Urban Education In the recent past, research on the attitudes toward school of African-American students has suggested that the subculture within which many lived explained negative attitudes toward school success (Tyson, 2002). In this view, African-American students who excelled in school were teased by friends. This peer influence would prod students to either slough off school or attempt to hide the fact that they were good students. They would avoid bringing books home because completing homework was not a peer-supported value (Tyson, 2002).

However, Tyson (2002) has come to a different conclusion based on her research. She found that early school success or failure better accounted for the attitudes individual students hold toward school and school success. She found that African-American students who struggle in school during the elementary years would avoid academic work simply to avoid more failure. Her research suggested that the evolution of negative views of school was a developmental one and based on

Some approaches to teaching students might work toward the goal of developing and supporting a desire to do well in school. Howard Gardner's "theory of multiple intelligences" argues that there are many ways to learn, and that schools' tendency to emphasize verbal learning over other approaches unnecessarily disadvantages students whose strengths lie in other areas but who are nevertheless intelligent children (Nolen, 2003). Gardner identifies eight different "intelligences." In addition to verbal-linguistic, he lists musical, mathematical-logical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Those who follow Gardner's theory seek to find alternate ways for students to…