by Daniel Bell
48 Fritz Machlup, Education and Economic Growth (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1970), p. 40. Machlup cites a study by Edward Denison, which assumes that two-fifths of the income differentials of persons with more schooling was due to natural ability, while three-fifths was the result of additional schooling. Gary Becker, in Human Capital (New York, 1964), examined samples of persons for whom IQ and grades in primary and secondary school were available, and could be correlated with later income returns, and found that differential ability “might well have a larger effect on the estimated rate of return” than simply the effect of schooling, but that, by the college level, “education itself explains most of the unadjusted earnings differential between college and high-school graduates” (pp. 88, 124). The Denison data are in his essay, “Measuring the Contribution of Education to Economic Growth,” The Economics of Education, ed. Robinson and Vaizey (London and New York, 1966). The figures on college and high-school IQ are from Machlup, p. 40.
For a review of studies that question the relation of IQ to economic success, see Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “I.Q. in the U.S. Class Structure,” Social Policy, vol. 35, nos. 4 & 5 (November/December 1972).
49 Richard Herrnstein, “I.Q,” The Atlantic Monthly (September 1971). Technically, one cannot say that within any single person, 80 percent of his IQ is inherited. In a large sample, 80 percent of the variance between scores would be attributed by Jensen to inheritance.
50 Ibid., p. 63. Herrnstein’s arguments are paralleled by a school of ethologists who see in “the breeding process” the basis of the political struggle in human society. Thus, anthropologists Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox write, in their book. The Imperial Animal:
Analogies are often drawn between human and ant societies. There are, to be sure, striking similarities—such as division of labor, caste system, and domestication of other creatures—but the analogy breaks down at one fundamental point: human societies are political, and ant societies are apolitical. The social order of an ant colony is genetically fixed. Workers are workers, drones drones, queens queens, soldiers soldiers, and so on. Workers cannot usurp power in the colony, because they are genetically programmed to be workers and nothing else. There can be no redistribution of power, of place, and, most importantly, of breeding ability, and therefore of contribution to the genetic pool. This is a crucial difference. Politics involves the possibility of changing the distribution of resources in a society—one of which is the control over the future that breeding allows. The political process—the process of redistributing control over resources among the individuals of a group—is, in evolutionary terms, a breeding process. The political system is a breeding system. When we apply the word “lust” to both power and sex, we are nearer the truth than we imagine. In the struggle for reproductive advantage, some do better than others. It is this that changes the distribution of genes in a population and affects its genetic future. This is a world of winners and losers, a world of politics—of the haves and the have-nots, of those who have made it and those who sulk on the sidelines.
[From the beginning of human time] the species has been irretrievably concerned with who can marry whom and with the relationship between position, property and productive copulation.
The result of the reproductive struggle is a social system that is profoundly hierarchical and competitive. And if human politics exhibits a constant tension between the commonly valued ideal of equality and the privately valued aim of happy inequality, then this is simply a reflection of our evolutionary history. (New York, 1971, pp. 24-25.)
What makes this formulation even more striking is the character of the “new biology,” which now allows the human species control of breeding by transferring frozen sperm by “donors” to different women, the placing of the embryo in “host’ vitro, and cloning, which allows one to reproduce the exact genetic code of an organism. For a thoughtful discussion of the disquieting social and ethical questions raised by the new biology, see Leon Kass, “Making Babies,” The Public Interest, no. 26 (Winter 1972).
51 For a discussion of the argument that society is not becoming more meritocratic see Christopher Jencks and associates, inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York, 1972).
Jencks argues that there is no evidence that (a) the correlation between education and occupational status has changed over the past 80 years; (b) the correlation between IQ and occupational status has changed over the past 50 years; (c) the correlation between education and income has changed over the past 30 years; (d) or that the correlation between IQ and income has changed.
Equally, says Jencks, there is no evidence for a decline in the effects of family background either on occupational status or income, at least since World War I. The work of Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), suggest mobility rates as high in the nineteenth century as in the twentieth.
“ln what sense, then, can we say that society is becoming more meritocratic, if the importance of family background and educational credentials is constant over time?” writes Jencks. “Why should we accept Herrnstein’s thesis if (a) education is no more important, and (b) he offers not a shred of evidence that IQ is more important than it used to be, and (c) all the indirect evidence suggests no change in the importance of IQ as against other factors in determining success?” (Private communication, July 25, 1972.)
Jencks is somewhat skeptical, as well, of the argument about family background as the primary factor in determining the correlation between schooling and occupational status. “Samuel Bowles has an essay in the Spring 1972 Journal of Political Economy arguing that family background is a major factor in the observed relationship, although I think he greatly overstates his case. I can easily imagine that personality differences (persistence, discipline, etc.) may explain most of the differences between the educated and the uneducated, and that these may not be caused to any significant extent by schooling, but may simply affect the amount of schooling people get” (ibid).
Drawing upon the work of Jencks et al., a collaborator, David K. Cohen of the Harvard Education School, has stressed the large role of contingent factors in going to college. Cohen writes:
A comparison of IQ and social and economic status of college students reveals that being rich is nearly as big a help in increasing a student’s chances of going to college as being smart. The most important fact, however, is that ability and status combined explain somewhat less than half the actual variation in college attendance. As in the case of curriculum placement, we must turn to other factors— motivation, luck, discrimination, chance, and family encouragement or lack of it —to find likely explanations. “Does I.Q. Matter?” Cmmnentary (April 1972), p. 55 (emphasis added).
52 Lester Thurow, “Education and Social Policy,” The Public Interest, no. 28 (Summer 1972), p. 79 (emphasis in the original).
53 But there was usually some kind of sorting device. In the midwestern systems, anyone with a C average or better in high school could enter the state university, but a ruthless examination system would weed out the poorer students by the end of the first or second year. In the California system, any high school graduate could go on to higher education, but a grade tracking system put the top 10 to 15 percent directly into the universities (e.g. Berkeley, UCLA), the next 25 percent into the state colleges, and the remainder into junior or community colleges.
54 Jerome Karabel, “Perspectives on Open Admission,” Educational Record (Winter 1972), pp. 42–43.
“The philosophical rationale for open admissions,” Mr. Karabel writes, “is that the educational mission of the institution is not ... to serve as a talent scout for future employers but rather to foster growth in the student.” And in that light, Mr. Karabel quotes approvingly the remark of B. Alden Thresher: “There is no such thing as an unfit or unqualified seeker after education.” Mr. Thresher’s remark is in “Uses and Abuses of Scholastic Aptitude and Achievement Tests.” Barrie
rs to Higher Education (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1971). p, 39.
55 Edward Shils, “Editorial,” Minerva (April 1971), p. 165.
56 In full acknowledgment of this principle, the Union Theological Seminary on June 1 voted that blacks and other minority groups would henceforth make up one-third and women one-half of all students, faculty, staff, and directors: (At the time, blacks made up 6 percent of the 566 number student body and 8 percent of the 38 member faculty; women 20 percent of the student body and 8 percent of the faculty.) “It is unrealistic,” said the Seminary, “to educate people in a pluralistic society in an environment that is overwhelmingly white and male-oriented.” The figure of 50 percent women was chosen to reflect their representation in society; the one-third minority as a “critical mass” to give them presence. New York Times (June 1, 1972).
57 Ivan Illich, “After Deschooling, What?” Social policy (September/October1971), p.7.
58 Illich, who was a Monsignor in the Catholic Church, burst rather suddenly onto the American intellectual scene in the late 1960s with essays in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times on his theories of “de-schooling society.” These essays were published as Deschooimg Society (New York, 1970), and a second collection of essays. Celebration of Awareness, with an introduction by Erich Fromm, appeared a year later. Illich came to attention within the Catholic Church as the organizer of the center in Cuernevaca, Mexico, for training priests for work in Latin America. Though the center was set up with support from the Vatican hierarchy, after a few years it began to espouse unorthodox doctrines. A profile of Msgr. Illich—who has since resigned his church title—appeared in The New Yorker (April 25, 1970) by Francine DuPlessix Gray, and is reprinted in her book. Divine Disobedience (New York, 1971).
59 “The more learning an individual consumes, the more ‘knowledge stock’ he acquires. The hidden curriculum therefore defines a new class structure for society within which the large consumers of knowledge—those who have acquired large quantities of knowledge stock—enjoy special privileges, high income, and access to the more powerful tools of production. This kind of knowledge-capitalism has been accepted in all industrialized societies and establishes a rationale for the distribution of jobs and income.” Ivan Illich, “The Alternative to Schooling,” Saturday Review (June 19, 1971), reprinted in Deschooling Society.
60 Illich writes:
Science will be kept artificially arcane so long as its results are incorporated into technology at the service of professionals. If it were used to render possible a style of life in which each man would enjoy housing, healing, educating, moving, and entertaining himself, then scientists would try much harder to retranslate their discoveries made in a secret language into the normal language of everyday life. (“After Deschooling, What?” p. 13.)
61 As Richard Wollheim, a friendly critic, pictures the idyll:
Little vignettes of what would ensue are scattered through Descbooling Society. If a student wanted to learn Cantonese, he would be put on to a Chinese neighbour whose skill in his native language had been certified and whose willingness to impart it expressed. If he wanted to learn the guitar, he could rent not only a guitar but also taped guitar lessons and illustrated chord charts. If he wanted to find someone much in his own position with whom to discuss a disputed passage in Freud or Aquinas, he might go to a specially identified coffee shop, place the book by his side, and stay with whoever turned up as long a time as it took to satisfy his curiosity, or as short a time as it took to finish a cup of coffee. With the streets freed of private cars, individuals might wander freely through the city and explore the profuse teaching materials that exist not only in museums and libraries but in laboratories, storefronts, zoos, tool shops, cinemas and computer centres. And meanwhile the true teachers, the intellectual masters, would wait, presumably at home, for their self-chosen disciples to call on them. Richard Wollheim, “Ivan Illich,” The Listener (December 16, 1971), p. 826.
62 See James Coleman, “Education in Modern Society,” in Computers, Communications and the Public Interest, ed. Martin Greenberger (Baltimore, 1971).
63 This is Rousseau’s portrait of Emile at the end of his childhood:
He does not know the meaning of habit, routine and custom; what he did yesterday has no control over what he is doing today; he follows no rules, submits to no authority, copies no pattern, and only acts or speaks as he pleases. So do not expect set speeches or studied manners from him, but just the faithful expression of his thoughts and the conduct that springs from his inclinations. Emile (New York, 1911), p. 125.
64 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York; Capricorn edition, 1958; original publication, 1934), p. 275.
65 I have presented these ideas, in larger historical and philosophical detail, in my book. The Reforming of General Education (New York, 1966). See, especially, chap. 4, “The Need for Reform: Some Philosophical Presuppositions,” and chap. 6, “A New Rationale.” The quotation is from the Anchor edition (1968), p. 151.
66 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner (New York, 1966), Author’s Introduction, pp. 3, 5–6.
67 Christopher Jencks et al., Inequality, p. 8.
68 Jerome Karabel, “Perspectives on Open Admissions,” p. 42.
69 This was an argument made more than sixty years ago by W. H. Mallock, a British skeptic about democracy and perhaps the most able conservative thinker of the late nineteenth century. In The Limits of Pure Democracy (1917) Mallock argues that civilization proceeds only from the ability of a creative few and that complete equality would mean the end of economic progress and culture. In this respect, he writes: “The demand for equality of opportunity may, indeed, wear on the surface of it certain revolutionary aspects; but it is in reality—it is in its very nature—a symptom of moderation, or rather of an unintended conservatism, of which the masses of normal men cannot, if they would, divest themselves.... The desire for equality of opportunity—the desire for the right to rise—is a desire [for] some position or condition which is not equal, but which is, on the contrary, superior to any position or condition which is achievable by the talents of all.” Cited in Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (London, 1958), pp. 164-165.
70 Executive Order 11246, September 1965, cited in Earl Raab, “Quotas By Any Other Name,” Commentary (January 1972)p.41.
71 The document is formally known as “Equality of Educational Opportunity,” Report of the Office of Education to the Congress and the President, U.S. Printing Office (July 1966), pp. 731.
The first discussion of the report was in The Public Interest, no. 4 (Summer 1966), where Coleman summarized his conclusions in an article, “Equal Schools or Equal Students.” The quotation above is from p. 73 (emphasis added). As the debate widened, Coleman discussed the implications of the report in The Public Interest, no. 9 (Fall 1967), in the article “Toward Open Schools.” He argued for the utility of integration on the following grounds:
The finding is that students do better when they are in schools where their fellow students come from backgrounds strong in educational motivation and resources. The results might be paraphrased by the statement that the educational resources provided by a child’s fellow students are more important for his achievement than are the resources provided by the school board. This effect appears to be particularly great for students who themselves come from educationally-deprived backgrounds. For example, it is about twice as great for Negroes as for whites.
But since family background is so important, Coleman warned
The task of increasing achievement of lower-class children cannot be fully implemented by school integration, even if integration were wholly achieved—and the magnitude of racial and class concentrations in large cities indicates that it is not likely to be achieved soon (pp. 21–22).
The most comprehensive discussion of the Coleman Report took place in a three-year seminar at Harvard University initiated by Daniel P. Moynihan. The various pap
ers analyzing the report, and Coleman’s reply to his critics, are in On Equality of Educational Opportunity, ed. Frederick Mosteller and Daniel P. Moynihan (New York, 1972).
72 I have profited here from Diane Ravitch’s acute reading of the Mosteller and Moynihan book in Change (May 1972).
73Inequality, pp. 8–9.
Jencks’s key argument, to repeat, is that “economic success seems to depend on varieties of luck and on-the-job competence that are only moderately related to family background, schooling, or scores on standardized tests.” And, as he concludes, “Nobody seems able to say exactly what ’competence’ in this sense entails, including employers who pay huge sums for it, but it does not seem to be at all similar from one job to another. This makes it hard to imagine a strategy for equalizing such competence. A strategy for equalizing luck is even harder to conceive.”
Since the factors which make for success are, for Jencks, simply wayward, there is no ethical justification for large disparities in income and status, and since one cannot equalize luck in order ro create equal opportunity, one should seek to equalize results.
While Jencks’s findings are important against the vulgar Marxist notion that inheritance of social class background is all-important in determining the place of the child—since there is social mobility in the U.S., about one-third of all children end up below their parents—and they disprove, once again, the stilted American myth that each person of ability finds a place commensurate with his merit, the inability to find a consistent set of relationships leads Jencks to emphasize “luck” as a major factor. But in his analysis, “luck” is really only a residual factor which is inserted because all other variables do not correlate highly. In and of itself, luck cannot be measured as a positive variable. While it may be true, as many studies show, that there is a low correlation between the career one thinks a man is educating himself for and the final outcomes, and that there is a measure of “luck” about the job one finds in relation to one’s talents, the fact remains, nevertheless, that to keep that job, particularly at the professional level, a high degree of talent and hard work is required to succeed.