Achievement and School Attitudes of Adolescent Boys as Related to Behavior and Occupational Status of Families

School deviants were compared to school leaders with respect to school attitudes and three types of aclhievenment: reading, writing, and mathematics. Findings supported the notion that those who conform best to the non-academiic or behavioral expectations of the school do appreciably better academically than do those who deviate. The two groups were observed to differ with respect to school attitudes. The strength of the relationship was observed to shift when occupational status controls were introduced. "Blue-collar" deviants were found to be less hostile towrards the school thaln their "wlhite-collar" counterparts. chool children whose conduct in the classroom causes the teacher to breathe a t Isigh of relief whenever they are absent are ordinarily those whose grades and academic achievement scores fall at the bottom of the class range. It is of interest, but beyond tlhe scope of this paper, to consider the direction of the influence. Either pupils who by th-eir drive and effort secure high grades and scores are encouraged and given disproportionate attention and support by their teacliers, or these pupils aclhieve well because their manners and conduct are such tlhat teachers favor them wi-th additional time and effort. The imnplication of a strong relationship between these two aspects of school adaptation, conduict an-d achievement, bears upon the question of opportunity and social selection. What is likely is that bothl of these interactional processes canl be observed to be operating in the classroomii. A thiird factor, that of occupational status A-with its co1n1Lotation of differential value systems m-)ay play an influielntial part in the dyvnatnic processes of learning and behaving in sclhool. This paper attemiipts to examilne the relationiship between these two adaptations to the sclhool, conduct and achievemient, focusintg upon differences by occupational status of parents of clhildlren in the study. A second related objective is to consider school attitudes in relation to school conduct, again emiiploying controls based upon occupationlal status. -Much that lhas been said about aclhievemeint can be said about attitudcles. Do attitudes towardls schiool emiierge out of the initeractionl patterns that establish the school conduct reputation of pupils or is attitude towards sclhool on the part of pupils simply an outgrowtlh or extensionof values wl-hiclh have always inhered in the value systems of parents towards education related to their socio-economic position ?1 Some liglht may be shed upon this question from the results of the investigation. Ear1lier investigations lhave indicated that juvenile delincquents, identified primarily by court records, and school delinquents, tlhose informiially designlated by teaclhers and administrators, do not make the samle kind of educational progress that tlheir non-deliniquent counterparts do.2 Tlhere has been a tendenlcy 1 For a discussion of valuies towards education of differeint socio-economiiics glroups see Herbert Hyman, "Value Systems of Different Classes: A Social-Psychological Contribution to the Tlheory of Stratification," in Class, Status and Poccr, R. Bendix and S. Lipset, eds. (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 19533)), pp. 426-42; Joseph Kalil, "Education and Aspirations of 'Common Man' Boys," Harvard Educationial Rczic-zc, 23 (1953), pp. 186203; and Bernard Rosen, "The Achievemiient Syndromiie: A Psycho-Cultural Dimenisioln of Social Stratification," Aneiricau Sociological Reviecz', 21, pp. 203-211. 2Data collected by William Healey and Augnsta Broniner suggest that there is a significant difference between delinquenits and noln-delilnquents on sclhool grades and achievemiient tests. See Nero-y Lip/it on. Delin2C.euTC andl Its Treatnciiet ( New Haven: 1936), pp. 60-64, 201-203. Of the delinquelnts attendinschool a great majority were either failing academiiically or were on the border lilne. See "Tlhe Hoome, the School and Delinquency," I-Jarvard Edutcationlal Reviezc., 23 (1953), pp. 17-32. A This content downloaded from 207.46.13.118 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 06:25:42 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ADOLESCEATT ACHIEVEMIIIENTS AND ATTITUDES 463 amiong educators andl writers3 to associate both miscolnduct and poor aclhievement with inadequate intelligence despite the fact that the indlex of intelligence has onily been effective as a measure of something that relates to scllool progress. Tlis focus proves to be a dead end for investigators and forces consideration of -the possibility that both indicators of unsatis.factory school adjustment are related to another variable or set of variables or that they are comnplemlentary functiolns of each other. The focus of this study has beent upon two groups of students wlho were foulnd to be making opposite adaptations to the institution of the school. The approach has been to seek expected differences in sclhool achievenment and attitude between the groups, as well as within each group, employing socio-econoimic status as the criterion onl whlich the in-group coIiiparisolns were based. At the conclusion of eiglht molntlhs of beinog involvecl in a research program114 eiglhty-one teaclhers were asked to select two g-roups of students: (1) those wlholmthey felt contributed miiost to the solidarity of the classroom group by their outstanding efforts, excellent cooperation, demonstration of leadership abilities, and general all arouncld willingness to help, and (2) those students who contributed most to the disunity or conflict present in the classroomii tlhrough disobedience, lack of effort, and general non-coniformity to school ancl classroom expectations. No specific number of stutdenits was requested, only that they provide one list for boys and one for girls. This resulted in a list of 300 high conformers and 250 nonl-conformiers. Interviews witlh prinlcipals, vice principals, and office clerks5 followed. They were asked to describe those, studlents on tlle teaclhers' lists, whliclh had bDeen combinedl, whlollm they recognized by name or reputation, witlhout being told into wvliclh category they lhad been placed by the teachers. Approximiiately 90 percent of the pupils were recognized andl placed into the same cate-ories that they lhad bleen placed in by teachers. Those wvlio were not recognlized by admliiinistrators or clerks, or were not knowvni well enoughl because the studlents lhad not been in attenldanlce for more tlhan a year, were dropped firomii the lists. A searclh of the school records w.Ras the final step. Consistency of descriptionL over a three year period was thle criterion1 by whlicll tl-he puipils remained in the study. This was to ensure tla.t the deviancy or high conformity were not simply expressions of curren-t personality conilicts or lharm-iolnies between the student and hiis current teaclher. For tlhose whose records covered at least a tlhree year period better than 90 percent were able to be retained. This indicated that teaclers, tlrough time, expected anld sanctionedl the samie belhaviors. A seconcd factor whTich might be operatinig to confirmi and maintaini behavrior of students througlh tilm-e could be thle halo effect, a situation in wjhich a student's similar study to that undertaken by the Gleucks was made by William Hodge in the St. Louis Public Schools. He found, of several factors ilnvestigated, olnly two were significanltly related to delinquency, bad conduct marks and bad grades. See "Problem and Non-Problem iWhite Siblings," Sociology and Sociol Rescar-ch, 40 (1955-56), pp. 112116. Albert DeGroat and J-ames Thompson found that those students classified as "High ApprovalLOw Disapproval" scored sig-nificantly hig-her on I.Q. as well as achievement tests than did the group classified as "Low Approval High Disapproval." See "A Study of the Distributionl of Teacher Approval and Disapproval among Sixth Gr-ade Pupils," Journal of Experimnental Educatiolnl, 18, pp. 57-75. 3 Eleanor Gleuck, "Mental Retardation and Ju enile Delinqquency," Mental HyYgicne, 19 (October 1935), pp. 549-577, compared a group of delinquents with a random group of Massachusetts school children and found tlhat the percentage of delinquents who fell into below normal categories was nmuclh g-reater than the percentag-es of school children falling in these categ-ories. Data reported on in footnote 2 by DeGroat and Thompsonl have brouight the Gleuck data up to date. This is further supported by data collected by the author on Los Ang-eles school delinquents althoug-h the differences do3 not appear to be as great as those presented in the Gleuck paper. 4 C. Wayne Gordon, Jolhn D. MXFcNeil and Leta M. Adler, "Teacher Leaderslhip in Relation to Achievemelnt, Productivity alnd Morale of Seventh and Eig-hth Grade Pupils," A Cooperative Research Proj ect of the U. S. Office of Eduication1. 5 Office clerks appeared to be as knowledgeable as any arounlcd the scl-lool., particularly with respect to wlho the problem children were. Those dismissed from the classroom for bad colnduct report first to the clerks and usually sit by themn until summolned by the principal. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.118 on Sun, 11 Sep 2016 06:25:42 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms