This paper reports a secondary analysis of a direct measure of popular taste and contrasts it with professional evaluations of the same cultural product. The data are 5,644 motion pictures rated over a twenty-two-year period by members of a consumer organization and a group of professional movie reviewers. Ratings ofthe two groups are compared,…

Middle-class respondents mistakenly deny that the work ethic is strong among the poor, fundamentally misunderstand how high work ethic leads to increased feelings of insecurity, and mistakenly project for the poor a strong identification of welfare income with income from quasi-illegal sources. (Author)

THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES THE APPARENTLY UNBREACHABLE SOCIOECONOMIC GAP BETWEEN UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES AND WELFARE FAMILIES WHO LIVE ON ONE BLOCK IN THE WEST SIDE OF MANHATTAN. IN THIS CONTEXT THE ARTICLE CHALLENGES THE MIDDLE-CLASS ORIENTATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE "PHI DELTA KAPPAN," VOLUME 45, NUMBER 2,…

REPORTED IS A STUDY OF THE ASPIRATIONS OF 202 NEGRO MOTHERS FOR THEIR CHILDREN'S FUTURE. AN INTERVIEW SCHEDULE WAS ADMINISTERED BY TWO NEGRO WOMEN TO FOUR SUBGROUPS OF LOW AND HIGH STATUS MOTHERS. SUBGROUPS WERE DEFINED ON THE BASIS OF EDUCATION AND NUMBER OF CHILDREN. THE ASPIRATION OF THE RESPONDENTS WERE EXAMINED WITHIN THREE CATEGORIES--(1)…

This paper explores the hypothesis that parents consider preschool education to be more important for boys than for girls. To test this hypothesis, the following questions were examined: (1) Are boys disproportionately enrolled in nursery school? and (2) Do parents emphasize different reasons for enrolling boys and girls? The effect of social…

THE BEHAVIORAL NORMS OF LOWER CLASS DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT FROM CHILDREN IN MORE MIDDLE CLASS GROUPS. THE BEHAVIOR OF LOWER CLASS CHILDREN IS INFLUENCED NOT ONLY BY GENERAL SOCIAL CLASS AND CULTURAL BACKGROUND BUT ALSO BY SUCH SPECIFIC INTRACLASS VARIABLES AS FAMILY ENVIRONMENT. THE PRESENT ABSENCE IN THE LITERATURE AND IN PRACTICE…

PRIMARILY AN OVERVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF RESEARCH ON CHILD-REARING AND FAMILY LIFE PATTERNS, THIS BOOK FOCUSES ON THE LIFE OF THE VERY POOR AND COMPARES THEIR LIFE PATTERNS AND PRACTICES WITH THOSE OF MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES. THE TWO SETS OF PATTERNS ARE ANALYZED UNDER FIVE HEADINGS--MENTAL HEALTH, EDUCATION, "MORAL" CHARACTER, SOCIAL ACCEPTABILITY,…

THIS 1948 LECTURE ON THE SOCIALIZATION AND MENTAL ACTIVITIES OF NEGRO AND WHITE MIDDLE- AND LOWER-CLASS CHILDREN DISCUSSES (1) THE STRUCTURE OF REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS AMONG MIDDLE- AND LOWER-CLASS PERSONS, (2) THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CLASS ON PROBLEM SOLVING IN STANDARDIZED MENTAL TESTS, (3) THE NATURE OF PROBLEM-SOLVING ACTIVITIES AND MENTAL…

Theories of taste are efforts to understand the processes of signification by which cultural forms take on meaning, and how subjects are inserted into such processes. One of these theories is the notion of "taste cultures," set forth by Herbert Gans in the 1960s and continued by George Lewis into the 1980s. A taste culture is an…

The values, norms, and behaviors of the lower class Black community are inconsistent with achievement in American society and with the ethos characteristic of much of the Black middle class. Black leadership should directly address the problems faced by poor urban Blacks through constructive, internal institution building. (Author/KH)

This report offers the results of an effort to trace a value profile of school superintendents, who are distinguished both by a high level of professional education and by a need to relate effectively with those who have a lower level of education. The intent was to examine the growing polarity between a highly educated liberal…

This paper presents a Marxist reply to a philosophical discourse on the role of the "progressive" teacher in the education of children. The position under attack is that teachers themselves, no matter how progressive, are a part of the social hierarchy and impose middle class values on children, thus perpetuating the system. They are, in…

Lower-class black street corner behavior is present in the inner city and in nonschool settings. This language and behavior is misunderstood by middle-class whites, especially teachers, to the point that effective communications are seriously hampered in urban schools. Efforts to educate minority students will fail significantly until teachers and…

Preferences for 92 values, obtained from a survey of cross-cultural studies of values, were obtained from two separate and geographically distant sets of groups consisting of black and white males and females of lower- and middle-Class status. The middle-class black population was of insufficient size to include, however. Value preferences were…

This conference paper points out that there are different patterns of social deviancy among the various socioeconomic classes, and remedial treatment must take this class differential into account. For example, practitioners should be aware that there is a greater incidence of brain damage among children from impoverished families, and that…