![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_martin_aIt's been really interesting teaching Sociology this year.
One of the things I have to teach is 'Cultural Deprivation'. It's the idea that if you come from a working class background you're more likely to be deprived of the knowledge which helps you thrive in education. I recognise this in my own childhood. My parents both left school at 15 and got jobs straight away. I was brought up on a council estate and surrounded by people from similar backgrounds.
It's quite useful because most of the kids I teach are from working class backgrounds too so I can identify with them and when they learn that they're disadvantaged I can at least tell them that I was too. It's things like not being read to as a kid, not understanding the value of education, not going to private school, etc. It all adds up to disadvantage you at school.
Even now as a teacher I wouldn't have thought of suggesting to my son that he should apply for Cambridge University. It was other people that gave him that idea.
I'm much more culturally aware now but it's taken years in education and in other places to get to that point.
It might be a little different in the States but I definitely recognize myself as being culturally deprived aa a kid. I'm finding Sociology fascinating as a subject.
One of the things I have to teach is 'Cultural Deprivation'. It's the idea that if you come from a working class background you're more likely to be deprived of the knowledge which helps you thrive in education. I recognise this in my own childhood. My parents both left school at 15 and got jobs straight away. I was brought up on a council estate and surrounded by people from similar backgrounds.
It's quite useful because most of the kids I teach are from working class backgrounds too so I can identify with them and when they learn that they're disadvantaged I can at least tell them that I was too. It's things like not being read to as a kid, not understanding the value of education, not going to private school, etc. It all adds up to disadvantage you at school.
Even now as a teacher I wouldn't have thought of suggesting to my son that he should apply for Cambridge University. It was other people that gave him that idea.
I'm much more culturally aware now but it's taken years in education and in other places to get to that point.
It might be a little different in the States but I definitely recognize myself as being culturally deprived aa a kid. I'm finding Sociology fascinating as a subject.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-26 03:52 pm (UTC)Of course, it's only deprivation of a certain *kind* of culture--the ruling culture. But it's knowing that culture that helps you get ahead...