Abstract
A fundamental axiom in psychological theory states that an organism with a symbol system usually behaves toward a new situation in a manner that is congruent with the symbolic label applied to that situation. This assumption has prompted many investigators to study the child's symbolic labeling of significant objects in his experience, typically his parents (i, 2, 3). The present research inquired into the child's labeling of a different set of objects, those associated with school, and asked whether young children had a preference for labeling school as feminine or masculine. It is reasonable to assume that the child's sex-role classification of the school environment governs the degree of motivation he will invest in mastery of academic tasks. For the child should be more highly motivated to master tasks that he perceives as sex-appropriate than those he views as representative of the opposite sex.
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