“Children who are treated as if they are uneducable almost invariably become uneducable. This is educational atrophy. It is generally known that if an arm or a leg is bound so that it cannot be used, eventually it becomes unusable. The same is true of intelligence.

Children themselves are not fooled by the various euphemisms educators use to disguise educational snobbery. From the earliest grades a child knows when he has been assigned to a level that is considered less than adequate. Whether letters, numbers, or dog or animal names are used to describe these groups, within days after these procedures are imposed the children know exactly what they mean. Those children who are relegated to the inferior groups suffer a sense of self-doubt and deep feelings of inferiority which stamp their entire attitude toward school and the learning process. Many children are now systematically categorized, classified in groups labeled slow learners, trainables, untrainables, Track A, Track B, the ‘Pussycats,’ the ‘Bunnies,’ etc. But it all adds up to the fact that they are not being taught; and not being taught, they fail. They have a sense of personal humiliation and unworthiness. They react negatively and hostility and aggressively to the educational process. They hate teachers, they hate schools, they hate anything that seems to impose upon them this denigration, because they are not being respected as human beings, because they are sacrificed in a machinery of efficiency and expendability, because their dignity and potential as human beings are being obscured and ignored in terms of educationally irrelevant factors- their manners, their speech, their dress, of their apparent disinterest.

The contempt of these children for school is clearly related to the high dropout statistics, the hostility, aggression, and the seeming unmanageability of children in such schools. They are in a sense revolting against a deep and pervasive attack upon their dignity and integrity as human beings…

‘The clash of cultures in the classroom’ is essentially a class war, a socio-economic and racial warfare being waged on the battleground of our schools, with middle-class and middle-class aspiring teachers provided with a powerful arsenal of half-truths, prejudices, and rationalizations, arrayed against hopelessly outclassed working-class youngsters. This is an uneven balance, particularly since, like most battles, it comes under the guise of righteousness.” -“Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power” By: Kenneth B. Clark