The Making Of An Adolescent Elite At St. Pauls School, By Shamus Khan's Analysis

Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, by Shamus Khan, depicts the lives of teenagers enrolled in a prestigious high school. Khan focuses his observations of the Paulies (students) on their experiences at the school and with other students, staff, and faculty. More specifically, the embodiment of privilege in a new diverse world, as taught by St. Paul’s as an elementary root of acquiring skills necessary to maintain (or enter into) their position in the status hierarchy. My focus here, is to connect Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital to Khan’s analysis of St. Paul’s teachings, and their effects on the students (Paulies). One of the fundamental teachings of St. Pauls, is to instill a new sense of habitus that is essential in navigating their lives in an elite social realm they will soon join.

Broadly speaking, habitus is the structural internalizing of our social worlds into tastes, dispositions, and characteristics, dependent on our status (Bourdieu 1994:473). St. Pauls equips their students with notions of habitus of the elite through an

Paul’s is their insider knowledge of the workings of the school. Students with seniority possess the best/most information available on subjects such as who are the best teachers, which characteristics are prescribed to each dorm, what boys (and girls) to stay away from, and how to behave in given environments. Students who come into the school with a preconceived notion of the workings of the school are shunned and rejected. New students do not possess the experience required to make assumptions and proclamations of the inner workings of the school and its residents. For example, Evan Williams, a ninth grader discussed in the book was chastised and cursed at for acting as though he knew about the school’s inner workings when he had no prior experience at/of the school except for what he learned from his family