Another explanation for underachievement at school is cultural deprivation. This means that children are deficient in certain values, attitudes and skills, which are essential for educational success. Some deficiencies are a lack of ambition, a lack of motivation, little encouragement at home, few books, educational toys and educational visits and immediate gratification which leads to a lack of hard work and sacrifice needed for educational success. The effect becomes cumulative, if the child starts school like this and the effect increases as the time passes, the working class child is left further and further behind. The theory of cultural deprivation is that working class groups deprived of certain important factors before school accounts for low educational attainment or underachievement at school. Equality of opportunity can then only become a reality by compensating for the deprivations through education. This is otherwise known as positive discrimination in favour of culturally deprived children so they are given a helping hand so they can compete on equal terms with other children.
Operation Head Start was a programme of pre-school education, which aimed to educate children before they reached school. This would mean that once they started school, all children both working class and middle class would have equal opportunities in education. Operation Head Start were a series of television programmes, for example “Sesame Street” which America believed would aid children in spelling and counting. Unfortunately, the results were very disappointing. The Westinghouse Corporation found it produced no long-term beneficial results, and children from working class backgrounds still had low educational attainment. In Britain, pre-school education began in the late 1960’s with the government allocating extra resources for school buildings in the low-income areas and higher wages for the teachers working in those areas. Educational Priority Areas (EPA’s) were based mainly on pre-school education and additional measures in primary schools to raise literacy standards.
Another explanation for low educational attainment is called the “Labelling Theory”. This was introduced by Becker, who believed that the teacher’s interaction with their pupils could affect the way pupils behaved towards authority and school rules. The labelling theory states that teachers and school processes “label” pupils as either intelligent or not able, and in theory the pupils live up to these perceptions. This is known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. This relates to low educational attainment as pupils labelled as deviant should therefore act deviant, and go against school rules and authority. This means that they will fail exams on purpose, therefore underachieving at school.
It has been suggested that norms and values of social classes influence performance in the educational system. Hyman found that members of the working class place a lower value on educations. They place less emphasis on formal education as a means to personal achievement and they see less value in continuing school beyond the minimum leaving age. He also found that members of the working class place a lower value on achieving higher occupational status. In evaluating jobs, they emphasize “stability, security and immediate economic benefits” and tend to reject the risks and investments involved in aiming for high status occupations. Jobs therefore tend to be limited to a “good trade”. Hyman found that members of the working class believe that there is less opportunity for personal advancement. This belief is probably the basis for the lower value placed on education and high occupational status. Hyman argues that although it is based on a realization that the working class does have less opportunity, the belief itself reduces opportunities even more.
Sugarman also argued that working class pupils are socialised with different attitudes, which can account for low levels of educational attainment. He identified four different attitudes that the working class had. The first of these is fatalism, which involves an acceptance of the situation rather than trying to improve it. The second is immediate gratification, which emphasizes the enjoyment of pleasures for the moment rather than sacrifice that for a future reward that will be better. This discourages sustained effort with promises of examination success. It also encourages earlier leaving from education, for the more immediate rewards of a wage packet, adult status and freedom from discipline of school. The third is present time orientation, which may further reduce the motivation for academic achievement, whereas an emphasis on long-term goals and future planning can encourage pupils to remain in full time education longer, by providing a purpose for their stay. The last is collectivism, which involves loyalty to a group rather than placing emphasis on personal achievement. Sugarman concludes that subcultures of pupils from working class backgrounds place them at a disadvantage in the educational system.
Language is yet another explanation for low educational attainment. Bernstein found two system codes used within a school. The first was restricted code, which was used only by working class children. Restricted code can only be understood by other working class children, and it is inappropriate in schools as middle class speech is universalistic, otherwise known as elaborate code. This is used by teachers in schools, and as they don’t understand restricted code, this places the working class children at a disadvantage to the middle class children. To understand a working class child, you would need to listen to the whole story from the beginning, where as with a middle class child you would understand the story from listening halfway through. Bernstein therefore concludes that for a working class child to achieve good grades at school they must adopt the elaborate code spoken by teachers. This also shows that pupil’s performance has less to do with the education they receive in schools and more to do with what they bring to school in terms of experience and linguistics.
A Marxist perception of low educational attainment is cultural capital. Bourdieu argues that the working class failure is down to faults in the education system and nothing to do with working class culture. The major role of the education system is cultural reproduction. This doesn’t involve the transmission of the culture of society as a whole, but the reproduction of the Bourgeoisie (the rich). Bourdieu refers to the Bourgeoisie as cultural capital, because via the educational system it can be translated into wealth and power. Therefore, students with upper class backgrounds have a built in advantage because they have been socialised into the Bourgeoisie. He says that education doesn’t start from scratch, but uses skills and knowledge prior to being at school. Children from upper classes have internalised these skills and knowledge during their pre-school years and they possess the key to unlock the messages transmitted in the classroom. This means that students from upper classes have a higher success rate than the middle class students.
Bourdieu believes that a major role of the education system is eliminating the working class from higher levels of education. This is accomplished by examination failure and self-elimination. As they have a relative lack of dominant culture, working class pupils are much more likely to fail examinations which stops them from going into higher education.
This leads me to believe that although material deprivation is an explanation of low educational attainment, it is not the main barrier to working class achieving at school. It is one of several factors which all add up to working class underachieving at school.
