Bourdieu a French sociologist argued that the education system is biased towards the culture of dominant social classes as it devalues the working classes skills and knowledge. Bourdieu recognised that the educational attainment of social groups is directly related to the amount of cultural capital they have meaning that middle class students have higher success rates than working class students because the middle class culture is closer to the dominant culture.
Basil Bernstein believed that language played a part in educational achievement, as it is an important medium of communication and learning. Bernstein believed that educational attainment may be related to the different speech patterns between the classes and he recognised to different two linguistic codes. These codes originate from the work place and family organisation, the middle classes seem to have a elaborated or universal code where as the working classes seem to have a more restricted or context bound code which to not help them through school. Bernstein believed that the middle classes could switch from one code to another but the working classes were only able to use to restricted code. This leaves the working class at a disadvantage as formal education is based on the terms of an elaborated code. However Bernstein’s distinction between the classes is over simplified, as even if there was a clear working class when he was writing in the 1960s this is not the case today and there is little evidence for his assertions about working class and middle class family life.
J.W.B. Douglas also commeneted that one of the most important facts to how well you achieve is down to parental interest. The middle classes seem to have more parental interest and the working classes less, however the working class could have less time to visit the schools because of the demands of their jobs, they may also be put off from visiting schools because of the way teachers interact with them, bearing in mind that most teachers are middle class.
Middle class parents are in a better position to ensure their children get to a better school than working class parents. This is because they have cultural capital, meaning they can ‘play the system’ to their advantage, they also possess material advantages, this all leaves the working class children at a loss and there culture determining how well they might be able to succeed at school.
The theory of cultural deprivation was developed based on a more negative view of the working classes. This placed the blame for working class educational failure on the culture of low-income groups. This has also led to the idea of positive discrimination towards culturally deprived children leading to the policy of compensatory education where the working class children are given extra resources to help them compete on equal levels with the other children.
The theory of cultural deprivation has been attacked as by placing the blame for failure on the child and his or her background attention is therefore being diverted from the deficiencies of the education system.
Interactionists focus on processes within the education system, which result in different levels of achievement. Interactionist sociologists have said that the interaction between the teacher and pupil will affect their attainment. This can be because some teachers tend to label their learners; these labels can be positive or negative with the positive labels meaning the pupils will succeed where as the negative labels meaning the pupils will be more likely to under achieve.
Howard Becker writing in the 1960s said that teachers had an ideal pupil image, which was based on conduct, manners and the nature of attitude of the learner. Becker said that the academic ability of the learner could influence their interaction with the teacher, which could therefore determine their educational attainment. The teachers usually have an ideal image, however this image tends to be conformist, this has led to the self-fulfilling prophecy theory, where the teacher is the prophecy and the leaner is self-fulfillist, this results in the teacher labelling there learners with the working class usually being negative, the pupils then react to the label given and respond accordingly meaning the label has become true and the prophecy is fulfilled.
However interactionists recognise that not all pupils will live up to their labels. Fuller writing in 1984 found that black girls in a comprehensive school resented their negative stereotypes of being both black and female. They felt that people expected them to fail so they tried to prove them wrong by devoting themselves to their work in order to achieve success. Fuller’s work avoids some of the pitfalls of deterministic versions of the labelling theory, which suggest that failure is inevitable for those with negative labels attached to them.
The school organisation has been criticised with teachers interacting differently with different streams, especially since the middle classes are normally in the top stream and the working class in the lower stream. There is also said to be a culture clash between teachers and working class pupils as the teachers are normally middle class, which could all ultimately affect the child’s educational achievement.
Nell Keddie writing in the 1970s commented on the differentiation of an undifferentiated curriculum. Keddie felt that all streams should have the same information, something, which was not happening in schools at the time, she was writing. Keddie also felt that the curriculum was middle class orientated with the subjects, way of learning, the language and the more mental and abstract concepts, which would leave the working classes at a disadvantage. This meant that the middle class would possess the key to open the doors to success.
We can see that the research of Douglas et al shows that various home background factors and experiences of cultural deprivation can account for attainment levels of the working class being lower than the middle class. It may be that those sociologists who emphasise the inside school factors are nearer in explaining the causes of a differential education system.