ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the past 10 or 15 years' psychological research on the intellectual development and education of poor children's minds. In the early 1970s, the author wrote The Myth of the Deprived Child, the aim of which was to offer a critique and analysis of existing work on poor children's intellect and education. The desire to ameliorate school failure was the motivating force behind the early studies of poor children's intellect; now the author have research that sheds light on the nature of school failure and hence on the school performance of many poor children. Cognitive developmental psychology is moving in new directions that can inform the study of poor children. Researchers are beginning to go “beyond the purely cognitive” to propose new perspectives on issues of intellectual development. An important research question for the future has to do with the nature and extent of such cognitive differences and their role in education.
