Question 20
ComprehensionJAMB 1990 Passage IV: The code theory in education
The importance of the code theory in education lies in the fact that the school system requires the use of an elaborated code but not all students have access to it. The importance of this theory to sociology lies in the fact that the differential access to the elaborated code does not occur randomly but rather is controlled by the class system. Lower working-class urban children tend to have a restricted code. Middle-class children possess both a restricted and an elaborated code. The two groups enter into different types of relationship and learn to express themselves in different ways through language. They do not use language for the same functions, some of which, it seems, are necessary for the school situation. When the lower working-class child is expected implicitly to explcit language for functions he normally does not express verbally, a discoutinuity is created between his home and his school environment. He has learned to verbalize certain range of meanings in his home and when he enters school, another range of meanings is required. There is, then a very subtle, but nonetheless very real, sense in which what is taught is personally irrelevant for this child. The school system does not talk to him. Middle class children, possessing both codes, experience no such discontinuity. They can use language for these functions required by the school.
'The school system does not talk to him' means that the
- A.teachers do not talk to him
- B.teachers talk to him differently from the way other pupils do
- C.headmaster and teachers do not talk to him
- D.teachers talk to him differently from the way he is talked to at home
Show the answer and explanation
Answer: D (teachers talk to him differently from the way he is talked to at home)
Explanation
The school uses a range of meanings and language different from what the working-class child knows at home, so it does not 'speak his language'.