Learning to be an Agent of Accomplishment
Let us place the characterization of segregated minority children by the Social Science Statement of 1953 in the context of the child psychology and mental hygienist theories of the Midcentury White House Conference of 1950.
According to the child psychologists, the preschool stages of personality growth saw the successive development of trust, autonomy, and initiative. The fourth stage brought development of the "sense of duty and accomplishment."* The Midcentury Conference report cited the wording of psychiatrist, Erik Erikson, who described the fourth stage as creating, in the child, "the sense of industry." (P. 17.) This stage began at about six years of age and lasted for five or six years; that is, it coincided with the lower elementary grades of school.
Here is how the report explains what happens to the child in this stage:
"This is the period in which preoccupation with phantasy subsides and the child wants to be engaged in real tasks that he can carry through to completion."(P. 17.)
In the elementary school years, the child learns how to engage reality by making goals, planning their execution, and working through the plan. Growth in this stage would be thwarted if the child never experiences success in her plans. Failure would affect the child's adult years by crippling her sense of her ability to be effective in living. Here is how the report put the issue:
"The chief danger of this period is the presence of conditions that may lead to the development of a sense of inadequacy and inferiority. This may be the outcome if the child has not yet achieved a sense of initiative, or if his experiences at home have not prepared him for entering school happily, or if he finds school a place where his previous accomplishments are disregarded or his latent abilities are not challenged. Even with a good start the child may later lapse into discouragement and lack of interest if at home or school his individual needs are overlooked--if too much or too little is expect of him or if he is made to feel that achievement is beyond his ability. It is most important for health of personality, therefore, that schools be conducted well, that methods and courses of instruction be such as will give every child the feeling of successful accomplishment."(P. 18.)
In the absence of adequate empirical evidence regarding the effect of school segregation on the young minority student, the Social Science Statement drew inferences from psychological theories. The inference to be drawn from the theory of the stage of duty and accomplishment was that segregation crippled the minority child's sense of industry. Minority children could not grow up into industrious adults, because that portion of their personalities required for such active agency had been stunted by segregation.
The key to power of the inferential conclusion drawn by the Social Science Statement was its setting aside other explanations of the crippling of the minority child's sense of industry. In the long quotation above, from the Midcentury Conference report, it is clear that preschool life and home life were considered important factors in making the child ready to obtain a sense of its agency in the real world. The school was but one institution that could stunt the child in the elementary school years. The statement, "If his experiences at home have not prepared him for entering school happily," points to the major problem: a crippling home life.
The Social Science Statement set aside scientific concerns about the home life and family life of Black school children in order not to dilute the power of its conclusion regarding the negative psychological impact of segregated education on minority children. This was a rhetorical strategy that would create one of the great ideological and political divisions in American racial policy. Progressive liberal opinion would generally side with the Social Science Statement; it would call for the "total school" to solve minority children's psychological problems. Conservative opinion would disagree with the Statement, maintaining that the disordered state of the African American family was the crucial problem; the schools could not solve psychological problems created by chaotic families. Conservatives would call for reconstitution of the Black family and limiting the schools to academic education.
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* Helen L. Witmer and Ruth Kotinksy, editors, Personality in the Making: The Fact-Finding Report of the Midcentury White House Conference on Children and Youth, reprint edition ([1952, Harper & Brothers] Science and Behavior Books, Inc, Palo Alto, California, n.d.), p. 17 ff. The report is hereafter cited only by page number.
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