A Critique of Personality Approaches to Negro Performance, With Research Suggestions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the empirical and theoretical status of socialization and personality factors in the academic failure of Negro youth and to suggest some promising directions for research. The disadvantaged pupil's learning difficulties are attributed to a basic failure of the socialization process in the home. It could also be a reflection of the lack of relevance of the competence goals of the school to the competence goals toward which the child has been socialized by the transmitting agents of his own culture. A key component of the deprivation which afflicts ghetto children is that generally their teachers do not expect them to learn, and have adopted as their concept of their function custodial care and discipline.