Cultural Deprivation

Unlike most other culture-based theories, cultural deprivation theory starts with the assumption that working class culture is not only different but also deficient.

In basic terms, while middle-class culture is seen to prepare children adequately for school life, the reverse is true for working-class culture; it basically fails to prepare children adequately for educational success. In this respect, writers working within this type of theoretical tradition are basically arguing that lower-class culture is, in a number of ways, "deprived" when it comes to preparing children for the demands of educational life and achievement.

Although the concept of cultural deprivation is similar in some ways to ideas like class sub-culture theory / cultural capital, the crucial difference tends to be the idea that there is something in the cultural background of working class children - male, female, black and white - that needs changing. Lower class culture, in effect, holds children back from educational success and, therefore, we need to identify the essential characteristics of this culture that create "failure" (and, by so doing, counteract their influence).

Cultural deprivation theorists, therefore, take it for granted that the "school system" cannot be significantly changed (mainly because of the various ways schools are tied-into the social and economic structure of the society in which they develop). If schools (their practices and cultural assumptions) cannot be significantly changed, therefore, what must change is the cultural attitudes and practices of lower class families and their children.

In basic terms, therefore, cultural deprivation theorists argue that the "cultural resources" possessed by lower class children are insufficient to ensure educational success, whereas the cultural resources of their middle and upper class counterparts go some way towards ensuring their relative success.

However, precisely what lower class cultural practices need to be changed is, however, a matter of debate and disagreement...