St Edwards University - Tower Yearbook (Austin, TX)

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The Schools and Equal Opportunity An advance report by the authors of the study Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling i America. Americans have a recurrent fantasy that schools can solve their problems. Thus it was perhaps inevitable that, after we rediscoy- ered poverty and inequality in the early 1960s, we turned to the schools for solu- tions. Yet the schools did not provide solu- tions, the high hopes of the early-and-middle 1960s faded, and the war on poverty ended in ignominious surrender to the status quo... Today there are signs that some people are beginning to look for new solutions to these perennial problems. There is a vast amount of sociological and economic data that can, we think, help in this effort, both by explaining the failures of the 1960s and by suggesting more realistic alternatives. For the past four years we have been working with this data. Our research has led us to three general conclusions. First, poverty is a condition of relative rather than absolute deprivation. People feel poor and are poor if they have a lot less money than their neighbors . . . The problem is economic inequality rather than low in- comes. Second, the reforms of the 1960s were misdirected because they focused only on equalizing opportunity to “succeed” (or “fail’’) rather than on reducing the economic and social distance between those who suc- ceeded and those who failed . . . Third, even if we are interested solely in equalizing opportunities for economic suc- cess, making schools more equal will not help very much... The main policy implication of these findings is that although school reform is im- portant for improving the lives of children, schools cannot contribute significantly to adult equality. If we want economic equality in our society, we will have to get it by changing our economic institutions, not by changing the schools. Poverty and Inequality The rhetoric of the war on poverty described the persistence of poverty in the midst of affluence as a “paradox,” largely attribut- able to “neglect.” Official publications all assumed that poverty was an absolute rather than a relative condition. Having assumed this, they all showed progress toward the elimination of poverty, since fewer and 36 fewer people had incomes below the offi- cial “poverty line.” Yet, despite all the official announce- ments of progress, many Americans still seemed poor, by their own standards and their neighbors’. The reason was that most Americans define poverty in relative rather than absolute terms .. . The changes in the definition of pov- erty are not just a matter of “rising ex- pectations” or of people’s needing to “keep up with the Joneses.” The goods and services that made it possible to live on $15 a week during the Depression were no longer available to a family with the same real income ($40 a week) in 1964. Eating habits had changed, and many cheap foods had disappeared from the stores. Housing arrangements had changed, too. During the Depression many people could not afford indoor plumbing and “got by” with a privy. By the 1960s privies were illegal in most places. Those who still could not afford an indoor toilet ended up in buildings that had broken toilets. For these they paid more than their parents had paid for privies. Examples of this kind suggest that the “cost of living” is not the cost of buy- ing some fixed set of goods and services. It is the cost of participating in a social system. It therefore depends in large part on how much other people habitually spend to participate in the system. Those who fall far below the norm, whatever it may be, are excluded. Accordingly, rais- ing the incomes of the poor will not elim- inate poverty if the cost of participating in “mainstream” American life rises even faster ian. Schooling and Opportunity Almost none of the reform legislation of the 1960s involved direct efforts to equal- ize adult status, power, or income. Most Americans accepted the idea that these rewards should go to those who were most competent and diligent. Their objec- tion to America’s traditional economic system was not that it produced inequality but that the rules determining who suc- ceeded and who failed were often unfair, The reformers wanted to create a world in By Mary Bane and Christopher Jencks i) hy lh 7 | 7] ae, — = — =] ay Illustrated by Sybil Ingram

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SS i ‘hildren, with all of the richness, humor, “ Jesperation, rage, self-contradiction, “trength, and pathos that he would reveal to ther grownups . . . “)) In the face of many intelligent and ; Jespected statements on the subject’ of . “spontaneous” and “ecstatic” education, the 4 mple truth is that you do not learn | ‘alculus, biochemistry, physics, Latin -ammar, mathematical logic, Constitutional jiw, brain surgery, or hydraulic engineering ‘1 the same organic fashion that you learn to | valk and talk and breathe and make love. Tonths and years of long, involved, and—let 4 s be quite honest—sometimes nonutopian ‘ibor in the acquisition of a single unit of : ‘omplex and intricate knowledge go into the xpertise that makes for power in this vation. The poor and black cannot survive “ne technological nightmare of next ten ella | ears if they do not have this expertise. oe There is no more terrifying evidence of : nae culf of race and class that now separates ‘ppressor and oppressed within this nation aan that so many of those people who are Ich and strong should toil with all their Heart to simulate the hesitation, stammer, I awkward indirection of impotence, hile blacks in Roxbury, in Harlem, and in vast St. Louis must labor with all their soul win one-tenth of the real effectiveness ) jnat those white people conspire to deny. If Jhere is a need for some men and women to ‘ontinue in that manner of existence and hat frame of mind, and if it is a need that annot be transcended, then let there be two jery different kinds of free schools and two ery different kinds of human ‘ ransformation and human struggle. But, at )“ yeast within the urban free schools that we ‘ }uild and labor to sustain, let us be willing Jo say who we are and what we think and ie there we stand, and let us also say what wi Ihings we do not want. ce Those who fear power in themselves lear it still more in those whom they select ll) ly lead them... and boring people. Fear of power places a premium on mediocrity, nonvital leadership, insipid character, and unremarkable life-style. An organization, of whatever kind, that identifies real excellence, effectiveness, or compelling life-style with the terrifying risk of despotism and authoritarian manipulation will, little by little, drive away all interesting, brilliant, and exhilarating people and will establish in their stead norms of command mediocrity. The label reserved for those who do not learn to respect these norms is ““ego-tripper.”” Without question, there is a need for realistic caution, but not The perfect way to avoid an ego trip is to create a community of utterly alienated, dull, Free schools must separate -| the fear of domination from the fear of excellence. every straightforward, unequivocal statement of position can be construed as an instance. of ego-tripping. The perfect way to avoid an ego trip, of course, is to create a community of utterly alienated, dull, and boring people. There is no risk of ego-tripping if there is no ego. But there isn’t any life or strength or truth or passion either. Free schools, if they wish to stay alive and vital, must learn to separate the fear of domination from the fear of excellence. Jonathan Kozol, March 4, 1972 Copyright, Saturday Review, Inc. 35

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Ili f | vhich success would no longer be associated pi vith skin color, economic background, or yther “‘irrelevant” factors, but only with ac- “ual merit. What they wanted, in short, was what they called “equal opportunity.” | Their strategy for achieving equal op- T lested on a series of assumptions that went oughly as follows: |) Eliminating poverty is largely a matter of relping children born into poverty to rise ‘but of it. Once families escape from poverty, hey do not fall back into it. Middle-class ‘thildren rarely end up poor. 2) The primary reason poor children cannot sscape from poverty is that they do not ac- quire basic cognitive skills. They cannot ‘ead, write, calculate, or articulate. Lacking hese skills, they cannot get or keep a well- paid job. 3)The best mechanism for breaking this . ‘vicious circle” is educational reform. Since y +. 2 —— q ‘e children born into poor homes do not ac- quire the skills they need from their parents, 4 they must be taught these skills in school. ’ This can be done by making sure that they , if ‘attend the same schools as middle-class chil- ‘ ‘dren, by giving them extra compensatory yy programs in school, by giving their parents a voice in running their schools, or by some | ‘combination of all three approaches. | | | | | | Our research over the last four years suggests that each of these assumptions is erroneous... Implications for Educational Policy These findings imply that school re- form is never likely to have any signifi- cant effect on the degree of inequality among adults. This suggests that the prev- alent “factory” model, in which schools are seen as places that “produce” alumni, probably ought to be abandoned. It is true that schools have “inputs” and “out- puts,” and that one of their nominal pur- poses is to take human “raw material” (i.e., children) and convert it into some- thing more “useful” (i.e., employable adults). Our research suggests, however, that the character of a school’s output depends largely on a single input, the characteristics of the entering children. Everything else—the school budget, its policies, the characteristics of the teachers—is either secondary or com- pletely irrelevent, at least so long as the range of variation among schools is as narrow as it seems to be in America. These findings have convinced us that the long-term effects of schooling are relatively day-to-day internal life of the schools, in contrast, is highly variable. It follows that the pri- uniform. The cost of participating in a social system. mary basis for evaluating a school should be whether the students and teachers find it a satisfying place to be. This does not mean we think schools should be like mediocre summer camps, in which children are kept out of trouble but not taught anything. We doubt that a school can be enjoyable for either adults or children unless the children keep learning new things. We value ideas and the life of the mind, and we think that a school that does not value these things is a poor place for children. But a school that values ideas because they enrich the lives of children is quite different from a school that values high reading scores because reading scores are important for adult success . . . In America, as elsewhere, the long-term drift over the past 200 years has been to- ward equality. In America, however, the contribution of public policy to this drift has been slight. As long as egalitarians as- sume that public policy cannot contribute to equality directly but must proceed by ingen- ious manipulations of marginal institutions like the schools, this pattern will continue. If we want to move beyond this tradition, we must establish political control over the eco- nomic institutions that shape our society. What we will need, in short, is what other countries call socialism. Anything less will end in the same disappointment as the re- forms of the 1960s. SR of Education, October 1972 Copyright, Saturday Review, Inc. The “cost of living” is not the cost of buying some fixed set of goods and services. It is the 37