School Subjects as Social Categorisations

The present study set out to examine school subjects in terms of social categorisations of a child’s educability. A group of academically educated (N = 180) and vocationally educated parents (N = 249) with a child in the third grade of comprehensive school were asked to indicate their child’s strongest and weakest school subject and to give reasons for their choices. The parents’ most frequent choices for both the strongest and the weakest subject turned out to be mathematics and Finnish, which substantiates the pivotal role of the cognitive-verbal competencies in defining the child’s educability. The choices were guided by the child’s gender, so that mathematics was typically regarded as the strongest subject of boys and the weakest subject of girls and conversely, Finnish was regarded as the strongest subject of girls and the weakest subject of boys. The parent’s educational position organised the reasons given for the subject choices so that self-serving attribution was stronger among the academically educated than the vocationally educated parents, suggesting that the parents’ education relates to the trust they place on their child’s educational potential.