Individual in Collective Adaptation: A Framework for Focusing on Academic Underperformance and Dropping Out Among Involuntary Minorities (From Dropouts from School: Issues, Dilemmas, and Solutions, P 181-204, 1989, Lois Weis, Eleanor Farrar, et al., eds. -- See NCJ-129690)

• NCJ Number: 129699
• Author(s): J U Ogbu
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 24 pages
• Sale Source: California Correctional Peace Officers Assoc
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

An alternative conceptualization of the dropout issue is presented to characterize the high proportion of involuntary minority youth with low academic performance.

Abstract

The school adjustment and academic performance problems of the minorities are based on a white, middle class cultural model, not the cultural models of the minorities. A cultural model of the minorities which incorporates status mobility frame, folk theory of getting ahead in the United States, survival strategies, trust identity, and a cultural frame of reference influences the minorities youth educational attitudes and behaviors. In contrast the nature of the content of the immigrant minorities cultural model allow them to adopt attitudes and strategies more conducive to school success than is the case of the involuntary minorities. Until the incorporation of the minorities' own notion of schooling into the cultural model occurs, the present social policies or remedial problems based on the white middle class cultural model will be ineffective. 48 notes