Material and Cultural deprivation

Material and cultural deprivation

‘Which is more important for educational achievement, material or cultural deprivation’

A child social background is important is the vital factor in academic performance, and that a school’s success is based largely on the class background of its pupil. However other factors such as gender and ethnicity are also important for educational achievement.

Material Deprivation

Material deprivation-Income inequality and the problems associated with it.

Material deprivation refers to the inability for individuals or households to afford those consumption goods and activities that are typical in a society at a given point in time, irrespective of people’s preferences with respect to these items.

Working class parents tend to earn lower income than middle-class parents; as a result these children usually experience material deprivation, bad diet, unsatisfactory housing conditions, lack of resources such as pens and books. This lack of income is said to hinder their chances at school as judge by examination and sat’s results. For example Douglas 1964 longitudinal study, home and school, offered partial support to this materialistic approach. He found out that poor housing conditions in particular affected school performance as they would not able to work in those poor housing conditions, not able to get the resources  just as the other pupils.

However the government have long tried to tackle this issue by positive discrimination or compensatory education that targets poor areas with pupils living there, to spend money on their education to encourage them to improve their attitude towards.

Five policies were introduced to support schools and raise their standards:

·         Improve provision for gifted children

·         Learning mentors

·         Learning support unit

·         Beacon schools

·         Specialist schools

Cultural deprivation

Cultural deprivation-Different attitudes to attitudes between the classes

There are different attitudes towards education dependent on a person social class they belong to. It is thought that working class attitudes and values fail to adequately prepare children for their education, whereas middle class families do. Many working class families fail to socialise their children because they lack the cultural equipment needed to do well at school.

There are three main aspects of cultural deprivation:

Intellectual development-Refer to development of thinking and reasoning skills. Many working class homes lack the books and activities that would help develop the child intellectual development. This is why working class children are always a step behind Middle class families in education as they have the resources to progress their skills.

Language-Differences between the working class and middle class languages influence achievement.

·         The restricted code:  Speech code used by working class has a limited vocabulary and is based on the use of short and unfinished sentences.

·         The elaborated code: Used by Middle class, wider vocabulary and is based on longer complex sentences.

Attitudes and values- Parent’s attitudes and key values are a key factor affecting educational achievement. For example parents who placed less value on education and gave less encouragement to children, these children had lower level of achievement motivation. Compared to parent’s who encourage their children and place more value on education and how useful it is to their children have more higher level of motivation.

I believe the most important factor which affects in pupils attaining educational achievement is Cultural deprivation. The reason for this is because it is important to look at different social classes and compare whether or not different social classes affect parent’s attitudes and values toward education. As families is important factor to look at how they socialise their children on how to view education, as parent’s teach their children their norm and values of what they think of education is and if their parent’s failed and had low level education achievement,  a repeating cycle of not being able to escape the working class.