Education Topic 3 - Ethnicity And Education

• labels given usually by authority figure
• e.g. by a teacher to a student
• master status given
• a sub group is formed
• self-fulfilling prophecy - living up to the label
• 
  

• He was also black and grew up in the same are so could be biased
• the boys may act differently when they're being observed

• racism that occurs in the day to day practice of an institution such as the police or education system
• when racism isn't allowed but still exists
• doesn't mean that everyone in that institution is racist just that racism can go unchallenged
• e.g. The Stephen Lawrence case
• Sewell also did a study on institutional racism

Young black men are eight times more likely to be stopped by the police

• 12.5% gender gap in Afro-Caribbean's compared to a 7.5% gender gap nationally
  
• A/C boys four times more likely to be excluded
• Chinese boys can expect to earn 25% less than white graduates
• the successfully educated Indian is more likely to be unemployed than the young white Brit
• 23% of places at university taken by people from ethnic minority groups
• more black carribean students at the London Metropolitan university than all of the Russell group universities put together
• there was 1 A/C student accepted in to Oxford in 2009
• ethnic minorities more likely to drop out or achieve lower classifications of degrees

Bernstein (1975) - Restricted code

Mac an Ghaill- young A/C are more likely to use the restricted code

- influenced by the media, family etc.

Berthoud- A/C families more likely to be single mother

Murray - says these are are more likely to get into trouble - no discipline from fathers

• Pakistani and Bangladeshi are three times more likely than whites to be in the poorest 1/3 of population
  
• also 3x more likely to be unemployed - including afro-caribbeans as well
• 15% of minority groups live in overcrowded homes (2% for whites)

Evaluation - marxists would say that certain ethnic groups are more likely to do bad because they're poor not because of their ethnicity

Becker (1971) would suggest that some teachers label students based on stereotypes

Gilbourne and Yodell

• teachers quicker to discipline black students than others for similar behaviour
• teachers hold 'Racialised Expectations'
• they see black pupils as anti-authority
• this creates conflict between teachers and pupils which reinforces stereotypes and leads to more problems

teachers were more likely to label black students as trouble makers

were therefore put in lower sets

• observed lessons and interviewed students
• found that young Asian students (mainly girls) were left out of group discussions if the teacher couldn't pronounce their name
• this leads to marginalisation and therrefore underachievement

found their were three different kinds of teacher in the school:

1. the colour blind teacher - believed in equality yet let racism go unchallenged
2. the liberal chauvinist - believed that all black students came from poor backgrounds and therefore had lower expectations
3. Overt racist - believe black people are inferior, are openly racist

it could be argued that the curriculum is ethnocentric

British Curriculum centres around white, British culture

e.g. GCSE English only teaches books by British authors- usually really old ones

• schools try to create a false history based around the idea of empire
• e.g. taught that Britain "civilised" countries when they took them over
• whereas it is not taught that Idi Ahmin who took over Uganda was trained by the British army

• doesn't take into account other factors such as class, wealth, gender etc.
• Chinese and Indian students do better than Bangladeshi students so maybe its about class instead
• or you could say gender is the issue instead because girls outperform boys in every ethnicity

• language of us and them
• Elliot says people are racist because they're ignorant not because of their skin colour - conditioned to feel that way
• "If you graduate from high school and your not racist you weren't listening properly

• tested on 30 secondary schools (11-16) with a diverse population - large amounts of ethnic
• provided funding for failing ethnic minority students - particularly afro-carribean students because they were the ones failing the most
• gave out questions about how effective the funding had been
• only 18 schools actually gave feedback at the end
• found that the school would do better if there was more tolerance towards all ethnic groups - not to do with money
• better SMSC programmes
• never became nationwide because Tikley found that it would only work if there was already a good tolerance structure in place at the school
• throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it