Ethnic Differences In Education Flashcards
What are the external factors that affect ethnic minority childrens’ achievement?
- Cultural Deprivation & Material Deprivation
- Attitudes and Values
- Family structure and parental support
- Racism in wider society
How does ethnicity affect educational experience?
Within education:
- proportionately more black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students are recorded as having special educational needs compared to white, Chinese and Indian students
- Black Caribbean students are around three times more likely than white students to be permanently excluded from school.
- Black (82%) and Asian (85%) people are more likely to stay on in full-time education at age 16 than young white people (69%).
Those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin, and particularly males from African-Caribbean backgrounds, tend to do less well than they should given their ability:
- taken overall, they appear to have below average reading skills
- the performance of African-Caribbean pupils worsens as they go through the schooling system, deteriorating, between Key Stage 1 and 4
- African-Caribbean school students are between three and six times more likely to be permanently excluded from schools than white students of the same sex, and to be excluded for longer periods than white students for the same offences.
How does intellectual and linguistic skills affect achievement in ethnically diverse children?
Cultural deprivation theorists argue that many children from low income black families lack intellectual stimulation and enriching experiences.
They lack this because of the lack of parent involvement in their education and the lack of educational toys. Lack the ability to go to museums, exhibitions; they don’t develop the ability to do abstract thinking.
Some children who have England as a second language will find it difficult initially, however official statistics show that this is not a major factor. They achieve similar levels for GCSE English in Year 11.
How do attitudes and values affect achievement in ethnically diverse children?
There is a suggestion that some MEG (Minority Ethnic Group) children lack ambition, competitiveness and willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve long-term goals. CD theorists may say that black children are socialised into a subculture that instils a fatalistic ‘live for today’ attitude.
How does Family and Support affect achievement in Chinese children?
Chinese students do the best in the British education system achieving the highest results.
Amy Chua believes the key to educational success is ‘tough love’. When Amy Chua first proclaimed the superiority of Chinese parenting and unveiled a manifesto for ‘tiger mothers’ who drove their kids hard, whether in exams or piano practice, she provoked something close to mass hysteria.
Amy Chua’s list of “things my daughters Sophia me Louise, were never allowed to do:
- have a play date
- get any grade less than an A
- watch TV or play computer games
- complain about not being in a school play
- not be the No. 1 students in every subject, except gym and drama
- not play the piano or the violin
- choose their own extra-curricular activities
How have parents adopted Amy Chua’s parenting?
Parents have adopted these ideas and practiced a farm of strict parenting and focus on strict educational success.
“The solution to substantial performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child”, Chua wrote.
Other studies have suggested that study-focused Chinese parenting may hamper students later in life because they don’t develop social skills.
Now she faces more scholarly criticism: two peer-reviewed studies showing that high-achieving Chinese American teenagers are more anxious and less socially adjusted that their white American counter-parts.
Why do Asian children succeed?
Sewell says Asian students benefit from supportive families who place a high value on education. Luptom argues adult authority in Asian families is similar to the model that operates in schools. She found that respectful attitudes towards adults was expected from children. The effect of this was that parents were likely to be very supportive of school behaviour policies.
The Swann Report (1985) and Pilkington (1997) suggested Asian family life has been characterised as consisting of close-knit extended families, which have high aspirations for their children and very supportive attitudes to education, combined with wider cultural values which encourage higher levels of achievement. Ethnic minority parents see education as a route to upward social mobility.
Why do Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Asian children succeed?
Bhatti’s (1999) research of the relationship between home and school for Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Asian pupils, found parents were very supportive and had a high level of interest in their children’s education.
What is parent involvement like for minority ethnic children?
Moon and Ivin’s (2004), in a telephone survey of a representative sample of over 1500 parents/carers of minority ethnic children, found parental involvement with their children’s education was greater in minority ethnic groups than in the population as a whole, and a higher proportion saw their children’s education as mainly the parents’ responsibility rather than the school’s. A very high proportion went to parents evenings whenever there was an opportunity, although Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents were less confident about helping their children with homework, largely because they lacked the cultural capital to which Bourdieu referred.
What does family and support affect achievement in African Caribbean boys?
Black communities have a high level of lone parenthood (51%) and Sewell says black boys underachievement is the result of a lack of fatherly nurturing or ‘tough love’. This results in black boys finding it hard to overcome the emotional and behavioural difficulties of adolescence. No father may pose financial and practical problems.
Street gangs of other fatherless boys offer black boys with a media-inspired role model of anti-school black masculinity, whose ideal Chris Arnot described as ‘the ultra-tough ghetto superstar, an image constantly reinforced through rap lyrics and MTV videos’. These videos and rap lyrics also reinforce stereotypes, placed onto women.
Vincent et al found that black middle class parents were particularly concerned with and actively involved in their children’s schooling, enrolling their children in a range of extra-curricular activities and extra tutoring, and often making particular efforts to meet teachers, insisting on high standards, and carrying out research to actively demonstrate their knowledge about education to teachers and to support their children’s education. However, they often found that teachers treated them as if they knew less about their children’s education than white middle class parents.
Why do Black Caribbean girls display higher levels of achievement?
For black Caribbean girls, the fact that women are often the primary breadwinners in many black Caribbean families may provide positive role models for girls and encourage higher levels of achievement - recognition that they themselves will in future be major breadwinners.
What did Lupton find about white WC families and support?
Lupton found that teachers reported poorer levels of behaviour and discipline in the white working class schools - despite the fact that they had fewer children on free school meals. Teachers blamed this on lower levels of parental support and the negative attitude that white WC parents had towards education. By contrast ethnic minority parents were more likely to see education as ‘a way up in society’.
Gillian Evans found that street culture in white WC areas can be brutal and so children have to learn how to withstand intimidation and intimidate others. In this context, school can become a place where the power games that young people engage in on the streets are played out again, bringing disruption and making it hard for pupils to succeed.
What are the criticisms of the cultural deprivation theory in regard to ethnically diverse children?
Geoffrey Driver - ignores the positive effects of ethnicity on achievement. He shows that the black Caribbean family, far from being dysfunctional, provides girls with positive role models of strong independent women.
Errol Lawrence - challenges Pryce’s view that black pupils fail because their culture is weak and they lack self-esteem. He argues that black pupils underachieve because of racism.
Keddie argues that ethnic minority children are culturally different, not culturally deprived. They underachieve because schools are ethnocentric: biased in favour of white culture and against minorities.
Critics oppose compensatory education because they see it as an attempt to impose the dominant white culture on children who already have a coherent culture of their own. They propose two main alternatives:
- multicultural education
- anti-racist education
How does material deprivation affect ethnically diverse children?
Material deprivation explanations see educational failure as resulting from factors such as substandard housing and low income. Ethnic minorities are more likely to face these problems. For example, according to Guy Palmer:
- Almost half of all ethnic minority children live in low income households, as against a quarter of white children
- Ethnic minorities are twice as likely to be unemployed compared with whites.
- Ethnic minority households are around three times as likely to be homeless.
- Almost half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers earned under £7 per hour, compared with only a quarter of white British workers.
What are several reasons as to why ethnic minorities may be at greater risk of the material deprivation that results from unemployment, low pay and overcrowding?
- many live in economically depressed areas with high unemployment and low wage rates
- cultural factors such as the tradition of purdah in some Muslim households, which prevents women from working outside the home
- a lack of language skills, and foreign qualifications not being recognised by the UK employers. These are more likely to affect recently arrived groups, many of whom are refugees. Most members of established minority groups are fluent in English.
- asylum seekers may not be allowed to take work
- racial discrimination in the labour market and housing market.
The material deprivation explanation argues that such class differences explain why Pakistani pupils tend to do worse than Indian and White pupils. Indian pupils - whose achievements are generally above average - are likely to be from better-off backgrounds. For example, they are the ethnic group most likely to attend private schools - at twice the rate of whites and five times that of blacks.
