Disadvantaged students and art school: the outcasts on the inside between acquiescence and contestation

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis research explores the educational experiences from a qualitative perspective with in-depth interviews and focus groups with disadvantaged young pupils. The research takes place in two secondary art schools in Milan. I define art in the space of educational choices, in a Bourdieusian perspective. This type of school is an ambivalent practical lyceum. I study the meanings of this choice, the educational representations and attitudes of the students as well as the ambitions for the future. I investigate the school choice, the learner identity and the creative aspiration as classed concepts by means of cultural capital and habitus tools. The social class determines the way in which students orient themselves towards creative educational routes and professional future careers. A research of mediocrity and modesty characterises their dispositions towards school and art. The educational artistic experience is considered as a merely autotelic practice without value and relevance to their life. The disadvantaged young students are incomplete neo-liberal subjectivities and their life projects are undefined in terms of tools, aims and trajectories. In sum, I examine the role of secondary art school to reproduce the social disadvantages in terms of educational and professional aspirations.