Looking Beyond the Headlines

...Last August the Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity released a report on "The Effects of Dropping Out—The Costs to the Nation of Inadequate Education...

...Individual capacity to profit from schooling may differ, of course, and it is entirely possible that schooling adds to inequality...

...by reformers demanding that the classroom be made less rigid, more "humane...

...The classroom is a bridge between family life on the one hand, and occupation-political life on the other...

...Or, "We suspect, however, that employers would favor educated applicants even if such applicants were not especially productive...

...The average man drafted in World War II, for example, outscored 83 per cent of all World War I recruits...

...There is great intellectual enjoyment to be derived from the explorations: building a republic where genetic traits are equalized, another where cognitive skills are equalized, still another where job satisfaction is equalized (through kibbutz-style job rotation...

...government grant to develop a program for school vouchers—what people believe to be Inequality's conclusions may well have a more significant effect on public policy in education...

...3. Jencks pays little attention to the role of the school in the socialization process...

...But these constructs have gone largely unreported...

...Inequality, instead of being treated as the complicated scholarly work it is, has been trumpeted as a sensational attack on the public schools...

...The children of the millions of immigrants who came to our shores impoverished...

...Jencks and his team of colleagues from Harvard's Graduate School of Education have given us the most complete and comprehensive review to date of existing research on inequality in schools, in cognitive skills and educational attainment, in family background and genetic characteristics, in income, in job satisfaction and status—and how all of these relate to each other...

...Jencks, though, makes no argument that Americans ought to be equalized in ignorance and poverty, or that our pool of unskilled labor ought to be widened...

...This volume, it should be noted at the outset, is not confined to what Colin Greer has called "the great school legend...

...He argues that if we want to bring about greater equality of income we should not depend on the indirect method of schooling...

...Regardless of the other possible explanations for this, Jencks continues, "the fact that the average man left school at 15 in 1915, at 17 in 1935, and at 19 in 1965 also seems likely to explain part of the change...

...Education, Levin insists, pays off in higher employment, welfare-cost savings and lower crime rates...

...For those who tend to be guided by reviews and headlines, therefore, some cautioning seems necessary...

...Although Jencks has employed reruns of Coleman, as well as other data, whether his conclusions are firmly based—or are the result of a faulty method—is still open to question...

...In today's political climate, legislators are more likely to use his work as an excuse for cutting down on educational expenditures and programs than for promoting the income redistribution he desires...

...For the masses education has been an equalizer...

...Whatever the critics might say, public education could not be that bad if it accomplished so much...

...4. Reports on the Jencks book erroneously infer that if schooling does not advance the cause of equality, then it has no social value...

...Jencks notes that "the average level of performance on [Army] tests rose dramatically during the first half of the 20th century...

...Jencks has written this book with a political purpose...

...The book is, in fact, a Platonic exercise...

...Where the author has been cautious, the headline-writers have been foolhardy...

...by traditionalists complaining that educators are too soft, too "progressive," and demanding greater discipline, concentration on basic skills and the elimination of "frills...

...Yet the schools have survived all these attacks, because most citizens believe they perform a necessary—and somewhat miraculous—function within our society...

...Scientific" theories ought to be conclusively proven before they are permitted to override universal common sense...

...we should deal with the problem directly through policies of taxation and income distribution...

...His objective is very worthwhile, yet Jencks may inadvertently have contributed to a very different end...

...He does maintain that some of those who returned would acquire valuable additional capabilities...

...5. While public discussion of Inequality treats its conclusions as "fact," Jencks himself admits to qualifications and guesses...

...That belief is rooted in the American experience...

...He does not assume that every dropout would return to the classroom, or that all who did would complete high school or get as much out of each additional year of schooling as regular students...

...estranged, often totally illiterate, not only improved their own lot through public education but saw their children, the third generation, benefit further from it to move into prestigious occupations and high income brackets...

...He writes that education, occupation and politics "create similar demands on persons who participate in them, that similar psychological capacities prove appropriate to the demands . . . and that schools contribute to the creation of those capacities...

...2. Recent studies covering the same subjects arrive at views that are the opposite of Jencks...

...Jencks arrives at his conclusions by constructing a number of "republics," each of which maximizes equality in one area, but not in others, to examine the effects...

...Even if education does not produce increased equality, it clearly does expand knowledge and skills...

...Indeed, one of his major conclusions is that expenditures for education ought to be supported—not for reasons of equality or "output," but simply because they will make schools a more satisfying place for teachers and students...

...Various experts have made the point...

...He "suspects" that "what school administrators and teachers are really trying to do...

...But given the media's handling of it and Jencks' ties to the national education establishmen—the earlier had received a U.S...

...For Jencks, educational institutions merely select, certify, measure, and label people...

...In recent years, however, this view of the schools has itself become a target of severe criticism...

...Schools have few long-term effects on the later 'success' of those who attend them...

...Robert Dreeben (On What Is Learned in School, Addison-Wesley, 1968) observes that the school—by its structure rather than its instructional program contributes to the learning of certain necessary behavioral norms more than any other social agency...

...Jencks maintains the opposite: "In response we have argued that people who stay in school and attend college would differ from people who now drop out even if they all had exactly the same amount of school...

...This is a delusion...

...Written by Levin, it argues that if the United States provided $40 billion to give a high school education to a large number of present dropouts, the government's gain on this investment would exceed $34 billion...

...The book is full of statements like, "We have no way of saying how much of the variation in people's incomes depends on characteristics of this kind, but it could well be substantial...

...Jencks relies heavily on the Coleman Report, for instance, yet Samuel Bowles and Henry M. Levin, writing in the Winter 1968 Journal of Human Resources, argued that Coleman's "findings concerning the determinants of scholastic achievement, namely those relating to the ineffectiveness of school resources, the influence of student peers, and the effects of integration, are not substantiated by the evidence...

...is to teach children to behave themselves the way schools want them to behave...

...Inside a "teaser" explained: "Quality education will reduce socioeconomic inequality, the reformers claim...

...it has enabled them to approach the position and wealth of those born into privilege...

...Reviewed by Albert Shank er President, United Federation of Teachers The public schools have always been under siege: by fiscal conservatives fighting adequate financing...

...He fails to ask whether schools succeed in teaching children to "behave" and whether—if they do—this has value for them and for society...

...Such arguments make good headlines, but they remain heavily disputed, and we would be wiser to try bringing about improvements through education than to abandon our efforts...

...The Saturday Review's summary hid behind a cover emblazoned with "Equality and Inequality: The Schooling Fantasy...

...Jencks touches only briefly on this issue...

...Again, the book deserves to be studied and considered seriously...

...The New York Times, ignoting Jencks' admonitions against an oversimplified reading in its interview with hum, set the tone in a lengthy front-page story the same day announcing the study's publication, and in a subsequent editorial...

...And now Christopher Jencks has published Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America, giving new impetus to the debate...

...1. The methods used by Jencks underestimate the influence of formal schooling...