A Radical Critique of U.S. Education and Society

...Stanley K. Schultz, an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, is an urban and social historian whose most recent book is ' The Culture Factory: Boston's Public Schools, 1789-1860, " published by Oxford University Press in 1973...

...Yes and no...

...Argumentative, provocative, and incisive, Schooling in Capitalist America shines as a beacon in the national confusion and murky debates about the functions and purpose of education in American society...

...Scores of writers have jumped aboard the publishing bandwagon, attacking the cherished American belief, expressed by reformer Horace Mann a century ago, that education could "adjust society to the new relations it is to fill, to remove the old, and to substitute a new social edifice, without overwhelming the present occupants in ruin...

...They argue that the present system of education, like capitalism itself, contains contradictions that ultimately will force the system to collapse under its own weight...

...Although the application of that test has a long history (best detailed in David Tyack's book, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education) social scientists like Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein over the past decade have resurrected the heritability notion of I.Q., asserting that the distribution of wealth, income, and status within society accurately reflects genetically-based differences in human intelligence...

...To that end, they propose five guidelines: First, revolutionary educators should seek the democratization of schools by pressing toward participatory power for all members of the community...

...schools and colleges here and now," the authors conclude, "is not that they should become the embryo of the good society but that struggles around these institutions, and the educational process itself, should contribute to the development of a revolutionary, democratic socialist movement...

...Our "liberal" truism is that if one has a high level of intelligence and goes to school long enough to hone that native capacity into socially valued skills, he or she will achieve a high level of income...

...Although their definition of "proper" sharply diverges from conventional wisdom, they wish to use education for the same socially functional purposes as do those the economists rightfully have attacked...

...Clearly they believe, as did the muckraking socialist Charles Edward Russell at the turn of the Twentieth Century: "Every attack upon entrenched evil helps the onward motion...

...The two economists show that "the association of schooling and economic success is largely unrelated to the differences in cognitive skills observed between workers with differing levels of education...

...From their work, from horror stories in the daily press, and from personal observation, we know that our schools fail our expectations as generators of social mobility or engines of economic progress for many Americans...

...Beyond demonstrating the economic fallacy of the meritocracy concept, Bowles and Gintis maintain that the social functions of schools include much more than selecting and promoting cognitive growth...

...To document this conelusion they present an impressive array of historical research, statistical analyses of the economic impact of education, and assessments of various "liberal" school reforms such as racially integrated schooling, open enrollment, compensatory education, and voucher systems...

...The authors opt for the latter course...

...In an America that has developed, in historian Daniel Boorstin's telling phrase, a number of "statistical communities" (ways of knowing who we are by comparing ourselves with the norm for others like us), the measure of cognitive achievement is the I.Q...

...Do we need, then, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Marxian economists at the University of Massachusetts, to sound again the knell of doom when our ears still reverberate from past poundings...

...Education, they note, increases the productive capacity of workers by imparting technical and social skills and appropriate motivations...

...First, they assert that at no time has education potently promoted economic equality, although apologists from Horace Mann to John Dewey to present-day liberals have claimed the opposite...

...Betterment comes if men will to have it...

...Fifth (ironically), "pie-in-the-sky politics must be rejected in favor of a program of revolutionary reforms built around such issues as democracy, free classrooms, open enrollment, adequate financial aid for needy students, and development of a critical antidiscrimi-natory and socialist content of education...

...The "tracking" system in schools sorts out individuals along test-score lines, thus providing a self-fulfilling prophecy for access to additional years of schooling...

...Schooling in Capitalist America is the most persuasive and seductive presentation in recent years of radical views about the institutional structure of American society...

...It is a marvelous addition to the radical critique of our social order...

...There is no such thing in this world as a wasted protest against any existing evil...

...Measurably" is the operative word...

...The educational system that has evolved in the United States over the past century or so, they argue, is the direct product of the capitalist economy, and its institutional mainstay...

...The economists provide us the most thoughtful, strongly supported, and useful synthesis of our educational past and present that I have read...

...Education reproduces economic inequality by justifying the privileged classes, by pushing their children through the meritocracy maze, and by attributing poverty (a la Jensen and Herrnstein) to personal failure...

...The offspring is tough-minded, bright, witty, and often convincing...

...Therein lie its glories and its failures...

...And it makes not the slightest difference if in men's eyes the effort is fruitless...

...Finally, the economists show that recent efforts to transform schools into more humane, egalitarian institutions —such as the free-school movement— stem from the misconception that the present system is the product of irrationality and social backwardness by teachers and administrators...

...They are caught on the horns of the dilemma facing all evolutionary socialists: which comes first, a revolution in the economic means and control of production that leads to other institutional changes in the society, or changes in the institutional structure that lead to a reorganization of the economic foundations of society...

...But, with all of their assertions to the contrary, I think that the authors finally adopt the tinkering position...

...No educational theorist ever has claimed that schooling would equalize income distribution, only that additional years of schooling would maximize opportunities for economic mobility...

...Thus, although Bowles and Gintis are correct in their charge against the educational system, they err in imputing a claim for the economic power of schooling to theorists who never made such assertions in the first place...

...Further, when writing about the impact of various forms of schooling on the economy of individuals- or the nation, they qualify their statements with caveats like "not substantially" or "measurably...

...Rather, they assert, our school system has evolved rationally and purposely as the integrative tool of the capitalist system: "the structure of the educational experience is admirably suited to nurturing attitudes and behavior consonant with participation in the labor force...

...They identify the second misconception as the meritocracy fallacy: the assertion that the admitted association between length of education and economic success results from the cognitive achievements of students...

...At the same time it helps keep a lid on "the potentially explosive class relations of the production process, and thus serves to perpetuate the social, political, and economic conditions through which a portion of the product of labor is expropriated in the form of profits...

...Whether it is Horace Mann and the creation of the Massachusetts school system, or John Dewey and his notions of the integrative function of schooling in society, they select only that evidence which bolsters their ideological position...

...Given the technological complexity of our society, the limited mental-skill demands of most work, and the abundance of individuals possessing adequate mental skills, the liberal equation of high I.Q...

...With unimpeachable statistics the authors show that while a substantial equalization of educational attainments has occurred since World War I, that process has not "measurably" produced an equalization in income among individuals...

...If we fully accept their trenchant analyses of our educational system, then, it seems to me, we can no longer tinker with the system in the Utopian hope that, once altered, it will move us along the road to a new society...

...Third, we must redirect educational philosophy toward the goals of personal development, personal authority, and interpersonal relationships on a basis of economic equality...

...Economic mobility and economic equality are not synonymous...

...To say that Bowles and Gintis have joined a long line of American socialist critics, most of whose work has moved the society only a slight distance forward, is not to demean their intentions, or their effort...

...I am inclined to agree with them...

...We can agree with the two writers on the desirability of a greater equalization of income in the United States, and at the same time recognize the straw man basis of their argument...

...They believe that the principal function of education in this society is to legitimatize preexisting economic disparities—to teach individuals their place in the social economy and prepare them to accept it...

...plus years of schooling equaling direct monetary return simply does not hold up...

...Again, in a brilliant synthesis of others' research and their own, the authors demonstrate that the social relationships fostered in formal education replicate the hierarchical relationships of labor in the capitalist system of economy...

...As Bowles and Gintis see them, debates over the social goals and reach of education in American society rest upon some basic misconceptions of the historical evolution of the educational system...

...However, I, am troubled by the scholarly paths they have walked to reach their destination...

...They serve up their banquet of information in an ideological setting that will attract some readers and antagonize, if not alienate, many others...

...test...

...No, because there are some reasons to suspect the legitimacy of their progeny...

...Fourth, educators should be the vanguard of a movement to create a unified class consciousness...

...In their view the meritocracy notion is largely symbolic...

...Currently he is writing a history of city planning in America...

...Bowles and Gintis believe that social institutions such as the family, the church, the state, and the school inevitably mirror and reinforce the property, market, and power relationships that define the economic order...

...I wish I could say the same for their conclusions and for the "strategies of change" they suggest...

...Education potentially can awaken individuals to the senselessness and sterility of the capitalist system and thereby motivate them to alter that system...

...Time and again, Bowles and Gintis use historical evidence like a fisherman uses a mountain stream: that is, they wade in, drop their lines, and concentrate all their attention on the fish they have caught while ignoring the larger stream around them and all the other fish within its depths...

...This nirvana, however, can come only from a movement dedicated to the transformation of economic life...

...Second, reformers should equate liberated education with education for economic democracy (read socialization of the economic means and control of production...

...The chances of obtaining much schooling substantially depend upon one's race and parents' economic level...

...Bowles and Gintis believe that socialists can create "an equal and liberating educational system" that will equalize income, replace the irrationality of the division of labor and the profit motive of capitalism, and foster the development of human personal and intellectual potential...

...Bowles and Gintis share a faith in the saving grace of schooling similar to that conviction called "conservative" in the Nineteenth Century and "liberal" in the Twentieth: the belief that education is a social tool that can shape the minds and personalities of the masses in the "proper" way...

...By so doing, the authors argue, the educational system "constrains the type of personal development which it can foster in ways that are antithetical to the fulfillment of its personal developmental function...

...Our objective for U.S...

...I have no arguments against Bowles's and Gintis's analysis of the present-day structure and purposes of our system of education, although certainly many others will dispute their observations...

...Because Bowles and Gintis judge capitalism an irrational system that stands in the way of social progress, they also consider the educational system a failure...

...Nonetheless, Bowles's and Gintis's analyses have weight, they are intellectually powerful, and they should be required reading for every person even vaguely interested in our system of schools or in the institutional structure of our society...

...Schooling produces a surplus of workers with marketable skills, thus giving employers unwarranted powers over potential employes...

...These jeremiads have become as inevitable as our quadrennial national political conventions—and often as boring...

...Yes, because these authors wed present and historical research on education to a socialist critique of the role of schooling in a capitalist society...

...For example, they support their assertion that education never has promoted economic equality by showing that more years of schooling for more people has not "measurably" brought an equalization of income among individuals...

...Bowles and Gintis attack this meritocracy notion head-on and, drawing upon the research of others as well as their own, demolish it...

...Horace Mann, for instance, affirmed that education not only had "the power of diffusing old wealth, it has the prerogative of creating new...