Word: banfield
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What about key studies that indicate putting low achievers in classes with high achievers improves the performance of the former? Banfield only mentions this, but without interest. Besides, he assures us, that would also worsen the performance of the high achievers when the proportion of low achievers "passes a certain point." We know of no data to support that view. And if it should be true, why pass "that certain point...
Really, the biggest thing wrong with our cities is that small part of the population which is lower class. Banfield defines them as those whose "time horizon" is such that they cannot conceptualize the future, but, instead, are obliged to live from moment to moment...
...Banfield hastens to add that not all Negroes are lower-class. On the other hand, the present lower class is mostly black. (Banfield does not appear to consider that 300 years of living in white America may have played a role in forcing some blacks to be "present-oriented...
Well, what are we going to do about those lower-class people who are fouling up the cities? (Their number is a relative mystery: Banfield devotes a four-page appendix to discussing that, but with no clear results.) At least twice in the book, he wistfully points out that if only those lower classes would "disappear." "... there would be no serious urban problems worth talking about...
...BANFIELD admits that this lower class is probably growing. And that makes him "apprehensive...