Show Underachieves Say Parents Hostile Students who underachieve in school generally criticize parents as overly permissive or IT IS a sharp contrast to the positive view of parental influences shared by successful according to a recent study by University of Utah The study-which involved 39 eleventh graders from Hillcrest High School in Utah-also shows that Severs exhibit more negative personality traits and frequently dislike the school JAMES P. director of the Center for Academic and Joanne launched the t project to determine the pact of parental personality factors and school altitudes on young people whose scholastic performance is below their predicted intellectual or poor scholastic performance by intellectually capable students has long been a concern of explains In the the U researchers conducted thre group tests and an with the who were randomly selected from a total of eleventh IN THE area of perceived parental Pappas points out that the criticism of parental training differed widely between male and female indicating the need for separate approaches to each sex by Underachieving males stated permissiveness was characteristic of both while the fathers and mothers of achieving boys were perceived as controlling in their parental according to mothers of poor female students were perceived as more enforcing of more hostile in their instilling more persistent and using more hostile detachment as a control he achieving girls said their mothers were more child-centered and more positively he WHILE no significant differences were found between and underachieving males in their attitudes toward the school unsuccessful females reported less overall teacher approval and educational Various personality tests confirmed that the underachiever tends to be socially self-cen constricted in his thoughts and rude and generally has difficulty working in a controlled situation which demands DURING the Pappas says no significant differences between achievers and Severs were noted in the marital status of parental occupation and mothers working outside the size of family or birth underachieving females did cite the fact that their parents often did not want them to attend college and that social life had a higher priority than attending PAPPAS says he hopes the study will provide other researchers with a better method for studying the problem of scholastic |