Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Disadvantage: The Environmental Case 79In an early argument, sensory deprivation was thought to be the chiefculprit. It has long been known that animals reared in isolation fromothers, or in severely abnormal social conditions, develop in aberrant andinappropriate ways; if the early conditions are severe enough, recoverybecomes impossible. Among human beings too, we know that sensorydeprivation (or perceptual isolation) has dramatic consequences.Observations of prisoners in isolation cells and the victims of ‘brainwashing’or ‘thought reform’ are relevant here. The effects can be easilyreplicated in laboratory conditions. In studies at McGill Universityduring the 1950s, well-paid subjects were required to lie on a bed withno visual, somaesthetic or auditory stimulation: few could endure themonotony for more than a few days, and none for more than six. Hebb(1968: 252) described some of the effects: ‘the subjects in isolationcomplained of being unable to think coherently... they began to havehallucinations... [their] very identity had begun to disintegrate’. Otherevidence for the importance of early stimulation derives from studies ofinstitutionalized children who while receiving adequate physical care lived in dull and unstimulating quarters, lacking attention and personalcontact. In famous work by Skeels and Dye (1939), Spitz (1946) andDennis (1960), apathy, poor motor and mental performance, developmentalretardation and ‘anaclitic depression’ (whose symptoms includelistlessness, withdrawal, susceptibility to illness and anorexia) weredocumented consequences.Could, then, the environmental conditions leading to social andeducational disadvantage have to do with inadequate stimulation andinterpersonal contact? The work of Hunt (1964: 242) was representativehere; he argued that the ‘effects of cultural deprivation [are]...analogous to the experimentally-found effects of experiential deprivationin infancy’ (see also Hunt, 1961, 1975). Any analogy, however, betweensensory deprivation in experimental animals and institutionalizedchildren, on the one hand, and the ‘cultural deprivation’ (i.e. disadvantage)of poor children, on the other, is very weak. Lower-class neighborhoods,for instance, are not at all similar to the orphanages and hospitalsstudied by those students of anaclitic depression. Comparisons betweenthe ‘sensory stimulation’ available in lower- and middle-class homesmay reveal some interesting differences, but there is little to suggest thatthe amount of stimulation is markedly different. (Indeed, we mightsuspect that, in many poor surroundings, there is too much stimulation,too little privacy and personal space, and so on.) Any attribution ofsensory deprivation to lower-class children, on the basis of work withanimals or orphans, has obviously not thought through the implications