The School of Inequality

Teachers are kept awake at night by the fact that so many pupils fail, play truant or even drop out completely. These are often children of unemployed people or immigrants. Failure to pass is also attributed to their home environment: they are really too weak for mathematics, they are not stimulated at home, etc. Is it that simple?
That Flemish education falls far short in terms of equal opportunities is not a new observation. But what mechanisms are responsible for the school maintaining the reproduction of inequalities by social and ethnic origin?
Nico Hirtt, Ides Nicaise and Dirk De Zutter try, with facts and figures in hand, to expose some of its structural and cultural roots. They point in particular to the extreme competition on the school market, the overemphasis of instrumental knowledge as opposed to critical knowledge, the abuse of special education as a social broom wagon, the too early study orientation of pupils, the weak integration policy with regard to migrants...
But the authors also point to concrete, feasible steps to do something about it. Principles for pedagogical-didactic practice at class and school level are also discussed.
This book is the result of a collaboration between a teacher-publicist, a university professor and a trade union official. What unites people with such different backgrounds is their unanimous vision regarding the contours of the necessary changes, their openness to debate and their will to break with the school of inequality.