Class

• Class cultural deprivation - Working-class subculture (Sugarman)


  
  

  • Fatalism - nothing you can do will change your status
  • Collectivism - valuing being part if a group more than succeeding as an individual
  • Immediate gratification - seeking pleasure now rather than making sacrifices in order to get rewards in the future
  • Present time orientation - lack of long term plans as you see the present as more important
• Class cultural deprivation - Language

  
  

  • Hubbs-Tait et al - found that where parents use language that challenges their children to evaluate their own understanding, cognitive performance improves
  • Feinstein - middle class parents use praise, which encourages their children to develop a sense of their own competence
  • Criticism - Troyna and Williams argue it's not the child's language, it's the school's attitude towards it, as they use a speech hierarchy
• Class cultural deprivation - Speech codes (Bernstein)


  
  

  • Restricted code - limited vocabulary, often unfinished, grammatically incorrect and short sentences
  • Elaborated code - complex, grammatically correct and wider vocabulary
  • Early socialisation of elaborated code means middleclass students means they get a leg up when they start school
  • Criticism - Gaine and George say he exaggerates and oversimplifies the differences in speech
• Class cultural deprivation - Parent's education (Feinstein)


  
  

  • Parenting style - MC emphasise consistent discipline and high expectations, giving the kid lessons of individual teaching
  • Parent's educational behaviour - MC are more aware of what is needed to assist their children's educational progress
  • Use of income - MC spend their income in ways that promote their child's educational success, like books and days out
• Class cultural deprivation - Compensatory education

  
  

  • Aim to tackle the issue by providing extra resources to schools and communities
  • Operation Head Start in the USA from the 1960s
  • Halsey and Whitty - don't work due to few resources, Educational Priority Areas only made up 0.2% of spending
• Class cultural deprivation - general criticisms

  
  

  • Victim blaming - ignores inequalities built into the system
  • Different, not deprived - Keddie says it's just a different background and fail due to majority middle class values
  • Labelling - the idea itself contributes as it allows teachers to identify negative labels
  • Parental interest - Blackstone and Mortimore found that working class parents only attended less parents evenings because they have to work longer hours
• Class material deprivation - Housing

  
  

  • Overcrowding - less room for educational activities, nowhere to do homework and disrupted sleep
  • Temporary housing - frequent moving disrupts time for education
  • Poor conditions - cold or damp conditions can lead to ill health, meaning missed time at school
• Class material deprivation - Diet and health

  
  

  • Howard - poor young people have lower intakes of of energy, vitamins and minerals, resulting in difficulty with concentration
  • Wilkinson - among 10 year olds, the lower the social class, the higher the rate of hyperactivity, anxiety and conductive disorders
  • Blanden and Machin - low income kids are more likely to engage in fighting and temper tantrums
• Class material deprivation - financial cost

  
  

  • Tanner et al - in Oxford, cost of transportation, uniforms, computers, calculators and sports are a heavy burden on poor families
  • Hand me downs and cheaper alternatives may lead to isolation or bullying
  • Smith and Noble - poverty acts as a barrier to methods of improvement, like private schooling or tuition
• Class material deprivation - fear of debt

  
  

  • Callender and Jackson - attitude towards debt was important in deciding whether to apply to university
  • Most debt averse students were over 5x less likely to apply than the most of debt tolerant students
  • Drop out rates are higher for universities with high working class populations, London Metropolitan had a rate of 18.6%
• Cultural capital - Bourdieu 


  
  

  • Cultural capital - knowledge, values and language of the middle class, which gives advantages to those who poses it
  • Economic capital - wealthier parents can convert it into educational capital with private schools or tutoring
  • Counter - Sullivan found that it only accounted for part of the class difference in achievement with a questionnaire with 465 pupils in 4 schools
• Class differences - Labelling

  
  

  • Becker - interviewed 60 Chicago high school teachers, finding that they judged pupils according to how closely they fitted an image of the 'ideal pupil'
  • Dunne and Gazeley - schools persistently produce working class underachievement, teachers labelled WC parents as uninterested in their children's education and MC parents as supportive
  • Rist - teachers in American kindergartens used information about children's home background and appearance to place them in separate groups and to seat them at different tables
• Class differences - the self-fulfilling prophecy

  
  

  • Rosenthal and Jacobson - picked 20% of a schools population randomly and labelled them as 'spurting' ahead, they returned a year later and found that 47% of those labelled had improved themselves
• Class differences - streaming (Gillborn and Youdell)


  
  

  • Found teachers use stereotypical notions of 'ability' to stream pupils
  • Don't see WC students as having ability, this denies them a chance at achieving high GCSEs, widening the class gap in achievement
• Class differences - educational triage (Gillborn and Youdell)


  
  

  • Students sorted into:
  • Those who will pass anyway and can be left alone
  • Those with potential, can be helped to get a pass
  • Hopeless cases, doomed to fail
  • Teachers assume that WC students are hopeless
  • League tables means that schools prioritise the classes that are likely to get the schools high placement, leading to a neglect of the hopeless
• Class differences - pupil subcultures (Lacey)


  
  

  • Pro-school - high streamed pupils who gain their status in an approved manner, through academic success
  • Anti-school - low streamed pupils who suffer a loss of self esteem due to their label, pushing them to search for alternative ways of gaining status, like trouble making
• Class differences - abolishing streaming (Ball)


  
  

  • When the school abolished streaming, the basis for pupils to polarise into subcultures was largely removed and the influence of the anti-school subculture declined
  • But teachers continued to categorise pupils and label MC as cooperative and able
  • Shows class inequalities happen even without streaming or subcultures
• Class differences - responses to labelling and streaming (Woods)


  
  

  • Ingratiation - being the 'teacher's pet'
  • Ritualism - going through the motions and staying out of trouble
  • Retreatism - daydreaming and mucking about
  • Rebellion - outright rejection of everything the school stands for
• Class differences - labelling criticisms

  
  

  • Fuller - says it assumes that pupils who are labelled have no choice but to fulfil the prophecy and will inevitably fail
  • Marxists - says it ignores the wider structures of power within which labelling takes place and only blames teachers
• Class differences - Habitus (Archer)


  
  

  • Refers to the taken for granted ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class
  • The MC have the power to define its habitus as superior and to impose it on the education system
  • This places WC students at a disadvantage, as they are expected to integrate into MC tastes, preferences and values
• Class differences - Symbolic capital and violence (Archer)


  
  

  • Symbolic capital - MC students benefitting from being socialised with the 'right' habitus
  • Symbolic violence - defining the WC and their tastes and lifestyle as inferior reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower classes 'in their place'
  • Means that WC students feel they have to 'loose themselves' to be academically successful, by changing their dialect and appearance
• Class differences - Nike identity (Archer)


  
  

  • The right appearance earns symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying
  • WC pupils choose to reject education because it does not fit in with their identity or way of life