Schooling the Inner City John U. Ogbu

hree assumptions that underlie my recent cross-cultural study of minority education may shed light on the educational problems of blacks in our inner cities. First of all, in the United States and similar contemporary urban-industrial societies, achieving full adult status is tantamount to holding a good job that pays well and provides a good chance for promotion. Herman P. Miller, in Rich Man, Poor Man, sums it up well: "It is the job that counts." Secondly, regardless of the rhetoric of educators and "philosophers" of education, schools in such societies are designed to recruit people into the job market. Schools recruit people by teaching children beliefs, values, and attitudes that support the economic system; teaching them the skills and competencies required to make the system work; and "credentialing" them to enter the workforce. In the course of their schooling, children develop appropriate ideas or "cognitive maps" of the structure of their economic system--how it works and how to get ahead in it. They help schools succeed by accepting and internalizing the supportive beliefs, values, and attitudes of the economic system as well as by learning the skills and competencies taught by the schools. But for the children to develop appropriate attitudes and perform well in school, their observations of the older people around them and the folklore of their community must confirm that the system works the way schools say it does. Their observations must also convince them that their own chances of succeeding in the system or elsewhere are good. On the whole, under favorable perceptions and experiences, the community

T

from which the children come will usually develop culturally sanctioned instrumental attitudes and behaviors that enhance school success. The community will not only transmit the instrumental attitudes and behaviors to their children, but will also take steps to ensure that the children conform to their expectations. Children will conform if their observations confirm that such behavior will produce desirable results. Thirdly, under structured inequality, particularly under castelike stratification, unequal opportunity in the labor market affects the design and process of minority education. Two elements emerge under that circumstance to determine how minorities get ahead, what kind of education they receive, and how the minorities themselves perceive and respond to their schooling. One is the unequal power relationship, which allows the dominant group to control minority access to jobs and education. The other is the introduction of a job ceiling. Both cause dominant-group and minority members to define "realities" for the minorities differently. These definitions may include an indication of the kind of education the minorities should receive and an explanation of why minorities may not be doing well in school. The dominant group's epistemology, their view of how things are and why, usually determines the type of schooling that minorities receive and the remedies for minority school problems. A minority group's epistemology is usually different. The minorities are not content with their menial jobs and unemployment; they do not endorse educational ideas that advocate preparing them for such positions; and they do not believe that "the system" is open and fair. Of

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course, different types of minorities (e.g., castelike minorities, immigrant minorities) are likely to interpret the same situation differently. Minority status per se does not cause the disproportionate school failure found among inner-city blacks. Therefore, we need to specify what kinds of minorities experience such failure and what distinguishes them from other minorities. In my cross-cultural work, ] have classified minorities into autonomous, immigrant, and castelike types, and have pointed out that persistently poor school performance is associated primarily with castelike minorities. Castelike minorities, best represented in the United States by blacks and American Indians, are those which have been incorporated into society more-or-less involuntarily and permanently and then relegated to menial status. Immigrant minorities, such as Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, and others, have usually entered the host society more-or-less voluntarily in order to improve their social, political, and economic status. Autonomous minorities, such as Jews, Mormons, and the Amish, are primarily minorities in a numerical sense. They are not totally subordinated politically or economically by the dominant group. On the whole, castelike minorities tend to develop what may be called an institutional discrimination perspective, whereby they argue that they cannot advance into the mainstream or the labor market through individual efforts in school alone or by adopting the cultural practices of the dominant elite. They tend, instead, to endorse collective efforts as offering the best chances for advancement. This pooling of effort may weaken realistic perceptions and sidetrack the pursuit of schooling as a strategy for self-advancement. For the minority group as a whole, it may affect the extent to which the group sanctions (as distinct from wishing) school success as a cultural goal, accepts the schools' criteria for success, and sanctions and implements the instrumental attitudes and behaviors that enhance success. These three assumptions can be incorporated into R.A. Levine's concept of status mobility system. Such a system, a way of getting ahead in a culture, is made up of content (in the present case, jobs are the most important), folk theory or assumptions about getting ahead, and culturally approved strategies for getting ahead (e.g., " G o to school to get a credential to get a job"). Studying the educability problems of a minority group, according to this model, means finding answers to four related questions: How does the status mobility system of the wider society treat the minority group or its segments? How does the school respond to the minority group? How do minority-group members perceive the status mobility system? And how do the minority's perceptions affect its images of, and responses to, schooling? I shall apply this model to black Americans, paying special attention to low-income blacks in the inner city. In American folk assumptions, and in reality, the status mobility system is closely linked to schooling: people who have more education usually have access to

more desirable jobs, wages, and chances for self-advancement. Historically, a large proportion of American people, particularly white Americans, have found jobs commensurate with their school credentials; they have also earned wages commensurate with their education and jobs. Not only has this experience influenced the folk theory or epistemology of white Americans about how the economic system works, it has also reinforced their positive responses to schooling. This is particularly true of middle-class whites, for whom the system works best. For blacks, on the other hand, the experience has been historically different. They have faced a job ceiling-very consistent pressures and obstacles that selectively assign minorities to jobs at low levels of status, power, dignity, and income while allowing whites to compete more easily and freely, on the basis of individual training and ability, for the more desirable jobs above that ceiling. The jobs above the ceiling roughly correspond to those in the four top occupational categories: professional/technical; managerial, official, and proprietory; clerical and sales; and skilled crafts and foremanship. In the American belief and value system, these are the more desirable jobs; they require more schooling and schooling pays off. Below the job ceiling are semiskilled operatives, personal and domestic service, common labor, and farm labor. These jobs require less schooling and yield lower returns for educational investment.

The Missing Link Before the 1960s, blacks made some progress in employment above the job ceiling. Their progress, however, did not parallel their educational achievement. That is, their underrepresentation above the job ceiling was not proportionate to their educational qualifications; nor were they overrepresented below the job ceiling because they lacked the educational qualifications for higherlevel jobs. In general, black advances in conventional industry---especially above the job ceiling--occurred mainly in periods of crisis. As Gunnar Myrdal puts it, black occupational progress has been the result of a unique series of happenings in isolated periods of national emergency and labor shortage: the economic growth period of 1900-08, World War I, the immigrant-labor restriction from 1922 to 1929, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and the social reform period of the 1960s. It was these events, rather than technological changes in the general economy, that periodically raised the job ceiling and reshaped black job opportunities. In each period, significant numbers of blacks were employed in the mainstream economy and some made it into middle-class jobs. In the 1960s, this pattern changed. Employment opportunities above the job ceiling increased significantly and continuously through deliberate government policy, backed by legislation. This new development is educationally important because it has tended to establish the

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appropriate linkage between schooling and postschool opportunities for blacks, by making their jobs and earnings commensurate with the education they received. Analysts generally agree, though, that these favorable changes have mainly affected middle-class blacks, especially young, college-educated blacks. It is also among the black middle class that the appropriate linkage has been established between school credentials, on the one hand, and jobs and earnings, on the other. No such significant changes have occurred in the way the status mobility system treats lower-class and noncollege-educated blacks. There has been no official program to increase their employment as there has been for the college-educated; no affirmative action of equal vigor. Of course, in the 1960s an increase in the job pool (resulting from the Vietnam War and from federal social programs) led to increased employment of blacks at all levels of the occupational ladder. The decrease in the job pool during the early 1970s not only slowed down the employment of non-college-educated blacks, but also resulted in job losses by blacks already employed--last hired, first fired. The loss of jobs among non-college-educated blacks has continued into the 1980s, and under the economic policies of the Reagan administration, black unemployment has passed 18 percent (nearly twice the national average). Thus, non-college-educated blacks have not been helped by employment policies that were developed for the college-educated. Blacks without a college diploma continue their traditionally marginal participation. This pattern is characteristic of life in the inner city. Indeed, several ethnographic studies show that inner-city blacks are often given an inferior education, which ultimately prepares them for inferior jobs. This is no longer accomplished through such crude mechanisms as deliberate segregation, inferior staffing, and differential resources. Many, more subtle mechanisms underscore the different futures facing inner-city blacks and suburban white graduates. One such, now receiving increasing attention, is the disproportionate labeling of black children as having "learning handicaps," thereby channeling them into special education, which prepares them for inferior jobs. Thus, in a court case brought by blacks against the San Francisco school district (amended later as a case against the State of California), evidence was presented showing that black children (who made up only 31.1 percent of the school enrollment in the 1976-77 school year) constituted 53.1 percent of all children in educable, mentally retarded classes. That same year, in twenty California school districts, which enrolled 80 percent of all black children in the public schools, blacks composed only 27.5 percent of the schools' enrollment but constituted 62 percent of the educable, mentally retarded population. The court found against the San Francisco school district, pointing out that such disproportionate placement of black children in special education classes could not have occurred by chance. The figures for San Francisco are similar to those for

Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., and other large cities. The Other Half of the Problem

Good teaching and a good school environment help children learn successfully. But equally important is how the children, as individuals and as members of a group, perceive and interpret their schooling in relation to the status mobility system. Different groups of children, representing various minority groups, who perceive different destinations in the status mobility system will also tend to perceive and respond in different ways to the same educational offering and schooling. This appears to be so with castelike (e.g., black American) and immigrant (e.g., Chinese American) minorities. Even for children from the same minority group, differences in perceptions and interpretations can lead to different responses to schooling. In the case of black Americans, such perceptions and responses are important for understanding their school problems. The situation is paradoxical, however. Blacks accept the assumption underlying the status mobility system; namely, that recruitment into, and remuneration and advancement within, the job hierarchy should be linked to educational credentials. On the basis of a long historical and collective struggle for equal education, it is clear that blacks see formal schooling as a good strategy for improving their status. Studies also show that, at any given class level, blacks desire as much education as whites. On the other hand, blacks do not match their wishes and aspirations with efforts. My observations in Stockton, California, both at school and in the community, have impressed on me the fact that the children diverted most of their efforts away from schoolwork and into nonacademic activities. Other observers report similar findings. These observations have led me to believe that the poor school performance of black children is partly a result of not putting enough time, effort, and perseverance into their schoolwork. Yet, black children know what is required in order to do well in school. In my research interviews in Stockton, black children explained that one of the reasons Chinese, Japanese, and some white students do well in school is that they expend more time and effort on their schoolwork than black students. The question, then, is why inner-city black children fail to give adequate time, effort, and perseverance to their schoolwork. I suggest there are two reasons. One is that blacks, from generations of experience, realize that they face a job ceiling; therefore, they develop a variety of coping responses that do not necessarily enhance school success. The other is that the fact of segregated and inferior education has resulted in an abiding antagonism and distrust between blacks and the schools; this sort of relationship must make it difficult for blacks to accept and follow school rules of behavior conducive to achievement. The available data on minority education reveal that blacks have long believed that their chances of "making

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it" through a conventional strategy of acquiring educational credentials are not as good as the chances for whites. W.A. Shack has suggested that such perception of limited opportunity under the job ceiling has discouraged blacks from developing a persevering or optimistic attitude toward school and work. Specifically, because white people have not faced a job ceiling and have traditionally received adequate payoffs for their schooling, they took to heart the maxim " I f at first you don't succeed, try, try again." The job ceiling taught blacks, on the other hand, that employment, wages, and promotions do not necessarily depend on education, individual ability, or effort. So blacks lived by an appropriate maxim, "What's the use of trying?" In short, out of their experie n c e - b e i n g rewarded for educational efforts--whites developed a strong cultural tradition for academic hard work and perseverance. The small rewards received by blacks have not encouraged them to develop a similarly strong tradition. Moreover, how blacks (especially older children) perceive their chances of making it with a conventional strategy seems to affect the way they look at schooling. The children learn about the job ceiling quite early in life--by observing their unemployed and underemployed parents, older siblings, relatives, family friends, and other community adults. They also learn from public demonstrations for more jobs and better wages, as well as from reports in the mass media about the problems of black joblessness. Thus, even very young inner-city children soon begin to realize that for black people in America, the connection between school success and one's ability to get ahead is dismal, or at least not as good as for whites. As these children grow older and experience personal disappointment and frustration looking for part-time or summer jobs--the present black-youth unemployment rate is 52 percent--their already pessimistic view of the future becomes hardened. One may gain some idea about the mindset of black youngsters in the inner city from Dearich Hunter's article in the Newsweek department " M y Turn" for August 1980. Hunter is a 15-year-old high school student from Wilmington, Delaware, who has also lived in Brooklyn. In the article, he describes several categories of innercity black teenagers. The "rocks" are the majority who have given up all hope of making it in mainstream economy by means of school credentials. Consequently, they have stopped trying to do well in school. They do not bother to look for work, for not even their parents can find work. The "hard rocks," Hunter writes, are "caught in the deadly, dead-end environment and can't see a way out, a life that becomes the fast life or incredibly boring--and death becomes the death that you see and get used to every day." The "ducks" are the few who still have hope that they can make it by succeeding in school. The "ducks," unfortunately, often become the target of ridicule and rip-off by the "hard rocks." Any "hard rock" who tries to change, to become one of the "ducks" usually falls into the category of "jun-

kies." For, often, those attempting to change find themselves abandoned and despised, eventually becoming drug addicts. Historically, blacks have developed survival strategies to cope with the consequences of the job ceiling and of other racial barriers that have weakened the linkage between personal training and ability, on the one hand, and jobs and other opportunities, on the other. Some of these survival strategies help people get ahead within the conventional mainstream economy; others are for exploiting the nonconventional street economy. Among the first group are collective struggle and clientship. Collective struggle, if successful in increasing the pool of jobs and other resources for the black community, may even encourage inner-city youths to work hard in school. But it can also encourage such youths to blame "the system" and rationalize their own lack of serious effort in their schoolwork. Clientship, or "Uncle Tomming," is dysfunctional in that "Uncle Toms" do not make good role models for school success through hard work. Clientship teaches children manipulative knowledge, skills, and attitudes used by inner-city adults in dealing with whites and white institutions. In my Stockton research, I found that many low-income blacks, both adults and children, believed that most blacks who are successful had played the "Uncle T o m " game to achieve their success. Other survival strategies, such as hustling and pimping, also prevalent in the inner city, are used to exploit the nonconventional resources of the street economy. Familiarity with these survival strategies probably has an adverse effect on children's schoolwork. For one thing, in the norms that support these strategies the work ethic is reversed (one should "make it" without working, without doing "the white man's thing"). Also, social interactions like those between teacher and student are seen as opportunities for exploitation (one earns prestige by putting the other person down), and this may contribute to class disruptions and suspensions. Finally, the skills involved in hustling and similar activities may conflict with those required for completing schoolwork.

Decent Futures Throughout the history of public education, blacks have perceived their exclusion or inferior education as designed to prevent them from qualifying for the more desirable jobs open to the whites. Consequently, a significant part of their "collective struggle" has gone toward persuading or forcing the schools, and the whites who control them, to provide blacks with equal education. Today, conflict between blacks and the schools still goes on, for a variety of reasons and at different levels. My own observations in Stockton together with other researchers" studies suggest that from this hostile relationship blacks have come to distrust the schools. Blacks do not believe that the public schools can be trusted to educate black children as well as they educate white children. This conflict and distrust also leads the schools to

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deal with blacks defensively, to try to control them (sometimes paternalistically). Thus, the conflict-ridden relationship between blacks and school officials seems to divert the attention of both from the paramount goal-educating black children effectively. For all these reasons, it is more difficult for blacks than for whites to accept and internalize the schools' goals and their rules of behavior for achievement. Existing efforts--Headstart, compensatory education, follow-through, school integration, special college admission and recruitment programs, financial aid, and other support services for inner-city blacks--are necessary. They help undo the effects of past educational discrimination; meet legal, moral, and other worthy requirements; and send a new message to black children that American society is serious about giving them an equal chance. While these measures are necessary, however, they are not sufficient to overcome the ultimate cause of the problem of inner-city school failure: inadequate postschool opportunities. Clearly, one prerequisite for the kind of change envisioned in this article is to recognize that a castelike stratification has for generations distorted the linkage between schooling and postschool opportunities, and that this problem still remains for inner-city blacks, despite increased occupational opportunities for the college-educated black. Another prerequisite, therefore, is to recognize that real

change will come not simply by patching up the sup-

posed past deficiencies of individuals, but only with the opening up of decent adult futures for inner-city blacks. []

READINGS SUGGESTED BY THE AUTHOR: Levine, R.A. Dreams and Deeds: Achievement Motivation in Nigeria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Ogbu, J.U. Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-cultural Perspective. New York:

Academic Press, 1978. Shack, W.A. "On Black American Values in White America: Some Perspectives on the Cultural Aspects of Learning Behavior and Compensatory Education." A paper prepared for the Social Science Research Council, Subcommittee on Values and Compensatory Education, 1970/71.

John U. Ogbu is professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley. He is the author of The Next Genera-

tion: An Ethnography of Education in an Urban Neighborhood and Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies.

Society. IS available in Microform. University Microfilms International Please send additional information for (name of publicalion)

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