“…(disadvantaged) children may not experience the benefits at home which more advantaged children take for granted, for example access to a wide range of books or educational software” (DCSF 2009a)
In the second half of the last century, our schools began to develop strategies on multicultural education. There was recognition that home and school for some of the ethnic minority were two separate worlds. The Bullock Report (1975) was perhaps the most well known document in this respect. It pointed out that home and school should not be separate worlds for children and that efforts should be made, by schools and others in education, to reflect the child’s life at home. Although, the focus of this report was ethnic minority pupils and their needs, it equally applies to White working class children for whom home and school are two separate worlds as the academic Gillian Evans has shown. In her research into the lives of working class families she found a world very different from that which middle class people are used to. Talking about one family she visits, she writes:
“..The contrast between Sharon’s household and my own is revealing. I become self-consciously aware that, at least on school days, my daughters have to make sense of all the prohibitions and special routines to do with the cultivation of self-discipline: learning how to eat healthily, happily do homework and music practice (not so happily), before relaxing and doing as they please. I realise that this is also what probably makes the transition from home to school easier for middle-class children: they are already used to following instructions, doing as they are told, and may have some awareness that those rules and regulations are for their own good”. (Evans 2006)
Demie and Lewis (2010) spoke of assumptions made by the education system about different groups of pupils. It is expected that immigrants will not understand the education system and the wider services available in a given area around them and that White working class pupils will have such knowledge. So everyone sets out to work with the former while ignoring the latter and yet it is they who need bit of an ‘immigrant treatment’- to be pointed out where services are; what their purpose is, how they can benefit the user etc.
According to the DCSF, cultural and social factors are implicated in the association between deprivation and poor educational outcomes. They have acknowledged the possibility that working class children may have “different background knowledge, skills and interest which are not reflected in the school curriculum and are less likely to have the kinds of social connections which offer inspiration and opportunities” (2009b).
It has been shown that the way middle class children are parented, both before and during their school life, has greater continuity with what they experience at school. According to Lareau (2003), through their upbringing they develop a ‘sense of entitlement’. They expect the world and its systems to revolve around them and when it doesn’t they know they can complain. This is often not the case for working class children (Evans 2007, Lareau 2003). For them home and school are two separate worlds, given the “middle class values” of the education system (Evans 2007).
Reay (2006) talks about working class pupils feeling worthless within the ‘classed’ environment education is. They can feel “..not really valued and respected within education” and there was a feeling of inadequacy – “inadequate cultural backgrounds, looked down for their ‘stupidity’ and ..positioned as less than human”. On the other hand, there are numerous schools who give respect to such working class young people and their parents and get respect back.
Thrup also talks about social class discrimination in the education system. He points out: “..research has indicated that teachers and principals can advantage the middle class in lots of ways in the day to day life of schools: in their use of language, in what they choose to teach about and assess, in their support for segregated and stratified school programmes, in their assumptions about student behaviours and world views, the so called ’hidden curriculum’ and so on” (2007). This sounds like ‘classism’(ala institutional racism)
According to Lupton (2003a), middle class teachers do not always recognise class differences between themselves and their working class pupils in the same that they recognise ethnic and cultural differences. They were also less likely to adapt their practice to accommodate the needs of white working class students in the way they were for ethnic minority students. Of course, their ability to adapt is also limited, given the constraints of school organisation and the curriculum as well as unavailability of training and resources.
Becky Francis, RSA Director of Education, was quoted as making a similar point when she said: “Academic research…has shown that there is often a huge gulf between the values that working-class children grow up with and those they encounter at school. Middle-class children, by contrast, face far less dissonance… . Already, working-class kids feel like fish out of water,” she says. “Those differences come into play even at a very young age. If you’re told you’re a failure, why would you bother?” (Bloom 2010)
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