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Middle-class boys and lower-class girls expressed a significantly greater preference for white collar and professional occupations than lower-class boys or middle-class girls. Differences in occupational perception were found between middle-and lower-class boys. Occupations perceived by middleand lower-class girls did not differ significantly in status.T HE NEGRO and white boys enrolled in a New York City elementary school were described by Deutsch (1960) as aspiring in an unrealistic way to high prestige occupations such as medicine and engineering. In contrast, the lower-class girls were described as realistic in their aspirations. Negro girls expressed a greater preference for office work than did the white girls, who expressed a greater preference for the role of housewife, while nurse was the modal occupational choice of both groups of girls.The high level of educational and vocational aspiration expressed by some lowerclass children has been characterized by Ausubel and Ausubel (1963) as involving only the appearance rather than the substance of aiming high. In their view, the lower-class child does not perceive the eventual reward of striving and self-denial as actually attainable and fails to acquire the trait components of the middle-class de-

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