Social%20Class%20and%20education

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Social Class and education

• The Facts of disadvantage

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Some key facts about working class children

• Even when compared to middle class children with
  the same IQ, working class children are
• less likely to be found in nursery schools
• more likely to be poor readers when they start
  school
• more likely to be in low sets and streams in
  secondary school
• more likely to underachieve at GCSE and A level
• less likely to go to University
• more likely to leave school early
• more likely to be suspended and excluded

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Explanations Intelligence

• Sociologists and psychologists such as Eysenck
  suggests that working class children have lower
  innate intelligence that middle class children.
• Intelligence is inherited from parents which
  explains the childs educational performance and
  the lowly social status of their parents.
• Problems
• Intelligence is a cultural construct
• Most regard factors such as poverty and time
  spent in school as far more meaningful than raw
  IQ scores

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Explanations Cultural Deprivation

• Working class culture viz. parental attitudes,
  child rearing practice and language used, is to
  blame for underachievement.
• JWB Douglas argued working class parents do not
  value education.
• Bernstein argued the restricted code of the
  working class handicapped childrens language
  development. Education being delivered in the
  elaborated code of middle class standard English.
• The Newsons suggested middle class parents are
  measurably more child centred than the working
  class.

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Criticisms of Cultural Deprivation Theory

• It fails to consider material deprivation.
  Factors such as poverty are arguably far more
  significant working class children do not get
  access to nursery education or expensive
  educational toys and games.
• It has a rather suspect methodology e.g. Douglas
  counting of parental visits to parents evenings
  is seen as unscientific.

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Explanations Marxism

• School is seen as a middle class institution run
  by middle class teachers using middle class
  language and perpetuating middle class values,
  attitudes and power.
• Marxists such as Bourdieu suggest that working
  class pupils lack the cultural capital to achieve
  in such an environment.
• Marxists see school as part of the state
  machinery which is designed to condition the
  working class to failure and drudgery. Working
  class failure is therefore guaranteed as this is
  one of the systems desired outcomes.

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ExplanationsThe interactionist view

• Interactionist sociologists us labelling theory
  to explain working class underachievement.
• Negative labels of the working class child are
  constructed by middle class teachers which are in
  turn communicated to pupils who internalise them
  and become self fulfilling prophecies of failure.
• Positive labels are communicated to the middle
  class child as ideal pupils who work hard and
  keep quiet they too become self fulfilling
  prophecies this time successful ones.

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Examples of labelling theory

• Rosenthal and Jacobsen self fulfilling
  prophecy.
• Keddie who characterised streaming as
  institutionalised labelling. Top sets are treated
  more favourably whilst bottom sets are blamed for
  their own failure.
• Hargreaves who studies the counter sub- cultures
  that pupils develop in response to labelling

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Criticisms of labelling theory

• It ignores important structural factors such as
  class inequality.
• It underestimates counter school culture. Paul
  Willis claims working class boys choose to fail
  because school achievement isnt valued in their
  culture.
• There is little empirical evidence to back it up.

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Important point to note

• Intelligence, cultural deprivation theory and
  labelling theory have also all been used to
  attempt to explain the relative underachievement
  of certain ethnic groups.