Höherqualifizierung und intergenerationale Fremdheitsrelationen

Higher Qualifications and Intergenerational Relations of Otherness. Resistance to adversarial relationships that hinder education.
People involved in educational processes to receive higher qualifications are always sons and daughters of mothers and fathers and their parents’ deeply rooted ideas about the self and meaning, which implicitly or explicitly include expectations about the educational behaviour of their child. To rebel against the traditional, conservative educational atmosphere in their parents’ household is thus a form of resistance behaviour that produces “intergenerational relations of otherness” that must be overcome individually. This article takes data from the treasure trove of the 1990s that permits higher qualifications to be considered from an intergenerational standpoint. A description is provided of the educational climate in the parents’ home of the first generation to pass the vocational school-leaving exam (Berufsreifeprüfung) and its influence on this “pioneer cohort” of those who have experienced educational upward mobility. It includes explanations of the concept of generations (which is much more than the primary parent-child relationship) and of intergenerational relationships as the principle of social order and the principle of the construction of social mentalities. The article concludes with the discovery that the investigation of this phenomenon of uprooting still reveals significant gaps in socially, generationally constructed concepts of meaning. (Ed.)