The school failure as tutor: An exploratory approach

This paper describes a pilot program in the use of high school near dropouts as tutors for young children. The work is set in the context of adolescent developmental tasks and draws its rationale from the general human tendency to reach mastery by turning passivity into activity. We ask whether adolescents who have experienced a decade of school failure and misery might use the opportunity for a new form of more active contact with the schools to master old failures. We reasoned that the very area of failure, where these adolescents show apparent uninterest through truancy and minimal work, must be a highly emotionally charged one (albeit negatively) precisely because it is an area of failure. After describing the setting and the rationale, we analyze the experience for several tutors from the point of view of their relationship to (1) the tutees, (2) the tutor-supervisor, (3) the group of adolescent tutors, and (4) the social system of the elementary school.Received Ph.D. from Department of Social Relations, Harvard University, 1956. Main current research interest is in the developmental process.This work was conducted while on the staff of the Department of Psychiatry, Bronx Municipal Hospital Center. Currently Instructor, Department of Psychiatry, Montefiore Hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Received Ph.D. from School of Education, New York University, 1971. Main current interest is in early childhood development.