ABSTRACT
Denni's cross-cultural study of the Goodenough Draw-A-Man test showed that there is a strong relationship between an involvement of a given group with representational art and the test scores of its children. An example concerns the influence of cultural activities on mathematical skills. Posner and Saxe and Posner reported this phenomenon for two West-African cultures whose economic activities differ with regard to their use of numerical skills. Compatibility between the ancestral values of minority groups and the dominant value orientations of the societies in which they reside cannot explain the differential academic performance of various minorities. One major problem with cultural compatibility as an explanation is that the minorities who are doing relatively well are, in fact, those closest to their ancestral cultural practice in socialization and social orientation, not those closest to the Western model. Rather, it is one of "crossing cognitive boundaries". Any proposed solution must begin with an understanding of those boundaries.
