Slumdog Millionaire v Trimble

Welcome back after what I hope has been a great half-term break for you all. I’ve been busy myself with a sociologically stimulating visit to Primark (see more tomorrow) and a trip to the cinema to catch Slumdog Millionaire. But now, the big question of the day is - where do you stand in regard to Slumdog v Trimble? You must all know who Trimble is surely? The new found star of Univesity Challenge who seems able to rack up points with her brain still in first gear. The poor girl has come in for a fair bit of criticism on the web, but that’s showbiz for you. But irrespective of where you stand on the Trimble like/dislike issue, the whole incident is nicely pulled into sociological perspective by Slumdog. The lead character, Jamal Malik has some interesting lines when he’s being questioned by the police. The general thrust of questioning is - how could some character from the slums know enough to answer all the questions on Millionaire? One implication is that only by cheating could he have done so well. Another is that the poor are stupid.

Malik’s answer is to counter by asking his police interrogator a few tricky questions himself; questions which Malik points out, ‘anyone living in the slums would know the answer to.’ Sociologists of course, argue that knowledge and intelligence are socially constructed. That means that knowledge is ordered in hierarchies and some forms of knowledge are accorded higher status than others. Gail Trimble, for all her undoubted brilliance, would - dare I suggest it - fare less well on a battery of questions about football, unless she’s a secret football fan. And of course, that wouldn’t could as knowledge, would it? “I am the master of this college, What I don’t know, it isn’t knowledge” etc as the old Oxbridge rhyme goes. Whatever the truth of that matter though, sociologists argue knowledge, because it is socially constructed, can be a form of power and a way of legitimating inequality and hierarchy.What do you think these examples tell us about the education system? Can you think of any ways in which or examples where some forms of knowledge are given higher status than others?