What's your evidence of this amplification? I went to a half-white mostly working class high school and this was the attitude among the white kids--smart kids are uncool; think they're superior. I think it's connected to class divisions and the goodie-goodies and teacher suck-ups tending to be from families with more money. (The other half of the school was Latino and I can't say I noticed more or less studiousness there.) Once education has become an individualistic competition with every kid pitted against every other kid, they're going to react by disregarding the whole deal--a child who does well is seen as showing up the others. Who wants to do that? And when the goal is made entirely instrumental--to get a 'good job'--and those are not really available and everyone knows it, you've pretty much lost a lot of kids by highschool.
Then there's the problem that doing well in school is reduced to 'getting good grades to go to college,' even in a school, like the one I went to, where most of the kids are getting nowhere near a college. So if you know college is not an option--why bother? They've already sucked a lot of the fun out of learning anyway. A really smart friend of mine dropped out in 11th grade, took the GED and went to work. College was not an option for her moneywise, she didn't see the point of another year where she had to juggle part-time work and school. At the time I thought, she's smart, how come she can't get a scholarship? But her grades weren't that great cause she didn't think it made much difference, and she was right. Even a full scholarship won't bring in money to the family.
Psychopathology? If anything I hear a lot of talk--especially in the black community-- about education and how it's the solution and so important, even though jobs for the educated are not that abundant--if every kid who was exhorted to achieve excellence suddenly did--as Dwayne points out--they'd have a big political problem on their hands. Not that I'm against that, mind you, I say bring it on. One thing that I've heard black leaders say--and I've never heard white leaders say the equivalent--is that you have to get an education to be able to properly and effectively fight for the race (the whites could say fight for your class, but they don't). In other words, they're giving a collective, rather than an individual reason, to study and try to figure things out. It's also a lot more real reason, given what most kids (for example at my high school) see around them.
Jenny Brown