Eduaction- Topic 1 Class Differences (External) Flashcards
What is cultural deprivation?
Working class individuals lacking the cultural equipment needed to do well, resulting in underachievement.
Three main aspects:
*language
*parents’ education
*working-class subculture
CD- Language
Bereiter and Englemann
Language used in lower-class homes is deficient. They describe lower-class families as communicating by gestures, single words or disjointed phrases
As a result their children fail to develop the necessary language skills and are unable to take advantage of the opportunities that school offers.
CD- Language
Hubbs-Tait et al
Where parents use language that challenges their children to evaluate their own understanding or abilities, cognitive performance improves.
(Feinstein) found that educated parents are more likely to use language in this way.
CD- Language
Feinstein
Found that educated parents are more likely to use praise. This encourages their children to develop a sense of their own competence.
CD-Language
Bernstein distinguishes two types of speech code:
Restricted code and Elaborated code.
CD-Parents education
Douglas
Found that working class parents placed less value on education. As a result, they were less ambitious for the children, gave them less encouragement and took less interest in their education.
CD- use of income
Bernstein and Young
found middle-class mothers are more likely to buy educational toys, books and activities that courage reasoning skills and stimulate intellectual development.
Working class homes are more likely to lack these resources and this means children from such homes start school without the intellectual skills needed to progress.
CD- parenting style
Educated parents’ parenting style emphasises consistent discipline and high expectations of their children, and this supports achievement by encouraging active learning and exploration.
By contrast, less educated parents style is marked as hard or inconsistent discipline that emphasises ‘doing what you’re told’ and ‘behaving yourself’.
CD- Subcultures
Sugarman
Working class subculture has 4 key features that act as a barrier to educational achievement:
Fatalism- A belief in fate (nothing they can do to change their status)
Collectivism- valuing being part of 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- seeing the present as more important than the future and so not having long-term goals
CD- Compensatory education
Aims to take lee the problem of cultural deprivation by providing extra resources to schools and communities in deprived areas. They intervene early in the socialisation process to compensate children for the deprivation they experience at home.
EX. Operation Head Start in the USA, scheme of pre-school education in poorer areas introduced in the 1960s. Its aim was ‘planned enrichment’ of the deprive child’s environment to develop skills and instil achievement motivation.
CD- myth of cultural deprivation
Keddie
Describes cultural deprivation as a myth and sees as victim-blaming.
Children are not culturally deprived, just culturally different.
MD- Housing
-Crowded
-Damp
-Cold
-Mould
-Temporary accommodation
Can make it hard to achieve
MD- Diet and health
Howard
Young people from poorer homes have lower intakes of energy, vitamins and minerals. This poor nutrition can weaken their immune system and energy levels resulting in absence from school and being too tired to adequately complete school work.
MD- ‘costs of free schooling’
Bull
Lack of financial support means that children from poor families have to do without equipment and miss out on experiences that would enhance their education achievement.
Cultural Capital-
Bourdireu
Middle-class children with cultural capital are better equipped to meet the demands on the school curriculum. Parents can convert the cultural capital into economic capital, for example, they can send their children to private schools.
