Criticisms of CD

Keddie (1973)

• Victim blaming

  • A child cannot be deprived of their own culture

  • Failure at school cannot be based on a CD home background

• Different, not deprived

  • W/c children fail as they’re put at a disadvantage in a system dominated by m/c values

    • Build on w/c culture’s strength and challenge teacher’s prejudices

Blackstone and Mortimore

• W/c parents attend fewer school events due to long/irregular hours

  • Put off by m/c atmosphere of school

• Schools with mainly w/c students have less effective parent-school contacts

Troyna and Williams

• Teachers have a speech hierarchy

  • M/c

  • W/c

  • Black

• This shows that it is ingrained in teachers conscious to treat students from different backgrounds with varying expectations, often leading to a cycle of disadvantage and reinforcing existing stereotypes, and it is not the student’s fault

Bernstein says that w/c speech is inadequate but recognises that school influences children’s achievement, and that w/c pupils fail due to the failure of the school to teach them elaborated code, not because they are culturally deprived.

Gaine and Georgy

• The differences between working- and middle-class speak are exaggerated and oversimplified