Introduction – returning to nowhere

‘Different people, different backgrounds, different identities’: Filling the vacuum created by policy views of ‘cultural capital’

“…Making connections with more contemporary, international and popular culture texts has also been attempted by other teachers working in this field (see Cockerill, 2019, for a good example of this) and highlights one of the ways that teachers work around some of the limitations of this curriculum. These practices have been described elsewhere (Connolly, 2021) and indeed such circumnavigation is inherently contained in a subject with quite a particular conception of knowledge (Doecke & Mead, 2018). The refusal of English, as a subject, to be corralled by limited notions of cultural capital or curriculum has its roots in the rejection of Leavisite discrimination, as characterised in the work of Raymond Williams or Stuart Hall and the above interview data suggests this tradition is alive and well.…”

“…The above conflation of academic ideas with educational policy, and the neoliberal agenda certainly have resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum (see Nelson‐Addy et al, 2018 for a good example of this) and in some instances quite an insular curricular view in subjects such as English and History, where the use of canonical structures results in significant proportions of modern and ancient cultures being excluded from the school curriculum. If this narrowing – discussed extensively elsewhere (Connolly, 2020, 2021) – is coupled with the idea that, contra Arnold, much cultural activity is not actually said at all, but rather expressed online in various ways, it is quite easy to see conceptions of cultural capital as both limiting and illiberal. As Paul Nightingale has noted, it is part of the ‘compliance’ curriculum – one that tells students that the culture they come from and the cultural life they engage in outside of school is invalid, and to be interested in such culture within schools is to be non‐compliant.…”

Exploring teachers' views of cultural capital in English schools

“…There is, seemingly, a disconnect between the cultural lives lived by pupils in English schools and the projected cultural lives that the NC and Ofsted think they should have. We should say here that this is not simply a high/popular culture divide; although the NC's refusal to treat popular culture and its associated industries as a worthy object of study is problematic (see Connolly, 2021 for an exploration of this), it is more the case that all sorts of socially and economically valuable culture is simply ignored by the curriculum. Vast swathes of texts from other cultures, linguistic forms, humour, film, TV, graphic art and leisure activities are simply not acknowledged or encouraged in this version of cultural capital.…”