Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

3 Dazzling Statistics? 35
graphs concerning the relative chance relationships of the workers versus the
higher employees in function of diplomas of higher secondary school and higher
education. 3 On the qualitative side, Pelleriaux tries to estimate 4 the regression of
the first professional prestige of the respondent with respect to that of the father,
the number of years the father attended school for and the number of years of
schooling of the respondent via a system of structural comparisons between three
groups of respondents (before 1955, between 1955 and 1973, and after 1973 on the
labour market) on the basis of the maximum likelihood criterion. This yields various
mathematical models that can be tested. With two degrees of freedom resulting in
chi-square of only 2.005, the most plausible model is the one in which the covariance
between the two independent variables has been kept constant over the three
periods. 5 If we advocate this model, this leads to the rejection of the hypothesis that
the effect of the educational level on professional prestige of the respondent remains
constant during the three distinguished periods. The influence of the professional
prestige of the father on the professional prestige of the first job of the respondent
is not linear. For the last group (after 1973), the professional prestige of the father
has no effect at all on the educational level of the respondent. That is not to say that
social origin no longer has an influence on the life opportunities of an individual.
It means that the influence proceeds via education (Pelleriaux, 1999, p. 14). This,
according to Pelleriaux, underlines the social importance of the educational level
and more specifically of the cultural dynamics in secondary education and the cultural
specificity of educational forms. Together, they constitute, as it were, the new
fault lines of the substantial cultural conflict that has emerged within contemporary
society (Pelleriaux, 2001, pp. 239–241).
However attractive these points of view may be from the cultural-sociological
point of view, a question still remains as to whether or not the empirical evidence
once finally estimated can be deemed sufficient. In fact, for a qualitative analysis,
one would have to examine the self-definition and the self-situating of workers over
time on the basis of historical research. If one takes such an anthropological view,
it could appear that statistics relating to the underprivileged of 1960s’ Flanders (the
notion of being ‘underprivileged’ did not even exist then) cannot be ‘related’ to
today’s situation regarding privilege. In the 1960s, social and cultural differentiation
had much less to do with ethnic, religious, linguistic and national substructures
than it does today. At that time Flanders was, culturally, still relatively homogenous
and was epitomized by a constrained self-absorption. This took precedent over the
development of intercultural openness to the world. Thus, my plea for historical
contextualization can in no sense be taken as an alibi for one or other reactionary
nationalistic discourse.
Let us return to questions surrounding the identification of social groups and the
classes that need to be distinguished. Trying to answer these questions by simply
looking at the subject’s first profession or the profession of their father is highly
suspect. Sociological theories such as those put forward by Bourdieu suggest that
cultural capital – which can have an influence on the choice of studies – comes
primarily from the side of the mother. Although some evidence contradicts this
position (Verbergt et al., 2009, p. 4) from a purely theoretical point of view, it seems
sensible to also consider the profession or social and cultural origin of the mother.