The Experience of Youth in Education
Class, genderand ethnicity all have an effect on a person’s experience of education. Aspects of both a formal and informal curriculum (hidden) will impact on the achievement of these different groups.
Recall previous sessions, what are we taught through the hidden curriculum?
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Gender
Academic achievement
The media has focused on the under achievement of boys for the past few years. This has almost become a moral panic as, for the first time in history, girls are outperforming the boys. We need to take care in this assumption however. Middle class boys who attend private schools still do very well, as do middle class girls. Some middle class boys do under perform however, but these are unlikely to form the anti school sub cultures that their working class peers will (more later). Middle class boys are more likely to develop feelings of inadequacy and having shamed /disappointed their parents.
Educational achievement is also influenced by ethnicity with Chinese and Indian students achieving much more highly than Pakistani or Bangladeshi youth(girls and boys). It is important then to include all social categories when discussing under achievement.
Attitudes towards education
Peer groups are formed based on masculinities and femininities and this process begins at a very young age. Reay studied 8 year old girls in primary school and found that four distinct groups could be identified, the nice girls, the girlies, the spice girls and the tomboys, indicating the importance and persistence of gender specific peer groups during the school years.
Sue Sharpe found that the attitudes of girls in the 70’s did not include a strong interest in academic achievement. They were far more interested in romance and motherhood. When Sharpe undertook a follow up study in 1994 however, she found that girls had become much more career orientated and saw education as a route to economic and social success.
Why do you think this may be the case?
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How attached a male is to hegemonic forms of masculinity (Connell) will also affect their experience of schooling. Haywood, 2003 found that pupils use language to regulate masculinity. Hard working middle class male students who achieved A’s were called ‘wanker’, ‘bum bandit’, ’gay’ and ‘poof’ even to their faces. They were felt to be engaging in feminine behaviour by concentrating on their studies instead of focusing on their social life.
The above study can also be linked to the ‘Harkton Boys’, study of students in an inner city school in London (Archer and Yamashati). The boys showed ‘resistance’ to academic achievement and the fear of being seen as a ‘swot’.
Kehily and Nayak looked at the use of humour and joking between boys aged 15/16. They found that boys engage in verbal insults (cussing), often based on insults about each others’ mother. The better the boys were at these insults, the higher their status within the group. This humour was also used in order to assert heterosexual masculinity. These boys also had a game called ‘punch and run’ where they punched each other and ran. This was viewed by the researchers as a form of male bonding leading to a more successful experience within the education system.
Mac en Ghaill’s ‘crisis in masculinity’ has also been used to explain achievement patterns. The feminisation of the labour market and changes in the economic structure of the country have led to young males being unclear as to their role in society. They no longer believe that educational success will lead to economic security and have become confused as to where they fit in.
Subject choice
Up until the 1980’s boys and girls often followed different educational courses. Boys were encouraged to study subjects which corresponded to traditional masculine employment and behaviours such as woodwork, metalwork and the sciences. Girls were encouraged to study subjects which would prepare them for their expected life in patriarchal society such as child care, cooking and needlework. Following the introduction of the 1988 national curriculum however, all students had to study core foundation subjects (maths, English and science) and fewer optional subjects were on offer. Despite this there still appears to be a gender divide in optional subject choices and this becomes more apparent at AS and A level. Males dominate in maths, science and technology and girls in the social sciences and particular vocational areas such as health and social care and child care. 95% of those studying engineering courses are male. Mac en Ghaill has named this the ‘remasculinisation’ of the vocational curriculum.
Explanations for differential subject choices are the following;
Innate ability
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Subject preference
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Socialisation in the home
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Teacher expectations
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Peer influence
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Table 3.10Students in higher education:1 by subject2 and sex, 2006/07
United Kingdom / Percentages
Men / Women / All
Business and administrative studies / 15.8 / 11.2 / 13.1
Subjects allied to medicine / 5.5 / 18.2 / 12.7
Education / 5.4 / 12.0 / 9.2
Social studies / 7.5 / 9.3 / 8.5
Biological sciences / 5.9 / 7.7 / 7.0
Creative arts and design / 6.2 / 7.2 / 6.8
Engineering and technology / 11.7 / 1.7 / 5.9
Languages / 4.5 / 7.0 / 5.9
Computer science / 8.3 / 1.7 / 4.5
Historical and philosophical studies / 4.6 / 4.2 / 4.4
Law / 3.7 / 4.0 / 3.8
Physical sciences / 4.8 / 2.6 / 3.6
Medicine and dentistry / 2.6 / 2.7 / 2.7
Architecture, building and planning / 4.1 / 1.4 / 2.6
Mass communications and documentation / 2.0 / 2.1 / 2.0
Source: Social Trends 39 ONS
Ethnicity
Attainment of five or more GCSE grades A* to C or equivalent:1 by ethnic group2England / Percentages
1999 / 2006
White / 50 / 58
Black / 38 / 50
Asian / 48 / 64
Indian / 60 / 72
Pakistani / 29 / 52
Bangladeshi / 29 / 57
Other Asian / 72 / 77
Other ethnic group / 42 / 56
1 Includes General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQ) achieved in Year 11. See Appendix, Part 3: Qualifications.
2 Pupils from each ethnic group achieving these grades, as a proportion of all pupils within that group, in their last year of compulsory education. See Appendix, Part 1: Classification of ethnic groups, and Part 3: Stages of education.
Source: Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, and Youth Cohort Study, from the Department for Children, Schools and Families
Source: Social Trends 39 ONS
As you can see from the above table, educational achievement varies dependent on ethnicity. There have however been improvements in many areas over the past seven years according to the above table, with the gaps between levels of attainment shrinking.
Despite this, there still appear to be differences in the attitude towards education dependent on cultural or ethnic background.
The concept of resistance has been used in the study of students from ethnic minority groups.
Recall previous sessions. How else is resistance used to explain youth culture/s?
Tony Sewell, 2000 used the concept of resistance to explain the behaviour of some groups of Afro Caribbean boys in his study. The Retreatists and the Rebels did not believe that the school provided for their needs, preferring the ‘anti educational’ culture of the streets and so resisted the views and values of their teachers. The boys preferred to achieve instant gratification rather than the delayed gratification offered in school. Educational success was thought to be feminine.
Mac en Ghaill’s earlier study found that the Afro Caribbean boys in his study, the Rasta Heads and the Warriors, responded to teacher labelling by developing subcultures based on strong masculine imagery.
This ‘macho’ image was also supported by O’Donnell and Sharpe 2000, who explained this as a reaction to racism and poor economic prospects. This is similar to the attitudes of working class white boys in the study by Willis over 20 years earlier.
Consider the Left Realist concepts of marginalisation and relative deprivation here. How could these be applied to Afro Caribbean youth?
Negative stereotypes can also be attached to girls. Connolly found that black girls were perceived as potentially disruptive and likely to be good at sports. They also underplayed the accomplishments of the girls while focusing on their social behaviour.
Resistance can also be found in studies of girls. Shain 2003, stated that the Asian girls that she studied, the Gang girls, believed that they had been the victims of racist bullying from their teachers and peers, so developed a ‘them and us’ attitude towards school.
Black girls however were found to hold a positive attitude towards achievement and had high self esteem in the study by Mirza 1992. She found that the girls resisted negativelabellingby teachers such as expectations that they will fail. Some of the teachers held girls back unintentionally with well meaning but misguided actions. These actions consisted of entering girls for fewer subjects and giving stereotypical careers advice. The girls stated that they rarely felt direct discrimination however. These girls had ambitions towards careers as opposed to the Irish girls in the study who anticipated becoming ‘home makers’. The black girls intended to achieve in order to prove the teachers wrong.
Suggest reasons for the differing ambitions of the girls.
Teachers often saw South Asian boys as immature in a study by Connolly 1998. The behaviour was seen as feminised and so not threatening. Bad behaviour was not punished as much as threat of the black boys. Teachers had high expectations of the Asian youth but they had difficulty in developing a masculine image which made school difficult. South Asian girls were seen as being obedient and conforming when the reality was that their behaviour did not differ from that of the boys.
O Donnell and Sharpe support the above findings, they found that peers of Asian youth placed them into three categories, the weakling who was obedient, the warrior who was tougher and the patriarch who accepted the power of the family, especially the father. The pupils most likely to fit the warrior image were those of Bangladeshi descent who were also more likely to under achieve.
A number of studies report that racism is still a factor in school experience. Wright et al, 2006, suggest that teachers attitudes towards pupils from differing ethnic backgrounds are often based on stereotypical assumptions. Black boys were felt to be more outgoing and physically expressive than white boys. Teachers felt that black boys drew attention to themselves through their ‘uniform’ of distinctive clothing and hairstyles. The negative reactions from teachers when the boys used the same behaviour in school as they used outside of school, fuelled negative attitudes and accusations of racism from the boys.
Black boys are also more likely to be excluded from school than any other ethnic groups.
Social class
Social class impacts heavily on school experience. Early studies such as that by Willis found white working class resistance to education as they saw it as irrelevant to their future. The working class boys in this study, ‘the lads’ were in school to have a laugh and called conformist boys, ‘earoles’.
Lees found that it was predominantly middle class girls who were typically the academic achievers. Hargreaves and Lacey both studied single sex boys schools and found that working class boys developed anti school subcultures as a result of being labelled by teachers as potential or actual trouble makers and partly because they were placed in lower streams in school. The boys rejected the school values and gained status from fighting, not respecting teachers, messing about etc.
Hatcher argues that the education system does not encourage working class achievement. Middle class are thought to have more cultural and economic capital which enables them to achieve more highly along with the power to choose schools.
Power et al studied 342 academically able boys and found that the failing boys were the ones who resisted the work ethic of the school. This study supported Aggerton’s earlier study of middle class students where a group of able middle class boys resisted the middle class values of academic achievement and wanted to succeed without effort
Ball however found that working class boys did not necessarily reject school, they were simply indifferent to it and suggested that class was only one factor to be considered.
Phil Brown criticises previous studies for being too polarised arguing that most pupils simply want to get by, regardless of gender. Brown suggests that working class students approach school in three ways
- Getting in – low achievers who want a working class job and to leave school as early as possible
- Getting out – swots, wanted middle class jobs and a comfortable life style
- Getting on – the majority of students, neither accept nor reject school but just get on with it.
Riseborough has suggested that the reasons for the differences in Browns study and that of Willis are the changes in the economic situation of the country over the intervening period.
What are these changes?