Junior High School and the Disadvantaged: Time for Change

The author, from his experience as a regular classroom teacher and a prevocational counselor of retarded students in the junior high school, sees the problems of the educable retarded as part of the broader problem of educational disadvantage. He sketches the forces which have shaped the disadvantaged, the educationally relevant effects of that shaping, and the resulting conflicts between the goals of the junior high school and what it has actually provided for a large segment of its pupils. Suggestions for change are offered which focus on possible contributions of the staff of the community school.