John U Ogbu
Biographic Data
| ID | 117706 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John U Ogbu |
| GIVEN NAMES | John U |
| FAMILY NAME | Ogbu |
| SIGNATURE | OGBU J U |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1977 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Minority Status, Oppositional Culture, and Schooling
Collective Identity and the Burden of "Acting White" in Black History, Community, and Education
Black American Students in An Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement
John Ogbu has studied minority education from a comparative perspective for over 30 years. The study reported in this book--jointly sponsored by the community and the school district in Shaker Heights, Ohio--focuses on the academic performance of Black American students. Not only do these students perform less well than White students at every social class level, but also less well than immigrant minority students, including Black immigrant stude…
Is America Breaking Apart
Is America Breaking Apart? John A. Hall and Charles Lindholm. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 162 pp
Beyond Language: Ebonics, Proper English, and Identity in a Black-American Speech Community
The discourse on the ebonics resolution passed in December 1996 by the Board of Education in Oakland, CA, has increased national awareness of the language problems faced by African-American children in the public school. The discourse focused almost exclusively on dialect differences per se between the standard English of the public school and the children's home dialect or ebonics. This article has three objectives: (a) to contribute to sociolin…
Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education
This article has three objectives. First, it describes Ogbu's classification of minorities: autonomous, voluntary or immigrant, and involuntary or nonimmigrant minorities. Second, it explains Ogbu's cultural-ecological theory of minority school performance. Finally, it suggests some implications of the theory for pedagogy. The authors regard the typology of minority groups as a heuristic device for analysis and interpretation of differences among…
Cultural problems in minority education: Their interpretations and consequences—Part one: Theoretical background
Cultural problems in minority education: Their interpretations and consequences—Part two: Case studies
Racial Stratification and Education in the United States: Why Inequality Persists
The primary objective of this article is to explain (1) the persistence of inequality between blacks and whites in spite of the changes that have taken place in the opportunity structure since 1960; and (2) why a gap persists in the school performances of the two racial groups. I argue that inequality persists for two reasons. The first is that changes have occurred mainly in one aspect of racial stratification, barriers in opportunity structure,…
Differences in Cultural Frame of Reference
There are at least two prerequisites for understanding the academic performance of minorities in contemporary urban industrial societies. The first is to distinguish among different types of minority status; the second is to distinguish different types of cultural difference. The distinctions between voluntary and involuntary minorities and between primary and secondary cultural differences are used as explanatory concepts. Voluntary minorities d…
Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning
Core curriculum and multicultural education are two major approaches advocated in the current school reform movement. This article argues that neither of these approaches adequately addresses the problem of those minority groups who have not traditionally done well in the public school. Core curriculum advocates falsely assume that as a result of instituting a core curriculum, demanding higher standards, and patching up supposed individual defici…
Adaptation to minority status and impact on school success
1992). Adaptation to minority status and impact on school success. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 31, Literacy and the African-American Learner/The Struggle Between Access and Denial, pp. 287-295
Understanding Diversity: Summary Comments
Minority Education in Comparative Perspective
Minority groups in contemporary pluralistic industrial societies face the problem of achieving educational parity with the dominant groups of their societies. They often lag in years of school completion. They also do less well on tests given at school and on standardized tests of academic achievement and cognitive skills. Variability in the school adjustment and academic performance of minority groups has been documented in the United States (Og…
Cultural diversity and human development
Students of human development in ethnic-minority cultures must ascertain the culture's repertoire of competencies and the indigenous formulas by which those culturally diverse competencies are socialized. Cultural attitudes toward schooling differ if the observed cultural diversity is based on primary or secondary cultural differences
Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure in Urban Education
This text offers a scholarly, in-depth analysis of urban education that provides insights into its current failures while suggesting policies and practices to make it more effective in the future. Payne ...questions conventional attitudes and approaches to urban education...This well-written text contains extensive footnotes, references, and an index. It compares favorably with quality studies concerned with the problems confronting urban educati…
Variability in Minority School Performance: A Problem in Search of an Explanation
This article traces historically the different research approaches in educational anthropology. In doing so, the author presents a theoretical approach to minority school performance based on the important differences that arise from a minority community's experiences in the postschool opportunity structure and how minority community members' perceptions of dismal future opportunities influence their perceptions of and response to schooling. MINO…
Black students' school success: Coping with the ?burden of ?acting white
Applied Anthropology: The World Crisis in Education: The View from the Eighties . Philip H. Coombs
Lads, Citizens, and Ordinary Kids: Working-Class Youth Life-Styles in Belfast
Family Life and School Achievement: Why Poor Black Children Succeed or Fail
Working mothers, broken homes, poverty, racial or ethnic background, poorly educated parents these are the usual reasons given for the academic problems of poor urban children. Reginald M. Clark contends, however, that such structural characteristics of families neither predict nor explain the wide variation in academic achievement among children. He emphasizes instead the total family life, stating that the most important indicators of academic …
Family Life and School Achievement: Why Poor Black Children Succeed or Fail . Reginald M. Clark
Enculturation and Education in Shanti Nagar Ruth S. Freed and Stanley A. Freed
Communicating with Quotes: The Igbo Case. Joyce Penfield
Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies
Black students' school success: Coping with the ?burden of ?acting white
Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education
This article has three objectives. First, it describes Ogbu's classification of minorities: autonomous, voluntary or immigrant, and involuntary or nonimmigrant minorities. Second, it explains Ogbu's cultural-ecological theory of minority school performance. Finally, it suggests some implications of the theory for pedagogy. The authors regard the typology of minority groups as a heuristic device for analysis and interpretation of differences among…
Origins of Human Competence: A Cultural-Ecological Perspective
OGBU, JOHN U. Origins of Human Competence: A Cultural-Ecological Perspective. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 413-429. In this essay it is argued that child rearing in the family and similar micro settings in the early years of life and subsequent adolescent socialization are geared toward the development of instrumental competencies required for adult economic, political, and social roles. These cultural imperatives vary from 1 cultural group to an…
Understanding Cultural Diversity and Learning
Core curriculum and multicultural education are two major approaches advocated in the current school reform movement. This article argues that neither of these approaches adequately addresses the problem of those minority groups who have not traditionally done well in the public school. Core curriculum advocates falsely assume that as a result of instituting a core curriculum, demanding higher standards, and patching up supposed individual defici…
Variability in Minority School Performance: A Problem in Search of an Explanation
This article traces historically the different research approaches in educational anthropology. In doing so, the author presents a theoretical approach to minority school performance based on the important differences that arise from a minority community's experiences in the postschool opportunity structure and how minority community members' perceptions of dismal future opportunities influence their perceptions of and response to schooling. MINO…
Collective Identity and the Burden of "Acting White" in Black History, Community, and Education
Cultural Discontinuities and Schooling
Anthropologists have long hypothesized that major differences in the school experiences of various populations lie in the discontinuities between their cultural backgrounds and the culture of the schools. Research has, therefore, generally focused on differences in cultural values, cognitive, motivational, communicative, and interactional domains that are presumed to affect school experience. This paper attempts to refine the cultural discontinui…
Minority Education in Comparative Perspective
Minority groups in contemporary pluralistic industrial societies face the problem of achieving educational parity with the dominant groups of their societies. They often lag in years of school completion. They also do less well on tests given at school and on standardized tests of academic achievement and cognitive skills. Variability in the school adjustment and academic performance of minority groups has been documented in the United States (Og…
Adaptation to minority status and impact on school success
1992). Adaptation to minority status and impact on school success. Theory Into Practice: Vol. 31, Literacy and the African-American Learner/The Struggle Between Access and Denial, pp. 287-295
School Ethnography: A Multilevel Approach1
Ethnography is increasingly used by researchers in education. Among nonanthropologists, however, it is often misconceived and superficially applied; among anthropologists there is a strong bias toward a narrow application of the technique to the study of education. The present paper argues for the application of traditional anthropological ethnography in the study of formal education and for broadening the scope of such studies. It also suggests …
Cultural problems in minority education: Their interpretations and consequences—Part two: Case studies
Cultural problems in minority education: Their interpretations and consequences—Part one: Theoretical background
Beyond Language: Ebonics, Proper English, and Identity in a Black-American Speech Community
The discourse on the ebonics resolution passed in December 1996 by the Board of Education in Oakland, CA, has increased national awareness of the language problems faced by African-American children in the public school. The discourse focused almost exclusively on dialect differences per se between the standard English of the public school and the children's home dialect or ebonics. This article has three objectives: (a) to contribute to sociolin…
African bridewealth and women's status
Three shortcomings of previous studies of African bridewealth and its relation to the status of African women are: they are based on a limited number of societies, they usually consider bridewealth mainly in terms of the interests of the male members of African societies, and they are essentially etic models that cannot adequately account for many important features of bridewealth payment. These inadequacies have led to conflicting results and un…
Seasonal Hunger in Tropical Africa as a Cultural Phenomenon
IntroductionIn 1961 Marvin Miracle attempted to demonstrate that reports of 'seasonal hunger' in tropical Africa were to be discounted and that in fact regular 'hunger periods' did not occur. He based his argument on a definition of seasonal hunger which took into account only the calories people consumed. By his definition, 'seasonal hunger' can exist only if people consume fewer calories than they need in certain months of each year even though…
Nigerian Perspectives: An Historical Anthology
Family, Fertility, and Economics [and Comments and Reply]
Family, fertility, and economics are inextricably intertwined. Yet despite intensive investigation, the interdependencies among these phenomena remain elusive. Expectations based on cross-cultural research and the theory of industrial society are contradicted by studies from throughout the industrial and industrializing world. Foundamental conceptual errors underlie these difficulties. This paper indicates how the interdependencies among family, …
Understanding Diversity: Summary Comments
Social Stratification and the Socialization of Competence1
This paper treats competence as a linkage between socialization and adult role-repertoire. The traditional approach to the study of socialization of cognitive, motivational, and social skills, or competences, in the United States generally makes an invidious comparison with white middle-class socialization of the same skills. Investigators often conclude that subordinate-group parents are a failure as socialization agents, incapable of transmitti…
Lads, Citizens, and Ordinary Kids: Working-Class Youth Life-Styles in Belfast
Schooling the inner city
School Desegregation in Racially Stratified Communities-A Problem of Congruence
This article is a comment on the rest of the issue. The papers in this volume were originally Symposium Papers presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 30, 1977. They all have to do with the topic, Informal Social Organization in Desegregated Schools: Patterns and Processes of Adaptation and Realignment
The King in Every Man: Evolutionary Trends in Ontisha Ibo Society and Culture
The Igbo-Igala Borderland: Religion and Social Control in Indigenous African Colonialism
Seasonal Hunger in Tropical Africa as a Cultural Phenomenon
IntroductionIn 1961 Marvin Miracle attempted to demonstrate that reports of 'seasonal hunger' in tropical Africa were to be discounted and that in fact regular 'hunger periods' did not occur. He based his argument on a definition of seasonal hunger which took into account only the calories people consumed. By his definition, 'seasonal hunger' can exist only if people consume fewer calories than they need in certain months of each year even though…
The next generation: An Ethnography of Education Inan Urban Neighborhood
The Next Generation: An Ethnography of Education in an Urban Neighborhood
Nigerian Perspectives: An Historical Anthology
Family, Fertility, and Economics [and Comments and Reply]
Family, fertility, and economics are inextricably intertwined. Yet despite intensive investigation, the interdependencies among these phenomena remain elusive. Expectations based on cross-cultural research and the theory of industrial society are contradicted by studies from throughout the industrial and industrializing world. Foundamental conceptual errors underlie these difficulties. This paper indicates how the interdependencies among family, …
Minority education and caste: The American system in cross-cultural perspective
School Desegregation in Racially Stratified Communities-A Problem of Congruence
This article is a comment on the rest of the issue. The papers in this volume were originally Symposium Papers presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 30, 1977. They all have to do with the topic, Informal Social Organization in Desegregated Schools: Patterns and Processes of Adaptation and Realignment
African bridewealth and women's status
Three shortcomings of previous studies of African bridewealth and its relation to the status of African women are: they are based on a limited number of societies, they usually consider bridewealth mainly in terms of the interests of the male members of African societies, and they are essentially etic models that cannot adequately account for many important features of bridewealth payment. These inadequacies have led to conflicting results and un…
Social Stratification and the Socialization of Competence1
This paper treats competence as a linkage between socialization and adult role-repertoire. The traditional approach to the study of socialization of cognitive, motivational, and social skills, or competences, in the United States generally makes an invidious comparison with white middle-class socialization of the same skills. Investigators often conclude that subordinate-group parents are a failure as socialization agents, incapable of transmitti…
Piaget's Theory of Intelligence . Charles J. Brainerd
Origins of Human Competence: A Cultural-Ecological Perspective
OGBU, JOHN U. Origins of Human Competence: A Cultural-Ecological Perspective. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 413-429. In this essay it is argued that child rearing in the family and similar micro settings in the early years of life and subsequent adolescent socialization are geared toward the development of instrumental competencies required for adult economic, political, and social roles. These cultural imperatives vary from 1 cultural group to an…
School Ethnography: A Multilevel Approach1
Ethnography is increasingly used by researchers in education. Among nonanthropologists, however, it is often misconceived and superficially applied; among anthropologists there is a strong bias toward a narrow application of the technique to the study of education. The present paper argues for the application of traditional anthropological ethnography in the study of formal education and for broadening the scope of such studies. It also suggests …
Cultural Discontinuities and Schooling
Anthropologists have long hypothesized that major differences in the school experiences of various populations lie in the discontinuities between their cultural backgrounds and the culture of the schools. Research has, therefore, generally focused on differences in cultural values, cognitive, motivational, communicative, and interactional domains that are presumed to affect school experience. This paper attempts to refine the cultural discontinui…
Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies
Schooling the inner city
Family Life and School Achievement: Why Poor Black Children Succeed or Fail
Working mothers, broken homes, poverty, racial or ethnic background, poorly educated parents these are the usual reasons given for the academic problems of poor urban children. Reginald M. Clark contends, however, that such structural characteristics of families neither predict nor explain the wide variation in academic achievement among children. He emphasizes instead the total family life, stating that the most important indicators of academic …
Family Life and School Achievement: Why Poor Black Children Succeed or Fail . Reginald M. Clark
Enculturation and Education in Shanti Nagar Ruth S. Freed and Stanley A. Freed
Communicating with Quotes: The Igbo Case. Joyce Penfield
Lads, Citizens, and Ordinary Kids: Working-Class Youth Life-Styles in Belfast
Black students' school success: Coping with the ?burden of ?acting white
Applied Anthropology: The World Crisis in Education: The View from the Eighties . Philip H. Coombs
Getting What We Ask For: The Ambiguity of Success and Failure in Urban Education
This text offers a scholarly, in-depth analysis of urban education that provides insights into its current failures while suggesting policies and practices to make it more effective in the future. Payne ...questions conventional attitudes and approaches to urban education...This well-written text contains extensive footnotes, references, and an index. It compares favorably with quality studies concerned with the problems confronting urban educati…
Sociology (31 works) · Political science (16 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Anthropology (13 works) · Law (9 works) · Social science (9 works) · Global Education and Multiculturalism (8 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · School Choice and Performance (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)