Jews, Catholics, & intellectual achievement

...Thus, there is no basis for attributing the generally lower rates of scholarly productivity of Catholic colleges to the intellectual quality of these institutions, much less to a specific set of anti-intellectual values rooted in the Catholic religion...

...Yet these eastern Jews . . . have contributed a larger proportion of their children and grandchildren to academic and scholarly life than have Catholic immigrants as a whole...

...Consistent with this liberal faith in education, two general assumptions run through the social science literature on education and ethnic mobility...

...The fact that the great majority of Catholic immigrants came from peasant backgrounds was of enormous consequence...

...This has sometimes led to invidious comparisons between, the two groups...

...only taken longer to play itself out...

...The scenario is no different for Catholics than for other groups...

...Rather it is the interpretation of this fact-specifically, the notion that Jewish educational achievements result from a reverence for learning embedded in Jewish history and culture-that is problematic...

...The category labeled "working class" included both blue-collar and those in low-level white-collar occupations such as clerical and sales workers...

...Implicitly Mann recognized that the schools would function within the context of class inequality, providing the less privileged members of society with opportunities for social and economic advancement...

...There is a sense in which both these questions can be answered affirmatively...

...and East Broadway, a somewhat more prosperous neighborhood largely inhabited by businessmen and professionals...

...Of course, it is the Jews who are most often acclaimed, in folklore as well as social science, as a "people of the book...

...He assumes ipso facto that those institutions low in productivity are marked by anti-intellectual, antidemocratic, and antihumanitarian values that are antithetical to scholarship...

...To this day, it is an article of faith in American society that education is the key to material success, and the key to eliminating social inequalities as well...

...The figure for Jews is 25 percent...

...Obviously, immigrants from peasant backgrounds were not likely to have the same outlook upon education as other immigrants, including Northern Italians, who came from more industrially advanced sectors of their countries of origin...

...What conclusion, then, can be drawn concerning the relationship between Jewish cultural values and Jewish educational achievements...

...Like earlier writers, Hofstadter automatically assumed that the low level of Catholic representation among scholars is symptomatic of an anti-intellectualism rooted in Catholic religion and culture...

...The authors thus concluded that "the conspicuous dearth of scientists among Catholics suggests that the tenets of the church are not consonant with scientific endeavor...

...Slater argues that the style and content of traditional Jewish scholarship were fundamentally at odds with the requirements of modern secular education, and if anything would have operated as a deterrent to educational achievement in America...

...Hardy's interpretation of these findings is altogether circular...

...The pattern is quite the opposite for Catholics...

...But these values only assumed operational significance in their interaction with a wider set of structural factors, especially the advantageous position of economically mobile Jews and the favorable structure of educational opportunity that they encountered...

...In Democracy and Education John Dewey also wrote that "it is the office of the school environment . . . to see to it that each individual gets an opportunity to escape from the limitations of the social group to which he was born, and to come into contact with a broader environment...

...Studies have also shown that Jews are disproportionately represented among the teaching faculties of the nation's colleges and universities and this is especially so in the leading research institutions...

...As in the case of Jewish economic success, the fact of Jewish intellectual prominence can hardly be disputed...

...For example, in his study on the historical evolution of science, Lewis Feuer writes of Talmudic scholarship that "this sterile type of 'learning' and disputation was an obstacle to the development of science among Jews, a hurdle they had to surmount...

...As Andrew Greeley has shown, Irish and German Catholics rank well above the national average on measures of income, occupation, and education, while Poles, Italians, Slavs, and French are closer to average...

...Several decades later, in his book on Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter also scored Catholics for having "failed to develop an intellectual tradition in America or to produce its own class of intellectuals...

...for Protestants, 32 percent...

...Slater is not the first to suggest that the specific content of traditional Jewish education was incompatible with modern secular education...

...As in the case of Jews, Catholics had to secure an economic foothold before their children could make significant advances up the economic ladder...

...The conclusion that economic mobility preceded the Jewish thrust in education is also suggested by Herbert Gutman's analysis of 1905 census data...

...But Jews did place a special value on education, and this helped to impart the pursuit of educational opportunities with deeper cultural significance...

...On Cherry Street almost all of the children in their late teens had left school and gone to work, generally at low-status, blue-collar jobs that barely raised them above the level of their parents...

...This is a more precarious economic base than existed for Jews, which helps to explain the lower representation of Catholics in the academic profession...

...Yet the issue that Slater raises is a spurious one...

...Respondents were asked about the occupation of their fathers...

...Gutman did a comparison of two immigrant Jewish neighborhoods on New York's East Side: Cherry Street, one of the section's poorest neighborhoods, made up largely of rank-and-file workers...

...Obviously, education allowed these groups to consolidate and extend their economic gains, but these were gains that initially occurred in the occupational marketplace without the benefit of extensive education...

...This is the question raised by anthropologist Miriam Slater, who did a "content analysis " of Jewish scholarly traditions...

...Hardy ranked American undergraduate colleges in terms of their "scholarly productivity," as measured by the relative number of their graduates who went on to receive Ph.D.s...

...The second assumption is that the values of some groups have been saddled with anti-intellectual values or other cultural traits that discouraged their children from pursuing educational opportunities...

...Given the fact that Italian peasants were tied to the soil, formal education had little value for individual or collective survival...

...Having assumed that Catholics and Jews started out in the same place in the class system, O'Dea implicitly dismisses class factors as irrelevant to the question of why Jews have produced a greater number of scholars...

...Yet a number of writers have claimed such evidence by pointing to the cultural systems of certain ethnic groups that are thought to be compatible or incompatible with the requirements of modern education...

...What is especially notable is that even among older age cohorts, relatively few Jewish faculty come from working-class backgrounds...

...It pertained to learning in general, though in the traditional framework it is most apparent with respect to the study of religious subjects...

...Not only did high levels of illiteracy slow the pace of cultural adjustment, but Catholic immigrants also lacked the kinds of occupational skills that facilitated economic mobility for other groups...

...The survey revealed that relatively few Jewish scholars, , and many more Catholics, have their origin in the working class...

...As John Briggs has shown in a recent study, in areas where education was available, illiteracy was far less prevalent...

...In fact, those Catholic colleges that maintain high entrance standards-for example, Georgetown University, Boston College, Loyola University, and the Catholic University of America-all have above-average records for producing future Ph.D.s...

...In short, if Italians and other Catholics have not excelled academically, this cannot be blamed on a value system that discouraged education, since these values themselves only reflect the operation of social class factors and the unfavorable structure of educational opportunity that confronts the lower classes generally...

...Whereas the cultural theory holds that certain groups placed unusually high value on education, which resulted in greater mobility, the class theory turns this proposition-around, and holds that economic mobility occurred first, and that this opened up channels of educational opportunity and engendered a corresponding set of values and aspirations favorable to education...

...This Jewish attitude was part of the value system of the immigrants...

...The implication here is that Jews owe their intellectual prominence to a reverence for learning that is rooted in their religious culture and that has been passed down through the ages...

...What was the meshing of culture and circumstance that obstructed educational progress for Catholics...

...The data seemed to give credence to the popular stereotype of the Catholic Church as a dogmatic and authoritarian institution that restricts free thought and scientific inquiry...

...The data now indicate that it is the children of these businessmen who went on to become scholars and scientists in disproportionate numbers...

...This argument is commonly made with respect to Asians and Jews, both of whom have in fact achieved higher levels of education than most other groups in American society...

...WHY, THEN, have Catholics produced fewer scholars and scientists than other groups...

...for Catholics, 45 percent...

...Thomas O'Dea was too quick to dismiss immigration and problems of assimilation as factors bearing on "the absence of intellectual life" among Catholics...

...These conditions also presented formidable obstacles to intellectual achievement, especially in light of the class character of American higher education, and the many obstacles that make it difficult for members of the "lower class to attend college...

...Like women's colleges and southern colleges, Catholic colleges turn out to be low in scholarly productivity...

...An alternative to this cultural theory is a social class theory that does not deny the operation of cultural factors, but sees them as conditional on preexisting class factors...

...It goes without saying that the educational levels that Jews finally attained would not have been possible without a corresponding set of supportive values that encouraged education, defined college as a suitable channel for social and economic mobility, and idealized intellectual achievement...

...This helps to explain not only why Italians were less mobile than other groups, but also why they would have exhibited different attitudes toward education...

...It was because education carried with it such compelling social and economic rewards that the traditional value on education was activated, redefined, and given new direction...

...If this assumption is correct, then the greater overall success that Jews experienced stems from the fact that Jews had an occupational head start compared to other immigrants, (see box on the next page) that this resulted in an early economic ascent, which in tum allowed more of their children to remain in school and aviail themselves of educational opportunities...

...Indeed, Alexander Astin has shown that it is not the attributes of colleges that determine their productivity of future Ph.D.s, but rather the attributes of the students they recruit...

...Given the role of study in Jewish religion, the transfer of these values to secular learning tended to legitimize and sanctify a worldly desire for social and economic improvement...

...A more basic reason for the high rate of illiteracy that prevailed among Italian immigrants was that schools were poor or nonexistent...

...As observed earlier, many Jewish immigrants were able to use their prior experience in commerce as an avenue of economic mobility...

...It has only taken longer to play itself out...

...In Slater's view it was a striving for material success, and not a passion for learning, that spurred Jews up the educational ladder...

...In order to explore this further, it will be useful to focus on Italians, since they constitute the largest Catholic group in the last great wave of immigration, and because Italians have often beeh singled out as a group whose values are said to be inimical to education...

...However, as Catholics have gradually improved their position in the class system, their children are going to college with greater frequency, and as in every group, a certain number of them pursue academic careers and become scholars of distinction...

...But the only evidence he has that institutions have such retrograde values is that they are very low in productivity...

...There is no evidence to indicate that the children of Jewish rank-and-file workers received more education than other immigrant children of the same social class...

...As a first step in addressing this issue, it is necessary to consider the varied ethnic composition of the Catholic population...

...For example, in 1931 Scientific Monthly published an article on'' Scientific Eminence and Church Membership,'' in which the authors reported that Unitarians were 1,695 times more likely than Catholics to be listed among the nation's eminent scientists...

...Though Gutman's data are far from conclusive, they are consistent with other historical data suggesting that economic success was a precondition, rather than a consequence, of extensive schooling...

...Still other studies have shown that Jews have produced more than their share of eminent scholars and scientists, and of course there has been much preoccupation with the fact that Marx, Freud, and Einstein, three of the towering figures of modern history, have been Jewish...

...Indeed, this is the case of slightly over half the Jews in the oldest age category, and a third of these in the youngest age category...

...To prove the cultural thesis, it is necessary to furnish independent evidence that some groups placed special value on education, and that this factor operated in its own right as a determinant of educational achievement...

...There is hardly a study of Jews in America that does not cite a "Jewish passion for education" as a major factor, if not the major factor, in explaining Jewish mobility...

...It makes little sense to treat Catholics as a monolith, especially given the fact that the ethnic groups that made up the nation's Catholic population occupy such different positions in the class system...

...According to Sklare and numerous others, the high valuation that Jews traditionally placed on religious learning was, in the New World, transferred to secular learning, and with this cultural head start, the children of Jewish immigrants were quick to climb the educational ladder...

...But, although Jewish immigrants were poor, they were much more urbanized than other immigrants and had social class advantages, in the form of literacy and occupational skills, that resulted in more rapid economic mobility...

...However, the children of the more affluent families on East Broadway were making a breakthrough into higher-status white-collar occupations and the professions...

...A large number of empirical studies have documented Jewish intellectual achievements...

...The first is that those ethnic groups that have taken advantage of educational opportunities have, for that reason, enjoyed comparative mobility and success...

...On the other hand, the Jewish working class has never been a major source of Jewish scholars...

...CAN JEWISH INTELLECTUAL traditions, rooted in premodern and prescientific systems of thought, explain the academic achievements of Jews in twentieth-century America...

...Thus, O'Dea's unfavorable comparison between Catholics and Jews is based on a false assumption...

...The same inference is made in Kenneth Hardy's 1974 study of the "Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars," published in Science magazine...

...These differences themselves suggest that religion may be less important as a factor in explaining social class outcomes than factors associated with the nationality of particular groups...

...A typical exposition of this idea is found in Marshall Sklare's 1971 book on America's Jews: Jewish culture embraced a different attitude toward learning from that which characterized the dominant societies of eastern Europe...

...It is known that, compared with most other groups, Jews are more likely to go to college, especially highly competitive colleges, to excel once they are there, and go on to graduate and professional schools...

...Yet O'Dea's failure to consider class factors has been characteristic of nearly half a century of social research, and has resulted in a castigation of Catholicism itself for the under-representation of Catholics among the nation's scientists and scholars...

...A more plausible explanation, however, is that such colleges tend to attract students from less privileged backgrounds who have lower academic qualifications from the start, and who are less likely to aspire to careers that entail graduate education...

...The contrast between the two neighborhoods in terms of the mobility patterns of the next generation is striking...

...For example, Thomas O'Dea, a leading Catholic scholar, wrote in 1958 in American Catholic Dilemma: It is doubtful that even the Irish immigrants, perhaps the poorest of the nineteenth-century arrivals to these shores, were much poorer than the eastern European and Russian Jews who came after 1890, except possibly in the worst years of the Irish potato failure of the 1840s...

...What sociologists have argued is not that Jewish intellectual traditions were important in and of themselves, but rather that they fostered a positive orientation toward learning that was easily adapted to secular education...

...For example, whereas shtetl learning involved a ritualistic preoccupation with Talmudic legalism, Western education is highly pragmatic, innovative, and oriented toward lucrative employment in the marketplace...

...IN MATTERS OF education, Catholics stand in historical counterpoint to Jews, lagging behind in areas where Jews have excelled...

...Since the Second World War, however, Catholics have substantially improved their collective position in the class system, as data from a survey conducted a decade ago by the Carnegie Committee on Higher Education on the social class origins of college faculty reveals...

...But were these values distinctively part of a religious and cultural heritage, or were they merely cultural responses of a group that had acquired the economic prerequisites for educational mobility at a time when educational opportunities abounded...

...In every age cohort four out of every ten Catholic scholars come from working-class backgrounds, and on the basis of what is known about the occupational concentrations of Catholics in the society at large, it is safe to assume that Catholic scholars are typically coming not from the bottommost strata, but rather from stable working-class occupations that offer an adequate, if marginal livelihood...

...Most Italian immigrants came from the underdeveloped provinces of Southern Italy, where they worked as landless peasants...

...Given the disadvantages with which Catholic immigrants started life in America, it is not surprising that they required another generation or two to produce their numerical share of scholars and scientists...

...Even if Jews placed no special value on education, their social class position undoubtedly would have led them to pursue educational opportunities anyway...

...An unusually large number of Jewish faculty had fathers who owned small businesses...