Small Futures

...The thinking behind the educational approach to poverty, is similar to that of some child welfare experts, who seek to transform poor children into nonpoor adults by taking them away from their natural parents and placing them in working- and middle-class foster homes...

...In this connection, he restates a theory which seems self-evident from the historical record, but has not yet received enough empirical study: that schooling cannot lead to occupational success for qhildren whose parents have not already obtained some occupational success and economic security...

...Nonetheless, should another New Deal be in the offing, it is likely to be more redistributive than the last one, and in that case books like Small Futures may suddenly turn out to be more practical than anyone now imagines...

...In the real world, where resources and power rather than ideas and policy proposals are being distributed, equality is faring less well, for Democrats and Republicans alike seem content to pile the new inequities generated by OPEC, inflation and 15% prime rates on top of the old ones already burdening the poor...

...as a result, the school rarely offers them an effective escape-hatch from poverty even in those few instances in which it truly tries to do so...

...Consequently, it was good news that the Carnegie Council on Children concluded its studies and deliberations by resuscitating the redistributive approach and proposing—in All Our Children, authored by Kenneth Keniston and the Council—a wide range of family policies based on this approach...

...Although de Lone underestimates the extent to which education has fueled the economic success of working- and lower-middle-class children, he is right to argue that it rarely helps the poor...

...In recent years, the outpouring from publications owned or taken over by conservatives has nearly overwhelmed writers who view poverty as inequality...

...Put in reality, such schemes merely postpone the pursuit of equality into an unspecified future, meanwhile discouraging the resort to effective antipoverty policies...

...The school will, however, help children achieve further upward mobility once their parents have pulled themselves out of poverty...

...Equality of opportunity is very different from equality of results, however, 28 March 1980: 187 and according to de Lone, schemes to improve the poor are nothing but a copout They claim to be redistributive because, by assuming that the improved children will escape from poverty when they reach adulthood, they promise the achievement of more equality in the next generation...

...HERBERT J. GANS is professor of sociology at Columbia University and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Policy Research...

...De Lone's Small Futures is also a "Council book" but it is more theoretical, seeking to trace the deprivations of poor children to "the inherent conflict between the inegalitarian consequences of a liberal economy and the egalitarian ideal of a liberal political democracy...

...Herbert J. Gems THE SUCCESS and failures of the War on Poverty led a number of policymakers and policy analysts to realize that poverty is essentially a corollary of economic and political inequality, and that ultimately, it can be eliminated by redistributing some income, wealth and power from the rich to the poor...

...Daniel M. MURTAUGH, author of Piers Plowman and the Image of God, is assistant editor of Commonweal...

...To be sure, other, less egalitarian scenarios are also conceivable, and if the REVIEWERS MICHAEL ZEIK teaches in the department of history at Marymount College, Tarrytown, with a special interest in Oriental studies...

...The economic downturn was accompanied by the emergence of the neoconservatives, who argued that giving poor people economic aid was throwing money at problems...

...Even if both policies had the intended effects, which they do not, they fail to attack the economic causes of poverty, so that if a generation of poor children could actually be uplifted from poverty by education or foster care, they would simply be replaced by the newly poor people which our economy is constantly creating...

...28 March 1980: 189...

...Still, neoconservatives may be right to fear the egalitarian idea, for if the present recession worsens and produces dramatic unemployment rates among workers who h'ave heretofore not experienced or expected layoffs, they may be ready to call for soak-the-rich legislation and controls on corporate prices,'profits and power...

...To be precise, de Lone argues that the historic American concept of equality of opportunity has resulted in a variety of schemes to educate, train, counsel and otherwise "improve" poor children in order to prepare them to compete with nonpoor children on an equal basis in the adult race for material success, prestige, and power...

...His work has appeared in The Village Voice and Review...

...and behind them lurked ultraconservatives who proposed that the poor were too inept and depraved to benefit from such aid, or that they would actually be hurt further by policies intended to help them...

...Poor youngsters who observe the occupational failures of the adults around them have no reason to expect real help from education...

...Most of Small Futures is devoted to demonstrating that educational and related improvement policies, and the psychological theories underlying them, do not work for the majority of poor chil-" dren...

...Before this conception of poverty could even begin to become the conventional wisdom, however, it was short-circuited by the stagflation of the early 1970s, and the resulting taxpayer reluctance to spend additional monies on the poor...

...N. e. CONDINI is a freelance writer and critic...

...Commonweal: 188 Great Depression is any guide, even this one may not significantly benefit the already poor...

...De Lone concludes, therefore, that "instead of trying to reduce inequality by helping children, we may be able to help children by reducing inequality," supporting fullemployment policies and tax-reform schemes that redistribute income and wealth which had already been discussed in the Keniston bookSince de Lone also questions the virtues of "classic liberalism," (read laissez-faire conservatism), Small Futures was harshly attacked in the New York Times Book Review by Diane Ravitch, perhaps the head Neoconservative for Education...

...Nevertheless, the very tone of her attack suggested a strong, if fearful, respect for the idea of equality, while similar attacks by hordes of neoconservative Goliaths against a tiny handful of egalitarian Davids indicate that the redistributive approach still retains considerable power in the world of intellectuals and policy analysts...

...Poverty, education, & equality SMALL FUTURES INEQUALITY AND THE LIMITS OF LIBERAL REFORM Richard H. de Lone for the Carnegie Council on Children Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95, 258 pp...