‘School is the Foundation of Everything’: Master- and Counter-narratives in Upper-secondary School Pupils’ Stories About the Importance of Schooling and Education

Cultural images of the knowledge society and the achievement generation are prevalent in current public and policy narratives about young people’s education. This article investigates how young people themselves give meaning to education, by reconstructing their narratives about the importance of schooling and education in today’s society. We present results from a qualitative in-depth study, consisting of focus group interviews with lower-secondary school pupils in suburban middle-class areas of Norway. From the perspective of narrative methodology, the article identifies how pupils construct, thematize and emplot the role and importance of education in their lives. The article finds that young people navigate a complexity of meaning dimensions in their lives. Although a master narrative of the knowledge society and its inherent achievement imperative certainly dominates the pupils’ accounts, they also present refinements and counter-narratives to these cultural imaginaries.