British Journal of Sociology of Education

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The indifference of distinction. Art schools and the

noblesse oblige of privileged students

Anna Uboldi

To cite this article: Anna Uboldi (2020): The indifference of distinction. Art schools and
the noblesse�oblige of privileged students, British Journal of Sociology of Education, DOI:
10.1080/01425692.2020.1726170

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British Journal of Sociology of Education
https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2020.1726170

The indifference of distinction. Art schools and the

noblesse oblige of privileged students
Anna Uboldi
Linguistic and Intercultural Mediation, University of Milan, Milano, Italy

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

A consolidated sociological line of the research allows us to understand Received 9 October 2018
the educational advantages of middle-class pupils in terms of the Accepted 29 January 2020
dynamics of reproduction [Bourdieu, P., and J. C. Passeron. 1970. The KEYWORDS
Inheritors: French Students and Their Relations to Culture, translated and art school; school choice;
edited by Richard Nice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Power, S., social class; habitus;
T. Edwards, G. Whitty, and V. Wigfall. 2003. Education and the Middle Class. aspirations
Buckingham: Open University Press]. However, some scholars have
pointed out how this process cannot be taken for granted, highlighting
the difficulties experienced by youths in reaching academic success
[Reay, D., and H. Lucey. 2002. “Carrying the Beacon of Excellence: Social
Class Differentiation and Anxiety at a Time of Transition.” Journal of
Education Policy 17 (3): 321–336. Doi:10.1080/02680930210127586].
Based on Bourdieu’s perspective, this article will explore the links
between low educational attainment, artistic passion, and high aspira-
tions in privileged students. The research is based on in-depth inter-
views and focus groups with middle-class pupils in two secondary art
schools in Milan. It is argued the artistic disposition acts within dynamics
of negotiation among different and contrasting expectations. Creativity
emerges as a source to perform gendered privileged learner identities.
This study on artistic educational pathways can contribute to under-
standing the process-making of inequalities in creative fields.

Introduction
This article examines a group of middle-class Italian youngsters who attend secondary art
school. It focuses on their attitude of detachment from their lives at school.
The experiences of these students are a compelling case study, as they seem to run counter
to the reproduction theory set out by Bourdieu and Passeron (1970, 1977). According to
Bourdieu’s perspective, the ‘dauphins’, i.e. the new generations of the ruling classes, inherit
a certain skill in navigating their way through the school. However, the students in this
study have low levels of academic attainment and display a low level of interest in school-
work. In order to explore this phenomenon, I will analyze the dynamics and meanings
underlying the forms of disconnection between family cultural capital and scholastic dis-
positions. The pupils in this study cannot be identified as ‘rebels’ (Aggleton 1984) or simply

CONTACT Anna Uboldi Annauboldi0@gmail.com

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. UBOLDI

‘deviants’ (Bourdieu 1996a, 183) despite being some way from achieving school success [see
paragraph III]. I will argue how these students represent a new form of reproduction, rather
than being anomalies. The disassociation from scholastic knowledge appears linked to a
specifically elitist way of experiencing education, and of projecting themselves into a pro-
fessional future (Leccardi, 2006). These pupils represent instances of particular kinds of
dominant class identities that reflect contemporary Italian society. Playing a significant role
within them are the creative industries.
It is important to begin by providing an overview of the characteristics of secondary art
schools, in Italian education. The secondary school system is made up of three types of
institution: vocational schools, technical institutes (that provide students with the practical
skills needed for specific occupations) and, finally, ‘lyceums’ (that traditionally open the
door to university).1 Art schools2 are one type of lyceum. Until 2009, there were two types
of art school: vocational art schools and ‘artistic lyceums’: ‘artistic lyceums’ focused on the
fine arts while vocational art schools were dedicated to craft arts. The ministry of education
‘Gelmini Reform’ (2009) transformed all art schools into lyceums, incorporating artistic
vocational schools into them.
This reform of the artistic lyceums established new curricula of specialization for the
final three years of schooling, following a common biennial path: visual and figurative art,
architecture, design, scenography, graphics and multimedia.3 Today, art schools are widely
considered the least prestigious type of lyceum due to their practical dimension. They lie
beyond the division (Willis 1981, Bourdieu 1986) between the theoretical dimension—a
feature of the ‘lyceum’—and the practical dimension of the technical and vocational schools.
Therefore, this type of school has an ambiguous status in Italy. It represents a school with
a mainly practical basis that seeks to prepare students for the ‘distinctive’ field of creative
activities4 (McLeod, O’Donohoe, and Townley 2009; Burke and McManus 2011; Allen 2014;
Banks and Oakley 2016; Oakley et al. 2017; Martin and Frenette 2017). I will now discuss
how middle-class pupils live this educational choice.

2. The theoretical framework: the research on privileged students

Studies conducted by Bourdieu and Passeron (1970, 1977) and Bourdieu (1996a) on uni-
versity students have highlighted research trajectories dedicated to the analysis of the forms
of symbolic violence and reproduction of the social order through the educational field. In
extreme synthesis, in these works, Bourdieu demonstrates how school is an institution
which contributes to the perpetuation of social inequalities. Through the notions of habitus,
field, and cultural capital (1984), Bourdieu investigates the differences in educational
chances—both in terms of ability and knowledge—but also of students’ perceptions, feelings,
values and attitudes, of closeness or distance to the world of school.
The State Nobility (1996a) is a key piece of research. In it, Bourdieu describes how the
French ‘state nobility’ reproduces itself through the system of the Grandes Écoles. One of
the topics tackled in this extensive study is the complex work of interaction and the bond
of ‘complicity and affinity’ between the family world and the school system. Bourdieu argues
how the choice of school contributes to a gradual process of internalization and embodiment
of certain categories, codes, and inclinations. He describes a process of mutual selection.
The field of educational institutions is interpreted through the metaphor of a cognitive
machine, one which selects the students according to the implicit criteria of social
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 3

classification. It reproduces the social order through acts of consecration, which are justified
and legitimized by explicit ‘academic taxonomies’ (Bourdieu 1996a, 52). The bond between
social origin and scholastic success is therefore masked by the functioning strategies of the
educational body, which acts by considering students with a high family cultural capital as
being scholastically gifted. The outcome of these dynamics is that the educational system
ensures that the advantages bestowed by family inheritance are celebrated as individual
talent and, recognized as a principle of scholastic and social consecration.
In more recent sociological literature on the worlds of education (Pitzalis 2012), the main
focus concerns the experience of the dominated. There is a considerable number of studies
exploring the forms of inequality reproduced in schools towards ‘working-class’ pupils: the
middle class has received less attention by comparison (Kehily and Pattman 2006; Bourdieu
and de Saint Martin 1970; Van Zanten 2010). It is only recently, due to growing and more
general attention to the cultural world of the middle class (Savage and Butler 1995), that a
more solid research interest has emerged on the educational contexts of the privileged
(Aggleton 1984; Power et al. 2003; Ball 2003; Reay, Crozier, and James 2011; Maxwell and
Aggleton 2013, 2014). However, some areas remain under-investigated. If the dynamics of
selection and organization of the schools of the elites (Van Zanten 2010; Nogueira 2010)
and the practices of parents’ choice (Ball 2003; Brantlinger 2003; Vincent and Ball 2006;
Reay et al. 2008) represent the two topics studied in the literature, less attention seems to
have been paid to the direct experience of the youngsters themselves. Regarding this last
line of interpretation, some studies have shown how the reproduction of privileges is a
complex process and cannot be taken for granted (Power 2001; Reay and Lucey 2002; Kehily
and Pattman 2006; Allan 2010). These studies recognize school as a site where class and
gender identities are formed while outlining how these learner identities are shaped by
contradictory demands.

3. The research: materials and methods

The empirical research for this study was conducted in Milan, during the 2014–2016
academic years. The everyday educational experiences, ambitions, and future goals of
students at two secondary art schools—one state and one private—were explored. The
primary research techniques were interviews and focus groups with the students, aged
between 16 and 21, as well as additional interviews with their parents. Firstly, a question-
naire was distributed to several classes in both art schools in order to obtain basic demo-
graphic information on students, as well as to receive parents’ confirmation and consent.5
In this way, I selected students to reach different socio-cultural backgrounds. Later, the
focus groups (7 groups of 8 students) were conducted in reserved and closed classrooms.
Finally, thirty students from the focus groups were identified for individual interviews.
During these interviews, timeline activity was used (Bagnoli 2009) as a projective tool to
facilitate biographical reflexivity. This consists of a graphic task in which the interviewee
draws a line on a sheet of paper in order to indicate the most significant events in their
biography. The interviews with the parents (15 individuals) were held at their homes.
Ethnographic participant-observation was also conducted through participation in every-
day class activities in order to better understand the social dynamics and the school cli-
mate. As previously mentioned, two schools were chosen: one private and one public. The
private school is small (100 students), Catholic, and located in a quiet residential area of
4 A. UBOLDI

Milan.6 The state school was located in a multi-ethnic and peripheral area, and is attended
by approximately 800 students.
The Italian educational system is based on the division between state and private, with
private schools being mainly Catholic (De Natale 2007). According to the 2014 Istat survey,
the highest regional concentration of secondary art schools is in Lombardy (24.7%), of
which 36.5% are private. In Italy, state secondary schools are chosen by pupils from every
social class while private schools are mainly attended by pupils from the bourgeoisie. Despite
receiving some state funding (Barone 2005), entry to these schools requires the payment
of a yearly fee. Students, however, do not have to sit any entrance examinations. Catholic
private secondary schools provide a similar quality education to state schools. They attract
the most conservative middle-class families who are likely to share Catholic values and seek
elitist educative climates (Grimaldi and Serpieri 2012).
To analyze the data produced, the students were divided into two interpretative groups:
privileged and disadvantaged students. In order to establish these two groups, the level of
education and the employment class of both parents was considered, according to the
principle of dominance.7 The analysis of the interview texts was based on a qualitative
approach centered on interpretative categories emerging from both a horizontal examina-
tion of every single interview and a vertical comparison of all the interviews. The latter
involved the creation of interpretative categories and thematic areas. The data was analyzed
through both biographical and content analysis using qualitative research software (QDA
Miner 4 Lite). In this paper, only the data on privileged students are considered. Table 1
lists the students interviewed:
The term ‘middle class’ was used to identify those students from privileged social
milieus. This simplification has an explicative use. The reflections developed in this paper
are based on this wider category. However, we must clarify the necessarily arbitrary nature
of the classification used and, above all, the impossibility to examine the same divisions
within the middle class (Bourdieu 1984; Devine 2004), for example, between the occupa-
tions of teacher and executive. The limited number of interviews conducted with the
privileged youngsters does not allow us to take into account the internal differences among
the middle class.

Table 1. The students with a high sociocultural background interviewed.

Francesco1, male, 18 years old, private school, father: dentist with degree; mother: homemaker with secondary school
diploma.
Elisabetta, female, 17 years old, private school, father: teacher; mother: teacher with degree.
Lorenzo, male, 18 years old, private school, father: building entrepreneur with secondary school diploma; mother: teacher
with degree.
Elisa, female, 18 years old, private school, mother: architect but homemaker; father entrepreneur with degree.
Cecilia, female, 16 years old, state school, father: civil servant with degree; mother: homemaker with secondary school
diploma.
Michele, male, 16 years old, private school, father: doctor with degree; mother: bank worker with secondary school diploma.
Andrea, male, 18 years old, state school, father: entrepreneur with degree, mother: events organizer with secondary
school diploma.
Francesco2, male, 18 years old, private school, father and mother both doctors with degrees.
Veronica, female, 17 years old, private school, father: lawyer with degree; mother nursery school teacher with post-
secondary school specialization.
Vittorio, male, 18 years old, private school, father and mother architects with degrees.
Alessandro, male, 17 years old, private school, father: entrepreneur; mother: artist, both with secondary school diploma.
Marta, female, 18 years old, private school, father: chemist; mother: executive, both with degrees.
Gian Maria, male, 17 years old, private school, mother: designer; father: architect, both with degrees.
Giulia, female, 18 years old, private school, mother: fashion designer; father: entrepreneur, both with degrees.
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 5

4. Results: the search for abstract manual skills

Art schools seem to be a destination for pupils with low levels of academic attainment,
when compared with other ‘lyceums’ and with their privileged pupils (Pitzalis 2012). The
strategic nature (Bourdieu 2000) of the decision to go to art school, and the reference to a
lyceum with a strong practical dimension, is a pervasive element in the students’ accounts.
The choice of secondary school as the first conscious investment in the construction of
their biography therefore emerges. This is the case, for example, of one student who argues
how he chose a lyceum over a technical institute due to its perceived prestige and usefulness.
He explains how he intends to ‘exploit the art school to his advantage’. A sense of interest,
as defined by Bourdieu (1984), can be seen in these words:
D: What did the teachers at middle school advise you to do?

R: A technical school because it’s not as though I was excellent in the other subjects… […]
but I wanted to go to a ‘lyceum’ out of pride as well […] all my brothers went to a lyceum […]
I decided to go to the artistic lyceum for my qualities […] so really something more […] let’s
say useful and actually now I want to do it on something slightly more technical, I’ve exploited
the artistic lyceum to my advantage. (A., male, 18 years old)
In their narratives, there is an interest in a sort of ‘abstract manual skill’. These youngsters
emphasize both the primarily manual and practical character of this lyceum sui generis;
and the possibility of gaining not only an artistic taste but, above all, a way of experiencing
daily life:

- I think it is the richest school in the sense that you are in front of both different subjects of
study and the more practical side that allows you to express yourself in the way you prefer and
therefore […] this is an extra point, in my opinion, also in view of the job market […] you can
expand this creativity in all fields because you have that extra something.

- Exactly we have a wider view on everything. (Focus group, private lyceum)

This is a difference which seems to allow them to interpret themselves as students of

‘subjects of talent’ (Bourdieu and de Saint Martin 1970, 156). This is in contrast to others
devoted to mere schoolwork. Educational and textbook knowledge is considered as a sort
of second-class knowledge—the value of which is subordinate to knowledge—but, above
all, represents a disposition towards it, which is freer, more creative, subjective, and distinc-
tive (Bourdieu 1984).

I have always been a student who likes to know but not through books […]. I prefer to learn
by travelling around the world and learning through what we have here that is physical, mate-
rial and not in books […]. I have always slightly neglected my studies […] I prefer to become
cultured in another way. (V. female, 17 years old)

It is within this framework of partial scholastic disaffection that the students’ passion
for art finds space, since art is considered non-scholastic and textbook knowledge. This
defines them as ‘distinctive’ students. An image of the artistic school emerges from the
interviews as a paradigmatic example of that ‘honorable refuge’ described by Bourdieu to
indicate some subject areas offering prestige at the minimum scholastic cost (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1977, 141). There are various elements in the accounts of the students, which seem
to make these observations topical and transferable to the creative fields (Richards 2005).
6 A. UBOLDI

4.1 Intersections of class and gender: creativity as identity resource

These learner identities cannot be separated from their gendered dimension. The following
analysis explores how creativity serves as an identity resource for pupils. It will argue how
the creative dispositions are enrolled in negotiations, incorporations, and re-elaborations
of social expectations.

4.1.1 Smart creative girls

In recent European debates and policy discourses, contemporary young females have often
been presented as ‘supergirls’ able to interpret femininity as a new neoliberal fantasia of
success (Walkerdine and Ringrose 2006; Renold and Allan 2006; Francis and Skelton 2005;
Ringrose 2007). Besides these ‘girl power discourses’, the issue on problematic boys is raised
as an ‘academic obsession’ (Reay 2001, 154). This limited focus obscures the theme of
troubled girls, conflating academic success with femininity. An increasing corpus of socio-
logical studies reveals, instead, the hidden costs of academic excellence for young girls and
discusses how the reproduction of educational privileges could be a fragile process (Maxwell
and Aggleton 2014). For example, Reay and Lucey (2002) discuss feelings of anxiety for
academic life in young middle-class girls. Along a similar line, Raby and Pomerantz (2015),
in a qualitative study of young Canadian girls, explore how scholastic performance is a
complex question within identity dynamics. They state that girls ‘are struggling to negotiate
their identities within highly contradictory expectations that demand careful and conscious
thought’ (Raby and Pomerantz 2015). Like Reay, they highlight the ambivalence between
the two main value orientations of the ideal of ‘smart girlhood’: academic success and
femininity. Their research uncovers a variety of ways in which girls from different social
backgrounds and who exhibit high academic performance negotiate identity. The authors
emphasize that, for many girls, academic engagement is always ‘carefully and consciously
navigated’ (Raby and Pomerantz 2015, 508) within contradictory requests and desires. This
point is also useful in order to understand the instances of low achievement in middle-class
girls; an area underexplored in the relevant research literature. In this way, (Aggleton 1984),
there is the work of Jones and Myhill (2004) on middle and high school pupils. Exploring
teachers’ perceptions of student underachievement, they explain how the underachievement
of girls is an issue that ‘remains a shadowy vague figure, almost invisible’ (Jones and Myhill
2004, 570).
For the girls who participated in the present study, there is a different but similar
kind of identity negotiation to that explored by Pomeratz and Roby, namely ‘how girls
‘do’ smart girlhood’ (Raby and Pomerantz 2015, 511). Contradictory expectations of
educational achievement and social desirability seem to act in identity works for these
middle-class girls. Social constructions of ‘smartness’ and girlhood are deployed here
in a very specific way: these girls manage social desirability and school achievement to
perform an identity work in line with their class affiliation, under a bourgeois imperative
of success. Despite different nuances in attitude, a basic orientation unites these girls.
Scholastic engagement is not easily embraced, nor easily refused. Students do not con-
sider their limited commitment a problem. In this way, the girls interviewed seem to create
a distance from the idea of being a ‘supergirl’, rejecting, only in part, the feminine imperative
of high educational achievement (Fuller 2009; Allan and Charles 2014; Maxwell and
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 7

Aggleton 2014). These girls have embraced a model of femininity, in which a school-focused
personality is rejected. To be a socially successful girl, academic achievement is not crucial.
Instead, they seem to display indifference to it. Unlike Raby and Pomerantz (2015), these
girls don’t consider school grades as an indication of smartness. This attitude can be inter-
preted in a similar way to the reflections of Reay and Lucey (2002), who observed how
middle-class girls tend to maintain, despite scholastic failure, a positive self-perception. An
example is the case of E. This girl displays a positive approach towards school life even if
she had to repeat a school year and change school due to her difficulties in some subjects.
E recognizes the value of schooling, which reflects her sense of responsibility:

I like to know so I like going to school regardless of the fact that then you meet an asshole
teacher […] it’s always better to know rather than not to know but I like school, I don’t hate
it […] strangely I like to come to school! And now I’m happy in the morning despite the fact
that I have to get up and I have to do it with pleasure, absolutely! (E. female, 17 years old)

The girls interviewed for this study appear confident, responsible and self-determined.
They affirm a specific version of the ‘super girl’ that is in line with the school ethos. They
make efforts to distinguish their ways of living everyday school life from the attitudes against
the school world. They do not focus completely on school but, on the other hand, do not
have a ‘ladette’ (Jackson 2006), model of behavior either. What is certain is that they are the
opposite of the masculine ‘posse’ girls studied by Mac An Ghaill (1994). These students try
to manage school, family, and peer group pressures and expectations. As a result, they
conform to traditional middle-class values (Allan 2010) in showing respect for and engage-
ment with school. As Allan (2010) writes about her ethnographic study on girls in a ‘selective
school’: ‘for the girls themselves also appeared to be dedicated to this project of creating
the perfectly groomed, governed, balanced and successful self ’ (Allan 2010, 45). In these
girls, there is also an emphasis on the importance of extra-curricular experiences as they
are seen as added values. Examples are private school programs that offer field trips, intern-
ships, and voluntary activities in order to fully educate the individual and form their per-
sonality. As Allan continues, these activities are understood as opportunities to create ‘a
successful self […] a way of accruing success and (surplus) capital for themselves’ (Allan
2010, 45). As one of the girls interviewed explains, a lack of interest in school subjects is in
contrast to her love for high culture, fine arts and for cultural experiences in everyday life:
It has always been a passion about art in general, I love going to see exhibitions, museums, see-
ing cities, also outside school trips. I always stop to find out about the buildings, etc., and then
I always read books on famous architects, artists […] so that is, it is a passion that has held me
since childhood and (laughs) and I hope to be able to continue it. (V., female, 17 years old)

The value attributed to cultural extra-curricular activities expresses the difference

between high and scholastic culture, as has already been observed. A love for high cultural
knowledge and the girls’ disposition towards school values overshadow scholastic difficul-
ties, in terms of performance and results. These girls are highly educated so they are able
to conform to a traditional middle-class model of femininity. They combine a value for
attractiveness and intelligence around the centrality of creativity. Creativity is deployed as
a tactic, an identity resource in their relationship with family, school and friends. Smartness
is identified with creativity, spirit and an aesthetic taste. Creativity becomes a way of being
that connects them with all social pressures:
8 A. UBOLDI

We are creative. I have always played with clothes since childhood. I invented collections; do
you know paper dolls? I drew clothes… And even today, you see I like to have a look of my
own, which expresses me: I got this skirt from a vintage shop and I worked on it, you see I
transformed it and every morning I try to express it my mood… and then from there, okay, I
started doing a thousand things and I started to paint my room, to create myself, that is to say,
things you would think of as absurd! (C., female, 16 years old)

It is also expressed by an embodied normalized middle-class femininity, in terms of

accent and appearance. Their gender performances are grounded in the idea of girlhood,
but without any strong countercultural or hyper-feminine nuances. For example, they are
interested in fashion and they are inspired by the design world. They resemble the ‘nice
girls’ studied by Reay (2001). They are distinctly future-oriented, yet they do not demon-
strate any specific worries about academic results. They also conform to gender and class
expectations and embrace the value of success, interpreted as the ability to project oneself
into the future. School achievement is considered preparation for university and professional
paths. In the interviews, they express effortless success in the artistic domains, which cat-
alyzes their future ambition in those fields:

I want to study fashion and photography or fashion photography. I love that world and I think I
can get into it. My mother works in the communications office of a fashion house here in Milan
and I see myself in backstage, in the sense of doing a job backstage. I wouldn’t want to be a model;
I want to work with fashion collections. I have good taste (laughs). (F. female, 18 years old)

In this way, they outline a model of girlhood in which there is a particular harmony with
teachers and parents. The interviewees repeatedly cite an appreciation for their creativity
in both school and family contexts and were noticeably proud of their artistic work. An
example is the following young woman who explains how her ambitions in photography
are supported by her family:
My education is very important for my father […] let’s say that it’s one of the most important
things […] it is a very good school from the point of view of how they treat people […] my
parents have always supported me. In their opinion, it’s best if I do what I like […] they are
also willing to support me about the choice of university: photography at the IED (a private
university with a design, fashion and art curriculum). (G., female, 18 years old)

In conclusion, these young women reject substantial academic commitment, prioritizing

their artistic passion. Their love of art, fashion or photography leads them to negotiate an
identity of creative, agreeable, pretty, and, socially successful young girls. They play on the
ambiguity of an academic achiever and they construct an image of polite, well-behaved and
smart girls. They highly value academic trajectories but reject exclusive academic engage-
ment and a ‘book-smart’ cliché. They look for social acceptance and for an agreeable self-im-
age while refusing an excessively attractive and ‘sexy’ presentation. This is some distance
from Reay’s ‘Spice Girls’ model and one that recalls their class origins. Through such ambiv-
alence, a specific identity of charming, glamorous and creative girls emerges.

4.1.2 Cool creative guys

In literature, a wide body of work allows the boys’ underachievement to be interpreted in
terms of self-identification with ‘macho’ values (Renold 2001; Lusher 2011; Bowley 2013;
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 9

Holdsworth 2013; Waller 2014) and within dynamics of class origin (Archer and Yamashita
2003; Williams, Jamieson, and Hollingworth 2008; Haywood and Mac An Ghaill 2012). A
solid corpus of work raises the question of underachievement as being a class issue, and
thus linked to the identity processes of working-class pupils. Educational underachievement
is often understood as a problem for working-class boys engaged in the construction of
‘laddish’ identities. In contrast, there are few analyses of low attainment in the middle-class
experience (Aggleton 1984). Some research has explored the reproduction of privileges for
middle-class boys in terms of dynamics of capital conversion in academic fields (Proctor
2011). However, studies on difficulties in school achievement, and in the dynamics of
reproduction of privileges of middle-class pupils, focus principally on female students.
In this study, following the work of Mac An Ghaill (1994), multifaceted nuances in the
expression of masculinity can be explored. There are internal contradictions between an
attempt to balance both gender and class models, in which academic achievement is shunned
but an idea of success is embraced. The interviews suggest that one way of managing this
contradiction is the affirmation of creative male identities. Creativity becomes an identity
resource that is key to becoming a successful boy, rejecting pure academic accomplishment
but pursuing some form of success. Similar to the reflections of Lusher (2011), the claim
for a form of success and mastery may be interpreted as a way expressing masculinity.
I have never been a hard-working student […] probably I don’t even study for an hour a day
[…] maybe I use a bit more of my personal cultural knowledge rather than study in greater
depth […] because I am a little lazy. (A. male, 18 years old).

The interviewed pupils negotiate a self-positioning between male representations and

class belonging.
By rejecting the drudgery of schoolwork, they appear to be influenced by dominant
discourses on male identity. However, there is not a direct appropriation of a form of hege-
monic masculinity. These boys pursue a softer version of masculinity in a specific way.
Firstly, they develop a ‘distinctive’ anti-schoolwork attitude that is in contrast to a pure
‘lad’ disposition (Willis 1981). There is a class dimension which is essential to understanding
their ways of living gender identity, creative skills and academic life. For example, one boy
interviewed explains his university and professional plans in the artistic fields, linking his
passion for music with a strong sense of self-realization. His words project an impression
of the ‘successful man’:
I’ve seen universities… of sound design… this is what I’d like to do in the future… we can
say that I’ve got ambitions! … I believe that the path is the right one… I would have good
opportunities in this field… (F., male, 18 years old).

In some of the boys, the ‘distinctive distance’ from academic engagement takes the
semi-serious nature of temporary rebellion. There emerges a tension between the desire to
select a career which is in line with their family’s social position and the simultaneous desire
to maintain liminal spaces. These are identities which revolve around an adolescent and
rebellious elaboration of the artistic practices (Aggleton 1984). Experiences in the field of
graffiti and the world of tattoos are found. These youngsters seem to transgress their own
class boundaries through playful and creative experiences, with a purely temporary char-
acter. For example, F. tells of minor offenses and subsequent fines accumulated due to his
experience with urban graffiti and the use of ‘soft’ drugs. Today, he considers himself an
10 A. UBOLDI

adult who must ‘not waste time’, and wishes to translate his artistic aptitude into a respectful
profession and to get into art galleries:

I did a lot of graffiti and I hung out… I love that world, I love art…, so I want to extrapolate
what I did and what they still do in the street, on trains or in the underground metro and take
that into an [art] gallery… I’m creative, a Basquiat of 2015! … When you’re eighteen, you real-
ize that [it’s time to] take on responsibilities… and I’ve already paid enough [fines] (laughs).
Enough! I don’t have any more time to waste. (F., male, 18 years old)

In these words, the young man’s class dimension is characterized by an ability to distance
himself from the ‘others’ (his fellow graffiti artists, whose ‘street’ experience is not temporary)
by means of it being a brief parenthesis within a clear life project. Like the analysis developed
by Kehily and Pattman (2006) on the deviant leisure activities of university students, these
youths are characterized by a ‘strong sense of agency’ (Kehily and Pattman 2006, 43) and
they are able to construct themselves as ‘autonomous individuals with a bright future’ (Kehily
and Pattman 2006, 50). In these boys, despite some occasional ‘rebellious’ attitudes (Aggleton,
1984), there prevails a sense of harmony with both scholastic and family goals and values.
Each boy interviewed acknowledged the importance of education yet rejected a school-cen-
tered attitude. For example, the previously cited boy explained to me that during secondary
school it was possible to ‘waste time’ with graffiti in the suburbs but, from next year, he would
only be busy at an art academy to become the new ‘Basquiat’. Another young man explained
that he regards school as a ‘necessary evil’ in reaching a high social and professional standing
in life. For example, this boy explains the usefulness of the school experience to prepare for
a solid future; furthermore, he acknowledged the added value of a private education:

A combination of love and indifference, a lot [for school]. Because my classmates are really
great and […] also the teachers aren’t any less [great] […] I know it’s useful! And that’s why I
go [to private school] because it is more useful in this sense! (V., male, 18 years old).

Educational performance is separated from a ‘feel for the game’ in the academic world:
a sense of play that leads them to embrace the educational ethos and to elaborate high
aspirations. The refusal to choose high academic achievement runs in parallel to an adhesion
to valuing success. These pupils invest in educational identity in a distinct way, defined by
a strong sense of self-confidence in the idea of higher education and lifelong learning.
Secondly, it must be underlined that these young men do not consider an artistic dispo-
sition to be effeminate; rather they explicitly reject the idea of gender identification within
artistic curricula. Instead, they utilize creativity as a tool to claim a ‘cool’ male identity,
which is reflective of their class values. In these pupils, social popularity is mainly linked
to creative commitment. Success in the creative arts allows them to manage the idea of
educational failure in a strategic way, depending on their gender and class position (Williams,
Jamieson, and Hollingworth 2008). Their boyhood is built on an intersection between
artistic accomplishment, clear ambition and a distinctive indifference towards traditional
scholastic achievement. The claims for ‘natural’ and ‘distinctive’ intelligence and creative
aptitude become valid and respectful elements of male identity:
Then tomorrow [each one of us] will have all the possibilities, i.e. if you want to be an architect
[…] design […] fashion […] you can do a thousand things and whatever you do you’ll do it with
an extra point of view that the others, in my opinion, can’t have compared to us. We are educated
differently, that is […] we’ve been taught to see things differently… (Private school focus group)
 British Journal of Sociology of Education 11

They underline the difference from ‘bad boys’ by demonstrating that they are well-ed-
ucated. Their class masculinity is built, in terms of embodied identity, through specific and
distinctive ways of speaking, their appearance, posture and endeavor. Education and good
manners are key principles for the boys’ affirmation of alternative kinds of masculinity that
are far from pure, anti-education, masculine identities. Following the suggestions from Mac
An Ghaill (1994), a new negotiation of gender representations thus comes to the surface.
Besides the rebel lad and the successful, studious pupil, there is a range of alternative identity
constructions. These are different nuances through ‘cool’ creative identities constructed by
the youths interviewed. I can identify a range of alternative masculine positions: from
‘muscular and creative’ boys, with some temporary laddish attitudes to deviant behavior,
to ‘creative gentlemen’ who are more polite.
However, both of these positions are characterized by a strong sense of investment in
the educational field. The ‘muscle men’ and the ‘gentlemen’ identities both refer to a social
coolness which ‘has less to do with physical work and more to do with the individualized
project of the self ’ (Ingram and Waller 2014, 46). These students manage hegemonic gender
repertoires to negotiate their feelings of failure and success. In this way, cool boys are able
to reject hard work but not the school culture: to reject certain ‘laddish’ attitudes while
maintaining a male distance from full academic achievement. They try to achieve social
popularity through creative skills. School is the key for their engagement in educational
and social milieu and defines their coolness.
To conclude, these boys and girls are engaged in dynamics of assimilation, resistance, and
the rejection of elements of traditional gender and class models. Beyond academic success
or failure, creativity is, in its various shades, a third way to manage different social pressures.

5. Conclusion
The central purpose of this paper has been the exploration of the experience of a group of
privileged students, examining their views of school life and the meanings attached to artistic
pathways. I have drawn on existing studies on privileged pupils to look at learner identity
process-making. These studies, however, does not focus, apart a few exceptions, on low-at-
tainment privileged pupils. Instead, I have referred mainly to research on the hidden costs
of high achievement for middle-class girls . In addition, low school achievement is an issue
explored mostly in the experience of disadvantaged boys but there are few interpretations
for middle-class boys. Another body of study concentrates on the hidden costs of high
achievement for middle-class female students. Similar to the studies of Reay and Lucey (2002),
among others, I have shown how the interviewed pupils manage different expectations from
family, peers and school. In bringing together these different studies (see paragraph I), I seek
to make a unique contribution to the study of educational dispositions in privileged pupils,
with a comparative look at girls and boys (see paragraph III). The pupils interviewed show
distinctive attitudes of indifference to school marks and high aspirations and class perceptions
of success and failure. It is argued that the pupils’ focus on creativity is a way to manage
contradictory educational and social pressures. Art is a key source in articulating experiences
of educational failure, aspirations for success and to act out middle-class gender identities.
To conclude, these identity dynamics revolve around the idea of ‘distinction’ such as ‘noblesse
oblige’: in terms of a clear sense of distance from scholastic knowledge but also as a sign of
good taste and artistic sense and, finally, as a distinctive reflexive capacity of guiding one’s life
12 A. UBOLDI

and aspiring to the future. This paper suggests that there is a need for more research on mid-
dle-class pupils’ identity negotiations, considering, relationally, gender. These reflections on
the forms of intersection between class, gender and academic dispositions point towards fur-
ther questions. In particular, traditional artistic capital is no longer a key resource for the new
generations of the dominant classes (Savage and Prieur 2013). Even so, some remnants of class
persist in certain forms of artistic engagement (Oakley, O’Brien, Laurison and Friedman,
2017). Recent creative pathways, such as fashion or sound design, have special appeal to some
privileged students. It is therefore necessary to continue to investigate these dynamics of con-
version in capital resources in order to better understand social inequalities in the creative fields.

Notes
1. The term ‘lyceum’ refers to a secondary school distinguished by the offer of a theoretical and
preparatory education, especially in view of university studies. Nevertheless, there is nothing
to formally prevent pupils with a technical or vocational diploma from attending university.
2. The ‘lyceums’ are: classical, scientific, linguistic, artistic, musical and social science.
3. There are no mandatory curricula and schools can choose which courses to activate.
4. I refer to contributors of the special issue American Behavioral Scientist (2017).
5. All ethical issues were addressed prior to conducting this study. The process of gaining con-
sensus in the research field was realized in four steps. First, I obtained the formal consensus
of the headteachers. Second, I gained the help and the informal approbation of the teachers.
Third, I negotiated the formal agreement with the parents. Finally, I gained the informal con-
sent and the confidence of the pupils.
6. The pupils interviewed live mainly in this urban area and some in nearby neighborhoods.
7. I attributed to the family the employment class corresponding to the higher level of the occu-
pations of the father or the mother.

Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the feedback received on previous and partial versions of this work at conferences and
seminars and to all my professors. In particular, I am indebted to Professor C. Leccardi for her crucial
encouragement, to Professor A. Verger for for many suggestions provided and to Professor A. Warde
for giving me a lot of advice during my period abroad during the doctorate, helping me at a decisive
step and boosting my knowledge. All their insightful comments have been essential for me. Finally, I
would also like to thank to the editor and referees for their precious comments have allowed me to
vastly improve my manuscript.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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