Class difference

• Cultural deprivation

  • Values, attitudes and skills
  • 'cultural equipment' includes aspirations, motivation, self-discipline and language skills
  • W/C children 'culturally deprived' = underachievement
• W/C subculture - Sugarman

  • Fatalism: Belief in fate and that there is nothing you can do to change your status
  • Collectivism: valuing being part of a group more than succeeding as an individual
  • Immediate gratification: seeking pleasure now rather than making sacrifices now to receive reward in the future
  • Present-time orientation: seeing the present as more important than the future. Have no long-term goals or plans
• Language - Feinstein

  • More highly qualified parents are more likely to use challenging language
  • They are also more likely to use praise, encouraging their children to develop a sense of their own competency
  • Parents with fewer qualifications tend to use language in ways that only require children to make simple descriptive statements resulting in lower performance
• Language - Criticism

  • Troyna & Williams
  • Teachers have a 'speech hierarchy' labelling the m/c speech highest followed by the w/c and then Black speech
• Speech codes - Bernstein

  • Restricted code: limited vocabulary with unfinished and grammatically simple sentences. Predicable speech involving a single word response or a simple gesture
  • Elaborated code: Longer, grammatically more complex sentences. Varied and abstract ideas
  • Early socialisation into the elaborated code means children are fluent by the time of attending school
• Speech codes - Criticism

  • Gaine & George
  • Criticise Bernstein for exaggerating and oversimplifying the differences between the m/c and w/c speech patterns
• Parents' education

  • Douglas: W/C parents place less value on education and were less ambitious for their children giving them less encouragement. Visited schools less often and less likely to discuss their children's progress with teachers
  • Feinstein: m/c parents give them children an advantage
  • Parenting style: consistent discipline and high expectations
  • Parents' educational behaviours: better able to to get expert advice, interact with school and educational value of activities e.g. museums
  • Use of income: spending of income to benefit children's educational success
• Compensatory education

  • Aim to tackle cultural deprivation by providing extra resources to schools and communities in deprived areas
  • Intervene in early socialisation through programmes to improve parenting skills, nursery classes or raising children's aspirations e.g. Aim Higher and Education Action Zones
• Compensatory education - Criticism

  • Halsey - argue these programmes have little impact due to insufficient resources e.g Education Priority Areas only accounted for 0.2% of education spending
• Cultural deprivation theory - Criticism

  • Victim blaming: ignores inequalities built into the educational system and wider society which are to blame for underachievement
  • Different, not deprived: w/c children are culturally different and fail because they are put at a disadvantage by an education system that is dominated by m/c values
  • Labelling: cultural deprivation contributes negative label which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Material deprivation

  • Refers to poverty and a lack of material necessities such as adequate housing and income
  • FSM is used as a measure for disadvantage. 2019 only 51% of pupils gained an average of a grade 4 or above in English and math
• Housing

  • Overcrowding can make it harder to study as less room for HW, disturbed sleep from sharing rooms
  • Temporary accommodation means constant changes of schools and disrupted education
  • Cold or damp housing can cause ill health leading to absences
• Diet and Health - Howard

  • Young people from poorer homes have lower intakes of energy, vitamins and minerals. Weakened immune systems may result in absences and difficulties concentrating in class
  • Wilkinson: amongst 10 year olds the lower social class = higher rate of hyperactivity, anxiety and conduct disorders which all have a negative effect on child's education
• Financial support

  • Tanner: cost of items such as transport, uniform, books, computers etc puts a burden on poor families
  • Poor children may have to make do with hand me downs and cheaper but unfashionable equipment which may result in isolation and bullying
  • Fear of stigmatisation may explain why 20% of those elligable for FSM don't take their entitlement
  • Fear of debt: Callender & Jackson found the attitude to debt was important in deciding whether to attend uni
• Cultural capital - Bourdieu

  • Knowledge, attitudes, values, abilities of the m/c
  • Gives an advantage in school as highly valued
  • Wealthier parents convert their economic capital into educational capital by sending their children to private schools and paying extra tuition
  • Leech & Campos' study of Coventry show m/c parents are likely to afford a house in the catchment are of a school that is highly placed in exam league tables
• Labelling - Becker

  • Interviews with 60 Chicago high school teachers judging pupils according to how closely they fit the image of an 'ideal pupil'
  • Teachers saw m/c children as closest to the ideal and w/c as the furthest
• Self-fulfilling prophecy

  • Teacher labels a pupil, then treats the pupil accordingly then the pupil internalises the teacher's expectation which becomes part of their self-image
• Streaming - Becker

  • Separating children into different ability groups called 'streams'
  • Teachers do not usually see w/c children as ideal pupils and see them to lack ability and have low expectations of them meaning they are placed in lower streams
  • Once streamed it is usually difficult to move to a higher stream and students 'get the message' that their teachers have written them off as 'no hopers'
  • Douglas: Children placed in a lower stream at age 8 had suffered a decline in their IQ score by 11
• 'A-C economy' - Gillborn & Youdell

  • They link the streaming process to exam league tables where schools are ranked according to their exam performance
  • Schools need to achieve a good league table position to attract pupils and funding
  • This then creates an 'A-C economy' where schools focus on pupils who ave the potential of getting good grades to boost their position
• Educational triage - Gillborn & Youdell

  • The rationing of educational opportunity
  • They argue that the A-C economy produces this where students are categories pupils into 3 groups
  • Those who will pass anyway, those who will pass with help and those who are hopeless and doomed to fail
  • Teachers often use a stereotypical view of w/c and Black pupils as lacking ability
• Pupil subcultures - Lacey

  • Identify 2 ways subcultures develop
  • Differentiation: teachers categorises pupils according to perceived ability. Streaming is a form of this
  • Polarisation: process where pupils respond to streaming by moving towards to two opposite 'poles'
• Pro and anti school subculture - Lacey

  • Pro-school: pupils placed in high streams tend to remain committed to school values They gain their status in an approved manner, through academic success
  • Anti-school: those placed in lower streams suffer a loss of self-esteem as the school has undermined their self-worth by placing them in a position of inferior status. Such pupils form an anti-school subculture as a means of gaining status amongst their peers
• Pupil response (to labelling or streaming) - Woods

  • Ingratiation: being the 'teacher's pet'
  • Ritualism: staying out of trouble and going through the motions
  • Retreatism: daydreaming and mucking about
  • Rebellion: rejection of everything school stands for
• Labelling theory - Criticism

  • Assumes pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail
  • (Marxists) Ignores the wider structures of power
• Habitus - Bourdieu

  • Dispositions, attitudes and values that shape an individuals actions and perceptions of the world
  • A groups habitus is formed as a response to its position in the class structure
  • The m/c's habitus has the power to define its habitus as superior and imposes this on the education system
• Symbolic capital & symbolic violence

  • School devalues the w/c habitus so w/c pupils' tastes are deemed to be worthless
  • Bourdieu calls this withholding of symbolic capital, 'symbolic violence as defining w/c as inferior reproduces the class structure
  • Archer: found w/c pupils felt to be educationally successful, they had to change they way they talked and presented themselves
• 'Nike' identities - Archer

  • Symbolic violence led the w/c to seek alternative ways of creating self-worth, status and value
  • They did so by constructing meaningful class identities consuming branded clothing such as Nike
  • Led to conflict with school dress code as teachers opposed 'street' styles showing 'bad' taste - caused educational marginalisation
• Self-exclusion

  • Evans: studied a group of 21 w/c girls from south London studying for their A-levels. They were reluctant to apply to Oxbridge and those who did apply felt they wouldn't fit in
  • Bourdieu says this comes from their habitus which includes beliefs about what opportunities exist for them