Cultural Depravation Theory

850 Words4 Pages
CULTURAL DEPRIVATION THEORY The cultural deprivation theory, basically states that the culture of the working class people, regardless of race, gender, and ethnicity, is inherently deficient and different from the middle class. For this reason, the working class will always remain poor. Focus has been placed on this theory in terms of educational failure of the working class. Another assumption of this theory is that the educational structure is built on middle class values and since it is believed that the culture of the middle class is different, it would be extremely difficult for them to succeed. Also, because the teachers have middle class values as well, the cultural deprivation theorists believe that they will have a bias against the working class kids and therefore they will not be able to teach them properly since their values and cultures conflict. Compensatory education is a policy that was designed to deal with the problem of cultural deprivation, by providing extra resources to schools and communities in deprived areas. Compensatory education programmes were introduced to intervene early in the socialisation process to compensate children for deprivation they experience at home. The most comprehensive programme was Head Start. It involved health care, social services, and education. Parental involvement was a key component, so parents and children were taught together. In practice the policies focused originally upon the assumed cultural deprivation of black children in the USA as the most comprehensive programme Head Start was introduced, which involved health care, social services, and education and working class children in the UK as in the Education Priority Area Programme and have consequently attracted criticism from sociologists who argued strenuously against the concept of cultural deprivation. It may perhaps be argued that later
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