Subjective Culture and the Perceptions of Black and White Urban School Teachers

Abstract

The effects of cultural differences between teachers and pupils have been the subject of much discussion and less research. It has been asserted that the effects of such dissimilarity are potent to the extent that it is necessary to maintain cultural similarity between groups at all costs (Sizemore, 1969). Examples of this view are found in those demands for community control of schools which propose the hiring of teachers on a racial or cultural basis. The basis for such a proposition is that racial similarity results in a presumed understanding of the child that a person from another group cannot hope to share. It also implies that all, or most, teachers of a particular racial/cultural ethnic group have some attitudes and behaviours which are different, in some positive way, from those held or manifested by non-members of the group. Since these are questions which carry implications for educational and social policy, it is important that they be subjected to empirical analysis. This chapter,1 which is the second in a series of related studies (e.g. Landis, McGrew and Triandis, 1975), is in that spirit of inquiry.