Impact of background on achievement

[lecce]

I have been looking at some other threads and thinking about research in this area and it has raised this question in my mind:

When it is said, as it frequently is, that social class/parental job etc, have a huge impact on the development and academic success of children, is this a passive or an active effect?

In other words, does growing up in a household in which books are read and discussed frequently, interesting outings take place and are discussed etc etc benefit dc, or is it the case that these kind of families do more of the active stuff - flashcards, tutors, workbooks etc?

My SIL never shuts up. Didnt do her DS much good - he is a year behind his peers.

My SIL never shuts up. Didnt do her DS much good - he is a year behind his peers.

Probably because she wasn't having a conversation and she wasn't listening, or even interested in his response.
I don't think it is flash cards, sending off to Mandarin lessons, starting the violin at 2 yrs that helps (it may do, but it may put them off for life!)
It is the background. They do as you do. Therefore if they see you play the piano every day they are more likely to play it than if you send them off for lessons but never play anything yourself. They are more likely to read if the see you, and their father, reading for pleasure. They need to actually talk to you, debate the 'big' questions of life.
I would say definitely the passive, but that the tutor, workbook is entirely dependant on whether the DC wants to do it.
DCs do as you do, they do not do as you say.

It's quite old but read Freakonomics on this subject. Their studies show it is not how much you read to them but if you have lots if books at home and the parents can show their love if reading to their children. It also concludes that lots of tv doesn't do any harm!

I lived in a working class part of the Midlands. My parents were poor and uneducated. They didn't read to me. I didn't do any extra curriculum activities. I was basically left alone to raise myself. Looking back, I don't think we ever had any meaningful conversations.

I decided for myself what A levels to study, what degree to study and where, and what careeer to get into. Basically, all of the Big Decisions was made by me and me alone.

Ok, I am not an Oxbridge grad with a high flying career but I am doing 'ok'. DP has a similar story except that DP was more motivated than me and did end up being an Oxbridge grad.

I accept that just because there we are two people who don't fall into the above mentioned preconditions for success doesn't mean those opinions don't hold water.

Having said that, there are those who attribute a lack of achievement to being poor or having parents that weren't able to help them or didn't encourage them or their wasn't an academic role model etc. Yes having all of that helps but it is NOT a precondition for success.

Exotic, I so agree. I worked someone who twittered on and on. One of those 'I'm hilarious me' types.

Anyway, she would talk constantly without pausing for breath and would fire a barrage of questions that only required yes/no answers at them.

They were so quiet and looked bewildered most of the time. She would then mock their lack of language skills in front of them.

They were never given the opportunity to actually talk, poor things. :(

The most frightening stat of all is that by the age of 5 a child who is from a professional background will have better language skills than the parents of their most deprived peers. By the time children start school, the disadvantage is already dyed in. As to how you change that, I have no idea

Exotic/roundtable - My SIL lives about 4 hours from us so we only see her about once as year. It was at a family wedding when someone remarked that her DS, who was three at the time, hardly spoke at all. As roundatable has said, the DS was never given the opportunity to actually talk so the mom never picked up on the fact that her DS had speech problems.

Very interesting thread and Lecce it does need more research. And maybe it actually needs plucking someone from an inner-city deprived environment and giving them Eton or Winchester to show that it isn't just down to home environment.

I think mrz has made a number of very salient points. In particular, points on parental aspirations, desire to learn and encouragement.

It is a triangle: pupil, parent and school. If all three are working together my feeling is the outcome will be good, possibly exceptional.

If however, one or more of the sides of these triangles is not 'doing their bit' the likelihood seems to be that the outcome for the child will not be as good.

Is it too late for the child? Of course not. I've just read recently that Lenny Henry who left school at 16, has got so into Shakespeare (those of you who regularly listen to Radio 4 will be aware of this) that he took an OU undergraduate degree and he's now starting a PhD in English literature.

We can always learn. We aren't always ready. We aren't always well taught or supported. But we can always learn.

I think the real issue that disturbs me is a tacit understanding that IQ will determine success - not endeavor, good teaching and practice. I truly believe this has to be resolved. My DD1 is quite literally being shown a maths principle the once in class. Those that understand thrive and remain on top table, those that don't get it are just moved down a group. Bottom table are still colouring in caterpillar segments for goodness sake. At some point these kids have to be shown sums, they have to be shown a methods to cope with addition and subtraction (for some counting fingers, for other counting objects, for others mental maths) but they need the tools and then they need the practice. I don't know if this happens at all schools (I surely hope not) - but this is also a very large part of the problem as far as I'm concerned.

DH came from a working class background. He won a scholarship to an independent ,selective school. He didn't have a tutor, workbooks etc. His parents read, talked and played games and spent a lot of time with him from an early age. They both read a lot themselves and had many interests.

I agree it is never too late but the early years can be a handicap.

The sort of parent that you read about on here-constantly talking- is a good example of how not to do it. You need to pause and take an interest in what comes back! They need to give the poor DC time to think!!

I was feeling aggrieved the other day because I'd noticed that the football coach clearly had favourites (and my ds not one of them). Then I realised that it was subsconscious on his part - all the favourites were tall, big lads with proper London accents just like the coach himself. And I realised that in the classroom as opposed the pitch, my children (esp dd) benefit from just such a bias from their teachers. Teachers are by definition graduates and mc so they, consciously or otherwise, might exalt those children who most mirror them and this can become self-fulfilling.

I think we're having two conversations at once. Several people have commented that there is a great difference between the trend for deprivations of all types to contribute to underachievement. That's common sense. But since we live in a country which provides free and compulsory education, free and (once prevalent libraries,) free museums, (some limited free educational programmes on TV) many opportunities to buy cheap books of all kinds in second hand bookshops and endless educational resources on the Internet, there's no reason why somebody who is naturally bright and inquisitive can't get a good education. Socrates was a stonemason, Spinoza was lens grinder (are there any other singular words which end in s, rather than se?) David Davies, the Tory MP, is always going on about how he had a single mother and lived on a council estate. Cardinal Wolsey was the son of a butcher. History and modernity is full of the stories of individuals who have risen above deprivation in order to achieve great things. But both also show that in the main, people who come from challenging backgrounds have more likelihood of remaining in those backgrounds and people who began life with privilege are most likely to retain it and pass it on to their children. Revolution is the only way to change that. (And it has a dodgy history of even doing that properly.)

"Revolution is the only way to change that"

I hope that you aren't advocating an armed uprising :o

People were changing, for the better IMO, and then the Banking crisis put the whole thing in reverse gear.

Marge Thatcher and Gordon Gekko (film Wall Street) made greed cool. It became ok for people to be ambitious and to be greedy. Having a grocer's daughter, albeit via Oxford, become PM sent out a message about social mobility. But now there is the backlash against bankers and ambition and greed are dirty words again.

Oh well. The world economy will pick up in the next few years and being greedy will be popular again :)

I think its a combination of active and passive.

On the passive side. We have loads of books in the house and children see me read. We have the space for a dining table and because no-one works shifts we usually sit down for an evening meal and a chat together. I have a degree and so university is a normal thing to aim for rather than something that other people do. As I have studied and read a lot I have a pretty good vocabulary and don't dumb it down too much for the children. DH is an immigrant and multilingual and we are bringing up the children speaking DH's mother tongue as well as English (otherwise they wouldn't be able to speak to their cousins).

On the active side. We are well off enough that if the children want to buy some books, we buy them. If the children want music lessons they can have them (I play an instrument so the children are also learning). If they are interested in a topic we can take them to museums, buy relevant books / materials etc. For example, when DS1 was studying the Great Fire of London we went to climb the Monument (that cost £6 which if you have £30 for a week's food is unaffordable). DH and I can help the children with their homework because we already know something about what the children are studying so aren't phased by it.

I think one key thing for me is - because I have benefited hugely from being well qualified I place a high value on being well qualified.

I think there's something subtle that goes on as well, to do with having some sense of power/vision over your life. I think children who grow up in households where parents pass on the message that you can make choices and have some agency in the world will grow up to have much more chance of doing this. Huge generalisation of course - some will still mess up massively, but if you're growing up with the kind of poverty that makes every day more about survival and less about the luxury of 'what is the best decision here' it's bound to make a difference. Obviously some children do make it out of that cycle, but I think they are the exceptions.

People often hold up poor immigrants with children that go on to become doctors as examples of how poverty can't be used as an excuse for underchieving.

I went to university with a couple of Indians and Vietnamese born of poor immigrants. Back home their parents were doctors, teachers, businessmen and the like, and for political reasons they had to leave their respective countries and come to the UK as 'poor' immigrants.

So when people talk about poor immigrants, they should note that being poor does not necessarily mean uneducated and that one should be careful about comparing them with the indigenous poor.

Absolutely. And also, I suspect that the children of genuinely "poor" immigrants do as well, or as badly as indigenous children from similar backgrounds. Probably worse, because there will be additional language and acceptance issues which will make their lives even harder.

Pushed taking a very unscientific sample of DH & his friends I would agree that it is often the case that the poor immigrants whose children are doing well are well educated in their home country. DH came here with virtually nothing as did most of his friends (political reasons etc). He was a teacher as were two others plus 2 scientists, 1 lawyer, 1 doctor and one successful businessman.

That's true, immigrants are often the ones with gumption & good life skills to go find a better life elsewhere. They aren't that representative of the whole society they came from.

I still think income + intelligence are closely linked.
The part I disagree strongly with is values: I think aspiration (& associated attributes, like valuing education & hard work) occurs in about the same frequency in all social groups, bar the underclass where it still occurs just not so much. Feckless disinterested parents also occur in about the same %s in all social groups, too (imho).

But aspirations are always framed by your personal experiences. It may seem a big deal to hold down a steady job & not live on benefits if no one else in your family or community seems to manage that.

Another thing. Posters often mention the oriental kid in their class and how studious he is. Therefore ALL oriental kids are studious. If that was true then your local Chineses takesway won't have any workers since they will all either be at university or in some high paid white collar job :)

How do you think a Chinese takeaway can be successful, PushedToTheEdge? I would have thought, by employing people willing to work insanely hard without a break.

This makes an interesting read on why the early years are so important to children from deprived backgrounds - good nurseries or preschools can make a huge difference to the future lives of children from poor families, but make very little impact on better-off children.

rabbit - The days of the successful Chinese takeaway and families that work long hours are a thing of the past.

These days there is more competition i.e. McDonalds, pizza and kebab delivery. And then there is microwave dinners. If that wan't enough you have the newly arrived Chinese immigrant coming along and going - he is doing good business so I think I'll open a takeaway 100ft away (50% of your business is still a good deal as far as he is concerned). Many grew up working in these shops so they don't want the same for their kids so they hire workers, often students.

There are no shortage of jobs stacking shelves at Sainsburys or cleaning your office building so why would anyone sign up for the job that you are describing?

I still see Chinese and Indian families working very long hours in Indian and Chinese restaurants and fish and chip shops, PushedToTheEdge. The difference is, when they are successful, they aren't satisfied with just the one restaurant and they open up a chain of several restaurants - but they still also work in them, themselves. The difference between that and shelf stacking in Sainsbury's is fairly obvious - you are working your fingers to the bone for your own business, not someone else's.

Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting section on immigrants in Outliers

one of the chapters looks at the fact that a surprising number of the most powerful and successful corporate lawyers in New York City have almost the exact same biography: they are Jewish men, born in the Bronx or Brooklyn in the mid-1930's to immigrant parents who worked in the garment industry.

We don't see a full picture of previous lives of Political asylum seekers and Immigrants who made their new home here in the UK, but what is obvious is the fact that these people had their lives turned upside, lost probably everything they had, moved half way across the world in search of safety.
IME, little Chinese girl joined DS's class in Y2 without being able to speak a word of English, both her parents worked in the local Chinese restaurant, the child made most amazing progress, became fully bilingual, and established herself very quickly at the top of the class, at the time doing wonderfully well.
I understood much later trough talking to her parents, that both of them held very good jobs back in China, educated people who due to circumstances had to uproot give up everything and face uncertainty, but they were strong unfazed very focused on their children and just getting on with their new life.
IMO academic achievement, drive and ambition on the parental side will no doubt influence the offspring, this has nothing to do with affluence nor money, but rather with will to do well and to succeed.
For some strange reason here in UK we tend to associate academic achievement with being "Middle class", having a reasonable amount of money, living comfortably in the certain post code and mixing with like-minded people, this attitude seams to be exclusive to us, rest of the world is completely oblivious to it.