Anna Asimaki

Cultural activities and the family’s ‘institutionalised’ cultural capital: the case of native and immigrant primary school pupils

Abstract This paper explores and interprets the cultural activities of native and immigrant primary school students in relation to their parents’ ‘institutionalised’ cultural capital. The research used a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with sixth grade primary school students from a Greek city which had a high proportion of immigrants due to its geographical location and the activity of its port. The research results showed that the students’ cultural activities were correlated with the ‘institutionalised’ cultural capital of their parents. More specifically, native students whose parents possessed a high level of ‘institutionalised’ cultural capital were involved in cultural activities which defined the ‘cultivated’ person. This was in contrast to native students whose parents possessed low and middle levels of education. This specific group of students shared similar cultural practices to students who were of immigrant origin and whose parents possessed similar educational characteristics.

Regulative discourses of primary schooling in Greece: memories of punishment

Abstract The mechanisms of discipline and power within the institution of the school constitute, in part, the relationship between society and childhood. This article traces the relationship between official regulative discourses of control and punishment practices over students in primary school. It focuses on the memories of schooling of first-year students in a Department of Primary Education at a Greek University. The concepts of power, discipline and discourse from the theory of Michel Foucault are drawn on to examine the pedagogical control over primary school pupils. The research was carried out using an open questionnaire in which participants were asked to describe their experiences of school punishment. The key findings showed that corporal punishment is dominant in the memory of the majority of research participants. The reason for the pupils’ punishment was mainly their making noise in the classroom and their poor performance in core subjects of the curriculum. These findings are significant for the sociology of education as they reveal the real and symbolic violence of school life that endures in memories of childhood, schooling and society.