Book Review: The Left Outs
| Author | Diana Davis |
| DOI | 10.1177/000486586900200313 |
| Published date | 01 September 1969 |
| Date | 01 September 1969 |
184
AUSf.
&N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (1969): 2, 3
intended
to be an introduction to a piece
of long-term research,
the
true
value of
which
will emerge as it progresses. This
purpose
is
admirably
fulfilled in
this
book;
the
aims of
theresearch
are
clearly
set
out,
the
methods
are
painstakingly
described,
and
the
problems arising there-
from
are
widely
and
frankly
discussed.
Aspecial
chapter
on
the
pitfalls of
interpretation
analyses
the
problern of
interviewer
blas, especially in dealing
with
the
more
socially handicapped families
and
points
out
the
dangers
arising from
the
lack of complete or wholly reliable infor-
mation
in
certain
areas. This
last
problem
arises
to a
large
extent
from
the
fact
that
the
survey
only commences
at
age nine.
It
would
obviously
have
been
much
better
if
the
survey
had covered
the
sample
from
birth
onwards
and
thus
enabled
"hard"
data
to
be collected
for
this
period. This
is, in fact,
the
major
criticism of
the
research
so
far
since
the
years
from
birth
to
age eight
are
in
many
ways
the
most
formative
and
it is
unfortunate
that
for
information on
this
period
the
research
workers
are
at
the
mercy
of
the
well-
known
idiosyncrasies of
parental
memory
with
the
result
that
such
factors
as tem-
porary
matemal
separation
cannot
really
be adequately investigated.
However, in
spite
of
this
one small
defect, which in
the
circumstances could
hardly
be avoided,
the
study
clearly has
immense potential
and
asequel to
this
initial
report
will be
awaited
with
con-
siderable impatierice.
NEIL
CAMERON
Lecturer
in Criminology,
Victoria University, Wellington.
The
Left
Outs, S. A.
Warden,
Holt,
Rinehart
and Wlnstone, Inc., 1968. 208
pp.,
$4.35.
I
used
to
think
I
was
poor,
Then
they
told
me I
wasn't
poor.
1was·NEEDY.
Then
they
told me it
was
self-defeating
to
think
of myself as needy. I
was
DEPRIVED.
Then
they
told me deprived
was
a
bad
Image,
I
was
UNDERPRIVILEGED.
Then
they
told me underprivileged
was
overused,
I
was
DISADVANTAGED.
Istill
don't
have adime,
But
Ihave a GREAT vocabulary.!
THE impoverished philosopher of
this
cartoon
might
find his
vocabulary
further
1. Jules Feiffer, The New York Post, Feb. 17,
1965, p, 41.
enlarged
by reading this book.
Within
these pages
the
"culturally
deprived
child" is, willy-nilly, metamorphosed into
the "socioculturally disadvantaged child",
achange which
might
be justified if it
reflected
any
actual progress in
our
under-
standing
of the problem and how
to
cope
with
it.
The
purported
significance of
the
title
is
not
immediately
apparent.
Warden
defines a
"leftout"
as
"an
organically
normal, socioculturally disadvantaged
elementary-school child
who
attends
a
heterogeneous school, a school in which
the
majority
of his age-mates
are
significantly
better
prepared
than
he is
to
meet
the
academic and social demands
of
the
school situation." One
cannever
be
sure
whether
he is
left
out
because he
lacks
preparation
per
se or
whether
he is
actively rejected in
the
school
situation
because
he is perceived by his
peers
to
lack
this
prerequisite
for acceptance.
It is on this
shaky
conceptual
basis
that
Warden
looks
at
the
problem
within
the
broad
perspectives of social-psychological
theory, The
early
chapters of
the
book,
after
the
initial orientation outlined above,
review
some
of the
literature
in this fleld,
a
review
which is
more
remarkable
for
curious omissions (no
mention
of Loban,
Hunt, or even Bernstein
with
regard
to
language, for example)
than
for com-
prehensiveness. The axioms of
the
area
emerge
with
tired
clarity-
There
is an inverse relationship
between
socio-economic background
and
educa-
tional achievement:
As an agent of socialization,
the
family
provides
the
child's
first social learning
experiences and, for example, in shaping
the
child's language
behaviour
and
expectations of the external world, is
fundamentally
responsible for
the
degree
of deprivation (in
this
author's
terms)
with
which
the
child
enters
the
school
situation: -
The
social isolation which
results
from
a
poor
self-concept and rejection
or
being
ignored
by
peers is cumulatively dis-
advantageous
to such a child.
One
might
have expected
and
hoped
that
something more
creative
and
con-
structive
would emerge in
the
chapter
provocatively (and
perhaps
self-
deceptively) headed Analysis: Causes,
Consequences and
"eures".
But, although
under
each
heading we
are
presented
with
aformidable catalogue of
the
qualities
lacking in
the
children
characterized
by
Warden
as "leftouts",
her
exposition of
the
"eures"
tends
to be descriptive
rather
than
analytical,
There
is
very
little
attempt
to
explore
these
in
the
context
of
the
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