Research on the effects of mass schooling on social cleavages in Africa ignores descent-based hierarchies despite their affecting 218 million people on the continent. In contrast, I show how pursuit of social mobility and honor to overcome descent-based discrimination underpinned Haalpulaar parents' and youths' engagement with secondary school in Senegal. This included youth developing a counter-culture oppositional to school values through appropriation of popular culture, a rarely documented outcome of EFA in the Global South.