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80 Language Diversity in the Classroomof the term: ‘it has nothing to do with the educational quality [howeverthat might be measured] of the stimuli available, but only with theirvariety, intensity and patterning’ (Bereiter & Engelmann, 1966: 27).A more thoughtful approach to the environmental underpinnings ofdisadvantage has held that inadequacies in early socialization practiceslead to cognitive and emotional defects in children, defects that thencreate difficulties at school. A representative opinion was that of Deutsch(1967: 39): ‘the lower-class child enters the school situation so poorlyprepared to produce what the school demands that initial failures arealmost inevitable’. The major thrust of the sociocultural-deprivationposition was therefore to try and isolate factors in early home environmentsthat might result in the inadequate development of cognitiveskills; as noted above, it is easy to see how this environmentalist view ofdisadvantage directly led to intervention programs of ‘enrichment’ orcompensatory education. Some of the factors seen to suggest remediationinclude low socioeconomic status, poor material living conditions, andincomplete or dysfunctional families. More psychologically interestingvariables include low value placed upon formal education, absence ofbooks at home and poor parent-child interactions (most notably, deficientpatterns of mother-child communication). The home environment, inshort, is viewed as one of noise, crowding and physical discomfort, onein which children have little opportunity to learn and develop, andwhere the usual (i.e. middle-class) parental role of tutor and guide isrestricted and inadequate. Perceptual, conceptual and verbal deficits areseen as the inevitable consequences.In this cultural-deprivation stance, the other major category ofdisadvantaging factors involves the children themselves. They are seento be more ‘activity-orientated’, for example, than conceptually motivated.They are allegedly more concerned with the here-and-now, lesslikely to anticipate or think about the future, and therefore unwilling todelay gratification; the emphasis is upon immediate reward. There is adiminished regard for matters of ‘conscience’, increased aggression,lowered self-esteem, poor academic motivation and restricted languageabilities.What is wrong with this picture? First, we find that, although manyresearchers have trumpeted the need to attend closely to details of thedisadvantaged lifestyle, gross markers of socioeconomic status havealways remained central in discussions of disadvantage; that is, despitethe more detailed information available, the main pivot is still the equationof material deprivation with educational disadvantage (see Archer &Edwards, 1982). A second problem involves the presumed characteristics