The Ghetto Gap: Educating the Educator

Reviews the book, School Children in the Urban Slum: Readings in Social Science Research edited by Joan I. Roberts (1967). The general introduction is a readable, succinct justification for an interdisciplinary (anthropological, sociological, and psychological) approach to understanding the problems of urban education. The editor has resisted the temptation to focus only on topical or controversial aspects of urban educational problems. A major criticism of the editor's cross-disciplinary approach to urban school problems is that it is truncated. Absent is a treatment of political power and organization as it may impinge, if not dictate, the future direction of slum education. The urban teacher may be in for a rude awakening if he or she is not prepared, academically and otherwise, to comprehend the increasing militancy of ghetto parents and power groups as they align and consolidate their attempts to determine educational policy and teachers' roles in the slum school. Admittedly, the urban child may become the pawn in this process but this is exactly why the urban teacher must be primed to confront such a possibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)