Where Should We Look to Find the Causes of Educational Inequalities Essay Example for Free

Where Should We Look to Find the Causes of Educational Inequalities EssayIn this essay, I forget be attempting to explain where I take the causes of learningal inequality lie. I will be focusing on 3 of the reasons that I believe there argon much(prenominal) deep rooted inequalities in the nurture system. I believe that sexuality, ethnicity and class encounter the biggest concern on inequality in education. These are the caters which I will be discussing. The statistics are daunting, as Asthana, A (2010) states boys are f eithering behind girls in 11 come out of the closet of 13 learning categories by the age of five and Caribbean pupils are three times more in on the whole probability to be excluded than either other ethnic group. I have chosen to focus on gender, ethnicity and sociable class in my essay, though these are by no means the just problems within the education system. I will start by discussing gender and educational inequality. Gender inequalities i n education The impact on child attainment Women have always been allowed spurtal education, though formal education for all children has only been an ideal since about the mid-19th century. in that location were always a large proportion of people of twain sexes who could not read or write, and many for whom formal education never went beyond basic information and writing and simple arithmetic.Practical skills were more important for most people. Girls in ancient Greece and Rome for example, were educated, it was frequent for women to be able to read and write, though most would not have had the same degree of education as boys. For girls, learning the practical skills to run a household would have been the most important soften of their education. But rough women did manage to make their mark as writers Sapphos poetry was admired more than any other poet in ancient Greece except for Homer.Girls were often educated at home, though in chivalric times for instance there were civilises that educated children of both sexes. And upper-class girls sometimes went as boarders to nunneries. Among the upper classes it was popular for girls to be more literate than boys, because reading and writing were usually regarded as effeminate pursuits, a boys comme il faut occupation was warfare. Grammar take aims were normally only for boys, and in England, universities were open only to male students, though the proportion of boys who went there was tiny compared to the number who go today.Education for girls was of a fairly low standard during the 17th and eighteenth centuries, but from the early 19th century in America, and the mid-19th century in the UK, it was increasingly the case that all children were expected to attend school. Although boys and girls went to the same schools, they were not in the same classes and certainly were not taught the same subjects. Girls learnt subjects such as embroidery, needlework, music and writing as it was thought more impor tant for them to study accomplishments rather than donnish subjects.Although a divvy up has changed regarding the differences between boys and girls education, there are still some issues that concerns us the gender cattle farm for example. The gender gap is the difference in attainment with boys and girls. In recent years, there has been a lot of worrying about the growing gap in attainment between boys and girls. By the age of 5, 53% of boys had reached the expected writing level compared with 72% of girls. They then underachieve at GCSE and not as many go on to university. Even once there, they are less likely to achieve a 21 or a first (Asthana, A 2010).Some contribute boys lower attainment to the ever-changing notions of masculinity and differing attitudes to schoolwork. As Renold, E (2001) stated, many boys learnt the hard way early in their school careers that studiousness and pedantic success conflict with conventional forms of hegemonic masculinity. Renold (2001) then g oes on to argue that as a result of the at odds(p) masculinities produced by the school, the boys invented an array of strategies and techniques to avoid what were perceived as non-masculine/ or feminine classroom behaviours and to disguise both their desire for and the achievement of, academic success.As Connell (1996, cited in Renold, E 2001) claims, when he discusses gender strategies for schools, actual patterns of gender relation can only be altered or changed by paying close caution to the dynamics of masculinity, especially the means by which alternative masculinities are construed (peer support/ collectivity) and resisted (gender and sexualised bullying). Another issue is, of course the same sex school debate. I believe that Co-educational schools are better for children as it teaches them things that are not on the curriculum. It teaches kids maturity with members of the opposite sex.We can logically conclude that members from a coeducational school are generally more un derstanding of their opposing sex than those who are in a single-sex school. This doesnt apply to students who have no siblings or are in relationships. It applies to the vast major(ip)ity of students with any form of schooling. A sibling only has one temperament, a girlfriend or a boyfriend only possess one personality. One must be able to understand and cope with members with different personality types to be counted as mature. Also, in a co-ed school, pupils form more respective(a) relationships.More diverse friendship types would supposedly expand to a bigger and better fond life, which is important to have for school students as they progress in life. The logic behind this reasoning is that once you are in the on the job(p) force, you must be able to deal with anyone that you work with, work for and assign work to. In the historical world, we are not separated from the opposite sex so why are we separated in schools? Ethnicity and Inequality in education Ethnicity and ine quality of education has always been, in my opinion, a delicate subject. at that places always the possibility of appearing racist or as though discriminating in some way.Rob Meyers (1994) when talking of educational inequality states with the passing of slavery, equality of education was one of the rights at once held back that was now for low people to take advantage of. With this equal starting ground, social consolidation would be a realizable dream. Yet after over 120 years, equality of education had been denied to swart children, thus preventing them from the amount of financial success white children have in life after school. through with(predicate) benign neglect and the goal of some to find a genetic link to race and intelligence, Black students have been railroaded into low end jobs and inescapable poverty.As Bowles and Gintis have stated, the purpose of education is to preserve the existing class structure. Since the abolition of slavery, racist whites have used the educational system to keep their thrones and to keep sears poor. Ideas of minority inferiority are spread, and the misinformed fall into the trap of believing that race determines intelligence, using skewed test info to help support their ideas. Although Im sure Meyers work has some implications of truth, I dont believe that this is all about racism and it certainly isnt all about black children.There are ethnic minorities from all over the globe who experience educational inequality and discrimination. For example, while some ethnicities like Caribbean boys receive negative discrimination I. e. teachers thinking that they wont perform to as high school a standard as the other children, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, other ethnicities such as Chinese girls receive positive discrimination teachers thinking that they will be able to perform naturally higher(prenominal) than other students for example, thus putting added stress and pressure on the students.Though one c ould argue that the feature Asian girls excel is not due to positive discrimination but because their families, friends and societies value hard work, enlighten and educational achievement. It is however, very important to maintain high expectations for all students, no matter the race, social understate or ability. In the UK, there is evidence that points toward black Caribbean pupils being excessively moved into for lower level math and science exams at age 14.Strand (in press, cited in Twining 2012) has shown that black Caribbean students are the only ethnic group to be regularly under represented, relative to white students in entry to higher maths and science test tiers. Furthermore, this under-representation is not a by-product of their lower prior attainment nor of variances in gender, social class, and a wide range of contextual variables. Strand concludes it is possible that teachers conclusions of black Caribbean students academic possibility whitethorn be distorted b y observations of their behaviour as more challenging than it truly is.This may, in turn, lead to a inclination to miscalculate their academic capability (Twining 2012). While black Caribbean children (especially the males) have been consistently designate as being the underachievers in secondary level education, research has shown that white working class males actually make up around half of the number of low achieving school leavers (Kingdom and Cassen, 2007 Cassen and Kingdom 2007, cited in Twining, 2012).As Asthana (2010) convincingly states, Once it was a story of black and white, in which racial discrimination was a major driving force. But in tomorrows report, the story of ethnicity is a complicated one in which poor black boys underachieve, as do those from Irish Traveller families, but poor Chinese girls overachieve Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities see different outcomes to Indian ones and there is a growing group of mixed race children who in themselves have compl ex outcomes. Other issues students from other cultures face is the need to conform to British culture. I believe that the classroom would be a more efficient place to learn if students were allowed to incorporate knowledge from their cultures into it. Or perhaps teachers should be trained to understand other cultures and to try to teach students by referring to things they may have learnt in their communities.