Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In this valuable book, Paula Ambrossi critically compares English school systems with those in her native Chile. She draws on twenty years of personal experience in Britain as a teacher, university lecturer, and doctoral student. She particularly contrasts the tendency in the USA, and the UK and many of its former colonies, to group students by their perceived ability with the mixed ability grouping favoured in South American countries and Finland. For centuries, these latter countries fought occupation by invaders, which Ambrossi considers increased their concern to promote social equality and justice, whereas ability grouping in schools reinforces lifelong and neocolonial social, political, and ethnic inequalities. Children know when they are bottom set citizens, ‘the dumb ones’. Many feel it is a calamity, and it is a constantly feared threat for many others in higher sets. Ambrossi contends that ‘knowing one’s place in British Society trickles down from The Crown to the classroom, as part of a norm’ (Ambrossi 2024: 2).
Author: Priscilla Alderson
Institution: University College London
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4401628842