ABSTRACT
The design of educational interventions for children from economically distressed communities has historically been driven by principles and assumptions lodged deeply in utilitarian individualism. Here we find the primacy of individual rational choice, the emphasis on self-reliance, the mythology of meritocracy, and the belief regarding the limited distribution of talent within the student body (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985; Waterman, 1984). One major problem of working within such a paradigm is that the hidden injuries of class, racial, and gender stratification remain just that, hidden, particularly in the consciousness of those who develop and implement conventional interventions within the urban school system.
