Abstract
The focus in this chapter is on the scholarship students’ entry into the elite school field. Described by the participants as a “culture shock,” this chapter details the scholarship recipients’ initial response to the elite school field and their discovery that, despite them feeling that they had earned their place at the elite school by being a top achiever in their primary school, they possessed “cultural capital in the wrong currency” (Gewirtz et al., Markets, choice and equity in education. Open University Press, Buckingham, p 40, 1995). The students’ narratives in this chapter provide the reader with an emerging awareness of the profound institutional differences between schools that operate from unequal positions within the field of education in the South African context. These largely unanticipated differences encountered include the physical environment, the culture of boarding, the racial demographics of the school, higher academic and sporting standards, and cultural expectations of behavior. The chapter concludes by outlining the scholarship recipients’ accounts of their realization that the accolades that positioned them well in their working-class communities and schools were not necessarily transferable in the same measure to another part of the field, resulting in a feeling for many of not fitting in or belonging in this new space.
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Notes
- 1.
This chapter expands upon the work of the PhD thesis, “The Gift of a Scholarship: The reflective accounts of scholarship recipients attending elite secondary schools in post-apartheid South Africa,” by Wallace (2020).
- 2.
Scholarship students are invited to provide the foundation with their school preferences once they are offered the scholarship. Ultimately, however, the foundation and the schools make the final decisions about which schools the scholarship students will attend.
- 3.
Government Notice No. 23315 (www.gov.za).
- 4.
Established in 2004, the South African Mathematics Olympiad is the biggest Olympiad in the country where approximately 100,000 learners participate annually to achieve recognition for the mathematic ability within their school and grade.
- 5.
The #RhodesMustFall was a protest movement that began on 9 March 2015. It was originally directed against a statue at the University of Cape Town that commemorates Cecil Rhodes. The campaign for the statue’s removal received global attention and led to a wider movement to decolonize education across South Africa. In the same year, the #FeesMustFall student-led protest movement began in mid-October 2015 in South Africa. The goal of the movement was to stop increases in student fees as well as to increase government funding of universities. Protests started at the University of Witwatersrand and spread to other universities across the country.
- 6.
For an overview of education and education changes in South Africa see Fiske, E. & Ladd, H., 2004. Education and Apartheid. In Elusive Equity: Education reform in post-apartheid South Africa (pp. 40–60). Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.
- 7.
- 8.
In South Africa most school days start any time between 07:30 and 08:00 every morning. The academic school day typically ends at 14:30 with cultural and sporting activities starting at 15:00 and continuing until 17:00 or 18:00 depending on the activity.
- 9.
An important note to make in the South African context is the current very poor public transport system that is in place. The most popular public transport is mini-bus taxis or buses, as the train system does not operate in all areas.
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Wallace, J., Feldman, J. (2022). Cultural Capital in the Wrong Currency. In: Scholarship Students in Elite South African Schools. Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, vol 16. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7536-3_5
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