Class notes by Fabian Largie
 Pre-Emancipation:
• Education limited to whites and males
specifically
• Female education was limited to
domestic science (whites)
• No formal education (in reading, writing
and numeric) for the enslaved.
• Emergence of limited formal education for the newly
freed. Usually initiated by the missionary societies.
• State funded educational institutions were limited
during the immediate post-emancipation era. Economic
loss from declining sugar profits was blamed for this
inadequacy.
• In Jamaica, the 1898 Lumb Report recommended that
both boys and girls should be taught agriculture science “in
such a manner as to overcome the prevalent distaste for
these pursuits so essential to the economic standards of
Jamaica and its citizens”. (Leo-Rhynie, 1997) Blacks had
developed a dislike for agricultural enterprise and
preferred education in areas lending to ‘office work’.
• Nationalist politicians understood that education
was essential to national progress and productivity.
National policies were implemented to improve the
quality and increase opportunity for education
amongst the masses.
• 1948 saw the development of the first regional
university amongst the British West Indies – the
University of the West Indies, with three campuses
spread throughout the region, located at Mona
Jamaica, Cave hill Barbados and St Augustine
Trinidad.
 For the first time in the history of the BWI, Anglophone
students desirous of pursuing university education had
the option of obtaining their Bachelor degree within the
region.
 Formal education
•
The process of teaching and learning in an
organized setting
 Informal education
•
This is where we learn unconsciously from
observing each other or in a relaxed
environment.
 Schooling
•
Suggest structured learning that’s limited to
instruction in the Classroom
 Education
•
This encompasses a broader spectrum where
learning as a more qualitative component it is
not limited to classroom instruction but includes
other experiences which include other spheres.
Thus education in comparison to schooling is
seen as a more complete product
 Formal curriculum
•
All the subjects or courses that a school
offers.
 Hidden curriculum
•
This is the Covert way the education system
transmit norms and values and learnt
unconsciously through the organization and
structure of the school
 Emile Durkheim
 Talcott Parsons
 Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore
 Role as an agent of socialization (Durkheim
and Parsons)
• Bridge between the family and wider society
• Prepare the individual for adult life.
• Takes over the socialization role of the
family.
• Transmit society’s culture to the next
generations.
• Prepares the individuals to operate based on
universalistic level
 Agent of Social Control(Durkheim)
Teaching acceptable behaviour
• Hidden curriculum teaches punctuality,
conformity and respect for authority
• Promote Social solidarity.
 Economic training it provides(Durkheim and
Parsons)
• Provide the skills aptitude and training for
the world of work.
•
 Functionalist assume that the school system
is fair and just
 Norms and values transmitted by schools are
not unquestioningly accepted.
 They do not focus on small scale interrelations' such as teacher pupil relationships
and their possible effects.
 It assumes that norms and values are held in
common.
 Educational qualifications do not always
equate with role allocation.
 Education is a part of the superstructure
Althusser argues that school is apart of
superstructure that re-enforces false class
consciousness
• Pierre Bordieu argues that a major role of
education is to reproduce the norms and
values of the elites
•
 Agent of social control and exploitation
•
Bowles and Gintis argue that education
reproduces a workforce that is submissive,
punctual ,perseveres and is dependable .
This is done via the Hidden curriculum
•
Pierre Bourdieu School train people to get
jobs in order to produce greater profits in
order to produce greater profits for
capitalist.
 Education re-enforces inequality and
stratification:
• It is a tool of social reproduction rather than
social mobility
• Pierre Bourdieu education rewards students
from different backgrounds in different ways
the middle class get high status white-collar
jobs and the less advantaged get the Bluecollar jobs.
• Bowles and Gintis make a similar argument
when they identify a correspondence
between school and work.
 High demand school
 Low demand school
Higher ability
students
• More demanding
curriculum
• Student given more
responsibilities
•
•
Bound for managerial and
professional position
Students are managed
and controlled to
maintain order
• Curriculum is
‘dumbed down and
simplified
• Testing and working
for extrinsic reward
Bound for “blue collar” work
in shops, factories and low
status service
Bourdieu believe that children of the upper
classes possesses what he called cultural
capital which gives them an unfair
advantage.
 Literature from books ,social media
encyclopaedias , electronic media.
 They are more likely versed in using different
forms of language be able to switch codes
 They would have been more likely exposed
to the arts.
•
 More likely to have academically proficient
family members.
 Persons whose foot steps they need to follow.
Too deterministic, students have been made
to appear too passive, compliant and
obedient.
• Other social institution such as the mass
media may
• Not all teachers are agents of capitalism.
According Paolo Frere education can be a
source of self liberation rather than
imprisonment of the mind.
•
 They focus on the
interactions in schools
and showed the effects these interaction had
on student’s achievement
 People interpret the world in terms of the
meanings they attach to action.
 Their actions are therefore based on those
meanings
 Students self concept can therefore result
from student-teacher interaction and student
to student interaction.
 Outlines the three stages:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Speculation-based on first impression
Elaboration- on first impression. First
impression might be confirmed or adapted.
Stabilisation – teacher now claim to know
student
Note that students are assessing teacher as
well.
 Becker argues teacher classified and
evaluated students based on the ‘ideal
type’. The ideal student was seen as well
discipline , intelligent and highly motivated.
 The above characteristics people associate
with people from the middle class.
 Showed that counsellors in an high school
evaluated students based on their social
background rather than their academic
attainment
 Student with middle class traits were rated
higher
 Classifications were based on appearance
and personality
 Showed how seating in a kindergarten class
was based on what students social class
appeared to be.
 Studies shows that Teacher assessment of
student can determine interpersonal
relationship
 Students may be motivated if postively seen
by teachers
 Correspondingly students can be negatively
affected if teacher sees students negatively
 This may cause a breakdown in relationship
 Disciplinary issues may arise and further
complicate matters
 In the experiment a group of randomly
selected students they deemed to be ‘high
achievers” by the researchers
 Student were tested at the beginning of the
experiment and at the end a year later,
 At the end of the year these “high achievers”
showed increased IQ scores
 The teachers belief that they were
‘splurters’ led them to interact differently
with them.
 Labelling involves a positive or negative
stereo-types being attached to a person.
 A teacher perception of a student can result
in the student being labelled as conscientious
or as delinquent or as a class clown.
 Predictions are made about the student
behaviours and their performance
 The labelled person may then accept their
identity and act according to it. Students
might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
With negative consequences.
 Label may stick depending on:
How often student is labelled
• Whether the student sees the teacher as
someone whose opinion counts
• The extent to which others support the label
• Where the labelling take place.
•
 Margaret Fuller 1984
Black girls in a London Comprehensive
resented stereotypes they were being
subjected to. The girls vowed to prove their
teachers wrong.
 This refers to tracking where students were
placed in one group for all subjects bases on
abilities.
 Studies have shown that this practice as a
negative impact in terms:
 Students self esteem
 Teachers expectations
 Knowledge can be withheld (lower stream
students may be deemed incapable of
grasping high order skills)
 Researchers found link with social class
and streaming
 Steven Ball(1981) Beachside Comprehensive
Students with fathers in non-manual jobs
have a better chance of ending up in top
streams
• Students with behavioural problems end up
in lower streams. Thus teacher may spend
more time establish class control rather than
actual teaching
•
Showed that teachers modified their
teaching according to who they were
teaching.
• Weaker groups were ‘taught down’ and were
denied certain Knowledge (which required
‘high order skills’)
• Stronger groups were given knowledge that
could help with their success
• Like ball Keddie found a strong correlation
with social class and the streams that
students found themselves in.
•
Hargreaves found that students self –
perceptions were strongly affected by the
band in which they were placed.
Lower band students feel that that they have
denied status and may respond with a antischool attitude
•
 Does not account for external factors that
may impact on what may happen in schools
e.g. government policy demands and even
parental involvements.
 Meanings are not constructed in the
classroom students from low socio-economic
backgrounds may be encouraged by family,
community
 The response of students of lower
socioeconomic group may be more positive
than negative.