Perfectly accomplished? Biographical trajectories and the production of inequality among exclusive boarding school alumni in Germany

ABSTRACT

Given that exclusive boarding schools in Germany are repeatedly referred to in public and academic discourses as places of elite education, the question arises as to the consequences of boarding school socialisation and how these schools affect the post-school biographies of their alumni. This qualitative study examines the autobiographies of alumni aged approximately 30 years who attended either expensive progressive education boarding schools (in the tradition of Landerziehungsheime) or state boarding schools for the highly gifted in Germany, which likely cater to different class fractions. The autobiographical narratives of 31 alumni were interpreted using biographical analysis. The results are discussed in relation to the habitus of boarding school students and the question of what this means for alumni’s post-school biographical trajectories and their social positioning in terms of habitus and capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Boarding school alumni
• exclusive boarding schools
• autobiographies
• Germany
• biographical narrative analysis

Introduction

German boarding schools and their alumni represent a particularly interesting field of research for several reasons. In the media, many German boarding schools are associated (and advertised) with the term ‘elite’, which conveys claims of exceptional or holistic pedagogies, academic excellence, a wide variety of extra-curricular activities, and better opportunities in later life, including social networks comprising all the graduates of the respective boarding school (Angod & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2019; Gibson, 2019; Erichsen & Waldow, 2020).

However, apart from these advertisements, nothing is systematically nor empirically known about the further education and professional whereabouts of the former students of such boarding schools in Germany. In general, boarding schools are a minority among German schools. The largest share of these boarding schools is found within the upper-secondary level, where students are prepared for university entrance examinations (Abitur). The high costs of private boarding schools and the performance-based entrance examinations of state-run boarding schools alone make them socially selective.

Nevertheless, due to the Abitur, boarding school alumni initially seem to have no discernible advantages over other upper-secondary school graduates when they begin studying at university, since only the Abitur grade point average is relevant for entry to most limited study courses. For this and several other reasons, the question arises as to whether these schools can be ascribed elite status. According to the following definitions of what makes an elite school, they must be at least academically and socially elite (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009b) and

usually [involve] some degree of longevity, consistent and significant success in end-of-school public exams and entry to prestigious universities and faculties; the ongoing production of influential alumni across government, industry, the professions and, in certain countries, the military; connections with powerful figures in a range of significant spheres of influence; and, overall, high public esteem. (Kenway et al., 2013, p. 18)

To date, there has been no statistical evidence for such definitions for the German boarding schools that claim elite status. There is neither evidence that they produce particular academic achievements nor that they educate the social elite. Not all socially elite schools are also exclusive in the sense of having entry examinations and selecting the clientele. In contrast, in Germany also upper-secondary day schools (Gymnasium) can have entrance examinations and prepare for academical elite. In fact, the boarding schools studied partially correspond to the criteria determined by Kenway et al. (2013) and Gaztambide-Fernández (2009b) but not entirely, thus, in this paper, I prefer to use the term ‘exclusive’ (boarding) schools (Deppe & Kastner, 2014).

Since no previous research exists on this topic, it is important to study the alumni of German boarding schools to understand the processes by which former boarding school students gain socially relevant positions. Light must be shed on the socialisation of boarding school alumni (Mangset et al., 2017) and how this subsequently affects them after they leave school. Such exploration can provide hints on how habitus aspects, such as embodied experiences, produce a disposition for certain practices (Bourdieu, 1977) and how the social and cultural capital incorporated in boarding schools is relevant to post-school life.

In this article, I present findings from a qualitative study that explores the post-school biographies of approximately 30-year-old alumni of German exclusive boarding schools. After outlining the state of the existing research, I present the alumni’s typical biographical trajectories. The subsequent results will be relevant to the current discussions on the habitus of boarding school students and the question of what this means for their post-school trajectories and the reproduction of social inequality.

Boarding schools, their alumni and the case of Germany

The extant literature on boarding schools in Germany is quantitatively and qualitatively limited. The few studies on boarding schools are mainly interpretive studies that have focused on individual institutions and their clientele (cf. Gibson, 2019; Gonschorek, 1979; Helsper et al., 2001; Kalthoff, 1997; Rühle, 2017). Nevertheless, these studies have provided detailed information about the particular constitution of such schools and, in particular, their socialisation conditions. A recent overview by Züchner et al. (2018) included boarding schools and dormitories of all types and identified 260 facilities with almost 22,000 places for children and young people. Of these, 171 are boarding schools (approximately 5% of all upper-secondary schools in Germany), of which 33 have a focus on performance promotion via entrance examinations, are largely located in Eastern Germany, and for the most part, are publicly run. Of the 171 boarding schools, most are upper-secondary schools, meaning that this type of school forms a focal point in the boarding school landscape. Of the open schools (i.e. those without entrance examinations), 80% are privately and church-run, and half of them charge more than 1,600 euros per month (Züchner et al., 2018). Nevertheless, representative studies are lacking.

In countries such as the UK, France, the USA, and Australia, the research on elite schooling is well developed but only offers us hints about the situation in Germany (e.g. Courtois, 2017; Forbes & Lingard, 2013; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009a; Kenway et al., 2017; Khan, 2011; Maxwell & Aggleton, 2013). In these studies, ‘accomplishment’ (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2013), ‘a sense of entitlement’ (Gaztambide-Fernández et al., 2013) or ‘a habitus of assuredness’ (Forbes & Lingard, 2013) are used to refer to the particular characteristics of the student body of elite boarding schools. In contrast to these countries, an important feature of the German education system is that all upper-secondary (day and boarding) school students take the Abitur as the general school-leaving certificate, which allows them to attend any university (or increasingly frequently, the International Baccalaureate). In general, students do not have to apply to German universities as is the case at US or British universities because the Abitur guarantees entry to the universities (Deppe et al., 2015). However, a particularly high number of German upper-secondary boarding schools promote themselves as ‘elite’ in terms of academic achievement, strong connections to other elite schools all over the world, and their (self-declared) innovative and international curricula.

The personal connections and transitions of former graduates of elite schools to corresponding elite colleges and universities have also been demonstrated in this strand of the literature (Bourdieu, 1996; Karabel, 2005; Letendre et al., 2006; Rivera, 2015), as has their increased entry into socially recognised positions, some of which are endowed with power (e.g. Bond, 2012; Naudet, 2015; Reeves et al., 2017; Wakeling & Savage, 2015). Nevertheless, the question of how boarding schools affect the characteristics and processes of students’ post-school careers and biographies has not yet been examined (apart from studies that have taken a different focus and used very small samples; for example, Berg, 2015; Kennedy & Power, 2010; Madrid, 2013; Patterson, 2020). The few studies that have been conducted have suggested that the schools can ‘be described as “total institutions” that provide through both formal and “hidden” curricula, a strong secondary socialisation model for students that will decisively influence their public and private adult life’ (Faguer, 1991, as cited in van Zanten, 2009, p. 329; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009a; Khan, 2011). In addition, a counter-narrative is emerging ‘concerned with the significant harm and damage done to the emotional and psychological development of some children that attend boarding schools’ (Murphy et al., 2020, p. 1317; cf. Schaverien, 2015).

The German boarding school (upper-secondary level) landscape is fragmented and features different historical, regional, and religious traditions and developments (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Overview of German boarding schools with upper-secondary level (Gymnasium).

The boarding schools studied (private and state-run) belong to prominent boarding schools that are integrated into a series of historical developments and contexts of the history of ideas (cf. Angod & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2019; Erichsen & Waldow, 2020; Gibson, 2019; Tenorth, 2019). The state boarding schools studied belong to the tradition of Protestant Landesschulen, which were founded in the 16th century to recruit suitable boys for the civil service (Gerster, 2020) and thus break the monopoly of the Jesuits (Gonschorek, 1979). Partly drawing on these traditions, but echoing more recent discourses on giftedness, boarding schools for highly gifted children and young people were (re)founded in Germany in the 1990s and 2000s. The private boarding schools in this study follow a progressive boarding school tradition¹ (Landerziehungsheim²). They emerged at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century inter alia in criticism of the Prussian school and closely linked the idea of the educational province with the natural environment outside the cities and the activity of young people in nature (Gerster, 2020, p. 93; Skiera, 2003). These schools gained nationwide and international attention by committing themselves to the education of elites and nobility with the aim of creating a ‘responsibility elite’ (Erichsen & Waldow, 2020; Gibson, 2019). Even though they differ conceptually among themselves, they distinguish themselves as private institutions in distinction to or as an alternative to state schools, more precisely state upper-secondary schools.

It can, therefore, be assumed that this thoroughly differentiated boarding school landscape attracts different class fractions (Helsper, 2009; van Zanten & Maxwell, 2015). As can be seen from the historical emergence of the schools studied, the former Landerziehungsheime distinguish themselves from the state schools and emphasise extracurricular activities for the formation of responsibility and character, thus appealing mainly to entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and, more rarely, nobles. The highly gifted boarding schools seem to attract more families with an academic background, intellectuals and with children suffering from a diagnosis of giftedness.

Theoretical concepts such as total institutions (Foucault, 1979; Goffman, 1961) work as ‘sensitising concepts’ (cf. Blumer, 1954); boarding schools can feature the characteristics of total institutions but must not in all conditions (Foucault, 1979; Goffman, 1961). A general characteristic is that they are comprehensively organised and pedagogically transformed into educational worlds (Tenorth, 2019), offering a total curriculum (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009a; Khan, 2011) that brings together work, life, and leisure in one place, synchronises students, and permanently separates them from their families and other previous social relationships. Teachers are not only involved in teaching but also in informal education and interactions. Peer groups are stable over the whole day, and there are no different contexts, unlike those found in day schools. Peer groups become formalised when schools settle hierarchies and responsibilities between older and younger students and the established and newcomers. The socialisation in the ‘underlife’ (Goffman, 1961), as well as aspects of discipline (Foucault, 1979), are central parts of the schools’ hidden curriculum.

Methods and sample

Given the lack of related research and previous studies’ suggestion that access to elites, exclusive schools, and institutions is difficult to gain, I employed a qualitative design to explore this study’s research questions. In Germany, no publicly available data such as on social background, Abitur grades, the whereabouts of alumni after school are accessible centrally or outside of boarding schools. Previous studies have already failed due to quantitative access (Züchner et al., 2018) or the general willingness of schools to participate in studies (see Gonschorek, 1979, for details).

In a two-stage sampling procedure, two contrasting but comparable boarding school types were first selected from a broad variety; these two types had enough in common to facilitate contrasting, including in terms of the social class fractions they probably attract. Interviews with alumni were conducted in the second step. The first type was characterised by two schools that charge high fees and follow a progressive boarding school tradition (Landerziehungsheime), combined with international curricula and an international student body. The second was represented by two state-funded boarding schools with strict performance and personality-related entrance requirements for highly gifted students from Germany. Moreover, neither type is exclusively specialised (such as in sport, see Figure 1) but promote ‘talents’ overall. The schools are located in rural areas and largely only accept boarding students; only in exceptional cases do they accept day students.

As most of the schools work closely with their alumni organisations, access was first sought through visits and interviews at the four boarding schools and these organisations. Subsequently, the alumni organisations were asked to sent a link to a monitoring questionnaire for the 2006 to 2008 graduating years (field screening) (where ca. 17% participated) to enable an initial selection of interview subjects. In the case of the private boarding schools, very few questionnaires were completed by the alumni of the first and second schools; therefore, other recruitment strategies were required, for example, the use of social networks and social media. Finally, another school and its alumni association were included, and two additional interviews with alumni of a fourth private school were conducted (for an overview, see Table 1). Thirty-one autobiographical narrative interviews were conducted with alumni aged approximately 30, who were equally distributed between the two types of school with a larger proportion of female interviewees (18 female vs. 13 male interviewees) (Table 1).

Table 1. Sample overview.

Boarding School	Description	Number and quoted participants^a
School 1	Private, co-educational boarding school from year 5, progressive education	N = 5 Mr Wolff
School 2	Private, co-educational boarding school from year 1, progressive education	N = 1
School 3	Highly selective state co-educational boarding school with entrance examinations for the gifted from year 9	N = 8 Mr Wagenknecht
School 4	Highly selective state co-educational boarding school with entrance examinations for the gifted from year 7	N = 8 Ms Berger
School 5	Private, co-educational boarding school from year 5, progressive education	N = 7 Mr Münch
School 6 (closed)	Private, co-educational boarding school from year 5, progressive education	N = 2

^aAll names and places were anonymised to protect the identity of the participants.

The recorded, transcribed and anonymised autobiographical-narrative interviews were interpreted via biography analysis (Schütze, 2007); the documentary method (Bohnsack et al., 2010) was used to interpret the collective and implicit action-leading knowledge underpinning the interviews. In this biographical research approach, I assumed that ‘there is a very deep relationship between the identity development of an individual and her or his narrative renderings of life historical experiences’ (Schütze, 2007, p. 8; cf. Rosenthal, 2004) in extempore autobiographical storytelling. Thus, the respondents were not specifically asked to describe their boarding school experiences but rather asked to simply ‘tell their life story’. Thus, attending boarding school became a subject of the interviewees’ life story and came up ‘on its own’, proving that it was relevant in the respondents’ life-worlds and not something that the researcher imposed on them. In this manner, the way of telling one’s own autobiography extempore became a reference not only to biographical processes but also to social processes and a protocol of previous interactions.

According to Schütze (2007), ‘The most important ordering principles of life history are biographical process structures’ (p. 8). Schütze differentiated ‘between four elementary biographical process structures: Biographical action schemes, by which a person attempts to actively shape the course of his life (…); [t]rajectories of suffering, in which persons are not capable of actively shaping their own life anymore, since they can only react to overwhelming outer events (…); [i]nstitutional expectation patterns, in which persons are following up institutionally shaped and normatively defined courses of life; [c]reative metamorphoses of biographical identity by which a new important inner development is starting in one’s own biography, that might be miraculous and irritating in the beginning since it is new and that initially prohibits pertinent competencies of the biography incumbent (…)’ (p. 11). The idea was, therefore, that relevant interactions and socialisation processes would appear in the autobiographies of the boarding school graduates without being specifically prompted by the interviewer.

The interview data were analysed Schütze’s (2007) biography analysis. First, the qualitative analysis focused on the question of how the alumni’s time at boarding school was experienced and had subsequently shaped their life. The interpretation was carried out sequentially and elaborates the dominant biographical process structures in the particular cases. The comparative analysis of the interviews with the graduates and the resulting typology identified typical patterns of biographical process structures (Schütze, 2007) and internalised knowledge. For the typification, the maximum contrasting cases with regard to their biographical trajectories were elaborated in extensive case studies and contrasted with other cases.

The current study has some limitations. First, the professional careers of most of the graduates who participated in the study were very successful by general standards, that is, most of them completed their studies and entered a profession, often in middle and higher positions. On the one hand, this is an important finding, which is supported by the trends in the results of the questionnaire survey. On the other, this is certainly also a bias of the study, which presumably particularly addressed those graduates who perceived themselves as largely (re-)presentable. Second, it is noticeable that the sample, especially of private graduates, was German, although surveying the visible alumni on the Internet and in any accessible school artefacts showed that the proportion of non-German students at private boarding schools in the 2000s was already significantly higher than that of the sample. Third, the sample was not representative in quantitative terms and did not represent the fragmented diversity of the German boarding school landscape (Figure 1) and possible class fractions of the schools’ charters, as I outlined in my above discussion of the present state of the research.

This research was carried out in accordance with the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) guidelines, and ethical approval was obtained from the Centre for School and Educational Research at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg.

Biographical process structures and meanings of boarding school attendance in later life – results

In this section I present the findings of data interpretation and typification of the interviews. Three types were determined that uncovered the meaning of having attended a boarding school 1) as a metamorphosis of biographical identity, 2) as part of an adjustment trajectory, and 3) as the fulfilment of family expectation patterns.³ In the following, the characteristics of these types are described in general terms and substantiated with case studies. Against initial expectations of an overarching finding of superiority and a continued successful life course, variants could be worked out that do not represent individual exceptions, but rather turn out to be a general socialisation effect for a part of the alumni, especially type 2.

Boarding school attendance as a metamorphosis of biographical identity (Type 1)

In this type, attending a boarding school triggered processes of change or was part of agentic subjectivity that also had a profound effect on the respondents’ post-school trajectories and sense of agency. Three variants of this type were identified. The first comprised processes of change that occurred at boarding school and respondents’ successful positioning within the norms and values of the school and in their later occupational field. The second involved post-school processes of metamorphosis and a crisis in detachment from the institutional ‘myth’ (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) of the boarding school. Finally, the third represented processes whereby the decision to attend a boarding school changed everything in respondents’ lives and made social and educational advancement possible. The last variant mainly included social and academic climbers that attended state schools for the gifted.

Mr Wagenknecht was one of the alumni in the first variant who benefited from attending boarding school by encountering teachers and peers who initiated important changes, enabled his emancipation from the expectations of his parents and by finding like-minded people and friends for the first time:

That was very nice, and that was really such an initiation for me after my family, who never really wanted to do anything with acting … my parents said, ‘Of course, you’ll never do anything with film, fortunately, because you know how bad the profession is’ … Then I was in School 3, so far away from home, what I thought here [with] the people I like the most and whom I like to spend the most time with … and then somehow I fell into this theatre hole, so to speak. (Mr Wagenknecht, School 3, 1095–1103)

Mr Wagenknecht was able to easily interact with school authorities and requirements, not only by achieving first place in the boarding school’s entrance exams but also continuously in later life. However, in peer interactions, he was spurred by older classmates and the hierarchies that ruled

One of my first memories is that … someone with whom I played a lot in the theatre, Paul Bootz, … it was him I met in the hallway, and he greeted me, and I didn’t answer because I didn’t know that’s what you do. … and he really pressed me against the wall and said, ‘Here, one says hello’. (Mr Wagenknecht, School 3, 709–719)

Through the exercise of power and discipline by his peers, biographical processes of change were set in motion, which, along with his integration into the school’s peer community and the development of his extracurricular commitment to the school theatre, lead to Mr Wagenkecht’s entry into the film director profession against the wishes of his parents and without attending university.

It was noteworthy that the interviewees had a high degree of (emotional) identification with their assumed occupational fields or roles, especially those for whom the process of change had already begun during their time at boarding school (Gaztambide-Fernández et al., 2013). At the same time, these persons positioned themselves as highly adaptable to their respective professional fields and the previous school environment. Their actions were confirmed by decisive authorities and received recognition while they dealt with the demands, as Ms Berger, a social climber from a state boarding school for the gifted, found when she attended the entrance examination for a medical degree:

I think that is the point where you can see most clearly what School 4 has objectively brought me. There were two people sitting there who … said, ‘First of all, why don’t you show us your Abitur?’ … when I took it out, they looked at it and said, ‘Who? School 4, you are the elite’. And then we were already in the middle of the conversation. (Ms Berger, School 4, 587–598)

Overall, what was striking about this group was the comprehensiveness and coherence of their extemporaneous narratives, their high level of perceived self-efficacy, their extensive reflection on even painful experiences, and their individualistic claim to their own needs and abilities and to pursuing them consistently. However, the subjects also moved in relatively closed fields, in which their own rules of the game prevailed; a close community among the members and the bond to power holders were central.

Boarding school attendance as part of an adjustment trajectory of suffering (Type 2)

Trajectories of suffering dominated the biographical process structure of the alumni autobiographies that were assigned to the second type. I identified two variants. The first variant comprised daughters from aristocratic and medical families, in which the male or eldest successor was subject to clear family expectations to take over the inheritance, while no role models were available for further descendants. Consequently, the transference of educational responsibility to boarding schools and the children’s often very early entry into these schools led to trajectories of suffering. These narratives were characterised by searching and being impelled within one’s own biography due to a lack of individuation models. The cases also included ‘out-of-home’ family placements, chosen because the expressions of the beginning of adolescence were unacceptable for the families, as well as the associated individuation attempts of the child and, often, due to visible problems at school. According to the knowledge about the psychological damage caused by boarding very young children (Patterson, 2020; Schaverien, 2015), these alumni suffered not only from having been sent to boarding schools at an early age but also from being ascribed only a marginal position in their family constellation. This was also reflected in the fact that only a school leaving certificate was considered compulsory for them by their families.

While the first variant seems unsurprising from a common-sense perspective, the second, which I found among alumni who had a scholarship or were funded through German departments of social care (Jugendamt), was interesting. This variant was a continuation of an adjustment trajectory, as Nittel (2017) elaborated in an account of the upper-secondary school career. Its characteristics include:

exemplary academic performance and a corresponding orientation towards success on the part of those affected. Pupils adapt to school conditions due to certain biographical preconditions and the heteronomous system conditions of their biographical action (e.g., the situation in higher education and the labour market)—which, however, is associated with high biographical costs: the loss of role distance, an oppositional attitude towards the age cohort, social isolation, a reified attitude towards school content, etc. (Nittel, 2017, p. 283 [translation by the author])

In all cases, the trajectories of suffering were already inbred in family interactions, in which a delegation of a family reproduction or advancement scheme took place. In this respect, it is unsurprising that there is an increasing number of cases in which parents strongly urge adolescents to attend a boarding school. Especially in state-run boarding schools for the highly gifted, this can only be recognised through interpretations: external placement can only take place with the consent of the young themselves as they are required to undergo the application procedure themselves. However, covert as well as overt ‘external placements’ were also observed in cases of private boarding schools, such as those of two former scholarship holders and another case financed through the Jugendamt and later through the school’s foundation.

The case of Mr Münch stands out as a maximum contrast case from the time of his admission as a partial scholarship holder at Boarding School 5 through his repeated submission to the standards of authorities (first the headmaster, then later his superiors). Not least driven by his upward orientation, he allowed headhunters to place him in order to reach a leading position as an executive assistant without any detours. At this point, the schools can be seen to have a catalyst function in that they further intensify alumni’s success orientation and impose the need to strive to ‘make something of oneself or of one’s talent’, for example, through dependence on the goodwill of the school administration for continued attendance and the additional imposed social obligations to prove oneself permanently as an integrative and useful member of the boarding school community. Mr Münch elaborated:

I got this scholarship. I was accepted at School 5, … then the school’s headmaster called us and said, ‘Hey, Sebastian you haven’t had that much opportunity to learn English yet, and you’re doing the English IB now, right? Don’t you want to go abroad … to really improve your English?’ (Mr Münch, School 5, 1788–1793)

After the threatening, identity-damaging experiences Mr Münch had at the boarding school abroad, he no longer found a connection with his peers after his return and remained a tolerated outsider until the end of school, in constant fear for his scholarship:

I was a scholarship holder. … and I was incredibly afraid of losing this scholarship. I behaved incredibly, I was exemplary? Maybe I could have been a little less afraid? (Mr Münch, School 5, 1550–1556)

Consequently, in such cases, orientation breakdowns can occur during, but usually after the school years.

I interpreted that, for me, in such a way that I … without reason, because actually, everyone was satisfied with my work, but I increased the pressure on myself even more. And then I became burnt out. … so, at some point, I developed an anxiety disorder that was so severe. (Mr Münch, School 5, 593–597)

Despite his success, Mr Münch and the other cases that were categorised in this type suffered from biographical processes that made it impossible to be satisfied with what they had achieved. Nevertheless, at the same time, they all presented themselves as successful.

What was particularly remarkable about this group was their isolation among their peers, their lack of significant others as biographical advisors, the pressure they felt to succeed, and the continuation of the adjustment trajectories in later life.

Boarding school attendance as the fulfilment of family expectation patterns (Type 3)

What the Type 3 cases had in common, apart from the dominant process structure of the institutional expectation pattern, is that they developed in the context of their family origins and in accordance with the family biographical mandate. Thus, they reproduced their respective family origins, social positions, and, to a large extent, their parents’ occupations. This type included graduates from all boarding schools. Attending a boarding school seemed to function as the ‘long arm’ of the family in that the alumni fit into the norms and values there, or in other words, fit into the family’s charter as realised in the charter of the schools (Meyer, 1970; van Zanten, 2015; van Zanten & Maxwell, 2015).

These alumni confirmed their superior identity by subordinating themselves to the expectation pattern of schooling, which also corresponded to parental expectations. They also successfully replicated this approach after leaving school by fitting their chosen courses of study and professional fields; for example, several alumni from entrepreneurial families who affirmatively fit into the performance logic and the peer logic of boarding schools, later also successfully attending university then ‘working their way up’ in the corporate world or the family business and, thus, legitimising their privileges (Stamm, 2016).

In particular, the case of a graduate of School 1, Mr Wolff, was characterised by such active and self-reliant subordination. The impositions of his parents’ mandate to attend a boarding school, as well as his experiences of feeling foreign and isolated during his many stays abroad and many different boarding schools, were biographically reinterpreted through active appropriation. This was also apparent in the below quote, in which he describes a stay at a boarding school abroad and the military exercises he found irritating:

That was unbelievably good for discipline, so you have to … I got my uniform, then I went in this sash … you never wear this uniform with age 16 or 15 which is not cool or what you always see on TV. And then I got myself together. I overcame my inner temptation and said, ‘Come on, I’ll subordinate myself here, I’m a link in this chain, and I’ll do my best so that I can do this well.’ (Mr Wolff, School 1, 703–710)

The dominance and symbolic power in the interview interaction were also evident in the act of addressing the interviewer by saying ‘what you always see on TV’, which implies that the interviewer would not have these first-hand experiences due to her (assumed) social position, and instead, could only know them from television. This affirmative complicity with the asymmetrical power structures in the context of symbolic violence (cf. Bourdieu, 1994) within the family and school, but also in the later stages of life, is rewarded by the privileging of one’s own person and position, so that critical reflections and distancing from one’s own upbringing and socialisation become obsolete.

Discussion and conclusion

Bearing in mind the distinction between habitus and capital (Bourdieu, 1977), the biographies of the alumni reveal considerable differences that refer to the primary socialisation of the family, as well as commonalities that were incorporated through the secondary socialisation of the boarding schools. In sum, the boarding school alumni primarily positioned themselves in their biographical narratives as very successful and able to stage themselves as competitive and autonomous (Courtois, 2017; Forbes & Lingard, 2013; Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009a; Howard, 2008; Khan, 2011). All the respondents presented themselves ‘as able, convincing, confident, articulate, reflective, sociable, mature, and poised’ (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2013, p. 91) at the ‘front stage’ (Goffman, 1959) of their autobiography.

Thus, as abovementioned, although they represent a very small group within the German educational system, the relevance of studying them is shown in the results, in that the alumni obviously entered middle and higher management positions and professions where they are able to make important decisions for other people and influence other’s lives, as well as revealing how they interpreted their biographies and positioned themselves acting in competitive and examination situations after leaving school and legitimated their privileges.⁴ In this context, internalised self-concepts and presentation skills were also helpful, which then led to the alumni being able to present themselves in the corresponding examination or hiring situations in a way that was compatible and confident or to perceive themselves as justified in taking paths beyond the average norm, as has been reported by studies on elite schools that have focused on the ‘habitus of assuredness’ (Forbes & Lingard, 2013) and ‘accomplishment’ (Maxwell & Aggleton, 2013). Furthermore, as was evident in the present study, it is not only female and not all alumni who display a habitus of assuredness and accomplishment due to their family and school socialisation, even though this was most distinctly elaborated in a single-sex girls’ school in Forbes and Lingard (2013). In Germany, single-sex schools are an absolute exception, even among boarding schools.

But how and where these habitus are leading and what is possibly misleading is the uniqueness of this angle within the literature on elite schooling. The sequential analyses of the autobiographies also differentiated the picture of an overall present habitus of assuredness or accomplishment among the alumni. While some were able to subordinate their selves under the rules and norms of the schools like ‘a fish in water’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 127), others suffered from their external placement by their families, and yet others benefitted from a change in the school environment and better support opportunities, as well as socially homogeneous peer groups. But in serving different class fractions, the situation and habitus formation at private boarding schools for scholarship and those funded through German departments of social care is infinitely more vulnerable, while those habitus of the specifically chartered class fractions as Mr Wagenknecht in Type 1 and Mr Wolff in Type 3 most fitted into and most benefitted from the schools and their socialisation.

There were indications that further biography and professional development after attending the boarding schools depended decisively on the biographical experiences before and during the alumni’s stays. How the alumni expressed that they shaped their later lives was closely linked to their primary socialisation experiences within the family, any existing family biographical missions (van Zanten, 2015), and the powerful (over)shaping and disciplining techniques of the boarding schools. When the respondents were able to enact habitual knowledge and practices connected to their cultural and social capital in the Bourdieusian sense, the transitions were fluently, but also in familiar ways (see Type 1 and 3). However, when the transitions were critical after leaving boarding school as for other variants of Type 1 especially social climbers who still had less social and economic capital, the respondents at least could apply their incorporated as well as institutionalised cultural and symbolic capital of boarding school socialisation, continued this, and stabilised themselves. At the same time, as was clear in the dominantly critical trajectories of suffering (Type 2), this stabilisation was not permanent and always required new and repeated efforts.

It is unsurprising that privileges and the incorporation of privileged educational environments and exclusive affiliations were created. However, not all alumni in the sample benefitted after leaving school in the same way. According to Gaztambide-Fernández et al. (2013), who elaborated on how this issue affects students of colour, Type 2 students with scholarships and the sub-variant of Type 1 who are primarily social climbers are unable to use social networks and social capital to the extent that their peers can. This seems to be due to the fact that social inequality is more closely related to social origin than to colour, and ethnic minorities are generally underrepresented in upper-secondary schools in Germany. They remain outsiders in relation to the main target groups of the schools, despite the transformed habitus acquired through school attendance. However, the biographical costs for social climbers are also evident in the long term and can be understood as an extension of their elaborated discomfort and affective alienation from their peers and the rest of the school (Gaztambide-Fernández et al., 2013).

Sequentially interpreting their extempore autobiographies revealed processes of suffering in the first variant of Type 2 and Type 3 beyond the great ‘narrative’ of agency, as Van Zanten (2015) showed, upper-class parents are convincing their offspring to choose elite tracks and institutions, even against the children’s own preferences and beliefs. These experiences of being processed and persuaded and, in later life, rewarded with privileges are also common and reflect the complicity of power structures and symbolic violence (cf. Bourdieu, 1994). Those rationalising suffering in school (and in later life) in Type 2 can rely on the social, economic and cultural capital of their family as well as the incorporated within school.

Reflecting the discussion on ‘concerted cultivation’ at elite schools by Maxwell and Aggleton (2013), the alumni that struggled with being placed in boarding schools with scholarships and in state boarding schools seemed to reflect parental anxiety about facilitating a good future; therefore, it seems that the institutional ‘myth’ (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) and the symbolic power (cf. Bourdieu, 1994) of the specific boarding school attracted them. At the same time, the autobiographies of the Type 2 alumni suggested that middle- or upper-class parents who lived in rural areas followed the schools’ charters to remove their burden of concerted cultivation and educate their children in one place in a total curriculum (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2009a; Khan, 2011).

However, it was also characteristic, especially for graduates of private boarding schools, that a sense of ‘entitlement’ makes it easier to be accepted into courses of study, to demand information from authorities or institutions (see also Krüger et al., 2019), and to circumvent common university regulations, for example, by studying abroad. This entitlement is the belief to deserve all the privileges that come from school and alumni networks and institutionalised cultural capital because of the permanent discipline and extra activities in a compressed curriculum.

There were also cases in which alumni did not achieve a formal occupational qualification or in which a Bachelor’s degree was often sufficient to enter the frequently chosen economic sector corresponding to the class fractions of the schools. Graduates of private boarding schools in particular frequently choose business courses of study and also remain in the private education sector overall, that is, in the vocational academies and business schools in which the educational paths have largely passed through the private sector (in an education system that is mainly organised by the German state). In those cases where vocational qualifications are not achieved, it is, in fact, the family, the social network, the economic capital, and often also the family name that mean that these alumni’s biographies do not correspond to the normal curriculum vitae, but instead that normative ideas of being productive, working, and successful can be maintained. In this scenario, it is evident that the meritocratic norms work but that, at the same time, certain fractions are able to suspend them with the help of boarding schools and their social background.

In Germany, upper-secondary boarding schools have the closest links to certain (privileged) class fractions (Helsper, 2009) and, therefore, reflect the different habitus of different class fractions (Forbes & Lingard, 2013), the peer communities, and the schools themselves, which have a transformative power for social climbers that could not be identified in other previous studies (cf. Kupfer, 2015). But given the low number of educational advancements I observed at state-run boarding schools for the gifted, the idea of giftedness that is independent of origin, as espoused by the boarding schools, must be critically questioned and introduced into the discussion of the social construction of giftedness.

These dimensions of the boarding school experience have not yet been analysed in the studies of boarding school graduates, and certain aspects can only be addressed after students leave the schools. The graduates in the present study tended to omit or fade out difficult experiences by systematically interrupting the flow of the extempore storytelling at difficult points in the biography in order to argue their lives, or even life stages, as consistent and to evaluate them positively. Dealing with their experiences is, for example, central to the answer why alumni from boarding schools all over the world (cf. Patterson, 2020) very rarely critically reflected on the boarding school or the parental home, despite problematic experiences, neither during their school years nor afterwards. One assumption is that the socialisation and value of the acquired education should not be devalued (Erichsen & Waldow, 2020); rather, the answer lies in socialisation itself, which also transforms and reinterprets experiences of suffering into privileges. Additionally, negative attributions may fall back on the person themselves, as would be the case with regard to their own family.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank here student assistants engaged in the research project, Arne Arend, Eleonore Freier, Franka Hans, Alexander Hellner, Charlotte Schweder, all members of the interpretation workshops at the Centre of School and Educational Research at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and especially Simona Szakács-Behling at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig as well as the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments at various stages of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grant number 366762907.

Notes on contributors

Ulrike Deppe

Dr Ulrike Deppe is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Zentrum für Schul- und Bildungsforschung, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany. Her research interests include education, socialisation, and the construction of social differences within educational institutions, families, and peer groups.

Notes

1. Reformpaedagogik is an umbrella term that describes pedagogically, politically, and ideologically heterogeneous reforms of schools, teaching, and education in general in Germany. It was also an international phenomenon, variously known as New Education, Progressive Education, or Nouvelle Education, which had its origins in cultural criticism and the social and cultural reform movements at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Link, 2018).

2. In the course of the pedagogical reform movements, experimental Landerziehungsheime (also called New Schools or Écoles Nouvelles) were founded, which turned away from the traditional state school and its methods and aimed to place the child at the centre of education with new methods such as manual or close-to-nature teaching. These schools were established in the countryside. The ‘New School Abbotsholme’, founded by Cecil Reddie in England in 1889, which propagated a departure from the forms and content of the traditional education and strict regimes of English boarding schools, was the model for the first of these German schools, founded by Hermann Lietz in 1898 (Skiera, 2003).

3. In this paper, I draw on 4 out of 31 individuals and focus on exemplary experiences from each; more of these will be detailed upon in other publications.

4. This is the experience in Germany, but maybe it also speaks to other contexts, as Kennedy and Power (2010) and Patterson (2020) indicate.