The Public Discourse

...Well, it does have its virtues, and to my taste they are no where better illustrated than in the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, which comes as close to the ideal of rational...

...his policy prescription is "drastic...

...For one thing, it is still committed to the idea of equal opportunity, while Jencks is not...

...Otherwise, however, the Times emphatically rejected Jencks' book and its advice on educational and social reform...

...Now each of these styles has its strengths - the deliberative tends to have the virtues of dispassionate reason, such as cogency, balance, precision and caution...

...Their forte is instead the passionate assertion and the ad hominem attack, and when the facts are at variance with the cause they are committed to, it is more probably the former than the latter which will suffer for it - not as a result of any malign intent or deliberate deception, but rather as a result of an insufficiency of intellectual and expository skills...

...Thus, Jencks' data do show that differences among schools do not affect the opportunities, whether taken advantage of or not, that children encounter in our schools...

...his research findings merely "shore up a flawed premise and are not simply a valid guide...

...it contains a "dangerous non sequitur...

...Third and most important of all, the data that Jencks uses do not measure equality or inequality of opportunity - they measure equality or inequality of results...

...The rhetorical offensive proceeded on four fronts...

...The Partisan and the Deliberative The most important and interesting division in American politics is not that between Left and Right or the New Politics and the Old, but rather the division between the partisan and the deliberative - between those whose instincts tell people to get committed, to take a stand, to do something now!, and those whose first inclination is to wait, take a careful look, search out more evidence, debate the various interpretations and find a comprehensive rational view of the situation before coming to a conclusion or contemplating action...

...First, there was the ad hominum attack: his book "has a serious flaw...

...What does determine learning and earning is genetic inheritance, family environment, peer environment, personality, effort, luck and many other things - but not schools...

...There was, after all, a way to accept Jencks' facts while rejecting his recommendations...

...Second, there is an argument from what I can only call "positive-thinking piety:" "What is the value in being told that more money has not produced better education, without a hard look at the manner in which it is spertt or at the roadblocks in the way of more effective spending...

...If it is, then doesn't the question of whom to elect at least deserve explicit discussion - and if a newspaper should discuss it, shouldn't it also indicate how it resolves the question...

...If personality or the capacity to grasp an opportunity...

...There is in the Journal's refusal to endorse a candidate at least a touch of fastidiousness and perhaps even a touch of unseriousness...

...Times editorialists are trained in and rewarded for being advocates in the partisan style...

...Its reasoning was that the function of an editorial page is to raise the level of public debate, and that "to pin one candidate's name on your lapel" not only doesn't contribute to public debate but can detract from it...

...The book reviews what is by now a large body of social science research on the effect of schools upon student achievement and adult income and social position...

...Indeed, his book may even help the cause of those who want effective school reform by showing what not to try or what not to pin their hopes on...

...This refusal, in the crunch, to consider and make hard grubby choices is, in its way, as grave a political failing as that of the Times...

...Third, there is an effort to discredit Jencks politically, by assimilating his position to that of "reactionaries" and "radicals" who hate "the schools," think them irrelevant and are trying to destroy them...

...Second, Jencks' data do not show that any or all differences among schools have no effect on student achievement or social mobility...

...As it happens, there are several good reasons for doubting or rejecting much in Jencks' book...

...How else to describe this formulaic refusal to consider the single most political decision, however uninspiring the alternatives, the average citizen makes...

...are steps on the ladder, there is no reason why schooling cannot offer a leg up...

...There is no great mystery why the Times proceeded as it did in this case...

...So is the deliberative style of political discussion superior...

...The existence of unequal results does not necessarily imply that there was unequal opportunity, just as the existence of equal opportunity does not necessarily imply that there are going to be equal results...

...One of the best places to observe these two political styles is in the editorial pages of our leading newspapers...

...But Jencks' research shows that, as a matter of fact, they are not and do not...

...There is also a more general reason for the Times' intellectually sordid performance here...

...The partisan style, for example, can be followed in The New York Times or the New York ∢ Daily News, while the deliberative style is best exemplified by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post...

...The editorial in the Times (September 10) dealt with an important new book about education, Inequality, by Christopher Jencks and several of his associates at Harvard...

...Now technically, these statements are correct in a way: there isn't in principle any reason why the schools absolutely can not be and do- these things...

...whereas the partisan style has the virtue of being an active and consistent political force...

...The problem for the Times and the Journal - and for the rest of us as well - is to reconcile the two case by case, from day to day...

...The Times did not much like this book...

...But most shabbily of all, the Times also felt constrained to deny the validity of Jencks' research findings...

...The Times was prepared to accept his findings about the causes of success in our society and the limitations of schools as an instrument of social reform...

...Its editorial began charitably enough, by observing that we tend to have exaggerated expectations of schools and that Jencks had performed a service in reducing them to a more realistic level...

...Its key conclusion is that, within the range of school quality in America today, this effect is negligible...

...Jencks' findings do not exactly help this cause, so the Times attacks...

...These three arguments did lurk in me Times' critique of Jencks, since they are the arguments which best define and justify the Times' position in this matter - that socialism isn't necessary or desirable, that schools are valuable and important even if they don't equalize society, that equal opportunity remains the overriding goal of social policy and that improving schools is both possible and desirable...

...From this Jencks concludes that schools are not an effective means of decreasing inequality in American society, that social policy should shift its focus away from the schools and that socialism is the best way to promote equality...

...Three days after the Times attacked Jencks, the Journal published an editorial explaining why it would not - and never does - endorse a presidential candidate...

...Politics demands both reason and commitment, both deliberation and partisanship...

...A student who goes to a "good" school does not, on average, learn more, or earn more as an adult, than he would have if he had gone to a "bad" school, and vice versa...

...g., "the report...

...They, therefore, neither develop, nor have occasion to use, the skills of making an argument that begins with first principles and proceeds, methodically and coherently, to logical conclusions, that makes sense of a complex body of information, that draws distinctions and identifies contradictions, that preserves a lively sense of the uncertainty of our knowledge and of the difficulty of making public policy...

...they show only that the kinds and degrees of differences that currently exist among American schools have no such effect...

...Yet the Times alluded to these arguments only indirectly, clumsily and sometimes almost unintelligibly (e...

...So Jencks' study does not justify despair over school reform - for the purposes of increasing equality - only great caution, and perhaps also a determined effort to look harder for something that will work...

...If one is not prepared to accept this re-definition, then one should not be too quick to accept his pronouncements on the efficacy or advisability of school reform...

...on the elusive ingredients of success and failure...

...Since the historic promise of the American democracy has been that of equal opportunity, and not equal achievement or talents or social position, Jencks' dismissal of equality-oriented school reform entails a radical re-definition of the American idea of equality, as he himself is candid to admit...

...But each style also has its characteristic defects, as was recently illustrated by two editorials appearing within days of each other in the Times and the Journal...

...These arguments did not really surface in the editorial because the bulk of the Times' effort consisted of an indiscriminate attack on the book as a whole, lock, stock and barrel...

...One without the other is absurd and has results that are at best comic, at worst, seriously harmful...

...And is not the election of a president one of the most important elements of such conduct...

...Since it is emphatically in favor of the people and organizations who make up "the schools" and the cause of "school reform," it is automatically against those who, for whatever good or bad reason, might aid the enemies of "school reform...

...If the environment contributes importantly to success or failure," it said, "then the schools can be a positive force...

...Such a reconciliation is, in fact, impossible, within the constraints of any single editorial "style...

...the Times did not - I would suggest in fact that it could not - discover how to do it...

...he has "fallen into the standard American trap of putting simplistic tags...

...political discourse as any daily publication in America...

...The Journal is always calm and intelligent, quick to get to first principles, alert to the need of making distinctions, mindful of the legitimacy of claims of competing points of view, civilized, thoughtful and never quick to take up a cause advocate a particular policy proposal or dismiss an idea...

...There may be many reforms that don't affect the results of schooling, but that do, in fact, affect the opportunities offered by schools...

...and after the first two polite paragraphs, the editorial went heatedly - and none too politely or intelligently - on the attack...

...In the second place, the Times is also committed to editorializing in the partisan style...

...Well, maybe, but what, after all, is the purpose of raising the level of discussion if not to improve the conduct of public affairs...

...This is a sobering fact, and it should make us skeptical about current proposals for improving schools - but it does not mean that schools can not be improved, only that it is very difficult and that we haven't yet figured out how to do it...

...these findings, the Times said, came "as no surprise...

...The only function of the Times statements here is to encourage, people to avoid or deny these facts...

...And rather than proceeding to ignore the book, it chose instead to deny facts, and in the bargain to illustrate a pathology to which the partisan style of discourse is especially prone...

...What Jencks really wants is not socialism, but a redistribution of wealth and a reduction of the distance between the highest and lowest income levels, and this can be done as easily and effectively in a capitalist system as in a socialist one...

...proceeds on the false premise that there is an inherent contradiction between the belief in equality of opportunity for all and the acknowledgment of great individual differences in competence, aspirations and effort...

...To begin with, it is a crashing non sequitur to argue for socialism on the basis of these data: as S. M. Lipset shows in the autumn issue of The Public Interest, socialist nations today have about the same degree of inequality as democratic-capitalist nations...