Attitudes of elementary school children to school, teachers and classmates

Abstract

The attitudes toward school, teachers, and classmates of 639 sixth- and seventh-grade children in New York City were investigated by means of the author's School Attitude Questionnaire Test. The results indicate that: 20% of the children are dissatisfied with school and 40% are critical of many phases; girls are more favorable toward school than boys; the school curriculum is considered to have high value; teachers are often mentioned as the cause of disliking school, but they are liked better than school itself, and more by girls than boys; and 7 or 8% of students express unfavorable attitudes toward classmates. Correlations between attitudes and intelligence, school achievement, past and present conduct and proficiency marks, retardation, and amount of absence are all low; significant differences were found, however, between attitudes of children in the upper and lower fourths for most of these variables. Children selected by teachers as problem cases had markedly less favorable attitudes toward school than had the children as a whole. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)