Cultural Deprivation is a term referring to the absence of certain expected and acceptable cultural phenomena in the environment which results in the failure of the individual to communicate and respond in the most appropriate manner within the context of society.
Working class children underachieve because they are cultural deprived. The evidence for this would be that statistically schools in middle class areas achieve better results than those in more working class areas. This matters because if children who are growing up in working class and more culturally deprived area are not achieving as good results as those in middle class areas then they are less likely to get a decent job. This is because they will be competing for jobs against middle class students with better results. This leaves them in a vicious circle because if they have kids the same will happen to them. A counter argument for this is that people who are culturally deprived are not less intelligent that those who aren’t, they just lack certain expected and acceptable cultural phenomena in the environment. This means that they are almost biased towards middle class children. The implications of this is that there is less well educated and skilled workers in the workforce than there possibly could be if the way we looked at education was changed.
But it is not just cultural deprivation that causes working class children to underachieve material deprivation is also seen as a large factor in achievement. Material deprivation is having a lack of basic necessities such as adequate diet, housing, clothing or the money to buy these things. This can have an effect on children’s achievement at school because they are at a disadvantage to middle class children, for example a middle class child may have their own room with a large desk allowing them to complete their studies at home in a nice neat, quiet environment whereas a working class child will not have these things and will struggle to complete work