Stereotypes in Action

During my education from year seven to twelve, I have attended a public school in an area identified as low socioeconomic.

As we can see from the graph, in the year 9 reading test, we failed to meet the national average.

Many stereotypes have been built around the area I live in, as I do come from the Western suburbs. Stereotypes include; high drop out rates, poor results and many other inequities compared to other suburbs. In my school, dropping out has become apart of the school culture. Many of my peers possessed a reproductive habitus attitude resulting in more than half my grade disregarding school before year twelve commenced. Many students planned for TAFE, working in their family business or living on Centrelink as one of their carrier choices. Their futures didn’t place a high value in their life and did not appreciate schooling but perceived it as a place that was mandatory or like a ‘prison’. Our poor culture towards education has built our identity of a disadvantaged school achieving poor results. Unfortunately, my school has successfully met the stereotypes built by society, but not in some cases. This video depicts the education disadvantages occurring in my school, but also shows strategies our school has implemented to combat the cycle of poverty.

Even though a substantial amount of students have poorly approached education, the partnership between the government and major stakeholders in schools have assisted many students to counteract the negative social factors disadvantaging students. Programs like homework centres and learning centres have been provided for students to improve their results or who need extra support. From my experience, the extra guidance and support from teachers have assisted me in many areas of schooling, mentally and socially.

Although extra support is helpful, it may be considered as ‘spoon feeding’. This method proves to be effective in the HSC year but does not assist in a positive transition into tertiary studies. Many students in my school, including myself, experienced difficulties merging into the university society because of the adaption to ‘spoon feeding’. Troubles include; need of assertion for tasks, lack of independent learning and many other issues. This method of improving results has contributed to the difficulty of students independently transitioning into the University environment.

Government incentives of extra bonus point’s added on- top of a student ATAR is provided to disadvantaged schools to improve the inequality of attaining entrance into a prestigious university. But is this initiative effective within schools experiencing inequity? I know many students who have relied on the bonus points as a path into university. Students lacked motivation when acknowledging bonus points, contributing to an ‘I don’t care’ approach.

Many times I have heard ‘Don’t worry you will get like 15 bonus points anyways’.

Therefore, my school culture was poor in regards to education. Many students possessed the ‘I don’t care’ attitude or reproductive habitus emphasizing the stereotypes. However, (Jost et al., 2004) argues that people of low socioeconomic backgrounds who accept the social organization, perceiving it as fair, excluding the negative conditions the system contributes to their disadvantage, will encourage their commitment to long term goals[1]. For example, from my personal experiences, I still managed to achieve my goal of entering a prestigious University in Australia even though I attended a school in Fairfield. I did not take into account the disadvantages in the area I live in and always noticed it as a fair system. Therefore, the stereotypes are correlations and in cases are proven to be false but to a certain extent.

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[1] Jost, J. T., Banaji, M. R., & Nosek, B. A. (2004). A decade of system justification research: Accumulated evidence of conscious and uncon- scious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology, 25, 881–919. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x

References:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paDvEOCSCpw