Students seem to achieve success in the eyes of their peers by not respecting teachers, messing about, arriving late, having fights, not turning up to lesson and so on. This seems to be supported by Item B as it states that students are willing to fail exams in order to stay ‘cool’. Lynne Howe says that “social standing outside school is more important that qualifications” for these students. Item 2 also states that teenagers identified five different groups in school: Charvers, Radgys, Divvies, Goths and Freaks, of which the main subculture in the north east of England is charvers who reject school as uncool and refuse to do coursework. If you were seen doing homework or answering questions in class there was risk that you would get bullied and made fun of. In general I agree with Item B, I do believe that some students care more about their reputation with other students than qualifications. I think at school it’s a matter of bully or be bullied, if you are seen as the ‘popular’ group (anti-school subculture) then its very unlike that you would get picked on by other subcultures, but pro-school subcultures are more likely to be bullied as they may be perceived as ‘geeks’ or ‘nerds’ by the popular students.
Writers such as Hargreaves and Willis refer to the pro- and anti-school cultures as homogenous, which are coherent groups that share their own uniform sets of values. Peter Woods (1983), however, argues that this is too simplistic and that pupils use a variety of adaptations, some pupils may accept aspects of the school’s values and reject others. But in many cases the response will vary within and between different pupils, institutions and location. Woods makes a relevant point in that different students have different adaptations, and it depends on the family background, class, where the student lives, the community they are brought up in ect. For example middle-class and higher-class student may go to high performance public school and in that kind of institution there may be less anti-school subcultures than in a private secondary school in east London.
The anti-school male subcultures were made apparent in the 70s were most students could get jobs despite their lack of qualifications, which meant that students didn’t necessarily need to pay attention at school, they could just have a ‘laff (Willis 77)’. Mac and Ghaill (1994) illustrate the complexity of sub-cultural responses by examining the relationship between schooling, work, masculinity and sexuality. He identified a range of school male subcultures: The ‘macho lads’ (this group was hostile to school authority and learning); The academic achievers (this group adopted a more traditional upwardly mobile route via academic success); The ‘new enterprisers’ (this group embraced the ‘new vocationalism’ and studied subjects such as business studies and computing); ‘Real Englishmen’ (this was a small group with middle-class pupils, who rejected what teachers had to offer, but aspired to university and a professional career); Gay students (these students commented on the heterosexist and homophobic nature of the school).
Ethnic minority subcultures are also important in understanding if subcultures make student underachieve. For example many black boys reject school and education in favour of a culture of conspicuous consumption and street credibility, while some black girls strive to achieve in alternative ways, as they reject their teachers’ low expectations of them. Other ethnic groups, such as Asians, in particular Pakistani boys and girls seem to accept and respect school and education and seem to be very high achievers and continue to higher education and end up with successful careers, usually in business or medicine. I think that some poorer ethnic minority students may have experienced cultural deprivation, where they know the value of education and as a result want to learn, where other don’t know its value and reject it and refuse to learn.
Item A I think is a good example of a pro-school subculture, maybe it’s the ‘New Enterprisers’? Item A shows that not all students involved in subcultures underachieve, the 3 boys all have excellent knowledge of the stock market and all plan to continue their passion on to further education in hope of having a career in that field. It also states that the Three Freshers are just one of thousands of investment clubs in the UK, so this subculture is nationwide and has extremely smart student within it or as Mac and Ghaill refer to as the remasculinization of the vocational curriculum (which describes the process whereby higher-status subjects such as business studies come to be dominated by boys).
To conclude I believe that subculture to some extend are the case of failure at school, in that a number of pupils do not value education, and focus on building a ‘cool’ reputation within their subculture. In most cases that means that the students with interrupt lessons and not do set tasks set by the teacher, which as a result will bring down achievement as they are not focusing on the information given by the teacher and also them kind of students are not allowing pro-school subcultures to learn because of the bad behaviour or interruptions going on in class. However I think subcultures vary in many aspects and different subcultures will have different ideologies depending where they live, their socio-class and the background they come from. Not all subcultures are anti-school, there are also pro-school subcultures, so we can not generalize subcultures.
P.S I am not sure if I answered the question correctly, if not then SORRY.
By Saida Murati