Understanding the Environments in which schools operate (Part 2): The socio-cultural environment

School Managers must, if they have not yet seriously engaged themselves with this activity, develop an understanding of the socio-cultural environment in which students have their being. This environment does impact the performance of students either positively or negatively. Three elements of the socio-cultural environment demands study by school managers. Understanding these elements determines how these managers develop their vision for their schools.

The first element of the socio-cultural environment that requires much study by school managers is that of poverty. School managers need to acquaint themselves with the extent and nature of poverty in the country and in their locales. They can do this in several ways: either by reading about the subject as it relates to Jamaica, its manifestations and effects or they may listen to discussions of the issue on various media or they may sharpen their observation of what happens in their environment.

School Managers may be familiar with the usual definition of poverty as material deprivation, that is, the inability of persons to take care of their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter. Students wear uniforms to school. Many students regularly attend school so the issue of students possessing clothing is not of direct interest to school managers. However, if these school managers travel around the communities in which their students live they may realise that many of them live in substandard housing. And they may remember from their schooling that sociologists, from their studies, usually in other lands but whose findings may provide insights into any context in which people live, have determined that the physical space in which the child lives may impact their learning (See for example the work of J. W. B. Douglas (1964).

There is no doubt that many children who attend school come from households that are suffering from chronic poverty. Many of these children while they may have been able to acquire some form of clothing live in sub-standard housing. But, it is the lack of food that will greatly impact their learning. A child who is hungry cannot concentrate on anything else but food. The Ministry of Education has instituted a school feeding programme in schools. We may question the nutritional value of some of the food items on offer but the initiative is a bold move by government. What is of concern for a number of principals, however, is the amount of resources that the Ministry of Education provides to the schools to service this programme. They believe it is inadequate to feed all those who are in need.

However, if school managers work in environments where the population of the school comes mainly from poor households, and they are keen on improving the literacy level of students in their schools, they must be prepared to innovate beyond the Ministry’s provision to ensure that students in need are fed so that they will be in a position to take advantage of schooling.

School Managers may also find it useful to realise that the basic definition of poverty with which they have been familiar has been widened by scholars to open up the human condition to scrutiny as regards equity. For example, Amartya Sen (1987) has extended the basic definition of poverty to include the level of self actualisation to which people are exposed in their societies as a measure of poverty. Self actualisation, according to Dennis A. V. Brown (2001) in his lecture Poverty in the Caribbean, means in the context in which Sen uses it access to basic education, to primary health care, personal safety, to the supply of information necessary to make informed choices and to participate in the running of the society (p. 3). The UNDP has endorsed this view by Sen to the extent that it has added life expectancy and literacy to the measures of poverty.  If people have freedom from poverty in the senses outlined above they will be on their way to enjoying human development. Freedom from poverty is the very essence of human development as defined by the UNDP.

Managers of schools may recognise in the above definition of poverty a call for those who manipulate power to use it to realise positive outcomes for the less advantaged in society. In this light, they may recognise that they have a role to play in using their influence which they have gained by virtue of their positions in the education system to cause the advancement of literacy of all the students in their charge. They should not sit back, congratulating themselves on the progress that has been made to date in the education system which has impressively widened access to students at all levels of the system since independence. They must keep at the backs of their minds that a significant proportion of students today still leave primary school (almost 40%) without the requisite skills to function at the secondary level. And that many students leave the secondary level without acquiring much by way of literacy and numeracy (see previous articles in this blog).

So, though the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in its 2013 report has ranked Jamaica 85^th on the Human Development Index (HDI) and has classified it as being one of the countries experiencing high human development, and it is, it still faces challenges in reducing poverty. And this poverty is negatively impacting the performance of many students in the education system.

As a result, school managers need to be fully aware of the full range of poverty with which students are grappling and try to manoeuvre around the limited resources that their schools possess to provide an enabling environment in which students can be more than they thought they could be.

The second issue in the social environment of Jamaica which managers of school have to consider before they move forward with the business of educating their students is crime and violence. Managers of schools should develop an awareness of the problem as it affects their students because many students are from environments where crime and violence have been accepted as natural parts of life. Oftentimes in the media we are made aware of criminally violent acts in school where students have migrated from verbal and what I will call simple physical assault on each other to murder.

Scholars like Anthony Harriott (2003) and colleagues have, in the edited work, Understanding Crime in Jamaica: New Challenges for Public Policy, postulated that the incidence of crime and violence in Jamaica is multi-causal, as to be expected. They have attributed crime and violence to events arising from the political history of the country, the search by community members for identity in light of their disadvantaged position in society as well as group conflicts as a result of organised crime. They have also postulated that there is a link between poverty and crime.

Recently, another study reported in the Jamaica Gleaner has provided some fantastic insights into the incidence of crime and violence in countries like Jamaica. If managers of schools choose to accept the findings of this “international study” carried out by a group of scientists from the University of Berkeley in California, findings which were widely criticised, then they will fold their arms and relax because, according to this study, the crime wave in Jamaica will not wane any time soon. These researchers see the incidence of crime and violence in societies as a function of the temperature of these societies. Heat is the major causal factor identified for the incidence of crime and violence. Jamaica is a hot country.

What can managers of schools learn from the literature on crime and violence in the society? The major lesson that they may take from the literature is that the incidence of crime and violence in society today is caused by the interaction of many forces – historical forces hat still impact the present, sociological forces, economic forces and so on. School managers then will have to study their schools’ population to identify the types of behaviours that are prevalent in their schools that may be deemed as being criminal and violent and devise interventions making use of internal and external social intervention programmes to target them in order to reverse the number of such incidents in their schools.

A number of the children who have passed through the school system and will continue to pass through the school system have made and will continue to make conscious decisions to engage in violent and criminal behaviour. It is possible that the learning provided by the school may blunt the edge of their desire to follow criminal and violent pursuits. The managers of schools must continue to believe that their schools have a role to play in reversing undesirable behaviour in society.

The third issue in the social environment that may impact the performance of students is cultural practices adopted by members of many communities that do not place much emphasis on “book learning”. “Book learning” here refers to what teachers teach in school. The school is a symbol of this “book learning” against which many students rebel.

Managers of schools must realise this and use their influence to seek to reverse this trend which is evident in rural and urban communities. In many rural communities, for example, a number of students attend school irregularly. But there are a number of days when the attendance is expected to fall. If the parents of these students sell in the market children may either be absent from school on Wednesdays or Thursdays or Fridays depending on the days their parents go to the market. These parents expect that their boys and sometimes girls will accompany them to their farms to harvest crops to be sold at the market. In urban centres this trend of some students being absent on certain days may also be evident if students are from families which make a living by selling in the markets. Making a living now is seen by many families as being more important than “wasting” time in the classroom.

Another cultural practice that may be impacting performance of some students in schools is the influence of the sub-culture in which these students are socialised. Part of this culture involves women/children having children as soon as they come of age in the eyes of caregivers/some dominant male in the community; the trading of their sexuality for gain; the ritual of “dress up” in Jamaican parlance. That is, many men and women prefer to invest thousands of dollars in maintaining an appearance in the eyes of their friends than on spending it on their children’s education. The return on this investment is the knowledge gained (from compliments received) that they are "striving".

Many children in environments like these have seen members of their family and friends survive without having much education. They have material things. This is the immediate gratification that these children crave – the symbols of success, now. Success in school takes too long, they believe.

There is not much that school managers can do about this situation. However, this situation may reveal to the school managers that the number one priority of these children is not the acquisition of “book knowledge” but on emulating the lifestyle of members of their community – a lifestyle which seems much more exciting than that of the school. Therefore, school managers can take the attitude that some students will do well and some won’t and leave those who are not performing to their own devices. Or, they may attempt through the counselling services that schools provide some guidance to these students.

From the three elements of the socio-cultural environment outlined above, it is evident that managers of schools face a dilemma in trying to raise the performance levels of students who are performing poorly in the education system. Managers of schools have to measure the performance of students against the background of a socio-cultural environment in which there is an interaction and intersection of poverty, crime and violence along with pervasive sub-cultural practices in some communities which privilege immediate gratification over education which many see as not having any immediate benefit.

If the school managers really understand the state of the social environment in which their schools operate they will have realistic expectations of the performance of the students in their schools. As a result, they will be able to lead their teachers in creating interventions that are appropriate to meeting the specific needs of their students. In doing this, they may see some improvement in the output of their students. 

Read the other parts of this article at the following links:

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6