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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1968

"bright" and "cooperative" and "delightful" in first and second grade tend to be described as "apathetic" and "failing" and "behavior problems" by fourth grade and after. Is this metamorphosis to be explained solely-or even primarily-in terms of their social background? Could it be that negative school experiences had something to do with the change?
Several summers ago, Clark and his associates at the Northside Center for Child Development brought in a number of disadvantaged children from Harlem-all from impoverished homes, all seriously retarded in school-and undertook to teach them to read. They worked with them one hour a day, five days a week, for four weeks. Standard tests showed that the average child gained eight months in reading achievement during this period, and the smallest gain made by any child was four months in reading achievement. In the fall, these children returned to their regular schools; and after nine months they were tested again. The average gain in reading for the whole school year was zero! Are these findings to be explained in terms of the children's "culturally deprived" backgrounds, or must they be explained in terms of differences in the appropriateness of their learning experiences at the Northside Center and in their regular schools?8
This recital need not be extended. Suffice it to say that evidence mounts to prove that the "cultural deprivation" hypothesis is bankrupt. Like its predecessor, the doctrine of "genetic inferiority," it is untenable as an explanation for the prevailing academic retardation among children from the ghetto. When provided with learning experiences appropriate to their developmental needs, these children, despite their impoverished background, do learn effectively. Their academic failures must be attributed in large measure to inappropriate learning experiences.
It is not difficult to identify such inappropriate learning experiences in schools serving Negro children in the urban ghetto, including most of our schools with the new programs of compensatory education. 
We start out with stereotypic ideas about what "these children" are like, conjuring up the whole array of negative characteristics listed over and over again in the literature on the education of disadvantaged children. Overlooked is the important pedagogical fact that the children of the ghetto, like all children, are wondrously varied

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8 Kenneth B. Clark, Dark Ghetto, New York: Harper and Row, 1965, 251 pp. Chapter 6.

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