Boys of Class, Boys of Color: Negotiating the Academic and Social Geography of an Elite Independent School Peter Kuriloff,

Ed.D. University of Pennsylvania Michael C. Reichert, Ph.D. Center for the Study of Boys and Girls Lives Haverford, PA Authors Note We wish to thank The Haverford School (THS) and its Head, Dr. Joseph Cox and Assistant Head, Mr. Mark Thorburn, for their support of this research. THS has used it to engage in continuous reflection and change. What we describe in this paper,therefore, is a moment in time. We are also grateful for the helpful feedback we received from Professors Mort Botel, Art Dole and Joan Goodman, and Drs. Dan McGrath, Norman Newberg and Richard Parker. Finally, we are grateful to our Research Assistants, Dr. Robert Zeitlin, Ms. Lauren Scher and Ms. Laura Boniello, who helped us in many aspects of the research process. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Peter Kuriloff, Graduate School of Education, 3700 Walnut St., Phila. PA. 19104-6216. Note for quotation or citation without the written permission of the senior author.In press, Journal of Social Issues. Abstract How do boys from diverse backgrounds manage in an elite boys school? Interviewing a representative sample of 27 boys, blocked for race, class and academic performance, we found that they navigated the schools academic geography by mastering "a drill" that included hard work, unwavering commitment, a will to win, a cool style and self knowledge as learners. Some developed a transformative love of learning. But many marginalized boys struggled with the schools social geography. African American boys managed most effectively as they developed intra-group discourses of race and class enabling them to take up the schools offers of "hegemonic habitus" without "selling out". We discuss the liberating implications of helping students in both independent and public schools develop similar critiques. Independent School Elite preparatory schools have played a unique role in preparing boys for power. Until World War II, graduation from a handful of schools was enough to guarantee boys entrance into the best private colleges and universities. Even as the social revolution of the 1960s propelled most of these schools toward coeducation and greater socioeconomic and racial diversity, they continue to play a disproportionate role in educating future members of the power elite. For example, as late as the 1980s, fully 12% of the senior managers of a very large sample of the nations major companies had graduated from 16 top boarding

schools (Useem & Karabel, 1986). Other studies have shown similar disproportionate representation of upper class men and graduates of top private schools among partners in elite Wall Street law firms (Smigel, 1964) and in high level, federal service (Mintz, 1975; Prescott, 1970). Clearly, attendance at elite private schools has privileged mens careers. While White upper class parents have always taken advantage of this, the schools push to diversify has enabled numbers of working class parents and parents of color to enroll their children in an effort to advantage them. By the 1980s, approximately 15% of elite boarding school students were working class or poor and while about 10% were students of color, only about 4% were African American (Cookson & Persell, 1985). What is it like for these children to negotiate their way through such schools? What does it take for them to survive? How do they both manage to survive and succeed in contexts that privilege upper class values, knowledge, speech, and writing? How does their experience contrast with that of upper class boys? What do these contrasting experiences tell us about the nature of these schools and the construction of academic and social success within them? And, more broadly, what can we learn from them that might inform the ways in which we struggle to educate students in schools generally? To begin to answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative study of boys attending one elite boys school. To frame our study, it is important first to describe the central elements that have characterized the educational philosophies of elite American private schools in general and this school in particular. The Historical Character of Elite Private Schools American preparatory schools originated in boarding academies founded in New England to prepare boys for college while shaping them into a Puritan, moral elect (Sizer, 1964). Their numbers grew rapidly in the half-century between 1880 and 1929 when they served primarily "old stock," upper class Protestants, while also assimilating the sons of new, Protestant tycoons (Baltzell, 1989). These schools gradually became the model for a set of elite day schools, first also for boys and then, more recently, for girls. Increasing numbers of parents, aware of ever-growing competition for entrance to prestigious colleges (Frank & Cook, 1995), choose to send their children to such schools in order to help them succeed. What are they actually buying when they make this choice? Consciously or unconsciously, often parents are hoping for training in the habits of success they believe such schools uniquely offer. The term "hegemonic [or dominant] cultural capital" reflects deeply embedded values, skills, language codes, dispositions, tastes and knowledge that are taken for granted as representing the "best" by dominant classes, by schools and by many parents (Foley, 1990; Bourdieu, 1984). Elite independent schools embody such capital in their impressive faculty and facilities, their demanding curricula, and their capacity to first attract and then to develop students with privileged habits of mind and heart. In the process of negotiating these curricula, elite schools

believe students will develop these habits as central elements of their character. Their character also is shaped by an explicit regime designed to foster particular forms of identity, and in the case of many of these schools, a particular form of masculinity. From the beginnings of elite private schools, boys were expected to develop a cool, "no sweat" style that suggested their achievements were effortless. They were expected to be "in control," to show physical courage and to disregard physical pain (provided by cold showers, long, regulated hours and the cane) (Cookson & Persell, 1985; Gathorne-Hardy, 1978). As formal athletics developed, they were incorporated into this ethos, underscoring the schools emphasis on competition and its requirements: fearlessness, speed, strength, endurance, teamwork and uncommon commitment to victory (Cookson & Persell, 1985). Bourdieu (1993) called such sets of qualities "habitus." He argued that because there is" an astonishingly close correspondence" between positions and dispositions, between the social characteristics of "posts, and the social characteristics of the agents who fill them" (1993, p. 64), the habitus of the ruling classes helps to explain the enduring intergenerational stability of wealth and privilege. Thus, according to Bourdieu, boys and girls who share a common habitus are most frequently chosen for the top schools (or for the top track in schools), and then seem to encourage and challenge each other once they enter the competitive world of education. The habitus that they carry into their schools, is the result of a long process of inculcation, beginning in early childhood, which becomes a "second sense" or "second nature"(1993, p. 5) but is then, in turn, honed and shaped by schools. We are left to wonder how marginal groups of students, recruited to such schools relatively recently, have fared. We also wonder what the impact of their presence has been on upper and upper-middle class boys who, until now, have enjoyed undisputed ownership of these schools. In this study, we were interested in finding out how different groups of boys managed at one elite school where the dominant cultural capital continues to define the core of the schools practices and where students are expected to have and hone the habitus of the ruling classes. Method We conducted our study at The Haverford School (THS), a junior kindergarten through 12th grade, boys day school, founded in 1884 and located in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia . THSs mission statement says it is a college preparatory school designed to provide "superior liberal arts education" to boys from different backgrounds. It stresses the importance of creating a challenging and supportive environment, that sets "high standards, of character and conduct" in order to develop each students "full intellectual, moral, social, artistic, athletic and creative potential." In its "Statement of Vision," the school says it strives to be nothing less than" the premier independent school for boys" while developing a community to foster"high achievement in academics, athletics and the arts." (www.haverford.org, 2-23-01 ).

THSs mission and vision are realized through long-standing traditions, many of which reflect those of the British-style, private boarding schools it originally emulated. Beginning in the 6th grade, boys wear ties and blazers. They take a very rigorous college prep curriculum that includes more than 15 hours of homework a week. All middle and upper school students are required to participate in interscholastic sports, within the areas most competitive league. From entrance, boys are told how good the school is, how lucky they are to be attending, and how, if they honor the privilege they are being given with diligence, hard work, focus and competitive zeal, they can be confident of a place in a fine college and later success in life. In short, THS has a very clear vision of what kind of young man it is trying to mold, as well as a variety of timetested methods for doing it. How do boys manage under this regime? In order to find out, we conducted hour-long interviews with 16 boys from 19992000 as part of a larger, quantitative study examining the relationship between achievement and the way boys co-construct their identities at THS (Reichert & Kuriloff, in preparation). As one of us (Reichert) was the schools consulting psychologist, he had well-established reputation among the boys, so it was relatively easy to recruit them for interviews. We also included interviews of 11 young men from an earlier study who had graduated from the school and were currently in college (Reichert, 2000). Our sample included boys from each grade as well as graduates, blocked for race, class, ethnicity and achievement level (upper and lower quartile and middle half). This sampling strategy enabled us to interview boys for whom THS was like a multi-generational home, as well as boys from the upper-middle and middle classes and boys from its socio-economic, ethnic and racial margins. In particular, for White boys: in the bottom quartile, 1 was upper class, 2 were upper-middle class and 5 were working class; in the middle 2 quartiles, 1 was upper class, 2 were upper-middle class and 3 were working class; and in the top quartile, 1 was upper class and 2 were working class. Among African American boys: in the bottom quartile, 1 was middle class and 3 were poor; in the middle quartiles, 1 was upper-middle class and 1 was poor; and in the upper quartile, 1 was upper-middle class and 1 was poor. Finally, the 2 non-WASP boys, one Jewish and one Pakistani, were upper middle class and in the top quartile of their class. In conducting the interviews, we followed a protocol that asked boys to describe themselves as learners, their understandings of their parents attitudes about learning and their view of the school s approach to teaching and learning. We asked them to contextualize these thoughts by explaining their views about the varieties of social identities within the school and how they saw such differences reflected within both the schools academic and social hierarchies. We recorded and transcribed all interviews. The 3 primary members of the research team, first individually, then collectively, coded sample interviews for emerging themes. We used these to develop a preliminary coding tree and, assisted by the qualitative analysis software program QSR NUD.IST, Version 4.0 (Richards & Richards, 1997), used it to code all sentences of every interview. This coding was

conducted, first individually and then by the authors and our research assistant. We compared, discussed and resolved differences among us. After practice, we agreed over 90% of the time. Reviewing our results, we then refined our categories into a set of themes that best captured what the boys had told us about their experiences. NUD.IST enabled us to regroup the sentences to capture all the data related to these themes. Results Buying In: THS Boys Believe in the Vision Universally, the boys we talked to believe in the quality of the school. From the most upper class "Lifer" (student parlance for boys who had attended since pre-K and for boys from prominent families), to the poorest "Recruit" (student parlance for boys who joined THS in 9th grade), boys constantly compared THS with other schools, reinforcing their sense of luck, opportunity and privilege. Ward, a twelfth grade, upper class, fourth generation Lifer, was very detailed in his appraisal of the school, contrasting it with his local, highly regarded public high school: "There are a lot of differences: people dont wear coats and ties there; teachers care here; kids pay attention in class; people dont make out in the hallways; everyones smarter; its just a smarter environment - the teachers are much more open to thought here." While Wards perceptions were based on his casual acquaintance with a few public school students and largely reflect his stereotypes, the perceptions of the Recruits were based on first hand experience. These boys had been in the public schools and maintained relationships with many of their old friends. Daniel, a junior Recruit from a very poor African American family living in Philadelphia, compared THS to his crumbling, chronically under-funded public school options. In his comments, we catch a glimpse of the political theory he was developing that differences are a result of how the schools are situated ("advertised") and of the fact that impoverished inner city schools are designed to prevent the kind of learning THS offers. This school is so much better than the other schools - [K]ids at Absalom or Bendel, which is where most of the kids I hang out with go to - they are just not taught the same things we are taught here. Theyre just not allowed to learn [our emphasis] the same things we learn here because they are just not, it is just not advertised the same way. What the Boys Buy: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Academic Geography: The Good More than any of the schools within the boys frame of reference, THS openly prides itself on conveying privileged cultural capital and developing within boys an elite habitus. As the boys learn to navigate the curriculum, they develop a remarkable consensus about the implicit skills it takes to succeed. Here, there were many fewer differences of perception by class, race or ethnicity than those we describe below when we discuss how boys talked about the social geography

of the school. They described the need to "learn the drill": to acquire discipline and self-control and to develop intrinsic motivation by cultivating a love of learning. Hard work, unwavering commitment and a will to win. Working hard was a central aspect of the boys shared meritocratic ideology and constituted a central piece of the drill. Perhaps because the boys assumed that any boy who had been admitted had the brains to succeed, we found almost no intra-group discourse about some boys being "less qualified than others." Ken, a high achieving White senior from a middle class family, told us: "I think everyone who comes into this school has the potential to be successful. I think it is just how much work you put in that is pretty much going to equal how much you get out." Grif, a White senior from a middle class family at the bottom of the class, said that what differentiated boys at the top from boys like him was hard work. Embedded within these beliefs are echoes of two other dimensions of "the drill": unwavering commitment and self-discipline. Boys explained their own success and that of others in terms of their drive; their willingness to pay whatever price was required in order to succeed. Antonio, a middle class African American Recruit in twelfth grade crafted an attitude that enabled him to live up to his commitment to excel: "I just have to look at myself in the mirror and ask, "Am I doing what I need to be doing?" I mean, what is the reason I have a 77 in this class? - "Well, what could I do to improve myself?"" Boys we talked to, especially those in the top quartile of their grades, coupled hard work and commitment with a tremendous competitive spirit. Kevin, another high achieving, working class White junior, was very direct about his desire to be a winner: "Everything is about doing well. I mean I always want to be the best... Because then I get recognition-I expect myself to win everything, to do the best on tests, to do really well on the soccer field." While most of the boys we interviewed were not as extreme as Kevin, all of them thought of themselves in comparative terms, all of them wanted recognition and many of them strove to be the best. Most of them, however, had learned what Kevin was beginning to learn: at THS being the best was good as long as one also played the right part. Being cool, bearing pain, talking and dressing right. Playing the part was critical to all the boys self-evaluations and directly reflects the "hegemonic masculinity" so valued at elite private boarding schools. Bearing pain and being cool were values embedded in THSs culture and key ingredients in the masculine style students strove for. Kevin contrasted how he managed a painful injury he received in gym with how he might handle it on the playing field: "So you know I went to the bathroom I didnt want to be crying in front of [friends from gym class] - so, I just waited for them to leave - I just had to sit there for a couple of minutes and just notice how much it hurt.... Because a lot of times you totally keep going, play through the pain so your team can win." Achieving this kind of toughness and self-control resulted in a kind of polished confidence that boys clearly evince by the eleventh and twelfth grade. It was matched outwardly by an approved THS style of talk and dress. While higher

status students had a difficult time describing acceptable dress, talk and academic behavior because it was simply part of who they were, their poor and blue collar peers had no such difficulty, though they often had glimmers that what they were becoming might separate them from what they had been. What Sam, a White, working class, sophomore Recruit, told us captures this double awareness beautifully: "Thats the school - Learning how to speak and bring out ideas and things like that, hanging out and becoming - Well I dont want to become a rich person or anything like that - Jim, another White, working class Recruit in twelfth grade recognized that at THS the definition of appropriate masculinity included being smart in a way that didnt fit the definition he had brought from his former neighborhood school: Just because you excel doesnt mean youre on the right path to manhood. Because at other schools when you have somebody whos really smart with great grades - that s who everybody perceives as a geek - not popular Here,you get people who are smart [who] range from the person who may be stoned [to] the person whos prim and proper. THSs working class boys also described a long period in which they struggled with the fact that they didnt speak and dress the way the other boys did. Gradually, these boys did learn to speak well and dress "rich." Simultaneously, they also were learning what was being taught to all THS boys about the value of developing academic discipline. Focus, knowing oneself as a learner and getting organized. Antonio explained one of the key things he had learned about being a student at THS: I think its just training your mind. Its just practicing: there is a task that has to be accomplished, every day at 7 oclock - no matter what is going on - I am going to sit down and study for a certain amount of time and then, everyday, it becomes a habit. Boys described girls as distractions and outlined the strategies they used to avoid them during the week. But for boys like Antonio, conditions at home could present even more of a problem that they have to learn how to overcome: "But for me to learn it and really get value out of it, I have to isolate myself in a certain area, like maybe going to a cubicle in the library. I cant do it at home, thats out of the question because my house is too loud." Boys also told us about the importance of coming to know how they learned and then making allowances for their style as they approached new problems. Ken told us how he thought students developed such meta-learning: I think, through experience - maybe one class - one teacher who really emphasizes participating in class and in that class you do really well and in another class you dont get much teaching, they just throw the book at you. I learn best, its a mix of the two - When I read though, I have a system in which I underline things - When I am studying - I just read the things that I underlined and that really [works]. At some point, I just realized if I underline ten percent of

the material,thats the right amount. More than that, I just get overwhelmed and I dont remember anything. Less than that I miss a lot of key information. But developing an understanding of oneself as a learner was not enough. Students also told us how they had to get organized in order to learn. To accomplish this, they developed strategies ranging from making timelines of their work, to keeping daily and weekly "to do" lists, to using study halls efficiently, to studying instead of sleeping on the long bus ride home. Maintaining balance. Yet, despite developing focus, knowledge of self as a learner and good organizational habits, students still often faced a combination of sometimes overwhelming and highly competitive extra-curricular and study demands, and sometimes experienced setbacks. To manage these, boys found ways of keeping things in perspective, encouraging themselves in the face of grades that were lower than other boys, so that they could persist. Tyler, a White middle class junior, exemplified the way many students managed such feedback by establishing a sense of life priorities: I always did enough that I was doing well. I am just interested in more things than just schoolwork, sports after school, or just working out. [If] I had the opportunity to go play golf with my Dad and I knew that I was going to take 3 hours away from my homework, I would probably do it because, I would rather have that enjoyment. Tyler felt such balance helped him meet the demanding pace set by the school without being overwhelmed. Other boys adopted a developmental perspective to help them manage negative feedback. Antonios personal narrative sustained him as he grappled with THSs rigorous demands: When I was younger...If I had a test, it was a struggle just to spend the 3 hours studyingbecause there was no real sense of anything... [Now] I am more mature. I have a better sense of what it means to learn something When I was younger I was all about getting the good grades... [Now] I wanted to learn stuff and actually understand it. Here, Antonio captures his own growing awareness of himself as a learner but also as someone who differentiates between being a learner and being someone who merely gets good grades. In this way he exemplifies the powerful contribution the school makes as different boys develop a common love of learning. Intrinsic Motivation: Learning as Transformational. In the end, what boys from every class and race told us was that they came to take pleasure in the intellectual work of the school. This work, in turn, involved acquiring habits of mind and style embedded in the schools curriculum and culture and proved transformative for some boys, especially for African American boys. Rahim, a highly motivated Black senior from a very poor, disorganized family, who was

invited to the school by the football coach in 9th grade, described this poignantly: Like all my classes this year, Ive really learned. It just came together and meshed. Like in Art, I could take this 20 pounds of clay and I can make something really nice. We read this play, Master Harold. Theres this one character that made this kite. He made it out of junk, you know, pantyhose, an old paper bag, rope. But this kite flew high and it probably flew better than most of the kites you would buy in the store It just goes to show you, I mean. Its kind of like my life. I could take this junk and, like, make something. As Rahims father was a drug addict, we might speculate that Rahims identification with the character in Master Harold and his use of the term "junk" for the materials out of which he realized he could fashion a viable, even a soaring life, were powerfully, if unconsciously accurate. Perhaps he was saying he could fly high like a kite without having to be "high" as one. Other boys we interviewed expressed similar thoughts. They found a freeing permission to see themselves as intellectuals in Haverfords normative commitment to the life of the mind. While boys might complain about a teacher, or about their parents reactions to their performance, or about other aspects of school life, no boy complained about the actual experience of learning. Finding some measure of the kind of liberating realization that Rahim described in their own capacity to create themselves from the "junk" of their existence, boys told us they allowed the rewards of learning to carry them through the enormous effort it took. We think these conversations with THS boys reveal the transformative power of its elite, hegemonic, academic regime. The boys acquired habits of mind and heart (a habitus) that elite schools have long believed prepare students for material success. Poor and working class boys whose families instilled different capital, a different habitus (Bourdieu, 1984; MacLeod, 1990; Willis, 1981)) strongly believed acquiring such habits was especially valuable even though it appeared to be achieved with considerable struggle. Indeed, when we examined the social geography of the school we found that all the boys paid a price for current ways in which the school was organized. The Social Geography: The Bad and the Ugly Our discussions with boys revealed a school invisibly but palpably divided between an exclusive "center," made up of upper class Lifers, often following in the footsteps of generations of male relatives, and a set of "margins" made of groups of boys who differed in important ways from the boys at the center. Some of these boys had been at the school since pre-K, but were from different ethnic, racial or class origins. Others were Recruits brought to THS in 9th grade. Boys of the center viewed the schools social geography very differently from those at the margins, defending as natural both their position and that of their disadvantaged classmates.

The Center: The Bad Upper class boys were clear about both its high status and the kinds of boys who embodied that status. Cal, a popular and accomplished, middle class White senior, characterized the school this way: "There is [an] undercurrent of elitism here, a proposition that a lot of people think about, whether they are actually telling you or doing other things to show you, that they think Haverford is just better than other places." Ward was a self-nominated cheerleader for the school who had taken to wearing its colors every day. He spoke for other upper class peers, though perhaps more directly than they would have, when he characterized the kind of boy who embodied the values that made the school "the best." As far as the school life is concerned, the group of kids who are the movers and shakers, the guys that do everything are my group of friends. Harry is a buddy who does the yearbook. I did the pep rally. A couple of my other friends are in the Signet Society or Student Council. Sam is the class president. All buddies of mine, people that we see on the weekends. In this quote, Ward indicates not only that the leadership of the student body is made up of his upper class friends, but also that they form a relatively tightly knit group that socializes together. When we asked Ward to help us understand the view of many students that the school overlooked and under-appreciated boys with backgrounds that were atypical of the schools tradition, he offered this view of how boys at the center perceive boys from different social positions: [T]here are a lot of people in the school who are not "who they are." I mean, aside from maybe the fact that I am not wearing a tie, I am the same guy in school as out of school. There are a lot of people who are not and thats not something that anyone respects or likes. So, a lot of people who dont have the background, who dont live in the big house, often feel threatened. I dont know if its everybody being White or everyone being rich, or whatever it is. Its not something theyre comfortable with, so, not always but often, they feel the need to put up a front, its usually defensive, they need to put forth a persona that they think will either protect them or make them fit in. The Margins: The Ugly Boys who occupied the margins were Caucasians from blue-collar families, African Americans from families of every social class, and other non-WASP boys, including other boys of color and Jews. These boys did not feel the kind of ease Ward experienced. Each described unique problems navigating THSs social geography as well as unique ways of solving them. White blue collar boys: Experiencing without developing a collaborative discourse of class. While these boys agreed with Ward that there were clear social groups in the school, they saw them almost entirely as a function of money. John, a junior from a nearby working class neighborhood, asked if he could describe the cliques in the school said: "Yeah, rich people, non-rich people

and other people." All of these boys told us, in one way or another, that the school deliberately or unconsciously privileged its wealthy students and that they in turn often excluded poorer students, acted insensitively towards them or simply failed to see them. The White, working class boys we interviewed thought the school handed out awards in a way that was prejudiced. John told us: "Yeah, there are awards. It is so obvious who is going to get them. I could put $10 down on who is going to get the next award and win." Larry, a junior from another nearby working class neighborhood, added: "Its pretty sad when you can pick out (this is really when I get sick), out of how many students there are here, who is going to get it [the award]." These boys also encountered lowered expectations that they experienced as prejudice. John associated this with the same type of stereotyping experienced by Blacks: People never felt I was a good match for the school. At first everyone thought I was some dumb punk, or something like that, because I could kick a soccer ball. Why do they think Black people are lazy? Its just a stereotype. John told us about many instances of stereotypes he encountered among both other students and faculty. One example illustrated how the stereotypic assumptions of people at the center revealed his invisibility: Ill give you an example of a typical attitude. The other day, this teacher was talking about a character of a book, he said something like, "You got this guy whos got, like, a mechanic mouth." And I was about to walk out because my Moms fianc is a mechanic. However the boys explained the motives of the "center," they all developed ways to cope with it. Some addressed the issue directly (with more or less success) by trying to explain their situation to fellow students. Larry explained: "You get into arguments with kids. I can never really make them understand how there is a difference." Other boys tried to assimilate. Alex, just out of college when interviewed, entered THS as a Recruit from a Catholic grade school and by the time he graduated was at the top of his class both academically, and by some measures, socially. At the beginning of the career, he discovered Lifers called boys from Catholic schools, "Vinnies:". I am and half the other kids I came in with, are as Irish American as you are going to get, and we were labeled "Vinnies" because everyone thought we were coming from these hard-core Irish or Italian backgrounds." Responding to such stereotypes, Alex determined to win the contest for recognition. At graduation, he was presented with the schools top honor, the "Key Man" award to the boy who excels most academically, athletically and socially. But Alex seemed quite aware of its price. To boys of the center, Alex was still a "Vinnie," though now reformed. He told us with some irony:

But by the end of my time here a Lifer dubbed me the "Reformed Vinnie," so, even to the point where I can joke about it, I came here knowing I wasnt a preppy kid and I left here in khaki pants and argyle socks and so, yeah, it was a conversion experience for me. Still other working class boys, like Mark, a senior, tried to hide the differences between his family and those of the more privileged boys: "Well, like, I come from a family that doesnt have a lot of money and unless I get to be really, really good friends with someone, I dont tell them. I like to make it look like I kind of fit in with the other kids at Haverford" In such boys efforts to "pass" there is a kind of naive focus on markers of wealth to the exclusion of other markers like language, style and a sense of assumed privilege that, absent discourses of class, they fail to see. Perhaps it was this failure that Ward picked up when he ungraciously complained about boys who were not "real." A boy of color and a Jewish boy had similar struggles trying to adapt as well as similar experiences of feeling invisible, voiceless and marginalized. But they also felt the added burden of racial prejudice. Other boys from the margins: Experiencing without developing a collaborative discourse of difference. These boys come from upper-middle class families but because of their color, religion and ethnicity felt like outsiders. Individually, they framed their issues in terms of race and prejudice, but there appeared to be little discussion among them about their experiences. They did not describe shared understandings of racism or classism as societal phenomena. Lacking such understandings, they tended to internalize their negative experiences. Aftab, a junior whose parents were affluent but who were immigrants from Pakistan, described boys at the center this way: "Whenever you think of Haverford, you think of that upper-middle class, White kid who lives on the Main Line , whos got all the luxuries he could want. Hes got basically an easy life" Aftab told us how he had encountered racism in the lower school when another child referred to his color in a derogatory fashion. As he got older, he experienced a continued lack of acceptance: "I feel that I am just as good as they are, but they automatically, when they seem me off in the distance see a brown kid they tend not to want to associate with that kid." But Aftab was not free of stereotypes himself: "I would tend to go to the White kid first because maybe he is more educated; hes got more money." Aftabs barely disguised struggle with self-loathing is reflected in the way another non-WASP boy talked. Jacob, a sophomore from an affluent family but one of the few Jewish boys in the school, told us: "I dont see very much antiSemitism I do see jokes, but theyre all in fun." But then he went on to say: "Like the other day, we were talking about [a fancy store], and I said: "Oh, that place is expensive" and they yelled, "Jew", its sort of funny. They always make fun of my big nose, all the time, being Jewish" While Jacob minimized these "jokes," for other Jews, they resonate down the long, bleak history of antiSemitism. Absent shared discourses of difference, these boys found they had to

work their feelings out on their own, often at a serious cost to their self-esteem. The schools African American boys were at no such disadvantage. African American boys: The power of developing collaborative discourses of race and class. Like their White working class peers, these boys had a clear notion of who was at the center; of who (was) counted. But their assessments were informed by discussions of class and race. They saw, as Daniel said, that recognition would go to "[rich] Caucasian males who excel academically and athletically and who uphold the traditional, conservative standards of Haverford." And they explicitly labeled what they saw as bias in the recognition system. Matthew, a junior who was a mediocre student and the son of an African American Philadelphia judge, told us, on the day he had been passed over in the awards assembly, that he didnt "fit the mold": The mold is set. Its partially racism and classism mixed together. It was made so long ago that [we] were never here so [we] would never be figured into the mold. It is not just the Blacks who are pushed over for an award, its the White kids, not the right people. The African American boys experienced the same kind of invisibility, stereotyping and prejudice as Aftab and Jacob. They were acutely aware of not being seen or appreciated for their academic interests or intellectual passions. Sometimes the boys experienced prejudice mixed with the stereotyping as well. Several students told us that a teacher or advisor had suggested that the school only expected them to achieve modest grades. Others described incidents in which White students called the place by their lockers where they hung-out "the Ghetto," and associated the Black Student Alliance (BSA) with drug gangs like the "Bloods" or "Crips." Unlike their working class, White peers, however, the African American boys collectively developed a sophisticated set of strategies for coping with these painful aspects of the schools social geography. Creating the BSA forced the school community to recognize them and gave them a foundation for voicing their collective concerns. In the BSA, these boys compared notes across class lines. Because some of their parents, both poor and wealthier, had insights into class, they were able to tap into those discourses. This, in turn, enabled them to develop critiques of the school. What emerged, as we have seen, was a broadly helpful understanding of the race and class dynamics of the school. What also emerged was an associated critique of the schools hidden curriculum as well as agreement about the value of mastering it. And, finally, these boys developed genuine insight into the transformative power of the intellectual content to which they were exposed. Rahim and his close friend, Harold, another African American senior from a poor family, who was also a highly talented athlete, discovered that their critique of the schools center enabled them to grow more confident. As Harold described to us the advantages enjoyed by students who had grown up within the value framework represented by the teachers and the curriculum - "Its just like [they grow] up in these ideas and how it should be and, they know it, its like second

nature to them." - it was evident he had come to understand how the school embodied hegemonic cultural capital. Once they had realized this, he and Rahim consciously decided to emulate the successful students, watching the way they engaged and borrowing from them: Excuse the expression, they learn how to BS, and they are like pros at it. In class, they raise their hand and they say something, and I am trying to figure what in the heck theyre talking about - its so far out - The next thing I know, the teacher is saying, "Thats a good point." So here at Haverford they teach you how to say some BS and then back it up. I think that is very great, very useful. Rahim and I call this school BS Prep. In a separate interview, Rahim extended this theme beyond academics to include emotional competence: Me and Harold call [this school] "Bullshit Prep," because it prepares you for all the bullshit in the world. Its the small stuff, but it is going to translate into real life and if you learn to deal with stuff here, then you will be fine once you get out - little things - like I have to learn to control my mouth and my temper. As Harold and Rahim bonded together, the framework they developed for understanding key parts of THSs hidden curriculum enabled them to better control what formerly simply had happened to them. In an explicit way they worked to acquire both the cultural capital and the habitus that more privileged boys just took for granted. In a sad irony, what appeared to sustain them and other African American boys in this endeavor was the inspiration they found in the very curriculum that poor, working class and African American students are alienated from in public schools (Delpit, 1995; MacLeod, 1990; Willis, 1981). We have already described Rahims liberating discovery while reading Master Harold. Other boys told similar stories. In one very poignant account, Matthew illustrated how reading a group of Black writers during a literature class had enabled him to imagine both an empowered masculinity and an alternative future for himself: They seem like such great people. They seem like they have everything going for them Its intellectual power. Its the power that when people listen to [them], that when people look at them, they look at them with respect. I just see the ideal idea of manhood inside of them - thats the way I want to be. Taken together then, these interviews suggest that Haverfords African American boys have created the collective power to see, name and discuss race and class issues. This has given them both voice and a stronger purchase on the slippery social terrain of the school than other marginal students whose individualized strategies have been to attempt to assimilate or simply "wait it out," graduate and move on. By developing a critique, the African American boys also have been able to understand central aspects of THSs hidden curriculum and to see its relationship to the world of privilege. This meta-view allowed them to embrace the schools offer of privileged cultural capital and to begin to develop

through imitation and self-conscious study a hegemonic habitus. And, it helped them do this without feeling as if they were selling out. Discussion Where the School Succeeds: Lessons of Privilege What does all this suggest about the organization of elite independent schools like Haverford, and more broadly, about the possibilities for schools in general? It is very clear from our interviews that THS privileges all of its boys in several important ways. Despite a few teachers who had lower expectations for Recruits, there is a widely held belief that every matriculated student has the ability to succeed by dint of his own efforts. The discourses of "ability" so common in public schools, colleges and the public at large have been replaced by discourses of "learning the drill" and the value of a strong work ethic. As a result, unlike public schools, students are not placed into curricular tracks highly correlated with race and class. And, unlike many colleges, we found little evidence of the debilitating discourses of affirmative action that derogate all African Americans and many recruited athletes. Further, the school holds all boys to very high standards. It has an explicit, unabashed regime that expresses those standards by valuing academic cultural capital and the acquisition of a hegemonic habitus. Marginal boys did notice that the schools higher rewards too predictably were going to boys of the center and were somewhat cynical and embittered by their experience of this contradiction. Yet that was clearly less important to them than their recognition of the value of the high standards the school held them to and the power of its demanding curriculum. Moreover, THS teaches a hegemonic masculinity that, while restrictive in some ways, is liberating in others. Anderson (1999) has detailed the ways in which poor African American boys must narrow and focus their identities at the cost of learning in order to cope with what he terms "the code of the street." Ferguson (2000) describes how such "bad boy" identities also are constructed in schools. And, Willis (1981) and MacLeod (1990) painfully detail how working class masculinities are crafted in ways that exclude school learning as a manly activity. Haverford embraces a masculinity that includes among its virtues honor, courage, teamwork, sacrifice, a strong inquiring intellect, and a genuine appreciation for the life of the mind. At this school, being strong and being intellectual are mutually supportive, not mutually exclusive. Where the School Fails: Lessons Learned from the Center and the Margins The costs to working class White boys at THS were the clearest. Absent a class critique, they bought into the individualistic aspects of the schools meritocracy, blaming themselves for their academic and social shortcomings and feeling inadequate. Even when they became frustrated and angry at the insensitivities of their more privileged peers, their own lack of a critique and the absences of discourses of class within the school made it hard for them to put their experience into perspective, to "denature it" by understanding it in broader terms and to frame effective arguments when trying to explain their experience

to others. Certainly, it also made it almost impossible to develop a metaunderstanding of the social and academic geography of the school. Lacking a map of the territory they had a much more difficult time navigating it. Upper class boys, locked in an exclusive social group that appeared to them "natural," stayed aloof from other boys. Their social separateness at once protected them from exposure to the circumstances that may have caused them to question and maintained stereotypes that they brought with them to school. Lacking discourses of class and race that might expose those aspects of their privilege that were unearned, they only opened themselves to boys who assimilated to the school on the centers own terms and learned little from anyone outside their own group. Ironically, like the working class and non-WASP boys, they also failed to develop a meta-understanding of the geographies of the school, despite the fact that the school had been constructed by earlier generations of their "own" families. Indeed, the existences of discourses of class among African Americans and their apparent absence among other groups, meant that many members of the Haverford School community lived with strongly experienced, if dimly understood, conflicting realities that divided students, teachers and parents from one another. As long as these strongly felt differences in privilege are not conceptualized, framed and opened to examination, they will remain strong barriers to a fully gathered community. Going forward: Implications for Schools Both Elite and Public While our story describes merely a chapter in the very fluid life of this particular school, we feel it illuminates important themes in the education of boys. It is clear, for example, that all boys at Haverford have a bright future. If history is a guide, all of them will go to college. Almost every one of them, in turn, will graduate and go on to jobs in an evolving economy that rewards college graduates more than ever (Frank & Cook, 1995). This means that high expectations, high standards and the substitution of a discourse of hard work for the more common discourses of ability have much to recommend them. This is a powerful lesson and suggests that critics of public schools like Hirsch (1996) and Ravitch (1997) may have it almost right when they argue for a demanding core curricula, taught energetically to high standards [not withstanding Ravitchs indefensible attacks on Progressive Education (See Wraga, 2001)]. The African American boys and their parents at THS would certainly agree as long as such a core also included the kinds of Black authors who had such a transforming effect on the boys imagined futures. We believe the same lesson applies to working class students as well as students from other ethnic groups. Indeed, this is just the kind of curriculum that Collins brought to her impoverished children in her highly successful school in Chicago (Collins & Tamarkin, 1982) without the rich cultural trappings of elite, private schools. Though it may be a more threatening proposition, we believe that THS in particular, and perhaps schools in general, can learn important lessons from the

way the African American boys we interviewed made meaning of their experience in the school and then devised strategies to take advantage of the best of what it has to offer. These boys were fortunate because, somewhat isolated racially and thrown together by class, they were able to learn much from intra-group, cross class discussions. This did not happen for White Recruits or other marginal boys. Tracking and neighborhood school policies make it equally unlikely for public school children. This brings us to the most radical implication of our findings. For, taken together, they suggest schools, both private and public, can play a much more powerful role educating children by helping them actively explore their schools particular social and academic geographies. Such "geography lessons" would include helping students actively interrogate each schools particular "drills." Drills in urban and suburban schools differ dramatically from each other and from elite private schools. Students could study these differences and work towards understanding their long-term implications. Such study now takes place in college in a variety of courses within departments ranging from sociology to feminist studies. Enabling students to develop such a critical stance towards their own education may help many more of them to begin to acquire hegemonic cultural capital and an elite habitus before reaching college. References Anderson, E. (1999). The code of the street: Decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city. New York : W. W. Norton. Baltzell, E. D. (1989). Philadelphia gentleman: The making of a national upper class. Chicago : Quadrangle Books. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social class critique of the judgment of taste. London : Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York : Columbia University Press. Cookson, P. W. Jr., & Persell, C. H. (1985). Preparing for power: Americas elite boarding schools. New York : Basic Books. Collins, M., & Tamarkin, C. (1982). Marva Collins way. New York : Tarcher/Putnam. Delpit, L. (1995). Other peoples children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York : The New Press. Frank, R.H., & Cook, P.J. (1995). The winner-take-all society. New York : Free Press. Foley, D. E. (1990). Learning capitalist culture. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.

Ferguson , A. A. (2000). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of black masculinity. An Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Gathorne-Hardy, J. (1978). The old school tie: The phenomenon of the English Public School . New York : The Viking Press. Haverford School, The. (2000). About The Haverford School . Retrieved February 23, 2001 , from http://www.haverford.org Hirsch, E. D, Jr. (1996). The schools we need: Why we dont have them. New York : Doubleday. MacLeod, J. (1990). Aint no makin it: Aspirations & attainment in a low-income neighborhood. Boulder , CO : Westview Press. Mintz, B. (1975). The presidents cabinet, 1897-1972: A contribution to the power structure debate. Insurgent Sociologist, 5, 131-148. Prescott, P. (1970). A world of our own: Notes on life and learning at a boys preparatory school. New York: Coward-McCann. Ravitch, D., & Viteritti, J. P. (1997). New schools for a new century: The redesign of urban education. New Haven , CT: Yale University Press. Reichert, M. (2000). Disturbances of difference: Lessons from a boys school. In M. Fine & L. Weis (Eds.), Construction sites. (pp. 259-273). New York : Teachers College Press. Reichert, M., & Kuriloff, P. (In preparation). The Glare of the Looking Glass: The constitution of Boys Sense of Self in Schools. (43 pages.) Richards, T., & Richards, L. (1997). QSR NUD*IST (Version 4). [Computer software]. Victoria , Australia : Qualitative Solutions and Research, Ltd. Sizer, T. R. (Ed.) (1964). The age of the academies. New York : Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University . Smigel, E. (1964). The Wall Street lawyer. New York: Free Press. Useem, M., & Karabel, J. (1986). Pathways to top corporate management. American Sociological Review, 51, 184-200. Willis, P. (1981). Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. Wraga, W. G. (2001). Left out: The villainization of Progressive Education in the United States . Educational Researcher. October, 34-39. Authors Biographies Peter J. Kuriloff, Ed.D.

Peter Kuriloff is a counseling psychologist and a Professor in the Educational Leadership Division of the University of Pennsylvanias Graduate School of Education. He is Research Director of the Center for the Study of Boys Lives, a national research enterprise created by a consortium of independent schools. Michael C. Reichert, Ph.D. Michael Reichert has been a practicing child and family psychologist for the past 20 years. He is the Executive Director for the Center for the Study of Boys and Girls Lives and for Peaceful Posse, a youth violence initiative sponsored by Philadelphia Physicians for Social Responsibility.