Social Class Flashcards
What is Material Deprivation?
Lacking sufficient money to buy resources necessary to reach full educational potential.
Gibson and Asthana (1999) - Material Deprivation
Pointed out that there is a correlation between low household income and poor educational performance.
Material Factors
- Higher levels of sickness in poorer homes may mean more absence from school and falling behind in lessons
- Educational books are not bought, and computers are not avaliable at home
- May be finacially difficult for parents on a low income to support students in education
- Schools in poorer areas may suffer disadvantages as they have less money to spend
- Students are more likely to have part time jobs which could create a conflict between study and paid work
Material Advantages
- Larger house with a private study space
- Afford private tuition
- Able to move to house to reach the catchment areas of the best schools (selection of mortage)
- Can afford to help to help their children out with university tuition fees
- Private schools
Leon Feinstein (2003) - Material Deprivation
Found thaw low income is related to low cognitive reasoning skills amongst children as young as 2 years old
Stephen Ball (2005) - Material Deprivation
The introduction of marketisation means that those who have more money have a greater choice of state schools because of selection by mortgage
Material Deprivation Criticisms
- To say that poverty causes poor educational achievement is too deterministic as some students from poor backgrounds do well.
- Middle Class cultural capital also advantages them in education.
How does cultural deprivation disadvantage children in education?
- Lower class children are more likely to speak in restricted speech codes - Basil Bernstein
- Lower class parents are less able to help their children with homework
- Working class parents may show lack of interest in their children’s education.
- Working class parents amy have low aspirations for their children as they may think education is not especially important
Basil Bernstein (1997) - Speech Patterns
- Working class use restricted speech codes, whereas middle class ca alternate between restricted and elaborated speech codes
- Restricted speech codes are short, grammatically simple, unfinished sentences, which operate in terms of particularistic meanings
- Explicitly verbalises meanings, spells out relationships between things and operates in terms of universalistic meanings
- Formal education is carried out in elaborated speech codes meaning wc students are disadvantaged
Barry Sugarman (1970) - Immediate gratification
- Noted that the different occupations of wc and mc may account for differing attitudes towards education
- Middle class occupations emphasise room for continuous professional advancement and planning for the future, which encourages and attitude for deferred gratification
- WC tend to lack opportunities for career progression, which fostered and attitude of immediate gratification
Cultural deprivation criticisms
- Isn’t the only factor that plays a role in educational underachievement
- Marxists would argue that cultural deprivation theorists blame working class parents for the underachievement of their children
Define cultural capital
The skills and knowledge middle class parents have that they ca use to give their children an advantage in the education system
Three ways middle class parents use their cultural capital
- Better educated and more able to help with homework
- More skilled in researching schools
- Teach their children the value of deferred gratifictaion
Dianne Reay (1988) - Middle Class Mothers
- Study on Mothers involvement in their children’s primary schooling
- Middle class mothers had more educational qualifications and more information about how the educational system operated
- They used their cultural capital by helping their children with homework, blostering their confidence and sorting their problems with teachers
Critisms of cultural capital
- Not all middle class students achieve highly
- Ignores material deprivation
- Doesnt consider other factors such as gender and ethnicity
- Difficult to research
What are the in school factors affecting education and social class?
- Type of school
- School subcultures
- Labelling
- Setting and streaming
Type of school and school ethos
- Children from wealthy backgrounds who attend the most expensive fee paying schools have not only much smaller class sizes but privileged access to universities
- People who go to the best state schools are socialised into ethos of attending university whereas in average state schools going to university is seen as more of a choice
School subcultures
- Paul Willis Counter School Culture (lads)
- WC boys value system opposed to that of the school
- They felt superior to the teachers a d they attached no value to academic work
- Their objective of school was to miss as many lessons as possible, the reward for this was status within the group
Labelling Theory
Howard Becker - Labelling theory ‘Ideal Pupil’
Becker theorised :
- Middle class teachers have an idea of the ideal pupil
- The ideal pupil is well behaved, well motivated, well mannered and compliant
- Middle class pupils tend to get positive labels
- Working class pupils were seen more negatively
Describe Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s study on the ‘Self Fulfilling Prophecy’
- Tested th IQ of all pupils and gave teachers a list of the top 20% of students, however the list was actually a random selection of student names
- One year later those students who teachers believed to be the most intelligent had improved the most which concluded that high teacher expectation resulted in improvement (self-fulfilling prophecy)
Evaluate the role of in school factors
- Going to the best schools is something that requires money, which is a home factor
- It is the cultural capital of middle class parents that get their kids to grammar school, making home background a more important factor
- Research from JRF shows that what goes on at home is far more important as if students aren’t adequately controlled by their parents, schools cannot be expected to make up the difference
Explain skilled/disconnected choosers (cultural capital)
Ball refers to middle class parents as 'skilled choosers' compared to working class parents as 'disconnected choosers. Middle class parents are more comfortable with dealing with public institutions like schools, they are more used to extracting and assessing information. They use social networks to talk to parents whose children are at the schools on offer and are more used to dealing and negotiating with administrators and teachers,
