We must not resign ourselves to the idea that a child’s background dictates their future

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Paco Benítez

“It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul”.

(Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, 1888)

It is a frustrating yet well-known reality in the field of education: a child’s socioeconomic background has a direct influence on their linguistic development (Hart & Risley, 1995). The kind of verbal interactions children have with their families during their first three years of life—just before they enter the school system—largely determines their subsequent linguistic and academic progress. In homes where little is spoken, the child’s brain remains under-stimulated, and learning suffers as a result. Studies have estimated that the gap in words heard between children whose parents interact with them regularly and those who are not so fortunate can reach 30 million words by the age of three (Hart & Risley, 1999). Moreover, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are not only exposed to fewer words (quantity), but also to poorer linguistic quality. In some homes, communication consists mainly of swear words, orders, and prohibitions; in others, parents use richer, more varied language, offering explanations and words of encouragement.

Does this mean that children from modest backgrounds are academically doomed? The answer, though nuanced, is no. Evidence consistently shows that, on average, pupils from lower-income families perform worse academically than their middle- and upper-class peers. Yet reality stubbornly resists such reductionist readings. While socioeconomic status matters, there are always exceptions—and these exceptions are deeply significant. First, they sustain hope for every student within the system, offering examples of those who have managed to thrive despite adversity. Second, they help dismantle the view of disadvantaged pupils as a monolithic group, as though all were destined to follow the same path. They remind us that individuals possess agency—the capacity to act, to make choices, and to change their circumstances—even when those circumstances are far from favourable. The dominant pedagogical discourse often attributes the same traits to all disadvantaged students, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that casts them as academically weak and behaviourally disruptive. Yet those of us who work in classrooms know that reality is far more diverse. There are pupils from humble backgrounds who behave impeccably, just as there are privileged pupils whose conduct is anything but.

Let us consider some examples that challenge the assumption that one’s starting conditions determine one’s academic fate—cases in which minority groups have outperformed the privileged majority in different countries. In Malaysia, throughout the 1960s, members of the Chinese minority earned more university degrees than the Malay majority—including over 400 degrees in engineering, compared with only four among Malays (Suffian bin Hashim, 1973). In the United States, a 1985 study found that the proportion of students of Asian descent scoring above 700 in the mathematics section of the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) was more than twice that of white students (Ramist & Arbeiter, 1986)—a trend that still holds true today. In Fiji, descendants of Indian migrants (many of whom arrived as plantation workers) obtained university degrees at several times the rate of indigenous Fijians, who nonetheless still own most of the land (Premdas, 1991). Examples of disparity in academic achievement between different sociocultural groups have existed throughout history and across the world: in Israel, between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews (Smooha & Peres, 1980); in Sri Lanka, between Tamils and Sinhalese (Richard de Silva, 1984); and in Northern Ireland, between Protestants and Catholics (Compton, 1991).

One particularly striking case is that of several African American high schools during the era of racial segregation in the United States—schools that achieved far higher academic results than nearby white schools serving students from much wealthier families (Sowell, 1986). These included McDonough 35 High School in New Orleans (which produced Wilson Riles, the first African American state superintendent of schools), Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore (alma mater of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court), Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C. (which educated the first Black general, Benjamin O. Davis Sr.; the first Black Cabinet member, Robert C. Weaver; the discoverer of blood plasma, Charles R. Drew; and the first Black senator, Edward W. Brooke), and Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta (attended by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martin Luther King Jr.). Clearly, beyond the individual merit of these students—and that of their families—the decisive factor lay in the schools themselves: institutions with a strong culture of high expectations and quality teaching that fostered academic excellence.

In short, qualitative differences between social groups in education have been common across time and geography. Although there is a positive—though not necessarily causal or proportional—correlation between socioeconomic level and academic performance, there are, and always have been, cases showing that certain habits of behaviour can play a crucial role in reversing the disadvantages of one’s starting point. It may seem obvious, but it bears repeating: the education and values that families pass on to their children are essential. Families who instil in their children the importance of studying and of behaving properly at school are doing a service not only to the institution but, above all, to their own children. By contrast, families who overprotect their children and excuse every instance of poor behaviour hinder their growth and harm the educational community. This is why schools—and public institutions—must actively engage in educating families about these matters. The message cannot be overstated: family engagement is fundamental.

There are, of course, pupils whose families, either because they cannot (lacking time, means, or cultural capital) or because they do not know how, fail to provide rich linguistic interaction from an early age. Studies have shown that children in families receiving welfare benefits experience roughly 616 words per hour, compared with 1,251 words in working-class families and 2,153 words in professional families. Over four years, this amounts to about 45 million words for children of professional parents, 26 million for those from working-class homes, and only 13 million for those from welfare-dependent families (Hart & Risley, 1999). Hence the so-called 30-million-word gap mentioned earlier. This linguistic gap means that too many children begin school at a disadvantage compared to peers raised in homes rich in linguistic and cognitive stimulation—a disadvantage which, if not addressed early, only grows wider with time.

And this is precisely where the essential role of the state school comes in. If state education fails—if the schooling it provides is neither demanding nor of high quality—disadvantaged pupils are deprived of the one genuine opportunity for social and academic mobility available to them. The examples mentioned earlier—those exceptional cases where minority or low-income groups achieved high academic performance—defy the logic of determinism and demonstrate that social origin does not have to define one’s destiny. These facts are, in truth, profoundly hopeful: they show that reality can be transformed, that individuals have agency and the power to shape the outcomes of their own lives. This does not mean denying the existence of inequality, nor abandoning the struggle for a fairer society that offers equal opportunities to all. On the contrary: it means complementing that struggle with a recognition of individual responsibility. Such recognition allows us to move beyond the view—so prevalent in dominant pedagogical discourse—that society is ignorant and in need of reform by its enlightened interpreters. To achieve this, parents must be made aware of the research showing how critical verbal interaction is during a child’s first three years of life. Public institutions should therefore promote awareness campaigns encouraging families to create as rich a linguistic environment at home as possible. Yet all of this will come to nothing if schools lose faith in their own ability to transform lives.

If schools fail to address the inequalities with which children from diverse backgrounds arrive in nursery and early primary education, those inequalities will only continue to widen over time—a dynamic long recognised as the Matthew Effect in education. In fact, Hart and Risley’s 1999 study was followed up years later, and their early measurements of linguistic development in three-year-olds were found to predict language ability and academic performance at ages nine to ten—roughly the equivalent of Year 5 in the British system—when pupils move from learning to read to reading to learn.

The linguistic differences with which children begin school are striking, and fully compensating for them may be close to utopian. Yet what our education system must never do is give up on helping every child reach their fullest potential. The task of intervention needed to offset inequalities in early upbringing is immense and complex—but the sooner it is done, the more likely it is to succeed. To this end, disadvantaged pupils should, first and foremost, be taught by the best teachers—teachers who use rich and varied language in the classroom. Secondly, these pupils must be given every possible form of additional support. In short, schools must offer a demanding education, with high academic and behavioural standards, so as to protect both teaching and learning for vulnerable pupils—pupils who have no time to waste.

Meanwhile, our current education system is producing students who struggle increasingly to understand what they read, as shown by recent PIRLS results. Instead of compensating for innate or environmental learning difficulties, the system is now creating them through poor instruction. Content knowledge is being eroded in favour of vague, supposedly “general” competencies—contrary to the evidence, since skills are not transferable but rooted in specific domains of knowledge (Willingham, 2011). Worse still, the latest Royal Decree 157/2022—which defines the minimum national curriculum for Primary Education—does not explicitly mention literacy (except digital literacy) or phonological decoding, a basic skill for learning to read that requires explicit instruction (Piasta, 2023; Ripley et al., 2009). The decree even states in its introduction to the area of Spanish Language and Literature that “La adquisición de las competencias específicas debe producirse de manera progresiva a lo largo de la etapa, y siempre respetando los procesos individuales de maduración cognitiva” (“The acquisition of specific competencies must take place progressively throughout the stage, always respecting individual cognitive maturation processes”). This reflects a dangerously naïve belief that one should “wait until the child is ready” (rooted in the sacrosanct belief in individualised learning, which ultimately leaves so many pupils behind. Research has long shown that interventions addressing reading difficulties such as dyslexia are most effective when applied early (Wanzek & Vaughn, 2007; Ferret et al., 2015). Reading—being a biologically secondary form of learning—is not acquired naturally, but must be explicitly taught. Waiting for a child to “mature” is therefore not only misguided but condemns them academically—and, by extension, economically and socially—for life. And all this at a time when the scientific evidence on how children learn to read is overwhelming. Studies have shown that teaching reading in accordance with such evidence can reduce the proportion of poor readers in the United States from 33% to between 3% and 5% (Ruiz Martín, 2025).

However, the current education law — LOMLOE — explicitly promotes so-called alternative constructivist methodologies such as Project-Based Learning (PBL), learning situations and learning areas, not to mention approaches verging on educational myth, such as learning styles (Ruiz Martín, 2023) or the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), models which undermine the progress of vulnerable pupils. In fact, some of these approaches have even been imposed — or attempted to be imposed — by law, in clear violation of teachers’ methodological freedom. Methodology should serve learning, not become an end in itself. Yet in regions such as the Valencian Community, for instance, “Projects” has been turned into a subject in its own right in primary education. Each method can serve particular learning goals, but it is the content of the subject — and pupils’ level of understanding — that should determine which approach is used.

Evidence repeatedly shows that explicit, structured instruction led by the teacher is far more effective in helping pupils acquire basic skills — notably phonetic decoding, the most fundamental component of reading and, by extension, of all subsequent learning. A very recent report by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel on reading instruction in low- and middle-income countries underlines the same point (Álvarez-Marinelli et al., 2025): “la crisis mundial de alfabetización, [el hecho de que] el 70% de los niños de diez años en países de ingresos bajos y medios no puedan leer y comprender un texto simple, es principalmente debido a una crisis de instrucción, causada por la falta de uso de métodos de enseñanza probados por la investigación. (“The global learning crisis — the fact that 70% of ten-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text — is primarily a crisis of instruction, caused by the failure to use teaching methods proven by research”). In other words, the methods of the “new education”, despite their rhetoric of inclusion and equality, paradoxically generate greater educational inequity. The evaluation of Project Based Learning carried out by Durham University (Menzies et al., 2016) already concluded that, at best, PBL has no positive impact on literacy; at worst, its effects are negative for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

When the dominant pedagogical discourse paints such a monolithic picture of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, it inevitably finds its way into education policy and legislation. The result is a tendency to make it easier for pupils to pass rather than to learn more, to excuse negative attitudes instead of teaching habits of behaviour that will serve them in the future. This logic assumes that the way to “leave no one behind” is to ensure that everyone obtains a qualification — regardless of what they have actually learned. Yet true inclusion does not consist in lowering standards, but in deploying every possible resource to ensure that the greatest number of pupils acquire the knowledge and skills they need to progress academically, professionally and personally. What we see instead is a kind of well-meaning condescension that disempowers students and prevents them from advancing — a form of short-termism that soothes the conscience of those who propose it but ultimately harms the very pupils it claims to protect.

Those who suffer most from this lack of effective knowledge transmission are the pupils from vulnerable backgrounds. One particularly striking observation, made by Javier Mestre, Professor of Spanish Language and Literature, during the el IV Congreso de Expertos Docentes para un Análisis Crítico de la Educación (organised by the OCRE Association in Seville, October 2024), summed it up perfectly: “To fail a pupil is to strengthen state education”. At first glance, this may sound contradictory — and it will no doubt horrify the champions of the dominant pedagogical orthodoxy, who share much of the blame for the current state of education — yet it highlights the crucial role of academic rigour in preventing the devaluation of state schooling. Rigour is essential because the public system is often the only one accessible to vulnerable pupils, who lack the means to compensate for its shortcomings through private tuition or family support. With rigorous education from the earliest years, far fewer pupils would end up repeating grades.

The primary mission of the state education system should be to provide genuine opportunities for improvement to those who need them most. But achieving this requires more than slogans — those empty declarations of good intentions that never materialise in practice. The state school system has a moral duty to offer every pupil the chance to move up the social ladder. We know that this is extremely difficult — but it is not impossible. One of the greatest rewards for any teacher is witnessing socially vulnerable pupils achieve academic success. That is what gives full meaning to our work as educators. Speaking for myself, having come from a humble background and having achieved what some of my students are now achieving, I can say that this feeling is deeply personal. Yet observing my colleagues, I am convinced that it is shared by all teachers. There is no greater success, and no deeper satisfaction, than helping those who need it most. There is nothing more urgent — or more just — than taking by the hand children and young people from economically and culturally limited backgrounds and offering them a high-quality education that instils in them enough self-confidence to progress in adult life. For in doing so, we help them become the masters of their own destiny.

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Source: educational EVIDENCE

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