Equality and Achievement in Education

James S. Coleman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429710704
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book presents a major report that has evoked extensive controversy and initiated extensive policy debate on equality and achievement in education. It examines the concept of equality of educational opportunity and the relations between equality and achievement and between families and schools.

Part One
The Concept of Equal Educational Opportunity

One view of the ideal state of social science is that questions of fact and cause flow from theoretical, philosophical, and normative discourse. The wisdom from such discourse would guide and inform subsequent empirical research. This intellectual enrichment is especially important for the inherently normative issues surrounding the concept of equality of educational opportunity.

If this ideal state had characterized the work on equality of educational opportunity reported in Parts 1 and 2 of this book, it would have been impossible to extricate the one from the other into two separate parts. The empirical work would have flowed quite naturally from the juxtaposition of philosophical and policy questions. But it was not quite that way. The positions of research and theory in the image were reversed; the empirical research informed the theoretical work. The results of the empirical research exerted a continuing pressure to address certain theoretical and normative questions that had not been apparent in the absence of the research. It was the needs imposed by the policy questions that forced serious examination of just what might be meant by equality of educational opportunity. And, as indicated in the latter part of Chapter 2, it was the research results that forced a further refinement of the concept itself and exposed the naivete of the earlier theoretical position. Chapter 2 might, in fact, be seen as an exercise in conceptual clarification through empirical research.

One of the conclusions of Chapter 3, forced by the empirical research results, is that "complete equality of opportunity can be reached only if all the divergent out-of-school influences vanish, a condition that would arise only in the advent of boarding schools." This conclusion, confronting John Rawls'ss Theory of Justice, pits empirical research results directly against a priori principles of moral philosophy, Rawls'ss vision of a just society assumes that "there is fair (as opposed to formal) equality of opportunity . . . either by subsidizing private schools or by establishing a public school system" (Rawls 1971:275) He does not envision removing the child from the family at an early age; but the research results show that actions short of this, whether carried out in a public school system or in private schools, are insufficient.

The research results show the excessive simplicity of Rawls'ss assumption and make apparent what an abstract philosophical argument can miss: The achievement of a just society (in Rawls'ss sense) entails the sacrifice of other values (such as the value of nurturance provided by a child's parents) that may be held at least as strongly. Thus, it becomes clear that the achievement of justice, at least in Rawls'ss sense, requires not merely that the good forces overcome evil ones, but that one quality regarded as good overcome others also regarded as good.

Chapter 4 shows a somewhat different relation between the real world and theoretical positions in moral philosophy. Here the relation does not involve empirical research, but rather a concrete policy problem: the problem of racial desegregation in the schools. The nature of the relation is also different: Seen through the lenses of Rawls'ss work on justice and Robert Nozick's answer to Rawls, the nature of the rights at issue in the policy question becomes more transparent.

Again it becomes clear that to realize one value regarded as desirable, other values, also held strongly, must be sacrificed. In this case, the conflict can be conceived in terms of a balance of rights: the rights of parents and the rights of the state. But not only is the policy problem of school desegregation clarified by viewing it through the lenses representing two philosophical positions; the character of these positions, and the nature of the rights involved, is clarified through the implications of the philosophical positions for the real world.

Chapter 5, really only a brief comment, can be seen as a continuation of the attempt in Chapter 2 to clarify the concept of equality of educational opportunity. Written several years after Chapter 2, and after the juxtaposition of empirical results, policy issues, and moral philosophy presented in Chapters 3 and 4, Chapter 5 contains a further distillation, which arrives at a view of "equal educational opportunity" shaped by policy issues, empirical results, and philosophical argument.

Finally, back to the beginning: The placement of Chapter 1, which was written last, as the first essay is a further indication of the inductive character of the philosophical and theoretical enterprise. Chapter 1 provides the broadest theoretical perspective of all the chapters of this part. In the exposition, this chapter serves as an appropriate starting point because of its broad view. This broad view arose only through the continued focus on the theoretical-philosophical questions, a focus that itself was generated by the policy questions and empirical results. Chapter 1 raises the meta-normative question of what the social conditions are under which a norm of equal opportunity is likely to arise and be strongly held. This is an empirical question, about which I have no systematic data, but I examine the question with conjectures about what empirical data would show, together with a small amount of illustrative data. With this chapter, the interrelation between empirical research and normative philosophy comes full circle, from empirical to normative to empirical: We begin with empirical questions (generated by policy issues); these lead to philosophical and normative questions. Then there arises an empirical question about the norm itself. The empirical question is not designed to help bring about a moral relativism, to free the society from the norm of equal opportunity. It is, rather, to help us understand when and where the norm will wax strong, and when and where it will weaken or vanish.

Altogether, Part 1 of this book provides a conceptual and philosophical background for the value that has been dominant—the value of equal opportunity in education—in educational policy throughout the period covered by the research in this book. Thus the essays of Part 1, though mostly written after those of Part 2, serve as a philosophical and theoretical introduction to Part 2.

References

Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

1
Norms of Equal Opportunity

When and Why Do They Arise?

I begin with a quote from the British economist, Lionel Robbins: ". . . I am not clear how these doubts first suggested themselves; but I will remember how they were brought to a head by my reading somewhere—I think in the work of Sir Henry Maine—the story of how an Indian official had attempted to explain to a highcaste Brahmin the sanctions of the Benthamite system. 'But that', said the Brahmin, 'cannot possibly be right—I am ten times as capable of happiness as that untouchable over there'. I had no sympathy with the Brahmin. But I could not escape the conviction that, if I chose to regard men as equally capable of satisfaction and he to regard them as differing according to a hierarchial schedule, the difference between us was not one which could be resolved by the same method of demonstration as were available in other fields of social judgement. . . ."

The context of Robbins' comment was a dispute with Roy Harrod over the question of whether the repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain could be held to be beneficial, although the losses were experienced by one set of persons and the gains by another. As Robbins' comment indicates, such a judgement implies interpersonal comparison of utility, and there is no way that such comparisons can be made on positive, rather than normative grounds.

Although the context for Robbins' comment was a specific economic policy, it is relevant as well to questions of social policy that involve benefits to certain persons at an expense to others. In particular, it is relevant to the question of equal opportunity. Just as there seems no justification, other than a normative one, for deriving societal happiness from a particular combination of the Brahmin's happiness and the untouchable's happiness, there seems no justification, other than a normative one, for policies that promote equal opportunity or those that promote unequal opportunity.

Perhaps this point would be of less relevance if a goal of equal opportunity were always and everywhere held. But the Brahmin-untouchable example is a reminder that it is not. Nor do we need to travel so far to find it not held. In the United States, there is much discussion of equal educational opportunity, as if this were held as an absolute goal. Yet any careful examination of the policies that would be necessary to achieve this shows that it implies steps that no one is willing to take; Removing the child from the family, the single institution that provides opportunity most differentially and unequally, and placing that child in another social environment, the same for all children (see Coleman 1974). In fact, there are many policies toward equal educational opportunity that could be taken in the United States which are not—precisely because they would severely harm other values that are strongly held.

It thus seems of sociological interest to treat a norm or goal of equal opportunity not as something to be attacked or defended, but rather as a norm that arises in certain times and places, and to examine what characterizes those times and places.

To address the question of when and why such a norm arises, I turn to John Rawls's Theory of Justice. Rawls derives principles of justice which contain inherently the notion of equal opportunity. Rawls's second principle states as its second part that any social and economic inequalities be "attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity" (1971, p. 83). The question I want to ask is how Rawls can arrive at a presumptively universal principle of justice that is so much at odds with the principle which Sir Henry Maine's Brahmin would have arrived at?

Perhaps the most attractive part of Rawls's theoretical structure is that the two principles are regarded as chosen by rational individuals behind a "veil of ignorance". Behind this veil, "no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilties, his intelligence, strength, and the like" (p. 12). The attractiveness of this aspect of Rawls's theory lies in the fact that it appears to derive the principles of justice purely on rational grounds without importing value premises. In effect, what Rawls has done through use of the veil of ignorance is to convert interpersonal comparison of utility into intrapersonal comparisons. Each of the prospective members of the society is acting self-interestedly, but because none knows his future position, each favors a policy which he sees as most beneficial over all the ups and downs he will confront over his lifetime.

I will not examine the question of whether such a veil of ignorance would lead rational persons to choose the two principles that Rawls arrives at. Rather, what is of interest here is the kind of society within which Rawls's original position behind a veil of ignorance is reasonable. It would hardly be conceivable to the Brahmin, nor to the untouchable, because in the system in which they lived, such caste distinctions were taken as a starting point. Is this to say, then, that "justice" is incompatible with a differentiated social system of the sort that caste India was? I think this is hardly so: There are notions of justice within a society having highly differentiated institutions with fixed internal boundaries, just as there are within societies without this differentiation, and without the fixed internal boundaries.

Rather, I think we must say, that Rawls's theory of justice is a product of a particular kind of social structure, one in which each person can reasonably visualize himself as exchanging places with any other person in society. It is only to persons in such a social structure that Rawls's original position would even appear worth taking seriously. In other social structures, such a conception of justice would have no rationale.

This begins to suggest a first condition for the rise of a norm of equal opportunity. The condition might be stated this way: that all persons among whom the norm is held be able easily to imagine themselves exchanging positions with anyone else covered by the norm.

Perhaps the example of the Brahmin and untouchable is not sufficiently persuasive. There are many others, some of which may be more persuasive:

1. There exists within the state of Israel a strong norm of equal opportunity, a norm which can be traced back to before the founding of the state, in the socialist ideology that was part of Zionism, and the socialist institutions in Palestine that predate the state. Yet this norm of equal opportunity does not, in all its aspects, include Israeli Aarbs. Why not? Further, I will venture a prediction that twenty years hence, the norm of equal opportunity will include Israeli Arabs. If so, what conditions will bring about the change?
2. In the United States, the democratic and egalitarian foundations have meant that a norm of equal opportunity has always been held, though of course not as the single overriding social value. That norm has led, throughout at least the period of industrialization roughly coinciding with the 20th Century, to great concerns with poverty and to legislation, particularly in the 1930s, to increase opportunity. Yet until sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, most discussions of alleviation of poverty were confined to poverty among whites. Since that time, black Americans have come to be included in the set of persons to whom the norm of equal opportunity applies. Why has there been this change?
3. Norms of equal opportunity are widespread today in most developed countries. These norms are widespread among the general population in these countries. Yet the norms are peculiar in one sense: They stop at national boundaries. For example, the norm of equal opportunity in the United States includes U.S. citizens or residents, but not Mexicans residing in Mexico. (Mexicans residing in the United States constitute an interesting intermediate case, for some persons in the U.S. holding equal opportunity norms include them, while some do not.) Nor are the natives of New Guinea included. Why do these norms stop at national boundaries? Why do they reach that far?

These examples should be sufficient to illustrate the point that norms of equal opportunity are highly time-and-place specific, highly restrictive as to coverage, and far from ubiquitous. The variations presented in these examples also seem to be compatible with the condition stated earlier: that all those holding the norm be easily able to imagine themselves exchanging positions with anyone else covered by the norm.

Another way of getting a sense of the time-and-place specificity of norms of equal opportunity is to consider two conceptions of democracy. One conception characterized the British political system before the entrance of the Labour Party, and continues to characterize a segment of the Conservative Party as well as some individuals within the Labour Party. It is a conception of a certain class of persons having both rights and responsibilities beyond those of another class. Candidates for office are chosen from the former class, and when they come to govern, they are expected to govern not in terms of their interests or those of their class, but with a responsibility for the society as a whole, and especially for those who are their "dependents", that is, those who are, and will always be, the governed. Policies are arrived at (or at least seem to be arrived at) not through the clash of interests, but through the judgement and wisdom of those who have this special responsibility for the society as a whole. The conception arises from the traditional class structure that characterized precapitalist Europe. From that structure arose the conception of "noblesse oblige" and the principle that is inculcated in trainees for the officer corps of most military services: "Rank has its privileges; rank has its responsibilities." It is the conception of democracy that arises out of, and is compatible with, a hierarchial society.

The second conception of democracy is one that more nearly characterizes the American political system, especially since the Jacksonian Revolution. Every citizen has the opportunity to run for office, and the political contest is a contest between differing interests. There is no noblesse oblige, no conception that those who govern have a special responsibility for a permanent governed class, but a conception that policies arise in the day-to-day functioning of government through the struggle of interests that results in legislation. These policies represent a balance among the interests who are affected by them. It is a conception of government more compatible with Congressional system and a weak party structure than with a Parliamentary system where policies are arrived at by the Cabinet and ratified by a Parliament controlled by party discipline. This difference is described at length and in vivid detail by Moise Ostrogorski (1902) in his two volumes on English and American democracy. The conception I have described for American democracy was brilliantly described by Arthur F. Bentley (1908) with the political system as a market in which political resources are employed by various interested parties leading to policies that reflected the balance of these interests in the society as a whole.

Norms of equal opportunity are compatible with a democratic political system of the second sort, but not that of the first. The reason appears to be that in the first of these two conceptions of democracy, the society stratified by rank is not one in which each member can easily imagine himself changing positions with anyone else in the society.

There is another way of looking at a norm of equal opportunity that may give some insight into the conditions under which such norms arise. I introduce this only tentatively, because I see no direct evidence for it. It arises from a general conception that I have proposed elsewhere, of the condition under which norms arise (Coleman 1984). The argument goes as follows: Norms arise when one actor's action imposes negative externalities on a set of others, who then come to hold the prescriptive norm. Prescriptive norms, to encourage the action, arise when the action imposes positive externalities on those who come to hold the norm.

A norm of equal opportunity is a prescriptive norm, dictating that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One The Concept of Equal Educational Opportunity
• Part Two Equality of Educational Opportunity
• Part Three Desegregation and Resegregation
• Part Four Public and Private Schools
• Part Five Families and Schools, Achievement and Equality