Chapter 4: An OATS Cross-case Analysis

It is generally accepted that ‘working class schools in the black African townships are likely to persist in reproducing working class school leavers, with a few exceptional cases of upward social mobility’ (Robins & Fleisch, 2014). Bowles and Gintis referred to this as the ‘correspondence principle, namely, by structuring social interactions and individual rewards to replicate the environment of the workplace’ (Bowles & Gintis, 2002). The case studies of working class youth are not much different in this regard. The converse is also assumed to be correct, that as a consequence, middle class schools also persist in reproducing middle class school leavers, with a few exceptional cases of downward social mobility. This is the argument that is equally central to Arjun Appadurai's conceptualization of the capacity to aspire – which is mainly about the working class and how to trigger their upward mobility through them changing ‘their terms of recognition’ (Appadurai, 2014). This study is informed by nine case studies of black South African youth, four of whom are working class and the other five being middle class. Based on these nine cases, the research can therefore neither claim cases of generality, nor can it claim cases of exceptionality. What it has shown is that whilst it can largely confirm what the literature says about the reproduction of working class school leavers, the cases of all middle class male youth seem to challenge mainstream literature when it comes to the reproduction of middle class school leavers. The reproduction of black middle class male school leavers seems to not be as given as the reproduction of middle class female school leavers and that of the working class youth.