ABSTRACT
A major barrier to the reduction of racial inequalities of opportunity in the United States is the low academic achievement of most Negro youths. The racial gap in school performance was recently documented by a national survey which found that about 85 per cent of all Negro American students in elementary schools and high schools score below the average of their white contemporaries on tests of basic knowledge and skills (Coleman et al., 1966). Psychologists and educators who are familiar with this problem generally assume that the black pupil's learning difficulties are largely motivational in nature. Given the extensive experimental evidence of the crucial role of motivation in learning, and a strong consensus among teachers that most lower-class Negro children are not sufficiently interested in schoolwork, this assumption seems reasonable.
