In the previous two chapters, we looked at the particular mechanisms by which schooling belittles intellect and deflects talent toward instrumental ends. Those mechanisms implicate all of schooling, kindergarten through graduate study, and all participants in schooling -- parents and students as well as educators. Moreover, the anti-intellectual culture of schooling assumes singularly peculiar distortions as it seeks ways to discourage the development of intellect among those children presenting the most evident intelligence. This chapter concerns other distortions of schooling that operate to sustain social and political inequities. It examines in some detail how schooling operates to limit the academic and life chances of underprivileged and working-class students, women, and students from racial and ethnic minorities.
For purposes of this chapter, class is categorized in fairly unconventional terms: the underprivileged, the working class, and the privileged. We use these rather idiosyncratic categories in an attempt to call attention to the effects of class location. The terms "lower class," "middle class," and "upper class" do not, in themselves, denotatively refer to any qualitative characteristics of class membership, and, connotatively, they stigmatize the poor as "below" the other classes. Since one of the purposes of this chapter is to correct the misconception that people who live in poverty are less worthy than others, the conventional categories of socioeconomic status are particularly inappropriate. In contrast, Marxist structural categories, which do distinguish among discrete classes based on their relationship to the production process (e.g., Wright, 1979; 1985), seem inadequate here, even though in other contexts they are most useful in depicting the dialectical relationship between classes -- particularly between the two major classes, workers and capitalists, whose interests conflict.
Marxist class categories seem inadequate for discussion in this chapter,
which refers to a group -- commonly referred to as the "underclass" -- that is
prohibited from selling its labor -- which is not to say that its members do not
work. We refer to this group as "underprivileged" in order to focus on their
circumstance as a group from which even the most ordinary privileges are
withheld and in order to avoid the negative connotations of "underclass."
Marxist categories have also been criticized as too limited for a complete
understanding of the nature of white-collar workers' role in the political
economy (Wright, 1979; 1985). Professionals and managers, particularly, do not
fit neatly into structural categories. Like other workers, their livelihood
usually depends on their labor, but many white-collar workers tend to align
their interests with the capitalist class. They may, for example, own stock or
rental property that supplements their incomes. Hence, we include them among the
privileged. We make no claims that the classification system we use is better
than conventional systems -- except insofar as a different angle may offer new
insights -- just that it addresses more directly the main issues included in
this chapter.
Poverty increased dramatically for a number of reasons, chief among them the globalization of corporate interests (Sweezy, 1992), increased foreign competition, accelerated computerization and automation in the workplace, and conservative economic policies at the federal and state levels of government (Heilbroner, 1993). Changes in business practices and in government policies, including the export of jobs to other countries and investment in financial trading rather than in production, resulted in significant reductions in demand for skilled and semiskilled labor in this country. While a small percentage of the population made a great deal more money than in the previous decade, the majority had to endure a lower standard of living. The status of some people changed so drastically that society adopted the newly coined term mentioned above, the "underclass" to describe them. The term "underclass" was used to describe the growing number of people who live in substandard housing -- or no housing, who depend on charity or welfare for their livelihood, who have little or no health care, and who have virtually no prospects for improving their circumstances (Leman, 1986).
This recent deepening and expansion of poverty clarifies the function of the working class in U.S. society. Greater poverty results primarily from the reduced corporate need for so large a working class. Reduced need for workers implies that the limited material means allocated to workers to keep them sufficiently educated, healthy, and motivated to work now fall to a smaller proportion of the population. The function of the working class, for business purposes, is merely to provide labor. Because profit is business's reason for existence, people who are not needed for labor are, in effect, considered worthless and abandoned by the business community. To the extent that government serves business, it too abandons those who are useless for business's purposes. Moreover, the perspectives of government and business dominate public discussion. These circumstances conspire to ensure the virtual abandonment of a large segment of society, including millions of school children.
As Kozol (1991) points out in his critique of U.S. schools, Savage Inequalities, working-class and underprivileged children receive significantly fewer educational benefits than the children of wealthy parents. He also notes that parents who can secure educational advantages for their children do so even when these benefits are garnered at great expense to other children. Depriving other children of a "good education" gives the children of the privileged a competitive advantage, and it ensures a cheap labor pool for the future. Kozol (1991, p. 228) quotes the ironic observation of a school superintendent in San Antonio, Texas:
To the extent that popular opinion regards wealth as the just reward for superior merit, it supports the increasingly unequal distribution of resources among the populace. Business corporations together with government institutions heavily influenced by them promote this opinion, and schools reflect as well as promote an ideology that justifies inequality as proceeding from such natural phenomena as inborn individual differences in ability and motivation. Seligman (1992, p. 3 ), for example, decries affirmative action and other efforts to create equity in society by attributing success and failure to inborn ability:
Schooling sustains social inequities by discriminating unfairly against vulnerable groups in a number of ways, deploying several forms of power to achieve its goals (Lukes, 1974). One form of the school's power is overt: The threat of punishment is inherent in school policies and rules, which represent the power of the state. Another mechanism of power in the schools is instruction itself, which, especially through the hidden curriculum, persuades students to accept particular beliefs and normative behaviors. The content and form of schooling perpetuates ruling-class ideologies among students (e.g., the importance of the restoration of America's global economic dominion). Institutionalized schooling also exerts power by controlling the agendas of decision-making forums (e.g., school-board meetings, IEP meetings, and school improvement council meetings ). These mechanisms of localized power help to maintain the power relations that prevail throughout society.
According to the meritocratic view of achievement, individuals have the ability to change their economic circumstances through the exertion of will. Free will, with its related, particularly American, concept, "will power," is an important component of the popular view that capitalism establishes a meritocracy. Subscribing to the concept of free will allows privileged members of society to regard members of the working class and members of the underprivileged class as responsible for their own poverty.
The will to succeed financially plays an essential role in the U.S. political economy and has since the beginning of the industrial age. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber (1904/1958 ) explains the relationship between salvation and wealth as conceived by John Calvin and his followers. According to what Weber calls the "worldly asceticism" of the Puritans, prosperity was a sign of grace, and good husbandry was a means to salvation. Although Calvin, one of the earliest founders of Protestantism, was a determinist who believed that the Elect were predestined for salvation and that no one could earn salvation, other influential Protestant leaders confounded Calvin's concept of a calling as a sign of grace with the concept of a calling as an avenue to salvation.
Unlike medieval asceticism, which valued contemplation, hard physical labor was regarded by the Puritans as the most desirable means of avoiding temptation and glorifying God. The end of work was salvation, not wealth, but wealth was not considered undesirable in itself -- as it had been under medieval asceticism -- but only in so far as it tempted the wealthy to leisure and sensuality (Lasch, 1991). The religious spirit of the Protestant ethic has almost disappeared, but the summary ethical judgments that derive from it persist in a context very different from seventeenth-century New England. Today, joblessness, different from failing to receive a "call," is still somehow the mark of ill favor (the lack of grace). Often without understanding the source of this belief, the public regards the poor as immoral and pitiable.
One result of this ethic is the tendency to discount the social conditions that inhibit success: poor nutrition, inadequate health care, miseducation, and institutionalized abuse (e.g., racism, sexism, and classism). This ethic bolsters the feeling of entitlement shared by privileged members of society. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 70% of the heads of impoverished rural families are employed (Maharidge, 1992), yet the myth that the poor are too lazy to hold jobs predominates. To illustrate this myth, Robert Coles (1977, pp. 491-492) reports interviews with children of wealthy parents:
Herbert Spencer's conception of this principle as the "survival of the fittest" justified the ill results of the competitiveness inherent in the capitalist system as not only natural, but beneficial to the species and the economy. Spencer's "social Darwinism" maintains that capitalism is the best economic system because it fosters the operation of natural law in the marketplace. Unimpeded operation of this natural law supposedly results in the success of the biologically elite and, consequently, in the establishment of a meritocracy (the aristocracy of the most able). In the allegedly classless and democratic capitalism of the U.S., everyone is destined to succeed except those who are biologically inferior. Because intelligence is regarded as the most important biological trait for human adaptation, reduced levels of intelligence are supposed to reflect biological inferiority.
According to the logic of social Darwinism, less intelligent people are unlikely to succeed in a democratic meritocracy. They are less likely to procreate than in a class-based society in which biologically inferior people of the aristocratic class are "artificially" protected under a monarchy or oligarchy. By contrast, in a capitalist democracy, intelligent people, of whatever economic origins, become wealthy and thereby gain a reproductive advantage. Following this logic, capitalism should result in the development of a superior race of humans. Although comparatively few educators wholeheartedly endorse this logic -- and virtually all would agree that it oversimplifies matters -- social Darwinism forms a relatively unexamined ideological legacy that continues to influence public policy (Gould, 1981).
Gifted education has historically been associated with social Darwinism through the hereditarianism of Francis Galton, Cyril Burt, and Lewis Terman. In Hereditary Genius, Galton (1869/1972) reported that inborn ability, combined with two other innate qualities -- zeal and the willingness to do hard work -- was certain to manifest itself in high achievement. Although Darwin himself did not share Galton's conviction that achievement was solely a function of innate qualities, Galton believed that natural selection was the major factor in determining individuals' achievement. When his study of eminent literary figures, statesmen, musicians, and others showed that most had relatives with similar talents, he interpreted the findings as support for his hypothesis that talent was inherited. He did not acknowledge that these findings also support the equally plausible hypothesis that particular family environments create conditions favoring the development of particular talents.
Like Galton, Burt considered heredity to be the primary source of variation in levels of intelligence. Unlike Galton, however, Burt distinguished between potential ability, that is, intelligence, and realized ability, or achievement (Hearnshaw, 1979). He believed that the environment could expand ability but only up to an innately determined limit. This view is hardly arguable in theory -- most scientists would agree that humans can do no more than their physical limitations allow. Burt and his colleagues, however, posit a comparatively narrow margin between potential and achievement.
Burt's studies, which correlated the IQ scores among family members who were related in varying degrees, and his studies of the IQ correlations among siblings, including identical and fraternal twins and non-twin siblings, served to buttress hereditarian theory and research from the 1940s until the 1970s. Although most of Burt's work has been discredited by the discovery that he fabricated findings, data, subjects, and even coresearchers, the hereditarian viewpoint continues to influence psychologists and educators ( Gould, 1981).
Galton and Burt's work was admired by Lewis Terman, principal investigator and primary author of Genetic Studies of Genius (1925). Although many researchers and educators have questioned Terman's methods of identifying gifted children, his study is arguably the most influential in the field of gifted education. Few of the critiques of his study have questioned Terman's basic assumption that exceptional ability is inborn.
Beginning in the 1960s, another admirer of Galton and Burt, Arthur Jensen, put forth the hereditarian argument in a series of studies in which he concluded that higher socioeconomic status groups are innately superior to lower socioeconomic status groups. His conclusions offended many because he claimed to have found scientific evidence of the intellectual inferiority of African Americans. His findings supported the contention that the greater relative poverty of African Americans was due to their inferiority rather than to a long history of oppression. Although eminent sociological researchers (e.g., Jencks et al., 1972) challenged Jensen's findings, the predominant view -- both professional and popular -- remains hereditarian (e.g., Seligman, 1992).
Another hereditarian argument, advanced by Edward O. Wilson, an entomologist, considers evolutionary adaptation retrospectively: If the fittest survive, then whatever survives must be fittest (Wilson, 1975). Wilson's invalid logic leads him to the Panglossian view that all long-standing social behaviors are natural and important for survival. According to his view, behaviors -- such as submissiveness in women and aggression in men, represent genetic traits that have survival benefits. The longevity of these so-called "traits" validates their evolutionary advantage. Wilson's version of social Darwinism, of course, argues against all social change. Any change in long-established social behaviors involves tampering with what Wilson believes are genetically programmed, inborn traits. Such tampering could, in Wilson's view, have disastrous social consequences.
Sociobiological and certain other innatist theories reflect and justify popular opinion. Incorporated into the curriculum in higher education, they influence future educators. Administrators, teachers, and counselors often use these theories, consciously or unconsciously, to discount their own effect on students' performance. For example, many teachers attribute learning disabilities and behavior disorders to inherited brain dysfunctions even when evidence of neurological impairment is lacking. By assuming that physical disabilities cause students' low achievement, teachers accept the inevitability of such poor performance. Belief in students' inevitable failure permits teachers to overlook the role that schooling (including poor teaching) plays in conditioning students' low achievement.
Similar beliefs contribute to the anti-intellectualism of programs for the gifted: Curriculum and instruction are regarded as less essential than innate ability for the development of talent. If educators think "talent will out," as Galton proposed, then they may regard activities to promote socialization as more important than those to cultivate students' intellectual abilities. This emphasis is likely to have particularly insidious effects on the achievement of gifted students from economically disadvantaged homes. Such families often lack the resources to compensate for schools' derelictions; they depend on the public schools to give their children an academic education.
According to Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin (1984), biological differences do not account for differences in academic achievement, nor does research support the belief that complex manifestations of human cognition and personality (e.g., intelligence, creativity, and motivation) are inherited. The arguments of biological determinism -- that these manifestations represent inborn traits and that such traits account for differences in academic and life achievement -- primarily serve ideological purposes. They legitimate social institutions responsible for unequal distribution of resources, and they conveniently relieve educators of responsibility for developing talent. The arguments of biological determinism, however, are not the only arguments claiming that the most successful are also the best and brightest.
In its way, the purportedly egalitarian position of liberals also advances this claim. Whereas political conservatives tend to attribute the achievement of individuals to inborn characteristics, political liberals tend to attribute it to environmentally induced characteristics. According to this view, the deficiencies of working-class and underprivileged individuals result from inadequacies in their cultures. The poor are said to be "culturally deprived," a condition more of their own making than inferior genetics ever could be. According to this view, parents with low incomes do not provide enough intellectual or linguistic stimulation nor do they value education sufficiently. Their children's failure is seen as a direct consequence of inadequate child-rearing practices. Hence, the liberal view -- as much as and possibly more than the conservative one -- may misrepresent the sources and consequences of poverty.
Barbara Ehrenreich (1987, p. 188) explains the popular tendency to attribute undesirable and self-defeating characteristics to the poor as a form of projection: The public attributes to the poor the very traits that it fears in itself.
When inaction or ineffective action is recognized as a product of circumstance, not an acquired or inherited "personality" trait, one can make the quite tenable claim that changing the balance of power will immediately change the behavior of the poor. The "culture of poverty" no longer provides a convenient mask for the structural features of our society that condition the "failure" of the poor. Nevertheless, educators continue to invoke this explanation for the low achievement of certain students in part because it -- like the hereditarian argument -- relieves them of responsibility.
Moreover, the media and other representatives of dominant classes continue to blame the poor for their "failure," citing as moral exemplars the relatively few individuals who grow up in poverty but manage to succeed nonetheless (Ryan, 1971). These success stories serve both to inspire and to reproach those who remain impoverished.
All of these strategies help to convince members of the working and underprivileged classes that they are poor because they are unlucky, unintelligent, weak willed, or lazy, and, for the most part, these strategies work. Sennett and Cobb (1972) quoted the disparaging remarks that manual laborers made about themselves: "I really didn't have it upstairs to do satisfying work, if you know what I mean. I just wasn't smart enough to avoid hauling garbage" (p. 118). Sennett and Cobb concluded, however, that the workers whom they interviewed were not totally convinced of their blameworthiness. These workers understood that they had never really had the chance to develop themselves in the ways that privileged people have. Many of them had strongly conflicting feelings, blaming themselves for their relative poverty and, at the same time, sensing that they had been cheated out of a better life because the odds were against them.
Working-class and underprivileged students who are aware of the odds against them, however, may be in even greater jeopardy than other students. Paul Willis's Learning to Labor shows how working-class youths' attempts to resist the dominant culture doom them to the most menial role within it, that is, to low-paying, manual labor. These students' "partial penetration of the really determining conditions of existence of the working class . . . [is] definitely superior to those official versions of their reality which are proffered through the school and various state agencies," according to Willis (1977, p. 3). This savvy, however, occasions resistance, which much more surely conditions failure than would naive acquiescence.
Working-class parents are also suspicious of educators, as the following interview with a mother and father about an open-school night makes evident (Willis, 1977, pp. 73-74):
Father: The headmaster irritated me . . . if I could have been in a room with 'im [the headmaster] you know on his own, without anybody hearing us, I could have said . . .
Father: You're full of bull.
Mother: They say, "Children's night," go down, they ain't
interested
really in what you'm saying am they? They don't want to
know.
PW: What's the whole thing in aid of then?
Mother: I don't know.
Father: I think it's trying to show you what good they'm doing for your kid. . . . They don't tell what they'm doin' wrong for him, they tell you exactly what they're doing right for 'em, what good they're doing.
Although many state constitutions explicitly require thorough and efficient systems of schooling for all students, states fail much more often to provide for children of the poor than for children of the affluent. This failure is perhaps most obvious in the squalid buildings and grounds, dilapidated equipment, and inadequate supplies provided in schools for working-class and underprivileged children. But it is also evident in other features of schooling relating to curriculum and instruction, remediation and discipline, and access to opportunities for higher education.
Inadequate facilities. Vast discrepancies exist between schools for children who are poor and schools for privileged children. Kozol (1985) reports that in Massachusetts, for example, the poorest school districts spent $1,500 per year per child, and the richest spent more than $6,000. This range -- a 1:4 ratio -- is typical, but in some states it is much wider and in some (e.g., impoverished West Virginia) it is much narrower. Litigation to reduce these discrepancies has sometimes proven successful in court, but the court decrees are, in fact, unlikely to be carried out (Kozol, 1991). Supportive court decisions have not often been translated into action to promote equity.
Kozol writes primarily about urban schools, but rural schools show similar discrepancies. In West Virginia, for example, parents in a poor, rural county filed suit because conditions in the schools were so much worse in their county than in more affluent counties (Pauley v. Kelley, 1979). The conditions in some schools in this mountainous, sparsely populated county were so bad that they were unsafe. Sewage disposal systems became saturated and seeped to the surface of playgrounds. Some schools had no on-campus source of potable water. In the high schools, only 40 textbooks were assigned to each classroom. Since most classrooms served over 100 students a day, students typically had difficulty taking books home. Consequently, relatively little homework was assigned. Laboratory equipment was outdated or missing. Most science classes were taught in regular classrooms, and teachers had to bring materials from home for the few science experiments that could be conducted under such conditions. In some counties in the state, conditions were not much better, but in most, buildings were safer and more sanitary. Furthermore, some counties had excellent facilities.
The West Virginia Department of Education responded to the judgment in favor of the plaintiffs by developing a "master plan," intended to raise standards all across the state and provide a more equitable school system. Five years later, however, educational researchers in the state reported that the plan "is not being implemented at this time" (Meckley, Hartnett, & Yeager, 1987, p.186). More than a decade later, the plan still has not been implemented. Funding, if still terribly inadequate, is now more equal, however (Hughes, 1993 ).1
These events took place in a state that is forty-ninth in income, but twenty-second in spending on education. In spite of the state's general poverty, it spends more than an average proportion of its taxes on education, as do many school systems in impoverished areas, rural and urban. Even this exceptional commitment to education has not been expressed in actions to provide an equal and adequate education to all students in the state. It is even less likely that more affluent states, which spend a smaller proportion of their tax monies on education, will implement such action.
Although gifted programs, which predominantly serve children of the privileged, sometimes have better facilities than other programs in the schools, facilities for gifted programs vary greatly, as well. Gifted classes in poorer districts often have to meet wherever they can find space -- on the stage in the auditorium or in the gymnasium, for example. But those in wealthier districts may have the use of their own, special facilities: laboratories with sophisticated equipment and computer classrooms with state-of-the-art hardware and software. The gifted children of privileged parents enjoy such benefits, while others, less fortunate but equally capable, are denied access based on their residency in impoverished communities.
Inappropriate curriculum and instruction. One means of allocating poverty is to make sure that some children fail to learn the concepts and skills needed to succeed (or at least to continue in school for long enough to earn credentials for particular jobs). Poor children and children from racial or ethnic minorities are most vulnerable. Research shows that these children are more likely than others to be retained or placed in remedial classes (Oakes, 1985). Retention in grade is probably the most effective means of delaying academic progress, but placing children in low groups or in remedial classes also ensures that they receive instruction at a slower pace (Oakes, 1985). In these slower paced classes, children may cover only part of the text or use a lower level text, so that at the end of the year, they are further behind than they were at the beginning.
This situation is particularly disturbing because instructional decisions about retention and grouping are not made solely on the basis of children's instructional needs. For example, the lowest achiever in the class is not necessarily the child who is retained. Educators' stereotypes about poor children affect such instructional decisions. Moreover, privileged parents find it easier to intervene when the possibility of retention or placement in a remedial class is broached. Parents who are members of the business or professional community are often neighbors of the teacher or principal, but even when they do not know the teacher personally, they share similar styles of dress, speech, and behavior. They regard themselves as the teachers' equals. Underprivileged and working-class parents who wish to intervene face a more formidable task than these parents.
Lareau (1989, p. 50) describes working-class parents' interactions with teachers: "parents appeared nervous and genuinely anxious in front of their children's teachers. Many shifted from one foot to another, had trouble maintaining eye contact, spoke very rapidly, and, in a few cases, stumbled over words." She contrasts this with the interactions of "upper-middle class" parents, who "easily maintained eye contact, did not blush or stutter, and did not appear visibly nervous" and who "joked with the teachers in their conversations, which were longer than at Colton [working-class school] and were more likely to include social conversation (e.g. the weather, community events, vacations )" (p. 76).
In working-class schools, the "really existing" curriculum tends to be mechanical, often involving rote memorization, practice of routine, and very little decision-making opportunity for students (Anyon, 1980; Brown, 1993). Teachers rarely explain why the work is assigned or the concepts behind procedures. Teachers often use worksheets. For example, in studying grammar, instruction considers rules, rather than discussing rhetorical reasons for selecting different styles of punctuation or diction. An essential message communicated by the curriculum for working-class children seems to be that work is boring, but must be done anyhow. According to Anyon (1980), assignments are highly structured and require primarily convergent answers; teachers' directions are phrased as orders rather than explanations or requests.
Students in predominantly working-class schools seldom have the opportunities offered to children in schools where students are predominantly affluent; working-class students are given fewer chances to design experiments or projects, to analyze ideas, or to express themselves in creative work (Brown, 1993). In high school, the curriculum for working-class students emphasizes manual and technical skills rather than scholarship. This type of curriculum is justified as more practical for "low achievers," but it effectively limits the college and career potential of bright underprivileged and working-class students (Gamoran, 1992; Oakes, 1985).
Remediation and discipline. The misconduct of underprivileged and working-class students arises in large part because of the type of instruction and curriculum they endure (e.g., Pink, 1982). Educators, however, tend to ignore the effects of poor educational practice and to regard only the students -- and their families -- as responsible for their indiscipline. Consequently, punishment is the school's usual response to the misconduct of such students. Although punishment, such as detention, paddling, suspension, or expulsion, has not been found to be effective, it is consistently preferred over interventions that are effective (Kauffman, 1993).
Characteristics of successful programs have been documented; such programs usually apply principles of reinforcement in highly structured ways to improve students' academic achievement, social skills, and progress toward graduation. More sophisticated programs acknowledge the relationship between students' indiscipline and schools' coercive agenda; but thus far the success of such programs has been ephemeral. Nearly all effective programs, however, are short-lived because of lack of fiscal support (Safer, 1982).
Privileged students are less vulnerable to pressures to fail; hence, they are less rebellious than their working-class or underprivileged peers. The privileged are also more likely than working-class or underprivileged students to attend schools that foster internalized responsibility and self-control. In fact, the classroom regimens in schools that serve impoverished communities stress obedience to external sources of authority, and even to arbitrary authority (e.g., Anyon, 1980; Brown, 1993; Wilcox, 1982; Willis, 1977). The two sorts of schools apparently pursue the cultivation of different sorts of character: one to accept leadership and rule, the other to submit to subordination and manipulation.
These distinctions help explain why infractions yield punishments that fall more heavily on working-class and underprivileged students than on their privileged peers. Preparation for leadership and responsible self-direction entails risk taking, so that among the privileged a certain degree and frequency of rebellious action can even be encouraged. Among those destined to be ruled rather than to rule, however, frequent counterproductive rebelliousness can be expected, but certainly not tolerated. Students from privileged backgrounds are not only less likely to receive punishment when they do indulge in rebellious behavior, but they are also more likely to receive and to respond to therapeutic intervention (e.g., counseling), a technology of the middle class (Bellah et al., 1985). In addition, they are more likely to be given over to the custody of their parents, and to have lawyers who can reduce the burdens that serious infractions might entail (see Colvin & Pauly, 1983, for a theoretical explanation of these circumstances ).
Economically disadvantaged children often suffer poor health and uncomfortable or dangerous living conditions. Nevertheless, punishments are meted out to these children by schools and legal systems with more severity and greater certainty than to other children (Pink, 1982). Despite comparatively adverse circumstances, most working-class students are well-behaved. Nevertheless, the few who misbehave serve as examples that reinforce meritocratic myths; thus, according to Jencks and colleagues (1972, p. 139), we find that "the deviant minority seems to shape popular stereotypes of working-class values and behavior."
Inadequate access to college. Working-class and underprivileged students, no matter how capable, are much less likely than their more privileged counterparts to attend college. Data from the longitudinal survey, High School and Beyond, show that by 1986 approximately 38% of upper socioeconomic status (SES) students from the high school graduating class of 1980 had earned a bachelor's degree and approximately 16% of the middle SES students from this nationally representative sample had earned such a degree. By contrast, only 7% of the lower SES students had earned the B.A. degree (National Center for Education Statistics, 1991, table 289).
There are financial assistance programs for economically disadvantaged students, of course, but such programs offer limited support. Most assistance packages combine scholarship and loan monies, requiring students to work at least part-time in order to pay living expenses and to begin paying back loans as soon as they graduate. Students who must work while they are in college find it harder to get adequate time to read and prepare for class discussions, tests, and assignments than do students whose college attendance is fully subsidized by their parents. As a consequence, the students who are least well prepared by their high schools to attend college, are further impeded by the conditions under which their college attendance is made possible.
Evidence of the difficulty working-class and underprivileged students have in completing college work comes from the NCES survey Recent College Graduates. African-American, Hispanic, and American Indian groups take considerably longer, on average, to complete bachelor's degrees. For example, 41% of American Indians, as compared to 18.5% of whites take more than 6 years to complete B.A. degrees (NCES, 1993). Institutionalized racism and classism, of course, contribute to the circumstances that make college attendance and graduation more difficult for some groups than for others even when some financial assistance is available.
In Willis's view, a person's cultural location, at least in part, decides his or her likelihood to succeed in school and in the marketplace. He finds that the concept of "cultural location" provides a more compelling explanation of social mobility than the concept of individual intelligence (Willis, 1977). Cultural location is a function of class, but it is also determined by gender, race, and ethnicity. Cultural location implicates mechanisms of institutionalized practice that systematically and unfairly discriminate against members of the working and underprivileged classes.
In Western capitalist societies, discrimination against women and against racial and ethnic minorities helps to ensure that a large proportion of the population is available as cheap labor. Moreover, as the need for workers in general decreases, the increasing numbers of unemployed female and minority workers drive down the wages of those who are employed. Discrimination against certain groups in this way sustains differences in class.
Institutionalized discrimination against women and minority groups clearly favors the wealthy, even though individuals from privileged backgrounds may feel little personal prejudice or animosity toward the victims of unfair discrimination. Institutionalized discrimination allows members of privileged groups to espouse liberal sentiments without giving up their privileges. Because it is diffused throughout government and private institutions, the mechanisms and effects of institutionalized racism, for example, tend to be more insidious than the more blatant hostilities expressed by individuals. Despite serious attempts to change discriminatory practices in the U.S. (e.g., the civil rights movement, the women's movement), our society still favors male members of the white, privileged class. This favoritism is less evident than it once was in policy, though it persists in practice even after policies have changed.
Personalized discrimination, though fostered by institutionalized discrimination, varies in form and intensity among individuals and among groups. Both forms of discrimination, however, produce hardships for those discriminated against: Out of proportion to their numbers, more women than men are poor, more blacks than whites, more Hispanics than Anglos, more American Indians, and more of the rural populace. Exceptions occur, and extraordinary individual successes are documented in the popular and professional media -- often as exhortatory examples.2 In general, though, the chances of a minority child's growing up to become a well-paid professional or highly successful business person are much less than those of an equally capable child from the white majority.
Women of all social classes predominate in relatively low paying jobs. Working-class women earn low wages as fast food waitresses, clerks, and aides in day-care nurseries or, if they have access to more resources, as teachers, social workers, secretaries, and nurses. Privileged women may be judges and CEOs, yet they almost always earn less than their male counterparts (e.g., Matthews, 1985). Furthermore, the working wives of professionals and business executives often are employed in less prestigious and less well-paid jobs than those of their husbands.
Subotnik, Karp, and Morgan (1989) found that the male graduates of Hunter College's school for gifted students earned about twice as much per year as the equally gifted and equally well-educated female graduates. The mean income of the women was $47,391 and their median income was $40,000, compared with a mean of $105,000 and a median of $75,000 for the men. Part of this difference can be explained by the women's occupations. For example, as compared with 1.4% of the men, 13.4% of the women taught school at the elementary or high school levels. Nonetheless, the authors found that even when men and women were matched by profession, the women earned less than the men.
Hereditarian claims about women's intelligence. Although the media still portray women as less intelligent (i.e., more "dippy") than men, scholars seldom make this claim. Some research on highly gifted children, conducted under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins study of mathematical precocity, however, does make such an assertion. The finding used to advance this claim relates specifically to the mathematics achievement of mathematically talented girls. These high achievers never quite match the high scores on the math portion of the SAT obtained by their male counterparts. Benbow (1986) attributes the girls' lower scores to genetic, specifically hormonal, gender-specific characteristics. Of course, she could just as easily have offered an environmental explanation: Considerable research shows that girls receive less instruction than boys in advanced math.
Benbow's hereditarian reasoning is based on Geschwind's (Geschwind & Behan, 1982; Geschwind & Galaburda, 1984) hypotheses about brain dominance. According to Geschwind, right-hemisphere dominance results from excesses of testosterone or sensitivity to it. This right-brain dominance is associated with left-handedness and, sometimes, with learning disabilities and immune deficiencies. It also is associated with extremely superior mathematical ability. This reasoning suggests that individuals who show signs of having testosterone-induced right-hemisphere dominance (i.e., because they are left-handed or have allergies) are likely to perform extremely well in mathematics.
A recent study attempting to replicate Benbow's findings (Wiley & Goldstein, 1991) found no support for the link between allergies, left handedness, and mathematical ability, casting doubt on Benbow's argument. Wiley and Goldstein found no higher incidence of left-handedness among highly mathematically precocious boys than among other adolescents. Moreover, they questioned Benbow's research methods. Benbow found a higher frequency of left-handedness, they say, because she compared the frequency in the experimental group of adolescent boys with the frequency among males in the total U.S. population. Her findings are the artifact of this decision.
According to Wiley and Goldstein, had Benbow used adolescents as her comparison group, she would have found no significant difference because there is a greater frequency of left-handedness in the 10- to 20-year-old age groups than in adults. Wiley and Goldsmith account for the higher incidence of allergies as relating to class differences rather than intellectual differences. They believe that a higher incidence of identified allergies exists among the gifted because middle- and upper-income families can afford to seek medical help for allergic conditions. Benbow's sample came primarily from this privileged group.
"Culture-of-poverty" claims about women's intelligence. Until this century, women in Europe and the United States were effectively excluded from higher education. Their lack of formal schooling -- private or public -- affected intellectual development. Mary Wollstonecraft (1792/1986, p. 100), an early feminist, astutely observed,
Declines in girls' achievement result from their socialization, via the "hidden curriculum." Without thinking about it, teachers convey messages that reinforce and reproduce behaviors associated with gender stereotypes. Teachers, for example, reinforce girls' quiescence by giving more attention to the boys in their classes. They initiate more contacts with boys (Acker, 1988) and engage them in more verbal interchanges -- more criticism as well as more praise (Jones, 1989; Sadker et al, 1989). Teachers encourage male achievement by referring boys to high-level groups more often than they refer girls, even when the girls are equally bright (Hallinan & Sorensen, 1987; Irvine, 1986; Mickelson, 1989). In addition, some evidence suggests that teachers respond more positively to gifted boys than to gifted girls (Solano, 1976).
Receiving the messages that they do, girls -- even gifted girls -- express less confidence in their abilities than do boys (Fox, 1976). They are particularly skeptical of their abilities to excel in science and mathematics. Consequently, girls are less likely than boys to pursue advanced studies even when they have the ability to succeed (Fox, 1976). Although increasing numbers of women are studying mathematics and science at the college level (Mickelson, 1989), women are still grossly underrepresented among math and science majors (Jones, 1989). The majors they select most often lead to relatively low-status, low-paid work like nursing and teaching.
Some advocates for women's rights have marked off an area of expertise as belonging essentially to girls and women. They view women as tending to be more intuitive than analytical. Cixous (1975/1988) for example, uses the metaphors "intelligible" for masculine and "sensitive" for feminine. Although women and men do exhibit some characteristic differences in interests, there is no clear empirical evidence for differences in reasoning or intuition. Nevertheless, objectivity is often regarded as masculine, and analytical thinking is sometimes associated with male domination.
Efforts to assign intuition as a special expertise of women, while well-intentioned, may actually limit women's intellectual development. Girls and women who -- because of their special "gift" for intuition -- have been discouraged from learning to think analytically are at a disadvantage in the intellectual realm. Of course, men, who often fail to cultivate a sensitive outlook on life, are disabled by a similar oversight. Stereotyping mental abilities as masculine or feminine denies both women and men development of a broad range of intellectual powers (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986).
African-American students. The most chilling evidence of the effects of racism appears in comparisons of the mortality rates of different racial groups. According to 1988 statistics, life expectancy at birth was 75.5 years for whites, but only 69.5 years for African Americans. Moreover, the discrepancy appears to be widening (Navarro, 1991). This difference results from the greater poverty of the African-American minority, poverty that results from a long history of oppression (Navarro, 1991).
Of course, such oppression persists, even if the privileged classes -- given voice through the mass media -- prefer to blame African Americans for the unfavorable circumstances in which they live. For example, liberal politicians from the 1960s liked to attribute African Americans' poor school performance to the failure of African-American culture to value education.3 This view, however, reflects an ahistorical misconception. Since before the Civil War, African Americans have struggled ardently to provide education for their children. The white majority, not African Americans themselves, have impeded these efforts through such overt mechanisms as "separate but equal" schools and continuing (perhaps worsening) de facto segregation (e.g., Rumberger & Willms, 1992).
An illustration of the conditions that hindered the efforts of African Americans to educate themselves is provided by the history of the Freedmen schools. Gutman (1987) describes how former slaves and white schoolteachers from the North fought to set up and operate schools despite opposition from white southerners. Except for Florida, which imposed a separate education tax on African Americans, no state in the South made budgetary provisions to assure facilities, materials, and teachers for the former slaves. Three years after the end of the Civil War, the federal government allocated a half million dollars to the Freedmen's Bureau to set up or rent schoolhouses, but white opposition continued to impede the establishment and operation of schools for African-American children. Evidence of African Americans' commitment, however, is ample. They "purchased schoolbooks, hired, fed, boarded, and protected teachers, constructed and maintained school buildings and engaged in other costly (and sometimes dangerous) activities to provide education for their children" (Gutman, 1987, p. 260).
Whereas today there may be less overt hostility toward African Americans, impediments to the education of African-American children are still considerable. Segregation is nearly as prevalent now as it was 40 years ago when the Supreme Court handed down the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling (Rumberger & Willms, 1992). There are fewer resources to support schooling in African-American communities, despite the fact that such communities often tax themselves at higher rates than those of the neighboring suburbs. Because property values are low, however, high taxation rates often fail to provide adequate funds for schools (Kozol, 1991). As a consequence, children attend schools that are dilapidated, often to the point of being dangerous.
Because of poor conditions in public schools many African-American parents struggle to send their children to private or parochial schools. These schools are safer, have better discipline, and are more academically focused than public schools. According to one study (Jones-Wilson, Arnez, & Asbury, 1992), African-American parents in Washington, DC, ranked inadequate discipline in the public schools and poor curriculum and standards as the two most important reasons for seeking alternatives to public education.
Although most privately schooled African-American children attend Catholic schools, many attend independent African-American schools (Ratteray, 1992). New York City has 55 such schools (Foster, 1991). The majority of African-American students, however, attend public schools despite the harm such schools may cause them: Their achievement relative to that of other students is often lower when they leave public schools than when they enter (cf. Brown, 1993; Wilcox, 1982; Wilcox & Moriarity, 1977).
African-American males usually have the lowest academic achievement of any group, but African-American females also perform poorly (Garibaldi, 1992). As a consequence, African-American students are disproportionately assigned to remedial and special education programs. They are, for example, three times as likely as white children to be identified as mentally retarded but only half as likely to be identified as gifted (Kozol, 1991).
The blame for low achievement among African-American students has traditionally been assigned to the family; however, schooling itself appears to inhibit the intellectual development of these students. Teachers often regard African-American students as less capable than other students and, consequently, hold low expectations for them; they assume that African-American students will not have the interest or the ability to attend college. Furthermore, when African-American students are educated in integrated classrooms, they are given relatively little attention (Williams & Muehl, 1978).
The content of the curriculum also contributes to the disenfranchisement of all minority groups, perhaps especially African Americans and women. As McCarthy (1990) notes, both African-American and feminist writers have commented on the devaluation of African Americans' and women's identity; James Baldwin, Ntozake Shange, and June Jordan, among others, cite schools as "principal sites for the production and naturalization of myths and ideologies that systematically disorganize and neutralize minority cultural identities" (p. 46).
As a consequence of such treatment, African-American students often regard the school environment as a hostile one. Despite the best intentions of many educators, African-American students nevertheless experience political and cultural conflict within their classrooms and schools. Such conflict -- rather than inherent or cultural deficiencies -- accounts for the low achievement of these students (Jackson, 1992; cf. Labov, 1972). Nevertheless, the conflict contributes to low self-esteem and persistent feelings of hopelessness.
Minority students identified as gifted, however, tend to be more hopeful and positive about their schooling than other students. As Ford and Harris (1992, p. 59) speculate, "Perhaps students, by virtue of being identified as gifted and placed accordingly in gifted classes, have more hope for their educational futures and career prospects than do those placed in regular classes. "But African-American students have limited access to gifted programs, and the gifted programs that do serve them tend to have fewer resources than gifted programs in more affluent, white communities (Kozol, 1991). Whereas only 1.4% of African-American students received resources or services through gifted education programs in 1981, 3.7% of white students received such services (Grant & Snyder, 1986).
African-American students also have limited access to higher education, as we mentioned above. Historically, they have been underrepresented in college programs, and their college enrollment rate has been declining since 1978 (Reed, 1988). Those who do enroll in college cannot hope for the kind of family support available to white students. Compared to the $50,000 family income of more than half of the white college students, the family income of more than half of the African-American college students in 1985 was under $20,000 (Reed, 1988). Not surprisingly, African American students are more likely than white students to leave college for financial reasons.
Hispanic students. The patterns of discrimination that inhibit the intellectual development of Hispanic students are similar to those affecting African Americans. But for many Hispanic students, the problems of racism and poverty are compounded by the fact that English is their second language. Hispanics may, in fact, have the highest drop-out rate of any minority group (Ruiz, 1989). On average, 32.4% of Hispanics as compared with 13.2% of African Americans and 12% of whites were classified as high school dropouts in 1990 (NCES, 1991, table 98).
These findings, however, can be misleading. Among Hispanics, different subgroups seem to meet different fates as they assimilate into American society. The differential success of Hispanic subgroups results in large part from class differences in their native countries. Many Cubans who immigrated to the United States, for example, came from wealthy families. Their move to this country was an attempt to retain wealth and privilege in the face of the egalitarian policies of the communists (Bean & Tienda, 1987). Mexican-American immigrants, by contrast, usually come from impoverished communities, bringing few resources with them to the U.S. (Bean & Tienda, 1987).
The differences in the relative achievement of the different Hispanic subgroups are, of course, obscured in statistics that consider Hispanics as a single ethnic group. Moreover, the achievement of Hispanic students reflects factors such as length of residence in the U.S. and socioeconomic status. For these reasons, the school achievement of Hispanic students is quite variable. On average, however, their achievement in many subjects, while lower than the average for white students, is typically higher than that of African-American students (Hardeo, 1989).
Like African Americans, Hispanic students are more likely to be retained than white students. Those who are from large families, particularly single-parent families, are more vulnerable. By the time they are in high school, they are more than twice as likely as non-Hispanic white students from comparable family types to have been retained at least 2 years ( Muller & Espanshade, 1985). Their relatively higher retention rates may reflect the combination of discrimination, poverty, and linguistic and cultural differences.
Hispanics -- like African Americans -- share a legacy of public humiliation. Many African-American and Hispanic students hear from their parents stories about being required to use separate restrooms, drink from separate fountains, and eat at different restaurants. Though perhaps less public, discrimination continues against the current generation of minority children. As Rodriguez (1989, p. 38), recalls, "I had a sense that it was not so good to be a Mexican . . . in sixth grade, when my mother enrolled me in a different school, the school administrator commented, 'Oh, her last name is Rodriguez, just put her in the slow class.'"
Hispanics not only have lower achievement than whites, they are also underrepresented in gifted programs. Relatively few Hispanics are identified as gifted. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, Hispanics represent 56% of the total student population, but they represent only 29% of the population identified as gifted (Perrine, 1989). Similarly, Hispanic students are underrepresented in higher education programs (Schroeder, 1991), including graduate programs, especially in mathematics and science (Thomas, 1992). In 1988-1989, for example, 86.2% of those earning doctoral degrees were white, whereas only 3.8% were African American and 2.7% were Hispanic (NCES, 1991, table 274).
American Indians. American Indians are the most impoverished of all of the minority groups; and the effects of their poverty are reflected in their high drug-abuse, murder, and suicide rates (e.g., Szasz, 1992). These conditions are the legacy of whites' attempts to destroy the Indian nations through genocide from the moment of contact through the nineteenth century; but they also reflect the vicious discrimination that followed (see Zinn, 1980). Whites' mistreatment of American Indians was so horrendous that by the turn of the twentieth century, the Indian population had been reduced at least 90% by murder, disease, and starvation. The Indian population has risen almost tenfold since 1900, and the federal government today recognizes over 400 tribes.
Given the historical circumstances, the effects in the present are no surprise. Indians' achievement test scores, for example, approximate those of African Americans and Hispanics. Of the Indians graduating in the high school class of 1980, only 9.29% had completed college degrees by 1986 (NCES, 1991, table 289); and Indians have the highest level of unemployment of any ethnic group in the U.S. population.
Indians' academic performance suffers not only because of political and economic discrimination but also because of cultural hegemony. Whites typically devalue (or patronize) Indian culture -- circumstances that adversely affect Indian children's achievement and ability test scores (Guilmet, 1983). Differences between native culture and school culture, ignorance of native culture, language differences between students and teachers, differences between students' and teachers' values, cultural differences in learning styles, poor motivation of students, students' home and community problems, and inappropriate use of tests with Indian students all contribute to the underachievement of this group (Gilliland, 1986; Swisher & Deyhle, 1987).
In response to such conditions, Indians have traditionally struggled to wrest control of their education from white institutions. Institutions like the Bureau of Indian Affairs now favor the employment of Indians as teachers and school administrators. The infamous boarding schools have mostly closed or changed dramatically, and many Indian schools are tribally controlled. Most Indian children, however, attend public schools (either on reservations or elsewhere). But despite the legacy of oppression and genocide, many whites nevertheless continue to view Indians' successful efforts to establish their control over Indian education as a form of rebellion.
Asian-American students. In contrast to the academic achievement of African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and women, that of Asian-American students is higher than average. Specifically, Asian-American high school students score significantly higher on tests of mathematics than other students (Hardeo, 1989), and they tend to select majors in math and science in college. The high academic achievement of Asian-American students has received much attention in the popular media as well as in scholarly journals. Curiously, the high achievement of these students is usually attributed to environment -- specifically, to cultural values communicated through the family -- rather than to heredity.
Chauvinistic attitudes may be responsible for this representation. For instance, the success of Asian Americans neatly confirms the American myth that poor immigrants who work hard can succeed in this country regardless of the odds against them. Asian Americans can, in this way, serve as exemplars to other minority groups.
Some studies have examined the relationship between families' valuing of education and Asian-American children's high achievement. To discover specific family variables that are associated with high achievement, one study (Caplan, Choy, & Whitmore, 1992), surveyed 200 Indochinese refugee families. The 536 school-age children in the families had been in the U.S., on average, 3 1/2 years. Despite their limited familiarity with English, the tragedy and disruption many had suffered in political and military conflicts in their home countries, and the poverty in which they lived in the U.S., these children performed as well as children born in this country. They had GPAs slightly above 3.0 ("B") and average scores on the California Achievement Test.
Surprisingly, GPA was positively correlated to the number of children in the family -- the opposite of what is usually found. The investigators attributed the positive correlation among the Asian Americans to two circumstances: (1) Asian-American children spend more time on homework than native-born children do and (2) siblings help each other with school work in the evenings. These researchers concluded that the nature of the family is the key to these children's high achievement.
Although Caplan and colleagues' causal attributions are not justified by their methods -- correlational studies such as this one cannot establish cause -- their explanation is plausible. It would be difficult to argue that additional hours of homework and devotion to learning do not contribute to good grades. But in suggesting that poverty and limited familiarity with English do not preclude achievement among children who receive support and encouragement in a stable home, this research tends to discount the real impediments to the achievement of children from other minority groups.
Unlike Asian Americans, children from African-American, Hispanic, and American-Indian families grow up under conditions of institutionalized discrimination: Their families have endured generations of poverty and exclusion from school.
Studies of second- and third-generation Asian-American children may find that high educational achievement does not have the returns for them that their families predicted. If this is the case, we can expect that these generations will show lower achievement. Studies that have, indeed, found lower achievement among subsequent generations of Asian-American children attribute decreases in achievement to changes in family values -- the children have been Americanized.
Investigators usually stop their analyses at this point, unwilling to speculate about the sources of these changes. We suspect, however, that such changes may reflect acquiescence to a covert class system as much as or more than they reflect pressures on children to conform to the norms of the mainstream. We worry, too, that the decreasing achievement of Asian-American students may become even more pronounced as states like California institutionalize practices -- for example, quota systems in higher education -- that discriminate against high-achieving Asian Americans.
Action of such extraordinary purpose ultimately resulted in the passage of civil rights legislation in 1964, but its actions -- the ongoing campaign for the equal rights not only of African Americans but of all minorities, women, and disabled people -- were countered forcibly. Not only did the angry sentiment of mainstream whites operate to thwart change, but the agents of institutionalized racism (especially local political machines and the police) aggressively sought to squelch the civil rights movement. Civil rights legislation was passed, but not without substantial loss of life. And, of course, legislation has merely made some racist practices illegal. Enforcing the law and disestablishing institutional racism are other matters altogether.
The events and consequences of the civil rights movement are, however, illustrative of the sorts of commitments and sacrifices required to effect substantive change. Any similar effort that seeks real change in terms of the distribution of power will meet as much or greater resistance. If the disenfranchised are to significantly improve their life circumstances, they must be ready to join forces for a long, and possibly bloody, battle.
This devastating prospect leads many sympathizers to search for more gradual, less tumultuous avenues for change. Reformers, in past and present times, have imagined that changes in schooling would foster such gradual improvements in society. Yet many of the school reforms proposed to target problems of poverty and discrimination have as much potential for sustaining as for relieving oppression. Two such proposed reforms -- school choice and site-based management of schools -- exemplify the contradictions inherent in the project of using schools to promote political economic change.
Many school choice plans involve the use of vouchers -- subsidies to parents that pay all or part of the tuition at public or private schools. Despite their purported benefits, school choice plans pose particular dangers to poor and minority children. For instance, some voucher plans involving cross-district choice among public schools require the school district the student leaves to pay the cost of the child's tuition in the school of his or her choice. Poor schools whose students opt to leave find themselves in the position of paying per pupil costs -- often much higher than their own -- to wealthy school districts. Parker (1992) gives the example of one school district, which spends $4,600 per student, having to pay another district $10,200 for each student choosing to attend its schools. Such arrangements drain the resources of districts that already are the most poorly funded; yet students who benefit most from school choice are likely to be the most privileged within their districts.
Voucher plans that include private as well as public school options are even less likely to provide substantial benefits to poor and minority students. Such plans usually give students a fixed stipend -- often a fraction of the cost of private school tuition -- to spend at the school of their choice. Because poor families cannot pay for the unfunded portion of private school tuition, however, they cannot exercise this "choice." Wealthy families find, by contrast, that they are supported in their efforts to educate their children outside of the public schools. This arrangement is doubly damaging to underprivileged and working-class children: When sizable numbers of wealthy parents select private school options, they become much less willing to pay high taxes whose primary purpose is to support the education of other people's children.
The fact that some African-American parents, as well as parents of other minority groups, support school choice indicates their recognition of the failure of the public schools to educate their children properly. Under some circumstances vouchers may, in fact, give options to low-income families that privileged families have long exercised. Nevertheless, because public schools are contradictory sites of struggle in the political economy -- informed not only by the market but also by democratic ideals -- they hold more promise for equity than do private schools.
A second reform proposal aimed primarily at public schools is site-based management. Like school choice, this reform promises structural changes in the institution of schooling. Site-based management is put forth as a democratic reform intended to make schools responsive to communities' needs and aspirations. But it, too, poses particular dangers for poor and minority children.
Unintended consequences may result when local schools are given autonomy to design and regulate their own programs. Of most concern for underprivileged and working-class children is the possibility that site-based management will substantially deregulate the schools. Whereas we, like most educators, would welcome the elimination of much of the intrusive regulation that currently exists, we worry about the elimination of regulation intended to ensure adequate and equitable education. This concern is particularly acute when we imagine what might happen if site-based management were implemented widely without provision for the equal funding of schools.
School choice and site-based management plans may be less forward looking than they appear. They may actually represent efforts to revoke some of the equity provisions achieved through the civil rights movement and other popular movements. We find it curious that much of the "bureaucracy" that conservatives claim hampers the schools (e.g., Chubb & Moe, 1990) exists in order to provide due process protection for handicapped students, women, minorities, and the poor (Lowe, 1992).
The "cultural revolution" of the 1960s, nonetheless, suggests that students can accomplish significant change. The majority of the student activists of the 1960s--most of them privileged and many of them gifted--would probably agree, however, that what was accomplished is far short of the just legal system and more equitable distribution of resources for which they worked.
A more contemporary youth subculture, commonly labeled "punk," is composed primarily of working-class youth whose families subscribe less to mainstream values. Though members of this group may not have particularly high IQs, they nevertheless seem to be making an intellectual statement. Their critique of society is articulated through their clothes and hairstyles, just as the hippies' was. But the punk movement is cynical. The clothes acknowledge how bad things are, refusing to pretend that things will get better--an attitude that is an insult to the enterprising spirit of Western capitalism. However, as Willis notes, this kind of rebellion is only a beginning--a partial penetration. The violent racism of some "skinheads" provides evidence of the misdirection of such rebellion. Willis and Giroux, among others, would argue that the racism of these "punkers" derives from their inability to recognize the privileged class as the true source of their oppression.
Giroux (1983) believes that resistance can be effective if it is channeled into more acceptable forms of rebellion. He suggests that teaching critical theory and critical thinking in a context that values students' lived experience will empower students to play a more active role in creating an equitable society. Furthermore, his suggestions seem to recognize the contradictions endemic in reforms that merely seek to improve the academic success of underprivileged and working-class students: Greater academic success often results merely in the cooptation of bright underprivileged and working-class students. 4
Like most educational reform proposals, Giroux's approach overestimates the potential of schools to change society by making changes in students. Moreover, his approach fails to take into account the severe constraints under which teachers normally work within the public schools. In our view, structural changes in the political economy must precede and then inspire changes in schools.
There are so many poor people today, not because of problems with schools, but because of problems with our political economy. Unemployment is the result of the elimination or export of jobs, not of inadequately trained employees. It is due, also, to the failure of the wealthy to invest in the production of new goods. Instead, they have employed their wealth and expertise to buy and sell existing companies, often using risky methods and outright scams (Jacobs, 1992). Slowly, smaller companies are being bought out and subsumed under the aegis of large, multinational corporations. As this trend continues, power is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, and the wealthy have less and less of a stake in their own nation's well-being (Barnet, 1974; Sweezy, 1992).
Increased poverty is understandable if the goal of capitalism is, as frequently seems to be the case, to make as large a profit as possible. Under this regimen, cheap labor is a distinct advantage. And if business's goal is to maximize profit, then to the extent that business influences government, people who make a living through their own labor should expect no more government protection than the minimum needed to supply the cheapest possible labor to business. This analysis suggests that improvements in education will merely be instrumental -- minor technical refinements of the efficiencies of training. Significant education reform, however, will not be achieved without significant structural change in the political economy, and such change can take place only through widespread popular action.
Yet we observe that such changes are not forthcoming. Instead, we see sharper divisions between the privileged and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the vocal and the silenced. Moreover, the future does not promise easy improvement. With a rapidly growing world population and the attendant competition for scarce resources, the scope of poverty will continue to widen and its circumstances worsen.
Even the most dire vision does not excuse educators from the important work of nurturing talent -- of all students, from all backgrounds -- in ways that give them the greatest chance of realizing their potential. The chance to realize one's potential is a birthright to which all people are, as a consequence of their humanity, entitled. This entitlement implicates an academic education.
And an academic education for poor and minority students entails affirmative action. In defending the selection procedures of an Illinois gifted program, Fetterman (1988, p. 74) says that the Illinois superintendent of schools wanted "an affirmative action program rather than an academic program." We do not regard these as incompatible. In fact, affirmative action requires an academic program; otherwise, academic knowledge will retain its identity as capital, available disproportionately to the privileged. And good academic programs require affirmative action; otherwise, the curriculum must include obfuscation and rationalizations that compromise the integrity of scholarship. Respect for the intellect and the development of talent depend, in our view, on equity.