education ethnicity

• Cultural dep: Language

  Lack of linguistic skills poses as a major cause of underachievement for EMs.

  Engelmann: language spoken by WC Black Americans is ungrammatical & disjointed.

  Criticised for racism, labels black speech codes as inferior and white speech codes as superior.

  Assumption that children that dont speak English at home may be disadvantaged educationally. But stats show that children whos first language isnt English are proven to do better at school. Being bi/tri-lingual can improve individuals executive functions
• Cultural dep: Attiudes & Values

  EM children are socialised into a fatalistic attitude

  However, studys show that EM children aged 7-14 actually have higher career aspirations than their white counterparts.

  Sewell: Argues an 'Asian Work Ethic'. Asian parents place higher value on education and are more supportive of their childs educational aspirations. Demonstrated in government statistics which show that Indian and Chinese pupils exceed in education in comparison to other races
• cultural dep: Family Structure

  Educational underachievement linked to inadequate socialisation as a result of dysfunctional family structures. EG many black families are headed by a lone parent mother. Therefore students may underachieve because they cant afford material resources & lack support from struggling mothers.

  Critics: ignores the positive effects having lone parent mother can have, eg providing a strong, independent female role model.
• Cultural dep: Family structure

  Sewell: The absence of a nurturing father can influence young black pupils to join 'fatherless street gangs' that offer black boys loyalty & love. These gangs present boys with an inspiring role model of anti-school black masculinty.

  Critics: Downplays the impact of racism. Sewell blames peer pressure and absent fathers, & ignores racism in the educational system
• Criticisms of cultural dep:

  1. Victim blaming: culturally different, not deprived. Underachieve not of cultural factors but because schools are ethnocentric, based in favour of white culture.
  2. Deterministic.
  3. Ignores the interplay of ethnicity with class and gender. EG Chinese MC girls had the highest scores at GCSE, while WC black caribbean/white mixed caribbean boys did the worst.
• Material dep:

  1. Almost half of all EM live in low income households; almost half of all Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents earn minimum wage.
  2. More likely to live in urban areas, which have higher unemployment & overcrowding.
  3. EM parents may struggle to find work: Asylum seekers may not be allowed work, racial discrimination in job & housing market, some muslim traditions prevent women from working outside the home
• Internal: Asian pupils

  Teachers assumed asian pupils have a poor grasp on the English language, leaving them out in class discussions & using simplistic language when talking to them. Teachers generally seeing them as a problem they could ignore.

  This leads to these asian pupils being marginalised & preventing from fully participating = this exclusion potentially having drastic effects on their achievement level.
• Becker Labelling theory: Black and Asian pupils are far from the 'ideal pupil', often being labelled as disruptive and passive. This may lead to teachers treating them differently.
• Gillborn & Youdell: found that teachers are quicker to discipline black students than their white counterparts for the same behaviour. Teachers expect black students to present more problems and therefore misinterpret their behaviour as threatening to authority, resulting in further conflict.

  This would explain why black boys are 3 times more likely to be excluded than white boys.

  Link to A-C economy. Put in lower streams. Negative self fulfilling prophecy. Lower tier exams. widening the ethnic gap in achievement between black and white students.
• Criticism for labelling theory: It is deterministic.

  Mary Fuller: found that black girls in London rejected their negative label and instead channelled their anger into pursuing educational success. They were able to maintain a positive self concept by relying on their own efforts to achieve rather than the help of teachers they deemed racist. This denies the deterministic nature of labelling theory and self fulfilling prophecy.
• Study done by Yale in 2016: used eye tracking technology and asked teachers to choose which student (from a group of primary school pupils) shows the most potentially challenging & deviant behaviour. They found that teachers looked at the black pupils first, despite them not showing any indications of misbehaving. This shows that teachers have an subconcious bias towards black pupils. Explain why black students are 3 times more likely to be excluded than their white counterparts.
• Internal: School curriculum is ethnocentric.

  • Language: meagre provision for teaching Asian languages compared with European languages.
  • History: National curriculum ignores ethnic diversity. Tries to recreate a mythical age of the British empire and its past glories, while ignoring the history of black & asian people.
• Internal: school curriculum is ethnocentric

  • History represents the British as bringing civilisation to the 'primitive' (black) people. This undermines black students history and lowers their self esteem, leading to their failure.
  • However, theres no evidence that black students have a low self esteem & that indian and chinese pupils perform above average.
• Gifted & talented programme: created to meet the needs of more able students in inner city schools.

  Instead of benefiting bright ethnic minorty students, white students were much more likely to be entered than black pupils.

  Black people are systematically unrepresented in higher tier tests. This could be due to streaming.