sociology

1. Overall how impactful are cultural factors in determining the educational achievement for
ethnic minorities.

I think that cultural factors impact ethnic minorities during education because one of the reasons
may be that the parents aren’t very engaged in their child’s education. This could mean that the
parent wouldn’t go to parents evenings at the school, and work with them to improve their child
educational achievement. This can result in low motivation for the child because their parents might
not be interested in seeing them achieve. However in other cultures education is deemed very
important, and so parents may push for extra tutoring for their child, and do everything they can to
make sure they do well. Family may also impact education achievement by having an absent father,
and Daniel Monyihan argued that children are deprived of adequate care because the single mother
has to struggle financially. The fathers absence can also lead to boys lacking an adequate role model.

Intellectual and linguistic skills can also cause underachievement for minority groups, and theorists
argue that low-income black families lack intellectual stimulation and experiences. This means that
they haven’t been able to develop problem solving and reasoning skills which can leave them poorly
equipped for school. also it was viewed that the language which is spoken at home can have an
impact, however this view was changed as statistics showed that pupils with English as their first
language were only 3.2 points ahead of those without English as their first language.

2. Which of the cultural deprivation factors do you think has the biggest impact on educational
achievement foe ethnic minorities?

I believe that attitudes have values has the biggest impact on educational achievement. This is
because many cultural deprivation theorists argue that black children are socialised into a subculture
that instils a fatalistic ‘live for today’ attitude which means they don’t value education. Stands
analysis of the longitudinal study of young people found that Indian students are more likely to
complete homework five evenings a week and the group where parents are more likely to say they
always know where their child is when they are out. This study shows that the two difference in
parenting between the different ethnic groups also places a difference in how they might do during
education and who has a more positive attitude with wanting to succeed.