Education- External Ethnicity factors Flashcards
Ethnicity definition
Ethnicity means a social group that shares a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like. This is different to race which is related to biology.
Trends in Ethnicity and
Achievement
DfES (2007):
* Only 24% of White male pupils who were on free school-meals gained 5 A*-C Grades.
* White & Asian pupils on average achieve higher than Black pupils
* Amongst Asians, Indians do better than Pakistanis &
Bangladeshis
* Hastings (2006): White pupils make less progress between the ages of 11-16 years-old compared to Black or Asian pupils. If current trends continue then White pupils will become the lowest performing ethnic group in the UK.
* Within every ethnic group,
M/C pupils do better than
W/C pupils.
* Among all groups other than Gypsy/Roma children, girls out perform boys.
Cultural Deprivation: Language
These arguments suggest that many ethnic minority groups (particularly Black, low-income groups), lack adequate stimulation & linguistic development through their socialisation.
Bowker (1968): ‘The Education of Coloured Immigrants’ A lack of standard English creates a huge barrier to UK education.
Bollard and Driver - language problems cease to be a problem by the age of 16.
The Swann Report (1985) found that language differences had little impact on achievement.
Cultural Deprivation: Family structures and support
Many sociologists argue that ‘dysfunctional’ family types are to blame for the underachievement of certain ethnic groups.
Murray 1984: African Caribbean Lone-Parenthood to blame. Lack of male role-models means that mothers struggle to socialise children adequately.
Scrunton 1986 - Low achievement is the result of ethnic minorities failing to embrace & conform to British culture.
Pryce 1979 - Asian culture in the UK is much more cohesive than Black culture & as such they are able to ignore racism more effectively and as such are not effected by it as much e.g. low self-esteem leading to educational failure.
Hall (1992) calls this a ‘Culture of Resistance’ - The impact of Slavery means that much of the Black culture has lost it’s language, religion, ancestry etc.
The Black culture are therefore much less likely to integrate & assimilate with
White M/C UK.
Driver & Ballard (1981): Argue that Asian families have a much more ‘Pro-School’ attitude than Black families. Also because Asian families are rarely lone parents families they offer a bigger support network for children.
Lupton (2004) suggests that the ‘Adult Authoritarian’ Asian family matches that of the school.
Keddie (1971) says that to blame culture is to blame the victims of educational failure.
Cultural Deprivation: Attitudes and values
These arguments suggest that different ethnic groups are socialised into (or ‘inherit) different attitudes & values.
Arnot (2004) suggests that the Media have created a negative anti-school role model for Black pupils in particular which he describes as
‘the Ultra-Tough Ghetto Superstar ‘ reinforced through rap lyrics &
MTV videos.
Driver (1977) highlights how ethnicity can be an advantage in education e.g. African Caribbean Girls actually do very well in school.
Material deprivation overview
According to Flaherty (2004):
* Pakistanis & Bangladeshis are 3X more likely than whites to be in the poorest 1/5 of the population.
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According to the Swann Report (1985), Social Class differences account for a high proportion of differences in achievement between ethnic groups.
This argument is paradoxical. We cannot tell if these groups underachieve within education because they are working class, or if they end up being working class because other factors lead them to fail within education.
Racism in wider Society overview
Mason (1995) argues that ‘Discrimination is a continuing & persistent feature of the experience of Britain’s citizens of minority ethnic origin’.
Rex (1986) - Racism leads to social exclusion and accordingly poverty. This is shown in housing, employment & education. Racism also leads to discrimination both inside & outside the classroom.
Noon (1993) - Sent identical letters to 100 top UK companies but alternated between the names ‘Evans’ &
‘Patel’ … the replies to the ‘White’ candidate were more helpful and informative.
Tronya and Carrington (1990) - argue that the descriptions of some cultures are little more than racist stereotypes.
Cultural research can be used against certain groups - Sivanandan arques that afro-caribbean culture is used by some right wing groups to justify the view that they are a problem for society.
