REVIEWER MEETS REVIEWED

SEMINAR SERIES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S CENTRE FOR ANTHROPOLOGY

Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain

Thursday 17th May 2012 at 10.00 am (tea & coffee served from 9.30am)

Centre for Anthropology, British Museum

THIS IS A FREE EVENT

The British Museum’s Centre for Anthropology, in collaboration with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present the sixth seminar in the 2011-12 series of ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’. Gillian Evans will give a presentation on her book ‘Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain’.

Despite over 50 years of compulsory education in Britain, many working class children are still likely to end up in the same kind of low-paid, routine occupations as their parents. Either schools are failing working class children or working class life presents alternative means for gaining social status that conflict with what it means to do well at school. Or perhaps both factors are relevant. The book takes a journey of self-discovery in Bermondsey, Southeast London and makes the process of learning how to become a certain kind of British person its central focus. It provides a window onto another world, a world where middle class values are challenged and the complex cultural politics of white working class people are revealed.

Bookings/enquiries: Ted Goodliffe ( TGoodliffe@britishmuseum.org)