The transmission of capital and a feel for the game

Introduction

School choice is a complex process incorporating multiple overlapping parental desires, hopes, constraints and fears, which are framed by pupil-allocation policies. The local context, as well as the child’s aptitudes, family background and possession of different forms of capital, all have an impact on the use of a ‘choice’ (Reay and Lucey, 2003). Choosing a school may be both a practical and an ideological question, which relates to balancing between individual rights as a parent and a citizen, to the idea of the common good and to the practical organisation of everyday family life in cities. This article examines the discourse of parental choice of lower secondary school, which falls within the nine-year compulsory education system, in two cities on Finland’s southern coast, Espoo and Turku. The parents concerned are defined as belonging to the Finnish upper class. ¹

There is extensive academic discussion in the sociology of education on the reproduction of social positions and distinctions through educational choice (e.g. Ball et al., 1995; Bathmaker et al., 2013; Power et al., 2003; Reay, 2007; van Zanten, 2009), and the construction of social inequalities in societies, drawing mainly on the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 1986; see also Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Finland is, by reputation, a country that provides its citizens with relatively egalitarian high-quality education, although recent studies have revealed several patterns suggesting that the educational system is becoming more diversified. Learning outcomes among lower secondary school pupils are generally deteriorating (Hautamäki et al., 2013) and are becoming differentiated across schools (Bernelius, 2013) and their classes ² (Berisha and Seppänen, in press) in major Finnish cities. School choice and pupil selection seem to be creating selective routes within comprehensive schooling (Seppänen et al., 2012a; Seppänen and Kosunen, 2015). Most lower secondary schools in certain urban areas of Finland nowadays select at least some or even a significant proportion of their pupils (aged 13−15), mainly via aptitude tests to control enrolment in selective classes, or classes with a special emphasis, as they are known (Seppänen and Kosunen, 2015). The Finnish upper class is also under pressure to ‘choose well’, given that the education system does not offer them distinct routes via private schooling (Kosunen et al., 2015).

The tradition in Finland until the 1990s was to allocate whole-age cohorts to local publicly funded schools on the basis of residence, following the Nordic ‘one school for all’ ideology: all children, regardless of their gender and social and ethnic background, are to be educated together. This was the principle on which the Nordic welfare state was built, the explicit goal being equality among citizens and long, tuition-free and uniform education as a civil right. Nevertheless, the emergent transition from the production of social equality through equality in education to a model promoting competition between schools and individuals, and thus the diversification of the school system, has aroused widespread debate (Rinne, 2000). There was no reference to parental choice as a policy in the legislation until the reform of the late 1990s (the Basic Education Act 1998; Seppänen, 2006). Echoing Brown (1990), Rinne (2000) claimed that parentocratic ideology had also replaced meritocratic ideology in Finland. The original official aim in the policy of school specialisation was to create selective classes for pupils with an interest in and aptitude for particular subjects. Now, in the 2010s, parents from the upper and upper middle classes are more likely to choose selective classes for their children (Kalalahti et al., 2015; Kosunen et al., 2015; Seppänen et al., 2012b; 2015). The proportion of children of upper-class parents performing well at school is significantly higher than the proportions of children with other social-class backgrounds doing so (Kosunen et al., 2015). The aim of this study is to contribute to this discussion by enhancing understanding of what constitutes the existing distinctions of the upper class in the allegedly egalitarian field of education in Finland.

We address the following research questions: (a) how and why do Finnish upper-class parents exercise school choice in a publicly funded tuition-free and ranking-free comprehensive school system; (b) what is the role of different forms of capital in the process; (c) How is the legitimation of selective choice constructed in the discourse, given that it contrasts strongly with the historical Nordic welfare-state ideology of egalitarian and uniform education?

Educational choice and social class

Educational choices are perceived in this study as strategic practices and procedures that do not follow explicit rules and are not necessarily conscious, but which are a product of the habitus (see Bourdieu, 1976) and are thereby perceived as natural. Habitus constitutes a combination of different amounts of cultural, economic, social and symbolic capital, always operates in relation to the field (the configuration of objective relations of positions) and comprises the ‘historical relations “deposited” within individual bodies in the form of mental and corporeal schemata of perception, appreciation and action’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 16). Cultural capital is continuously transmitted in the family, fairly unconsciously and covertly as dispositions of mind and body (embodied type: e.g. skills and knowledge), but needs to be validated in the education system (institutionalised type) to maximise its efficacy on the labour market. Children accumulate their cultural capital in the family as part of their whole socialisation process, which makes it the most efficient hidden form of capital transmission. Due to its disguised acquisition and transmission, it might also function as symbolic capital (prestige), recognised as legitimate competence and misrecognised as capital (Bourdieu, 1986). Our specific interest in this article is in the skills the children have acquired related to cultural activities of different kinds (embodied cultural capital), which are tested in the process of admission to certain institutions, and in how they relate to other forms of capital mobilised in their school choice.

Economic capital constitutes inherited and generated wealth, and all other types of capital may eventually be derived from it: the strategies required for the transformation of one form of capital to another depend on the field in question (Bourdieu, 1986). Social capital refers to social relations and networks, as well as group membership. The real volume of a person’s social capital is linked to the size of the networks of which he or she is a member, as well as to the volume of mobilisable forms of capital within them (Bourdieu, 1980). Transforming economic capital into social capital requires time and effort, as the relationships need to be developed and maintained over time via acts of attention, care and concern. Social exchange does not follow the same logical patterns as pure economic exchange, and thus social capital is never fully disconnected from economic and cultural capital: social connections require mutual acknowledgement, which is often based on some level of objective homogeneity. The more the prevailing social structure prevents the straight transmission of capital in its different forms, the greater is the emphasis on its clandestine circulation, which is how cultural capital becomes a key element in the reproduction of the social structure (Bourdieu, 1986). In the context of this study, the interest lies in the transformation of capital from one form to another, and from one field to another.

Habitus is creative and inventive, yet is limited by the social structures that produce it (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), influencing decisions without being completely explicit (Bourdieu, 1976). The amount of inherited capital(s) an individual possesses allows differing starting points for action that do not end up in equally probable ‘positions of arrival’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 104). Individuals and families try to maintain their assets and positions in the class structure, consciously or unconsciously, via reproduction strategies (Bourdieu, 1984). The structural similarity of habituses within a social class facilitates the production of compatible practices that are devoid of intention, consciousness and conspiracy (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Lifestyles are systematic products of habitus, which become socially acknowledged and applied sign systems. Bourdieu (1984: 166−168) describes the social world as ‘a space of lifestyles’. The aim in this study is to enhance understanding of how upper-class families in Finland operate within a publicly funded education system, and of the practices of choice they naturally include as part of their lifestyle. The relevance of this lies in the interconnectedness of upper-class actions to the production of inequalities in the lower social strata (Giddens, 1998: 104−105).

As shown in other educational contexts (e.g. Ball et al., 1995; Power et al., 2003; van Zanten, 2009), economic, social and cultural capital are interconnected in terms of their impact on the choice of school, and their effective use may produce privileged educational trajectories (Ball, 2003a; Ball, 2003b: 169). Many of the studies on school choice concentrate on distinctions across the working and middle classes (e.g. Reay, 2001; Vincent et al., 2010), emphasising the role of educational choice in reproducing social positions and how different actors ‘play the game’ (see Bathmaker et al., 2013). As far as this study is concerned, the field of education is a game that is without explicit rules but is worth playing, where illusio (what is invested in the game) and trump cards emerge. The relative value and utility of the different trump cards depend on the game in question, and are related to the varying relative values of forms of capital in different fields (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Promoting education markets and increasing freedom of choice seem to favour the middle classes, which have the capacity to transfer the cultural and material capital that is required in connection with school choice and admission (Lauder et al., 1999: 20, 29). The players’ strategies are defined by their social position and habitus. Thus, as Bourdieu states, the task of empirical research is to identify the limits of the field(s) in question and the forms of capital that are active and efficient within them – in other words, how the game is played (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).

The increasingly fierce competition for prestigious educational positions through the massification of academic qualifications has made the dominant classes reflect on their use of educational systems in their desire to ensure cross-generational social reproduction (Bourdieu, 1984: 126–128; Brown, 1990). The upper classes in many countries manage to opt out of the game by turning to the private education market. According to Giddens (1998: 103), social exclusion is at work at both ends of the social stratum here, and it is obviously a question of agency and social distinction between social groups: the upper classes in England have always been able to ‘self-exclude’ from the lower classes by making educational choices that are not available to others due to a lack of economic capital, in particular. Historically (since the 1650s), the main schooling route for upper-class children in Finland has been via selective secondary education in grammar schools that prepared pupils for academia. Urban upper-class children of the late 1800s also went to private primary schools, which were abolished by law during the 1950s (Kivinen, 1988). The private grammar schools were put under the governance of the municipalities following the reform of comprehensive schooling during the 1970s, and almost all of them started basing their pupil admission on catchment areas (see e.g. Seppänen and Kosunen 2015). As a result, upper-class children were also admitted to publicly funded schools, based on their home address. Nowadays there is no market for private education in Finland. Less than 3 per cent of pupils in basic education attend ‘private’ schools – in other words, fully state-subsidized independent schools (such as the Steiner schools) run by non-profit foundations or non-municipal communities (Ministry of Education 2007: 31).

The fact that the upper class operates within the same space of choice as all other social classes makes its position interesting, and the ways in which it creates distinct circuits of schooling worth investigating.

The construction of the upper class in urban Finland: The socio-historical setting, the data and the methods

The upper class has not been the subject of extensive discussion in Finland until recently (e.g. Erola, 2009, 2010; Kolbe, 2014; Kortteinen et al., 2005; Purhonen et al., 2011). According to Alapuro (2010), ever since the nineteenth century the Finnish upper class has based the construction of its position and self-image on the trust of the people, to which it has aimed to stay culturally close. The borders of the upper social class were fairly clear at the time, but the whole concept of an upper class was questioned in the twentieth century. Alapuro (2010) goes on to point out how the distinctions and possible endeavours to build bridges between the ruling and the lower classes could be understood as a reaction to external threats and internal conflicts. The civil war in 1917–1918 positioned social class vis-à-vis nationality. The gap between the ruling and lower classes widened, which led to long-lasting national tension (Alapuro, 2010: 531).

The construction of the welfare state and the massification of tuition-free higher education in the 1960s and 1970s led to more equal educational opportunities across social classes, and opened paths from agricultural and working-class backgrounds to higher positions in society (Kivinen and Rinne, 1995). Many members of the current Finnish upper class come from less advantaged backgrounds, and their current high social positions are related to the socially equalising goals of Finnish education. Hence, not all the parents investigated in this study had an upper-class background.

The upper-class parents (n=33, 17 mothers and 16 fathers) interviewed ³ were highly educated (MA or PhD), with a high occupational status (managers or professionals) and high income. ⁴ In Bourdieusian terms, we interviewed both the economic (especially high economic capital) and the cultural (especially high cultural capital) fractions of the upper class. All the informants were parents of children aged 12–13 who were proceeding from primary to lower secondary school in two cities in the south of the country, Espoo (n=19) and Turku (n=14). Most of Finland’s economic upper class live in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, and are particularly heavily concentrated in some areas of Espoo (Kortteinen et al., 2005). Espoo is a city of about 250,000 inhabitants (the second largest city in Finland), the home base of Aalto University and the provider of offices for several international corporations. Turku is Finland’s oldest university city, having been the country’s capital until 1812 and currently being the regional centre of southwest Finland. It is two hours from Helsinki by train, and has 180,000 inhabitants (the sixth largest city).

The social networks of many of these families consisted exclusively of other academics (17/33 families), although some were socially mixed (7/33), and among the vast majority with a higher education degree they were based on friendships formed at university. The space for school choice in both cities consists almost solely of schools run by the municipalities (called public schools here) and funded via taxation, plus a few state-subsidised independent schools. All pupils are assigned a public school on the basis of their residence, but parents are allowed to express a preference and to apply to enrol their children in selective classes.

We conducted individual semi-structured thematic interviews with the parents concerning their children’s educational choices and wishes concerning their future, the parents’ attitudes to education and how they valued it and the lifestyle practices of the family. The interviews lasted between one and two hours. The interview material was subjected to theory-informed qualitative content analysis (see Tuomi and Sarajärvi, 2002) and the analysis was elaborated on further in line with the research questions. Forms of expression were analysed and contrasted with the socio-historical context of the discourse. Aspects that were taken for granted or justified in the discourse were subjected to closer analysis.

Upper-class families and their practices of selective choice

All the interviewees shared certain similarities. All their children (12–13-year-olds) performed well at school (i.e. an average grade of 8.4–9.7 on a scale ranging from four to 10); all were expected to proceed to an upper secondary rather than a vocational school after comprehensive school; all the parents emphasised the importance of acquiring a good knowledge of foreign languages at school; all their children had sports as a hobby (e.g. ice hockey, equestrian sports or ballgames), and many also attended classical music classes after school. Many of these activities could be described as concerted cultivation, which is often associated with a middle-class upbringing (Lareau, 2003) and leads to the acquisition of cultural capital in the form of knowledge and skills in various fields of (high-brow) culture. It seems that these cultural activities are also distinctive by nature in relation to social position in Finland (Purhonen et al., 2014).

There were no differences in the numbers of children from the economic and cultural fractions (Bourdieu, 1984) of the upper class applying for selective classes: almost all of them did so. As a possible explanation we refer to the findings reported by Purhonen et al. (2014: 411–412): lifestyle distinctions are not diversified across economic and cultural fractions in Finland to the same extent as elsewhere, or as one might expect in the light of Bourdieu’s theory of taste. ⁵ Those on the highest social strata have the most wide-ranging taste, but are still selective and emphasise legitimate high-brow culture (Purhonen et al., 2014). The hobbies of most of the children (classical music, specific sports, reading) could be described as legitimate cultural practices in Finland (see Purhonen et al., 2014: 376).

The discussion and the decision-making related to choosing a school took place within the family. The child’s role as a choice-maker was discursively emphasised, as in most cases the parents insisted that they would not make the choice, and would instead allow the child to decide from the available options. Nevertheless, the strategy of pre-selecting schools for children to ‘freely choose from’ was present. The parents sometimes seemed to credit themselves with making the child believe that a certain choice was his or her own idea from the beginning, which is a typical and sophisticated strategy among upper-class parents (see van Zanten, 2009: 139). With reference to a previous study about the reputation and prestige of schools in the same two cities (Kosunen and Seppänen, 2015), these parents were applying for places in selective classes with a prestigious or at least a good reputation, high levels of selectivity, a socially advantaged pupil body and subject matter known to be academically demanding. It seemed that the emerging pre-selection was not always conscious, however, even though the palette of schools from which to choose seemed to be clear to them. We interpreted this as an embedded educational strategy because it seemed to occur naturally. The interviewees categorised their reasons for their pre-selection as vague positive feelings about some schools and not about others, also referring either to tradition in the family (among parents with an academic background) or to social support among friends.

One practice in specifying the choice palette of schools was to talk about the choice and school admission process with the parents of the child’s closest friends, in other words mobilising their social capital. For some parents, the most influential social networks with regard to their children’s schooling, apart from their own siblings (who in most cases were also highly educated), were the parents of children who had the same hobbies as their children. Many children from the upper class seemed to have two sets of friends: one from school and another from their hobbies, which tended to be fairly expensive. Some parents formed groups and applied together for selective classes across the catchment areas and the city. Knowing the children and their parents, and also knowing their aspirations and ambitions in a common hobby, meant that these upper-class parents were able to choose a school and a class with selective enrolment practices and still allow their children to keep their friends. This practice required several forms of capital, but was presented as easy and natural in the discourse. The parents said they were relieved to meet their future peers, namely the other children and their parents, beforehand, which they thought would moderate the risks connected with 13-year-olds starting at a new school. Choosing schools together with other families from similar backgrounds could be interpreted as an application of ‘colonisation’ and cultural co-optation (van Zanten, 2009: 137, 144). This is when families actively participate in the activities of the chosen school and influence their child’s education within the school (especially when the school is socially heterogeneous) and when the choice is influenced by the motivation and reasoning of other families with similar backgrounds (van Zanten, 2009), and in this case even made together.

The parents did not see the socially selected composition of children following the same hobbies as intentional but rather as natural, in that the choices were often based on the families’ mutual interests and the child’s aptitudes, which is understandable from a Bourdieusian perspective on lifestyle. Hence, the social networks that parents build in connection with these hobbies are not random: the hobbies would have been chosen in any case, but now they also seemed to have a profitable connection with the choice of school.

With regard to the choosing process, we had many different motives. First of all, both of us went to a class with a special emphasis on music ourselves. So it was already our own experience. The kids also have music as their hobby outside of school and we of course wanted music to be a more important part of their schooling, also partly because our children felt that the regular music classes in a regular school were, first of all, boring and painful to their ears, when the others can’t necessarily [play or sing]. But it’s also linked slightly to social… I’ve found myself that music as a hobby when I was a youngster helped me to develop in a certain direction, which might not otherwise have been possible. And this has influenced our choice that we ended up choosing a music emphasis.… The older brother said the other day when we were discussing the girl’s choice that he’s really happy about the fact that he came to this [special emphasis], that his previous classmates who are in the local school, they spend their Friday nights behind the [shopping centre] drinking beer. He says he’s glad that he has another type of a framework here. (Tomas)

It is obvious from Tomas’ comment that the aim in making the school choice was to provide a preferred social frame for the child: it still seemed difficult for him to give the real reason for the choice or to explain the nature of the ‘other type of framework’ that he mentions in the interview. We interpret this as a description of constructed closure, which relates to having similar children from similar backgrounds studying together in groups in selective classes: selection into these study groups is officially meritocratic, but the parents also reflect on the ways in which the admission operates as social selection. Misrecognition of the role of capital (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) emerges, success in the entrance test being reduced to personal competence and talent. It is also apparent that describing the functioning of emerging social closure is difficult in a society like Finland, where discussing social-class divisions is still a taboo of a kind.

The parents were also aware of possible obstacles concerning school admission, and were able to gather information through active involvement in their children’s hobbies and school. As a result, their choice palette was not only wide but also realistic, with technically impossible options being ruled out – not that there were many. Social capital in the form of social interaction with certain peers, relevant information and the skills to interpret it, together with ‘hot’ knowledge such as rumours and stories about schools (see Ball and Vincent, 1998), helped the parents to optimise their choice in a careful manner.

In fact we got the information earlier from the head of the team, given to all the players, that in [outside the high-SES area] there is a school emphasising sport with which our sports club […] is in cooperation anyhow. (Matias)

Yes, she also chose [language emphasis]… because it became clear at the information evening for parents that for this school … they can only take five more pupils from outside the area and these places are reserved for five basketball players, who come to the [sport] special class. So, it became very, very clear that [without choosing another emphasis] there was no way of getting in. (Katrina)

Matias expresses the interesting notion that the sports club actually provided the families with information, if not instructions, about the upcoming school choice. Katrina then describes vividly how the information provided was used in the choice strategies. Many other families had received the same information, but in Katrina’s family the choice was highly optimal regardless of the expected restrictions. Not all families are able to create an optimal ‘plan B’: these families tended to have many.

The parents with the most sophisticated choice practices tended to have one asset that the less sophisticated did not possess: access to local social capital. In other words, they knew other children attending the preferred school, and their parents, and joined the local networks (see Rivière, 2014); or they had gone to school in the same area or close by, and had an understanding of the historical build-up of prestige on which they partly based their choice. However some families, despite a high social class position, had no personal access to local knowledge because they were not originally from the area or were long-term expatriates. They therefore tried to strengthen their knowledge base, even if it relied mainly on rumour, by talking to work colleagues with first-hand knowledge about the school – otherwise they could not have made the right choice:

Yeah, I did discuss this a lot at work at [international company] with other people who have moved around the world with children, about whether choosing a language-emphasised primary school, secondary school is important.… We discussed this very much with many families… (Johannes)

I come from a small municipality myself, and it’s a long time since I went to school, I mean comprehensive school. And we just went there: we only had one school, and we went to town by bus. And [now] when they sent all these guidebooks about choice and stuff, and I read it just like that, and I was like hey, how can we do this.… The first thought was that it doesn’t matter. But then I discussed it here at work with colleagues: colleagues who have been in the capital area for a longer time. And I also see it in colleagues who are in their thirties, as they tell me, ‘I’ve been to a music class’ and ‘I’ve been to that’, and so on. And now I realise that [the selectivity] has been here for a longer time. (Laura)

What is interesting in Laura’s comment is that, despite her high cultural capital and vast network of international connections, school choice was not in her mind-set when she moved from rural Finland to the capital city area and was sending her first child to lower secondary school. This also describes well the general transformation and expansion in the discourse of educational choice, particularly in urban areas. Laura was stunned by the policy and de facto practice of school choice, and had to search for tools to help her succeed in the ‘game’.

Admission to the selective classes was based on testing the children in particular subject areas, such as musical aptitude or success in sports, which all the upper-class children covered in this study had. Thus, not only did the parents have the required information and social support from their peers about the different options (social capital); the children also had the necessary skills to gain admission to the particular selective class (embodied cultural capital), and in some cases to many or even all of them. The selective space of school choice was wide open to these families due to the composition, transmission and transferability of the forms of capital they possessed.

Actually we had multiple options, I think more options than many others, since we could choose to continue in this international environment and proceed to [international] school, or then to … the [class with a special emphasis], and then we had this [nearby school in the next municipality]. So we didn’t actually talk at all about the possibly allocated option. We had all sorts of options. Eventually the outcome of the process was a happy one, and he got into the [class with a special emphasis]. He got into the one we didn’t believe he would. He had performed so well in the aptitude test. (Andreas)

As Andreas describes it, the educational provision of selective classes with a more prestigious profile matched the child’s aptitudes and skills fairly well: enhanced linguistic skills due to the years spent abroad, as well as extensive training in a certain form of sports, widened his scope for school choice. These skills derived from the cultural field of hobbies, not success in primary education. Hence, because economic capital could not directly ensure educational advantage – as it might in the private sector – and success in the aptitude tests (transformation of embodied cultural capital into institutional) was uncertain, the choosing strategy had to be more complex. Andreas’ family’s second and third options were both high in prestige, but were still accessible.

These upper-class families used school choice in order to get ‘a good match’ for their child in terms of the school environment, and typically expected to find that environment in a selective class applying pupil selection. They chose a selective class as an implicit social practice without explicitly aiming at social distinction, or even being fully aware of it. Misrecognition of the role of capital was evident. There was still a realisation of the habitus, an unconscious feel for the game, in matching the child with a certain selective class. Nevertheless, and regardless of the unintentionality, the skills derived via lifestyle practices (hobbies) seemed to produce assets, or trump cards, in the competition for study places in the field of education.

The naturalisation of distinctions and the question of the elite

The parents expressed the view that their selective choice would result in a selective class of highly motivated and talented peers, which in turn would help their children to learn more, and especially to keep motivated during their lower secondary school years: there was a discourse of naturally talented and motivated children. These parents wanted their children to be in a peer group promoting a habitus that was fairly similar to their own, so that they would not stand out (as too motivated or talented) and nor would the wishes and the aims of the other parents differ too much from theirs. They considered the selection to be meritocratic, and thereby just. Still, the question of attached social selection emerged:

Well, maybe children’s hobbies and their parents’ educational background do correlate, but we haven’t been looking for anything like that, a science-based school or anything. I think there the correlation is even stronger. I think we have gone after value here [with their choice of a music emphasis]. For some reason among people who have music as their hobby, regardless of the genre, there is always some sort of mental… some kind of values that you don’t necessarily see in a general school. (Tomas)

Tomas’ comment indicates that choice is used as a social vehicle, and requires legitimation because it contradicts the historical discourse of universal Nordic comprehensive education. Officially the pupil selection was meritocratic, but, given the skills tested, it also resulted in social selection that was visible to the parents. They distanced themselves from the open distinctions created in the choosing process by referring to ‘others’ as the choosers, where the parents’ own actions seemed relatively less crude, as Tomas pointed out. Nevertheless, the contradiction between the embedded discourse of choosing and the visible social diversification across schools was acknowledged. Their mutual connection was still not fully recognised, however. Sara reflected on the determinants of the selection:

I find it really hard to imagine her not going to upper secondary school [instead of a vocational school] of her own free will. And as her friends are ‘from the same tree’ [similar], who are in her class [with a special emphasis]… But then there are some in the neighbourhood who might not even be able to get into an upper secondary school. But I don’t see any reason at all why she wouldn’t go to an upper secondary school. (Sara)

Sara refers to her child’s academically able and homogeneous peer group, which she contrasts, as a group, with some other children from the neighbourhood. She perceives the similarly minded peer group as a preferable environment in which the child would feel her habitus matched that of the group. Still, Sara did not explicitly promote upward social exclusion, even if she acknowledged it. The parents generally said that they wanted their children to experience a multicultural society and also to meet children from the lower social classes at school, which was one of the original principles behind comprehensive schooling. This discourse clearly contradicted the one expressing the wish for a ‘similar’ peer group, as the parents realised that practices of selective choice did not promote diversity, and de facto appeared socially exclusive. Lisa points out the contradiction of simultaneously aspiring to peer-group diversity and homogeneity:

Maybe I’m so introverted myself that I think it would be safe to have a peer group of the same mind as you and your family. So that you could be there and grow to be yourself, but then… In a way as you have the space to grow to be who you are, then maybe it’s easier to accept all the differences. On the other hand – this is really difficult – on the other hand, if you grow up straight away in a multifaceted society, it becomes embedded. I think the essential thing is to have peace at school. (Lisa)

When the parents referred to ‘similar families’ and ‘similar children’ they meant general family lifestyles, and implied social class. Lifestyles, on the other hand, are known to vary according to the amounts and types of possessed capital, in Finland as elsewhere (Purhonen et al., 2014). It was evident that all the families engaged in various sports, valued family time, engaged in many other outdoor activities and travelled. Living in an upper-class neighbourhood was not necessarily a prerequisite, but when leisure was discussed, some kind of pattern typifying the upper-class way of living emerged. Van Zanten (2009) and Reay (1998), drawing on Bourdieu (1986), describe extensively and intensively promoted family time as a practice of transmitting cultural capital, which requires economic means and intentional decision-making (in other words, time).

Of particular interest are the misrecognition of classed lifestyle practices and the conceptualisation of choice: both are evidently part of the habitus and thereby unquestioned, as they appear natural. Still, the experienced social diversification at the end of the choice process exposes the need for legitimation. There are references to meritocratic justification, and to the social norm of choice-making in those social circles. The same goes for the children’s ‘free choice’ of schools: the choices of these families share multiple similar features despite having been made ‘individually’.

Of our son’s friends, in the [hobby], it seems that quite a few have chosen something other than the local school. In other words, they have gone to a class with a special emphasis. Surprisingly many. (Leo)

The old and even historic question of elites and social reproduction still arose when the parents were asked about the current policy of school specialisation and pupil selection:

Yes, there is the elite question behind all this. I’m going to put it bluntly: I’m against the idea, which dominates in Finland, that everyone should have the same in everything.… At home at least we believe that those with more to help them on their journey through life also have a duty, a social duty, to help others, to spread their talent. And also to profit from it. I don’t see a problem there, but then there is a problem if people start to behave arrogantly, they think they are ‘a bit better’. We don’t think in that way at all. And if you have the ability to join a music class, for example, be my guest. They need to work harder than the others anyhow. They have rehearsals and concerts. The following morning they have an exam in mathematics. They still do. And therefore their burden is a lot heavier. They don’t have it any easier than the others, rather the opposite. (Linda)

As Linda implies, misrecognition of the derived assets provided by public schooling was blurred by the officially meritocratic selection of pupils for the selective classes. Nevertheless, the open expression of social distinction was rejected as arrogant behaviour, and should be avoided despite the acknowledged class differences. The acquired advantages were legitimised through the notion of hard work. Thus, the issue of pupil selection and parental choice turns into a question of the common good and legitimate action. The historical social division of the nation, and the idea of the elite as a part of it, constitute something of a political hot potato.

The main issue was exclusion at the top, despite the fact that it was not explicitly voluntary, as Giddens (1998) puts it. Nor was it conscious, which may be attributable to the consistency of habitus and lifestyle and misrecognition of the prerequisites of a ‘feel for the game’: somehow it just seemed to happen. The methods of conducting pupil selection resulted in visible social distinction (regardless of the possible unintentionality). The upper-class families transformed embodied cultural capital from the field of culture into institutionalised cultural capital in the field of comprehensive education. Given that this was a practice that visibly created distinction across schools and their selective classes, legitimation was required in the discourse. Many of the interviewees had attended comprehensive schools during the 1970s and 1980s, when the transition from a binary to a comprehensive school system one took place, and were aware that they had profited from such schooling. The aim in this analysis was to assess the extent to which the process of testing aptitudes was considered a meritocratic selection practice and thus legitimate, ⁶ and how the social circles of the families in question reinforced the idea of ‘everyone’s choosing’. Interestingly, the structure of the Finnish education system de facto facilitates this pattern of educational reproduction through the transmitting of cultural capital from one field to another in the process of creating privileged educational choice.

Conclusion

The accessible space for school choice among these upper-class families in Finland’s public, tuition-free and ranking-free comprehensive school system seemed wider than the space available to families with smaller amounts of capital. Parental pre-selection of schools and their selective classes was evident, and their children were able to ‘choose freely’ from the given options. In fact, the parents carefully chose and prioritised these options, albeit often unconsciously, depending on the different forms of capital the family possessed: in other words, they had a ‘feel for the game’. The expectation of social homogeneity in the selective classes prevailed. There was already a ‘culture of choice’ among these families – what Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) refer to as a ‘class ethos’ of choosing and selecting a distinct route – which the parents in this study rationalised in talking about their children as motivated, naturally talented and hard-working. Many of the children had long-term institutionalised hobbies in the fields of classical music and sports, which are interpreted here as concretisations of the lifestyle. Their knowledge and skills were part of their habitus rather than being deliberately aimed at gaining advantages in schooling. Skills in music and sports, for example, were nevertheless evaluated in the aptitude tests for some selective classes, and became trump cards in the competition for admission. The position of the children in terms of accessing these classes seemed advantaged in comparison with children who had no such formal training. The practices of selective choice required many forms of capital, and the capacity to transmit it from one field to another. An interesting aspect is that these practices constituted a way of profiting from hobbies in which economic capital is invested in the field of culture, thereby creating assets and distinctions within the tuition-free comprehensive field of education in urban Finland. The connection between success in the meritocratic selection process and membership of a socially distinctive group as an end product remained unclear and subconscious in the discourse. The notion of attached social selection seemed to create anxiety, and required legitimation. The misrecognition of selection related to social class emerged through the naturalisation of meritocratic choice and shared social norms. The problem is that this ‘natural’ pattern of selection, which involves hobbies that upper-class children would have anyway and that are known to be divisive in relation to the amounts of possessed capital (Purhonen et al., 2014) – in other words, social position – is providing access to ‘better’ learning environments in the field of egalitarian comprehensive education. As Giddens (1998) states, here, too, exclusion at the top just seemed to happen, which will have knock-on effects on other parts of the social strata.

Kivinen and Rinne (1995) stated long ago that, despite the common discourse, Finnish schooling does not offer a uniform educational route, but rather creates and maintains relative distinctions across social groups. The aim of this study was to assess this statement in a 2010s urban context. The creation of social distinctions is still evident in Finnish comprehensive education. The distinctions occur discreetly via the transfer of economic capital to embodied cultural capital in the field of culture, the optimising of choice by means of relevant social capital and the transferability of trump cards to the field of education.