Opportunity vs. Values

...Values The Illusion of Equality: The Effects of Education on Opportunity, Inequality and Social Conflict By Murray Milner Jr Jossey Bass 172 pp $8 50 Reviewed by Elliott Abrams Americans, reacting against hereditary monarchies in Europe, early developed beliefs in equality and in achievement as the proper concepts on which to base a social order Although there was an inherent contradiction between the two, it was to be resolved by providing all citizens with the same opportunities, especially in education, so that any deviation from the equality model would be explained as a product of individual merit In the 1960s, people admitted that we were actually very far from the ideal of equal opportunity, and a public commitment to change this was made Equal opportunity commissions were established and new laws passed Even the Republicans, in their fashion came along President Nixon has called it a scandal that someone might be kept out ot college because he could not afford the tuition Murray Milner Jr contends that all this simply misses the point, that increasing opportunity will neither alter our present social structure nor further equality What the masses lack, he says, are proper values and attitudes Lest he begin to sound like William F Buckley Jr, it should be noted that Milner is a man of the Lett who does not attribute the state of affairs to personal failings but to membership in one of the non-privileged classes Milner's views are based on an examination of the relevance of financial aid levels to students' decisions about attending college He finds that very few students who want to go to college are prevented from doing so because money is un-available Instead, family social status largely determines the choice made, and the availability of higher education does not in itself change the child's or parents' attitudes There is one great exception Financial aid levels significantly affect the number of blacks who attend college Blacks, who may be poor as a result of racism, or who may be poor yet have a respected position within their own communities, have taken advantage of the opportunity to obtain an education in ever increasing numbers As far back as 1965 studies showed that among people 25 29, blacks had stayed in school almost exactly as long as whites—an average of 12 0 and 12 5 years, respectively But racism places blacks in a special category—indeed the statistics indicate that poor blacks appreciate educational achievement considerably more than do poor whites—and Milner's main concern is with the general illusion that if we only provide equality of opportunity, each man will end up with his just deserts For one thing, he points out that most efforts to aid the poor do not lessen the distance between them and the rich In schooling, for example, when the poor started attending high school, the rich went on to college, and thus a "raising of the floor" was accompanied by a "raising ot the ceiling' This process Milner calls status in nation' (as with money inflation, everyone has more, so relative positions remain unchanged)—a neat term which John Kenneth Galbraith will wish he had invented To Milner, therefore, substantive change requires an upgrading of the values and attitudes of the nonprivileged classes, and he sees only one way of achieving this Eliminate class differences through massive income redistribution Since it has been demonstrated that increases in a parent's income also result in increases m his children's years in school, redistribution of income will equalize educational accomplishment, probably within one generation "Economic equality must precede rather than follow meaningful educational equality of opportunity," Milner maintains The most one can say about this argument is that Professor Milner does not prove it First, it assumes that there are no inherent differences between poor whites and rich whites But Richard Herrnstein, for one, claims his investigations show that class differences are in some measure attributable to the higher average intelligence of the upper classes Second, if the reason that parents improved their income, and thus their children's school attendance, was above-average ambition or intelligence, then grants made to other less intelligent or less motivated families would not necessarily do the same Milner also asserts that expanded income brings about value changes as the nouveaux riches try to assimilate into a higher class, yet this may simply overlook the fact that only certain "talented" members of the lower classes become nouveau riche Extremely widespread income redistribution could have the opposite effect by producing a class of nouveaux riches without ambition This group would be so large that its attitudes would be self-reinfrocing and it would not adopt "upper-class" values such as education The most convincing argument for income redistribution remains Milton Friedman's What poor people lack most is money, and if you want to help them, you ought to give them some The Illusion of Equality is persuasive in its analysis, if not in its prescriptions The reader will come away convinced that present 'equal opportunity" programs will reduce race differences but hardly affect class differences Unfortunately, Milner bit off more than could be chewed m 159 pages, and might better have avoided the thicket of income redistribution Nonetheless, he has raised some very important and highly charged political issues for those who will wish to address these problems in the future...