Working class underachievement

Marked

During the twentieth century, numerous changes were made to the structure of the education
system. These changes include the 1944 Education act which made secondary education
obligatory and the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988. Official statistics state that
all these measures have served to amplify the overall levels of educational attainment, but both
official and sociological evidence indicates that class-based inequities in educational attainment
have shown no inclination to decline.

Sociological explanations have suggested many different reasons for the class base differences in
educational achievement. It is suggested that the diversity in educational success between
different classes are due to home and family factors. This approach is based on the belief that
those from different social classes have significantly differing home lives.

It is possible to split home and family based factors into three main categories, material factors,
cultural factors and sub-cultural factors. Each factor serves as an explanation for working class
underachievement but material, cultural and sub-cultural factors are all outside school
justifications and therefore inside school justifications also have to be taken into consideration
when clarifying reasons for working class underachievement.

Cultural factors include both cultural deprivation and cultural capital. Cultural deprivation
means to be deficient in the skills and values required to be successful in education. This
explanation points out that working class children are short of stimulus in the home due to lack
of parental interest, restricted amounts of books, limited amounts of educational toys and a lack
of educational outings such as visits to the museum. Theorists such as Douglas have investigated
cultural deprivation in dept to find out if this explanation does actually apply to the
underachievement of working class children. Douglas created the Plowden Report in 1967
argued that working class parents offer less encouragement and support towards their children's
education. The effect of studies like that of Douglas was to 'blame the victim'; working class
culture was seen as problematic. One result was the idea that certain students needed
'compensatory education' and gave rise to Educational Priority Areas as a result of the Plowden
Report of 1967.

Also the cultural deprivation explanation for working class underachievement clarifies that
working class children are also linguistically deprived. Sociological theorist Bernstein
deliberated this theory. The core of Bernstein's original intuition, "an obstinate idea in me which
I could neither give up nor properly understand" as he calls it, is that there is a difference
between working class and middle class speech, and that this difference is fraught with
educational consequence. Restricted and elaborate codes are Bernstein's description of the two
distinct speech codes. Bernstein's theory states that middle class families promote elaborated
codes and that elaborated codes are the currency of formal educational systems therein some
children, mainly middle class start at a tremendous advantage in the race for educational
certification.

The cultural deprivation supposition projects a number of ideas explaining working class
underachievement but this theory has been criticised. Firstly the fact that some working class
children do well defies all of the explanations. Also it is complicated to measure attitudes and
values so it can not be known that all working class parents lack interest. In addition to this
critics of this approach argue that cultural differences are not as important as the material
disadvantages suffered by working class children.

Theorists have also censured this supposition. Lynch and O'Neill argue that it is poverty that
often lies behind poor school performance. Additionally, Aggleton showed how some middle
class students resist schooling and leave with poor qualifications. However, the major difference
from working class school failures is that the students in Aggleton's study where not held back in
the labour market by their lack of academic qualifications because they had 'cultural capital'.
Further more Jackson and Marsden in 'Education and the Working Class' argued; working class
children caught between two cultures-home/school. Parents were eager but had limited resources
and relationships with staff were awkward

Cultural capital was an explanation formed by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu believed that middle
class children, possess and are rewarded with power and success. Bourdieu thought that the
middle class own the sort of culture that enables educational and social advancement while the
working class do not. Akin to cultural deprivation this theory has been criticised. It is said not to
have as much importance as material factors and Bourdieu was too vague about the values of the
theory.

Sub-cultural aspects have been suggested to explain working class underachievement. Sub-
culture supposed to be the fact that middle class people and working class people have different
value systems and that the working class practice in immediate gratification while the middle
class do not. Sugarman and Hymen agreed that sub-cultural factors explained working class
underachievement.

This theory like others has also been criticised. This theory is generalising for that reason it may
not be so of all working class and middle class people. Also this theory is seen as less important
than material factors and has been contradicted as some working class pupils do well in their
education.

Material factors focuses on income inequality and the material problems that are associated with
it. This theory describes how the working class tend to leave school at sixteen rather than
carrying on into further education and shows evidence of a link between parental occupation and
the attainment of children. When Halsey, Heath and Ridge attempted to determine the effects of
material and cultural factors on educational attainment they established that both factors
influenced the type of secondary school a child attended but once at secondary school cultural
factors had no effect on educational attainment.

Even though some sociologists have proven that material factors do have an effect on working
class educational attainment, some working class children are successful in their education even
with material deprivation there fore it is said by some sociologists that it must be cultural factors
that effects working class achievement at school.

Finally, rather than focusing on the relationships outside of the school, inside school factors have
been considered for an explanation for the lack of success working class children have in
education. This type of approach centres around the concepts of labelling theory and self-
fulfilling prophesy, believing that if someone is labelled in a particular way, other will respond to
their behaviour in terms of that label, and the person will act in terms of that label, resulting in a
self-fulfilling prophesy. This has been illustrated in studies by Rosenthal & Jacobson, where it
has been shown that a teacher perception of a pupil's abilities strongly affects how that pupil
progresses.

Streaming is another feature of inside school factors, streaming is pupils are put into ability
groups. Lacey and Hargreves examined the effects of streaming in schools, and found that
children from working class backgrounds were more likely to be placed in lower ability streams.
They also found that in these classes, the children were denied high-quality teaching and
knowledge, and that the teachers spent more time controlling behaviour than teaching the class.
This works to artificially disadvantage those in the lower ability streams, disadvantaging those
from working class backgrounds.

It is not just the above factors that need to be taken into consideration. Other clarifications have
been formed for the explaining of working class underachievement, one example of this is
Genetic explanations. Since intelligence is 'fixed' it can be scientifically measured therefore
objective tests have shown that working class students are less intelligent than middle class
students. These measured differences in IQ explain class inequalities in educational achievement
and it explains that class differences in educational achievement are continuing over time
because intelligence is mainly inherited. This approach was firstly associated with Eysenck and
Jenson

Like all explanations and theories for the educational underachievement of working class
children this theory has also been criticised. It is said that there is no agreed definition of
intelligence and there is no way to exclude the influence of environmental factors i.e. type of
question and type of answer. as well as this IQ tests cannot tell us about 'potential' and IQ scores
can be affected by variables that are independent of intelligence - reactions to the test situation,
nervousness, distrust, lack of familiarity.

In conclusion, there are many different explanations of class-based differences in educational

success. However, they are not necessarily isolated, and the factors identified on one theory may
be a cause of the factors outlined in another. The reasons for class-based differences may
therefore be very complex, and not able to be explained by a single factor in isolation.

(Mohsin Ehsan Muhaar(M.A Eng. in Linguistics, LL.B)Cell:03236437546)