Educability and Rehabilitation: The Future of the Welfare Class

Socialization in early childhood of behavior leading to socio-economic and educational poverty was examined in mother-child interactions in problem-solving situations. The teaching styles, interactional modes, and attitudes toward school of Negro lower-status and ADC mothers appear to restrict the child's educability to such an extent that many lower-status children enter the first grade unable to assimilate information presented in a classroom setting. Present policies supposedly designed to ameliorate this self-perpetuating threaten to institutionalize it, thus progressively creating a permanent welfare class. To eventually eliminate the cultural deprivation which now characterizes a large segment of our society, measures attacking its cause, not its symptoms, must be instituted.