Culture and disadvantaged students

Bryne (2005:1) argues that culture ‘is a key dimension of a multifaceted understanding of exclusion’. It is saturated by politics which aims to control social and educational changes over time (Hall, in Giroux, 2000:168). The educational force of culture redefines the politics of power rand the political nature of representation (Hall, in Giroux, 2000: 168). For this reason, policies and practices focused on addressing cultural exclusion are significant for achieving the goals of social inclusion (in Stevenson Rowe and McKay, 2010:258-259). Social exclusion is the situation which characterizes those who lack the cultural capital necessary for the consumption of educational products (Bryne, 2005: 143, in Stevenson, Rowe and McKay 2010: 259). Cultural capital is the mediating factor between students’ origin and their educational outcomes. The unprivileged students lack the school cultural capital and hence cannot have the sense of belonging to the school system (Interviewee B, SEEDA, 2006, in Stevenson, Rowe and McKay, 2010: 259).

Today, young people from lower socioeconomic classes face more than other in Greece the effect of economic crisis. Generally, they cannot find a job as they have fewer economic and educational qualifications than privileged ones. The unemployment rate has reached a high level. According to the broadcast of news in the Greek TV station of Alpha unemployment in Greece was 16,2 in March of 2011 and the same month unemployment of young people up to 24 years old reached 42,5%.

Neelands, Freakley, and Lindsay (2006: 96) support that social justice is an attempt to encourage a self-realization project through greater participation in the symbolic processes of culture among those who are most disadvantaged (in Stevenson, Rowe and Mckay, 2010: 262). Students from lower socioeconomic classes are disadvantaged, as they have limited interventions in the educational processes which are determined by their socioeconomic classes’ culture. Greeks especially Greek youth by their greater intervention not only in educational procedures, but also in political ones can ameliorate the difficult conditions which emerge from the economic deficit and the national debt which damage more the individuals from the lower socioeconomic classes. The young individuals can play an important role in shaping the political protest, as their participation can give democracy a more representative and fair character which can respond to recent social evolutions. They can formulate democracy by the stamp of their feelings and perceptions about justice and participation.

In Greece, as the differences between left and right parties have been blunted, the matters of equality between sexes, equality of opportunities in education, in health and other areas of major importance are confronted in the same way by political parties. The structure and targets of political parties which differentiate them do not exist, as they do not represent specific groups of population anymore. Therefore, their structure and ways of functioning as it is today can be changed since cannot solve substantially people’s problems. Only people’s greater participation in the social problems and their proposed solutions can enhance democracy, ensuring in this way the social benefits. Aristotle (4th century B.C.: 57) supports that: “The case that many people have to exercise their power and not the best of them and the few seems to be the appropriate type of decision-making. Thus, if many people gathered for this purpose, the view of each one is not so important like the view of all, which can be better than the one of the few and the best of them”.

Nevertheless, educational practices which familiarize all students to the school culture can eliminate the obstacles toward unprivileged students’ participation in school learning. They can be related to the establishment of the unprivileged students’ cultural characteristics to the school’s ones. This establishment can be attained by teaching and practicing pedagogy for the improvement of students’ attendance, engagement and their overall performance. Besides, their opportunities and capacity to participate in their school decision-making can be enhanced and built up by the policies of a democratic school administration system.

School democratic practices can mainly enhance the skills and capacities of students so they can have better school performance, while the democratic policies can ensure students’ participation in the school decision-making and their further public life. Hence, practices represent small scale measures of school administration which accomplish the governmental broader plans of school policies. In reality, both democratic policies and practices are interconnected, and give priority to the promotion of students’ learning and the improvement of their school performance.

Policies related to the culture of students appeal to the social cohesion since: ‘culture has been fore grounded as an object of social policy and collective sentiment at local, regional, national, and supranational levels of governance’ (Stevenson, Rowe and MacKay, 2010: 252-254). Social inclusion has become a central object of cultural policy that accommodates cultural diversity (Stevenson, 2004).

Policies for the successful performance of students from different socioeconomic background

As policies are operationalized through clear objectives linked to the target of the students’ higher performance, education must be reduced to the acquisition of skills and dispositions by students (Ball, 1999: 201, in Nichols and Griffith, 20009: 243). These policies analysis occurs in the context of broader social forces and social relations (Hodgson et al. 2006, in Nichols & Griffith, 2009: 244). Thus, the successful performance of students seems to follow the path of cultural and social reproduction, as concerns all forms of social relations and patterns of behaviour. For this reason, social class as one of the most important determinant contributing to a group’s social power, is the greater factor in the successful performance of students. One of biggest social groups of underachievers are the white working class students (Demie, 2011: 247).

However, the outcome of successful performance can be partly attained by a democratic school administrative system which encourages the correct choice of knowledge that students of high school are going to learn, or the knowledge that influences their mood to study more or to show interest, as they will obtain the skills and talents of a specific area.

Students who have found out the complexity and the ambiguity of the educational world challenges in which solutions or the information involved may be conflicting, encompass in the process of their school performance their suggestion of what they would do if they were confronting a conflicting situation (Chun, 2010: 24). This reflection process constitutes a phase of the students’ performance. It is the conflicting situation which students of high school or teachers can face when their school administration system offers them the opportunity to make their decisions, concerning their involvement in the determination and realization of the school’s targets.

A democratic school administration system induces students and teachers to take decisions which spring from the recognition of their involvement’s necessity in a possible problematic situation. It gives people involved in education multiple options and facilitates the discovery of school goals. It is a flexible system to the changing demand s of students. The decisive role of teachers and students can take place by the decision-making of school committees, which serve to satisfy the needs of students instead of implementing the heads’ orders (Bush, 1995: 114). The limitations of the organizational structure of this democratic school administration system can be overcome by its implementation in accord with collegiality.

 Changes in the school administrative system are of great importance, since school inclusive reforms can not hinder the exclusion of students with learning difficulties without testing school‘s power relations which preclude critical examination of the existing school administration (Bourke, 2010: 189). It can also strengthen the role of the individuals concerned with education as cultural and political changes for centuries in social policies are grounded in the demands and the exercise of power by disempowered individuals themselves (Harding in Lipman, 1990: 293).

For this reason, students, teachers and individuals concerned with education must be involved in the school decision-making process. This kind of involvement constitutes an ‘interruption’ of common notions of deficit, social isolation, social detachment and culture of poverty (Steele, 1991, et al. in Stovall, 2007: 682).This involvement also has a political nature, since it challenges the power of the school’s status quo, while investigates, the racial, political, social and economic forces that impact school functioning (Stovall, 2007: 682). Teachers have to incorporate the democratic principles involved in educational thought in their practice (Van Manen, 1977 in Dimova and Loughran, 2009: 208).

The democratic system of school administration requires students to demonstrate skills in several subject areas (Stovall, 2007: 689). According to Goodnight (2005: 124) creative capital is the arsenal of creative thinkers whose ideas can be turned into valuable products and services (in McWilliam and Dawson: 635). Creativity can be described as a state which is characterized by a harmonization of individuals with their internal self and their obtained knowledge that stimulates the spring of new ideas in the area of their concern. In other words, creativity is a synchronization and combination of both internal attitude and external obtained knowledge.

According to the procedure of the synchronization of the obtained external knowledge and the internal attitude, deep thoughts for human nature can be used as a point of reference for human creativity. This method of introspection is related to the holistic approach of interpretivism for the knowledge of the broader reality. Thus, the procedure of self-knowledge in connection with the global human principles can help the mental development of individuals through the broader interpretation of the world and the creation of new ideas. However, Csikszentmihalyi (1999) argues that the creative process includes two important elements, the cultural order and the social order which both interact and with which individuals interact. It is the intersection of these interactions which shape the creative mood and practice of individuals (in McWilliam & Dawson, 2008: 637).

Social order and cultural one must change according to the social circumstances, keeping pace in this way with the developmental procedure of people from different socioeconomic classes, who affect the developmental procedure of the whole society and their creative mood. This creative mood can be encouraged by the inclusive reforms which might be suggested by teachers, who require changes in school culture and support the transformation of the school administration system (Kent, 1977: 37). These reforms can be attained partly by the greater participation of students, teachers and community in the school decision-making. They can facilitate the inclusive practices of teachers for the students who have learning difficulties (Educational Adjustment Profiles Process, in Bourke, 2010: 187).The practices of teachers include the pedagogy which encompasses the installment of the cultural characteristics of students from lower socioeconomic classes in their teaching behaviour and school culture. For example, the focus of teaching behaviour can be rather on the content than on the structure of items or situations, and the adjustment of curriculum to the concrete way of organizing knowledge instead of the abstract one (Postic, 1995:72).

These adjustments encourage students of lower socioeconomic classes to respond positively to the learning stimuli, as they organize their knowledge in a concrete way and focus on the content of items or situations. Students must be provided with opportunities to act with other students as synergies or separately. Co-creative ability increases students’ collaborative responsibility when they are not hampered by the other students of the team, so that they can be aligned and cooperate with them (McWilliam and Dawson, 2008: 640). In this way, students’ creative capacity can be enhanced by their self-knowledge in ways that optimize their team (McWilliam and Dawson, 2008: 640).

Students’ critical thinking is developed through the process of reflection which can be seen as a principle for the development of a plan necessary for a specific activity (Shchedrovitsky, in Dimova and Loughran, 2009: 2011). This task which can solve problems, can emerges as a judgment or conclusion and pertain to creativity by applying evidence, constitutes the higher-order thinking (Chun, 2010: 24). The ‘reflexive ourgo’ is described as the change of the previous position of an individual and the shape of a new one which includes the performed and future activities (Shchedrovitsky in  Dimova and Loughran, 2009: 211). By reflective ‘outgo’ individuals obtain self-knowledge (Dimova and Loughran, 2009: 215). It can be added that reflection can be ‘ingo’ as it helps individuals’ self-knowledge through the effective insight and intuition of them. This ‘ingo’ procedure can include the release of the self from the lost life opportunities as a selfish reflection to life situations, and the acceptance of the world which derives from the broader setting of human understanding. By the broadening of their consciousness individuals can dominate their natural and emotional world.

The values of students from different socioeconomic classes

The students of higher socioeconomic classes exploit in a greater degree the available educational resources than they reasonably have, and thus they obtain more educational qualifications than the students from lower socioeconomic classes. For this reason, they are characterized as privileged. Their private rational choice stimulates their self-interest which emerges as a dominant element of their educational culture (Beach, 2009: 702).

The market values of individualism and personalization domain in school today, and extend the differences (Lundahl, 2002, in Beach, 2009: 702) among students of different socioeconomic classes, reproducing at the same time the traditional ideology of school functioning. Market’s values undermine the reflexivity of students which assists the democratic interests (Beach, 2009: 702). This means that students cannot reflect the forces of their socialization which school creates, and they cannot alter their school behaviour accordingly. For example, ‘a sense of profit’ is described as a pattern in students thinking, talking and acting in school context (Beach, 2003; 2007; Beach and Dovemark, 2009: 694). This chase of profit is included in the values of the privileged students (Beach, 2009:694), who are formally more successful in school in comparison to others (Staberg, 1997, in Beach, 2009: 694).

The unprivileged students, no matter how hard they try to succeed in school, will hardly attain to have higher scores than privileged students, since their values are not consistent with the values that are rewarded by school culture. It is the reason which contributes to their low rate of growth in their self-esteem and mastery during high school (Falci, 2011: 599). Another reason for the school failure of unprivileged students-the students from lower socioeconomic classes- is that they adopt some decades later the values of students from higher socioeconomic classes which nowadays are steeped by individualism. Nowadays, the lower socioeconomic classes’ life style shows an imitation of the higher socioeconomic classes’ patterns of the past decades. In our days, the values of the higher socioeconomic classes are in accord with the values of competitive markets, and include the competitive ways of the accumulation and consumption of educational resources (Beach, 2009: 697).

An example of the capacity of privileged students to consume for their own interest the material of education is the consumption of teachers’ time at the expense of other students’ teaching time (Beach, 2009: 298). This privileged students’ attitude is rewarded and subjectively valued (Beach, 2009: 698).

The oppositions between the values of privileged and unprivileged students are shaped by the social structure that forms different social relations between people from different socioeconomic classes. A democratic school administration system is difficult to be achieved without a substantial change in the social order as the social relations of people in a specific society shape a different way of communication and evaluation of their actions. Unprivileged students demand a concrete and clear relationship with their teachers, while privileged students ask for a more independent relationship with them (Postic, 1995: 72).

Privileged students present a greater cultural understanding in accordance with the rationalized bureaucratic school administration system. On the other hand, unprivileged students usually feel alienated from the different than their own school culture and the mentality of other students which determine their acceptance. They have to choose between their teachers’ consent to their school functioning and their family’s one.

Unprivileged students must know how to display what they know, and what specific ways of talking and acting are appropriate in certain contexts or what they need to learn. These ways of learning behaviour are connected with the appropriate interpretation of school rules which are often implicit (Mehan, 1984: 179-181).

They stay uninvolved and distant from schools’ activities. Unprivileged students usually cannot place their logic in front of their feelings. They can hardly accept the predominance of logic in their life situations. Besides, they feel that logic brings about a delay in their action and contributes to the reduction of tension of a specific behaviour (Pateras, 1997, 242). When they hardly secure their earnings, their intensive emotions facilitate and create their action (Pateras, 1997: 242). Unprivileged students’ different way of estimating others and themselves in relation to the school culture hinder their learning process.

However, what is threatening them more is the abandonment of their characteristics and the ways of their functioning, which means the alteration of their cultural patterns and values of behaviour. For this reason, they face school as a social uprooting from their family’s patterns of behaviour. They believe that their deficiencies are responsible for their positions and not the school which is neutral and meritorious. School’s policy most of the time helps them to internalize the legitimacy of their exclusion from education, and persuade them that their exclusion is justified by their different functioning and learning behaviour.

School policies in accordance with social values

According to the philosophy of the free market there is much to be lost if human activity migrates to the commercial realm. Market’s philosophy cannot determine human relations which are threatened by commercial laws that create individuals’ isolation. They can diminish social culture and destroy the historical continuation of generations as well as the cultural inheritance and the responsibility of people for ensuring the future of next generations (Bottery, 2002: 165). A generation that is unable to feel for one another or to support one another is also incapable to create the social trust that is very essential for the maintenance of a society’s culture. The maintenance of the culture is induced by the improvement of the social conditions of citizens and the consistency of the state to the citizens’ conquests.

The gathering of people in squares of major cities nowadays is mainly shared by young individuals who see their occupational future uncertain and their ideals shuttered and put into mnimonio’s pockets. They understand that the mnimonio not only mortgages their future according to Kasimatis (2011), but also it gives the right to creditors to exploit Greek monuments economically, depriving people especially youth of their cultural heritage. Students’ responsibility and a ‘responsivity’ toward the suffering of others’ (Leibowitz, 2010: 125) can be strengthened by the building of students’ resilience and the sharing of students’ cultural knowledge which they bring to their learning environment (Cambell, Faulkner & Pridham, 2010: 18). Teachers can cooperate with students and citizens for the exploitation of their school learning environment and their real life experiences according to human values.

The factor for the greater achievements of students is related to the satisfaction of their basic needs such as survival, love, power, fun and freedom. The students from higher socioeconomic classes can satisfy these needs by controlling their behaviour in order to choose to do the most need-satisfying thing they can do (Glasser, 1990: 43). However, unfamiliar environment of school culture and the distant behavior of the school teachers do not foster the satisfaction of those needs by the students of lower socioeconomic classes. Usually, they can not control their behaviour as much as students of higher socioeconomic classes, and they do not choose to do things which satisfy their needs as they hardly take the correct educational and occupational choice.

Yet, in the social context, there is a segregation of the effective engagement of students from different socioeconomic classes in the school’s learning activities. Students of higher socioeconomic classes know better than students of lower socioeconomic classes the socioeconomic reality which is backed by their rational thinking about school relations and the logic of economic reasoning. This knowledge is not obtained by the school learning, but by their family culture. It is the framing of social relations within the social division of labour according to Hoadley (2008: 65). This is the reason which underlines the necessity of the teaching of economic reality’s courses in high school, so as to limit the students’ exclusion from the practical economic knowledge. This knowledge as part of school policies can determine their correct choices for their future education or occupation and the relative courses can strengthen students’ philosophy and attitude toward their learning procedure.

Yet, this knowledge is not assimilated easily by the students of lower socioeconomic classes who are more sensitive to the human factor which contradicts the rationality of their future occupational choice. Many times their emotional relation with their teachers regulates their studying effort in a specific course, and they relate with difficulty school functioning with the ideology and rational of the economic market. Actually, the change of students’ attitudes from lower socioeconomic classes toward education requires information which is relevant to their experiences and needs that compose their own culture. In other words, a pedagogy is needed which respects, builds on and extends students’ experiences (Richardson, in Foley, 2005: 41).

An alternative solution, that can signal the acceptance of the different culture of the students from lower socioeconomic classes, will be the inclusion of their cultural characteristics such as distinctive values and meanings to the methods of pedagogy and the school culture. These cultural characteristics influence the furthering of the common interests of the lower socioeconomic classes’ students, while shaping their consciousness (Foley, 2005: 38).

In Greece it has been established the ‘Parliament of adolescents’ in which representatives of adolescents from several high schools participated in social matters in a consultative way, present in Parliament their positions. Now, the time has come for the establishment of the ‘Parliament of youth’ which must have a decisive character and will operate in parallel with Greek Parliament. Its members will be voted only from young persons and there must be a quota of the representatives from different socioeconomic classes. Young people have the right not only to express their opinion in squares of Greek major cities, but also to decide about their future educational and occupational future institutionally and officially in cooperation with Greek Parliament.

These days, this pathetic behaviour of young people seems to be replaced by their mood to struggle for the ensuring of their educational and occupational potentiality as well as their cultural continuity. What is meaningful is that the students from lower socioeconomic classes have a greater need for social participation, and this newly acquired trend of their culture can influence the unity of the society and school. This trend can also build social tolerance and can cultivate the social mood of ‘not possessing’ but ‘searching’. If followed, students from lower socioeconomic classes can cultivate the obtained knowledge in favour of the whole society. “Thus, the experience and learning of lower socioeconomic classes’ students remains an area from which new understandings of education and social change could still emerge” (Woodin, 2007: 495).

Besides, social trust is one of the human values which individuals from lower socioeconomic classes breed together with empathy that creates the bond of familiarity (Mulford, 2002: 130). It must be the school’s priority to preserve these values into the school hidden curriculum and philosophy. This can be realized by creating bonds between school and community in order to instigate citizens involved in the arrangement of school problems. These bonds can stimulate the social action of teachers, students, parents and citizens, which encourages their involvement in the school administration system (Carvoy, 1985: 111).

A democratic school administration system does not only demand the declaration of democratic equity or the participation of marginalized students, but also demands the specific school practices which attain these democratic targets. Still, the first step of all students’ participation in the school decision-making, can be the recognition that students from lower socioeconomic classes have particular needs which are not being met by the existing school system (Demie and Kirstin, 2011:245).

Their acquisition of social responsibility can be stimulated by a democratic dialogue over social topics, which seeks broader participation and diverse perspectives, part of a larger communitywide initiative of agreements, commitments and actions of people about how they are going to work together (Thomas, 2008:11-12). This can be ensured by school committees which must have a decisive character and serve the needs of students.

Secondly, their educational outcomes are considerably below those achieved by all other ethic groups. This is mainly due to the low aspirations of their parents regarding education and their social deprivation (Demie, and Kirstin, 2011: 263).

Equal opportunities can be attained by the transformation of the education offered and the influence of the mainstream educational forms from within (Woodin, 2007: 487). This means the use of alternative forms of pedagogy and systems of school administration able to change the school order, which up to our days determines the priority of the higher performance of the students from the higher socioeconomic classes. Fir example, teaching practices can be based on the content of items or issues instead on the structure of them.

The existing school administration system of ambiguity and contrived collegiality do not correspond to the established information system which increases the will of students to [participate in their school educational processes through their learning. Despite the great technological evolution which favours the acquisition of information by all students, the educational functions of schools maintain the cultural characteristics of privileged students. When individuals interested in education can overcome their cultural characteristics, they can also overcome the educational status quo. By their participation and active support in a new administration system, students can increase the effectiveness of its measures when they apply their own proposals.

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