Using information from the items and elsewhere, assess the extent to which pupil subcultures are the cause of failure at school

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Monday 9th March 2009

'Using information from the items and elsewhere, assess the extent to which pupil subcultures are the cause of failure at school'.

Failure is school may be due to a number of factors, however the most obvious and common is pupil anti-school subcultures. A subculture defines a group of people within a larger culture that shares aspects of that culture but also some of its own values, customs ect. A majority of school students will accept the rules and the authority of teachers without question, but there is a small minority of students that will choose not to follow school rules and choose to misbehave and not complete school work in hope of becoming more popular within their peers perspective. Subcultures in general, have things in common: they try to gain higher states then their peers, mutual support and a sense of belonging from the subculture. These subcultures can be pro-school or anti-school.

Sociologist Paul Willis (1977) wanted to investigate the reasons behind these mainly male, anti-school subcultures. His study showed that working-class 'lads' learned to behave at school in ways quite at odds with capitalism's supposed need for a docile workforce. The main aim of the 'lads' at school was to have a 'laff' by rejecting the values of the school. However, according to Hargreaves (1967), anti-school working class subcultures are mainly the result streaming and labelling in secondary schools, the pupils who were lower streamed or labelled as "failure" would be more likely to form their own subculture in order to achieve success in the eyes of their peers, as they were unable to achieve status in terms of the mainstream values of the school. I personally agree with Hargreaves in that anti-school subcultures can be formed as a result of teacher labelling and streaming, because students may be made to feel as 'failures' and see no hope of improvement and may feel that they need to live up to that label, but also agree with aspects of Willis theory that working-class boys in particular don't take school and their education seriously as they feel that they don't need to, so instead they just mess around at school. On the other hand students that are labelled as 'excellent' and are placed in higher streams would want to live up to that label, and may feel pressured to conform to that tag, because if they don't then them too may be classed as 'failures'.
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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 ...

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