Youth and education: a question of social class

Abstract

The most publicized debates on education and youth tend to overshadow class inequalities or address them from a sociocentric middle-class perspective. The article addresses these inequalities in the Spanish school system and confronts them with some of the "social problems" that have had the greatest media impact. It is shown that the data do not support the seriousness of alleged problems such as the failure of the Spanish school system, its alleged laxity or the alleged parental resignation of the most disadvantaged strata. These "problems" are self-serving constructions that serve to legitimize policies of social closure that benefit the middle classes and to overshadow the enormous importance of the difference in economic and cultural resources in the dynamics of the school system.