Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People's ... - SAGE Journals

European Educational Research Journal Volume 8 Number 4 2009 www.wwwords.eu/EERJ

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes ELINA LAHELMA Department of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland

ABSTRACT Drawing from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal study on educational transitions, the aim of this article is to analyse young people’s reflections about their educational choices at different ages. Consistencies and breaks in their plans and actual choices are explored and reflected in relation to the economic, social, cultural and emotional resources they possess. In particular, the author explores taken-for-granted dichotomous metaphors that seem to open up certain educational routes and close others, such as ‘the head’ and ‘the hand’ for routes to academic and vocational education. In the first section of the article, the author demonstrates how metaphors appear in ethnographic accounts of lower secondary schools. The author then suggests how they are activated when young people reflect on their post-compulsory choices. Finally, the author presents the educational routes of two young people, drawing from their hopes, dreams and actual choices, as they relate them in interviews when they were 13, 18, 20 and 24 years old.

Introduction Western cultures are loaded with strong dichotomies, including sense and emotions, abstract and concrete, theory and practice, mind and body, brain and hand. Gender is interlinked with this dichotomy as the male is constructed as presenting sense, abstraction and theory, and the female as presenting emotions, concrete and practice. Hierarchy is also involved, as sense, abstract and things theoretical are more highly valued than emotions, concrete and the practical (see, for example, Davies, 1993; Adams St. Pierre, 2000). In educational policies, this dichotomy is built up between theoretical and practical subjects, as well as between general and vocational sectors of postcompulsory education and, later on, between academic and manual work. These dichotomies remain strong dividers in a taken-for-granted way, partly because they are embedded in powerful metaphors. In this article, I discuss these dichotomies as they appear in metaphors and become reflected in relation to transitions from lower secondary school into general or vocational upper secondary education and onwards. I will analyse how metaphors are used for making sense of the choices that young people are supposed to make in a society in which the ideology of individualization (see, for example, Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) addresses them as free choosers. In Finland, educational policies and official statistics, moreover, address post-compulsory choices as if they were equal options that are open to each student, with possibilities for further transitions to university from both general and vocational routes. This official rhetoric hides several taken-for-granted structural and cultural barriers; it also contains implicit neo-liberal ideas of lifelong learning as a possibility and responsibility for all (see, for example, Ball, 2006). My aim in this article is to analyse how dichotomized metaphors are repeated in teachers’ and students’ talk. I also suggest how they are used in making sense when certain educational routes are opened and others closed in the reflections of young people’s educational choices at different ages. I try to find consistencies and breaks in the plans and actual choices of young people and 497

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.497

Elina Lahelma reflect them in relation to the economic, social, cultural and emotional resources that they actually possess. Metaphors that Divide When we use a metaphor, we substitute one term for another. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a metaphor as ‘the figure of speech in which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable’.[1] Metaphors translate and invent, but they also betray; they clarify and confuse. Metaphors express much, but also lose and overlook, set aside and place parentheses around even more (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 140). Metaphors are typically embodied (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and spatial (Smith & Katz, 1993; see also Gordon & Lahelma, 1996). They present, Lefebvre (1991) argues, the mind’s eye. Metaphors are powerful tools when they relate to something that is culturally shared, and they are also dangerous, because, as Morgan (1997) argues, the way of seeing created through a metaphor becomes a way of not seeing. The division of labour and the hierarchy that is involved is universally understood and discussed metaphorically as mental and manual; head and hand; mind and body. It is institutionalized in a division of school subjects in the curriculum. This division has a long history. Ivor Goodson (1992) shows how it emerged in Britain in the eighteenth century as a division of mentalities: ‘higher order’ mentalities were intellectual, abstract and active, whereas those for the ‘lower orders’ were sensual, concrete and passive. This division has been explicated as a division of people who should be fostered to the routes that are for ‘their kind’ (cf. Popkewitz, 1998) whenever the popular and academic routes have been blocked off. Saara Tuomaala (2004) writes about the clean and hard-working hands as metaphors that were repeated in old people’s memories and documents about popular education in some rural Finnish areas of the 1930s. Today, the division is more talked about in terms of young people’s individual responsibilities to choose and create the conditions for successfully managing their own life course, the biographical project of selfrealization (see, for example, Rose, 1992). Still, the same metaphors are used for sense making in this process. Studies on Young People’s Educational Transitions This article draws from an ethnographically grounded, longitudinal, life historical study on young people’s paths to adulthood.[2] These young women and men were met in a collective ethnographic study in two schools in Helsinki when they were aged between 12 and 13, at the beginning of secondary school (see, for example, Gordon et al, 2006).[3] One of the schools followed was more middle class, whilst the other was more working class. In both schools, the majority of students were white and Finnish. The project was also cross-cultural and comparative. A similar study was conducted in London (see, for example, Gordon et al, 2000a). The ethnographic field work was contextualized in contemporary educational politics and policies in Britain and in Finland. With Tuula Gordon I conducted follow-up studies, with a focus on young people’s educational transitions. The first transition interviews (63 young people) took place when the young women and men were around 18 years old, the second when they were around 20, and the third minor set of interviews (with 24 young people) took place when they were around 24 years old. The aims, plans and practices of these young people, the meanings they attach to these, as well as their outcomes are explored in our study. The ways in which social class, gender, ethnicity and locality intersect their paths to adulthood are traced. A multilayered analysis is utilized, whereby the life history exploration is embedded in, and grounded by, the earlier ethnographic study. This provides unique opportunities to analyse economic, cultural and biographical, as well as educational aspects in the paths pursued by young people. The study is contextualized: thus we are interested not only in the narratives through which people interpret their experiences, but also in the cultural, social and material conditions and positions in which they are living their lives and planning for their futures. We analyse possibilities of, and limitations in, their agency, as well as 498

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes their own sense of being agentic. Focus is also on the resources at their disposal (see, for example, Gordon & Lahelma, 2003). In the interviews, we have invited the young people to discuss what is important in their present lives, to reflect on their past lives as remembered and their futures as imagined. Periods of the imagined future in the first interviews turned into the remembered past during the subsequent interviews. Through these varying positions of past, present and future, it has been possible to acquire a multilayered picture of young people’s transitions to adulthood, as well as of their changing dreams and fears concerning various steps in these transitions (see, for example, Gordon et al, 2005) and their school memories (see, for example, Lahelma, 2002). For this article, I have focused on young people’s reflections concerning their educational paths at different ages. I have read the interviews across cases, looking at each student’s reflections on the same themes. I especially looked at the interviews conducted at the age of 18, because one of the explicit foci in this set of interviews was to discuss post-compulsory educational choices. But I also have looked at some young people’s narratives longitudinally, starting from the ethnographic accounts and then looking at their interviews at different ages. This article is connected to a research project entitled ‘Citizenship, Agency and Difference in Upper Secondary Education: with special focus on vocational institutions’.[4] Within this project, transitions into and practices and processes within upper secondary education are explored from the actors’ perspectives, with contextualization on educational politics and policies. The research project includes several small-scale ethnographic or life historical studies concerning transitions to upper secondary education or starting vocational education, as well as the joint cross-cultural and comparative reflections of the researchers (Brunila et al, forthcoming; Lappalainen et al, forthcoming). The Metaphoric Dichotomy Active in Lower Secondary School From the field notes produced in the ethnographic study with the seventh graders, it was easy to collect examples of the metaphorical use of the ‘hand and head’ dichotomy. This dichotomy is repeated in the speech of teachers and students and in the day-to-day practices of schools (see also Gordon et al, 2000b). The activity valued by teachers in academic subject lessons is mental activity taking place in the heads of the students. A teacher may sigh to the researcher that ‘the content of the book does not stay in their heads’, and the metaphor of knowledge that fits or does not fit into one’s head often occurs in students’ interviews: Mathematics doesn’t fit in the head … I don’t like to learn really, because I’m afraid that it suddenly vanishes from there [knowledge from the head]. And you have to remember so much all the time. And there’s the requirement that you should know well, and such difficult tests. And then, some teachers think that their subject is the most important … I get tired, so much knowledge that I must put in my head each day. And I am afraid that I will forget it, it’s so frustrating. (Auli, a girl) [5] It kind of doesn’t stay in one’s head, when one writes at the same time. (Manu, a boy)

Manu’s remark suggests that activity in the head might exist in contrast to the activity of the hand in theoretical lessons. The routine activity of hands – copying notes from the blackboard that Manu refers to here, as well as raising the hand when you have the correct answer to the teacher’s question ‘in your head’ – is expected from ‘professional students’ (see, for example, Lahelma & Gordon, 1997) as taken for granted in pedagogy, in teaching as usual (Davies, 1990). This is not an issue that is paid attention to, however, unless students fail to conform to it. Rather than saying that students are not achieving academically, it is considered more encouraging to say that they have talented hands. A teacher, who has been in the profession since before the comprehensive school reform in Finland, remembered at that time a division between ‘those who went to the secondary school and those who stayed in the general school, who were good with their hands’. The main division between hand and head is related to school subjects, subjects that ‘handle’ [6] theoretical issues and those that deal with practical subjects. Teachers of practical subjects (c.f. Räty et al, 2006) often challenge this dichotomy. One teacher argued in the interview that you do 499

Elina Lahelma not know what to do unless you have ‘the track of movement from the head to the hands’. Another urged the students to ‘put eyes into their fingertips’ when they were modelling an animal from clay. The actual relation between ‘hand’ and ‘head’ is supported by learning theories that teachers obviously have read during their teacher education. But the additional emphasis that the teachers of practical subjects place on this might also be related to their attempts to raise the status of their subjects – which in general is lower than the status of academic subjects (see, for example, Paechter, 2000). Hands at school are divided into strong, technically competent and possibly dirty hands, and hands that are gentle, caring and artistic. This division divides the practical subjects, and is gendered. It follows the traditional division of male and female labour that is still reproduced in homes as well as during leisure activities (Kokko, 2009). In Finland, technical handicrafts are mostly taught by male teachers to boys in lower secondary schools, while textile handicrafts are taught to girls by female teachers. During a lesson of technical handicrafts that I followed, the teacher demonstrated to the admiring boys how strong arms were needed to turn a handle. In lessons of textile handicrafts, the aesthetic value of products was constantly evaluated and admired. Along with the metaphorical dichotomy between hand and head, the head or mind is contrasted to the body at school as well. While in Western thought ‘male’ is related to the mind, in the school context it is often boys who are expected to be more physically active and girls more concerned with using their ‘heads’. A boy argues: ‘But boys, they all mess around and strike out at others, but girls just sit and look.’ In today’s school, it is more often girls than boys who achieve in theoretical subjects. The ‘moral panic’ (see, for example, Epstein et al, 1998) or the ‘travelling discourse’ (Arnesen et al, 2008) of boys’ poor school achievement may be related to the fact that the ‘natural order’ is challenged. Bodies are expected to move, especially during physical education lessons. This also is a subject in which male bodies are admired. In her ethnographic study of physical education classes of seventh graders, Päivi Berg (see Berg & Lahelma, in press) suggests how gender segregation in physical education in Finnish lower secondary schools is legitimated by the physical strength and better competence of boys. The strong and physically active bodies of some male students are also planned to be used as another positive resource for their future, when they are regarded as not being good at using their heads. Several low-achieving boys in our study, when asked about their plans while still in the lower secondary school, expressed the desire to become sports professionals. Media publicity about the fantastic salaries and fabulous life of ice hockey or football heroes produces an alternative dream of success when academic achievement seems impossible (Parker, 1996). Metaphors Activated in Post-Compulsory Choices The European Union (EU) and other economic and political organizations (the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) have an impact on harmonizing European educational structures. The orientation seems to be shifting practices in politics of education towards a new kind of ‘active citizenship’, which emphasizes flexibility, selfcontrol and self-reliance. Internalization of the thought of individual choice within this EU discourse has strengthened worries on the national level concerning young people’s educational choices. The age when young people must make the choice between academic and non-academic routes and the irreversibility of the process varies, but it typically is classed and gendered (see, for example, Ball, 2006; Reay et al, 2005). The Nordic model of the comprehensive school (Antikainen, 2006; Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006) introduced rather uniform schooling until the age of 16 in the 1960s and 1970s. There remain major differences in the structures of upper secondary education, however, even in the Nordic countries. In Finland, school students are obliged to make choices and apply for upper secondary education during the ninth year of their comprehensive schooling, at age 16. The importance of individual choices based on young persons’ own inclinations and interests is emphasized in schools and in society, as if there were no structural constraints (see Brunila et al, forthcoming; Lappalainen et al, forthcoming). The main division when conducting upper secondary choices is between general, academically oriented education and one of the sectors of vocational education. General 500

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes upper secondary education is an all-round theoretical education that prepares students for the matriculation examination. The starting point of vocational programmes is that students attain vocational competence. More than 90% of Finnish youth continue to upper secondary education immediately after finishing their compulsory schooling. Vocational upper secondary education is chosen by less than half of each cohort after comprehensive school, whilst a slight majority starts general upper secondary education. Young people with a working-class and ethnic-minority background, more often than middle-class youth, tend to take the vocational route (see, for example, Järvinen & Vanttaja, 2000). Boys choose vocational education somewhat more frequently than girls, but the difference is minor in relation to the strong gender segregation between and within sectors in vocational education (Lahelma, 2005). The dichotomy is activated when choices of secondary education are discussed. Now it is expressed more in terms that refer to reading, theoretical versus manual and practical, rather than the more concrete metaphors of hand and head. Below are some examples of interviews with 18year-old young people. Tiina and Hille chose vocational education after comprehensive school; Altti, Lotta and Auli general upper secondary school. At least, it was clear for me that I won’t go to general secondary school. I kind of cannot stand reading, ’cause I’m such a poor reader, it wouldn’t have worked with me. (Tiina, a girl) Well, I know from the beginning that I’m not a good reader. So I thought of some business school or vocational institution. And then this graphical [school] was because then it would be arts, I liked arts and all that. So that artistically, I’m more talented than [what would be expected in] some general secondary school. (Hille, a girl) No, manual work has never been for me. Although I have worked, washed dishes in a big restaurant, carrying back and forth, then anyway it is, it is this kind of working with theoretical issues, this kind of knowledge. (Altti, a boy) It had always been clear for me that I will apply for university, because I’ve never had any practical inclinations. (Lotta, a girl) I’m scared that I may choose a wrong job and, also, because I’m an artistic person, I want to have some flexibility … I worry about getting the sort of job I hate, one that doesn’t give me energy, only takes it. (Auli, a girl)

Whilst Tiina and Hille did not even think about general upper secondary school, because they did not regard themselves as readers, Altti and Lotta did not consider the vocational route, because manual and practical work was not for them. Auli was worried about a job without flexibility; choosing upper secondary school was therefore self-evident. The same patterns also repeat themselves in the other studies of the research project: the reason for choosing a vocational route is explained by moving away from reading and theory, by not being ‘brainy’, and also by means of the positive evaluation of doing, of practice (Brunila et al,forthcoming; Lappalainen et al, forthcoming; see also Käyhkö, 2006).[7] Vocational school is still associated as schooling that does not require reading. In school discourses in the ninth grade, differences between general and vocational upper secondary education are often connected to the theory–practice and head– hands/bodies dichotomies. Another dimension is also evident in the above extracts. Both Hille and Auli constructed themselves as artistic persons. However, vocational education was Hille’s choice and general upper secondary education Auli’s choice. Being artistic may have connections to either hands or heads in this metaphorical thinking. But it suggests gendered connotations. The artistically talented hands that Hille wished to activate differ from the hands and bodies in movement that Altti related to when talking about the manual work that ‘has never been for me … carrying back and forth’. Metaphors in Action: young people’s routes on the educational ladder The metaphors that constitute the division between academic and vocational routes after comprehensive school are repeated, changed, negotiated and challenged during young people’s

501

Elina Lahelma educational trajectories. In the following, I will focus on ethnographic field notes and interviews with a young woman and a young man, whom I call Petra and Akseli. Petra In the seventh grade, I found Petra to be a high-achieving, good-mannered middle-class girl who took responsibility for joint tasks: for example, the class jumble sale. When recalling her teachers’ comments about her, the joint admiration of her motivation, talent and behaviour was evident: ‘She’s so superb there [in her group], she kind of takes care of everything’; ‘She is, somehow, my favourite student’. In the interviews at age 13, we asked the students to imagine their life at the age of 25. An academic career was taken for granted in Petra’s dreams, but she also engaged fantasies that included metaphorical references to a life of luxury, such as champagne in a boat: I live in London, in a fancy detached house with my husband. We are both lawyers. We do not have children, just a lovely Scottish terrier. We also own a Jazz-café where I play saxophone in my spare time. We also own a lovely boat, in which we spend the summer holidays, sailing on the sea, with champagne, of course. (Petra, age 13)

This story can be interpreted as including some irony, but her plans at age 18 still suggested individuality and taking distance from the ordinary. She planned for a life where she need not be ‘in the same assembly line’ but ‘I want like, that – thinking selfishly – anyway that I am allowed to do what I want to’. She was in a very selective general upper secondary school, and reflected on her plans for further studies: ‘social sciences. And then, somehow to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, or becoming a diplomat somehow, or something like that’. Petra was aware that doing what she wanted to do would be challenged by having children, and she did not necessarily want to have them – ‘they are a terrible nuisance’ – except if she did find a ‘perfect man’. She reflected on the ordinary life span with children with a sigh: ‘somehow it seems that everybody’s life has that sort of pattern: first you are at school, then you study, then you marry, then you have children, and then you die’ (Petra, age 18). Petra, at this age, could be described in terms of being a chooser (see, for example, Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), a consumer of what life has to offer, or in terms of ‘girl power’ (Aapola et al, 2005). However, the moral stance and responsibility for others that I could read in the field notes and teachers’ comments about her in the seventh grade were still there: one example in this interview was that she regarded it as selfish to want something other than the assembly line. Petra’s self-evident plans for a career were not equally clear at the age of 20. She then had a boyfriend and thought of having children at some point. Therefore, and also because she did not want to leave her friends, she was not thinking any longer of having a career and spending time abroad. She had applied to study law but did not succeed in gaining a study place [8], and now studied in a polytechnic instead. She had realized that reading – at least the law books – was not for her: It is not for me at all, to sit alone in the library and read books that do not have anything [laughs]. I kind of couldn’t imagine that I would be able to do such a thing, for so many years. And then, after all, the work, I don’t think that it is such that I would like to do … But maybe most of all, I don’t think that I would hold up with those studies, ’cause it kind of is not my style. (Petra, age 20)

At the age of 24, she had gained a degree at polytechnic but it was just a beginning for her. She continued to study social sciences at university, but was also unsure whether this field was the best for her. She wondered what to do next: I’ve always thought that it goes like that – from the upper secondary to the university, then getting the Master’s and then to a good job – and then it kind of didn’t go quite that easily. (Petra, age 24)

Petra was a young woman who planned for an individualistic life, a subject of neo-liberalism par excellence, in Valerie Walkerdine’s (2003) words. This is not the whole truth, however, any more than the modern slogans of the ‘new girl’ actually ever are (see Öhrn, 2000), even in relation to middle-class girls. Whilst she repeatedly talked about her own individual choices, at the same time 502

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes moral responsibility was a repeating theme in her interviews, and already noticed by her teachers and the researchers in the lower secondary school. She was willing to curtail her earlier plans of an international career and luxury life abroad when starting to think about a family; and her earlier plans for an education in the most competitive field at university had collapsed: she had found out that such reading actually was not her style. Akseli Akseli was a working-class boy who was liked by both his teachers and classmates. His school achievement was average, but already at age 13 he seemed to have positioned himself in line with his father – working with his hands: Akseli (age 13): Well, I don’t know, my father is a plumber, and it’s not bad that he’s also handy. Tuula: Yes, aren’t you quite handy yourself? Akseli: Yes. Tuula: Yes, so that you find practical subjects much easier? Akseli: Yes, and when others are good in reading the mother tongue, like they can keep in their mind all the words. Tuula: Do you have the feeling that they don’t stay in your mind? Akseli: I suppose that they would if I would read.[9]

Akseli’s last answer indicates that he does not see himself as someone who cannot learn, but as someone who does not read. At age 18 he had started vocational education in a sector with low entrance criteria. He was satisfied with his choice, which seemed not to have bothered him much: I hadn’t really thought about it, only that I had it … I never was really interested in reading that much. I just thought about some vocational school in some sector. My father is a plumber, therefore I thought at first to go to study in the same sector. Then I somehow decided on this metalwork. Other mates from the [ice hockey] league also applied to this. I don’t know, I actually never thought about it earlier. (Akseli, age 18)

The careers counsellor had tried to convince him to go to general upper secondary school, but he refused, arguing in the interview that ‘there I would have had to read, I suppose’. Again, he mentioned his father, and constructed himself as someone who did not like to read. Ice hockey was important for Akseli, and the choices of his friends in the league influenced his choice as well. When reflecting about his future plans, he mentioned the possibility of becoming a professional sportsman. At age 20, and with a degree in vocational education, he planned to continue at the polytechnic because the practical period in vocational school had been a disappointment: It was … rather much that metalwork is like … almost an assembly line. Like I got there some glimmer that I could do something else as well, use your head like. Something with more education would be fine. At least if it gives you more money and so. And especially if I also can learn things. (Akseli, age 20)

Experience of the forthcoming work based on his earlier education was for Akseli the ‘glimmer’ that helped him to rethink using his head. The last sentence, however, suggests that he was still a bit afraid of whether he would actually be able to learn the things that were expected to further his education. At age 24, he was still living in his childhood home, worked as a semi-professional in sports, and had started studies at the polytechnic but had quit, because the ice hockey took up so much of his time. He reflected that he would need to move abroad if he wanted to really make a living out of ice hockey, and was afraid that his skills in foreign languages were not good enough. He was aware, too, that a professional career in ice hockey would not last for many years. He had thoughts about what he would like to do in the future: At least I think that I feel that I’d like to be this kind of ‘doing-it-for-yourself’, or then that I could tinker with my own things or then for somebody else, as a job, you know. But such would be the vocation of my dreams, that I could do like this and that. So that it is versatile, not standing in front of the turning machine all the time. (Akseli, age 24)

503

Elina Lahelma Working with his hands was, accordingly, a repeating metaphor for Akseli, and he distanced himself from reading as well as from mechanical work. Akseli’s hands are technically competent hands, and in his interviews he never talked about hands that take care of other people. His hands were ‘tinkering’ hands, not creating aesthetically beautiful artefacts. The other route that he followed simultaneously was that of using his male body: doing sports. Like Petra, Akseli also had problems and disappointments in his education, and his plans for an international career were challenged because of a lack of reading languages in his case. Lifelong Learners Escaping the Assembly Line The stories of Petra and Akseli, as well as those of several others whom we interviewed, suggest that they have internalized the idea of lifelong learning. This seems to be the case for young Finnish people in particular, and especially for those young people who already have an education (Olkinuora et al, 2008). Whilst the schoolgirl Petra thought that education would be just one pattern in her life trajectory, at 24 she was still planning for a new education. So was Akseli, who at the age of 13 obviously had imagined himself following his father’s route from school to hard manual work in the labour market. Petra, as well as some of the other young people whom I interviewed, used the word ‘onwards’, meaning that the next degree was just one step in the line of qualifications that they were going to achieve. Moving from one education to the next is often a necessity for young people who want to get rewarding work in the future. The assembly line as a metaphor for monotonous work was used by Petra and Akseli, but it seems to have slightly different connotations for each of them. For Akseli, embodied work was self-evident but he did want to have individual decisions concerning the tasks involved. In my interpretation, when Petra uses the same metaphor, the assembly line is not concrete, but refers rather to something ordinary, whilst she also regarded the possibility to do what she wanted to do in opposition to the assembly line. Petra’s and Akseli’s fears for the assembly line resemble Auli’s fears regarding the lack of flexibility and a job that saps her energy. Conclusion For young people, educational transitions are simultaneously problematic and full of taken-forgranted assumptions. The postmodern emphasis on individual choices also means compulsory choices and individual responsibility when the choices turn out to be disappointing. Whilst the vocabulary of individuality is strong, the impact of social and cultural backgrounds and gender has left its mark on the actual choices (see, for example, Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Ball et al, 2000). In this article I have tried to suggest that metaphors which are related to the head and hand are constructed as dichotomies when making sense of the difficult decisions concerning educational choices. These are repeated by teachers, study counsellors and young people themselves (see also Brunila et al, forthcoming; Lappalainen et al, forthcoming ). The longitudinal case studies also suggest that the self-evidence of this dichotomy is challenged when young people acquire actual experience in education and work. As such, it is something that should be challenged in schools before it starts to divide young people for the routes that are supposed to be geared for their kind. I suggested earlier that metaphors do not only translate and invent, but they also betray, lose and overlook. These metaphors which produce dichotomies with an impact on young peoples’ educational choices in such a manner are metaphors that betray, lose and overlook. Notes [1] See http://dictionary.oed.com/ [2] This longitudinal study has been one of the sub-studies in several projects supported by the Academy of Finland and the University of Helsinki, of which the latest project is ‘Learning to be Citizens: ethnographic and life historical studies in education’ (Academy of Finland 2004-08, directed by Lahelma). [3] The project ‘Citizenship, Difference and Marginality in Schools: with special reference to gender’ (Academy of Finland 1994-98, directed by Gordon).

504

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes [4] Project of the Academy of Finland 2010-2013, directed by Lahelma. [5] All names are pseudonyms. However, because of the collective ethnographic background, whereby many colleagues have written about the same people, some of them might be recognizable. Therefore I have given new pseudonyms to some people, especially those whose school lives and interviews have been used in several articles. [6] The metaphorical verb ‘handle’ (käsi = ‘hand’; käsitellä = ‘to deal with’) is regularly used in the Finnish language when theoretical issues are dealt with, and teachers use it repeatedly when they speak about their theoretical subject in interviews. [7] Five Master’s theses were completed as part of this project in 2008, and examples of this pattern can be found in these as well: in ethnographic studies of the ninth grade (Tuuli Kurki) and of vocational education in the field of construction (Asko Kauppinen); a life historical study with token women in a male field of vocational education (Aino Haapala-Samuel) and with adult women in education for cleaners (Merja Jacobsson); and a study about educational transitions of young people who have spent their childhood in a children’s home (Tuulia Jokela). [8] To gain access to study law is very difficult in Finland. For the most demanding entrance tests young people have to memorize thick law books; earlier school achievement hardly counts. [9] The first interview with Akseli at age 13 was conducted by Tuula Gordon, the others by myself.

References Aapola, S., Gonick, M. & Harris, A. (2005) Young Femininity: girlhood, power and social change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Adams St. Pierre, E. (2000) Poststructural Feminism in Education: an overview, Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5), 477-515. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518390050156422 Antikainen, A. (2006) In Search of the Nordic Model in Education, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 229-243. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00313830600743258 Arnesen, A.-L., Lahelma, E. & Öhrn, E. (2008) Travelling Discourses of Gender and Education: the case of boys’ underachievement, Nordisk Pedagogik, 28(1), 1-14. Arnesen, A.-L. & Lundahl, L. (2006) Still Social and Democratic? Inclusive Education Policies in the Nordic Welfare States, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 285-300. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00313830600743316 Ball, S. (2006) Education Policy and Social Class: the selected works of Stephen Ball. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ball, S., Maguire, M. & Macrae, S. (2000) Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-16: new youth, new economies in the global city. London: Routledge. Beck, U. & Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualisation: institutionalised individualism and its social and political consequences. London: Sage. Berg, P. & Lahelma, E. (in press) Gendering Processes in the Field of Physical Education, Gender and Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250902748184 Brunila, K., Kurki, T., Lahelma, E., Lehtonen, J., Mietola, R. & Palmu, T. (forthcoming) Multiple Transitions: educational policies and young people’s post-compulsory choices, manuscript submitted to Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. Davies, B. (1990) Agency as a Form of Discursive Practice: a classroom scene observed, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(3), 341-361. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569900110306 Davies, B. (1993) Shards of Glass: children reading and writing beyond gendered identities. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Epstein, D., Elwood, J., Hey, V. & Maw, J. (Eds) (1998) Failing Boys? Issues in Gender and Achievement. Buckingham: Open University Press. Furlong, A. & Cartmel, F. (1997) Young People and Social Change: individualization and risk in late modernity. Buckingham: Open University Press. Goodson, I. (1992) On Curriculum Form: notes toward a theory of curriculum, Sociology of Education, 65(1), 66-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2112693 Gordon, T. & Lahelma, E. (1996) ‘School Is Like an Ants’ Nest’: spatiality and embodiment in schools, Gender and Education, 8(3), 301-310. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540259621548

505

Elina Lahelma Gordon, T. & Lahelma, E. (2003) From Ethnography to Life History: tracing transitions of school students, International Journal of Social Research Methods, 6(3), 245-254. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000091842 Gordon, T., Holland, J. & Lahelma, E. (2000a) Making Spaces: citizenship and difference in schools. London: Macmillan. Gordon, T., Holland, J. & Lahelma, E. (2000b) Moving Bodies/Still Bodies: embodiment and agency in schools, in L. McKie & N. Watson (Eds) Organizing Bodies: policy, institutions and work. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gordon, T., Holland, J., Lahelma, E. & Thomson, R. (2005) Imagining Gendered Adulthood: anxiety, ambivalence, avoidance and anticipation, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 12(1), 83-103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350506805048857 Gordon, T., Hynninen, P., Lahelma, E., Metso, T., Palmu, T. & Tolonen, T. (2006) Collective Ethnography, Joint Experiences and Individual Pathways, Nordisk Pedagogik, 26(1), 3-15. Järvinen, T. & Vanttaja, M. (2000) Koulutuksen hyvä- ja huono-osaiset: laudaturylioppilaiden ja koulutuksesta karsiutuneiden kotitaustat [High achievers and drop-outs: the social background of the most successful upper secondary school leavers and young people outside education and working life], Kasvatus [Finnish Journal of Education], 31(3), 205-216. Kokko, S. (2009) Learning Practices of Femininity through Gendered Craft Education in Finland, Gender and Education, 21(6), 721-734. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250903117090 Käyhkö, M. (2006) Siivoojaksi oppimassa: etnografinen tutkimus työläistytöistä puhdistuspalvelualan koulutuksessa [Learning to be cleaners: an ethnographic study about working-class girls in vocational education for cleaning service]. Joensuu: University of Joensuu. Lahelma, E. (2002) School is for Meeting Friends: secondary school as lived and remembered, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(3), 367-381. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0142569022000015418 Lahelma, E. (2005) School Grades and Other Resources: the ‘failing boys’ discourse revisited, NORA, 13(2), 78-89. Lahelma, E. & Gordon, T. (1997) First Day in Secondary School: learning to be a ‘professional pupil’, Educational Research and Evaluation, 3(2), 119-139. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1380361970030202 Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lappalainen, S., Mietola, R. & Lahelma, E. (forthcoming) Hakemisen pakkoa, tiedonmuruja ja itseymmärrystä: nuoret pohtivat peruskoulun jälkeisiä valintoja [Compulsory application, pieces of information and self-understanding: young people reflecting post-compulsory choices], Nuorisotutkimus [Finnish Journal of Youth Studies]. Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Morgan, G. (1997) Images of Organisation. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Öhrn, E. (2000) Changing Patterns? Reflections on Contemporary Swedish Research and Debate on Gender and Education, NORA, 8(3), 128-136. Olkinuora, E., Rinne, R., Mäkinen, J., Järvinen, T. & Jauhiainen, A. (2008) Promises and Risks of the Learning Society: the meanings of lifelong learning for three Finnish generations, Studies in the Education of Adults, 40(1), 40-61. Paechter, C. (2000) Changing School Subjects: power, gender and curriculum. Buckingham: Open University Press. Parker, A. (1996) The Construction of Masculinity within Boys’ Physical Education, Gender and Education, 8(2), 141-158. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540259650038824 Popkewitz, T.S. (1998) Struggling for the Soul: the politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. New York: Teachers College Press. Räty, H., Kasanen, K. & Kärkkäinen, R.(2006) School Subjects as Social Categories, Social Psychology of Education, 9(1), 5-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11218-005-2439-6 Reay, D., David, M.E. & Ball, S. (2005) Degrees of Choice: social class, race and gender in higher education. Stokeon-Trent: Trentham Books. Rose, N. (1992) Governing the Soul: the shaping of the private self. London: Routledge. Smith, N. & Katz, C. (1993) Grounding Metaphor: towards a spatialised politics, in M. Keith & S. Pile (Eds) Place and the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge. Tuomaala, S. (2004) Työtätekevistä käsistä puhtaiksi ja kirjoittaviksi [From working to clean and writing hands]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.

506

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes Walkerdine, V. (2003) Reclassifying Upward Mobility: femininity and the neo-liberal subject, Gender and Education, 15(3), 237-248. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540250303864

ELINA LAHELMA is Professor of Education in the Department of Education at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has conducted ethnographic and life historical studies with young people, with a special emphasis on gender. She has published extensively, including the books Making Spaces: citizenship and difference in schools (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), with Tuula Gordon & Janet Holland, and Democratic Education: ethnographic challenges (Tufnell Press, 2003), edited with Dennis Beach & Tuula Gordon. Correspondence: Elina Lahelma, Department of Education, University of Helsinki, PO Box 9, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland ([email protected]).

507