Assess the view that subcultures are the key to underachievment in school

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Chris Fox

Assess the view that pupil subcultures are the key to understanding educational underachievement.

A subculture is a culture within a culture where a group develop distinctive norms and values that are different from those of the mainstream culture. Subcultures can exist in both a positive and negative way and during education these opposite subcultures are at their most noticeable. These two subculture s in school are called pro school subculture (positive) and an anti school subculture (negative) each sharing very different views of school. A pro school culture is a culture within the schools environment that agrees and bases their norms and values around the rules that are set by the school. This is generally the group that contains the high academic achievers within the school gaining the top grades. An anti school subculture is again a culture within the school environment but this subculture base there norms and values to contradict and deny the rules of the schooling environment. Evidence suggests that it is because of anti school subcultures schooling experiences under achievement. It has also been shown that this under achievement is mainly from males, the working class and some ethnic groups.

        

Willis studied counter school subcultures and the working classes affect within them and likelihood of why they are popular within them. His study was carried pout in the 1970’s. Willis’s study suggested that working class boys were highly likely to join counter school sub cultures because of there attitudes in the schooling environment. He believe it was because they had very little or no value to the academic work that the school would set and that they had no interests or aspirations of gaining qualifications. He also believed that they avoided going to lessons and bunked of school and hated the school trying to take there time and would stop this if they could in any way.

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 O’ Donnell and Sewell showed in there study how various ethnic groups joined in the anti school subcultures. For example Afro Caribbean males are more likely to join an anti school subculture in order to reject white domination within school systems. Whereas it showed that Indians where more likely to join pro school subcultures as they have a very high will to succeed. Afro Caribbean girls also tended to form pro school sub cultures by rejecting there negative label and therefore academically achieve. These studies suggest that anti school sub cultures within education environments are if not one of the ...

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