Ethnicity in education

• Mainstream culture vs black subculture

  Mainstream -

  -ambition

  -competitiveness

  -willingness

  Black subculture

  -fantastic {live for today}

  -does not value education

  -unequipped for success
• Ethnicity-{people who share common history, customs and identity as well as i most cases, language and religion and who see themselves as a distinct unit
• external factors

  • Intellectual and linguistic skills
  • Attitudes and values {very important}
  • Family structure and parental support
• intellectual and linguistic skills

  bereiter an engelmann

  black low income

  • lack intellectual stimulation and enriching experiences

  english not the primary language

  • may be held back at school due to no English at home
• external factors -family structure and parental support

  Daniel Moynihan -argues that because many black families are headed by lone mother children are deprived of adequate care because she has to struggle financially
• Charles murray- argues that a high rate of lone parent and lack of positive role models leads to underachievement of one minorities
• Rodger scruton - sees the low achievement levels of one minorities are resulting from a fail to embrace mainstream British culture
• Geoffrey driver- criticises moynihan saying it ignores black girls being more successful that black boys because they have have a strong female role model
• Tony Sewell- argues it isn’t absence of furthers as role models that leads to black boys underachieving, sees the problem as lack of love results i black boys finding it hard to overcome emotional and behavioural difficulties of adolescence
• evaluation of Sewell

  blames black people when its not peer pressure but institutional racism within educational system
• cultural deprivation-

  has a negative affect on black Caribbean families ,particularly

  Because of family structure
• criticisms of cultural deprivation-

  • victim blaming- nell keddie - {culturally different not deprived}
  • labelling theorists - argue that the cause is not in the supposed low aspirations of minority ethnic group pupils but in the teachers {stereotyping} this can lead to self fulfilling prophecy
  • critical race theorists- argue that the education system as a whole institutionally racists
• black students start secondary school as the highest achiever but are the lowest by gcse
• black students start secondary school as the highest achiever but are the lowest by gcse this proves....

  gillborn and youdell

  -teachers label black and Asian children as being far from the "ideal pupil" as black students are stereotyped as trouble makers most lkikely to end up in bottom sets

  -and Asian pupils are seen as passive, assumed difficulty with language -even high achieving ethnic groups such as Chinese are pathologized{seen as abnormal} for the way they achieve
• teachers assign "pupil identities" and fit students into three main categorise

  • "ideal pupil" - white, mc, masculinised identity, hetero sexual
  • "pathologized pupil"- Asian, feminised identity, asexual
  • "demonised pupil"- white or black , wc, hyper-sexualised
• pupil response to teacher racism

  • withdrawal into poor behaviour
  • refuse to accept label or prove it wrong {negative labels do not always end up as self-fulfilling prophecies}
  • avoid racism - "keep your head down"
• rebels- most visible and influential group often excluded from school, reject both goals and rules of school