Cultural codes are the sum of behaviours, perceptions and beliefs that define any particular culture. They are, in a sense, a coded laguage system by which members identify and distinguish themselves. The term is used in Critical Education Theory to explain the difficulties that children from subordinated cultures have when they try to move above their social station and adopt a new code. Sociologist Basil Bernstein was the first to point out that the cultural codes of working class children were significantly at odds with the cultural codes of the largely middle class educational system which they were aspiring to, and that this difference loaded children from poorer homes with an additional intellectual and emotional burden which their middle class colleagues did not have to carry. Bernstein suggested that it was as if working class children had to leave their identities at the school gate. See: Bernstein, B., Class Codes and Control. Vol. 1 , Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1971. Perhaps the most renowned theorist in this area is the late French sociologist  Pierre Bourdieu . See: Bourdieu, P., Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1977; Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. C., Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, Sage, London, 1976; Bourdieu, P., "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" in Karabel, J. and Halsey, H. A., (eds) Power and Ideology in Education, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977