Low-Income Adolescents' Perceptions of School, Intelligence, and Themselves as Students

ABSTRACT

Using naturalistic methodologies, 40 low-income teenagers were interviewed regarding their own, their peers', and their parents' attitudes toward school; their feelings about the purposes and personal influences of school; and their ideas about the nature and importance of intelligence. Results indicate considerable correspondence between low-income adolescents' and the general public's views of school, intelligence, and the causes of poor school performance. Adolescents tended to internalize the negative messages they received in the school setting and blame themselves for school failure. Problematic is the fact that low- income adolescents were not very critical of a system that does not work well for them.