Paper short abstract:

School ethnography of secondary vocational school in the Czech Republic describes the students of low school achievements and their teachers approach towards them during their secondary school attendance. The ethnography aims to show structures leading to low social mobility.

Paper long abstract:

In modern democratic societies, school is perceived as a tool to promote social mobility (Jarkovská 2009; Keller 2012; da Conceição 2019), at least theoretically. In the Czech Republic, although the number of people with higher education has been growing in the past thirty years, the reproduction of social inequalities remained almost unchanged (OECD, 2019). Many scholars (Willis 1977; Bettie 2003; Katrňák 2004) studied the family background role in children school achievements to show the effect of family on social mobility. I aim to show structures leading to the social reproduction of working class through the ethnography of one vocational secondary school class (15/16-17/18 year-olds) in the Czech Republic during their three-year attendance.

The role of schools’ hidden curriculums and teachers’ norms, values, and praxis has a vital impact on the social mobility of their pupils. Prescribing a child pupils identity (the belief that a child can be taught, is able to learn and gain knowledge) is a tool to social mobility. However, school institution often does not bestow working class children the pupil’s identity, because working class holds norms and values that do not concur with those of school.