In turn, black pupils felt teachers underestimated their ability and picked on them. Gilborn and Youdell conclude that much of the conflict between white teachers and black pupils stem from the racial stereotypes that teachers hold, rather than the pupil’s actual behaviour. This disadvantages pupils because they are treated differently, which could result in their failure and even exclusion from school. As Jenny Bourne 1994) found that schools tend to see black boys as a threat and label them
For example, Wright (1992) found that teachers perceived and treated minority ethnic pupils differently from white pupils. Afro-Caribbean boys were often expected to behave badly and they received a disproportionate amount of negative teacher attention. Other sociologists claim that non-school factors such as family structure and home background have a greater impact on the educational achievement of different ethnic groups. Assess the claim that ‘ethnic differences in educational achievement are primarily the result of school factors’ (20 marks) Patterns of ethnic achievement are complex, cross-cut by gender and social class. For example Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students do worst compared to Indians and Chinese who do best.
To label someone is to attach a meaning or a definition to them. This is studied by Interactionists. When looking at ethnic differences in achievement, studies show that teacher often see black and Asian pupils as being far from the ‘ideal’ pupil. These negative labels leads to ethnic minority pupils being treated differently, resulting in their low educational performance. Gillborn and Youdell (2000) found that teachers expected black pupils to present more discipline problems and misinterpreted their behaviour as threatening or as a challenge to authority.
On the other hand, Gilbon recognises the processes committed in school which create the ethnic differences in attainment, he found that Afro-Caribbean boys were often labelled “unruly” “disrespectful”, they were also more likely to be given detentions than other pupils. This was because teachers misinterpreted their dress and manner of speech as a challenge to their authority. These actions lead these boys to have a self fulfilling prophecy which results in them
Assess sociological explanations for ethnic differences in achievement. (20 Marks) There are many reasons for ethnic differences in achievement, it’s been found that Indian and Asian pupils achieve higher than White, African-Caribbean, and Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi pupils. One possible cause of ethnic differences in education is labeling, sociologist Gillborn found that teachers would label and therefore discipline black pupils quicker than other pupils which would do the same things and this would create a self fulfilling prophecy of the teachers thinking that black pupils would misbehave and do poorly and the pupils would accept that and with the extra lack of teacher help and increased discipline would therefore fail. Gillborn and Youdell think that this is because teachers label black pupils as being more likely to cause problems and rebel, with the teachers labeling the black pupils like this it makes them feel picked on and that the teachers underestimated them. Another result of the negative labeling of black pupils is the higher exclusion rate and the higher chances of black pupils to be put in sets below their actual abilities, which can only lead those black pupils to underachieve.
These ‘streams’ would then depict how the child would learn; higher streams would be higher status knowledge and lower streams lower status knowledge (Keddie 1971). The way the children reacted to this streaming then affected the way they performed. M/C benefitted, becoming the pupil the teachers idolised, and W/C became ‘locked in’ to their stream and ‘got the message’ that they were written-off and weren’t to achieve good grades. Streaming is an element of the Self Fulfilling Prophecy, put forward by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), where by labelling these pupils and treating the pupil according to the label then the pupil would internalise this idea and become it. The Self Fulfilling Prophecy is relative to over-achievement and under-achievement, just as one pupil can become the ideal pupil and succeed, another can slip into the prediction
This cultural deprivation which Murray controversially links to lower IQ levels, is seen as creating a group of pupils who are fundamentally alienated from the education system. Cultural deprivation has been widely criticised as an explanation of class differences in
Aaron Cicourel and John Kitsuse’s study of educational counsellors in an American High school shows how labelling can disadvantage working-class students and it states in item A that ‘they were negatively labelled as non-academic and often as ‘difficult’’. This is because counsellors play an important role in deciding which students will get onto courses that prepare them for higher education. They found from their study that although they claimed to judge them on their ability, in practice they mainly judged them on the basis of their social class and/or race. Even where students had similar grades, counsellors were more likely to label middle-class
Any country that conquest another country has to impose it culture by obligating its language, religion, and traditions to fully conquest the other country. To many people from the dependent country, it is hard to learn the language imposed because of the lack of good education and experience. The dominant society may think that because of their anatomy or their race they are not able to do so. In the text “Black Children are Verbally Deprived” by Walt Wolfram, the author explains how the North American society supposes that African American has a different English speech because the segregation and the poor education they have had. Nowadays, Puerto Ricans are having the same problems as the African Americans did before with the North Americans in terms of the use of English.
One explanation for these patterns of achievement lies in the school itself and the processes at work there. For example, Black pupils are more likely to be excluded from school than members of other ethnic groups. Other factors within school include peer groups and subcultures. For example, Sewell found that a minority of Black boys joined ‘rebel’ subcultures. However, he also found that some teachers labelled all Black boys as rebels, regardless of the facts.