Ethnicity

• Ethnic cultural deprivation - language

  
  

  • Bereiter and Engelmann - black Americans speak ungrammatically, disjointed and incapable of expressing abstract ideas
  • Counter - Gillborn and Mirza note that Indian pupils do very well despite often not having English as their home language
• Ethnic cultural deprivation - attitudes

  
  

  • Some black children are socialised into a subculture that instils a 'live for today' attitude that doesn't value education and leaves them unequipped for success
  • Other children are socialised into mainstream values of ambition and willingness
• Ethnic cultural deprivation - parent's support

  
  

  • Moynihan - many black families are headed by a lone mother, their children are deprived of adequate care due to financial struggles
  • No father also means boys lack an example of male achievement
  • Pryce - Asian families aren't effected as their family structures, languages and religion was not destroyed by colonial rule
• Ethnic cultural deprivation - fathers (Sewell)


  
  

  • Sees the problem as a lack of fatherly nurturing, resulting in black boys finding it hard to overcome the emotional difficulties of adolescence
  • Street gangs of other fatherless boys offer black boys perverse loyalty and love
  • Arnot - further emphasised by black fantasy of being a gangster in rap lyrics and MTV videos
  • Counter - Gillborn argues that it is the fault of institutional racism in education rather than peer pressure
• Ethnic cultural deprivation - Asian families

  
  

  • Sewell - Indian and Chinese pupils benefit from supportive families that have an 'Asian work ethic' and place a high value on education
  • Lupton - adult authority in Asian families is similar to the model that operates in schools, as the respectful behaviour towards parents is relayed in school
• Ethnic cultural deprivation - white working class families

  
  

  • McCulloch - ethnic minority pupils are more likely to go to university than white British pupils
  • Lupton - ethnic minority parents are more likely to see education as "a way up in society"
• Ethnic cultural deprivation - general criticisms

  
  

  • Driver - ignores the positive effects of ethnicity on achievement, like black Caribbean families providing examples of strong independent women, helping black girls in school
  • Keddie - sees it as victim blaming and that ethnic cultures are different, not deprived. They fail due to the ethnocentric curriculum that favours white culture
• Ethnic material deprivation (Palmer)


  
  

  • Almost half of all ethnic children live in low-income households, compared to a quarter of white children
  • Ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be unemployed
  • Minority families are 3x more likely to be homeless
  • Muslims have traditions like Purdah, which prevents women from working
• Ethnic material deprivation - Class vs race

  
  

  • In 2011, 86% of Chinese girls with free meals achieved 5x higher GCSEs, compared to 65% of white girls who were not given free meals
  • Shows that material deprivation and social class factors do not completely override the influence of ethnicity
  • Modood - children from low income families do worse but the effects of low income were much less for other ethnic groups than for white people
• Racism in wider society

  
  

  • Rex - discrimination means that minorities are more likely to be forced into substandard accommodation than white people of the same class
  • Wood - sent 3 closely matched job applications to 1000 job vacancies, only 16 of the ethnic appearing applications got interviews, compared to 1/9 for the white one
• Ethnic differences - labelling black pupils

  
  

  • Gillborn and Youdell - teachers were quicker to discipline black pupils than others for the same behaviour
  • Bourne - schools tend to see black boys as a threat and to label them negatively, leading to exclusion. Only 1/5 excluded pupils achieves 5 GCSEs
  • Osler - black pupils appear more likely to suffer from unrecorded unofficial exclusions and from 'internal exclusions' where they are sent out of class
• Ethnic differences - streaming

  
  

  • Gillborn and Youdell - teachers focus on those students who they believe are most likely to achieve a grade C at GCSE, stereotypes lead to assumptions that black students wont achieve this
  • Foster - this negative streaming leads to self-fulfilling prophesy
• Ethnic differences - labelling Asian pupils

  
  

  • Wright - teachers hold ethnocentric views, seeing British culture as superior, leads to assumptions that Asians had a poor grasp on the English language, leaving them out of discussions
  • Victims of marginalisation as teachers mispronounce their names and disapprove of their customs
• Ethnic differences - pupil identity (Archer)


  
  

  • Ideal pupil - white, MC, heterosexual male who achieves status the 'right' way
  • Pathologised pupil - Asians with feminised, asexual identity who teachers see as a conformist and as achieving through natural ability, not hard work
  • Demonised pupil - black, WC and hypersexual, seen as an unintelligent, deprived underachiever
• Ethnic differences - Chinese pupils (Archer)


  
  

  • Are simultaneously praised and viewed negatively by their teachers
  • Families are stereotyped as 'tight' and 'close' to explain their supposed passivity
  • Seen as achieving through the wrong way, being hard work rather than gifted ability, means that they never achieve status of ideal pupil
• Ethnic differences - rejecting labels

  
  

  • Fuller - black girls challenged their anger about being labelled into the pursuit of educational success
  • Counter - they still didn't seek the approval of their teachers as they saw them as racist and limited their friendships to people with the same label
  • Mac an Ghaill - girls felt their experience at an all-girls school increased their commitment and helped them overcome labels later in their academic lives
• Ethnic differences - teacher racism (Mirza)


  
  

  • The colour blind - see all pupils as equal but in practice let racism go unchallenged
  • The liberal chauvinists - see black pupils as culturally deprived and have low expectations of them
  • The overt racists - see black pupils as inferior and actively discriminate against them
• Ethnic differences - black boy's responses (Sewell)


  
  

  • The rebels - conform to stereotypes and reject school's values and goals
  • The conformists - accept the school's goals and were keen to not be stereotyped, meaning they befriend non-black peers
  • The innovators - pro-education but anti-school, seeked success but not teacher's approval
  • The retreatists - disconnected from both school and black culture
  • Counter - Sewell himself sees external issues as more pressing
• Ethnic differences - locked-in equality

  
  

  • Roithmayr - the scale of historical discrimination is so large that there no longer needs to be any conscious intent to discriminate, it feeds on itself
  • Gillborn - ethnic inequality is so deep rooted and large that it is a practically inevitable feature of the education system
• Ethnic differences - marketisation and segregation

  
  

  • Gillborn - marketisation gives schools more scope to select pupils, leading to unfavourable ethnic students to not be selected
  • Moore and Davenport - selection procedures lead to ethnic segregation, with minority pupils failing to get into better secondary schools due to factors like language difficulties
• Ethnic differences - the ethnocentric curriculum

  
  

  • Troyna and Williams - Asian languages not taut as much as European languages
  • David - National Curriculum is too focused on British culture, ignoring no-European art and music
  • Ball - National Curriculum recreates a mystical age of the empire and past glories
  • Counter - doesn't explain how Indian and Chinese pupils do so well even though it leaves Asian culture out of the curriculum
• Ethnic differences - assessments (Gillborn)

  • They're rigged so as to validate the dominant culture's superiority
  • In primary schools, baseline assessments were replaced with end of year FSPs, which made black children appear to be weaker
  • Sanders and Horn - ethnic achievement gap widened with more teacher set tasks, rather than written exams
• Ethnic differences - access to opportunities

  • Gillborn - white pupils 2x more likely to be identified as as gifted than black Caribbean
  • Tikly - 30 schools with the 'Aiming high' initiative still had more black pupils entered for lower GCSEs than white pupils
• Ethnic differences - the new IQism (Gillborn)

  • Teachers make false assumptions about the nature of pupil's ability or potential
  • Youdell - secondary schools are increasingly using old-style intelligence tests to allocate pupils to different streams on entry
  • Argues that there is no genuine measurement of potential
• Ethnic differences - combined with class and gender

  • Evans - sociologists tend to look at black culture and ethnicity, but rarely at their class
  • Connolly - black boys are stereotyped, leading them to chase status with girls, sports or bullying passive Asian students