The issue of male academic underachievement continues to attract worldwide attention. In Trinidad and Tobago, the situation is consistent with what has been found regionally and internationally. Frymier and Gansneder (1989) suggest that when students endure male academic underachievement, they become at risk and suffer from a variety of negative factors such as crime, illiteracy, substance abuse, dropping out of school, poverty and suicide.
In addition, Superville (1999) asserts that academic underachievers display "learned helplessness" - a condition in which they do not try to reach a goal because they lack self - confidence and feel that their efforts would not succeed. As such, they reinforce experiences of alienation and a negative sense of belonging, feeling cut off from family, friends, school and work as an affect of seeming incompetence.
Various factors that may contribute to this phenomenon include the biological, social and personal history of the individuals as well as a lack of parental involvement and expectation which can de - motivate a child and cause him /her to become a chronic academic underachiever. In addition, males who suffer from low self esteem feel that they have been " stigmatized" and , as such , there is no genuine desire to do good in school since thsy believe that their efforts will go unnoticed.
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