For Tina, then, her course has led to civic participation, but not to an extension of her
social networks or to any reciprocal involvement with others on the course. The
investment club, through education, was also a source of benefit for her in terms of
esteem and health:
“ Well it does, yes, to a certain extent. Saying well you did Open University in
Maths, you know. Anything to do with figures, everybody sort of gasps. I mean I
had to go to a convenors’ meeting and they said everybody give their name and
say what group they’re doing and I said I’m into stocks and shares and they
said ‘ Ooohk you know ... anything you do that boosts your ego gives you
confidence to go and do something else, doesn’t it? ”
We might have contrasted Tina with Irene - also middle-class, widowed and retired,
but with a powerful inclination to social activism at almost every level, from her
improving her grandchildren’s education to email participation in global
environmental debate. However, we have chosen Billy, who is in his early twenties
and gay. He works as a mobile security inspector and volunteers for NACRO Shape, a
charity for homeless young offenders, and a gay helpline. His education was a
positive experience: he had a number of GCSEs and ‘A’ levels and is acquiring NVQ
as part of his training as a security inspector. During his education, he participated in
Cubs and Scouts and the ATC.
Through school, and particularly through College, Billy has developed a strong sense
of internal self-efficacy. Although school was more restricted than College, he
received a great deal of support from school in terms of organising and running a
basketball team. College life was a major revelation for Billy:
“ It’s made me ... see that not everybody’s right ... .not everybody’s wrong
either.. But you can prove people right or wrong yourself. You control ... this is
going to sound really weird., but you control your own fate. Fate does not
control you. People’s influences and decisions don’t have to determine what
you are going to become, what you are going to do. ”
The sense of internal efficacy and agency inculcated by school and College gave Billy
the confidence to participate in civic activity by volunteering to help run a gay
helpline. He describes himself as wanting to “give back to society”, and this
reciprocity had been built up through positive experiences of teachers at College:
Interviewer: “Right, do you think that attitude has come at all from school,
college environments, teaching environments ... ?”
Billy: “In a way, yeah, it has because you see the lecturers coming in day after
day, putting up with the same monotonous thing every day, year after year. And
to me it was a case of 'Oh, they must be enjoying it, doing it because they want
to do it’ because it was a way of them putting back out what they got out of the
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