educational achievement

Factors that affect educational achievement:

Cultural deprivation.

Cultural deprivation can be defined as 'the absence of certain expected and acceptable cultural phenomena in the environment which results in the failure of the individual to communicate and respond in the most appropriate manner within the context of society.' (source)

In simple words and relating it to educational achievement, cultural capital is an absence of appropriate skills for successful studying and attitude towards learning.

Working class children are more likely to suffer from cultural deprivation than those of middle class and this can be explained by the way children are brought up in such families. They are not encouraged to study better, they are not aiming to go to the university afterwards. Working class families are also less likely to encourage such activities as visiting museums, theatres, reading books, playing educational games.

According to Hyman, ' the working class have a self imposed barrier against education.'

Cultural deprivation also means lаck of certain nоrms (rules оf behaviоur in sоcial situаtions), vаlues (belief thаt sоmething is wоrthwhile), which leads to misbehaviour and educational under-achievement.

Family break-up may also be the cause of cultural deprivation. According to Murray, wefare dependency and single motherhoоd have become part of a culture that threatens to destrоy family life and social mоrality.

Another point worth mentioning is that educational system is mostly contrоlled by middle class people, which means they may be viewed more pоsitively, and thus it deprives working class.

Material deprivation.

In relation to edcuation material deprivation happens when individuals or households are unable to affrord materials or activities which are essential for successful study. It is worth higlighting that material deprivation refers not only to the lack of educational materials, but to the living standarts as well. For example, if family can't provide appropriate accomodation for themselves it will have an impact on their children's process of studying.

Another definition for the material deprivation: 'enforced lack of a combination of items depicting material living conditions, such as housing conditions, possession of durables, and capacity to afford basic requirements.'. (source)

Material Deprivation can be presented in three dimensions:




Cultural capital.
Has already written about this one here.

sociology brief notes part 2

Meritocracy. The term 'meritocracy' was first used by Michael Young. Meritocracy is a social system where leadership is based on individual achivement, abilities and talents rather than on one's class, wealth or origin.

Social control. Social control is represented by different social mechanisms aimed to regulate the behaviour of social groups and individuals, providing social order and conformity.

In Social Control Theory, Ivan Nye (1958) introduced 4 types of social control:

1. Direct: by punishment and rewards for the appropriate behaviour
2. Internal: an internal control wherein individuals are driven by their sense of conscience or sense of guilt
3. Indirect: an internal control driven by the individual's need to please those whom he is closest to.
4. Needs of satisfaction: if all individuals' needs are met, there is no point in criminal behaviour

(source)

The Hidden Curriculum. This term was first used by Philip Jackson (1968). He argued that what is taught in school is more than the official curricuum: school should be understood as a place where the processes of secondary socialisation happen.

Definition by Michael Haralambos: 'The hidden curriculum consists of those things pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions.'

(source)

Hierarchy. Hierarchy can simply be defined as an arrangement of items. But in the sociological context the word hierarchy usually has a meaning 'power structure' or 'the establishment of dominance-subordination relationship'.

This is just an example of Social Hierarchy (the occupational hierarchy in the formal labour market):

sociology brief notes

Cultural Capital.
The idea of 'cultural capital' was first introduced by Pierre Bordieau (french sociologist). He argued that economic inequality is not sufficient to explain distinctions between social classes and cultural capital is important in achieving high status in the society. 'Bourdieu reasoned that culture adds to the wealth of a particular class.'

We need to distinguish between 3 forms of cultural capital:

1. an embodied state - when cultural capital can not be separated from an individual and transmitted physically.It is often gained from primary socialisation .

2.an objectified state - when objects themselves function as cultural capital and can be transmitted physically. It can only be used by individuals having the correct form of the embodied capital.

3.an institutionalized state - when individual's embodied capital gain an objective value. 'Bourdieu suggests that institutionalization performs a function for cultural capital analogous to that performed by money in the case of economic capital.' (source)

Also, Cultural Capital can generally be defined as a combination of skills, education, personal advantages of an individual. (source)

sociology homework

Why do some pupils achieve more than others?

As we all know, there are always inequalities among pupils' achievement: some of them hardly get 3 GSCE's, some of them pass 10 with As. But these inequalities may take place due to different reasons.

Some of the reasons become clear after looking at the statistics: for example, girls tend to achieve more that boys. Girls are brought up to be more modest and behave well, while boys tend to be more active and even aggressive, which, of course, affects their performance at school.
Boys are approximately 7 times more likely to be excluded from school than girls due to their bad behaviour, as the statistics says.

Another important point is that parents often expect girls to do better than their brothers, parents put the responsibility of being 'a sensible pupil' on a girl rather than a boy.
However, according to my own experience, I'd say that boys are more clever than girls on average. Girls perform better at subjects asking to remember and retell information while boys are better at interpreting information.

The second thing that affects pupils' achievement is the existence of peer groups, in some of which under-performance at school may be considered as 'normal' or even 'cool'.

As you can see from the bar chart below, there is a tendency of pupils of higher classes to achieve more than those of the lowest classes.


But why is the correlation between the family income and children performance is so strong?
I guess, that is because children of higher and middle class families have larger access to educational sources (e.g. computers with internet access, educational toys, textbooks) and they can afford to go to private schools and hire private tutors.

Child from low-income families may have part-time jobs as well as problems within their families (alcoholism, domestic violence), which prevents them from achieving educational standarts.

People from middle and upper class tend to live by principle 'work today for better life tomorrow', while the situation with low class families is rather the opposite.


I can also outline 'labelling' as a reason for inequality in pupil's achievement. Teachers often label children as good or bad performers, sometimes without any reason for that ( for example, a quite and peaceful girl may be labelled as 'clever' without really being so). Pupils labelled as 'bad' will continue to perform badly, while 'good' pupils try to impress teachers even more.


The way pupils are taught may also influence their performance at school, for example single-sex schools/ordinary schools, size of the classes make difference as well as teacher's actual interest in subject and the ability to teach it and make pupils interested and involved in the process of thinking.


Moreover, exams are created in a way that often leaves only one way of thinking of a subject and we are, of course, taught not to really learn the subject but to perform well in an exam. That is the problem for people, whose find it difficult to think in a one 'right' way, proposed by examiners and teachers.


Having said all of that, I'd like to add that the problem of inequality in school achievement can not be investigated only on a large scale - that is also the problem of individuals. And if educational policies have effect on general problems, these 'personal' problems can be solved only by individuals themselves.

Outline the importance of perception in Economics

The perception is a very important aspect of Economics, as it can bring significant changes both in a positive or in a negative way.
For example, if people perceive the economic state of the country as strong enough ( even though it is not really so) that may increase their confidence, they will tend to spend more, invest more, borrow more, businesses will produce more and eventually that will lead to the faster economic growth and the general economic state improvement.
That is one of the reasons for the governments to prevent their citizens from getting news and information from international sources as it is, for instance, in China.

On the other hand, an interesting example is the current financial crisis. People's perception of the economic situation was affected by media, which 'advertised' crisis wherever it was possible. Many advertisements like 'Credit Crunch? Everything is down by 20% now!' have appeared. People are afraid of losing their jobs, as 'their colleague's relative's friend was fined because of the credit crunch' and begin to panic. Some economists argue that this lack in confidence make the crisis worsen.
The proof for that is that even different policies such as VAT rate cut and interest rates cut did not really increase consumers' spending.

Another example is people's tastes and preferences. Switzerland banks are thought to be the 'safest', British higher education to be the best, Italian clothes as the most fashionable - all this things affect the world export and import, advertising etc.

feminism

Contrast liberal feminism, radical feminism amnd Marxist feminism.


Marxist feminists believe that capitalism and the power of classes predate sexual oppression. They claim that women discrimination exists because it benefits the capitalist society and that with the abolishment of class oppresion, sexual oppression will disappear as well.

Radical feminists, in contrast to Marxist feminists, see sexual oppression as a fundamental form of oppression, predating any other. In other words, they believe that woman is oppresed because of her sex and not as a member of a social class. Radical feminists see the reconstruction of the society including its values and norms as the only way of achieving their goals.

'Nevertheless, in contrast to liberal feminist framework, radical feminism is inclined to be suspicious of government intervention, perceiving the state itself as being intrinsically patriarchal, and also tends to focus on the politics of the private sphere, in particular sexuality, motherhood and bodies.'
(source)

While the two previous types of feminism are rather 'public' ( considering progress on the basis of the whole society) Liberal feminism is an individualistic form of feminism. Liberal feminists' way of achieving their goals lays through legislation and regulation, creating laws to support women equality to men. For example, equal pay, equal childcare duties, abortion rights etc.

feral youth

'Youth crime is an aspect of crime which receives great attention from the news media and politicians.'. And a number of several offences commited by people aged under 25 has significantly risen during last 10 years, while the average level of youth crime stayed nearly the same. ( source )

However, the proportion of youth crime is rising as the general level of crime went down in many countries:

1. Great Britain



2. Canada




So, what are the main causes of youth crime?
I think the main causes ( and those which we are most aware of) are:

1.Poverty, which is likely to lead to property crime.

2.Troubled home life or domestic violence. People who were offended at home feel themselves right to treat others in a same way.

3.Alcohol/Drugs use, which sometimes leads to antisocial behaviour and even crime commitment.

4.Poor school education, when pupils are ill-informed about social norms and values, or unstrict rules within schools, which allow offence to happen.

5.Peer groups, which has the most significant effect on young people's behaviour. Different subcultures form their rules of behaviour, present their norms about what is right and what is not.

6.Godlessness, which is argued by some people as a cause of youth crime. I find this true to some extent, as almost every religion restricts violence and with the rising popularity of atheism people feel themselves free from 'God punishment'.

7.Labelling. It has been found out the person labelled as 'criminal' is more likely to commit a crime.

8.Media e.g. movies, tv programmes, games, music..


Another feature of youth crime is 'Male phenomenon'.
Males tend to present the greatest part of the young criminals. That happens not only because males are biologically more powerful and aggressive.
A psychological factor also affects male behaviour: parents always treat boys as future defenders and bring them up in a way that boys are likely to express they masculinity. So, some of them choose to do that through commiting crime.
Moreover, 'Аdolescent males who possess a certain type of variation in a specific gene are more likely to flock to delinquent peers' (wiki)

Oakley's rise of the housewife role

Ann Oakley has conducted a research on the housewife role, within which she considered several questions such as how the housewife role developed, what has an impact on it and whether there is greater equality in the household roles.

Pre-Industrial world:

Women participated in the paid labour market as their work was an essential part of the family economy. They were 'breadwinners' as well as men. However, their worked in industries such as cottage or cookery.


Early-Industrial world:

Women worked in the heavy industries (mines) and factories and were placed on the same jobs as men, but were paid less.

Later-Industrial world:

Women work was restricted, they were to look after children. (Guardianship of Infants 1925)
Also, they were pressured by man, who were paid more for the same jobs.
'Men used the emerging trade union movement to squeeze women into the hometo squeeze women into the home'
The development of the new ideology 'women-housewifes, men- breadwinners', man gained a status of 'a head of family'.
Men became separated from the daily routines, women and children became more economic dependent.


book source: Ann Oakley, Woman's Work: The Housewife, Past and Present