However, Coard felt that there was racism being put through the ‘ethnocentric’ education, it focused on white people, so it caused racism from the teachers and peer groups.
This view argues that ethnic minority pupils are being discriminated against, but I feel it is difficult to state whether this is knowingly happening. For example, there is a wide range of ethnic minority pupils from a range of backgrounds in Britain today so it would be impractical to include work that is related to all of the cultures. As we all live in England it seems natural to give slightly more attention to the history of this country. Also, an explicit criticism of Coard’s work would be that it is not scientific as it is only based on his views. Overall, I feel that what Coard has described is not discrimination, but he has simply looked at the education system from a negative angle.
By the 1980s, Troyna and Carrington found that there was not ‘overt’ racism, but ‘covert’ racism. By this they meant that people were saying, ‘I’m not racist, but…’’ This indicates that at this time, people were aware that it was wrong to be racist, but they still had views against ethnic minorities. This shows that there may have been discrimination against ethnic minorities, but it was not intentional. They felt that schools needed to do ‘Anti-Racist Education,’ this would involve more strategies to deal with overt racism and would completely remove any barriers that were apparent between the cultures. From this, it can be said there is very little or no discrimination against ethnic minorities as schemes have even been introduced to reduce the small amount of covert racism.
From primary school research Cecile Wright found that teachers gave Asian girls; less attention, perceived them as an annoyance and spoke to them in simple language. From a personal point of view, I have not experienced this and consequently feel that this view is a little out-of-date. It may have occurred when new immigrants arrived to this country as their language skills would have been minimal and people would not have been used to seeing pupils from other ethnic groups. However, today, Britain is a multicultural country and up to four generations of ethnic minority families have settled here, so their language skills have dramatically improved and they are no longer seen as an addition to the country, but more part of it. This therefore, disproves Wright’s work and shows that ethnic minority pupils are not discriminated against.
Aside from racism, labelling from teachers is another factor that may cause discrimination to ethnic minority pupils. Elaine Brittain states that teachers may have stereotypes of Afro-Caribbean’s. They get known as slow and having a low effort in work which results in them taking up the image and causing it to become true.
This idea indicates that the underachievement of certain ethnic groups may be due to the discriminative labelling from teachers, which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Coard who stated that teachers believe Afro-Caribbean’s are only good at sport supported this. This means that ethnic minority pupils are being discriminated against because the teacher already has preconceived ideas about how the child will perform based on their race. It is then felt that this determines the characteristics of the child, irrelevant of their abilities.
This is a very generalised view, as not all teachers will label children. It may often be the case that the child naturally excels, which causes it to look like they have been pushed to a certain area, where as in actual fact, they did it themselves. I therefore, agree with the view of the Swan Report that does not agree that labelling occurs and if it did, students just ignored it. Furthermore, as Maureen Stone states, the labelling may actually give the children an incentive to do well.
Overall, it is possible to see that beneath the question about discrimination against ethnic minority pupils, there is also a question about the differing abilities. The idea that the low-achieving ethnic groups being discriminated against would be a worthy explanation of their under-achievement. However, it is important to take note of the fact that there are many other factors that may cause the difference in ability of ethnic minorities to their white peers. For example, the Afro-Caribbean’s may have an innate ability in sport, so it is not that being pushed towards sport, but more the fact that they actually enjoy and succeed in it.
Some of the later immigrants may have language barriers that may cause problems with their educational ability, resulting in them not doing as well. Finally, the family background of all the different cultures is so vast that it would be another factor affecting their achievement.
Overall, I feel the view that ethnic minority pupils are being discriminated against in the education system is not a fair judgement to make as we have seen there are many issues that go with this subject. For example, the idea of discrimination can be interpreted in many different ways. It could be direct racism in which a child is singly stereotyped and discriminated against, or a milder form where a cohort of people are having ethnocentric teaching.
The consequent issue that needs to be tackled is that if there is not labelling then why is there such a difference in the abilities of ethnic groups. Personally, I feel this is due to the smaller issues as discussed earlier which are different to each ethnic group hence causing the different levels of ability.
