Education: The Answer to Poverty?
Roby, Pamela & Miller, S. M.
The best long-term bet [for combating poverty], we think, is simply education. Despite some encouraging studies of compensatory programs, experience sug gests education is a better engine...
...Until our young people are offered alternative entryways into the occupational world, the pressure of having to make it through the educational system will continue to be debilitating to many...
...Economists, proponents of government poverty programs, and educators themselves support this conclusion...
...Even more disconcerting, the gap between funds allocated to cities and suburbs is widening: the 1962 difference did not exist in 1958, for then the two areas were spending the same amount...
...Only a minority of the policymakers who now support education as a human resource are asking that it be used as a means of redistributing national resources...
...In this approach to poverty, education is aimed at improving the prospects of the young...
...And recent failures of programs designed to improve educational performance of the disadvantaged have dampened the hope that in the future many of the other heralded "breakthroughs" will succeed...
...At the present time, this assumption seems undebatable...
...Thus, increase of expenditures does not guarantee the availability of a staff adequate to the challenge of improving the educational performance of the disadvantaged...
...In state aid, suburban schools receive $40 more per pupil than city schools...
...Even college graduation does not completely protect blacks from being treated differently than whites in the occupational arena...
...Therefore, they conclude, education will reduce poverty by enabling formerly unskilled individuals to fill This article is a condensed version of a chapter in Racial Crisis in American Education, edited by Robert L. Green, published and copyright 1969 by the Follett Educational Corporation...
...Another fraction may be attributed to the higher concentration of blacks working in the South where wages are low...
...the new jobs in the American economy, or by reducing the number of dropouts so that manpower programs will be less needed in the future...
...His role as a partisan supporter of the Nigerian leadership reached its peak during the 24-hour visit he paid to Nigeria immediately after the Biafran collapse...
...And partly because too much energy has been wasted arguing other things, the nation's cities have yet to evolve a truly comprehensive and coordinated school program for slums...
...Education partially improves economic prospects of blacks and helps them deal more effectively with agencies that dispense services...
...Schools today are not a humanizing or an educational force as much as a credentials agency, sorting out people who do not fit into the regular channels of educational development...
...The UN's moral decline is matched by the cynicism of its Secretary-General.—S...
...One of the paradoxes of our time is that education, which is to be a liberating force, has become a prison for many...
...Such outstanding individuals are the most important educational need of low-income youth in Appalachia, Harlem, or Watts...
...But discrimination, unfortunately, is the only factor which can account for a major portion of the difference...
...However, rising levels of education do not insure the reduction of the occupational and income gaps which persist between whites and blacks in this country...
...For some persons, behaving the "correct way" means following the family's traditions, the family's culture...
...Employers' current emphasis on academic credentials forces individuals to remain in school and makes education a form of coercion...
...A portion of the discrepancy between black and white earnings may be accounted for by differences in the quality of black and white education...
...In ghetto communities the proportion is higher...
...Dorothy Newman, who has summarized the findings of several studies, reports that among poor families, black parents tend to be more interested in their children's schooling and more ambitious for their children than white parents...
...EDUCATION: THE ANSWER TO POVERTY...
...Therefore, increasing the education and skill levels of the labor force is a prerequisite for better living and will solve many American problems by stimulating economic growth...
...America's recent "degree worship" has negative consequences for society as a whole as well as for individuals...
...People who have acquired a higher education may be rapidly absorbed today while there is a EDUCATION: THE ANSWER TO POVERTY...
...The unemployment rates of black college alumni and high school graduates in all but the 35to 44-year age group were two to three times those of white college alumni and high school graduates...
...The objective of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 was to insure that more federal resources would go to the poor than to people with higher income...
...However, if all people improve their education, is there an automatic guarantee that they will be absorbed at higher job levels than before...
...Despite some encouraging studies of compensatory programs, experience sug gests education is a better engine of social advancement than any alternative...
...If the poor are to catch up, they must get proportionately more of the new resources now being allotted to education...
...Whatever his educational credentials or knowledge, the man who speaks ungrammatically, wears an outdated suit, has spent several years without a job (unless he was a student or a millionaire's son seeing the world), the man who does not have the right words for the right situations, or whose "good hours" do not fall into a regular schedule (preferably nine to five) is at a definite disadvantage in today's occupational world...
...It also neglects those youngsters who are unable to succeed in school while their families live on low incomes...
...Some ghetto youths drop out rather because they feel the need to prove themselves "men," earn money and become independent of their parents' small earnings, than because their schools were "bad...
...But perhaps the prize for immoral behavior and political bankruptcy in the Biafran story belongs in advance to U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations...
...Nonwhites at every educational level were not only employed in lower paying, less prestigious occupations than whites, but their chance of even obtaining work was also considerably lower than that of whites...
...Style of life preferences, discriminatory practices, and uneven rewarding of various levels of educational attainment intervene between education and income...
...These data indicate that discrimination continues to intervene between education and income, between education and occupation, and between education and chances of employment...
...We ask too much of the schools and too little of the rest of society...
...The history of recent years is not reassuring in regard to the redistribution of educational resources...
...People possessing education do get higher incomes in the United States...
...In 1966 nonwhite college alumni still earned less than white high school dropouts...
...Politically this is extraordinarily difficult to achieve...
...it is only partially effective for those youths who do obtain education because discrimination and other factors intervene between education and income...
...One of the most disturbing findings in the investi gation is that, relatively, more state funds go to the suburbs than to the cities...
...we must fight discrimination more directly...
...Educational programs alone cannot solve all problems of poverty...
...We lack statistics on who really did benefit from the ESEA monies, but we have been told that many school superintendents channeled these funds to children whose conspicuous talents would enhance their prestige and to children of influential people rather than to the poorest youth in their districts...
...Nor does education ensure the transfer and transformation of power, which is a growing issue as blacks struggle for a late twentieth-century version of equality...
...Between 1958 and 1966 the income gap separating nonwhite and white males with one or more years of college grew from $2,131 to $3,095...
...Education socializes the young to certain values and warehouses them by keeping them out of the labor market and out of mischief...
...Furthermore, the goals of the educational strategy are difficult to achieve...
...To date, blacks have not reaped the monetary or occupational rewards that education delivers to whites...
...In the late sixties the reduction of inequalities has been largely given over to the schools...
...For poverty reduction, the issue is not just more years of education, but moving people toward points where the level of education makes a difference...
...Education" can become a mere slogan to help us escape from the wider responsibility of aiding the poor...
...The Syracuse University study of school expenditures, conducted by Alan Campbell, Jesse Burkhead, Seymour Sachs, and associates, is to the point...
...Today over one-fourth of white and nearly one-half of our Negro youth are dropping out of school before they complete high school...
...The gap between the occupational rewards whites and nonwhites gain from education is greater at the level of high school graduation and some college short of graduation than at the level of college graduation...
...For education to enrich rather than constrict, men must be free to choose whether or not they wish to use it...
...If as the poor extend their educational attainment those who are better off extend theirs, the gap between the two may not be reduced...
...Never moving out of the Nigerian-controlled cities, U Thant gave his assurance that all was well: there was neither mass starvation nor murder...
...The know-how that is required in addition to education for many positions, the racial discrimination that occurs in the recruitment and selection of employees, and the uneven rewards of various levels of educational attainment intervene between education and income...
...when youths do not follow the schools' mandates, they are sentenced to unemployment, uselessness, and poverty...
...As Otis Dudley Duncan has noted, findings of the S. M. MILLER AND PAMELA ROBY survey of Equality of Educational Opportunity show that a wide variety of measures of school quality do "not vary by race as much as most analysts had hitherto assumed...
...And because all groups are striving to improve their education so as to improve their economic prospects, redistribution is unlikely to take place in the near future...
...The difference separating the percentage of nonwhites and whites possessing highschool diplomas has also declined...
...Most social learning takes place outside of school and depends upon one's friends or family...
...Only 8 percent of nonwhite as opposed to 30 percent of white 16- to 21-year-old high school graduates who had not enrolled in college were able to obtain clerical and other white-collar jobs in 1964...
...Black mothers, fathers, and students have already embraced the educational strategy because they consider education the most effective, if not the only sure means of advancement...
...The following survey of educational, occupational and income data demonstrates that education alone does not produce occupa tional and income equality for blacks...
...Therefore, educational resources must be redistributed as well as increased if poverty is to be reduced...
...it hurts millions of individuals...
...In the fifties and early sixties the burden of desegregating American society was left to the children and the educational arena rather than to adults who were wary of the task...
...Because our schools function more to certify that individuals are not harmful than to develop the potential of all students, the present educational strategy tends to limit the pluralism of society's values and institutions...
...A one-to-one relationship does not exist between education and income...
...The answer is probably, "No...
...Not only money, modem school buildings, and technological equipment such as teaching machines, but people—teachers and administrators— are required for effective education...
...The total number of jobs, they contend, is not insufficient...
...Although of great importance, it cannot solve all the problems that produce poverty in our present American society...
...The obvious need in reducing poverty is to increase educational levels of the poor...
...In part, mandatory education (through law or threats of poverty) conditions low-income youth and strengthens established values...
...Money devoted to new methods of training and guiding teachers and administrators may improve the effectiveness of the "poor" and the "average" teachers, but it is doubtful whether any technique can make all teachers as effective as those few talented and concerned individuals who stand out in our minds as great...
...For others, the "correct way" means breaking with the family's way of life...
...From the perspective of human resources, education is viewed as an investment enabling individuals to support themselves...
...Sharp differences exist not only between the earnings but also between the occupational distribution of blacks and whites...
...thus blacks, given their present educational trends, are likely to suffer increasing relative deprivation despite their educational progress...
...In thethirties and forties education, charged with a wide range of tasks extending beyond the narrow confines of developing skills and knowledge, was to develop the "whole child," which meant socializing him so that he fit more easily into American society, developed good manners, was patriotic and a "good citizen...
...Paul Siegel has also found that differences in white and nonwhite occupational and regional distributions accounted for only 27 percent of the mean 1959 earnings differential between white and nonwhite high school dropouts and high school graduates, 45 percent of that between white and nonwhite college dropouts, and 16 percent of that between white and nonwhite college graduates...
...Not only do black parents value education, but their offspring are now obtaining more education than heretofore...
...Furthermore, the strategy of our educational system assumes that the economy will absorb and recompense those who have a higher education...
...rather, the unemployed lack the skills and education to fill the available jobs...
...Their implementation requires both redistribution of educational resources and recruitment of personnel who can improve education in lowincome areas...
...Although blacks rapidly increased their median educational attainment during the sixties, the difference between the percentages of nonwhite and white males graduating from college remained constant and that between females increased...
...U Thant As Moralist WHEN AND IF a full and accurate account of the Biafran tragedy is written it will surely be a tale of incredible blundering and endless betrayal on the part of all those involved...
...its heavy emphasis on education unexpectedly damages individuals and society by constricting alternative channels of occupational mobility and by restricting the pluralism of social values...
...This S. M. MILLER AND PAMELA ROBY is both a question of whether to emphasize families or youth and of whether investing in families or in schools affects educational performance most...
...Obviously, our schools can make an important contribution, and perhaps they have already done so, but they cannot be assigned the entire burden of reforming the American social structure...
...Indeed, with the aid of education, nonwhites do gain higher incomes, more prestigious occupations, and a smaller risk of unemployment...
...It shows that in 1962, in 35 of the largest metropolitan areas expenditures in central cities, where there are many children of low-income families, were $145 per pupil less than in their contiguous suburbs, where there are few children of low-income families...
...By working directly with youth rather than with S. M. MILLER AND PAMELA ROBY their families, these strategists hope to sever the relationship between the position of the family and that of its offspring...
...Manners, style of life, and know-how are considered in the selection of individuals for many jobs...
...The educational strategy for poverty reduction suffers from four major limitations: • it neglects many poor people...
...Therefore, even if we could meet the educational needs of all youth, education would only have a limited effect on their future incomes...
...Since 1960 young Negroes have radically narrowed the education gap which traditionally existed between nonwhites and whites...
...The overemphasis on education not only frequently restricts the creative growth of our society...
...They point to "structural unemployment," the mismatch of available people and jobs...
...Such a program would require spending more money on slum schools than even on suburban ones.—Wall Street Journal THE FACTS are striking: the lower the level of education, the higher the rate of unemployment and the lower the level of income...
...shortage of well-educated people and a large reservoir of people with relatively low levels of education...
...Should more money be spent, for example, to provide cash income to poor families in the hope that the increased family income will lead to improvement of school performance of youth...
...The loss resulting from an overemphasis on credentials is society's as well as that of the penalized individuals...
...However, the gap separating the percentage of whites and nonwhites graduating from college remained unchanged, for while the number of nonwhites completing college increased, the number of whites doing so increased at an equivalent rate...
...but they may not be absorbed when this reservoir disappears and all people reach a higher educational level...
...Like so many other things, the capacities of teachers and principals are distributed roughly along a "normal curve...
...T T HE RELATIONSHIP between education and income for whites as well as nonwhites is further complicated by the upward movement of the tipping point where the "payoff" for education is greatest...
...It is unlikely to improve the situation of the aged or of many mothers who are receiving welfare...
...The emphasis on education has the unanticipated effect of stressing social control and a limited range of values...
...Despite its importance, however, education is not the simple panacea for deepseated American ailments that it first appears to be...
...But, unfortunately, the roots of black poverty lie in the discriminatory practices of the larger society and not only in blacks' lack of education...
...Discriminatory practices also continue to intervene between education and income and thereby to limit the educational strategy...
...The growth of the American economy, some leading economists argue, is largely the result of investing in "human resources," in the education of the labor force...
...Between 1960 and 1968 the difference in median educational attainment of white and nonwhite 25to 29-year-olds shrank from 1.9 years to 0.4 years...
...The educational strategy is aimed at helping people to fit better into the existing occupational structure rather than at constructing new policies that would directly aid the poor...
...Only a few are very effective, a few very ineffective, and most are "average...
...The anguish of such a break has frequently been described in psychological and sociological literature...
...At every educational level, nonwhites earn less than whites...
...Differential treatment applies to the younger as well as the older age groups...
...Consequently, individuals who may have outgrown the issues that propelled them out of school continue to be economically disenfranchised...
...The educational strategy must be supplemented by other efforts...
...More and more today, the significant cleavage in the society is between college graduates and noncollege people...
...Manpower strategists also support the conclusion that education is the answer to the needs of the poor...
...But this strategy not only neglects the families of the youngsters, it overlooks others living in poverty: the aged, the working poor who do not receive enough to maintain their families, and families that must depend on transfer income (welfare...
...As long as discrimination exists, education alone will not solve the problems of redistributing incomes and occupations between whites and nonwhites...
...its goals are difficult to achieve, requiring a radical redistribution of resources and firstrate staffs...
...For example, Duncan has noted that there is greater dissimilarity between the occupational distribution of white and nonwhite high school graduates and college dropouts than between college graduates...
...Many of the present educational objectives obviously appeal to those who do not want any significant change in the present structure of American society and economic life...
...Many young people whose culture stresses the importance of masculinity need new inroads into the occupational world other than "better schools...
...With our increasing emphasis on academic credentials, our Chinese walls of exclusion grow ever higher for persons who are ignored becausethey lack the magical diploma although their occupational experience and performance prove that they are qualified...
...Education, as we conceive of it today, in its strategy is essentially youth-oriented...
...Therefore, when we consider educational spending from the point of view of the poor, we must weigh the value of this approach against that of other strategies for reducing poverty...
...Today "dropouts" who have gained valuable experience in the work world find that this experience is ignored by employers because the label "dropout," assigned at the age of 14 or 15, persists throughout a lifetime...
...No one—neither the leaders of the Biafran people who led their followers into a hopeless trap and then fled the country, nor the Great Powers who lined up remorselessly behind the Nigerian leadership—will come out of this episode untainted...
...A A FTER QUESTIONING the level and distribution of educational resources, we must also ask, "If we had adequate monetary resources, would we have the capacity to implement our educational goals in the way we know they should be implemented...
...And this need is not easy to fill...
...Today the issues of poverty are essentially questions of inequality...
...By forcing all persons to enter the occupational world through the school gate, we have drastically underestimated and underutilized the potential of many low-income youth...
Vol. 17 • March 1970 • No. 2
