OUGD501: Study task 3

Write an analysis (3-500 words) of one media image of your choosing. 

This analysis should highlight how the intended reader/audience would construct their identity by a specific reading of the text which is based on the 'othering' of other groups or individuals.

Your analysis should evidence an understanding of the concept of 'othering' and also show some acknowledgement of how much the security of our own fragile subjectivities or identities depend on this process.

In the article Mr Woodhead, former Ofsted chief argues that middle class children are smarter than children from poorer families. 

'He suggested that grammar school pupils were more likely to be middle-class because "the genes are likely to be better if your parents are teachers, academics, lawyers, whatever, and the nurture is likely to be better”.'

This article is directly othering the poorer readers who attended secondary modern schools or their children who now attend an equivalent school. It is othering, them by saying they're not going to succeed and neither are their children because of their class.

The reader is going to feel a whole lot less secure about their identity if they’re from a lower class simply by looking at the headline, while the people who are middle-class who attended grammar-school or whose children will are going to feel more security in their belief that they are smarter and better than the poorer people. Creating more than just a class divide but a social divide in their attitudes towards each other. It’s an article that is attempting to render the poorer people as inferior to the middle-class.

These views are criticised in the article with a statement made by political scientist Alan Ryan, who totally dismisses the comments made by Mr Woodhead as ‘garbage’.

'However, there was support from Dr Bruce Charlton, an expert in evolutionary psychiatry from Newcastle University.'

'Dr Charlton insisted that intelligence was 'mostly inherited', adding that family background and education 'probably makes a small difference but nothing like as much as people think.’

This ends the article by further supporting the othering of the 'unintelligent' poor people to make them less secure in their identity. Which at the same time reaffirms the rich people’s ’superiority’ complex by asserting that ‘Dr Charlton’ is a expert whereas Alan Ryan (criticising this) is simply a ‘political scientist’. This down plays Ryan to further assert the othering towards the poor people by giving Dr Charlton more backing.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1180701/Middle-class-children-better-genes-says-schools-chief--just-accept-it.html