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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The structure of schooling : readings in the sociology of education / [edited by] Richard Arum, New York University, Irenee R.
Beattie, University of California, Merced, Karly Ford, New York University. —Third Edition.

pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4522-0542-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Educational sociology. 2. Education—Social aspects. I. Arum, Richard, editor. II. Beattie, Irenee R., editor. III. Ford, Karly, editor.

LC189.S87 2015
306.43—dc23 2014041261

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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 CONTENTS

About the Editors

Preface
Introduction

I. THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

A. STATUS ATTAINMENT AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

1. The “Rationalization” of Education and Training
Max Weber
2. Social and Cultural Mobility
Pitirim Sorokin
3. Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System
Ralph H. Turner
4. Status Attainment Processes
Archibald O. Haller and Alejandro Portes

B. HUMAN CAPITAL, CULTURAL CAPITAL, AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

5. Human Capital
Gary S. Becker
6. Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps, and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical Developments
Michèle Lamont and Annette Lareau
7. Schools, Families, and Communities
James Coleman and Thomas Hoffer

C. CHANGING THEORIES OF EDUCATION SYSTEMS

8. The First Element of Morality: The Spirit of Discipline
Émile Durkheim
9. The School and the Community
Willard Waller
10. Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification
Randall Collins
11. The Long Shadow of Work
Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Peter Meyer
Part I Discussion Questions

II. STRATIFICATION WITHIN AND BETWEEN SCHOOLS

12. Privilege
Shamus Khan
13. Equality of Educational Opportunity: The Coleman Report
James Coleman, Ernest Campbell, Carol Hobson, James McPartland, Alexander Mood, Frederic Weinfeld,
and Robert York
14. The Effects of High Schools on Their Students
Christopher S. Jencks and Marsha D. Brown
15. E Pluribus . . . Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students
Gary Orfield, John Kucsera, and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley
16. The Nature of Schooling
Doris R. Entwisle, Karl L. Alexander, and Linda Olson
17. Desegregation Without Integration: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White After Brown
Karolyn Tyson
18. The Distribution of Knowledge
Jeannie Oakes
Part II Discussion Questions

III. CLASS, RACE, ETHNICITY, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY

A. CLASS
19. Persisting Barriers: Changes in Educational Opportunities in Thirteen Countries
Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Yossi Shavit
20. The Widening Income Achievement Gap
Sean F. Reardon
21. More Inclusion Than Diversion: Expansion, Differentiation, and Market Structure in Higher
Education
Richard Arum, Adam Gamoran, and Yossi Shavit
22. Learning to Labor
Paul Willis
23. Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families
Annette Lareau
24. Exceptions to the Rule: Upwardly Mobile White and Mexican American High School Girls
Julie Bettie

B. RACE AND ETHNICITY

25. Black Students’ School Success: Coping With the “Burden of ‘Acting White’”
Signithia Fordham and John U. Ogbu
26. It’s Not “a Black Thing”: Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other Dilemmas of High
Achievement
Karolyn Tyson, Domini R. Castellino, and William Darity, Jr.
27. Straddling Boundaries: Identity, Culture, and School
Prudence L. Carter
28. Digital Divide: Navigating the Digital Edge
S. Craig Watkins
29. Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities
 Amanda Lewis
30. Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identity in High Schools
Pamela Perry
31. The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants
Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou

C. GENDER AND SEXUALITY

32. Boys and Girls Together . . . But Mostly Apart
Barrie Thorne
33. Teaching and “Women’s Work”: A Comparative and Historical Analysis
Michael Apple
34. Rewriting Race and Gender High School Lessons: Second-Generation Dominicans in New York City
Nancy López
35. Gender, Race, and Justifications for Group Exclusion: Urban Black Students Bussed to Affluent
Suburban Schools
Simone Ispa-Landa
36. Notes on a Sociology of Bullying: Young Men’s Homophobia as Gender Socialization
C. J. Pascoe
Part III Discussion Questions

IV. STUDENT BEHAVIOR AND ADOLESCENT SUBCULTURE

37. The Adolescent Culture

James Coleman
38. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Findings From the Digital Youth Project
Mimi Ito, Heather Horst, Matteo Bittanti, Danah Boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, C. J.
Pascoe, and Laura Robinson
39. Resistance as a Social Drama: A Study of Change-Oriented Encounters
Daniel A. McFarland
40. Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random School Shootings, 1982−2001
Michael S. Kimmel and Matthew Mahler
41. The (Mis)Education of Monica and Karen
Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong
42. College Life Through the Eyes of Students
Mary Grigsby
Part IV Discussion Questions

V. THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

A. THE CULTURAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

43. Do Employers Really Need More Educated Youth?
James E. Rosenbaum and Amy Binder
44. The Effects of Education as an Institution
 John W. Meyer
45. Community Colleges and the American Social Order
Stephen Brint and Jerome Karabel
46. Judging School Discipline: A Crisis of Moral Authority
Richard Arum
47. Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites
Mitchell Stevens
48. Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives
Amy Binder and Kate Wood
49. Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to
Adulthood
Roberto G. Gonzales

B. EDUCATION POLICY AND SCHOOL REFORM

50. English-Only Triumphs, But the Costs Are High
Alejandro Portes
51. School Choice or Schools’ Choice?: Managing in an Era of Accountability
Jennifer L. Jennings
52. The State of Undergraduate Learning
Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum
53. Education Research That Matters: Influence, Scientific Rigor, and Policy Making
Pamela Barnhouse Walters and Annette Lareau
Part V Discussion Questions
 ABOUT THE EDITORS

Richard Arum has recently served as Professor of Sociology and Education at New York University; Program
Director of Education Research at the Social Science Research Council; and Senior Fellow at the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation. His past work with various co-authors includes Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative
Transitions of College Graduates (University of Chicago Press, 2014); Academically Adrift: Limited Learning
on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011); Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral
Authority (Harvard University Press, 2003); Stratification in Higher Education: A Comparative Study (Stanford
University Press, 2007); and Improving Learning Environments: School Discipline and Student Achievement in
Comparative Perspective (Stanford University Press, 2012).
Irenee Beattie is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of California, Merced. Her research
examines racial/ethnic, gender, and class inequalities in adolescent transitions to adulthood as well as how
families, high schools, and colleges can foster beneficial social capital among underrepresented college student
populations. Her research has been funded by the American Educational Research Association and the Hellman
Faculty Fellows Fund. She has published in various outlets such as Sociology of Education, Youth & Society,
and Harvard University Press.
Karly Ford is an Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on the
relationship between education and social stratification. She received a Masters of Education in International
Education Policy from Harvard University in 2007 and a Ph.D. in Sociology of Education from New York
University in 2014. Ford’s research interests are Higher Education, Sociology of Education, International
Comparative Education, Institutional Variation, and Educational Assessment.
 PREFACE

F or the updated third edition of The Structure of Schooling, we have selected writings that are
illustrative of the fundamental ideas and insights developed by past and current academic research in
the sociology of education. In the past several years, sociological research on education has developed
in multiple directions that are reflected in the new readings we have selected for this edition. We include various
new studies of higher education, drawing on the discipline’s growing attention to this sector. Further, our
readings now include reports of cutting edge research on adolescent use of social media and communications
technologies. New work on immigration status, gendered sexuality, and bullying has also been included in this
new edition. We incorporate additional research using an intersectional approach to the study of educational
inequality. This edition also reflects trends in sociological research on schools in the past decade, when scholars
have refocused attention on the discipline’s earlier interest in identifying the relationship between schools and
communities and between schools and student behavior. This research has progressed in several directions: (a)
advances in understanding the significance of the school community—for example, the development and
application of the concept of social capital; (b) renewed attention to the effects of racial segregation and
resource inequality on student outcomes; (c) a redefinition of what constitutes a school community with
particular attention paid to specification of the institutional, as opposed to demographic, characteristics of the
environment; and (d) a broader investigation of both relevant school-level practices and significant individual-
level outcomes associated with variation in schooling, including student behavior, delinquency, and crime.
Readings reflecting newer trends in sociological scholarship continue to be anchored by more classic theoretical
and empirical works that shape current debates in the field. We have replaced or reedited several of these
selections in this new edition to improve clarity.
We have also consciously chosen material that is both accessible and engaging. Rather than relying
excessively on the reproduction of articles published in the discipline’s top research journals (e.g., Sociology of
Education, American Sociological Review, and American Journal of Sociology), we have worked to incorporate
more accessible readings—largely free of regression coefficients, but reflective of general mainstream
sociological concerns. We thus have purposely avoided a heavy reliance on academic research written primarily
for other specialists rather than for broader classroom and public audiences. When possible, we also have
attempted to include contributions from prominent authors in the field, as well as promising new scholars. In
choice of subject matter, we have followed a broad, inclusive strategy. Instead of focusing only narrowly on
educational achievement outcomes, we present research on a larger set of topics.
In preparing this book, we are grateful for the assistance of SAGE Editor Jeff Lasser, Editorial Assistant
Nick Pachelli, our Permissions Specialist Sheri Gilbert, and Senior Production Editor Libby Larson. In addition,
we are grateful to our colleagues across the country who generously provided feedback on revisions to our
earlier editions.
 INTRODUCTION

At present, concentration of industry and division of labor have practically eliminated household
and neighborhood occupations—at least for educational purposes. But it is useless to bemoan the
departure of the good old days of children’s modesty, reverence, and implicit obedience, if we
expect merely by bemoaning and by exhortation to bring them back. It is radical conditions
which have changed, and only an equally radical change in education suffices.
—John Dewey, 1899 (1964, p. 299)

A t the close of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, proponents of educational reform,
such as John Dewey, recognized the social nature of the significant challenges facing US schools. As
economic production shifted to points far distant from local farms, shops, and homes, families no
longer were capable of training and socializing their children for productive roles in society. Once children
could no longer implicitly learn adult roles through daily involvement in family economic activities, “the good
old days of children’s modesty, reverence, and implicit obedience” (Dewey, 1964, p. 8) were forever lost.
Schools were expanded or established to assume pedagogical tasks that had formerly been carried out by
families. With the simultaneous advancement of technology and employment outside of the home, parents no
longer had the time or the knowledge necessary to educate their children for productive adult roles in society.
A century later, one can recognize both how schools have changed to meet the needs of society and how
societal transformations continue to shift responsibilities from families to schools. When Dewey wrote, only
about 10 percent of individuals aged fourteen to seventeen attended high school. Today, virtually all children
growing up in the United States enter high school and only about 10 percent of these individuals actually fail to
complete their high school education. In addition, the length of the school year has dramatically expanded:
elementary and secondary public schools today are in session for almost twice as many days per year as they
were at the turn of the 19th century. Postsecondary education also has greatly expanded. Even in the 1940s,
fewer than 10 percent of individuals attained a bachelor’s degree; by the end of the 20th century, almost a third
of young adults were expected to obtain such credentials (Digest of Educational Statistics, 2008). Social
scientists have referred to this tremendous growth in the role of formal education as an educational revolution.
Recent changes in family structure and labor force participation will likely continue or accelerate the trend
of schools taking increased responsibility for shaping the lives of youth. While at the beginning of the 20th
century the employment of men outside the home was perceived as underlying an erosion of the family’s ability
to socialize children, today concern often focuses on how children are affected by the decline of two-parent
families and the increasing labor force participation of mothers (see Hochschild, 1997; McLanahan & Sandefur,
1994). Patriarchal assumptions can underlie how these socioeconomic changes are understood and addressed,
but the role of formal schooling in society is likely to expand even further.
As schools in the 20th century became an increasingly core societal institution, sociologists directed
continuous, concerted effort toward understanding both their structure and their effects on individuals. Over the
past century, sociologists who developed the theoretical framework for the discipline as a whole (e.g., Emile
Durkheim, Max Weber, Talcott Parsons, Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, and John Meyer) also directly
focused and wrote on the role of education in society. Because schools were complex institutions, sociological
theorizing was multidimensional and multilayered.
Sociology of education as a field developed a focus on two separate levels of analysis. At a macro level,
sociologists worked to identify how various social forces (such as politics, economics, and culture) created
variation in schools as organizations. At a more micro level, researchers sought to identify how variation in
school practices led to differences in individual-level student outcomes. In addition to these distinct levels of
analysis, researchers further developed separate foci on various aspects of the functioning of education in
society. While some researchers focused on economic aspects of education (e.g., how economic forces shaped
school practices and how schools determined individual productivity and earnings), others focused on related
issues of socialization, allocation, and legitimation. When approaching research in the sociology of education,
these distinctions are useful to keep in mind.
The organizational structure of the book reflects the multidimensional, multilayered analysis that
characterizes the sociology of education field as a whole. We begin by providing selections of major
contributions that trace the theoretical development of the sociology of education. We then include work
identifying how stratification of schooling creates inequality in access to education within schools, between
schools, and by ascriptive characteristics and individual identities (such as class, race, ethnicity, citizenship,
gender, and sexuality). We provide research demonstrating how schools are settings for the formation of peer
subcultures and relations that often promote outcomes at odds with conventional social behavior and school
achievement. This is true for colleges to the same extent as secondary schools. We also present research focused
on the role of digital technology in the lives and educational trajectories of youth. We highlight how schools
affect a range of life-course outcomes: not just cognitive attainment but also adolescent behavior, delinquency,
and adult labor market success. In addition, we show how schools are affected not just by neighborhood context,
but by their organizational environment (e.g., the influence of private school competition, unionization,
professionalization, politics of school reform).

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

The volume starts with a section presenting theoretical and historical perspectives on education. We begin the
book with readings highlighting the development of a status attainment perspective, with the explicit intent of
emphasizing this approach. As a paradigm, status attainment has been extraordinarily influential in shaping
recent sociological research on the structure of education.

Status Attainment and Social Mobility

Status attainment has its roots in Max Weber’s conceptualization of status groups. Status groups are formed
on the basis of various distinctions, such as occupation, class, and ethnicity. Weber argued that the education
system had a dual character in modern societies: It could be used to increase meritocratic selection of
individuals for privileged occupations but could also be used as a closure strategy to maintain a status group’s
monopoly over scarce resources. Building on Weber’s work, Pitirim Sorokin suggested that schools played a
fundamental role in society, not simply training individuals for employment but more importantly working to
sort, sieve, and select those who would be granted access to more desirable occupations. To the extent that
schools facilitate the movement of talented individuals from lower social origins to privileged occupations, a
society was considered open rather than closed. When individuals from disadvantaged socioeconomic
backgrounds attain privileged occupational positions with associated higher social rewards (such as status,
prestige, and income), social mobility has occurred. Both Weber and Sorokin understood that schools played a
critical role in either blocking or facilitating social mobility.
In subsequent years, sociologists often applied Weber and Sorokin’s ideas by comparing how societies
differed in their rates of social mobility. Researchers such as Ralph Turner used cross-national comparisons to
explore the possibility that developed capitalist countries had differences in their educational systems that led to
variation in social mobility. In spite of much research, these scholars found only small differences in rates of
social mobility among developed capitalist countries. In the context of these findings, Peter Blau and Otis
Dudley Duncan began research that would change the focus of social mobility research. Sociologists began to
explore the determinants or causes of social mobility, rather than simply quantifying rates of mobility.
Blau and Duncan’s work statistically confirmed Weber and Sorokin’s theoretical propositions about the role
of education in society. Blau and Duncan’s research clearly established the central, critical role education
played in individual occupational attainment. In modern society, the occupations that individuals held as adults
were primarily determined by how far they had earlier gone in school. Blau and Duncan also established,
however, that social origins remained critical in facilitating or hindering an individual’s educational
achievement. Social background influenced occupational attainment largely through its effects on prior
educational achievement. Schools thus worked to reproduce the structure of social inequality: Children from
affluent families tended to do better than children from poor families in terms of educational achievement.
Schools also, however, allowed vertical social mobility by sorting and sieving, thus facilitating higher than
average attainments for individuals from lower status groups who showed merit and ability in school
performance. If individuals from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups did well in school, social mobility
and occupational rewards would follow; the educational deck, however, was stacked against them. Following
Blau and Duncan’s research, sociologists quickly identified factors other than social origins that influenced an
individual’s educational attainment. Scholarship demonstrated that individual expectations and aspirations, as
well as the influence of significant others (e.g., parents, teachers, and peers), affect individuals’ educational
achievement.

HUMAN, CULTURAL, AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

While the status attainment paradigm has been extraordinarily influential in the sociology of education, this
approach is not the only source for the development of concepts applied to the study of education.
Contemporary research on schooling has also been strongly influenced by thinking about educational processes
in terms of human capital, cultural capital, and social capital.
Economists in the early 1960s developed the concept of human capital. Theodore Schultz, Gary Becker, and
others argued that one could invest in the human capital of individuals just as one invested financial capital in a
firm. Individuals invested in a business because they expected their investments to yield dividends or returns.
Economists argued that one made similar investments in individuals. The acquisition of education led
individuals to increase their knowledge and skills; greater knowledge and skills led to increased labor
productivity, which was subsequently rewarded by employers. Individuals who pursued further education
incurred significant costs (in terms of tuition and forgone earnings), but they would later more than recoup their
investment. Becker demonstrated, through a series of calculations, that during the time he was writing, returns
on investing in high school education were approximately 28 percent and returns on investing in college
education were around 15 percent. People were choosing to obtain more and more education in part because
these returns were quite large and considerably greater than what one would expect from a more traditional
financial investment. However, recent sociological research has demonstrated that the effect of income returns
on college enrollment decisions of adolescents varies by race/ethnicity, gender, and social class; only white men
from lower socioeconomic origins follow the pattern predicted by the theory (Beattie, 2002). The human capital
approach was nonetheless important for explaining the rationale behind why individuals and governments were
willing to invest increasing resources in education.
Many sociologists have adopted the concept of human capital to understand how education improves
individuals’ labor market experiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, sociologists supplemented the notion
of human capital by developing two related concepts that are distinctly sociological: cultural capital and social
capital.
In the early 1970s, Pierre Bourdieu began elaborating the concept of cultural capital. Bourdieu argued that
individuals in society were stratified in such a way that they possessed different levels and types of cultural
capital. Individuals from privileged classes were trained from birth to possess cultural dispositions, attitudes,
and styles that set them apart from ordinary members of society. Privileged members of society made cultural
distinctions that other members of society accepted. These distinctions defined elite forms of culture as superior
and other forms of culture as less worthy. Individuals possessed greater cultural capital if they were raised to
appreciate upper class cultural forms such as opera, classical music, and good manners. Bourdieu argued that
individuals whose behavior reflected greater accumulations of cultural capital were rewarded by both school
personnel and employers, who deemed these individuals more worthy and deserving. Differences in cultural
capital thus led to inequality in educational achievement and related occupational attainment.
In the early 1980s, James Coleman developed the concept of social capital. Coleman argued that a focus on
human and cultural capital obscured the fact that one of the greatest resources individuals have is their social
relationships. Coleman elaborated a concept of social capital to articulate the differences in the character of
social relationships that individuals possessed. While there are many relevant dimensions of social relationships
that affect individuals (e.g., the frequency, duration, and character of social interactions), Coleman focused on
one key aspect of social relationships in his work on education: intergenerational closure. Communities around
schools varied, according to Coleman, by the extent to which the parents of children were in contact with youth
and with each other. Communities had greater closure when adults in the community had social relationships
that allowed them to develop shared norms and values, to monitor children’s behavior, and to enforce proper
sets of behavior. When communities around schools did not have intergenerational closure, student behavior
was less successfully aligned with adult goals.

ALTERNATIVE THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Many of the concepts underlying contemporary research on education are encompassed in status attainment
research and the trinity of human, cultural, and social capitals. However, the theoretical insights from these
areas are still an incomplete theoretical toolkit for the analysis of education.
Émile Durkheim, for example, provides essential theoretical insights on the structure of education that are
not reflected either in status attainment research or in the concepts of human, cultural, and social capital.
Durkheim, like Weber, is a theorist who laid the groundwork for modern sociology. Unlike Weber, however,
Durkheim focused much greater attention on noneconomic aspects of education. For Durkheim, the key
function of the education system was to socialize and integrate individuals into a larger society. According to
Durkheim (1965), humans confronted society as an entity “superior to themselves, and upon whom they
depend” (p. 237). Schools functioned as one of the most critical socializing instruments of society in fulfilling
their task of impressing upon youth that social institutions possessed moral authority and that individual
satisfaction was possible only when one willingly submitted to their rule. Schools worked to integrate
individuals in society by encouraging students to define their own individual will and interests in terms of the
larger needs and interests of society: that is, to internalize external social goals. During the middle of the
century, Talcott Parsons (1959) further developed Durkheim’s functionalist explanation for the role of education
and society.
An alternative functionalist account for the structure of education emerged in the early 1970s. While sharing
a similar logic to Durkheim’s earlier work, these theorists adopted a more critical neo-Marxist perspective.
Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Randall Collins, and others argued that schools functioned to integrate
individuals into an unjust capitalist society; because society was inequitable, the school’s role in socializing
individuals to accept their place in the social structure was unjust. Bowles and Gintis advanced a social
reproduction theory: Schools worked to integrate individuals into an inequitable system while simultaneously
legitimizing that inequality. Similarly, Randall Collins argued that schools produced social inequality by
providing individuals not simply with unequal access to skills and training but with credentials and certificates
that were rewarded in the labor market. In recent decades, writers such as Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux
(1985) have further elaborated this critical neo-Marxist view of education.
Other theoretical perspectives that have developed outside of educational research have been subsequently
imported and applied to the study of schooling. Educational researchers have, for example, applied concepts
derived from theoretical approaches as diverse as symbolic interactionism, deconstructionism, and feminism.
We have included research based on some of these approaches in the readings (see Amanda Lewis, C. J. Pascoe,
and Barrie Thorne), but space limitations prevent full discussion and presentation of these alternative theoretical
paradigms in this book.
Our book does, however, focus attention on one additional theoretical perspective: neo-institutionalism.
Beginning with the work of John Meyer in the late 1970s, researchers increasingly focused attention on
institutional factors affecting the structure of schooling. Meyer argued that schools faced institutional pressures
that structured educational practices. The organizational environment around schools provided a context that led
schools to accept institutional norms, values, and practices as taken-for-granted assumptions. Institutional
isomorphism led schools in a common organizational environment to adopt similar sets of organizational
practices that often had little to do with meeting the educational needs of students.

STRATIFICATION WITHIN AND BETWEEN SCHOOLS

The theoretical approaches identified above have informed research designed to explicate the structure of
stratification within and between schools. Sociologists argue that the education system is stratified in the sense
that student assignment to different schools and different classrooms determines the character and the quality of
education that they receive. Implicit in the concept of stratification within and between schools is the notion of
inequality—that is, Weber’s insight that status groups use schools to gain privileged access to scarce resources.
One fundamental way that schools are stratified in the United States is by sector. Some students come from
families and communities that provide opportunities to enroll in private schools. Today, approximately 10
percent of elementary and secondary students attend private schools. In the past, Catholic schools dominated
this private school market; in more recent years, as many Catholics have become more affluent and moved to
the suburbs, the role of Catholic schools has declined. In the South, fundamentalist private schools, as well as
homeschooling, have replaced the influence of Catholic schools (Stevens, 2001). As courts forced Southern
public schools to integrate racially, private fundamentalist schools became an increasingly attractive haven for
white flight. From a sociological perspective, it is worth emphasizing that students attending private schools are
exposed to different educational experiences. Private schools can often provide greater educational resources
(Khan, Reading 12), differing levels of trust relationships (Bryk and Schneider, 2002), more effective
disciplinary climates (Arum, Reading 46), and alternative curriculum emphasis and instructional strategies.
Private schools have fewer disciplinary problems than public schools, not only because they tend to have greater
social capital (Coleman and Hoffer, Reading 7), but more importantly, because they have a greater ability than
public schools to expel (or threaten to remove) disruptive students without the threat of legal challenge.
US schools are also profoundly stratified in terms of race and social class. More than four decades after
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), many African American students still attend schools with few, if any,
white students (Orfield, Kucsera, and Siegel-Hawley, Reading 15). In the Northeast and Midwest, close to half
of all African American students attend schools where more than 90 percent of their fellow students are
nonwhite. In many of America’s largest cities, segregation of nonwhite students is even more pronounced. In
New York City, for example, 74 percent of African American and 68 percent of Latino students attend schools
that are more than 90 percent nonwhite; in Los Angeles, 70 percent of African Americans and 69 percent of
Latinos currently attend such profoundly racially segregated schools (Orfield & Monfort, 1988). Racially
segregated schools generate a structure of inequality in educational resources along multiple dimensions. Racial
segregation of schools is related to inequality in access to academically oriented peer climates (Coleman et al.,
Reading 13) and school environments characterized by productive parental involvement (Lareau, Reading 23).
Variation in schools along these dimensions creates increased obstacles to educational achievement for
individuals whose early educational experiences are in settings that are less conducive to learning.
Sociologists of education, however, argue that stratification exists not only between schools: Inequality is
structured by stratification of students into different curricular tracks within schools. This educational practice,
known as tracking, can have effects on student educational outcomes greater than differences produced by
inequality between schools. Students in the same school often have very different life trajectories due to
exposure to college preparatory, general, or vocational curricula. Students placed in academic tracks take honors
classes and other advanced coursework have higher rates of growth in standardized test performance, and they
are subsequently more likely to attend and succeed in college. Students taking vocational coursework in high
school, although less likely to attend college, are more likely to have positive early labor market experiences
than they would otherwise. Unfortunately, in US high schools, many students are exposed to neither college
preparatory nor vocational coursework; instead, students often take a general curriculum, which fails to prepare
them for success in either college or the labor force.
CLASS, RACE, ETHNICITY, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY

As a result of the variation in backgrounds that students bring to classrooms, schools often serve to reproduce
preexisting social inequality. In addition, as a result of variation between schools, tracking within schools, and
differences within classrooms, schools also can serve to generate or increase inequality in society. To identify
the role of schools in either reproducing or deepening social inequality, sociologists have examined the
trajectories of categorically defined groups of individuals. Class, race, and gender—because of their salience in
affecting life-course outcomes—have often been the focus of attention.
Status attainment research has demonstrated that talented and motivated individuals within socially
disadvantaged groups can use schools to achieve upward social mobility. Schools do work to promote limited
meritocratic selection of individuals within groups. Status attainment research, however, also demonstrates that
schools reproduce and intensify the consequences of socially disadvantaged group membership. This distinction
is essential to understanding how schools affect social inequality. In modern societies, individuals from
disadvantaged backgrounds can use schools as vehicles for upward social mobility; disadvantaged groups as a
whole, however, face increased barriers and obstacles in their efforts to obtain school success.
The effects of social class background on educational achievement have long been a focus of sociological
concern. Sociologists have identified persistent patterns of the effects of social class on educational
achievement: In virtually all developed capitalist societies, with but a few social-democratic exceptions,
disadvantaged social class background remains a significant obstacle to educational attainment (Blossfeld and
Shavit, Reading 19). As the completion of secondary school has become increasingly prevalent and higher
education access has expanded, increased analytic attention has focused on the latter (Arum, Gamoran and
Shavit, Reading 21). In addition, researchers such as Paul Willis, Julie Bettie, and Annette Lareau have
documented the pervasive effects of class background on a wide range of student and school experiences. Class
background not only limits the resources individuals have available to pursue continued education but also
affects how students and parents interact with school personnel and how individuals articulate, communicate,
and produce understandings about the role of schools in their lives. Class background also is associated with the
schools students attend, and this sorting of individuals has significant effects on educational inequality
(Reardon, Reading 20).
Racial and ethnic differences are also associated with variation in educational achievement. While some
researchers have advanced genetic and cultural explanations for these differences (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray,
1994; Fordham & Ogbu, Reading 25), empirical sociological research has largely discredited these approaches.
Genetic and cultural explanations for racial differences in educational achievement have been rejected in that
they fail to account for the historical pattern of racial differences in educational attainment. Structural factors,
such as racial segregation of schools, resource inequality, and social class background, provide more credible
explanations for racial differences in educational attainment. For example, while African Americans as a whole
continue to score lower than whites on standardized tests and have lower rates of college and graduate degree
attainment, these gaps are closing. Today, in spite of significant disadvantages in class background, African
Americans are almost as likely as whites to finish high school. In addition, African American students have
higher educational aspirations than white students. These findings suggest that African Americans often do
better than expected—not worse, as many cultural and genetic theorists predict—on many educational
indicators. Asian American students also outperform white students on many measures of educational
achievement. Latino and Native American students, however, continue to have significantly low rates of
educational attainment relative to other racial and ethnic groups. Latinos, who often face language barriers in
US schools, are almost three times more likely than whites to drop out of high school.
Gender has also structured patterns of historical differences in individual experiences within the educational
system (Tyack & Hansot, 1992). Male students tend to receive greater attention from their teachers than do
female students, which can take the form of both increased praise and greater sanctions. Boys are more often
scolded and labeled bad, but they are also more often evaluated as brilliant. These social-psychological
dynamics, in addition to structural factors such as gender differences in labor market opportunities, underlie
variation in the pattern of male and female educational achievement. On average, contemporary American
women have slightly higher levels of educational achievement than men: They are more likely to finish high
school and complete college (Buchmann, DiPrete, & McDaniel, 2008). Such gender differences favoring
women are particularly pronounced among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations (López, Reading 34).
Men, however, are more highly concentrated on both ends of the educational attainment distribution—that is,
while men are more likely to drop out of high school, they are also more likely to receive graduate and
professional degrees. Men are also more likely to receive postsecondary training in relatively lucrative fields
such as engineering and computer science.
Researchers have also highlighted how schools are settings where gender socialization and employment
discrimination occur. Schools often function to socialize boys and girls into acceptance of traditional gender
roles (Thorne, Reading 32; López, Reading 34; Pascoe, Reading 36). Children often learn these roles as part of a
school’s “hidden curriculum”—that is, the taken-for-granted assumptions of the school’s institutional culture.
For example, elementary and preschool teachers today are overwhelmingly female, and occupations in which
women are concentrated tend to have lower pay, less prestige, and little professional autonomy (Apple, Reading
33). Students implicitly learn these lessons through direct observation of social life within schools.

STUDENT BEHAVIOR AND ADOLESCENT SUBCULTURES

Since Durkheim’s early writings on school discipline, sociologists have focused continued attention on how
schools structure youth behavior. In recent decades, as adolescents increasingly attend high schools that
concentrate youth in settings segregated from general adult society, distinctive adolescent subcultures and
behaviors have appeared. Adolescent behavior in schools often is explicitly rebellious and at times impervious
to adult efforts to maintain social control. Researchers such as James Coleman worried that adolescents had
formed subcultures that were in direct opposition to the academic goals promoted by the education system.
Sociologists attempted to identify structural causes for this rebellious adolescent behavior. Stinchcombe (1966),
Fordham and Ogbu (1986) [Reading 25], and others argued that there was a structural logic to youth rebellion.
Adolescents were not simply acting out irrationally but were instead responding to the inequality or injustice
inherent in their structural conditions.
Recent research suggests that regardless of the underlying causes of student misbehavior, dangerous and
violent consequences often result. US schools today face not only disruptive behavior but violent behavior.
Recent social surveys indicate that a third of students feel that “pushing, shoving, grabbing, or slapping” is a
major problem in their schools. One out of five students reports that being “threatened with a knife or gun” is a
major school problem; similarly, approximately the same number of high school students reports having carried
a weapon on school property (Digest of Educational Statistics, 2008). Sociologists are currently struggling to
understand the character and implications of these changes in adolescent behavior (McFarland, Reading 39;
Kimmel & Mahler, Reading 40).
Student high school educational experiences serve as defining moments in an individual’s life-course
trajectory. Adolescence is a time when individuals struggle with issues of cognitive, social, and moral
development. It is a period in the life course when individuals often begin the process of adult identity
formation. Individuals grapple with resolving the question: Who am I? In contemporary society, adolescents’
connection with peers and to interests are often mediated by new forms of media (Ito et al., Reading 38;
Watkins, Reading 28).
It is thus not surprising that educational experiences have lasting effects on life-course outcomes. High
school settings and educational experiences determine whether youth develop delinquent behaviors (Wilson &
Herrnstein, 1985); high school experiences are also associated with the likelihood of teenage pregnancy and the
risk of subsequent adult incarceration (Arum & Beattie, 1999; Crane, 1991). Schools do more than simply
provide skills for individuals; they shape attitudes and dispositions that have long-lasting independent effects on
adult life-course outcomes. As transitions to adult roles in society have increasingly been delayed and an
individuals’ twenties are now more often than not described by social scientists as a period of emerging
adulthood (Arnett, 2004), increased attention has focused on how colleges structure student behavior in college
and the implications of these peer environments on academic achievement (Hamilton & Armstrong, Reading
41; Grigsby, Reading 42; Roksa & Arum, Reading 52).
Sociological research on schools has focused considerable attention on the links between education and
adult labor market position. In modern societies, how well an individual fares in the labor market determines not
only an individual’s access to economic goods and services, but just as important, his or her access to other
related scarce social resources (such as authority, prestige, and status). While researchers have debated the
specific skills and attitudes that are valued and rewarded by employers (Rosenbaum & Binder, Reading 43),
research is unequivocal on one point: Educational achievement determines subsequent occupational attainment.
How well an individual does in school is one of the best predictors of how well he or she will do as an adult in
the labor market (Haller & Portes, Reading 4). Inequality in access to education, therefore, has clear and
profound long-term consequences for an individual’s future well being (Fischer et al., 1996).

THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

While much of the sociology of education has focused on identifying how schools affect students, an equally
interesting and productive line of research has focused on how social factors structure school organization.
Cultural explanations for variation in school practices are inherently appealing (see Tobin, Wu, & Davidson,
1992), but sociologists have attempted to move beyond these simplistic explanations to uncover the deeper
underlying structural causes for school variation.
In the last two decades, neo-institutionalist approaches have dominated sociological efforts in this area. For
example, researchers have examined the role of legal and political contexts for the lives of students in schools
(Gonzales, Reading 49; Binder & Wood, Reading 48). Researchers have argued that schools are not efficiently
organized for the production of student cognitive gains. Rather, school officials pursue their own ends, which
often involve issues of institutional self-interest, expansion, and survival. Schools as organizations are not
simply about producing educational outputs and meeting the needs of students; more important, as institutions,
they work to ensure organizational growth and survival in uncertain environments (Arum, 1996).
The extent to which the organizational environment of public schools is hostile, unstable, and unpredictable
is clear from even a cursory examination of recent educational policy debates. In spite of the fact that public
schools are graduating more students with mastery of basic academic skills than at any time in US history, a
sociology of school reform suggests that a variety of political forces has coalesced to challenge the very
existence of a public education sector. Conservative politicians in recent decades have increasingly pushed for
the full-scale dismantling of public education (Berliner & Biddle, 1996).
We find it ironic that public schools are being attacked at a time when society has grown increasingly
dependent on their role in socializing and training youth. While critics of public schools often focus attention on
the low test scores of disadvantaged students, they often ignore the structural factors underlying this poor
performance. Policy makers spend endless hours discussing the merits of school restructuring, national
standards, integrating curriculum, and even privatization, but spend too few minutes pondering the effects of
social background, racial segregation, resource inequality, gender segregation, and other structural factors
responsible for inequality of educational opportunity. Policy makers would do well to remember John Dewey’s
(1964 [1899]) advice on the matter a century ago:

We are apt to look at the school from an individualistic standpoint, as something between teacher and pupil,
or between teacher and parent. . . .Yet the range of outlook needs to be enlarged. What the best and wisest
parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our
schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. (p. 295)

Educational reform, which simultaneously improves our schools and strengthens our democracy, is only
possible when reforms explicitly recognize and address the structural factors underlying educational inequality.

REFERENCES
Arnett, J. J. (2004). Emerging adulthood: The winding road from the late teens through the twenties. New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. (1985). Education under siege: The conservative, liberal and radical debate over
schooling. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
Arum, R. (1996). Do private schools force public schools to compete? American Sociological Review, 61, 29–
46.
Arum, R., & Beattie, I. R. (1999). High school experience and the risk of incarceration. Criminology, 37(3),
515–540.
Beattie, I. R. (2002). Are all “adolescent econometricians” created equal? Racial, class, and gender differences
in college enrollment. Sociology of Education, 75, 19–39.
Berliner, D., & Biddle, B. (1996). The manufactured crisis: Myths, fraud, and the attack on America’s public
schools. New York, NY: Addison-Wesley.
Buchmann, C., DiPrete, D. A., & McDaniel, A. (2008). Gender inequalities in education. Annual Review of
Sociology, 34, 319–337.
Bryk, A., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. New York, NY: Russell
Sage Foundation.
Crane, S. (1991). The epidemic theory of ghettos and neighborhood effects on dropping out and teenage
childbearing. American Journal of Sociology, 96, 1226–1259.
Dewey, J. (1964). The school and society. In R. Archambault (Ed.), John Dewey on education (pp. 295–310).
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Digest of Educational Statistics. (2008). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Durkheim, E. (1965). The elementary forms of the religious life. New York, NY: Free Press.
Fischer, C., Hout, M., Sanchez Jankowski, M., Lucas, S., Swidler, A., Voss, K., and Arum, R. (1996).
Inequality by design. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fordham, S., & Ogbu, J. (1986). Black students’ school success: Coping with the “burden of acting white.”
Urban Review, 18(3), 176–206.
Herrnstein, R., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New
York, NY: Free Press.
Hochschild, A. (1997). The time bind: When work becomes home and home becomes work. New York, NY:
Metropolitan Books.
McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Orfield, G., & Monfort, F. (1988). Racial change and desegregation in large school districts: Trends through
the 1986−1987 school year. Alexandria, VA: National School Board Association.
Parsons, T. (1959). The school class as a social system: Some of its functions in American society. Harvard
Educational Review, 29, 297–318.
Stevens, M. (2001). Kingdom of children. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stinchcombe, A. (1966). Rebellion in a high school. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books.
Tobin, J. J., Wu, D. Y. H., & Davidson, D. H. (1992). Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China, and the
United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Tyack, D., & Hansot, E. (1992). Learning together: A history of coeducation in American public schools. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wilson, J. Q., & Herrnstein, R. (1985). Crime and human nature: The definitive study of the causes of crime.
New York, NY: Touchstone.
PART I

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES

C ontemporary sociological research relies on theoretical perspectives to help inform analysis. Theory
provides the concepts we can use to recognize and understand new issues, processes, and social
developments. Researchers use theoretical concepts to enrich their own work and to facilitate
dialogue and communication with other researchers in a common intellectual community. Part I of this book
provides an overview of the central theoretical perspectives that have played a key role in the development of
the sociology of education. As you read subsequent selections in the book, you should consider whether (and
how) the research fits the perspectives outlined next or whether the studies rely on concepts from theoretical
paradigms outside this core sociological tradition.
Section IA includes readings on status attainment and social mobility. Max Weber, one of the most
influential theorists in sociology, begins the readings with the argument that education has a dual character in
society. On one hand, education allows individuals to advance themselves through meritocratic selection
processes. On the other hand, education is used as a mechanism for social closure: Status groups use education
as a means for keeping outsiders from obtaining access to desirable occupations. Weber’s concern over this dual
character of education stemmed from his experience in Germany, with bureaucracy and the use of civil service
exams to place individuals in occupations.
In the second reading, Pitirim Sorokin extends Weber’s work by arguing that schools sort and sieve students
into occupations, thus allowing for a limited amount of mobility within society. Sorokin contends that the role
of education in society is to determine allocation of scarce resources to individuals.
The third reading in the section is Ralph Turner’s classic piece comparing English and American
educational systems. He maintains that the English norm of sponsored mobility involves the careful, early
selection of recruits for advancement to elite status. In contrast, American mobility is normatively a contest in
which all individuals are purported to have an equal chance at attaining elite status at multiple stages in their
educational careers. These different structures of mobility are argued to have profound implications for the
value and content of education in each society.
In the final reading of this section, Archibald Haller and Alejandro Portes provide an overview of two early
status attainment perspectives. First, they present Peter Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan’s model of the role of
education in mediating the relationship between an individual’s social origins and social destination. The second
perspective, the Wisconsin model, builds on Blau and Duncan’s early status attainment work by investigating
additional social psychological variables and the role of students’ relationships with peers, teachers, and parents.
Section IB highlights three central theoretical concepts in the sociology of education: human capital, cultural
capital, and social capital. First, Gary Becker, an economist, provides an articulation of human capital theory.
He contends that an investment in human capital—expanding individual knowledge and skills—leads to
economic growth for individuals, businesses, and societies. Becker’s work focuses on the financial rate of return
for high school and college education in the United States, but he generalizes his findings to investments in
human capital of varying amounts and kinds.
Next, Michèle Lamont and Annette Lareau explicate Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital. Cultural
capital includes a host of linguistic and cultural competencies (generally related to art, literature, music, and
theater) that are more easily accessed by people from the middle and upper classes. Bourdieu argues that
cultural capital is important for education because these competencies are valued—though never really taught—
in schools. In this way, schools aid in reproducing the social order, by rewarding students who enter with
cultural advantages and punishing students who enter with cultural disadvantages. Lamont and Lareau review
how American sociologists have adopted Bourdieu’s work for the context of the United States. Writing in
France, Bourdieu defined cultural capital as competencies in and preferences for a uniquely French high culture
of art, music, and literature. Lamont and Lareau suggest a redefinition of cultural capital that is broader in scope
than that of Bourdieu’s original theorizing. The authors are expert readers of Bourdieu and point out
ambiguities, gaps, and methodological problems in his original work. Lamont and Lareau conclude by
proposing a research agenda for sociologists interested in moving forward with the intellectual project of
theorizing how cultural capital functions in the context of the United States.
In the final reading on a concept of capital, James Coleman and Thomas Hoffer write about how social
capital affects schools. Social capital is the relationship between people, at both familial and community levels,
that emerges from social structures in which people live. Coleman and Hoffer maintain that the absence of
social capital among public school families represents a loss of vital resources for students in these settings.
Private and Catholic schools exhibit greater closure in social networks of students’ families and are able both to
generate greater consensus of norms among families and to implement intergenerational transmission of these
norms through greater monitoring and enforcement. James Coleman’s work intellectually dominated the
research in sociology of education for three decades. Additional selections of Coleman’s work appear in this
reader in Parts II and IV.
Section IC focuses on changing theories of education systems. Émile Durkheim, a theorist whose work—
like Max Weber’s—formed the basis for modern sociology, identified the role of education in integrating
individuals into society. Durkheim argued that schools have a critical role in socializing individuals to accept
productive social roles. Through interactions with school authority, students learn self-discipline, which is
essential to their attachment to the larger society.
The Willard Waller reading emphasizes that, in addition to developing individual citizens, schools are part
of a larger community. This reading is an early articulation of the importance of neighborhood context and
family composition in defining school communities. Schools both affect and are influenced by the communities
in which they are situated. Waller demonstrates that schools are not merely islands unto themselves but that they
incorporate moral positions and attitudes of the community at large. This role puts particular pressure on
teachers to represent the ideals of the community. Such a task is difficult when there are conflicting ideals and
demands or when there are additional constraints on a teacher’s personal life. Although it might be tempting to
shrug off the community and school policing of teacher behavior as an archaic historical artifact from Waller’s
time (the 1930s), this practice continues, as evidenced by recent firings of teachers for the use of objectionable
reading material or for coming out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Next, Randall Collins provides an explanation for trends in educational expansion. Collins returns to the
work of Max Weber by asserting that status groups use education to monopolize their access to scarce
resources. Collins argues that schools are increasingly important but not because they impart socially relevant
skills and knowledge. Rather, the increasing significance of schooling is the result of the role of education in
providing credentials that serve as exclusionary requirements for privileged occupational positions. Collins’s
work demonstrates that rising education requirements for jobs are driven by the expansion of opportunities in
schooling rather than by changes in the structure of employment. In his later work, Collins (1979) extends this
argument to show that such a trend ultimately serves to devalue educational credentials, making continued
expansion of degree attainment inevitable.
Finally, Bowles, Gintis, and Meyer argue from a neo-Marxist perspective that schools play a central role in
the social reproduction of the class structure. Social reproduction theory, which their analysis advances,
purports that schools developed in the United States to serve the interest of a capitalist class. Bowles, Gintis,
and Meyer maintain that mass education promotes the illusion of meritocratic selection, thereby socializing
working class youth to accept their failure as the result of their own shortcomings. This perspective challenges
status attainment and human capital theories by conceptualizing schools as a hindrance to social mobility and as
producers of surplus workers at the mercy of capitalist employers. While Bowles, Gintis, and Meyer have been
embraced and expanded upon by neo-Marxist educational theorists, their work is also criticized for being too
simplistic a model of class imposition. Researchers with similar political leanings argue that labor movements,
ethnic groups, professional educators, and middle-class reformers were primarily responsible for the historical
development of modern educational institutions (e.g., Katznelson & Weir, 1985; Reese, 1986). This alternative
research tradition views the working class as an active participant in the development of the education system
rather than simply as a passive group on whom capitalists impose an inequitable schooling apparatus.

REFERENCES

Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: A historical sociology of education and stratification. New York,
NY: Academic Press.
Katznelson, I., & Weir, M. (1985). Schooling for all. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Reese, W. (1986). Power and the promise of school reform: Grassroots movements during the Progressive Era.
London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
1
THE “RATIONALIZATION” OF EDUCATION AND
TRAINING
MAX WEBER

W e cannot here analyze the far-reaching and general cultural effects that the advance of the rational
bureaucratic structure of domination, as such, develops quite independently of the areas in which
it takes hold. Naturally, bureaucracy promotes a “rationalist” way of life, but the concept of
rationalism allows for widely differing contents. Quite generally, one can only say that the bureaucratization of
all domination very strongly furthers the development of “rational matter-of-factness” and the personality type
of the professional expert. This has far-reaching ramifications, but only one important element of the process
can be briefly indicated here: its effect upon the nature of training and education.
Educational institutions on the European continent, especially the institutions of higher learning—the
universities, as well as technical academies, business colleges, gymnasiums, and other middle schools—are
dominated and influenced by the need for the kind of “education” that produces a system of special
examinations and the trained expertness that is increasingly indispensable for modern bureaucracy.
The “special examination,” in the present sense, was and is found also outside of bureaucratic structures
proper; thus, today it is found in the “free” professions of medicine and law and in the guild-organized trades.
Expert examinations are neither indispensable to nor concomitant phenomena of bureaucratization. The French,
English, and American bureaucracies have for a long time forgone such examinations entirely or to a large
extent, for training and service in party organizations have made up for them.
“Democracy” also takes an ambivalent stand in the face of specialized examinations, as it does in the face of
all the phenomena of bureaucracy—although democracy itself promotes these developments. Special
examinations, on the one hand, mean or appear to mean a “selection” of those who qualify from all social strata
rather than a rule by notables. On the other hand, democracy fears that a merit system and educational
certificates will result in a privileged “caste.” Hence, democracy fights against the special-examination system.
The special examination is found even in pre-bureaucratic or semi-bureaucratic epochs. Indeed, the regular
and earliest locus of special examinations is among prebendally organized dominions. Expectancies of
prebends, first of church prebends—as in the Islamite Orient and in the Occidental Middle Ages—then, as was
especially the case in China, secular prebends, are the typical prizes for which people study and are examined.
These examinations, however, have in truth only a partially specialized and expert character.
The modern development of full bureaucratization brings the system of rational, specialized, and expert
examinations irresistibly to the fore. The civil-service reform gradually imports expert training and specialized
examinations into the United States. In all other countries this system also advances, stemming from its main
breeding place, Germany. The increasing bureaucratization of administration enhances the importance of the
specialized examination in England. In China, the attempt to replace the semi-patrimonial and ancient
bureaucracy by a modern bureaucracy brought the expert examination; it took the place of a former and quite
differently structured system of examinations. The bureaucratization of capitalism, with its demand for expertly
trained technicians, clerks, et cetera, carries such examinations all over the world. Above all, the development is
greatly furthered by the social prestige of the educational certificates acquired through such specialized
examinations. This is all the more the case as the educational patent is turned to economic advantage. Today,
the certificate of education becomes what the test for ancestors has been in the past, at least where the nobility
has remained powerful: a prerequisite for equality of birth, a qualification for a canonship, and for state office.
The development of the diploma from universities, and business and engineering colleges, and the universal
clamor for the creation of educational certificates in all fields make for the formation of a privileged stratum in
bureaus and in offices. Such certificates support their holders’ claims for intermarriages with notable families
(in business offices people naturally hope for preferment with regard to the chief’s daughter), claims to be
admitted into the circles that adhere to “codes of honor,” claims for a “respectable” remuneration rather than
remuneration for work done, claims for assured advancement and old-age insurance, and, above all, claims to
monopolize socially and economically advantageous positions. When we hear from all sides the demand for an
introduction of regular curricula and special examinations, the reason behind it is, of course, not a suddenly
awakened “thirst for education” but the desire for restricting the supply for these positions and their
monopolization by the owners of educational certificates. Today, the “examination” is the universal means of
this monopolization, and therefore examinations irresistibly advance. As the education prerequisite to the
acquisition of the educational certificate requires considerable expense and a period of waiting for full
remuneration, this striving means a setback for talent (charisma) in favor of property. For the “intellectual” costs
of educational certificates are always low, and with the increasing volume of such certificates, their intellectual
costs do not increase, but rather decrease.
The requirement of a chivalrous style of life in the old qualification for fiefs in Germany is replaced by the
necessity of participating in its present rudimentary form as represented by the dueling corps of the universities
which also distribute the educational certificates. In Anglo-Saxon countries, athletic and social clubs fulfill the
same function. The bureaucracy, on the other hand, strives everywhere for a “right to the office” by the
establishment of a regular disciplinary procedure and by removal of the completely arbitrary disposition of the
“chief” over the subordinate official. The bureaucracy seeks to secure the official position, the orderly
advancement, and the provision for old age. In this, the bureaucracy is supported by the “democratic” sentiment
of the governed, which demands that domination be minimized. Those who hold this attitude believe themselves
able to discern a weakening of the master’s prerogatives in every weakening of the arbitrary disposition of the
master over the officials. To this extent, bureaucracy, both in business offices and in public service, is a carrier
of a specific “status” development, as have been the quite differently structured officeholders of the past. We
have already pointed out that these status characteristics are usually also exploited, and that by their nature they
contribute to the technical usefulness of the bureaucracy in fulfilling its specific tasks.
“Democracy” reacts precisely against the unavoidable “status” character of bureaucracy. Democracy seeks
to put the election of officials for short terms in the place of appointed officials; it seeks to substitute the
removal of officials by election for a regulated procedure of discipline. Thus, democracy seeks to replace the
arbitrary disposition of the hierarchically superordinate “master” by the equally arbitrary disposition of the
governed and the party chiefs dominating them.
Social prestige based upon the advantage of special education and training as such is by no means specific to
bureaucracy. On the contrary! But educational prestige in other structures of domination rests upon substantially
different foundations.
Expressed in slogan-like fashion, the “cultivated man,” rather than the “specialist,” has been the end sought
by education and has formed the basis of social esteem in such various systems as the feudal, theocratic, and
patrimonial structures of dominion: in the English notable administration, in the old Chinese patrimonial
bureaucracy, as well as under the rule of demagogues in the so-called Hellenic democracy.
The term “cultivated man” is used here in a completely value-neutral sense; it is understood to mean solely
that the goal of education consists in the quality of a man’s bearing in life which was considered “cultivated,”
rather than in a specialized training for expertness. The “cultivated” personality formed the educational ideal,
which was stamped by the structure of domination and by the social condition for membership in the ruling
stratum. Such education aimed at a chivalrous or an ascetic type; or at a literary type, as in China; a gymnastic-
humanist type, as in Hellas; or it aimed at a conventional type, as in the case of the Anglo-Saxon gentleman.
The qualification of the ruling stratum as such rested upon the possession of “more” cultural quality (in the
absolutely changeable, value-neutral sense in which we use the term here), rather than upon “more” expert
knowledge. Special military, theological, and juridical ability was of course intensely practiced; but the point of
gravity in Hellenic, in medieval, as well as in Chinese education, has rested upon educational elements that were
entirely different from what was “useful” in one’s specialty.
Behind all the present discussions of the foundations of the educational system, the struggle of the
“specialist type of man” against the older type of “cultivated man” is hidden at some decisive point. This fight is
determined by the irresistibly expanding bureaucratization of all public and private relations of authority and by
the ever-increasing importance of expert and specialized knowledge. The fight intrudes into all intimate cultural
questions.
During its advance, bureaucratic organization has had to overcome those essentially negative obstacles that
have stood in the way of the leveling process necessary for bureaucracy. In addition, administrative structures
based on different principles intersect with bureaucratic organizations.
The bureaucratic structure is everywhere a late product of development. The further back we trace our steps,
the more typical is the absence of bureaucracy and officialdom in the structure of domination. Bureaucracy has
a “rational” character: rules, means, ends, and matter-of-factness dominate its bearing. Everywhere its origin
and its diffusion have therefore had “revolutionary” results. . . . This is the same influence which the advance of
rationalism in general has had. The march of bureaucracy has destroyed structures of domination, which had no
rational character, in the special sense of the term. Hence, we may ask: What were these structures?

SOURCE: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology translated by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. Copyright ©
1946, 1958, 1973 by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. By permission of Oxford University Press, USA.
2
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL MOBILITY
PITIRIM SOROKIN

DEFINITION

In any society there are a great many people who want to climb up into its upper strata. Since only a few
succeed in doing this, and since, under normal conditions, the vertical circulation does not have an anarchical
character, it seems that in any society there is a mechanism which controls the process of vertical circulation.
This control seems to consist in the first place, in testing individuals with respect to their suitableness for the
performance of a definite social function; in the second place, in the selection of individuals for a definite social
position;1 in the third place, in a corresponding distribution of the members of a society among different social
strata, in their promotion, or in their degradation. In other words, within a stratified society, there seem to exist
not only channels of vertical circulation, but also a kind of a “sieve” within these channels which sifts the
individuals and places them within the society. The essential purpose of this control is to distribute the
individuals so that each is placed according to his talents and able to perform successfully his social function.
Wrongly placed, individuals do their social work poorly; and, as a result, all society suffers and disintegrates.
Though there scarcely has existed any society in which the distribution of individuals has been quite perfect, in
complete accordance with the rule “Everybody must be placed according to his ability,”2 nevertheless, many
societies have existed for a long time and this very fact means that their mechanism of social testing, selecting,
and distributing their members has not been wholly bad and has performed its function in a more or less
satisfactory way. The problems to be discussed now are: What represents this mechanism of selection and
distribution of individuals? How and on what bases does it test, select, and distribute them?
The first question may be answered in the following way: in any given society this mechanism is composed
of all the social institutions and organizations which perform these functions.
As a general rule these institutions are the same as those which function as channels of vertical circulation.
These institutions, such as the family, army, church, school, political, professional, and occupational
organizations are not only a channel of social circulation, but are at the same time the “sieves” which test and
sift, select and distribute the individuals within different social strata or positions.
Some of them, as the school and family, are the machinery which tests principally the general qualities of
individuals necessary for a successful performance of a great many functions, such as their general intelligence,
health, and social character. Some other institutions, such as many occupational organizations, are the
machinary which tests the specific quality of individuals necessary for a successful performance of a specific
function in a given occupation; the voice of a prospective singer, the oratorical talent of a prospective politician,
the physical strength of a future heavyweight champion, and so forth. Turn now to the problem of how these
institutions perform these functions and what principal types of testing, selection, and distribution exist in
different societies. This will give us a somewhat deeper insight into many institutions, and will show that many
of them, quite absurd at first sight, have been, indeed, quite understandable under existing circumstances.

THE SCHOOL AS A TESTING AND SELECTIVE AND DISTRIBUTIVE AGENCY

A kind of machinery for testing the abilities of the individuals and determining their social position has been the
school. The family is the agency which gives the first test; earlier than any other group, it determines the life
career and the prospective social position of the children. But even in the caste-society the family test and
influences, to some degree, are retested and reconsidered by other agencies, the educator and the teacher among
them; still more true is this of societies of another type, especially of those in which we live.
If at the present time the family status and education outline roughly the life career of its children, the school
is the next agency which retests the “decisions” of a family, and very often and very decisively changes them.
Up to the last few years, the school was regarded primarily as an educational institution. Its social function was
seen in “pouring” into a student a definite amount of knowledge, and, to some extent, in shaping his behavior.
The testing, the selective, and the distributive functions of the school were almost completely overlooked,
although these functions of the school are scarcely less important than that of “enlightenment” and “education.”
During the last few years many specialists in different fields have begun to see these functions. At the present
moment it is certain that the school, while being a “training and educational” institution, is at the same time, a
piece of social machinery, which tests the abilities of the individuals, which sifts them, selects them, and
decides their prospective social position. In other words, the essential social function of the school is not only to
find out whether a pupil has learned a definite part of a textbook or not, but through all its examinations and
moral supervision to discover, in the first place, which of the pupils are talented and which are not; what ability
every pupil has and in what degree; and which of them are socially and morally fit; in the second place, to
eliminate those who do not have the desirable mental and moral qualities; in the third place, through an
elimination of the failures to close the doors for their social promotion, at least within certain definite social
fields, and to promote those who happen to be the bright students in the direction of those social positions which
correspond to their general and specific abilities. Whether successful or not, these purposes are some of the
most important functions of the school. From this standpoint the school is primarily a testing, selecting, and
distributing agency. In its total the whole school system, with its handicaps, quizzes, examinations, supervision
of the students, and their grading, ranking, evaluating, eliminating, and promoting, is a very complicated
“sieve,” which sifts “the good” from “the bad” future citizens, “the able” from “the dull,” “those fitted for the
high positions” from those “unfitted.” This explains what is meant by the testing, selective, and distributive
functions of school machinery.
The intensiveness of this function of the school naturally fluctuates from society to society, from time to
time. Among other conditions, it strongly depends on the extent to which the testing and the sifting of
individuals is carried out by other institutions, and especially by the family. If the family performs this role
efficiently, in such a way that only an already selected group of children reaches the doors of the schools and
enters them, then the testing and the selecting and sifting role of the school is not so necessary as in the case
when the doors of the school are open for all children, when there is no selection and elimination preceding
school entrance. Under such conditions, naturally, there are a great many children incapable of progressing
further than the first few grades of school; the number of failures is greater than where there is pre-school
selection. Therefore, the elimination work of the school becomes much greater and more pitiless. It increases as
it proceeds, going from the lower grades to the higher, from the elementary to the secondary school, from the
secondary school to the college. As a result, out of the many pupils who enter the door of the elementary school
only an insignificant minority reach the stage of university graduation. The great majority (see below for
figures) are eliminated, not only from school, but automatically thereby from climbing up this ladder to high
social positions. Part of those eliminated succeed in climbing through another ladder (money making, etc.), but
only a small part.3 The majority of those eliminated from the school through “the school sieve” are doomed to
be placed at a relatively lower social position. In this way, in certain societies the school does the work of
selection, and bars the social promotion of individuals who have not been barred and selected by the family.
This explains the fact that, contrary to the common opinion, universal education and instruction leads not so
much to an obliteration of mental and social differences as to their increase. The school, even the most
democratic school, open to everybody, if it performs its task properly, is a machinery of the “aristocratization”
and stratification of society, not of “leveling” and “democratization.” The following representative data show
clearly the testing, selective, and eliminating role of the school in the United States of America. According to
Doctor Ayres,4 for every 1,000 children who enter the first grade, we have in the higher grades:

723 in the second grade

 692 in the third grade
640 in the fourth grade
552 in the fifth grade
462 in the sixth grade
368 in the seventh grade
263 in the eighth grade
189 in the first grade of high school
123 in the second grade of high school
81 in the third grade of high school
56 in the fourth grade of high school

Admitting that out of 1,000 children who enter the first grade, there must be, owing to the death and increase
of population, in the eighth grade, 871, we see that, in fact, we have instead of this figure only 263. The
remaining 608 pupils are eliminated and dropped out of school. A similar conclusion is given by Doctor
Thorndike.5 According to his data, 25 percent of the white children in the United States at the beginning of the
twentieth century could reach only the fifth grade. According to Doctor Strayer and Doctor Terman, out of 100
children entering elementary school only about 40 remain to enter the high school and only 10 are graduated
from high school.6

NOTES

1. From the text it is clear that the selection here means not a biological selection in the sense of a differential
survival but a social sorting of individuals among the different strata or groups: non-admission or rejection
of the unsuitable and placement or taking in of suitable individuals.
2. This social placement to everybody according to his talent was known long ago; it is the motto of the
Indian, of the Chinese, and of the Greek and the Roman writers. It composes the central idea of Plato’s
Justice in his Republic; it is the dominant idea of Confucius, Aristotle, and of the Sacred Books of India.
3. Even in the field of money making the majority of the successful money makers have been those who
successfully met the school test. Part of those who have not had such a test in no way could be regarded as
the school failures. They do not have the degrees simply because they did not have the chance to enter the
school. Out of 631 richest men of America, 54 percent hold a college degree; 18.5 percent went to high
school; 24.1 went to elementary school, only 3.4 percent had no education except self-education. Sorokin,
P., “American Millionaires and Multimillionaires,” p. 637.
4. Leonard P. Ayres, Laggards in Our Schools (New York Survey Association, 1913), p. 13.
5. E. Thorndike, The Elimination of Pupils from School, p. 9.
6. G. D. Strayer, “Age and Grade Census of Schools and Colleges,” United States Bureau of Education, Bull.
No. 451, p. 6; L. Terman, “The Intelligence of School Children,” pp. 87–89.

SOURCE: Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Publishing Group, a division of Simon &
Schuster Inc., from the Free Press edition of Social and Cultural Mobility: The Spirit of Discipline by Pitirim
Sorokin. Copyright © 1959 by The Free Press. All rights reserved.
3
SPONSORED AND CONTEST MOBILITY AND THE SCHOOL
SYSTEM
RALPH H. TURNER

T his [chapter] suggests a framework for relating certain differences between American and English
systems of education to the prevailing norms of upward mobility in each country. Others have noted
the tendency of educational systems to support prevailing schemes of stratification, but this discussion
concerns specifically the manner in which the accepted mode of upward mobility shapes the school system
directly and indirectly through its effects on the values which implement social control.
Two ideal-typical normative patterns of upward mobility are described and their ramifications in the general
patterns of stratification and social control are suggested. In addition to showing relationships among a number
of differences between American and English schooling, the ideal-types have broader implications than those
developed in this [chapter]: they suggest a major dimension of stratification which might be profitably
incorporated into a variety of studies in social class, and they readily can be applied in further comparisons
between other countries.

THE NATURE OF ORGANIZING NORMS

Many investigators have concerned themselves with rates of upward mobility in specific countries or
internationally,1 and with the manner in which school systems facilitate or impede such mobility.2 But
preoccupation with the extent of mobility has precluded equal attention to the predominant modes of mobility.
The central assumption underlying this [chapter] is that within a formally open class system that provides for
mass education, the organizing folk norm which defines the accepted mode of upward mobility is a crucial
factor in shaping the school system, and may be even more crucial than the extent of upward mobility. In
England and the United States there appear to be different organizing folk norms, here termed sponsored
mobility and contest mobility, respectively. Contest mobility is a system in which elite3 status is the prize in an
open contest and is taken by the aspirants’ own efforts. While the “contest” is governed by some rules of fair
play, the contestants have wide latitude in the strategies they may employ. Since the “prize” of successful
upward mobility is not in the hands of an established elite to give out, the latter cannot determine who shall
attain it and who shall not. Under sponsored mobility elite recruits are chosen by the established elite or their
agents, and elite status is given on the basis of some criterion of supposed merit and cannot be taken by any
amount of effort or strategy. Upward mobility is like entry into a private club where each candidate must be
“sponsored” by one or more of the members. Ultimately the members grant or deny upward mobility on the
basis of whether they judge the candidate to have those qualities they wish to see in fellow members.
Before elaborating this distinction, it should be noted that these systems of mobility are ideal types designed
to clarify observed differences in the predominantly similar English and American systems of stratification and
education. But as organizing norms these principles are assumed to be present at least implicitly in people’s
thinking, guiding their judgments of what is appropriate on many specific matters. Such organizing norms do
not correspond perfectly with the objective characteristics of the societies in which they exist, nor are they
completely independent of them. From the complex interplay of social and economic conditions and ideologies,
people in a society develop a highly simplified conception of the way in which events take place. This
conception of the “natural” is translated into a norm—the “natural” becomes what “ought” to be—and in turn
imposes a strain toward consistency upon relevant aspects of the society. Thus the norm acts back upon the
objective conditions to which it refers and has ramifying effects upon directly and indirectly related features of
the society.4
In brief, the conception of an ideal-typical organizing norm involves the following propositions: (1) The
ideal types are not fully exemplified in practice since they are normative systems, and no normative system can
be devised so as to cope with all empirical exigencies. (2) Predominant norms usually compete with less
ascendant norms engendered by changes and inconsistencies in the underlying social structure. (3) Though not
fully explicit, organizing folk norms are reflected in specific value judgments. Those judgments which the
relevant people regard as having a convincing ring to them, irrespective of the logic expressed, or which seem to
require no extended argumentation may be presumed to reflect the prevailing folk norms. (4) The predominant
organizing norms in one segment of society are functionally related to those in other segments.
Two final qualifications concerning the scope of this [chapter]: First, the organizing folk norm of upward
mobility affects the school system because one of the latter’s functions is the facilitation of mobility. Since this
is only one of several social functions of the school, and not the most important function in the societies under
examination, only a very partial accounting of the whole set of forces making for similarities and differences in
the school systems of the United States and England is possible here. Only those differences which directly or
indirectly reflect the performance of the mobility function are noted. Second, the concern of this [chapter] is
with the current dynamics of the situation in the two countries rather than with their historical development.

DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE TWO NORMS

Contest mobility is like a sporting event in which many compete for a few recognized prizes. The contest is
judged to be fair only if all the players compete on an equal footing. Victory must be won solely by one’s own
efforts. The most satisfactory outcome is not necessarily a victory of the most able, but of the most deserving.
The tortoise who defeats the hare is a folk-prototype of the deserving sportsman. Enterprise, initiative,
perseverance, and craft are admirable qualities if they allow the person who is initially at a disadvantage to
triumph. Even clever manipulation of the rules may be admired if it helps the contestant who is smaller or less
muscular or less rapid to win. Applied to mobility, the contest norm means that victory by a person of moderate
intelligence accomplished through the use of common sense, craft, enterprise, daring, and successful risk
taking5 is more appreciated than victory by the most intelligent or the best educated.
Sponsored mobility, in contrast, rejects the pattern of the contest and favors a controlled selection process.
In this process the elite or their agents, deemed to be best qualified to judge merit, choose individuals for elite
status who have the appropriate qualities. Individuals do not win or seize elite status; mobility is rather a process
of sponsored induction into the elite.
Pareto had this sort of mobility in mind when he suggested that a governing class might dispose of persons
potentially dangerous to it by admitting them to elite membership, provided that the recruits change character by
adopting elite attitudes and interests.6 Danger to the ruling class would seldom be the major criterion for choice
of elite recruits. But Pareto assumed that the established elite would select whom they wished to enter their
ranks and would inculcate the attitudes and interests of the established elite in the recruits.
The governing objective of contest mobility is to give elite status to those who earn it, while the goal of
sponsored mobility is to make the best use of the talents in society by sorting persons into their proper niches. In
different societies the conditions of competitive struggle may reward quite different attributes, and sponsored
mobility may select individuals on the basis of such diverse qualities as intelligence or visionary capability, but
the difference in principle remains the same.7
Under the contest system society at large establishes and interprets the criteria of elite status. If one wishes
to have his status recognized he must display certain credentials which identify his class to those about him. The
credentials must be highly visible and require no special skill for their assessment, since credentials are
presented to the masses. Material possession and mass popularity are altogether appropriate credentials in this
respect, and any special skill which produces a tangible product and which can easily be assessed by the
untrained will do. The nature of sponsored mobility precludes these procedures, but assigns to credentials
instead the function of identifying elite members to one another.8 Accordingly, the ideal credentials are special
skills that require the trained discrimination of the elite for their recognition. In this case, intellectual, literary, or
artistic excellencies, which can be appraised only by those trained to appreciate them, are fully suitable
credentials. Concentration on such skills lessens the likelihood that an interloper will succeed in claiming the
right to elite membership on grounds of the popular evaluation of his competence.
In the sporting event there is special admiration for the slow starter who makes a dramatic finish, and many
of the rules are designed to insure that the race should not be declared over until it has run its full course.
Contest mobility incorporates this disapproval of premature judgments and of anything that gives special
advantage to those who are ahead at any point in the race. Under sponsored mobility, fairly early selection of
only the number of persons necessary to fill anticipated vacancies in the elite is desirable. Early selection allows
time to prepare the recruits for their elite position. Aptitudes, inherent capacities, and spiritual gifts can be
assessed fairly early in life by techniques ranging from divination to the most sophisticated psychological test,
and the more naive the subjects at the time of selection the less likely are their talents to be blurred by
differential learning or conspiracy to defeat the test. Since elitists take the initiative in training recruits, they are
more interested in the latters’ capabilities than in what they will do with them on their own, and they are
concerned that no one else should first have an opportunity to train the recruits’ talents in the wrong direction.
Contest mobility tends to delay the final award as long as practicable to permit a fair race; sponsored mobility
tends to place the time of recruitment as early in life as practicable to insure control over selection and training.
Systems of sponsored mobility develop most readily in societies with but a single elite or with a recognized
elite hierarchy. When multiple elites compete among themselves the mobility process tends to take the contest
pattern, since no group is able to command control of recruitment. Sponsored mobility further depends upon a
social structure that fosters monopoly of elite credentials. Lack of such monopoly undercuts sponsorship and
control of the recruitment process. Monopoly of credentials in turn is typically a product of societies with well-
entrenched traditional aristocracies employing such credentials as family line and bestowable title which are
intrinsically subject to monopoly, or of societies organized on large-scale bureaucratic lines permitting
centralized control of upward social movement.
English society has been described as the juxtaposition of two systems of stratification, the urban industrial
class system and the surviving aristocratic system. While the sponsored mobility pattern reflects the logic of the
latter, our impression is that it pervades popular thinking rather than merely coexisting with the logic of
industrial stratification. Patterns imported into an established culture tend to be reshaped, as they are
assimilated, into consistency with the established culture. Thus it may be that changes in stratification
associated with industrialization have led to alterations in the rates, the specific means, and the rules of mobility,
but that these changes have been guided by the but lightly challenged organizing norm of sponsored mobility.

SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE TWO NORMS

Every society must cope with the problem of maintaining loyalty to its social system and does so in part through
norms and values, only some of which vary by class position. Norms and values especially prevalent within a
given class must direct behavior into channels that support the total system, while those that transcend strata
must support the general class differential. The way in which upward mobility takes place determines in part the
kinds of norms and values that serve the indicated purposes of social control in each class and throughout the
society.
The most conspicuous control problem is that of ensuring loyalty in the disadvantaged classes toward a
system in which their members receive less than a proportional share of society’s goods. In a system of contest
mobility this is accomplished by a combination of futuristic orientation, the norm of ambition, and a general
sense of fellowship with the elite. Each individual is encouraged to think of himself as competing for an elite
position so that loyalty to the system and conventional attitudes are cultivated in the process of preparation for
this possibility. It is essential that this futuristic orientation be kept alive by delaying a sense of final irreparable
failure to reach elite status until attitudes are well established. By thinking of himself in the successful future,
the elite aspirant forms considerable identification with elitists, and evidence that they are merely ordinary
human beings like himself helps to reinforce this identification as well as to keep alive the conviction that he
himself may someday succeed in like manner. To forestall rebellion among the disadvantaged majority, then, a
contest system must avoid absolute points of selection for mobility and immobility and must delay clear
recognition of the realities of the situation until the individual is too committed to the system to change
radically. A futuristic orientation cannot, of course, be inculcated successfully in all members of lower strata,
but sufficient internalization of a norm of ambition tends to leave the unambitious as individual deviants and to
forestall the latters’ formation of a genuine subcultural group able to offer collective threat to the established
system. Where this kind of control system operates rather effectively it is notable that organized or gang
deviancy is more likely to take the form of an attack upon the conventional or moral order rather than upon the
class system itself. Thus the United States has its “beatniks”9 who repudiate ambition and most worldly values
and its delinquent and criminal gangs who try to evade the limitations imposed by conventional means,10 but
very few active revolutionaries.
These social controls are inappropriate in a system of sponsorship since the elite recruits are chosen from
above. The principal threat to the system would lie in the existence of a strong group, the members of whom
sought to take elite positions themselves. Control under this system is maintained by training the “masses” to
regard themselves as relatively incompetent to manage society, by restricting access to the skills and manners of
the elite, and by cultivating belief in the superior competence of the elite. The earlier that selection of the elite
recruits is made, the sooner others can be taught to accept their inferiority and to make “realistic” rather than
phantasy plans. Early selection prevents raising the hopes of large numbers of people who might otherwise
become the discontended leaders of a class challenging the sovereignty of the established elite. If it is assumed
that the difference in competence between masses and elite is seldom so great as to support the usual differences
in the advantages accruing to each,11 then the differences must be artificially augmented by discouraging
acquisition of elite skills by the masses. Thus a sense of mystery about the elite is a common device for
supporting in the masses the illusion of a much greater hiatus of competence than in fact exists.
While elitists are unlikely to reject a system that benefits them, they must still be restrained from taking such
advantage of their favorable situation as to jeopardize the entire elite. Under the sponsorship system the elite
recruits—who are selected early, freed from the strain of competitive struggle, and kept under close superivsion
—may be thoroughly indoctrinated in elite culture. A norm of paternalism toward inferiors may be inculcated, a
heightened sensitivity to the good opinion of fellow elitists and elite recruits may be cultivated, and the
appreciation of the more complex forms of aesthetic, literary, intellectual, and sporting activities may be taught.
Norms of courtesy and altruism easily can be maintained under sponsorship since elite recruits are not required
to compete for their standing and since the elite may deny high standing to those who strive for position by
“unseemly” methods. The system of sponsorship provides an almost perfect setting for the development of an
elite culture characterized by a sense of responsibility for “inferiors” and for preservation of the “finer things” of
life.
Elite control in the contest system is more difficult since there is no controlled induction and apprenticeship.
The principal regulation seems to lie in the insecurity of elite position. In a sense there is no “final arrival”
because each person may be displaced by newcomers throughout his life. The limited control of high standing
from above prevents the clear delimitation of levels in the class system, so that success itself becomes relative:
each success, rather than an accomplishment, serves to qualify the participant for competition at the next higher
level.12 The restraints upon the behavior of a person of high standing, therefore, are principally those applicable
to a contestant who must not risk the “ganging up” of other contestants, and who must pay some attention to the
masses who are frequently in a position to impose penalties upon him. But any special norm of paternalism is
hard to establish since there is no dependable procedure for examining the means by which one achieves elite
credentials. While mass esteem is an effective brake upon over-exploitation of position, it rewards scrupulously
ethical and altruistic behavior much less than evidence of fellow-feeling with the masses themselves.
Under both systems, unscrupulous or disreputable persons may become or remain members of the elite, but
for different reasons. In contest mobility, popular tolerance of a little craftiness in the successful newcomer,
together with the fact that he does not have to undergo the close scrutiny of the old elite, leaves considerable
leeway for unscrupulous success. In sponsored mobility, the unpromising recruit reflects unfavorably on the
judgments of his sponsors and threatens the myth of elite omniscience; consequently he may be tolerated and
others may “cover up” for his deficiencies in order to protect the unified front of the elite to the outer world.
Certain of the general values and norms of any society reflect emulation of elite values by the masses. Under
sponsored mobility, a good deal of the protective attitudes toward and interest in classical subjects percolates to
the masses. Under contest mobility, however, there is not the same degree of homogeneity of moral, aesthetic,
and intellectual values to be emulated, so that the conspicuous attribute of the elite is its high level of material
consumption—emulation itself follows this course. There is neither effective incentive nor punishment for the
elitist who fails to interest himself in promoting the arts or literary excellence, or who continues to maintain the
vulgar manners and mode of speech of his class origin. The elite has relatively less power and the masses
relatively more power to punish or reward a man for his adoption or disregard of any special elite culture. The
great importance of accent and of grammatical excellence in the attainment of high status in England as
contrasted with the twangs and drawls and grammatical ineptitude among American elites is the most striking
example of this difference. In a contest system, the class order does not function to support the quality of
aesthetic, literary, and intellectual activities; only those well versed in such matters are qualified to distinguish
authentic products from cheap imitations. Unless those who claim superiority in these areas are forced to submit
their credentials to the elite for evaluation, poor quality is often honored equally with high quality and class
prestige does not serve to maintain an effective norm of high quality.
This is not to imply that there are no groups in a “contest” society devoted to the protection and fostering of
high standards in art, music, literature, and intellectual pursuits, but that such standards lack the support of the
class system which is frequently found when sponsored mobility prevails. In California, the selection by official
welcoming committees of a torch singer to entertain a visiting king and queen and “can-can” dancers to
entertain Mr. Khrushchev illustrates how American elites can assume that high prestige and popular taste go
together.

FORMAL EDUCATION

Returning to the conception of an organizing ideal norm, we assume that to the extent to which one such norm
of upward mobility is prevalent in a society there are constant strains to shape the educational system into
conformity with that norm. These strains operate in two fashions: directly, by blinding people to alternatives and
coloring their judgments of successful and unsuccessful solutions to recurring educational problems; indirectly,
through the functional interrelationships between school systems and the class structure, systems of social
control, and other features of the social structure which are neglected in this [chapter].
The most obvious application of the distinction between sponsored and contest mobility norms affords a
partial explanation for the different policies of student selection in the English and American secondary schools.
Although American high school students follow different courses of study and a few attend specialized schools,
a major educational preoccupation has been to avoid any sharp social separation between the superior and
inferior students and to keep the channels of movement between courses of study as open as possible. Recent
criticisms of the way in which superior students may be thereby held back in their development usually are
nevertheless qualified by the insistence that these students must not be withdrawn from the mainstream of
student life.13 Such segregation offends the sense of fairness implicit in the contest norm and also arouses the
fear that the elite and future elite will lose their sense of fellowship with the masses. Perhaps the most important
point, however, is that schooling is presented as an opportunity, and making use of it depends primarily on the
student’s own initiative and enterprise.
The English system has undergone a succession of liberalizing changes during this century, but all of them
have retained the attempt to sort out early in the educational program the promising from the unpromising so
that the former may be segregated and given a special form of training to fit them for higher standing in their
adult years. Under the Education Act of 1944, a minority of students has been selected each year by means of a
battery of examinations popularly known as “eleven plus,” supplemented in varying degrees by grade school
records and personal interviews, for admission to grammar schools.14 The remaining students attend secondary
modem or technical schools in which the opportunities to prepare for college or to train for the more prestigeful
occupations are minimal. The grammar schools supply what by comparative standards is a high quality of
college preparatory education. Of course, such a scheme embodies the logic of sponsorship, with early selection
of those destined for middle-class and higher-status occupations, and specialized training to prepare each group
for its destined class position. This plan facilitates considerable mobility, and recent research reveals
surprisingly little bias against children from manual laboring-class families in the selection for grammar school,
when related to measured intelligence.15 It is altogether possible that adequate comparative study would show a
closer correlation of school success with measured intelligence and a lesser correlation between school success
and family background in England than in the United States. While selection of superior students for mobility
opportunity is probably more efficient under such a system, the obstacles for persons not so selected of “making
the grade” on the basis of their own initiative or enterprise are probably correspondingly greater.
That the contrasting effects of the two systems accord with the social control patterns under the two mobility
norms is indicated by studies of student ambitions in the United States and in England. Researches in the United
States consistently show that the general level of occupational aspiration reported by high school students is
quite unrealistic in relation to the actual distribution of job opportunities. Comparative study in England shows
much less “phantasy” aspiration, and specifically indicates a reduction in aspirations among students not
selected following the “eleven-plus” examination.16 One of the by-products of the sponsorship system is the fact
that at least some students from middle-class families whose parents cannot afford to send them to private
schools suffer severe personal adjustment problems when they are assigned to secondary modern schools on the
basis of this selection procedure.17
This well-known difference between the British sorting at an early age of students into grammar and modern
schools and the American comprehensive high school and junior college is the clearest application of the
distinction under discussion, but the organizing norms penetrate more deeply into the school systems than is
initially apparent. The most telling observation regarding the direct normative operation of these principles
would be evidence to support the author’s impression that major critics of educational procedures within each
country do not usually transcend the logic of their respective mobility norms. Thus the British debate about the
best method for getting people sorted according to ability, without proposing that elite station should be open to
whosoever can ascend to it. Although fear of “sputnik” in the United States introduced a flurry of suggestions
for sponsored mobility schemes, the long-standing concern of school critics has been the failure to motivate
students adequately. Preoccupation with motivation appears to be an intellectual application of the folk idea that
people should win their station in society by personal enterprise.
The functional operation of a strain toward consistency with the organizing norms of upward mobility may
be illustrated by several other features of the school systems in the two countries. First, the value placed upon
education itself differs under the two norms. Under sponsored mobility, schooling is valued for its cultivation of
elite culture, and those forms of schooling directed toward such cultivation are more highly valued than others.
Education of the non-elite is difficult to justify clearly and tends to be half-hearted, while maximum educational
resources are concentrated on “those who can benefit most from them”—in practice, this means those who can
learn the elite culture. The secondary modern schools in England have regularly suffered from less adequate
financial provision, a higher student-teacher ratio, fewer well-trained teachers, and a general lack of prestige in
comparison with the grammar schools.18
Under contest mobility in the United States, education is valued as a means of getting ahead, but the
contents of education are not highly valued in their own right. Over a century ago Tocqueville commented on
the absence of an hereditary class “by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor.” He remarked that
consequently a “middling standard is fixed in America for human knowledge.”19 And there persists in some
measure the suspicion of the educated man as one who may have gotten ahead without really earning his
position. In spite of recent criticisms of lax standards in American schools, it is in keeping with the general
mobility pattern that a Gallup Poll taken in April, 1958, reports that school principals are much more likely to
make such criticisms than parents. While 90 percent of the principals thought that “our schools today demand
too little work from the students,” only 51 percent of the parents thought so, with 33 percent saying that the
work was about right and six percent that schools demanded too much work.20
Second, the logic of preparation for a contest prevails in United States schools, and emphasizes keeping
everyone in the running until the final stages. In primary and secondary schools the assumption tends to be
made that those who are learning satisfactorily need little special attention while the less successful require help
to be sure that they remain in the contest and may compete for the final stakes. As recently as December, 1958,
a nationwide Gallup Poll gave evidence that this attitude had not been radically altered by the international
situation. When asked whether or not teachers should devote extra time to the bright students, 26 percent of the
respondents replied “yes” and 67 percent, “no.” But the responses changed to 86 percent “yes” and only nine
percent “no” when the question was asked concerning “slow students.”21
In western states the junior college offers many students a “second chance” to qualify for university, and all
state universities have some provision for substandard high school students to earn admission.
The university itself is run like the true contest: standards are set competitively, students are forced to pass a
series of trials each semester, and only a minority of the entrants achieve the prize of graduation. This pattern
contrasts sharply with the English system in which selection is supposed to be relatively complete before
entrance to university, and students may be subject to no testing whatsoever for the first year or more of
university study. Although university completion rates have not been estimated accurately in either country,
some figures are indicative of the contrast. In American institutions of higher learning in 1957–1958, the ratio
of bachelor’s and first-professional degrees to the number of first-time degree-credit enrollments in the fall four
years earlier was reported to be .610 for men and .488 for women.22 The indicated 39 and 51 percent drop-out
rates are probably underestimates because transfers from two-year junior colleges swell the number of degrees
without being included in first-time enrollments. In England, a study of the careers of individual students reports
that in University College, London, almost 82 percent of entering students between 1948 and 1951 eventually
graduated with a degree. A similar study a few years earlier at the University of Liverpool shows a comparative
figure of almost 87 percent.23 Under contest mobility, the object is to train as many as possible in the skills
necessary for elite status so as to give everyone a chance to maintain competition at the highest pitch. Under
sponsored mobility, the objective is to indoctrinate elite culture in only those presumably who will enter the
elite, lest there grow a dangerous number of “angry young men” who have elite skills without elite station.
Third, systems of mobility significantly affect educational content. Induction into elite culture under
sponsored mobility is consistent with an emphasis on school esprit de corps which is employed to cultivate
norms of intra-class loyalty and elite tastes and manners. Similarly, formal schooling built about highly
specialized study in fields wholly of intellectual or aesthetic concern and of no “practical” value serves the
purpose of elite culture. Under contest mobility in the United States, in spite of frequent faculty endorsement of
“liberal education,” schooling tends to be evaluated in terms of its practical benefits and to become, beyond the
elementary level, chiefly vocational. Education does not so much provide what is good in itself as those skills,
especially vocational skills, presumed to be necessary in the competition for the real prizes of life.
These contrasts are reflected in the different national attitudes toward university students who are gainfully
employed while in school. More students in the United States than in Britain are employed part-time, and
relatively fewer of the American students receive subsidies toward subsistence and living expenses. The most
generous programs of state aid in the United States, except those applying to veterans and other special groups,
do not normally cover expenses other than tuition and institutional fees. British maintenance grants are designed
to cover full living expenses, taking into account parental ability to pay.24 Under sponsored mobility, gainful
employment serves no apprenticeship or testing function, and is thought merely to prevent students from
gaining the full benefit of their schooling. L. J. Parry speaks of the general opposition to student employment
and asserts that English university authorities almost unanimously hold that “if a person must work for financial
reasons, he should never spend more than four weeks on such work during the whole year.”25
Under contest mobility, success in school work is not viewed as a sufficient test of practical merit, but must
be supplemented by a test in the world of practical affairs. Thus in didactic folk tales the professional engineer
also proves himself to be a superior mechanic, the business tycoon a skillful behind-the-counter salesman. By
“working his way through school” the enterprising student “earns” his education in the fullest sense, keeps in
touch with the practical world, and gains an apprenticeship into vocational life. Students are often urged to seek
part-time employment, even when there is no financial need, and in some instances schools include paid
employment as a requirement for graduation. As one observer describes the typical American view, a student
willing to work part-time is a “better bet” than “the equally bright student who receives all of his financial
support from others.”26
Finally, training in “social adjustment” is peculiar to the system of contest mobility. The reason for this
emphasis is clear when it is understood that adjustment training presumably prepares students to cope with
situations for which there are no rules of intercourse or for which the rules are unknown, but in which the good
opinions of others cannot be wholly ignored. Under sponsored mobility, elite recruits are inducted into a
homogeneous stratum within which there is consensus regarding the rules, and within which they succeed
socially by mastering these rules. Under contest mobility, the elite aspirant must relate himself both to the
established elite and to the masses, who follow different rules, and the elite itself is not sufficiently
homogeneous to evolve consensual rules of intercourse. Furthermore, in the contest the rules may vary
according to the background of the competitor, so that each aspirant must successfully deal with persons playing
the game with slightly different rules. Consequently, adjustment training is increasingly considered to be one of
the important skills imparted by the school system.27 That the emphasis on such training has had genuine
popular support is indicated by a 1945 Fortune poll in which a national sample of adults was asked to select the
one or two things that would be very important for a son of theirs to get out of college. Over 87 percent chose
“Ability to get along with and understand people,” and this answer was the most frequently chosen as the very
most important thing to get out of college.28 In this respect, British education may provide better preparation for
participation in an orderly and controlled world, while American education may prepare students more
adequately for a less ordered situation. The reputedly superior ability of “Yankees” to get things done seems to
imply such ability.
To this point the discussion has centered on the tax-supported school systems in both countries, but the
different place and emphasis of the privately supported secondary schools can also be related to the distinction
between sponsored and contest mobility. Since private secondary schools in both countries are principally
vehicles for transmitting the marks of high family status, their mobility function is quite tangential. Under
contest mobility, the private schools presumably should have little or no mobility function. On the other hand, if
there is to be mobility in a sponsored system, the privately controlled school populated largely with the children
of elite parents would be the ideal device through which to induct selectees from lower levels into elite status.
By means of a scholarship program, promising members of lesser classes could be chosen early for recruitment.
The English “public” schools, in fact, have incorporated into their charters provisions to insure that a few boys
from lesser classes will enter each year. Getting one’s child into a “public” school, or even into one of the less
prestigeful private schools, assumes an importance in England relatively unknown in the United States. If the
children cannot win scholarships the parents often make extreme financial sacrifices in order to pay the cost of
this relatively exclusive education.29
How much of a role private secondary schools have played in mobility in either country is difficult to
determine. American studies of social mobility usually omit information on private versus tax-supported
secondary school attendance, and English studies showing the advantage of “public” school attendance
generally fail to distinguish between the mobile and the nonmobile in this respect. However, during the
nineteenth century the English “public” schools were used by nouveaux riches members of the manufacturing
classes to enable their sons to achieve unqualified elite status.30 In one sense, the rise of the manufacturing
classes through free enterprise introduced a large measure of contest mobility which threatened to destroy the
traditional sponsorship system. But by using the “public” schools in this fashion they bowed to the legitimacy of
the traditional system—an implicit acknowledgement that upward mobility was not complete without sponsored
induction. Dennis Brogan speaks of the task of the “public” schools in the nineteenth century as “the job of
marrying the old English social order to the new.”31
With respect to mobility, the parallel between the tax-supported grammar schools and the “public” schools
in England is of interest. The former in important respects have been patterned after the latter, adopting their
view of mobility but making it a much larger part of their total function. Generally, the grammar schools are the
vehicle for sponsored mobility throughout the middle ranges of the class system, modelled after the pattern of
the “public” schools which remain the agencies for sponsored mobility into the elite.

CONCLUSION: SUGGESTIONS FOR RESEARCH

The foregoing discussion is broadly impressionistic and speculative, reflecting more the general impression of
an observer of both countries than a systematic exploration of data. Relevant data of a variety of sorts are cited
above, but their use is more illustrative than demonstrative. However, several lines of research are suggested by
this tentative analysis. One of these is an exploration of different channels of mobility in both England and the
United States in an attempt to discover the extent to which mobility corresponds to the mobility types.
Recruitment to the Catholic priesthood, for example, probably strictly follows a sponsorship norm regardless of
the dominant contest norm in the United States.
The effect of changes in the major avenues of upward mobility upon the dominant norms requires
investigation. The increasing importance of promotion through corporation hierarchies and the declining
importance of the entrepreneurial path of upward mobility undoubtedly compromise the ideal pattern of contest
mobility. The growing insistence that higher education is a prerequisite to more and more occupations is a
similar modification. Yet, there is little evidence of a tendency to follow the logic of sponsorship beyond the
bureaucratic selection process. The prospect of a surplus of college-educated persons in relation to jobs
requiring college education may tend to restore the contest situation at a higher level, and the further possibility
that completion of higher education may be more determined by motivational factors than by capacity suggests
that the contest pattern continues within the school.
In England, on the other hand, two developments may weaken the sponsorship system. One is positive
response to popular demand to allow more children to secure the grammar school type of training, particularly
by including such a program in the secondary modern school. The other is introduction of the comprehensive
secondary school; relatively uncommon at present but a major plank in the labour party’s education platform, it
remains to be determined whether the comprehensive school in England will take a distinctive form and serve a
distinctive function, which preserves the pattern of sponsorship, or will approximate the present American
system.
Finally, the assertion that these types of mobility are embedded in the genuine folk norms requires specific
investigation. Here, a combination of direct study of popular attitudes and content analysis of popular responses
to crucial issues would be useful. Perhaps the most significant search would be for evidence showing what
courses of action require no special justification or explanation because they are altogether “natural” and
“right,” and what courses of action, whether approved or not, require special justification and explanation. Such
evidence, appropriately used, would show the extent to which the patterns described are genuine folk norms
rather than mere by-products of particular structural factors. It would also permit determination of the extent to
which acceptance of the folk norms is diffused among the different segments of the populations.

NOTES

1. A comprehensive summary of such studies appears in Seymour M. Lipset and Reinhard Bend ix. Social
Mobility in Industrial Society, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1959.
2. Cf. C. A. Anderson, “The Social Status of University Students in Relation to Type of Economy: Art
International Comparison,” Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology, London, 1956, vol. V,
pp. 51–63; J. E. Floud, Social Class and Educational Opportunity, London: Heinemarm, 1956; W. L.
Warner, R. J. Havighurst, and M. B. Loeb, Who Shall Be Educated? New York: Harper, 1944.
3. Reference is made throughout the chapter to “elite” and “masses.” The generalizations, however, are
intended to apply throughout the stratification continuum to relations between members of a given class
 and the class or classes above it. Statements about mobility are intended in general to apply to mobility
from manual to middle-class levels, lower-middle to upper-middle class, and so on, as well as into the
strictly elite groups. The simplified expressions avoid the repeated use of cumbersome and involved
statements which might otherwise be required.
4. The normative element in an organizing norm goes beyond Max Weber’s ideal type, conveying more of
the sense of Durkheim’s collective representation; cf. Ralph H. Turner, “The Normative Coherence of Folk
Concepts,” Research Studies of the State College of Washington, 25 (1957), pp. 127–136. Charles Wagley
has developed a similar concept which he calls “ideal pattern” in his as yet unpublished work on Brazilian
kinship. See also Howard Becker, “Constructive Typology in the Social Sciences,” American Sociological
Review, 5 (February 1940), pp. 40–55.
5. Geoffrey Gorer remarks on the favorable evaluation of the successful gamble in American culture:
“Gambling is also a respected and important component in many business ventures. Conspicuous
improvement in a man’s financial position is generally attributed to a lucky combination of industry, skill,
and gambling, though the successful gambler prefers to refer to his gambling as ‘vision.’” The American
People (New York: Norton, 1948), p. 178.
6. Vilfredo Pareto, The Mind and Society (NewYork: Harcourt, Brace, 1935), vol. 4, p. 1796.
7. Many writers have noted that different kinds of societies facilitate the rise of different kinds of
personalities, either in the stratification hierarchy or in other ways. Cf. Jessie Bernard, American
Community Behavior (New York: Dryden, 1949), p. 205. A particularly interesting statement is
Martindale’s exploration of “favored personality” types in sacred and secular studies. Don Martindale and
Elio Monachesi, Elements of Sociology (New York: Harper, 1951), pp. 312–378.
8. At one time in the United States a good many owners of expensive British Jaguar automobiles carried
large signs on the cars identifying the make. Such a display would have been unthinkable under a
sponsored mobility system since the Jaguar owner would not care for the esteem of persons too uninformed
to tell a Jaguar from a less prestigious automobile.
9. See, e.g., Lawrence Lipton, The Holy Barbarians (New York: Messner, 1959).
10. Cf. Albert K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955).
11. D. V. Glass, editor, Social Mobility in Britain (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954), pp. 144–145, reports
studies showing only small variations in intelligence between occupational levels.
12. Gorer, op. cit., pp. 172–187.
13. See, e.g., Los Angeles Times (May 4, 1959), p. I, Part 24.
14. The nature and operation of the “eleven-plus” system are fully reviewed in a report by a committee of the
British Psychological Society and in a report of extensive research into the adequacy of selection methods.
See P. E. Vernon, editor, Secondary School Selection: A British Psychological Inquiry (London: Methuen,
1957); and Alfred Yates and D. A. Pidgeon, Admission to Grammar Schools (London: Newnes
Educational Publishing Co., 1957).
15. J. E. Floud, A. H. Halsey, and F. M. Martin, Social Class and Educational Opportunity (London:
Heinemann, 1956).
16. Mary D. Wilson documents the reduction in aspirations characterizing students in British secondary
modern schools and notes the contrast with American studies revealing much more “unrealistic”
aspirations; see “The Vocational Preferences of Secondary Modern School-children,” British Journal of
Educational Psychology, 23 (1953), pp. 97–113. See also Ralph H. Turner, “The Changing Ideology of
Success,” Transactions of the Third World Congress of Sociology, 1956, London, vol. V, esp. p. 37.
17. Pointed out by Hilde Himmelweit in private communication.
18. Less adequate financial provision and a higher student-teacher ratio are mentioned as obstacles to parity of
 secondary modern schools with grammar schools in The Times Educational Supplement (February 22,
1957), p. 241. On difficulties in achieving prestige comparable with grammar schools, see G. Baron,
“Secondary Education in Britain: Some Present-Day Trends.” Teachers College Record, 57 (January
1956), pp. 211–221; and O. Banks, Parity and Prestige in English Secondary Education (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955). See also Vernon, op. cit., pp. 19–22.
19. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Knopf, 1945), vol. I, p. 52.
20. An earlier Gallup Poll has disclosed that 62 percent of the parents opposed stiffened college entrance
requirements while only 27 percent favored them. Reported in Time (April 14, 1958), p. 45.
21. Reported in the Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1958, Part I, p. 16.
22. U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education, Earned Degrees Conferred by
Higher Education Institutions, 1957-1958, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959, p. 3.
23. Nicholas Malleson, “Student Performance at University College, London, 1948-1951,” Universities
Quarterly, 12 (May, 1958), pp. 288-319.
24. See, e.g., C. A. Quattlebaum, Federal Aid to Students for Higher Education, Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1956; and “Grants to Students: University and Training Colleges,” The Times
Educational Supplement, May 6, 1955, p. 446.
25. “Students’ Expenses,” The Times Educational Supplement, May 6, 1955, p. 447.
26. R. H. Eckelberry, “College Jobs for College Students,” Journal of Higher Education, 27 (March, 1956), p.
174.
27. Adjustment training is not a necessary accompaniment of contest mobility. The shift during the last half
century toward the increased importance of social acceptability as an elite credential has brought such
training into correspondingly greater prominence.
28. Reported in Hadley Cantril, editor, Public Opinion 1935–1946. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1951, p. 186.
29. For one account of the place of “public” schools in the English educational system, see Dennis Brogen,
The English People. New York: Knopf, 1943, pp. 18–56.
30. A. H. Halsey of Birmingham University has called my attention to the importance of this fact.
31. Op. cit., pp. 24–25.

SOURCE: Ralph Turner, “Modes of Social Ascent through Education: Sponsored and Contest Mobility,”
American Sociological Review 25, December 1960:855–67.
4
STATUS ATTAINMENT PROCESSES
ARCHIBALD O. HALLER AND ALEJANDRO PORTES

INTRODUCTION

Statuses are inequalities among social units, such as persons or families, which are more or less institutionalized
within the larger social system. These inequalities occur in most societies along a plurality of basic dimensions.
Three such dimensions come closest to being regarded universally as bases for status systems: wealth, power,
and prestige (Runciman, 1968; Haller, 1970). Abstract hierarchies represented by these dimensions are
operationalized in social life by a broader set of specific status variables. They include, among others, income
and property, political influence, prestige in the occupational domain, and generalized esteem in the community.
Of these, for reasons explained below, the variable most commonly focused upon is occupation and, more
specifically, occupational prestige (Duncan, Featherman, and Duncan, 1972; Hodge, Siegel, and Rossi, 1966).
Also employed as status indicators, though less frequently than occupation, are income (Miller, 1966), general
wealth (Lampman, 1962), and reputational prestige and influence in the community (Warner and Lunt, 1941;
Lehman, 1969; Walton, 1971). Education has been proposed as a fourth basic status dimension (Svalastoga,
1965). Education, however, seems to lack the abstractness and universality of the first three hierarchies, its
formal importance being limited to relatively modern societies (Haller, 1970). Concern for education in the
study of stratification systems seems better justified by its increasingly important role as determinant of
positions in subsequent variables directly representing differences in wealth, power, and prestige (Rosen,
Crockett, and Nunn, 1969).
Among many study areas to which the permanent fact of social inequality has given rise, the problem of
“movement” along status dimensions has few rivals in the amount of interest it has elicited. Two focal points of
concern have been the extent to which ascriptive factors at birth determine subsequent levels of achievement
and the extent to which initial positions of individuals in the stratification system influence their positions at
later points in time. The initial impetus provided by Sorokin’s (1927) plea for empirical research instead of
speculation in this area was followed by nearly three decades in which the above issues were approached under
the labels inter- and intra-generational mobility, respectively.
Research on mobility has been useful in providing descriptions of the extent and direction of population
movements along different status dimensions in particular societies. Comparing rates of upward and downward
mobility between different societies has given rise in turn to insightful theorizing about societal causes of static
versus changing inequalities and the social and political consequences of these alternative situations (Lipset and
Bendix, 1959).
However, for the most part there is a paucity of causal explanations of mobility at the individual level. The
magnetism exercised on researchers by the mobility problem has meant almost exclusive concentration on
description—analysis of conventional mobility matrices per se—to the neglect of explanation—study of the
possible determinants of observed status movements. Analysis of the causes and consequences of mobility
within a society has been handicapped, in addition, by use of a “difference score” between parental or individual
initial positions and present ones to represent direction and distance of status movement. Because such a score is
not a simple measure but a composite of initial and terminal positions, its statistical manipulation is fraught with
difficulties. As noted by Blau and Duncan (1967), causal influences on parental or early individual positions
(and their impact on mobility scores) may not be identical with those on terminal ones. Identical mobility scores
may be the result of quite different causal configurations making simple, homogenous explanations
inappropriate. Moreover, initial parental or individual status is not causally indifferent to final outcomes. Their
impact on later attainment—reflected in consistently sizable correlations—means that mobility in either
direction varies in degree of difficulty with its starting point: there are few chances of downward mobility for
children of those at the bottom of the stratification ladder and equally restricted opportunities for upward
movement among offsprings of those at the top. Interpretation of statistical results based on mobility as a
difference score runs into the constant risk of confusing substantive findings with those due to an inevitable
regression toward the mean (Blau and Duncan, 1967).
Given the present ambiguities in nomenclature, a new term is in order. “Status attainment” seems to us to
avoid the pitfalls of difference scores and premature conclusions concerning the role of motivation. It is specific
enough to draw attention only to changes in the status of persons, yet is general enough to cover all such
processes, including intergenerational status transmission. Throughout the remainder of this paper, we will
employ “status attainment processes” to refer to those sets of events by which individuals come to occupy their
positions in the social hierarchies of wealth, power, and prestige. The plural “processes” calls attention to two
aspects. First, different societies may have quite different sets of events leading to status attainment. The well-
known comparison between the American system of “contest” attainment and the British system of “sponsored”
attainment furnishes a good example of these differences (Turner, 1960). Second, status attainment within
specific societies tends to occur as a net result of several quite different sets of events. This applies to both the
particular status which is attained and the causal processes leading to it. This paper attempts to summarize what
is now known about status attainment processes in the United States today. It may be convenient to state here
reasons for employing occupational status as the main attainment variable to be explained.
In sum, the place of status attainment research in the study of social stratification lies in the effort to specify
the causal sequence through which individuals reach their positions in status hierarchies. Status attainment
research seeks to identify those basic factors describing the persons and their situations which account for
whatever status locations they come to occupy. Knowledge of these causal inputs may allow prediction of
eventual status outcomes for different categories of individuals. While a plurality of social hierarchies offers
alternative foci for the study of attainment, it is occupation, among readily measured status variables, which is
most strategic and which is best known. Finally, study of individual attainment must take into account the
changing structure of status systems within which these processes take place.
The sections below present, in summary fashion, what is known on the basis of empirical research of causal
sequences through which status attainment takes place. Discussion is limited to American society because it is
here that the main research has been conducted. Two such models exist today. We shall call one the “Wisconsin
model” and the other the “Blau-Duncan model.” One, the Blau-Duncan model, is most precisely concerned with
status transmission. Both are grounded solidly in careful research using extensive samples. The following
discussion will aim at clarifying:

1. The dissimilar theoretical orientations but eventual complementarity of the two basic models presented;
2. The relative usefulness of each as analysis is focused on general objective determinants or on more
specific psychological factors;
3. The limitations of both approaches and, by extension, lines of viable research for the future.

MODELS OF STATUS ATTAINMENT

Research on status attainment processes in the U.S. has been conducted along different theoretical paths. The
two models outlined in this section are not the only ones developed, but they are representative of the two main
orientations which sociological thought has followed. Both are based on large data sets and both have employed
path analysis as a form of presentation.
Best known among causal theories of status attainment is Blau and Duncan’s (1967) model. It is based on
data collected from a single cross-sectional sample of the American adult male population as part of the Bureau
of Census’ “Current Population Survey” of March, 1962. Strictly speaking, the concern of the model is status
transmission, or the extent to which ascribed positions relate to subsequent attainment. As such, Blau and
Duncan’s model essentially is an attempt to reconceptualize classic questions of mobility research within a more
useful analytic framework. That is, they focus upon:

1. The extent to which inherited status determines the social fate of individuals.
2. The extent to which earlier positions in status hierarchies affect later levels of attainment.

Their answers are portrayed graphically in a path model reproduced in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1 Blau-Duncan Model of Status Attainment

NOTE: U = respondent’s education; V = father’s education; W = respondent’s first job; X = father’s occupation; Y = respondent’s
present occupation (in 1962).

Basically, the model says that while parental positions exercise some significant direct effects, their primary
influence on occupational attainment is indirect via educational level. Education affects both early and late
occupational attainment while the former also has a sizable effect on the latter. The greater importance of
education-mediated influence vis-à-vis direct parental effects is illustrated further by partitioning gross effects
of parental status variables into their direct and indirect components. As presented in Table 4.1, only the effect
of father’s occupation on initial occupation shows roughly equal direct and indirect components. In all other
cases, direct effects on occupational attainment are much smaller than those mediated first by education and
then by initial occupation.
Variables included in this model are of an “objective” positional nature for which reliable measures are
available. All were already present in conventional mobility research. The major contribution of the model thus
consists of systematizing causal relationships obscured by usage of mobility “difference scores.” Restriction of
the theory to these variables means, however, that further questions concerning the finer mechanisms through
which status attainment takes place are not answered. Crucial among them:

1. What are the mediating processes by which parental status affects educational and, to a lesser extent,
occupational attainment?
2. In what specific ways are mental ability and academic performance related to status attainment?

Answers to these questions require examination of causal processes at a more specific social psychological
level. It is obvious, for example, that father’s occupation does not affect educational and occupational
attainments directly. What father’s occupation “means” in terms of the set of influences it can bring to bear on
offspring’s attitudes and cognitions and how these in turn affect attainment-oriented behavior comprise crucial
aspects for study if adequate understanding of the dynamics of status attainment is to be reached.
To explore these questions is to enter the less “safe” realm of social psychological variables. It is also,
however, to face a challenging scientific endeavor since specification of mediating mechanisms can enrich a
causal model based on objective variables.
The second model of status attainment, presented below, departs from a social psychological orientation. Its
basic features were developed by a group of researchers originally affiliated with the University of Wisconsin
(Sewell, Haller, and Portes, 1969; Sewell, Haller, and Ohlendorf, 1970; Woelfel and Haller, 1971). The data set
was collected by Little (1958) and Sewell (1971) from a one-third random sample of Wisconsin’s male high
school seniors in 1957. Information was obtained at that time on parental status, area of residence, and other
objective variables as well as on more subjective factors such as significant others’ influence and respondent’s
educational and occupational aspirations. Eighty-nine per cent of the sample was reinterviewed in 1964–65 to
ascertain educational and early occupational attainments.

Table 4.1 Indirect and Direct Effects of Parental Status Variables on Occupational
Attainment

SOURCE: Adapted from Blau and Duncan (1967).

NOTE: N = 20,700 (approx.)
a. Differences are due to the effects of rounding.

The Wisconsin model was first used to describe data on the subsample of farm residents (Sewell, Haller, and
Portes, 1969). Subsequently it was applied to respondents in five different residential areas—farm, village,
small city, medium city, and large city—as well as to the total sample—in order to ascertain whether original
results were specific to the farm population (Sewell, Haller, and Ohlendorf, 1970). This test supported the initial
model with slight modifications. The final model is presented in Diagram 2. Path coefficients (beta weights) for
each residential area are presented in Table 4.2. As these results show, the causal model applies in similar
fashion across different residential categories. The model is parsimonious, involving thirteen of the possible
twenty-six paths among variables arranged in this causal order. Evidence in support of this restriction is
provided by comparing variation in dependent variables accounted for by the model (R2s) versus that explained
when all possible paths are included. The two sets of figures—for each residential area and the total sample—
are presented in Table 4.2. As can be seen, increases in explained variation due to these additional paths are, in
almost all cases, of little consequence.
Total explained variation in early occupational attainment (X1) is forty per cent and in educational
attainment (X2) fifty-seven per cent. These figures compare with thirty-three per cent of variation accounted for
in early occupational attainment (W) and twenty-six per cent in educational attainment (U) by the Blau-Duncan
model.

Diagram 2 The Wisconsin Model of Educational and Early Occupational Attainment

NOTE: X1 = occupational attainment; X2 = educational attainment; X3 = level of occupational aspiration; X4 = level of educational
aspiration; X5 = significant others’ influence; X6 = academic performance; X7 = socioeconomic status; X8 = mental ability.

Both models came to identical conclusions regarding the causal order of comparable status variables. Early
occupational attainment is defined, in both cases, as primarily a function of prior education. Educational and, to
a lesser extent, occupational attainments, in turn, are viewed as causally dependent on parental status. The
Wisconsin model attempts, however, to complement this general model by a series of hypotheses specifying
mediating variables and paths through which initial status variables influence later ones. Direct effects of
parental status on educational and occupational attainments are found to disappear when intervening factors are
considered. Indirect parental status effects occur primarily through significant others’ influences (X5) as the
latter affects the formation of status aspirations (X3, X4) and acts directly on educational attainment.
The model in fact says that practically all the effect that family’s socioeconomic status has on a person’s
educational and occupational attainment is due to its impact on the types of attainment-related personal
influences that the person receives in his adolescence. The measure of significant others’ influence employed on
the Wisconsin sample1 suggests that this impact includes, but is not exhausted by, direct parental influence on
the formation of status aspirations. The family’s socioeconomic position also sets limits on the pool of potential
significant others confronted by the individual and the nature of their orientations. It affects, for example, the
class and general background of possible friends and hence the likelihood of their having and conveying college
plans.
In sum, two theoretical models emerging from the main currents of empirical research on status attainment
have been presented. The first, employing objective status variables, is concerned primarily with status
transmission. The second, employing objective and social psychological variables, is concerned primarily with
the dynamics of status attainment. Variables shared by the two models—parental status, educational and early
occupational attainment—are arranged in the same causal order and yield similar empirical results. Thus, the
main contribution of the second model is not in challenging conclusions reached by the first, but rather in
clarifying the processes through which causal influence of earlier status variables on later ones occurs. Direct
effects of parental status variables on educational and occupational attainment in the first causal model are
shown by the second to be entirely mediated by formation of educational and occupational aspirations and the
impact of significant others’ influences on this process.
In other words, when we look at both systems as status transmission models we find that they yield similar
results, except that the Wisconsin model includes a set of social psychological mediating variables while the
Blau-Duncan model does not.
As in the case of Blau and Duncan’s theory, the Wisconsin model does not contain any radically new
conceptions but rather summarizes in a systematic fashion well-established notions in social psychology and
stratification research as they impinge on the process of status attainment. Most important among them: (1) The
forceful impact of interpersonal influence on the formation of attitudes and their behavioral enactment. This is
portrayed by the strong direct effects of significant others’ influence on educational and occupational aspirations
and its smaller direct effect on educational attainment. (2) The role of self-reflexive action in the adjustment of
status aspirations to more or less conform to perceived ability (Woelfel and Haller, 1971a). (3) The basic role of
status aspirations, as antecedents of educational and occupational attainment. These observations are in
agreement with results of most past research in the area (Kahl, 1953; Herriott, 1963; Alexander and Campbell,
1964; Duncan, Haller, and Portes, 1968).
It is the last set of variables which constitutes the strategic center of the model. Aspirations mediate most of
the influence of antecedent factors on status attainment. Even when educational attainment is taken into
account, occupational aspirations still exercise a significant direct effect on occupational attainment.

Table 4.2 Path Coefficients and Coefficients of Determination for Final Wisconsin
Model and for That Including All Possible Paths: Five Residence Categories
and Total Sample
 The execution of occupational and educational aspirations appears to be a central process in early adult
status attainment, not only because it represents a clear expressive orientation toward desirable goals but also
because it is likely to involve a realistic appraisal of possibilities conveyed to ego by significant others and his
own self-evaluations. The hypothesized impact of aspirations on status attainment does not mean that all or
most specific goals must be fulfilled but, more generally, that initial plans set limits to the range where eventual
attainment levels are likely to be found.

NOTE
 1. Significant others’ influence was measured by a summated index of three variables: parental
encouragement toward college, teachers’ encouragement toward college, and best friend’s college plans.
These variables are moderately inter-correlated. Family socioeconomic status (X7) correlates significantly
with all three. Further details on measurement are found in the original sources: Sewell, Haller, Portes,
1969 and Sewell, Haller, Ohlendorf, 1970. (Sewell, Hauser, and Shah, unpublished, are currently
disaggregating the multi-item indexes and are assessing their effects on subsequent variables.)

REFERENCES

Alexander, C. Norman, and Ernest Q. Campbell. 1964 “Peer influences on adolescent educational aspirations
and attainments.” American Sociological Review 29 (August):568-575.
Blau, Peter M., and Otis Dudley Duncan. 1967 The American Occupational Structure. New York: Wiley.
Boerger, Paul H. 1970 “The Relations of Boys’ Intellectual Achievement Behavior to Parental Involvement,
Aspirations and Accuracy of IQ Estimate.” Unpublished dissertation. University of Minnesota.
Davis, Kingsley, and Wilbert E. Moore. 1945 “Some principles of stratification.” American Sociological
Review 10 (April):242-249.
Duncan, Otis Dudley. 1961 “A socioeconomic index for all occupations.” Pp. 109-138 in Albert J. Reiss, Jr., et
al., (eds.), Occupations and Social Status. New York: Free Press.
Duncan, Otis Dudley, David L. Featherman, and Beverly Duncan. 1972 Socioeconomic Background and
Achievement. New York: Seminar Press.
Duncan, Otis Dudley, Archibald O. Haller, and Alejandro Portes. 1968 “Peer influences on aspirations: A
reinterpretation.” American Journal of Sociology 74 (September): 119-137.
Featherman, David L. 1971 “A social structural model for the socioeconomic career.” American Journal of
Sociology 77 (September): 293-304.
Gasson, Ruth M., Archibald O. Haller, and William H. Sewell. 1972 Attitudes and Facilitation in Status
Attainment. Arnold M. and Carolyn Rose Monograph Series in Sociology. Washington, D.C.: The
American Sociological Association.
Haller, Archibald O. 1970 “Changes in the structure of status systems.” Rural Sociology 35 (December): 469-
487.
Haller, Archibald O., and Irwin W. Miller. 1971 The Occupational Aspiration Scale. Cambridge, Mass.:
Schenkman.
Haller, Archibald 0., and William H. Sewell. 1967 “Occupational choices of Wisconsin farm boys.” Rural
Sociology 32 (March):37-55.
Haller, Archibald O., and Joseph Woelfel. 1972 “Significant others and their expectations: concepts and
instruments to measure interpersonal influence status aspirations.” Rural Sociology 35 (December):591-
621.
Henmon, V. A. C., and M. J. Nelson. 1942 The Henmon-Nelson Test of Mental Ability. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company.
Herriott, Robert E. 1963 “Some social determinants of educational aspiration.” Harvard Educational Review
(Spring):157-177.
Hodge, Robert W., Paul M. Siegel, and Peter H. Rossi. 1966 “Occupational prestige in the United States: 1925-
1963.” Pp. 322-334 in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.), Class, Status and Power: Social
Stratification in Comparative Perspective. New York: Free Press.
Hyman, Herbert, and Elanor Singer (eds.). 1968 Readings and Reference Group Theory and Research. New
York: The Free Press.
Kahl, Joseph A. 1953 “Educational and occupational aspirations of ‘Common Man’ boys.” Harvard
Educational Review (Spring): 186-203.
Kelly, Harold H. 1968 “Two functions of reference groups.” Pp. 77-83 in Herbert Hyman and Elanor Singer
(eds.), Readings and Reference Group Theory and Research. New York: The Free Press.
Knudsen, Dean D. 1969 “The declining status of women: popular myths and the failure of functionalist
thought.” Social Forces (December): 183-193.
Lampman, Robert J. 1962 The Share of the Top Wealth-holders in National Wealth. Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press.
Landecker, Werner S. 1970 “Status congruence, class crystallization, and social cleavage.” Sociology and
Social Research 54 (April):343-355.
Lehman, Edward W. 1969 “Toward a macrosociology of power.” American Sociological Review 34
(August):453-465.
Lewin, Kurt. 1951 “Formalization and progress in psychology.” Pp. 1-29 in Dorwin Cartwright (ed.), Field
Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers by Kurt Lewin. New York: Harper.
Lipset, Seymour, and Reinhard Bendix. 1959 Social Mobility in Industrial Society. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Little, J. Kenneth. 1958 A Statewide Inquiry Into Decisions of Youth About Education Beyond High School.
Madison: University of Wisconsin, School of Education.
McClelland, David C. 1961 The Achieving Society. New York: Free Press.
Miller, Herman P. 1966 Income Distribution in the United States. A 1960 Census Monograph. Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Office.
Parsons, Talcott, and Edward A. Shils. 1951 “Values, motives and systems of action.” Pp. 47-275 in Toward a
General Theory of Action. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Rosen, Bernard C. 1959 “Race, ethnicity, and the achievement syndrome.” American Sociological Review 24
(February):47-60.
Rosen, Bernard C., Harry J. Crockett, Jr., and Clyde Z. Nunn. 1969 Achievement in American Society.
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Intellectual Development. New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston.
Runciman, W. G. 1968 “Class, status, and power?” Pp. 25-61 in J. A. Jackson (ed.), Social Stratification.
London: Cambridge University Press.
Sewell, William H. 1971 “Inequality of opportunity for higher education.” American Sociological Review 36
(October):793-809.
Sewell, William H., and J. Michael Armer. 1966 “Neighborhood context and college plans.” American
Sociological Review 31 (April):159-168.
Sewell, William H., Archibald O. Haller, and George W. Ohlendorf. 1970 “The educational and early
occupational attainment process: replications and revisions.” American Sociological Review 35 (December):
1014-1027.
Sewell, William H., Archibald O. Haller, and Alejandro Portes. 1967 “Educational and occupational
achievements of Wisconsin farm boys.” Paper presented at the meetings of the American Sociological
Association, San Francisco.
Sewell, William H., Archibald O. Haller, and Alejandro Portes. 1969 “The educational and early occupational
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Sewell, William H., Robert M. Hauser, and Vimal P. Shah. n.d. Social Status and Higher Education.
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Sorokin, Pitirim. 1927 Social Mobility. New York: Harper.
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Treiman, Donald J. 1970 “Industrialization and social stratification.” Pp. 207-234 in Edward O. Laumann (ed.),
Social Stratification Research and Theory for the 1970s. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Turner, Ralph H. 1960 “Sponsored and contest mobility and the school system.” American Sociological Review
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Walton, John. 1971 “A methodology for the comparative study of power: Some conceptual and procedural
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Warner, W. Lloyd, and Paul S. Lunt. 1941 The Social Life of a Modern Community. New York: Yale.
Weber, Max. 1946 “Class, Status, and Party.” Pp. 180-195 in Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From
Max Weber. New York: Oxford University Press.
Woelfel, Joseph, and Archibald O. Haller. 1971a “Significant others, the self-reflexive act and the attitude
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Woelfel, Joseph, and Archibald O. Haller. 1971b “Reply to Land, Henry and Hummon.” American Sociological
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Rural Sociology 37 (March):86-97.
Yinger, Milton. 1965 Toward a Field Theory of Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

SOURCE: Archibald O. Haller and Alejandro Portes, “Status Attainment Processes,” Sociology of Education,
Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter, 1973), pp. 51–91. Reprinted with permission from the American Sociological
Association and the authors.
5
HUMAN CAPITAL
GARY S. BECKER

ome activities primarily affect future well-being; the main impact of others is in the present. Some affect
S money income and others psychic income, that is, consumption. Sailing primarily affects consumption, on-
the-job training primarily affects money income, and a college education could affect both. These effects
may operate either through physical resources or through human resources. This study is concerned with
activities that influence future monetary and psychic income by increasing the resources in people. These
activities are called investments in human capital.
The many forms of such investments include schooling, on-the-job training, medical care, migration, and
searching for information about prices and incomes. They differ in their effects on earnings and consumption, in
the amounts typically invested, in the size of returns, and in the extent to which the connection between
investment and return is perceived. But all these investments improve skills, knowledge, or health, and thereby
raise money or psychic incomes.
Recent years have witnessed intensive concern with and research on investment in human capital, much of it
contributed or stimulated by T. W. Schultz. The main motivating factor has probably been a realization that the
growth of physical capital, at least as conventionally measured, explains a relatively small part of the growth of
income in most countries. The search for better explanations has led to improved measures of physical capital
and to an interest in less tangible entities, such as technological change and human capital. Also behind this
concern is the strong dependence of modern military technology on education and skills, the rapid growth in
expenditures on education and health, the age-old quest for an understanding of the personal distribution of
income, the recent growth in unemployment in the United States, the Leontief scarce-factor paradox, and
several other important economic problems.
The result has been the accumulation of a tremendous amount of circumstantial evidence testifying to the
economic importance of human capital, especially of education. Probably the most impressive piece of evidence
is that more highly educated and skilled persons almost always tend to earn more than others. This is true of
developed countries as different as the United States and the Soviet Union, of underdeveloped countries as
different as India and Cuba, and of the United States one hundred years ago as well as today. Moreover, few if
any countries have achieved a sustained period of economic development without having invested substantial
amounts in their labor force, and most studies that have attempted quantitative assessments of contributions to
growth have assigned an important role to investment in human capital. Again, inequality in the distribution of
earnings and income is generally positively related to inequality in education and other training. To take a final
example, unemployment tends to be strongly related, usually inversely, to education.
Passions are easily aroused on this subject and even people who are generally in favor of education, medical
care, and the like often dislike the phrase “human capital” and still more any emphasis on its economic effects.
They are often the people who launch the most bitter attacks on research on human capital, partly because they
fear that emphasis on the “material” effects of human capital detracts from its “cultural” effects, which to them
are more important. Those denying the economic importance of education and other investments in human
capital have attacked the circumstantial evidence in its favor. They argue that the correlation between earnings
and investment in human capital is due to a correlation between ability and investment in human capital, or to
the singling out of the most favorable groups, such as white male college graduates, and to the consequent
neglect of women, dropouts, nonwhites, or high-school graduates. They consider the true correlation to be very
weak, and, therefore, a poor guide and of little help to people investing in human capital. The association
between education and economic development or between inequality in education and income is attributed to
the effect of income on education, considering education as a consumption good, and hence of no greater causal
significance than the association between automobile ownership and economic development or between the
inequality in ownership and incomes.

SOURCE: Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, with Special Reference to Education, 2nd
edition, by Gary S. Becker. Copyright © 1975 by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. Reprinted by
permission of the University of Chicago Press.
6
CULTURAL CAPITAL
Allusions, Gaps, and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical
Developments
MICHÉLE LAMONT AND ANNETTE LAREAU

INTRODUCTION

Culture has recently become an “in” topic in both American and European sociology. This trend is not an
intellectual fad, as a large number of researchers are seriously engaged in dealing with the theoretically central
issue of the interaction between culture and social structure. We are here concerned with scrutinizing a small
segment of this growing field, the recent work on cultural capital. This concept—defined as high status cultural
signals used in cultural and social selection—was first developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron
to analyze how culture and education contribute to social reproduction. Born in France, the concept of cultural
capital has been imported to the U.S. and used to account for phenomena ranging from the political attitudes of
the new middle class (Gouldner 1979; Lamont 1986; Martin and Szelenyi 1987), to the structure of the
stratification system (Collins 1979), the reproduction of educational inequality (Apple 1982; Apple and Weis
1985; Carnoy 1982; Cookson and Persell 1985a; Giroux 1983), and the influence of family background on
school experience, educational attainment, and marital selection (DiMaggio 1982; DiMaggio and Mohr 1985;
Ganzeboom 1986; Lareau 1987).
As work dealing with cultural capital has grown, the concept has come to assume a large number of, at
times, contradictory meanings. Cultural capital has been operationalized as knowledge of high culture
(DiMaggio and Useem 1978) and educational attainment (Robinson and Garnier 1985). Others defined it as the
curriculum of elite schools (Cookson and Persell 1985a), the symbolic mastery of “practices” (Martin and
Szelenyi 1987), the capacity to perform tasks in culturally acceptable ways (Gouldner 1979), and participation
in high culture events (DiMaggio and Mohr 1985). Still other researchers viewed cultural capital as
“symbols . . . in accord with specific class interests” (Dubin 1986) and “the stock of ideas and concepts acquired
from previous encounters” (Collins 1987). This proliferation of definitions, undoubtedly a sign of intellectual
vitality—and possibly, of the fruitfulness of the concept—has created sheer confusion. We are now reaching a
point where the concept could become obsolete, as those using it equate it with notions as different as human
capital, elite culture, and high culture. An attempt at theoretical clarification is long overdue.
But clarifying the concept presumes that it can be put to good use. Why is cultural capital important? Is it
something other than a faddish new term used to address the perennial status issues which have fascinated
researchers from the days of Weber and Veblen on? We will argue that if the concept does not point to
phenomena much different from those of concern to these traditional sociologists, its underlying theory provides
a considerably more complex and far-reaching conceptual framework to deal with the phenomenon of cultural
and social selection.
The concept of cultural capital is also important because it has improved our understanding of the process
through which social stratification systems are maintained. As noted by Bielby (1981), Cicourel and Mehan
(1984), and Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel (1981), while the effect of social origin on educational and occupational
outcomes is among the most studied topics in the sociological literature, little progress has been made toward
understanding how this relationship is reproduced. Bourdieu and Passeron’s work (1979[1964]) received wide-
spread attention at first because it proposed a novel view of the process by which social and cultural resources
of family life shape academic success in a subtle and pervasive fashion. These authors’ earlier work showed that
apparently neutral academic standards are laden with specific cultural class resources acquired at home.
Following Bernstein’s (1964; 1977) observation that working class and middle class children are taught
different language “codes” at home, Bourdieu and Passeron (1979[1964]) argued that other types of preferences,
attitudes and behaviors, such as familiarity with high culture, are valued in school settings, while being more
typical of the culture transmitted in “dominant classes” (i.e., upper-middle and middle class) families.
Bourdieu and Passeron’s work also improved upon existing studies of social reproduction and mobility
because their theory was structural, yet it left room for human agency. Indeed, they argued that individuals’
social position and family background provide them with social and cultural resources which need to be actively
“invested” to yield social profits.1 This contrasts with labor market studies which assume a preexisting
occupational and organizational structure of “empty places” (Hodson and Kaufman 1982).

BOURDIEU AND PASSERON ON CULTURAL CAPITAL

1. The Seminal Question

The concept of cultural capital was developed by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron to analyze the
impact of culture on the class system and on the relationship between action and social structure.2 The authors
were first concerned with “the contribution made by the educational system [and family socialization] to the
reproduction of the structure of power relationships and symbolic relationships between classes, by contributing
to the reproduction of the structure of distribution of cultural capital among these classes” (Bourdieu
1977a[1971], p. 487). The well-known argument goes as follows: schools are not socially neutral institutions
but reflect the experiences of the “dominant class.” Children from this class enter school with key social and
cultural cues, while working class and lower class students must acquire the knowledge and skills to negotiate
their educational experience after they enter school. Although they can acquire the social, linguistic, and cultural
competencies which characterize the upper-middle and middle class, they can never achieve the natural
familiarity of those born to these classes and are academically penalized on this basis. Because differences in
academic achievement are normally explained by differences in ability rather than by cultural resources
transmitted by the family, social transmission of privileges is itself legitimized, for academic standards are not
seen as handicapping lower class children.
Bourdieu and Passeron’s argument on social reproduction is in some respects similar to the arguments made
by researchers who studied the discriminatory character of schools by looking at language interaction patterns
(Heath 1982; 1983), counseling and placement (Cicourel and Kitsuse 1969), ability groupings (Rist 1970), the
implementation of the curriculum (Anyon 1981), and authority relations in the classroom (Wilcox 1982). These
studies have all pointed to the subtle and not so subtle ways that formally meritocratic institutions help to
recreate systems of social stratification. However, rather than interpreting these patterns as examples of an
individual’s or school’s discriminatory behavior, Bourdieu and Passeron saw these behaviors as
institutionalized. Their analysis was more structural, and as such provided a sociologically more powerful
framework for explaining the “taken-for-granted routines” of daily life.

2. Disentangling the Concept

A close reading of Bourdieu and Passeron’s work on cultural capital suggests that the authors group under
this concept a large number of types of cultural attitudes, preferences, behaviors, and goods, and that the
concept performs different roles in their various writings. In Inheritors (Bourdieu and Passeron 1979[1964]),
cultural capital consists of informal academic standards which are also class attributes of the dominant class.
These standards and attributes are: informal knowledge about the school, traditional humanist culture, linguistic
competence and specific attitudes, or personal style (e.g., ease, naturalness, aloofness, creativity, distinction and
“brilliance”). In Reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977[1970]), the concept retains its original definition as
academic standards. However, the constitutive items are narrowed, and some are defined in more detail.
Cultural capital is described as including only linguistic aptitude (grammar, accent, tone), previous academic
culture, formal knowledge and general culture, as well as diplomas. Attitudes toward school, manners and
personal style, and taste for high culture are now conceived of as class ethos rather than cultural capital. In
Distinction (Bourdieu 1984[1979]), cultural capital plays a radically different theoretical role: it is an indicator
and a basis of class position; cultural attitudes, preferences, and behaviors are conceptualized as “tastes” which
are being mobilized for social selection. Bourdieu shows that tastes vary with cultural and economic capital
(i.e., with occupational differences in level of education and income). In other words, disaggregated dimensions
of cultural capital (credentials on the one hand, and preferences and behaviors on the other) are the dependent
and the independent variables (1984[1979], p. 81).3 Finally, in “Les stratégies de reconversion” (Bourdieu,
Boltanski, and St-Martin 1973, p. 93), cultural capital is a power resource (technical, scientific, economic or
political expertise) facilitating access to organizational positions (for a similar perspective, cf. the new class
theorists Bazelon 1963; Bell 1973), and simultaneously an indicator for class positions.
Therefore, in Bourdieu’s global theoretical framework, cultural capital is alternatively an informal academic
standard, a class attribute, a basis for social selection, and a resource for power which is salient as an
indicator/basis of class position. Subtle shifts across these analytical levels are found throughout the work. This
polysemy makes for the richness of Bourdieu’s writings, and is a standard of excellence in French academia
(Lamont 1987a). However, the absence of explicit statements makes systematic comparison and assessment of
the work extremely difficult.
Unfortunately, the forms of cultural capital enumerated by Bourdieu, which range from attitudes to
preferences, behaviors and goods, cannot all perform the five aforementioned theoretical functions: for instance,
while “previous academic culture” can be salient as an informal academic standard, it cannot constitute an
indicator of class position, because it is not an essential class characteristic. Neither can it constitute a power
resource (in the sense used by new class theorists), because it does not give access to positions in organizations.
Also, level of education cannot be a signal of dominant class culture, because it is a continuous variable that
applies to members of all classes.
Because of these incompatibilities between functions and forms of cultural capital, and because of the
confusion with the original model, we need to simplify the latter and use the term cultural capital to refer to the
performance of a narrower set of functions. The idea of cultural capital used as a basis for exclusion from jobs,
resources, and high status groups is one of the most important and original dimensions of Bourdieu and
Passeron’s theory. For this reason, we propose to define cultural capital as institutionalized, i.e., widely shared,
high status cultural signals (attitudes, preferences, formal knowledge, behaviors, goods and credentials) used
for social and cultural exclusion, the former referring to exclusion from jobs and resources, and the latter, to
exclusion from high status groups. This definition is encompassing as it also includes signals operating as
informal academic standards, and those that are dominant class attributes, for both types perform exclusivist
functions. New terms need to be coined for the remaining functions of cultural capital with which we are not
concerned here.4
Examples of cultural capital as high status cultural signals would be 1) thinking that knowing what a good
wine is is important [attitude]; 2) knowing how to consume and evaluate wine [formal knowledge]; 3) liking not
only “certified” good wines, but “osés” ones as well (i.e., having enough confidence in one’s taste to define
signals that are not wide-spread as legitimate and to be able to manipulate the code) [preference and attitude]; 4)
having a sense of how conspicuous wine consumption should be to be tastefully done [behavior and attitude]; 5)
having a wine cellar [possession of a good]. For those who don’t share such signals, other more general
examples might apply: owning a luxury car or a large house [possession of a good], being thin and healthy
[preference and behavior], being at ease with abstract thinking [attitude], knowing how to send signals of one’s
competence [behavior], being a good citizen [attitude], knowing the appropriate range of topics of conversation
in specific settings [behavior], having upper-middle class speech patterns [behavior], and having scientific
expertise, and a well-rounded culture [formal knowledge].
For any of these signals to be considered a form of cultural capital, it needs to be defined as a high status
cultural signal by a relatively large group of people: the institutionalized or shared quality of these signals make
them salient as status markers. Contrary to Coleman and Rainwater (1978), Bourdieu is not concerned with how
individuals gain status, but with the institutionalized structure of unequally valued signals itself; therefore,
again, he adopts a more structural and less individualistic approach to status attribution.
The authors often use the term “legitimate culture” interchangeably with cultural capital.5 Yet, they don’t
specify if by legitimate culture they mean signals which are largely believed to be “most valued” (i.e.,
prestigious) or if they refer to those that are “respectable” (i.e., good but not prestigious) (Bourdieu 1984[1979],
p. 228). This is a significant distinction because prestigious signals would be salient for controlling access to
high status positions, while “respectable” signals would act to exclude lower class members from middle class
circle.6
It is important to note in this context that we believe that lower class high status cultural signals (e.g., being
streetwise) perform within the lower class the same exclusivist function that the legitimate culture performs in
the middle and the upper-middle class. However, for the purpose of clarity, the term cultural capital is not
applied to these signals because they cannot be equated with the legitimate culture. A new concept needs to be
coined for these signals; “marginal high status signal” is a potential candidate.

4. Exclusion and Power

Implicitly building on Weber’s and Goff-man’s theories of status, Bourdieu argues that cultural capital is
used by dominant groups to mark cultural distance and proximity, monopolize privileges, and exclude and
recruit new occupants of high status positions (1984[1979], p. 31). Whereas Weber (1946; 1968) is more
concerned with prestige and inter-group status boundaries (e.g., castes, ethnic groups), Bourdieu, like Douglas
and Isherwood (1979), adopts a more Durkheimian approach, and focuses on the necessary classificatory (or
marking) effects of cultural practices. To use Goffman’s terminology, cultural capital is seen as an
“interpersonal identifier of social ranking;” which is only recognized as such by those who possess the
legitimate culture; it is a basis for status boundaries as it signals participation in high status groups and distance
from cultural practices, preferences, and groups that are “‘common’, ‘easy’, ‘natural’, and ‘undemanding’”
(Bourdieu 1984[1979], p. 31). It is used to exclude and unify people, not only lower status groups, but equals as
well. Exclusion is not seen as typical of special “status” groups, such as the Chinese literati, but exists to various
degrees throughout the social fabric.
It is worth noting that in contrast to Veblen who dealt with conspicuous consumption (i.e., “showing-off”
which would normally be a conscious act), Bourdieu (1977b[1972]; 1988, p. 3) thinks that most signals are sent
unconsciously because they are learned through family socialization, and incorporated as dispositions, or
habitus, or are the unintended classificatory results of cultural codes. Also, cultural exclusion is conceived of as
intrinsic to modern society, rather than as a phenomenon likely to disappear with the diffusion of capitalism and
the decline of status groups.
We suggest that Bourdieu and Passeron build on Weber in an important way by introducing a more complex
conception of the process of exclusion. They are concerned with four major forms of exclusion: self-
elimination, overselection, relegation, and direct exclusion. In the case of self-elimination, individuals adjust
their aspirations to their perceived chances of success (Bourdieu 1974[1966], p. 35). They also exclude
themselves because they do not feel at ease in specific social settings where they are not familiar with specific
cultural norms. In the case of overselection, individuals with less-valued cultural resources are subjected to the
same type of selection as those who are culturally privileged and have to perform equally well despite their
cultural handicap, which in fact means that they are asked to perform more than others (Bourdieu and Passeron
1979[1964], p. 14). In the case of relegation, individuals with less-valued cultural resources end up in less
desirable positions and get less out of their educational investment. Their cultural disadvantage is manifested
under the forms of “relay mechanisms such as early, often ill-informed decisions, forced choice, and lost time”
(Bourdieu and Passeron 1979[1964], p. 14). These three forms can be distinguished from direct exclusion
resulting from “elective affinities” based on similarities in taste (with which Weber was mostly concerned).
Because this more sophisticated approach to indirect exclusion is one of the most original aspects of Bourdieu
and Passeron’s work, we decided to retain exclusion as the central dimension of the concept of cultural capital.
Bourdieu does not explicitly state the theory of power underlying his work.7 However, it is clear that he
conceives exclusion to be one of the most pervasive forms of power. It produces “dehumanization, frustration,
disruption, anguish, revolt, humiliation, resentment, disgust, despair, alienation, apathy, fatalist resignation,
dependency, and aggressiveness” (1961 [1958], p. 161); cf., also Sennett and Cobb 1973). The power exercised
through cultural capital is not a power of influence over specific decisions (Dahl 1968), or over the setting of the
political agenda (Bachrach and Baratz 1962). Rather, it is first and foremost a power to shape other peoples’
lives through exclusion and symbolic imposition (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977[1970], p. 18). In particular, it is
a power of legitimating the claim that specific cultural norms and practices are superior, and of institutionalizing
these claims to regulate behavior and access to resources. The capacity of a class to make its particular
preferences and practices seem natural and authoritative is the key to its control. These become standard
through society while shrouded in a cloak of neutrality, and the educational system adopts them to evaluate
students (Bourdieu 1974[1966], p. 349). Thereby, the “dominant class” exercises symbolic violence, i.e., “the
power . . . to impose meanings . . . as legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its
force” (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977[1970], p. 4; also Thompson 1984).
Another implicit theory of power present in Bourdieu’s general theoretical apparatus is one which, similarly
to the exchange theory of power, focuses on the dependency and maximalization of resources—however, in
Bourdieu’s work, individuals adjust their investments to their probability of success, which explains why they
do not all behave like homines economici.8 Cultural capital is seen as one of several resources (along with
social, economic and symbolic capital) in which individuals invest, and which can be converted into one another
to maximize one’s upward mobility (1985a, p. 724). It is mostly converted into symbolic capital, i.e., legitimacy
and prestige, a point that conceptually differentiates cultural capital from human capital.9 The market metaphor
seems to us justified because the various types of capitals are rare and highly desirable resources, and are used
as generalized medium of exchange; however, we believe that this metaphor is less suitable in societies where
the cultural consensus is weak, and where the definition of high status cultural signals, and their yields, varies
across groups.

RECENT AMERICAN WORKS ON CULTURAL CAPITAL

The concept of cultural capital has spurred considerable theoretical interest in America, resulting in several
empirical studies. Work has focused almost exclusively on educational institutions, the schooling of elites, and
the relation between home and school.10 A few examples provide a glimpse of the recent developments: in a
1982 study using survey data, DiMaggio (1982) found that levels of cultural capital influenced grades for high
school students. In a later study, DiMaggio and Mohr (1985) found that cultural capital also influenced higher
education attendance and completion as well as marital selection patterns. Studies of boarding schools examined
the role of cultural capital in the curriculum (Cookson and Persell 1985a; 1985b; Persell and Cookson 1985).
Lareau (1987; forthcoming) argued that differences in family life linked to social class (e.g., social networks,
role segregation) become a form of cultural capital, structuring family-school relationships for first grade
children. Dubin (1986) suggested that representations of blacks in popular culture are a form of cultural capital
used in the imposition of symbolic violence. Among the studies not concerned with educational or social
reproduction, Collins has drawn on the concept of cultural capital in his discussion of the modern stratification
structure (1979), his theory of interaction ritual chains (1981a; 1985), and his analysis of creativity in
intellectual careers (1987). Lamont (1986; 1987b) has explained variations in political attitudes within the new
middle class by variations in the degree of dependence on profit-making and the utility for profit-making of
workers’ cultural capital.
Not all researchers have found empirical support for Bourdieu’s model of cultural reproduction: Robinson
and Garnier (1985) reported that Bourdieu greatly overstates the influence of education on class reproduction in
France. They also noted that the influence is mediated in important ways by gender. Similarly, Blau (1986a;
1986b) found support for the independence of economic capital from cultural and academic capital in patterns
of cultural tastes. Other analyzing patterns of cultural choices found that variables other than class were better
predictors of preferences in cultural consumption in the U.S., notably education, age and gender (Greenberg and
Frank 1983).
2. Is There Cultural Capital in the U.S.?
Important features of American society, such as high social and geographical mobility, strong cultural
regionalism, ethnic and racial diversity, political decentralization and relatively weak high culture traditions
suggest that culture is not as highly class-differentiated in the U.S. as it is in France. Indeed, American research
suggests that class culture is weakly defined in the U.S. (Davis 1982); that ethnic and racial minorities
reinterpret mainstream culture into their own original culture (Horowitz 1983; Liebow 1967); that high culture
is being debased by commercialization (Horowitz 1987); that the highly educated consume mass culture, but
also have a wider range of cultural preferences which distinguishes them from other groups (DiMaggio and
Mohr 1985; DiMaggio 1987; Hughes and Peterson 1983, Robinson and Garnier 1985). Does this mean that
America has an undifferentiated mass culture where cultural exclusion is infrequent, and that high status signals
are purely individually defined and not institutionalized? It is unlikely, especially given the important cultural
influence of the mass media.
However, a consensus of high status cultural signals could very well be less stable in the U.S. than it is in
France, for the public for various types of cultural goods changes rapidly, e.g., country music went from being
rural music to working class music after WWII (Peterson and DiMaggio 1975; for an empirical assessment of
the level of consensus in the U.S. (cf. DiMaggio and Ostrower 1987; no comparative data is available at this
point). Frequent cultural innovation, as well as transgressions between cultural genres and styles (e.g.,
Californian cuisine, wine-coolers, the Boston Pops) probably constantly redefine hierarchies of signals. Race,
and to a lesser extent, ethnicity, would also have a negative effect on the cultural consensus. Consequently,
symbolic boundaries between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” cultures are likely to be weaker.
The permeability of symbolic boundaries—or the existence of a legitimate culture—can be identified by
documenting struggles around these boundaries between members of lifestyle clusters, which is a most urgent
task for evaluating the usefulness of the notion of cultural capital for studying American society. Boundaries
exist only if they are “repeatedly tested by persons on the fringes of the group and repeatedly defended by
persons chosen to represent the group’s inner morality” (Erikson 1966, p. 23). Therefore, cultural laissez-faire,
or infrequent direct cultural exclusion based on a random land variable set of criteria, would be indicators of an
ill-defined and weakly differentiated legitimate culture.
We believe that the “class racism” (or cultural intolerance) described in Distinction is more frequent in
France than, let’s say, in the American Midwest, which would reflect 1) the existence of a less strongly
differentiated legitimate culture; and 2) a greater autonomy of lower class high status cultural signals from
middle class ones. But this issue needs to be empirically explored.11 The problem of stability of cultural
boundaries goes unmentioned in Bourdieu’s work. This is one area in which researchers could expand on the
French work in a theoretically fruitful way.

3. Documenting American Forms of Cultural Capital

We have seen that, as research on cultural capital has spread, definitions of the concept have multiplied. On
the whole, however, studies have followed Bourdieu and paid special attention to “high culture” in pointing out
the items that make up the legitimate culture. Most notably, DiMaggio and colleagues operationalized cultural
capital as knowledge of classical music and participation in the fine arts (DiMaggio 1982; DiMaggio and Useem
1978; 1982—cf., also Cookson and Persell 1985a; 1985b). Although this choice has often been a wise choice
given the data available,12 no one has yet empirically tested if participation in high culture events is an adequate
indicator of cultural capital in the U.S. Firsthand experience with American culture—especially outside the East
Coast—could cast doubt on the centrality of high culture participation as a basis for social and cultural
selection.
Documenting the socially and historically specific forms of American cultural capital is now an urgent
empirical task. At this point, much of our knowledge concerning high status cultural signals is located in “how
to” books which spell out in detail the proper symbols and behaviors that assist occupational success, including
clothing, jewelry, conversation styles, gift giving, alcohol consumption, dinner party etiquette, leisure time
activities, and community service. Biographies of upwardly mobile individuals which reveal how they changed
their dress, speech, household furnishings, and dietary patterns to fit in their new milieux also provide valuable
information scattered in bits and pieces.
In order to systematically document the American forms of cultural capital in America, one could identify
clusters of people who share similar répertoires of institutionalized signals by interviewing managers,
professionals and entrepreneurs on their preferences and lifestyles—the latter being seen as ideal by Americans
(Coleman and Rainwater 1978).13 The respective weight of various items in the legitimate culture—a topic
unexplored by American and French researchers alike—should be analyzed while documenting how people
evaluate status. This can be done by comparing the importance attached to various types of cultural preferences
—e.g., knowledge of high culture in contrast with other types of signals, such as familiarity with sports, owning
guns and horses, belonging to health clubs, churches, and country clubs, having environmental concerns,
sending one’s children to private schools, and belonging to ethnic or historic associations. This would allow
identifying clusters of individuals who share specific tastes, and discovering which clusters are predominant
(e.g., “pointy-headed highbrow liberals on bicycles.” vs “God-fearing materialist entrepreneurs”) in various
types of occupations and regions.
The weight of items of legitimate culture can also be analyzed by looking at the importance attached to
purchasable signals in contrast to culturally acquired ones. Firsthand cross-cultural experience suggests that in
the U.S., in contrast to France, access to goods (e.g., having a wine cellar, or buying expensive biking or skiing
equipment) is more important than modalities of consumption (i.e., the wine consumption examples cited below,
manners, dressing code), or connoisseurship, which are likely to be less nuanced and elaborate; fewer valued
signals are likely to be inexpensive (e.g., reading Sartre in contrast to buying “yuppy” paraphernalia). This trait
might be becoming more pronounced, as exemplified by the recent rapid diffusion of the expensive yuppy
culture, and the simultaneous decline of cultural literacy.
Based on studies of French images of American life, we can predict that American legitimate culture is less
related to knowledge of the Western humanist culture, is more technically oriented (with an emphasis on
scientific or computer information), and more materialistic than the French legitimate culture depicted in
Distinction (Wylie and Henriquez 1982; on consumption in the U.S. cf., also Sobel 1983, Zablocki and Kanter
1976). Valued attitudes and personal styles are also likely to be different: rather than the aloofness, originality,
non-profit orientation, brilliance, and off-handedness valued in the French context—according to Bourdieu
(1984[1979])—some evidence suggests that aggressiveness, competence, entrepreneurship, self-reliance, self-
directiveness, “problem-solving activism,” and adaptability are desirable personal styles in the American
context (Katchadourian and Boli 1985; cf. also Bellah et al. 1985; Kerckhoff 1972; Kohn and Schooler 1983;
Varennes 1977). While Bellah et al. (1985) were concerned with some of these values, they did not
systematically document the American répertoire of high status cultural signals, and were more interested in
how people make sense of their lives and their self.

CONCLUSION

This paper pursued several interrelated goals. It systematized Bourdieu and Passeron’s work by specifying the
theoretical roles cultural capital plays in their model, and the various types of high status signals the authors are
concerned with. In the second section, we looked at the American literature on cultural capital to compare it
with the original work, and again point out theoretical gaps and untested theoretical assumptions. We also
described a research agenda to decouple the concept from the French context in which it has been developed.
Confusion, some of it creative, has dominated discussions of cultural capital. To solve this problem, we
proposed to define cultural capital as widely shared, legitimate culture made up of high status cultural signals
(attitudes, preferences, behaviors, and goods) used in direct or indirect social and cultural exclusion.
We differentiated Bourdieu’s work from others concerned with status attribution. We suggested that
Bourdieu differs from Weber most importantly in that he provides a more sophisticated conception of exclusion
in part, because he is concerned with indirect forms of exclusion as well. Bourdieu’s theory differs from
Veblen’s in that he thinks that status signals are mostly sent unconsciously, via the habitus, or unintentionally,
because of the classificatory effects of cultural codes.
Bourdieu and Passeron’s work improves on others by providing a more structural theory of discrimination in
school settings, and a more dynamic approach to social reproduction which leaves room for agency. It also takes
a more structural view at status attribution as it looks at institutionalized signals. Simultaneously, the relational
method of identification of cultural capital presents important operationalization problems, which result in
contested conclusions concerning the subordinate nature of lower class culture. Furthermore, many aspects of
the framework remain undertheorized, particularly concerning the theory of power underlying the work.
In order to build on the important available American work, and to make cultural capital less bound to the
French context in which it was developed, we proposed to step back and 1) assess the relevance of cultural
capital in the U.S.; 2) document the American répertoire of high status cultural signals; and 3) analyze how
capital is turned into profits in American organizations and schools. This could be done by analyzing 1)
conflicts around symbolic boundaries; 2) the weight of various items in the legitimate culture (e.g., high culture
vs. sport connoisseurship, purchasable vs. non-purchasable signals); and 3) the day-to-day process and micro-
level interactions where individuals activate their cultural capital to gain access to social settings or attain
desired social results.
While Weber was mostly concerned with status groups, and Bourdieu, with differentiated class cultures and
their relationship to the legitimate culture or cultural capital, we are reaching the conclusion that more attention
should be given to the institutionalized répertoire of high status cultural signals and to conflicts around
symbolic boundaries. Our program would avoid the pitfalls of the original framework, particularly the confusion
concerning multiple functions of cultural capital, and the unsupported assumptions relative to the relational
nature of the cultural system and the lack of autonomy of dominated culture. It would also preserve some of the
advantages of the original framework, by retaining Bourdieu and Passeron’s sophisticated analysis of direct and
indirect exclusion, which largely accounts for the original success of their theory.
Cultural capital can improve our understanding of the way in which social origin provides advantages in
social selection. In particular, by focusing on the “investment” practices, it stands to yield a more active and
dynamic model of social reality. Further work on cultural capital, which unravels cultural reproduction while
highlighting individual strategies, stands to make an important contribution to research on culture, power, and
social stratification.

NOTES

1. In an analysis of marital strategies in a French village, Bourdieu (1976[1972]) draws an analogy with
players in a card game. Players are dealt different cards (e.g., social and cultural capital), but the outcome
is dependent on not only the cards (and the rules of the game) but the skills with which individuals play
their cards. Depending on their “investment patterns” individuals can realize different amounts of social
profits from relatively similar social and cultural resources.
2. The first work mentioning the concept of cultural capital was an article titled “The School as a
Conservative Force” (Bourdieu 1974[1966], p. 32), where a quickly abandoned concept of “national
cultural capital” is proposed to describe national cultural supplies (see also Bourdieu, Alain, and Schnapper
1966). The theoretical framework in which the concept of cultural capital is used had been developed in
collaboration with Jean-Claude Passeron (Inheritors (1979[1964]); Les étudiants et leurs études [1964]);
Reproduction (1977[1970]) and Monique de St-Martin (Rapport Pédagogique et Communication 1965).
Bourdieu and Passeron parted after 1970.
3. Elsewhere, Bourdieu (1974[1966], p. 327) argues that ideally, cultural capital should be measured with an
index combining items such as the level of formal education of one’s parents and grandparents, the size of
one’s place of origin and residence—which influence access to cultural events—and the frequency of one’s
cultural activities.
4. Bourdieu (1987[1979]) distinguishes three types of cultural capital: embodied (or incorporated) cultural
 capital (i.e., the legitimate cultural attitudes, preferences, and behaviors [which he calls practices] that are
internalized during the socialization process), objectified cultural capital (i.e., the transmittable goods—
books, computers, particle accelerators, paintings—that require embodied cultural capital to be
appropriated), and institutionalized cultural capital (i.e., the degrees and diplomas which certify the value
of embodied cultural capital items). Therefore “institutionalized cultural capital” could be used to refer to
cultural capital performing the functions of power resource and indicator to class position: because it is
certified, widely diffused across classes and quantifiable, it can be used as an indicator of class position. It
can also refer to cultural capital used as a power resource, because credentials facilitate access to
organizational positions.
5. In Reproduction (1977[1970], p. 46), cultural capital is defined as cultural goods and values that are
transmitted through class differentiated families and whose value as cultural capital varies with its cultural
distance (dissimilarity?) from the dominant cultural culture promoted by dominant agencies of
socialization. This suggests that various types of cultural capital could have different values, and that some
are even “illegitimate,” or of low value. However, most of Bourdieu’s writings suggest that cultural capital
refers only to highly valued signals.
6. Bourdieu is not concerned with describing the mechanisms through which arbitrary practices and
preferences become legitimate. Cultural producers are seen as central in this process (Bourdieu 1985b), but
we don’t know how the legitimate culture makes its way from the cultural producers to the public—the
work of Featherstone (1988) on the historical constitution of the cultural sphere provides interesting
pointers. Goffman (1951, p. 31) called for empirical studies that would trace out the social career of
particular status symbols. The “production-of-culture” approach provides leads concerning how to study
groups of cultural producers (Becker 1982; Peterson 1979).
7. Elsewhere, Bourdieu implicitly addresses the problem of power. In Algeria 60 (1979[1977], p. 51), he
writes: “The degree of freedom conferred on each worker, the freedom to choose his job and his employer,
the freedom to demand respect in work relationships, varies considerably according to socio-occupational
category, income, and especially the degree of skill and level of education. Similarly, the field of possible
[sic] tends to expand as one rises in the social hierarchy.”
We have argued that Bourdieu and Passeron provide a more structural approach to discrimination in
school settings, cultural selection and status attribution by focusing on institutionalized signals. They also
provide a more sophisticated conception of social exclusion than Weber does, as they point out various
forms of indirect exclusion. Yet, even if Bourdieu’s work is extremely rich and fruitful, many aspects of
the framework remain undertheorized, and the framework presents methodological flaws and conceptual
gaps. We have attempted to isolate some of the gaps pertaining to power for instance. We have also built
on the original theory by disentangling the concept of cultural capital, and proposing a less encompassing
definition which focuses on cultural and social exclusion. We now look at changes that the concept has
undergone in being imported to the U.S.
8. One of several differences between Bourdieu’s work and the exchange theory of power is that the latter
pays much attention to how dependence arises from individuals’ emotional (or subjective) investment in
resources (e.g., Emerson 1962). Bourdieu seems to assume that the control of resources alone triggers
dependency; at least, he does not discuss how variations in need, availability, and emotional investment
affect dependency relations and power.
9. Bourdieu considers both the symbolic and the economic profits bestowed by cultural capital, while human
capital theorists ignore symbolic profits. Also, human capital theorists neglect the structure of possible
profits, which varies by social class and which, according to Bourdieu, explains differences in investment
in cultural capital: “Economists might seem to deserve credit for explicitly raising the question of the
relationship between the rates of profit on educational investment and on economic investment (and its
evolution). But their measurement of the yield from scholastic investment takes account only of monetary
investments and profits or those directly convertible into money, such as the cost of schooling and the cash
equivalent of time devoted to study; they are unable to explain the different proportions of their resources
 which different agents or different social class allocate to economic investment and cultural investment
because they fail to take systematic account of the structure of the differential chances of profit which the
various markets offer these agents or classes as a function of the volume and the composition of their
assets.” (1987[1979], pp. 243–44; see also Bourdieu, Boltanski and St-Martin 1973).
10. This section ignores an important literature on social and cultural reproduction (e.g., Anyon 1981; Arnot
and Whitty 1982; Bowers 1980; Bullivant 1982: Connell et al. 1982; Mickelson 1987; Oakes 1985; Taylor
1984; Watkins 1984; and Willis 1981).
11. One of the few researchers working on the problem of cross-national differences in the influence of
cultural selection on the stratification system is Richard Münch (1988). Also, Ganzeboom (1986) found
that cultural socialization affects status attainment in a similar way in the U.S., the Netherlands and
Hungary, which suggests that cultural and social selection functions similarly in these three national
settings.
12. DiMaggio (1982, p. 191) states: “While it would be preferable to ground these measures in observed
cultures of dominant status groups, in the absence of such a rigorous data base, high cultural measures
represent the best alternative for several reasons.” He also proposes (p. 199) that “An ideal data set for our
purposes would contain measures of cultural capital grounded in research on adult elites in a single
community; objective measures of grades, standardized by school; data on teachers’ evaluations of
students’ characters and aptitudes; and observationally grounded measures of students’ interaction style,
both linguistic and nonverbal.”
13. This culture has been almost completely neglected by students of American culture who have focused on
the upper class culture (Baltzell 1964; Domhoff 1974), the middle class at large (Bellah et al. 1985; Kanter
1977; Mills 1953; Varennes 1977), and the working class and the underclass cultures (Garson 1977;
Liebow 1967; Rubin 1976; Sennett and Cobb 1973). It should be noted that Wuthnow (1987, chap. 3)
offers interesting insights on how to study symbolic boundaries.

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SOURCE: Michèle Lamont and Annette Lareau “Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps, and Glissandos in Recent
Theoretical Developments,” Sociological Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 153–168. Reprinted with
permission from the American Sociological Association and the authors.
7
SCHOOLS, FAMILIES, AND COMMUNITIES
JAMES COLEMAN AND THOMAS HOFFER

HUMAN CAPITAL AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Probably the most important and most original development in the economics of education in the past thirty
years has been the idea that the concept of physical capital as embodied in tools, machines, and other productive
equipment, can be extended to include human capital as well (see Schultz 1961; Becker 1964). Just as physical
capital is created by working with materials to create tools that facilitate production, human capital is created by
working with persons to produce in them skills and capabilities that make them more productive. Indeed,
schools constitute a central institution for the creation of human capital. And just as decisions are made on
investment in physical capital based on expected rates of return to these investments, it is useful to conceive of
educational decisions as being made on the basis of expected rates of return to investments in human capital
(see, for example, Mincer 1974).
There is, however, something quite different and distinct from human capital, yet no less important, which
we have called social capital. If physical capital is wholly tangible, being embodied in observable material form,
and human capital is less tangible, being embodied in the skills and knowledge acquired by an individual, social
capital is less tangible yet, for it exists in the relations between persons. Just as physical capital and human
capital facilitate productive activity, social capital does as well. For example, trust is a form of social capital. A
group within which there is extensive trustworthiness and extensive trust is able to accomplish much more than
a comparable group without that trustworthiness and trust. (For example, some economic activities depend
greatly upon such trust relations for their very existence. Perhaps the example that shows this best is wholesale
diamond markets, in which one merchant will give another possession of a valuable lot of diamonds for
inspection, with no formal security whatsoever.)
The distinction between human capital and social capital can be exhibited by the diagrams sometimes used
by analysts of social networks. In a diagram like that of Figure 7.1, representing relations between four persons,
A, B, C, and D, the human capital resides in the nodes, and the social capital resides in the lines connecting the
nodes. Social capital and human capital are often complementary. For example, if B is a child and A is an adult
parent of the child, then in order for A to be useful for the cognitive development of B, there must be capital in
both the node and the link, human capital held by A, and social capital in the existence of the relation between A
and B.
Furthermore, certain kinds of social capital arise only in networks with a high degree of closure. In a
network like that of Figure 7.1, the existence of relations between A, B, C, and D means that two can discuss a
third’s behavior and develop consensus about what is proper or appropriate behavior, that is, develop social
norms. For example, if A and D are parents of B and C, they can develop norms about appropriate behavior for
their children. If, in contrast, the network does not exhibit closure, so that A and D, who have parent-child links
to B and C, respectively, do not have links to one another, then norms to govern and constrain B’s and C’s
actions cannot develop.
Thus, if we are correct, the social capital that we have described earlier as existing in religious communities
surrounding a religious school resides at least in part in the norms and sanctions that grow in such communities.
These norms and sanctions in turn depend both on social relations and the closure of networks created by these
relations.
SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE FAMILY

Students’ families differ in human capital, as, for example, measured in years of parental education. And this
research shows, just as has much other research, that outcomes for children are strongly affected by the human
capital possessed by their parents. But this human capital can be irrelevant to outcomes for children if parents
are not an important part of their children’s lives, if their human capital is employed exclusively at work or
elsewhere outside the home. The social capital of the family is the relations between children and parents (and
when families include other members, relationships with them as well). That is, if the human capital possessed
by parents is not complemented by social capital embodied in family relations, it is irrelevant to the child’s
educational growth that the parent has a great deal, or a small amount, of human capital.
There are striking examples in the biographies of particular persons that illustrate the importance of social
capital in the family. For example, Bertrand Russell once remarked, in response to a comment on his brilliance,
that he had no greater endowments than many others; that his grandmother, who engaged him in extensive
discussions on intellectual matters when he was a child, is what made the difference. Assuming that his
statement contained some truth, it is evident that the major difference between Bertrand Russell’s childhood and
that of others was not the intellectual resources his grandmother had, but the use of those resources in extended
interaction with the boy. John Stuart Mill, who at the age of four had been taught Latin and Greek by his father,
James Mill, and later in childhood would discuss critically with his father and with Jeremy Bentham drafts of
the father’s manuscripts, is another example. John Stuart Mill probably had no extraordinary genetic
endowments, and his father’s learning, while extensive, was no more so than that of some other men of the time.
The central difference was the time and effort spent by the father with the child on intellectual matters.

Figure 7.1 Network With Closure

A third example is from contemporary America. In one public school district where texts for school use
were purchased by children’s families, school authorities were puzzled to discover that a number of Asian
immigrant families purchased two copies of each textbook needed by the child, rather than one. Investigation
showed that the second copy was purchased for the mother to study in order to maximally help her child do well
in school. Here is a case in which the human capital of the parents, at least as measured traditionally by years of
schooling, is low, but the social capital in the family available for the child’s education is extremely high.
These three examples contrast greatly with the situation in which many children of well- educated parents
find themselves today. The human capital exists in the family, but the social capital does not.
It is the absence of social capital within the family that we have labeled “deficiencies” in the family. What
we have labeled as structural deficiency is the physical absence of family members. The two elements of
structural deficiency that we have used in the analysis are single-parent families and families in which the
mother worked before the child entered elementary school. However, the nuclear family itself can be seen as
structurally deficient, lacking the social capital which comes with the presence of grandparents or aunts and
uncles in or near the household.
What we have labeled functional deficiency in the family is the absence of strong relations between children
and parents despite their physical presence in the household and opportunity for strong relations. This may
result from the child’s embeddedness in a youth community, from the parents’ embeddedness in relationships
with other adults which do not cross generations, or from other sources. Whatever the source, it means that
whatever human capital exists in the parents, the child does not profit from it because the social capital is
missing. The resources exist in node A of the diagram of Figure 7.1, but the weakness of relation between the
parent A and the child B makes them unavailable to the child.
It is, in fact, precisely the distinction between human capital existing in the family and social capital existing
in the family that constitutes the differences between what we have called “traditional disadvantage” of
background and what we have called “family deficiencies.” . . . What is ordinarily meant by a disadvantaged
background is the absence of resources embodied in the parents, primarily represented by parents’ education but
also represented by a low economic level or racial-ethnic minority status that stand as surrogates for low levels
of human capital useful for economic success. What we have counterposed to that in identifying “deficient
families” is the absence of social capital, the weakness of links between the adult members of the family and the
children. If we consider a fourfold table as shown in Figure 7.2, where the two dimensions are human capital
and social capital, we can see immediately that there exist families in all four cells of the table. In cell 3 are
families in which the parents are of low economic level and low education but with a strong and facilitating set
of relations within the family. Poor and uneducated but strong families, such as those often found among
immigrants from an underdeveloped country to a developed country exemplify this cell. In cell 4 are families
that are poor, uneducated, and disorganized, structurally broken or weakened by the personal disorganization of
the parent or parents. In cell 1 is the family with both human and social capital: The adult members are capable
and educated, and relations within the family are strong. The resources of the parents are available to the
children to encourage and aid their educational and social development. In cell 2 is the family that is becoming
more prevalent today: The adult members are well educated and individually capable, but for a variety of
reasons—divorce, involvement with other adults in relations that do not cross generations (as is typical of most
work settings), exclusive attention to self-development—the resources of the adults are not available to aid the
psychological health and the social and educational development of the children.

Figure 7.2 Families Characterized by Presence or Absence of Human Capital and Social
Capital

By confounding these two dimensions of family resources, those concerned with educational policy have
targeted their efforts at children from families in cells 3 and 4, and it is those from families in cell 4 that are by
far the most deprived. But there has been little attention altogether to children from families in cell 2.
Yet . . . students from these families have considerably lower rates of achievement growth and considerably
higher rates of dropout than do children from families in cell 1. Perhaps if we could identify sufficiently well
children from these four types of families, the children from families in cell 3, that is, disadvantaged but strong
families, might have fewer problems in school than those from cell 2, that is, advantaged but deficient families.

SOCIAL CAPITAL BEYOND THE FAMILY

Beyond the family is social capital of other kinds that is relevant to the child’s development. The most striking
instance of that shown in the present research is the social capital provided by the religious community
surrounding a Catholic school. The social capital that has value for a young person’s development does not
reside merely in the set of common values held by parents who choose to send their children to the same private
school. It resides in the functional community, the actual social relationships that exist among parents, in the
closure exhibited by this structure of relations and in the parents’ relations with the institutions of the
community. Part of that social capital is the norms that develop in communities with a high degree of closure. If,
for example, in Figure 7.1, B and C represent students in school who see each other every day, and A and D are
B’s and C’s parents, respectively, then there is closure if the parents A and D know each other and have some
kind of ongoing relation. The importance of this closure for the young persons, B and C, lies in the fact that only
if A and D are in some kind of ongoing relation can they establish norms that shape and constrain the actions of
B and C. Indeed, in such a structure, there develop relations between one child and the parent of another, as
exemplified in Figure 7.1 by the links between A and C, and between D and B.
A social structure that does not exhibit closure is represented by Figure 7.3. If B and C are two students who
know and see each other in school, and A and D are the parents of B and C, respectively, then if A’s friends and
daily contacts are with others outside (E), and D’s are also with a different set of others outside (F), A and D are
not in a position to discuss their children’s activities, to develop common evaluations of these activities, and to
exercise sanctions that guide and constrain these activities.

Figure 7.3 Network Without Closure

Figure 7.1 represents what we have described as a structure with intergenerational closure, while Figure 7.3
represents what we have described as a structure without intergenerational closure. However much closure there
may be in the youth community, among B, C, and other students in the school, it is the absence of
intergenerational closure that prevents the human capital that exists among the adults from playing any role in
the lives of the youth. This lack of intergenerational closure constitutes the missing social capital that we have
identified earlier as resulting in tangible losses for young persons: lower achievement growth, greater likelihood
of dropping out of school. The social capital does exist in some isolated small towns and rural areas where
adults’ social relations are restricted by geographic distance, and where residential mobility has not destroyed it.
It exists in schools based on a religious community, such as the Catholic schools and the few other religious
schools in our sample, though the social relations which make up the community are more narrowly focused
around a single dimension of social life, a religious institution. In rare circumstances it may exist for private
schools without a religious base.
This form of social capital once existed for many public schools, when they served a clientele in which
mothers worked in the home, and everyday contacts were largely with neighbors. It may have once existed in
elite private schools, when the social elite whose children attended the schools constituted a community with
relatively dense interaction. But neither in most modern public schools nor in most nonreligiously based private
schools does that intergenerational closure now exist. The evidence presented . . . indicates that the absence of
this social capital represents a real resource loss for young persons growing up.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AS A PUBLIC GOOD

There is, however, a central fact about social capital that does not exist for physical capital and human capital—
and it is this fact which most threatens the social, psychological, and cognitive growth of young persons in the
United States and, indeed, throughout Western society. Physical capital is ordinarily a private good, and
property rights make it possible for the person who invests in physical capital to capture the benefits it produces.
Thus, the incentive to invest in physical capital is not depressed; there is, as an economist might say, not a
suboptimal investment in physical capital because those who invest in it are able to capture the benefits of their
investments. For human capital also—at least human capital of the sort that is produced in schools—the person
who invests the time and resources in building up this capital reaps its benefits, in the form of a higher-paying
job, more satisfying or higher work status, or even the pleasure of greater understanding of the surrounding
world—in short, all the benefits that schooling brings to a person.
But social capital of the sort that is valuable in the ways we have shown for a young person’s education is
not like this. The kinds of social structures that make possible social norms and the sanctions that enforce them
do not benefit primarily the person or persons whose efforts would be necessary to bring them about, but benefit
all those who are part of such a structure. For example, in some schools where there exists a dense set of
associations among parents, these are the result of a small number of persons, ordinarily mothers who do not
hold a full-time job outside the home. Yet these mothers themselves experience only a subset of the benefits of
this social capital surrounding the school. If one of them decides to abandon these activities, for example to take
a full-time job, this may be an entirely reasonable action from a personal point of view, and even from the point
of view of that household with its children. The benefits of the new activity may far outweigh the losses arising
from the decline in associations with other parents whose children are in the school. But the withdrawal of these
activities constitutes a loss to all those other parents whose associations and contacts were dependent on them.
Or there are the . . . decisions of parents. . . . The decision to move from a community so that the father, for
example, can take a better job, may be entirely correct from the point of view of that family. But because social
capital consists of relations between persons, other persons may experience extensive losses by the severence of
those relations, a severence over which they had no control. A part of those losses is the weakening of norms
and sanctions that aid the school in its task. For each family, the total cost it experiences as a consequence of the
decisions it and other families make may outweigh the benefits of those few decisions it has control over. Yet
the beneficial consequences of those decisions made by the family itself may far outweigh the minor losses the
family experiences from them alone.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE FUTURE FOR YOUTH

There are further suggestive implications that this analysis holds for the future of youth and education in
modern society. Two sets of facts taken together suggest a future with special problems. One set of facts is the
results contained in this analysis . . . that show the importance of social capital within the family and social
capital outside the family in the religious community for supporting the involvement of youth in school and
their achievement growth. The importance of the social capital outside the family [is] especially apparent
in . . . the importance of religious participation generally (not only among Catholics or among students in
Catholic schools) in lowering the probability of dropping out of high school, and in research that showed that
among the non-Catholic private schools, dropout was least in those which were grounded in a religious body
and served a religiously homogeneous set of students.
All these results emphasize the importance of the embeddedness of young persons in the enclaves of adults
most proximate to them, first and most prominently the family and second, a surrounding community of adults
(exemplified in all these results by the religious community).
But there is a second set of facts as well, not from the data of this study, but observable from social trends.
This is the declining embeddedness of youth in these enclaves, that is in families and in intergenerational
functional communities. This decline comes from two directions. One is the decreased strength of the
institutions themselves, the family and the local community (religiously based, neighborhood-based, or
otherwise). We have discussed at length the “modern family deficiencies,” and it is apparent that these
deficiencies are growing rather rapidly. An example of one is the declining presence of father and mother in the
household, through work in settings outside, and organizationally distant from, the household. Much attention
has been directed to the recent rise in proportions of women working outside the household, but what is often
forgotten is that this exodus from the household merely follows (by about a hundred years) that of the men.
Figure 7.4 shows the proportion of the male labor force engaged in agriculture (used as a proxy for men
working in the household, though some nonfarm occupations were, especially in early days, in the household as
well) and the proportion of women not in the labor force (that is, in the household).1 These curves show a nearly
parallel pattern, with the men’s complete and the women’s following the same course. These curves show the
household progressively denuded of its adult members.
Other statistics could show different aspects of the loss of social capital in the household. One would be, for
example, the declining number of adults in the household of the average American child—a decline that first
saw members of the extended family vanish, and now sees one of the parents vanishing. And similar statistics
could be presented for the decline of adult social capital available to children in the community outside the
family.
But the decreased embeddedness of children and youth in family and community arises from a second
source as well. This is the increasing psychic involvement of the youth with the mass media. This involvement
is intense only for a fraction of youth, but the fraction may be increasing with the growth of the youth-oriented
music industry from radio to television, with MTV (continuous rock video cable TV) its most extreme current
expression.2
Thus, youth are pushed from psychic involvements in family and community by the reduced substance of
those institutions and are pulled by the mass media toward involvements with “persona” of the media. The
implications of this movement are many, but one is of special concern here: The former institutions, whatever
their failings in specific cases, supported and strengthened the formal educational institution in which children
and youth are placed. The latter do not. The implications are that the goals of schools become increasingly
difficult to attain, as the social base that supports them comes to be less and less important in the lives of
children and youth. The further implication is that something must give, and the most likely direction would
appear to be a radical transformation of the institutions into which children are placed, from the schools we now
know to something different.

Figure 7.4 Percent of Male Labor Force in Agriculture, 1810–1982, and Percent of
Women Not Employed in Paid Labor Force, 1890–1982
THE INEGALITARIAN CHARACTER OF FUNCTIONAL COMMUNITIES

The evidence . . . indicates that functional communities with intergenerational closure constitute social capital
that is of widespread value for young persons in high school. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that this social
capital is particularly valuable for young persons from families in which the social capital or the human capital
of the parents is especially weak. Yet there is a body of research and theory that would predict just the opposite:
Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and perhaps those from deficient families, would do less well in
schools surrounded by strong functional communities.
According to this theory and research, higher expectations and standards will be held by teachers for those
students from families with high status, while those students from low-status families will be stigmatized with
the reputations of their parents, low expectations for their achievement will be held by teachers, and adult
members of the community outside the school will treat them differently.
This general thesis has a strong tradition in social psychology and sociology, both in research and in theory.
“Expectation theory” or its close relative in sociology, “labeling theory,” asserts that persons live up or down to
others’ expectations of them or to the labels attached to them by others. [See Merton (1968, pp. 475–90), Becker
(1973, pp. 177–208), and Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) for seminal treatments of the thesis.] This, in
conjunction with the fact that it is only where there is a strong functional community that the expectations or
labels attached to particular students will be widely held in common by teachers, parents, and other students
strengthens the prediction that schools based on a strong functional community will be most effective for
students from advantaged backgrounds and may depress performance of students from disadvantaged
backgrounds. Where the community extends only to the student body of the school (and nearly all high schools
have a community within the student body itself, whatever its attachments to the adult community), these
expectations and labels will be shared only among the students and can be expected to be less powerful in their
effects on behavior. But where the school is based on a strong adult functional community, it would be
predicted to be powerful.
A tradition of research in educational sociology has also held the general thesis of labeling theory and
furthermore has used strong functional communities as the site for demonstrating its importance. The best
known of these is Elmtown’s Youth (Hollingshead 1949), based on research in a small Illinois town in 1942.
Hollingshead showed the intergenerational inheritance of status in Elmtown and the way this was reinforced
through the high school. Although Hollingshead’s evidence was suggestive and illustrative rather than
conclusive, it provided a graphic portrayal of how a functional community can strengthen the advantages of the
already-advantaged and block the opportunities of the disadvantaged.
These theoretical positions, expectation theory and labeling theory, lead to the general prediction that those
private schools based on a functional community (Catholic schools in our sample) will confer more benefits on
those students from advantaged backgrounds relative to those from disadvantaged backgrounds than is true for
public schools, or for those private schools not based on a functional community. In short, they will be
internally inegalitarian.
How then can we account for the different findings in this book . . . ? The answer can be only conjectural,
due to the lack of direct evidence. However, our conjecture is that a functional community based on the single
dimension of religious association is different, in just those respects that relate to inegalitarianism, from a
functional community that encompasses all arenas of social and economic life. In part, this is due to the
egalitarian ethic of religion itself (“All God’s children are equal in His eyes”). In part, it is due to the abstraction
of a single arena of activity from the total fabric of social and economic life. This abstraction allows a child to
escape a single encompassing evaluation of the family (including its children) based on the totality of its
activities. This is an instance of the “role-segmentation” of modern social life, and according to our conjecture,
the role-segmentation is important in inhibiting the inheritance by the child of the status of the parent.

NOTES

1. Data from U.S. Bureau of Census (1975) Table 182–282 for proportion of labor force on farms 1900–
1970, and proportion of labor force in agriculture, 1800–1890; and Table D49–62 for proportion of females
in labor force 1890–1970. U.S. Bureau of Census (1984) is used to bring series up to 1982.
2. The question is often raised (ironically, often in the mass media itself) about “the effects of the mass
media” (especially television, and the sex and violence on television) on children and youth. A frequent
conclusion is that the “effects” are minimal or absent, and that children who have strong psycho-social
foundations are impervious to any “undesirable” elements in media contents. But the discussion should
make apparent that this misses the point in at least two ways. First, the very attention directed to these
media is attention directed away from the adults who have traditionally constituted the social support for
education and social development of the youth. Second, if it is the youth with strong psycho-social
foundations who are unmoved by these elements, these are precisely the youth who, because of declines of
family and community, are decreasing in numbers.

REFERENCES

Becker, G. S. 1964. Human Capital. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Becker, H. S. 1973. The Outsiders. New York: Free Press.
Hollingshead, A. B. 1949. Elmtown’s Youth. New York: Wiley.
Merton, R. K. 1968. “The Self-fulfilling Prophesy.” Chap. 13 in R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social
Structure. New York: Free Press.
Mincer, J. 1974. Schooling, Experience and Earnings. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Rosenthal, R. and L. Jacobson. 1968. Pygmalion in the Classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Schultz, T. W. 1961. “Investment in Human Capital.” American Economic Review 51:1–17.

SOURCE: From Public and Private High Schools by James Coleman and Thomas Hoffer (1987). Reprinted by
permission of Basic Books, a member of Perseus Book Groups, and the author.
8
THE FIRST ELEMENT OF MORALITY
The Spirit of Discipline
ÉMILE DURKHEIM

O ne can distinguish two stages in childhood: the first, taking place almost entirely within the family or
the nursery school—a substitute for the family, as its name suggests; the second, in elementary
school, when the child, beginning to leave the family circle, is initiated into a larger environment.
This we call the second period of childhood; we shall focus on it in discussing moral education. This is indeed
the critical moment in the formation of moral character. Before that, the child is still very young; his intellectual
development is quite rudimentary and his emotional life is too simple and underdeveloped. He lacks the
intellectual foundation necessary for the relatively complex ideas and sentiments that undergird our morality.
The limited boundaries of his intellectual horizon at the same time limit his moral conceptions. The only
possible training at this stage is a very general one, an elementary introduction to a few simple ideas and
sentiments.
On the other hand, if, beyond this second period of childhood—i.e., beyond school age—the foundations of
morality have not been laid, they never will be. From this point on, all one can do is to complete the job already
begun, refining sensibilities and giving them some intellectual content, i.e., informing them increasingly with
intelligence. But the groundwork must have been laid. So we can appropriately fix our attention above all on
this stage of development. Moreover, precisely because it is an intermediate stage, what we shall say may be
readily applied, mutatis mutandis, to the preceding and following stages. On the one hand, in order to show
clearly the nature of moral education at this period, we shall be led to indicate how it completes, and carries on
from, familial education; on the other hand, to understand what it must later become, it will suffice to project
our thinking into the future, taking account of differences in age and situation.
However, this first specification of the problem is not enough. Not only shall I discuss here, at least in
principle, only moral education during the second stage of childhood; but I shall limit my subject even more
narrowly. I shall deal above all with moral education in this second stage in our public schools because,
normally, the public schools are and should be the flywheel of national education. Furthermore, contrary to the
all too popular notion that moral education falls chiefly within the jurisdiction of the family, I judge that the task
of the school in the moral development of the child can and should be of the greatest importance. There is a
whole aspect of the culture, and a most important one, which would otherwise be lost. For if it is the family that
can distinctively and effectively evoke and organize those homely sentiments basic to morality and—even more
generally—those germane to the simplest personal relationships, it is not the agency so constituted as to train
the child in terms of the demands of society. Almost by definition, as it were, it is an inappropriate agency for
such a task.
Therefore, focusing our study on the school, we find ourselves precisely at the point that should be regarded
as the locus, par excellence, of moral development for children of this age. We have committed ourselves to
provide in our schools a completely rational moral education, that is to say, excluding all principles derived
from revealed religion. Thus, the problem of moral education is clearly posed for us at this point in history.
I have shown not only that the task to be undertaken is possible but that it is necessary—that it is dictated by
all historical development. But at the same time, I have emphasized the complexity of the task. These
complications should not discourage us in the least. It is altogether natural that an undertaking of such
importance should be difficult; only the mediocre and insignificant tasks are easy. There is, then, nothing to be
gained in minimizing the magnitude of the task on which we are working, under pretext of reassuring ourselves.
 It is worthier and more profitable to face up to the difficulties, which inevitably accompany such a great
change. I have pointed out what these difficulties seem to me to be. In the first place, due to the close bond
established historically between morality and religion, we can anticipate—since these are essential elements of
morality never expressed save in religious guise—that if we begin to eliminate everything religious from the
traditional system without providing any substitute, we run the risk of also eliminating essential moral ideas and
sentiments. In the second place, a rational morality cannot have the same content as one that depends upon some
authority other than reason. For the development of rationalism does not come about without a parallel
development of individualism and, consequently, without a refinement in moral sensitivity that makes certain
social relations—the allocation of rights and obligations, which up to the present has not bothered our
consciences—appear unjust. Furthermore, there is not only a parallel development between individualism and
rationalism, but the latter reacts upon the former and stimulates it. The characteristic of injustice is that it is not
founded in the nature of things; it is not based upon reason. Thus, it is inevitable that we shall become more
sensitive to injustice in the measure that we respond to the authority of reason. It is not a trifling matter to
stimulate free inquiry, to accord a new authority to reason; for the power thus granted cannot but turn against
those traditions that persist only insofar as they are divorced from its influence. In undertaking to organize a
rational education, we find ourselves confronted with two kinds, two series of problems, the one as compelling
as the other. We must take care lest we impoverish morality in the process of rationalizing it; and we must
anticipate the complications that it entails and prepare for them.
To attack the first problem, we must rediscover the moral forces basic to all moral life, that of yesterday as
well as that of today, without a priori derogation of the former, even if up to the present that morality has only
existed in religious guise. We have to seek out the rational expression of such a morality, that is to say,
apprehend such morality in itself, in its genuine nature, stripped of all symbols. Secondly, once these moral
forces are known, we have to investigate how they should develop and be oriented under present social
conditions. Of these two problems, it is the former that, from all evidence, should first concern us. We must first
determine, in their essentials, the basic elements of morality before investigating the changes that may be
indicated.
To ask what the elements of morality are is not to undertake a complete listing of all the virtues, or even of
the most important. It involves an inquiry into fundamental dispositions, into those mental states at the root of
the moral life. To influence the child morally is not to nurture him a particular virtue, followed by another and
still another; it is to develop and even to constitute completely, by appropriate methods, those general
dispositions that, once created, adapt themselves readily to the particular circumstances of human life. If we are
able to push through to their discovery, we shall at once have overcome one of the major obstacles confronting
us in the work of our schools. What sometimes creates doubt about the effectiveness of the school in matters
pertaining to the moral elements of culture is that these latter apparently involve such a host of ideas,
sentiments, and customs that the teacher seems to lack the necessary time, in the few and fleeting moments
when the child is under his influence, to awaken and develop them. There is such a diversity of virtues, even if
one seeks to fasten on the most important, that if each of them must be at least partially developed, the
dissipation of effort over such a large area must necessarily vitiate the enterprise.
To operate effectively, especially since influence can only be exerted during a brief period of time, one must
have a definite and clearly specified goal. One must have an idée fixe, or a small number of definite ideas that
serve as lodestar. Thus, our efforts, pushing always in the same direction, following the same paths, can achieve
some results. One must desire strongly whatever he wishes; and few rather than many things. To provide the
necessary drive for our educational efforts, we must therefore try to ferret out those basic sentiments that are the
foundation of our moral dispositions.
How do we go about it? You are familiar with the way the moralists ordinarily handle this question. They
commence with the principle that each of us carries within himself all the elements of morality. Hence, we have
only to look inside ourselves with a little care to discover the meaning of morality. So the moralist engages in
introspective inquiry and, from amongst the ideas that he has more or less clearly in mind, seizes upon this one
or that as seeming to represent the central motions of morality. For some, it is the idea of utility; for others, the
notion of perfection; and for still others, it is the conception of human dignity, etc.
I do not wish to discuss at this point whether morality in its entirety resides in each person—whether each
individual mind contains in itself all those elements that, simply in their development, constitute morality.
Everything that follows leads us to a different conclusion, but we must not anticipate it here. To dispose of this
currently fashionable approach I need only point out how subjective and arbitrary it is. After his self-
interrogation, all that the moralist can state is his own conception of morality, the conception he has personally
contrived. Why is this more objective than the quite unobjective vulgar notions of heat, or light, or electricity?
Let us acknowledge that morality may be completely implicit in each mind. Nonetheless, one must know how to
get at it. One must still know how to distinguish, amongst all our ideas, those within the province of morality
and those that are not. Now, according to what criteria can we make such a distinction? What enables us to say:
this is a matter of morality and this is not? Shall we say that that is moral which accords with man’s nature?
Suppose, then, that we knew quite certainly what man’s nature was. What proves that the end of morality is to
realize human nature—why might it not have as its function the satisfaction of social needs? Shall we substitute
this idea for the other? But first, what justifies us in doing so? And what are the social interests that morality
must protect? For such interests are of all sorts—economic, military, scientific, etc. We cannot base practice on
such subjective hypotheses as these. We cannot regulate the education that we owe our children on the basis of
such purely academic conceptions.
Moreover, this method, to whatever conclusions it may lead, rests throughout on a single premise: that to
develop morality empirical analysis is unnecessary. To determine what morality should be, it is apparently
thought unnecessary first to inquire what it is or what it has been. People expect to legislate immediately. But
whence this privilege? One hears it said today that we can know something of economic, legal, religious, and
linguistic matters only if we begin by observing facts, analyzing them, comparing them. There is no reason why
it should be otherwise with moral facts. On the other hand, one can inquire what morality ought to be only if
one has first determined the complex of things that goes under this rubric, what its nature is, what ends it serves.
Let us begin, then, by looking at morality as a fact, and let us see what we are actually able to understand by it.
In the first place, there is an aspect common to all behavior that we ordinarily call moral. All such behavior
conforms to pre-established rules. To conduct one’s self morally is a matter of abiding by a norm, determining
what conduct should obtain in a given instance even before one is required to act. This domain of morality is the
domain of duty; duty is prescribed behavior. It is not that the moral conscience is free of uncertainties. We
know, indeed, that it is often perplexed, hesitating between alternatives. But then the problem is what is the
particular rule that applies to the given situation, and how should it be applied? Since each rule is a general
prescription, it cannot be applied exactly and mechanically in identical ways in each particular circumstance. It
is up to the person to see how it applies in a given situation. There is always considerable, if limited, leeway left
for his initiative. The essentials of conduct are determined by the rule. Furthermore, to the extent that the rule
leaves us free, to the extent that it does not prescribe in detail what we ought to do, the action being left to our
own judgment, to that extent there is no moral valuation. We are not accountable precisely because of the
freedom left us. Just as an action is not a crime in the usual and actual sense of the word when it is not forbidden
by an established law, so when it is not contrary to a pre-established norm, it is not immoral. Thus, we can say
that morality consists of a system of rules of action that predetermine conduct. They state how one must act in
given situations; and to behave properly is to obey conscientiously.
This first statement, which verges on a common-sense observation, suffices nonetheless to highlight an
important fact too often misunderstood. Most moralists, indeed, consider morality as entirely contained in a very
general, unique formula. It is precisely on this account that they so readily accept the view that morality resides
entirely in the individual conscience, and that a simple glance inside ourselves will be enough to reveal it. This
formula is expressed in different ways: that of the Kantians is not that of the utilitarians, and each utilitarian
moralist has his own. However, in whatever manner it is conceived, everyone assigns it the central position. All
the rest of morality consists merely in applying this fundamental principle. This conception expresses the
classical distinction between so-called theoretical and applied morality. The aim of the former is to specify the
general law of morality; the latter, to investigate how the law thus enunciated should be applied in the major
situations and combinations encountered in life. Thus, specific rules deduced by this method would not in
themselves have an independent reality. They would only be extensions or corollaries of the general formula as
it was reflected throughout the range of life experiences. Apply the general law of morality to various domestic
relations and you will have family morality. Apply it to different political relationships and you will have civic
morality, etc. These would not be diverse duties but a single, unique duty running like a guiding thread
throughout life. Given the great diversity of situations and relationships, one can see how, from this point of
view, the realm of morality seems quite indeterminate.
However, such a conception of morality reverses the real situation. If we see morality as it is, we see that it
consists in an infinity of special rules, fixed and specific, which order man’s conduct in those different
situations in which he finds himself most frequently. Some define the desirable relationships between man and
wife; others, the way parents should behave with their children; and still others, the relationships between
person and property. Certain of these maxims are stated in law and sanctioned in clear-cut fashion; others are
etched in the public conscience, expressing themselves in the aphorisms of popular morality, and sanctioned
simply by the stigma attaching to their violation rather than by some definite punishment. But whether the one
or the other, they have their own existence, their own life. The proof lies in the fact that certain of these rules
may be found in a weakened state, while others, on the contrary, are altogether viable. In one country, the rules
of familiar morality may provide all the necessary stability, while the rules of civic virtue are weak and
ineffective.
Here, then, are phenomena not only real, but also comparatively autonomous, since they can be realized in
different ways depending upon the conditions of social life. This is a far cry from seeing here simple aspects of
one and the same general principle that would embrace all their meaning and reality. Quite to the contrary, the
general rule, however it has been or is conceived, does not constitute the reality but is a simple abstraction.
There is no rule, no social prescription that is recognized or gains its sanction from Kant’s moral imperative or
from the law of utility as formulated by Bentham, Mill, or Spencer. These are the generalizations of
philosophers, the hypotheses of theoreticians. What people refer to as the general law of morality is quite simply
a more or less exact way of representing approximately and schematically the moral reality; but it is not that
reality itself. It is a more or less satisfactory shorthand statement of characteristics common to all moral rules; it
is not a real, established, effective rule. It is to moral reality what philosophers’ hypotheses, aimed at expressing
the unity of nature, are to that nature itself. It is of the order of science, not of the order of life.
Thus, in fact and in practice, it is not according to theoretical insights or general formulae that we guide our
conduct, but according to specific rules applying uniquely to the special situation that they govern. In all
significant life situations, we do not refer back to the so-called general principle of morality to discover how it
applies in a particular case and thus learn what we should do. Instead there are clear-cut and specific ways of
acting required of us. When we conform to the rule prescribing chastity and forbidding incest, is it only because
we deduce it from some fundamental axiom of morality? Suppose, as fathers, we find ourselves widowers
charged with the entire responsibility of our family. We do not have to hark back to the ultimate source of
morality, nor even to some abstract notion of paternity to deduce what conduct is implied in these
circumstances. Law and the mores prescribe our conduct.
Thus, it is not necessary to represent morality as something very general, made concrete only to the extent it
becomes necessary. On the contrary, morality is a totality of definite rules; it is like so many molds with
limiting boundaries, into which we must pour our behavior. We do not have to construct these rules at the
moment of action by deducing them from some general principles; they already exist, they are already made,
they live and operate around us.
Now, this first statement is of primary importance for us. It demonstrates that the function of morality is, in
the first place, to determine conduct, to fix it, to eliminate the element of individual arbitrariness. Doubtless the
content of moral precepts—that is to say, the nature of the prescribed behavior—also has moral value, and we
shall discuss this. However, since all such precepts promote regularity of conduct among men, there is a moral
aspect in that these actions—not only in their specific content, but in a general way—are held to be certain
regularity. This is why transients and people who cannot hold themselves to specific jobs are always suspect. It
is because their moral temperament is fundamentally defective—because it is most uncertain and undependable.
Indeed, in refusing to yield to the requirements of regularized conduct, they disdain all customary behavior, they
resist limitations or restrictions, they feel some compulsion to remain “free.” This indeterminate situation also
implies a state of endless instability. Such people are subject to momentary impulses, to the disposition of the
moment, to whatever notion is in mind at the moment when they must act, since they lack habits sufficiently
strong to prevent present inclinations from prevailing over the past. Doubtless it may happen that a fortunate
impulse prompts them to a happy decision; but it is a situation by no means guaranteed to repeat itself. Morality
is basically a constant thing, and so long as we are not considering an excessively long time span, it remains
ever the same. A moral act ought to be the same tomorrow as today, whatever the personal predispositions of
the actor. Morality thus presupposes a certain capacity for behaving similarly under like circumstances, and
consequently it implies a certain ability to develop habits, a certain need for regularity. So close is the
connection between custom and moral behavior that all social customs almost inevitably have a moral character.
When a mode of behavior has become customary in a group, whatever deviates from it elicits a wave of
disapproval very like that evoked by moral transgressions. Customs share in some way the special respect
accorded moral behavior. If all social customs are not moral, all moral behavior is customary behavior.
Consequently, whoever resists the customary runs the risk of defying morality.
Regularity, however, is only one element of morality. This same conception of the rule when carefully
analyzed will disclose another and no less important feature of morality.
To assure regularity, it is only necessary that customs be strongly founded. But customs, by definition, are
forces internalized in the person. It is a kind of accumulated experience within us that unfolds itself, activated,
as it were, spontaneously. Internalized, it expresses itself externally as an inclination or a preference. Quite to
the contrary, a rule is essentially something that is outside the person. We cannot conceive of it save as an order
—or at least as binding advice—which originates outside ourselves. Is it a matter of rules of hygiene? They
come to us from the science that decrees them, or, more specifically, from the experts representing that science.
Does it concern rules of professional practice? They come to us from the tradition of the profession and, more
directly, from those among our elders who have passed them on to us and who best exemplify them in our eyes.
It is for this reason that, through the centuries, people have seen in the rules of morality directives deriving from
God.
A rule is not then a simple matter of habitual behavior; it is a way of acting that we do not feel free to alter
according to taste. It is in some measure—and to the same extent that it is a rule—beyond personal preference.
There is in it something that resists us, is beyond us. We do not determine its existence or its nature. It is
independent of what we are. Rather than expressing us, it dominates us. If it were entirely an internal thing, like
a sentiment or a habit, there would be no reason why it should not conform to all the variations and fluctuations
of our internal states. Of course, we do set for ourselves a line of conduct, and we say, then, that we have set up
rules of conduct of such and such a sort. But the word so used generally lacks its full meaning. A plan of action
that we ourselves outline, which depends only upon ourselves and that we can always modify, is a project, not a
rule. Or, if in fact it is to some extent truly independent of our will, it must rest in the same degree on something
other than our will—on something external to us. For example, we adopt a given mode of life because it carries
the authority of science; the authority of science legitimates it. It is to the science that we defer, in our behavior,
and not to ourselves. It is to science that we bend our will.
Thus, we see in these examples what there is in the conception of rules beyond the notion of regularity: the
idea of authority. By authority, we must understand that influence which imposes upon us all the moral power
that we acknowledge as superior to us. Because of this influence, we act in prescribed ways, not because the
required conduct is attractive to us, not because we are so inclined by some predisposition either innate or
acquired, but because there is some compelling influence in the authority dictating it. Obedience consists in
such acquiescence. What are the mental processes at the bottom of this notion of authority, which create this
compelling force to which we submit? This we shall have to investigate presently. For the moment, the question
is not germane; it is enough if we have the feeling of the thing and of its reality. There is in every moral force
that we feel as above or beyond ourselves something that bends our wills. In one sense, one can say that there is
no rule, properly speaking, which does not have this imperative character in some degree, because, once again,
every rule commands. It is this that makes us feel that we are not free to do as we wish.
Morality, however, constitutes a category of rules where the idea of authority plays an absolutely
preponderant role. Part of the esteem we accord to principles of hygiene or of professional practice or various
precepts drawn from folk wisdom doubtless stems from the authority accorded science and experimental
research. Such a wealth of knowledge and human experience, by itself, imposes on us a respect that
communicates itself to the bearers, just as the deference accorded by the devout to things religious is
communicated to priests. But, in all these cases, if we abide by the rule it is not only out of deference to the
authority that is its source; it is also because the prescribed behavior may very well have useful consequences,
whereas contrary behavior would entail harmful results. If, when we are sick, we take care of ourselves,
following the doctor’s orders, it is not only out of deference to his authority, but also because we hope thus to
recover. There is involved here, therefore, a feeling other than respect for authority. There enter quite utilitarian
considerations, which are intrinsic to the nature of the act and to its outcomes, possible or probable.
It is quite otherwise with morality. Without doubt, if we violate rules of morality we risk unhappy
consequences: we may be blamed, blacklisted, or materially hurt—either in person or our property. But it is a
certain and incontestable fact that an act is not moral, even when it is in substantial agreement with moral rules,
if the consideration of adverse consequences has determined it. Here, for the act to be everything it should be,
for the rule to be obeyed as it ought to be, it is necessary for us to yield, not in order to avoid disagreeable
results or some moral or material punishment, but very simply because we ought to, regardless of the
consequences our conduct may have for us. One must obey a moral precept out of respect for it and for this
reason alone. All the leverage that it exerts upon our wills derives exclusively from the authority with which it is
invested. Thus, in the case of moral rules, authority operates alone; to the extent that any other element enters
into conduct, to that extent it loses its moral character. We are saying, then, that while all rules command, the
moral rule consists entirely in a commandment and in nothing else. That is why the moral rule speaks to us with
such authority—why, when it speaks, all other considerations must be subordinated. It permits no equivocation.
When it is a matter of evaluating the ultimate consequences of an act, uncertainty is inevitable—there is always
something indeterminate in the outcome. So many diverse combinations of circumstance can produce outcomes
we are unable to foresee. But when it is a matter of duty, since all such calculation is forbidden, it is easier to be
sure: all problems are simpler. It is not a matter of anticipating a future inevitably obscure and uncertain. It is a
matter of knowing what is prescribed. If duty speaks there is nothing to do but obey. As to the source of this
extraordinary authority, I shall not inquire for the time being. I shall content myself with pointing out its
incontestable existence.
Morality is not, then, simply a system of customary conduct. It is a system of commandments. We were
saying, first of all, that irregular behavior is morally incomplete. So it is with the anarchist. (I use the word in its
etymological sense, referring to the man so constituted as not to feel the reality of moral imperatives, the man
who is affected by a kind of color-blindness, by virtue of which all moral and intellectual forces seem to him of
the same order.) Here we confront another aspect of morality: at the root of the moral life there is, besides the
preference for regularity, the notion of moral authority. Furthermore, these two aspects of morality are closely
linked, their unity deriving from a more complex idea that embraces both of them. This is the concept of
discipline. Discipline in effect regularizes conduct. It implies repetitive behavior under determinate conditions.
But discipline does not emerge without authority—a regulating authority. Therefore, to summarize this chapter,
we can say that the fundamental element of morality is the spirit of discipline.
However, let us be clear about the meaning of this proposition. Ordinarily, discipline appears useful only
because it entails behavior that has useful outcomes. Discipline is only a means of specifying and imposing the
required behavior, so it derives its raison d’être from the behavior. But if the preceding analysis is correct we
must say that discipline derives its raison d’être from itself; it is good that man is disciplined, independent of the
acts to which he thus finds himself constrained. Why? It is all the more necessary to consider this problem,
since discipline and rules often appear as constraining—necessary, perhaps, but nonetheless deplorable evils
that one must know how to bear while reducing them to a minimum. What, then, makes discipline good?

SOURCE: Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster Publishing Group, a division of Simon &
Schuster, Inc., from the Free Press edition of Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of
Sociology of Education by Emile Durkheim, translated by Everett Wilson and Herman Schnurer. Copyright ©
1961, 1973 by The Free Press. All rights reserved.
9
THE SCHOOL AND THE COMMUNITY
WILLARD WALLER

O ne who thinks about the relation of the school to the community which supports it will soon come
upon questions of public policy which it would take an Einsteinian grasp of the calculus of felicity to
answer. Difficulty arises because the aims of the school and the community are often divergent. It is
very well to say that the school should serve the community, but it is difficult to decide what opinion should
govern when school and community differ. The lights of the school authorities are often better than those of the
community in general. School men have given some study to their own problems, and could reasonably be
expected to know more about them than outsiders do. Yet the community is often wiser than the school, because
the community is whole and the school is fragmentary. The school, as a fragment of the common life, is a prey
to institutionalism. Institutionalism causes the school to forget its purpose; it makes the school give education
for education and teaching for teaching, perhaps for teachers; in short, it makes an end of what is logically only
a means to an end. This vice the community escapes because the community is whole, because it is not simply a
place where teachers teach and children learn. The community is whole because whole men live in it. And the
community is sometimes wise with a knowledge of the complete life that surpasses the knowledge of the
schools. It becomes, then, one of the important questions of public policy as to how far the community should
determine the policy of the school and how far the school should be self-determining. We have not yet the
formula.
A complication of a different order arises from the fact that communities in general, perhaps especially
American communities, have chosen to use the schools as repositories for certain ideals. The ideals which are
supposed to have their stronghold in the schools are of several different sorts. The belief is abroad that young
people ought to be trained to think the world a little more beautiful and much more just than it is, as they ought
to think men more honest and women more virtuous than they are. A high-school student must learn that
honesty is always the best policy; perhaps his father secretly believes that he knows better; perhaps the boy
himself may be learning something quite different in the world of business, but it does the boy no harm to start
with that assumption. We can teach him enough honesty to keep him out of jail all his life; later he can make
such amendments to our principles as seem necessary to him. All must learn that the United States is the
greatest and best of all the nations of history, unequalled in wealth or virtue since time began. Perhaps it does no
harm for students to think that the world is getting better and better, though this is a very dangerous doctrine if
one thinks about it very long.
Among these ideals are those moral principles which the majority of adults more or less frankly disavow for
themselves but want others to practice; they are ideals for the helpless, ideals for children and for teachers.
There are other ideals which are nearly out of print, because people do not believe in them anymore. Though
most adults have left such ideals behind, they are not willing to discard them finally. The school must keep them
alive. The school must serve as a museum of virtue.
We have in our culture a highly developed system of idealism for the young. The young have not yet come
into contact with a world that might soil them, and we do what we can to keep the young unsullied. There are
certain things that are not for the ears of the young. There are certain facts about human nature that they must
not learn. There are certain bits of reality that they must not touch. There are certain facts of history that we
think it best not to teach them. There is an idealized world view that it is thought best to pass on to adolescents.
The notion that it is not proper to tell the whole truth is often carried over into college teaching, and it affects
materially the point of view of many university professors. There is just enough apparent wisdom in the policy
of hiding difficult facts from the young to justify it in the popular mind as a general policy. For it is often argued
that character training must begin by the inculcation of an impossible virtue, in order that the individual may
have a surplus of virtue to trade upon. The world, of course, is thoroughly committed to the policy of not telling
the whole truth to youngsters, to the policy of telling them falsehoods which will make the world more
attractive or themselves more tractable and virtuous.
The conventional belief, as we have noted, is that the young must be shielded from contact with the
unpleasant and amoral aspects of the universe and that they must be kept in an ultra-conservative environment.
These ideals may be justified by the fact that they prevent the demoralization of the young; as to that we have
preferred to keep an open mind. But it is certain that the necessity of serving as the repository for these ideals
limits the larger utility of the school. For if it is the purpose of education to prepare for life in the world, then the
school must give its students that world in order that they may get themselves ready for living in it. Actually it
cannot give students the world, but only an imitation or a representation of the world; in any case, it should be
an accurate imitation or a faithful representation if the training which the student receives in school is to have
any validity. The less the discontinuity between the life of the school and the life of the world outside, the better
will be the training for life which the school gives to its students. Any ideal which cuts down the ability of the
school to reproduce reality interferes with its real function of preparing students for life. The utility of such
ideals may even be disputed from the moral point of view; the argument against them is the good one that the
individual upon whom we have foisted off a too idealistic world view will be more readily disorganized by
contact with a far from perfect world than will an individual who has already had some experience of the world;
it is the old principle of inoculation. In almost any case, if a school man believes in the policy of training young
persons to be virtuous by not telling them the truth, he sets very definite limits to his own continuing influence
upon those who come in contact with him. There is reason for the bitter jest that a school teacher is a man hired
to tell lies to little boys.
Our analysis of the relation between the school and the community has so far been very general. The
possibilities of such analysis are limited. We may hope to achieve an analysis which will have greater
concreteness by basing it upon the connections which are made between the school and the community by the
lives of individuals. If we wish an analysis that will bite into reality we must study the roots which persons
involved in school life have in the community at large and attempt to discover the interconnection of their lives
within and without the school. Each individual represents a reciprocal channel of influence, an influence of the
community upon the school and an influence of the school upon the community. Therefore we must study the
relation of the school and the community by studying persons and attempting to learn what burdens they carry
as they go back and forth between the community and the school. We turn now to an analysis of this sort.
The place of students as the young of a community we have already noted. Toward young persons the
community in general has the conventional attitude of the elders, an attitude of protection mingled with
regulation. Children live in glass houses. There is the desire to shield the young from all contaminating contact
with the world, and this is one reason for the multitudinous restrictions upon the teacher in the community.
Every older person tends to take a paternal interest in the young of the community, whether he has progeny or
not. The students in a public school thus have a very definite place in the community, and the community
conception of this place materially affects the kind of school which the community maintains.

• • •
Differences of position in the community determine important differences in the school. The child’s status
as the son of a particular person affects his status in the school and his attitude toward school. The daughter of
an influential man in the community does not expect to be treated in the same way as an ordinary child, and yet
it is dangerous for a teacher to make exceptions. Thus arise many problems to perplex the teacher. . . .
The attitudes of students make very clear the cruel distinction between rich and poor. Many children attain
an easy and unhealthy leadership through the use of the economic resources of their parents or merely through
their parents’ reputations. It is upon the basis of such distinctions that many of the cliques and social clubs of
high-school children are formed; the competition is not a healthy one because it is not based upon the merits of
the persons competing. Many parents who have the misfortune to be well-to-do or famous have longed to
remove their children from this atmosphere. The private school presents a way out of the situation. In
Washington it is no distinction to be a Congressman; in a private school it is not usually a distinction to have
wealthy parents; competition must therefore ascend to a different plane.
The children of poor and humble parents experience the situation with the opposite emphasis. They are
those whom the teachers do not favor; they are the ones excluded from things exclusive. These poorer children
frequently drop out of high school because of their inability to sustain themselves in social competition with the
children of wealthier parents.1 Clothes make the student. Teachers sometimes take unusual pains with children
who have few cultural advantages and little economic backing at home, and these efforts occasionally have
remarkable and heartening results.
Students may likewise stand out as individuals. The high-school athletic hero achieves much distinction in
the school, and his prowess is usually bruited about the community as well. Brilliant students may likewise
achieve desirable status in the school, with some carryover into the community at large. The girl who becomes
implicated in any scandal is singled out for special attention both in the school and the community. Frequently
the attention is an attempt to injure her, and it usually succeeds.
Such is the influence of the community upon the school, as mediated through the personalities of students.
The opposite process is fully as significant. The school, through its influence upon individuals, exerts a
tremendous influence upon the community. This is a process which has often been dwelt upon in the literature,
and we need give it here but passing notice. The long-term influence of the school may be very great. Perhaps
the school can have but little effect upon the inner make-up of the children who pass through it, but it can have a
great effect upon certain specific beliefs. Thus the advocates of temperance strove wisely to get their doctrines
incorporated into the curriculum of the schools. Perhaps it seemed futile at the time to show little children
pictures of ulcerated stomachs and badly deteriorated livers, but when those children grew old enough to vote,
they put prohibition into the Constitution. Likewise the representatives of the public utilities have chosen to
make much of their propaganda easily available for teachers in the form of lessons ready planned; some have
gone to the extreme of offering to grade the teacher’s papers for him. The process of cultural diffusion has
sometimes been hastened through the lessons of the schools; a particularly good example of this has been
furnished by the rapid spread of the toothbrush in America in the last quarter of a century.

• • •
On occasion, the doctrines of the school and the community come sharply into conflict. The result is that
some members of the community attempt to discipline erring members of the faculty. Instances like the
following could be multiplied without end.

In studying Caedmon, I asked them to read the Biblical version of the creation story and compare it with his.
I especially reminded them that I wanted it read as literature and compared on that basis. I called for the
papers the next day. Only three were available. I nonchalantly gave them the same assignment and an
additional one. No papers came in. I reminded them of their neglect. Finally, after another day or two, I
began to get papers of a distinctly sectarian version of the story. It was not what I wanted and I told them so.
It could not be used to the same purpose.
One night after school a rap came at the Assembly room door. There stood three very indignant ladies,
one of whom I recognized as the mother of one of my girls. She asked me icily if “The Professor” (everyone
called him that) was in. Innocence itself, I took them to his office in my most gracious manner. Miss V and I
laughed about how someone surely was going to get their everlasting, for those ladies were mad. Little did I
dream! I was thoroughly surprised when, the next day, the superintendent told me what a terrible time he
had convincing them that I was not trying to corrupt their daughters’ morals. (Autobiographical document,
My First Year of Teaching, from a twenty-five-year-old woman teacher.)

This incident leads naturally to a consideration of community-school relations centering in the personalities
of teachers. We may state our two most important generalizations concerning the relation of teachers to the
community in this form: That the teacher has a special position as a paid agent of cultural diffusion, and that the
teacher’s position in the community is much affected by the fact that he is supposed to represent those ideals for
which the schools serve as repositories.
Teachers are paid agents of cultural diffusion. They are hired to carry light into dark places. To make sure
that teachers have some light, standard qualifications for teachers have been evolved. Not only must the teacher
know enough to teach the youngsters in the schools competently according to the standards of the community,
but he must, usually, be a little beyond his community. From this it follows that the teacher must always be a
little discontented with the community he lives in. The teacher is a martyr to cultural diffusion.
It does not matter where a teacher starts, he must always take just enough training to make him a little
dissatisfied with any community he is qualified to serve. And it does not matter much how far he goes, for there
is, for most of us, no attainable end. A farmer’s daughter decides to teach. It seems to her that a rural school
would be just right; she is used to country life and it pleases her well. But she must be a high-school graduate
before she is qualified to teach in a rural school. When she has finished her training in the nearby village she is
no longer enthusiastic about teaching in a rural school. She goes to a normal school, and learns to live in a
cultural center of that level. Then she can teach in the high school of a small town. She goes to a state
university, which is a first-rate center of learning. What she learns there makes high-school teaching a little dull
and life in the smaller community difficult. University teachers and public-school teachers in the large cities are
partial exceptions, but for the rest there is rarely an end to the process. The teacher must always know enough to
make his subject matter seem commonplace to him, or he does not know enough to teach it. He must always
have received teaching a grade higher than he can give. He must always have adjusted his possibilities to a
center of learning one size larger than the one he serves. The teacher must take what consolation he can from
the fact, made much of by inspirational writers, that he is a carrier of the cultural values.
This nearly universal maladjustment is not without its effect upon the standards of success in the profession.
The successful teacher makes progress; that is, he moves occasionally, and always to a larger community. That
is one reason why teachers stubbornly go to school. They hope some time to make tastes and opportunities
coincide. But the fact that they rarely succeed accounts in part for the fact that teachers rarely take root in a
community. They hold themselves forever ready to obey that law of gravitation which pulls them toward an
educational center equivalent to the highest center they have had experience of. That is partly why teachers are
maladjusted transients rather than citizens. Although the stair steps of primary groups of children no doubt have
more to do with it than the attitudes of teachers, this unadjustment of teachers may help to account for the fact
that schools of each level ape the schools of the next higher grade, the grade schools imitating the high school,
the high schools pretending to be colleges, and colleges trying to become graduate schools.

• • •
Our second major generalization is that the teacher is supposed to represent certain ideals in the community.
These ideals differ somewhat from one community to another, but there is an underlying similarity. The entire
set of ideals in their most inclusive form is clearly stated in the contract which teachers in the public schools of
a certain southern community are asked to sign. The contract follows:

I promise to take a vital interest in all phases of Sunday-school work, donating of my time, service, and
money without stint for the uplift and benefit of the community.
I promise to abstain from all dancing, immodest dressing, and any other conduct unbecoming a teacher
and a lady.
I promise not to go out with any young men except in so far as it may be necessary to stimulate Sunday-
school work.
I promise not to fall in love, to become engaged or secretly married.
I promise not to encourage or tolerate the least familiarity on the part of any of my boy pupils.
I promise to sleep at least eight hours a night, to eat carefully, and to take every precaution to keep in the
best of health and spirits, in order that I may be better able to render efficient service to my pupils.
I promise to remember that I owe a duty to the townspeople who are paying me my wages, that I owe
respect to the school board and the superintendent that hired me, and that I shall consider myself at all times
the willing servant of the school board and the townspeople.2

The contract quoted above is so extreme that it will seem incredible to persons who are not familiar with the
moral qualifications which teachers in general are supposed to fulfill. Those a little closer to the facts will be
willing to credit its literal truth. In any case, the contract itself is so explicit that comment upon it is
unnecessary.
The demands made by the smaller community upon the time and money of the teacher are unremitting. The
teacher must be available for church functions, lodge functions, public occasions, lecture courses, and edifying
spectacles of all sorts. Not infrequently he is expected to identify himself closely with some particular religious
group and to become active in “church work.” School executives occupy an even more exposed position than do
underlings. Yet some unbelieving superintendents in very small communities have been able to work out
compromises that satisfied the community and yet involved no sacrifice of their own convictions. One tactful
agnostic declined to attend any church services at any time, but made it a point to be present at all church
suppers, “sociables,” and other non-religious ceremonies. Such a policy would need to be coupled with a great
deal of skill in evasion and putting off if it were to work successfully; the teacher must not only avoid the issue
and wear out those who urge church attendance upon him, but he must do it without giving offence or getting
himself classed as an adherent of the devil. The teacher is also under considerable pressure to contribute to good
causes. The difficulty is that he is not always permitted to judge of the goodness or badness of a cause. Quite
aside from any such factor of judgment, the very multiplicity of the good causes to which the teacher is
expected to contribute may make them a heavy drain upon his resources.
These demands are often resented, and with reason. But an interesting dilemma presents itself in this
connection. A part of the solution of the problems of the teaching profession depends upon the assimilation of
teachers to the community. Is not this conscription of teachers for edifying occasions a step in that direction?
Where the participation of the teacher is quite unforced, as it sometimes is, it would seem that such demands
work out favorably. Yet such participation will never really assimilate the teacher to the community, because it
is not the right kind of participation. The teacher participates as a teacher, always formally and ex officio, too
often unwillingly and by force. What is needed is participation by the teacher as an individual in community
groups in which he is interested. If the teacher is ever really to belong, he must join in local groups as John
Jones and not as the superintendent of schools.
The moral requirements that go with school teaching are extremely important. A colleague sometimes says,
half in jest, that the schools of America are primarily agencies for moral and religious instruction. If anyone
accepts the challenge laid down by that proposition, he points out the fact that the most complete ineffectiveness
as a teacher does not always constitute a valid ground for dismissing a teacher from his position, whereas
detection in any moral dereliction causes a teacher’s contract to be broken at once. Undoubtedly the fact that
teachers must be models of whatever sort of morality is accepted as orthodox in the community imposes upon
the teacher many disqualifications. With regard to sex, the community is often very brutal indeed. It is part of
the American credo that school teachers reproduce by budding. In no other walk of life is it regarded as even
faintly reprehensible that a young bachelor should look about for a wife, but there are indications that courtship
is not exactly good form in the male teacher. The community prefers its male teachers married, but if they are
unmarried, it forbids them to go about marrying. With regard to the conduct of women teachers, some
communities are unbelievably strict. Youth and beauty are disadvantages. Husband-hunting is the unpardonable
sin. The absurdity of this customary attitude, as well as its complete social unsoundness, should be apparent
from its mere statement; it becomes all the more significant that, in presenting the subject of sex prejudice
against school teachers, one must usually go on to point out that this is a situation almost without parallel in
modern life. Women teachers are our Vestal Virgins.
Conduct which would pass unnoticed in a young business woman becomes a matter of moment when the
young woman is a teacher. Rarely does an entire community pause to inquire into the affairs of a nineteen-year-
old stenographer, but it can, as the following incident shows, become tremendously excited about the affairs of a
nineteen-year-old school teacher.

During the summer when Mr. Blank, our superintendent, was on vacation, Miss Jones came to apply for a
position. Miss Jones was a very good looking young lady, nineteen years of age, and just graduated from a
small sectarian university. She, herself, belonged to the sect. The school board had one fellow sectarian, and,
as the principal remarked, two others who were susceptible to good-looking young women. Miss Jones was
hired. Mr. Blank had intended to fill her place with a young man.
 Miss Jones, being the only member of the high-school faculty belonging to this sect, chose to room alone.
From the first it was noticeable that the young men frequented Miss Jones’s room in the mornings and
noons before school had taken up and after school evenings. That started talk. The story was passed around
that Mr. Blank hadn’t wanted her in the first place and that she had better be careful. Some of the teachers
passing through the hall or otherwise near her classroom reported that she had noisy classes.
Several of the teachers talked to her in order to get her to confide in them. Then the rest of the teachers
were informed of what had occurred. She remarked that there wasn’t a single man in town that she hadn’t
dated. Several times she had accepted rides with high-school boys. If she walked up the street with one of
the boys at noon this was further cause for gossip. One teacher was reported to have said that she had better
leave her gentleman friend alone or she would scratch her eyes out.
One of the mathematics teachers was on hall duty right outside Miss Jones’s door and each day she had
something to report about Miss Jones.
The first six-weeks examination time came. The examinations were sent to the office to be
mimeographed. Miss Jones’s questions were considerably revised. Naturally she became bitter. She
remarked that she knew that the superintendent and principal were out to oust her. Her conduct was reported
as worse and worse. The teacher on hall duty reported that she had heard the principal chase a number of
boys out of her room. It was decidedly noticeable that the principal and superintendent were in the hallways
a great deal of the time.
Every move she made was watched and catalogued. A teacher told the others that at one of the class
parties some boys had come up to her and politely inquired as to how she had enjoyed the party, then turned
to Miss Jones and asked her to go riding with a group of them after the party.
Toward the end of the year she started keeping company with a young man reported to be of questionable
character. It appears that a member of the school board remonstrated with her, telling her she shouldn’t be
seen with him. As Miss Jones stated in her own words, she “gave him to understand where he should head
in.”
By established custom, public dancing was not allowed among the teachers. Miss Jones was seen
numerous times at public dances.
Once she told a group of teachers that she was not cut out for a teacher and that she was not coming back.
The school teachers, principal, and superintendent were all brought forcefully to the attention of the
public through this unfortunate affair. The town took sides on the question, which disturbed the entire
school and the entire community. (Document submitted by a school teacher.)

Miss Jones, perhaps, merits scant concern. But hers is a story that repeats itself every year or every few
years in almost every city and village of the nation. In other instances some particular points would stand out
more clearly. Cases could easily be found in which much greater injustice was worked upon the individual
teacher and a much less charitable attitude taken by the community at large. This community had some cause to
be concerned. There were numerous complicating factors, including the young woman’s religion, her isolation
from the other teachers, and the bad blood between her and them. But this case will serve to show how a storm
may descend upon the head of an adolescent girl who is a teacher and who nevertheless behaves as another
adolescent girl might behave.
This story calls to mind many others of a similar nature. There is, for example, the not uncommon case of
the teacher who is quite efficient in her work and quite discreet in her relations with students, but inclined to
lead a somewhat emancipated life outside the school room and the circle of school contacts. The efficient
teacher who somehow gets the reputation of being “fast” often becomes a storm center too. Sometimes this
reputation is founded upon nothing more tangible than the fact that this teacher prefers to live in a hotel than in
a private home, that she does not go to church, that she plays cards, or that she occasionally takes weekend trips.
The list of taboos is endless; the president of a certain teacher’s college in the south is reputed to look with the
utmost disfavor upon any association outside of school between his male and female teachers, though he does
not disapprove, apparently, of other arrangements they make in their love life.
NOTES

1. Cf. The Lynds, Middletown (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1929), p. 185.
2. Quoted by T. Minehan, “The Teacher Goes Job-Hunting,” The Nation, (1927), vol. 124, p. 606. (Reprinted
by permission of The Nation.)

SOURCE: Willard Waller, “The School and the Community,” The Sociology of Teaching. New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1965; pp. 33–47. Reprinted with the permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
10
FUNCTIONAL AND CONFLICT THEORIES OF
EDUCATIONAL STRATIFICATION
RANDALL COLLINS

E ducation has become highly important in occupational attainment in modern America, and thus
occupies a central place in the analysis of stratification and of social mobility. This [chapter] attempts
to assess the adequacy of two theories in accounting for available evidence on the link between
education and stratification: a functional theory concerning trends in technical skill requirements in industrial
societies; and a conflict theory derived from the approach of Max Weber, stating the determinants of various
outcomes in the struggles among status groups. It will be argued that the evidence best supports the conflict
theory, although technical requirements have important effects in particular contexts. It will be further argued
that the construction of a general theory of the determinants of stratification in its varying forms is best
advanced by incorporating elements of the functional analysis of technical requirements of specific jobs at
appropriate points within the conflict model. The conclusion offers an interpretation of historical change in
education and stratification in industrial America, and suggests where further evidence is required for more
precise tests and for further development of a comprehensive explanatory theory.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION

Educational requirements for employment have become increasingly widespread, not only in elite occupations
but also at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy. . . . At the same time, educational requirements appear to
have become more specialized, with 38% of the organizations in the 1967 survey which required college
degrees of managers preferring business administration training, and an additional 15% preferring engineering
training; such requirements appear to have been virtually unknown in the 1920s (Pierson 1959:34–54). At the
same time, the proportions of the American population attending schools through the completion of high school
and advanced levels have risen sharply during the last century. . . . Careers are thus increasingly shaped within
the educational system.

THE TECHNICAL-FUNCTION THEORY OF EDUCATION

A common explanation of the importance of education in modern society may be termed the technical-function
theory. Its basic propositions, found in a number of sources (see, for example, B. Clark 1962; Kerr et al. 1960),
may be stated as follows: (1) the skill requirements of jobs in industrial society constantly increase because of
technological change. Two processes are involved: (a) the proportion of jobs requiring low skill decreases and
the proportion requiring high skill increases; and (b) the same jobs are upgraded in skill requirements. (2)
Formal education provides the training, either in specific skills or in general capacities, necessary for the more
highly skilled jobs. (3) Therefore, educational requirements for employment constantly rise, and increasingly
larger proportions of the population are required to spend longer and longer periods in school.
The technical-function theory of education may be seen as a particular application of a more general
functional approach. The functional theory of stratification (Davis and Moore 1945) rests on the premises (A)
that occupational positions require particular kinds of skilled performance; and (B) that positions must be filled
with persons who have either the native ability, or who have acquired the training necessary for the performance
of the given occupational role.1 The technical-function theory of education may be viewed as a subtype of this
form of analysis, since it shares the premises that the occupational structure creates demands for particular kinds
of performance, and that training is one way of filling these demands. In addition, it includes the more
restrictive premises (1 and 2 above) concerning the way in which skill requirements of jobs change with
industrialization, and concerning the content of school experiences.
The technical-function theory of education may be tested by reviewing the evidence for each of its
propositions (1a, 1b, and 2).2 As will be seen, these propositions do not adequately account for the evidence. In
order to generate a more complete explanation, it will be necessary to examine the evidence for the underlying
functional propositions, (A) and (B). This analysis leads to a focus on the processes of stratification—notably
group conflict—not expressed in the functional theory, and to the formalization of a conflict theory to account
for the evidence.
Proposition (1a): Educational requirements of jobs in industrial society increase because the proportion of
jobs requiring low skill decreases and the proportion requiring high skill increases. Available evidence
suggests that this process accounts for only a minor part of educational upgrading, at least in a society that has
passed the point of initial industrialization. Fifteen percent of the increase in education of the U.S. labor force
during the twentieth century may be attributed to shifts in the occupational structure—a decrease in the
proportion of jobs with low skill requirements and an increase in proportion of jobs with high skill requirements
(Folger and Nam 1964). The bulk of educational upgrading (85%) has occurred within job categories.
Proposition (1b): Educational requirements of jobs in industrial society rise because the same jobs are
upgraded in skill requirements. The only available evidence on this point consists of data collected by the U.S.
Department of Labor in 1950 and 1960, which indicate the amount of change in skill requirements of specific
jobs. Under the most plausible assumptions as to the skills provided by various levels of education, it appears
that the educational level of the U.S. labor force has changed in excess of that which is necessary to keep up
with skill requirements of jobs (Berg 1970:38–60). Over-education for available jobs is found particularly
among males who have graduated from college and females with high school degrees or some college, and
appears to have increased between 1950 and 1960.
Proposition (2): Formal education provides required job skills. This proposition may be tested in two ways:
(a) Are better educated employees more productive than less educated employees? (b) Are vocational skills
learned in schools, or elsewhere?

(a) Are better educated employees more productive? The evidence most often cited for the productive
effects of education is indirect, consisting of relationships between aggregate levels of education in a
society and its overall economic productivity. These are of three types:
(i) The national growth approach involves calculating the proportion of growth in the U.S. Gross
National Product attributable to conventional inputs of capital and labor; these leave a large
residual, which is attributed to improvements in skill of the labor force based on increased
education (Schultz 1961; Denison 1965). This approach suffers from difficulty in clearly
distinguishing among technological change affecting productive arrangements, changes in the
abilities of workers acquired by experience at work with new technologies, and changes in skills
due to formal education and motivational factors associated with a competitive or achievement-
oriented society. The assignment of a large proportion of the residual category to education is
arbitrary. Denison (1965) makes this attribution on the basis of the increased income to persons
with higher levels of education interpreted as rewards for their contributions to productivity.
Although it is a common assumption in economic argument that wage returns reflect output value,
wage returns cannot be used to prove the productive contribution of education without circular
reasoning.
(ii) Correlations of education and level of economic development for nations show that the higher the
level of economic development of a country, the higher the proportion of its population in
 elementary, secondary, and higher education (Harbison and Myers 1964). Such correlations beg
the question of causality. There are considerable variations in school enrollments among countries
at the same economic level, and many of these variations are explicable in terms of political
demands for access to education (Ben-David 1963–64). Also, the overproduction of educated
personnel in countries whose level of economic development cannot absorb them suggests the
demand for education need not come directly from the economy, and may run counter to
economic needs (Hoselitz 1965).
(iii) Time-lag correlations of education and economic development show that incre ases in the
proportion of population in elementary school precede increases in economic development after a
takeoff point at approximately 30–50% of the 7- to 14-year-old age group in school. Similar
anticipations of economic development are suggested for increases in secondary and higher
education enrollment, although the data do not clearly support this conclusion (Peaslee 1969). A
pattern of advances in secondary school enrollments preceding advances in economic
development is found only in a small number of cases (12 of 37 examined in Peaslee 1969). A
pattern of growth of university enrollments and subsequent economic development is found in 21
of 37 cases, but the exceptions (including the United States, France, Sweden, Russia, and Japan)
are of such importance as to throw serious doubt on any necessary contribution of higher
education to economic development. The main contribution of education to economic
productivity, then, appears to occur at the level of the transition to mass literacy, and not
significantly beyond this level.

Direct evidence of the contribution of education to individual productivity is summarized by Berg

(1970:85–104, 143–76). It indicates that the better educated employees are not generally more productive, and
in some cases are less productive, among samples of factory workers, maintenance men, department store
clerks, technicians, secretaries, bank tellers, engineers, industrial research scientists, military personnel, and
federal civil service employers.

(b) Are vocational skills learned in school, or elsewhere? Specifically vocational education in the schools
for manual positions is virtually independent of job rate, as graduates of vocational programs are not
more likely to be employed than high school dropouts (Plunkett 1960; Duncan 1964). Most skilled
manual workers acquire their skills on the job or casually (Clark and Sloan 1966:73). Retraining for
important technological changes in industry has been carried out largely informally on the job; in only a
very small proportion of jobs affected by technological change is formal retraining in educational
institutions used (Collins 1969:147–158; Bright 1958).

The relevance of education for nonmanual occupational skills is more difficult to evaluate. Training in
specific professions, such as medicine, engineering, scientific or scholarly research, teaching, and law, can
plausibly be considered vocationally relevant, and possibly essential. Evidences comparing particular degrees of
educational success with particular kinds of occupational performance or success are not available, except for a
few occupations. For engineers, high college grades and degree levels generally predict high levels of technical
responsibility and high participation in professional activities, but not necessarily high salary or supervisory
responsibility (Perrucci and Perrucci 1970). At the same time, a number of practicing engineers lack college
degrees (about 40% of engineers in the early 1950s; see Soderberg 1963:213), suggesting that even such highly
technical skills may be acquired on the job. For academic research scientists, educational quality has little effect
on subsequent productivity (Hagstrom and Hargens 1968). For other professions, evidence is not available on
the degree to which actual skills are learned in school rather than in practice. In professions such as medicine
and law, where education is a legal requirement for admission to practice, a comparison group of noneducated
practitioners is not available, at least in the modern era.
Outside of the traditional learned professions, the plausibility of the vocational importance of education is
more questionable. Comparisons of the efforts of different occupations to achieve “professionalization” suggest
that setting educational requirements and bolstering them through licensing laws is a common tactic in raising
an occupation’s prestige and autonomy (Wilensky 1964). The result has been the proliferation of numerous
pseudo-professions in modern society; nevertheless these fail to achieve strong professional organization
through lack of a monopolizable (and hence teachable) skill base. Business administration schools represent
such an effort. (See Pierson 1959:9, 55–95, 140; Gordon and Howell 1959:1–18, 40, 324–37.) Descriptions of
general, nonvocational education do not support the image of schools as places where skills are widely learned.
Scattered studies suggest that the knowledge imparted in particular courses is retained only in small part through
the next few years (Learned and Wood 1938:28), and indicate a dominant student culture concerned with
nonacademic interests or with achieving grades with a minimum of learning (Coleman 1961; Becker et al.
1968).
The technical-function theory of education, then, does not give an adequate account of the evidence.
Economic evidence indicates no clear contributions of education to economic development, beyond the
provisions of mass literacy. Shifts in the proportions of more skilled and less skilled jobs do not account for the
observed increase in education of the American labor force. Education is often irrelevant to on-the-job
productivity and is sometimes counter-productive; specifically vocational training seems to be derived more
from work experience than from formal school training. The quality of schools themselves and the nature of
dominant student cultures suggest that schooling is very inefficient as a means of training for work skills.

FUNCTIONAL AND CONFLICT PERSPECTIVES

It may be suggested that the inadequacies of the technical-function theory of education derive from a more basic
source: the functional approach to stratification. A fundamental assumption is that there is a generally fixed set
of positions, whose various requirements the labor force must satisfy. The fixed demand for skills of various
types, at any given time, is the basic determinant of who will be selected for what positions. Social change may
then be explained by specifying how these functional demands change with the process of modernization. In
keeping with the functional perspective in general, the needs of society are seen as determining the behavior and
the rewards of the individuals within it.
However, this premise may be questioned as an adequate picture of the fundamental processes of social
organization. It may be suggested that the “demands” of any occupational position are not fixed, but represent
whatever behavior is settled upon in bargaining between the persons who fill the positions and those who
attempt to control them. Individuals want jobs primarily for the rewards to themselves in material goods, power,
and prestige. The amount of productive skill they must demonstrate to hold their positions depends on how
much clients, customers, or employers can successfully demand of them, and this in turn depends on the balance
of power between workers and their employers.
Employers tend to have quite imprecise conceptions of the skill requirements of most jobs, and operate on a
strategy of “satisfying” rather than optimizing—that is, setting average levels of performance as satisfactory,
and making changes in procedures or personnel only when performance falls noticeably below minimum
standards (Dill et al. 1962; March and Simon 1958:140–41). Efforts to predict work performance by objective
tests have foundered due to difficulties in measuring performance (except on specific mechanical tasks) and the
lack of control groups to validate the tests (Anastasi 1967). Organizations do not force their employees to work
at maximum efficiency; there is considerable insulation of workers at all levels from demands for full use of
their skills and efforts. Informal controls over output are found not only among production workers in
manufacturing but also among sales and clerical personnel (Roy 1952; Blau 1955; Lombard 1955). The
existence of informal organization at the managerial level, the widespread existence of bureaucratic pathologies
such as evasion of responsibility, empire-building, and displacement of means by ends (“red tape”), and the fact
that administrative work is only indirectly related to the output of the organization, suggest that managers, too,
are insulated from strong technological pressures for use of technical skills. On all levels, wherever informal
organization exists, it appears that standards of performance reflect the power of the groups involved.
In this light, it is possible to reinterpret the body of evidence that ascriptive factors continue to be important
in occupational success even in advanced industrial society. The social mobility data summarized at the onset of
this [chapter] show that social origins have a direct effect on occupational success, even after the completion of
education. Both case studies and cross-sectional samples amply document widespread discrimination against
Negroes. Case studies show that the operation of ethnic and class standards in employment is based not merely
on skin color but on name, accent, style of dress, manners, and conversational abilities (Noland and Bakke
1949; Turner 1952; Taeuber et al. 1966; Nosow 1956). Cross-sectional studies, based on both biographical and
survey data, show that approximately 60 to 70% of the American business elite come from upper-class and
upper-middle-class families, and fewer than 15% from working-class families (Taussig and Joslyn 1932:97;
Warner and Abegglen 1955:37–68; Newcomer 1955:53; Bendix 1956:198–253; Mills 1963:110–39). These
proportions are fairly constant from the early 1800s through the 1950s. The business elite is overwhelmingly
Protestant, male, and completely white, although there are some indications of a mild trend toward declining
social origins and an increase of Catholics and Jews. Ethnic and class background have been found crucial for
career advancement in the professions as well (Ladinsky 1963; Hall 1946). Sexual stereotyping of jobs is
extremely widespread (Collins 1969:234–38).
In the traditional functionalist approach, these forms of ascription are treated as residual categories: carry-
overs from a less advanced period, or marks of the imperfections of the functional mechanism of placement. Yet
available trend data suggest that the link between social class origins and occupational attainment has remained
constant during the twentieth century in America (Blau and Duncan 1967:81–113); the proportion of women in
higher occupational levels has changed little since the late nineteenth century (Epstein 1970:7); and the few
available comparisons between elite groups in traditional and modern societies suggest comparable levels of
mobility (Marsh 1963). Declines in racial and ethnic discrimination that appear to have occurred at periods in
twentieth-century America may be plausibly explained as results of political mobilization of particular minority
groups rather than by an increased economic need to select by achievement criteria.
Goode (1967) has offered a modified functional model to account for these disparities: that work groups
always organize to protect their inept members from being judged by outsiders’ standards of productivity, and
that this self-protection is functional to the organizations, preventing a Hobbesian competitiveness and distrust
of all against all. This argument re-establishes a functional explanation, but only at the cost of undermining the
technological view of functional requirements. Further, Goode’s conclusions can be put in other terms: it is to
the advantage of groups of employees to organize so that they will not be judged by strict performance
standards; and it is at least minimally to the advantage of the employer to let them do so, for if he presses them
harder he creates dissension and alienation. Just how hard an employer can press his employees is not given in
Goode’s functional model. That is, his model has the disadvantage common to functional analysis in its most
general form, of covering too many alternative possibilities to provide testable explanations of specific
outcomes. Functional analysis too easily operates as a justification for whatever particular pattern exists,
asserting in effect that there is a proper reason for it to be so, but failing to state the conditions under which a
particular pattern will hold rather than another. The technical version of job requirements has the advantage of
specifying patterns, but it is this specific form of functional explanation that is jettisoned by a return to a more
abstract functional analysis.
A second hypothesis may be suggested: the power of “ascribed” groups may be the prime basis of selection
in all organizations, and technical skills are secondary considerations depending on the balance of power.
Education may thus be regarded as a mark of membership in a particular group (possibly at times its defining
characteristic), not a mark of technical skills or achievement. Educational requirements may thus reflect the
interests of whichever groups have power to set them. Weber (1968:1000) interpreted educational requirements
in bureaucracies, drawing especially on the history of public administration in Prussia, as the result of efforts by
university graduates to monopolize positions, raise their corporate status, and thereby increase their own
security and power vis-á-vis both higher authorities and clients. Gusfield (1958) has shown that educational
requirements in the British Civil Service were set as the result of a power struggle between a victorious
educated upper-middle-class and the traditional aristocracy.
To summarize the argument to this point: available evidence suggests that the technical-functional view of
educational requirements for jobs leaves a large number of facts unexplained. Functional analysis on the more
abstract level does not provide a testable explanation of which ascribed groups will be able to dominate which
positions. To answer this question, one must leave the functional frame of reference and examine the conditions
of relative power of each group.
A CONFLICT THEORY OF STRATIFICATION

The conditions under which educational requirements will be set and changed may be stated more generally, on
the basis of a conflict theory of stratification derived from Weber (1968:926–39; see also Collins 1968), and
from advances in modern organization theory fitting the spirit of this approach.

A. Status Groups. The basic units of society are associational groups sharing common cultures (or
“subcultures”). The core of such groups is families and friends, but they may be extended to religious,
educational, or ethnic communities. In general, they comprise all persons who share a sense of status equality
based on participation in a common culture: styles of language, tastes in clothing and decor, manners and other
ritual observances, conversational topics and styles, opinions and values, and preferences in sports, arts, and
media. Participation in such cultural groups gives individuals their fundamental sense of identity, especially in
contrast with members of other associational groups in whose everyday culture they cannot participate
comfortably. Subjectively, status groups distinguish themselves from others in terms of categories of moral
evaluation such as “honor,” “taste,” “breeding,” “respectability,” “propriety,” “cultivation,” “good fellows,”
“plain folks,” etc. Thus the exclusion of persons who lack the ingroup culture is felt to be normatively
legitimated.
There is no a priori determination of the number of status groups in a particular society, nor can the degree
to which there is consensus on a rank order among them be stated in advance. These are not matters of
definition, but empirical variations, the causes of which are subjects of other developments of the conflict theory
of stratification. Status groups should be regarded as ideal types, without implication of necessarily distinct
boundaries; the concepts remain useful even in the case where associational groupings and their status cultures
are fluid and overlapping, as hypotheses about the conflicts among status groups may remain fruitful even under
these circumstances.
Status groups may be derived from a number of sources. Weber outlines three: (a) differences in life style
based on economic situation (i.e., class); (b) differences in life situation based on power position; (c) differences
in life situation deriving directly from cultural conditions or institutions, such as geographical origin, ethnicity,
religion, education, or intellectual or aesthetic cultures.

B. Struggle for Advantage. There is a continual struggle in society for various “goods”—wealth, power, or
prestige. We need make no assumption that every individual is motivated to maximize his rewards; however,
since power and prestige are inherently scarce commodities, and wealth is often contingent upon them, the
ambition of even a small proportion of persons for more than equal shares of these goods sets up an implicit
counter-struggle on the part of others to avoid subjection and disesteem. Individuals may struggle with each
other, but since individual identity is derived primarily from membership in a status group, and because the
cohesion of status groups is a key resource in the struggle against others, the primary focus of struggle is
between status groups rather than within them.
The struggle for wealth, power, and prestige is carried out primarily through organizations. There have been
struggles throughout history among organizations controlled by different status groups, for military conquest,
business advantage, or cultural (e.g., religious) hegemony, and intricate sorts of interorganizational alliances are
possible. In the more complex societies, struggle between status groups is carried on in large part within
organizations, as the status groups controlling an organization coerce, hire, or culturally manipulate others to
carry out their wishes (as in, respectively, a conscript army, a business, or a church). Organizational research
shows that the success of organizational elites in controlling their subordinates is quite variable. Under
particular conditions, lower or middle members have considerable de facto power to avoid compliance, and
even to change the course of the organizations (see Etzioni 1961).
This opposing power from below is strengthened when subordinate members constitute a cohesive status
group of their own; it is weakened when subordinates acquiesce in the values of the organization elite.
Coincidence of ethnic and class boundaries produces the sharpest cultural distinctions. Thus, Catholics of
immigrant origins have been the bulwarks of informal norms restricting work output in American firms run by
WASPs, whereas Protestants of native rural backgrounds are the main “rate-busters” (O. Collins et al. 1946).
Selection and manipulation of members in terms of status groups is thus a key weapon in intraorganizational
struggles. In general, the organization elite selects its new members and key assistants from its own status group
and makes an effort to secure lower-level employees who are at least indoctrinated to respect the cultural
superiority of their status culture.3
Once groups of employees of different status groups are formed at various positions (middle, lower, laterally
differentiated) in the organization, each of these groups may be expected to launch efforts to recruit more
members of their own status group. This process is illustrated by conflicts among whites and blacks, Protestants
and Catholics and Jews, Yankee, Irish and Italian, etc., found in American occupational life (Hughes 1949;
Dalton 1951). These conflicts are based on ethnically or religiously founded status cultures; their intensity rises
and falls with processes increasing or decreasing the cultural distinctiveness of these groups, and with the
succession of advantages and disadvantages set by previous outcomes of these struggles which determine the
organizational resources available for further struggle. Parallel processes of cultural conflict may be based on
distinctive class as well as ethnic cultures.

C. Education as Status Culture. The main activity of schools is to teach particular status cultures, both in and
outside the classroom. In this light, any failure of schools to impart technical knowledge (although it may also
be successful in this) is not important; schools primarily teach vocabulary and inflection, styles of dress,
aesthetic tastes, values and manners. The emphasis on sociability and athletics found in many schools is not
extraneous but may be at the core of the status culture propagated by the schools. Where schools have a more
academic or vocational emphasis, this emphasis may itself be the content of a particular status culture, providing
sets of values, materials for conversation, and shared activities for an associational group making claims to a
particular basis for status.
Insofar as a particular status group controls education, it may use it to foster control within work
organizations. Educational requirements for employment can serve both to select new members for elite
positions who share the elite culture and, at a lower level of education, to hire lower and middle employees who
have acquired a general respect for these elite values and styles.

TESTS OF THE CONFLICT THEORY OF EDUCATIONAL STRATIFICATION

The conflict theory in its general form is supported by evidence (1) that there are distinctions among status
group cultures—based both on class and on ethnicity—in modern societies (Kahl 1957:127–56, 184–220); (2)
that status groups tend to occupy different occupational positions within organizations (see data on ascription
cited above); and (3) that occupants of different organizational positions struggle over power (Dalton 1959;
Crozier 1964). The more specific tests called for here, however, are of the adequacy of conflict theory to explain
the link between education and occupational stratification. Such tests may focus either on the proposed
mechanism of occupational placement, or on the conditions for strong or weak links between education and
occupation.

EDUCATION AS A MECHANISM OF OCCUPATIONAL PLACEMENT

The mechanism proposed is that employers use education to select persons who have been socialized into the
dominant status culture: for entrants to their own managerial ranks, into elite culture; for lower-level employees,
into an attitude of respect for the dominant culture and the elite which carries it. This requires evidence that:(a)
schools provide either training for the elite culture, or respect for it; and (b) employers use education as a means
of selection for cultural attributes.

(a) Historical and descriptive studies of schools support the generalization that they are places where particular
status cultures are acquired, either from the teachers, from other students, or both. Schools are usually founded
by powerful or autonomous status groups, either to provide an exclusive education for their own children, or to
propagate respect for their cultural values. Until recently most schools were founded by religions, often in
opposition to those founded by rival religions; throughout the 19th century, this rivalry was an important basis
for the founding of large numbers of colleges in the U.S., and the Catholic and Lutheran school systems. The
public school system in the U.S. was founded mainly under the impetus of WASP elites with the purpose of
teaching respect for Protestant and middle-class standards of cultural and religious propriety, especially in the
face of Catholic, working-class immigration from Europe (Cremin 1961; Curti 1935). The content of public
school education has consisted especially of middle-class, WASP culture (Waller 1932:15–131; Becker 1961;
Hess and Torney 1967).
At the elite level, private secondary schools for children of the WASP upper class were founded from the
1880s, when the mass indoctrination function of the growing public schools made them unsuitable as means of
maintaining cohesion of the elite culture itself (Baltzell 1958:327–72). These elite schools produce a distinctive
personality type, characterized by adherence to a distinctive set of upper-class values and manners (McArthur
1955). The cultural rule of schools has been more closely studied in Britain (Bernstein 1961; Weinberg 1967),
and in France (Bourdieu and Passeron 1964), although Riesman and his colleagues (Riesman 1958; Jencks and
Riesman 1968) have shown some of the cultural differences among prestige levels of colleges and universities
in the United States.

(b) Evidence that education has been used as a means of cultural selection may be found in several sources.
Hollingshead’s (1949:360–88) study of Elmtown school children, school dropouts, and community attitudes
toward them suggests that employers use education as a means of selecting employees with middle-class
attributes. A 1945–1946 survey of 240 employers in New Haven and Charlotte, N.C. indicated that they
regarded education as a screening device for employees with desirable (middle-class) character and demeanor;
white-collar positions particularly emphasized educational selection because these employees were considered
most visible to outsiders (Noland and Bakke 1949:20–63).
A survey of employers in nationally prominent corporations indicated that they regarded college degrees as
important in hiring potential managers, not because they were thought to ensure technical skills, but rather to
indicate “motivation” and “social experience” (Gordon and Howell 1959: 121). Business school training is
similarly regarded, less as evidence of necessary training (as employers have been widely skeptical of the utility
of this curriculum for most positions) than as an indication that the college graduate is committed to business
attitudes. Thus, employers are more likely to refuse to hire liberal arts graduates if they come from a college
which has a business school than if their college is without a business school (Gordon and Howell 1959:84–87;
see also Pierson 1959:90–99). In the latter case, the students could be said not to have had a choice; but when
both business and liberal arts courses are offered and the student chooses liberal arts, employers appear to take
this as a rejection of business values.
Finally, a 1967 survey of 309 California organizations (Collins 1971) found that educational requirements
for white-collar workers were highest in organizations which placed the strongest emphasis on normative
control over their employees.4 Normative control emphasis was indicated by (i) relative emphasis on the
absence of police record for job applicants; (ii) relative emphasis on a record of job loyalty; (iii) Etzioni’s
(1961) classification of organizations into those with high normative control emphasis (financial, professional
services, government, and other public services organizations) and those with remunerative control emphasis
(manufacturing, construction, and trade). These three indicators are highly interrelated, thus mutually validating
their conceptualization as indicators of normative control emphasis. The relationship between normative control
emphasis and educational requirements holds for managerial requirements and white-collar requirements
generally, both including and excluding professional and technical positions. Normative control emphasis does
not affect blue-collar education requirements.

VARIATIONS IN LINKAGE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND OCCUPATION

The conflict model may also be tested by examining the cases in which it predicts education will be relatively
important or unimportant in occupational attainment. Education should be most important where two conditions
hold simultaneously: (1) the type of education most closely reflects membership in a particular status group, and
(2) that group controls employment in particular organizational contexts. Thus, education will be most
important where the fit is greatest between the culture of the status groups emerging from schools, and the status
group doing the hiring; it will be least important where there is the greatest disparity between the culture of the
school and of the employers.
This fit between school-group culture and employer culture may be conceptualized as a continuum. The
importance of elite education is highest where it is involved in selection of new members of organizational
elites, and should fade off where jobs are less elite (either lower level jobs in these organizations, or jobs in
other organizations not controlled by the cultural elite). Similarly, schools which produce the most elite
graduates will be most closely linked to elite occupations; schools whose products are less well socialized into
elite culture are selected for jobs correspondingly less close to elite organizational levels.
In the United States, the schools which produce culturally elite groups, either by virtue of explicit training or
by selection of students from elite backgrounds, or both, are the private prep schools at the secondary level; at
the higher level, the elite colleges (the Ivy League, and to a lesser degree the major state universities); at the
professional training level, those professional schools attached to the elite colleges and universities. At the
secondary level, schools which produce respectably socialized, nonelite persons are the public high schools
(especially those in middle-class residential areas); from the point of view of the culture of WASP employers,
Catholic schools (and all-black schools) are less acceptable. At the level of higher education, Catholic and black
colleges and professional schools are less elite, and commercial training schools are the least elite form of
education.
In the United States, the organizations most clearly dominated by the WASP upper class are large,
nationally organized business corporations, and the largest law firms (Domhoff 1967:38–62). Those
organizations more likely to be dominated by members of minority ethnic cultures are the smaller and local
businesses in manufacturing, construction, and retail trade; in legal practice, solo rather than firm employment.
In government employment, local governments appear to be more heavily dominated by ethnic groups, whereas
particular branches of the national government (notably the State Department and the Treasury) are dominated
by WASP elites (Domhoff 1967:84–114, 132–37).
Evidence on the fit between education and employment is available for only some of these organizations. In
a broad sample of organizational types (Collins 1971) educational requirements were higher in the bigger
organizations, which also tended to be organized on a national scale, than in smaller and more localistic
organizations.5 The finding of Perrucci and Perrucci (1970) that upper-class social origins were important in
career success precisely within the group of engineers who graduated from the most prestigious engineering
schools with the highest grades may also bear on this question; since the big national corporations are most
likely to hire this academically elite group, the importance of social origins within this group tends to
corroborate the interpretation of education as part of a process of elite cultural selection in those organizations.
Among lawyers, the predicted differences are clear: graduates of the law schools attached to elite colleges
and universities are more likely to be employed in firms, whereas graduates of Catholic or commercial law
schools are more likely to be found in solo practice (Ladinsky 1963). The elite Wall Street law firms are most
educationally selective in this regard, choosing not only from Ivy League law schools but from a group whose
background includes attendance at elite prep schools and colleges (Smigel 1964:39, 73–74, 117). There are also
indications that graduates of ethnically-dominated professional schools are most likely to practice within the
ethnic community; this is clearly the case among black professionals. In general, the evidence that graduates of
black colleges (Sharp 1970:64–67) and of Catholic colleges (Jencks and Riesman 1968:357–66) have attained
lower occupational positions in business than graduates of white Protestant schools (at least until recent years)
also bolsters this interpretation.6
It is possible to interpret this evidence according to the technical-function theory of education, arguing that
the elite schools provide the best technical training, and that the major national organizations require the
greatest degree of technical talent. What is necessary is to test simultaneously for technical and status-conflict
conditions. The most direct evidence on this point is the California employer study (Collins 1971), which
examined the effects of normative control emphasis and of organizational prominence, while holding constant
the organization’s technological modernity, as measured by the number of technological and organizational
changes in the previous six years. Technological change was found to affect educational requirements at
managerial and white-collar (but not blue-collar) levels, thus giving some support to the technical-function
theory of education. The three variables—normative control emphasis, organizational prominence, and
technological change—each independently affected educational requirements, in particular contexts.
Technological change produced significantly higher educational requirements only in smaller, localistic
organizations, and in organizational sectors not emphasizing normative control. Organizational prominence
produced significantly higher educational requirements in organizations with low technological change, and in
sectors de-emphasizing normative control. Normative control emphasis produced significantly higher
educational requirements in organizations with low technological change, and in less prominent organizations.
Thus, technical and normative status conditions all affect educational requirements; measures of association
indicated that the latter conditions were stronger in this sample.
Other evidence bearing on this point concerns business executives only. A study of the top executives in
nationally prominent businesses indicated that the most highly educated managers were not found in the most
rapidly developing companies, but rather in the least economically vigorous ones, with highest education found
in the traditionalistic financial and utility firms (Warner and Abegglen 1955:141–43, 148). The business elite
has always been highly educated in relation to the American populace, but education seems to be a correlate of
their social origins rather than the determinant of their success (Mills 1963:128; Taussig and Joslyn 1932:200;
Newcomer 1955:76). Those members of the business elite who entered its ranks from lower social origins had
less education than the businessmen of upper and upper-middle-class origins, and those businessmen who
inherited their companies were much more likely to be college educated than those who achieved their positions
by entrepreneurship (Bendix 1956:230; Newcomer 1955:80).
In general, the evidence indicates that educational requirements for employment reflect employers’ concerns
for acquiring respectable and well-socialized employees; their concern for the provision of technical skills
through education enters to a lesser degree. The higher the normative control concerns of the employer, and the
more elite the organization’s status, the higher his educational requirements.

HISTORICAL CHANGE

The rise in educational requirements for employment throughout the last century may be explained using the
conflict theory, and incorporating elements of the technical-functional theory into it at appropriate points. The
principal dynamic has centered on changes in the supply of educated persons caused by the expansion of the
school system, which was in turn shaped by three conditions:

(1) Education has been associated with high economic and status position from the colonial period on
through the twentieth century. The result was a popular demand for education as mobility opportunity.
This demand has not been for vocational education at a terminal or commercial level, short of full
university certification; the demand has rather focused on education giving entry into the elite status
culture, and usually only those technically oriented schools have prospered which have most closely
associated themselves with the sequence of education leading to (or from) the classical Bachelor’s
degree (Collins 1969:68–70, 86–87, 89, 96–101).
(2) Political decentralization, separation of church and state, and competition among religious
denominations have made founding schools and colleges in America relatively easy, and provided initial
motivations of competition among communities and religious groups that moved them to do so. As a
result, education at all levels expanded faster in America than anywhere else in the world. At the time of
the Revolution, there were nine colleges in the colonies; in all of Europe, with a population forty times
that of America, there were approximately sixty colleges. By 1880 there were 811 American colleges
and universities; by 1966, there were 2,337. The United States not only began with the highest ratio of
 institutions of higher education to population in the world, but increased this lead steadily, for the
number of European universities was not much greater by the twentieth century than in the eighteenth
(Ben-David and Zloczower 1962).
(3) Technical changes also entered into the expansion of American education. As the evidence summarized
above indicates: (a) a mass literacy is crucial for beginnings of full-scale industrialization, although
demand for literacy could not have been important in the expansion of education beyond elementary
levels. More importantly, (b) there is a mild trend toward the reduction in the proportion of unskilled
jobs and an increase in the promotion of highly skilled (professional and technical) jobs as industrialism
proceeds, accounting for 15% of the shift in educational levels in the twentieth century (Folger and Nam
1964). (c) Technological change also brings about some upgrading in skill requirements of some
continuing job positions, although the available evidence (Berg 1970:38–60) refers only to the decade
1950–1960. Nevertheless, as Wilensky (1964) points out, there is no “professionalization of everyone,”
as most jobs do not require considerable technical knowledge on the order of that required of the
engineer or the research scientist.

The existence of a relatively small group of experts in high-status positions, however, can have important
effects on the structure of competition for mobility chances. In the United States, where democratic
decentralization favors the use of schools (as well as government employment) as a kind of patronage for voter
interests, the existence of even a small number of elite jobs fosters a demand for large-scale opportunities to
acquire these positions. We thus have a “contest mobility” school system (Turner 1960); it produced a widely
educated populace because of the many dropouts who never achieve the elite level of schooling at which expert
skills and/or high cultural status are acquired. In the process, the status value of American education has become
diluted. Standards of respectability are always relative to the existing range of cultural differences. Once higher
levels of education become recognized as an objective mark of elite status, and a moderate level of education as
a mark of respectable middle-level status, increases in the supply of educated persons at given levels result in
yet higher levels, becoming recognized as superior, and previously superior levels become only average.
Thus, before the end of the nineteenth century, an elementary school or home education was no longer
satisfactory for a middle-class gentleman; by the 1930s, a college degree was displacing the high school degree
as the minimal standard of respectability; in the late 1960s, graduate school or specialized professional degrees
were becoming necessary for initial entry to many middle-class positions, and high school graduation was
becoming a standard for entry to manual laboring positions. Education has thus gradually become part of the
status culture of classes far below the level of the original business and professional elites.
The increasing supply of educated persons has made education a rising requirement of jobs. Led by the
biggest and most prestigious organizations, employers have raised their educational requirements to maintain
both the relative prestige of their own managerial ranks and the relative respectability of middle ranks.7
Education has become a legitimate standard in terms of which employers select employees, and employees
compete with each other for promotion opportunities or for raised prestige in their continuing positions. With
the attainment of a mass (now approaching universal) higher education system in modern America, the ideal or
image of technical skill becomes the legitimating culture in terms of which the struggle for position goes on.
Higher educational requirements, and the higher level of educational credentials offered by individuals
competing for position in organizations, have in turn increased the demand for education by the populace. The
interaction between formal job requirements and informal status cultures has resulted in a spiral in which
educational requirements and educational attainments become ever higher. As the struggle for mass educational
opportunities enters new phases in the universities of today and perhaps in the graduate schools of the future, we
may expect a further upgrading of educational requirements for employment. The mobilization of demands by
minority groups for mobility opportunities through schooling can only contribute an extension of the prevailing
pattern.

CONCLUSION
It has been argued that conflict theory provides an explanation of the principal dynamics of rising educational
requirements for employment in America. Changes in the technical requirements of jobs have caused more
limited changes in particular jobs. The conditions of the interaction of these two determinants may be more
closely studied.
Precise measures of changes in the actual technical skill requirements of jobs are as yet available only in
rudimentary form. Few systematic studies show how much of particular job skills may be learned in practice,
and how much must be acquired through school background. Close studies of what is actually learned in school,
and how long it is retained, are rare. Organizational studies of how employers rate performance and decide upon
promotions give a picture of relatively loose controls over the technical quality of employee performance, but
this no doubt varies in particular types of jobs.
The most central line of analysis for assessing the joint effects of status group conflict and technical
requirements are those which compare the relative importance of education in different contexts. One such
approach may take organization as the unit of analysis, comparing the educational requirements of organizations
both to organizational technologies and to the status (including educational) background of organizational elites.
Such analysis may also be applied to surveys of individual mobility, comparing the effects of education on
mobility in different employment contexts, where the status group (and educational) background of employers
varies in its fit with the educational culture of prospective employees. Such analysis of “old school tie”
networks may also simultaneously test for the independent effect of the technical requirements of different sorts
of jobs on the importance of education. Inter-nation comparisons provide variations here in the fit between types
of education and particular kinds of jobs which may not be available within any particular country.
The full elaboration of such analysis would give a more precise answer to the historical question of
assigning weight to various factors in the changing place of education in the stratification of modern societies.
At the same time, to state the conditions under which status groups vary in organizational power, including the
power to emphasize or limit the importance of technical skills, would be to state the basic elements of a
comprehensive explanatory theory of the forms of stratification.

NOTES

1. The concern here is with these basic premises rather than with the theory elaborated by Davis and Moore
to account for the universality of stratification. This theory involves a few further propositions: (C) in any
particular form of society certain occupational positions are functionally most central to the operation of
the social system; (D) the ability to fill these positions, and/or the motivation to acquire the necessary
training, is unequally distributed in the population; (E) inequalities of rewards in wealth and prestige
evolve to ensure that the supply of persons with the necessary ability or training meshes with the structure
of demands for skilled performance. The problems of stating functional centrality in empirical terms have
been subjects of much debate.
2. Proposition 3 is supported by Tables 1 and 2 [see full text of article for these tables]. The issue here is
whether this can be explained by the previous propositions and premises.
3. It might be argued that the ethnic cultures may differ in their functionality: that middle-class Protestant
culture provides the self-discipline and other attributes necessary for higher organizational positions in
modern society. This version of functional theory is specific enough to be subject to empirical test: are
middle-class WASPs in fact better businessmen or government administrators than Italians, Irishmen, or
Jews of patrimonial or working class cultural backgrounds? Weber suggested that they were in the initial
construction of the capitalist economy within the confines of traditional society; he also argued that once
the new economic system was established, the original ethic was no longer necessary to run it (Weber
1930:180–83). Moreover, the functional explanation also requires some feedback mechanism whereby
organizations with more efficient managers are selected for survival. The oligopolistic situation in large-
scale American business since the late 19th century does not seem to provide such a mechanism; nor does
government employment. Schumpeter (1951), the leading expositor of the importance of managerial talent
 in business, confined his emphasis to the formative period of business expansion, and regarded the large,
oligopolistic corporation as an arena where advancement came to be based on skills in organizational
politics (1951:122–24); these personalistic skills are arguably more characteristic of the patrimonial
cultures than of WASP culture.
4. Sample consisted of approximately one-third of all organizations with 100 or more employees in the San
Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose metropolitan areas. See Gordon and Thal-Larsen (1969) for a description
of procedures and other findings.
5. Again, these relationships hold for managerial requirements and white-collar requirements generally, both
including and excluding professional and technical positions, but not for blue-collar requirements. Noland
and Bakke (1949:78) also report that larger organizations have higher educational requirements for
administrative positions than smaller organizations.
6. Similar processes may be found in other societies, where the kinds of organizations linked to particular
types of schools may differ. In England, the elite “public schools” are linked especially to the higher levels
of the national civil service (Weinberg 1967:139–43). In France, the elite Ecole Polytechnique is linked to
both government and industrial administrative positions (Crozier 1964:238–44). In Germany, universities
have been linked principally with government administration, and business executives are drawn from
elsewhere (Ben-David and Zloczower 1962). Comparative analysis of the kinds of education of
government officials, business executives, and other groups in contexts where the status group links of
schools differ is a promising area for further tests of conflict and technical-functional explanations.
7. It appears that employers may have raised their wage costs in the process. Their behavior is nevertheless
plausible, in view of these considerations: (a) the thrust of organizational research since Mayo and Barnard
has indicated that questions of internal organizational power and control, of which cultural dominance is a
main feature, take precedence over purely economic considerations; (b) the large American corporations,
which have led in educational requirements, have held positions of oligopolistic advantage since the late
19th century, and thus could afford a large internal “welfare” cost of maintaining a well-socialized work
force; (c) there are inter-organizational wage differentials in local labor markets, corresponding to relative
organizational prestige, and a “wage-escalator” process by which the wages of the leading organizations
are gradually emulated by others according to their rank (Reynolds 1951); a parallel structure of
“educational status escalators” could plausibly be expected to operate.

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SOURCE: Randall Collins, “Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification,” American
Sociological Review, Vol. 36, No. 6 (Dec., 1971), pp. 1002–1019. Reprinted with permission from the
American Sociological Association and the author.
11
THE LONG SHADOW OF WORK
SAMUEL BOWLES, HERBERT GINTIS, AND PETER MEYER

“Every child born into the world should be looked upon by society as so much raw material to be
manufactured. Its quality is to be tested, it is the business of society, as an intelligent economist, to make the
best of it.”
—Lester Frank Ward, “Education,” 1872

INTRODUCTION

A central tenet of Marxist social theory is that consciousness develops through the social relations into which
people enter in their daily lives. Among the manifold relations formative of consciousness, those involving the
production of material life hold a pre-eminent position. Thus in the Manuscripts, Marx says:
[Labor is] a process going on between man and nature, in which man, through his own activity initiates,
regulates and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He confronts nature as one of her own
forces. . . . By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature.1
The vision of a perfect dialectic between individuals and nature, in which each acquires its character from its
interaction with its antagonist, Marx notes in his later writings, is broken in class societies. The existence of
dominant and subordinate classes produces on the one hand history as class struggle rather than the embodiment
of communal wills; and on the other hand, consciousness as class-specific, class-differentiated, and alienated
according to the way people enter into the social division of labor.
This paper treats an area in the reproduction of consciousness relatively unexplored in the Marxist literature:
the role of such institutions of reproduction as the educational system and the Family. We shall argue that
consciousness is reproduced not only directly through the individual’s contact with work and membership in a
particular class, but also through these institutions of reproduction. Thus both inequality and repressiveness in
the educational sphere, to take a case in point, are best understood as reflections of the social relations of
hierarchy and subordination in the capitalist economy.
We shall here suggest that the key which unlocks the secret of the social relations of U.S. education lies in
the capitalist economy itself.
The most fruitful way to understand the relationship between schooling and economic life in the U.S. is to
grasp the essential structural similarity between their respective social relations. The correspondence, between
these social relations is pervasive, and accounts for the ability of the educational system to reproduce the social
relations of production by reproducing an amenable labor force. The experience of schooling, and not merely
the content of formal learning is central to this process, and the process is efficacious because the structures of
the schooling and work experiences are conformable.
In our view, it is fruitless to ask if the net effect of U.S. education is toward equality or inequality,
repression or liberation. These issues pale into insignificance before the major fact: the educational system is an
integral element in the reproduction of the class structure. The liberal educational creed is mistaken because the
stance of schooling vis-á-vis equality and liberation are molded by its role in the reproduction of the social
relations of production. The experience of work and the articulation of the class structure are the fixed points
around which educational values are formed, social justice assessed, the realm of possible delineated in people’s
consciousness, and the social relations of the educational encounter historically transformed. Educational and
economic transformation go hand in hand.
The theme of this paper is the unity of lived experience through the structural similarities of its diverse
spheres. Structural correspondence lies at the heart of the reproduction of social life. Yet at the base of
reproduction lies contradiction, and the correspondences we shall describe have arisen through struggle. Both
the evolution of the educational system and the prospects for a liberated future must be analyzed in terms of
both reproduction and contradiction. But here we shall stress the former.
In the next section we argue that the economic system must be understood in light of the need to reproduce
consciousness and modes of personal interaction through the lived experiences of daily activity. In the section
following we suggest that the stability of the economic system in this reproduction process is facilitated by the
prior experiences which individuals undergo in the educational system. Thus, that section presents the basic
descriptive, analytical, and statistical support for our principle of the correspondence between the social
relations of schooling and work. We then turn to the role of the family in the reproduction of the class structure.
In the third section we shall argue that the social relations of the educational encounter are predicated on prior
experiences in family life. In the contemporary U.S., education works because, and insofar as, the family works.
Finally, we shall argue that there is also a tendency for the social relations of family life to correspond to the
social relations of production, in the sense that the positions individuals hold in the hierarchy of production
influence the structure of family life and the mode of raising children. In light of this, the role of family life in
reproducing the class structure and affecting the transmission of economic status from one generation to the
next can be understood, as well as the interaction of social background and education in the individual’s
maturation process.

ON REPRODUCING CONSCIOUSNESS

Economic life exhibits a complex and relatively stable pattern of interactions and power relations among
individuals and groups. The stability of social intercourse is by no means automatic. As with a living organism,
it is the result of explicit mechanisms constituted to maintain and rejuvenate these systemic relationships. We
call these mechanisms of reproduction.
Amidst the various types of social relations experienced in daily life, a few stand out as central to our
analysis of education. These are (a) inter-class relations: the social relations obtaining among classes defined by
the capitalist mode of production; (b) intra-class relations: the social relations obtaining among members of the
same class, and in particular the degree of solidarity, mutuality, and social distance they normally exhibit; (c)
production relations: the social relations of cooperation, competition, dominance, and subordination obtaining in
the production process itself.
Under normal circumstances, the efficacy of coercive power is based at least on the inability or
unwillingness of those so subjected to join together in its opposition. More auspiciously, the economic system
enjoins their positive acceptance and approbation. Laws generally considered illegitimate lose their coercive
power, and force too frequently applied tends to contradict its intended effect. The consolidation and extension
of the capitalist relations of production have engendered struggles of furious intensity no less today than in past
times. Yet instances of force deployed against a united and active opposition are sporadic. They have usually
given way to detente through the annihilation of opposing forces, through structural change, and through
ideological accommodation. Thus it is clear that the consciousness of workers beliefs, values, self-concepts,
types of solidarity and fragmentation, as well as modes of personal behavior and development–is integral to the
perpetuation, validation and smooth operation of economic institutions. The reproduction of the social relations
of production depends on the reproduction of consciousness.
Under what conditions will individuals accept the pattern of social relations that frame their lives? Believing
that the long-run development of the existing system holds the prospect of fulfilling their needs, they might
actively embrace these social relations. Failing this, and having no vision of a fundamental transformation of
economic life that might significantly improve their situation, individuals might merely accept their condition
with some resignation. Even with such a vision, vaguely adumbrated or fully articulated, they might passively
submit to the framework of economic life and seek individual solutions to social problems, believing that the
possibilities for forging a powerful movement for change are remote. The issue of the reproduction of
consciousness enters each of these three assessments.
First, the economic system will be embraced when the perceived needs of individuals are congruent with the
types of satisfaction the economic system can objectively provide. While perceived needs may be in part
biologically determined (e.g., minimal physical and psychological requisites), in larger part needs arise through
the aggregate experiences of individuals in society itself. That is, the social relations of production are
reproduced in part through a harmony between the perceived needs which the social system generates, and the
means at its disposal for satisfying these needs.
Second, the assessment of fundamental social transformation as infeasible, unoperational, and utopian is
normally supported by a complex web of ideological perspectives deeply embedded in the cultural and scientific
life of the community, and reflected in the structure of consciousness of its members. But fostering the
“consciousness of inevitability” is not the office of the cultural system alone. In addition, mechanisms
systematically thwarting the spontaneous development of social experiences of contradicting these beliefs must
exist. Such mechanisms include direct suppression of counter-institutions (e.g., workers’ or consumers’ co-ops
and communes) by dominant classes, as well as channelling their development in directions compatible with the
prevailing constellation of power prerogatives and consciousness.
Third, the belief in the futility of organizing for fundamental social change is facilitated by social
distinctions which fragment the conditions of life and consciousness of subordinate classes. Thus the strategy of
“divide and conquer” has been basic to the maintenance of power of dominant classes since the dawn of
civilization. Once again the splintered consciousness of a subordinate class is not the product of cultural
phenomena alone. Rather, the fragmentation of subordinate groups, with its consequent chaotic pattern of
divergent interests, must be reproduced through the social relations of daily life.
The reproduction of consciousness develops in part through the individual’s direct perception of and
participation in social life.2 For instance, when the social division of labor stratifies the working class,
individual needs and self concepts develop in an accordingly fragmented manner. Youth of different racial,
sexual, ethnic or economic backgrounds directly perceive the economic positions and prerogatives of “their kind
of people,” and by appropriately adjusting their aspirations, not only reproduce stratification on the level of
personal consciousness, but bring the development of their needs into (at least partial) harmony with the
objective conditions of economic life. Similarly, individuals tend to gear the development of their personal
capacities–cognitive, emotional, physical, aesthetic, and spiritual–in directions where options for their exercise
are available. For instance, the alienated character of work leads people to guide their creative and human
potentials to areas outside economic activity: consumption, travel, sexuality, and family life. Thus needs and
need-satisfaction again tend to fall into congruence. Alienated labor is reproduced on the level of personal
consciousness.3
But this congruence is continually disrupted; the satisfaction of needs gives rise to new needs–which derive
from the logic of personal development and in turn undercut the social integration of consciousness. Thus the
reproduction of consciousness cannot be the unintended by-product of social experience. On a deeper level,
social relations are often organized to facilitate the reproduction of consciousness through the day-to-day
activities of the individual. For instance, power configurations, job contents, inter-personal relations and hiring
criteria in the enterprise are organized to reproduce the workers’ self-concepts, the legitimacy of their
assignments within the hierarchy, the technological inevitability of the hierarchical division of labor itself, and
their social distance from other workers in the organization. Indeed, workers’ participation in decision-making
becomes a threat to profits because it tends not to reproduce patterns of consciousness compatible with capitalist
control. By generating new needs and possibilities, by demonstrating the feasibility of more thoroughgoing
economic democracy, by increasing worker solidarity to a potentially threatening degree, worker involvement in
decision-making may undermine the power structure of the enterprise.
But the reproduction of consciousness cannot be insured through the direct mechanisms alone. In addition,
the initiation of youth into the economic system is facilitated by a series of institutions more immediately
related to the formation of personality and consciousness. Among these institutions are the family and the
educational system.
How does the educational system reproduce consciousness? In a very general way, schooling fosters and
rewards the development of certain capacities and the expression of certain needs, while thwarting and
penalizing others, and by tailoring the self-concepts, aspirations, and social class identifications of individuals to
the requirements of the capitalist division of labor. The educational system accomplishes this through the
institutional relations to which students are subjected.
More concretely, we may isolate four main functions of the educational system. First, schooling produces
many of the technical and cognitive skills required for adequate job performance. This process is well
understood and, as we have suggested elsewhere, cannot account for either the association between schooling
and economic success or the repressive nature of U.S. education.4 We shall not pursue it further. Second, the
educational system helps legitimate economic inequality.
The objective and meritocratic orientation of U.S. education, the cumulative process of reconciling the
aspirations of individuals with their future positions, reduces discontent over both the hierarchical division of
labor and the process through which individuals attain position in it. Once again, the generation of needs is
rendered compatible with the means of satisfying them–in this case the personal need for the attainment of
valued social positions. Third, the school generates rewards, and selects personal characteristics relevant to the
staffing of positions in the hierarchical division of labor. Fourth, the educational system, through the pattern of
status distinctions it fosters, reinforces the stratified consciousness on which the fragmentation of subordinate
economic classes is based.
What aspects of the educational system allow it to serve these various functions? We shall suggest that the
educational system’s ability to reproduce the consciousness of workers lies in a straightforward correspondence
principle: for the past century at least, schooling has contributed to the reproduction of the social relations of
production largely through the correspondence between school structure and class structure.

EDUCATION AND CONSCIOUSNESS: THE CORRESPONDENCE PRINCIPLE

The oft discussed tension between “business” and “academic” values obscures an underlying communality: the
structure of social relations in education–including sources of motivation, authority,, and control, and types of
sanctioned interpersonal relations–not only inure the student to the discipline of the work-place, but develop the
types of personal demeanor, modes of self-presentation, self-images, and social class identifications which are
the crucial ingredients of job adequacy.
Specifically, the social relations of education–the relations between administration and teachers, teachers
and students, students and students, and students and their work–replicate the hierarchical division of labor.
Hierarchical relations are reflected in the vertical authority lines from administrators to teachers to students.
Alienated labor is reflected in the student’s lack of control over his or her education, the alienation of the
student from curriculum content, and the motivation of school work through a system of grades and other
external rewards rather than the student’s integration with either the process (learning) or the outcome
(knowledge) of the educational “production process.” Stratification and fragmentation in work is reflected in the
institutionalized and rarely constructive competition among students, continual and ostensibly meritocratic
ranking and evaluation of students. By attuning young people to a set of social relations similar to those of the
workplace, schooling gears the development of personal needs to its requirements.
The correspondence of schooling with the social relations of production goes beyond this aggregate level,
however. First, different levels of education feed workers into different levels within the structure of production
and correspondingly tend towards an internal organization comparable to levels in the hierarchical division of
labor. The lowest levels in the hierarchy of the enterprise emphasize rule-following, middle levels dependability
and capacity to operate without direct and continuous supervision, and the higher levels internalization of norms
of the enterprise and sensitivity to interpersonal relations without the organization.5 Similarly, lower levels of
education (junior and senior high school) tend to severely limit and channel the activities of students; junior
colleges, teacher colleges, and community colleges allow more breadth for independent activity and less overall
supervision, with the four-year colleges tending toward social relations conformable with the higher levels in
the production hierarchy. Thus schools continually maintain their hold on students. As they “master” one type
of behavioral regulation, they are either allowed to progress to the next, or tend to be channeled into the
corresponding level in the hierarchy of production.
Second, even within a single school, the social relations of different tracks tend to conform to different
behavioral norms. Thus high school vocational and general tracks emphasize rule-following and close
supervision, while the college track tends toward a more open atmosphere emphasizing the internalization of
norms.
These differences in the social relations among and within schools, in part reflect both the social
backgrounds of the student body and their future economic positions as well. Thus blacks and other minorities
tend to concentrate in schools with the most repressive, arbitrary, and coercive authority structures, and which
offer the most minimal possibilities for advancement–in all respects mirroring the characteristics of secondary
job structures. Similarly, predominantly working class schools tend to emphasize behavioral control and rule-
following, while schools in well-to-do suburbs utilize relatively open systems involving greater student
participation, less direct supervision, more student electives, and in general a value system stressing internalized
standards of control.
The differential socialization patterns of schools attended by students of different social classes, and even
within the same school, do not arise by accident. Rather, they stem from the fact that the educational objectives
and expectations of administrators, teachers and parents, and the responsiveness of students to various patterns
of teaching and control, differ for students of different social classes.
At crucial turning points in the history of U.S. education, changes in the social relations of schooling have
been structured in the interests of a more harmonious reproduction of the labor force, and usually through the
direct intervention of elites most highly, benefited by these changes. But in the day-to-day operation of the
schools, the consciousness of social classes, derived from their cultural milieu and work experience, is crucial to
the maintenance of the correspondences we have described. That working class parents seem to favor stricter
educational methods is a reflection of their own work experiences, which have demonstrated that submission to
authority is an essential ingredient in one’s ability to get and hold a steady, well-paying job. That middle class
parents prefer a more open atmosphere and a greater emphasis on motivational control is likewise a reflection of
their positions in the social division of labor. Thus Burton Rosenthal has shown that when given the
opportunity, higher status parents are far more likely than their lower status neighbors to choose “open
classrooms” for their children.6
Further, differences in the social relations of schooling are reinforced by inequalities in financial resources.
The paucity of financial support for the education of children from minority groups and working class families
leaves more resources to be devoted to the children of those with commanding roles in the economy; it also
forces upon the teachers and school administrators in the working class schools a type of social relations that
fairly closely mirrors that of the factory. Thus financial considerations in poorly supported working-class
schools militate against small intimate classes, against a multiplicity of elective courses and specialized teachers
(except disciplinary personnel), and preclude the amounts of free time for the teachers and free space required
for a more open, flexible educational environment. The lack of financial support all but requires that students be
treated as raw materials on a production line; it places a high premium on obedience and punctuality; there are
few opportunities for independent, creative work or individualized attention by teachers. The well-financed
schools attended by the children of the rich can offer much greater opportunities for the development of the
capacity for sustained independent work and the other characteristics required for adequate job performance in
the upper levels of the occupational hierarchy.
Our correspondence principle should help us explain the observed association between educational
attainment (years of schooling) and economic success (income and occupational status). This association cannot
be accounted for in terms of the acquisition of cognitive skills alone.7 We shall now show that much empirical
evidence points to the importance of work-related personality traits in accounting for this association.
We have referred to the research of our colleague Richard Edwards, who found that job performance could
be quite well predicted by three personality factors–rule-following, dependability, and internalization of norms–
with the first relatively more important at the lowest levels of the hierarchy of production, internalization of
norms predominant at the highest, and with dependability salient at intermediate levels. Are these traits in fact
rewarded in schools? Our discussion certainly suggests that they are. In addition, we have surveyed the
literature on the personality correlates of school success and have found that the best predictors consistently fall
into four categories quite similar to Edwards’s factors: Subordinacy, Discipline, Emotionally Neutral
Orientation to Interpersonal Relations, and Motivation by External Reward.8
A more direct confirmation of the proposition that the personality traits rewards in schools (through grading)
are similar to those conducive of performance in the hierarchical division of labor can be obtained by using
these same personality measures employed in Edwards’s study on a group of school students, thus obtaining
direct comparable evidence.9
We began with the personality measures used by Edwards. Gene Smith, the originator of these types of
personality measures, had previously shown them to be excellent predictors of educational success (grade point
average) in a series of well-executed studies.10 Noting that personality inventories suffer from low validities due
to their abstraction from real-life environments, and low reliabilities due to the use of a single evaluative
instrument, Smith turned to student peer-ratings of 42 common personality, traits, based on each student’s
observation of the actual classroom behavior of his or her classmates. Factor analysis allowed the extraction of
five general traits, stable across different samples. These five traits may be labeled Agreeableness, Extroversion,
Work-orientation, Emotionality and Helpfulness. Of these only the Work-orientation factor, which Smith calls
“Strength of Character”–including such traits as “not a quitter, conscientious, responsible, insistently orderly,
not prone to daydream, determined-persevering”–was related to school success. Smith then showed that in
several samples Work-orientation exhibited three times the power to predict post-high school academic
performance than any combination of thirteen cognitive variables, including SAT-verbal, SAT-mathematical,
and high school class rank. Edwards’s success with this test in predicting supervisor ratings of workers
convinced us that applying the same forms to high school students would provide a fairly direct link between
personality development in school and the requisites of job performance.
We chose for our sample the 237 members of the senior class of a single New York state high school, of
whom most participated in the study.11 Analysis of this data provides striking confirmation of the
correspondence principle. Following Edwards (1972), we created sixteen pairs of personality traits,12 and
obtained individual grade-point averages, IQ, scores, and College Entrance examination SAT-verbal and SAT-
mathematical scores from the official school records.13
As was expected, the cognitive scores provided the best single predictor of grade point average– indeed, that
grading is based significantly on cognitive performance is perhaps the single valid element in the “meritocratic
ideology.” Yet the sixteen personality measures possessed nearly comparable predictive value, having a
multiple correlation of .63 as compared to .77 for the cognitive variables.14 More important than the overall
predictive value of the personality traits, however, is their pattern on contribution to grades. To reveal this
pattern, we first eliminated the effect of differences in cognitive performance in individual grades, and then
calculated the correlation between grades and the personality measures.15 The results are presented in Table
11.2.
The pattern of resulting associations clearly supports our model. First, the only significantly penalized traits
are precisely those which are incompatible with conformity to the hierarchical division of labor– Creativity,
Independence, and Aggressivity. Similarly, all the personality traits we would expect to be rewarded are, and
highly significantly so (see lines 4 through 12 of Figure 1), while those which are more or less neutral from the
social relations of production framework are insignificant (lines 13 through 16).
As a second stage in our analysis of this data, we used the technique of “factor analysis” to consolidate the
sixteen personality measures into three “personality factors.” Factor analysis allows us to group together those
measured traits which are normally associated with one another across all individuals in the sample The first,
which we call Submission to Authority, includes Consistent, Identifies with School, Punctual, Dependable,
Externally Motivated, and Persistent. In addition, it includes Independent and Creative weighted negatively. The
second, which we call Temperament, includes Not Aggressive, Not Temperamental, Not Frank, Predictable,
Tactful, and Not Creative. The third, which we call Internalization of Norms, includes Empathizes Orders and
Defers Gratification. Factor Loadings are presented in Table 11.3.16
 Table 11.2 The Importance of Personality Traits in Predicting Grades

SOURCE: Meyer (1972); Bowles and Gintis (1975).

NOTES: (*) p < .01 (**) p > .05
These are partial correlations controlling for IQ, SAT-Verbal and SAT-Math.

Table 11.3 Factor Analysis of High School Personality Traits

NOTE: (a) Numbers are factor loadings. The factor analysis was by principal components and quartimax rotation. The first factor
accounts for 43.7% of the variance, the second for 15.9% of the variance, and the third for 11.8% of the variance.

These three factors are not perfectly comparable to Edwards’s three factors. Rather, our Submission to
Authority seems to combine Edwards’s Rules and Dependability factors, while our Internalization is
comparable to Edwards’s Internalization factor. In the case of the latter factor, both Edwards’s and Meyer’s data
depict an individual who sensitively interprets the desires of his or her superior, and who operates adequately
without direct supervision over considerable periods of time.
Our theory would predict that on the high school level Submission to Authority would be most predictive of
grades, while Internalization, which becomes important on the post-high school level, would be less important.
The Temperament factor is essentially irrelevant to our theory, and might be expected to be unimportant. In
Table 11.4, this prediction is confirmed. This Table exhibits the independent contributions of both cognitive
measures and personality factors to the prediction of grades. We see that SAT-math is the most important, with
Submission to Authority and SAT-verbal being equally important, and Internalized Control significantly less so.
The Temperament and IQ, variables have no independent contribution.
Thus the personality traits rewarded in schools, at least for this sample, seem to be quite closely related to
those indicative of good job performance in the capitalist economy. Since both Edwards and ourselves used
essentially the same measures of personality traits, this assertion can be tested directly. We may take the three
general traits extracted by Edwards in his study of workers–Rules-Orientation, Dependability, and
Internalization of Norms–and find the relation between grades and those traits in our school study. This is
exhibited in Table 11.5, which shows a remarkable congruence.17

Table 11.4 Contribution of Personality Factors to the Prediction of Grades

NOTES: (*) p < .01 (**) p > .05
The numbers represent normalized regression coefficients when all variables are entered into a single regression.

Hence the correspondence principle stands up well in the light of grading practices. We must stress,
however, that the empirical data on grading must not be conceived as revealing the “inner workings” of the
educational system’s reproduction of the social division of labor. First of all, it is the overall structure of social
relations of the educational encounter which reproduces consciousness, and not merely grading practices.
Second, personality traits are not the only relevant personal attributes–others being modes of self-presentation,
self-image, aspirations, and class identifications–which are not captured in this data. Third, the measuring of
personality traits is tricky and difficult, and the studies mentioned probably only capture a small part of the
relevant dimensions. Fourth, both traits rewarded in schools and relevant to job performance differ by
educational level, class composition of schools, and the student’s particular educational track. These subtleties
are not reflected in the data.
For these reasons we would not expect student grades to be a good predictor of economic success. In
addition, grades are clearly dominated by the cognitive performance of students, which we have seen is not
highly relevant to economic attainment. Yet we might expect that in an adequately controlled study in which
work performances of individuals on the job and with comparable educational experience are compared, grades
would be good predictors. We have managed to find only one study meeting these requirements–a study which
clearly supports our position, and is sufficiently interesting to present in some detail. Marshall S. Brenner
studied 100 employees who had joined the Lockheed-California Company after obtaining a high school diploma
in the Los Angeles City School Districts. From the employees’ high school transcripts, he obtained their grade-
point averages, school absence rates, a teachers’ “work habits” evaluation and a teachers’ “cooperation”
evaluation. In addition to this data, he gathered three evaluations of job performance by employees’ supervisors;
a supervisors’ “ability rating,” a supervisors’ “conduct rating” and “productivity rating.” Brenner found a
significant correlation between grades and all measures of supervisor evaluation. We have reanalyzed Brenner’s
data to uncover the source of this correlation. One possibility is that grades measure cognitive performance and
cognitive performance determines job performance. However, when the high school teachers’ “work habits”
and “cooperation” evaluations as well as “school absences” are controlled for by linear regression, grades have
no additional predictive value. Hence, we may draw two conclusions: first, grades predict job adequacy only
through their non-cognitive component; and second, the teachers’ evaluations as to behavior in the classroom is
strikingly similar to the supervisor’s ratings as to behavior on the job. The cognitive component of grades
predicts only the supervisors’ “ability rating”–not surprising in view of the probability that both are related to
employee IQ.18

Table 11.5 Predicting Job Performance and Grades from the Same Personality Factors
SOURCES: Edwards (1975); Bowles and Gintis (1975).
NOTE: The Multiple R in the first equation is R = .613, and in the second equation, R = .523. The figures in parenthesis are beta
coefficients.

In closing, we wish to emphasize that the correspondence principle has been introduced not only as the
structural relationship between the economy and the educational system, but as the framework for
understanding why individuals with greater educational attainment achieve higher levels of economic success.
The question arises because the most obvious candidate for an answer–the difference in cognitive skills
attained–actually accounts for only a small portion of this association.
Why then the association? Elsewhere we surveyed the reasoning and evidence indicating the importance of
four sets of non-cognitive worker traits–work-related personality characteristics, modes of self-presentation,
ascriptive characteristics and credentials.19
We believe all are involved in the association between educational level and economic success. We have
emphasized that personality traits opposite to performance on different hierarchical levels are fostered and
rewarded by the school system. A similar, but simpler argument can be made with respect to modes of self-
presentation. Individuals who have attained a certain educational level tend to identify with one another socially
and differentiate themselves from their “inferiors.” They tend to adjust their aspirations and self-concepts
accordingly, while acquiring manners of speech and demeanor more or less socially acceptable and appropriate
to their level.20 As such, they are correspondingly valuable to employers interested in preserving and
reproducing the status differences on which the legitimacy of the hierarchical division of labor is based. In
addition, insofar as educational credentials are an independant determinant of hiring and promotion,21 they will
directly account for a portion of this association.
Finally, family background effects also account for a significant portion of the association between
educational and economic attainment. For white males about 33% of the correlation between education and
income is due to their common association with socio-economic background, even holding constant childhood
IQ. That is, children whose parents have higher status economic positions tend to achieve more income
themselves independent of their education, but they also tend to get more education. Hence the observed
association is reinforced.
Indeed, there is a strong independent association between family background and economic success. What is
the origin of this effect? We shall argue in the following section that the experiences of parents on the job tend
to be reflected in the social relations of family life. Thus, through family relations children tend to acquire
orientations toward work, aspirations, and self-concepts preparing them for similar economic positions
themselves.

FAMILY STRUCTURE AND JOB STRUCTURE

Family experience has a significant impact on the welfare, behavior and personal consciousness of individuals,
both in their period of maturation and their daily adult lives. The social relations of family life–relations
between husband and wife as well as between parents and children and among children–have undergone
important changes in the course of U.S. economic development. The prospect for future changes is of crucial
importance in the process of social transformation.22
The analysis of family life is not only of basic importance, but is of subtle and dynamic complexity.
Compared to the social relations of family life, the economic and educational phenomenon we have been
discussing appear as straightforward and rather mechanical. Hence rather than entertaining a broad analysis of
family life we shall limit our discussion to a few issues directly linked to our central concern: the reproduction
of the social relations of production. Like the educational system, the family plays a major role in the
preparation of the young for economic and social roles. In particular, the family’s impact on the reproduction of
the sexual division of labor is distinctly greater than that of the educational system.
We maintain that the reproduction of consciousness is facilitated by a rough correspondence between the
social relations of production and the social relations of family life. This correspondence is affected by the
experiences parents encounter through their participation in the social division of labor. Thus there is a tendency
for families to reproduce in their offspring not only a consciousness tailored to the objective nature of the work
world, but to prepare them for economic positions roughly comparable to their own. These tendencies can be
countered by other social forces (schooling, media, shifts in aggregate occupational structure), but they remain
sufficiently strong to account for a significant part of the observed intergenerational status transmission
processes.
The case of the sexual division of labor is particularly straightforward. The capitalist division of labor
promotes the separation between wage labor and household labor, the latter being unpaid and reserved almost
exclusively for women. This separation is reflected within the family as a nearly complete division of labor
between husband and wife. The occupational emphasis on full-time work, the dependance of promotion upon
seniority, the career-oriented commitment of the worker, and the active discrimination against working women,
conspire to shackle the woman to the home while minimizing the possibility of sharing of domestic duties
between husband and wife.
But how does the family help reproduce the sexual division of labor? First, wives and mothers themselves
normally embrace their self concepts as household workers. They then pass these onto their children through the
differential sex role typing of boys and girls within the family. Second, and perhaps more important, children
tend to develop self-concepts based on the sexual divisions which they observe around them. Even families
which treat boys and girls equally in important respects cannot avoid sex role typing when the male parent is
tangentially involved in household labor and child-rearing. In short, the family as a reproduction unit cannot but
reflect its division of labor as a production unit–as the locus of household production and the sexual division of
labor. This sex typing, unless countered by other social forces, then facilitates the submission of the next
generation of women to their inferior status in the wage labor system and lends its alternative–child-rearing and
domesticity–an aura of inevitability, if not desirability. Yet in essential respects, the family exhibits social
patterns quite atypical of the social relations of production. The close personal and emotional relations of family
life are a far cry from the impersonal bureaucracy and autocracy of the wage labor system. Indeed, the family is
often esteemed as a refuge from the alienation and psychic poverty of work life. The fact that family structure
and the capitalist relations of production differ in essential respects lies at the heart of our explanation of the
necessary role of schooling in the integration of young people into the wage labor system.23
Despite the tremendous structural disparity, between family and economy, we shall argue there is a
significant correspondence between the authority relations of production and child-rearing. This flows in part
from the overall tenor of family life common to all social levels. The work-dominated family with its
characteristically age-graded patterns of power and privilege replicates many of the aspects of the hierarchy of
production in the firm. Yet we shall be more concerned with the difference among families whose income
earners hold distinct positions in this hierarchy.
Successful job performance at low hierarchical levels requires the worker’s orientation toward rule-
following, or conformity to external authority, while successful performance at higher levels requires behavior
according to internalized norms.
 These traits are not confined to work alone, but affect the individual’s fundamental social values and
orientations generally. It would be surprising indeed if these general orientations did not manifest themselves in
parental priorities for the rearing of their children.

CONCLUSION

The economic system is stable only if the consciousness of the strata and classes it engenders remain compatible
with the social relations which characterize it as a mode of production. Hence, the social division of labor must
be reproduced in the consciousness of its participants. The educational system is one of the several reproduction
mechanisms. By providing skills, legitimating inequalities in economic positions, and facilitating certain types
of social intercourse among individuals, U.S. education patterns personal development around the requirements
of alienated work. The educational system reproduces the capitalist social division of labor in part through a
correspondence between its own internal social relations and those of the workplace.
We believe that the tendency of the social relations of economic life to be reproduced in the educational
system and in family life lies at the heart of the failure of the liberal educational creed, and must form the basis
of a viable program for social change. Patterns of inequality, repression, and forms of class domination cannot
be restricted to single spheres of life, but reappear in substantially altered yet structurally comparable form in all
spheres. Power and privilege in economic life surface not only in the core social institutions which pattern the
formation of consciousness (family and school), but even in face-to-face personal encounters, leisure activities,
and philosophies of the world. In particular, the liberal goal of employing the educational system as a corrective
device, overcoming the “inadequacies” of the economic system is vain indeed. Transformation of the
educational system and the pattern of class relations, power, and privilege in the economic sphere must go hand
in hand as part of an integrated program of action.
To speak of social change is to speak of making history. Thus, we are motivated to look into the historical
roots of the present educational system, to better understand the framework within which social change takes
place and has taken place in the past. Our major question will be: what were the historical forces giving rise to
the present correspondence between education and economic life, and how have these been affected by changes
in the class structure and concrete peoples’ struggles?
We believe that the historical development of the educational system reflects a counterpoint of reproduction
and contradiction, as capitalist economic development leads to continual shifts, in the social relations of
production and the attendant class structure. These social relations have involved class conflicts which
throughout U.S. history have periodically changed in both form and content. A major role of the educational
system has been to defuse and attenuate these conflicts. Thus the changing character of social conflict, rooted in
shifts in the class structure, has demanded periodic reorganizations of the network of educational institutions.
We perceive the recurrent phenomenon of an educational system whose social relations are geared to a
disappearing pattern of economic relations thrown into contradiction with the reproduction needs of the
ascendent economic structure. Out of this recurrent contradiction have come structural transformations
characterizing the “crucial turning-points” in U.S. educational history.

NOTES

The original version of this article appeared in The Insurgent Sociologist 5:4 (Summer, 1975), pp. 3–22.
1. Marx (1963).
2. Gintis (1972); Berger and Luckmann (1966); Schutz and Luckmann (1973).
3. For an extended treatment of these issues, see Gintis (1972).
4. Bowles and Gintis (1975).
 5. Edwards (1975); Bowles and Gintis (1975).
6. Rosenthal (1972).
7. Gintis (1972); Bowles and Gintis (1975).
8. Gintis (1972).
9. Meyer (1972).
10. Smith (1967a, 1967b, 1970).
11. Personality data was collected for 97% of the sample, grade-point average and test-scored data was
available for 80% of the sample, and family background data was available for 67%. Inability to collect
data was due usually to students’ absences from school during test sessions.
12. These are described fully in Bowles and Gintis (1975), Appendix B.
13. The school chosen was predominantly higher income, so that most members had taken college entrance
examinations.
14. The multiple correlation of IQ, SAT-verbal, and SAT-mathematical with grade-point average, (GPA) was
r: = 769, while their correlation with the personality variables was r = .25, which is quite low.
15. That is, we created partial correlation coefficients between GPA and each personality measure, controlling
for IQ SAT-V and SAT-M.
16. This is taken from Meyer (1972) and Bowles and Gintis (1975), Appendix B.
17. This is taken from Edwards (1975), Table 3.
18. Brenner (1968).
19. Bowles and Gintis (1975).
20. See Offe (1970). Offe quotes Bensen and Rosenberg from The Meaning of Work in Bureaucratic Society
(in M. Stein et al. [eds.], Identity and Anxiety, New York: Free Press, 1960), pp. 183–184: “Old habits are
discarded and new habits are nurtured. The would-be success learns when to simulate enthusiasm,
compassion, interest, concern, modesty, confidence, and mastery; when to smile, and with whom to laugh
and how intimate and friendly he can be with other people. He selects his home and his residential area
with care; he buys his clothes and chooses styles with an eye to their probable reception in his office. He
reads or pretends to have read the right books, the tight magazines, and the right newspapers. All this will
be reflected in the ‘right line of conversation’ which he adapts as his own. . . . He joins the right party and
espouses the political ideology of his fellows.”
21. See Berg (1971), and Taubman and Wales (1972) for sonic evidence on this point.
22. See Benston (1969), Goldberg (1971), Gordon (1970), Mitchell (1972), and Zaretsky (1973).
23. Bowles and Gintis (1975), Chs. 6–9.

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Gordon, Linda. Families. Cambridge, Mass.: A Bread and Roses Publication, 1970.
Herndon, James. The Way It Spozed to Be. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968.
Howe, Florance, and Paul Lauter. “The Schools Are Rigged for Failure,” New York Review of Books, June 20,
1970.
Karier, Clarence; Joel Spring; and Paul C. Violas. Roots of Crisis. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1973.
Kohn, Melvin. Class and Conformity: A Study of Values. Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey, 1969.
Marx, Karl. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Dirk Struick (ed.), International Publishers,
New York, 1963.
Meyer, Peter J. “Schooling and the Reproduction of the Social Division of Labor,” unpublished honors thesis,
Harvard University, March 1972.
Mitchell, Juliet. Woman’s Estate. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
Offe, Claus. Leistungsprinzip und Industrielle Arbeit. Frankfort: Europaische Verlaganstalt, 1970.
Rist, Ray C. “Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations: The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy in Ghetto
Education,” Harvard Educational Review, August, 1970.
Rosenthal, Burton E. “Educational Investments in Human Capital: The Significance of Stratification in the
Labor Market,” unpublished thesis for Harvard University, 1972.
Schutz, Alfred, and Thomas Luckmann. The Structures of the Life-World. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1973.
Smith, Gene M. “Usefulness of Peer Ratings of Personality in Educational Research,” Educational and
Psychological Measurements, 1967a.
_____, “Personality Correlates of Academic Performance in Three Dissimilar Populations,” Proceedings of the
77th Annual Convention, American Psychological Association, 1967b.
_____, “Non-intelligence Correlates of Academic Performance,” mimeo, 1970.
Taubman, Paul, and Terance Wales. “Earnings: Higher Education, Mental Ability, and Screening,” unpublished
Paper for the University of Pennsylvania, May 1972.
Zaretsky, Eli. “Capitalism and Personal Life,” in Socialist Revolution, January April, 1973.
 PART I DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. The authors in the first section of the text (Weber, Sorokin, Turner, Haller, and Portes) write about the
role of schooling in social mobility. How do they each characterize the relationship between individuals’
social origins, school performance, and social destinations?
2. Becker, Lamont and Lareau, and Coleman and Hoffer each tackle a type of capital that aids children in
attaining school and life success. How does each author (or pair of authors) define the kind of capital that
interests him or her? How might economic capital (e.g., family wealth) allow families to invest in
cultural, human, and social capital?
3. The selections by Randall Collins and Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and Peter Meyer highlight the
viewpoints of conflict theorists in that they describe the relationship between individuals and society as
one based on struggle and competition. How do they theorize the role of schools in society? How are they
similar, and where do they diverge?
4. According to Durkheim, what is the purpose of punishment? Does his explanation apply to your own or
your friends’ experiences with school discipline? What factors do you think might contribute to any
differences between his explanation and your own experiences or observations?

SOURCE: Bowles, Samuel, Herbert Gintis, and Peter Meyer. “The long shadow of work: Education, the family,
and the reproduction of the social division of labor.” Critical Sociology 5.4 (1975): 3–22.
PART II

STRATIFICATION WITHIN AND BETWEEN

SCHOOLS

W hen thinking about the structure of schooling in the United States, one must recognize that all
schools are not created equal. Schools may have different characteristics based on whether they
are public or private, segregated or integrated, abundantly endowed or poorly financed. Even
within the same school, curricular tracking provides a variety of different experiences and opportunities for
students. Such differences between and within schools are consequential for student outcomes and attainment
because they structure educational opportunity. The readings in Part II focus on some important areas of
stratification between and within schools.
Shamus Khan’s ethnography about Saint Paul’s Prep School (spanning his time as a student and his time as
a teacher) provides a unique perspective on the role of elite institutions in shaping American inequality and a
clear example of stratification between schools. His work builds on earlier research on boarding schools (most
notably Cookson & Persell’s 1987 classic Preparing for Power). Khan’s work asserts that though the student
body of elite prep schools is markedly more multiracial, they continue to serve and reproduce a privileged class.
While many studies of inequality look only at disadvantaged populations, Khan’s work argues that studying the
top of the economic distribution provides important lessons about growing inequality for all Americans.
The next few readings address the important issues of racial segregation and resource inequality between
schools. These interrelated issues have long plagued the educational history of our nation. Although US courts
in the not-too-distant past endorsed the concept of separate but equal (the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v.
Ferguson was the basis of this law until 1954), few historic examples exist in which subordinate minority
groups were not segregated without concurrent denial of equal access to resources and opportunity. In 1954, the
Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education verdict, essentially reversing the ruling in Plessy
v. Ferguson. US courts prohibited intentional de jure racial segregation enforced by public authorities.
However, de facto racial segregation still occurs in many US schools. One must remember this history when
recognizing that issues of racial segregation are implicitly related to issues of educational resource inequality.
Perhaps because of the political implications inherent in research on educational resource inequality, there
has been continued debate in the education literature about whether increasing financial resources to schools
affects student outcomes. For example, economist Eric Hanushek has been a harsh critic of plans to increase
funding to schools, arguing that school resources are unrelated to student success. Other empirical research,
however, has failed to support Hanushek’s position. Work by economists Card and Krueger (1992), for
example, demonstrates that for every ten fewer students in a classroom, students can be expected to attain an
additional half-year of education and 4 percent more income per year for each and every year of their labor
market experience. Research in Tennessee, which used randomized student assignment, also provides clear and
persuasive support for the conclusion that resources are related to student outcomes (Finn & Achilles, 1990). In
our own research, we too have found a clear association between increased educational resources and improved
student outcomes (Arum, 1998; Arum & Beattie, 1999; Arum & LaFree, 2008).
The next selection is commonly referred to as “The Coleman Report.” This report focuses on the interrelated
issues of racial segregation and resource inequality. James Coleman and his colleagues demonstrate that peer
composition in schools and a student’s family background have significant effects on student outcomes.
Although the statistical analysis is rudimentary by contemporary standards, the results of the study were
influential in the promotion of government plans to bus students to diminish racial segregation and provide
equality of educational opportunity. This reading is also an important early example of the growing reliance on
sociological research for informing educational policy debates at the federal, state, and local levels throughout
the latter half of the 20th century.
The third reading in this section contains results similar to results from a prominent study of inequality in
the early 1970s. Christopher Jencks and Marsha Brown maintain that differences between schools do not
account for variation in student educational attainment. Instead, the authors argue that family background is the
crucial determinant of how much schooling people obtain. These results have an important (if controversial)
implication for policy: The best way to affect educational achievement is to invest in families, not in schools.
Christopher Jencks later backed away from this policy recommendation in his popular edited volume The Black
White Test Score Gap.
The next reading, by Gary Orfield, John Kucsera, and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, examines the persistence
of racial segregation in schools. Gary Orfield and the Civil Rights Project have been chronicling patterns of
school segregation for decades. Here, they outline worsening school segregation in the West and Northeast—
particularly for black and Latino students. They demonstrate that a double segregation has taken hold, where
students are segregated both by race and class. For example, the average black student in the US attends a
school where almost two-thirds of her classmates (64%) are low income. This rate is almost two times the level
of low-income students at schools attended by the average white or Asian student (37% and 39%, respectively).
The three states where black student are the most segregated in schools are New York, Illinois, and Michigan.
The states where black students are the least segregated in schools are Washington, Nebraska, and Kansas.
In the next reading in this section, Doris Entwisle, Karl Alexander, and Linda Olson look at stratification
between elementary schools. Racial segregation and economic polarization exist for even the youngest students
as they make their way through the public schools. The authors propose that because the early grades are so
critical for cognitive development and later educational attainment, inequalities between elementary schools
have profound effects on children’s outcomes. In their previous work, Entwisle and Alexander (1992)
demonstrated that low socioeconomic status has more detrimental effects on young students’ math achievement
than does the racial composition of schools. Both black and white students from impoverished economic origins
lose ground in math over the summer while school is not in session. However, the authors emphasize that the
racial mix of a school can be important: Even the poorest African American children do better in integrated
schools.
The final pair of readings in Part II focuses on stratification systems that operate within schools—
specifically, tracking. Often, secondary school students are tracked, or sorted, into academic, general, or
vocational tracks. Critics of this practice maintain that it is inherently inequitable, while proponents believe that
it promotes more effective learning opportunities. In the first reading of this section, Karolyn Tyson places
systems of racialized tracking in historical context. She goes on to demonstrate that students’ personal
experiences are the strongest determinant of their beliefs and orientations toward achievement. She notes that
culture plays a role in how students make meaning, but “does not drive values and action.”
The final reading of this section is a portion of Jeannie Oakes’s influential ethnographic study Keeping
Track. Oakes is an outspoken critic of tracking in schools. Here, she argues that tracking structures different
opportunities for students in different tracks through distribution of knowledge and level of teacher
expectations. Her results suggest that the types of skills learned by high-track students help them get ahead,
while the skills taught to low-track students keep them at the bottom.
Following scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Oakes’s, that highlighted inequalities by
race/ethnicity and social class in track placement, high school curricula have grown increasingly academically
focused. This constrained curriculum (Lee, Croninger, & Smith, 1997) theoretically gets rid of a general track in
high schools and makes it so that even students who are concentrating on vocational curricula are likely to
invest in college preparatory coursework. In essence, these reforms have increased the overall number of
students taking college preparatory courses. They have also decreased the rigidity and consistency of course
placements across subjects, so that a student could be taking advanced English while also taking remedial math.
Recent studies indicate that while formal, all-encompassing tracking arrangements have largely subsided, de
facto tracking has resulted in continued curricular differentiation in the modern era that looks much as it did in
the past (Yonezawa, Wells, & Serna, 2002). Indeed, a recent report to the Gates Foundation on high school
dropouts suggests that a one-size-fits-all curriculum focused on college preparation turns many students away
from high school (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morison, 2006). The report highlights the importance of connecting
classroom learning to real life experiences and work, rather than using it only as a stepping stone to college.

REFERENCES

Arum, R. (1998). Invested dollars or diverted dreams: The effect of resources on vocational students’
educational outcomes. Sociology of Education, 71(2), 130–151.
Arum, R., & Beattie, I. R. (1999). High school experience and the risk of adult incarceration. Criminology,
37(3), 515–540.
Arum, R., & LaFree, G. (2008). Educational attainment, teacher/student ratios and adult incarceration risk
among U.S. birth cohorts since 1910. Sociology of Education, 81(4), 397–421.
Bridgeland, J. M., DiIulio, Jr., J. J., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The silent epidemic: Perspectives of high school
dropouts. Washington, DC: Civic Enterprises Institute.
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Card, D., & Krueger, A. B. (1992). Does school quality matter? Journal of Political Economy, 100(1), 1–40.
Cookson, W., Cookson, Jr., P. W., & Persell, C. (2008). Preparing for power: America’s elite boarding
schools. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Entwisle, D., & Alexander, K. L. (1992). Summer setback: Race, poverty, school composition, and
mathematics achievement in the first two years of school. American Sociological Review, 57(1), 72–84.
Finn, J., & Achilles, C. (1990). Answers and questions about class size: A statewide experiment. American
Educational Research Journal, 27(5), 557–577.
Hanushek, E. A. (1996). School resources and student performance. In G. T. Burtless (Ed.), Does money
matter? The effect of school resources on student achievement and adult success. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution.
Hanushek, E. A. (2003, February). The failure of input-based schooling policies. Economic Journal, 113, F64–
F98.
Hanushek, E. A., Benson, C. S., Freeman, R. B., Jamison, D. T., Levin, H. M., Maynard, R. A., et al. (1994).
Making schools work: Improving performance and controlling costs. Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution.
Lee, V. E., Croninger, R. G., & Smith, J. B. (1997). Coursetaking, equity, and mathematics learning: Testing
the constrained curriculum hypothesis in U.S. secondary schools. Educational Evaluation and Policy
Analysis, 19(2), 99–121.
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Yonezawa, S., Wells, A. S., & Serna, I. (2002). Choosing tracks: “Freedom of choice” in detracking schools.
American Educational Research Journal, 39(1), 37–67.
12
PRIVILEGE
SHAMUS KHAN

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.
—Plato
My story is part of the larger American story.
—Barack Obama

INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRATIC INEQUALITY

I am surrounded by black and Latino boys. As I looked around the common room of my new dorm this was all I
could think about. It was September 1993, and I was a rather young fourteen-year-old leaving home for the first
time. My parents, who had helped me unpack my room and were about to say good-bye, noticed as well. We
didn’t say anything to one another. But the surprise on their faces was mirrored on my own. This was not what I
expected, enrolling at a place like St. Paul’s School. I thought I would be unlike everyone else. I thought my
name and just-darker-than-olive skin would make me the most extreme outlier among the students. But though
my parents grew up in small rural villages in Pakistan and Ireland and my father was not white, they had
become wealthy. My father was a successful surgeon; my mother was a nurse. I had been at private school since
seventh grade, and being partly from the Indian subcontinent hardly afforded one oppressed minority status. For
the other boys around me, those from poor neighborhoods in America’s urban centers, St. Paul’s was a much
more jarring experience.
I quickly realized that St. Paul’s was far from racially diverse. That sea of dark skin only existed because we
all lived in the same place: the minority student dorm. There was one for girls and one for boys. The other
eighteen houses on campus were overwhelmingly filled with those whom you would expect to be at a school
that educates families like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. This sequestering was not an intentionally racist
practice of the school. In fact the school was very self-conscious about it and a few years prior tried to distribute
students of color across all houses on campus. But the non-white students complained. Though their
neighborhoods of Harlem and the Upper East Side might border each other, a fairly large chasm separated the
non-elite and elite students. They had difficulty living with one another. Within a year the minority student
dorm returned. Non-white students were sequestered in their own space, just like most of them were in their
ethnic neighborhoods back home.
I grew up in a variety of neighborhoods, but like most Americans, none of them was particularly diverse.1
My parents’ lives had not been much different until they met one another. In no small part this was because they
grew up in rural towns in poor nations. My father’s village consisted of subsistence farmers; things like
electricity and plumbing arrived during my own childhood visits. My mother grew up on a small farm on the
weather-beaten west coast of Ireland. At the time she was born, her family pumped their own water, had no
electricity, and cooked on an open hearth. Modern comforts arrived during her childhood.
My parents’ story is a familiar one. Their ambitions drove them to the promise of America. Early in life I
lived in New York’s rural Allegany County. But seeking to make the most of American opportunities, my
parents moved to the suburbs of Boston where the schools were better and the chances for me and my brother
were greater. There was more to this move than just new schools. The Pontiac that was standard in the
driveways of rural America was replaced by a European luxury car. The trips to visit family in Ireland and
Pakistan were augmented by tours of Europe, South America, and Asia. My parents did what many immigrants
do: they played cultural catch-up. I spent my Saturdays attending the New England Conservatory of Music.
Public school education was abandoned for private academies. There was no more time for my religious
education. We became cosmopolitan.
For all these changes, my father never lost some of the cultural marks of a rural Pakistani villager, and many
in Boston did not let him forget his roots. He was happiest working with his hands, whether doing surgery or
toiling in the earth. As he spent his free time sculpting the garden of our home into a place that would soon be
put on garden tours, he was mistaken for a hired hand by visitors. During a visit to our home, one of my father’s
colleagues exclaimed, “Where are your books!?” Never in my life have I seen my father read a novel; his
favorite music is still from the Indian movies of his childhood or the songs that greeted him when he arrived in
Detroit in the early 1970s. He would not know Bach from Schoenberg. My father’s reply to this cultural
scolding by a New England blue blood was prescient: “Someday, my kids can have all the books they want.”
My parents were justifiably proud of what they had achieved, and the cultural tastes they would never develop
they would instill in their children. We ate at fine restaurants. At one of these restaurants I saw my father, raised
a Muslim, take his first sip of wine. The snobbery that always stung me—waiters handing me or my brother a
wine list instead of my parents, who were clearly paying for the meal—seemed not to bother them. Compared to
their achievements, these slights were trivial.
Attending an elite high school was the ultimate mark of success in our bourgeois suburban world, and I was
determined to do so. My parents were not enthusiastic about my leaving home, but they knew the advantages of
boarding school. Perhaps thinking of their own lives, they respected my desire to head out on my own. St.
Paul’s was on my tour of New England boarding schools. I didn’t know anything about the place, but during my
visit I was seduced. The school is a truly stunning physical place—one of the most beautiful campuses in the
world. Luckily, I was accepted.
I was unprepared for my new life. The shock of moving from poor rural New York to rich suburban Boston
was repeated during my first days at St. Paul’s. This school had long been home to the social elite of the nation.
Here were members of a national upper class that went well beyond the professional circles of my suburban
home. Children with multiple homes who chartered planes for weekend international trips, came from family
dynasties, and inherited unimaginable advantages met me on the school’s brick paths. My parents’ newfound
wealth was miniscule compared to many at the school. And in my first days, all the European tours, violin
lessons, and private schooling could not buy me a place among many of my classmates. I was not comfortable
around this new group of people. I instead found a home by recessing into my dorm, away from the entitlements
of most of my classmates.
For my entire time at St. Paul’s I lived in the same minority student dorm. But as I became more at ease at
the school, as I began to under-stand the place and my classmates, I also began to find ways to fit in. Upon
graduating I was elected by my classmates to represent them on the board of managers of the alumni. While this
respect of my peers made me proud, I was not sad to be moving on. I had purposefully not applied to the Ivy
League schools that my classmates would be attending. St. Paul’s was a world I had learned to fit into but one
that I was not particularly happy in.
The source of my discontent was my increasing awareness of inequality. I kept returning to my first days:
both my surprise at my minority student dorm and my discomfort among my elite classmates. The experience
remained an aggravating curiosity. Why was elite schooling like a birthright for some Americans and a
herculean achievement for others? Why did students from certain backgrounds seem to have such an easy time
feeling comfortable and doing well at the school while others seemed to relentlessly struggle? And, most
important, while students were repeatedly told that we were among the best of the best,2 why was it that so
many of the best came from among the rich? These were all questions about inequality, and they drove me away
from the world of St. Paul’s. But learning more about inequality also brought me back.

DEMOCRATIC INEQUALITY, ELITE EDUCATION, AND THE RISE OF THE MERITOCRACY

No society will ever be equal. Questions about inequality are not “Is there inequality?” but instead “How much
inequality is there, and what is its character?” Inequality is more tolerable if its character is perceived as “fair.”
Systematic, durable inequalities3—those where advantages and disadvantages are transferred from generation to
generation—are largely unacceptable to our contemporary sensibility. We are unhappy if our poor always
remain poor or our rich seem to have a stranglehold on wealth. We are similarly uncomfortable with the notion
that ascribed characteristics like race help determine our life chances. Levels of inequality are slightly more
contentious. Some of us do not mind large gaps between rich and poor if the poor receive a livable income and
the rich are given the capacity to innovate to create more wealth. Others feel that larger and larger gaps generate
social problems. The evidence seems to show that inequality is bad for societies.4 Following these data, I am
among those who believe that too much inequality is both immoral and inefficient.
One of the curiosities in recent years is how our social institutions have opened to those they previously
excluded, yet at the same time inequality has increased. We live in a world of democratic inequality, by which I
mean that our nation embraces the democratic principle of openness and access, yet as that embrace has
increased so too have our levels of inequality. We often think of openness and equality as going hand in hand.
And yet if we look at our experiences over the last fifty years we can see that that is simply not the case. This is
most notable in elite colleges, where student bodies are increasingly racially diverse but simultaneously richer.
In 1951 blacks made up approximately 0.8 percent of the students at elite colleges.5 Today blacks make up
about 8 percent of Ivy League students; the Columbia class of 2014 is 13 percent black—representative of the
black population in our nation as a whole. A similar change could be shown for other races, and women today
are outperforming men, creating a gender gap in college attendance in favor of women.6 Without question our
elite educational institutions have become far more open racially and to women. This is a tremendous
transformation, nothing short of a revolution. And it has happened not only in our schools but also in our
political and economic life.
Yet at the same time the overall level of inequality has increased dramatically. When we think of inequality
we often think of poverty. And when social scientists study inequality they tend to focus on the conditions of
disadvantage. There are good reasons for this—understanding the lives of the poor should help us alleviate
some of the difficulties of poverty. But if we want to understand the recent increases in American inequality we
must know more about the wealthy, as well as the institutions that are important for their production and
maintenance. This becomes clear if we look at what has happened to the incomes of American households over
the last forty years. From 1967 to 2008 average American households saw their earnings increase about 25
percent. This is respectable but hardly laudatory. But as we move up the income ladder, we see something quite
dramatic. The incomes of the richest 5 percent of households increased 68 percent. And the higher we go, the
greater the increase in income. The top 1 percent of American households saw their incomes increase by 323
percent, and the richest 0.1 percent of Americans received a staggering 492 percent increase in earnings.7 Why
has inequality increased over the past forty years? Mostly because of the exploding incomes of the rich.
These dual tranformations of increasing openness and inequality run against many of our intuitions about
how social processes work. How is it that some of our most elite and august institutions—those that are central
pathways to reaching the highest levels of economic success—have transformed into being more open to those
they previously excluded, yet the overall levels of inequality in our nation have increased so dramatically? How
is it that our democratic ideal of greater openness has transferred into a much better life for the privileged few
but stagnation for most of our nation?
Part of the explanation emerges once we look at class. The “openness” I have highlighted is racial. But if we
add class to the mix, we see something quite different. While elite private colleges send out press release after
press release proclaiming how they are helping make college affordable to the average American, the reality of
college is that it is a place dominated by the rich. As my colleague Andrew Delbanco has noted,

Ninety percent of Harvard students come from families earning more than the median national income of
$55,000, and Harvard’s dean of admissions . . . defined “middle-income” Harvard families as those earning
between $110,000 and $200,000. . . . Today’s students are richer on average than their predecessors.
Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges, the percentage of
 students from families in the bottom quartile of national family income remained roughly steady—around
10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the top quartile rose sharply, from a
little more than one third to fully half. . . . And if the sample is broadened to include the top 150 colleges,
the percentage of students from the bottom quartile drops to 3 percent.8

Harvard’s “middle income” is the richest 5 percent of our nation.9 This alone should tell us a lot about our
elite educational institutions. While they look more open to us, this is in no small part because to us openness
means diversity, and diversity means race. But class matters.
Though poor students experience a host of disadvantages—from lower-quality schools to difficult access to
out-of-school enrichment programs to the absence of support when they struggle—colleges are largely blind to
such struggles, treating poorer students as if they were the same as rich ones. This is in stark contrast to students
who are legacies (whose past family members attended the college), athletes, or members of a minority group.
Though students from these three groups are provided special consideration by colleges, increasing their
chances of admission, poorer students are afforded no such luxury.10 They may claim otherwise, but colleges
are truly “need blind” in the worst possible way. They are ambivalent to the disadvantages of poverty. The
result is a clear class bias in college enrollments. College professors, looking at our classrooms, know this sad
truth quite well. Put simply, lots of rich kids go to college. Few poor ones do.11
As I discuss inequality I keep returning to education, and elite education in particular. This is no accident.
One of the best predictors of your earnings is your level of education; attending an elite educational institution
increases your wages even further.12 Schooling matters for wealth. If the competitive nature of the college
application process is any indicator, its clear that most Americans know this story quite well. Given that
increases in inequality over the past fifty years are in no small part explained by the expansion of wealth, and
elite schooling is central to becoming an elite, we need to know more about how elite schools are training those
who are driving inequality.
Before casting elite schools as the villains of our story, we must pause. For all my criticism of elite schools
as bastions of wealth, we must remember that these are not simply nefarious places, committed to producing the
rich. And as far back as 1940, James Bryant Conant, the president of Harvard University, declared it our
national duty “to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.” Conant imagined creating a
Jeffersonian ideal of a “natural aristocracy” where the elite would be selected on the basis of talent. At his core
Conant was a Tocquevillian, hoping to strike a blow at the heart of the undeserving elite and replace it with
what he imagined made America great: equality of conditions.13 Over the past sixty years elite schools have
made attempts to shift away from being bastions of entitled rich boys toward being places for the talented
members of all of society. Many accepted black students long before they were compelled to do so by the
pressures of the civil rights movement. They similarly transformed into places that do not just “allow” women;
they created the conditions in which they could thrive. These schools’ religious foundations led them to imagine
that they were not simply places for the education of the advantaged but places that lead to the betterment of
society.
In no small part this leading has meant attempts to create a meritocracy of talent. Things like the SAT—a
test seeking to evaluate the “natural aptitude” of students and move away from favoring their wealth and lineage
—emerged out of the ideal.14 The test was imagined and instituted by Henry Chauncey, a descendant of Puritan
ministers who arrived in this country in the 1630s. His family were firmly part of the American WASP
establishment; they were among the very first students at the Groton School, one of the nation’s premier
boarding schools, and Chauncey himself was a graduate of and later a dean at Harvard. Through the SAT
Chauncey sought to level the playing field and in the process transform elite schools and thereby the elite. The
paradox of open inequality shows how this project has been both a tremendous success and a tremendous
failure. Who is at elite schools seems to have shifted. But the elite seem to have a firmer and firmer hold on our
nation’s wealth and power.
One reason is that there is nothing innate about “merit.” Though we tend to think of merit as those qualities
that are abstract and ahistorical, in fact what counts as meritorious is highly contextual. Many scholars have
pointed to the ways in which our definitions of merit change over time, depending on cultural and institutional
contexts.15 The term “meritocracy” was coined by Michael Young. In the 1940s Young had been asked by
England’s Labour Party to help institute and evaluate a new educational system meant to allow all young
Britons the opportunity to acquire the best education, should they be able. Young soon became cynical of the
kind of technocratic approach to human character that such an education seemed to promote. Struggling to think
of a word to describe this new system, he played off “aristocracy” and “democracy.” Rather than “rule by the
best” (aristos) or “rule by the people” (demos), this system would establish “rule by the cleverest people.”16
Though we often think of the word as something admirable, Young invented it to damn what he saw as the cold
scientization of ability and the bureaucratization of talent.
At its core, “meritocracy” is a form of social engineering, aimed at identifying the talents of members of
society so that individuals can be selected for appropriate opportunities. In the case of the SAT this means
evaluating particular mathematics, reading, writing, and vocabulary skills and using them as indicators of
academic ability.17 This move toward meritocracy has sought to decollectivize formerly valued attributes and
instead individualize new ones that are “innate.” Rather than accept students because they manifest a character
that revealed good heritage, this new system would look beyond the trappings of society and reward peoples
inherent individual talents. When meritocracy began to make its way into college admissions, then dean of
Harvard admissions, Wilbur Bender, worried, “Are there any good ways of identifying and measuring goodness,
humanity, character, warmth, enthusiasm, responsibility, vitality, creativity, independence, heterosexuality, etc.,
etc., or should we care about these anyhow?”18 As Jerome Karabel has shown, many of these traits were used as
proxies for elite status.19 Bender, the child of Mennonite parents from Goshen, Indiana, was no elite WASP. But
he expressed concerns that echoed throughout the world of elite education in the 1950s and 1960s: what might
happen to the elements of character that so marked the old American elite? Would the rise of the meritocracy
mean the death of the old elite?
With “merit” we seem to have stripped individuals of the old baggage of social ties and status and replaced
it with personal attributes—hard work, discipline, native intelligence, and other forms of human capital that can
be evaluated separate from the conditions of social life. And the impact of the adoption of this approach has led
to rather contradictory outcomes. It has undercut nepotism. It has been used to promote the opening of schools
to talented members of society who previously were excluded. But it has also been used to question policies like
affirmative action that take into account factors other than performance on select technocratic instruments. It has
been used to justify the increased wages of the already wealthy (as their skills are so valuable and irreplaceable).
And most important for me, it has obscured how outcomes are not simply a product of individual traits. As I
shall argue, this meritocracy of hard work and achievement has naturalized socially constituted distinctions,
making differences in outcomes appear a product of who people are rather than a product of the conditions of
their making. It is through looking at the rise of the meritocracy that we can better understand the new elite and
thereby some of the workings of our contemporary inequality.
In exploring St. Paul’s I will show how the school produces “meritorious” traits of students. We will see
how these attributes are developed within elite settings that few have access to. What seems natural is made, but
access to that making is strictly limited. Returning to my first days at St. Paul’s, we can see some of these
tensions. The school had worked hard to recruit the talented members of minority groups; more were on campus
than ever before. And these students did not represent diversity as mere window dressing. Instead St. Paul’s
hoped to take seriously its elite role within the great American project of equality and liberty. But for all these
ambitious ideals, such a project was not a simple one. Admission was incredibly competitive; a condition of
being an elite school is exclusion (or at least exclusivity). The acceptance of talented minorities did not
guarantee integration. And openness did not always mean equality. The rich students still seemed to dominate
the school. Yet structured around the new meritocracy, it seemed these outcomes were a product of different
aptitudes and not different conditions. The promise of America was not fulfilled in my days at St. Paul’s School.
The question is why. It is not due to a lack of commitment on the part of elite institutions. Nor is it because
of the failure of the disadvantaged to desire mobility. In order to make sense of what is going on, this [chapter]
leaves social statistics behind and explores my return to high school as a teacher and researcher, chronicling a
year in the life of St. Paul’s School.20 Upon first imagining this project I was pretty sure I knew what I would
find. I would return to the world of my first day at the school. I would enter a campus populated by rich, entitled
students and observe a few poor, black, and Latino kids sequestered in their own dorm. I would note the social
and cultural advantages of the students who arrived at school already primed to be the next generation of elites.
And I would see how advantages were protected and maintained. But the St. Paul’s I returned to was a very
different place than the one I had graduated from just ten years earlier. My ethnographic examination of St.
Paul’s School surprised me. Instead of the arrogance of entitlements I discovered at St. Paul’s an ease of
privilege. This [chapter] is a story of a new elite—a group I had to rethink in light of my second time at St.
Paul’s—and how knowing about this elite reinforms our understanding of inequality within a meritocracy.

RETURNING TO ST. PAUL’S: PRIVILEGE AND THE NEW ELITE

Before us stood two enormous closed doors. Heavily carved slabs of thick oak with large looping braided
wrought-iron handles, it was clear that opening them would be no easy task. Standing in a hallway outside we
could look out through the arched windows upon the immaculate lawns, ponds, buildings, and brick paths of the
school that surrounded us. Behind those doors we could hear the muffled sounds of an organ and the murmurs
of hundreds. I glanced around at the faces lined up behind me: excited, terrified, curious, tired. Some were
nervously chattering, others frozen in place; surrounding me was a group of teenagers in their Sunday best,
unsure what lay beyond. Behind those doors was our future. We waited.
As the doors opened a quiet overcame everyone. A deep, steady voice began announcing names. With each
name another one of us stepped into a dark silence beyond those doors. Our line shortened; our time grew
nearer. Soon I could peer into the building we were about to enter. Standing in the bright outside, I could just
make out the contours of a cavernous space, softly lit with chandeliers that hung so far from the ceiling they
seemed to float. I saw vague rows of people.
My name was called, and I stepped through the enormous doors. The Chapel was long and narrow. My eyes
were slow to adjust. I told myself I shouldn’t be nervous. After all, I had been through this before, years earlier.
But it was hard to suppress my nerves. Dressed in a black gown with a blue and red hood and newly purchased
shoes, my soles clicked too loudly against the cold stones. Some of the new faculty members walking in front of
me looked around frantically, like rural tourists walking among skyscrapers for the first time. Others kept their
eyes fixed on the distant altar, as though it were a beacon guiding them to the safety of their seat. As I casually
and slowly walked between the pews, I spotted faces I recognized and places I had occupied years ago as a
student. I was the last new faculty member to enter; after me came a stream of incoming freshmen, sophomores,
and juniors. They swarmed in quickly behind me, unable to hide their anxiety, stepping on my heels until I took
my seat.
This was our first ceremony at the school, “taking one’s place.” Through this ritual new members were
formally introduced to the school and shown where we belonged among the community. Each new member had
a designated seat—one we would occupy almost every morning for the next year. The seating is arranged like
bleachers in a football stadium—four rows of wood-carved seats face one another, with the aisle we had just
paraded down separating them. I belonged in the highest, back row, where all faculty members sat. To my right
sat returning faculty, arranged in order of seniority; to my left were the new hires. In front of and below me
were row after row of our students. As the new students took their place they filled out the very front row,
closest to the aisle. Like the faculty, their place was arranged by seniority, with the seniors sitting in the row just
below the faculty, and the new freshman in the lowest front row.
Stretched before me were girls and boys who had fought to gain entry to St. Paul’s School. The pews were
bursting with the weight and the promise of monumental success. The seniors closest to me knew that next year
the college they were most likely to attend was Harvard—almost a third of them would be at the Ivy League,
and nearly all of them at one of the top colleges in the nation. And college placement was merely the next step
in their carefully cultivated lives. Just as this seating ceremony endowed them with a specific place at St. Paul’s,
so too would graduation from St. Paul’s endow them with a place in an even more bountiful world. As they all
had doubtlessly been reminded by eager parents, they would be part of an even broader community—a member
of a group of graduates who occupied powerful positions throughout the world. The students around me, though
fighting sleep and the hormonal haze of adolescence, knew that they were sitting in seats once occupied by the
men and women who had led American commerce, government, and culture for the last century and a half. For
the boys and girls around me, their own challenge was no less daunting; they were the new elite.
Since 1855 St. Paul’s has been one of the primary homes for the adolescent elite of our nation. It is a strange
feeling to know that you are partly responsible for shaping the minds and hearts of children who are expected to
one day lead the world. Doubly strange because I had once been one of those students, watched over by many of
the same faculty members with whom I now shared the back row. Here I was again. Only now my motives were
far more complicated. I was here to mold these young men and women, but I was also here to study them.
How is it that a boarding school endows the future success of its members? What do these students have,
develop, or learn that advantages them in the years to come? Just a few decades ago these questions might have
been easy to answer. Students came from families that already had astounding advantages. For more than a
hundred years, America’s aristocracy used institutions like St. Paul’s to solidify their position as masters of our
economy and government, to pass that power on to the next generation. St. Paul’s helped transfer the birthright
of each new group of students into credentials, relationships, and culture, all of which ensured their future
success.
Today, the dominant role of the elite has become less straightforward. Looking at the faces before me I saw
boys and girls from every part of the world. St. Paul’s could never be mistaken for a public high school. It has
an intentional diversity that few communities share or can afford. Sitting next to a poor Hispanic boy from the
Bronx—who forty years ago would never have been admitted—is a frighteningly self-possessed girl from one
of the richest WASP families in the world. St. Paul’s is still a place for the already elite. Parents who visit often
do so in a sea of Mercedes and BMWs, with the occasional chauffeured Rolls Royce; on sunny days, the
campus seems to shimmer from the well-appointed jewelry that hangs carelessly from necks and wrists and
fingers. But it is more. Today the school seeks to be a microcosm of our world. Rich and poor, black and white,
boys and girls live in a community together. As they share their adolescent lives in classrooms, on sports fields,
at dances, in dorms, and even in bed, they make up a diverse and idealized community. Sitting there in my
Chapel seat, I saw before me a showcase of the promise of the diverse twenty-first-century world. And I began
to understand the new ways that St. Paul’s instills in its members the privileges of belonging to an elite.
In the pages that follow I present a portrait of what I call the “new elite”—a group of advantaged youths
who don’t quite reflect what we typically imagine when we conjure up a vision of the well-off. They are not all
born into rich families. They are not all white. Their families did not arrive on these shores four centuries ago.
They are not all from the Northeast. They do not share a preppy culture; they don’t avoid rap music and instead
educate themselves in the “finer” cultural things.
We also don’t know much about our elites. Though we eagerly read profiles in Vanity Fair, watch the latest
exposé on the evening news, or smugly smile through television programs that show the grotesque underbelly of
wealth, we lack a clear sense of how they acquire, maintain, and protect their positions. Who are the
contemporary American elite? How are they educated? What do they learn about the world, the place of others,
and how to interact with them? And how have they adapted to the changing social environment of the past fifty
years? How have they dealt with the demands for openness by those who for much of modern history have been
excluded from their rolls?
I will argue that the new elite are not an entitled group of boys who rely on family wealth and slide through
trust-funded lives. The new elite feel their heritage is not sufficient to guarantee a seat at the top of the social
hierarchy, nor should their lives require the exclusion of others. Instead, in certain fundamental ways they are
like the rest of twenty-first-century America: they firmly believe in the importance of the hard work required to
achieve their position at a place like St. Paul’s and the continued hard work it will take to maintain their
advantaged position. Like new immigrants and middle-class Americans, they believe that anyone can achieve
what they have, that upward mobility is a perpetual American possibility. And looking around at their many-
hued peers, they are provided with experiential, though anecdotal, evidence that they are correct.
Instead of entitlement, I have found that St. Paul’s increasingly cultivates privilege. Whereas elites of the
past were entitled—building their worlds around the “right” breeding, connections, and culture—new elites
develop privilege: a sense of self and a mode of interaction that advantage them. The old entitled elites
constituted a class that worked to construct moats and walls around the resources that advantaged them. The
new elite think of themselves as far more individualized, supposing that their position is a product of what they
have done. They deemphasize refined tastes and “who you know” and instead highlight how you act in and
approach the world. This is a very particular approach to being an elite, a fascinating combination of
contemporary cultural mores and classic American values. The story that the new elite tell is built on America’s
deeply held belief that merit and hard work will pay off. And it also harnesses a twenty-first-century global
outlook, absorbing and extracting value from anything and everything, always savvy to what’s happening at the
present moment. Part of the way in which institutions like St. Paul’s and the Ivy League tell their story is to look
less and less like an exclusive yacht club and more and more like a microcosm of our diverse social world—
albeit a microcosm with very particular social rules. This [chapter] will take us into the world of St. Paul’s
School to draw out three lessons of privilege that students learn.

lesson 1: hierarchies are natural and they can be treated like ladders, not ceilings
Students learn to emphasize hard work and talent when explaining their good fortune. This framing is
reinforced by a commitment to an open society—for only in such a society can these qualities explain one’s
success. However, students also learn that the open society does not mean equality—far from it. A persistent
lesson is the enduring, natural presence of hierarchy. Within the open society there are winners and losers. But
unlike the past where these positions were ascribed through inheritance, today they are achieved. Hierarchies
are not barriers that limit but ladders that allow for advancement. Learning to climb requires interacting with
those above (and below) you in a very particular way: by creating intimacy without acting like you are an equal.
This is a tricky interactive skill, pretending the hierarchy isn’t there but all the while respecting it. Hierarchies
are dangerous and unjustifiable when too fixed or present—when society is closed and work and talent don’t
matter. And so students learn a kind of interaction and sensibility where hierarchies are enabling rather than
constraining—in short, where they are fair.

Lesson 2: Experiences Matter

Students learn this through experience. Many St. Paul’s students are from already privileged backgrounds,
and it would not be unreasonable to think that they would have an easier time learning these lessons. Yet
adjusting to life at the school is difficult for everyone. The students who act as if they already hold the keys to
success are rejected as entitled. In learning their place at the school students rely not on their heritage but
instead on experiences. There is a shift from the logic of the old elite—who you are—to that of the new elite—
what you have done. Privilege is not something you are born with; it is something you learn to develop and
cultivate.

Lesson 3: Privilege Means Being at Ease, No Matter What the Context

What students cultivate is a sense of how to carry themselves, and at its core this practice of privilege is
ease: feeling comfortable in just about any social situation. In classrooms they are asked to think about both
Beowulf and Jaws. Outside the classroom they listen to classical music and hip-hop. Rather than mobilizing
what we might think of as “elite knowledge” to mark themselves as distinct—epic poetry, fine art and music,
classical learning—the new elite learn these and everything else. Embracing the open society, they display a
kind of radical egalitarianism in their tastes. Privilege is not an attempt to construct boundaries around
knowledge and protect such knowledge as a resource. Instead, students display a kind of omnivorousness.
Ironically, exclusivity marks the losers in the hierarchical, open society. From this perspective, inequality is
explained not by the practices of the elite but instead by the character of the disadvantaged. Their limited
(exclusive) knowledge, tastes, and dispositions mean they have not seized upon the fruits of our newly open
world.
This elite ease is also an embodied interactional resource. In looking at seemingly mundane acts of everyday
life—from eating meals to dancing and dating—we will see how privilege becomes inscribed upon the bodies of
students and how students are able to display their privilege through their interactions. In being embodied,
privilege is not seen as a product of differences in opportunities but instead as a skill, talent, capacity—”who
you are.” Students from St. Paul’s appear to naturally have what it takes to be successful. This helps hide
durable inequality by naturalizing socially produced distinctions.
This [book] is my attempt to understand the new elite and, through drawing out these lessons of privilege, to
make sense of our new inequality. This work often emphasizes the way in which culture—students’
dispositions, interactions, and ways of being in the world—defines elite belonging and thus helps drive
inequality. Culture can be thought of as a kind of “capital”—like money it has value and can be put to work to
acquire social advantages. In learning about the culture of the new elite I hope to elucidate some of the workings
of inequality in a meritocracy.
My return to St. Paul’s was inspiring. I saw how even our most august institutions could rewrite the
assumptions of previous generations and attempt to create a more inclusive world. And yet like all good tales,
this one has another side. Students from St. Paul’s are undoubtedly privileged. They accrue extraordinary
advantages, and the disjuncture between the lives of these students and the lives of other American teenagers—
even those living a few miles down the road in Concord, New Hampshire—can be shocking. The elite adoption
of the American Dream, however well-intentioned, happens against a backdrop of increasing social inequality.
In embracing an open society and embodying privilege, elites have obscured the persistence of social closure in
our world.
Throughout the twentieth century the battles against inequality were battles of access: could women, blacks,
and other excluded groups be integrated into the highest institutions and positions in our society? These battles
were largely won. Yet the results have not been what we imagined. The promise of the open society was not just
more access but more equality. This promise has proven to be a fiction. Twenty-first-century America is
increasingly open yet relentlessly unequal. Our next great American project is to find a way out of this paradox.

The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very
different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is
not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labor. The difference between
the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to
arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.
—Adam Smith
The same equality that allows every citizen to conceive lofty hopes renders all the citizens less able to
realize them; it circumscribes their powers on every side, while it gives freer scope to their desires. Not only
arc they themselves powerless, but they are met at every step by immense obstacles, which they did not at
first perceive. They have swept away the privileges of some of their fellow creatures which stood in their
way, but they have opened the door to universal competition; the barrier has changed shape rather than
place.
—Alexis de Tocqueville

What have we learned from this small, out-of-the-way place? St. Paul’s is a high school of just five hundred
students, tucked away in the outskirts of Concord, New Hampshire. If one is interested in the American
experience, as I am, then this is not your typical spot to learn about it. And even if we now know about St.
Paul’s, do we now know more about the character of American inequality? I would like to think that we do. And
in particular we know something about elites: how they have adapted to the changing landscape of the twenty-
first century. I leave the reader with some impressions that I have drawn from my time spent at St. Paul’s. I will
resist the urge to suggest any programmatic changes we might try to realize as a nation. But I shall make some
claims that are as brief as they are provocative. I will brazenly think beyond my case so as to make sense of
what our new elite and our new inequality might mean for our new century.

THE RISE OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE DEATH OF COLLECTIVIST POLITICS

One of the ironic consequences of the collectivist movements of the 1960s has been the further triumph of the
individual and the death of the collective. Groups gathered together—blacks, women, gays, immigrants—to
argue that the properties that grouped them should not matter. It should be our own human capital that matters;
we should all have opportunities based on our capacities, not on some characteristics ascribed to us.
The elite have largely adopted this stance. They have gone from seeing themselves as a coherent group, a
class with particular histories and tastes, to a collection of the most talented and hardest working of our nation.
They look more diverse, by which I mean that they now include members they formerly excluded. They have
rejected moat and fence building around particular resources and qualities that might identify them as a class
and have accepted the fundamentally American story of “work hard, get ahead.” They think in terms of their
individual traits, capacities, skills, talents, and qualities. They certainly know that these are all cultivated, but
this cultivation is done through hard work, and access is granted through capacity rather than birthright. Recall
the three lessons of privilege that I outlined in the introduction: (1) hierarchies are natural and can be used to
one’s advantage; (2) experiences matter more than innate or inherited qualities; and (3) the way to signal your
elite status to others is through ease and openness in all social contexts. Inequality is ever-present, but elites now
view it as fair. Hierarchies are enabling, not constraining. It is the inherent character of the individual that
matters, not breeding, or skin color, or anything that smacks of an old-fashioned collectivity.
As the excluded have been included, we have assumed that the characteristics that served as principles for
exclusion have dissolved in importance. Social commentators have heralded our new classless society; we
congratulate ourselves on being “post-race.” While our colleges appear to embrace these changes, some caution
is warranted. Race still matters among the elite, just as it does across our nation.1 Access is not the same as
equality, and social inequalities still show a persistent importance of race and gender to one’s life chances.
It bears repeating that as elite schools appear to have opened their doors, to a large degree they have not.
There are more rich kids at top schools than there were twenty-five years ago and fewer poor ones. As we saw
in earlier chapters, the lack of a language of and identification with class in our nation presents challenges to
confronting our increasing class inequalities. The difference between rich and poor people can be understood
very simply. Rich people have more money than poor people. And they use that money to buy advantages for
themselves and their children. One of the places they do so is at St. Paul’s School. And the trick of these
advantages today is in their naturalization.
This is certainly not where we thought we would end up after the rights revolutions of the 1960s. Increased
openness and increased inequality should not go hand in hand. The rise of the meritocracy seems a far more
desirable world than the domination of aristocracy. And so too does openness feel more preferable than closure.
How did we get to this place?
Our equating of diversity with equality is problematic. We do this in part because we lack class as a
descriptive, resonant social category, and the political solidarity required to address its ill effects is largely
absent. The new elite, who in the words of P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves “are acute to the notion of class
distinction,” can integrate across the class scale, but there is embodied knowledge required to move up the scale
that tends to keep others out. The irony of social integration absent class consciousness is that elites have been
given the tools to more effectively remain elite and reinforce their status. This isn’t necessarily solvable or even
pernicious, but I hope to have shown that it is the case.
We are also here because of one of the key features of our American exceptionalism: individualism. Ours is
a world of “me” rather than “we.” Collectivism is far from a utopia: it is by definition exclusionary (there is an
“us” and a “them”) and it can limit innovations. But individualism is far too cherished in our nation. And when
combined with meritocracy it has allowed for the justification of inequalities that should embarrass our nation.
This attention to the individual has led us to ignore the conditions of our own making. We tend to think of our
successes as our own work (we are less likely to do so for our failures) and our positions relative to our own
qualities. This is certainly true. But it is important to note that our positions are part of our activity within a
social context. We do not live in a flat world but in one with different conditions of possibility. These conditions
are highly tied to ascriptive characteristics, creating durable inequalities.
When we combine race, class, and the decline of collectivist politics we are left to wonder seriously about
the gains in educational institutions. Importantly, the weapons of the disadvantaged are in their numbers and
organization. These are both only possible through collective identification and collective action. The triumph
of individual man and the death of collective politics may make race go the way of class: to increasingly
become a source of inequality but one whose capacity to challenge these durable inequalities is eroding. There
is some evidence that this is the case. Most of the gains made in terms of both racial and class equality have
ceased. During the moments of collectivist politics income inequality shrank, and the wage gap between black
and white did as well. But since the 1980s we have not seen this trend continue. The triumph of the story of
individual traits and capacities has been the death of collectivism and the solidification of racial and income
inequality. Until we reclaim some of our social trust and solidarity I am not optimistic that these difficulties can
be addressed.

THE TRICK OF PRIVILEGE: THE NEW DEMOCRATIC INEQUALITY

All of this is to say that the “new” inequality is the democratization of inequality. We might call it democratic
inequality. The aristocratic marks of class, exclusion, and inheritance have been rejected; the democratic
embrace of individuals having their own fair shake is nearly complete. Differences in outcomes are explained
by the capacities of people; the elite have embraced differences among their roles while accepting and even
consecrating the hierarchy between them and others. The difficulty with this move, what I have called the
“trick” of privilege, is to make the hierarchy seem a natural rather than durable systematic process. My
explanation here has drawn directly on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and deploys the ideas of embodiment and
ease to show how such a naturalization of socially produced differences can occur.
Embodiment is a fancy word for a simple idea: we carry our experiences with us. Our time in the world
becomes imprinted on our bodies themselves. Time in elite spaces matters, and by definition elite spaces are
ones that are exclusive. The importance to embodiment is that once social experiences become embodied, they
begin to seem natural. It’s just how your carry yourself. We all have to act in some way; your embodiment is
yours. The particular form of embodiment of the new elite is ease. This ease is enormously wide-ranging. As
they have integrated those who have been excluded, the elite have adapted many of the cultural markers they
previously shunned. And so the new elite are at ease in a wide range of areas.
An implication is that, perhaps, cultural hierarchies are not simply imposed from above by exclusive
practices2 but maintained from below. If elites are generally indifferent or (display ease) across cultural
symbols, then the “specialness” of high cultural markers is maintained not only by elites through exclusive
practices but also by non-elites who do not engage in practices marked as culturally elite. My own research only
allows for this as a loose hypothesis. But if we think for a moment about, say, a concert, the price of a ticket to
the Met Opera is no greater than the price of a ticket to see U2. Students from St. Paul’s can be observed
attending both. Students from Concord High School (almost) only attend the latter. And so we might ask where
cultural exclusivity comes from—those who consume across culture or those who have stronger consumptive
tendencies? This question is the one the new elite ask the world. And the answer is that they are open-minded
and others are closed-minded.
Though the elite have been opened, and have opened themselves to the world, the world has not opened to
all. Access is not the same as integration. But what is crucial is that no one is explicitly excluded.3 The effect is
to blame non-elites for their lack of interest. As we have seen, the result of this logic is damning. The distinction
between elites and the rest of us appears to be a choice. It is cosmopolitanism that explains elite status to elites
and closed-mindedness that explains those who choose not to participate. What matters are individual attributes
and capacities, not durable inequalities. From this point of view, those who are not successful are not
necessarily disadvantaged; they are simply those who have failed to seize the opportunities afforded by our new,
open society.
Embodied ease is a physical manifestation of this openness, and it makes differences natural. Inequality
becomes the product of who you are, not where you are from. Society has recessed in the minds of the elite as
producing social problems. Society is to be as benign as possible—to sit in the background as we play out our
lives on an even field. The world is flat, so the story goes. This is a delusion, a fable the elite tell to themselves
and others in order to obscure their continued domination and inheritance. It bears repeating that one of the best
indicators of your social position is that of your parents. I would like to think it is my wits that resulted in my
job at an Ivy League university. But there is more to the story; my parents’ wealth was able to buy me out of
difficulties and create endowments. When less than a stellar student in middle school, tutors were hired. When
wits weren’t enough, I could fall back on my comfort within elite institutions—comfort purchased through a
pricey education. These processes are more often than not obscured; elites, in embodying their costly
experiences, simply seem to have what it takes.

THE DEMOCRATIC CONUNDRUM

Privilege is not a uniform experience for the elite. There are contradictions for many students at the school. We
can see this most clearly in the cases of blacks and girls. We might remember Carla, who thought the school
was bullshit, or Mary, who was mercilessly teased for working hard, or Devin, who thought of St. Paul’s as a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, or Lee, who struggled to avoid dressing like she was at the prom, working the
corner, or a business executive, or the girls of Barclay House for whom sexuality was a central part of a hazing
ritual. There are contradictions to the experience of privilege and of race and gender for these students. All of
the examples I just highlighted point to the ways in which social categories have real impacts on the experience
of students at St. Paul’s and to the fact that durable (categorical) inequalities can emerge from these
contradictory experiences. For girls, the dominance of sexuality creates tensions with expressing ease; looking
forward, such sexuality might limit success throughout the life course, especially when sexuality and youth are
so tightly tied together. For black students, revering or rejecting the institution meant that time at the school is
not as “natural” —it is either artificial bullshit or the kind of thing you’ll never experience again.
As the languages of race, gender, and class are increasingly framed as academic liberal pandering or as old
social categories whose usefulness has run their course, students begin to lose the tools to make sense of their
experience, and challenging durable inequalities becomes more and more difficult. Not only does the success of
some become naturalized, but the failure of others becomes internalized.
It is your own incapacities. Democratic inequality comes with a democratic conundrum. The new elites’
suggestion that they “accept all” and that they do so within an increasingly open world makes the collectivism
required for social transformations of any kind more challenging. And this leads to an odd, perhaps even ironic
outcome: by becoming more democratic the elite have undercut the power of the weak within our nation.
The elite story about the triumph of the individual is just that; or better, it is a myth. Even though they are
outperforming them in educational institutions, women still make less than men, blacks make less than whites,
and students from St. Paul’s get into better colleges than equivalent ones who attend non-elite schools. These
“new elite” are less honest can their “old elite” ancestors, like Chase Abbott. I do not wish to suggest an
invidiousness here. But in suggesting that it is their work and not their wealth, that it is their talents and not their
lineage, elites function beneath a fiction. Would I prefer today’s open yet obscuring elites to yesterday’s closed
and more transparent ones? Certainly. The changes in spaces like St. Paul’s and its Ivy League counterparts
have been profound and should leave any who value equality of opportunity optimistic. Meritocracy is a social
arrangement like any other: it is a loose set of rules that can be adapted in order to obscure advantages, all the
while justifying them on the basis of collective values.
And so my optimism is heavily tempered. If our economic trends continue, if the spoils produced by the
many are increasingly claimed by the few, then the transformations among the elite may be durable. That is, we
may have a diverse elite class. And this I imagine will no doubt be trotted out by the elite to suggest that ours is
an open society where one can get a fair shake. But diversity does not mean mobility and it certainly does not
mean equality. Ours is a more diverse elite within a more unequal world. The result of our democratic inequality
is that the production of privilege will continue to reproduce inequality while implying that ours is a just world;
the weapons of the weak are removed, and the blame for inequality is placed on the shoulders of those whom
our democratic promise has failed.

NOTES
Introduction: Democratic Equality
1. See Massey and Denton 1998.
2. In his work on an elite boarding school, Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez (2009) nicely elaborates this point.
3. I have taken this term from Charles Tilly, who argues that “Large, significant inequalities in advantages
among human beings correspond mainly to categorical differences such as black/white, male/female,
citizen/foreigner, or Muslim/Jew rather than to individual differences in attributes, propensities, or
performances. . . . Durable inequality among categories arises because people who control access to value-
producing resources solve pressing organizational problems by means of categorical distinctions” (1999:6).
4. The data seem to firmly show that inequality matters and that it is bad for societies. See Jencks 2002;
Wilkinson and Pickett 2009.
5. Bowen and Bok 2000:4.
6. Buchmann and DiPrete 2006.
7. The income of average American households increased from $40,261 to $50,303 (all numbers reported are
in 2008 dollars). The richest 5 percent saw their incomes increase from $107,091 to $180,000; the richest 1
percent from $422,710 to $1,364,494; and the richest 0.1 percent from $1,447,543 to $7,126,395. These
data are from the U.S. Census Bureau and Piketry and Saez 2003, available online at
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/saez/.
8. Delbanco 2007. The figures are from Bowen, Kurzweil, and Tobin 2005. The eleven institutions are
Barnard, Columbia, Oberlin, Penn State, Princeton, Smith, Swarthmore, the University of Pennsylvania,
Wellesley, Williams, and Yale.
9. Further, only 8 percent of Harvard’s undergraduates receive Pell Grants (awarded to families with incomes
of less than $40,000); the real middle income is vastly underrepresented at America’s elite colleges.
Fischer 2006.
10. Bowen, Kurzweil, and Tobin 2005:103.
11. This class composition of colleges has clear racial impacts. Though we tend to separate out such factors as
class and race as analytically distinct, they are densely intertwined. The easiest way to see this is to simply
look at the income of American families by race. The average income of the black family is about 62
percent of that of the average white family and almost half that of the average Asian family. Blacks and
Hispanics are far poorer than the average American, and this poverty impacts their college chances and life
prospects. This means that when speaking of the importance of class, race is a necessary part of the
discussion. As William Bowen and his colleagues have noted, “the minority enrollment gap [in four-year
colleges] is primarily a result of the fact that underrepresented minority students are more likely than other
students to come from low-income families.” Bowen, Kurzweil, and Tobin 2005:76.
12. A frequently cited paper by Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger (2002) is often credited in the press as showing
that elite education does not matter— what matters is the capacity to get in. However, these reports are
deceptive. In the models that journalists point to, Dale and Krueger control for such factors as the resources
that schools devote to instruction and tuition cost. But both of these increase earnings significantly, and
both are marks of elite schools. Further, in the study institutional quality is a product of SAT score, not
prestige; yet prestige is a far better predictor of elite status than a student’s average SAT score. Perhaps
most simply, from Dale and Kruegers own study we find that men who attend the most competitive
colleges (as evaluated by Barrons) earn 23 percent more than those who attend very competitive colleges.
This is an enormous difference in wages. For critiques of the interpretations of the study, see
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/college-prestige-matters.html. There are similarly clear
advantages to attending an elite boarding school. See S. Levine 1980.
13. See Lemann 2000. Equality of conditions is not the same as equality of outcomes. It suggests that all
 members of society be given an equal chance of success. Some may achieve, and some may not. But such
outcomes are a product of how the game is played, not how it is set up.
14. Ibid.
15. Tsay et al. 2003; Brim et al. 1969; Friedland and Alford 1991; Sen 1999.
16. See Young 1994; Lemann 2000.
17. It is important to note that the SAT is only a weak predictor of college grades in the first year, that
performance on the test is highly correlated with demographic factors like family wealth and race, and that
other indicators like class rank and high school grades are far better predictors of college performance.
18. Karabel 2006:267.
19. Ibid.
20. For a description of the methodology employed, see the methodological and theoretical reflections.

Chapter 5: Learning Beowulf and Jaws

1. See Bryson 1996; Peterson and Kern 1996
2. L. Levine 1990.
3. See Bryson 1996; Emmison; Gans 1974; Peterson and Kern 1996; and Sintas and Alvarez 2002. This
argument assumes that “social stratification and cultural stratification map closely onto each other” (Chan
and Goldthorpe 2007:1. As Michael Emmison argues, “the cultural lives of those once deemed to be the
‘bearers’ of elite or high cultural traditions are increasing diversified, inclusive or omnivorous”) 2003:226).

SOURCE: “Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School by Shamus Rahman Khan.”
Review by Wendy Leo Moore American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 117, No. 3. November 2011, pp. 995-997.
Copyright © 2011, The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted with permission.
13
EQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
The Coleman Report
JAMES COLEMAN, ERNEST CAMPBELL, CAROL HOBSON, JAMES MCPARTLAND,
ALEXANDER MOOD, FREDERIC WEINFELD, AND ROBERT YORK

1.1 SEGREGATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The great majority of American children attend schools that are largely segregated—that is, where almost all of
their fellow students are of the same racial background as they are. Among minority groups, Negroes are by far
the most segregated. Taking all groups, however, white children are most segregated. Almost 80 percent of all
white pupils in 1st grade and 12th grade attend schools that are from 90 to 100 percent white. And 97 percent at
grade 1, and 99 percent at grade 12, attend schools that are 50 percent or more white.
For Negro pupils, segregation is more nearly complete in the South (as it is for whites also), but it is
extensive also in all the other regions where the Negro population is concentrated: the urban North, Midwest,
and West.
More than 65 percent of all Negro pupils in the first grade attend schools that are between 90 and 100
percent Negro. And 87 percent at grade 1, and 66 percent at grade 12, attend schools that are 50 percent or more
Negro. In the South most students attend schools that are 100 percent white or Negro.
The same pattern of segregation holds, though not quite so strongly, for the teachers of Negro and white
students. For the Nation as a whole, the average Negro elementary pupil attends a school in which 65 percent of
the teachers are Negro; the average white elementary pupil attends a school in which 97 percent of the teachers
are white. White teachers are more predominant at the secondary level, where the corresponding figures are 59
and 97 percent. The racial matching of teachers is most pronounced in the South, where by tradition it has been
complete. On a nationwide basis, in cases where the races of pupils and teachers are not matched, the trend is all
in one direction: white teachers teach Negro children but Negro teachers seldom teach white children; just as, in
the schools, integration consists primarily of a minority of Negro pupils in predominantly white schools but
almost never of a few whites in largely Negro schools.
In its desegregation decision of 1954, the Supreme Court held that separate schools for Negro and white
children are inherently unequal. This survey finds that, when measured by that yardstick, American public
education remains largely unequal in most regions of the country, including all those where Negroes form any
significant proportion of the population. Obviously, however, that is not the only yardstick. The next section of
the summary describes other characteristics by means of which equality of educational opportunity may be
appraised.

1.2 THE SCHOOLS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

The school environment of a child consists of many elements, ranging from the desk he sits at to the child who
sits next to him, and including the teacher who stands at the front of his class. A statistical survey can give only
fragmentary evidence of this environment.
Great collections of numbers such as are found in these pages—totals and averages and percentages—blur
and obscure rather than sharpen and illuminate the range of variation they represent. If one reads, for example,
that the average annual income per person in the State of Maryland is $3,000, there is a tendency to picture an
average person living in moderate circumstances in a middle-class neighborhood holding an ordinary job. But
that number represents at the upper end millionaires, and at the lower end the unemployed, the pensioners, the
charwomen. Thus the $3,000 average income should somehow bring to mind the tycoon and the tramp, the
showcase and the shack, as well as the average man in the average house.
So, too, in reading these statistics on education, one must picture the child whose school has every
conceivable facility that is believed to enhance the educational process, whose teachers may be particularly
gifted and well educated, and whose home and total neighborhood are themselves powerful contributors to his
education and growth. And one must picture the child in a dismal tenement area who may come hungry to an
ancient, dirty building that is badly ventilated, poorly lighted, overcrowded, understaffed, and without sufficient
textbooks.
Statistics, too, must deal with one thing at a time, and cumulative effects tend to be lost in them. Having a
teacher without a college degree indicates an element of disadvantage, but in the concrete situation, a child may
be taught by a teacher who is not only without a degree but who has grown up and received his schooling in the
local community, who has never been out of the State, who has a 10th-grade vocabulary, and who shares the
local community’s attitudes.
One must also be aware of the relative importance of a certain kind of thing to a certain kind of person. Just
as a loaf of bread means more to a starving man than to a sated one, so one very fine textbook or, better, one
very able teacher, may mean far more to a deprived child than to one who already has several of both.
Finally, it should be borne in mind that in cases where Negroes in the South receive unequal treatment, the
significance in terms of actual numbers of individuals involved is very great, since 54 percent of the Negro
population of school-going age, or approximately 3,200,000 children, live in that region.
All of the findings reported in this section of the summary are based on responses to questionnaires filled
out by public school teachers, principals, district school superintendents, and pupils. The data were gathered in
September and October of 1965 from 4,000 public schools. All teachers, principals, and district superintendents
in these schools participated, as did all pupils in the 3rd, 6th, 9th, and 12th grades. First-grade pupils in half the
schools participated. More than 645,000 pupils in all were involved in the survey.

Facilities
Table 13.1 lists certain school characteristics and the percentages of pupils of the various races who are
enrolled in schools which have those characteristics. Where specified by “average” the figures represent actual
numbers rather than percentages. Reading from left to right, percentages or averages are given on a nationwide
basis for the six groups; then comparisons between Negro and white access to the various facilities are made on
the basis of regional and metropolitan-nonmetropolitan breakdowns.
[F]or the Nation as a whole white children attend elementary schools with a smaller average number of
pupils per room (29) than do any of the minorities (which range from 30 to 33). . . .
Table 13.1 shows that secondary school whites have a smaller average number of pupils per room than
minorities, except Indians. Looking at the regional breakdown, however, one finds much more striking
differences than the national average would suggest: In the metropolitan Midwest, for example, the average
Negro has 54 pupils per room—probably reflecting considerable frequency of double sessions—compared with
33 per room for whites. Nationally, at the high school level the average white has 1 teacher for every 22
students and the average Negro has 1 for every 26 students.
It is thus apparent that the table must be studied carefully, with special attention paid to the regional
breakdowns, which often provide more meaningful information than do the nationwide averages. Such careful
study will reveal that there is not a wholly consistent pattern—that is, minorities are not at a disadvantage in
every item listed—but that there are nevertheless some definite and systematic directions of differences.
Nationally, Negro pupils have fewer of some of the facilities that seem most related to academic achievement:
They have less access to physics, chemistry, and language laboratories; there are fewer books per pupil in their
libraries; their textbooks are less often in sufficient supply. To the extent that physical facilities are important to
learning, such items appear to be more relevant than some others, such as cafeterias, in which minority groups
are at an advantage.
Usually greater than the majority-minority differences, however, are the regional differences. Table 13.1, for
example, shows that 95 percent of Negro and 80 percent of white high school students in the metropolitan Far
West attend schools with language laboratories, compared with 48 and 72 percent, respectively, in the
metropolitan South, in spite of the fact that a higher percentage of Southern schools are less than 20 years old.
Finally, it must always be remembered that these statistics reveal only majority-minority average differences
and regional average differences; they do not show the extreme differences that would be found by comparing
one school with another.

Programs
Table 13.2 summarizes some of the survey findings about the school curriculum, administration, and
extracurricular activities. The table is organized in the same way as Table 13.1 and should be studied in the
same way, again with particular attention to regional differences.
The pattern that emerges from study of this table is similar to that from Table 13.1. Just as minority groups
tend to have less access to physical facilities that seem to be related to academic achievement, so too they have
less access to curricular and extracurricular programs that would seem to have such a relationship.
Secondary school Negro students are less likely to attend schools that are regionally accredited; this is
particularly pronounced in the South. Negro and Puerto Rican pupils have less access to college preparatory
curriculums and to accelerated curriculums; Puerto Ricans have less access to vocational curriculums as well.
Less intelligence testing is done in the schools attended by Negroes and Puerto Ricans. Finally, white students
in general have more access to a more fully developed program of extracurricular activities, in particular those
which might be related to academic matters (debate teams, for example, and student newspapers).
Again, regional differences are striking. For example, 100 percent of Negro high school students and 97
percent of whites in the metropolitan Far West attend schools having a remedial reading teacher (this does not
mean, of course, that every student uses the services of that teacher, but simply that he has access to them)
compared with 46 percent and 65 percent, respectively, in the metropolitan South—and 4 percent and 9 percent
in the nonmetropolitan Southwest.

• • •

Student Body Characteristics

Table 13.3 present[s] data about certain characteristics of the student bodies attending various schools.
Th[is] table must be read the same as those immediately preceding. Looking at the sixth item on Table 13.3, one
should read: the average white high school student attends a school in which 82 percent of his classmates report
that there are encyclopedias in their homes. This does not mean that 82 percent of all white pupils have
encyclopedias at home, although obviously that would be approximately true. In short, [this table] attempt[s] to
describe the characteristics of the student bodies with which the “average” white or minority student goes to
school.
Clear differences are found on these items. The average Negro has fewer classmates whose mothers
graduated from high school; his classmates more frequently are members of large rather than small families;
they are less often enrolled in a college preparatory curriculum; they have taken a smaller number of courses in
English, mathematics, foreign language, and science.
On most items, the other minority groups fall between Negroes and whites, but closer to whites, in the
extent to which each characteristic is typical of their classmates.
Again, there are substantial variations in the magnitude of the differences, with the difference usually being
greater in the Southern States.

1.3 ACHIEVEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The schools bear many responsibilities. Among the most important is the teaching of certain intellectual skills
such as reading, writing, calculating, and problem solving. One way of assessing the educational opportunity
offered by the school is to measure how well they perform this task. Standard achievement tests are available to
measure these skills, and several such tests were administered in this survey to pupils at grades 1, 3, 6, 9, and
12.
These tests do not measure intelligence, nor attitudes, nor qualities of character. Furthermore, they are not,
nor are they intended to be, “culture free.” Quite the reverse: they are culture bound. What they measure are the
skills which are among the most important in our society for getting a good job and moving up to a better one,
and for full participation in an increasingly technical world. Consequently, a pupil’s test results at the end of
public school provide a good measure of the range of opportunities open to him as he finishes school—a wide
range of choice of jobs or colleges if these skills are very high; a very narrow range that includes only the most
menial jobs if these skills are very low.
Table 13.4 gives an overall illustration of the test results for the various groups by tabulating nationwide
median scores (the score which divides the group in half) for 1st-grade and 12th-grade pupils on the tests used
in those grades. For example, half of the white 12th-grade pupils had scores above 52 on the nonverbal test and
half had scores below 52. (Scores on each test at each grade level were standardized so that the average over the
national sample equaled 50 and the standard deviation equaled 10. This means that for all pupils in the Nation,
about 16 percent would score below 40 and about 16 percent above 60.)
With some exceptions—notably Oriental Americans—the average minority pupil scores distinctly lower on
these tests at every level than the average white pupil. The minority pupils’ scores are as much as one standard
deviation below the majority pupils’ scores in the 1st grade. At the 12th grade, results of tests in the same verbal
and nonverbal skills show that, in every case, the minority scores are farther below the majority than are the 1st-
graders. For some groups, the relative decline is negligible; for others, it is large.
Furthermore, a constant difference in standard deviations over the various grades represents an increasing
difference in grade level gap. For example, Negroes in the metropolitan Northeast are about 1.1 standard
deviations below whites in the same region at grades 6, 9, and 12. But at grade 6 this represents 1.6 years
behind; at grade 9, 2.4 years; and at grade 12, 3.3 years. Thus, by this measure, the deficiency in achievement is
progressively greater for the minority pupils at progressively higher grade levels.
For most minority groups, then, and most particularly the Negro, schools provide little opportunity for them
to overcome this initial deficiency; in fact they fall farther behind the white majority in the development of
several skills which are critical to making a living and participating fully in modern society. Whatever may be
the combination of nonschool factors—poverty, community attitudes, low educational level of parents—which
put minority children at a disadvantage in verbal and nonverbal skills when they enter the first grade, the fact is
the schools have not overcome it.
Some points should be borne in mind in reading the table. First, the differences shown should not obscure
the fact that some minority children perform better than many white children. A difference of one standard
deviation in median scores means that about 84 percent of the children in the lower group are below the median
of the majority students—but 50 percent of the white children are themselves below that median as well.
A second point of qualification concerns regional differences. By grade 12, both white and Negro students
in the South score below their counterparts—white and Negro—in the North. In addition, Southern Negroes
score farther below Southern whites than Northern Negroes score below Northern whites. The consequences of
this pattern can be illustrated by the fact that the 12th-grade Negro in the nonmetroplitan South is 0.8 standard
deviation below—or, in terms of years, 1.9 years behind—the Negro in the metropolitan Northeast, though at
grade 1 there is no such regional difference.
Finally, the test scores at grade 12 obviously do not take account of those pupils who have left school before
reaching the senior year. In the metropolitan North and West, 20 percent of the Negroes of ages 16 and 17 are
not enrolled in school—a higher dropout percentage than in either the metropolitan or nonmetropolitan South. If
it is the case that some or many of the Northern dropouts performed poorly when they were in school, the Negro
achievement in the North may be artificially elevated because some of those who achieved more poorly have
left school.
1.4 RELATION OF ACHIEVEMENT TO SCHOOL CHARACTERISTICS

If 100 students within a school take a certain test, there is likely to be great variation in their scores. One student
may score 97 percent, another 13; several may score 78 percent. This represents variability in achievement
within the particular school.
It is possible, however, to compute the average of the scores made by the students within that school and to
compare it with the average score, or achievement, of pupils within another school, or many other schools.
These comparisons then represent variations between schools.
When one sees that the average score on a verbal achievement test in school X is 55 and in school Y is 72,
the natural question to ask is: What accounts for the difference?
There are many factors that may be associated with the difference. This analysis concentrates on one cluster
of those factors. It attempts to describe what relationship the school’s characteristics themselves (libraries, for
example, and teachers and laboratories, and so on) seem to have to the achievement of majority and minority
groups (separately for each group on a nationwide basis, and also for Negro and white pupils in the North and
South).
The first finding is that the schools are remarkably similar in the way they relate to the achievement of their
pupils when the socioeconomic background of the students is taken into account. It is known that
socioeconomic factors bear a strong relation to academic achievement. When these factors are statistically
controlled, however, it appears that differences between schools account for only a small fraction of differences
in pupil achievement.

Table 13.1 Percent (Except Where Average Specified) of Pupils in Secondary Schools
Having the School Characteristics Named at Left, Fall 1965
NOTE: The group identifications are abbreviated as follows: MA—Mexican American; PR—Puerto Rican; IA—Indian American;
OA—Oriental American; Neg.—Negro; and Maj.—Majority or white.

Table 13.2 Percent of Pupils in Secondary Schools Having the Characteristic Named at
Left, Fall 1965
NOTE: The group identifications are abbreviated as follows; MA—Mexican American; PR—Puerto Rican; IA—Indian American;
OA—Oriental American; Neg.—Negro; and Maj.—Majority or white.

Table 13.3 For the Average Minority and White Pupil, the Percent of Fellow Pupils with
the Specified Characteristics, Fall 1965
NOTE: The group identifications are abbreviated as follows: MA—Mexican American; PR—Puerto Rican; IA—Indian American;
OA—Oriental American; Neg.—Negro; and Maj.—Majority or white.

Table 13.4 Nationwide Median Test Scores for 1st- and 12th-Grade Pupils, Fall 1965
 The schools do differ, however, in their relation to the various racial and ethnic groups. The average white
student’s achievement seems to be less affected by the strength or weakness of his school’s facilities,
curriculums, and teachers than is the average minority pupil’s. To put it another way, the achievement of
minority pupils depends more on the schools they attend than does the achievement of majority pupils. Thus, 20
percent of the achievement of Negroes in the South is associated with the particular schools they go to, whereas
only 10 percent of the achievement of whites in the South is. Except for Oriental Americans, this general result
is found for all minorities.
The inference might then be made that improving the school of a minority pupil may increase his
achievement more than would improving the school of a white child increase his. Similarly, the average
minority pupil’s achievement may suffer more in a school of low quality than might the average white pupil’s.
In short, whites, and to a lesser extent Oriental Americans, are less affected one way or the other by the quality
of their schools than are minority pupils. This indicates that it is for the most disadvantaged children that
improvements in school quality will make the most difference in achievement.
All of these results suggest the next question: What are the school characteristics that are most related to
achievement? In other words, what factors in the school seem to be most important in affecting achievement?
It appears that variations in the facilities and curriculums of the schools account for relatively little variation
in pupil achievement insofar as this is measured by standard tests. Again, it is for majority whites that the
variations make the least difference; for minorities, they make somewhat more difference. Among the facilities
that show some relationship to achievement are several for which minority pupils’ schools are less well
equipped relative to whites. For example, the existence of science laboratories showed a small but consistent
relationship to achievement, and Table 13.1 shows that minorities, especially Negroes, are in schools with fewer
of these laboratories.
The quality of teachers shows a stronger relationship to pupil achievement. Furthermore, it is progressively
greater at higher grades, indicating a cumulative impact of the qualities of teachers in a school on the pupil’s
achievement. Again, teacher quality seems more important to minority achievement than to that of the majority.
It should be noted that many characteristics of teachers were not measured in this survey; therefore, the
results are not at all conclusive regarding the specific characteristics of teachers that are most important. Among
those measured in the survey, however, those that bear the highest relationship to pupil achievement are first,
the teacher’s score on the verbal skills test, and then his educational background—both his own level of
education and that of his parents. On both of these measures, the level of teachers of minority students,
especially Negroes, is lower.
Finally, it appears that a pupil’s achievement is strongly related to the educational backgrounds and
aspirations of the other students in the school. Only crude measures of these variables were used (principally the
proportion of pupils with encyclopedias in the home and the proportion planning to go to college). Analysis
indicates, however, that children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social
composition, will achieve at quite different levels. This effect is again less for white pupils than for any minority
group other than Orientals. Thus, if a white pupil from a home that is strongly and effectively supportive of
education is put in a school where most pupils do not come from such homes, his achievement will be little
different than if he were in a school composed of others like himself. But if a minority pupil from a home
without much educational strength is put with schoolmates with strong educational backgrounds, his
achievement is likely to increase.
This general result, taken together with the earlier examinations of school differences, has important
implications for equality of educational opportunity. For the earlier tables show that the principal way in which
the school environments of Negroes and whites differ is in the composition of their student bodies, and it turns
out that the composition of the student bodies has a strong relationship to the achievement of Negro and other
minority pupils.
This analysis has concentrated on the educational opportunities offered by the schools in terms of their
student body composition, facilities, curriculums, and teachers. This emphasis, while entirely appropriate as a
response to the legislation calling for the survey, nevertheless neglects important factors in the variability
between individual pupils within the same school; this variability is roughly four times as large as the variability
between schools. For example, a pupil attitude factor, which appears to have a stronger relationship to
achievement than do all the “school” factors together, is the extent to which an individual feels that he has some
control over his own destiny. . . . The responses of pupils to questions in the survey show that minority pupils,
except for Orientals, have far less conviction than whites that they can affect their own environments and
futures. When they do, however, their achievement is higher than that of whites who lack that conviction.
Furthermore, while this characteristic shows little relationship to most school factors, it is related, for
Negroes, to the proportion of whites in the schools. Those Negroes in schools with a higher proportion of whites
have a greater sense of control. This finding suggests that the direction such an attitude takes may be associated
with the pupil’s school experience as well as his experience in the larger community.

1.5 OTHER SURVEYS AND STUDIES

• • •

School Enrollment and Dropouts

Another extensive study explored enrollment rates of children of various ages, races, and socioeconomic
categories using 1960 census data. The study included also an investigation of school dropouts using the
October 1965 Current Population Survey of the Bureau of the Census. This survey uses a carefully selected
sample of 35,000 households. It was a large enough sample to justify reliable nationwide estimates for the
Negro minority but not for other minorities. In this section the word “white” includes the Mexican American
and Puerto Rican minorities.
According to the estimates of the Current Population Survey, approximately 6,960,000 persons of ages 16
and 17 were living in the United States in October 1965. Of this number 300,000 (5 percent) were enrolled in
college, and therefore, were not considered by the Census Bureau study. Of the remaining, approximately 10
percent, or 681,000 youth of 16 and 17, had left school prior to completion of high school.
The bottom line of Table 13.5 shows that about 17 percent of Negro adolescents (ages 16 and 17) have
dropped out of school whereas the corresponding number for white adolescents is 9 percent. . . .
Table 13.6 is directed to the question of whether the dropout rate is different for different socioeconomic
levels. The data suggest that it is, for whereas the nonenrollment rate was 3 percent for those 16- and 17-year-
olds from white-collar families, it was more than four times as large (13 percent) in the case of those from other
than white-collar families (where the head of household was in a blue-collar or farm occupation, unemployed,
or not in the labor force at all).
Furthermore, this difference in nonenrollment by parental occupation existed for both male and female,
Negro and white adolescents.
The racial differences in the dropout rate are thus sharply reduced when socioeconomic factors are taken
into account. Then the difference of 8 percentage points between all Negro and white adolescent dropouts
becomes 1 percent for those in white-collar families, and 4 percent for those in other than white-collar families.

• • •

Table 13.5 Enrollment Status of Persons 16 and 17 Years Old Not in College by Sex and
Race, for the United States: October 1965 (Numbers in thousands; figures are
rounded to the nearest thousand without being adjusted to group totals, which
are independently rounded)

NOTE: a. Percent “not enrolled, non-high-school graduates” are of “total not in college, 16–17 years.”

Table 13.6 Enrollment Status of Persons 16 and 17 Years Old by Sex, Race, and
Occupation of Household Head, for the United States: October 1965
(Numbers in thousands; percent not shown where base is less than 40,000)
NOTE: a. Percent “not enrolled, non-high-school graduates” are of “total not in college, 16–17 years.”

Relations of Integration to Achievement

An education in integrated schools can be expected to have major effects on attitudes toward members of
other racial groups. At its best, it can develop attitudes appropriate to the integrated society these students will
live in; at its worst, it can create hostile camps of Negroes and whites in the same school. Thus, there is more to
“school integration” than merely putting Negroes and whites in the same building, and there may be more
important consequences of integration than its effect on achievement.

Table 13.7 Average Test Scores of Negro Pupils, Fall 1965

 Yet the analysis of school factors described earlier suggests that in the long run, integration should be
expected to have a positive effect on Negro achievement as well. An analysis was carried out to seek such
effects on achievement which might appear in the short run. This analysis of the test performance of Negro
children in integrated schools indicates positive effects of integration, though rather small ones. Results for
grades 6, 9, and 12 are given in Table 13.7 for Negro pupils classified by the proportion of their classmates the
previous year who were white. Comparing the averages in each row, in every case but one the highest average
score is recorded for the Negro pupils where more than half of their classmates were white. But in reading the
rows from left to right, the increase is small and often those Negro pupils in classes with only a few white pupils
score lower than those in totally segregated classes.
Table 13.8 was constructed to observe whether there is any tendency for Negro pupils who have spent more
years in integrated schools to exhibit higher average achievement. Those pupils who first entered integrated
schools in the early grades record consistently higher scores than the other groups, although the differences are
again small.
No account is taken in these tabulations of the fact that the various groups of pupils may have come from
different backgrounds.
When such account is taken by simple cross-tabulations on indicators of socioeconomic status, the
performance remains highest in those schools which have been integrated for the longest time. Thus, although
the differences are small, and although the degree of integration within the schools is not known, there is
evident, even in the short run, an effect of school integration on the reading and mathematics achievement of
Negro pupils.

Table 13.8 Average Test Scores of Negro Pupils, Fall 1965

 SOURCE: From Equality of Educational Opportunity by James Coleman, Ernest Campbell, Carol Hobson,
James McPartland, Alexander Mood, Frederic Weinfeld, and Robert York, (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1966).
14
THE EFFECTS OF HIGH SCHOOLS ON THEIR STUDENTS
CHRISTOPHER S. JENCKS AND MARSHA D. BROWN

V irtually all educators and laymen believe that a school affects its students’ intellectual and social
development, and that “good” schools have more favorable effects than “poor” schools. But neither
educators nor laymen agree on what constitutes a good school. There is consensus that more resources
are better than fewer, but not that any particular resource affects any particular outcome. There is also some
consensus that advantaged classmates are preferable to disadvantaged classmates, but it is not clear what
specific effects classmates have.
Since 1965 hundreds of social scientists, including ourselves, have investigated these issues. Almost all of
us have used the same basic method. We have measured schools’ effects by surveying students who attended
schools with different characteristics. Usually we have concentrated on students’ test scores, but sometimes we
have looked at students’ attitudes, their plans for further education, their actual educational attainment, their
occupational plans, their actual occupational attainment, or their earnings. Using regression analysis, we have
then tried to determine whether there was any systematic relationship between the characteristics of the schools
and the characteristics of their alumni.
Suppose, for example, that we wanted to know whether an increase in per-pupil expenditure raises students’
test scores. Using Y to denote a student’s test score, X1 to denote his school’s per-pupil expenditure, B0 to
denote the score of a hypothetical student whose school spends nothing whatever, B1 to denote the average
effect of a one-dollar increase in expenditure, and e to denote the influence of all unmeasured factors, we can
write a simple equation:
Y = B0 + B1X1 + e

If we have survey data on students whose schools spent different amounts (have different values of X1), and
if we know each student’s test score (Y), we can estimate the value of B1 (the effect of a one-dollar increase in
expenditure). If B1 is positive, we can say that test scores rise with expenditure. If we also compute the sampling
error of B1, we can calculate the likelihood of getting the observed result by chance.
Unfortunately, if the other factors that affect test scores are correlated with school expenditure, i.e., if X1 and
e are correlated, B1 will provide a biased estimate of the effect of school expenditure on test scores. In order to
avoid this problem, we must measure every other factor that is likely both to affect test scores and to be
correlated with expenditure. If we have done this, we can write a more general equation:
Y = B0 + B1X1 + B2X2 + B3X3+ . . . + BnXn + e

where X1 is per-pupil expenditure (or any other school characteristic) and X2, X3,…, Xn are all the other
factors that correlate with X1 and influence Y. If we have included all such factors, the unmeasured factors that
contribute to e will be uncorrelated with X1. The value computed for B1 will then provide an unbiased estimate
of the effect of expenditure on test performance. (This simplified presentation ignores a variety of problems
which we will consider later, such as nonlinearity, interactions, and reciprocal causation.)
Probably a hundred studies in the past decade have used this general method to analyze schools’ effects.1
Reviewing these studies produces two contradictory impressions. On the one hand, almost every study has
identified one or more school characteristics that appeared to have a nonrandom effect on test scores or plans.
On the other hand, the school characteristics that have appeared significant in one study have not been
particularly likely to appear significant in other studies. Findings of this type suggest that the studies in question
must use methods that differ in critical respects, and in fact they do.

1. Different studies use different outcome measures. Some concentrate on the number of high-school students
who hope or plan to attend college. Others concentrate on one or two arbitrarily selected cognitive tests.
Only a handful of studies have investigated several outcomes simultaneously.2
2. Different studies use different measures of students’ characteristics when they enter a given school. Many
studies control only parental status. Some studies also control test scores and curriculum assignment.
Virtually no study has controlled initial motivation or aspirations.
3. Different studies cover different cities and states. Although school characteristics are not likely to have
genuinely different effects in different cities or states, there are many situations in which their effects
would appear to differ.
4. Different studies have used different statistical methods to assess the impact of school characteristics and
to control for the effects of initial differences among students entering different schools. Some
investigators have looked only at the effects of those school characteristics they were actually able to
measure, ignoring the possible effects of unmeasured school characteristics. Other investigators have
concentrated on the contribution of school characteristics to variance in one or another outcome, without
trying to determine how large an effect a change in a given school characteristic might have on the average
outcome.

The research reported in this paper tries to deal with each of these problems.

1. Our data include ten different measures of the outcomes of schooling: six cognitive tests, two measures of
educational status after leaving high school, a measure of occupational status five years after leaving high
school, and a measure of occupational plans five years after high school.
2. Our data on the initial characteristics of students entering different high schools include not only measures
of parental status and ninth-grade scores on our six cognitive tests, but school grades, curriculum
assignment, and educational plans—how much education each student expected to get.
3. Our sample of schools is national and reasonably representative. The sample of students located after they
left school is not representative, but this does not appear to bias our results.
4. We use a series of related statistical methods to analyze our data. First, we investigate how much of the
variance in individual outcomes could possibly be explained by disparities in high-school quality, both
measured and unmeasured. Second, we investigate the extent to which high schools that appear to confer
an advantage in one area also confer advantages in other areas. Finally, having examined the size and
consistency of high schools’ overall effects, we examine the effects of specific school characteristics that
might be expected to influence each outcome.

We present our analysis in eight sections. Section 1 describes our data, which come from Project Talent.
Section 2 examines the effects of students’ ninth-grade characteristics on their test scores in twelfth grade, and
estimates the contribution of high-school quality to variation in such scores. Section 3 investigates the effects of
ninth-grade characteristics on educational status one year after high school, and estimates the contribution of
high-school quality to the variance in educational status at this point. Section 4 uses educational attainment five
years after high school to check the validity of inferences based on educational status one year after high school.
Section 5 examines the possible effects of high-school quality on students’ occupational status and career plans
five years out of high school. Section 6 examines the extent to which schools that raise scores on one test raise
scores on other tests as well, and the extent to which schools that raise test scores also raise educational and
occupational status. Section 7 examines some specific school characteristics that might be expected to affect our
ten outcomes. Finally, Section 8 discusses the policy implications of our data.
DATA

Project Talent is a longitudinal study of individuals who were enrolled in grades nine through twelve in March,
1960. The sample design was meant to include roughly 5 percent of all Americans who met these criteria. To
achieve this, Talent selected a stratified probability sample of 1,063 public and private senior high schools.
When a high school enrolled no ninth graders, Talent also sampled the junior high schools from which the
senior high school drew its ninth graders. Ninety-three percent of the sample schools agreed to participate.3 In
theory, all students in each participating school took two days of cognitive tests and answered an extensive
questionnaire about their families, plans, and attitudes. Talent also sent followup questionnaires to all the
members of its 1960 sample both 15 and 63 months after their class finished high school.
This paper deals only with a subsample of 98 comprehensive public high schools covered by the initial
Talent survey. We selected these 98 schools because Talent retested all twelfth graders in these schools in the
spring of 1963, using the same tests it had given to ninth graders in 1960.4 This yielded a large sample of
individuals who had been enrolled in the same school for three years and who had been both pretested and
posttested. Talent followed up these students again in the fall of 1964 and in the fall of 1968.
Our analyses will concentrate on 17 variables.

METHODS

We define high-school quality as any set of school characteristics that affects the average student’s rate of
growth between ninth and twelfth grades. This definition means that we cannot say in advance whether
“quality” is a function of the resources that school administrators worry about: adequate salaries, small classes,
experienced teachers, well-equipped science laboratories, and the like. We cannot even be sure that high-school
quality is related to any set of measurable school characteristics. We can, however, try to predict what would
happen to each student in our sample if he or she attended the “typical” school in the sample. We can then
compare each student’s predicted score to his or her actual score. Any discrepancy must be due either to
measurement errors or to experiences between ninth and twelfth grades. We can then ask whether the apparent
effects of experiences between ninth and twelfth grades vary systematically from school to school. If they do,
we can impute the systematic portion of this variation to disparities in school quality.
Although we use this general strategy throughout the article, we implement it in different ways in different
sections. In this and the next section we will use a technique that is computationally similar to the analysis of
covariance.5 In Sections 4 and 5 we will use a slightly different method, in which we enter a dummy variable
for every school in our regression equations.6 The covariance analyses in this section proceed as follows:

1. We calculate each student’s deviation from his or her school’s mean on each of the variables listed above.
2. We regress students’ twelfth-grade deviation scores for each test on all their deviation scores for various
ninth-grade characteristics. This is equivalent to running regression equations within each school and
averaging the results, though the implicit averaging procedure is rather complex. The coefficients of
individual ninth-grade traits in this average “within-school” regression equation cannot be biased by
correlations between ninth-grade traits and high-school quality, since the coefficients in effect derive from
comparing students enrolled in the same school.
3. We use the within-school coefficients from step 2 to predict each school’s twelfth-grade mean on each test.
This tells us how well the students in any given school could be expected to do if they attended the average
school.
4. We subtract each school’s predicted mean from its actual mean to obtain the school’s “mean residual.”
This mean residual provides a crude measure of the average advantage or disadvantage associated with
having attended any particular school. We then calculate the variance of the mean residuals for all schools.
 This provides a crude measure of the range of schools’ effects relative to the typical school, whose “effect”
is defined as zero.
5. We calculate the expected contribution of experiences between ninth and twelfth grades and of random
errors in measuring both ninth- and twelfth-grade scores to the mean residual, if these factors did not differ
systematically from school to school.
6. We subtract this expected “random” variance from the total variance of the mean residuals to estimate their
“true” variance.

The true variance of the mean residuals estimates the cumulative impact of three factors: (a) systematic but
unmeasured differences between the students entering different high schools, (b) differences between the
communities in which students live, and (c) differences in high-school quality. If factors (a) and (b) are
negligible, the true variance of the mean residuals provides an unbiased estimate of the contribution of high-
school quality to variation in individuals’ twelfth-grade scores. If factors (a) and (b) are not negligible, the
estimated true variance of the mean residuals probably overestimates the effects of high-school quality.

EFFECTS OF NINTH-GRADE TRAITS ON TWELFTH-GRADE TEST SCORES

Table 14.1 presents some descriptive information about the six basic tests and about the Total Information
composite. The twelfth-grade means are consistently higher than the ninth-grade means. Surprisingly, only one
of the standard deviations increases between ninth and twelfth grades. Four out of six decline. This is not
because of attrition between ninth and twelfth grades; the ninth-grade data cover the same individuals as the
twelfth-grade data. The reduction occurs because gains between ninth and twelfth grades all have large negative
correlations with initial ninth-grade scores. Correcting for measurement error reduces but does not eliminate
these correlations, which range from –0.32 to –0.54. This suggests that there may have been ceiling effects on
these six tests. Yet very few twelfth graders got every item or every item but one correct. The average reliability
was, moreover, as high for twelfth-grade as for ninth-grade scores. Any ceiling effects must, then, have been of
a somewhat unusual kind. Whereas “easy” items on these tests must have been such that almost everyone who
did not know them in ninth grade learned them by twelfth grade, the “hard” items must have been such that
even clever students were not likely to master them between ninth and twelfth grades.
For the five basic tests on which we have the required data, the gains range from 0.545 to 0.778 standard
deviation (line 10 of Table 14.1). A moment’s reflection will suggest that if the average gain between ninth and
twelfth grades is only two-thirds of a standard deviation, school-to-school variations around this average would
have to be quite dramatic for school quality to explain much of the variance in twelfth-grade performance.
Consider, for example, a student who scored two standard deviations above the mean when he entered high
school. This would put him in the 97th percentile. If he were in an unusually bad school and learned nothing
whatever for three years, his twelfth-grade score would still be about 1.33 standard deviations above the mean,
or in the 90th percentile. Now compare this student to another who entered high school scoring at the 15th
percentile. Even if he gained twice as much as the average high-school student over the next three years, he
would still only score at the 36th percentile in twelfth grade. Such gains and losses would obviously not be
trivial for the individuals involved. Yet even with such dramatic differences in gain scores, twelfth-grade
performance would depend largely on what each student knew when he entered high school, not on how much
he gained during high school.
A school’s average gain is also inversely related to its average initial score. (Arithmetic Reasoning is an
exception to this rule.) This does not seem to be due to ceiling effects, since no school has a mean ninth-grade
score close to the ceiling for any test. The most obvious explanation is that the easier items on the Talent tests
cover material taught in all schools, while the harder items are not taught anywhere. If this were the case,
schools with low initial means would rise substantially, since they would teach items many of their ninth
graders had missed; schools with high initial means would rise less, since they would teach items many of their
ninth graders already knew.
 Line 15 of Table 14.1 indicates that between 7.8 and 13.0 percent of the observed variance in twelfth-grade
test scores falls between schools. This somewhat understates the true variability of twelfth-grade means,
however, since most of the error variance is within schools. Line 17 shows that after correction for measurement
error, between 8.5 and 14.5 percent of the true variance in twelfth-grade scores is between schools.7 Our task is
to say how much of this between-schools variance in twelfth-grade scores is attributable to school quality.

WITHIN-SCHOOL EFFECTS OF NINTH-GRADE TRAITS ON TWELFTH-GRADE TEST SCORES

If we define school quality as the set of factors that produces differences between initially similar students in
different schools, one obvious way to hold quality constant is to examine the determinants of twelfth-grade test
scores within a single school. In order to get reliable estimates, we examined variations within all 91 high
schools simultaneously. We did this by calculating the school mean for each ninth-grade trait and each twelfth-
grade trait. Then we subtracted the school mean from each individual’s score on each variable. The difference
represented the student’s deviation from his or her school mean. Then we regressed students’ twelfth-grade test
score deviations on their ninth-grade deviations. The resulting coefficients are the weighted means of the
within-school regression coefficients for all 91 schools.8 Table 14.2 shows the standardized coefficients from
these regression equations.
The best single predictor of a student’s score on a twelfth-grade test is his or her score on the analogous
ninth-grade test, but several other ninth-grade tests also enter each equation. The other ninth-grade tests enter
these equations partly because no one ninth-grade test is perfectly reliable. But they continue to enter even when
the observed correlations are inflated to correct for unreliability. This means that a student’s cognitive skill in
any given area in twelfth grade depends not only on ninth-grade skill in the same area, but also on some kind of
generalized learning capacity that can only be measured using a broad array of tests. This finding is neither
novel nor surprising, but neither is it trivial. It means that educational evaluations made on the basis of a single
pretest, however reliable that pretest might be, are likely to underestimate the extent to which variations in the
posttest depend on initial ability. Such evaluations are therefore likely to overestimate the effects of other traits
or experiences, such as SES or school quality.
The only other ninth-grade trait that seems to have appreciable effects on our six tests during the high-
school years is Sex. Since Sex is dichotomous with a mean of about 0.50, its standard deviation is also 0.50, and
males differ from females by two standard deviations. Table 14.2 therefore implies that on the Reading
Comprehension test twelfth-grade girls score about a sixth of a standard deviation above twelfth-grade boys
who had comparable scores in the ninth grade. For Social Studies Information and Arithmetic Reasoning, the
pattern is reversed, with twelfth-grade boys ending up a sixth of a standard deviation ahead of initially similar
girls. The average effect of Sex is close to zero (see row 8), but the variations around this average are clearly
significant.
The standardized coefficients of SES and Siblings average less than 0.01 for our six basic tests. This implies
that home environment exerts no direct influence on cognitive development after ninth grade, though it
obviously exerts an indirect influence by dint of having influenced ninth-grade test scores.
The coefficient of curriculum is consistently positive, occasionally significant, but never large. Its average
value is 0.027. This has important methodological implications. In order to get unbiased estimates of the
coefficients of ninth-grade traits, we must hold constant the quality of the educational environment between the
ninth and twelfth grades. We have eliminated the effects of environmental differences between schools by
subtracting out school means. But students may encounter different educational environments even if they are in
the same school. Indeed, tracking is a deliberate effort to provide some students with a more intellectually
demanding environment than others. If these environments have important effects, and if these effects are not
measured, the coefficients of ninth-grade test scores will be biased. The fact that curriculum assignment has
very little impact on test scores suggests that this problem is less serious than we initially assumed. We
therefore believe that the observed within-school coefficients of the ninth-grade tests provide relatively
unbiased estimates of the coefficients when students encounter identical educational environments.
EFFECT OF HIGH-SCHOOL QUALITY

If we use the unstandardized coefficients corresponding to the equations in Table 14.2, we can predict how each
student would perform on each twelfth-grade test if he or she attended the average high school. If we make such
predictions for each student and then average them for an entire school, we can predict how well the students in
that school would do if their school had the same impact as the average school. If the school’s observed mean
on a given twelfth-grade test exceeds its predicted mean, we can infer that the school did a better than average
job. If the school’s observed mean is lower than its predicted mean, we can infer that the school did a worse
than average job. The difference between the observed and predicted means, which we label the “mean
residual,” thus estimates the average effect on the student body of having attended that particular high school
rather than the average high school. Note that the mean residuals do not estimate the effect of having attended a
particular high school as against having dropped out. Rather, they measure the effect of having attended one
school rather than another. Their overall mean is therefore zero. The statistic of interest is the standard
deviation, which measures the dispersion of scores due to attending one high school rather than another.

Table 14.1 Statistics on Six Basic Talent Tests and on Total Information for all Students
with Complete Ninth-Grade and Twelfth-Grade Data in 91 Predominantly
White High Schools
a. Calculated by Shaycoft (see text footnote 13) separately for males and females in 101 retest schools using split-half formula. Value
shown here is mean of male and female values.
b. Calculated by adding the error variances for Vocabulary and Social Studies Information implied by Shaycoft’s reliability estimate,
dividing by the total observed variance of the composite, and subtracting from 1.
c. Not calculated by Shaycoft. Reliability was probably low. This was a speeded test.

d. Estimated as , where is the variance of school means in ninth grade, is the error variance of the means,
is the variance individual of scores, and is the error variance of individual scores. We assume , where r9,9 is the

ninth-grade reliability. We also assume that , where N is the mean number of pupils per school.

Table 14.2 Standardized Within-School Regressions of Twelfth-Grade Test Scores on

Ninth-Grade Characteristics for Students with Complete Data in 91
Predominantly White High Schools

NOTE: Coefficients in brackets are not significantly different from zero at the 0.05 level.
 Line 1 of Table 14.3 shows the observed standard deviation of the mean residual for each test. These
standard deviations measure not only the effects of disparities in high-school quality but also the effects of
random error. The within-school equations in Table 14.2 leave between 30 and 80 percent of the within-school
variance in twelfth-grade scores unexplained. An appreciable fraction of this unexplained variance is
attributable to imprecise measurement of students’ ninth-grade traits.9 Another fraction is due to misspecifying
the effects of these traits on twelfth-grade scores, i.e., assuming that these effects are linear and additive. Still
another fraction is due to not measuring all the experiences that influence test scores between ninth and twelfth
grades. The rest is due to random error in measuring twelfth-grade scores. All these errors in predicting
individual scores inevitably imply errors in predicting school means as well. The question is how large such
errors are likely to be.
Let us assume that none of these sources of error for individuals differs systematically from school to
school. If that were true, and if schools were infinitely large, the errors would average out to zero for each
school. But in schools of finite size, errors do not always average out to zero in any given year. We can estimate
the magnitude of these random annual fluctuations fairly accurately once we know how big the average school
is. Line 2 of Table 14.3 estimates the standard deviation of the mean residuals after the variance due to random
fluctuations is eliminated. One can think of these “true” standard deviations as the standard deviations that
would be obtained if a high school’s quality remained the same and its mean residuals were averaged over an
infinitely long period of time.10
Unfortunately, the factors that lead to errors in predicting an individual’s twelfth-grade score probably vary
systematically from school to school. There may well have been systematic differences between schools with
respect to both ninth- and twelfth-grade testing conditions, for example. This appears particularly likely for the
Arithmetic Computation test, which was supposed to be speeded. Misspecification of the equations in Table
14.2 would usually have the same effect. Systematic errors of this type are likely to inflate the standard
deviations in line 2, leading to overestimation of the effects of high-school quality. This is not necessarily true,
however. If the unmeasured factors that contributed to rapid cognitive growth between grades nine and twelve
had a very strong negative correlation with high-school quality, they could work to reduce the variance of the
mean residual instead of inflating it. Then we would underestimate the effects of school quality.
In order to get some idea of the likely sign of this correlation, we calculated the correlation between schools’
mean residuals and the measured ninth-grade characteristics of individuals that influenced their twelfth-grade
scores. These correlations were positive for the four skills tests. They were negative for the two information
tests. They were statistically insignificant for all six tests. We therefore concluded that the observed correlations
were probably due to sampling error, and that the true correlations for a larger sample of schools would be close
to zero. By analogy, we inferred that the correlations between school quality and unmeasured ninth-grade traits
were also close to zero. If this line of reasoning is correct, the standard deviations in line 2 must overestimate
the effects of school quality.11 We doubt that the bias is large, however, and we will ignore it in subsequent
computations.
Line 3 of Table 14.3 estimates the probable contribution of disparities in high-school quality to the total
variance of twelfth-grade test scores. Variations in high-school quality explain between 0.9 and 3.4 percent of
the twelfth-grade variance. Line 4 gives the estimated gain between ninth and twelfth grade on each test in the
average school. Line 5 estimates the true gain in the 18 most effective schools (i.e., the top fifth of the sample),
while line 6 estimates the true gain in the 18 least effective schools.

Table 14.3 Mean Residuals and Mean Gains for Twelfth-Grade Test Scores in 91 Talent
High Schools
a. Calculated as where is the variance of the observed mean residual, from line 1; is the variance of the
observed scores, from line 7 of Table 14.1; is the percent of variance in the observed scores explained by ninth-grade traits, from
column 13 of Table 14.2; and N is the average number of pupils per school, from rows 20 and 21 of Table 14.1.
b. Calculated as where is the variance of the true mean residuals from line 2, is the variance of observed scores, and
roo is the reliability of observed scores from line 9 of Table 14.1.
c. Same as line 5 in Table 14.1.
d. Lines 5 and 6 assume that the distribution of true mean residuals is normal, and hence that schools above the 80th percentile or
below the 20th percentile average 1.4 standard deviations from the mean. The assumption of normality is based on the approximate
normality of the observed mean residuals, along with the fact that the errors in these observed means are presumed to be random.
e. Line 5 divided by line 6.

Line 7 shows the ratio of estimated gains in the 18 most effective schools to gains in the 18 least effective
schools. Ignoring the deviant case of Arithmetic Computation, where we suspect systematic errors in test
administration, it seems clear that students gain about twice as much in the “best” schools as in the “worst.” The
reason high-school quality explains so little of the variance in the twelfth-grade scores is not, as Jencks et al.12
and others have asserted, that all high schools have about the same effect on cognitive development. Rather, the
reason is that high schools have relatively small effects on cognitive development, at least compared to the
enormous variation among entering students. Thus, if students start high school at the 50th percentile on
Arithmetic Reasoning, and attend one of the 18 worst high schools, they can expect to gain 1.85-1.18 = 0.67
points less than if they had attended the average school. From Table 14.1, we can calculate the true twelfth-
grade standard deviation for individuals to be So these students will score 0.67/3.10 =
0.216 standard deviations below the mean in twelfth grade. This will put them at the 41st percentile. If they
attend one of the 18 best high schools, they will gain more than twice as much as they would in one of the 18
worst, and will end up at the 58th percentile. These calculations suggest that even substantial variations in high-
school quality produce only modest changes in a student’s percentile rank between ninth and twelfth grades.
All the foregoing calculations involve averaging schools’ effects on all sorts of students. Certain groups of
students may, however, be particularly susceptible to variations in high-school quality. To test this possibility
we split the sample into those who were above and below the mean on each of six traits: ninth-grade Total
Information, ninth-grade Grades, ninth-grade Curriculum, ninth-grade Plans, SES, and Sex. We then calculated
the mean residual for each of these twelve groups in each school. The standard deviations of the mean residuals
for those who were above the mean on SES, Plans, Curriculum, and Sex did not differ consistently from the
standard deviations for those who were below the mean. This suggests that none of these groups is unusually
sensitive to variations in high-school quality. But the standard deviations for students with low ninth-grade
Information scores or low Grades consistently exceeded those for students with high ninth-grade Information
scores and Grades. This could mean that students with low ninth-grade scores are unusually sensitive to
disparities in high-school quality. The evidence is hardly conclusive, however, since low-scoring ninth graders
may have more variable twelfth-grade scores than high-scoring ninth graders even when both groups attend the
same school. Since the standard deviation of the mean residuals for low-scoring ninth graders was only 1.33
times that for high-scoring ninth graders, we did not pursue the question.
High schools’ effects might be larger if we looked at tests covering material that is part of the formal
curriculum. Shaycoft’s analysis of the Talent retest data shows, for example, that virtually no ninth grader knew
any advanced high-school math, that some twelfth graders knew some advanced math, and that twelfth-grade
Advanced Math scores, unlike scores on other tests, were related to having taken specific math courses.13
Our conclusions might also have been quite different if we had had comparable data for elementary schools.
Students learn so much between first and fourth grades that educators almost never use the same tests to assess
them at both times. This makes it hard to say exactly how much they gain. But using the logic of the Stanford-
Binet, a first grader with the “mental age” of the average fourth grader has an IQ of about (9/6) (100) = 150 and
ranks about three standard deviations above the mean for all first graders. This implies that the average student
gains about three standard deviations between first and fourth grades, compared to 0.65 standard deviations
between ninth and twelfth grades. It follows that if the relative size of students’ gains varied as much from one
elementary school to another as from one high school to another, elementary-school quality would explain far
more of the total variance in fourth-grade scores than high-school quality explains in twelfth-grade scores.

DETERMINANTS OF EDUCATIONAL STATUS ONE YEAR AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

In the fall of 1964 Talent sent a followup questionnaire to all students who had been tested as ninth graders in
1960. Respondents who had stayed in school and progressed at the normal rate were thus entering their
sophomore year in college. The response rate for students from our 91 predominantly white high schools was 56
percent. We eliminated 30 percent of these respondents because they had failed to answer one or more ninth-
grade items—usually the item about their educational plans. Our one-year followup sample thus consisted of
4,315 students with complete ninth-grade data and one-year followup data, or 39 percent of the initial sample.
We estimate that 85 to 95 percent of these students spent their entire high-school careers in one of our 91
schools, while 5 to 15 percent transferred to another high school at some point after the ninth-grade survey.
Unfortunately, we could not identify these transfer students. The means for our one-year followup sample
exceed the means for the initial ninth-grade sample, but the standard deviations and correlations are quite close
to those for the ninth-grade sample. Regression results should therefore be relatively unbiased.

WITHIN-SCHOOL EFFECTS OF NINTH-GRADE TRAITS ON EDUCATION (14)

We used the same procedure to estimate high schools’ effects on educational status one year after graduation
that we used to estimate their effects on twelfth-grade test scores. First, we subtracted the school mean from
each student’s score on each variable. Then we regressed each student’s Education(14) deviation score on his or
her deviation scores for Total Information, Reading Comprehension, Arithmetic Reasoning, SES, Siblings, Sex,
Plans, Grades, and Curriculum. This yielded the average within-school relationships shown in Table 14.4. Line
1 of Table 14.4 shows the average within-school correlation of Education(14) with each ninth-grade trait. Line 2
shows the standardized coefficients when all ninth-grade variables are used simultaneously to predict
Education(14). The best single predictor of educational status one year after high school is educational Plans at
the start of high school. But Education(14) is also influenced by other ninth-grade traits, notably test scores and
SES. This means that students’ chances of realizing their ninth-grade plans are significantly affected by their
SES and by their test scores in ninth grade. Of the three tests shown in Table 14.4, Total Information is the best
predictor of educational status one year after high school, Reading Comprehension is the second best, and
Arithmetic Reasoning is third. (Abstract Reasoning and Arithmetic Computation had small and statistically
insignificant effects on Education(14) once the other tests were controlled, so we deleted them from the
equation.)
The modest coefficient for Grades should not be taken as definitive. Grades were reported for the first
semester of ninth grade. These reports correlated only 0.492 with twelfth-grade reports of average grades over
the three previous years. The latter predict Education(14) far better than the former.
The small coefficient of ninth-grade curriculum should also be interpreted cautiously. Students report
considerable movement both into and out of the academic curriculum between ninth and twelfth grades.
Twelfth-grade curriculum assignment is much more strongly related to subsequent educational attainment than
ninth-grade assignment.
The regression equation in Table 14.4 leaves 58.6 percent of the within-school variance in Education(14)
unexplained. We explored three possible reasons for this unexplained variance. First, we adjusted the observed
correlations to eliminate the effects of measurement error in the four ninth-grade test scores, SES, and Siblings.
These adjustments explained only another 1.4 percent of the within-school variance. Second, we looked for
interactions among the measured variables by including 28 dummy variables representing all the two-way
interactions among 8 independent variables. These interactions raised R2 by 0.004 after correction for degrees of
freedom. Neither of these increases seemed large enough to be of substantive interest. We therefore decided not
to complicate our subsequent analyses by adjusting for measurement error or including interactions. Finally, we
examined the effects of 107 other student characteristics measured in ninth grade. Four of these traits were
significant at the 0.01 level. Ninth graders who planned to get vocational training after high school ended up
with slightly less education than our coding of ninth-grade Plans implied they should, but the discrepancy did
not seem large enough to justify adding another variable to our equation. Ninth graders whose fathers were
active in a church, a civic organization, or the PTA also got less education than their other traits implied they
should. Since none of these three effects was large, and since none made intuitive sense, we decided to ignore
these variables in subsequent analyses.14

Table 14.4 Within-School Relationship of Education(14) to Ninth-Grade Characteristics

of 4,315 Students in 91 Predominantly White High Schools

All coefficients are significant at the 0.05 level.

a. Plans were coded 0 to 6 in these analyses.
b. Calculated from a matrix in which the observed correlations involving test scores, SES, and Siblings were divided by the square
root of their reliabilities, while other correlations were left unchanged.

Effects of High-School Quality on Education (14)

 The standard deviation of Education(14) is 1.41 years. The standard deviation of school means is 0.45 year,
indicating that (0.45)2/(1.41)2 = 10.1 percent of the variance in Education(14) is between schools. In order to
assess the contribution of high-school quality to the between-schools variance, we estimated each school’s mean
residual for Education(14), using the same procedures we had used to estimate mean twelfth-grade test score
residuals.15 The standard deviation of schools’ mean residuals was 0.26 year, indicating that 3.4 percent of the
variance in Education(14) was attributable to the combined effects of unmeasured differences among students
entering different schools, random differences in the high-school experience of students in different schools,
random errors in measuring Education(14), variations in high-school quality, and variations in community
characteristics. After allowance was made for random differences among high schools with respect to the
unmeasured determinants of Education(14), the estimated “true” standard deviation of the mean residuals fell to
0.21 year. This implies that 2.2 percent of the total variance in Education(14) was attributable to systematic
unmeasured differences among the students entering different schools, differences in high-school quality, and
community characteristics. It also implies that if we rank high schools in terms of their effects on school and
college attendance, students who attend the most effective fifth of all high schools end up getting an average of
0.6 more years of school or college than they would if they had attended a school that ranked among the least
effective fifth.

EFFECTS OF HIGH-SCHOOL QUALITY ON OCCUPATIONAL STATUS AND CAREER PLANS

AT AGE 23

Talent’s five-year followup was conducted when the average respondent was 22 or 23. Only 790 men and 832
women from our 98 schools reported paid civilian occupations. We ranked these occupations using Duncan’s
scale, which is based on the education and income of males in a given occupation.16 Although this yields a
reasonable rank order for both male and female respondents’ occupations, it does not provide a satisfactory
basis for comparing the status of females with that of males. Nor does it provide a basis for assessing the
absolute distance between female occupations. Such comparisons would require both theoretical and empirical
work beyond the scope of this article. We will therefore analyze males and females separately.
Disadvantaged men often failed to return questionnaires; advantaged men were often still in college or
graduate school. The range of test scores, educational attainment, and occupational status is therefore lower than
in older and more representative samples. These restrictions, along with the youth of the sample, make the
observed correlations lower than they would be in an older or more representative sample.
The women who reported paid occupations appear even less representative than the men. These women
were drawn from the upper end of the SES, test score, and education distributions. Seventy-nine percent said
they were teachers, nurses, or secretaries.
Because of our reservations about the representativeness of those who reported current employment, we also
examined respondents’ statements about their career plans. Eighty percent of the males and 42 percent of the
females answered the question about career plans, including some individuals who were still in school or in the
military, and some who were currently housewives. The correlation between Occupation and Career Plans for
those reporting both items was 0.684 for males and 0.847 for females. Individuals who reported Career Plans
were well above national norms on education, and they planned to enter occupations that averaged well above
national norms in status.
Table 14.6 shows the regression equations for both Occupation and Career Plans. We are not certain how
seriously to take differences between the male and female equations. Still, the fact that academic ability has
substantially more effect on male than female occupational status seems consistent with common observation.
The fact that academic ability has more effect on women’s career plans than on their current occupations is also
suggestive. Whether able women will be able to fulfill their plans is an open question.
Except for the effects of academic ability on women, the equations for current Occupation and for Career
Plans are remarkably similar. We interpret both current Occupation and Career Plans as fallible predictors of
occupational status in maturity. We do not know how fallible either indicator will turn out to be.
 In order to estimate the effect of attending one high school rather than another, we can compare the four
equations in Table 14.6 that include the school dummies to the four equations that exclude them. The school
dummies raise Rc2 by 0.024 to 0.048, depending on the equation. These increases are statistically significant in
three cases out of four. We therefore conclude that either (a) unmeasured differences among the students
entering different schools affect students’ occupations in nonrandom ways, or (b) the schools themselves have
different effects, or (c) the communities in which the schools are located provide different occupational
opportunities for local youngsters. Unfortunately, our data do not allow us to distinguish between the effects of
high schools and the effects of local job opportunities.
We next sought to identify mechanisms by which school quality might influence Occupation and Career
Plans. One conventional assumption has been that a good high school can improve students’ occupational
prospects by raising their cognitive skills. But individual changes in test scores between ninth and twelfth
grades were not significantly correlated with eventual occupational status. We therefore abandoned the
hypothesis that high schools influence occupational status by influencing test scores.
A second theory holds that a good high school can improve students’ occupational prospects by encouraging
them to finish high school and attend college. Table 14.7 tests this theory. It presents a set of regression
equations identical to those in Table 14.6, except that they include Education(18) as an independent variable.
The high-school dummies raise Rc2 by an average of 0.022 in these equations, as compared to 0.039 when
Education(18) is not controlled. This suggests that the effects of high-school quality on educational attainment
may explain 1 to 2 percent of the variance in Occupation and Career Plans. The reader should recall, however,
that high-school quality explained less than 2 percent of the variance in Education(18) in our larger sample. This
means that the influence of high-school quality on Education(18) could not plausibly explain more than 1
percent of the variance in Occupation in the larger sample. We clearly need a much larger sample to get a
precise estimate of the contribution of high-school quality to variation in occupational status.

Table 14.5 Regression Equations for Education (14) or Education (18): Students with
Complete Data from 95 Talent High Schools
a. Note that coding of Plans is in years and so differs from Table 14.4.

b. The formula is where is the standard deviation of the residuals and is the observed standard deviation of the
dependent variable. Unlike the value of R, the value of se reported in conventional regression programs is corrected for degrees of
freedom and is supposed to estimate the standard deviation of the residuals in an infinitely large sample. Hence its utility in estimating.
c. The N’s for equations 1 through 6 differ from those for equations 7 and 8 because the latter equations did not exclude students who
failed to report Plans, Grades, Curriculum, Siblings, or Education (14).
d. Unstandardized coefficient. Coefficients in brackets are not significantly different from zero at the 0.05 level.
e. Standardized coefficient.

Table 14.6 Regression Equations for Occupation and Career Plans: Males and Females
with Complete Data in Talent High Schools

NOTE: Coefficients in brackets are not significantly different from zero at the 0.05 level.
Insignificant school dummies are denoted by [Yes].

How are we to explain the 2.2 percent increase in Rc2 that is independent of Education? One possibility is
that there are important unmeasured differences among the students entering different high schools, and that
these differences affect Occupation and Career Plans. Another possibility is that high schools produce important
unmeasured differences among their graduates. A third possibility is that the graduates of different high schools
confront different labor markets, and that this creates differences in both current Occupation and Career Plans
for individuals who do not differ in any other significant respect.
THE MEANING OF “HIGH-SCHOOL QUALITY”

The four preceding sections have estimated the effects of “high-school quality” on six twelfth-grade test scores,
on educational status one and five years after expected high-school graduation, and on occupational status and
career plans five years after graduation. Our repeated use of the term “high-school quality” to describe the
school characteristics that maximize these different outcomes may have conveyed the impression that “quality”
is a one-dimensional phenomenon. This is not true. Table 14.8 shows the correlations among the mean residuals
for thirteen different outcomes. The correlations are generally low and often insignificant. This means that the
high-school characteristics that boost performance in one area are not especially likely to boost performance in
other areas.
The fifteen correlations among the mean residuals for the six basic tests are shown in the top six rows of
Table 14.8. Four of the ten positive correlations are significantly different from zero. None of the five negative
correlations is significantly different from zero. The correlations among the residuals for the six basic tests
average only +0.17. This suggests that high-school quality is multi-dimensional, even with respect to test scores.
This same pattern holds if we restrict our attention to the four tests that showed an independent relationship to
subsequent educational attainment and occupational status—namely, Vocabulary, Social Studies Information,
Reading Comprehension, and Arithmetic Reasoning. Thus the data suggest that if we had to construct a one-
dimensional index of high-school quality, it would explain only about 17 percent of the variance in schools’
mean residuals on a wide range of tests.17 Since the mean residuals explain an average of 2.5 percent of the
variance in individual twelfth-grade scores (see Tables 14.1 and 14.3), the implication is that a one-dimensional
index of high-school quality could explain only (0.17)(2.5) = 0.43 percent of the variance in individual
performance on the typical test.
A one-dimensional notion of high-school quality would, of course, explain more of the variance in overall
academic achievement than in performance on any specific test. Suppose we think of performance on specific
tests as determined partly by general academic achievement and partly by specialized skills. If we define
general academic achievement as the first principal component of our six tests, it explains 48 percent of the
variance in these tests. Specialized skills and measurement error explain the rest, in roughly equal proportions.
If the first principal component of high-school quality explains 0.43 percent of the variance in the typical test,
and if the first principal component of individual achievement explains 48 percent of the variance in these same
tests, we can infer that a one-dimensional conception of high-school quality could explain about 0.43/48 = 0.9
percent of the variance in general academic achievement.
Now let us turn to the correlations between the mean test-score residuals and the mean residuals for
Education, Occupation, and Career Plans. These correlations average 0.006, and the variations around this mean
are within the range expected by chance. This suggests that schools which raise test scores unusually rapidly
between ninth and twelfth grades are not particularly likely to help their students get a lot of further education or
enter a high-status occupation. This implication was so contrary to our expectations that we decided to check it
at the individual level. We found that we could predict Education(14), Education(18), Occupation, and Career
Plans as accurately from ninth-grade scores as from twelfth-grade scores on the same test. It follows that test-
score changes between ninth and twelfth grades have no effect on individual life chances. It also follows that if
our real interest is in what happens to students after they graduate, it is a waste of time and money to assess high
schools’ “productivity” or “effectiveness” by trying to measure their impact on standardized tests of basic
cognitive skills. This might not be true, of course, if such evaluations used tests covering more advanced skills.
Nor is it necessarily true of elementary schools, although such evidence as we have on elementary schools is
similar to the evidence in Table 14.8.18
The correlation between the mean residuals for Education(14) and Education(18) is 0.468. More relevant,
the regression coefficient of the Education(14) residuals when predicting the Education(18) residuals is only
0.62, indicating that a school that appeared to have boosted its students’ average educational attainment by one
year at the time of the one-year followup turned out to produce a gain of only 0.62 year four years later.19 This
may be partly due to random error in the Education(14) residuals, which are not based on exactly the same
individuals as the Education(18) residuals. But the difference is also consistent with our suggestion in Section 4
that the effects of high schools on educational status one year after graduation may be peculiarly transitory.
The mean residuals for Occupation and Career Plans have an average correlation of 0.135 with the mean
residuals for Education(14) and 0.353 with the mean residuals for Education(18). The positive correlation
between the Education(18) residuals and the Occupation and Career Plans residuals is consistent with our earlier
finding that controlling Education(l8) appreciably reduced the unexplained between-schools variance in
Occupation and Career Plans.
The mean residuals for Occupation and Career Plans correlate 0.573 for males and 0.447 for females. This is
reassuring, since the individual residuals correlate about 0.40, and we expect a similar correlation between mean
residuals by chance alone. The correlations between mean residuals for males and females average 0.048. This
means one of two things. If high-school characteristics have any direct effect on occupational status or career
plans, the characteristics that influence males must be completely different from those that influence females.
Alternatively, local job opportunities for young men and women may be uncorrelated. Unfortunately, we cannot
test this latter hypothesis adequately with the data in hand.
On the basis of these analyses, we conclude that sweeping generalizations about “good” and “bad” high
schools are bound to be misleading. Among these white comprehensive public high schools, the estimated
effectiveness of a given high school will vary dramatically according to the measure of success one chooses to
emphasize. Very few schools rank high on all of the measures used in this investigation, and very few rank low
on all of them. High schools that are unusually effective in boosting student performance on one standardized
test are only marginally more effective than average in boosting performance on other tests. Those that are
notably effective in boosting test scores across the board are no more effective than average in getting their
students to finish high school, attend college, graduate from college, or enter high-status occupations. High
schools that are unusually effective in increasing the amount of education a student gets are also appreciably
more effective than average in boosting a student’s eventual occupational status. However, high schools that are
unusually successful in getting males into high-status occupations are no more successful than average in
getting females into high-status occupations, and vice versa.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Our data are relevant to at least four possible policy objectives: (1) increasing schools’ effectiveness, i.e.,
increasing students’ mean test scores, mean educational attainment, and mean occupational status; (2) making
schools accountable, i.e., determining whether schools have enhanced some politically determined set of
outcomes; (3) reducing inequality of opportunity, i.e., reducing the effects of race, sex, parental SES, or other
factors on any given outcome; and (4) reducing inequality of condition, i.e., reducing the dispersion of any
given outcome relative to its mean.

Effectiveness
Some high schools are more effective than others in raising test scores, Nevertheless, the gains are never
large relative to the variance of initial scores, and schools that boost performance on one test are not especially
likely to boost performance on other tests. Moreover, high-school characteristics such as social composition,
per-pupil expenditure, teacher training, teacher experience, and class size have no consistent impact on
cognitive growth between ninth and twelfth grades. These findings imply that if we want to boost student
performance, we will need drastically new methods. Our data tell us nothing about what methods might be most
effective. They tell us only that more money, more graduate courses for teachers, smaller classes,
socioeconomic desegregation, and other traditional remedies are unlikely to have much effect. We cannot say
anything about the effects of racial desegregation, since we excluded schools with more than 25 percent black
enrollment from our retest sample.20
Similarly, some high schools are more effective than others in boosting a student’s eventual educational
attainment. This effect has virtually nothing to do with a school’s effect on cognitive growth between ninth and
twelfth grades. However, a high school’s effect on individual educational attainment does depend on its social
composition, but not in any simple way. Mean Plans has a positive impact on individual attainment, whereas
Mean Information has a negative effect and Mean SES has no consistent effect once Plans and Information are
controlled. Social composition explains considerably less than 1 percent of the variance in individual
attainment. No other measured high-school characteristic plays a consistently significant role in determining a
student’s educational attainment. One characteristic—class size—has a statistically significant coefficient in
both the Talent and EEOS analyses, but it has different signs in the two studies. These results suggest that if we
want to boost the average student’s eventual educational attainment, neither socioeconomic desegregation nor
infusion of traditional resources is likely to help much. Again, we cannot say much about the effects of racial
desegregation, since our sample of Blacks is so unrepresentative.
Some high schools are more effective than others in boosting a student’s occupational status and career
plans, but a school which boosts a man’s occupational prospects is not especially likely to help a woman. A
school’s impact on a student’s eventual occupation does not depend on its effectiveness in raising test scores,
but it does depend on its effectiveness in raising educational attainment. A school’s social composition has a
modest effect on a student’s eventual occupational status, but that effect is not large in absolute terms. Teacher
characteristics (masters’ degrees and experience) and class size also have an independent relationship to
occupational status, at least for males. The effects of small classes are perverse, however, in that small classes
appear to lower a student’s eventual status. This raises serious questions about the plausibility of the entire
analysis, which is based on far fewer individuals than the analyses of test scores and educational attainment, and
which contains no direct measures of at least one potentially important variable, local job opportunities.
High schools vary in their effectiveness at raising their graduates’ test scores, educational attainment, and
occupational status. But even when schools are unusually effective or ineffective, the reasons for these effects
remain obscure. These findings suggest that neither educators nor social scientists know how to change high
schools so as to raise students’ test scores, educational attainment or occupational status.

Accountability
Our results imply that if legislatures or school boards want to hold high schools accountable for their
students’ achievement, they should be extremely careful to specify the outcomes that really interest them. High
schools that do well at raising students’ scores on one test will not necessarily do well at improving scores on
other tests. High schools that do well at raising test scores will not necessarily improve their graduates’
subsequent life chances. This means that unless there is a clear consensus on specific objectives, which there
rarely is, no two evaluations of a given high school can be expected to yield the same judgment.

Table 14.7 Regression Equations for Occupation and Career Plans with Education
Controlled: Males and Females with Complete Data in Talent High Schools
NOTE: Coefficients in brackets are not significantly different from zero at the 0.05 level.
Insignificant school dummies are denoted by [Yes].

Table 14.8 Correlations Between Schools’ Mean Residuals for Different Outcomes (With
School N’s in Parentheses)
*Significantly different from zero at the 0.05 level. Degrees of freedom estimated from number of schools. This overestimates
significance levels, since schools were unequally weighted (by the number of ninth graders tested in 1960).

Equality of Opportunity
Most people define equality of opportunity as equalizing the mean level of success for certain visible social
groups, such as males and females, Blacks and Whites, or children from high- and low-SES homes. We can
assess the effect of equalizing high-school quality on the gap between such groups by looking at the gap within
a single school. If the effects (i.e., coefficients) of Sex, Race, or SES are smaller within schools than in the
sample as a whole, we can say that equalizing high-school quality might equalize the gap between these groups.
Since males and females typically attend the same schools, disparities in high-school quality as we have
defined it cannot possibly account for differences in their test scores, educational attainment, or occupational
status. But black and white students usually attended different high schools at the time of the Talent survey, so
disparities in high-school quality could have contributed to racial inequality. For reasons already given, we did
not analyze the effects of Race on test scores. Tables 14.5 and 14.6 show that after controlling SES and test
scores, Blacks got more education and entered higher-status occupations than Whites. When we control high-
school quality by adding the school dummies to the relevant equations in Tables 14.5 and 14.6, Blacks lose their
advantage. This implies that Blacks gain their advantage by attending better high schools. These results
contradict almost everyone’s a priori assumptions. But the black sample is so small and unrepresentative that we
have little faith in these results.
Since high- and low-SES students often attend different schools, disparities in school quality could also
contribute to the correlation between parental SES and a child’s eventual test scores, educational attainment, or
occupational status. So far as we can discover, SES has no significant effect on cognitive growth between ninth
and twelfth grades, at least for the six Talent tests we investigated. This means that equalizing high-school
quality cannot reduce the correlation between SES and twelfth-grade scores. SES does have a substantial effect
on eventual educational attainment, even after all other measured ninth-grade traits have been controlled.
Comparing equations 2 and 5 or 7 and 8 in Table 14.5 shows, however, that this effect is not reduced when we
control high-school quality. The gap is as large when high- and low-SES students attend the same high school
as when they attend different schools. This means that equalizing high-school quality would not reduce
inequality of educational opportunity for low-SES students.
SES has a substantial effect on both occupational status and career plans at age 23, even with ninth-grade
test scores controlled. Table 14.6 shows that controlling high-school quality lowers the direct effect of parental
SES by 19 to 26 percent for males but does not lower it at all for females. This means that high- and low-SES
males end up more alike if they attend the same school. Unfortunately, it does not necessarily mean they end up
more alike if they attend different schools of similar quality. High- and low-SES students attend different high
schools largely because they live in different places. Local job opportunities are presumably better in affluent
communities than in poor communities, at least for men, and local youngsters presumably have an advantage in
getting local jobs. Equalizing the schools would do nothing to offset this situation. One would actually have to
move high- and low-SES students into the same communities to eliminate this source of inequality. We cannot
say how much impact high-school quality per se has on inequality in males’ occupational opportunities.

Equality of Condition
While most people are concerned primarily with equalizing opportunity for visible social groups, some also
want to reduce inequality within these groups. Inequality is generally measured by indices which relate the
dispersion of outcomes to the average outcome. There are two ways to reduce such an index. One possibility is
to raise the mean for everyone, while holding the dispersion constant. The other possibility is to reduce the
dispersion while holding the mean constant. Various combinations of these two policies are obviously possible
as well. We have already discussed the difficulties in identifying high-school policies that will raise mean test
scores, educational attainment, or occupational status. It is equally difficult to reduce the dispersion of these
outcomes. As we have seen, high-school quality accounts for only 1.0 to 3.4 percent of the variance in twelfth-
grade test scores, 0.2 to 2.4 percent of the variance in educational attainment, and 2.5 to 4.8 percent of the
variance in occupational status and career plans. This means that even if we knew how to eliminate all
disparities in high-school quality, which we clearly do not, we could reduce the standard deviations of these
outcomes by only one or two percent. Assuming the mean remained constant, this would imply a one to two
percent reduction in the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean, and hence in inequality.
The modest contribution of high-school quality to adult inequality does not mean we should stop trying to
equalize the schools. High schools are public institutions, and their contribution to inequality is symbolic as well
as substantive. If a society accepts unnecessary and unreasonable disparities in high-school quality, it
legitimates not only those inequalities but many others as well. Conversely, if a society commits itself to
eliminating disparities in high-school quality, however small, it may encourage other institutions and
individuals to reassess their behavior. The difficulty is that nobody knows how to eliminate disparities in high-
school quality, at least when these are defined in terms of educational outcomes. The best we can do is eliminate
disparities in inputs. As we have seen, this is unlikely to have much effect on test scores, educational attainment,
or occupational status. We suspect that it may alter other outcomes to some extent, and that it may also alter
how both students and communities feel about their schools. But this is mere speculation.
For those who want to alter not only symbols and feelings but individual outcomes, the data suggest a shift
in emphasis from differences among high schools to differences within high schools. Most of the variation in
adult characteristics arises among individuals who attend the same high school. Our data do not tell us whether
schools can reduce such variation, much less how they can do so, but the data do show that progress on this
front is potentially far more important than progress in reducing differences between schools.21

NOTES

1. The most comprehensive review is in Appendix A of Harvey Averch, Stephen Carroll, Theodore
 Donaldson, Herbert Kiesling, and John Pincus, How Effective is Schooling? A Critical Review and
Synthesis of Research Findings (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications, 1974). A
few additional studies are cited in Christopher Jencks, Marshall Smith, Henry Acland, Mary Jo Bane,
David Cohen, Herbert Gintis, Barbara Heyns, and Stephan Michelson, Inequality: A Reassessment of the
Effects of Family and Schooling in America (New York: Basic Books, 1972).
2. See especially Robert M. Hauser, “Schools and the Stratification Process,” American Journal of Sociology,
74 (1969), 587–611.
3. John C. Flanagan, The American High School Student (Pittsburgh: Project Talent, 1964).
4. In 1963, Talent tested twelfth graders in 118 of its original high schools. Seventeen of these were
vocational schools, which we eliminated. The remaining 110 schools were representative of comprehensive
high schools in the United States, except that Talent eliminated schools in New York City, Chicago, Los
Angeles, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Two of the 101 schools had defective data, and one enrolled only
American Indians. We eliminated them.
5. For a formal presentation of this approach, see Robert M. Hauser, Socioeconomic Background and
Educational Performance (Washington, D.C.: American Sociological Association, 1971).
6. The reason for this change is historical. When we began our work, we did not have a versatile computer
program capable of estimating a regression equation with 100 variables. We therefore used the more
laborious “covariance” method. Once such a program became available, we used it instead. But we did not
redo the 18 months of work we had already completed.
7. These estimates are roughly consistent with Coleman et al.’s estimates of between-schools variance for
Northern and Southern white twelfth graders covered by the Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey.
Our estimates are not weighted and not corrected for degrees of freedom, so strict comparability with the
EEOS should not be expected.
8. We assumed that the effects of ninth-grade characteristics were additive. In order to test for non-additive
relationships, we created eight dichotomous variables: Sex, Curriculum, Region (North/South), Urbanism
(urban/rural), Ninth-grade Test Score (above the mean/below the mean), SES (above 100/below 100),
Grades (above the mean/below the mean), and Plans (college/no college). We then created 28 dummy
variables, each of which represented having a high score on two of these eight dichotomies simultaneously
(e.g., both being assigned to the college curriculum and having high ninth-grade scores). These 28 dummy
variables increased the corrected R2 for the twelfth grade by less than 0.001. This increase was not
statistically significant. Although this is not a definitive test for all possible interactions, it should suffice to
detect most large interactions.
In light of this we did not check for interactions between the school an individual attended and his or her
measured traits, i.e., for school-to-school variations in the coefficients of the 91 within-school equations for
each test. Such interactions would not have much impact on our estimates of a school’s additive effects,
but they would be interesting in their own right if they followed a systematic pattern.
Furthermore, we did not make a systematic study of nonlinearity in the relationship between ninth-grade
traits and twelfth-grade scores. If there are any nonlinearities, they will inflate the residuals for individuals.
If they recur systematically from school to school, they will lead to an over-estimation of the role of school
quality.
9. Observed ninth-grade traits never explain as much of the variance in observed twelfth-grade scores as
would a “true” ninth-grade score on the same test. (Compare the values of R2 in Table 14.2 with the values
obtained from Table 14.1 by squaring line 19 and dividing by line 8.) This is not an entirely satisfactory
comparison, however, since the ninth- and twelfth-grade tests were not alternative forms of the same test
but literally identical. The test-retest correlation for two administrations of the same test can, and often
does, exceed the internal reliability, which is logically equivalent to using alternative forms. See Shaycoft,
“The Coefficient of Internal Precision,” American Institutes of Research, Palo Alto, Calif., 1968, offset.
10. The ratio of the standard deviation in line 2 to the standard deviation in line 1 estimates the correlation
between the mean residual for a single year and the “true” mean residual averaged over many years,
assuming the latter is stable. The square of this ratio is comparable to a reliability coefficient. In prinicple,
it predicts the correlation between mean residuals in sequential years.
11. We can think of schools’ mean twelfth-grade test scores (t) as the sum of four components: a predicted
score (P) based on measured ninth-grade traits, an adjustment (e) due to random errors in measuring either
ninth- or twelfth-grade traits, an adjustment (E) due to systematic errors in measuring either ninth- or
twelfth-grade traits, and an adjustment (S) due to the effects of school and community characteristics. The
mean residual (R) is the observed mean minus the predicted mean, T−P. Since T = P + e + E + S, it follows
that R = e + E + S, and that . But since e is random, re, E = re, s = 0. Then . The estimated standard deviation
in line 2 is Thus if the value in line 2 will be upwardly biased by an
amount equal to . It can even be upwardly biased when so longas The bias
will be downward only if
12. Jencks et al., Inequality.
13. Marion F. Shaycoft, The High School Years: Growth in Cognitive Skills (Pittsburgh: American Institutes
of Research and Project Talent, University of Pittsburgh, 1967).
14. We used the dummy variables listed in footnote 8 to test for interactions. The 107 additional ninth-grade
traits came from questions 47–52, 54–56, 60–63, 106–114, 118, 137–157, 168, 173, 176, 190, 191, 198,
201, 205, 208, 211, 212, 219, 220, 222–225, 230, 231, 239, 297–303, and 305 of Talent’s Student
Information Blank, which is reprinted in The Project Talent Data Blank: A Handbook (Palo Alto, Calif.:
American Institutes of Research, 1972).
15. We used the unstandardized regression coefficients from line 3 of Table 14.4 to predict each individual’s
total Education(14) score (not his or her deviation from the school mean). We then averaged these
predictions for each school. We did not include the individual’s Curriculum when predicting
Education(14), since the percentage of students in the college curriculum could depend on school policy as
well as on the characteristics of entering students. Purists might reasonably argue that we should also have
excluded those student characteristics that might have been influenced by Curriculum, especially Grades
and Plans. We initially retained Grades and Plans because we assumed that they influenced Curriculum far
more than Curriculum influenced them. We subsequently discovered that the inclusion of Grades and Plans
actually increased the variance of the mean residuals, rather than decreasing it. The change in the variance
of the mean residual was statistically insignificant, however, so including these two variables has no
important effect on our conclusions.
16. Duncan, “A Socioeconomic Index.”
17. The first principal component explains 25 percent of the variance in the mean residuals for the six basic
tests in our battery, but the value would fall toward the mean correlation (0.17 in this sample) if we
increased the number of tests.
18. Jencks et al., Inequality, pp. 147–48.
19. At the individual level the regression coefficient is 1.02.
20. See Christopher Jencks and Marsha Brown, “The Effects of Desegregation on Student Achievement:
Some New Evidence from the Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey,” Sociology of Education, 48
(1975), 126–40, for a reanalysis of the EEOS data on the effect of racial composition on test performance.
The effects appear trivial at the high-school level, though not at the elementary level.
21. For an analysis of the determinants of within-school variance of test performance, see Byron W. Brown
and Daniel H. Saks, “The Production and Distribution of Cognitive Skills Within Schools,” Journal of
Political Economy, 83 (1975), 571–593. Brown and Saks argue that schools actually try to increase the
 variance in scores and that this helps explain the negligible relationship between school resources and
changes in mean test score in studies such as ours. This possibility deserves more attention than we have
given it.

SOURCE: Christopher S. Jencks and Marsha D. Brown, “The Effects of High Schools on Their Students,”
Harvard Educational Review, Volume 45:3 (August 1975) pp. 273–324. Copyright © by the President and
Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. For more information, please visit
www.harvardeducationalreview.org.
15
E PLURIBUS … SEPARATION
Deepening Double Segregation for More Students
GARY ORFIELD, JOHN KUCSERA, AND GENEVIEVE SIEGEL-HAWLEY

T he U.S. is in the midst of its largest racial transformation and schools are the first institutions where
the shape of our future population can be most clearly seen. The overall size of student enrollment is
beginning to decline and the white share continues to shrink. Meanwhile Latino enrollment is soaring
and the small Asian student population is growing rapidly. More and more children are growing up in families
that cannot afford to buy school lunches. A country whose traditions and laws were built around a white, middle
class society with a significant black minority is now multiracial, poorer, with predominately nonwhite schools
in our two largest regions, the West and the South. In short, the country is changing and its schools are changing
even faster. This report is about how these changes are related to patterns of racial, ethnic, and class separation
in our schools. It describes how enrollment shifts and segregation trends are playing out nationally, in the
various regions of the country, and in different states and metropolitan areas. The large report is accompanied
by two smaller reports that provide a special focus on the South and the West, two vast regions which are home
to most African Americans and Latinos.
This analysis shows that school segregation is very high for Latino and black students, and that racially
isolated schools continue to overlap with schools of concentrated poverty. Racial and economic isolation has
increased most dramatically for Latino students, as they have become our largest and most poorly educated
minority population.1 And although African Americans have become less intensely segregated residentially than
in the past,2 there has been no significant corresponding decline in their school segregation.
Sadly, we are steadily undoing the great triumph of the Brown decision and the subsequent civil rights
revolution that spurred very significant desegregation of black students in the South. We are on the road away
from Brown and accepting the return of school segregation, assuming again that we can make it work even
though it has never been done on a significant scale.3
The radical cuts to our public schools in the midst of the nation’s economic crisis, as well as the continuing
expansion of even more segregated charter schools—which take funds from public schools and leave many
children with special costly needs behind4— only exacerbates educational inequality. The ultimate
consequences occur in central cities like Washington, D.C., Detroit and New Orleans. These are places where
the public school system has been picked apart, poorly funded, and overwhelmingly oriented to serving low-
income, students of color in segregated settings that comprise a vestigial system for the most disadvantaged.
During this fiscal crisis, many school districts are shutting down the one path to higher-opportunity schools by
reducing or ending transportation to strong magnet schools and higher-achieving schools in other parts of the
district. Under these conditions, “school choice” is virtually nonexistent for those who cannot provide their own
transportation. Districts are also generally cutting back on magnets and other special programs that help create
paths to college.5 We are preparing for a majority-minority society by abandoning most of the limited tools we
had to create schools able to reach across the lines of race and class. This threatens our common future.
Many individual families—especially white and Asian families with resources and full access to the
suburban housing market—may be temporarily protecting themselves from some of the consequences of
growing segregation and inequality by seeking out elite suburbs, gated communities or private schools. Our
broader society cannot, however, escape the consequences. The costs will steadily mount if our great
demographic change continues on its present path. America has been falling far behind many other countries,
not because it has failed to educate its middle class white students but because it has badly failed to educate its
Hispanic and black students, especially those in the most segregated schools.6 Yet we respond to decline not by
critically examining our racialized system of unequal schools but by calling for more of the same. This means
that we may be going through the last era of a white majority in our educational institutions in a way that
assures that our future will be more separated and less successful, both educationally and socially.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT RELATED TO GROWING DIVERSITY

Since European settlement began, what became the United States was characterized by a multiracial population
with serious issues of separation and inequality. Conquest of Indian communities and forced importation of
African slaves began almost immediately.7 When the Constitution was written, neither of these groups was
included in the “we the people of the United States” who adopted the framework of government. Racial
inequality and subordination profoundly shaped our society and, after the end of Reconstruction in the l880s,
was not seriously challenged until the l960s. The laws about who could come to America and be a citizen were
openly discriminatory until l965.8
American culture was shaped and dominated by the descendants of immigrants from Europe. For the first
two centuries of the nation’s existence, its population was roughly 80–90% Euro-American. It was a society
where blacks made up by far the largest racial minority. Until well into the 20th century, most blacks were
living in the rural South in situations of rigid racial hierarchy and enforced separation. They were largely
restricted to elementary education in separate and poorly funded schools. Following the U.S. conquest of half
the territory of the newly independent Mexican nation, the smaller Mexican-American populations in the
Southwest often found themselves in similar situations. American Indians were long almost entirely confined in
reservations with very limited education.9
The period between 1910 and 1960 produced vast migrations into large, northern cities, particularly for
blacks, and the formation of large ghetto areas of segregated housing, especially in growing industrial centers
hungry for workers.10 Schooling in urban centers was highly segregated in all parts of the country where there
were substantial black populations. And in seventeen southern and border states, state law mandated segregated
education. Further, in virtually every northern and western city examined by a federal court, school segregation
was proven to be substantially related to the intentional segregation of schools and housing through a variety of
public policies and practices.

EFFORTS TO PROMOTE SCHOOL DESEGREGATION: PROGRESS AND RETREAT

There has been little effort to integrate American students for a number of years, in part because of a belief that
we tried to do this in the past at great cost. In reality, the only period of consistent support for integrated schools
from the executive branch and the courts was in the 1960s, following the hard-won passage of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act. Between 1965 and 1969 the federal executive branch and a unanimous Supreme Court pressed
aggressively for school desegregation. That pressure produced massive changes, especially in the South where
most blacks lived and where enforcement was most vigorous.11 The 1968 presidential election, however, ended
such cooperation as President Nixon shut down administrative enforcement of desegregation requirements,
shifted the position of the Justice Department from proactive enforcement to passive acceptance, appointed four
conservative Justices to the Supreme Court and attacked desegregation rulings. Nixon’s judicial appointments
produced the first divided desegregation decisions since Brown. By l974 the Court had halted desegregation
across city-suburban lines and financial equalization of schools, both by 5–4 votes.12
Desegregation was only truly a national priority for less than a decade. The right to urban desegregation
wasn’t even announced by the Supreme Court until 1971, in the face of active presidential opposition. The last
Supreme Court decision expanding desegregation rights to schools outside the South and to Latinos came in
l973, nearly 40 years ago. The last substantial federal program to help schools deal successfully with diversity,
the Emergency School Aid Act, was repealed 31 years ago in an omnibus budget-cutting bill at the beginning of
the Reagan Administration.13 The incomplete transformation of a deeply segregated and unequal society that the
efforts of the l960s and l970s helped spur was consequential—but not enough.
Though people still talk about large-scale involuntary desegregation orders, the dominant pattern for a third
of a century has been to use voluntary transfers and magnet schools to foster integration. In an approach that
relies so heavily on “choice,” there are key elements that make a difference. First, there must be good choices,
special educational opportunities or strong schools worth transferring to. Second, there must be good
information widely and fairly distributed; otherwise the best choices will go to the most connected and
informed, and inequality will deepen. Third, there must be diversity goals and recruitment to encourage a well-
diversified school. Fourth, there must be transportation provided for those who cannot provide their own, so the
choices are not only available to those with money to provide their own transportation.14
School desegregation efforts designed to provide students with more equal educational opportunities were
rolled back through a series of judicial decisions. In the 1970s, in quick succession, were two Supreme Court
decisions (noted above) that held that poor and rich schools had no right to equal resources and that illegally
segregated central city children had no right to gain access to better schools in the suburbs.15 These rulings were
followed in the 1990s by Supreme Court decisions permitting school systems to abandon desegregation plans
and return to segregated neighborhood schools,16 and cutting off funds to remedy the educational harm caused
by a history of illegal segregation.17 Most recently, in 2007, the Supreme Court outlawed long-established and
popular forms of voluntary local school desegregation.18 The isolation of non-white students has increased
substantially in the aftermath of a number of these decisions. Although there is now a good deal of transitional
diversity as the rapid movement of black and Latino families to the suburbs evolves, it is often only a stage on
the way to resegregated suburban school systems, particularly in the absence of a desegregation strategy.19
Today, in spite of many requests from civil rights groups, the Obama Administration has done very little to
offset these trends. After three years, the Justice Department and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil
rights issued a long-delayed but strong statement clarifying the remaining rights of school districts to pursue
some forms of voluntary integration.20 Also, in 2009, the administration offered one round of technical
assistance grants for districts interested in designing voluntary student assignment plans in the aftermath of
Parents Involved.21 At the same time, though, the Obama Administration has fostered and funded segregated
charter schools, putting very strong pressure on states—including some that did not want large charter programs
—to lift their limits.22 It has rejected ideas of setting aside significant funding to expand magnet schools or to
assist districts in designing new voluntary integration programs as part of the “Race to the Top” program and
other initiatives.23 Officials in the Justice Department and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights
have produced some significant enforcement actions—which are a positive change from the Bush era—but the
kinds of policies needed to significantly expand access to integrated schools and support diverse school districts
threatened by resegregation have not been forthcoming. There are many people in the Administration that
understand and care about school integration, but they have yet to provide significant, large-scale incentives and
support for educators and communities who want to address these issues.

SEGREGATION AND DESEGREGATION: WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS24

A major irony is that we have been abandoning desegregation efforts as the evidence for its value becomes more
and more powerful. We have more than a half-century of research about the impacts of diverse schooling and
the ways to make integration most successful. Although we decided as a country to desegregate our schools
with very little information, we are abandoning the effort now that we have a great deal of knowledge about its
benefits.
The consensus of nearly sixty years of social science research on the harms of school segregation is also
clear: separate remains extremely unequal. Racially and socioeconomically isolated schools are strongly related
to an array of factors that limit educational opportunities and outcomes. These include less experienced and less
qualified teachers, high levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups and inadequate facilities and
learning materials.
Teachers are the most powerful influence on academic achievement in schools.25 One recent longitudinal
study showed that having a strong teacher in elementary grades had a long-lasting, positive impact on students’
lives—to include reduced teenage pregnancy rates, higher levels of college-going and higher job earnings.26
Unfortunately, despite the clear benefits of strong teaching, we also know that highly qualified27 and
experienced28 teachers are spread very unevenly across schools, and are much less likely to remain in
segregated or resegregating settings.29 High rates of teacher mobility in segregated schools may be related to the
fact that teachers in high-poverty, high minority schools are more likely to report problems of student
misbehavior, absenteeism, and lack of parental involvement than teachers in other school settings.30 Teachers’
salaries and advanced training are also lower in schools of concentrated poverty.31
Findings showing that the motivation and engagement of classmates are strongly linked to educational
outcomes for poor students date back to the famous 1966 Coleman Report. The central conclusion of that report
(as well as numerous follow-up analyses) was that the concentration of poverty in a school influenced student
achievement more than the poverty status of an individual student.32 This is largely related to whether or not
high academic achievement, homework completion, regular attendance and college-going are normalized by
peers.33 Attitudinal differences towards schooling among low- and middle-to-high income students stem from a
variety of internal and external factors, including watered-down learning materials that seem disconnected from
students’ lives.
Schools serving low-income and segregated neighborhoods have been shown to provide less challenging
curricula than schools in more affluent communities that largely serve populations of white and Asian
students.34 The impact of the standards and accountability era has been felt more acutely in minority-segregated
schools where rote skills and memorization have, in many instances, subsumed creative, engaging teaching.35
By contrast, students in middle-class schools normally have little trouble with high stakes exams, so the schools
and teachers are free to broaden the curriculum. Segregated school settings are also significantly less likely than
more affluent settings to offer AP- or honors-level courses that help boost student GPAs and garner early
college credits.36
Dynamics outside of schools contribute massively to inequalities within them. Studies demonstrate that
concentrated poverty in communities is associated with everything from less optimal physical development and
opportunities for summer learning, to families’ inability to stay in the same neighborhood long enough for
schools to produce powerful educational effects.37 There are thus very clear relationships between student
achievement and attainment, and neighborhood poverty rates.38
All of these things taken together tend to produce lower educational achievement and attainment—which in
turn limits lifetime opportunities—for students who attend high poverty, high minority school settings.39
Student discipline is harsher and the rate of expulsion is much higher in minority-segregated schools than in
wealthier, whiter ones.40 Dropout rates are significantly higher in segregated and impoverished schools (nearly
all of the 2,000 “dropout factories” are doubly segregated by race and poverty),41 and if students do graduate,
research indicates that they are less likely to be successful in college, even after controlling for test scores.42
Segregation, in short, has strong and lasting impacts on students’ success in school and later life.43
On the other hand, there is also a mounting body of evidence indicating that desegregated schools are linked
to profound benefits for all children. In terms of social outcomes, racially integrated educational contexts
provide students of all races with the opportunity to learn and work with children from a wide array of
backgrounds. These settings foster critical thinking skills that are increasingly important in our multiracial
society—skills that help students understand a variety of different perspectives.44 Relatedly, integrated schools
are linked to reduction in students’ willingness to accept stereotypes.45 Students attending integrated schools
also report a heightened ability to communicate and make friends across racial lines.46
Studies have shown that desegregated settings are associated with heightened academic achievement for
minority students47 (with no corresponding detrimental impact for white students).48 These trends later translate
into loftier educational and career expectations,49 and high levels of civic and communal responsibility.50 Black
students who attended desegregated schools are substantially more likely to graduate from high school and
college, in part because they are more connected to challenging curriculum and social networks that supported
such goals.51 Earnings and physical well-being are also positively impacted: a recent study by a Berkeley
economist found that black students who attended desegregated schools for at least five years earned 25% more
than their counterparts in segregated settings. By middle age, the same group was also in far better health.52
Perhaps most important of all, evidence indicates that school desegregation can have perpetuating effects
across generations. Students of all races who attended integrated schools are more likely to seek out integrated
colleges, workplaces and neighborhoods later in life, which may in turn provide integrated educational
opportunities for their own children.53
In the aftermath of Brown, we learned a great deal about how to structure diverse schools to make them
work for students of all races. In 1954, a prominent Harvard social psychologist, Gordon Allport, suggested that
four key elements are necessary for positive contact across different groups.54 Allport theorized that all group
members needed to be given equal status, that guidelines for cooperatively working towards common goals
needed to be established, and that strong leadership visibly supportive of intergroup relationship building was
necessary. Over the past 60-odd years, Allport’s conditions have held up in hundreds of studies of diverse
institutions across the world.55 In schools those crucial elements can play out in multiple ways, including efforts
to detrack students and integrate them at the classroom level, ensuring cooperative, heterogenous grouping in
classrooms, and highly visible, positive modeling from teachers and school leaders around issues of diversity.56

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

If a great democratic nation was deeply afflicted with unequal education at a time when education determined
both personal and national success, and if it had never succeeded in any major way in making separate schools
equal, then it would seem logical for that nation to abandon separate schools and instead pursue strategies
bringing schoolchildren together in equal opportunity settings. Furthermore, if most of the demographic growth
in that nation was among the groups locked into inferior schools— the same schools with poor records of
completion, achievement and success in higher education—and if that great nation was falling behind other
advanced societies, then the resolution of this massive problem would seem all the more urgent. Finally, if one
were to add the need to overcome a history of discrimination and the imperative to work out complex race
relations so that a rising generation of young people with no racial majority could live and work together in
communities, then the necessity would seem all the greater. The U.S. has no such policies now in operation, on
any scale.
The current diversity among our national school population and in the enrollment of thousands of our
districts is much deeper and quite different than during the civil rights era. We might assume that as the country
becomes truly multiracial, then stable, integrated schools would be the natural result of this change. Were it not
for discrimination in housing markets, absolute barriers between school districts in most places, and flight of
families and teachers from resegregating schools, among other problems, then the natural integration of schools
might be happening. We certainly have the potential for a rich diversity. We also have evidence that the
intensity of residential segregation for African Americans, our most segregated group, has been declining for
more than two decades.57 Shouldn’t we be seeing more integrated schools?
In fact, levels of school segregation for black students remain high and virtually unchanged over the last
decade. Although it is too early to see the full impact of the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Parents Involved,
which limited the most common forms of voluntary choice-based desegregation by local school districts,58 it
cannot be positive. And particularly worrisome is the continuous long-term increase in the isolation of Latino
students in segregated, high poverty schools.
The labor market will depend for a long time on what is now a declining number of students, substantially
fewer of whom are white and many more of whom are Latino. As the number and proportion of students in
poverty and from minority groups grow, the challenge to schools is all the greater because these students have
traditionally had far less success in American schools and colleges than whites and Asians. At a time when
educational attainment is critically important for U.S. educational success, as the Wall Street Journal notes,
there has been a sharp fall in the educational gains between generations. The U.S., long a leader in the
proportion of students receiving college degrees, now ranks number 15.59
The problems of high dropouts, low completion and poor preparation for college are strongly associated
with schools segregated by both race and poverty. These schools are systematically unequal on many
dimensions. This makes it very important to analyze how much progress we have made in getting our students
of color into less segregated, more middle class schools with better educational opportunities.
School desegregation is often discussed as if it were a kind of educational reform for poor nonwhite
children, but it also has much broader purposes for all groups of students, including whites and Asians. Most
critics look at nothing but test scores, usually in only two subjects. The broader purposes of schools are very
hard, often impossible, to achieve in segregated settings. Schools are intended to provide children with entry
into the mainstream of the ground for integrated communities in a successful multiracial society. Segregated
education has a self-perpetuating character, but so does integration. Children who grow up in integrated schools
lead more integrated lives and are better equipped to deal with diversity in their adult lives.60 In a nation where
more than 45% of all students (and half of those in the first grade) are nonwhite, where immigration is
overwhelmingly nonwhite, and where Latino families are younger and larger than white families, racial change
will continue regardless of immigration restrictions. Figuring out how to have successful multiracial schools and
communities is not a minor concern, it must be a central part of any plan to manage a successful transition to a
society changing dramatically between generations. A successful multiracial democracy depends upon
understanding each other and learning to work together across lines of race and ethnicity.
When military leaders told the Supreme Court in 2003 that affirmative action in college was essential
because a military system without a successfully integrated leadership cannot be effective,61 they were not
talking about liberal ideology. Instead they were responding to the disastrous wartime conflicts between officers
and enlisted men of different races that damaged the army. The same necessity for diverse staff and leaders who
can work together well is true for those who provide services or market products to a multiracial clientele in
America’s great economic institutions. This is no longer just a positive thing, it is a critical necessity. The
ability to work across lines of difference is one of the most important of the “soft skills” that employers value in
making decisions about who to hire and promote.
In the coming decades, ways to foster positive, diverse environments need to be worked out in all of our
institutions. Public schools, which serve almost nine-tenths of U.S. students, are by far the most important
institutions to make this happen. If we learn how to live, work and run organizations together successfully, then
young people of all races and ethnicities will gain. If we fail, then we will face a far more divided and
disappointing future. Desegregation is an educational treatment, but it is also much more than that. It is about
building a successful, highly functioning, democratic society in an incredibly diverse nation.

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

This report begins and ends with discussions of law and policy related to school segregation, and with a review
of research on its consequences. Its empirical core is based on the enrollment statistics provided for more than
four decades by public schools and assembled into data sets by the federal government.62 The basic facts we
compute from these data are about changes in the racial and poverty composition of the American school
population. We examine the degree of segregation, based on several different measures, that all major racial and
ethnic groups experience and the relationship between racial/ethnic segregation and segregation by poverty. We
look at the way in which these relationships play out by race and class in various regions of the nation, in the
individual states and in the major metropolitan areas.63
NATIONAL TRENDS

Dramatic Growth in Diversity of U.S. School Enrollment

Enrollment in U.S. public schools surged after World War II as returning soldiers, a booming economy, and
the development of millions of units of affordable suburban housing created conditions for the “baby boom.”
The 1950 Census reported 25.1 million public school students, the 1960 Census counted 35.2 million, and by
1970 it was 45.9 million, nearly doubling in two decades. During this time period, there was little immigration,
a huge increase in the numbers of white and black students, and the creation of thousands of new suburban
schools, many in large post-war housing developments on what had been farmland outside of the cities.
Nonwhite immigration, largely blocked by discriminatory legislation until 1965, began to soar in the 1970s as
the white baby boom began to decline and family size decreased. A vast movement of white families into
racially homogeneous suburban communities began shortly after World War II and had already transformed
metropolitan America before the federal fair housing law was enacted in 1968.64 By the l960s, schools in the
nation’s large cities were becoming institutions that served largely minority and poor children.
It was during this period that serious urban desegregation issues arose and many school districts came under
court-ordered desegregation or negotiated desegregation plans with federal civil rights officials. After the
Supreme Court’s l971 Swann decision ordering desegregation of southern cities, and the 1973 Keyes decision
extending more limited requirements to many northern and western cities, the country entered a massive
demographic transformation, the nature and significance of which would not become apparent for years to
come.
We did not care enough about school segregation to collect national data on it until the civil rights
transformation of the 1960s. Thanks to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the federal government began to gather
enrollment data from public schools, allowing us to trace yearly changes and observe the emergence of what
would become the nation’s largest minority population, the Latinos. There had been no collection of national
school data on Latinos, or even an official definition of them as a statistical category, until the Office for Civil
Rights started compiling national school enrollment data by race and ethnicity in 1967.65 In 1970, as the urban
desegregation struggle began, Latino students made up only 5% of the enrollment, concentrated in just 8 states.
Little over half of one percent of the enrollment was comprised of Asian and American Indian students. Four-
fifths of all students were white.
All of the vast growth in the diversity of American schools came after the civil rights era. Between 1970 and
2009, the white enrollment fell from four-fifths of U.S. students to little more than half (53.7%) (See Table 15.1,
Figure 15.1). The national share of black students grew slowly, from 15% to 16.5% over nearly four decades.
The proportion of American Indians tripled to 1.3%. A huge surge in the Asian enrollment brought Asians from
a half a percent to 5%, making Asians a significant share of the enrollment in some states and cities. The most
historic change, however, came in the Latino enrollment, which soared from a twentieth of U.S. students to
nearly one-fourth. Another way to look at the growth in the Latino enrollment is to consider that it went from
one-third of the black share of U.S. students to being substantially larger than the black share of students. The
proportion of Latino students also expanded from being a very regional population, largely concentrated in the
Southwest and a few cities elsewhere, to being a group with a significant presence in many states. Today, Latino
students are becoming the dominant minority enrollment in the western half of the U.S.

Table 15.1 Public School Enrollment

NOTE: * Data not calculated or reported. AI=American Indian.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. Data prior to 1991 obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data
in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political
Studies.

Figure 15.1 Public School Enrollment

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. Data prior to 1991 obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data
in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political
Studies.
NOTE: AI=American Indian.

These are extraordinarily dramatic changes in the composition of U.S. schools. Whites and blacks together
accounted for 94% of the national total in 1970 and thus it is not surprising that desegregation policy was
framed as a black-white issue. But now 30% of students come from other backgrounds, and many school
districts have three or more racial and ethnic groups, including hundreds of districts that were virtually all white
during the civil rights era.
The big story is that the U.S. now has a school system with a rapidly disappearing white majority. The
2009-10 first grade enrollment, an excellent predictor of the future of our schools, shows that whites make up
only 52% of students, while Latinos make up 25% (Figure 15.2). Latinos are younger than the other racial and
ethnic groups, meaning they have, on average, more child bearing years as well as larger families. The Great
Recession has lowered the birth rates of all groups in the U.S. substantially, and has virtually stopped net
immigration from Latin America, so changes may be slowed in the near term. Yet the direction of change is
clear and people already residing in the U.S. drive it. Given the birth rates and age structure of the U.S.
population, these shifts are virtually certain to continue, even without more immigration. But since immigration
to the U.S. is largely for economic advancement, it is likely to resume as the job market recovers.
After many years of substantial growth in the number of high school graduates, the last decade has produced
few increases. We can expect the next to produce a substantial decline. The number of high school graduates
grew 32% from 1995 to 2007. In l995 the graduating class was still 72% white, which fell to 62% by 2009 and
is projected to be only 57% white by 2020 if existing trends continue. From 2007 to 2020, the federal
government predicts a drop of 3% in public school graduates and a 27% decline in graduates from private and
religious schools.66 One can look at the failures of American civil rights and educational policies of the last
generation and say that they did not devastate our progress, because we had people to spare and people eager to
come from all over the world and work in our society. Now, however, the number of qualified young entrants
into the work force is likely to shrink.

Nationwide Segregation Deepens for Black and Latino Students on Most Measures
We examine the segregation of students at the national, regional, state and metropolitan levels using three
different measures. For each level of geography, we begin with the concentration of black and Latino students
in 50–100%, 90–100% and 99–100% minority schools. In the national section, we also examine the racial
distribution of students attending multiracial schools. Next, we present the average exposure and isolation of
different racial groups in schools. The Index of Dissimilarity, a broad measure that examines how evenly
students are distributed across schools, follows. We conclude by examining the intersection of racial isolation
and concentrated poverty.

Figure 15.2 First Grade Public School Enrollment in 2009–10

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.
NOTE: AI=American Indian.

Concentration: Black and Latino Students in Segregated Minority Schools; Students of All Races in
Multiracial Schools
Back in 1968, when national statistics were first becoming available from the U.S. Department of
Education’s Office for Civil Rights, more than three-fourths of black students and slightly over half of Latino
students attended schools where most of their classmates were non-white (see Table 15.2). In intensely
segregated schools with 0 to 10% white enrollment, the differences were even more dramatic. Almost two-
thirds of black students were in intensely isolated schools 14 years after Brown v. Board of Education, while
less than a quarter of Latinos students attended similar settings. It looked like Latinos were destined to
experience far less severe segregation, perhaps showing the kind of intergenerational mobility experienced by
earlier European immigrants or current Asian immigrants.
By 1980, however, as Latino immigration surged and as a severe recession hit, Latinos were more likely
than blacks to be in majority minority schools (those where less than 50% of the student body is white).
Meanwhile, black segregation in intensely segregated schools (those where less than 10% of the student body is
white) had dropped dramatically because of urban desegregation plans. In contrast to the effectiveness of these
plans for black students, the Keyes case (the Supreme Court decision recognizing Latino desegregation rights)
came after the civil rights era and was only seriously enforced in a handful of cities.
In 1991, the year the Supreme Court handed down the Dowell case authorizing a return to segregated
neighborhood schools, Latinos had become more segregated from whites than black students. In most
desegregation plans, designed before the Latino growth, Latinos were simply ignored. After Dowell, the plans
were dissolved before their rights were ever enforced.

Table 15.2 Percentage of Racial Group in Minority Schools

NOTE: * Data not calculated. Minority school represents black, Latino, American Indian, and Asian students.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. Data prior to 1991 obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data
in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political
Studies.

A decade later, both groups had become more segregated by race (and poverty),67 a trend that continues in
the new 2009–10 data presented here. Four of every five Latino students, and three-fourths of black students,
were attending majority minority schools in 2001. In the same year, fully 42% of Latinos and 38% of blacks
were in intensely segregated schools. At the national level there was no sign at all of desegregation progress for
Latino students, who became steadily more isolated.
The eight years from 2001 to 2009 are basically a time of stagnating resegregation. In spite of a dramatic
growth in the suburbanization of nonwhite families, 80% of Latino students and 74% of black students
remained in majority nonwhite schools, while 43% of Latinos and 38% of blacks attended intensely segregated
schools. These figures have remained stable over the past decade. The only progress is at the most extreme level
of segregation, in what we call “apartheid schools,” where 99–100% of the students are nonwhite. Of course,
given the massive growth of Latino enrollments, the absolute numbers of Latinos experiencing intense
segregation have tripled since the early 1990s (Table 15.3).
Another fundamental demographic change of recent decades is shown in the rising proportions of students
from all racial/ethnic groups attending schools that are multiracial (Table 15.4). We define these settings as
schools with at least a tenth of their students coming from at least three groups. Asians, who on average have
the highest academic achievement levels,68 also attend the most multiracial schools. Two-fifths of Asians attend
multiraciall schools, compared to a little over a quarter of Latinos and blacks and about one-sixth of whites.
There is very little research on the nature and impact of multiracial diversity, even as more students begin to
experience these types of school settings.

Exposure: A Measure of Interracial Contact

The cause of segregation is important in making legal determinations about what can be ordered or allowed
to solve the problems, but it is not a key to the educational effects. The impacts come from creating a different
peer group for students and all of the factors that are related to different patterns of social capital and
educational resources both at home and in the school. There cannot be a desegregation impact without
interracial contact, and interracial contact creates potential benefits. The level of actual benefits depends upon
whether or not the conditions of successful integration are created within the school and its classrooms, neither
of which can be measured with the data used in this report.

Table 15.3 Number of Students in Schools of Different Levels of Segregation, by Race

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Table 15.4 Percentage of Racial Group in Multiracial Schools

NOTE: Multiracial schools are those with any three races representing 10% or more of the total student population respectively.
Mixed race students were excluded for 2009 calculation. Mixed race students were excluded for 2009 calculation.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Black and Latino exposure to white students has been very low over the past several decades. At the
national level, the share of white classmates for black and Latino students has been continuously declining for
three decades (Figure 15.3). After there were major gains in integration for black students from the mid-1960s
through the mid-1970s, and slower gains continuing into the mid-1980s, the pattern was reversed. The
improvement associated with urban desegregation plans was lost as they were dissolved or reached the point
where involvement of the suburbs was the only workable strategy (but blocked by the Court’s 1974 Milliken
decision). Black students’ average contact with whites gained until the late 1980s even though the proportion of
white students in the country was declining. After the Supreme Court authorized resegregation in l991,
however, this trend was overturned and black-white exposure is now below what it was in the late 1960s.
The picture for Latinos is worse because there has never been a time of real progress since national data was
first collected (Figure 15.3). Segregation in most areas was relatively modest when the number of Latinos was
small. There has been a continuous rise in segregation for over forty years, however, interrupted in only a
handful of areas where it was seriously addressed by the courts. But even those efforts have now been
abandoned for a long time. No other immigrant groups experienced the kind of intense long-term isolation in
neighborhoods that blacks and Latinos are experiencing.
Exposure indices are very much affected by the relative size of the racial groups. Thus, it is important to
keep a racial group’s proportion in mind when interpreting such findings. It is also necessary to monitor the gap
between racial proportion and exposure rates over time. In 1991, when whites were 66.1% of the population, the
average white student attended school that was 82.7% white—a gap of 16.6%. In 2009, when whites were
53.7% of the population, the average white student attended school that was 74.9% white—a gap of 21.2%.
Thus, the typical white student in 2009 is experiencing greater diversity than twenty years ago, but, at the same
time, this student is still encountering high isolation with their own racial group.

Figure 15.3 Percentage of White Students in School of a Typical Black, Latino, and White
Student

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. Data prior to 1991 obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data
in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political
Studies.

For a typical black student in the U.S., exposure to white and other black students has declined over the
years, as exposure to Latino students has nearly doubled (Table 15.5). There has also been a sharp increase in
the exposure of the average white student to Latinos in their schools (last column in Table 15.6), but a decrease
in the exposure of the average Latino student to whites (third column in Table 15.6). The basic national pattern
is for white students to have slightly more nonwhite classmates, but for nonwhite students to have fewer white
classmates. These trends reflect the decline in the white share of students, as well as the dismantling of
desegregation plans. Between 1991 and 2009, the share of nonwhite schoolmates for the typical white student
increased from 17% to 25%, still dramatically less than the national proportion of nonwhites. Blacks and
Latinos also have disproportionately fewer white and Asian classmates than the overall share of white and Asian
enrollment. Across the years, around a 30% difference is apparent (Table 15.7).

Table 15.5 Exposure Rates for the Typical Black Student in Public Schools

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Table 15.6 Exposure Rates to Latino Students for the Typical White Student and
Exposure Rates for the Typical Latino in Public Schools

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Evenness: A Measure of Spatial Distribution

Some critics of previous reports showing increasing isolation of black and Latino students in public schools
claim that they are misleading. They contend that in a society where the proportion of whites has declined
significantly and the proportion of Latinos has grown very rapidly, even a perfect distribution of students in a
nonracial way would produce less contact, particularly between Latinos and whites. This is of course true.

Table 15.7 Black and Latino Exposure Rates to White and Asian Students in Public
Schools
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

One way of looking at this issue is to examine segregation trends using a measure known as the
Dissimilarity Index. This index is a measure of the degree to which students of any two groups are distributed
evenly among schools. If all schools in the country had the same proportions of students of two racial or ethnic
groups as the national total, this index would be 0. If, at the other extreme, all schools were completely
segregated and had only students of one or the other group, the index would be 1.0.
There are a number of drawbacks to using the Index of Dissimilarity. It is a very broad way of looking at
segregation trends69 and can only be used to compare the spatial distribution of two groups at one time.70 It does
not measure the racial composition of individual schools, only the degree to which students from two groups are
evenly distributed among schools within the area under study. Because of these limitations, we supplement the
Dissimilarity Index with the other segregation measures found in this report.
Figure 15.4 shows that, although the national isolation of black students as measured by exposure levels has
increased,71 black-white dissimilarity was high in 1991 and remains virtually the same in 2009–10. This pattern
indicates that much of the national change in isolation is caused by change in racial proportions, not by more
unequal distribution among schools. Yet there is an important difference in the South, where desegregation
efforts were concentrated and where the dropping of desegregation plans is linked to increased segregation for
blacks.72 As the accompanying report on the South shows, black-white school dissimilarity in the region
increased slightly, from .55 in 1991 to .57 in 2009. So where there were serious desegregation efforts, mostly in
the South, we can see some evidence of policy-related reversals.
Since there was no significant policy effort to desegregate Latino students, massive demographic forces
clearly dominate the changes in the past 18 years. The white–Latino school dissimilarity levels were very high
and have improved, though are still worse than the black–white dissimilarity level. Again, there were never
significant desegregation efforts for this group and the dramatic increase in the proportion of Latinos has
accounted for the sharp increase in isolation.

Double Segregation by Race and Poverty

Black and Latino segregation is almost always double segregation by both race and poverty. We measure
poverty by eligibility for free and reduced price school lunches (FRL), which requires families to document
income below a level the federal government defines as poor. By this measure the share of poor children in U.S.
schools has grown substantially from 2001 to 2009 (Table 15.8). Exposure to poor students has also risen for
each racial group member. However, the stark differences in exposure to poor students between the typical
white student and the typical black or Latino student is constant over the last 10 years. Over time, the average
white student has gone to a school where poor students account for a quarter to over a third of the enrollment.
The typical black or Latino student experiences close to double that figure—almost two-thirds of their peers are
low-income.

Figure 15.4 Index of Dissimilarity Scores

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

At the individual level, poverty is associated with many conditions that are related to lower school
attainment. These include poor nutrition and health care, few educational resources at home, frequent
involuntary moves disrupting school continuity, weaker preschool training, and more exposure to violence and
abuse.73 At the school level, schools of concentrated poverty have less experienced teachers, more remedial and
special education classes, many more non-English speaking children, lower achieving peers, fewer honors and
AP classes, lower graduation rates and much weaker connections to college, among other inequalities.74
Recently, Stanford Professor Sean Reardon received a great deal of attention for his findings that the deepening
economic inequalities in the U.S. mean that poverty is now even more related than race to school outcomes.75 In
the current U.S. pattern, however, almost all intensely segregated minority schools, but very few all-white
schools, are associated with concentrated poverty. So the children in intensely segregated minority schools are
exposed to deeply damaging double segregation, by race and poverty. For Latino students, the correlation
between a school’s percent Latino and percent poor is a very high .71, on a scale in which 1.0 would be a
perfect relationship. It is lower, but high, for black students (.53). Of course many minority-segregated schools
serve both black and Latino students. The correlation between the combined percentages of these underserved
two groups and the percent of poor children is a dismaying .85 (Table 15.9).

Table 15.8 Student Exposure Rates to Poor Students in Public Schools

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Summary of National Trends

 These national trends indicate that segregation for black and Latino students is worsening in terms of their
contact with white students. Very high shares of black and Latino students are also concentrated in intensely
segregated minority and apartheid school settings where 90–100% and 99–100% of the students are minority,
respectively. For black students, current trends represent a reversal of progress made during the height of
desegregation. For Latino students, the trends have steadily worsened over time. Measures of evenness
(dissimilarity) characterize the only positive trend, with the dissimilarity index showing a modest decline in the
spatial separation of black and Latino students from white students. This could be influenced by the movement
of minority families into suburbs, which has often brought whites and minorities into closer geographic
proximity with one another—proximity that is likely temporary unless action is taken to prevent racial
transition.76

Table 15.9 Relationship between Poor Students and Race of Students in Public Schools

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

REGIONAL TRENDS

Though national trends tell the general story, schools in America’s regions77 are different in terms of their level
and type of diversity, amount of overall population growth, and rates of change. It is important, then, to
compare these large sections of the nation to understand the different realities and how they have changed. In
areas west of the Mississippi, the story of race relations is fundamentally a Latino-white story with significant
Asian, black, and, in some areas, American Indian populations. In contrast, in parts of the old South and the
aging industrial North, it is fundamentally a black-white story with relatively small immigrant populations.

Enrollment in U.S. Regions Varies and Grows More Diverse

Over the past four decades, the white student share of enrollment has steadily declined across every region
of the country (Table 15.10). The most marked decrease occurred in the West, which was transformed by
increased immigration from Latin America and Asia in the last third of the 20th century. Since 1970, the share
of white students in the West has dropped nearly 40 percentage points. In both the West and South, the nation’s
two most populous and racially diverse regions, whites are now the racial minority. Indeed, these areas of the
country, where the economy and the population have grown most rapidly, are highly diverse. Only in the
Northeast (which includes the heavily white states of Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire) and towards the
interior of the country, the Midwest and Border (American Civil War “Border”) regions, do white students still
comprise the largest share of the population.
Latino students account for the majority of growth in the nonwhite population. Though the enrollment of
Latino students has increased throughout the country and is growing rapidly in many areas formerly lacking
traditional Latino communities, Latino enrollment remains concentrated in the West, South and Northeast. Since
1970, the share of Latino students has tripled to 40% in the West, quadrupled to 16% in the Northeast and
nearly quintupled to roughly 25% in the South. The vast scale and speed of these changes make them hard for
districts, schools and communities to understand and adapt to.
Black students continue to make up the largest share of the enrollment in the South, where more than a
quarter of students identify as black. The Border region had the second largest share of black students (about
20%) in 2009, followed by the Northeast (15%). Over the past four decades, the share of black students has
increased in the Northeast, Border and Midwest regions, and has remained largely steady in the South and West.
Across all regions, the Asian student population has been increasing, from less than 1% in 1970 to more
than 3% in 2009. At 8%, the West had by far the largest share of Asian students, a figure that has doubled since
1970. It is also significantly higher than the share of black students in the West.
American Indian students constitute less than 1% of the population in most regions, with the exception of
the West (1.9%) and the Border states (3.9%). American Indian and Alaskan native students, however, make up
roughly a quarter of the student population in Alaska.
Students identifying with a mixed racial heritage constituted a new category in federal statistics in 2009. The
share of mixed-race students remains very small in most regions (less than 1% of the total enrollment). The
multiracial West reported the largest percentage, hovering just under 2%, of mixed-race students. New counting
methods in 2010 will produce significant increases in these numbers and changing marriage patterns also mean
that they will grow. A few states implemented the new federal categories in 2009-10 and we examined the data
to see whether there were sufficient changes to require major adjustments in the report. There were not, but we
expect when these standards are widely implemented—particularly in states where mixed race marriages are
most common—it may be quite difficult to discern the trends accurately. This is because significant numbers of
students previously counted as black, for example, will end up in a mixed race category. The way in which the
Census form is created also may change the number of mixed race students who are counted as Latino.

Table 15.10 Public School Enrollment by Region

NOTE: * Data not calculated or reported. AI=American Indian.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. Data prior to 1991 obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data
in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political
Studies.

The first grade enrollment by region shows that the Border states, the Midwest, and the Northeast will likely
maintain a substantial white majority in their schools for a significant period into the future, but figures for the
South and West reflect much more dynamic changes (Figure 15.5). The South, which has traditionally been the
home of most African Americans, may soon have a larger Latino than African American enrollment. The
southern region is likely to become a profoundly tri-racial area in which whites will be the largest minority, at
least for a time. The West, on the other hand, already reports that less than two-fifths of its first graders are
white. There are substantially more Latino students than white students, only one student in twenty is black, one
in thirteen Asian, and one in fifty American Indian. This is a racial and ethnic pattern never seen before in U.S.
schools and one that has received extremely little national attention. Obviously if we were to seriously pursue
integrated education, remedies devised in the 1960s-era South have to be dramatically reframed in this much
more complex and very heavily Latino setting.

Figure 15.5 First Grade Public School Enrollment by Region in 2009–2010

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Segregation Intensifying in Many U.S. Regions

Concentration: Black and Latino Students in Segregated Minority Schools
For over four decades, Latino students in nearly every region have experienced steadily rising levels of
concentration in intensely segregated minority settings (places of learning where nonwhite students make up
90–100% of the population). In the West, the share of Latino students in such settings has increased fourfold,
from approximately 12% in 1968 to 43% in 2009 (Table 15.11). This is significantly higher than the segregation
of blacks in the South.
In 1968, the first year the federal government began systematically collecting national school enrollment
statistics by race, Latino students experienced the most severe patterns of segregation in the Northeast. In that
year, more than two-fifths of Latino students attended intensely segregated minority schools, a statistic held
virtually constant over the past four decades in a region with limited desegregation efforts. The West and South
reported similar levels of concentration for Latino students in the most recent data, and also represent two areas
where significantly higher shares of Latinos are enrolled in intensely segregated school settings than black
students.
In terms of black students, the most intense historical concentrations in majority-minority or intensely
segregated minority settings were in the de jure segregated South, along with the Border and Midwest. These
areas also experienced the most marked declines in such concentrations during the era of active desegregation
oversight and enforcement. In the South, almost 80% of black students attended intensely segregated settings in
1968, a figure that fell very sharply to 23% by 1980. The Northeast—where the presence of small, deeply
fragmented school districts and severe housing segregation foster patterns of school racial and socioeconomic
isolation—is the only region where the segregation of black students in 90–100% minority schools increased
every decade between 1968 and 2001.
During the 1990s, as court oversight of desegregation came to a close in many districts and rapid
demographic transition ensued, the share of black and Latino students enrolled in majority-minority or intensely
segregated minority schools increased markedly in most regions. Today, five years after the Court’s Parents
Involved decision and more than two decades since the Dowell decision, significant majorities of black and
Latino students attend predominately minority schools in every region. The share of black students enrolled in
intensely segregated schools hovers between 30 and 40% in all areas except in the highly segregated Northeast,
where fully half of all black students attend hypersegregated educational settings. Black students are also highly
segregated in the Midwest, where 45% of all black students attend a school where 90–100% of the students are
racial minorities. Major metropolitan areas in these regions were strongly impacted by the 1974 Milliken
decision that made urban-suburban desegregation very difficult.
Schools under apartheid-like conditions—where whites constitute zero to 1% of the enrollment—represent
an even more extreme form of segregation. The Northeast and Midwest report the highest shares of black
students in these 99–100% minority settings. In the Midwest almost one in every four black students enrolls in a
setting of near absolute segregation. It is interesting to note that the nation’s most diverse regions report the
lowest shares of black and Latino students attending 99–100% minority settings. Still, more than 10% of black
students in the South experience similar educational conditions, and 20% do so in the Border states. More than
60 years after the Brown decision rendered the separate but equal doctrine null and void, these figures for black
students highlight a significant reversion to the all-black schools mandated during the Jim Crow era.
Latino students are less likely than blacks to enroll in 99–100% minority schools, but the highest shares do
so in the Northeast, South and West. Nearly 13% of Latino students in the Northeast attend schools where
whites constitute 1% or less of the population, and more than 10% experience similar settings in the southern
and western regions of the country. Yet only on this measure of extreme segregation do African Americans now
fare worse than Latinos.

Table 15.11 Percentage of Racial Group in Minority Schools

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment. Minority school represents black, Latino, American Indian, and Asian students.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data. Data prior to 1991 obtained from the analysis of the Office of Civil Rights data
in Orfield, G. (1983). Public School Desegregation in the United States, 1968-1980. Washington, D.C.: Joint Center for Political
Studies.

Exposure: A Measure of Interracial Contact

In a society growing ever more diverse, the ability to communicate and relate effectively across racial lines
becomes increasingly important. It is concerning, then, that white students remain severely isolated nationally
and in every region—even as their exposure to students of color has increased since 1991. Whites are most
isolated in the Midwest, Border and Northeast regions, where the typical white student goes to a school where
more than 80% of their peers are also white (Table 15.12).
Beyond the “soft skills” that flow from learning to live and work with students from diverse backgrounds,
simply sitting next to a white student does not guarantee better educational outcomes for students of color.
Instead, the resources—both material and human—that are consistently linked to predominately white and/or
wealthy schools help foster serious advantages over minority segregated settings.100 For these reasons, it
remains vital to explore and understand the extent to which other racial groups are exposed to white students.

Table 15.12 Exposure Rates to White Students in Public Schools

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Black students in every region have experienced a slight decline in exposure to whites—exposure levels that
remain very disproportionate to the overall share of white students in each region. In the South, for example,
white students made up roughly 47% of the overall population, but the typical black student in 2009 enrolled in
a setting where whites made up about 30% of their peer group. Average Latino exposure to white students in the
South is even lower than the figures for black students.
Latino students experience similar disparities in exposure to white students, and also enroll in schools with
slowly declining shares of whites in every region except the Northeast. The typical Latino student in the
Northeast has experienced very low and stagnant levels of exposure to whites over the past two decades. In
2009, white students constituted about 62% of the enrollment in the northeastern region, and the average Latino
student went to a school that was about 27% white.
Asian students, meanwhile, experience the highest levels of exposure to whites in each region where data
were available. The typical Asian student in the Northeast heads to a school where whites make up about 48%
of the enrollment, compared to roughly 42% of the overall enrollment in the region. It should be noted,
however, that the broad category of “Asian” encompasses many different nationalities and experience differing
levels of segregation and educational opportunity. Refugee populations from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam tend
to have higher levels of poverty, lower average parent education, and less educational success. Conversely,
highly educated immigrant populations from countries including Korea, India, China and elsewhere experience
high levels of integration and educational and economic success.101

Evenness: A Measure of Spatial Distribution

The Dissimilarity Index, a measure of the degree to which two populations are evenly distributed among the
schools within an area, shows that black-white school segregation has fallen slowly in several regions of the
country, including the Northeast and Midwest, where segregation has traditionally been the most extreme (Table
15.13). Still, this measure indicates that the level of black-white school segregation remains very high. In 2009,
fully 73% (D=.73) of black or white students in the Northeast would have to attend a different, more diverse
school in order to achieve the perfect integration of black and white students, compared to 77% in 1991. (Recall
that values less than .30 are considered low levels of segregation, any values between .30 and .60 are considered
moderate, and any figure above .60 is considered high.) At this rate, it will be a very long time before race does
not matter in terms of school enrollment patterns.
In the South, black-white school segregation rose slightly by this measure in the two decades that court-
ordered desegregation waned. Nevertheless, the South still reports the lowest level of school segregation
compared to other regions of the country; as it is the region of the country that took the most proactive steps to
integrate its students.
The dissimilarity measure also shows that segregation between black and Latino students has decreased to
somewhat moderate levels over the past two decades. In the South, for example, nearly 80% of black or Latino
students would have needed to attend schools with a greater proportion of the other racial group in order to
achieve perfect integration in 1991, compared to 66% in 2009. Similar patterns have occurred nationally, and in
the West, Midwest and Northeast. The relationship between these two groups inheriting many central cities and
older suburbs is very important, but little understood. And as housing markets change, bringing together two
different disadvantaged groups in the same schools could either increase understanding or foster polarization. It
is obviously important that school officials create conditions for positive relationships.

Table 15.13 Segregation of Students in Public Schools by Region

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment. A change in .10 in D represents a significant change in segregation levels across
years.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Double Segregation by Race and Poverty

In terms of poverty (as measured by the share of students qualifying for free and reduced priced lunches), all
regions report a marked increase in poor students over the past decade (Table 15.14). The nation’s two most
racially diverse regions, the South and the West, also have the highest shares of poor students. More than 50%
of students in these regions qualified for free and reduced priced lunch in 2009. The Northeastern and
Midwestern regions of the country report lower levels of student poverty. Some areas historically considered
wealthy, such as California, now have very substantial shares of children growing up in poverty. Across every
region, white and Asian students were exposed to significantly lower levels of student poverty than black or
Latino students. In some cases, like in the Northeast, the typical Asian student was exposed to lower levels of
poverty than whites.
The most disparate levels of exposure to poor students by race occurred in the Northeast, where black and
Latino students attend schools with well over twice the share of poor students than white students. Specifically,
in 2009, the typical white student in the Northeast went to a school where roughly 25% of the students qualified
for free and reduced price lunch. Meanwhile the average black or Latino student in the region enrolled in a
school where roughly 63% of the students qualified were considered poor. The share of poor students in the
typical black student’s school was highest (65.9%) in the Midwest.
The intersection of intense segregation by race and poverty—and the related barriers to educational
opportunity—has detrimental consequences for black and Latino students in every part of the country. Schools
where poverty is concentrated are systematically associated with numerous barriers to educational equity,
including high rates of teacher and staff turnover, outdated and unchallenging curricula, limited extracurricular
offerings, low achievement and poor graduation rates.102 The very high level of student poverty is, in part, a
reflection of the intense polarization of incomes in the U.S.103
Looking at enrollment and segregation patterns for the nation’s largest metros, it is evident that we have no
policy for creating successfully diverse schools on a metropolitan level. Our great urban regions with
remarkably different histories and traditions are sadly consistent in enrolling their students in patterns likely to
perpetuate and even deepen intergenerational inequality. We went from the early 1950s, when many issues of
racial inequality could have been solved by handling the development of public housing and suburbs differently,
to a period of massive construction of predominately white suburbia, amid fateful decisions to neither integrate
nor equalize opportunities in city and suburban schools. In the last third of a century, the country has done very
little to address the issues of race and poverty, supporting instead economic and social policies that increased
economic inequality to historic levels and radically reduced urban policies and social support—all while vastly
increasing incarceration rates.104
These issues have not disappeared. Readers need to think about the implications of the patterns we report for
opportunity, equality, and race relations in their own metropolitan areas.

FINDINGS

This report highlights four broad themes. First, the nation’s public school enrollment has shifted dramatically
since 1970 when fully 80% of students were white. The most recent data (2009–2010) indicates that white
students constitute roughly 54% of the U.S. enrollment. This figure varies across regions and is well below 50%
in both the West and the South. At the same time, the share of Latino students has soared from one-twentieth of
U.S. students in 1970 to nearly one-fourth (22.8%) in 2009. Because of the higher birth rates documented
among minority groups and the overall age structure of the U.S. population,105 these changes will likely
continue to transform the national school enrollment for many decades to come.

Table 15.14 Student Exposure Rates to Poor Students in Public Schools

NOTE: * Less than 4.5% of a racial enrollment.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), Public
Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey Data.

Second, levels of school segregation are deepening for black and Latino students, according to two
segregation indices that rely upon the racial composition of schools. According to these indicators, the average
black and Latino student has experienced rising concentration in 50–100% and 90–100% minority schools,
declining exposure to white students, and persistent disproportional exposure to poor students. The third
measure, dissimilarity, showed a slight decline in still high levels of black-white and Latino-white national
school segregation. Given the massive shifts in enrollment, it is logical that white students would experience
growing exposure to different racial/ethnic groups, and that black, Latino and Asian students would enroll in
schools with relatively fewer white students, even with no policy changes. It is also possible that students from
different racial groups are being spread—temporarily or otherwise—more evenly across different levels of
geography, as minority families continue to migrate to the suburbs. A snapshot of the racial patterns in any
given year makes it look like these racially changing areas are integrated, and not in transition, but that often
proves incorrect.
Beyond the logic of changing demography, however, are persistently high—and in many cases worsening—
levels of isolation and concentration for black students since the judicial rollback of school desegregation began
in the 1990s. These spikes have occurred in spite of declines in black-white residential segregation.106
Meanwhile, Latino students, who were ignored under most older desegregation plans, have become steadily
more isolated from whites over the past four decades and are now the most segregated group of students in the
country.
The third critical finding is that the share of black students attending intensely segregated minority schools
has jumped considerably in the formerly de jure segregated states of the South. In 1991, just before judicial
retrenchment on school desegregation began, a quarter of the region’s black students were in 90–100% minority
schools. Twenty years later, a third of southern black students enrolled in similarly segregated settings.
Furthermore, during the era of court-ordered desegregation and enforcement, virtually no southern states
appeared in the rankings of the most segregated states for black students. More recently, though, the rollback of
desegregation efforts has led to a situation where at least 3 to 4 southern states have emerged in the top 20 on
selected measures of black student segregation. Fully 8 of the 20 states reporting the highest figures for students
attending schools under apartheid conditions—places of learning where white students make up 1% (or less) of
the enrollment—are in the South or Border states. All of these figures represent significant backsliding on civil
rights progress in the regions most impacted by Brown and the l964 Civil Rights Act.
The fourth and final theme is an on-going and significant overlap between racially isolated schools and
schools of concentrated poverty, what we call double segregation. The share of poor children (as measured by
free and reduced priced lunch eligibility) in U.S. schools has grown substantially in the last three decades. With
the growth in the number of students facing family poverty, all groups of students go to school, on average, with
more poor children than they have in the past. For the typical white student, the share of poor students in their
school has moved from a seventh to more than a third, but large majorities of middle class students still enroll in
the schools most whites and Asians attend. By contrast, the average Latino and black student in the early 1990s
attended a school where roughly a third of students were poor—but now attend schools that are nearly two-
thirds poor. The differential racial exposure to concentrated school poverty is a fundamental reason why
segregation is so strongly related to educational inequality. Recent research has argued that concentrated
poverty is even more related to educational inequality than racial segregation.107 Unfortunately, most black and
Latino students attend schools where both disadvantages accumulate, whereas most white and Asian students
are in schools where the advantages related to their racial background are accompanied by a middle class peer
group.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The public schools of the U.S. are becoming more segregated. This isolation continues to severely limit
educational opportunities for African American and Latino students, as well as the opportunity for all students
to learn to live and work effectively in a multiracial society. High levels of segregation exist across the country
and are particularly egregious for Latinos in all regions and for African Americans experiencing resegregation
in the South. Although demographic changes are important in influencing the degree of isolation, it is clear that
legal and policy decisions were very critical, both in the rise of white-black integration for several decades and
in the decline that followed the Supreme Court decisions of the 1990s. Yet in spite of the obstacles, there are
many ways in which diversity could be fostered. What follows are a number of concrete actions and policies
that could begin to turn us in a different direction.

Creating Awareness
Before we can solve the problems we face, people must understand what has happened and its implications
for the nation and their communities. With the on-going failure of the political leadership’s willingness to face
these issues, there are vital roles for other sectors in terms of producing and disseminating important
information.

• Professional associations, teachers’ organizations, and colleges of education need to make educators and
 communities fully aware of the nature and costs of existing segregation.
• Civil rights organizations and community organizations supporting integration should study the existing
trends, and observe and participate in the boundary changes, school siting decisions and other key
policies that make schools more segregated or more integrated.
• Local communities and fair housing organizations must monitor their real estate market to make sure that
potential home buyers are not being steered away from areas with diverse schools.
• Community institutions and churches need to facilitate discussions about the values of diverse education
and help raise community awareness about its benefits.
• Local journalists should cover the relationships between segregation and unequal educational outcomes
and realities, in addition to providing coverage of high quality, diverse schools.
• The federal government must sponsor serious research on segregation and its alternatives. Little activity
in this direction has occurred by the U.S. Department of Education since the l970s.
• Foundations should fund research dedicated to exploring the continuing harms of segregation and the
benefits of well implemented integration policies.
• Researchers and advocates need to analyze and publicize the racial patterns and practices of public
charter schools.

Advocacy
• Local fair housing organizations should monitor land use and zoning decisions, and advocate for low-
income housing set asides in developing new communities attached to strong schools, as has been done
in Montgomery County, just outside Washington, D.C.
• Local educational organizations and neighborhood associations should vigorously promote diverse
communities and schools as highly desirable places to live and learn, an essential step in breaking the
momentum of flight and transition in diverse communities.
• Efforts should be made to foster the development of suburban coalitions to influence state-level policy-
making around issues of school diversity and equity.
• Communities need to provide consistent and vocal support for promoting school diversity and recognize
the power of local school boards to either advocate for integration or work against it.
• Nonprofits and foundations funding charter schools should not incentivize the development of racially
and economically isolated programs.

Enforcing the Law

• Many communities have failed to comply with long-standing desegregation plans and have not been
released by the federal courts or the Office for Civil Rights. Such noncompliance and/or more
contemporary violations are grounds for a new or revised desegregation order. Many suburban districts
that never had a desegregation order, because they were virtually all white during the civil rights era, are
now diverse. These districts may be engaged in classic abuses of racial gerrymandering of attendance
boundaries, school site selection that intensifies segregation, or operating choice plans with methods and
policies that undermine integration and foster segregation. Where such violations exist, local
organizations and parents should ask the school board to cure them. If there is no positive response, then
they should pursue complaints to the U.S. Department of Justice or the Office for Civil Rights of the
Department of Education.
• In turn, the Justice Department and the Office for Civil Rights need to take enforcement actions under
Title VI in some substantial school districts in order to revive federal policy sanctions for actions that
either foster segregation or ignore responsibilities under desegregation plans.
• State and local officials should sue charter schools that are receiving public funds but that are
intentionally segregated, serving only one racial or ethnic group or refusing service to English language
learners. They should investigate charter schools that are virtually all white in diverse areas, or schools
 that provide no free lunch program, making it impossible to serve students needing these subsidies to
eat, and therefore excluding a large share of students. The federal government, which has been intensely
pushing the expansion of charter schools, both in funding and by specifying charter conversion as a
remedy for low performance, needs to issue clear civil rights standards for charter schools.
• Civil rights organizations need to create a serious strategy to enforce the rights of Latino students in
districts where they are segregated in unequal schools but where their rights have never been recognized
and enforced.
• Fair housing agencies and state and local housing officials need to regularly audit discrimination in
housing markets, particularly in and around areas with diverse school districts. The same groups should
bring significant prosecutions for violations. Housing officials need to strengthen and enforce site
selection policies for projects receiving federal direct funding or tax credit subsidies so that they support
integrated schools rather than foster segregation.
• Courts supervising still-existing court orders and consent decrees should monitor them for full
compliance before dissolving the plan or order. Courts have, in a number of cases, rushed to judgment to
simplify their dockets without any meaningful analysis of compliance, thus backtracking on the rights of
minority communities hampered by generations of local discrimination. Since few judges have the
experience or the staff to seriously evaluate compliance with the constitutional requirements for release
from court supervision, and since that release eliminates the rights of the historically segregated
population, the courts should appoint expert researchers. These experts should assess compliance and
report to the court before the court holds a hearing on ending the local plan. Unless this is done, the
extremely unequal resources of the school district and local minority communities often means that there
is no independent assessment of these critical issues.

Positive Policies at the Federal, State, Regional and Local Levels

The function of the federal government in many areas of education policy is to provide good information,
incentives and support for initiatives that expand educational opportunity. In the past, the federal government
pursued a much more active and important role in fostering successful integration policy. More recently,
however, the Bush and Obama Administrations have vigorously fostered policies that reflected their passive
attitude toward resegregation issues. They changed the nation’s testing systems, decided how schools should be
evaluated and sanctioned, imposed qualifications on teachers, and incentivized states to adopt and expand
charter school laws, among other policy initiatives. The Obama Administration’s “Race to the Top” strongly
pushed charters and more systematic assessments of teachers, as well as certain kinds of reforms for schools
with inadequate test scores.
This is possibly due to a fear of the memory of mandatory desegregation orders, almost all of which
happened thirty years or more ago. Feasible steps now focus on fostering choice- based methods that school
districts want to implement. Helping school districts create desirable, voluntary desegregation plans is probably,
in practice, far less controversial—and more valuable in educational terms—than imposing testing systems,
sanctions and teacher assessment methods that districts do not support.
Thousands of schools are becoming diverse now, not because of any desegregation mandate but due to the
outward migration of African American and Latino families from cities, and inner suburbs, and from other
countries into small town and rural areas in the U.S. When this happened to city neighborhoods more than a half
century ago—long before mandatory busing— the great majority of the communities resegregated relatively
rapidly because nothing was done to support stable integration in either housing or schools. During the time
these city communities were diverse, too little was done to create and sustain positive race relations, and to
retain trust of older residents in the changing schools.
The most positive approach came, ironically enough, at the peak of the busing conflict under the Nixon
Administration.108 Congressional liberals and the administration agreed on a large program of voluntary
assistance that provided funds, not for busing, but for creating new magnet programs, technical help in planning
desegregation strategies, retraining teachers and staffs in techniques to handle diversity fairly and effectively,
basic research on school diversity, and a generation of new curricular materials reflecting the diversity of
students. In short, funds from the Emergency School Aid Act supported the effective management of diverse
schools and choice programs operating with the goal of fostering lasting successful integration. The programs
were extremely popular with school districts, and research showed gains both in terms of academic achievement
and positive race relations. These programs were eliminated not because of public or local opposition—there
was an intense demand for these funds—but as part of an enormous budget-cutting bill early in the Reagan
Administration.
This program of voluntary assistance for integration should be reenacted, building on the Obama
Administration’s Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plans (TASAP) grant. The renewed program
should add a special focus on diverse suburbs and gentrifying urban neighborhoods (which seldom produce
diverse schools). It should provide money for school districts to learn about and prepare assignment plans that
are legal under current Supreme Court limitations and that are educationally effective. It should fund reviews of
magnet plans where some schools that were once magnetic have decayed and where new options are needed. It
should provide special summer catch-up programs for students transferring from weaker to stronger schools. It
should support partnerships with universities to bring new materials and training into the schools, help create a
stronger connection between black and Latino students, and increase knowledge of and preparation for college.
There should be funds for building more robust relationships between schools and diverse groups of parents.
The competitive program should give preference to school systems that increase and sustain diverse and
equitable schools, and it should help them gain the resources necessary to recruit a more diverse faculty and
staff. A purely voluntary, well-conceived program of this sort would be very much in demand— particularly in
this economy—and provide resources and knowledge of great value to many communities. Lasting and
successful diversity is the product of very purposeful knowledge, skills and resources.
The federal government should establish a joint planning process between the Department of Education, the
Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to review programs and regulations
for successful, lasting community and school integration. The first task would be to end policies that foster
segregation. A second mandate would prevent housing policy decisions that resegregate diverse communities
and schools, or doom tenants to dropout factory schools that gravely damage their future. Another objective
would be to help train program staff and develop shared plans for lasting diversity at the municipal level using a
variety of federal program funds.
In the past, federal desegregation assistance funds did not pay for student transportation due to the intense
controversy over mandatory reassignment of students. Now, however, when the transfers basically reflect
student and family preferences for special educational opportunities, this limit no longer makes sense. The need
for federal transportation support is particularly high in a time of fiscal austerity when many districts have
unfairly limited students’ choices by cutting off transportation to magnet and other choice-based programs. It is
time to reverse the former policy. Federal funds should also be available for transporting students who increase
the diversity of segregated charter schools.
At the state level, recent developments in Ohio offer important lessons in how to create and sustain policy
around the issues of reducing racial isolation and promoting diverse schools. The State Board of Education of
Ohio recently adopted an updated Diversity Policy, with the input and assistance of grassroots groups, the
Kirwan Institute at Ohio State and the Ohio Department of Education.109 The new policy provides guidance to
school districts, encouraging student assignment policies that foster diverse schools, reducing the concentration
of poverty within schools and recruiting a diverse group of teachers. It also encourages inter-district programs
like city-suburban transfers and regional magnet schools. The guidance requires that districts report to the Ohio
state Superintendent of Public Instruction on many diversity-related matters, and it applies to both regular public
schools and charter schools. Other states could clearly benefit from closer study of Ohio’s Diversity Policy and
should think carefully about ways to adopt and implement similar frameworks.
State higher education institutions have a role to play as well. Public colleges and universities should inform
families that their campuses are highly diverse and that students without any experience in diverse settings may
be at a disadvantage. Universities should also recognize the additional skills obtained in diverse high schools by
considering them when reviewing student applications.
The issue of school integration is not merely a local problem, it is a regional one. Metropolitan areas are
embedded in a larger housing market, and thus, local solutions would be greatly facilitated by regional
cooperation. In the No Child Left Behind Act and in many state reforms, there is a great emphasis on giving
families the right to transfer to a stronger school in their district. However, there are often not enough strong
schools, either regular public or charters, to which students can transfer within their own district. Furthermore,
many transfers actually facilitate and fund white flight from integrated areas, speeding school and neighborhood
resegregation. By creating regional magnets and regional pro-integration transfer programs, as is the case in
Connecticut, we could provide unique educational opportunities that would support voluntary integration and
help move toward a regional approach. Similarly, providing funds for existing regional transfer programs such
as METCO in the Boston area would be a positive step in the same direction.
School districts in urban areas should also consider initiatives to change the influx of white and middle class
residents without children characteristics of many gentrifying neighborhoods to true family integration built
around stable, diverse and strong local schools. Creating multiracial coalitions committed to developing whole-
school magnets in the gentrifying neighborhood would be a positive way forward.
The most important public policy changes affecting desegregation have been made by the courts, not by
elected officials or educators. The U.S. Supreme Court changed the basic elements of desegregation policy by
180 degrees, particularly in the 2007 Parents Involved decision, when it sharply limited voluntary action by
school districts using choice and magnet school plans in their desegregation policies. The Court is now divided
5-4 in its support of these limits, and many of the Courts of Appeals, as well as state and local court members,
are also deeply divided. Since we give our courts such sweeping power to define and eliminate rights, judicial
appointments are absolutely critical. Interested citizens and elected officials should support judicial appointees
who seem willing to address the history of segregation and minority inequality, with an open mind to sensitive
racial issues that are brought into their court rooms.

CONCLUSION

One of the greatest ironies of segregation for black and Latino students is that we know much more about the
value of integration and how to do it well, even as major policy discussions ignore segregation’s consequences
and integration’s benefits. The impact of segregation will steadily mount as the country becomes a
predominantly nonwhite society. In that new society, increasing levels of education for historically
disadvantaged black and Latino students becomes even more vital to the health of families, communities and the
nation.
The choices we make now are particularly consequential for the South, for Latino students and for our
suburbs across the nation. The South is at a critical juncture as it is losing much of what was gained from an
epic social movement. Latino students are profoundly affected by unequal education as they are by far the
largest minority community with the lowest success in post-secondary education, and as they become more
trapped in inferior schools. The choices and consequences are also stark for the nation’s suburbs, which need
but do not receive help in building lasting, successful integration.
In politics, there has been an overall lack of leadership on the issue of creating diverse schools. Conservative
administrations have actively opposed desegregation efforts. Those who see the value and urgency of
integration have often been quieted by harsh criticism if they challenge the orthodoxy that inequality can be
solved within highly unequal schools through accountability, will power, and sanctions. As evidence
accumulates that this orthodox theory of education reform has failed, the response of its advocates has been to
press even harder, imposing a still more rigid set of tests and sanctions. The dominant tendency among
educators is a parroting of policies that have failed for decades. They fear that mentioning “race” will upset
other people and trigger criticism for using “excuses” to avoid their responsibility for educating all children
fairly. Ignoring the well-documented relationship between segregation and educational inequality, the focus
instead has been on creating intense testing drills in segregated schools and on blaming the schools and the
teachers. Often the emphasis is only on English and math, which radically narrows instruction for millions of
students in these segregated schools, discourages teachers and principals who then try to exit these schools, and
in the end does not produce real educational gains.110
 When great progress was made in moving toward an integrated society, there were civil rights groups,
educators, community leaders, clergy, writers, and many others who found the courage to identify the realities
that had long been covered up. They ignored the advice of the establishment suggesting that the conditions
could not be changed. In only a few years, the schools of the South and many other aspects of Southern race
relations shifted in deep ways. Many assumed that the work was basically done and we could move onto other
issues. No coherent policy was developed and enforced in our great Northern and Western metropolitan areas,
and the rights of Latinos, the group to become the largest minority community in U.S. history, were largely
ignored as isolation and inequality deepened.
The time has come to stop celebrating the Brown decision and the civil rights movement as if the dream of
equal opportunity had been realized. Words on paper are very important, but opponents of the civil rights
revolution mobilized against the implementation of those rights, and took over the machinery that interprets and
enforces rights. Increasing segregation is a clear sign that we are, in fact, going backwards. These changes have
not happened because school integration failed. It succeeded. They are due to the tacit acceptance of segregation
by our educational and political leaders, who cover it with hopeful rhetoric, which has not borne fruit in
practice.
If we are to have a successful and equitable society, especially at a time when success depends on education
and the ability for all groups to live and work well together, then we need a new commitment to access and
integration wherever it is feasible. If we passively accept the spread of segregated and blatantly unequal schools
into more and more suburbs, then many more communities will experience the decline and disinvestment that
led to the collapse of many city neighborhoods a half century ago. Whites could better understand—and work to
change— palpable inequalities by simply spending time observing classes and talking to educators in nearby
schools. African American and/or Latino schools must not let themselves be pushed back into a form of
multiple inequalities that never worked effectively on any scale, justified by the claim that more tests, sanctions
or charters will overcome these inequalities. Latinos must insist that as they gain numbers and presence in the
society, they not be locked into the kind of isolated and self-perpetuating segregation in unequal schools that so
devastated black communities. Asians, who have prospered greatly as the nation’s most integrated group, must
be part of the coalition for justice so they will not be an isolated successful community in a society that is
profoundly unequal and declining in average education and competitiveness. People of all races need to fight for
their children to have strong preparation for the multiracial society we are becoming.
Our political and educational leaders, who have let this decay happen, need to find some of the same
courage that transformed our society in the mid-twentieth century. The challenges we face now are far less
intense than what those earlier leaders had the strength to overcome. Many things can be done, at all levels of
government and in thousands of communities, to move towards a new vision of educational and social equity.
There is much to learn about how to create lasting and successful diverse schools that can shape a successful
multiracial society. Ultimately these issues need to come back to the highest levels of state and federal
government. The time to begin is now.

NOTES

1. For further information, see Gandara, P. & Contreras, F. (2010). The Latino education crisis. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard Education Press.
2. Vigdor & Ladd, 2012.
3. There are, of course, individual schools that defy the odds, such as some of the KIPP schools that are able
to operate a much longer school day, exercise great control of the students, and raise very substantial
additional funds.
4. Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley & Wang, 2012. Miron, G., Urschel, J., Mathis, W., & Tornquist, E. (2010).
Schools without diversity: Education management organizations, charter schools, and the demographic
stratification of the American school system. EPIC/EPRU. Available at: http://epicpolicy.org/files/EMO-
 Seg.pdf
5. See, e.g., The Integration Report, 2008–2009.
6. Gandara & Contreras, 2009.
7. Steinberg, S. (2001). The ethnic myth: Race, ethnicity, and class in America. Boston, MA: Beacon Press
Books.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid. Portes, A., & Bach, R. (1985). Latin journey: Cuban and Mexican immigrants in the United States.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
10. Massey, D., & Denton, A. (1992). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
11. Orfield, G. (1969). The reconstruction of southern education. New York: John Wiley.
12. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974). San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S.
1 (1973).
13. Days, D. (1984). Turning back the clock: The Reagan Administration and civil rights. Faculty Scholarship
Series. Paper 1492. http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1492
14. Orfield, G., & Frankenberg, E. (2012). Educational delusions? Why choice can deepen inequality and how
to make it fair. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
15. Rodriguez; Milliken; See also Ryan, J. (2010). Five miles away and a world apart. Cambridge: Oxford
University Press.
16. Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U.S. 467, 1992.
17. Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U.S. 70, 1995.
18. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle Public Schools, 551 U.S. 701, 2007.
19. Orfield, M., & Luce, T. (2012). America’s racially diverse suburbs: Opportunities and challenges.
Minneapolis, MN: Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity.
20. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2011/12/us_guidance_encourages_k-12_co.html
21. U.S. Department of Education (2009). Technical assistance for student assignment plans. Available at
http://www2.ed.gov/programs/tasap/awards.html
22. Siegel-Hawley, G., & Frankenberg, E. (2011). Does law influence charter school diversity? An analysis of
federal and state legislation. Michigan Journal of Race & Law 16(2): 321–376.
23. http://prrac.org/pdf/DiversityIssueBriefNo3.pdf. http://www.school-
diversity.org/pdf/DiversityIssueBriefNo4.pdf
24. Portions of this section are adapted from Gandara, P., & Orfield, G. (2010). A return to the Mexican
room? The segregation of Arizona’s English learners. Los Angeles: Civil Rights Project.
25. Rivkin, S. G., Hanushek, E. A., & Kain, J. F. (2005). Teachers, schools, and academic achievement,
Econometrica, 73(2), 417–458.
26. Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2011). The long-term impacts of teachers: Teacher value-
added and student outcomes in adulthood (NBER Working Paper# 17699). Retrieved from:
http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.pdf
27. Clotfelter, C., Ladd, H., & Vigdor, J. (2005). Who teaches whom? Race and the distribution of novice
teachers, Economics of Education Review, 24(4), 377–92; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005.
28. See, for example, Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2002). Teacher sorting and the plight of urban
 schools: A descriptive analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(1): 37–62; Watson, S.
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graduation rate crisis (pp. 13–40). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
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psychological processes that perpetuate racial segregation: The relationship between school and
employment segregation. Journal of Black Studies, 19(3), 267–289.
44. Schofield, J. (1995). Review of research on school desegregation’s impact on elementary and secondary
school students. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of multicultural education (pp. 597–
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development: Isolating family, neighborhood and school influences. In E. Frankenberg & E. DeBray
(Eds.), Integrating schools in a changing society: New policies and legal options for a multiracial
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children and adolescents. In E. Frankenberg & G. Orfield (Eds.), Lessons in integration: Realizing the
promise of racial diversity in American schools (pp. 31–56). Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia
Press.
47. Braddock, J. (2009). Looking back: The effects of court-ordered desegregation. In C. Smrekar & E.
Goldring (Eds.), From the courtroom to the classroom: The shifting landscape of school desegregation
(pp. 3–18). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press; Crain, R., & Mahard, R. (1983). The effect of
research methodology on desegregation-achievement studies: A meta-analysis. American Journal of
Sociology, 88(5), 839–854; Schofield, J. (1995). Review of research on school desegregation’s impact on
elementary and secondary school students. In J. A. Banks & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), Handbook of
 multicultural education (pp. 597–616). New York: Macmillan Publishing. .
48. Hoschild, J., & Scrovronick, N. The American dream and the public schools. New York: Oxford
University Press.
49. Crain, R. L. (1970). School integration and occupational achievement of Negroes. American Journal of
Sociology, 75, 593–606; Dawkins, M. P. (1983). Black students’ occupational expectations: A national
study of the impact of school desegregation. Urban Education, 18, 98–113; Kurlaender, M., & Yun, J.
(2005). Fifty years after Brown: New evidence of the impact of school racial composition on student
outcomes. International Journal of Educational Policy, Research, and Practice, 6(1), 51–78.
50. Braddock, J. (2009). Looking back: The effects of court-ordered desegregation. In C. Smrekar & E.
Goldring (Eds.), From the courtroom to the classroom: The shifting landscape of school desegregation
(pp. 3–18). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
51. Guryan, J. (2004) Desegregation and Black dropout rates. The American Economic Review 94(4): 919–
943; Kaufman, J. E., & Rosenbaum, J. (1992). The education and employment of low- income black youth
in white suburbs. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 14, 229–40.
52. Johnson, R. C., & Schoeni, R. (2011). The influence of early-life events on human capital, health status,
and labor market outcomes over the life course. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy
Advances, 11(3), 1–55.
53. Mickelson, R. (2011). Exploring the school-housing nexus: A synthesis of social science evidence. In P.
Tegeler (Ed.). Finding common ground: Coordinating housing and education policy to promote
integration (pp. 5–8). Washington, DC: Poverty and Race Research Action Council; Wells, A. S., & Crain,
R. L. (1994). Perpetuation theory and the long-term effects of school desegregation. Review of Educational
Research, 6, 531–555.
54. Allport, G. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge: Addison-Wesley.
55. Pettigrew, T., & Tropp, L. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783.
56. Hawley, W. D. (2007). Designing schools that use student diversity to enhance learning of all students. In
E. Frankenberg & G. Orfield (Eds.), Lessons in integration: Realizing the promise of racial diversity in
American schools (pp. 31–56). Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.
57. Glaeser & Vigdor, 2012.
58. Siegel-Hawley, G., & Frankenberg, E. (2011). Redefining diversity: Political responses to the post-PICS
environment. Peabody Journal of Education, 86(5): 529–552.
59. Wessel, D., & Banchero, S. (2012, April 26). Education slowdown threatens U.S. The Wall Street Journal.
Available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304177104577307580650834716.html
60. Wells, A., & Crain, R. (1994). Perpetuation theory and the long-term effects of school desegregation.
Review of Educational Research, 6, 531–555.
61. Brief amicus curiae of 553 Social Scientists. Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School
District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007).
62. For detailed information on the data and measures used in these reports, please see the Appendix B.
63. Accompanying this report are two in-depth explorations of enrollment and segregation in the country’s
two largest regions (in terms of student enrollment)—the South and the West—both of which have already
crossed the point at which there is no longer a racial majority. These two regions illustrate what the nation
as a whole is moving rapidly towards and, as such, their experience is instructive.
64. Massey & Denton, 1992. Authority for enforcing the Fair Housing Act was not forthcoming until 1988,
when the act was amended to give HUD the ability to initiate enforcement actions and to seek stiffer fines
 and penalties for housing discrimination.
65. We have consistent data for almost all states from 1967 until 2010, when a confusing new set of categories
designed by the Bush administration—over the protest of dozens of civil rights groups—took hold. The
changes will make it very difficult to accurately compare trends over time.
66. Hussar, W. J., & Bailey, T. M. (2011). Projections of education statistics to 2020 (NCES 2011-026).
Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, US Department
of Education.
67. See section on “Double Segregation by Race and Poverty”
68. Peng, S., & Wright, D. (1994). Explanation of academic achievement of Asian American students. Journal
of Educational Research, 87(6): 346–352.
69. The Index of Dissimilarity fails to capture how the movement of minorities into schools with shares of
minority students above or below the overall share in the area impacts segregation levels (James &
Taubuer, 1985). The measure only calculates the impact of the movement of minority students from
schools where they are over-represented relative to the area’s proportion of minority students to schools
where they are underrepresented. For further information see, Measurement of Segregation by the U.S.
Bureau of the Census in Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980–2000 by
Weinberg, Iceland, and Steinmetz at
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/housing_patterns/pdf/massey.pdf
70. Reardon, S., Yun, J., & Eitle, T. (2000). The changing structure of school segregation: Measurement and
evidence of multi-racial metropolitan school segregation, 1989–1995. Demography, 37(3), 351–364.
71. See previous section.
72. Reardon, S. F., Grewal, E., Kalogrides, D., & Greenberg, E. (forthcoming). Brown fades: The end of court
ordered school desegregation and the resegregation of American public schools. Journal of Policy Analysis
and Management.
73. Newberger, H., Birch, E., & Wachter, S. (2011). Neighborhood and life changes: How place matters in
modern America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
74. Rothstein, R. (2004). Class and Schools: Using social, economic and educational reform to close the
black-white achievement gap. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. See also section in this report,
“Segregation and desegregation: What the evidence says.”
75. Reardon, S. (2011). The widening achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and
possible explanations. In G. Duncan & R. Murname (Eds). Whither opportunity: Rising inequality, schools
and children’s life chances (pp. 91–116). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
76. Orfield & Luce, 2012.
77. States and regions used for analysis in this report include the Border region (Delaware, Kentucky,
Maryland, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia), Midwest region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin), Northeast region
(Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island, Vermont), South region (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia), and the West region (Arizona, California, Colorado,
Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming).
100. Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
101. White, M. J., Fong, E., & Cai, Q. (2003). The segregation of Asian-origin groups in the United States and
Canada. Social Science Research, 32, 148–167.
102. Kahlenberg, R. (2001). All together now: Creating middle class schools through public school choice.
 Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press; Orfield, G., & Lee, C. (2005). Why segregation matters:
Poverty and educational inequality. Cambridge: Civil Rights Project.
103. Noah, T. (2012). The great divergence: America’s growing inequality crisis and what we can do about it.
New York: Bloomsbury Press.
104. Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York,
NY: The New Press.
105. Frey, W. (8 June 2012). Baby boomers had better embrace change. Washington Post. Available at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/baby-boomers-had-better-embrace-
change/2012/06/08/gJQAwe5jOV_story.html
106. Glaesor & Vigdor, 2012.
107. Reardon, 2011.
108. See Orfield, G. (1978). Must we bus? Segregated schools and national policy. Washington, DC: The
Brookings Institution.
109. For further information, see Menendian, S. (July/August 2012). Promoting diversity and reducing racial
isolation in Ohio. Poverty and Race Research Action Council, 21(4). Available at
http://prrac.org/newsletters/julaug2012.pdf
110. Lipman, P. (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization and urban school reform. New York,
NY: Routledge Press. Sunderman, G., Orfield, G., & Kim, J. (2006). NCLB meets realities: Lessons from
the field. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

SOURCE: E Pluribus Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students, by Gary Orfield, John
Kucsera and Genevieve Siegel-Hawley. September 19, 2012, The Civil Rights Project/Proyect Derechos Civiles
(www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu). Reprinted with permission.
16
THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING
DORIS R. ENTWISLE, KARL L. ALEXANDER, AND LINDA OLSON

T he nation remains skeptical that schools can reduce social inequality among children. Historically, this
skepticism springs from two main sources, one, the early evaluations of Headstart that reported little
benefit for children attending preschools, and the other, a consensus inherited from the Coleman
Report (1966), that said differences in school quality had little bearing on students’ achievement. These two
lines of research strongly deflected public policy analysts and laypersons away from seeing schools as
institutions that could reduce social inequality. In order to set aside old shibboleths and move ahead toward a
fresh and more realistic view of children’s early schooling, each of these lines of research will be briefly
summarized and reinterpreted in turn.

HEADSTART

According to early evaluations, Headstart programs raised disadvantaged children’s IQ’s by only a few points
and for only a relatively short period of time (Cicarelli 1969; McDill et al. 1969; Bronfenbrenner 1974). These
conclusions, which were widely disseminated, were mistakenly pessimistic, and taking them at face value even
led some commentators to conclude that children’s IQ’s responded mainly to genetic rather than to
environmental factors (Jensen 1969). These conclusions were modified a decade or so later when the early
Headstart reports were re-evaluated by pooling data from all the major Headstart experiments, concentrating on
those in which students were randomly assigned to experimental (preschool) and control (no preschool) groups
(Lazar and Darlington 1982). The re-evaluations verified that preschooled children’s IQ gains amounted to
about 8 points in first grade and gradually faded after 2 or 3 years. But these re-evaluations found benefits that
had not been uncovered earlier: compared to the control children, the Headstart children had better math
achievement up through grade 5 and had more pride in their accomplishments throughout elementary school.
Parents of Headstart children were also affected. Compared to mothers of control children, the mothers of the
preschooled children were more satisfied with their children’s school performance, even allowing for the level
of that performance; also mothers of preschooled children had higher occupational aspirations for their children
than other mothers did, and higher aspirations for their children than their children had for themselves. Most
impressive, when the Headstart students reached seventh grade, only 14.6% of them were in Special Education
compared to 34.9% of the control children, and only 19.9% had been retained compared to 34.9% of the control
group. By twelfth grade, 18.9% more of the preschooled than the control group had avoided Special Education.
These findings in favor of Headstart are impressive because they come from hard experimental data
analyzed by careful investigators who had no part either in designing or running the original Headstart
programs. In addition, the re-evaluation included every experiment before 1969 in the United States that
involved more than 100 children. It is hard to overrate the importance of helping youngsters avoid being held
back or placed in Special Education because avoiding these placements makes a tremendous difference in their
long-term life chances—more of them will continue in school, and not drop out before high school graduation,
for example.
• • •

Some additional long-term effects also have emerged subsequent to the time of the 1982 evaluation.
Headstart youngsters were more likely to graduate from high school, and after they left high school, 66% of the
graduates who had no retentions were employed compared to 41% of those who had been retained (Consortium
1983: p. 443ff). The Headstart youngsters also adapted better to “mainstream society”: they were more likely to
be in some type of educational program, including high school or the military; they were more likely to be either
employed or temporarily laid off; they were more likely to be living with a working spouse/companion. By
contrast, the non-Headstart group was more likely not to be employed or looking for work, and more likely to
be in prison or a non-student on public assistance. Many of these positive findings come from the Perry
Preschool Project (Berrueta-Clement et al. 1984), one of the experiments with the longest time frame and a
particularly intensive intervention.

• • •

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Another large-scale and famous study, the Coleman Report (1966), can also be interpreted to support the idea
that schools reduce social inequality, although originally it was taken to prove the opposite. Coleman et al.
concluded that differences among youngsters’ families and not differences among their high schools affected
students’ achievement. Narrowly interpreted, this conclusion is correct: secondary school quality does account
for less of the difference among high school students’ achievement than do personal and family background
factors (see also Hauser 1971; Jencks et al. 1972; Mosteller and Moynihan 1972; Alexander and Eckland 1975).
Still, to say that secondary schools have little differential influence on students’ learning is not to say that
attending high school has no influence: if children who attended one high school gained 100 points on some
standardized test while those who attended another high school gained 98 points, the 2-point difference is
rightly judged negligible, but the 98-point gain that they all make is not negligible. If schools act to negate
social inequalities, they would produce this lack of variability in achievement across secondary schools because
they would boost the performance of the less advantaged children to equal that of the more advantaged.
Unfortunately, the negative interpretation of the Coleman data discouraged similar research at the
elementary level, so that, without directly examining new data, Jencks et al. wrote (1972, p. 89): “Differences
between elementary schools may be somewhat more important [than those between high schools] . . . but the
average effect of attending the best rather than the worst fifth of all elementary schools is almost certainly no
more than 10 [IQ] points and probably no more than 5.”1 At the same time though, Jencks (p. 89) was careful to
note the early work of Hayes and Grether (1969), which shows that children’s differential growth in summer is
the major source of the differences in achievement between children of different socioeconomic levels. (See
also Mosteller and Moynihan 1972, p. 48.) In this sense, Jencks anticipated Heyns’ (1978) Atlanta study that
demonstrated substantial effects of schooling independent of home background for sixth and seventh graders.
She brought to light seasonal differences in learning that make the school’s contribution much clearer.

SEASONAL LEARNING

Heyns’ research provided a major breakthrough. By comparing children’s cognitive growth when schools are
open (in winter) to children’s growth when schools are closed (in summer), she separated effects of home
background from effects of school. In winter both school and home can affect children’s growth but in summer
only home influence can affect their growth.
Heyns determined that attending school reduces the achievement gap separating economically advantaged
from disadvantaged children, a gap which increases as they progress up through the grades, i.e., she
demonstrated that the distance between the achievement of well-off and poor students narrows during the school
year. She showed . . . that the school-year gain for white children from the most favored backgrounds is 1.00
grade-equivalent unit, and is very close to the 0.96 unit gain seen for those in the next lower income category (a
difference of only .04 units). Over the summer, however, the better-off white children in her study gained .11
units more than students in the next lower economic category (.29 versus .18). For African Americans, the
seasonal contrasts were even more striking; gains in the school year for children in the highest income
categories differed by only .03 units (.62 and .59), but differed by .34 units in summer (–.12 plus .22). Thus,
achievement differences between children from advantaged and disadvantaged home backgrounds emerged
mainly in the summer months when schools were closed. When schools were open, poor children gained just
about as much as better-off children did. Rather than making no difference, it seems Atlanta schools actually
made up for shortfalls in resources in low socioeconomic status children’s homes.
Heyns was not the first to identify seasonal differences in learning (see Hayes and Grether 1969; Murnane
1975), but she developed a conceptual framework, including multivariate models with “summer parameters,”
and carried out a large scale study on summer learning that produced two solid findings: (1) the gains children
made in the school year exceeded those they made in the summer, and (2) children’s summer gains were
inversely related to their socioeconomic status; that is, poorer children gained about the same amount as other
children in winter but gained less in summer. In summers, almost all the African American children in Atlanta
lost ground, in fact.
A subsequent study of summer learning (Klibanoff and Haggart 1981), based on three years’ data for more
than 100,000 students in over 300 elementary schools, bore out Heyns’ conclusions. Economically
disadvantaged students grew at a slower rate over the summer than did their more advantaged counterparts, and
as in the Atlanta sample, the least advantaged children consistently lost ground over the summer in reading and
math (see Heyns 1986).
Why have these findings about “summer learning” not energized educators and policy makers? Mainly
because in most educational research, children’s school progress is assessed only once a year. Any variation in
rates of learning during the year is thereby obscured. If students are tested every June, then the annual increment
in their achievement is computed as this June’s score minus last June’s score. The relationship between social
background and learning is then necessarily assumed to be constant throughout the year, and all the causes of
that learning are necessarily taken to operate in the same way over that period. Only when score gains are
computed by season, separately for winter and summer, is the strong inverse relation between socioeconomic
status and children’s lack of summer achievement apparent.
To understand how schooling counteracts social inequality, it is essential to separate “home” from “school”
learning. The effect of schooling by itself is hard to isolate, because children learn around the clock, and on
week-ends as well as on week days. Indeed, they spend more time outside school than inside, and much of that
time is spent at home. Accordingly, much of what children learn could be learned at home, not at school. Better-
off families travel, go to museums and libraries, and spend time with youngsters in ways that could enhance
their cognitive growth, while families who are not so well off have fewer resources to help children develop. It
would not be surprising, then, if children from relatively advantaged backgrounds improved their academic
skills substantially over the summer, when school is closed, while children from poor backgrounds did not. (See
Entwisle and Alexander 1992, 1994; and Alexander and Entwisle 1996.)
Seasonal patterns in learning square well with the long-time impression that schooling helps disadvantaged
more than it helps advantaged children (St. John 1975; Coleman 1966). In fact, in periods when school is open,
disadvantaged children in Baltimore learn as much as their more advantaged counterparts do (Alexander and
Entwisle 1996). Only when school is closed does Baltimore children’s achievement vary by socioeconomic
status level. The seasonal variation in learning seen in Heyns’s and other data (Entwisle and Alexander 1992,
1994; Murnane 1975) highlights the idea that schools mitigate social inequality because differences in
children’s learning across socioeconomic status groups are virtually absent in winter. . . . Heyns (1978) shows
that African American children with less than $4,000 income have a “school gain” (.42) plus a “summer gain”
(−.28) that produces a net gain of .14 points. Parallel gains for African Americans in the highest income group
came to .84 points. The highest and lowest income groups are thus separated by .70 points, but the “winter” part
of that differential is .20 while the “summer” part is .50. Therefore, most of the difference in gains between the
two groups (71% of it) comes from the considerable progress that better-off children made in summer when
school was closed. All but the very poorest African American children in Atlanta gained roughly the same
amounts of word knowledge when school was in session (.51, .59, .62). In summer, however, all of the poorer
groups lost ground; only the most affluent group gained. The major differences in children’s overall
achievement are thus traceable to family background, as the Coleman Report concluded, but when schools are
in session they are highly successful at reducing effects of social inequality. Seasonal learning data thus provide
a strong counterpoint to the Coleman Report and other large national studies that have been interpreted so as to
negate the role of schools in reducing inequality.
The Beginning School Study that we carried out in Baltimore builds directly on Heyns’s research. It sees
children’s cognitive development as temporal in two key respects. The first is consistent with Heyns—schooling
occurs in some seasons of the year, not in others, and the pace of children’s cognitive growth reflects the school
calendar. The second emphasizes that cognitive growth is temporal in quite another sense: it is much more rapid
early in life than later. Jencks (1985) estimates the rate of cognitive growth in first grade is ten times the rate in
high school. Consistent with this, Beginning School Study data show that children’s cognitive growth is much
more rapid over the first two elementary years than the later years. The reading comprehension gain that
children made in year one (64 points) is well over twice the gain in year five (26 points), for example (see
Entwisle and Alexander 1996). Because students’ capacity to profit from schooling is greatest in the early
primary grades, their rapid rate of growth in the early years means that effects of social inequality are probably
greatest in the early years of schooling.

DIMENSIONS OF INEQUALITY

This [chapter] covers just a few dimensions of social inequality: children’s socioeconomic status, age, and
gender, plus school and family organization. The first three of these are characteristics of individual children
and are closely related to the “risk factors” often discussed in connection with schooling (Pallas, Natriello, and
McDill 1989). As we will later point out, organizational factors in school and family also impose “risks” that
can help or hinder children’s schooling. Before considering these, a few words are needed about the individual
risks, however, especially socioeconomic status.
Children from families of low socioeconomic status suffer from multiple risks including two major ones that
overlap: family economic status or income, and the level of their parents’ education. Low family income and
reduced education go together, because, other things equal, persons who finish high school or better can
anticipate a much higher standard of living throughout their lives than those who do not. In 1992, for example,
for U.S. families in the lowest income quintile, 22% of household heads had less than a 9th grade education and
only 5% had earned a bachelor’s degree. By contrast, among families in the highest income quintile, 54% of
heads had at least a bachelor’s degree and only 1% had not reached the 9th grade. Similarly, high school
completion rates for household heads in the highest income quintile stood at 96%, while among those in the
lowest income quintile, only 57% had earned a high school diploma (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1993).
Children who come from economically disadvantaged families are at greater risk of failing a grade, getting
low test scores and marks, or having behavior problems in school. (See Zill 1996.) The odds are 8% greater that
a child from a higher income family will be in the upper half of the class than a child from a lower income
family will be, for example. Children in low-income families are also more likely to fail a grade, and those
whose families were in the lowest income quintile in 1992 had a dropout rate of close to 25% versus a rate of
only 2% for children from families in the highest income quintile (Smith et al. 1994). (See also U.S. Department
of Education 1994.) Bianchi (1984) used national school enrollment data to show that among sons of high
school dropout parents living in poverty, retention rates reached 50%, compared with rates of 18% to 19% for
sons in an “average household” (a husband–wife family with income above the poverty level, in which the wife
had a high school education and either did not work outside the family or worked part-time). Similarly the
NELS-88 survey shows that, in the lowest quartile of family socioeconomic status, over 31% of children had
repeated a grade versus 8% in the highest quartile (National Center for Education Statistics 1990).
Parental education level is an alternative measure of family socioeconomic status that also predicts
children’s school performance. The proficiency tests administered in 1990 by the National Assessment of
Educational Progress reveal a consistent relationship between achievement and parental education. Among 9
year olds, scores in reading ranged from 193 for students whose parents did not have a high school diploma, to
218 for those whose parents had more than a high school education. Math scores ranged from 210 for 9 year
olds whose parents lacked a high school education, to 238 for those whose parents were college graduates (U.S.
Bureau of the Census 1994). The relationship between students’ achievement and how far their parents have
gone in school is thus strong and consistent. (See also U.S. Department of Education 1994; U.S. Department of
Education 1991.) As a consequence, research studies often merge family income and parent education level, as
happens when father’s occupation is used to measure family socioeconomic standing.
Baltimore data clearly illustrate the specific risks posed by low family economic status for young children’s
school achievement in reading and math. Grade equivalent scores2 in reading and math in all 122 elementary
schools in Baltimore in the spring of 1987, classified by quartiles according to the percentage of children in the
school eligible for subsidized meals, show that in schools where less than 50% of the children were on subsidy,
scores are above grade level in every year. . . . At the end of grade 2, for example, these children were already
reading above the third grade level (3.19), and by the second semester of grade 5, they were reading above the
seventh grade level (7.15). At the other extreme, however, in schools where almost everyone (89% or more)
was on subsidy, children at the end of grade 2 were reading almost half a grade (2.53) below the third grade
level. By the end of elementary school, the difference in reading proficiency was well over one full grade
equivalent between children in schools where students were at the two extremes of meal subsidy rates.
The risk factor approach is unattractive for many reasons, however, one being that this approach focuses on
characteristics of individual children. Many influences on children’s schooling are organizational or
institutional, a prime example being the school’s socioeconomic mix. The “risk” associated with children’s low
economic status could be mitigated or reinforced depending upon the fit between the socioeconomic
characteristics of the school and those of the child who attends. On the one hand, placing poor children in
schools where the majority of other children are well-off can promote higher achievement in those who are poor
(Coleman et al. 1966). On the other hand, placing first grade African American youngsters in integrated schools
(where they are often poorer than their white classmates) may make it harder for them to learn to read than it is
for their counterparts in segregated schools (Entwisle and Alexander 1994).
The risk factor approach is limited for another reason, too. A risk factor is essentially the kernel of a
probability statement where “risk” means an elevated probability of some event. It is easy to slide into causal
imagery—that is, to say “low economic status causes children to drop out.” To invoke causality requires more
than an elevated likelihood, however; it requires pinpointing why and how low family income hinders children’s
schooling. Does family economic deprivation shunt children away from attending “good” schools, does the lack
of infrastructure in poor children’s neighborhoods undercut their learning outside of school, do poor families
lack books and other learning materials in the home, or what? Rating individuals according to risks is a useful
starting point in terms of suggesting hypotheses to test, but this approach cannot shed much light on social
processes or social contexts. Also, so far the risk factor approach focuses mainly on negative relationships. The
“risk” of doing better in school than would be predicted is hardly ever considered even though many children
from economically disadvantaged and/or single-parent families do well in school (Pallas et al. 1987). The “risk”
label has a negative ring to it, which is not necessary but which, nevertheless, leads to a neglect of “upside” risk.

LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE

Issues related to social inequality and schooling can best be joined by taking a life course perspective. Risk
factors, as just noted, somehow direct attention to shortfalls or failure, while a life course perspective directs
attention to all outcomes, the positive and the negative. Many economically disadvantaged youngsters manage
to finish high school, complete college, and go on to successful careers. A key question is how these children
manage to do well despite economic disadvantage. Also a life course approach requires thinking in terms of
how early schooling affects students over their entire life span. The schooling process in adolescence and early
adulthood can be understood only in light of students’ earlier school histories. In middle school, for example,
children who take a foreign language and algebra, and so are in line for the college preparatory program in high
school, are those same students who have done well in elementary school (Dauber et al. 1996). Thus, to
understand high school tracking requires an assessment of where students stood before they started high school.
As yet, however, a dearth of longitudinal research with elementary school children examines effects of
economic disadvantage, minority status, family type, and other social inequities in relation to school outcomes
over the long term. In fact, to our knowledge, no national study of test scores in elementary schools continues
into secondary schools even though various local studies suggest the correlation between early test scores and
educational attainment is greater than .50, perhaps almost .60 in some instances (see Jencks 1972, p. 323. . .).
A life course approach also highlights the importance of school transitions. School transitions are times
when children’s social roles and obligations change, so they provide a window through which we can get a
clearer view of how social forces affect schooling. They are strategically advantageous because they are points
of maximum continuity/discontinuity in people’s lives. In a bicycle race, it is hard to make distinctions among
people when all are pedaling ahead on the straightaway and so bunched close together. Encountering a hill,
however, spreads cyclists out, and it is easier to see who is ahead or behind as they pump uphill. Likewise, it is
hard to tell who is ahead or behind when children stay in the same school, but school transitions are like “hills”
when people are challenged and the differences among them tend to widen. Expanding the range along which
people can be measured (spreading them out) is a technical advantage, because when people are more spread
out we can estimate their positions relative to one another more accurately and so have a better chance to
identify what propelled them ahead or behind. For example, if children are only one or two points apart on an
achievement test, say 300 versus 302 on the California Achievement Test in reading when they began first
grade, we cannot tell who is doing better or worse because the random error in the test is bigger than one or two
points. If John gets 302 and Harry gets 300, we are hard pressed to say John’s true score is actually greater than
Harry’s because if the test were repeated, Harry could easily outscore John. If scores are separated by many
points, however, we have more confidence in our decision as to which person is first, which is second, and so
on.
Children’s long-term success can be made more certain or placed in jeopardy by how they negotiate school
transitions. By studying the details of their performance over such problematic periods, researchers usually can
learn more than they learn from studying a life period that is static. The beginning school transition is a very
difficult transition for children. Because of the way schools are organized, it is also the time when social
inequality may exact its heaviest toll on their long-term life chances. As noted earlier, the rate of retention is
higher in first grade than in any subsequent grade (Shepard and Smith 1989; Reynolds 1992; Alexander,
Entwisle, and Dauber 1994). With other things equal, poor children are more likely than better-off children to be
held back, so socioeconomic inequality at this stage can exact a price that may never be repaid (Pallas 1984).
The “excess” retention rate in first grade for children from poor families illustrates how social inequity
present at the time children begin school can provoke serious consequences for later schooling. Or, to take
another example, single parents have lower expectations than married parents do for children’s school
performance at the beginning of first grade . . . and lower parent expectations act to depress their children’s
reading marks. Given the importance of early reading skills for all other kinds of academic performance, a small
difference in parents’ expectations for their children’s reading performance at the start of first grade, when
added on to the debit linked to the low income of single parents, can make the difference between children who
pass or fail first grade (Sundius 1996).
It is puzzling why so little research examines children’s success in negotiating the transition into full-time
schooling because children’s starting points are strong determinants of their trajectory patterns. Those who have
an early lead have a marked tendency to stay ahead (Ensminger and Slusarcick 1992; Harnqvist 1977; Husén
and Tuijnman 1991; Kraus 1973; Alexander, Entwisle, and Dauber 1994; Kerckhoff 1993; Luster and McAdoo
1996). As discussed earlier, the advantage of Headstart youngsters in the early grades that put them slightly
ahead of their non-preschooled counterparts persisted far into adulthood. The Consortium (1983) and other
related analyses (Luster and McAdoo 1996) provide a compelling example of how even a slight edge early in
the game can mediate remarkable long-term advantages.
Children’s personal characteristics are easier to study than the social contexts of schools, and so are more
often investigated, but the two are intertwined. If two children of the same ability attend different schools, for
example, such that one school has a student body of higher socioeconomic status than the other, the student
attending the “low” school could well receive less instruction than the student in the “high” school. Yet because
his/her reference group could contain many more students of lower ability than him/herself, the student’s
academic self-image in the “low” school could exceed that of the student in the “high” school. The social milieu
as well as the student’s individual characteristics need to be considered in understanding schooling.
Teachers’ personal characteristics are part of the school milieu that students experience. All else equal,
higher status teachers in the Beginning School Study rated disadvantaged or minority children lower than they
rated advantaged or majority children (Alexander et al. 1987). Compared to children with the same test scores
but of higher socioeconomic status, high status teachers held lower expectations for the future performance of
students from low social backgrounds and saw them as less active participants in class.
Teachers’ feelings about their work environment can form still another part of the school’s social milieu.
Beginning School Study first graders who did exceptionally well in first grade had teachers who rated the social
climate of their school higher than did other teachers (Pallas et al. 1987). Specifically, if teachers found teaching
in their school “pleasant” (versus “unpleasant”) and found trying to do their job right as “very rewarding”
(versus “frustrating”), their students did better than did students of less satisfied teachers. Perhaps the
enthusiasm of teachers who think well of their school spreads to their students, or perhaps these schools provide
settings that make teacher-student interactions more productive. Whatever the case, these examples show how
subtleties of the school context can help or hinder young students.

SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND EARLY SCHOOLING IN PERSPECTIVE

This chapter started by looking back at two large research studies, one on Headstart and the other the Coleman
Report, which both initially seemed to provide strong evidence that schools do not mitigate social inequality.
The consensus about these earlier studies has now changed: attending high quality preschool programs certainly
reduces effects of social inequality on students’ later school success, and secondary schools serve to equalize
the achievement of students of varying economic backgrounds in winter when they are open (Heyns 1978). In
fact, . . . schooling at any level probably offsets effects of social inequity because home resources are critical for
students’ development mainly when schools are closed.

NOTES

1. His emphasis on the “smallness” of 10 IQ points can be questioned. The standard deviation of most IQ
tests is 15 points—two thirds of a standard deviation on each side of the mean includes 49% of the
population. Or, from another point of view, the 10 point difference between an average score (100) and the
score (110) is often cited as appropriate for a cutoff for college admissions.
2. Grade equivalents classify test scores by grade level. For example, a child who can complete tests in
reading at the beginning third grade level is rated at 3.0 Grade Equivalent Units (G.E.’s). One who can
complete tests equivalent to those of children in the middle of grade 3 would be rated at 3.5 G.E.

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SOURCE: From Children, Schools and Inequality by Doris R. Entwisle, Karl L. Alexander and Linda Steffel
Olson. Reprinted by permission of Westview Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group.
17
DESEGREGATION WITHOUT INTEGRATION
Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White After Brown
KAROLYN TYSON

In America, nothing matters more for getting ahead than education. The widespread agreement on this point is
perhaps why the academic underperformance of racial and ethnic minorities is the focus of so much debate and
why public policy, including the No Child Left Behind Act, so often targets these students. The relatively low
academic achievement of African American students, in particular, dominates a great deal of the discussion on
the achievement gap. Recent figures from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that,
on average, seventeen-year old black students score 30 points lower than white students on reading and 28
points lower on math.1 Few issues in the field of education have received as much attention as this one. And
everyone—educators, researchers, parents, students, politicians, journalists, and celebrities—seems to have a
theory about why black students are not doing better in school. What is most interesting about this chorus of
voices is that many loudly repeat some version of the same argument, namely that African American youth are
steeped in a culture that ridicules academic achievement because it is equated with acting white.2
President Barack Obama’s was probably the loudest of these voices, as his remarks were made in a
nationally televised speech at the 2004 National Democratic Convention. Commenting on the problems of
inner-city neighborhoods, the then-senator emphasized the need to “eradicate the slander that says that a black
youth with a book is acting white.”3 Arguably no other explanation of black academic underperformance has
become more entrenched. Indeed, it has become part of our commonsense understanding of why black students
are underachieving. A former teacher’s letter to the editor of the New York Times some years ago captures the
gist of the public perception about the problem plaguing black students: “Many black children who are serious
about their studies are subject to derision by other black students. Acting ‘white’ is the ultimate put-down. What
is so ‘white’ about being a good student . . . ?”4
Remarks like these initially left me confused. I had spent time conducting research in all-black elementary
schools, observing classrooms and talking with students, and these remarks did not match what I had observed. I
never heard any student mention acting white, in any context. The students I encountered coveted academic
success. There were tears and tantrums when they did not make the honor roll or when they failed to get high
marks on an assignment, or when they did not receive a gold star on the board or an invitation to the schoolwide
celebration of individual achievement on the state’s standardized tests, or when they were not picked for a role
in a classroom play.5 But later, as my research expanded to include adolescents, I began to hear accounts from
high-achieving black students about being accused of acting white apparently because of their achievement.
Even now, however, after more than ten years conducting research in schools, what I have learned remains
hard to reconcile with claims that black students are “culturally disinclined to do well in school,” as linguist
John McWhorter claims in his book Losing the Race.6 My empirical analysis shows that explanations such as
McWhorter’s distort what is really going on. First, many black students do not connect race with achievement.
This phenomenon is greatly exaggerated. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the idea that race and
achievement are linked is not something that black youth are taught at home or in their communities. This is a
connection they learn at school. The popularity of the notion that black students reject achievement as acting
white and that this accounts for the black-white achievement gap has helped turn this hypothesis into an
accepted fact. But using this argument anecdotally in social discourse is inaccurate and costly. We know
surprisingly little about students’ use of the acting white slur with respect to achievement, let alone what its
empirical connection might be to the achievement gap. When did the association of race with academic
achievement emerge among black students? Why have black youth come to equate school success with
whiteness? This [chapter]addresses these questions by giving readers a chance to look inside of schools and
listen as students talk about their everyday experiences. The students I observed, interviewed, and spent time
with during the course of my research generously opened their lives to an outsider’s gaze and shared their
stories about life at school. They spoke frankly about their successes and disappointments, their trials and
tribulations, and their goals, aspirations, and fears.
Consider Sandra, for example. We met in 2002, when she was a junior at Earnshaw School of Excellence.
Sandra was one of sixty-five North Carolina public high school students participating in research my colleagues
and I were conducting on high-achieving black students.7 As we walked from one class to another on
Earnshaw’s sprawling campus, Sandra generally was quiet and reserved. During the interviews, however, she
opened up and spoke candidly and at length. Her school, a combined middle and high school, was 49 percent
white and 44 percent black. Yet Sandra described her early experiences at Earnshaw as “hell,” because she had
been “the only black student” in her gifted English and advanced math classes. She explained:

Well, I—okay, because of my classes that I couldn’t take with a lot of black students, so I was in, mainly
made—I had to make friends with a lot of white students ’cause those are the only people who are in my
classes. And those are the people that I tend to sit with at lunch because I had never met anyone else. I mean
I had black friends, but because I don’t see a lot of them, I made friends with white [students]. And because
of that, [the black girls] thought that that meant I was—I didn’t want to be with other black people and that I
thought that I was better than them, and I was trying to “act white.” . . . But that’s not it, you know.

Some high-achieving black students at other schools described similar encounters with peers over the issue
of acting white and particular achievement-related behaviors. For example, Juliana, a senior at Everton High
School, recalled that her black friends occasionally joked that she had “turned white on [them]” after she began
taking advanced courses, which they called “white people class[es].” Everton’s student population was just over
one-fifth black, but few advanced classes had more than one or two black students enrolled, and many had none.
Another student, Lynden, a senior at City High, remembered being teased in the ninth grade by fellow blacks.
They called him “White Pretty Boy” because of his friendships with the “smart” students in his advanced
classes, most of whom were white. Although City High’s student body was 16 percent black, black students
were nearly invisible in the school’s higher-level classes. In many of those classes, black students accounted for
less than 5 percent of those enrolled.
Stories like these will resonate with readers who are familiar with the contemporary schooling experiences
of black youth and the problem of black academic underachievement.8 What readers may be less familiar with,
however, is the unmistakable connection between this peculiar use of the acting white slur and an institutional
practice common in secondary schools: tracking. This practice of separating students for instruction, ostensibly
based on their ability and prior achievement, often results in segregated classrooms in predominantly white and
racially diverse schools like the ones described above. The higher-level classes (gifted, honors, advanced
placement) are disproportionately filled with white students, while the lower-level, standard classes are
disproportionately filled with black and other minority students.9 We call this “racialized” tracking, but it is
essentially segregation.
With black and white students largely segregated within the schools they attend, racialized tracking has
made it possible to have desegregation without integration. It is this school-based pattern of separation that has
given rise to students associating achievement with whiteness. This association is found only in schools where
racialized tracking is prevalent. In the predominantly black high schools in our study, where advanced classes
were majority black, the high-achieving black students we met were not even aware that academic achievement
is considered a form of acting white.10 When we asked Sonya, a senior at Banaker High School (89% black),
whether students at the school ever use the acting white slur to refer to high-achieving students in particular, she
answered casually, “No, I haven’t seen that. When they say you’re acting white, they just do if you talk a
different way.”11 Sonya and her peers at Banaker had no experience with the type of “hell” Sandra encountered
across town at Earnshaw.
 The marked difference in the experience of students who attend schools like Sonya’s and those who attend
schools like Sandra’s draws attention to the importance of how schools are organized.12 As Sandra’s and many
other students’ experiences suggest, tracking does more than keep black and white students separated during the
school day. It also produces and maintains a set of conditions in which academic success is linked with whites:
Students equate achievement with whiteness because school structures do.13 By focusing on students’ equating
achievement with acting white as the problem, without first trying to understand the cause of this phenomenon,
we end up confusing cause with effect. Consequently, we attempt to treat the symptom (equating achievement
with whiteness), while the disease (racialized tracking) goes unchecked. The connection between racialized
tracking and students’ linking of achievement-related behaviors to whiteness has received far too little
attention.14 One aim of this [chapter] is to bring that connection into sharp focus. I argue that students’ linking
achievement with whiteness emerged after desegregation and is a result of racialized tracking, which is part of a
historical legacy of strategies used to avoid integration.15
In the study of high-achieving black adolescents (Effective Students), my research assistants and I shadowed
students at school. At racially diverse and predominantly white high schools, the participants were frequently
the only black students in their advanced classes. This pattern, which was especially evident in AP courses, did
not escape their attention. Without prompting, many mentioned being the “only black” student in their advanced
classes. Robin, for example, who attended Shoreline High School (72% white; 15% black), recalled that she did
not have another black student in her advanced classes until her junior year. City High (69% white; 16% black)
student Courtney called off a list of classes in which he was the only black student: honors physics, AP
statistics, AP U.S. history. Jasmine made similar observations about her advanced classes at Lucas Valley High
School (65% white; 24% black): “I took advanced English and I was the only black person in [the class both
times]— This year I’m the only black person in my physics class.” Keisha, who attended Garden Grove High
School (54% white; 32% black), complained about being the “only black girl in a sea” of “white people” in her
advanced classes. And a student I called to arrange to shadow at school the following day warned me that she
and I would be the only two black people in the room during her first class.
Observations of these high-achieving students continued over an eighteen-month period. My research
assistants and I became so accustomed to the pattern of segregation in advanced classes in predominantly white
and racially diverse schools that any deviation struck us as odd. Once, when I was shadowing Zorayda, a senior
at Earnshaw, I was shocked as I sat down and surveyed her honors English class, made up of nineteen students,
twelve of whom were black. In my field notes that day I wrote: “I’ve never been in a class like this here
[Earnshaw] before—predominantly black.”16 Until then, I had been in classes with a racial composition of that
kind only at predominantly black schools or in elective or general education classes.17
The participants’ reports of their peers’ comments indicate that other students at racially diverse and
predominantly white schools also were aware of the prevailing pattern of racial segregation across classrooms.
Why else would they refer to advanced classes as “white classes” or the “white-people class,” or ask peers why
they wanted to be in classes or programs in which there were no other black students? These types of comments
reflect a general pattern. Reports of racialized ridicule (e.g., being accused of acting white, or being called an
“Oreo”) for high achievement and for other achievement-related behaviors (e.g., taking advanced classes)
always coincide with students’ experiences of racial hierarchies in tracking and achievement at the schools they
attend. Thus, not all high-achieving black students are taunted for acting white because of their achievement.
What I found is that those who are taunted always attend racially diverse or predominantly white schools where
racialized tracking makes possible racial isolation and rejection of the kind Sandra experienced.
Today, many racially diverse schools lack true integration because of racialized tracking.18 A number of
studies emphasize this point. For example, Charles Clotfelter’s research on interracial contact among students
since desegregation indicates that within-school segregation increases as the percentage of blacks in the student
body increases. According to Clotfelter, schools between 30 and 60 percent black show the highest rates of
segregation.19 Similarly, in their study of the correlates of tracking, Samuel Lucas and Mark Berends find that
tracking is more pronounced in schools with more racial and social class diversity.20 In stalling integration,
tracking exacts enormous costs that are borne by black students such as Sandra, as well as by her schoolmates,
both black and non-black. This [chapter] explores some of those costs.
Examining the Costs of Racialized Tracking
The pattern of black-white racial segregation in American public schools produced through tracking (and
through gifted and magnet programs) is well documented.21 Indeed, racialized tracking is a common feature of
contemporary American secondary schools. Unfortunately, however, it gets relatively little public attention.
Americans simply assume that academic placements reflect students’ ability and their (and their parents’)
choices and attitudes toward school. These assumptions are not entirely accurate. There is more to the
contemporary high school placement process than meets the eye. Yet in racially mixed schools, what does meet
the eye—the image of overwhelmingly black lower-level classes and overwhelmingly white advanced classes—
sends powerful messages to students about ability, race, status, and achievement. Linking achievement with
whiteness is one consequence of racialized tracking, but there are others that also shape school performance and
interracial relations. This [chapter] takes a look at how institutional practices such as tracking affect black and
other students’ schooling experiences. How do students make sense of this pattern of racialized tracking? What
does it mean for students’ developing sense of self and their decisions and actions at school? How does it affect
black students’ relationship with same-race and other peers?
In many states, schools’ early placement decisions involve some form of ability grouping or the use of
academic designations such as “gifted,” “gifted and talented,” or “advanced.” Previous research has shown that
these practices contribute to the initial sorting process that sets racial groups on different academic paths in
elementary school.22 Institutional sorting continues more formally and overtly in secondary school. There
students are separated for instruction on the basis of a range of criteria, including perceived ability, prior
achievement, and/or post-high school occupational plans and aspirations. During adolescence, as students
attempt to negotiate the delicate balance between where they fit and where they feel most comfortable, both
academically and socially, this sorting reinforces racial patterns and stereotypes. Thus, the schools’ early
placements and labels have a particularly profound and, for some adolescents, harmful effect.
This [chapter] lets us hear students’ perceptions of these placements and labels and allows us to look inside
some of their classrooms. Through hearing students’ own perceptions of their placements and labels, this
[chapter] reveals the quandary racialized tracking has created and the anguish it has wrought. During the ten-
plus years I have been conducting observational and interview research on students’ in-school experiences, I
have found that sorting practices such as tracking and gifted programs have implications for much more than
grades and test scores. These practices influence students’ perceptions of the link between race and
achievement, their self-perceptions of ability, how they view one another, and where they think they and others
belong. As a result, in schools with racialized tracking, high-achieving black students are more likely to
perceive pressure to conform to a peer culture oppositional to the norms and values of schools. However, this
perception does not necessarily prevent high-achieving students from taking advanced courses. For all students,
regardless of race, the most important consideration in course-selection deliberations is a desire to avoid failure
and the feelings of incompetence and embarrassment that accompany that experience.
In the chapters that follow, I share more of these findings, presenting a detailed analysis of the narratives
and school experiences of some of the more than two hundred students studied in twenty-eight schools. Some
are like Sandra—high-achieving black students who are subject to their peers’ taunts about acting white. Some
are like Sonya—high-achieving black students who have not encountered this form of ridicule. Some are lower-
achieving students; and some are non-black. I draw on these students’ varied experiences to show how
racialized tracking and the messages it conveys affect students’ daily life at school, their academic self-
perceptions, school-based decisions and actions, and their relationships with peers.
Racialized tracking and the belief that academic achievement is a “white thing” reflect broader social issues
regarding the role of race in education. Each speaks to the continuing significance of race in America. And each
also points to obstacles on the path to integration. Since desegregation, we have been witnessing a new form of
educational apartheid achieved through tracking.23 As part of a historical legacy of strategies to avoid
integration, tracking has proven remarkably effective, and, in the wake of desegregation, highly consequential.
Black and white adolescents often have very little meaningful contact with one another in school because they
are separated for most of their core classes. Not surprisingly, these divisions are often deliberately replicated in
other settings. As we observed while shadowing high-achieving black students, in elective classes, at lunch or
assemblies, blacks and whites tend to sit apart from one another, occupying different sections of the room.24
Everyday realities like these help explain why attending a desegregated school does not always provide the
benefits we anticipate young people will gain from a racially diverse environment.

Tracking and Acting White after Brown

The Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was supposed to eliminate school
segregation.25 More than five decades after the decision, however, black students and white students throughout
much of the country still experience separate and unequal schooling. Not only have American schools been
growing more segregated at the school level, they remain overwhelmingly segregated at the classroom level.
Numerous scholarly and journalistic accounts detail the startling degree to which black and white students are
segregated within the schools they attend.26 Yet, within-school segregation has not engendered the same type of
urgency, outrage, or national shame that segregation did before and shortly after the Brown ruling. There have
been no marches or sit-ins, no public outcry, and very little condemnation of school officials or pressure on
policy makers. But why should there be protests? Wasn’t the fight for equality of educational opportunity won
with the Brown decision? In some respects it was, if only because the ruling prohibited dejure segregation. But
Brown promised more than desegregation; the decision also promised integration, as it raised hopes that black
and white students would come together as equals. Instead, the movement toward integration had barely begun
before it was interrupted.
The failure to achieve true integration at school is an enormous loss. No American institution other than
schools brings together so many children, from so many diverse backgrounds, for so much time each day, over
so many years. Not families, not churches, not neighborhoods. We might expect schools to be where children
learn to see past their differences and find commonalities that would allow them to form meaningful
relationships with people unlike themselves. Unfortunately, this kind of learning is rare. Instead, schools too
often teach young people pecking orders, hierarchies based on status and achievement. The social divisions and
animosity that exist between groups in the larger society are reinforced at school. As James Rosenbaum found
in his study of tracking at a white working-class school more than three decades ago, “Tracking provides
distinct categories that are highly salient.”27 When these categories (e.g., honors, remedial, college prep) mirror
the racial, gender, and social class hierarchies in place outside of school, they can lead students to perceive their
own and others’ assigned placements as accurate and permanent. Indeed, students tend to believe that
placements merely reflect racial differences in ability, work ethic, and attitudes toward school.28 Thus, for
example, some of the high-achieving black students in our study felt that in order to fit in with their peers, they
had to project an attitude that downplayed school. Otherwise, they feared, they might be perceived as “acting,
like, white or something if you’re trying to be smart.” As one student explained, this was because “it’s always
been [that] . . . the smart people are the white people.”
The popularity of the belief that a fear of acting white explains black academic underachievement has
obscured an important fact. It is only relatively recently that black youth have equated high academic
achievement with acting white. The first published accounts of this phenomenon began emerging in the 1980s.
Prior to that, there is no indication that acting white included reference to academic achievement and
achievement-related behaviors. The earliest published study reporting black students’ use of the term
documented the students’ adjustment to desegregation in a Wisconsin high school in 1969. The black students
in the study raised concerns about acting white. They noted that they did not want to lose what was, as the
authors put it, “a natural part of Negro behavior as it evolved in this country.”29 The students characterized
acting white only as being “more inhibited,” “more formal,” and “lacking ‘soul.’” More recent studies, however,
report that among adolescents (blacks and others), acting white currently includes a host of characteristics,
including taking honors and advanced placement classes, getting good grades, going to class, and doing school
work.30
This expansion in meaning of acting white indicates a cultural shift. This is in itself telling, because such
shifts typically are associated with other, larger changes in the social world.31 In other words, changes in social
structure tend to bring about changes in culture. Indeed, patterns like the one Sandra described at Earnshaw
suggest that the shift in the meaning of acting white was brought about largely by the change in educational
policy that led to school desegregation.32 Desegregation, and especially attempts to bypass it with tracking and
gifted and magnet programs, paved the way for the emergence of distinct racial patterns in student placement
and achievement in some schools.33

Tracking and Race in Historical Context

The practice of sorting and selecting students in order to provide them with different educational programs
did not originate with desegregation, however. In the United States, this type of tracking dates back to the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the immigrant population increased and the public school system
expanded.34 During this early period, tracking helped separate students more by social class and ethnicity than
by race. Racial cleavages within public schools were rare. This was because, depending on the area, non-whites
were few in number, denied access to public schooling, or consigned to separate schools. In most states outside
the South, neighborhood segregation ensured that blacks and whites attended different schools. In the South and
some other areas (e.g., Arizona), laws enforcing segregation accomplished the same end.35
Thus, before desegregation, curricular differentiation in public schools reflected social class, ethnicity,
immigrant status, and gender variation in the student population.36 Not surprisingly, these also were the lines
along which students often drew group boundaries and reinforced social divisions.37 Divisions that existed
outside of school undoubtedly were worsened by the disparities in tracking found inside the school. These
disparities further separated and marked the haves and the have nots, those who were “expected to ‘make
something’ of themselves” and those who were deemed unlikely to succeed.38 Desegregation brought another
line along which students within the same school could be marked and separated by the curriculum.
The path to desegregation was not smooth, however. By all accounts, it was a painfully slow and difficult
process. Whites vigorously fought the federal mandate to create racially mixed schools. In Virginia, for
example, officials in some counties chose to shut down the public schools rather than comply with the Supreme
Court’s desegregation ruling.39 Prince Edward County officials not only closed the public schools for five years,
they also used public funds to help establish private schools for whites. In other areas of the South (e.g.,
Mississippi), whites fled to existing private schools or established new private academies.40 And elsewhere in
the country, whites abandoned major metropolitan areas (e.g., Detroit), opting to send their children to public
schools in largely white suburban districts.41 Thus, although the Court handed down its Brown I and II decisions
in 1954 and 1955, many schools, including ones outside the South, did not begin implementing desegregation
plans until decades later.42 Significant progress toward desegregation finally occurred in the 1970s, as a result
of court-mandated busing in various parts of the country.43
Once desegregation began in earnest, the long-standing institutional practice of tracking students took on
new meaning as districts faced the reality of racially mixed schools. Particularly in the South, where segregation
had been mandated by law and was therefore deeply entrenched, white school officials sought to continue
avoiding integration by devising legally permissible ways to separate students by race.44 Some districts simply
placed black and white students in separate classrooms. Others achieved a similar outcome by using strategies
such as magnet schools, gifted programs, and other forms of curriculum differentiation.45 Tracking became part
of the arsenal of strategies used to resist school integration in the South and elsewhere. As Kenneth Meier,
Joseph Stewart Jr., and Robert England have argued in their book Race, Class and Education: The Politics of
Second-Generation Discrimination, the policy that defined equal educational opportunity as desegregated
education “ignored the continued resistance to integration and permitted the development of other methods of
limiting access.”46
Eventually, legal challenges to racialized tracking emerged. In one well-documented case that landed in the
courts in the early 1990s,47 a school district in Rockford, Illinois, established predominantly white gifted
programs within some of its high-minority schools as a means of complying with the state’s desegregation
laws.48 Indeed, the plaintiffs’ findings in the case alleged that, “These programs created virtually all-white
enclaves within black schools—independent curriculums that were totally separate from the regular academic
pursuits of these predominantly black schools.”49 A federal court later found the district’s classroom assignment
methods unconstitutional. Similar cases were brought against school districts in other states as well, often with
similar outcomes.50
Despite these battles, racialized tracking persists—in large part because of differences in the average
achievement of white and black students. School districts use whites’ higher average achievement (a disparity to
which tracking no doubt contributes) to justify the segregation.51 However, a number of studies have found that
even after taking students’ prior achievement, socioeconomic status, and other relevant factors into account,
black students still are more likely than whites to be placed into lower tracks.52 Roslyn Mickelson’s analysis of
test score and track-level data collected from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, schools provides an
example of this. She found that among eighth-grade students scoring in the top (90–99th) percentile on the
California Achievement Test, 72 percent of whites were enrolled in the top English track compared to only 19
percent of blacks. Mickelson found a similar pattern of racial disparity among twelfth-grade students as well.
Findings such as these indicate that racial differences in achievement do not fully explain racialized tracking.53
Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that in the 1960s and 1970s, courts in a number of jurisdictions
banned the use of standardized IQ and achievement tests to place students in classes because the practice
produced an isolation effect, much as we find for black students today. In the District of Columbia, for example,
the federal district court ruled tracking unconstitutional because of its “racially discriminatory effects.”54 In
contrast, today, as the courts have determined school districts to be operating a unified system for all students,
tracking that contributes to racial segregation within schools and a widening achievement gap is widespread and
generally considered acceptable.55 This is clear in a recent case brought against the City of Thomasville School
District in Georgia. The plaintiffs, black parents and the local NAACP, argued that school policies and practices
resulted in black students being segregated in lower-level courses. The court held that the district’s system of
tracking was not intentionally discriminatory and ruled in favor of the school district.56 This reflects a
significant change from the way the courts in earlier decades viewed tracking that leads to racial segregation.
For now, the court’s decision leaves racial segregation within the Thomasville district’s schools intact. In
this city in Georgia, as in cities and towns across the country, whites and blacks will continue to experience
separate and unequal schooling, and whiteness will continue to define what it means to be smart and high
achieving. This [chapter] examines how this process unfolds at the school and classroom level and calls
attention to its consequences for today’s youth. If we are serious about achieving integration in America, this
kind of analysis is critically important. We need to understand why, after more than fifty years, school
desegregation has not led to true integration. The best approach is to begin by looking at what is really
happening inside our schools, the place where many children have their first opportunities to interact with peers
of other racial and ethnic groups.

ONE: EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE, CULTURE, AND ACTING WHITE

It’s kind of like, it’s not cool. I don’t know how this came about, but it bothers me so much
because it perpetuates the stereotype, it like, somehow it became not cool within the black
community to be trying hard for yourself because it’s viewed as acting uppity or trying to act
white.
—Shelly, Anderson
High School (59% white; 33% black)

Shelly’s comments reflect the frustration and bewilderment that many students feel when their peers cast
academic striving and achievement as acting white.1 How did it come about that trying hard in school is now
defined as “trying to act white”? In this [chapter], I argue that to understand this phenomenon, we must closely
examine the conditions under which it occurs. When and where do we find evidence of students casting
achievement as acting white? How do those settings differ from settings in which students do not link academic
achievement with whiteness? Why do these differences in context matter? What consequences do they have for
students’ attitudes and behavior?
Approaching the issue Shelly raises with these kinds of questions leads to an understanding of students’
casting academic achievement as acting white that differs from the long-standing view. For decades, the most
widely accepted explanation has been one that frames academic underachievement as part of black Americans’
cultural adaptation to the history of slavery, racial oppression, and discrimination in America.2 For example, the
late anthropologist John Ogbu argued that being denied access to a good education for generations has narrowed
black Americans’ occupational opportunities and has discouraged the black community “from developing a
strong tradition of academic achievement.”3 According to Ogbu, as generations of blacks observed family and
community members struggle and eventually fail to achieve upward mobility via traditional routes, their
collective ambivalence about school success deepened. African Americans came to believe that education
would not pay off for them as it did for whites. This belief, Ogbu asserted, led black Americans to develop a
“folk theory of making it” that rejects mainstream institutions, norms, and values.4 In short, according to Ogbu
and others, black youth learn to disparage school learning and success because academic excellence is not
valued in the culture of their communities.5
The problem with this explanation is that it ignores students’ everyday schooling experiences and implies
that culture is unchanging.6 Do students’ own experiences in school have no influence on how they think about
their chances for success? The increases in the percentages of blacks graduating from high school and college
since 1970 and the presence of a growing black professional class suggest that black Americans generally do
accept that there is value in formal education.7 Even if they are not achieving at the same level as white
Americans, African Americans continue to pursue high school and college degrees at record levels. There is no
hard evidence of a wholesale rejection of education as a vehicle for upward mobility among black Americans of
any socioeconomic group. Likewise, evidence is lacking for the idea that this attitude has been passed down
from generation to generation.8
In this chapter, I explain some of the theoretical reasons for arguing that black youth who link academic
achievement with whiteness learn to do so in the context of their own experiences in school. I argue that
racialized tracking, and other institutional displays of unequal status between blacks and whites, have a
significant affect on black youth’s schooling experiences and their ideas about their own abilities, achievement,
race, and getting ahead. I begin with a discussion of how youth develop a sense of academic competence. I then
discuss how students’ achievement experiences affect their outlook on the future. Lastly, I address the role that
culture plays in young people’s approach to schooling and achievement.

Developing a Sense of Academic Competence

Much of the existing empirical evidence suggests that the process by which youth form an understanding of
the way people achieve success in America is a complex one. It involves more than just their awareness of the
history of racism, discrimination, and other injustices faced by members of their racial, ethnic, or social class
group.9 Youth rely heavily on their own experiences to judge just how open and fair American society actually
is. Whether they feel that opportunities are blocked for people like them and that striving therefore would be
futile, depends in large part on what happens to them in school and in the labor market.
As children progress through school, they develop a conception of themselves as students. These student
identities reflect children’s ideas about their academic ability, what they think they are capable of achieving, and
what they believe are their strengths and weaknesses.10 The experience of academic success inspires confidence
and optimism in students. This in turn raises their expectations for continued academic achievement as well as
future occupational success. Students come to see themselves as smart based on the school’s evaluations—what
their teachers say about them, their grades, test scores, academic awards, and so forth. They adjust their own
aspirations and expectations in response to these institutional measures. Students’ behavioral response to the
school’s evaluation may vary widely (e.g., some may work harder, some may work less hard), but the
evaluations are consistently shown to affect students’ academic self-concept. Indeed, we know from classic
social psychological theories of the self, as well as from expectancy effects research, that children develop ideas
about themselves, whether positive or negative, consistent with the evaluations of others.11 Thus, it makes sense
to pay careful attention to how the school’s evaluations shape students’ perceptions of their abilities and future
possibilities.
Comments from participants in each of the four studies I report on in [the original] book (see the preface)
capture this interactive aspect of self-evaluation.12 Consider Marguerite. As she describes her grades, this
Vanderbilt High School junior articulates some of the process by which she has come to see herself as “smart.”

I like to keep myself above an eighty-five. I have not had a C on a report card yet. So I hold that in great
esteem. If I see a C this year, I would truly cry. . . . In ninth grade, I got all A’s and B’s. I don’t know if that
was a conscious thing or if I told myself not to go below eighty-five, but it just kind of happened. Since
then, I’ve just held myself to that. . . . It’s just kind of, now I think it’s the expectation that I’ll do well that
keeps me going. But before—even the expectation began to come in middle school with [my induction into]
the Junior Honor Society. After that, it was like, okay, I’m supposed to be smart.13

Jasmine, a Lucas Valley junior, also emphasizes the centrality of the school’s evaluations in her account of
coming to view herself as capable and smart.

I don’t know, like, I don’t know, I guess I was just smart and I just didn’t know. . . . Like, my mom would
say it, but, like, when you look at, when I took that test where I made that high score, that really, like, set my
mind, you know, “She was right!” You know, I could do a whole lot better than that. I mean in fourth grade
you just want to go outside and play. But after I made that high score on the test, it was like “I may be
actually good at this! So why don’t I put more into it?”

Massey High School senior Yvette describes a similar process of becoming more motivated to excel and
developing greater confidence in her academic abilities. “But then I’m like, I have to get good grades. Like,
third grade, Ms. [Olson’s] class. She was a hard third-grade teacher. I thought, like ‘I got to do good. I got to
get’—I made all A’s that year. And then after that I just started pushing myself. Because I know I can make all
A’s ‘cause I’ve done it before.” Most of the other students I have spoken with in the course of my research are
like Marguerite, Jasmine, and Yvette. They draw on their school’s rewards and evaluations to form their
understandings of their own abilities and capabilities. And also like these three students, many have offered
accounts that show the significance and enduring effects of early achievement experiences in this process.
It is not surprising to find that students view themselves as smart, average, or below average based on grades
and other school evaluations, as well as on comparisons to other students’ performance. Yet, too frequently, we
overlook the significance of these school evaluations for the expectations students form of themselves and the
decisions they make in school. Gifted identification provides an especially clear example of this relationship. As
I explain in detail in chapter 4, statewide, North Carolina students who were identified as “gifted” in elementary
or middle school were significantly more likely to enroll in Advanced Placement (AP) classes in high school
than were students who had not been identified as “gifted,” independent of these students’ prior achievement.
Among the high school students interviewed about their course-selection choices, “gifted” students believed that
they were “expected” to take AP courses. They viewed themselves as being “more intelligent than [the] average
person” and felt that they did not “fit” anywhere other than advanced classes. In contrast, “non-gifted” students
believed that AP courses were “too challenging” for them and that they were “not smart enough” to be in those
courses.
Other research, such as Reginald Clark’s study of black family life and school achievement and Julie
Bettie’s study of race, class, and identity among girls, decribes similar findings.14 Such studies show that
students rely heavily on their own achievement experiences to form self-evaluations and assess their chances of
success.15 These self-assessments and self-evaluations in turn affect students’ actions. Clark’s description of the
outlook of one low-achieving participant in his study is a poignant illustration of this process.

Alice admits that school has been a bad experience for her. Hardly ever has she had enough success to make
 the experience a pleasant one. Now, she questions her own intelligence and ability (and, ultimately, her
worth as a person). . . . Unwilling to humiliate herself time and time again in the classroom, Alice has
become protective of her ego and less concerned about her ability to perform school tasks well.16

Given her academic experiences, Alice plans to end her formal education with a high school diploma. She
has come to the conclusion that higher education is not for her, explaining to Clark, “I’m too slow for college.”
According to Clark, however, “she secretly wishes to attend.” While other factors may have influenced Alice’s
aspirations and actions at school, it is apparent that her own achievement experiences have had a significant
effect on her sense of academic competence and her outlook on the future.

School Achievement and Getting Ahead

The research conducted by Clark and others also indicates that students who have met with some
educational success and who judge their experiences in school to be fair are more likely to believe in the
American ideal of meritocracy. That is, they are more likely to think that opportunities are available to everyone
and that those who work hard will be rewarded. Students who have had more negative educational experiences
which they judge to be in some way unfair are more likely to reject the meritocracy ideal.17 These studies show,
too, the internal contradictions that poor, low-income, and minority youth often contend with as they try to
make sense of their circumstances. Those who have experienced school failure and other negative outcomes
often have strong critiques of the opportunity structure and its tendency to reproduce itself. Yet, these same
youth also tend to blame themselves for their failures and for what they did or did not do that undermined their
chances for success. Jay MacLeod’s work offers classic examples. The mostly white, low-income boys he refers
to as the “Hallway Hangers” challenge the achievement ideology and argue that they do not have the same
opportunities as others do (“Hey, you can’t get no education around here unless if you’re fucking rich,
y’know?”; “We don’t get a fair shake and shit”). At the same time, though, these young men fault their personal
shortcomings and lament their actions and prior choices (“I just screwed up”; “I guess I just don’t have what it
takes”).18
In my own research, I have found far greater buy-in of the achievement ideology among working-class and
low-income black youth who experienced school success, but this was coupled with an awareness of how hard it
could be for people like them to get ahead. These youth, whose hopes of social mobility rested primarily on
education, persisted in school, holding on to what they believed was their best chance for achieving a better life.
The older adolescents, especially, were not oblivious to racial inequality and discrimination. In fact, numerous
students reported incidents of perceived discrimination at school. For example, Curtis, a cocky, high-achieving,
rising senior at Everton High School, recounted an incident in which he felt a teacher had treated him unfairly
because of his race.19 According to Curtis, he and a few other students had not received a packet (handed out by
the homeroom teacher) for their pre-calculus class. When Curtis went to the head of the math department to
request a packet, she implied that he was lying about not having received one.

Curtis: . . . Other people didn’t get theirs either, and they went after theirs and she just handed it
right to them, but when I went to her and asked, you know, to explain what had
happened, and told her I didn’t get one, she pretty much insinuated that I was lying. I
was like, “You’re not going to, you’re not just going to call me a liar when I know what
happened and I see how, you know, hassle-free, you’re giving these other packets.
You’re going to give me one like that too.”
Interviewer: You said that to her?
Curtis: Yeah. Oh, I mean I was like, “I’m not going to be discriminated against just because you
think that I’m lying. That’s not the case.” And she’s like, “Well, okay,” and she gave
me the packet . . .
Interviewer: Why do you think she accused you of lying and just gave everybody else—?
 Curtis: I don’t know, and that’s why I said I felt discriminated against because it was like, “Wait
a minute, these other people just were in here and just got theirs, what’s the problem
here?” And I hate to say it was because I was black, because I was the only black person
in that class, but you know I don’t know what it was all about.

With a 4.5 (weighted) GPA, Curtis was one of the highest achievers among the sixty-five participants in the
study of high-achieving black students my colleagues and I conducted. The fact that he was aware of ongoing
racism and discrimination, however, did not diminish his ambitions or his desire for academic success.20
Other high-achieving black students expressed confusion and disappointment when they experienced
situations like the one Curtis described. Still, few seemed to think that discrimination and racism were
insurmountable. Most had faith in their ability to achieve despite the odds. They continued to strive despite any
obstacles they encountered because they “want[ed] to be successful in life,” as Lynden, a senior at City High
School explained. “I want to do better than my mom, and nobody [in my family] has ever went to college. My
mom and dad didn’t go to college and I want to do better. I want to go to college. And make something of
myself.”
Lynden effected what he called a “g’ed up” or “gangsta” style; he dressed from head to toe in the latest
urban gear, complete with oversized clothing, doo-rag, and lots of “bling.”21 Nevertheless, he was engaged in
school and striving for success. His academic successes and subsequent rewards (e.g., he made the honor roll
and he had his name listed in the local newspaper for his achievements) confirmed his belief that he would be
recognized as an intellectually capable person with the potential to “make something” of himself. By rewarding
his efforts, the school gave Lynden a formal and “expert” evaluation of his potential. From his perspective, this
institutional recognition confirmed that he would be judged based on his performance in the classroom, not on
his race, family background, or preferred style of dress.
Lynden had few examples in his own family of people who had achieved much upward mobility, but that
did not prevent him from thinking that his life might be different. Black students who see their parents and other
relatives struggle to make ends meet do not necessarily reject schooling and adopt identities oppositional to
mainstream norms. Many of the students I interviewed believed that their relatives’ struggles were a
consequence of the poor quality of their education or the fact that they had had too little education or had made
bad personal decisions. Such beliefs were often fostered by the relatives themselves. For example, when we
asked Clearview High School senior James what, if anything, his parents said to him about school, he
responded: “They say, ‘Well James, the worst thing that happened to me in my life was I didn’t go to college. I
didn’t seek my final degree. We don’t want you to do that. We want you to go and be the best you can be.’”22
Indeed, although students and their parents sometimes voiced complaints about schools and teachers, few
blamed schools, racism, or discrimination when they discussed their failures. Most blamed themselves.
This was especially true of the parents at Linwood Elementary School, many of whom lived in the low-
income housing projects surrounding the school.23 As they discussed their educational hopes and expectations
for their children, the parents expressed regret about the choices they had made in their own educational
careers.24 Interestingly, at no time did they suggest that the schools might have failed them. Now in the most
precarious of economic situations, either unemployed or working low-wage, unskilled jobs, the parents stressed
the importance of education for their children.

I hope [Kyle] goes to college. I’m gonna try to make him go to college. ‘Cause that’s something
I wanted to do, but I never pursued it because when I was—, I quit school in the eleventh grade. I
really, and then went back. Two months from graduation got pregnant. Didn’t never go back, just
didn’t. Just didn’t go. . . . ‘Cause you can’t go get a job, say, at City Hall, without a high school
diploma. You can’t go get a job at McDonald’s, not without a high school diploma. They want a
GED. You’ve got to have some kind of education background to get a job, and a proper job. I
mean you want to get a good job, now. You’ve got to have college, you know, degrees and stuff.
You know, the right college, you’ve got to have a degree. You’ve got to have a diploma. You’ve
 got to have a diploma to drive a trash can! If you don’t have it, you can’t get it. So, you’ve got to
have an education. It’s very important in life and learning in life.
—Ms. Parker, Linwood parent

Actually I dropped out when I was fifteen. Then I moved to PA—Pennsylvania with my mother,
and I went up there and I finished up to the eleventh grade. So that’s what I’m going to school
for now—to get my GED, my high school diploma. . . . From Tuesday through Thursday. So,
um, I just wasn’t doing nothing. Now I wish I could go back and do it, but I just—at that time I
wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t see myself doing no work. I didn’t want to be there. [Prompt:
What did you see yourself doing at that time?’] I, mm-mm. [She laughs.] I don’t know. I honestly
do not know. And I pray to God that my kids don’t be like that. And I can, take my son—he
probably would like—no, my daughter [is] probably like that. ‘Cause that girl don’t want to do
nothing. She don’t want to do—I believe if somebody tell her she old enough to drop out of high
school, she’d drop out. ‘Cause that girl just don’t want to do nothing. [Prompt: What do you tell
her?] She—if she know like I know, she better stay in. ‘Cause it’s getting harder by the year. It’s
getting harder by the day. Everybody asking for high school diploma. ‘Cause I told my kids if I
could turn that around, I would be done finished school—way long time ago like I supposed to
have. And I tell ’em, “Y’all better finish.” But she got a good head on her shoulder, all of ’em do.
‘Cause she says she wants to go to college . . . they better get it [education] while they can. I’m
serious. They—they better get it while they can because now that I’m going back to school—I’m
learning more, which I could’ve learnt then, you know, and got it all over with. Now I’m twenty-
nine years old, back at school again, I ain’t got no business being in school without no trade. [She
laughs lightly.] You know? So, I told ’em, I said, “Y’all better get it while you can, because I
mean, leave these streets alone, leave these babies alone, leave these little boys alone.” I tell ’em,
I said, “‘Cause if you don’t want to be set back, like,”—okay, like for example, I tell ’em, I said,
“Look at me. I haven’t finished school, your daddy haven’t finish school. Your daddy repeated
ninth grade for four years straight. You don’t want to be like him.”
—Ms. Moss, Linwood parent

Despite their own limited education, Ms. Moss and Ms. Parker, like many other parents in my research,
expressed little ambivalence about education as a means for achieving upward mobility, either for themselves or
for their children. They believed they would have been better off if they had completed more education.
Lacking access to other resources (e.g., steady income, powerful social networks) that might help their children
get ahead, these parents stressed the importance of education and hoped that their children would not make the
mistakes that they had made. There was little in the parents’ or the students’ narratives to support John Ogbu’s
claim that, “Many [blacks] see little evidence among their own people for believing that success in adult life or
upward mobility is due to education.”25
While Ms. Moss’s and Ms. Parker’s pro-education views are not exceptional among Linwood parents, my
point is not to argue that they are representative of all low-income black parents. Instead, I present their
comments to balance sweeping assertions of the sort that Ogbu and others make that poor and low-income
blacks see little value in education.26 These mothers are like other poor and low-income Americans (and like the
boys Jay MacLeod studied and the “hard living” students Julie Bettie describes). All face the same painful
contradiction of being poor in the “land of opportunity.” One way they are able to make sense of their position
is to see it as an outcome of their own failure to take school seriously and get the kind of education that is a
prerequisite for good jobs.
Most students I encountered, even those at schools like Linwood, where poor and low-income families
predominate, repeated the common refrain that if they work hard in school they will do well in the future.
Contrary to frequent reports of a pervasive sense of hopelessness and pessimism among contemporary black
youth, these students made statements signifying their belief in the utility of education. They readily made
connections between their own school performance and their chances of going to college, getting a good job,
and making a decent living. The higher their own achievement, the higher their aspirations and the greater their
optimism about their individual prospects for the future. This pattern was most evident among high school
students. The relationship between achievement and occupational aspirations was less clear among elementary
school students, because, as a group, their aspirations were less well developed (e.g., “[I’m] gonna be either a
teacher, a doctor, or a dancer.”). They also restricted themselves to a narrower range of future careers than did
their older counterparts. Most young students aspired to be police officers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, or
professional athletes. Nevertheless, most students, regardless of age or achievement level, expressed some faith
in the promise of the American dream. They seemed to want to believe in their own efficacy, that they had some
control over their lives, and that their effort and skills, above all else, would determine their success.
To be clear, faith in the promise of the American dream did not prevent the students from critically
assessing society’s treatment of blacks and other people of color; nor did it preclude feelings of uncertainty
about their own chances of making it. This combination—continuing to strive even while believing that African
Americans are not always treated fairly—is not as surprising as it might first seem. The students’ behavior is no
different from the behavior of scholars and other professionals of color who critique the U.S. opportunity
structure but continue to work to achieve personal success within that very structure, and routinely encourage
children to “stay in school.”27 African Americans, as W. E. B. Du Bois’s work reminds us, have always faced
these kinds of internal tensions.28
Such tensions are also evident among the “rags to riches” young men that Alford Young studied, and among
the high-achieving, low-income students of color described in Prudence Carter’s and Carla O’Connor’s
research.29 Again, like many adults who strive to achieve despite knowledge of, and even personal experience
with, racism and discrimination, disadvantaged youth who are aware and critical of larger structures of
inequality do not necessarily hold fatalistic attitudes or behave in self-defeating ways. The dilemma is not,
however, simply one of being both black and American. There is also a tension borne of the task of nurturing an
individual self within a society in which persons with black skin, like your own, are viewed and judged as a
single, undifferentiated group. In post-desegregation America, that means living one’s individual life with hopes
and dreams similar to those of other Americans, until something happens to remind you of your difference.
Since desegregation, African American youth have been socialized to believe in the ideal of meritocracy.
Like other Americans, most believe that with hard work, anyone can achieve success. African Americans are
generally willing to risk believing in this achievement ideology because they understand that their chances for
success and economic well-being will be greatly reduced if they do not work hard. If they have doubts about the
degree to which the achievement ideology applies to them, these misgivings are partially assuaged by personal
experiences of success in school, and in the labor and housing markets.
For those whom the school defines as successful—students like Lynden, Jasmine, Yvette, Curtis, and
Marguerite—their experiences of success encourage a sense of hope that barriers are continually being broken
down and that any existing obstacles can be overcome. After all, these students’ academic success offers them
evidence that people of color can be and sometimes are rewarded for their efforts. Despite their own modest
family backgrounds and the fact that neither their parents nor their siblings had a college degree, Curtis’s and
Lynden’s achievements gave them high hopes for their future: both planned to attend college. Curtis had
aspirations of becoming a pathologist and Lynden hoped to pursue a career in computer programming.
Lower-achieving, low-income and minority students have a very different perspective. Their faith in the
American ideals of fairness and meritocracy is less strong: they see that many individuals in their racial/ethnic
and socioeconomic categories encounter much more difficult circumstances than people in other categories
and/or classes. In schools in which differences in the educational experiences of the “haves” and the “have nots”
are unmistakable, lower-income and minority students quickly learn their place in the school’s achievement
hierarchy and many come to expect and accept that opportunities for people like them will be limited. To be
sure, students’ experiences outside of school as well as those of their parents also inform their perceptions of the
opportunity structure. The evidence suggests, however, that their own schooling experiences are of far greater
consequence in shaping their views. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are academically successful
are less likely to express the type of resignation and pessimism that their lower-achieving peers sometimes do.
There is a deep irony in the fact that the institution that is supposed to level social differences and to render
background characteristics unimportant, instead more often openly reinforces and exacerbates those differences.
An African American student in Annegret Staiger’s study captured this incongruity nicely. Remarking on the
marked racial disparities in curriculum placement at his school, he said, “It’s weird how in school and in life we
are taught not to discriminate or to segregate, but yet we are going through this every day at school.”30 As I
explain below, to make sense of the misalignment between what they are told and what they experience,
students draw on various alternative sources.

Cultures in Action among Students

How people assess their experiences depends, in part, on their own social position and on the cultural tools
available to them. Minority and low-income students are more likely to experience negative educational
outcomes (e.g., lower grades and less rigorous academic placements, higher retention rates, and more
disciplinary actions). It should not come as a surprise, then, that these students also are more likely to reject
some aspects of the dominant meritocracy ideology. After all, that ideology often does not accurately represent
their experiences, as studies like Julie Bettie’s, Jay MacLeod’s, and Katherine Newman’s so vividly illustrate.31
When people’s experiences are contrary to the ideology of the dominant culture, they can turn to other
sources to make sense of their seemingly abnormal experiences. They may use explanations available in
existing micro cultures or subcultures or create new subcultures. Studies of low-achieving, working-class
students provide examples of this process. To preserve their self-worth, these students draw on gender and
class-based discourses that allow them to construct narratives that accomplish two goals simultaneously: The
narratives accentuate differences between them and their higher-achieving peers and they devalue the goals and
pursuits to which their higher-achieving peers attach great importance. For instance, in his study of a group of
working-class boys in England, Paul Willis describes how the boys, whom he called “the lads,” regularly
ridiculed their middle-class, higher-achieving peers for their conformist behavior. Drinking, fighting, sexual
activity, and the ability to make themselves and others laugh, gave “the lads” a sense of superiority over their
“submissive” counterparts, who they believed were not having any fun. In a discussion of the ways in which
their lives were more exciting than their “childish” peers’ lives, one “lad” explained to Willis,

I mean, what will they remember of their school life? What will they have to look back on? Sitting in a
classroom, sweating their bollocks off, you know, while we’ve been . . . I mean look at the things we can
look back on, fighting on the Pakis, fighting on the JAs [i.e., Jamaicans]. Some of the things we’ve done on
teachers, it’ll be a laff when we look back on it.32

William Corsaro’s concept of “public negotiations” provides another useful way to think about how these
youth are using available symbols (in this case from working-class culture) to make sense of their experience
and, in the process, creating new meanings. He explains that:

[Culture] is produced and reproduced through public negotiations. In these negotiations, social actors link
shared knowledge of various symbolic models with specific situations to generate meanings while
simultaneously using the same shared knowledge as a resource for making novel contributions to the culture
and for pursuing a range of individual goals.33

In the United States and elsewhere, lower-achieving, working-class males routinely draw on discourses of
masculinity to dismiss their higher-achieving peers’ success.34 For example, in an ethnographic study of a
predominantly black Washington, D. C., high school, Fordham and Ogbu found that “persistent rumors”
circulated around the school that male students who took a “large number of Advanced Placement courses”
were homosexuals.35 Lower-achieving students of color also routinely draw on discourses of race.36 Julie Bettie
describes lower-achieving Mexican American students’ use of the acting white slur to hurt their higher-
achieving peers’ feelings as a “defensive strategy for coping with race-class injury.”37 Thus, as Ellen
Brantlinger asserts, “The directionality of exclusiveness is not just from high to low,” although, of course, the
consequences are not the same.38 Still, low-achieving minority and low-income students are quite adept at
devising ways to stigmatize and exclude their higher-achieving and higher-status peers.
The argument I make in this [chapter] is that students’ attitudes toward formal education, including attitudes
that are oppositional toward schooling and achievement, develop largely from their experiences in school. This
argument offers a different perspective on the attitude-achievement link than the view most widely accepted
today, which implies that attitudes predict achievement. The approach I advocate is not new, however. In earlier
research, scholars argued that working-class students who were not able to realize the goal of academic success
constructed subcultures that rejected, at least publicly, the school’s values and assessments.39 These studies
were conducted in the early years of school desegregation, when many public schools were still largely
segregated. The researchers concluded that the oppositional attitudes and behavior of white students were a
consequence of these students’ failure to achieve academic success and gain the esteem of their peers and
teachers.
Arthur Stinchcombe, for instance, in his 1964 study of high school students’ rebellion, argued that students
who are not academically successful “find other elements of the culture to use as symbols of identity.”40
Stinchcombe found that it was not that failing working-class students did not desire academic or occupational
success (most had internalized the dominant achievement ideology). Rather, their failure in school created what
he called a “psychological strain.” The students then had to reconcile their achievement goals with the harsh
realization that these aims might be unattainable. Put in this position, the students chose to reorient their goals
and redefine success on their own terms, ones that did not hinge upon the validation or esteem granted by the
school.41 By detaching themselves from the source of negative evaluations, the students were able to reconstruct
and maintain a positive sense of self in spite of the evaluations and judgments of the institution.42
In the post-desegregation period, some black students exhibit oppositional attitudes and behavior similar to
the kind Stinchcombe described among white students. Interestingly, despite these similarities, the old
explanations (like Stinchcombe’s) have disappeared. In their place we now find explanations that question the
cultural orientation and values of African Americans. What is needed, I believe, is a return to the lessons
learned from earlier research, in which students’ school experiences were central to understanding attitudes and
behaviors that appeared inconsistent with school norms.

EXPERIENCES AND STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES AND OUTCOMES

Many things influence the kinds of experiences we have. The most important of these are the social structure of
the society in which we live, the institutions with which we come in contact, and our location within both this
broad structure and particular institutions. A ten-year-old Muslim girl from a wealthy family growing up in Iran
and attending a private school will have much different experiences than a ten-year-old Muslim girl from a
working-class family growing up in Detroit and attending a public school. To make sense of our experiences
and decide how to act in particular situations—as part of the ongoing process of trying to influence what will
happen to us in the next moment—we rely on the knowledge made available to us in the cultures in which we
have been socialized.43 These cultures include both macro ones (e.g., those related to our national identity) and
micro ones (e.g., those related to our membership in specific racial, religious, and social class groups).
Each culture provides a particular vantage point from which to view and interpret the world, and these
interpretations may either complement or contradict one another. When they are contradictory, we tend to favor
the vantage point that provides a view that presents us, in our own estimation, in an acceptable light.44 Research
in psychology and social psychology has consistently demonstrated that people’s behavior is often motivated by
the need to feel a sense of competence, worth, and esteem. As the data provided in the forthcoming chapters will
demonstrate, much of what we observe among youth in school today reflects their attempts to negotiate
experiences in ways that allow them to achieve these same self-affirming goals. By claiming that they did not
work hard enough, low-performing students not only blame themselves, they also protect themselves from the
perception that they are not intellectually capable.
Here I am drawing on Ann Swidler’s conceptualization of culture as a tool kit, in which she views culture as
a set of “symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views” through which meaning is experienced and expressed.45
Sociologist Orlando Patterson has dismissed this view as being “too open-ended and voluntaristic” in its
“conception of culture as a tool kit from which people selectively draw their strategies of action as it suits their
purposes.”46 Yet I find these qualities precisely what make Swidler’s theory of culture most compelling and
useful. All Americans participate simultaneously in various cultures, in addition to the overarching national or
dominant culture. Our specific religious, social class, racial, ethnic, and regional backgrounds offer us a range
of possibilities for interpretation and subsequent “strategies of action.” As Troy Duster remarked in his 2005
presidential address to the American Sociological Association, people interpret what they see differently
because they “bring very different personal and social histories, perspectives, sexual orientations, [and] religious
or secular views,” to bear in any given situation. Moreover, an individual’s multiple social locations and
affiliations may offer divergent perspectives. Consequently, in making sense of their experiences, individuals
often have to select among competing interpretations.
When the role of culture is understood this way, the widely accepted argument that black youth cast
achievement as acting white because they do not value education seems misguided. Not only does it present a
static view of culture, it also suggests that culture supplies the values that drive our actions. However, Swidler
contends that culture shapes values and action because people come to value those things for which they have
the cultural tools to be competent. Useful examples of this approach to understanding the connection between
culture and values are found in school- and youth-focused studies such as Paul Willis’s, Jay MacLeod’s, and
Arthur Stinchcombe’s. In each case, the author describes how, failing to meet the school’s standards and
expectations, the group of poor or working-class boys became increasingly alienated from the institution.
Consequently, the boys created their own subculture in which the knowledge and skills they possessed,
including toughness, masculinity, street smarts, and physical strength, were among the most highly valued
attributes. Consistent with Swidler’s argument regarding the influence of culture on action, we can see how the
boys’ “actions and values [were] organized to take advantage of [their own] cultural competence.”47 The boys’
subculture also provided them with an alternative view of their school failure. Rather than accept the school’s
negative evaluation of their academic capabilities, they can argue, as the working-class “lads” in Paul Willis’s
study did, that they did not want what the school had to offer.
The tool kit argument, then, seems to point us in the right direction. It draws our attention to the existence of
the range of possible interpretive tools available to individuals. And, it prompts us to ask, “Under what
conditions do individuals in a given society draw on cultural tools other than the macro or national culture to
understand a particular experience?” But that question in turn points to the need to modify the tool kit
conceptualization somewhat. As Marguerite’s, Yvette’s, and Jasmine’s remarks (presented earlier in the
chapter) made clear, the school’s judgments and evaluations strongly affect students’ self-assessments and
aspirations. Yet, in the tool kit argument, institutions appear passive. Thus, I reformulate Swidler’s view that
people “come to value ends for which their cultural equipment is well-suited,” in order to accommodate the
powerful role institutions and their agents may play in judging and determining our competences.48
Various studies have shown that schools play an active role in contributing to student outcomes.49 These
studies shed light on the ways in which school practices and policies, whether intentionally or not, privilege
white middle-class culture and consequently undermine the achievement of minority and low-income students.
Annette Lareau’s research, for instance, makes clear that the middle-class approach to parental involvement in
schooling is not “better” than the working-class approach. Rather, middle-class students accrue advantages
because their parents’ approach is more consistent with what schools currently expect and reward.50 Shirley
Brice Heath’s work reveals the influential role of teachers’ typically unacknowledged cultural expectations. She
documents ways that cultural miscues and miscommunications around language may place students of color at a
disadvantage in schools.51 In one example, Heath describes how black children who are accustomed to
receiving direct orders (e.g., “Sit down”) sometimes find themselves in trouble in classrooms with teachers who
express themselves in indirect terms (e.g., “What should you be doing now?”). My point here is that the
practices and policies of schools have real effects, and these effects are neither neutral nor class- or colorblind.
Ironically, earlier studies of educational outcomes were faulted for attributing too much power to institutions
and too little to individuals. Herbert Bowies and Samuel Gintis, for instance, were harshly criticized for
developing explanations of educational outcomes that portrayed social structures as all-determining and made
no provisions for the possibility that students might act of their own volition.52 Other scholars, such as Paul
Willis, Jean Anyon, and Jay MacLeod, used ethnographic methods to redress this imbalance by showing the
ways in which students do resist and/or cooperate with structural forces in the production of outcomes.53 Their
work opened up interesting new possibilities for how we think about the interaction between social structure and
human agency with respect to schooling outcomes and social mobility. Yet, more recently, it seems that we
have taken a step backward—at least with respect to black students and acting white. In this area, attention to
the effects of local structures and individual experience has waned. We seem to have forgotten Richard Sennett
and Jonathan Cobb’s earlier call for more attention to “the child’s own experience in school.”54 To explain
complex interactional situations, we must pay attention both to the actors and the institutions involved, and to
the responses of each to the other.

CONCLUSION

I have argued in this chapter that black students’ pessimism or optimism about the future, their ideas about
academic success and making it, are best understood through an examination of their personal school
experiences and meaning-making, rather than through an assessment of the African American community’s
history or culture. Culture is not irrelevant here, but it does not drive values and action. Instead, culture is a
resource that individuals draw on to make sense of the world around them. For students in post-desegregation
America, that world, unfortunately, includes racialized tracking.
Regardless of how students interpret racialized tracking patterns, however, it is the school structure that
sustains the patterns and makes them a reality with which students must contend. As I describe in chapter 2,
many black students are presented on a daily basis with a visual image of achievement that is racialized. This
image keeps the myth of black inferiority intact. I argue that this experience explains how and why youth
associate academic achievement with whiteness. The institutional context has direct bearing on students’
judgments about the degree to which their skills are well or poorly suited to, the demands of schooling. Thus,
we must not overlook or downplay “the institutional authority in which the school is embedded.”55 Indeed,
Annette Lareau and Elliot Weininger’s call for greater attention to “the micro-interactional processes through
which individuals comply (or fail to comply) with the evaluative standards of dominant institutions such as
schools,” is exactly right.56 As I explain in the next chapter, constructing school success as acting white is how
some black adolescents choose to read and respond to the cultural spectacle of racialized tracking while
simultaneously discounting the inferiority explanation.
Throughout this book, I argue that local school structures and students’ experiences within those structures
are central to understanding the stories students construct about themselves and others, about achievement and
educational opportunity, and about succeeding in the larger society, as well as students’ responses to and
choices under particular conditions. In the next chapter, I closely examine the schooling experiences of a group
of sixty-five high-achieving black students in nineteen high schools in North Carolina in order to document
when and where students’ casting achievement as acting white emerges. The evidence shows that by paying
particular attention to the local school context and individual experience, and by understanding culture as a tool
for making and expressing meaning, we gain a clearer picture of how and why some black students associate
whiteness with academic success.

NOTES

Introduction
1. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), NAEP 2004 Trends in Academic Progress; unpublished tabulations, NAEP
 Data Explorer. Rev. March 29, 2010. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde/.
2. This argument is found in published research monographs, editorials, and the public comments of
educators and high-profile commentators such as Bill Cosby and Spike Lee. For a detailed discussion of
some of the comments made by black leaders and other public figures, see O’Connor, Horvat, and Lewis,
“Framing the Field,” 1–24.
3. “Transcript: Illinois Senate Candidate Barack Obama,” Washington Post, July 2004. Rev. October 17,
2005. Available: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19751-2004Jul27.html. For similar
remarks made while Obama was campaigning for president in 2007, see Bacon, “Obama Reaches Out with
Tough Love.”
4. “Speaking English Properly Is No Cause for Derision.” Rev. January 4, 2006. Available:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res = 9401EFDE1639F933A25750C0A960958260. Similar
teacher comments are also found in the research literature, including O’Connor, “Premise of Black
Inferiority”; Tyson, Darity, and Castellino, “It’s Not a Black Thing.”
5. For more on this research, see Tyson, “Weighing In.”
6. McWhorter, Losing the Race.
7. Throughout this [chapter] I use the terms “high- and low-achieving” to describe students. These
designations are based on judgments, mostly in the form of grades, rendered by schools. See the preface for
information on the study of high-achieving students, which I refer to as Effective Students.
8. Student reports of similar experiences are found in the scholarly literature and the popular press. An
example of the former is Mickelson and Velasco, “‘Bring It On!’” An example of the latter is included
among the recollections of Yma Johnson, the daughter of an African-born University of Michigan
professor, published in the magazine Michigan Today. Johnson describes how in school she was made to
feel that “if [she] ever wanted co have Black friends [she] would have to change.” She recalls that “the
majority of these encounters happened in the hallway because other Black students were almost never in
advanced placement classes, another difference held against me. All the way through middle and high
schools I was usually the only Black person in my Latin, French and Humanities classes.” Johnson,
“Travels in Mind and Space.”
9. A recent study by Charles Clotfelter, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor found that classroom-level
segregation in North Carolina was modest. However, the researchers focused on English classes. As I show
in chapter 2, these tend to be less segregated than math and science classes. “Classroom Level Segregation
and Resegregation in North Carolina,” 70–86.
10. Other studies involving black students in predominantly black schools find similar results. See Akom,
“Reexamining Resistance as Oppositional Behavior.”
11. Prudence Carter also finds that black and Latino youth’s most frequent use of the acting white slur is “in
reference to speech and language styles.” See “Intersecting Identities,” 116.
12. Numerous other studies have reported similar effects of classroom racial composition on the experiences
of high-achieving black students. See Butterfield. “To Be Young, Gifted, Black, and Somewhat Foreign,”
133–155; Carter, Keepin’ It Real; Horvat and Lewis, “Reassessing the Burden of Acting White";
Mickelson and Velasco, “‘Bring It On!’”
13. Kunjufu, in To Be Popular or Smart, vii, has cautioned against attributing this phenomenon “solely to
integration.” He argues that, “There are schools that only African-American students attend, there are no
white students, and they all still say to be smart is to be white.” Yet I know of no evidence, including that
which Kunjufu presents, that supports his assertion. Kunjufu begins his book with ten African American
students from a variety of Illinois high school discussing their experiences with achievement in school. The
only student who clearly indicates that black peers equated positive school achievement behaviors with
whites was a student attending a desegregated school that Kunjufu described only as “very liberal on racial
 balance.” In every other case the experiences the students discussed had more to do with the anti-
intellectualism that pervades American culture in general. I do not mean to imply that this is not a problem
for black students. What I am arguing is that it is not a uniquely black phenomenon.
14. There are a few notable exceptions. Some scholars have suggested this Connection in their work. See
Carter, Keepin’ It Real; Mickelson, “Subverting Swann?” Mickelson and Velasco, ‘“Bring It On!”’;
O’Connor, “Premise of Black Inferiority.”
15. See Welner, “Ability Tracking.”
16. I had a similar reaction in an honors classroom at another school, but I later learned that the class was not
actually an honors class. The teacher explained to me that due to a “scheduling mess” that “took five weeks
to straighten out,” the class contained students who were taking the course for general education credit and
three, including the participant I was shadowing, who were taking it for honors credit.
17. This was the only advanced class I saw like that during my time observing three students at Earnshaw and
it was never clear why.
18. See Diamond, “Still Separate and Unequal.”
19. Clotfelter, After Brown.
20. Lucas and Berends, “Sociodemographic Diversity.”
21. Important studies of within-school segregation include Clotfelter, After Brown; Lucas, Tracking
Inequality; Lucas and Berends, “Sociodemographic Diversity”; Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class
and Education; Oakes, Keeping Track; Orfield and Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation; Weiner, Legal
Rights, Local Wrongs.
22. See Brantlinger, Dividing Classes; Mickelson and Velasco, “‘Bring It On!’”; Oakes, “Two Cities’
Tracking”; Oakes and Guiton, “Matchmaking”; Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb;
Staiger, Learning Difference; Tyson, Darity, and Castellino, “It’s Not a Black Thing.”
23. For more on this topic, see Ansalone, “Tracking”; and Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class and
Education.
24. Reports that black and white students sit apart from one another in the cafeteria and other social spaces at
school have persisted for many years. See Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the
Cafeteria?”
25. The Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (347 U.S. 483) decision overturned the “separate-but-
equal” doctrine legalized in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537). In 1955, in Brown II (349 U.S.
294), the Supreme Court attempted to clarify its position on when and how desegregation should occur
with the mandate that schools desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”
26. See Clotfelter, After Brown; Donelan, Neal, and Jones, “The Promise of Brown”; Frazier, “Wrong Side of
the Track”; Kozol, Savage Inequalities; Mickelson, “Incomplete Desegregation”; Oakes, “Two Cities’
Tracking”; O’Connor, “Premise of Black Inferiority”; Perry, Shades of White’; Staiger, Learning
Difference’; Steinhorn and Diggs-Brown, By the Color of Our Skin; Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids
Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
27. Rosenbaum, Making Inequality, 165. For more on the salience of the categories tracking creates, see
Bettie, Women without Class; Lee, Unraveling the “Model Minority” Stereotype; Staiger, Learning
Difference.
28. See Bettie, Women without Class; Perry, Shades of White.
29. McArdle and Young, “Classroom Discussion of Racial Identity.”
30. See Bergin and Cooks, “High School Students of Color”; Neal-Barnett, “Being Black”; Peterson-Lewis
and Bratton, “Perceptions of ‘Acting Black’ among African American Teens.”
31. See Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World.
32. Anne Galletta and William Cross make a similar argument about the importance of integration to
understanding “oppositionality” among black students. See “Past as Present.”
33. Annegret Staiger draws on her research at a California high school to argue that giftedness is a “racial
project,” and that “[m]agnet programs are devices in the arsenal of school desegregation.” See “Whiteness
as Giftedness,” 161. See also Meier, Stewart, and England’s Race, Class, and Education for a discussion of
the use of tracking and disciplinary policies in efforts to resist desegregation.
34. See Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All; Lucas, Tracking Inequality; Oakes, Keeping Track; Persell,
Education and Inequality; Tyack, One Best System.
35. See Clotfelter, After Brown; Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All.
36. See Katznelson and Weir, Schooling for All; Oakes, Keeping Track.
37. See Coleman, Adolescent Society, Rist, “Student Social Class and Teacher Expectations”; Sennett and
Cobb, Hidden Injuries of Class; Stinchcombe, Rebellion in a High School.
38. Sennett and Cobb, Hidden Injuries of Class, 82.
39. See Campbell, When a City Closes Its Schools; Gates, Making of Massive Resistance; Muse, Virginia’s
Massive Resistance.
40. Andrews, “Movement-Countermovement Dynamics.”
41. In the 1970s, this “white flight” was legally challenged. In 1974, in Milliken v. Bradley (418 U.S. 717), the
Supreme Court rejected a plan that would have allowed busing across district lines to integrate heavily
minority central city school districts with largely white suburban districts.
42. See Clotfelter, After Brown; Orfield and Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation; Meier, Stewart, and England,
Race, Class and Education; Ogletree, All Deliberate Speed; Persell, Education and Inequality, Walters,
“Educational Access and the State.”
43. See Chemerinsky, “Segregation and Resegregation”; Clotfelter, After Brown; Jennifer Hochschild, The
New American Dilemma; Mickelson, “Subverting Swann.”
44. See Clotfelter, After Brown, 2004; Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class and Education, 1989;
Mickelson, “Incomplete Desegregation”; Mickelson and Heath, “Effects of Segregation”; Oakes, Keeping
Track; Persell, Education and Inequality; West, “Desegregation Tool.”
45. See Staiger’s Learning Difference, an ethnographic case study of a California high school that used a
gifted program to accommodate “the demands for desegregation,” which shows some of the consequcnces
of this strategy. See also Epstein, “After the Bus Arrives.”
46. Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class, and Education, 6.
47. People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, School District # 205, 851 F. Supp.905, 1026 (1994).
48. Clotfelter, After Brown, 131.
49. Quoted in West, “Desegregation Tool,” 2575. For more on the findings of the Rockford case, see Oakes,
“Two Cities’ Tracking.”
50. One example is Hobson v. Hansen, 269 F. Supp. 401 (D.D.C. 1967). For discussion of other cases see
Hochschild, New American Dilemma; Persell, Education and Inequality; and Weiner, “Ability Tracking.”
Also, Georgia’s Screven County school district ended the use of tracking after a group filed a complaint
with the U.S. Department of Education and the agency agreed to investigate tracking and segregation in the
district’s three high schools. And a case is currently pending in Monroe County, Alabama, where the
ACLU filed a discrimination lawsuit against school officials, citing numerous violations of black students’
rights, including subjecting them to racially segregated classrooms. Available:
 http://www.wkrg.com/news/article/racial_lawsui t_filed_agains t_monroe_
county_school_officials/14161/.
51. Racialized tracking may help explain why desegregation has not had a greater impact on the achievement
gap. See Jencks and Phillips, Black-White Test Score Gap, for discussion of the black-white achievement
gap and desegregated schools. See also Burris and Welner, “Closing the Achievement Gap by Detracking”;
Oakes, “Two Cities’ Tracking.”
52. See Lucas and Berends, “Race and Track Location”; Mickelson, “Incomplete Desegregation”; Oakes,
“Two Cities’ Tracking.”
53. In earlier studies using national data, researchers found a black advantage in track location when prior
achievement, SES, and school factors were controlled. See Gamoran and Mare, “Secondary School
Tracking.”
54. Meier, Stewart, and England, Race, Class and Education, 51.
55. As Erwin Chemerinsky, a legal scholar, notes, in later decisions the Supreme Court concluded that “proof
of discriminatory impact is not sufficient to show an equal protection violation,” because the Constitution
guarantees equal opportunity, but not equal results. “Segregation and Resegregation,” 35. Other scholars
also attribute much of the current pattern of within-school segregation to decreasing judicial oversight. See
Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor, “Classroom-Level Segregation.”
56. Thomas County Branch of the NAACP v. City of Thomasville School District, 299 F. Supp. 2d 1340, 1367
(M.D. Ga. 2004).
57. Fordham and Ogbu, “Black Students’ School Success”; Ogbu, “Variability in Minority School
Performance”; Ogbu, “Origins of Human Competence.”

One
1. Shelly’s remarks are part of her response to a question about how she was doing in school compared to
other black students. She began by saying that very few of her black peers were working really hard in
school.
2. For more detailed descriptions of previous explanations of black students’ use of the acting white slur in
schools, see Galletta and Cross, “Past as Present, Present as Past”; Mickelson and Velasco, “‘Bring It On!’”;
O’Connor, Horvat, and Lewis, “Framing the Field.”
3. For more on this perspective, see Ogbu, “Variability in Minority School Performance.” See also Fordham
and Ogbu, “Black Students’ School Success.”
4. Galletta and Cross refer to this as the “legacy” argument, which they contend “underestimates the power of
certain integration policies and practices and exaggerates the role of black culture, in explaining the origins
of black student oppositional attitudes.” See “Past as Present, Present as Past,” 20.
5. Fordham and Ogbu, “Black Students’ School Success”; Ogbu, “Variability in Minority School
Performance”; Ogbu, “Origins of Human Competence.” See also McWhorter, Losing the Race; Norwood,
“Blackthink’s Acting White Stigma in Education.”
6. For more discussion on culture as an explanation for black underachievement, see Carter, Keepin’ It Real;
Darity, “Intergroup Disparity”; Gould, “Race and Theory”; Norguera, City Schools and the American
Dream.
7. The percent of blacks graduating from high school increased from 31 percent in 1970 to more than 70
percent in 2000. The figures for college attainment, while less impressive, also show a steady increase over
the same period, from 4.4 percent in 1970 to 14.3 percent in 2000. U. S. Census Bureau, rev. January 22,
2010. Available: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/phct41.html (Tables 3 and 4).
 For more on the black professional and middle classes, see Lacy, Blue-Chip Black.
8. In fact, according to most survey findings, African Americans generally express a strong belief in the
efficacy of education. See Mickelson, “Attitude-Achievement Paradox”; Cook and Ludwig, “Burden of
Acting White.”
9. See Bettie, Women without Class; Carter, Keepin’ It Real; MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It.
10. See Carbonaro, “Tracking, Students’ Effort, and Academic Achievement,” especially the conceptual model
on page 30.
11. For more on the foundational literature about the self and social influence, see Cooley, Human Nature and
the Social Order; Mead, Mind, Self, and Society. For more on expectancy effects, see Babad, “Pygmalion 25
Years After Interpersonal Expectations in the Classroom”; Cooper, “Pygmalion Grows Up”; Jussim, “Social
Reality and Social Problems.”
12. For additional student comments on this issue drawn from each of the studies, see Tyson, “The Making of
a ‘Burden.’”
13. Marguerite rarely mentioned her parents in the context of this discussion of her achievement. In fact, she
downplayed their role. When asked where her motivation and expectation to do well came from she
responded: “Well, none of it was from my parents. It was mostly me.”
14. Bettie, Women without Class; Clark, Family Life and School Achievement. See also Lewis, Race in the
Schoolyard; Rosenbaum, Making Inequality; Sennett and Cobb, Hidden Injuries of Class.
15. Carol Dweck’s work also has shown that how students interpret their prior achievement experiences
depends on their understanding of intelligence. Students who believe that intelligence is a fixed trait are
more likely to avoid tasks on which they previously have not done well or to exert less effort on those tasks
in the future. Students who believe that intelligence is malleable are more likely to take on tasks on which
they have not done well in the past and to continue to exert effort in an attempt to improve their skills and
master the material. See Dweck, “Messages That Motivate”; Dweck, “Development of Ability
Conceptions.”
16. Clark, Family Life and School Achievement, 175–176.
17. See Clark, Family Life and School Achievement; Lee, “In Their Own Voices”; MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’
It; Williams and Kornblum, Growing Up Poor; Young, “Navigating Race.”
18. MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It, p. 121.
19. As will become clear in chapters 2 and 3, Curtis was not a favorite, either among his peers or his teachers.
He was seen by many as arrogant, and he conceded that that perception was probably accurate.
20. For similar examples, see also Diamond, Lewis, and Gordon, “Race, Culture, and Achievement
Disparities.”
21. A doo-rag is a head wrap. “Bling” is a hip-hop term that refers to flashy diamond-studded jewelry.
22. Informant was a participant in the NCDPI Understanding Minority Underrepresentation study.
23. Informants were participants in the study In Their Own Words II: Linwood, hereafter referred to as
Linwood.
24. Three of the four studies I draw on in this book include parent interviews (Understanding Minority
Underrepresentation is the exception). However, most of these interviews were with parents (mainly
mothers) of children who were attending predominantly or all-black elementary schools. In the Effective
Students study, which involved adolescents, only a small number of parents participated in interviews.
25. Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb, 53.
26. Many white middle-class Americans assert similar claims. Ellen Brantlinger documents how middle-class
 parents rationalize their advantage by attributing negative qualities (e.g., less intelligence, less respect for
education) to low-income families. See Dividing Classes.
27. See Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism; Lacy, Blue-Chip Black.
28. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk.
29. Young, “Navigating Race”; Carter, Keepin’ It Real; O’Connor, “Race, Class, and Gender in America.” See
also Fergus, Skin Color and Identity Formation.
30. Staiger, Learning Difference, 59.
31. Bettie, Women without Class; MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It; Newman, No Shame in My Game. See also
Steinberg, Dornbusch, and Brown, “Ethnic Differences in Adolescent Achievement.”
32. Willis, Learning to Labor, 14.
33. Corsaro, “Interpretative Reproduction,” 164.
34. Adler and Adler, Peer Power; Carter, “Intersecting Identities”; Sennett and Cobb, Hidden Injuries of
Class; Willis, Learning to Labor.
35. Fordham and Ogbu, “Black Students’ School Success,” 194.
36. See Bettie, Women without Class; Carter, Keepin’ It Real.
37. Bettie, Women without Class, 90.
38. Brantlinger, Dividing Classes, 38.
39. Sennett and Cobb Hidden Injuries of Class; Stinchcombe, Rebellion in a High School.
40. Stinchcombe, Rebellion in a High School, 107.
41. Scholars would later define similar student behavior as resistance. See Willis, Learning to Labor.
42. The process Stinchcombe describes is similar to the process of disidentification that Claude Steele and
Jason Osborne have identified among students. However, Osborne argues that disidentification is a “group-
level response to stigma, rather than a response to poor performance” (728). Osborne, “Race and Academic
Disidentification”; Steele, “Race and the Schooling of Black Americans.”
43. Hewitt, Self and Society.
44. Imagine a situation in which an American adolescent from a black immigrant family is reprimanded by her
high school teacher for questioning a grade she received on an assignment. The girl walks away upset,
trying to understand the teacher’s response. She considers that perhaps her behavior toward the teacher was
rude. She was raised according to the idiom “children should be seen and not heard.” Her parents and
grandparents have always taught her that it is inappropriate for a child to challenge any adult or authority
figure. On the other hand, recalling what she has learned about racism and discrimination since coming to
America, the girl thinks that the teacher, who is white, may have responded to her harshly because he does
not like foreigners or black people. She considers, too, that American teens of her age are expected to have
developed a sense of autonomy and independence from their parents. She also knows that many American
teenagers regularly challenge authority. She concludes that the teacher must be prejudiced. To be sure,
incidents like these are often much more complicated. They involve many nuances related to tone of voice,
body language, and gestures, for example. However, for the sake of simplicity, I limit the details.
45. Swidler, “Culture in Action,” 273.
46. Patterson, “Taking Culture Seriously,” 203.
47. Swidler, “Culture in Action,” 273. Other scholars, however, contend that culture shapes both “the means
and the ends of action,” See Blair-Loy, Competing Devotions, 222.
48. Swidler, “Culture in Action,” 277.
49. See Ferguson, Bad Boys; Irvine, Black Students and School Failure; Lareau, Unequal Childhoods; Lareau,
“Social Class Differences”; Lewis, Race in the Schoolyard; Rist, “Student Social Class and Teacher
Expectations”; Roscigno and Ainsworth-Darnell, “Race, Cultural Capital, and Educational Resources”;
Valenzuela, Subtractive Schooling.
50. Lareau, “Social Class Differences”; Lareau, Unequal Childhoods.
51. Heath, Ways with Words.
52. See Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America. For criticisms of purely structural arguments, see
Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture; Carnoy and Levin, Schooling and
Work in the Democratic State; Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education.
53. Anyon, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”; Willis, Learning to Labor; MacLeod, Ain’t No
Makin’ It.
54. Sennett and Cobb, Hidden Injuries of Class, 88.
55. Meyer, “Effects of Education as an Institution,” 60.
56. Lareau and Weininger, “Cultural Capital in Educational Research,” 568.

SOURCE: Tyson, Karolyn, ed. Integration interrupted: Tracking, Black students, and acting White after
Brown. Review by: Rachelle J. Brunn Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 2 (March 2013), pp. 281–282 ‥
18
THE DISTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE
JEANNIE OAKES

T here has been a considerable amount of interest in tracking and some scholarly effort spent analyzing
it. As a result, we know quite a bit about the outcomes of tracking— what happens to students as a
result of being in one or another track, how their academic learning is affected, and what behaviors
and attitudes they are likely to exhibit. Other studies have considered the factors that are important in
determining who gets placed in which track level. Much of this inquiry has revolved around the question of
fairness and has tried to assess the extent to which student placements are based on social class or on “merit.”
This question has not yet been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, because underlying the issue is a whole
hotbed of other concerns: the definition of “merit,” the objectivity of standardized tests, and probably the most
volatile of all, the relationship between race and scholastic aptitude.
We looked at tracking from a slightly different, but not unrelated, perspective. Consistent with the focus of
A Study of Schooling, we were interested in learning the content and process of classrooms under tracking
systems. We wanted to know what actually goes on in classes at different track levels and how they are similar
or different from one another. We wanted to know specific information about what students were being taught,
how teachers carried out their instruction, what classroom relationships were like, and how involved students
seemed to be in classroom learning. We also wanted to know about what kinds of student attitudes were
characteristic of classrooms: attitudes students had toward themselves, their classrooms, and their schools.
Essentially, we wanted to know details about what different kinds of classes were like for students and how
students felt about being in them.
• • •

WHO GOES WHERE

[T]here is a pattern of relationships between students’ socioeconomic positions—and important in this is their
ethnicity—and their chances of being placed in a particular track level. While there is certainly no automatic
placement of poor and minority students in low tracks or of affluent white students in upper tracks, the odds of
being assigned into particular tracks are not equal. In virtually every study that has considered this question,
poor and minority students have been found in disproportionately large percentages in the bottom groups.
In our study of twenty-five schools, we found this same pattern operating. We were able to examine it
directly in two ways— related to student race and ethnicity and— indirectly—related to other socioeconomic
characteristics. For one thing, we were able to look closely at the schools with racially mixed populations to
determine who got placed in which track levels at those schools. And second, we were able to look at vocational
education programs at all the schools and assess the differences in programs taught to white and nonwhite
students. While these two considerations are related directly to race and ethnicity and tracking, they relate
indirectly to other socioeconomic status factors as well, for not surprisingly, the minority students in our schools
tended to be poorer than the whites. Moreover, the relationships we uncovered were the strongest at schools
where the minority students were at the lowest income levels.

ACADEMIC TRACKING AND RACE

Our twenty-five schools were very diverse in a number of ways, as we have seen. But one of the most
noticeable ways in which they differed was in the racial and ethnic characteristics of the students who attended
them. Seven senior highs and six junior highs were attended almost exclusively by white students. These were
the schools in the Vista, Crestview, Woodlake, Atwater, Bradford, Euclid, and Dennison communities. The
Rosemont schools were Mexican-American, and the Manchester schools black. The other eight schools were
racially or ethnically mixed: Fairfield Junior and Senior highs were about half Mexican-American and half
white, the Laurel and Palisades schools about half black and half white; Laurel’s schools were part of a mixed,
although hardly integrated rural community. The blacks at the two Palisades schools were bused in to this
affluent white community. The Newport schools, located in a highly diverse metropolitan suburb, were unique
among our group. The student population at these schools represented a rich variety of ethnic and racial groups.
Slightly less than half of the students at each of the schools were white; the others were Mexican-American,
black, or Asian, and a scattering of students were from a number of other distinct ethnic groups. Together, the
thirteen white schools enrolled 10,783 students; the four nonwhite schools, 8,248 students; and the eight mixed
schools, 4,287 white and 4,546 nonwhite students.
The relationship between student ethnicity and tracking could be seen at six of our mixed schools: Fairfield,
Laurel, and Palisades. At these schools we recorded the race or ethnic background of every student in the
classes we studied. By looking at how students from various groups were tracked into the English and math
classes at these six schools, we could check to see if the schools followed the pattern that has been found so
consistently in other research.
The white student populations at these six mixed schools ranged from a low of 46 percent to a high of 53
percent with an average for the six of 50 percent. Within these schools, an average of 62 percent of the students
in high-track English classes were white, a considerably larger proportion than in the student population as a
whole. Only 29 percent of the students in low-track English classes at these six schools were white, a
substantially smaller percentage than in the total student population.1
Eight high-track and ten low-track English classes were included in the sample at these six multiracial
schools. Of these eighteen classes, fourteen followed the predominant pattern of racial composition, with
disproportionately large percentages of white students in high-track classes and of nonwhite students in low-
track classes. Of the four classes that did not conform to this racial pattern, three were high-track classes with
between 32 and 46 percent white students; the other, a low-track class, had 67 percent white students.
These four classes, however, shared some common characteristics. All four were located in the Palisades
community, which, as we have seen, was a middle- to upper-middle-class suburb of a large city. The minority
students were middle- and upper-middle-class blacks voluntarily bused to the school. At the other four
multiracial schools, the minority populations were considerably less affluent. Additionally, three of these four
nonconforming classes were elective subjects—speech, journalism, and creative writing. Only one was a
standard language arts class, and that class had the largest white population of any of the three high-track
classes (46 percent).
Math classes, too, evidenced this disproportionate allocation of racial groups in track levels. An average of
60 percent of the students in high-track math classes at the six schools were white, compared to only 37 percent
of the students in the low-track math classes. As with the English classes, these percentages differed markedly
from the percentage of white students in the total population at these multiracial schools.
Six high-track and twelve low-track math classes were studied at these schools. Of these eighteen math
classes, only five did not follow the predominant pattern in racial composition—larger percentages of white
students in high-track classes and smaller percentages of whites in low-track classes than in the schools as a
whole. Of these five nonconforming classes, two were high-track classes—one with 44 percent white students
and one with 29 percent—and three were low-track classes with a percentage of whites ranging from 55 to 65
percent. Like the exceptional English classes, three of these five math classes were located in the Palisades
community, which had the more affluent black students.
From the information about these six schools, then, it is clear that in our multiracial schools minority
students were found in disproportionately small percentages in high-track classes and in disproportionately large
percentages in low-track classes. And, as we have seen, this pattern was most consistently found in schools
where minority students were also poor. These findings are consistent with virtually every study that has
considered the distribution of poor and minority students among track levels in schools. In academic tracking,
then, poor and minority students are most likely to be placed at the lowest levels of the schools’ sorting system.

• • •

WHO LEARNS WHAT

Question: What is the most important thing you have learned or done so far in this class?
We were interested in finding out what students regarded as the most important learnings in their classroom
experience. We gave them a considerable amount of empty space on their questionnaires to tell us what they
thought. Students in high-track classes tended to write answers like these:

Responses
I’ve learned to analyze stories that I have read I can come with an open mind and see each character’s point
of view. Why she or he responded the way they did, if their response was stupidity or an heroic movement.
I like this class because he [the teacher] doesn’t put thoughts into your head; he lets you each have a say
about the way it happened. High-track English—senior high

Basic concepts and theories have been most prevalent. We have learned things that are practiced without
taking away some in-depth studies of the subject. High-track Science—senior high

Learning political and cultural trends in relation to international and domestic events. High-track Social
Studies—senior high

I have learned a lot about molecules and now am able to reason and figure out more things. High-track
Science—senior high

It teaches you how to do research in a college library. High-track English—senior high

Learned to analyze famous writings by famous people, and we have learned to understand people’s
different viewpoints on general ideas. High-track English—junior high

Things in nature are not always what they appear to be or what seems to be happening is not what really is
happening. High-track Science—senior high

Greek philosophy, Renaissance philosophy, humanities. How to write essays and do term papers. The
French Revolution. HISTORY! High-track Social Studies—junior high

We learned how to do experiments. High-track Science—junior high

I’ve really learned the whole idea and meaning behind economics and how to apply economics to my life.

The bases of our economic system and the way the business world is. High-track Vocational Education—
senior high

About businesses—corporations, monopolies, oligopolies, etc., and how to start, how they work, how
much control they have on the economy—prices, demand, supply, advertising.

We’ve talked about stocks—bonds and the stock market and about the business in the U.S.A. High-track
 Vocational Education—junior high

We have learned about business deals. We have also learned about contracts. High-track Vocational
Education—senior high

Learned many new mathematical principles and concepts that can be used in a future job. High-track Math
—senior high

Learning to change my thought processes in dealing with higher mathematics and computers. High-track
Math—senior high

How to write successful compositions, how to use certain words and their classifications. What to expect in
my later years of schooling. High-track English—junior high

The most important thing that we have done is to write a formal research paper. High-track English—
senior high

There is no one important thing I have learned. Since each new concept is built on the old ones, everything
I learn is important. High-track Math—senior high

To me, there is not a most important thing I learned in this class. Everything or mostly everything I learn in
here is IMPORTANT. High-track English—junior high

I have learned to do what scientists do. High-track Science—junior high

Students in low-track classes told us the following kinds of things:

How to blow up light bulbs. Low-track Vocational Education—junior high

Really I have learned nothing. Only my roman numerals. I knew them, but not very good. I could do better
in another class. Low-track Math—junior high

I’ve learned how to get a better job and how to act when at an interview filling out forms. Low-track
English—junior high

How to ride motorcycles and shoot trap. Low-track Science—senior high

How to cook and keep a clean house. How to sew. Low-track Vocational Education—junior high

The most important thing I have learned in this class I think is how to write checks and to figure the salary
of a worker. Another thing is the tax rate. Low-track Math—senior high

To be honest, nothing. Low-track Science—senior high

Nothing outstanding. Low-track Science—senior high

Nothing I’d use in my later life; it will take a better man than I to comprehend our world. Low-track
Science—senior high

I don’t remember. Low-track Social Studies— junior high

The only thing I’ve learned is how to flirt with the chicks in class. This class is a big waste of time and
effort. Low-track Science—senior high

I learned that English is boring. Low-track English—senior high

 I have learned just a small amount in this class. I feel that if I was in another class, that I would have a
challenge to look forward to each and every time I entered the class. I feel that if I had another teacher I
would work better. Low-track Math—junior high

I can distinguish one type rock from another. Low-track Science—senior high

To spell words you don’t know, to fill out things where you get a job. Low-track English—junior high

Learned about how to get a job. Low-track English—junior high

Job training. Low-track English—junior high

How to do income tax. Low-track Math—senior high

A few lessons which have not very much to do with history (I enjoyed it). Low-track Social Studies—
junior high
Most Americans believe that the school curriculum is fairly standard. From what we remember of our own
experiences and what we saw represented in the media, we have an impression of sameness. Tenth-grade
English at one school seems, with only slight variations here and there, to be tenth-grade English everywhere.
This seems to be so much so that we would expect a tenth-grader who moves in the middle of the year from
Pittsburgh or Pensacola to Petaluma to slip quite easily into a familiar course of study—a little Shakespeare,
some famous short stories, a few Greek myths, lists of vocabulary words from the College Entrance Exams, and
guidelines for well-developed paragraphs and short expository themes. The same beliefs hold for most academic
subjects. For example, isn’t eighth-grade math everywhere a review of basic operations, an introduction to
algebraic and geometric concepts, with some practice in graphing and scientific notation and a brief glimpse at
function and inequalities? How much could eleventh-grade American history differ from class to class or from
place to place? Or ninth-grade introductory biology?
Don’t misunderstand, however. We, as a society, have no expectation that all tenth-, or eighth-, or eleventh-
graders will finish these classes having learned all the same things. We know well that some students are more
or less interested than others and that some find it more or less difficult than others do. But most of us do
assume that the material itself—facts and concepts to be learned, pieces of knowledge and works of scientific
literacy or cultural merit to be appreciated—is at least paraded by everyone as they proceed through school. We
assume that everyone is at least exposed. In our study of twenty-five schools we found these assumptions and
beliefs to be unsubstantiated by our observations of what actually went on in classrooms.
One of the particulars we were most interested in finding out about was whether students who were placed
in different track levels in subjects had the same opportunities to learn the content of those subjects. Were
students in different track levels being exposed to the same or similar material? If so, were the differences
among tracks merely ones of mode of presentation or pace of instruction? If actual content differences did exist,
were they socially or educationally important ones—that is, was what some students were exposed to more
highly valued by society than what other students were presented? We also wanted to know whether students in
different track levels were experiencing about the same amount of learning time. Were some groups of students
getting more instruction than others? Were effective instructional techniques being used more in one track than
in another? Did teachers seem to perform better with some groups of students than with others?
We studied each of these questions carefully because we knew that the implications of what we found could
be far-reaching. We believe that these issues go to the very heart of the matter of educational equity. For beyond
the issue of what schools students have access to is the issue of what knowledge and learning experiences
students have access to within those schools. If there are school-based or system-related differences in what
students are exposed to, are these differences fair? Do they interfere with our commitment to educational
equality?
We have long acknowledged and perhaps even overemphasized the ways in which differences among
students influence their learning in school. Cultural and socioeconomic patterns have been carefully studied
with an eye toward how those patterns characteristic of poor children, and especially poor and minority
children, interfere with their opportunities to achieve in school. We have also given attention to the influence of
family characteristics, such as support and encouragement, on school success. Measured aptitude for learning or
intelligence has received a huge share of research time and money in the search for explanations of differences
in student learning outcomes. All these attributes are alike in that they are seen to reside in the student. They are
clearly important in the school-learning process, but they are not factors over which schools have much control.
As conceived, there is little school people can do to alter them.
We have not, however, paid so much attention to the role of school opportunities in determining what and
how much students learn. For, ultimately, students can learn in school only those things that the school exposes
them to. And this learning is restricted by the time allotted for it and the mode of instruction employed. Perhaps
this is so obvious that it is clearly understood. I suspect, rather, that it is so obvious that it is usually overlooked
as important. But the implications of these simple facts of schooling are tremendous. If schools, perhaps in
response to differences students bring with them from home, provide them with different kinds of opportunities
to learn, then the schools play an active role in producing differences in what and how much students actually
learn. The different educational opportunities schools provide to students become the boundaries within which
what different students learn must be confined. Further, if these opportunities differ in ways that may be
important in influencing children’s future opportunities both in and out of school, then the differences in
learning that schools help produce have profound social and economic as well as educational consequences for
students.
We found in our twenty-five schools that students in some classes had markedly different access to
knowledge and learning experiences from students in other classes. In nearly every school, some groups of
students experienced what we typically think of as tenth-grade English, eighth-grade math, eleventh-grade
history, and ninth-grade science. We found also, again in nearly every school, that other groups of students
encountered something quite different. And we found that these differences were directly related to the track
level of the classes students were in.
In our study we used several sources of information about the 299 English and math classes to shed light on
this question of differences in what was likely to be taught and learned in classes in different track levels.
Teachers had compiled packages of materials for us about their classes, including lists of the instructional topics
they cover during the year, the skills they teach their students, the textbooks they use, and the ways they
evaluate their students’ learning. Many teachers also gave us copies of sample lesson plans, worksheets, and
tests. The teachers were interviewed, and as part of the interview they were asked to indicate the five most
important things they wanted their students to learn during the year with them.
In analyzing all these data we looked for similarities and differences in the content of what students were
expected to learn in classes at various track levels. We looked both at the substance of what they were exposed
to and at the intellectual processes they were expected to use.
We analyzed these similarities and differences systematically2 and from a particular point of view. We did
not assume that all knowledge presented in schools is equally valuable in terms of societal worth, as exchange
for future educational, social, and economic opportunities. On the contrary, we began with the recognition that
some kinds of knowledge are far more valuable in this way than are others.
We were not thinking, of course, about the value of knowledge in a pure—that is, culture-free—sense. The
issue of what is worth knowing in this abstract sense is a question philosophers will continue to grapple with.
Nor were we thinking about the value of knowledge in a purely educational sense. Again, it is not clear what
kinds of learnings may be better than others in the development of a person who is a learner. This is likely to
vary dramatically in groups, even those composed of very similar individuals.
These two issues ignore the social and economic ties attached to learning when it becomes housed in
schools. Schools, as social institutions, do far more than impart knowledge and skills to students. They do more
than pass on the traditions and values, the folkways and mores of the culture, to the young. Schooling is both
more and less than education in the purest sense. It includes as an important function the preparation of youth
for future adult roles and for their maintenance of the social structure and organizational patterns of society.
And because our social structure is a hierarchical one, with different and fairly specific criteria for entry at
various levels, schooling becomes what Joel Spring has called a “sorting machine.”3 By this he meant that the
form and substance of the educative process that occurs in schools also select and certify individuals for adult
roles at particular levels of the social hierarchy. This sorting process results in part from students’ access to
socially meaningful knowledge and educational experiences.
We analyzed the differences in the content of classes from this perspective. We wanted to explore whether
students in different track levels were systematically given access to knowledge that would point them toward
different levels in the social and economic hierarchy.
We found considerable differences in the kinds of knowledge students in various tracks had access to. We
found also that these differences were not merely equally valued alternative curricula. Rather than being neutral
in this sense, they were differences that could have important implications for the futures of the students
involved.
For example, students in high-track English classes were exposed to content that we might call “high-status”
knowledge in that it would eventually be required knowledge for those going on to colleges and universities.
These students studied standard works of literature, both classic and modern. Some classes traced the historical
development of literature, some studied the characteristics of literary genres (the novel, the short story, poetry,
the essay), and others analyzed literary elements in these works (symbolism, irony, metaphoric language).
Students in these classes were expected to do a great deal of expository writing, both thematic essays and
reports of library research. In some classes, too, students were taught to write in particular styles or to learn the
conventions of writing in the various literary forms. These students were expected to learn the vocabulary they
would encounter on the College Board Entrance (SAT) exams and practice the type of reading comprehension
exercises they would find there as well. Some, although not many, of these classes studied language itself,
including historical analyses and semantics.
Low-track English classes rarely, if ever, encountered these kinds of knowledge or were expected to learn
these kinds of skills. Not only did they not read works of great literature, but we found no evidence of good
literature being read to them or even shown to them in the form of films. What literature they did encounter was
so-called young-adult fiction—short novels with themes designed to appeal to teenagers (love, growing pains,
gang activity) and written at a low level of difficulty. These novels constituted part of the focus of low-track
classes on basic literary skills. Prominent in these classes was the teaching of reading skills, generally by means
of workbooks, kits, and reading texts in addition to young-adult fiction. The writing of simple, short narrative
paragraphs and the acquisition of standard English usage and functional literacy skills (filling out forms,
applying for jobs) were also frequently mentioned as course content in low-track classes.
It is probably not surprising, given the differences in what they were learning, that the differences in the
intellectual processes expected of students in classes at different levels were substantial. Teachers of the high-
track classes reported far more often than others that they had students do activities that demanded critical
thinking, problem solving, drawing conclusions, making generalizations, or evaluating or synthesizing
knowledge. The learning in low-track classes, in nearly all cases, required only simple memory tasks or
comprehension. Sometimes low-track students were expected to apply their learnings to new situations, but this
kind of thinking was required far less frequently than were memorization and simple understanding.
The teachers of classes intended for “average” students gave us information indicating that the learnings
encountered in their classes were somewhere in between the high- and low-track extremes. But it is worth
noting that the kinds of knowledge and intellectual skills emphasized in these average English classes were far
more like those in the high track than in the low. It is more appropriate to consider these classes as watered-
down versions of high-track classes than as a mixture of the other two levels. Low-track classes seemed to be
distinctly different.
Math classes followed a similar pattern of differences with one major exception. The knowledge presented
in high-track classes in math, as in English, was what we could call “high status”; it was highly valued in the
culture and necessary for access to higher education. Topics frequently listed included mathematical ideas—
concepts about numeration systems, mathematical models, probability, and statistics—as well as computational
procedures which became increasingly sophisticated at the higher grades.
In contrast, low-track classes focused grade after grade on basic computational skills and arithmetic facts—
multiplication tables and the like. Sometimes included in these classes were simple measurement skills and the
conversion of the English system into the metric. Many low-track classes learned practical or consumer math
skills as well, especially at the high school level—the calculation of simple and compound interest,
depreciation, wages, and so on. Few mathematical ideas as such seemed to be topics of instruction in these
classes. In essence, while the content was certainly useful, almost none of it was of the high-status type.
As in the English classes, the average math classes were considerably more like the high-track classes in
their content than like the low. And, too, the content of average math classes can be considered a diluted version
of that of the high classes. This was especially true at the junior highs and through about grade ten at the senior
highs. From that point on in our schools, math was usually no longer a required subject, and only what would be
considered high-track classes were offered to those students wishing to go on in math.
Math classes did differ from English classes in the intellectual processes demanded of students in classes at
the various track levels. While the topics of math classes differed considerably—and the differences in the
conceptual difficulty of these topics is dramatic—students at all levels of math classes were expected to perform
about the same kinds of intellectual processes. That is, at all levels, a great deal of memorizing was expected, as
was a basic comprehension of facts, concepts, and procedures. Students at all levels were also expected to apply
their learnings to new situations—whether it was the application of division facts to the calculation of
automobile miles per gallon of gasoline in low-track classes or the application of deductive logic learned in
geometry to the proof of theorems and corollaries in calculus.
It is clear that both the knowledge presented and the intellectual processes cultivated in English classes and
the access to mathematical content in math classes were quite different at different track levels. Moreover, these
differences seem to be more than simply a result of accommodating individual needs—a major reason given for
such curricular variation. The types of differences found indicate that, whatever the motives for them, social and
educational consequences for students are likely to flow from them. The knowledge to which different groups of
students had access differed strikingly in both educationally and socially important ways.
Much of the curricular content of low-track classes was such that it would be likely to lock students into that
track level—not so much as a result of the topics that were included for instruction but because of the topics that
were omitted. Many of the topics taught almost exclusively to students in low-track classes may be desirable
learnings for all students—consumer math skills, for example. But these topics were taught to the exclusion of
others—introduction to algebraic equations, for example—that constitute prerequisite knowledge and skills for
access to classes in different, and higher, track levels. So, by the omission of certain content from low-track
classes, students in effect were denied the opportunity to learn material essential for mobility among track
levels. This content differentiation was found as early as grade six. Contrary to the suspicions of many, this line
of thinking, however, does not imply that all students need the same things in school. Moreover, it is not in
conflict with the view that schools should accommodate differences among individuals in learning speed and
style, nor does it deny that some students need remediation in fundamental prerequisite skills. But it suggests,
given the importance of some curricular topics for students’ future educational opportunities, that
individualization and remediation should take place within the context of a core of educationally and socially
important learnings—thus at least providing equal access to these topics.

NOTES

1. The analysis of the distribution of white and nonwhite students into high- and low-track classes in six
multiracial schools yielded a chisquare significant at the .001 level with 1 df. See J. Oakes, A Question of
Access: Tracking and Curriculum Differentiation in a National Sample of English and Mathematics
Classes, A Study of Schooling Technical Report no. 24 (Los Angeles: University of California, 1981),
available from the ERIC clearinghouse on teacher education, for a complete presentation of this analysis.
2. The findings presented here are the results of discriminant analyses conducted separately for each
construct in each subject area at each of the two levels of schooling. For a detailed presentation of these
analyses and precise definitions of the variables and summary statistics, see the report cited above.
3. J. H. Spring, The Sorting Machine (New York: David McKay, 1976).
 PART II DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Shamus Khan examines the processes through which an elite boarding school cultivates privilege among
a “new elite.” How does cultural capital theory (Reading 6) relate to Kahn’s arguments? Comparing the
school culture he describes at St. Paul’s to that of your own high school, what messages about your own
relative privilege or disadvantage were conveyed at your school?
2. Often politicians and community organizers rally for more funding for schools in an effort to close
achievement gaps. However, the conclusions found in the readings by Jencks and Brown and Coleman et
al. differ from mainstream ideas about school funding. What do the authors conclude? Jencks and
Coleman wrote in the 1960s: Are their conclusions outdated or relevant today?
3. Orfield, Kucsera, and Siegel-Hawley and Entwisle, Alexander, and Olson write about segregated and
economically polarized schools. How do race and class interact to stratify American schools? What are
the consequences for students who attend them and for society at large?
4. The Tyson and Oakes readings highlight the ways that racialized tracking systems are mechanisms for
allocating different kinds of educational opportunities within schools. Each article condemns tracking
from a different angle. Have you attended or worked in a school that was academically tracked? Drawing
on your experiences and the arguments presented by these readings, what conclusions do you draw about
within-school tracking? In particular, how does the practice of tracking relate to racial inequality within a
given school?

SOURCE: From Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality by Jeannie Oakes. Copyright © 1985 by
Yale University. Reprinted with permission from Yale University Press.
PART III

CLASS, RACE, ETHNICITY, GENDER, AND

SEXUALITY

P art III examines in greater depth how access to educational opportunities is stratified along the
dimensions of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Selections in this part build on the readings
about stratification within and between schools. Specifically, the readings here suggest that class, race,
ethnicity, gender, and sexuality are often social categories used to structure access to educational opportunities.
Obviously, numerous other characteristics, such as disability, age, language, and immigrant status, can magnify
existing inequalities within and between schools for individual students. Rather than provide superficial
coverage of inequality along all these relevant dimensions, we focus instead on the key divisions of class, race,
ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Such an approach allows a more in-depth treatment of the mechanisms
underlying educational inequality.
Section IIIA identifies the effects of class background on educational attainment and school experiences.
Hans-Peter Blossfeld and Yossi Shavit summarize the results of a seminal, cross-national study that modeled the
effect of class background on educational transitions in thirteen countries for a series of cohorts over the last
century. This work continues the tradition of status attainment research. The cross-national study demonstrated
that although class background matters less for different educational transitions today than it did in the past, its
determining influence on educational attainment continues to persist. Only in countries that have enacted
progressive social democratic policies (i.e., Sweden and the Netherlands) have the effects of class background
on educational attainment been reduced.
Sociologists of education have long been concerned with the “Black-White Test Score Gap.” Many papers
and volumes were written in the 1980s, 1990s, and earlier 2000s investigating the gap between black and white
students. Reardon (Reading 20) demonstrates that while differences between black and white students persist,
they have decreased overtime. Alarmingly, a socioeconomic test score gap has emerged, and the trend seems to
point to growing differences in academic test scores by class, rather than a lessening of inequality Arum,
Gamoran, and Shavit (Reading 21) summarize the results from a cross-national study which builds on Blossfeld
and Shavit’s earlier study to consider the ways that the expansion, privatization, and diversification of higher
education systems relate to social inequality. They concur with Blossfeld and Shavit that expansion in the
tertiary sector does not undermine the stability of relative inequalities, but argue that this expansion is beneficial
because it extends opportunities to a broader spectrum of the population.
The fourth reading on class examines how the growth of higher education globally has impacted patterns of
mobility and inequality in each society. The next reading is an excerpt from a study by Paul Willis, examines
how young men from working-class backgrounds end up in working-class jobs. This study emerged from the
British cultural studies tradition that sought to demonstrate how working-class cultural meanings and
understandings were continuously recreated through localized social interaction and communication. Using this
cultural studies framework, Willis’s ethnography of an English comprehensive high school demonstrates how
the social reproduction of workers occurs in school settings. The working-class lads create a culture of
resistance to school knowledge and authority—complete with their own language, rules of behavior, and
attitudes toward outsiders. Ironically, the counter-school culture adopted by the lads effectively ensures that
their resistance to class inequality will ultimately reproduce their own subordinate class position. The excerpt
provides descriptive details of youth language and behavior that illustrate self-destructive and self-defeating
resistance characterizing the lads culture.
 In the next reading, Annette Lareau observes dramatically different parenting styles in working-class and
middle-class homes. Social class influences how parents structure their children’s days, develop their
vocabulary, and interact with authority figures and institutions. Middle-class parents employ child-rearing
practices that Lareau calls “concerted cultivation.” These parents have the resources to whisk their children to
music and art classes, soccer tournaments, and writing camp. Middle-class parents tended to explicitly aid their
children in developing a wide vocabulary. Finally, middle-class parents intervened at school on a child’s behalf
and empowered children to advocate for themselves within institutions. Lareau contrasts concerted cultivation
with the “accomplishment of natural growth” child-rearing practices of working-class families. Children in
working-class families were given more unstructured time to play, often in the neighborhood with their siblings
and relatives. Parents tended not to intervene in matters at school. Children from working-class families were
more independent, able to entertain themselves, and on the whole, more deferential to adults and authority
figures. Lareau argues that there is no intrinsic value attributable to one parenting style over another. However,
the structure of schools favors middle-class membership and the parenting practices of concerted cultivation.
After perusing the first five readings in this section about class and educational outcomes, readers will
become well versed in the ways in which social background interacts with schools to influence social
destinations. However, in the next reading, Julie Bettie highlights the exceptions to the rule. Focusing on the
experiences of a small group of Mexican American and white high school girls in California’s Central Valley,
Bettie asserts that exceptional circumstances, in the cases of a handful of individuals, can interrupt a cycle of
social reproduction.
Section IIIB provides seven readings on the importance of race and ethnicity in school settings. The first
reading in this section is Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu’s “Black Students’ School Success: Coping With
the “Burden of ‘Acting White.’”” Ogbu is an anthropologist whose ideas have received wide attention from
sociologists (see Farkas, 1996). Ogbu rearticulates earlier sociological insights on immigrant achievement and
maintains that immigrant minorities do better in school than nonimmigrant minority children because of
collective orientations and a heightened sense of community. Here, Fordham and Ogbu argue that the fear
among African American high school students of being accused of “acting white” causes a social and
psychological orientation that diminishes black students’ academic effort and thus leads to underachievement.
The authors use data from an ethnographic study of a Washington, D.C., high school to draw their conclusions.
Much subsequent research has challenged Fordham and Ogbu’s findings.
In a quantitative analysis of the school attitude of various racial and ethnic groups, Ainsworth-Darnell and
Downey (1998) and Downey (2008) demonstrate that African Americans maintain more pro-school values and
greater regard for high-achieving peers than do whites. These researchers believe that African Americans are
hindered in their academic success by a lack of material conditions and not the burden of acting white.
Additionally, Cook and Ludwig (1997) demonstrate that racial group differences in peer attitudes do not
account for the black-white gap in educational attainment. Racial differences, they conclude, are largely
accounted for by inequities between the family backgrounds of whites and blacks.
In the next reading in this volume, Tyson, Castellino, and Darity respond directly to Fordham and Ogbu’s
claim that high-achieving black students are negatively sanctioned by their peers. Tyson and her colleagues
demonstrate that black students display positive attitudes about school success and their opportunities for the
future. Furthermore, academically successful students of all races and classes experience resentment from their
peers. While Fordham and Ogbu focus much attention on black students who are slandered for acting white,
Tyson, Castellino, and Darity found that degrading statements toward successful students were not always
racially motivated. Rather, some slurs were laden with class-related terms such as uppity or thinks he is better
than us. Tyson, Castellino, and Darity found some jeers, such as brainiac and nerd, to be class and race neutral.
The authors assert that there is no evidence that teasing academically successful high school students is more or
less common among particular classes or racial groups.
In the next reading, Prudence Carter also responds to Fordham and Ogbu’s “acting white” thesis. Carter
contends that African American and Latino students’ academic, social, and cultural experiences are dynamic
and heterogeneous—not monolithic, as oppositional culture explanations assert. Carter grouped the black and
Latino students she studied into three ideal types based on how they believed group members should behave
culturally—cultural mainstreamers, cultural straddlers, and noncompliant believers. Carter demonstrates how
each type responds to peer social boundaries and status hierarchies in schools. No simple patterns arose between
academic performance, gender, and racial identity. However, students who were cultural straddlers seemed to
have the most success in maintaining peer-social connections and achieving in the classroom.
In the next reading in this section, S. Craig Watkins examines marked differences in digital media
participation of black and Latino youth when compared to their white peers. A historical look back to the 1990s
reveals that white youth had better access and spent more hours using digital devices (mostly personal
computers). A follow-up survey in 2010 showed the black and Latino youth are spending as many or slightly
more hours using digital platforms. Watkins argues that this closing of the digital divide is both promising and
perilous.
The next two readings examine how race and racial identities are negotiated, constructed, renegotiated, and
reconstructed daily in schools. These readings show an understanding of race not as a system of static,
immutable categories but rather as a dynamic process and a social construction. Amanda Lewis examines three
schools with differing levels of racial diversity. She concludes that school context matters in the kinds of
conversations, interactions, and postures that students and teachers have about race. Children do not come to
school with a racial identity and go home with it intact. Rather, ideas about race are created through interactions
between students and teachers. In the next reading, Pamela Perry focuses squarely on how white students
understand race and their own whiteness. Her ethnographic research explores the racial identities of white
students in two public high schools in California—one school with a high level of racial diversity and one
school with a student body that is almost entirely white. Perry’s work demonstrates the ambivalence and
multiple perspectives white students experience around their identities.
Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou examine the identity development of second-generation immigrant youth in
the next reading. In the wake of immigration reform in 1965, the United States received a wave of newcomers
from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Portes and Zhou argue that American sociology has been
slow to shift its models for conceptualizing the experiences of immigrant youth. The discipline continues to rely
mainly on theories of immigration posited 50 years ago to explain the influx of European immigrants. However,
immigrants in this post−1965 wave differ from their European counterparts of the early 20th century in two key
ways. First, most European immigrants were white, so they had the ability to assimilate more easily into the
American mainstream. However, most post−1965 immigrants hail from Asia, Africa, and Latin America and are
racially recognizable even if they assimilate culturally. Second, 50 years ago the United States was the world’s
greatest industrial power, providing immigrants with working-class jobs that could support families. Immigrants
today seek work in an economy that holds far fewer options than the economy that greeted their earlier
counterparts. Portes and Zhou assert that immigrant youth undergo a complex array of pressures and options as
they integrate into communities in the United States. Because the assimilation process is not as clear-cut and
straightforward as it was a generation before, Portes and Zhou have coined the term segmented assimilation to
capture the idea of the different paths, or segments, that immigrant youth take in forging identities in a new
land.
Gender and sexuality in schools is the focus of the final section in Part III. Barrie Thorne’s “Boys and Girls
Together . . . But Mostly Apart” looks at the everyday social worlds of kids in elementary schools. Through an
ethnography of students at two working-class elementary schools in Northern California, Thorne illustrates that
patterns of gender segregation among children are amplified by school settings. These patterns, however, are not
merely the result of adult intervention and are not simply created by schools. They result from a complex
interaction of the characteristics of family, neighborhood, school, and classroom settings that contributes to the
geography of gender separation in school.
In the next reading, Michael Apple addresses another important aspect of gender in schools. Apple takes a
historical look at the teaching profession and describes how teaching became a women’s profession as well as
how the prevalence of women changed the vocation. At the end of the 1800s, teaching was predominantly
performed by men. However, decreasing wages coupled with increased certification requirements led many men
to abandon teaching for more lucrative alternatives. Women filled the gaps after their successful fight to gain
entrance to education and employment outside of the home. Greater involvement of women in teaching resulted
in a de-skilling of the profession. The feminization of teaching also led to a de-powering of the profession such
that outside administrators—who were usually men—dictated classroom policies. Because this reading deals
with employment, an arena in which sex segregation is more readily apparent, the effects of gender
discrimination are clearly ascertained. Teaching has been one of the few professional opportunities available to
educated women. In 1970, 41% of college-educated employed women worked as teachers; by 1990, 19% of
college-educated women were teachers, compared to only 6% of men (Hanushek & Rivkin, 1996).
In the next reading, Nancy López investigates gender differences in academic attainment among Dominican
youth inside of New York City public high schools. López argues that formal and informal institutional
practices within schools send male and female students different messages about their racial and gender
identities. Second-generation Dominican males were seen through a pathological lens as potential behavior
problems, agents of aggression and violence. Female students were viewed in a more sympathetic light. López
concludes that school policies and practices systematically disenfranchise male minority students, leading to
their attrition, expulsion, or disproportionate appearance in the lowest academic tracks. Next, Simone Ispa-
Landa also examines intersections of race and gender, in this case the ways that urban black boys and girls
bussed to a wealthy, white suburban school are welcomed (or not) into suburban social cliques. She finds that
the boys are more readily included in the cliques (albeit with constrained race and gender expectations), while
the girls are stereotyped as “ghetto” and “loud” and excluded. She argues that this variation results from
processes of racialization and gendering within the schools. López, Ispa-Landa and Carter’s studies are
windows into the complex ways that the intersection of race/ethnicity, class, and gender identities interact with
the organizational structure of schools to produce differing academic and social outcomes.
The final reading in this section investigates the role of gender socialization and its effects on peer
relationships. C. J. Pascoe begins her piece with the observation that she set out to write a book about youth
masculinities in school and ended up writing a book about bullying. According to Pascoe, one cannot fully
understand bullying by studying a particular set of individual characteristics of the bully or the victim. Rather,
bullying is embedded in a social environment that encourages a set of masculine qualities that condone
aggression and violence. Pascoe complicates earlier work on bullying by highlighting that bullying occurs not
just between students who are separated on the social ladder but also between students in the same friendship
groups.

REFERENCES

Ainsworth-Darnell, J. W., & Downey, D. (1998). Assessing the oppositional culture explanation for
racial/ethnic difference in school performance. American Sociological Review, 63, 536–553.
Cook, P., & Ludwig, J. (1997). Weighing the burden of acting white: Are there race differences in attitudes
toward education? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 16(2), 256–278.
Downey, D. (2008). Black/white differences in school performance: The oppositional culture explanation.
Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 107–126.
Farkas, G. (1996). Human capital or cultural capital? Ethnicity and poverty groups in an urban school district.
New York, NY: Aldine de Gruyer.
Hanushek, E., & Rivkin, S. (1997, Winter). Understanding the twentieth-century growth of American school
spending. Journal of Human Resources, 32(1), 35–68.
19
PERSISTING BARRIERS
Changes in Educational Opportunities in Thirteen
Countries
HANS-PETER BLOSSFELD AND YOSSI SHAVIT

INTRODUCTION

During the twentieth century, industrial societies have experienced a remarkable process of social and economic
change. In the occupational system, there has been a long-term shift in employment from the primary to the
secondary sector, and from the secondary to the tertiary sector (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1985; Haller 1989). In
most industrialized countries this shift has been accompanied by a change in class composition and an
upgrading of the occupational structure; the major decreases in agricultural and manual employment have been
in the less skilled rather than the more skilled jobs, and the greatest increases in non-agricultural and non-
manual employment have occurred not in relatively low-level clerical, sales, and personal service grades but in
professional, administrative, and managerial occupations (Goldthorpe 1986). For all industrial countries, the
twentieth century has also been a period of increased bureaucratization and rationalization, as ever greater
proportions of the work force have been employed in larger and more formalized organizations and firms (Blau
and Duncan 1967). This tendency has been intensified in many countries—particularly in the 1960s and 1970s
—by a rapid expansion of the welfare state and an increase in public employment (Flora 1981, 1988; Esping-
Andersen 1990).
Industrialization, bureaucratization, and the expansion of the (welfare) state did not occur in isolation from
changes in the educational system. Changes in the class structure and the upgrading of the occupational
distribution have increased the demand for better education (Bell 1974; Featherman and Hauser 1978; Blossfeld
1985, 1989, 1990). The progressive rationalization and bureaucratization of working life have enhanced the
value of educational and skill qualifications for job opportunities (Blau and Duncan 1967; Arrow 1973; Spence
1973; Mincer 1974; Thurow 1976). This is particularly true for public sector employment, which tends to be
based on formal educational qualifications (Müller and Mayer 1976; Müller 1990). Thus, throughout the
twentieth century, we observe the increasing importance in industrial societies of the role of education, together
with a long-term growth in the enrollment of men and women in the educational system. From one birth cohort
to another, the expansion of the educational system has enabled ever larger proportions of children from all
social strata to complete primary and secondary education, and to attend tertiary education. Indeed, in almost all
industrial countries primary, and even some types of lower secondary education, are now virtually universal
(Meyer et al. 1977). The distribution of educational credentials has shifted upward and the average level of
educational attainment has risen.
Given this long-term process of educational expansion, reinforced in many countries by educational
reforms, one might expect a drop in the impact of social background on educational opportunity. Boudon
(1974), for example, argued that if school attendance rates increase over time, then inequalities in educational
opportunity will steadily decline, because the lower socioeconomic classes can increase their attendance rates
by more percentage points than the upper classes whose rates are already high and constrained by ceiling
effects.
Surprisingly, however, empirical studies showed that inequality of educational opportunity between social
strata has been quite stable over time. For the United States, Featherman and Hauser (1976, 1978) reported that
the effects of social background on years of schooling during the first half of the twentieth century have
remained more or less unchanged. For England and Wales, Halsey, Heath, and Ridge (1980) showed that in the
inter-war period the working class increased their chances of securing a place at a selective secondary school
from 20% to 26%, while the service class increased theirs from 70% to 77%. The relative growth was greater
for the working class, but the absolute difference between the classes increased. This led Halsey and his
associates to conclude that the effect of educational expansion in equality of opportunity is dependent on the
starting points of the various classes, and on the saturation levels of the educational institutions themselves. “If
the working-class starting point is very low . . . there can be a high rate of growth but low absolute gains. A
higher starting point, on the other hand, may yield a lower rate of growth but, providing it is still well short of
the saturation level, the absolute gains can be large, and class differences can decline.” (Halsey, Heath, and
Ridge 1980: 217). Thus, Halsey and his associates were convinced that in the early stages of educational
growth, expansion would lead to greater inequality and that only in the later stages would it reduce social
inequality in the attainment of a given level of schooling.
The comments of Boudon, and the analyses of Featherman and Hauser together with those of Halsey and his
associates, reflect a certain ambiguity as regards the concept of inequality of educational opportunity and its
measurement (see also Sorensen 1983, 1986; Sorensen and Blossfeld 1989). Should we measure change in
inequality of educational opportunity by the change in effect of social origin variables on the mean number of
school years completed? Or in terms of change in class-specific proportion completing a given level of
schooling? Or again, in terms of change in the ratio between such proportions? Mare (1980) clarified this matter
by showing that previously employed measures of changes in equality of educational opportunity fail to make a
clear distinction between two different processes: the expansion of the educational system and the processes of
selection and allocation of students. He proposes a model of change in inequality of educational opportunity
whose parameters are not affected by the degree of educational expansion or contraction. The model views the
educational attainment process as a sequence of transitions (for example, from first to second grade, from
second to third grade, etc.). At each level of the sequence a student can either make the transition or discontinue.
The odds of making the transition are determined by various exogenous variables such as students’ parental
education, family size, etc. . . .

• • •
An important implication of Mare’s work is the reformulation of the original research question. Rather than
simply ask “How have educational attainment processes changed historically?” we now distinguish between
changes in the process which are due to the changing distribution of schooling and changes in the association
between educational transition and social strata.
Following Mare’s study, there have been several analyses of changes in educational opportunities in
European countries. . . .

• • •
In sum, the various studies report different patterns of change or stability in the parameters of educational
attainment and educational transition models for the different countries. Why these differences? Clearly, they
may reflect interesting social differences in the structures of educational systems and in the processes of
educational stratification. However, most of these studies focus on single countries (see, for example, Matĕjů
1984, and Peschar 1990) and do not attempt to explore the role of societal factors in producing differences in the
educational attainment process. Furthermore, there are major methodological differences between the studies
that hinder a systematic comparison of results. For example, there are differences between studies in the
definition and measurement of key variables, and in the time-span covered by the data. In addition, some studies
focus on men while others analyze data for both sexes.
This [chapter summarizes and synthesizes] the results of thirteen very similar studies of educational
attainment in thirteen different countries. The countries offer a range of variation in important variables such as
industrial development and culture, political systems and history, and types of educational structures. The
countries included in this comparison are the United States, the (former) Federal Republic of Germany, the
Netherlands, Sweden, England and Wales, Italy, Switzerland, Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
and Israel. . . . Each study was conducted by researchers who have an intimate understanding of the country in
question. Most of these studies employed relatively recent nationally representative data, covering cohorts
educated over a broad historical period (with the exception of Switzerland). . . . In particular, we studied change
in the educational opportunities for cohorts who attended school before and after major educational reforms or
changes in attendance rates. We also employed very similar statistical models although we preferred to avoid
complete standardization of method, because the institutional structure of the educational system varies from
country to country. For example, in some countries, there is formal and rigid streaming or tracking (e.g.,
Germany, Poland), while in others there is less rigid curricular differentiation (e.g., the United States).
Furthermore, the important independent variables in the educational attainment process vary across societies.
For example, in some societies, ethnicity or race are important independent variables in the educational process
while other societies are ethnically homogenous. A completely standardized analysis would have lost these
unique features of the different societies. We did, however, attempt to maintain sufficient standardization to
enable a systematic comparison of the results. . . .

• • •

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND HYPOTHESES

The basic question which is addressed by the comparative analysis can be stated as follows: To what extent has
the relationship between parental socioeconomic characteristics and educational opportunities changed over
time and why? In the following we will concentrate on theoretical perspectives which have guided the
comparative study of this question.

Cultural and Economic Theories of Educational Stratification

Socioeconomic differences in educational attainment are broad and pervasive in all industrialized societies:
children from working-class or farming families attain less education on average than children from higher
socioeconomic origins (Gambetta 1987). Among the possible hypotheses explaining the pervasive class and
ethnic inequalities of educational attainment, the two most prominent highlight different aspects of the issue:
cultural capital theory and the economic constraint thesis.
The cultural capital theory, first advanced by Bourdieu and Passeron (Bourdieu and Passeron 1964, 1977;
Bourdieu 1966), contends that children from families with a low level of parental education are likely to lack
those abilities normally transmitted by the family and valued and rewarded by schools. In particular, cultural
resources such as dominant societal values, attitudes, language skills, and styles of interaction are acquired in
school more quickly by children already familiar with them. Consequently, selection in school favors children
from those families that already possess dominant cultural advantages.
By contrast to the cultural capital thesis, Boudon’s (1974) economic constraint thesis contends that in most
countries, education must be financed by family resources which include direct costs (e.g., tuition fees, learning
materials, and transportation) and forgone earnings. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that education is particularly
dependent on the economic resources of the family of origin. Although it is true that in many countries lower-
class families now send their children to school for longer periods, it does not contradict the basic statement that
poor families “. . . need at the same time to make heavier sacrifices and to have relatively stronger ambitions”
than families which are better off (Gambetta 1987:80). Thus, cultural and economic inequalities between classes
and status groups combine to produce educational inequalities among their children.

Theories of Change in Educational Stratification

Parsons (1970) and Treiman (1970), two main exponents of modernization theory, have suggested that the
educational system expands in response to the functional requirements of an industrial society and that
education plays an increasingly important role in the process of status attainment (Lenski 1966; Treiman 1970).
It has been argued that as the level of educational requirements in industrial societies rises, educational
qualifications become more important for occupational placement. It has also been assumed that with increasing
modernization and the expansion of the educational system, educational selection tends to become more
meritocratic. Hence, inequality of educational opportunity, as measured by its dependence on socioeconomic
and sociocultural characteristics, should decrease across all educational levels over time.1 As we shall see, this
hypothesis is turned on its head in the final section of this chapter.
By contrast, cultural reproduction theorists (see, for example, Collins 1971) claim that educational
certificates actually serve to exclude members of subordinate and low status groups from desirable positions in
the occupational structure. Education-based selection and allocation in the labor market are used to maintain the
hegemony and privilege of dominant social groups (Bowles and Gintis 1976; Bourdieu 1973; Collins 1971).
Educational credentials therefore mirror the class structure and help legitimize inequality of job opportunity.
Reproduction theorists recognize, however, that there is an inherent conflict between the socialization role
of education and its selective function. On the one hand, schooling is an effective institution by which children
of subordinate group origins are socialized into the dominant value system of the society. Therefore,
representatives of the dominant groups may pressure the political system to expand the educational institutions
and to absorb children of ethnic minorities or working class origins. This is consistent with the demands of the
subordinate groups themselves for more education. Consequently, the attainment of primary and even some
types of secondary schooling may become increasingly independent of social background. On the other hand, if
the dominant groups want to maintain their privileges in the status system, they must retain their advantage in
the attainment of higher educational qualifications. Thus, students of subordinate group origins are diverted
from higher education by various means. These range from the expansion of non-academic educational
alternatives (see, for example, Karabel 1972; Shavit 1984), to raising the admission standards in universities.
Thus, the effect of social background on the attainment of higher educational qualification is not reduced
despite the democratization of graded schooling.
In summary, although both the modernization and reproduction approaches agree that educational expansion
—whether the result of functional imperatives of economic modernization or an outcome of competition
between status groups—leads to greater equality of educational opportunities at the lower levels of the
educational system over time, they disagree as to the predicted trends in inequality of education at the higher
levels of the educational hierarchy: modernization theorists predict a decreasing trend of inequality of education
over time; and reproduction theorists expect an unchanged or even an increasing importance of social origin.
Raftery and Hout (1990) suggested a more radical version of reproduction theory. They argue that inequality
in educational opportunity is “maximally maintained.” This means that in modern societies, the effects of social
origin at all levels of education do not change, except when the enrollment of advantaged groups is already so
high at a given level that further expansion is only feasible by increasing the opportunity of disadvantaged
groups to make the transition. Accordingly, where grade-saturation occurs, educational expansion is the
consequence of the demands for education made by advantaged groups, which increase their proportion in the
course of the upgrading of the occupational structure. As long as these advantaged groups are not fully
integrated at a given level of education, they strongly support efforts to expand educational participation by
eliminating tuition fees, lowering admissions standards, increasing capacity, etc. Expansion in participation at
these given levels of education, however, does not lead to more educational equality between social groups
because the increases for the advantaged groups will be greater as these groups favor higher education more.
Therefore, expansion of education does not lead to a better chance for disadvantaged groups to make the
transition and will not change the association between social origins and given educational transitions. This was
the case in England and Wales during the 1950s and 1960s (Halsey, Heath, and Ridge 1980), and in Ireland
(Raftery and Hout 1990). Only where, for a given level of education, the participation is saturated for the
advantaged groups (this means if the advantaged groups already have transition rates close to 100%), and there
is further expansion, will the association between social origin and grade progression decline. In particular, it is
suggested that, if primary and lower secondary education is nearly universal for the privileged groups, then any
further expansion of secondary education may lead to declining effect of social origin on these transitions.
 Reproduction theory views education as an instrument by which the dominant social elite exclude other
classes from attaining desirable occupations. When the elite are replaced by previously subordinate classes, one
would expect the educational system to open up for these (previously) less privileged strata. Thus, one can
expect that the association between the socioeconomic origins of students and their educational transition rates
should have declined in the decades following the socialist transformations in Eastern and Central Europe after
World War II. As noted, this hypothesis is consistent in part with the results of earlier studies of formerly
socialist societies where the effects of socioeconomic origins declined on the earlier educational transitions.
However, these studies also reported no change in the effects on later transitions. The socialist transformation
hypothesis also suggests that once the new elite establish their privilege and gain control of the school system,
they take steps to secure the educational advantages of their own children. Thus, we can expect an increase in
the impact of social origins in the later years of socialist regimes. This hypothesis is discussed in some detail in
the studies on Hungary and Czechoslovakia by Szelényi and Aschaffenburg, and by Matĕjů respectively.
As noted earlier, previous studies on educational transition have found that the effect of social origin is
strong at the beginning of the educational career and then declines for later transitions. One hypothesis to
explain this pattern is that younger pupils are more dependent on the preferences of their parents and the
economic conditions of their families of origin than older ones. With increasing age, students will increasingly
be able to decide on their own what they want and will rely less on parental resources, particularly in countries
where higher education is not connected with high costs for the family of origin (Müller 1990:9). An alternative
explanation for this finding is that children from lower social classes meet very severe selection barriers at the
earlier educational transitions. Thus, only the brightest working-class children make it to higher levels of the
school system. By contrast, middle-class and upper-class children progress into secondary schools and
universities with greater ease. Consequently, among candidates for later transitions, socio-economic origin is
less and less correlated with scholastic aptitude and with other student characteristics—such as motivation—that
determine educational success. Therefore, the indirect effect of origins that is mediated by aptitude and
motivation, is reduced or eliminated, and its effect is small (Mare 1981).
Thus we have two possible explanations for the decline in the effects of origins on successive transitions: an
explanation that hinges on arguments about life course differences in dependence on family, and one which
relates it to the selection process. These two explanations suggest competing hypotheses regarding cohort
differences in the parameters of the educational transitions process. The life-course hypothesis states that if
primary and lower secondary education become universal and lead to a decrease in the effect of social origin at
these earlier levels, then the effects of social origin on higher grade progression will stay small across cohorts
because older pupils are less dependent on the preferences and the economic conditions of their families than
younger ones. This means that expansion of primary and secondary education does not only abolish or
drastically reduce earlier severe selection barriers for disadvantaged groups, but will also lead to more equality
of origin-specific educational opportunity across cohorts.
By contrast, the differential selection hypothesis states that if the proportion of successive birth cohorts in
the risk set to make a transition increases, so will the observed association between social origin and the
transition probability. This is simply an implication of the argument concerning unmeasured variables (such as
ability, ambition, and motivation) within different social groups: as growing proportions of all social groups
reach higher levels of schooling across cohorts, the social groups become more equal with respect to
unmeasured variables which leads to a greater effect of observed socioeconomic factors across cohorts.
To summarize, we have suggested the following six hypotheses regarding change in the effects of social
origins on educational transitions:

• Modernization hypothesis: the effects of social origins on all transitions decline;

• Reproduction hypothesis: the effects of social origins decline on earlier transitions but not on later
transitions;
• Hypothesis of maximally maintained inequality: the effects will only decline at those transitions for
which the attendance rates of the privileged classes are saturated;
• Socialist transformation hypothesis: socialist transformations brought about an initial reduction in the
effects. This will then be followed by increased effects;
 • Life-course hypothesis: the effects decline across transitions but are stable across cohorts;
• Differential selection hypothesis: the effects decline across cohorts but the effects on later transitions
increase across cohorts.

THE COMPARATIVE PROJECT: COUNTRIES AND METHODS

The Countries
Thirteen industrialized countries are included in the study. They may be classified according to their basic
cultural and economic system into three major groups: (1) Western capitalist countries: the United States of
America, the (former) Federal Republic of Germany, England and Wales (see also, Heath and Clifford 1990),
Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden; (2) non-Western capitalist countries: Japan and Taiwan; and
(3) Western formerly socialist countries: Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In addition, and in order to
enrich the selection of societies examined here, we have also included a study on Arabs living in Israel: in the
mid-twentieth century, the Arab population in Israel shifted from being a society of mass illiteracy to one with
nearly universal primary education. Of recent cohorts, large proportions have also completed secondary
education. Moreover, this population also shifted from a peasant to a proletariat society. As such, it is a striking
example of a society which has undergone radical structural changes.
These societies do not constitute a representative sample of all industrialized societies, but do represent
considerable variations in the following: the level and timing of industrialization (compare, for example,
England and Wales with Taiwan and Sweden); the political system (democracies, socialist states, and non-
democratic states); the structure of the distributive systems (market-based vs. bureaucratically determined,
ethnic vs. class stratification); the organizational form of the school systems (nationally centralized in most
societies, decentralized in the United States, and regional in Germany and Switzerland) including the degree of
“tracking” (mostly rigid with the exception of the United States and Sweden) and educational attendance rates;
and formal public commitment to equality of opportunity. Thus, the array of countries enables an evaluation of
the hypotheses listed earlier in a variety of societies.
• • •

RESULTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

• • •

Patterns of Educational Expansion

We begin by focusing on inter-cohort changes in highest educational attainment. . . . [E]ducational
expansion is strong and universal in all countries, whether socialist or capitalist, Western or non-Western. The
average level of educational attainment has risen across cohorts. . . . In all thirteen societies, primary and even
some types of lower secondary education have become nearly universal during the period under study. . . . This
means that in all these societies, decisions about the educational continuation of children are no longer taken at
a very early age. As we shall see, this has important implications for equality of educational opportunity. In all
the societies, the major branching point between continuation and discontinuation of schooling occurs at the
transition from primary to secondary education.
The expansion of the educational systems [is] evaluated relative to the changing sizes of cohorts. Thus,
expansion of a given level of schooling is defined as an increase in the proportions of successive cohorts who
attended that level. In all societies, expansion has been strong at the lower secondary level, less pronounced at
the upper secondary level, and modest at the tertiary level. In some countries tertiary education increased only
slightly, or failed to increase at all, relative to the changing sizes of the cohorts to which it catered (Netherlands,
Taiwan, Hungary, and Poland). Educational systems appear to open up more fully at the bottom than at higher
educational levels. Higher levels of education do not expand fast enough to absorb the growing proportions of
graduates from lower levels of the school system, and educational bottlenecks can become quite severe,
especially in the transition from secondary to tertiary education.
It would seem that there is a universal pattern of educational expansion policies. Educational systems open
up step-by-step from the bottom up. In the process, successive birth cohorts improve their chances to move up a
small step within the educational hierarchy. However, higher levels of education still remain fairly exclusive.
This pattern of expansion leans towards the arguments of reproduction theory rather than towards modernization
theory. A persistent rationing of higher credentials restricts the pool of candidates to positions of privilege at the
top of the occupational hierarchy, and thus legitimizes inequality of job opportunities.
In several countries (Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, and for Israeli Jews see Shavit [1990]), this
basic pattern of educational expansion has been accompanied by an impressive expansion of tracking and
vocational education as an alternative to academic secondary or higher secondary education. In some cases,
vocational training opens employment opportunities in a wide range of occupations. It is attractive for children
from lower socioeconomic backgrounds because it provides rapid access to a skill. Thus, the availability of
vocational education enables the educational system to absorb disadvantaged groups at the secondary level
without disturbing the basic social interests of advantaged groups at higher levels in the school system (Shavit
1989).
. . . Ten of the thirteen studies analyze data for both sexes. All ten studies report a substantial reduction in
the differences between the mean educational attainment of men and women. In some societies (United States,
Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Sweden), women’s mean attainment in recent cohorts even surpassed those of
men. This indicates that women in particular have profited from educational expansion in industrial countries.

Socioeconomic Inequalities in Educational Attainment

Given the long-term process of educational expansion in all of the industrialized countries, one might expect
a drop in inequality of educational opportunity between socioeconomic strata. As noted earlier, each of the
studies in the project estimated the traditional linear regressions of educational attainment (measured as number
of school years) on measures of social background for successive cohorts. Changes in equality of educational
opportunity are operationalized as cohort differences in the effects of social origins on educational
attainment. . . . In one country in particular (the Netherlands), there is a decline in the effect of both father’s
education and father’s occupation across cohorts. In six of the societies examined there has not been any
significant change in the effects of either indicator of social origins on educational attainment (Germany,
England and Wales, Switzerland, Hungary, Poland, and the case of the Israeli Arabs). The remaining five
studies report mixed results: a decrease in the effect of one variable, and stability or increase in the effect of the
other (United States, Italy, Taiwan, Japan, and Czechoslovakia). Interestingly, the study for Czechoslovakia
reports a decline in the effect of father’s education on educational attainment for cohorts educated immediately
after the introduction of the socialist reforms. However, this was followed by an increase in the effects for more
recent birth cohorts.
Thus, although there is a uniform trend of educational expansion in the participant societies, there is no
uniform outcome with respect to educational inequality. Most notably, in most cases, expansion has not entailed
greater equality of educational opportunity among socioeconomic strata. With the exceptions of Sweden and the
Netherlands, the studies do not reveal a consistent decline in the associations between social origins and
educational attainment. Stability is somewhat more common with respect to the effect of father’s occupation
than with respect to the effect of father’s education.

EDUCATIONAL TRANSITIONS: STABILITY WITH THE SAME TWO EXCEPTIONS

As noted earlier, cohort differences in linear regression effects of socioeconomic origins on educational
attainment confound two distinct components: cohort differences in the proportions continuing to successive
levels of education, and changes in the associations between educational transition rates and social origin (Mare
1980). The former component is a reflection of educational expansion, whereas the latter is a reflection of the
social and institutional arrangements which govern the educational selection of different social strata. . . .
. . . With the exception of Switzerland, the effects of social origins are strongest at the beginning of the
educational career and then decline for subsequent educational transitions. In some countries (for example, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany) the effects of social origin on the transitions to tertiary education are so
small as to be insignificant. Thus, it would seem that social selection is most pronounced at very early stages of
the educational career.
Earlier, we mentioned two hypotheses explaining this declining effect of social origin across transitions: the
differential selection hypothesis, and the life-course hypothesis. The later postulates that the effects of family
diminish with age, as children become less dependent on their families. The data employed by the thirteen
studies do not allow for a direct test of the two hypotheses because we have not been able to control for
unmeasured variables such as ability or motivation. However, the implication of the differential selectivity
hypothesis is that as growing proportions of all social groups reach higher levels of schooling across cohorts,
there is greater heterogeneity on unmeasured variables at higher level of schooling. This should result in
increasing effects of observed socioeconomic variables across cohorts, but this has not been the case in our
study. Although we observe a long-term and strong educational expansion in all countries . . . , there is no
universal increase in the effect of social background on grade progression. In most countries, there is no change
in the logit effects of social origin on educational transitions,2 and some report declining effects.
This pattern suggests that variation in unmeasured heterogeneity is not a single cause for the decline in the
logit effects across transitions. . . . Mare shows that controlling for unmeasured heterogeneity in family
characteristics eliminates the decline in the effects of father’s education across the early educational transitions.
However, even when heterogeneity is controlled, the effect of father’s education declines sharply for the
completion of university or college. This also suggests that the decline in the effects across the first transitions is
best explained by a life-course hypothesis. Presumably, older students are less dependent on family resources—
cultural and material—in their educational decision-making.
Focusing on change in the association between social origins and educational transitions, we find virtual
stability across cohorts. The two exceptions are Sweden and the Netherlands, where the associations have
declined for transitions within secondary education. These two exceptions are highly significant for our study.
First, in neither case have the privileged classes been saturated with secondary education before the associations
declined. Thus, both cases counter the Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) hypothesis (Raftery and Hout
1990). The MMI hypothesis is also inconsistent with the results for the United States . . . , in which the middle
class has been saturated, or nearly saturated, with secondary education but in which the association has actually
increased at that level. Second, the Swedish model of the welfare state has been very effective in reducing class
differences in everyday life chances and life styles (see, for example, Erikson 1983; Erikson and Goldthorpe
1987). Jonsson therefore suggests that the equalization of living conditions in Sweden is probably the major
explanation for the declining association between social origins and educational opportunity. As social classes
become more equal in their living conditions, the factors which differentiate their educational opportunity (for
example, differences in cultural, capital, and material resources) also diminish. Moreover, the Netherlands is
undergoing a similar historic process of opening-up and equalization in the long-run. In sum, these two deviant
cases suggest that long-term commitments to socioeconomic equality may lead to an equalization of educational
opportunities between classes and socioeconomic strata.
On the other hand, the common experience of the three formerly socialist states in the study tell a quite
different story. In all three cases studied, there has been an expansion of educational opportunity at the primary
and secondary level similar to that found in other countries. And yet, despite the nominal commitment of their
regimes to equality and equality of educational opportunity, the data reveal stability in the relationship between
social origins and educational attainment. The Socialist Transformation Hypothesis suggested that the
transformation was followed by an initial equalization of educational opportunity, especially at the bottom
levels of the school system, followed by greater inequality in subsequent decades. In view of the data, the
hypothesis now appears too optimistic. Only in Czechoslovakia was there some indication that inequalization of
educational opportunity at the lower level declined somewhat, and there too, it was followed by a return to its
initial level.
In sum, despite the marked expansion of all the educational systems under study, in most countries there has
been little change in socioeconomic inequality of educational opportunity. Even in extreme cases of industrial
transformation (such as Taiwan, Japan, and Italy), and radical changes of the occupational structure (Israeli
Arabs), the parameters of the educational stratification process remain stable (see also Smith and Cheung 1986).
This is a clear refutation of the modernization hypothesis. Only in Sweden and the Netherlands has there been a
consistent equalization of educational opportunity by socioeconomic strata.

The Effects of Educational Reforms

Several of the educational systems studied . . . have undergone major structural reforms during the decades
covered by the data. Most notable, of course, were the transformations of educational systems during the
socialist transformations in Eastern and Central Europe. But major reforms were also made in England and
Wales in 1944, in Sweden during the early 1960s, in Japan after World War II, in Israel during the 1960s and
1970s, and during the 1968 Mammoth Reform in the Netherlands. Less dramatic transformations of the
educational system were introduced in other countries. The details of the reforms for each country are described
in the respective chapters of [the original source]. The finding which is common to all our studies is, however,
that the reforms did not lead to a reduction in the association between social origins and any of the educational
transitions. Even in Sweden and the Netherlands, which report a decline in the association, this is not
attributable to the educational reforms. In Poland, educational policy was designed to form “a new Communist
man” with the technical skills for productive labor, but the major effect seems in fact to have been the
displacement of men by women in the conventional elite academic tracks (see Heyns and Bialecki in Blossfeld
and Shavit 1993).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The synthesis of the empirical studies . . . suggests seven major conclusions. First, whereas earlier studies of
changes in the process of educational stratification in some of the countries yielded divergent results, the results
of the present study are more homogeneous. Two major patterns are identified: an equalization among
socioeconomic strata in educational opportunity for Sweden and the Netherlands, and virtual stability in other
countries.
Second, in all thirteen countries, there was a marked educational expansion during the periods examined.
This is equally true for industrializing and for advanced industrialized societies, for capitalist and for socialist
states, and for Western and non-Western countries. Furthermore, in most cases, expansion was not uniform
across all educational levels. Instead, educational systems expanded much more rapidly at the primary and
secondary levels than at the post-secondary level. Consequently, as larger proportions of successive cohorts
enter and complete secondary education, they encounter severe bottlenecks in the transitions to tertiary
education. In some cases, access to tertiary education actually declined across cohorts, as the pool of candidates
increased dramatically.
In some countries (e.g. Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, and Israel [Shavit 1989]), the expansion of
secondary education has been accompanied by a growing differentiation into academic and vocational tracks or
programs. The expansion of vocational, non-college education enabled these systems to incorporate growing
proportions of children from lower strata who would complete secondary education but would not be considered
for further academic education. This led to an opening up of secondary education without disturbing the
basically exclusive character of higher education.
Third, the analyses of linear regressions of educational attainment reveal a mixed pattern. In two countries
(Sweden and the Netherlands) there is a clear overall decline in the effect of social background for the first two
transitions across cohorts, whereas, in six countries the effects of socioeconomic origin on education attainment
have remained virtually stable. In the remaining five countries there have been both a decline and stability or
even increases in the effects. Thus, expansion of education does not consistently reduce the association between
social origins of students and their educational attainment.
Fourth, the effect of social origin on grade progression is strong at the beginning of the educational career
and declines for later educational transitions (except for Switzerland). Thus, socioeconomic selection occurs at
early stages of the educational career. This is partly due to the fact that school systems select students on the
basis of characteristics which are correlated with their socioeconomic origins (Mare 1980, 1981. . .). However,
there is also some indication that the effects of socioeconomic origins decline across educational transitions
because older students are less dependent on the family of origin in making (and financing) educational
decisions.
Fifth, while the effects of students’ origins decline across transitions, there is little change in these effects
across cohorts. There are only two exceptions to this pattern: Sweden and the Netherlands, in which the effects
of father’s occupation and education on the low and intermediate transitions declined. Both the Dutch (De Graaf
and Ganzeboom) and Swedish (Jonsson) authors attribute the declining effects to a general policy of
equalization of socioeconomic conditions in their countries. In Sweden, there has been an equalization of life
chances for the different social strata, and in the Netherlands there has been a long-term opening up in many
aspects of the stratification system (van Kersberger and Becker 1988; Esping-Andersen 1990). In both countries
the decline occurred before saturation of attendance of the privileged groups has taken place. This means that
part of the hypothesis of maximally maintained inequality is incorrect: inequalities of educational opportunities
can decline before saturation is reached. Furthermore, . . . for the United States, saturation does not necessarily
reduce class inequality in the odds of making transitions.3 Also interestingly, the radical social policies of the
socialist states did not reduce the effect of social origin. This is consistent with the assertion that under
socialism, the bureaucratic elites were as effective in protecting the interests of their children as elites in other
types of society. The stability in the association between social origins and educational transitions in eleven of
the thirteen societies indicates that educational selection persistently favors children of privileged social origins.
This is consistent with the argument that dominant social classes that manage to resist changes in the school
system might diminish their relative advantage in the educational process (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992).
Sixth, for ten of the thirteen societies, data were available on both men and women. In all ten cases, the data
reveal a marked reduction in gender differences in means of educational attainment. In some cases, most
notably, in Poland, the United States, Germany, and Sweden, the educational gender gap has actually been
reversed, with girls being more likely to benefit from the expansion of educational systems than lower class
boys. In addition, the association between gender and educational transitions has declined in each of the studies
in which it was estimated. Two important causes for this decline are suggested: girls are less often fed into dead-
end vocational tracks (Heyns and Bialecki), and families’ discrimination against girls has declined, especially
among the middle classes (Jonsson).
Finally, the impact of educational reforms on changes in educational stratification seems to be negligible.
Nowhere have they reduced inequalities of educational opportunity between socioeconomic strata. Even in
Sweden and the Netherlands, which report declines in the association, the decline is not attributable to the
educational reforms, but occurred before the educational reforms.
The thirteen societies represent very different social and educational structures. We noted that some were
socialist, others capitalist, and some in between the two. Some have highly centralized educational systems
whilst in others the systems are locally controlled (e.g., the United States, Switzerland, Germany). The countries
also display marked cultural variations. And yet, in all but two cases, there are two marked similarities between
them all. They all experienced dramatic educational expansions during the twentieth century, and they all
exhibit stability of socioeconomic inequalities of educational opportunities. Thus, whereas the proportions of all
social classes attending all educational levels have increased, the relative advantage associated with privileged
origins persists in all but two of the thirteen societies.
Many people will still be somewhat surprised that rapid educational expansion did not reduce inequalities of
educational opportunities. The reason may be that “educational opportunity” is still a rather vague and
unspecified concept. Educational opportunity—as we understand it—means the chance to attain a specific
educational level, rather than its actual attainment. It is a relative, not an absolute, concept. As a consequence of
educational expansion societies can produce a higher average level of educational attainment from one birth
cohort to the next, without changing the educational opportunities of children from different social strata. Thus,
educational expansion may even account for the stable patterns of educational stratification. It is a well-known
fact that the larger the pie, the less the conflict as to the relative size of the slices. For example, class conflict is
more pronounced during periods of decline than during periods of economic growth. Similarly, there are two
mechanisms through which the education of disadvantaged classes may be enhanced: through educational
expansion whereby the educational attainment of all classes is increased, and/or through a change of the rules
that govern educational selection and reduce or eliminate the disadvantage of lower social strata. As long as the
educational attainment of lower social strata is rapidly increasing, political attention can neglect any parallel
increases among the privileged classes. Thus, educational expansion can alleviate political pressure to reduce
inequalities. This is the essence of Halsey, Heath, and Ridge’s assertion which is discussed extensively at the
beginning of this chapter. It is also similar to the position of Raftery and Hout who too view educational
expansion and the equalization of educational opportunity to a certain extent as competing alternatives. Thus,
the modernization theorists’ hypothesis that educational expansion results in greater equality of educational
opportunity must be turned on its head: expansion actually facilitates to a large extent the persistence of
inequalities in educational opportunity.

NOTES

1. It should be noted that increased meritocratic selection does not necessarily reduce socioeconomic
inequalities in educational attainment. If scholastic ability is highly correlated with socioeconomic origins,
educational selection on ability may produce a correlation between origins and educational attainment.
Most studies of change in the effect of socioeconomic origins on educational attainment do not explicitly
consider the role of ability in the process. Hence, they are not able to distinguish between those
components of change in these effects that are mediated by ability and those mediated by other factors.
2. There are only two exceptions: the United States and Switzerland. For the United States, the authors
attribute the increasing effect of parental education on high school graduation across cohorts to the various
factors of urban disorganization. For Switzerland, for men the increase of social background on the
transition to university is probably connected with the specific meaning of these transitions in the Swiss
educational system.
3. If the upper class actually reached an attendance rate of 100%, any increase in lower class attendance
would lead to a declining logit effect. However, if the upper class reaches near saturation (around 95%), it
is no longer a mathematical necessity that lower class increased attendance need reduce the effects.

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permission of the authors.
20
THE WIDENING INCOME ACHIEVEMENT GAP
SEAN F. REARDON

Has the academic achievement gap between students from high-income and low-income families changed in
the last few decades? And if so, why?
Historically, low-income students as a group have performed less well than high-income students on most
measures of academic success—including standardized test scores, grades, high school completion rates, and
college enrollment and completion rates. Countless studies have documented these disparities and investigated
the many underlying reasons for them. But no research had systematically investigated whether these income-
related achievement gaps have narrowed or widened over time.
To answer this question, I conducted a comprehensive study of the relationship between academic
achievement and family income in the United States over the last 50 years. I used data from 12 nationally
representative studies that included information on family income and student performance on a standardized
test in math or reading. Because each of the tests measured reading and math skills on a different scale, I
standardized all the test scores and expressed the income achievement gap in standard deviation units (Reardon,
2011).

STRIKING FINDINGS

Finding 1: The income achievement gap has grown significantly in the last three
decades.
Among children born in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, the reading achievement gap between those
from high-income families (at the 90th percentile of the income distribution) and those from low-income
families (at the 10th percentile) was about 0.9 of a standard deviation. As illustrated in Figure 20.1, this gap
began to widen beginning with the cohorts born in the mid-1970s. Among those born 20–25 years later, the gap
in standardized test scores was roughly 1.25 standard deviations—40 percent larger than the gap several decades
earlier.1
Although the trend in the income achievement gap is striking in its own right, it is even more striking when
compared with the concurrent trend in the black-white achievement gap (see Figure 20.1). The black-white
achievement gap was considerably larger than the income achievement gap among cohorts born in the 1950s
and 1960s, but now it is considerably smaller than the income achievement gap. This change is the result of
both the substantial progress made in reducing racial inequality in the 1960s and 1970s and the sharp increase in
economic inequality in education outcomes in more recent decades.

Figure 20.1 Income Achievement Gap and Black-White Achievement Gap in Reading for
1943–2001 Birth Cohorts
SOURCE: Adapted from “The Widening Socioeconomic Status Achievement Gap: New Evidence and Possible Explanations” (p. 98)
by S. F. Reardon, in R. J. Murnane & G. J. Duncan (Eds.), Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life
Chances, 2011, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Indeed, Figure 20.1 encapsulates two important trends in U.S. history over the last 50 years. In the 1950s
and 1960s, racial inequality was high in virtually every domain of life—education, health, earnings, residential
segregation—whereas economic inequality was lower than it had ever been in the last century (Piketty & Saez,
2003). By the early part of the 21st century, racial inequality was much lower (although far from eliminated) in
terms of wages, health disparities, and residential segregation. Meanwhile, economic inequality reached historic
highs (Saez, 2012). Although both remain high, economic inequality now exceeds racial inequality in education
outcomes.

Finding 2: Income gaps in other measures of education success have grown as well.
Academic achievement, as measured by standardized test scores, is not the only education outcome for
which disparities between high-income and low-income students have been growing. The college-completion
rate among children from high-income families has grown sharply in the last few decades, whereas the
completion rate for students from low-income families has barely moved (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011). Moreover,
high-income students make up an increasing share of the enrollment at the most selective colleges and
universities (Reardon, Baker, & Klasik, 2012)—even when compared with low-income students with similar
test scores and academic records (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011; Belley & Lochner, 2007; Karen, 2002).
A related trend during the last 20 years is the growing social-class gap in other important measures of
adolescents’ “soft skills” and behaviors related to civic engagement, such as participating in extracurricular
activities, sports, and academic clubs; volunteering and participating in community life; and self-reports of
social trust (Putnam, Frederick, & Snellman, 2012).
Finding 3: The income achievement gap is already large when children enter
kindergarten, and it does not grow significantly as they progress through school.
One possible explanation for the widening income achievement gap is that K–12 schools have grown more
unequal in quality over the last few decades. If this were true, then the gap should grow larger the longer
students are in school. But when I examined the data, I found little evidence that this occurs.
In one study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), roughly 25,000
students were tested in math and literacy skills in kindergarten in 1998 and then were reassessed as many as six
more times between 1998 and 2007, when the students were in 8th grade (Tourangeau, Nord, Lê, Pollack, &
Atkins-Burnett, 2006). I used this study’s data to examine how the income achievement gap changed as this
cohort of students progressed through elementary and middle school. As Figure 20.2 shows, the gap in reading
grew very little during this period—it was 1.15 standard deviations when the children entered kindergarten and
1.25 standard deviations in 8th grade. Other longitudinal studies that assessed students multiple times during
middle and high school show the same pattern: The achievement gap changes little during the K–12 years.
The fact that the income achievement gap is large when children enter kindergarten—and does not grow
substantially during the school years—suggests that the primary cause of the gap is not unequal school quality.
In fact, the data in Figure 20.2 show that schools may actually narrow academic achievement gaps, rather than
widen them. The data show the gap narrowing between the fall and spring of the kindergarten and 1st grade
years—periods when students were in school—and widening in the summer between kindergarten and 1st grade
—when they were not in school. Although we can’t assume that the same pattern holds in later grades, the
ECLS-K data do suggest that schools may reduce inequality rather than widen it. This finding is consistent with
other research on the “summer setback” that has been conducted in smaller, more localized samples (for
example, see Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2007).

Figure 20.2 Development of Income Achievement Gaps in Reading, Kindergarten–8th

grade
SOURCE: Adapted from “The Widening Socioeconomic Status Achievement Gap: New Evidence and Possible Explanations” (p.
100) by S. F. Reardon, in R. J. Murnane & G. J. Duncan (Eds.), Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life
Chances, 2011, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

WHY HAS THE INCOME ACHIEVEMENT GAP GROWN?

To understand the reasons for the growing income achievement gap, it is necessary to look at the social history
of the past 50 years in the United States. A few key trends are worth considering.
First, income inequality has risen dramatically in the last 30–40 years, making the gap in income between
high-income and low-income families much greater. In 1970, a family with school-age children at the 90th
percentile of the family income distribution earned 5 times as much as a family at the 10th percentile; today, the
high-income family earns 11 times more than the low-income family.2 This rapid growth in income inequality
means that high-income families now have far more resources, relative to low-income families, to invest in their
children’s development and schooling.
Second, upward social mobility has become far more difficult and far less certain than it was 50 years ago,
partly because of rising income inequality and partly because of declining economic growth. While the
economy was growing rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, the vast majority of children in the United States
(particularly white children) grew up in families in which they were much more economically secure than their
parents (most of whom had grown up during the Great Depression and World War II) had been. But beginning
in the 1970s, economic growth slowed dramatically, and upward social mobility became far less certain.
Third, the economy has become increasingly bifurcated into a low-skill, low-wage sector (for example,
service jobs and routine production jobs) and a high-skill, high-wage information sector (for example,
engineering and financial analysis). Largely gone are the manufacturing jobs that provided a middle-class wage
without a college degree. As a result, education success has become increasingly essential to economic success
(Autor, Katz, & Kearney, 2008; Murnane, Willett, & Levy, 1995).
Fourth, popular notions of what constitutes education success have changed. In the last few decades, test
scores have become increasingly central to our idea of what schools are supposed to produce. As test scores
have played a more dominant role in education policy over the last decade (and have become more important in
college admissions), they have become increasingly salient to parents concerned with their children’s education
success.
Fifth, American families have changed in several important ways in the last four decades. Children in high-
income families are increasingly likely to be raised by two parents, both with college degrees, whereas low-
income children are more likely than ever to be raised by a single mother with a low level of education
(McLanahan, 2004; Schwartz & Mare, 2005). This means that family income has become increasingly
correlated to other family characteristics and resources that are important for children’s development.
The combination of these broad social trends has had important consequences for children’s academic
success. Increased uncertainty about children’s likelihood of upward social mobility, coupled with the increased
importance of education for career security, has made parents increasingly anxious about their children’s
education. This has led to greater competition among families for their children’s academic success.
In summary, the growth in income inequality and in the correlation of income with other family resources
means that family resources have become increasingly unequal at the same time that families are increasingly
focused on their children’s education, a constellation of trends that has led to a rapidly growing disparity in the
extent to which families invest their time and money in their children’s education. Indeed, high-income families
now spend nearly 7 times as much on their children’s development as low-income families, up from a ratio of 4
times as much in 1972 (Kornrich & Furstenberg, 2013).

WHAT ROLE CAN SCHOOLS PLAY?

U.S. schools have historically been thought of as the great equalizer—the social institution best suited to ensure
that all children have an equal opportunity to learn, develop, and thrive. It is unrealistic, however, to think that
school-based strategies alone will eliminate today’s stark disparities in academic success. Economic policies
that reduce inequality; family support policies that ensure children grow up in stable, secure homes and
neighborhoods; and early-childhood education policies that promote cognitive and social development should
all be part of a comprehensive strategy to close the economic achievement gap.
Nonetheless, schools do have a key role to play in the efforts to reduce this gap. Among the school-based
strategies that might be most effective, I suggest three specific areas.
First, states and school districts could devote a greater share of their resources and efforts to the earliest
grades, including kindergarten and preschool. Because achievement gaps are self-perpetuating, the earlier we
intervene to reduce them, the more effective we will be at eliminating them in the long run.
Second, growing evidence suggests that more time in school (for example, extending the school day or year
or providing after-school or summer-school programs) may help to narrow academic achievement gaps—if the
added time is used effectively (Dobbie & Fryer, 2011; National Center on Time and Learning, 2012). Although
the evidence is far from conclusive at this point, it appears to be a strategy worth pursuing.
Third, states and school districts can do more to ensure that all students have equal access to high-quality
teachers, stimulating curriculum and instruction, and adequate school resources (computers, libraries, and the
like). The United States has grown more residentially segregated by income over the last four decades (Reardon
& Bischoff, 2011), meaning that schools have, in many places, become increasingly segregated by income as
well. School districts can work against this growing segregation by developing student assignment systems that
promote socioeconomic diversity within schools.

IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES

The widening income achievement gap is a symptom of a confluence of trends that have accompanied and
exacerbated widening income inequality in the United States over the last four decades. But it is a symptom
with real and important consequences.
If we do not find ways to reduce the growing inequality in education outcomes, we are in danger of
bequeathing our children a society in which the American Dream—the promise that one can rise, through
education and hard work, to any position in society—is no longer a reality. Our schools cannot be expected to
solve this problem on their own, but they must be part of the solution.

NOTES

1. Analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Rampey, Dion, & Donahue,
2009) and from the 12 studies suggests that the income achievement gap is not widening because of
declines in low-income students’ performance. In fact, average test scores of both low-income and middle-
income students have risen substantially in math and very modestly in reading. But they have been
outpaced by high-income students, whose scores have risen even faster.
2. Author’s calculations, based on Current Population Survey data (King et al., 2010).

REFERENCES

Alexander, K. L., Entwisle, D. R., & Olson, L. S. (2007, April). Lasting consequences of the summer learning
gap. American Sociological Review, 72(4), 167–180.
Autor, D. H., Katz, L. H., & Kearney, M. S. (2008). Trends in U.S. wage inequality: Revising the revisionists.
 Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(2), 300–323.
Bailey, M. J., & Dynarski, S. M. (2011). Gains and gaps: A historical perspective on inequality in college entry
and completion. In G. Duncan & R. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality, schools, and
children’s life chances (pp. 117–132). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Belley, P., & Lochner, L. (2007). The changing role of family income and ability in determining educational
achievement (Working Paper 13527). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Dobbie, W., & Fryer, R. G. (2011). Getting beneath the veil of effective schools: Evidence from New York City
(Working paper 17632). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Karen, D. (2002). Changes in access to higher education in the United States: 1980–1992. Sociology of
Education, 75(3), 191–210.
King, M., Ruggles, S., Alexander, T., Flood, S., Genadek, K., Schroeder, M., et al. (2010). Integrated public
use microdata series, Current Population Survey: Version 3.0. [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota.
Kornrich, S., & Furstenberg, F. (2013). Investing in children: Changes in parental spending on children, 1972
to 2007. Demography, 50(1), 1–23.
McLanahan, S. (2004). Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic transition.
Demography, 41(4), 607–627.
Murnane, R. J., Willett, J. B., & Levy, F. (1995). The growing importance of cognitive skills in wage
determination. Review of Economics and Statistics, 78(2), 251–266.
National Center on Time and Learning. (2012). Time well spent: Eight powerful practices of expanded-time
schools. Boston: Author.
Piketty, T., & Saez, E. (2003). Income inequality in the United States, 1913–1998. Quarterly Journal of
Economics, 118(1), 1–39.
Putnam, R. D., Frederick, C. B., & Snellman, K. (2012). Growing class gaps in social connectedness among
American youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Retrieved from
www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/research/SaguaroReport_DivergingSocialConnectedness 20120808.pdf
Rampey, B. D., Dion, G. S., & Donahue, P. L. (2009). NAEP 2008 trends in academic progress. Washington,
DC: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.
Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between rich and poor: New evidence and
possible explanations. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality,
schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 91–115). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Reardon, S. F., Baker, R., & Klasik, D. (2012). Race, income, and enrollment patterns in highly selective
colleges, 1982–2004. Stanford, CA: Center for Education Policy Analysis, Stanford University.
Reardon, S. F., & Bischoff, K. (2011). Growth in the residential segregation of families by income, 1970–2009
(Project US 2010 Census Brief). Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved from
www.s4.brown.edu/us2010/Data/Report/report111111.pdf.
Saez, E. (2012). Striking it richer: The evolution of top incomes in the United States (updated with 2009 and
2010 estimates). Berkeley: Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved from
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Demography, 42(4), 621–646.
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 SOURCE: Sean F. Reardon, “Widening Income Achievement Gap,” in Educational Leadership, 70(8), May
2013. Reprinted with permission from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
21
MORE INCLUSION THAN DIVERSION
Expansion, Differentiation, and Market Structure in Higher
Education
RICHARD ARUM, ADAM GAMORAN, AND YOSSI SHAVIT

INTRODUCTION

For scholars of social stratification, the key question about educational expansion is whether it reduces
inequality by providing more opportunities for persons from disadvantaged strata, or magnifies inequality by
expanding opportunities disproportionately for those who are already privileged. The expansion of higher
education and its relation to social stratification deserves special scrutiny. First, whereas primary and secondary
education have now become nearly universal in most economically advanced societies, we are witnessing rapid
expansion and change at the tertiary level. In addition, higher education is the gatekeeper of managerial and
professional positions in the labor market. Finally, and from a theoretical point of view most important, the
structure of higher education has been transformed as it has expanded. Particularly in economically advanced
countries, expansion has been accompanied by differentiation. Systems that had consisted almost exclusively of
research universities developed second-tier and less selective colleges, and much of the growth in enrollment
was absorbed by these second-tier institutions. Thus, at the same time that members of the working class found
new opportunities to enroll in higher education, the system was being hierarchically differentiated so that these
new opportunities may have had diminished value.
Differences between systems of higher education provide us with the opportunity to revisit theories about
the role of expansion and differentiation in shaping stratification regimes in education. These theories were
developed through research on secondary education at the time when it was being transformed from elite to
mass education (e.g., Heyns 1974; Rosenbaum 1976; Shavit 1984; Gamoran 1987; Raftery and Hout 1993).
Now the educational frontier has shifted and similar debates arise concerning higher education. Some scholars
suggest that higher education expansion, especially when it occurs through hierarchical differentiation, is a
process of diversion, whereby members of the working class are diverted from elite opportunities and are
channeled to positions of lower status (Brint and Karabel 1989). Others have noted, however, that even lower-
tier postsecondary schooling represents enhanced opportunity, so that the important effect of expansion may be
one of inclusion (Dougherty 1994).
Another important dimension along which systems of higher education vary is the extent to which
expansion is supported through market-based private financing or more exclusively through public sources.
American research on expansion tends to ignore this distinction, taking expansion entirely for granted as a
historically inevitable response to consumer demand (Walters 2000). In many other countries, however, higher
education is centrally regulated and expansion is tightly controlled. While market-based systems likely result in
greater expansion overall, they charge tuition fees that may hinder attendance by the working class. Thus,
market-based systems may not promote equality of opportunity any more or less than state-centered systems.
This chapter synthesizes the findings reported by the 15 country chapters that comprise the bulk of [the
source] volume. The countries were drawn mainly from Western Europe (France, Italy, Germany, the
Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Great Britain), Eastern Europe (Russia, Czech Republic), and East Asia
(Japan, Korea, Taiwan) and also include Israel, the United States, and Australia. Across countries and over time,
these systems of higher education varied in the rate of expansion, the extent of differentiation, and market
structure. These differences allow us to assess several propositions about the relation between forms of higher
education expansion and social stratification. We examine how class inequalities in access to higher education
vary across systems with different levels of expansion, institutional differentiation, and private versus public
allocation logics. At the conclusion of this chapter we introduce the main findings of each of the country-
specific analyses, which are laid out in full in the remainder of the book.

Expansion and Stratification

Following Mare (1980, 1981), many sociologists of education view the educational attainment process as a
sequence of transition points at which students either continue to the next level or drop out. Some transition
points involve multiple options such as whether, after high school, to attend a first-tier college or a second-tier
college or to enter the labor force. At each transition point, students differ greatly in their transition
probabilities. For example, those raised in middle-class homes are less likely to drop out, and are more likely to
attend first-tier than they are to attend second-tier institutions, compared with students from disadvantaged
social origins.
While educational expansion is associated with many advantages, including enhancement of peoples general
well-being and of societies’ macroeconomic development, scholars have observed that, in and of itself,
expansion does not reduce class inequalities in education. Raftery and Hout (1993) have argued that inequality
between any two social strata in the odds of attaining a given level of education persists until the advantaged
class reaches the point of saturation. Saturation is defined as the point at which nearly all sons and daughters of
advantaged origins attain the educational level under consideration. Until that point, the advantaged group is
typically better equipped to take advantage of any new and attractive educational opportunities, and class
inequalities will persist or even increase as opportunities are expanded. Only when the privileged class reaches
saturation at a given level of education, would further expansion of that level contribute to the reduction of
inequality in the odds of its attendance because the privileged cannot increase their attendance rates past the
100% mark.
This hypothesis, known as “Maximally Maintained Inequality” (MMI), is consistent with results reported by
Shavit and Blossfeld (1993) who found that in most countries educational expansion did not reduce educational
inequality. More recent studies (e.g., Jonsson, Mills, and Müller 1996; Shavit and Westerbeek 1998) found that
as primary and secondary education expanded, class inequalities in their attainment declined. This result is
consistent with Raftery and Hout’s argument because the middle classes have reached saturation with respect to
attainment of lower educational levels. In a recent paper, Hout (forthcoming b) analyzed data for 25 nations and
found that among market economies, socioeconomic inequality in overall educational attainment is inversely
related to the prevalence of higher education. This is also consistent with MMI because in societies with market
economies, lower levels of education tend to be saturated in the privileged strata.
Although there are also empirical exceptions to MMI (e.g., in some former state socialist societies,
inequality is not related to the degree of saturation (Hout forthcoming a)), it is consistent with most cases and is
considered a useful working hypothesis for studies of educational expansion and stratification (Hout and
DiPrete 2006).

Institutional Differentiation and Stratification

An important critique of the MMI hypothesis and of the Mare model is that they both ignore tracking and
other forms of qualitative differentiation within education (e.g., Breen and Jonsson 2000; Lucas 2001; Ayalon
and Shavit 2004). Educational choices involve more than just the two options—to continue or to drop out. Most
education systems are tracked, in one form or another, and students must choose among various tracks within
the system. Several scholars have argued that concurrent with expansion, qualitative differentiation replaces
inequalities in the quantity of education attained (e.g., Shavit 1984; Gamoran and Mare 1989). Lucas (2001)
recently argued that once saturation has been reached with regard to a given level of education, inequalities in
the odds of this level’s attainment may be replaced by inequalities in the odds of placement in the more
selective track.
A well-known tenet of organization theory is that organizational growth tends to be accompanied by
differentiation (Blau 1970). Differentiation is viewed as a means to operate more efficiently by dividing “raw
materials” or “clients” into more homogeneous units. Educational expansion often follows this pattern, with
systems becoming more complex as greater numbers of students enroll. While differentiation is commonly
regarded as a consequence of expansion, it may also contribute to expansion, as new places become available in
new segments of the education system. Whereas a functionalist view suggests that differentiation allows greater
efficiency (Thompson 1967), social control theorists point out that a differentiated system of higher education
preserves the elite status of those born into privilege (Trow 1972; Brint and Karabel 1989).
The mode of differentiation in higher education varies between countries. In some countries, tertiary
education is offered primarily by a single type of institution—usually, a research university. Meek and his
associates refer to this type of system as unified (Goedegebuure et al. 1996). Unified systems tend to be quite
rigid. They are controlled by professorial elites who are not inclined to encourage expansion, either of their own
universities or through the formation of new ones. Very few systems still belong to this type. In our comparative
project, only the Italian and Czech higher education systems are strictly unified. Other systems consist of a mix
of institutions that are stratified by prestige, resources, and selectivity of both faculty and students. A well-
known example is the American system, which consists of prestigious research universities, a second tier of
private and public four-year colleges, as well as many two-year colleges (Karabel 1972; Brown 1995; Grodsky
2003). Meek and his associates refer to this type as diversified higher education (Goedegebuure et al. 1996).
Often, the second tier of tertiary education takes the form of vocational or semiprofessional training (e.g.,
the German Fachhochschulen). This system is labeled as binary because it consists of two main types of
institutions: academic and vocational. Some diversified systems are also binary in the sense that second-tier
colleges primarily provide vocational training. In other cases, vocational institutions were upgraded to
university status in an attempt to transform the system from a binary to a formally unified one (e.g., Britain and
Australia).
The co-occurrence of expansion and differentiation is the basis for claims that higher education expansion is
primarily a process of diversion, channeling members of the working class to lower-status postsecondary
opportunities in order to reserve higher-status opportunities for the elite (Brint and Karabel 1989). According to
this view, as tertiary education expands and as differences between social strata in the odds of attaining tertiary
education decline, between-strata differences widen with respect to the kind of tertiary education attended.
Swirski and Swirski (1997) argued that as the second-tier system expands, first-tier institutions become more
selective and class inequalities in access to first-tier institutions increase. An alternative view, however, is that
expansion of lower-tier postsecondary education enhances opportunity by bringing into higher education
students who would otherwise not have continued past secondary school (Dougherty 1994). Furthermore, one
could argue that as higher education expands, first-tier institutions must compete for students and may lower
admission thresholds. According to this logic, education expansion that leads to higher overall rates of tertiary
enrollments is a process of inclusion, even if expansion is accompanied by differentiation.

TERTIARY MARKET STRUCTURE AND EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY

Many studies of the relation between educational expansion and educational stratification suffer from an
important theoretical inconsistency. On the one hand, they assume that expansion is exogenous to the
stratification process, and that it affects the educational opportunities available to individuals (e.g., Raftery and
Hout 1993). At the same time, these studies assume that educational expansion reflects rising individual
incentives to attend school for longer periods of their life course. Some argue that incentives rise in response to
changes in the occupational structure (e.g., Blau and Duncan 1967; Treiman 1970b). Others believe that
incentives rise because groups and individuals compete for access to the best jobs (Collins 1979) or because
parental expectations are such that children’s education is likely to equal or exceed that found in the prior
generation (Erikson and Jonsson 1996a). Regardless of the specific mechanism, these theoretical orientations
share the assumption that expansion is demand-driven, namely, that schools expand in response to growing
aggregate demand by individuals for education.
Garnier, Hage, and Fuller (1989) and Walters (2000) argue convincingly that this assumption is applicable
to the American case, where education is decentralized and deregulated and where private and local educational
institutions expand to meet consumer demand. As Walters writes:

The literature on American school expansion has largely treated the growth of enrollments as a demand-
driven process, determined almost exclusively by the decisions of students and their families about whether
to send their children to school. The availability of schooling is taken for granted. . . . (p. 242, emphasis
added)

In many other countries, education is centrally regulated and numerous constraints are imposed on its
expansion. As Garnier et al. (1989) argue, where states are strong, they can ration elite education (e.g., in first-
tier institutions) while expanding mass education (e.g., through second-tier colleges). In some countries, there
are formal quotas on admissions (e.g., Sweden; see Jonsson and Erikson in Chapter 5 of [original source]). In
addition, states can simply constrain funding for education, enact rigorous curricular prerequisites or institute
restrictive accreditation requirements that effectively limit expansion.
Systems of higher education vary greatly in the degree to which they rely on public or private provision to
support tertiary education. Furthermore, the responsiveness of education systems to consumer demand changes
over time. Since the 1980s, some systems have undergone deregulation and privatization that facilitates rapid
expansion in response to growing demand. In some systems private institutions aggressively stimulate and
generate demand for their services through the use of promotional and marketing strategies (witness the increase
in “nontraditional” students, the spread of the concept of “life-long learning,” or the “College for All”
campaigns implemented in the United States).
We anticipate that where higher education is largely funded from private sources, enrollment rates exceed
those found in publicly funded systems. Privately funded colleges and universities rely on enrollment for
revenue and are thus client-seekers. Furthermore, private institutions may engage in demand-generating
activities, such as advertising, and the development of specialized programs that cater to well-defined groups of
potential clients. Expanded funding from private sources can also potentially increase the overall level of
support for higher education by supplementing—as opposed to substituting for—sustained public sector
resource commitments (Arum 1996). At the same time, however, some institutions of higher education are also
status-seekers. That is, they engage in various activities intended to enhance their prestige in terms of attracting
“high quality” faculty and students relative to competing institutions. Most important in this regard is social
exclusion in the process of student selection through the elevation of admissions criteria.
Clearly, the imperatives of client-seeking and status-seeking behaviors conflict with one another. Client-
seeking implies low admissions criteria while status-seeking implies fewer clients than could otherwise be
admitted. The conflict is often resolved through the differentiation of a status-seeking first tier of institutions
and a client-seeking second tier, which is less selective and enjoys lower prestige. Thus, we expect to find
greater enrollment rates and more institutional differentiation in market systems than in state-funded systems.
Class inequalities in the odds of progression to tertiary education may also differ between the two regimes,
but we are unable to hypothesize a priori what direction these differences might take. Class inequalities in the
odds of educational progression are due primarily to class differences in ability (including cultural capital),
financial resources, and motivation. It is likely that in regimes that have expanded tertiary education through
reliance on private sector funding there is less stringent educational selection on ability and there could thus be
lower class inequalities than in more rigid government funded systems. At the same time, in highly privatized
systems class inequalities may be mediated more directly by family differences in the ability to pay tuition fees.

Summary of Propositions

The discussion of educational expansion, differentiation, and market structure suggests six propositions as
follows.
Expansion and Educational Stratification
1. Expansion is not associated with inequality at the level where expansion occurs, unless saturation is
approached (i.e., inequality is maximally maintained).

Institutional Differentiation and Selection

2. Tertiary expansion and differentiation are related, with causal effects operating in both directions:
diversified systems are more likely to have higher overall enrollments rates, and vice versa.
3. The differentiation of higher education (both the diversified and binary modes) diverts students away
from first-tier enrollment.

Market Structure, Differentiation, and Access

4. On average, enrollment rates are higher in systems with more funding from private sources.
5. Systems with higher levels of funding from private sources are likely to be more diversified than state-
centered systems.
6. The degree of reliance on private funding is associated with inequality in access to higher education, but
the direction of the association cannot be determined a priori.

METHODOLOGY: A COLLABORATIVE COMPARATIVE STUDY

This research project reflects what has been termed the “fourth generation” of comparative stratification
research that has focused on the extent to which organizational variation across countries affects both
intergenerational mobility and associations between social class and educational attainment (Treiman and
Ganzeboom 2000; see also Ganzeboom, Treiman, and Ultee 1991). We employ a collaborative comparative
methodology of the kind previously used by Shavit and Blossfeld (1993), Shavit and Müller (1998), Arum and
Müller (2004), and others. Research teams in a sample of countries were asked to conduct similar studies of
higher educational attainment using nationally representative data. The country studies each applied a common
theoretical and methodological framework that had been agreed upon by the teams and was capable of
generating findings comparable across countries. Once the country studies were completed, we as the project
coordinators analyzed the findings comparatively and report the results in this chapter.
Our sample of countries is not a probability sample. Rather, we selected countries that represent variation in
the main macrolevel variables of interest (extent of expansion, differentiation, degree of privatization), and
where researchers were available who were familiar with our paradigmatic framework and had access to the
necessary data (see Appendix Table A, pages 421–422, for a description of the data sets utilized for this
project). The project includes 15 national teams consisting of 34 researchers and focuses on higher education
systems in advanced economies, where expansion of secondary and tertiary education is further along than
elsewhere (for a review of the strengths and limitations of applying such a framework to countries at earlier
stages of development, see Buchmann and Hannum 2001).
Each country chapter contains a detailed description of tertiary education in the country, including
organizational arrangement, size, regulation, administration, funding, and a description of changes and reforms
that the system may have undergone in recent decades. In addition, the chapters report the results of logit
regressions of several educational transitions including:

i. eligibility for higher education;

ii. entry into higher education; and
 iii. entry into first-tier higher education.

Most regressions are estimated for roughly 10- to 15-year cohorts born since World War II and include the
following independent variables: parental education, father’s occupational class when respondent was in
secondary school, and gender. Additional regressions also include track placement at the secondary level and
ethnicity (where appropriate).
To sort out changes that reflect secondary expansion from those that reflect variation in postsecondary
education, chapters report analyses that are both conditional and not conditional on eligibility for higher
education. In addition to these compulsory components, teams could include “free style” information in
supplementary analyses that they considered important for an understanding of tertiary educational attainment
and stratification in their specific countries.

VARIABLES AND CLASSIFICATIONS

Higher Education Eligibility and Attendance

The main objective of this research project is to reveal systematic inequalities in access to higher education
across social strata. We define higher education as tertiary programs that are either academic or occupationally
oriented. We operationalize the former as all programs leading to academic degrees such as a BA or BsC
(undergraduate degrees), Laurea, Diplom, MA or MsC (lower-level graduate degrees), or their equivalents. The
second tier includes all two-year college programs, whether vocational or academic, as well as polytechnics
(e.g., in the U.K.), Fachhochschulen (Germany), Srednee Spetsial’noe Uchebnoe Zavedenie (SSUZy in Russia),
or instituts universitaires technologiques (IUT in France). We exclude programs that are typically shorter than
two years or those attended predominantly by students of upper secondary school ages (e.g., vocational and
technical programs in Australia and Israel).1 Students who attended either academic or second-tier programs are
defined as having attended higher education. Those who attended academic programs are defined as having
attended first-tier programs, except in the United States and Israel. In the former, the first tier was defined as
having attended four-year programs in selective institutions, while in the latter it was defined as having attended
a university rather than a college.
Eligibility for higher education is defined as a certificate, or completed course of study at the secondary
level, that formally allows continuation into some form of academic higher education. Higher education systems
differ in their eligibility requirements. In some cases (France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Russia, and Switzerland)
admission into higher education requires a secondary school matriculation certificate. In the Czech Republic,
Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States, completion of secondary education is required. In Australia, it
entails completion of Year 12—the preparatory year for university study. In Britain, eligibility for upper tertiary
education requires two or more A-level examinations (i.e., advanced secondary qualification examinations). In
the Netherlands, there are multiple routes into higher education, but the most common are via the completion of
academic five-year secondary education (VWO) or via four-year vocational postsecondary education (HBO). In
Sweden, the eligibility rules have changed several times during the period of observation. Until the mid-1960s,
eligibility for university studies was defined as having passed the examination at the upper secondary level
(studentexamen). Since then, it was defined as having completed a three- or four-year program of study at the
upper secondary level. In all countries, there are both main and alternative routes into higher education. The
operationalization of eligibility in this chapter proxies the main routes into higher education in the various
countries and tends to ignore the secondary ones. A related limitation is that in some countries different tiers of
higher education have different eligibility requirements. In the country-specific chapters, this issue when
relevant is addressed at length (see in particular Chapter 5 on Sweden and Chapter 11 on the Netherlands). For
the comparative analysis presented here, however, a uniform definition was required. These compromises are
necessary, since modelling such a large number of alternative routes into higher education would not be
empirically feasible.
Modes of Differentiation
As noted, we capitalize on the existence of marked differences between countries in the organizational form
of higher education. However, these differences also thwart a strictly comparable definition of higher education
across cases. National postsecondary educational programs vary in eligibility requirements, content, duration,
form of accreditation and certification, and in the settings in which they are offered (university, college, private
institute, etc.). While educational systems typically exhibit some mix of organizational forms, we follow Meek
et al. (1996) who classify them into three ideal typical modes of differentiation. Column 2 in Table 21.1
classifies countries by these organizational categories. The classification pertains to the most recent decades
covered by the data in each country and is based on information provided in the respective chapters. Six of the
cases are binary, six are diversified, and two are unitary. Australia does not fall comfortably into any of the
three categories, but whether we include it as a unified case or exclude it from the analysis does not
substantially affect the results we report in findings that pertain to mode of differentiation.2
In unified systems, the bulk of postsecondary education is held in universities, is predominantly academic
and theory-oriented, and is designed to train students for entry into research or high-skill professions. Binary
systems combine academic higher education with second-tier programs that are occupationally oriented.
However, occupationally oriented programs vary greatly in length and prestige across countries. In Germany,
for example, Fachhochschule programs typically last four years, whereas in France the diplôme universitaire
technologique (DUT) requires only two years. And yet, the French instituts universitaires technologiques (IUT),
in which the DUT programs are offered, are more selective than regular universities, whereas in Germany the
Fachhochschulen are often less selective than universities. In most diversified systems, second-tier education
includes both occupationally oriented programs and programs that may lead to academic education. The prime
examples are the American, Japanese, and Taiwanese junior colleges that offer both vocational and academic
two-year preparation for entry into four-year programs.

Market Structure
Private/public distinctions in education can be proxied in many ways, such as the degree of state
institutional control, student enrollments in the private sector, the number of private institutions, and the
private/public mix of funding. We conceptualize the market structure of higher education by focusing on the
extent to which the system is driven by a consumer logic, that is, the extent to which colleges and universities
are dependent on resources provided by private sources. We operationalize this variable as the percent of
national expenditures on higher education that come from private as opposed to public sources as reported by
the OECD (OECD 1985–92, table II.1.9, p. 50; OECD 1996, table F1.1c, p. 61).3 We rely on OECD data here
because they report reliable and comparable data on privatization for most countries in our sample. Our focus on
examining the implications of private compared to public financial support for higher education systems is
consistent with resource dependency theoretical orientations from the sociology of organizations literature; this
approach suggests that institutional dependence on particular resource flows has consequences for the form,
structure, and practices of organizations (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978).

Measures of Inequality
As noted above, logit regressions (i)–(iii) include measures of father’s class and parental education. Father’s
class was measured on an EGP or a very similar class schema (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992), and parental
education was measured on the CASMIN educational schema (Müller et al. 1989). Both schema are shown in
Appendix Table B. From each equation we extracted the log-odds of attaining a particular educational outcome
contrasting respondents whose fathers were in classes I or II (the so-called service classes that include
professionals, managers, and owners of large firms) against those whose fathers were in classes V and VI (the
skilled working class). We also extracted the log-odds of achieving an educational outcome contrasting parents
with higher education against those with only secondary education. The average of these two log-odds statistics
provides a composite summary measure of the relative effects of social background on educational transitions
and thus serves as our measure of inequality between social strata, for each educational outcome (i)–(iii).4

Table 21.1 Classification of Countries by Mode of Differentiation in Higher Education

COMPARATIVE CASE—STUDY RESEARCH

There is a long-standing debate about the merits of variable-oriented and case-oriented comparative research
(e.g., Abbott 1992; Ragin 1997; Goldthorpe 2000a). The former aims to test hypotheses about relationships
between variables and to generalize from samples to populations of cases. This genre assumes probabilistic
models of causation. Change in X (e.g., educational expansion) can increase or decrease the probability of an
outcome (e.g., equalization of educational opportunities between social classes) but does not determine the
outcome fully. Therefore, probabilities can only be computed in relatively large samples of cases. However,
with a large number of cases, it is difficult for the researcher to gain an intimate understanding of the
idiosyncratic narratives and causal processes operating within cases. Variable-oriented studies have been
criticized for tracking cases as mere carriers of variables and categories and ignoring their other characteristics.
Causality is attributed to statistical associations between variables by the degree of statistical fit between a
theoretical model and data rather than sought in narrative and process (Abbott 1992). By contrast, case-oriented
research treats cases holistically and seeks to achieve a deep and full understanding of each. Causality, if sought,
is to be found in the historical development of the case, the narrative prevalent within it, or its cultural or
structural context. Case-oriented studies are usually limited to one or a few cases and no formal attempt is made
to generalize beyond them. Thus, variable-oriented researchers are frustrated by their inability to fully
understand their cases while case-oriented researchers are limited by their narrow, if deep, gaze and weak
capacity to generalize from sample to population.
The collaborative comparative method aims to bridge these extremes. On the one hand, in this chapter we
study a sufficient number of cases to attempt to formulate some tentative generalizations about the relationships
between variables.5 On the other hand, the individual country chapters provide detailed contextual, historical,
institutional, and statistical information on each of the cases.

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

Expansion and Educational Stratification

In Figure 21.1 we describe change across cohorts in the rates of eligibility and attendance of higher
education and of the first tier. The horizontal axis of the figure is labeled by the decade during which the birth
cohort would have made the transition from secondary to higher education.6 We see a marked expansion, across
the four decades, in all three educational levels. On average, the eligibility rate for higher education increased
from about 35% to about 80%, and attendance of higher education increased from under 20% to over 40% on
average. Attendance rates in the first tier also increased about twofold during the four decades.
Following Raftery and Hout’s MMI hypothesis, our Proposition 1 suggests that inequality between social
strata in the odds of attaining an educational level is stable over time and is unaffected by educational expansion
unless the proportion attaining it nears saturation. We begin to assess this hypothesis in Figure 21.2, which
depicts the association across countries between eligibility rates and change in inequality of eligibility. The data
points in the plot are labeled by the country acronym and the decade during which the youngest cohort attended
higher education. We measured change in inequality as the percent difference between the two youngest cohorts
in the mean effects of father’s class and parental education on the log-odds of eligibility.

Figure 21.1 Average Trends in Higher Education Eligibility and Attendance in 15

Countries
 Figure 21.2 reveals that inequality in eligibility declined in five countries, was about stable in nine, and
increased significantly in one (Italy). The observed pattern is largely consistent with the saturation hypothesis.
For this project, we operationalize saturation as educational attainment rates exceeding 80%.7 In four of the five
countries in which inequality declined, eligibility was greater than 80%, and in all but one or two of the
countries (Australia is borderline) in which eligibility rates were lower than 80%, inequality was stable or
increased over time.
The limitation of Figure 21.2 is that it depicts the relation between changing inequality and saturation, but
does not represent expansion. We address this limitation by examining the partial correlations between
saturation and expansion on the one hand, and changing inequality on the other hand. We measure expansion as
percent change between the two youngest cohorts in eligibility rates. The bivariate correlation of expansion with
change in inequality of eligibility is weak (0.13). To take account of expansion and saturation simultaneously,
we define a dummy variable, which is coded 1 for the five cases in which 80% or more of the youngest cohort
were eligible for higher education (i.e., U.S., Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sweden) and estimate a linear
regression of change in inequality of eligibility on both expansion of eligibility and the saturation dummy (R2 =
0.24). The standardized effect of expansion is virtually null (r = −0.04) but the effect of saturation is sizeable
and negative as expected (r = −0.50). This is precisely the pattern of results predicted by MMI and Proposition
1.

Figure 21.2 Association between Percent Eligible for Higher Education and Percent
Change in Inequality of Eligibility
NOTE: In this and subsequent scatterplots, the countries are labeled by their acronym and the decade during which the last cohort
attended higher education. The acronyms are: AU, Australia; CH, Switzerland; CZ, Czech Republic; D, Germany; F, France; I, Italy;
IL, Israel; J, Japan; K, Korea; NL, Netherlands; RU, Russia; S, Sweden; TA, Taiwan; UK, Britain; US, United States.

Next we repeat the analysis for the transition from eligibility to the actual attendance of higher education.
First, we relate change in inequality in the log-odds of making the transition to higher education to the percent
of eligibles who attended higher education. We hypothesize that, in the presence of expansion, as the proportion
of eligibles who attend higher education exceeds 80%, inequality at that transition point would decline. Figure
21.3 displays the bivariate relation between the percent of eligibles who attended higher education and change
in inequality in the transition from secondary to higher education attendance (r = −0.36).8 A detailed inspection
of the figure shows that inequality in the transition from eligibility to higher education was relatively stable in
six of the thirteen cases shown (Korea, U.S., France, Britain, Czech Republic, and the Netherlands), increased in
three, and declined in four. Of these four cases, the proportion of eligibles who continued to higher education
exceeded 80% in two (Israel and Italy). The exceptions are Taiwan and Japan, where inequality declined
without saturation. In both cases, colleges were allowed to expand rapidly in the 1990s, after a period of
retrenchment and consolidation (for details, see Chapters 3 and 6). In both, but especially in Taiwan, college
enrollments expanded at a much faster pace than the rate of eligibility, and inequality in the transition to higher
education declined. Figure 21.3 also reveals one case in which inequality in the parameters examined did not
decline despite saturation: in the United Kingdom, rates of higher education enrollment among those eligible
were very high, but little expansion occurred over the period covered by the data (see Chapter 8).
Next, we estimate a regression similar to the one reported earlier, in which we study the combined effects of
saturation and expansion on change in inequality of higher education attendance. The dependent variable is
inequality in the transition from eligibility to higher education, and the independent variables are two: a dummy
variable representing saturation (coded 1 for countries in which 80–100% of eligibles attended higher education,
i.e., Italy, Israel, and the U.K.), and expansion in the transition rate from eligibility to higher education
(measured as the percent increase between the two youngest cohorts in the proportion of eligibles who attend
higher education). The bivariate correlations between expansion and saturation on the one hand, and the
dependent variable on the other hand, are −0.36 and −0.45 respectively. However, when both variables are
included in the regression equation (R2 = 0.21) their standardized effects are 0.06 and −0.50. Thus, on average,
across the thirteen countries that are included in this analysis, saturation would seem to reduce inequality while
expansion alone does not.
In sum, MMI is supported by our data: expansion can attenuate educational inequality but its effect is not a
linear one. Rather, educational expansion tends to attenuate inequality when it reaches the point at which
educational attainment at a particular level is nearly universal.

Figure 21.3 Association between Percent of Eligibles Who Continued to Higher Education
and Change in Inequality in the Log-odds of Continuation

NOTE: Switzerland and Russia are excluded (see note 8).

DIFFERENTIATION AND INCLUSION

Our next empirical question concerns the extent to which institutional differentiation stratifies opportunities in
higher education. Specifically, we address two hypotheses: first, that differentiation and expansion are related
(Proposition 2); and second, that the differentiation of higher education diverts students from first-tier education
(Proposition 3). To this end, we compare attendance rates in higher and first-tier education in unified,
diversified, and binary systems. In addition, we compare inequalities of access to higher and first-tier education
between diversified and binary systems.
Table 21.2 examines the relations between expansion, differentiation, and inequality. Although we do not
have sufficiently detailed measurement of differentiation nor adequate variation within country over time to
model formally the relationship between change in differentiation and change in enrollment, we nevertheless
find substantial differences in eligibility rates between diversified systems as well as between binary and unified
systems. In the diversified systems eligibility is nearly universal (86%) on average, compared with 42% and
54% in the other two categories. Moreover, diversified systems have the highest tertiary attendance rates. Thus,
we find general support for Proposition 2: both eligibility and attendance rates tend to be higher in diversified
systems. Table 21.2 does not reveal the mechanisms that link differentiation and higher rates of tertiary
enrollments, but the country-specific chapters suggest that more diversified systems tend to have more lenient
requirements for eligibility for higher education. In most diversified systems (U.S., Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and
Sweden in recent decades) eligibility is conferred upon graduation from secondary school, whereas in most
binary systems (Britain, Germany, France, Russia, and Switzerland) students must pass a series of matriculation
examinations to be eligible. Matriculation examinations are generally more selective than graduation. Therefore,
where matriculation examinations determine eligibility, fewer students are eligible than in systems that require
only graduation. In addition, in most binary systems the distinction between vocational and academic education
begins at the secondary level, where many students are already diverted from tertiary education (Kerckhoff
1993).

Table 21.2 Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) of eligibility, attendance, and
inequality by mode of differentiation

NOTE: Australia is excluded (see footnote 2). The figures in columns 4–6 are average logit coefficients of fathers’ class effects (the
effect of the service class versus the skilled manual working class) and parental education (higher versus secondary education).

Proposition 3 suggested that the differentiation of higher education may divert students from first-tier higher
education. Column 3 of Table 21.2 contradicts this claim as it pertains to diversified systems: the cohort
proportions attending the first tier in diversified and unified systems are similar. By contrast, in binary systems
first-tier attendance rates are very low.
Whereas columns 1–3 of Table 21.2 respond to questions about differentiation and overall rates of eligibility
and higher education attendance, columns 4–6 address questions about inequality, as represented by average
logit coefficients for effects of parents’ educational and occupational backgrounds on eligibility for and
attendance in higher education and its first tier. In column 4 we compare the three modes of differentiation with
respect to inequality of eligibility. We find that inequality of eligibility is similar in unified and binary systems
(0.92 and 1.00) and is somewhat lower in diversified ones (0.77), consistent with our interpretation that
diversified systems have more lenient eligibility requirements. Thus, we conclude that diversified systems are
more inclusive than both binary and unified systems: a larger proportion of the population is eligible for and
attends higher education, and inequality occurs at a lower rate. The contrast between diversified and binary
systems is particularly compelling, favoring diversified systems, which exhibit both more expansion and less
inequality.
The greater inclusiveness of diversified systems could be illusory, if students from disadvantaged
backgrounds lacked access to first-tier higher education. Column 6 suggests this is not the case. Inequality of
access to the first tier appears slightly lower in diversified than in binary systems (1.30 versus 1.60 in the logit
metric). This contrast is robust to controls for expansion: in a regression on first-tier inequality controlling for
percent of first-tier enrollment, diversified systems exhibited lower inequality by the same margin as reflected in
column 6.
In both diversified and binary systems, inequality is greater for first-tier enrollment than for enrollment in
higher education overall (compare columns 5 and 6). Unified systems have only one tier, so that comparison is
not relevant, but it is noteworthy that while diversified systems exhibit lower inequality in higher education
enrollment than unified systems, the latter exhibits lower rates of first-tier enrollment inequality. Thus, the
differentiation of higher education may come at some cost to inequality of first-tier enrollment, although this
conclusion is necessarily tentative since it is based on only two unified cases. The more robust conclusion is that
diversified systems exhibit both greater enrollment levels and less inequality than binary systems at all levels of
higher education. Thus, we find strong support for Proposition 2 (differentiation and expansion are related), but
Proposition 3 (differentiation leads to diversion) is largely refuted. Diversified systems exhibit more first-tier
enrollment at lower rates of inequality than binary systems. The relative class-based odds of first-tier enrollment
still appear lowest in the unified systems (which have only one tier), but diversified systems offer more access
to higher education overall at little cost to enrollment in the first tier.

MARKET STRUCTURE, DIFFERENTIATION, AND ACCESS

Finally our analysis turns to a set of questions that focus on the role of market structure on higher education
differentiation, expansion, and inequality (Propositions 4–6). As noted above, we operationalize market
structure as the percent of higher education funding that is provided through private sector sources. As was the
case in our analysis of differentiation, data limitations prevent formal modeling of changes in funding from
private sources within country over time. Nevertheless, we are able to explore the extent to which private sector
involvement is related to the scale, scope, and allocation of higher education (i.e., the extent to which it is
associated with expansion, differentiation, and inequality).
Figure 21.4 displays the relation between market structure and the size of the higher education sector. There
is a strong positive association between these variables (R2 = 0.44), consistent with Proposition 4. However, in
supplementary analysis (results not shown), we found no significant relation between private funding and
attendance in higher education when the latter was considered only for the subset of the cohort that was eligible.
This finding suggests that where higher education is largely funded by private sources, it expands through the
adoption of lenient eligibility criteria. Similar results were found when we examined attendance rates solely for
first-tier higher education.9
Table 21.3 examines the relation between private funding and mode of institutional differentiation
(classified as unified, binary, or diversified).
Both unified systems exist in settings where tertiary education is funded primarily through public sources.
When variation and delineation in organizational type occur in systems with low levels of private funding, it is
usually binary rather than the less structured and weakly demarcated diversified form (Sweden is the one
exception). Diversified higher education systems appear primarily in countries where higher education relies on
private funds to a larger degree. Thus, we find support for Proposition 5: reliance on private sources of funding
is conducive to greater differentiation. More important however, in systems with a high degree of private
funding, the mode of differentiation is more likely to be diversified than binary.
Given that greater reliance on private funding of higher education is associated with institutional
differentiation, one would also expect increased rates of tertiary attendance in these settings. We find this indeed
to be the case. The partial correlation coefficient between private funding and higher education expansion (i.e.,
change over time), net of the overall original size of the higher education system is 0.29. Countries with lower
rates of expansion tend to have lower rates of private funding and to have either unified or binary institutional
forms. This pattern is also consistent with Proposition 5.

Figure 21.4 Association Between Percent Private Funding and Percent Attending Higher
Education

Table 21.3 Private sector funding and mode of differentiation in higher education

Finally, we address Proposition 6 by exploring the relation between the degree of reliance on private
funding and inequality in attendance at higher education. When exploring zero-order correlations between our
measures of inequality in higher education attendance and the extent to which the system was supported by
private sector funding, we found no evidence of any significant association (correlation coefficient = 0.03). We
found similar patterns when we examined the association of private funding with change over time in social
background effects and when considering attendance solely in first-tier institutions. However, the absence of a
direct correlation between private sector funding and inequality in higher education masks the presence of two
contradictory patterns of association underlying this phenomenon of null overall (or “total”) effects.
In Figure 21.5, we present a path diagram that captures the extent to which private sector funding is
associated with variation in both higher education attendance and higher education inequality. Specifically,
private sector funding exhibits a positive direct association with inequality in higher education, as identified by
the partial correlation coefficient of 0.31 in the diagram. However, the extent to which private sector funding
contributes to increased inequality is mitigated by the indirect link between private sector funding and
inequality via higher overall rates of tertiary enrollments. In path diagrams, such an indirect effect can be
calculated as the multiplicative product of the two partial correlation coefficients (0.67 × –0.43 = –0.29).
These results indicate that the beneficial effect of private funding is due to its positive effect on increased
levels of educational attendance, which in turn reduces inequality of access. Net of this indirect connection,
increased reliance on private sources of funding tends to magnify inequality. We suspect that in highly
privatized systems, class inequalities may reflect family differences in the ability to pay tuition fees.

Figure 21.5 Path Diagram of Associations Between Private-sector Funding, Higher

Education Attendance, and Inequality in Higher Education

In sum, our findings suggest that privatization of financial sources of support for higher education can be
beneficial up to a point. In so far as it contributes to the expansion of higher education, it reduces inequality.
Controlling for expansion, privatization enhances inequality of access; taken as a whole, however, privatization
is associated with larger higher education systems and similar aggregate levels of inequality overall.

A NOTE ON GENDER INEQUALITY

Although it was not the main focus of our inquiry, we would be remiss if we did not mention the findings
related to variation in gender inequality, which also appear in each of the country-specific chapters. Consistent
with what other researchers have observed (e.g., Bradley 2000), our findings indicate that men’s advantages in
educational attainment declined dramatically during the second half of the twentieth century. The erosion of the
male advantage is especially pronounced for participation in postsecondary education. In all countries for which
data are available, and in both the conditional and unconditional models, men’s relative advantage declined.
Only among German, Korean, and Taiwanese high-school graduates do men still hold a small advantage
relative to women in the odds of entering postsecondary education. In late-Soviet Russia, where women already
held a substantial advantage in the odds of postsecondary enrollment given secondary completion, men reduced
the gaps but still enroll at lower rates than women. A similar picture is seen with regard to gender differences in
the odds of attending first-tier institutions of higher education.
How did gender inequality in higher education change between the two most recent cohorts in our data?
Already in the next-to-last cohort, men and women reached parity, on average, in the odds of attending higher
education. The mean effect of gender in that cohort was negligible. By the last cohort, the gender gap increased
in favor of women who, on average, were 1.14 times as likely as men to attain higher education. On average,
women’s advantage (or men’s disadvantage) increased by 20% between the two most recent cohorts. We also
find that the decline in the male advantage is related to its magnitude in the next-to-last cohort: it declined most
in countries where men initially enjoyed a large advantage (Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Israel, and Czech Republic).
The correlation between the magnitude of the decline and the prior male advantage is 0.57. In addition,
women’s advantage in access to higher education increased (or their disadvantage declined) more rapidly in
countries where higher education expanded fastest. The partial correlation between female’s advantage and the
expansion of higher education between the two recent cohorts (controlling for female advantage in the next to
last cohort) is 0.29 suggesting that women took somewhat better advantage of expansion than men. The
correlation between women’s advantage and reliance on private sector funding is −0.22, reflecting the fact that
in two of the countries with very high proportion of private funding (Korea and Japan) gender inequality in
higher education was large until recently. Among other countries there is no systematic relationship between
private funding and gender inequality. Similarly, we do not find notable differences when comparing gender
inequality of access to higher education between binary, diversified, and unitary systems.
In sum, our data show an average widening of the gender gap in higher education favoring women, and
indicate that the gap expanded fastest in systems where attendance rates expanded most. While there are
differences across systems in the rate of change, overall there is a fairly uniform pattern of women’s increasing
participation in higher education, closing the gap, and then often coming to outperform men in higher education
enrollment.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Findings from this project provide evidence of the relations among institutional expansion, differentiation and
privatization, and the stratification of individual educational opportunity. We briefly review the findings in these
three areas, before discussing their theoretical and policy implications.
Our synthesis of country-specific findings indicated that expansion is pervasive, and that under certain
conditions, it may lead to declining inequality. In particular, expansion to the point of saturation was associated
with declining inequality in eligibility for higher education in four countries (Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and
Sweden), and with a decline in inequality in the transition from secondary to tertiary education in two countries
(Italy and Israel). With a few exceptions, inequality rates were stable or increased in other cases. These findings
supported Proposition 1, that inequality is maximally maintained. Among the exceptions, we took particular
note of declining inequality in the transition to higher education in two other countries that underwent sharp
expansion after a period of consolidation (Japan and Taiwan). These cases suggest that rapid expansion in a
diversified and deregulated system of higher education can broaden involvement in higher education across the
social strata, apparently without any greater tendency to divert those of disadvantaged origins to lower-tier
institutions.
 We also found that expansion and institutional differentiation are related; in particular, diversified systems
of higher education exhibit higher rates of eligibility and correspondingly higher rates of enrollment than
unified and binary systems (consistent with Proposition 2). Moreover, we found that binary systems divert
students away from higher education as a whole and from its first tier. In diversified systems, the proportions
attending higher education are much larger than in other systems and, contrary to our expectations (see
Proposition 3), the proportions attending first-tier institutions are more comparable to those of unified ones.
Finally, we examined the extent to which variation in private support for higher education was associated
with institutional expansion and differentiation as well as stratification of educational opportunities. Our
synthesis of country-specific findings suggests that systems with more private sector involvement tend to
expand more rapidly and are more diversified (consistent with Propositions 4 and 5). In approaching this
project, we hypothesized that while privatization is associated with inequality of access to higher education, we
could not specify a priori the shape of the association (Proposition 6). On the one hand we assumed that the
client-seeking behavior of private institutions would be associated with expansion, a weakening of social
selection, and thus greater inclusion of the lower strata. On the other hand we expected that reliance on private
funding could potentially lead to higher tuition fees on average and would increase inequality of access. Our
analysis suggests that both mechanisms are likely operative and that these countervailing trends in combination
largely balance each other out in their effects. Specifically, privatization is associated with expansion of
opportunity and a corresponding lessening of social inequality, but privatization net of expansion is associated
with increased inequality of access. Thus, whereas privatization through the indirect effect of expansion tends to
draw persons into higher education, it also has direct effects that are exclusive; overall, the total effect of
privatization on educational stratification is neutral.
How do these findings stand with respect to claims about inclusion and diversion? Overall, we found much
stronger evidence of inclusion than of diversion. Whereas privatization was associated with inclusion and
diversion in about equal amounts, expansion and diversification tended to be largely inclusive. First, overall
expansion was inclusive in the sense that even when social selection is stable, expansion means that more
students from all strata, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are carried further into the education
system, and for the cohort as a whole inequality is reduced. Second, expansion in a context of saturation often
results in declining inequality, clearly a case in which expansion stimulates inclusion. We observed this pattern
for both eligibility and attendance of higher education. Third, whereas binary systems tended to exhibit both
more inequality and lower rates of tertiary enrollment, diversified systems offered much higher rates of
enrollment with no greater inequality overall, and just moderately greater inequality of first-tier enrollment
compared to our two unified cases. Diversified systems are thus more inclusive overall than either binary or
unitary systems.
Our first claim, that expansion is inclusive even without declining inequality, gives a new interpretation to a
familiar set of findings. Previous work characterized cases of rising enrollment and stable odds ratios for
educational transitions as “persistent inequality” (Shavit and Blossfeld 1993). In our view, this conclusion
misses an important point: When a given level of education expands, we should expect increasing inequality of
enrollment at the next level due to the increased heterogeneity of the eligible population (see Rijken, Maas, and
Ganzeboom, Chapter 11 of [original source]). Consequently, when inequality in an expanding system is stable
rather than on the rise, the system should be regarded as increasingly inclusive because it allows larger
proportions of all social strata to attend. By this notion, not only should most of our cases be regarded as
increasingly inclusive, but so should those reported by Shavit and Blossfeld (1993) despite the stability that they
find in the parameters of the educational stratification process. Looking within countries over time, our findings
generally mirror those in Persistent Inequality: stable odds ratios, conditional on eligibility (Figure 21.3). Only
post-Soviet Russia exhibited increasing inequality.10 Of the four cases of downward changes in odds ratios, two
may be explained by saturation (Israel and Italy) and two by rapid expansion following consolidation (Japan and
Taiwan).11
Our findings and conclusions have policy implications. Persistent Inequality emphasized that expansion
enables the privileged classes to retain their relative edge in the process of educational stratification. Our
interpretation is different. Of course, we recognize that class inequalities in the relative shares of education
persist over time and are difficult to change. Much research has shown that in most instances the privileged
classes manage to maintain their advantages over time. Given the stability of relative inequalities, the most that
policy can achieve under ordinary (i.e., nonrevolutionary) political circumstances is change in the absolute size
of the educational pie (i.e., expansion). Yet we reach a slightly more optimistic conclusion here: namely that the
expanding pie is increasingly inclusive even when relative advantages are preserved, because it extends a valued
good to a broader spectrum of the population. Moreover, we found that diversified systems tend to be more
inclusive than binary systems—without diverting students from the first tier—and we noted four cases of
expansion in which relative inequalities actually diminished somewhat. Our findings thus imply that educational
expansion is an equalizing force and that diversification is not inconsistent with inclusion.
Critics of our position may argue that education is a positional good (Hirsch 1976). That is, the value of an
educational credential is not absolute but rather is determined by relative ordering on the hierarchy of
credentials. To the extent that education is a positional good, change in the size of the educational pie is not
likely to affect the opportunity structure that individuals and classes face in the labor market, which can only be
affected by change in relative educational inequalities between classes. But is education a strictly positional
good? The value of education also lies in the human capital it instills in students (e.g., Kerckhoff, Raudenbush,
and Glennie 2001). This seems particularly clear for specific vocational and professional training (Boesel et al.
1994, 137), as well as for basic and advanced literacy and numeracy, but it is arguably more generally
applicable (Kerckhoff, Raudenbush, and Glennie 2001). To the extent that attainments in the labor market
reflect the human capital component of education, it makes sense to enhance the latter through the expansion of
higher education. Moreover, even if education were strictly a positional good, it would still make sense for
individual countries to expand their systems of higher education. Workers now compete in a global labor market
and education is positional in relation to its global distribution. Therefore, countries that enhance the absolute
educational distribution of their youths give them an edge in the competition against youths in other countries.
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NOTES

1. In Russia, the SSUZy provide higher-level vocational and technical training in both secondary-level and
postsecondary programs. And yet they meet our criteria for higher education because since the late 1950s a
majority of students in SSUZy have been enrolled in programs requiring a general secondary degree prior
to entry.
2. Until the 1980s, the Australian system of higher education was binary (see the Australian chapter in this
volume). It consisted of about 20 universities and many polytechnics and other vocational colleges. In
1990-93 the polytechnics and several other second-tier institutions of postsecondary education were
upgraded to university status and the system was nominally transformed from a binary to a unified one.
However, of the nearly 40 universities now operating in Australia, eight (“The Group of Eight”) enjoy
privileged status and might be considered as the first tier. Unfortunately, data did not permit the authors of
the Australian chapter to identify the type of universities that their respondents had attended. In 1992,
polytechnics in Great Britain were also upgraded to university status; however, the most recent cohort
analyzed in the British chapter attended higher education before that year, when the system was still
binary.
3. Data for Israel and Taiwan were reported by the authors of these respective chapters.
4. The reader will note that there are differences between the chapters in the exact specification of the logit
models of education. For example, in some the models are estimated separately for men and women, while
in others the two groups are combined; in some father’s classes, I and II are coded separately while in most
they are united. We respected the authors’ preferences and accepted the small modeling variations. When
 deviations were large, we asked the authors to also estimate the standard models.
5. Our generalizations should be considered as tentative as they are based on broad patterns derived from
analysis of country-specific results. Our sample of countries is not representative of the population of
countries, and the number of observations are not always large enough to generate robust tests for
statistical significance.
6. For most countries, data are available for three of the four cohorts, but for some countries they are
available only for two; for one country (the Czech Republic), the data span all four decades. Thus, for each
decade, the averages are computed for a different number of countries.
7. We use the 80% cutoff point to simplify the presentation of comparative results. Alternative specification
of saturation in future research could explore the robustness of our finding by measuring the actual rate of
educational attainment of particular educational levels and social classes.
8. The figure and the following correlations and regression are estimated on 13 of our 15 cases. Switzerland
is excluded because the data in the Swiss chapter do not allow us to compute inequality in the transition
from eligibility to higher education. We exclude Russia because it was a clear outlier: In the years
following the post-Soviet transformation, inequality of access to higher education in Russia nearly
doubled. With Russia included, the effect of saturation in the regression shown below is −0.75 and the
effect of expansion is +0.40.
9. In supplementary analyses we examined the relation between private sector involvement and change in
attendance rates of higher education. We measured expansion as change in attendance rates per decade for
the earliest (since the 1960s) and latest cohorts with data available from our project. Consistent with the
results seen in Figure 1.4, we found strong support for Proposition 5: enrollment rates are higher and
increase more rapidly in systems with more private sector involvement.
10. As reported in Chapter 15, inequality also increased in the Czech Republic during the postcommunist
period, in that the offspring of unskilled workers (class origin VII) fell further behind all others in their
relative chances to attend higher education. This result is not evident in Figure 1.3, which focuses on the
gap between professional/managerial workers versus skilled workers (class origin I/II versus VI).
11. For Israel, Japan, and Taiwan, declines were observed for the 1990s compared with the 1980s, and for
Italy they were observed for the 1980s compared to the 1970s. Data in Persistent Inequality ended with the
early 1980s for the first three cases and in the late 1970s for Italy, so these are new findings.

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 SOURCE: From Stratification in Higher Education: A Comparative Study, by Yossi Shavit, Richard Arum,
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University. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of Stanford University Press, www.sup.org.
22
LEARNING TO LABOR
PAUL WILLIS

T he difficult thing to explain about how middle class kids get middle class jobs is why others let them.
The difficult thing to explain about how working class kids get working class jobs is why they let
themselves.
It is much too facile simply to say that they have no choice. The way in which manual labour is applied to
production can range in different societies from the coercion of machine guns, bullets and trucks to the mass
ideological conviction of the voluntary industrial army. Our own liberal democratic society is somewhere in
between. There is no obvious physical coercion and a degree of self direction. This is despite the inferior
rewards for, undesirable social definition, and increasing intrinsic meaninglessness, of manual work: in a word
its location at the bottom of a class society. The primary aim of this [chapter]is to cast some light on this
surprising process.
Too often occupational and educational talents are thought of as on a shallowing line of shrinking capacity
with working class people at its lower reaches unquestionningly taking on the worst jobs thinking somehow, ‘I
accept that I’m so stupid that it’s fair and proper that I should spend the rest of my life screwing nuts onto
wheels in a car factory’. This gradient model must, of course, assume a zero or near zero reading at its base. The
real individuals at the bottom end would scarcely rate a score for being alive, never mind for being human.
Since these individuals are currently far from walking corpses but are actually bringing the whole system into
crisis this model is clearly in need of revision. The market economy of jobs in a capitalist society emphatically
does not extend to a market economy of satisfactions.
I want to suggest that ‘failed’ working class kids do not simply take up the falling curve of work where the
least successful middle class, or the most successful working class kids, leave off. Instead of assuming a
continuous shallowing line of ability in the occupational/class structure we must conceive of radical breaks
represented by the interface of cultural forms. We shall be looking at the way in which the working class
cultural pattern of ‘failure’ is quite different and discontinuous from the other patterns. Though in a determined
context it has its own processes, its own definitions, its own account of those other groups conventionally
registered as more successful. And this class culture is not a neutral pattern, a mental category, a set of variables
impinging on the school from the outside. It comprises experiences, relationships, and ensembles of systematic
types of relationship which not only set particular ‘choices’ and ‘decisions’ at particular times, but also
structure, really and experientially, how these ‘choices’ come about and are defined in the first place.
A linked and subsidiary aim of the book is to examine important and central aspects of working class culture
through the concrete study of one of its most revealing manifestations. My original research interest was,
indeed, in working class culture in general and I was led to look at young non-academic disaffected males and
their adaption to work as a crucial and privileged moment in the continuous regeneration of working class
cultural forms in relation to the most essential structure of society—its working relations.
Both sets of concerns in fact turn on the important concept of labour power and how it is prepared in our
society for application to manual work. Labour power is the human capacity to work on nature with the use of
tools to produce things for the satisfaction of needs and the reproduction of life. Labouring is not a universal
transhistorical changeless human activity. It takes on specific forms and meanings in different kinds of societies.
The processes through which labour power comes to be subjectively understood and objectively applied and
their interrelationships is of profound significance for the type of society which is produced and the particular
nature and formation of its classes. These processes help to construct both the identities of particular subjects
and also distinctive class forms at the cultural and symbolic level as well as at the economic and structural level.
 Class identity is not truly reproduced until it has properly passed through the individual and the group, until
it has been recreated in the context of what appears to be personal and collective volition. The point at which
people live, not borrow, their class destiny is when what is given is re-formed, strengthened and applied to new
purposes. Labour power is an important pivot of all this because it is the main mode of active connection with
the world: the way par excellence of articulating the innermost self with external reality. It is in fact the dialectic
of the self to the self through the concrete world. Once this basic compact with the future has been made
everything else can pass for common sense.
The specific milieu, I argue, in which a certain subjective sense of manual labour power, and an objective
decision to apply it to manual work, is produced is the working class counter-school culture. It is here where
working class themes are mediated to individuals and groups in their own determinate context and where
working class kids creatively develop, transform and finally reproduce aspects of the larger culture in their own
praxis in such a way as to finally direct them to certain kinds of work. Part I of the book presents an
ethnography of the male white working class counter-school culture. For the sake of clarity and incision, and in
no way implying their lack of importance, other ethnic and gender variants are not examined.
We may just note here that the existence of this culture has been picked up conventionally and especially by
the media in its sensational mode as violence and indiscipline in the class room. The Raising of the School
Leaving Age (RSLA) in England in September 1972 seems to have highlighted and further exposed the most
aggressive aspects of the culture. Both the major teachers’ unions have commissioned special reports and have
formalised arrangements for union support in excluding ‘trouble-makers’ from class. Over half the local
authorities in England and Wales have set up special classes in school, and even quite separate ‘sanctuaries’ in
the case of Inner London for such kids. The Secretary of State for Education has ordered a national investigation
into this whole area. Disruption and truancy in schools is high on the agenda of the ‘great debate’ which Mr
Callaghan, the current Prime Minister, called for on education.
In the sense, therefore, that I argue that it is their own culture which most effectively prepares some working
class lads for the manual giving of their labour power we may say that there is an element of self-damnation in
the taking on of subordinate roles in Western capitalism. However, this damnation is experienced,
paradoxically, as true learning, affirmation, appropriation, and as a form of resistance.
The qualitative methods, and Participant Observation used in the research, and the ethnographic format of
the presentation were dictated by the nature of my interest in ‘the cultural’. These techniques are suited to
record this level and have a sensitivity to meanings and values as well as an ability to represent and interpret
symbolic articulations, practices and forms of cultural production. In particular the ethnographic account,
without always knowing how, can allow a degree of the activity, creativity and human agency within the object
of study to come through into the analysis and the reader’s experience. This is vital to my purposes where I
view the cultural, not simply as a set of transferred internal structures (as in the usual notions of socialisation)
not as the passive result of the action of dominant ideology downwards (as in certain kinds of marxism), but at
least in part as the product of collective human praxis.

THE HAMMERTOWN CASE STUDY

One main case study and five comparative studies were made in the research reported in this chapter. The main
study was of a group of twelve non-academic working class lads from a town we shall call Hammertown and
attending a school we shall call Hammertown Boys. They were selected on the basis of friendship links and
membership of some kind of an oppositional culture in a working class school. The school was built in the inter-
war years and lay at the heart of a closely packed inter-war council estate composed of standard, often terraced,
reasonably well maintained houses interlinked with a maze of roads, crescents and alleys and served by
numerous large pubs and clusters of shops and small supermarkets.
During the period of the research this school was a boys only, non-selective secondary modern school
twinned with a girls’ school of the same status. After the research finished it was redesignated a single sex
comprehensive school as part of the general reorganisation of secondary education in the borough. In view of
this expected change and under the pressure of events and in preparation for RSLA the school was expanding in
terms of buildings and introducing or experimenting with some new techniques during the period of the
research. Streaming was replaced by mixed ability groupings, a resources centre was introduced, experiments
were made in team teaching and curriculum development programmes, and a whole range of new ‘option’
courses were developed for the ‘RSLA year’. I made contact with the group at the beginning of the second term
of their penultimate year and followed them right through into six months of their working lives (their final year
was to be the first year of RSLA). The school population was about 600 and contained substantial West Indian
and Asian minorities. Basically this school was selected because it was in the heart of, and drew from, an
absolutely characteristic working class inter-war council estate, itself at the heart of Hammertown. The school
was exclusively working class in intake, but had the reputation of being a ‘good’ school. This seemed to mean,
in essence, that it had ‘reasonable standards’ of recognised behaviour and dress enforced by an interested and
competent senior staff. I wanted to be as certain as possible that the group selected was typical of the working
class in an industrial area, and that the educational provision it enjoyed was as good as, if not slightly better
than, any available in similar British contexts. An added advantage of the particular school chosen was that it
had a new and well equipped youth wing which was well attended by the pupils and gave the opportunity of a
very open and informal initial entry into the school.
Comparative case studies were made over the same period. These were of: a group of conformist lads in the
same year of Hammertown Boys; a group of working class conformist lads in a nearby Hammertown mixed
secondary modern, informally known as a somewhat ‘rougher’ school; a group of working class nonconformist
lads in the single sex Hammertown grammar school; a similar group in a comprehensive near the middle of the
larger conurbation of which Hammertown was part; and a mixed class male non-conformist group in a high
status grammar school in the most exclusive residential area of the same larger conurbation. As far as possible,
all groups were in the same school year, were friendship groups, and were selected for their likelihood of
leaving school at the statutory minimum leaving age of sixteen. In the case of the high status grammar school
this latter condition totally determined the membership of the group and its mixed class nature—they were the
only boys intending to leave at sixteen in the fourth year (when I first contacted them), and indeed subsequently
only two of them actually left at this point. These groups were selected to give a comparative dimension to the
study along the parameters of class, ability, school regime, and orientation to the school.
The main group was studied intensively by means of observation and participant observation in class,
around the school and during leisure activities; regular recorded group discussions; informal interviews and
diaries. I attended all of the different subject classes and options (not as a teacher but as a member of the class)
attended by the group at various times, and the complete run of careers classes which were taught by a dedicated
and experienced teacher recently returned from secondment to a well-respected careers and counselling course. I
also taped long conversations with all the parents of the main group, and with all senior masters of the school,
main junior teachers in contact with members of the group, and with the careers officers coming into the school.
I followed all twelve boys from the main group, as well as three selected boys from the comparative groups,
into work. Fifteen short periods of participant observation were devoted to actually working alongside each lad
in his job, and were concluded with taped interviews with the individual and selected interviews with foremen,
managers and shop stewards.
Hammertown is first recorded in the Doomsday Book as a tiny hamlet. It is in the centre of England as part
of a much larger conurbation. Like many other small towns around there, its population size and importance
exploded during the Industrial Revolution. The coming of canals and the building of a foundry by Boulton and
Watt for the construction of metal castings for other manufacturers in the middle of the eighteenth century
transformed its nature. It was among the first of the industrial towns, and its population one of the first industrial
proletariats. By 1800 it had extensive iron-smelting works and iron foundries as well as soap, lead and glass
works. More recently it has become an important centre for bearing engineering, and the production of springs,
cycle components, glass, screws, and nuts and bolts. It is indeed a Midlands nuts and bolts town, which was in
its time one of the cradles of the Industrial Revolution.
It is now part of a huge industrial conurbation in the Midlands. People still think of it as rough and dirty,
even though its civic record in public services and housing provision is better than most in the region.
Tumbledown cottages and Victorian slum terraces have now been largely cleared away and replaced by modern
council houses and highrise flats. But when boys from Hammertown meet girls away from home they still like
to say that they are from the adjacent big city which, conveniently, supplies their postal code.
The population of the town reached its peak in the early 1950s and has been falling since, despite the arrival
of substantial numbers of black immigrants. The population is now about 60,000 and, interestingly, has one of
the highest ‘activity rates’—especially for women—in the country. The age/sex structure of Hammertown is
similar to that for the rest of England and Wales, but its class structure is notably different. It is essentially a
working class town. Only 8 per cent of its residents are in professional and managerial occupations (half the
national rate) and the overwhelming majority of the population are in some form of manual work. There is a
startling daily inflow of around 3,000 middle class people from the south and west who will work but not live in
Hammertown. The dearth of the middle classes is reflected in the fact that under 2 per cent of adults are in full-
time education (again half the national rate).
The structure of employment demonstrates the distinctively industrial nature of the working class
community. There is a total labour force of about 36,000 of which fully 79 per cent is involved in
manufacturing of some kind compared with 35 per cent nationally and 55 per cent for the conurbation. Metal
and metal goods manufacturing accounts for over half of such employment. The other major sources of
employment are in food, drinks and tobacco industries, mechanical engineering, vehicles, bricks, pottery and
glass, and distribution. Employment prospects are generally good in Hammertown and even during recession its
unemployment rate has stayed about 1 per cent under the national average.
Although the town was industrialised over 200 years ago, and has kept many of the same basic industries—
especially metal and metal working—it does not have the small firm/family firm infrastructure of many similar
towns. In fact its industrial organisational structure is strikingly modern. Much of the employment in
Hammertown is in large factories which are often themselves a branch of national or multinational companies.
Sixty per cent of the total workforce works in firms employing over 1,000 people. Under 5 per cent of those in
manufacturing work in firms employing less than 25 people. Fifty-eight per cent of the total industrial
floorspace is concentrated in thirty-eight factories exceeding 100,000 sq. ft. in size. Over 20 per cent of the total
area of the town is in industrial use.
Hammertown is altogether something of an archetypal industrial town. It has all the classic industrial
hallmarks as well as those of modern monopoly capitalism in conjunction with a proletariat which is just about
the oldest in the world.

ELEMENTS OF A CULTURE: OPPOSITION TO AUTHORITY AND REJECTION OF THE

CONFORMIST

The most basic, obvious and explicit dimension of counter-school culture is entrenched general and
personalized opposition to “authority.” This feeling is easily verbalized by “the lads” (the self-elected title of
those in the counter-school culture).
[in a group discussion on teachers]

Joey: they’re able to punish us. They’re bigger than us, they stand for a bigger establishment
than we do, like, we’re just little and they stand for bigger things, and you try to get
your own back. It’s, uh, resenting authority I suppose.
Eddie: The teachers think they’re high and mighty ‘cos they’re teachers, but they’re nobody
really, they’re just ordinary people ain’t they?
Bill: Teachers think they’re everybody. They are more, they’re higher than us, but they think
they’re a lot higher and they’re not.
Spanksy: Wish we could call them first names and that . . . think they’re God.
Pete: That would be a lot better.
PW: I mean you say they’re higher. Do you accept at all that they know better about things?
 Joey: Yes, but that doesn’t rank them above us, just because they are slightly more intelligent.
Bill: They ought to treat us how they’d like us to treat them.

• • •

PW: You think of most staff as kind of enemies (. . .)?

— Yeah.
— Yeah.
— Most of them.
Joey: It adds a bit of spice to yer life, if you’re trying to get him for something he’s done to
you.

This opposition involves an apparent inversion of the usual values held up by authority. Diligence,
deference, respect—these become things which can be read in quite another way.
[in a group discussion]

PW: Evans [the Careers Master] said you were all being very rude ( . . . ) you didn’t have the
politeness to listen to the speaker [during a careers session]. He said why didn’t you
realize that you were just making the world very rude for when you grow up and God
help you when you have kids ‘cos they’re going to be worse. What did you think of
that?
Joey: They wouldn’t. They’ll be outspoken. They wouldn’t be submissive fucking twits.
They’ll be outspoken, upstanding sort of people.
Spanksy: If any of my kids are like this, here, I’ll be pleased.

This opposition is expressed mainly as a style. It is lived out in countless small ways which are special to the
school institution, instantly recognized by the teachers, and an almost ritualistic part of the daily fabric of life
for the kids. Teachers are adept conspiracy theorists. They have to be. It partly explains their devotion to finding
out “the truth” from suspected culprits. They live surrounded by conspiracy in its most obvious—though often
verbally unexpressed—forms. It can easily become a paranoic conviction of enormous propositions.
Of course individual situations differ, and different kinds of teaching style are more or less able to control or
suppress this expressive opposition. But the school conformists—or the “ear ‘oles” for the lads—have a visibly
different orientation. It is not so much that they support teachers, rather they support the idea of teachers.
Having invested something of their own identities in the formal aims of education and support of the school
institution—in a certain sense having foregone their own right to have a “laff”—they demand that teachers
should at least respect the same authority. There are none like the faithful for reminding the shepherd of his
duty.
[in a group discussion with conformists at Hammertown Boys]

Gary: Well, I don’t think they’m strict enough now (. . .) I mean like Mr Gracey, and some of
the other teachers, I mean with Groucho, even the first years play him up (. . .) they [the
lads] should be punished like, so they grow up not to be cheeky ( . . . ) Some of the
others, you can get on with them all right. I mean from the very beginning with Mr
Peters everybody was quiet and if you ain’t done the work, you had to come back and
do it. I mean some of the other teachers, say from the first years, they give you
 homework, say you didn’t do it, they never asked for it, they didn’t bother.

It is essentially what appears to be their enthusiasm for, and complicity with, immediate authority which
makes the school conformists— “ear ‘oles” or “lobes”—the second great target for “the lads.” The term “ear
‘ole” itself connotes the passivity and absurdity of the school conformists for “the lads.” It seems that they are
always listening, never doing: never animated with their own internal life, but formless in rigid reception. The
ear is one of the least expressive organs of the human body: it responds to the expressivity of others. It is pasty
and easy to render obscene. That is how “the lads” liked to picture those who conformed to the official idea of
schooling.
Crucially, “the lads” not only reject but feel superior to the “ear ‘oles.” The obvious medium for the
enactment of this superiority is that which the “ear ‘oles” apparently yield—fun, independence and excitement:
having a “laff.”
[in a group discussion]

PW: (. . .) why not be like the ear ‘oles, why not try and get CSEs?
[1]: They don’t get any fun, do they?
Derek: Cos they’m prats like, one kid he’s got on his report now, he’s got five As and one B.
[2]: —Who’s that?
Derek: Birchall.
Spanksy: I mean, what will they remember of their school life? What will they have to look back
on? Sitting in a classroom, sweating their bollocks off, you know, while we’ve
been . . . I mean look at the things we can look back on, fighting on the Pakis, fighting
on the JAs [i.e., Jamaicans]. Some of the things we’ve done on teachers, it’ll be a laff
when we look back on it.

• • •

Perce: Like you know, he don’t get much fun, well say Spanksy plays about all day, he gets
fun. Bannister’s there sweating, sweating his bollocks off all day while Spanksy’s doing
fuck all, and he’s enjoying it.

• • •
Opposition to staff and exclusive distinction from the “ear ‘oles” is continuously expressed amongst “the
lads” in the whole ambience of their behavior, but it is also made concrete in what we may think of as certain
stylistic/symbolic discourses centering on the three great consumer goods supplied by capitalism and seized
upon in different ways by the working class for its own purposes: clothes, cigarettes, and alcohol. As the most
visible, personalized and instantly understood element of resistance to staff and ascendancy over “ear ‘oles”
clothes have great importance to “the lads.” The first signs of a lad “coming out” is a fairly rapid change in his
clothes and hairstyle. The particular form of this alternative dress is determined by outside influences, especially
fashions current in the wider symbolic system of youth culture. At the moment the “lads’ look” includes longish
well-groomed hair, platform-type shoes, wide collared shirt turned over waisted coat or denim jerkin, plus the
still obligatory flared trousers. Whatever the particular form of dress, it is most certainly not school uniform,
rarely includes a tie (the second best for many heads if uniform cannot be enforced), and exploits colors
calculated to give the maximum distinction from institutional drabness and conformity. There is a clear
stereotypical notion of what constitutes institutional clothes—Spike, for instance, trying to describe the shape of
a collar: “You know, like a teacher’s!”
 We might note the importance the wider system of commercial youth culture has here in supplying a
lexicography of style, with already connoted meanings, which can be adapted by “the lads” to express their own
more located meanings. Though much of this style, and the music associated with it, might be accurately
described as arising from purely commercial drives and representing no authentic aspirations of its adherents, it
should be recognized that the way in which it is taken up and used by the young can have an authenticity and
directness of personal expression missing from its original commercial generation.
It is no accident that much of the conflict between staff and students at the moment should take place over
dress. To the outsider it might seem fatuous. Concerned staff and involved kids, however, know that it is one of
their elected grounds for the struggle over authority. It is one of the current forms of a fight between cultures. It
can be resolved, finally, into a question about the legitimacy of school as an institution.
Closely related with the dress style of “the lads” is, of course, the whole question of their personal
attractiveness. Wearing smart and modern clothes gives them the chance, at the same time as “putting their
finger up” at the school and differentiating themselves from the “ear ‘oles,” to also make themselves more
attractive to the opposite sex. It is a matter of objective fact that “the lads” do go out with girls much more than
do any other groups of the same age and that a good majority of them are sexually experienced. Sexual
attractiveness, its association with maturity, and the prohibition on sexual activity in school is what valorizes
dress and clothes as something more than an artificial code within which to express an institutional/cultural
identity. This double articulation is characteristic of the counter-school culture.
If manner of dress is currently the main apparent cause of argument between staff and kids, smoking follows
closely. Again we find another distinguishing characteristic of “the lads” against the “ear ‘oles.” The majority of
them smoke and, perhaps more importantly, are seen to smoke. The essence of schoolboy smoking is school
gate smoking. A great deal of time is typically spent by “the lads” planning their next smoke and “hopping off”
lessons “for a quick drag.” And if “the lads” delight in smoking and flaunting their impertinence, senior staff at
least cannot ignore it. There are usually strict and frequently publicized rules about smoking. If, for this reason,
“the lads” are spurred, almost as a matter of honor, to continue public smoking, senior staff are incensed by
what they take to be the challenge to their authority. This is especially true when allied to that other great
challenge: the lie.
[in a group discussion on recent brushes with staff]

Spike: And we went in, I says “We warn’t smoking,” he says ( . . . ) and he went really mad. I
thought he was going to punch me or summat.
Spanksy: “Call me a liar,” “I’m not a liar,” “Get back then,” and we admitted it in the end; we was
smoking ( . . . ) He was having a fit, he says “Callin’ me a liar.” We said we warn’t
smoking, tried to stick to it, but Simmondsy was having a fit.
Spike: He’d actually seen us light up.

• • •

Again, in a very typical conjunction of school-based and outside meanings, cigarette smoking for “the lads”
is valorized as an act of insurrection before the school by its association with adult values and practices. The
adult world, specifically the adult male working class world, is turned to as a source of material for resistance
and exclusion.
As well as inducing a “nice” effect, drinking is undertaken openly because it is the most decisive signal to
staff and “ear ‘oles” that the individual is separate from the school and has a presence in an alternative, superior
and more mature mode of social being. Accounts of staff sighting kids in pubs are excitedly recounted with
much more relish than mere smoking incidents, and inaction after being “clocked boozing” is even more
delicious proof of a traitor/sympathizer/weakling in the school camp than is the blind eye to a lighted “fag.”
Their perception of this particular matrix of meanings puts some younger and more progressive members of
staff in a severe dilemma. Some of them come up with bizarre solutions which remain incomprehensible to “the
lads”: this incident involves a concerned and progressive young teacher.
[in a group discussion about staff]

Derek: And Alf says, er, “Alright sir” [on meeting a member of staff in a public house] and he
dayn’t answer, you know, and he says, “Alright, sir?,” and he turned around and looked
at him like that, see, and er . . . and he dayn’t answer and he says, in the next day, and
he says, “I want you Alf,” goes to him and he says, “What was you in there last night
for?” He says, “I was at a football meeting,” he says, “Well don’t you think that was
like kicking somebody in the teeth?” “No,” he says. “What would you feel like if I
kicked you in the teeth?” he says “What do you mean?” he says. “Saying hello like that
down there,” he says, “what would you expect me to say?” He says, “Well don’t speak
to me again unless I speak to you first.” He says, “Right sir, I won’t say hello again,” he
says, “even if I see you in the drive.”

Certainly “the lads” self-consciously understand the symbolic importance of drinking as an act of affiliation
with adults and opposition to the school. It is most important to them that the last lunchtime of their last term
should be spent in a pub, and that the maximum possible alcohol be consumed. This is the moment when they
finally break free from school, the moment to be remembered in future years.

• • •
In the pub there is indeed a very special atmosphere amongst the Hammertown “lads.” Spike is expansively
explaining that although he had behaved like a “right vicious cunt” sometimes, he really likes his mates and will
miss them. Eddie is determined to have eight pints and hold the “record”—and is later “apprehended drunk,” in
the words of the head, at the school and ingloriously driven home by him. Fuzz is explaining how he had nearly
driven Sampson (a teacher) “off his rocker” that morning and had been sent to see the head, “but he wasn’t off
or anything, he was joking.” Most important, they are accepted by the publican and other adult customers in the
pub, who are buying them drinks and asking them about their future work. At closing time they leave,
exchanging the adult promises which they have not yet learned to disbelieve, calling to particular people that
they will do their plumbing, bricklaying or whatever.
That they have not quite broken loose, and that staff want to underline this, is shown when “the lads” return
to the school late, smelling of alcohol and in some c ases quite drunk. In a reminder that the power of the school
is backed ultimately by the law and state coercion, the head has called in the police. A policeman is waiting
outside the school with the head. This frightens “the lads” and a bizarre scenario develops as they try to dodge
the policeman.

• • •
Eventually “the lads” are rounded up and delivered in an excited state to the head’s study, where they are
told off roughly by the policeman: “He picked me up and bounced me against the wall”—Spike (I did not see
this incident myself). The head subsequently writes to all of their parents threatening to withhold their final
testimonials until an apology is received: In the case of Spike he wrote:

. . . your son had obviously been drinking, and his subsequent behavior was generally uncooperative,
insolent, and almost belligerent. He seemed bent on justifying his behavior and went as far as describing the
school as being like Colditz . . . as is my practice, I wish to give the parents of the boys an opportunity to
come and see me before I finally decide what action to take.

Even sympathetic young staff find the incident “surprising,” and wondered why “the lads” had not waited
until the evening, and then “really done it properly.” The point is, of course, that the drinking has to be done at
lunchtime, and in defiance of the school. It is not done simply to mark a neutral transition—a mere ritual. It is a
decisive rejection and closing off. They have, in some way, finally beaten the school in a way which is beyond
the “ear ‘oles” and nearly unanswerable by staff. It is the transcendence of what they take to be the mature life,
the real life, over the oppressive adolescence of the school—represented by the behavior both of the “ear ‘oles”
and of the teachers.
Some of the parents of “the lads” share their sons’ view of the situation. Certainly none of them take up the
head’s offer to go and see him.
[in a group discussion]

Will: Our mum’s kept all the letters, you know, about like the letters Simmondsy’s sent [about
the drinking]. I says, “What you keeping them for?” She says, “Well, it’ll be nice to
look back on to, won’t it,” you know, “show your kids like you know, what a terror you
was.” I’m keeping ’em, I am.

[individual interview at work]

PW: Did your old man understand about having a drink the last day of term?
Spanksy: Oh ah (. . .) he laughed, he said, “Fancy them, sending a letter,” you know. Joey’s father
come and had a little laugh about it you know.

No matter what the threats, and the fear of the law, the whole episode is “worth it” to “the lads.” It is the
most frequently recounted, embellished and exaggerated school episode in the future working situation. It soon
becomes part of a personalized folklore. As school uniform and smoking cease to be the most obvious causes of
conflict in schools as more liberal regimes develop, we may expect drinking to become the next major area
where the battle lines are drawn.

THE INFORMAL GROUP

• • •
In many respects the opposition we have been looking at can be understood as a classic example of the
opposition between the formal and the informal. The school is the zone of the formal. It has a clear structure: the
school building, school rules, pedagogic practice, a staff hierarchy with powers ultimately sanctioned—as we
have seen in a small way—by the state, the pomp and majesty of the law, and the repressive arm of state
apparatus, the police. The “ear ‘oles” invest in this formal structure, and in exchange for some loss in autonomy
expect the official guardians to keep the holy rules—often above and beyond their actual call to duty. What is
freely sacrificed by the faithful must be taken from the unfaithful.
Counter-school culture is the zone of the informal. It is where the incursive demands of the formal are
denied—even if the price is the expression of opposition in style, micro-interactions and non-public discourses.
In working class culture generally opposition is frequently marked by a withdrawal into the informal and
expressed in its characteristic modes just beyond the reach of “the rule.”
Even though there are no public rules, physical structures, recognized hierarchies or institutionalized
sanctions in the counter-school culture, it cannot run on air. It must have its own material base, its own
infrastructure. This is, of course, the social group. The informal group is the basic unit of this culture, the
fundamental and elemental source of its resistance. It locates and makes possible all other elements of the
culture, and its presence decisively distinguishes “the lads” from the “ear ‘oles.”

• • •

The essence of being “one of the lads” lies within the group. It is impossible to form a distinctive culture by
yourself. You cannot generate fun, atmosphere and a social identity by yourself. Joining the counter-school
culture means joining a group, and enjoying it means being with the group:
[in a group discussion on being “one of the lads”]

Joey: (. . .), when you’m dossing on your own, it’s no good, but when you’m dossing with
your mates, then you’re all together, you’re having a laff and it’s a doss.
Bill: If you don’t do what the others do, you feel out.
Fred: You feel out, yeah, yeah. They sort of, you feel, like, thinking the others are. . . .
Will: In the second years. . . .
Spanksy: I can imagine . . . you know, when I have a day off school, when you come back the next
day, and something happened like in the day you’ve been off, you feel, “Why did I have
that day off,” you know, “I could have been enjoying myself.” You know what I mean?
You come back and they’re saying, “Oorh, you should have been here yesterday,” you
know.
Will: (. . .) like in the first and second years, you can say er’m . . . you’re a bit of an ear ‘ole
right. Then you want to try what it’s like to be er’m . . . say, one of the boys like, you
want to have a taste of that, not an ear ‘ole, and so you like the taste of that.

Though informal, such groups nevertheless have rules of a kind which can be described—though they are
characteristically framed in contrast to what “rules” are normally taken to mean.

PW: (. . .) Are there any rules between you lot?

Pete: We just break the other rules.
Fuzz: We ain’t got no rules between us though, have we?

• • •

Pete: Changed ’em round.

Will: We ain’t got rules but we do things between us, but we do things that y’know, like
er . . . say, I wouldn’t knock off anybody’s missus or Joey’s missus, and they wouldn’t
do it to me, y’know what I mean? Things like that or, er . . . yer give ‘im a fag, you
expect one back, like, or summat like that.
Fred: T’ain’t rules, it’s just an understanding really.
Will: That’s it, yes.
PW: (. . .) What would these understandings be?
Will: Er . . . I think, not to . . . meself, I think there ain’t many of us that play up the first or
second years, it really is that, but y’know, say if Fred had cum to me and sez, “er . . . I
just got two bob off that second year over there,” I’d think, “What a cunt,” you know.

• • •

Fred: We’re as thick as thieves, that’s what they say, stick together.

There is a universal taboo amongst informal groups on the yielding of incriminating information about
others to those with formal power. Informing contravenes the essence of the informal group’s nature: the
maintenance of oppositional meanings against the penetration of “the rule.” The Hammertown lads call it
“grassing.” Staff call it telling the truth. “Truth” is the formal complement of “grassing.” It is only by getting
someone to “grass”—forcing them to break the solemnest taboo—that the primacy of the formal organization
can be maintained. No wonder then, that a whole school can be shaken with paroxysms over a major incident
and the purge which follows it. It is an atavistic struggle about authority and the legitimacy of authority. The
school has to win, and someone, finally, has to “grass”: this is one of the ways in which the school itself is
reproduced and the faith of the “ear ‘oles” restored. But whoever has done the “grassing” becomes special,
weak and marked.

• • •
The group also supplies those contacts which allow the individual to build up alternative maps of social
reality, it gives the bits and pieces of information for the individual to work out himself what makes things tick.
It is basically only through the group that other groups are met, and through them successions of other groups.
School groups coalesce and further link up with neighborhood groups, forming a network for the passing on of
distinctive kinds of knowledge and perspectives that progressively place school at a tangent to the overall
experience of being a working class teenager in an industrial city. It is the infrastructure of the informal group
which makes at all possible a distinctive kind of class contact, or class culture, as distinct from the dominant
one.

• • •

DOSSING, BLAGGING, AND WAGGING

Opposition to the school is principally manifested in the struggle to win symbolic and physical space from the
institution and its rules and to defeat its main perceived purpose: to make you “work.” Both the winning and the
prize—a form of self-direction—profoundly develop informal cultural meanings and practices. The dynamic
aspects of the staff/pupil relationship will be examined later on. By the time a counter-school culture is fully
developed, its members have become adept at managing the formal system and limiting its demands to the
absolute minimum. Exploiting the complexity of modern regimes of mixed ability groupings; blocked
timetabling and multiple RSLA options, in many cases this minimum is simply the act of registration.
[in a group discussion on the school curriculum]

Joey: (. . .) of a Monday afternoon, we’d have nothing right? Nothing hardly relating to school
work, Tuesday afternoon we have swimming and they stick you in a classroom for the
rest of the afternoon, Wednesday afternoon you have games and there’s only Thursday
and Friday afternoon that you work, if you call that work. The last lesson Friday
afternoon we used to go and doss, half of us wagged out o’ lessons and the other half go
into the classroom, sit down and just go to sleep (. . .)
Spanksy: (. . .) Skive this lesson, go up on the bank, have a smoke, and the next lesson go to a
teacher who, you know, ‘ll call the register (. . .)
Bill: It’s easy to go home as well, like him [Eddie] . . . last Wednesday afternoon, he got his
mark and went home (. . .)
Eddie: I ain’t supposed to be in school this afternoon, I’m supposed to be at college [on a link
course where students spend one day a week at college for vocational instruction]
PW: What’s the last time you’ve done some writing?
Will: When we done some writing?
 Fuzz: Oh are, last time was in careers, ‘cos I writ “yes” on a piece of paper, that broke me
heart.
PW: Why did it break your heart?
Fuzz: I mean to write, ‘cos I was going to try and go through the term without writing
anything. ‘Cos since we’ve cum back, I ain’t dun nothing [it was halfway through term].

Truancy is only a very imprecise—even meaningless—measure of rejection of school. This is not only
because of the practice of stopping in school for registration before “wagging off” (developed to a fine art
amongst “the lads”), but also because it only measures one aspect of what we might more accurately describe as
informal student mobility. Some of “the lads” develop the ability of moving about the school at their own will
to a remarkable degree. They construct virtually their own day from what is offered by the school. Truancy is
only one relatively unimportant and crude variant of this principle of self-direction which ranges across vast
chunks of the syllabus and covers many diverse activities: being free out of class, being in class and doing no
work, being in the wrong class, roaming the corridors looking for excitement, being asleep in private. The core
skill which articulates these possibilities is being able to get out of any given class: the preservation of personal
mobility.
[in a group discussion]

PW: But doesn’t anybody worry about your not being in their class?
Fuzz: I get a note off the cooks saying I’m helping them (. . .)
John: You just go up to him [a teacher] and say, “Can I go and do a job.” He’ll say, “Certainly,
by all means,” ‘cos they want to get rid of you like.
Fuzz: Specially when I ask ’em.
Pete: You know the holes in the corridor, I didn’t want to go to games, he told me to fetch his
keys, so I dropped them down the hole in the corridor, and had to go and get a torch and
find them.

For the successful, there can be an embarrassment of riches. It can become difficult to choose between self-
organized routes through the day.

Will: (. . .) what we been doing, playing cards in this room ‘cos we can lock the door.
PW: Which room’s this now?
Will: Resources center, where we’re making the frames [a new stage for the deputy head],
s’posed to be.
PW: Oh! You’re still making the frames!
Will: We should have had it finished, we just lie there on top of the frame, playing cards, or
trying to get to sleep. (. . .) Well, it gets a bit boring, I’d rather go and sit in the
classroom, you know.
PW: What sort of lessons would you think of going into?
Will: Uh, science, I think, ‘cos you can have a laff in there sometimes.

This self-direction and thwarting of formal organizational aims is also an assault on official notions of time.
The most arduous task of the deputy head is the construction of the timetables. In large schools, with several
options open to the fifth year, everything has to be fitted in with the greatest of care. The first weeks of term are
spent in continuous revision, as junior members of staff complain, and particular combinations are shown to be
unworkable. Time, like money, is valuable and not to be squandered. Everything has to be ordered into a kind of
massive critical path of the school’s purpose. Subjects become measured blocks of time in careful relation to
each other. Quite as much as the school buildings the institution over time is the syllabus. The complex charts
on the deputy’s wall show how it works. In theory it is possible to check where every individual is at every
moment of the day. But for “the lads” this never seems to work. If one wishes to contact them, it is much more
important to know and understand their own rhythms and patterns of movement. These rhythms reject the
obvious purposes of the timetable and their implicit notions of time. The common complaint about “the lads”
from staff and the “ear ‘oles” is that they “waste valuable time.” Time for “the lads” is not something you
carefully husband and thoughtfully spend on the achievement of desired objectives in the future. For “the lads”
time is something they want to claim for themselves now as an aspect of their immediate identity and self-
direction. Time is used for the preservation of a state—being with “the lads”—not for the achievement of a goal
—qualifications.
Of course there is a sense of urgency sometimes, and individuals can see the end of term approaching and
the need to get a job. But as far as their culture is concerned time is importantly simply the state of being free
from institutional time. Its own time all passes as essentially the same thing, in the same units. It is not planned,
and is not counted in loss, or expected exchange.

“HAVING A LAFF”

“Even communists laff” (Joey)

The space won from the school and its rules by the informal group is used for the shaping and development
of particular cultural skills principally devoted to “having a laff.” The “laff” is a multi-faceted implement of
extraordinary importance in the counter-school culture. As we saw before, the ability to produce it is one of the
defining characteristics of being one of “the lads”— “We can make them laff, they can’t make us laff.” But it is
also used in many other contexts: to defeat boredom and fear, to overcome hardship and problems—as a way
out of almost anything. In many respects the “laff” is the privileged instrument of the informal, as the command
is of the formal. Certainly “the lads” understand the special importance of the “laff”:
[in an individual discussion]

Joey: I think fuckin’ laffing is the most important thing in fuckin’ everything. Nothing ever
stops me laffing (. . .) I remember once, there was me, John, and this other kid, right,
and these two kids cum up and bashed me for some fuckin’ reason or another. John and
this other kid were away, off (. . .) I tried to give ’em one, but I kept fuckin’ coppin’
it . . . so I ran off, and as I ran off, I scooped a handful of fuckin’ snow up, and put it
right over me face, and I was laffing me bollocks off. They kept saying, “You can’t
fuckin’ laff.” I should have been scared but I was fuckin’ laffing (. . .)
PW: What is it about having a laugh, (. . .) why is it so important?
Joey: (. . .) I don’t know why I want to laff, I dunno why it’s so fuckin’ important. It just is
(. . .) I think it’s just a good gift, that’s all, because you can get out of any situation. If
you can laff, if you can make yourself laff, I mean really convincingly, it can get you
out of millions of things (. . .) You’d go fuckin’ berserk if you didn’t have a laff
occasionally.

The school is generally a fertile ground for the “laff.” The school importantly develops and shapes the
particular ambience of “the lads’” distinctive humor. . . . We can note the ways in which specific themes of
authority are explored, played with and used in their humor. Many of their pranks and jokes would not mean the
same thing or even be funny anywhere else. When a teacher comes into a classroom he is told, “It’s alright, sir,
the deputy’s taking us, you can go. He said you could have the period off.” “The lads” stop second and third
years around the school and say, “Mr Argyle wants to see you, you’m in trouble I think.” Mr. Argyle’s room is
soon choked with worried kids. A new teacher is stopped and told, “I’m new in the school, the head says could
you show me around please.” The new teacher starts to do just that before the turned away laughs give the game
away. As a rumor circulates that the head is checking everyone’s handwriting to discover who has defaced
plaster in the new block, Fuzz boasts, “The fucker can’t check mine, I ain’t done none.” In a humorous
exploration of the crucial point where authority connects with the informal code through the sacred taboo on
informing, there is a stream of telltale stories half goading the teacher into playing his formal role more
effectively: “Please sir, please sir, Joey’s talking/pinching some compasses/picked his nose/killing
Percival/having a wank/let your car tyres down.”

• • •
Of course “the lads” do not always look to external stimulants or victims for the “laff.” Interaction and
conversation in the group frequently take the form of “piss-taking.” They are very physical and rough with each
other, with kicks, punches, karate blows, arm-twisting, kicking, pushing and tripping going on for long periods
and directed against particular individuals often almost to the point of tears. The ribbing or “pisstaking” is
similarly rough and often directed at the same individuals for the same things. Often this is someone’s imagined
stupidity. This is ironic in view of “the lads” general rejection of school work, and shows a ghost of
conventional values which they would be quick to deny. Though “the lads” usually resist conventional ways of
showing their abilities, certainly the ablest like to be thought of as “quick.” Certain cultural values, like fast
talking and humor, do anyway register in some academic subjects. Joey, for instance, walks a very careful
tightrope in English between “laffing” with “the lads” and doing the occasional “brilliant” essay. In certain
respects obvious stupidity is penalized more heavily amongst “the lads” than by staff, who “expected nothing
better.” Very often the topic for the “pisstake” is sexual, though it can be anything—the more personal, sharper
and apposite the better. The soul of wit for them is disparaging relevance: the persistent searching out of
weakness. It takes some skill and cultural know-how to mount such attacks, and more to resist them:
[a group of “lads” during break-time]

Eddie: X gets his missus to hold his prick, while he has a piss. [Laughter]
Will: Ask him who wipes his arse. [Laughter]
Spike: The dirty bastard . . . I bet he changes her fucking rags for her.
Spanksy: With his teeth! [More laughter] [X arrives]
Spanksy: Did you have a piss dinnertime?
Bill: Or a shit?
Spanksy: You disgusting little boy . . . I couldn’t do that.
Bill: Hold on a minute, I want you to hold my cock while I have a piss. [Laughter]
X: Why am I. . .
Will: He don’t even know. (interrupting):
Bill: Does your missus hold your cock for you when you go for a piss?
X: Who does? [Laughter and interruptions]
— You do
X: Who?
— You
X: When?
 Spike: You did, you told Joey, Joey told me.

Plans are continually made to play jokes on individuals who are not there: “Let’s send him to Coventry
when he comes,” “Let’s laugh at everything he says,” “Let’s pretend we can’t understand and say, ‘How do you
mean’ all the time.” Particular individuals can get a reputation and attract constant ribbing for being “dirty,” or
“as thick as two short planks,” or even for always wearing the “same tatty jacket.” The language used in the
group, especially in the context of derision and the “pisstake,” is much rougher than that used by the “ear ‘oles,”
full of spat-out swearwords, vigorous use of local dialect and special argot. Talking, at least on their own patch
and in their own way, comes very naturally to “the lads”:
[in a group discussion on skiving]

Joey: (. . .) You’m always looking out on somebody [when skiving] and you’ve always got
something to talk about . . . something.
PW: So what stops you being bored?
Joey: Talking, we could talk forever, when we get together, it’s talk, talk, talk.

SEXISM

Two other groups against whom “the lads’” exclusivity is defined, and through which their own sense of
superiority is enacted, are girls and ethnic minority groups.
Their most nuanced and complex attitudes are reserved for the opposite sex. There is a traditional conflict in
their view of women: they are both sexual objects and domestic comforters. In essence this means that whilst
women must be sexually attractive, they cannot be sexually experienced.
Certainly desire is clear on the part of “the lads.” Lascivious tales of conquest or jokes turning on the
passivity of women or on the particular sexual nature of men are regular topics of conversation. Always it is
their own experience, and not that of the girl or of their shared relationship, which is the focus of the stories. The
girls are afforded no particular identity save that of their sexual attraction.

• • •
Although they are its object, frank and explicit sexuality is actually denied to women. There is a complex of
emotion here. On the one hand, insofar as she is a sex object, a commodity, she is actually diminished by sex;
she is literally worthless; she has been romantically and materially partly consumed. To show relish for this
diminution is seen as self-destructive. On the other hand, in a half recognition of the human sexuality they have
suppressed, there is a fear that once a girl is sexually experienced and has known joy from sex at all, the
floodgates of her desire will be opened and she will be completely promiscuous.

Y: After you’ve been with one like, after you’ve done it like, well they’re scrubbers
afterwards, they’ll go with anyone. I think it’s that once they’ve had it, they want it all
the time, no matter who it’s with.

Certainly reputations for “easiness”—deserved or not—spread very quickly. “The lads” are after the “easy
lay” at dances, though they think twice about being seen to “go out” with them.
The “girlfriend” is a very different category from an “easy lay.” She represents the human value that is
squandered by promiscuity. She is the loyal domestic partner. She cannot be held to be sexually experienced—
or at least not with others. Circulated stories about the sexual adventures of “the missus” are a first-rate
challenge to masculinity and pride. They have to be answered in the masculine mode:
[in an individual discussion]

X: He keeps saying things, he went out with me missus before like, and he keeps saying
things what I don’t like, and y’know like, it gets around . . . he won’t learn his fucking
lesson, he does summat, he sez summat, right, I bash him for it, he won’t hit me back,
he runs off like a little wanker, then he sez something else (. . .) he ain’t been to school
since Friday (. . .) when I fuckin’ cop him I’m gonna kill ‘im, if I get ‘im on the floor
he’s fucking dead.

Courtship is a serious affair. The common prolepsis of calling girlfriends “the missus” is no accident
amongst “the lads.” A whole new range of meanings and connotations come into play during serious courting.
Their referent is the home: dependability and domesticity—the opposite of the sexy bird on the scene. If the
initial attraction is based on sex, the final settlement is based on a strange denial of sex—a denial principally, of
course, of the girl’s sexuality for others, but also of sexuality as the dominant feature of their own relationship.
Possible promiscuity is held firmly in check by domestic glue:
[in an individual interview]

Spike: (. . .) I’ve got the right bird, I’ve been goin’ with her for eighteen months now. Her’s as
good as gold. She wouldn’t look at another chap. She’s fucking done well, she’s clean.
She loves doing fucking housework. Trousers I brought yesterday, I took ’em up last
night, and her turned ’em up for me (. . .) She’s as good as gold and I wanna get married
as soon as I can.

The model for the girlfriend is, of course, the mother, and she is fundamentally a model of limitation.
Though there is a great deal of affection for “mum,” she is definitely accorded an inferior role: “She’s a bit
thick, like, never knows what I’m on about,” “She don’t understand this sort of stuff, just me dad.” And within
the home there is a clear sense that men have a right to be waited on by the mother:
[in an individual interview]

Spanksy: (. . .) it shouldn’t be done, you shouldn’t need to help yer mother in the house. You
should put your shoes away tidy and hang your coat up, admittedly, but, you know, you
shouldn’t vacuum and polish and do the beds for her and (. . .) her housekeeping and
that.

The resolution amongst working class girls of the contradiction between being sexually desirable but not
sexually experienced leads to behavior which strengthens “the lads’” sense of superiority. This resolution takes
the form of romanticism readily fed by teenage magazines. It turns upon the “crush,” and sublimation of sexual
feeling into talk, rumors and message-sending within the protective circle of the informal female group. This is
not to say that they never have sex—clearly a good proportion must do—but that the dominant social form of
their relationship with boys is to be sexy, but in a girlish, latter day courtly love mold which falls short of actual
sexual proposition. The clear sexual stimulus which in the first place attracts the boy can thus be reconverted
into the respectable values of the home and monogamous submission. If ever the paranoic thought strikes the
boy that, having got the “come on” himself, why shouldn’t others, he can be calmed with the thought, “she’s not
like that, she’s soft inside.” In this way, still, romanticism brokers the sexual within a patriarchal society. It
allows sexual display without sexual promise, being sexy but not sexual.
What “the lads” see of the romantic behavior they have partly conditioned in the girls, however, is a simple
sheepishness, weakness and a silly indirectness in social relationships: “saft wenches giggling all the time.”
Since the girls have abandoned the assertive and the sexual, they leave that ground open to the boys. It is they
who take on the drama and initiative, the machismo, of a sexual drive. They have no reservations about making
their intentions clear, or of enjoying a form of their sexuality. However, they take it as an aspect of their
inherent superiority that they can be frank and direct and unmystified about their desires. The contortions and
strange rituals of the girls are seen as part of their girlishness, of their inherent weakness and confusion. Their
romanticism is tolerated with a knowing masculinity, which privately feels it knows much more about the
world. This sense of masculine pride spreads over into the expressive confidence of the rest of “the lads”
culture. It adds a zest to their language, physical and boisterous relations with each other, humiliation of “ear
‘oles,” and even to a particular display style of violence.
The combination of these various factors gives a special tone to interaction between the sexes. “The lads”
usually take the initiative in conversation and are the ones who make suggestive comments. The girls respond
with giggles and talk amongst themselves. Where girls do make comments they are of the serious, caring or
human kind. It is left to “the lads” to make the jokes, the hard comments, the abrasive summations and to create
a spectacle to be appreciated by the girls. The girls are clearly dominated, but they collude in their own
domination:
[a mixed group talking “by the sheds” at dinner time]

Joan: We’m all gonna start crying this afternoon, it’s the last.
Bill: You’ve only got two weeks left ain’t yer, we’m gonna laugh when we leave. (. . .)
Joan: I like your jumper.
Bill: You can come inside if yer like!
Will: Ain’t it terrible when you see these old women with bandages ‘round their ankles.
Mary: I ain’t got ’em, and I ain’t fat.
Will: I dayn’t say you had, I said it was terrible.
Bill: I’m gonna nick Mary’s fags and smoke ’em all. [Giggles]

• • •

Eddie: It’s time you lot were back in school, go on. [Giggles and whispering about someone
who “fancies” Eddie]. These wenches don’t half talk about you behind your back, me
ears are burning. [Loud burp from one of “the lads”]
Maggie: Oh, you pig, shut up.
Bill: [Handling cigarettes around] He’ are.
Maggie: No thanks, I’ll have a big one.
Bill: She likes big ones! He’s got a big one, ask him, he’ll let you have a look.
The rest: [Singing] He’s got a big one, he’s got a big one . . . [Bill takes his coat off]
Eddie: Have it off.
Bill: [To Mary] Have you ever had it off?
Will: I’ve had it off twice today already. [Laughter] Do you like having it off? [To Maggie]
Maggie: You cheeky sod.
Will: I mean your coat.

• • •
RACISM

Three distinct groups—Caucasians, Asians, and West Indians—are clearly visible in most school settings.
Though individual contacts are made, especially in the youth wing, the ethnic groups are clearly separated by
the fourth year. Divisions are, if anything, more obvious in informal settings. For a period the head of upper
school allows fifth years to use form rooms for “friendship groups” during break time. This is yet another, this
time defensive and accommodating, variant of the continuous if subtle struggle to contain opposition. Its results,
however, demonstrate for us what are the clear informal patterns of racial culture beneath and sometimes
obscured by the official structures of the school.

Head of upper school: We have got the Martins (Bill), Croft (Joey), Rustin, Roberts (Will), Peterson (Eddie),
Jeffs (Fuzz) and Barnes (Spike) in the European room. Bucknor, Grant, Samuels,
Spence in the West Indian room and Singh, Rajit and co in the Asiatic room. So much
for integration! There are three distinct rooms. You go into the white room and you will
probably sit down and have a cup of tea made. You go into the Indian room and they are
all playing cards and they are jabbering to each other, and then you go into the West
Indian room and they are all dancing to records. In the West Indian room they are sort
of stamping around, twisting.

From the point of view of “the lads” the separation is certainly experienced as rejection of others. There is
frequent verbal, if not actual, violence shown to “the fuckin’ wogs,” or the “bastard pakis.” The mere fact of
different color can be enough to justify an attack or intimidation. A clear demarcation between groups and a
derogatory view of other racial types is simply assumed as the basis for this and other action: it is a daily form
of knowledge in use.

Spanksy: We had a go at the Jamaicans, ‘cos you know, we outnumbered them. We dayn’t want to
fight them when they was all together. We outnumbered them.
Spike: They was all there though.
Spanksy: They was all there, but half of them walked off dayn’t they, there was only a couple left.
About four of us got this one.
Joey: Not one of us was marked . . . that was really super.

Racial identity for “the lads” supplants individual identity so that stories to friends concern not “this kid,”
but “this wog.” At Hammertown Boys there is an increasing and worrying tension between the ethnic groups,
particularly the Caucasians and the Asians, which sometimes flares up into violence. The deputy head then gets
everyone into the hall and lectures them, but this only suppresses the immediate expression of dislike:
[In a group discussion on recent disturbances at the school]

Joey: He [the deputy in the hall after an incident] even started talking about the Israeli war at
one stage, “This is how war starts. . . . Pack it in.”
PW: (. . .) was he convincing you a bit?
Joey: He was just talking, we were just listening thinking, “Right you black bastard, next time
you start, we’ll have you”—which we will.

This curiously self-righteous readiness to express and act on dislike is reinforced by what “the lads” take to
be a basically collusive attitude of staff—no matter what the public statements. This is perhaps even an
unconscious effect and certainly where racism exists amongst staff it is much less virulent than that in the
counter-school culture. There is, however, by and large much less sympathy and rapport between (a massively
white) staff and ethnic minorities than between staff and whites. In an almost automatic cultural reflex
minorities are seen as strange and less civilized—not “tea,” but “jabbering to each other” and “stamping
around.” Certainly it is quite explicit that many senior staff associate the mass immigration of the 1960s with
the break up of the “order and quietness” of the 1950s and of what is seen more and more retrospectively as
their peaceful, successful schools. Both “lads” and staff do share, therefore, a sense in their different ways of
resentment for the disconcerting intruder. For racism amongst “the lads” it provides a double support for hostile
attitudes. The informal was, for once, backed up by at least the ghost of the formal.
The racism in the counter-school culture is structured by reified though somewhat differentiated stereotypes.
Asians come off worst and are often the target for petty intimidation, small pestering attacks, and the physical
and symbolic jabbing at weak or unprotected points in which “the lads” specialize. Asians are seen both as
alien, “smelly,” and probably “unclean,” and as sharing some of the most disliked “ear ‘ole” characteristics.
They are doubly disliked for the contradictory way in which they seem simultaneously to be both further off,
and closer to received English cultural models. They are interlopers who do not know their station and try to
take that which is not rightfully theirs but which is anyway disliked and discredited on other grounds.

SOURCE: From Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs by Paul Willis.
Copyright © 1981. Reprinted by permission of Ashgate Publishing Limited.
23
INVISIBLE INEQUALITY
Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White
Families
ANNETTE LAREAU

I n recent decades, sociological knowledge about inequality in family life has increased dramatically. Yet,
debate persists, especially about the transmission of class advantages to children. Kingston (2000) and
others question whether disparate aspects of family life cohere in meaningful patterns.
Pointing to a “thin evidentiary base” for claims of social class differences in the interior of family life,
Kingston also asserts that “class distinguishes neither distinctive parenting styles or distinctive involvement of
kids” in specific behaviors (p. 134).
One problem with many studies is that they are narrowly focused. Researchers look at the influence of
parents’ education on parent involvement in schooling or at children’s time spent watching television or at time
spent visiting relatives. Only a few studies examine more than one dynamic inside the home. Second, much of
the empirical work is descriptive. For example, extensive research has been done on time use, including patterns
of women’s labor force participation, hours parents spend at work, and mothers’ and fathers’ contributions to
childcare (Hertz and Marshall 2001; Jacobs and Gerson 1998; Menaghan 1991). Time parents spend with
children also has been examined (Bianchi 2000; Bianchi and Robinson 1997; Marsiglio 1991; Presser 1989;
Zick and Bryant 1996), as well as patterns of children’s time use (Hofferth and Sandberg 2001b; Juster and
Stafford 1985; Sandberg and Hofferth 2001). But these works have not given sufficient attention to the meaning
of events or to the ways different family contexts may affect how a given task is executed (but see Daley 2001;
Rubin 1976; Thorne 2001).
Third, researchers have not satisfactorily explained how these observed patterns are produced. Put
differently, conceptualizations of the social processes through which families differ are underdeveloped and
little is known about how family life transmits advantages to children. Few researchers have attempted to
integrate what is known about behaviors and attitudes taught inside the home with the ways in which these
practices may provide unequal resources for family members outside the home. A key exception is the work by
Kohn and colleagues (e.g., Kohn and Schooler 1983), where the authors argue that middle-class parents value
self-direction while working-class parents place a premium on “conformity to external authority.” These
researchers did not investigate, however, how parents go about translating these beliefs into actions.
Fourth, little is known about the degree to which children adopt and enact their parents’ beliefs. Sociologists
of the family have long stressed the importance of a more dynamic model of parent-child interaction (Skolnick
1991), but empirical research has been slow to emerge (but see Hess and Handel 1974). Ethnographers’ efforts
to document children’s agency have provided vivid but highly circumscribed portraits (Shehan 1999; Waksler
1991), but most of the case studies look at only one social class or one ethnic group. Moreover, ethnographers
typically do not explicitly examine how social class advantages are transmitted to children.
I draw on findings from a small, intensive data set collected using ethnographic methods. I map the
connections between parents’ resources and their children’s daily lives. My first goal, then, is to challenge
Kingston’s (2000) argument that social class does not distinguish parents’ behavior or children’s daily lives. I
seek to show empirically that social class does indeed create distinctive parenting styles. I demonstrate that
parents differ by class in the ways they define their own roles in their children’s lives as well as in how they
perceive the nature of childhood. The middle-class parents, both white and black, tend to conform to a cultural
logic of childrearing I call “concerted cultivation.” They enroll their children in numerous age-specific
organized activities that dominate family life and create enormous labor, particularly for mothers. The parents
view these activities as transmitting important life skills to children. Middle-class parents also stress language
use and the development of reasoning and employ talking as their preferred form of discipline. This
“cultivation” approach results in a wider range of experiences for children but also creates a frenetic pace for
parents, a cult of individualism within the family, and an emphasis on children’s performance.1
The childrearing strategies of white and black working-class and poor parents emphasize the
“accomplishment of natural growth.”2 These parents believe that as long as they provide love, food, and safety,
their children will grow and thrive. They do not focus on developing their children’s special talents. Compared
to the middle-class children, working-class and poor children participate in few organized activities and have
more free time and deeper, richer ties within their extended families. Working-class and poor parents issue
many more directives to their children and, in some households, place more emphasis on physical discipline
than do the middle-class parents. These findings extend Kohn and Schooler’s (1983) observation of class
differences in parents’ values, showing that differences also exist in the behavior of parents and children.
Quantitative studies of children’s activities offer valuable empirical evidence but only limited ideas about
how to conceptualize the mechanisms through which social advantage is transmitted. Thus, my second goal is to
offer “conceptual umbrellas” useful for making comparisons across race and class and for assessing the role of
social structural location in shaping daily life.3
Last, I trace the connections between the class position of family members—including children—and the
uneven outcomes of their experiences outside the home as they interact with professionals in dominant
institutions. The pattern of concerted cultivation encourages an emerging sense of entitlement in children. All
parents and children are not equally assertive, but the pattern of questioning and intervening among the white
and black middle-class parents contrasts sharply with the definitions of how to be helpful and effective observed
among the white and black working-class and poor adults. The pattern of the accomplishment of natural growth
encourages an emerging sense of constraint. Adults as well as children in these social classes tend to be
deferential and outwardly accepting in their interactions with professionals such as doctors and educators. At the
same time, however, compared to their middle-class counterparts, white and black working-class and poor
family members are more distrustful of professionals. These are differences with potential long-term
consequences. In a historical moment when the dominant society privileges active, informed, assertive clients of
health and educational services, the strategies employed by children and parents are not equally effective across
classes. In sum, differences in family life lie not only in the advantages parents obtain for their children, but also
in the skills they transmit to children for negotiating their own life paths.

METHODOLOGY

Study Participants
This study is based on interviews and observations of children, aged 8 to 10, and their families. The data
were collected over time in three research phases. Phase one involved observations in two third-grade
classrooms in a public school in the Midwestern community of “Lawrenceville.”4 After conducting observations
for two months, I grouped the families into social class (and race) categories based on information provided by
educators. I then chose every third name, and sent a letter to the child’s home asking the mother and father to
participate in separate interviews. Over 90 percent of parents agreed, for a total of 32 children (16 white and 16
African American). A black graduate student and I interviewed all mothers and most fathers (or guardians) of
the children. Each interview lasted 90 to 120 minutes, and all took place in 1989–1990.
Phase two took place at two sites in a northeastern metropolitan area. One school, “Lower Richmond,”
although located in a predominantly white, working-class urban neighborhood, drew about half of its students
from a nearby all-black housing project. I observed one third-grade class at Lower Richmond about twice a
week for almost six months. The second site, “Swan,” was located in a suburban neighborhood about 45
minutes from the city center. It was 90 percent white; most of the remaining 10 percent were middle-class black
children.5 There, I observed twice a week for two months at the end of the third grade; a research assistant then
observed weekly for four more months in the fourth grade.6 At each site, teachers and parents described their
school in positive terms.7 The observations took place between September 1992 and January 1994. In the fall of
1993, I drew an interview sample from Lower Richmond and Swan, following the same method of selection
used for Lawrenceville. A team of research assistants and I interviewed the parents and guardians of 39
children. Again, the response rate was over 90 percent but because the classrooms did not generate enough
black middle-class children and white poor children to fill the analytical categories, interviews were also
conducted with 17 families with children aged 8 to 10. (Most of these interviews took place during the summers
of 1996 and 1997.)8 Thus, the total number of children who participated in the study was 88 (32 from the
Midwest and 56 from the Northeast).

Family Observations
Phase three, the most intensive research phase of the study, involved home observations of 12 children and
their families in the Northeast who had been previously interviewed.9 Some themes, such as language use and
families’ social connections, surfaced mainly during this phase. Although I entered the field interested in
examining the influence of social class on children’s daily lives, I incorporated new themes as they “bubbled
up” from the field observations. The evidence presented here comes mainly from the family observations, but I
also use interview findings from the full sample of 88 children where appropriate.10

CONCERTED CULTIVATION AND NATURAL GROWTH

The interviews and observations suggested that crucial aspects of family life cohered. Within the concerted
cultivation and accomplishment of natural growth approaches, three key dimensions may be distinguished: the
organization of daily life, the use of language, and social connections. (“Interventions in institutions” and
“consequences” are addressed later in the paper.) These dimensions do not capture all important parts of family
life, but they do incorporate core aspects of childrearing (Table 23.1). Moreover, our field observations revealed
that behaviors and activities related to these dimensions dominated the rhythms of family life. Conceptually, the
organization of daily life and the use of language are crucial dimensions. Both must be present for the family to
be described as engaging in one childrearing approach rather than the other. Social connections are significant
but less conceptually essential.
All three aspects of childrearing were intricately woven into the families’ daily routines, but rarely remarked
upon. As part of everyday practice, they were invisible to parents and children. Analytically, however, they are
useful means for comparing and contrasting ways in which social class differences shape the character of family
life. I now examine two families in terms of these three key dimensions. I “control” for race and gender and
contrast the lives of two black boys—one from an (upper) middle-class family and one from a family on public
assistance. I could have focused on almost any of the other 12 children, but this pair seemed optimal, given the
limited number of studies reporting on black middle-class families, as well as the aspect of my argument that
suggests that race is less important than class in shaping childrearing patterns.

Table 23.1 Summary of Differences in Childrearing Approaches

Developing Alexander Williams
Alexander Williams and his parents live in a predominantly black middle-class neighborhood. Their six-
bedroom house is worth about $150,000.11 Alexander is an only child. Both parents grew up in small towns in
the South, and both are from large families. His father, a tall, handsome man, is a very successful trial lawyer
who earns about $125,000 annually in a small firm specializing in medical malpractice cases. Two weeks each
month, he works very long hours (from about 5:30 a.m. until midnight) preparing for trials. The other two
weeks, his workday ends around 6:00 p.m. He rarely travels out of town. Alexander’s mother, Christina, is a
positive, bubbly woman with freckles and long, black, wavy hair.12 A high-level manager in a major
corporation, she has a corner office, a personal secretary, and responsibilities for other offices across the nation.
She tries to limit her travel, but at least once a month she takes an overnight trip.
Alexander is a charming, inquisitive boy with a winsome smile. Ms. Williams is pleased that Alexander
seems interested in so many things:

Alexander is a joy. He’s a gift to me. He’s very energetic, very curious, loving, caring person, that, um . . . is
outgoing and who, uh, really loves to be with people. And who loves to explore, and loves to read
and . . . just do a lot of fun things.

The private school Alexander attends13 has an on-site after-school program. There, he participates in several
activities and receives guitar lessons and photography instruction.

Organization of daily life. Alexander is busy with activities during the week and on weekends. His mother
describes their Saturday morning routine. The day starts early with a private piano lesson for Alexander
downtown, a 20-minute drive from the house:
 It’s an 8:15 class. But for me, it was a tradeoff. I am very adamant about Saturday morning TV. I don’t
know what it contributes. So . . . it was . . . um . . . either stay at home and fight on a Saturday morning
[laughs] or go do something constructive. . . . Now Saturday mornings are pretty booked up. You know, the
piano lesson, and then straight to choir for a couple of hours. So, he has a very full schedule.

Ms. Williams’s vehement opposition to television is based on her view of what Alexander needs to grow
and thrive. She objects to TV’s passivity and feels it is her obligation to help her son cultivate his talents.
Sometimes Alexander complains that “my mother signs me up for everything!” Generally, however, he likes
his activities. He says they make him feel “special,” and without them life would be “boring.” His sense of time
is thoroughly entwined with his activities: He feels disoriented when his schedule is not full. This unease is
clear in the following field-note excerpt. The family is driving home from a Back-to-School night. The next
morning, Ms. Williams will leave for a work-related day trip and will not return until late at night. Alexander is
grumpy because he has nothing planned for the next day. He wants to have a friend over, but his mother rebuffs
him. Whining, he wonders what he will do. His mother, speaking tersely, says:

You have piano and guitar. You’ll have some free time. [Pause] I think you’ll survive for one night.
[Alexander does not respond but seems mad. It is quiet for the rest of the trip home.]

Alexander’s parents believe his activities provide a wide range of benefits important for his development. In
discussing Alexander’s piano lessons, Mr. Williams notes that as a Suzuki student,14 Alexander is already able
to read music. Speculating about more diffuse benefits of Alexander’s involvement with piano, he says:

I don’t see how any kid’s adolescence and adulthood could not but be enhanced by an awareness of who
Beethoven was. And is that Bach or Mozart? I don’t know the difference between the two! I don’t know
Baroque from Classical—but he does. How can that not be a benefit in later life? I’m convinced that this
rich experience will make him a better person, a better citizen, a better husband, a better father—certainly a
better student.

Ms. Williams sees music as building her son’s “confidence” and his “poise.” In interviews and casual
conversation, she stresses “exposure.” She believes it is her responsibility to broaden Alexander’s worldview.
Childhood activities provide a learning ground for important life skills:

Sports provide great opportunities to learn how to be competitive. Learn how to accept defeat, you know.
Learn how to accept winning, you know, in a gracious way. Also it gives him the opportunity to learn
leadership skills and how to be a team player. . . . Sports really provides a lot of really great opportunities.

Alexander’s schedule is constantly shifting; some activities wind down and others start up. Because the
schedules of sports practices and games are issued no sooner than the start of the new season, advance planning
is rarely possible. Given the sheer number of Alexander’s activities, events inevitably overlap. Some activities,
though short-lived, are extremely time consuming. Alexander’s school play, for example, requires rehearsals
three nights the week before the opening. In addition, in choosing activities, the Williamses have an added
concern—the group’s racial balance. Ms. Williams prefers that Alexander not be the only black child at events.
Typically, one or two other black boys are involved, but the groups are predominantly white and the activities
take place in predominantly white residential neighborhoods. Alexander is, however, part of his church’s youth
choir and Sunday School, activities in which all participants are black.
Many activities involve competition. Alex must audition for his solo performance in the school play, for
example. Similarly, parents and children alike understand that participation on “A,” “B,” or “All-Star” sports
teams signals different skill levels. Like other middle-class children in the study, Alexander seems to enjoy
public performance. According to a field note, after his solo at a musical production in front of over 200 people,
he appeared “contained, pleased, aware of the attention he’s receiving.”
Alexander’s commitments do not consume all his free time. Still, his life is defined by a series of deadlines
and schedules interwoven with a series of activities that are organized and controlled by adults rather than
children. Neither he nor his parents see this as troublesome.

Language use. Like other middle-class families, the Williamses often engage in conversation that promotes
reasoning and negotiation. An excerpt from a field note (describing an exchange between Alexander and his
mother during a car ride home after summer camp) shows the kind of pointed questions middle-class parents
ask children. Ms. Williams is not just eliciting information. She is also giving Alexander the opportunity to
develop and practice verbal skills, including how to summarize, clarify, and amplify information:
As she drives, [Ms. Williams] asks Alex, “So, how was your day?”

Alex: Okay. I had hot dogs today, but they were burned! They were all black!
Mom: Oh, great. You shouldn’t have eaten any.
Alex: They weren’t all black, only half were. The rest were regular.
Mom: Oh, okay. What was that game you were playing this morning. . . ?
Alex: It was [called] “Whatcha doin?”
Mom: How do you play?

Alexander explains the game elaborately—fieldworker doesn’t quite follow. Mom asks Alex questions
throughout his explanation, saying, “Oh, I see,” when he answers. She asks him about another game she saw
them play; he again explains. . . . She continues to prompt and encourage him with small giggles in the back of
her throat as he elaborates.
Expressions of interest in children’s activities often lead to negotiations over small, home-based matters.
During the same car ride, Ms. Williams tries to adjust the dinner menu to suit Alexander:

Alexander: I don’t want hot dogs tonight.

Mom: Oh? Because you had them for lunch.
Alexander: [nods]
Mom: Well, I can fix something else and save the hot dogs for tomorrow night.
Alex: But I don’t want any pork chops either.
Mom: Well, Alexander, we need to eat something. Why didn’t you have hamburgers today?
Alex: They don’t have them any more at the snack bar.

Mom asks Alexander if he’s ok, if he wants a snack. Alexander says he’s ok. Mom asks if he’s sure he
doesn’t want a bag of chips?
Not all middle-class parents are as attentive to their children’s needs as this mother, and none are always
interested in negotiating. But a general pattern of reasoning and accommodating is common.

Social connections. Mr. and Ms. Williams consider themselves very close to their extended families. Because
the Williams’s aging parents live in the South, visiting requires a plane trip. Ms. Williams takes Alexander with
her to see his grandparents twice a year. She speaks on the phone with her parents at least once a week and also
calls her siblings several times a week. Mr. Williams talks with his mother regularly by phone (he has less
contact with his stepfather). With pride, he also mentions his niece, whose Ivy League education he is helping to
finance.
Interactions with cousins are not normally a part of Alexander’s leisure time. (As I explain below, other
middle-class children did not see cousins routinely either, even when they lived nearby.) Nor does he often play
with neighborhood children. The huge homes on the Williams’s street are occupied mainly by couples without
children. Most of Alexander’s playmates come from his classroom or his organized activities. Because most of
his school events, church life, and assorted activities are organized by the age (and sometimes gender) of the
participants, Alexander interacts almost exclusively with children his own age, usually boys. Adult-organized
activities thus define the context of his social life.
Mr. and Ms. Williams are aware that they allocate a sizable portion of time to Alexander’s activities. What
they stress, however, is the time they hold back. They mention activities the family has chosen not to take on
(such as traveling soccer).

Summary. Overall, Alexander’s parents engaged in concerted cultivation. They fostered their son’s growth
through involvement in music, church, athletics, and academics. They talked with him at length, seeking his
opinions and encouraging his ideas. Their approach involved considerable direct expenses (e.g., the cost of
lessons and equipment) and large indirect expenses (e.g., the cost of taking time off from work, driving to
practices, and forgoing adult leisure activities). Although Mr. and Ms. Williams acknowledged the importance
of extended family, Alexander spent relatively little time with relatives. His social interactions occurred almost
exclusively with children his own age and with adults. Alexander’s many activities significantly shaped the
organization of daily life in the family. Both parents’ leisure time was tailored to their son’s commitments. Mr.
and Ms. Williams felt that the strategies they cultivated with Alexander would result in his having the best
possible chance at a happy and productive life. They couldn’t imagine themselves not investing large amounts
of time and energy in their son’s life. But, as I explain in the next section, which focuses on a black boy from a
poor family, other parents held a different view.

Supporting the Natural Growth of Harold McAllister

Harold McAllister, a large, stocky boy with a big smile, is from a poor black family. He lives with his
mother and his 8-year-old sister, Alexis, in a large apartment. Two cousins often stay overnight. Harold’s 16-
year-old sister and 18-year-old brother usually live with their grandmother, but sometimes they stay at the
McAllister’s home. Ms. McAllister, a high school graduate, relies on public assistance (AFDC). Hank, Harold
and Alexis’s father, is a mechanic. He and Ms. McAllister have never married. He visits regularly, sometimes
weekly, stopping by after work to watch television or nap. Harold (but not Alexis) sometimes travels across
town by bus to spend the weekend with Hank.
The McAllisters’ apartment is in a public housing project near a busy street. The complex consists of rows
of two- and three-story brick units. The buildings, blocky and brown, have small yards enclosed by concrete and
wood fences. Large floodlights are mounted on the corners of the buildings, and wide concrete sidewalks cut
through the spaces between units. The ground is bare in many places; paper wrappers and glass litter the area.
Inside the apartment, life is humorous and lively, with family members and kin sharing in the daily routines.
Ms. McAllister discussed, disdainfully, mothers who are on drugs or who abuse alcohol and do not “look after”
their children. Indeed, the previous year Ms. McAllister called Child Protective Services to report her twin
sister, a cocaine addict, because she was neglecting her children. Ms. McAllister is actively involved in her
twin’s daughters’ lives. Her two nephews also frequently stay with her. Overall, she sees herself as a capable
mother who takes care of her children and her extended family.

Organization of daily life. Much of Harold’s life and the lives of his family members revolve around home.
Project residents often sit outside in lawn chairs or on front stoops, drinking beer, talking, and watching children
play. During summer, windows are frequently left open, allowing breezes to waft through the units and
providing vantage points from which residents can survey the neighborhood. A large deciduous tree in front of
the McAllister’s apartment unit provides welcome shade in the summer’s heat.
Harold loves sports. He is particularly fond of basketball, but he also enjoys football, and he follows
televised professional sports closely. Most afternoons, he is either inside watching television or outside playing
ball. He tosses a football with cousins and boys from the neighboring units and organizes pick-up basketball
games. Sometimes he and his friends use a rusty, bare hoop hanging from a telephone pole in the housing
project; other times, they string up an old, blue plastic crate as a makeshift hoop. One obstacle to playing sports,
however, is a shortage of equipment. Balls are costly to replace, especially given the rate at which they
disappear—theft of children’s play equipment, including balls and bicycles, is an ongoing problem. During a
field observation, Harold asks his mother if she knows where the ball is. She replies with some vehemence,
“They stole the blue and yellow ball, and they stole the green ball, and they stole the other ball.”
Hunting for balls is a routine part of Harold’s leisure time. One June day, with the temperature and humidity
in the high 80s, Harold and his cousin Tyrice (and a fieldworker) wander around the housing project for about
an hour, trying to find a basketball:

We head to the other side of the complex. On the way . . . we passed four guys sitting on the step. Their ages
were 9 to 13 years. They had a radio blaring. Two were working intently on fixing a flat bike tire. The other
two were dribbling a basketball.

Harold: Yo! What’s up, ya’ll.

Group: “What’s up, Har.” “What’s up?” “Yo.”

They continued to work on the tire and dribble the ball. As we walked down the hill, Harold asked, “Yo,
could I use your ball?”
The guy responded, looking up from the tire, “Naw, man. Y’all might lose it.”

Harold, Tyrice, and the fieldworker walk to another part of the complex, heading for a makeshift basketball
court where they hope to find a game in progress:

No such luck. Harold enters an apartment directly in front of the makeshift court. The door was
open. . . . Harold came back. “No ball. I guess I gotta go back.”

The pace of life for Harold and his friends ebbs and flows with the children’s interests and family
obligations. The day of the basketball search, for example, after spending time listening to music and looking at
baseball cards, the children join a water fight Tyrice instigates. It is a lively game, filled with laughter and with
efforts to get the adults next door wet (against their wishes). When the game winds down, the kids ask their
mother for money, receive it, and then walk to a store to buy chips and soda. They chat with another young boy
and then amble back to the apartment, eating as they walk. Another afternoon, almost two weeks later, the
children—Harold, two of his cousins, and two children from the neighborhood—and the fieldworker play
basketball on a makeshift court in the street (using the fieldworker’s ball). As Harold bounces the ball,
neighborhood children of all ages wander through the space.
Thus, Harold’s life is more free-flowing and more child-directed than is Alexander Williams’s. The pace of
any given day is not so much planned as emergent, reflecting child-based interests and activities. Parents
intervene in specific areas, such as personal grooming, meals, and occasional chores, but they do not
continuously direct and monitor their children’s leisure activities. Moreover, the leisure activities Harold and
other working-class and poor children pursue require them to develop a repertoire of skills for dealing with
much older and much younger children as well as with neighbors and relatives.

Language use. Life in the working-class and poor families in the study flows smoothly without extended verbal
discussions. The amount of talking varies, but overall, it is considerably less than occurs in the middle-class
homes.15 Ms. McAllister jokes with the children and discusses what is on television. But she does not appear to
cultivate conversation by asking the children questions or by drawing them out. Often she is brief and direct in
her remarks. For instance, she coordinates the use of the apartment’s only bathroom by using one-word
directives. She sends the children (there are almost always at least four children home at once) to wash up by
pointing to a child, saying one word, “bathroom,” and handing him or her a washcloth. Wordlessly, the
designated child gets up and goes to the bathroom to take a shower.
Similarly, although Ms. McAllister will listen to the children’s complaints about school, she does not draw
them out on these issues or seek to determine details, as Ms. Williams would. For instance, at the start of the
new school year, when I ask Harold about his teacher, he tells me she is “mean” and that “she lies.” Ms.
McAllister, washing dishes, listens to her son, but she does not encourage Harold to support his opinion about
his new teacher with more examples, nor does she mention any concerns of her own. Instead, she asks about last
year’s teacher, “What was the name of that man teacher?” Harold says, “Mr. Lindsey?” She says, “No, the other
one.” He says, “Mr. Terrene.” Ms. McAllister smiles and says, “Yeah. I liked him.” Unlike Alexander’s mother,
she seems content with a brief exchange of information.

Social connections. Children, especially boys, frequently play outside. The number of potential playmates in
Harold’s world is vastly higher than the number in Alexander’s neighborhood. When a field-worker stops to
count heads, she finds 40 children of elementary school age residing in the nearby rows of apartments. With so
many children nearby, Harold could choose to play only with others his own age. In fact, though, he often hangs
out with older and younger children and with his cousins (who are close to his age).
The McAllister family, like other poor and working-class families, is involved in a web of extended kin. As
noted earlier, Harold’s older siblings and his two male cousins often spend the night at the McAllister home.
Celebrations such as birthdays involve relatives almost exclusively. Party guests are not, as in middle-class
families, friends from school or from extra-curricular activities. Birthdays are celebrated enthusiastically, with
cake and special food to mark the occasion; presents, however, are not offered. Similarly, Christmas at Harold’s
house featured a tree and special food but no presents. At these and other family events, the older children
voluntarily look after the younger ones: Harold plays with his 16-month-old niece, and his cousins carry around
the younger babies.
The importance of family ties—and the contingent nature of life in the McAllisters’ world—is clear in the
response Alexis offers when asked what she would do if she were given a million dollars:

Oh, boy! I’d buy my brother, my sister, my uncle, my aunt, my nieces and my nephews, and my grandpop,
and my grandmom, and my mom, and my dad, and my friends, not my friends, but mostly my best friend—
I’d buy them all clothes . . . and sneakers. And I’d buy some food, and I’d buy my mom some food, and I’d
get my brothers and my sisters gifts for their birthdays.

Summary. In a setting where everyone, including the children, was acutely aware of the lack of money, the
McAllister family made do. Ms. McAllister rightfully saw herself as a very capable mother. She was a strong,
positive influence in the lives of the children she looked after. Still, the contrast with Ms. Williams is striking.
Ms. McAllister did not seem to think that Harold’s opinions needed to be cultivated and developed. She, like
most parents in the working-class and poor families, drew strong and clear boundaries between adults and
children. Adults gave directions to children. Children were given freedom to play informally unless they were
needed for chores. Extended family networks were deemed important and trustworthy.

The Intersection of Race and Class in Family Life

I expected race to powerfully shape children’s daily schedules, but this was not evident (also see Conley
1999; Pattillo-McCoy 1999). This is not to say that race is unimportant. Black parents were particularly
concerned with monitoring their children’s lives outside the home for signs of racial problems.16 Black middle-
class fathers, especially, were likely to stress the importance of their sons understanding “what it means to be a
black man in this society” (J. Hochschild 1995). Mr. Williams, in summarizing how he and his wife orient
Alexander, said:

[We try to] teach him that race unfortunately is the most important aspect of our national life. I mean people
look at other people and they see a color first. But that isn’t going to define who he is. He will do his best.
He will succeed, despite racism. And I think he lives his life that way.

Alexander’s parents were acutely aware of the potential significance of race in his life. Both were adamant,
however, that race should not be used as “an excuse” for not striving to succeed. Mr. Williams put it this way:
 I discuss how race impacts on my life as an attorney, and I discuss how race will impact on his life. The one
teaching that he takes away from this is that he is never to use discrimination as an excuse for not doing his
best.

Thus far, few incidents of overt racism had occurred in Alexander’s life, as his mother noted:

Those situations have been far and few between. . . . I mean, I can count them on my fingers.

Still, Ms. Williams recounted with obvious pain an incident at a birthday party Alexander had attended as a
preschooler. The grandparents of the birthday child repeatedly asked, “Who is that boy?” and exclaimed, “He’s
so dark!” Such experiences fueled the Williams’s resolve always to be “cautious”:

We’ve never been, uh, parents who drop off their kid anywhere. We’ve always gone with him. And even
now, I go in and—to school in the morning—and check [in]. . . . The school environment, we’ve watched
very closely.

Alexander’s parents were not equally optimistic about the chances for racial equality in this country. Ms.
Williams felt strongly that, especially while Alexander was young, his father should not voice his pessimism.
Mr. Williams complained that this meant he had to “watch” what he said to Alexander about race relations.
Still, both parents agreed about the need to be vigilant regarding potential racial problems in Alexander’s life.
Other black parents reported experiencing racial prejudice and expressed a similar commitment to vigilance.
Issues surrounding the prospect of growing up black and male in this society were threaded through
Alexander’s life in ways that had no equivalent among his middle-class, white male peers. Still, in fourth grade
there were no signs of racial experiences having “taken hold” the way that they might as Alexander ages. In
terms of the number and kind of activities he participated in, his life was very similar to that of Garrett
Tallinger, his white counterpart. That both sets of parents were fully committed to a strategy of concentrated
cultivation was apparent in the number of adult-organized activities the boys were enrolled in, the hectic pace of
family life, and the stress on reasoning in parent-child negotiations. Likewise, the research assistants and I saw
no striking differences in the ways in which white parents and black parents in the working-class and poor
homes socialized their children.
Others (Fordham and Ogbu 1986) have found that in middle school and high school, adolescent peer groups
often draw sharp racial boundaries, a pattern not evident among this study’s third- and fourth-grade participants
(but sometimes present among their older siblings). Following Tatum (1997:52), I attribute this to the children’s
relatively young ages (also see “Race in America,” The New York Times, June 25, 2000, p. 1). In sum, in the
broader society, key aspects of daily life were shaped by racial segregation and discrimination. But in terms of
enrollment in organized activities, language use, and social connections, the largest differences between the
families we observed were across social class, not racial groups.

IMPACT OF CHILDREARING STRATEGIES ON INTERACTIONS WITH INSTITUTIONS

Social scientists sometimes emphasize the importance of reshaping parenting practices to improve children’s
chances of success. Explicitly and implicitly, the literature exhorts parents to comply with the views of
professionals (Bronfenbrenner 1966; Epstein 2001; Heimer and Staffen 1998). Such calls for compliance do not,
however, reconcile professionals’ judgments regarding the intrinsic value of current childrearing standards with
the evidence of the historical record, which shows regular shifts in such standards over time (Aries 1962;
Wrigley 1989; Zelizer 1985). Nor are the stratified, and limited, possibilities for success in the broader society
examined.
I now follow the families out of their homes and into encounters with representatives of dominant
institutions—institutions that are directed by middle-class professionals. Again, I focus on Alexander Williams
and Harold McAllister. Across all social classes, parents and children interacted with teachers and school
officials, healthcare professionals, and assorted government officials. Although they often addressed similar
problems (e.g., learning disabilities, asthma, traffic violations), they typically did not achieve similar
resolutions. The pattern of concerted cultivation fostered an emerging sense of entitlement in the life of
Alexander Williams and other middle-class children. By contrast, the commitment to nurturing children’s
natural growth fostered an emerging sense of constraint in the life of Harold McAllister and other working-class
or poor children. (These consequences of childrearing practices are summarized in Table 23.1.)
Both parents and children drew on the resources associated with these two childrearing approaches during
their interactions with officials. Middle-class parents and children often customized these interactions; working-
class and poor parents were more likely to have a “generic” relationship. When faced with problems, middle-
class parents also appeared better equipped to exert influence over other adults compared with working-class
and poor parents. Nor did middle-class parents or children display the intimidation or confusion we witnessed
among many working-class and poor families when they faced a problem in their children’s school experience.

Emerging Signs of Entitlement

Alexander Williams’s mother, like many middle-class mothers, explicitly teaches her son to be an informed,
assertive client in interactions with professionals. For example, as she drives Alexander to a routine doctor’s
appointment, she coaches him in the art of communicating effectively in healthcare settings:

Alexander asks if he needs to get any shots today at the doctor’s. Ms. Williams says he’ll need to ask the
doctor. . . . As we enter Park Lane, Mom says quietly to Alex: “Alexander, you should be thinking of
questions you might want to ask the doctor. You can ask him anything you want. Don’t be shy. You can ask
anything.”

Alex: [thinks for a minute] I have some bumps under my arms from my deodorant.
Mom: Really? You mean from your new deodorant?
Alex: Yes.
Mom: Well, you should ask the doctor.

Alexander learns that he has the right to speak up (e.g., “don’t be shy”) and that he should prepare for an
encounter with a person in a position of authority by gathering his thoughts in advance.
These class resources are subsequently activated in the encounter with the doctor (a jovial white man in his
late thirties or early forties). The examination begins this way:

Doctor: Okay, as usual, I’d like to go through the routine questions with you. And if you have
any questions for me, just fire away. [Examines Alex’s chart] Height-wise, as usual,
Alexander’s in the ninety-fifth percentile.

Although the physician is talking to Ms. Williams, Alexander interrupts him:

Alex: I’m in the what?

Doctor: It means that you’re taller than more than ninety-five out of a hundred young men when
they’re, uh, ten years old.
Alex: I’m not ten.
Doctor: Well, they graphed you at ten . . . they usually take the closest year to get that graph.
Alex: All right.
 Alexander’s “All right” reveals that he feels entitled to weigh in with his own judgment.
Later, Ms. Williams and the doctor discuss Alexander’s diet. Ms. Williams freely admits that they do not
always follow nutritional guidelines. Her honesty is a form of capital because it gives the doctor accurate
information on which to base a diagnosis. Feeling no need for deception positions mother and son to receive
better care:

Doctor: Let’s start with appetite. Do you get three meals a day?
Alex: Yeah.
Doctor: And here’s the important question: Do you get your fruits and vegetables too?
Alex: Yeah.
Mom, high-pitched: Ooooo. . . .
Doctor: I see I have a second opinion. [laughter]
Alex, You give me bananas and all in my voice lunch every day. And I had cabbage for dinner
last night.
Doctor: Do you get at least one or two fruits, one or two vegetables every day?
Alex: Yeah.
Doctor: Marginally?
Mom: Ninety-eight percent of the time he eats pretty well.
Doctor: OK, I can live with that. . . .

Class resources are again activated when Alexander’s mother reveals she “gave up” on a medication. The
doctor pleasantly but clearly instructs her to continue the medication. Again, though, he receives accurate
information rather than facing silent resistance or defiance, as occurred in encounters between healthcare
professionals and other (primarily working-class and poor) families.

Emerging Signs of Constraint

The interactions the research assistants and I observed between professionals and working-class and poor
parents frequently seemed cautious and constrained. This unease is evident, for example, during a physical
Harold McAllister has before going to Bible camp. Harold’s mother, normally boisterous and talkative at home,
is quiet. Unlike Ms. Williams, she seems wary of supplying the doctor with accurate information:

Doctor: Does he eat something each day—either fish, meat, or egg?

Mom: [low and muffled] Yes.
Doctor: [attempts to make eye contact, but Mom stares intently at paper] A yellow vegetable?
Mom: [still no eye contact, looking at floor] Yeah.
Doctor: A green vegetable?
Mom [looks at doctor] Not all the time. [Fieldworker has not seen any of the children eat a
green or yellow vegetable since visits began.]
Doctor: No. Fruit or juice?
Mom: [low voice, little or no eye contact, looks at doctor’s scribbles on the paper he is filling
out] Ummh humn.
 Doctor: Does he drink milk every day?
Mom: [abruptly, in considerably louder voice] Yeah.
Doctor: Cereal, bread, rice, potato, anything like that?
Mom: [shakes her head] Yes, definitely. [Looks at doctor.]

Ms. McAllister’s knowledge of developmental events in Harold’s life is uneven. She is not sure when he
learned to walk and cannot recall the name of his previous doctor. And when the doctor asks, “When was the
last time he had a tetanus shot?” she counters, gruffly, “What’s a tetanus shot?”
Unlike Ms. Williams, who urged Alexander to share information with the doctor, Ms. McAllister squelches
eight-year-old Alexis’s overtures:

Doctor: Any birth mark?

Mom: [looks at doctor, shakes her head no.]
Alexis: [raising left arm, excitedly] I have a birth mark under my arm!
Mom: [raises voice, looks stern] Will you cool out a minute? [To doctor:] No.

Despite Ms. McAllister’s tension and the marked change in her everyday demeanor, Harold’s whole exam is
not uncomfortable. There are moments of laughter. Moreover, Harold’s mother is not consistently shy or
passive. Before the visit begins, the doctor comes into the waiting room and calls Harold’s and Alexis’s names.
In response, the McAllisters (and the fieldworker) stand. Ms. McAllister then beckons for her nephew Tyrice
(who is about Harold’s age) to come along before she clears this with the doctor. Later, she sends Tyrice down
the hall to observe Harold being weighed; she relies on her nephew’s report rather than asking for this
information from the healthcare professionals.
Still, neither Harold nor his mother seemed as comfortable as Alexander had been. Alexander was used to
extensive conversation at home; with the doctor, he was at ease initiating questions. Harold, who was used to
responding to directives at home, primarily answered questions from the doctor, rather than posing his own.
Alexander, encouraged by his mother, was assertive and confident with the doctor. Harold was reserved.
Absorbing his mother’s apparent need to conceal the truth about the range of foods he ate, he appeared cautious,
displaying an emerging sense of constraint.
We observed a similar pattern in school interactions. Overall, the working-class and poor adults had much
more distance or separation from the school than their middle-class counterparts. Ms. McAllister, for example,
could be quite assertive in some settings (e.g., at the start of family observations, she visited the local drug
dealer, warning him not to “mess with” the black male fieldworker).17 But throughout the fourth-grade parent-
teacher conference, she kept her winter jacket zipped up, sat hunched over in her chair, and spoke in barely
audible tones. She was stunned when the teacher said that Harold did not do homework. Sounding
dumbfounded, she said, “He does it at home.” The teacher denied it and continued talking. Ms. McAllister made
no further comments and did not probe for more information, except about a letter the teacher said he had
mailed home and that she had not received. The conference ended, having yielded Ms. McAllister few insights
into Harold’s educational experience.18
Other working-class and poor parents also appeared baffled, intimidated, and subdued in parent-teacher
conferences. Ms. Driver, who was extremely worried about her fourth-grader’s inability to read, kept these
concerns to herself. She explained to us, “I don’t want to jump into anything and find it is the wrong thing.”
When working-class and poor parents did try to intervene in their children’s educational experiences, they often
felt ineffectual. Billy Yanelli’s mother appeared relaxed and chatty in many of her interactions with other adults.
With “the school,” however, she was very apprehensive. She distrusted school personnel. She felt bullied and
powerless. Hoping to resolve a problem involving her son, she tried to prepare her ideas in advance. Still, as she
recounted during an interview, she failed to make school officials see Billy as vulnerable:

Ms. Yanelli: I found a note in his school bag one morning and it said, “I’m going to kill
you . . . you’re a dead mother-f-er. . . .” So, I started shaking. I was all ready to go over
there. [I was] prepared for the counselor. . . . They said the reason they [the other kids]
do what they do is because Billy makes them do it. So they had an answer for
everything.
Interviewer: How did you feel about that answer?
Ms. Yanelli: I hate the school. I hate it.

Working-class and poor children seemed aware of their parents’ frustration and witnessed their
powerlessness. Billy Yanelli, for example, asserted in an interview that his mother “hate[d]” school officials.
At times, these parents encouraged their children to resist school officials’ authority. The Yanellis told Billy
to “beat up” a boy who was bothering him. Wendy Driver’s mother advised her to punch a male classmate who
pestered her and pulled her ponytail. Ms. Driver’s boyfriend added, “Hit him when the teacher isn’t looking.”
In classroom observations, working-class and poor children could be quite lively and energetic, but we did
not observe them try to customize their environments. They tended to react to adults’ offers or, at times, to plead
with educators to repeat previous experiences, such as reading a particular story, watching a movie, or going to
the computer room. Compared to middle-class classroom interactions, the boundaries between adults and
children seemed firmer and clearer. Although the children often resisted and tested school rules, they did not
seem to be seeking to get educators to accommodate their own individual preferences.
Overall, then, the behavior of working-class and poor parents cannot be explained as a manifestation of their
temperaments or of overall passivity; parents were quite energetic in intervening in their children’s lives in other
spheres. Rather, working-class and poor parents generally appeared to depend on the school (Lareau 2000a),
even as they were dubious of the trustworthiness of the professionals. This suspicion of professionals in
dominant institutions is, at least in some instances, a reasonable response.19 The unequal level of trust, as well
as differences in the amount and quality of information divulged, can yield unequal profits during an historical
moment when professionals applaud assertiveness and reject passivity as an inappropriate parenting strategy
(Epstein 2001). Middle-class children and parents often (but not always) accrued advantages or profits from
their efforts. Alexander Williams succeeded in having the doctor take his medical concerns seriously. Ms.
Marshall’s children ended up in the gifted program, even though they did not technically qualify. Middle-class
children expect institutions to be responsive to them and to accommodate their individual needs. By contrast,
when Wendy Driver is told to hit the boy who is pestering her (when the teacher isn’t looking) or Billy Yanelli
is told to physically defend himself, despite school rules, they are not learning how to make bureaucratic
institutions work to their advantage. Instead, they are being given lessons in frustration and powerlessness.

DISCUSSION

The evidence shows that class position influences critical aspects of family life: time use, language use, and kin
ties. Not all aspects of family life are affected by social class, and there is variability within class. Still, parents
do transmit advantages to their children in patterns that are sufficiently consistent and identifiable to be
described as a “cultural logic” of childrearing. The white and black middle-class parents engaged in practices I
have termed “concerted cultivation”—they made a deliberate and sustained effort to stimulate children’s
development and to cultivate their cognitive and social skills. The working-class and poor parents viewed
children’s development as spontaneously unfolding, as long as they were provided with comfort, food, shelter,
and other basic support. This commitment, too, required ongoing effort; sustaining children’s natural growth
despite formidable life challenges is properly viewed as an accomplishment.
In daily life, the patterns associated with each of these approaches were interwoven and mutually
reinforcing. Nine-year-old middle-class children already had developed a clear sense of their own talents and
skills, and they differentiated themselves from siblings and friends. They were also learning to think of
themselves as special and worthy of having adults devote time and energy to promoting them and their leisure
activities. In the process, the boundaries between adults and children sometimes blurred; adults’ leisure
preferences became subordinate to their children’s. The strong emphasis on reasoning in middle-class families
had similar, diffuse effects. Children used their formidable reasoning skills to persuade adults to acquiesce to
their wishes. The idea that children’s desires should be taken seriously was routinely realized in the middle-
class families we interviewed and observed. In many subtle ways, children were taught that they were entitled.
Finally, the commitment to cultivating children resulted in family schedules so crowded with activities there
was little time left for visiting relatives. Quantitative studies of time use have shed light on important issues, but
they do not capture the interactive nature of routine, everyday activities and the varying ways they affect the
texture of family life.20
In working-class and poor families, parents established limits; within those limits, children were free to
fashion their own pastimes. Children’s wishes did not guide adults’ actions as frequently or as decisively as they
did in middle-class homes. Children were viewed as subordinate to adults. Parents tended to issue directives
rather than to negotiate. Frequent interactions with relatives rather than acquaintances or strangers created a
thicker divide between families and the outside world. Implicitly and explicitly, parents taught their children to
keep their distance from people in positions of authority, to be distrustful of institutions, and, at times, to resist
officials’ authority. Children seemed to absorb the adults’ feelings of powerlessness in their institutional
relationships. As with the middle class, there were important variations among working-class and poor families,
and some critical aspects of family life, such as the use of humor, were immune to social class.
The role of race in children’s daily lives was less powerful than I had expected. The middle-class black
children’s parents were alert to the potential effects of institutional discrimination on their children. Middle-
class black parents also took steps to help their children develop a positive racial identity. Still, in terms of how
children spend their time, the way parents use language and discipline in the home, the nature of the families’
social connections, and the strategies used for intervening in institutions, white and black middle-class parents
engaged in very similar, often identical, practices with their children. A similar pattern was observed in white
and black working-class homes as well as in white and black poor families. Thus my data indicate that on the
childrearing dynamics studied here, compared with social class, race was less important in children’s daily
lives.21 As they enter the racially segregated words of dating, marriage, and housing markets, and as they
encounter more racism in their interpersonal contact with whites (Waters 1999), the relative importance of race
in the children’s daily lives is likely to increase.
Differences in family dynamics and the logic of childrearing across social classes have long-term
consequences. As family members moved out of the home and interacted with representatives of formal
institutions, middle-class parents and children were able to negotiate more valuable outcomes than their
working-class and poor counterparts. In interactions with agents of dominant institutions, working-class and
poor children were learning lessons in constraint while middle-class children were developing a sense of
entitlement.
It is a mistake to see either concerted cultivation or the accomplishment of natural growth as an intrinsically
desirable approach. As has been amply documented, conceptions of childhood have changed dramatically over
time (Wrigley 1989). Drawbacks to middle-class childrearing, including the exhaustion associated with
intensive mothering and frenetic family schedules and a sapping of children’s naiveté that leaves them feeling
too sophisticated for simple games and toys (Hays 1996), remain insufficiently highlighted.
Another drawback is that middle-class children are less likely to learn how to fill “empty time” with their
own creative play, leading to a dependence on their parents to solve experiences of boredom. Sociologists need
to more clearly differentiate between standards that are intrinsically desirable and standards that facilitate
success in dominant institutions. A more critical, and historically sensitive, vision is needed (Donzelot 1979).
Here Bourdieu’s work (1976, 1984, 1986, 1989) is valuable.
Finally, there are methodological issues to consider. Quantitative research has delineated population-wide
patterns; ethnographies offer rich descriptive detail but typically focus on a single, small group. Neither
approach can provide holistic, but empirically grounded, assessments of daily life. Multi-sited, multi-person
research using ethnographic methods also poses formidable methodological challenges (Lareau 2002). Still,
families have proven themselves open to being studied in an intimate fashion. Creating penetrating portraits of
daily life that will enrich our theoretical models is an important challenge for the future.

NOTES

1. In a study of mothers’ beliefs about childrearing, Hays (1996) found variations in how working-class and
middle-class mothers sorted information, but she concluded that a pattern of “intensive mothering” was
present across social classes. My study of behavior found class differences but, as I discuss below, in some
instances working-class and poor parents expressed a desire to enroll their children in organized activities.
2. Some significant differences between the study’s working-class and poor families (e.g., only the poor
children experienced food shortages) are not highlighted here because, on the dimensions discussed in this
paper, the biggest differences were between middle-class and non-middle-class families. See Lareau (2011)
for a more elaborate discussion as well as Lamont (2000) for distinctions working-class families draw
between themselves and the poor; see McLanahan and Sandefur (1994) regarding family structure and
children’s lives.
3. Case studies of nonrandom samples, such as this one, have the limitation that findings cannot be
generalized beyond the cases reported. These examples serve to illustrate conceptual points (Burawoy et al.
1991) rather than to describe representative patterns of behavior. A further limitation of this study is that
the data were collected and analyzed over an extended period of time. (See the “Methodology” section.)
4. All names of people and places are pseudonyms. The Lawrenceville school was in a white suburban
neighborhood in a university community a few hours from a metropolitan area. The student population was
about half white and half black; the (disproportionately poor) black children were bused from other
neighborhoods.
5. Over three-quarters of the students at Lower Richmond qualified for free lunch; by contrast, Swan did not
have a free lunch program.
6. At both sites, we attended school events and observed many parent-teacher conferences. Also, I
interviewed the classroom teachers and adults involved in the children’s organized activities. These
interview data are not presented here.
7. Both schools had computer labs, art programs, and music programs, but Swan had many more resources
and much higher average achievement scores. Graffiti and physical confrontations between students were
common only at Lower Richmond. At these two sites and in Lawrenceville, white faculty predominated.
8. I located the black middle-class parents through social networks; the white poor families were located
through flyers left at welfare offices and social service programs, and posted on telephone poles. Ten white
poor families (only) were paid $25 per interview.
9. Of 19 families asked to participate in the intensive study, 7 declined (a response of 63 percent). I tried to
balance the observational phase sample by gender, race, and class, and to “mix and match” the children on
other characteristics, such as their behavior with peers, their relationships with extended family, and their
parents’ level of involvement in their education. The aim was to lessen the chance that observed
differences in behavior would reflect unknown variables (e.g., church attendance or parents’ participation
at school). Last, I deliberately included two families (Irwins, Greeleys) who had some “middle-class” traits
but who lived in a working-class and poor area, respectively. Including these unusual families seemed
conceptually important for disentangling the influences of social class and environment (neighborhood).
10. I analyzed the data for the study as a whole in two ways. I coded themes from the interviews and used
Folio Views software to help establish patterns. I also relied on reading the field notes, thinking about
similarities and differences across families, searching for disconfirming evidence, and re-reading the field
 notes.
11. Mr. and Ms. Williams disagreed about the value of their home; the figure here averages what each
reported in 1995. Housing prices in their region were lower—and continue to be lower today—than in
many other parts of the country. Their property is now worth an estimated $175,000 to $200,000.
12. Alexander’s mother goes by Christina Nile at work, but Mrs. Williams at church. Some other mothers’ last
names also differ from their children’s. Here I assign all mothers the same last names as their children.
13. I contacted the Williams family through social networks after I was unable to recruit the black middle-
class families who had participated in the classroom observation and interview phase. As a result, I do not
have data from classroom observations or parent-teacher conferences for Alexander.
14. The Suzuki method is labor intensive. Students are required to listen to music about one hour per day.
Also, both child and parent(s) are expected to practice daily and to attend every lesson together.
15. Hart and Risley (1995) reported a similar difference in speech patterns. In their sample, by about age three,
children of professionals had larger vocabularies and spoke more utterances per hour than the parents of
similarly aged children on welfare.
16. This section focuses primarily on the concerns of black parents. Whites, of course, also benefited from
race relations, notably in the scattering of poor white families in working-class neighborhoods rather than
being concentrated in dense settings with other poor families (Massey and Denton 1993).
17. Not all professionals accommodated children’s participation. Regardless of these adults’ overt attitudes,
though, we routinely observed that middle-class mothers monitor and intervene in their children’s
interactions with professionals.
18. Ms. McAllister told me about this visit; we did not observe it. It is striking that she perceived only the
black male fieldworker as being at risk.
19. Middle-class parents sometimes appeared slightly anxious during parent-teacher conferences, but overall,
they spoke more and asked educators more questions than did working-class and poor parents.
20. The higher levels of institutional reports of child neglect, child abuse, and other family difficulties among
poor families may reflect this group’s greater vulnerability to institutional intervention (e.g., see L. Gordon
1989).
21. The time-use differences we observed were part of the taken-for-granted aspects of daily life; they were
generally unnoticed by family members. For example, the working-class Yanellis considered themselves
“really busy” if they had one baseball game on Saturday and an extended family gathering on Sunday. The
Tallingers and other middle-class families would have considered this a slow weekend.
22. These findings are compatible with others showing children as aware of race at relatively early ages (Van
Ausdale and Feagin 1996). At the two sites, girls often played in racially segregated groups during recess;
boys tended to play in racially integrated groups.

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SOURCE: Annette Lareau, “Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White
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24
EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE
Upwardly Mobile White and Mexican American High School
Girls
JULIE BETTIE

W hile the correlation is strong between parents’ socioeconomic status and a student’s membership in
a middle- or working-class peer group, track in high school, and academic achievement, it is
imperfect. There always are at least a handful of working-class students who are college
preparatory and upwardly mobile and a handful of middle-class students who are on the vocational track and
downwardly mobile. Yet most school ethnographies assume working-class and middle-class categories are two
clearly distinct peer groupings (Brantlinger 1993; Eckert 1989; Foley 1990; MacLeod 1995; Weis 1990; Willis
1977). Students who are exceptions to the rule are often ignored.
This article represents a portion of my larger ethnographic study of working- and middle-class white and
Mexican American high school girls located in California’s Central Valley (Bettie forthcoming), which
demonstrates the way in which class identity is constructed and experienced in relationship to color,
race/ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Here I focus on those white and Mexican American girls from my study
who were from working-class origins but who were upwardly mobile, middle-class performers in high school,
en route to receiving state or university educations.
I ask what we might learn from their exceptionalism. The first obvious question is, Why are they
exceptional, or what makes these students’ mobility possible? I looked for reasons for each girl’s exceptionality
and for their ability to perform class identities other than their own. It seemed that they did so for multiple and
varied reasons, but some patterns can be identified. The other question of interest is, How do they do it? How do
they negotiate the disparity between the working-class identity acquired from home and the performance of a
middle-class identity at school? What is the subjective experience of class passing and of “choosing” upward
mobility? While the first question on causality is difficult to answer and my analysis should be considered
exploratory and limited given my small sample, the second question is more readily answered using my
ethnographic methodology. My goal is to show how race/ethnicity, class, and gender intersect in the lives of the
young women as these social forces relate to educational mobility.

Gender-Centered Research
Early feminist analyses primarily focused on the differences between women and men or girls and boys,
failing to account for gender differences across race/ethnicity and class and therefore failing to analyze women
as racial/ethnic and class subjects (i.e., Gilligan 1982). While many studies are now cognizant of these
dimensions, others still dichotomize white middle-class girls and working-class girls of color, paying little
attention to cross-racial analyses of class. Sometimes, studies address race or ethnicity and class, but only
gender is theorized (Brown and Gilligan 1992; Eder, Evans, and Parker 1995; Orenstein 1994; Pipher 1994;
McLeon Taylor, Gilligan, and Sullivan 1995; exceptions include Higginbotham and Weber 1992; Luttrell
1997).
Some studies take an additive rather than intersecting analytical approach, simply presuming that boys’
educational experiences and opportunities are in all cases better than girls’ rather than exploring the unique set
of challenges girls face. The American Association of University Women (1994) study on schooling did not
compare boys’ and girls’ graduation rates or grades but compared them on only six subjective self-esteem
measures, arguing that girls suffer from lower self-esteem than boys do in almost all cases. Although some
attention was paid to racial differences (African American girls scored higher on self-esteem than Latinas and
white girls but lower on the academic self-esteem measure), class differences among girls were not analyzed at
all. Such studies fail to ask if working-class girls might actually have higher academic achievement than their
male counterparts. There is little research to draw on in answering this question, but Gándara (1995) found that
low-income Chicanas who were upwardly mobile academically outperformed their male peers, and Valenzuela
(1999) found that working-class Chicanas promoted a proschool ethic among their male peers. However, even if
working-class girls do have higher academic achievement than their male counterparts (and this is unknown),
the possibility of pregnancy and the fact of lower-paid (than men) jobs for women with only high school
degrees mediates and inhibits girls’ mobility in the long run.
In short, no studies appear comprehensive enough to control for all the variables that need to be considered
when examining working-class upward mobility. This ethnographic study goes beyond previous research in its
comparison of the mobility experience of white students and students of color by providing attention to the
simultaneous interaction of race/ethnicity, gender, and class, which are not accounted for in much of the
literature on the reproduction of inequality in educational sites.
By studying both white and Mexican American girls, I am able to point to the similarity of working-class
girls’ educational experiences across race/ethnicity, therefore revealing how class operates independent of
race/ethnicity. My comparative approach also shows the limits of the similarities between working-class girls
across race/ethnicity, therefore revealing how race/ethnicity operates independent of class and why it cannot be
reduced to it. Finally, I make suggestions about the salience of gender on educational mobility.

WARETOWN GIRLS

The larger study from which this research is drawn includes more than 60 girls—working- and middle-class
white girls and working- and middle-class Mexican American girls—who were seniors in vocational and
college prep high school tracks. Of the 60 girls formally interviewed, 11 were upwardly mobile and of working-
class origin: 5 were white and 6 were Mexican American (2 immigrants and 4 children of immigrants).
It is notable that among college prep Mexican American girls in the senior class, only two were immigrants.
These two girls were fluent enough in English to be successfully able to complete college prep courses. The
remainder of the immigrant girls were on the vocational track. A limitation of this study is that since I am a
mono-lingual English speaker, I could study only fully bilingual students. Therefore, I am unable to make
generalizing comparisons between the experiences of these two immigrant college prep girls and their
vocational track counterparts.
In labeling a student’s class origin, I mean her socioeconomic status: a combination of parental occupation,
income, and educational attainment. The parents of girls coded working class were those without a college
education (some had vocational training). They worked, for example, as grocery store stockers, nurses’ aides,
beauticians, clerical workers, janitors, or truck drivers and had corresponding incomes. The parents of girls
coded middle class were college educated and worked, for example, as teachers, counselors, administrators,
lawyers, doctors, professors, and business owners, with corresponding incomes.

METHOD

The site of the ethnography is a California public high school located in an agricultural town of approximately
40,000 people that I call Waretown. Waretown High is the only high school, and it reflects the town’s
demography, having about 60 percent white and 40 percent Mexican American students. The majority of these
students, regardless of race/ethnicity, are from working-class families, but middle-class students are a visible
minority. Most of the latter are white, but a handful are third-generation Mexican American. While the town is
home to one private elementary school, no private schooling options exist in Waretown above the primary
school level. Thus, both middle- and working-class students are educated together in their middle and high
school years.
I engaged in participant observation for one year at the high school, hanging out daily with girls in
classrooms, hallways, and a variety of other social contexts. I had no official role at the school, and to gain
student trust, I distanced myself from adult school personnel. I spent my time wandering about the school
looking for students who had free time to talk. I introduced myself as “a student from the university” who is
doing “a study of high school girls.” I sometimes met students through a trusted teacher but more typically
through other students, as I interviewed girls in several networks or friendship circles.
I conducted tape-recorded interviews of approximately two hours in length with all the girls and follow-up
interviews with many of them. Given my whiteness and my upward mobility, I felt far closer to white working-
class students in experience, but this was not necessarily reciprocated. I knew that white working-class students
perceived me as “other” and Mexican American girls even more so, although I ultimately established a rapport
with both sets of girls. The fact that I was willing to speak openly and ask frank questions about race seemed to
automatically engender a certain level of trust among Mexican American girls. I asked them how they felt about
me as a “white girl” from the university writing a story about them, attempting to represent them. While they
occasionally expressed concern that the multiple factors influencing their lives may be hard for me to
understand as a cultural outsider, they also felt it was important that I include their stories. For further
consideration of the effect that my own class and racialized identity had on this research and a discussion of
issues of ethnographic authority, see Bettie (2003).

WHITE GIRLS’ EXPERIENCE OF MOBILITY

These girls’ experiences of mobility are characterized by a nascent awareness of class distinctions, the
perception that they have to work harder than their middle-class peers, an awareness of having exceeded their
parents’ educational level, and an associated ambivalence about the meaning of mobility.
Class is a relational identity; awareness of class difference is dependent on the class and racial/ethnic
geography of the environment in which one’s identity is formed. The working-class, upwardly mobile girls I
met, by virtue of their location in mixed-class peer groups and the college prep curriculum track, had an earlier
awareness of class distinctions than their vocational counterparts, although they did not often name those
differences as being about class.
Liz was one of very few students I met who actually referred to herself as working class.

Julie: You said you were “working class” earlier. Where did you get that term; what does it
mean?
Liz: I learned it in a social science class or maybe in history. Working class is like the serfs,
you know, the working class are the majority, blue collar versus the college educated.

It is ironic that Liz learned this in her college prep curriculum, and it raises the question of what it might
mean for working-class students (especially those located in the vocational track who will continue to be
workers) to become conscious of themselves as class subjects, to learn labor history, for example. As production
theory has suggested, even the smallest exposure to the knowledge of class as a structural inequality might aid
those students who, due to the U.S. ideology of individualism, can only see their status as linked to their own
and their parents’ individual inadequacies (MacLeod 1995, in particular). My broader research showed that
working-class vocational students were obscurely aware of their difference from college prep students, but they
never articulated it as clearly as (college prep) Liz did.
Unlike working-class girls in the vocational track, who rarely were in mixed-class settings or peer groups,
these upwardly mobile girls were not as mystified by the success of preps. By virtue of class crossing, they
could see the advantages their middle-class friends experienced. They were more acutely aware of the cultural
differences based on class as they found themselves exposed to the children of middle-class professionals in the
college prep curriculum, on the basketball court, in student government, and in middle-class homes. They could
see the reasons they had to work harder, and they were less likely to attribute friends’ success to some innate
difference between them.
Unlike other working-class girls, who were often unclear about the distinctions between junior colleges,
four-year colleges, and universities or the kinds of certificates and degrees available, these upwardly mobile
girls understood the distinctions. When I asked Mandy if her mom and dad had gone to college, she said,

No. Dad was in the army, Vietnam. Now he works as a postal clerk. My mom, well, I argue this with my
mom all the time. . . . She went to junior college and got an associate degree. She calls this college, but I
don’t. I mean it’s just a certificate; she’s a secretary. I’ll be the first one in my family that’s ever gone to a
four-year college.

In addition, these girls perceived that they had to work exceptionally hard for their high school diplomas and
to get into college, relative to their middle-class friends. As Staci said,

They’ve always been kind of handed everything, that they’ve never really had to think about their future,
and I was always like I don’t want my future to be like my parents’. . . . I don’t ever want to have to worry
about money, like we have all my life. . . . I want to go to college and get a good education so I can have a
better life, and they have always had a good life. I work my butt off, but it just seems easier for them. It’s
just always everything has always kinda been there for them.

When I asked Liz (working class) and Amanda (middle class) whether they considered themselves good at
school, Amanda modestly offered “pretty good” while Liz shook her head “no.”

Amanda: No, you are too.

Liz: Well, I’m not. She is an amazing writer, and I mean sometimes she’ll have a lot of fun in
class, but she, I mean, she’s an A student all the way. Everything she does is. . . .
Amanda: When I do my work, I do okay, but I’m a procrastinator, and I don’t apply myself.
Liz: When she applies herself, she is like great.
Amanda: But Liz’s good. She works hard at it.

In a later conversation with Liz she expanded on her perception that Amanda could afford to be a bit
reckless about school, procrastinate, and still do all right. She felt that Amanda took much for granted that she
does not. Liz, working incredibly hard to stay on top, feels she has no room for occasional slipups the way she
believes her peers do.
Moreover, these girls were aware of the fact that they exceeded their parents’ educational level early on.
They perceived as a handicap the fact that their parents were unable to help them with school. Mandy explained,

Ever since I’ve been in honors classes, I’ve always been around these people, you know, their parents have
advanced degrees and everything else. My parents were never able to help me out with math. Once I entered
algebra, that was it, that was as far as they could help me. I remember one time in this one class we had this
project, we had to build something. One girl’s father was an architect, and her father designed, and basically
built the entire project for her. We all had these dinky little things and she’s got this palace!

Later, she attempted to define her parents’ lack of education as an asset:

I mean, I was never mad at my parents because they couldn’t help me. I was actually happy because once
we get to college you’re not gonna call your parents up and say, “Hey Dad, can you design this for me?”
 You’re on your own then. And so I’ve always had to work on my own with my schoolwork; it was always
on my own, whereas other students, they always had their parents standing right there, you know?

Simultaneously distancing from and connecting to parents was a common theme in the discourse of these
students. On one hand, they wanted to point to the importance of mobility, while on the other hand, they did not
want to degrade their parents by suggesting they wanted to become someone other than who their parents were.
Such a desire to distance themselves from elements of working-class community while remaining close to and
respecting their parents was a difficult process to navigate and often left them speaking in contradictions. They
experienced some confusion and ambivalence when they realized that their own desire for mobility implicitly
might mean that something was wrong with who they and their parents are now.
These middle-class-performing, working-class girls were also readily able to see the differences between
their own parents and those of their friends. They were painfully aware of the fact that their friends’ parents
viewed their own parents with indifference at best, disdain at worst. When I asked Liz, whose mother works in
retail, if her parents and Amanda’s parents knew each other, she said they did and then went on:

Well, but my mom is not friends with her mom. They [Amanda’s parents] are not rich snobs, like in New
York or something, but her mom would see someone who helps her in a store as, well, just a clerk in the
store. My mom would be [willing to be] friends with her mom, but I think her mom would be less accepting.

When I asked Mandy about what differences she perceived between herself and most of the students she
takes courses with, she noted, “In an honors class once, the teacher asked how many of us had parents who went
to college. All but me and three others raised our hand. I know people think differently of me. . . .” I sat next to
Heather at a girl’s basketball game one evening. She was sitting on the bleachers with the rest of her prep
friends, front and center, cheering on the team. She kept glancing at the corner of the gym. When I asked her if
she was expecting someone, she whispered, “My dad said he might stop by and check the score. I hope he
doesn’t.” In a later conversation, she said,

Well . . . my family is a lot different than . . . my friends’ families . . . [who] are real formal. . . . Like my
best friend’s dad owns the bank and they always have nice things. . . . I’ve been embarrassed, especially of
my dad . . . ‘cause he’s a real hick-like kind of guy, wears those kind of clothes. . . . All growing up, I was
embarrassed of him, and I didn’t want to take him anywhere.

Where I first thought the idea of her father’s attending the game represented the standard embarrassment
teens experience in relationship to having their parents near them at social events, I recognized later that its
meaning went beyond this for her. In the middle-class milieu of the school, some parents are more embarrassing
than others.

MEXICAN AMERICAN GIRLS’ EXPERIENCE OF MOBILITY

These girls’ experiences of mobility are characterized by an early awareness of class distinctions, an awareness
of having exceeded their parents’ educational level, a related ambivalence about the meaning of mobility, an
acute awareness of what kinds of occupations await them if they do not finish school, and their refusal to
interpret mobility as assimilation to whiteness.
As with white upwardly mobile girls, these Mexican American young women could also see the differences
between themselves and the (mostly white) middle-class college prep girls more clearly than could their
vocational counterparts. But where white working-class students articulated their difference from preps in the
most obscure class terms, Mexican American girls articulated their difference clearly in terms of race. Luisa
stated,

I think it is harder for Mexican American students because I think most white people have like money, like
 their parents, they went to college, and they have money. They have an education. But you know, I’m not
saying, well, you know, it’s my mom’s fault that she didn’t go to college. She could have, you know, but I
don’t know, it’s just like that’s just what it is, kind of. The white students don’t understand because, you
know, their parents got to go to college, you know, had an education, they all have jobs.

Similar to white girls, Mexican American girls wanted to point to the importance of mobility yet did not
want this to mean that their parents’ lives were without value, thus expressing a certain amount of ambivalence
toward mobility and/or the acquisition of the middle-class cultural forms that accompany mobility. This can be
seen in Luisa’s comment above wherein she identified her mother’s limited education but then noted her mother
is not to blame for this. Similarly, Adriana said,

Well I’m proud of my parents. I’m proud of my dad, because like if anybody says anything about their
parents [such as] . . .”Oh, they went to college” . . . or something like that. Like I’m proud of my dad, you
know, he learned just from doing, from life. Being as poor as we were, he, you know, we’re like doing good,
you know.

Mobility experiences can never be understood outside of the racial/ethnic specific experience of them. These
girls were also well aware of having exceeded their parents’ ability. But for the Mexican American girls, unlike
the white girls, the acquisition of middle-class cultural forms included becoming bilingual while their parents
remained primarily Spanish speakers.
Where white girls would say generally that they did not want to struggle for money the way their parents
did, Mexican American girls were cognizant of the correlation between being Mexican American and being
poor; they were more likely to name the specific occupations the poorest people in their community worked and
identify their motivation to escape this. Angela said,

I don’t want to be like everyone else. . . . I want something better. I hate working in the fields, that’s not for
me, and I don’t want to do that. It is minimum wage and I don’t want to work for that.

And Adriana said, “When I think about havin’ to work in the fields or cannery, then I get back to studying
real hard.”
Unlike third-generation Mexican American middle-class girls, who sometimes felt that to be authentically
Mexican one must adopt working-class cultural forms and who were downwardly mobile (Bettie 2000, 2003),
these college prep working-class girls refused to interpret mobility as assimilation to whiteness. Adopting an
ethnic strategy of “accommodation without assimilation” (Gibson 1988), they were not apologetic about their
mobility and did not feel any “less” Mexican for being college bound. Moreover, their participation in school
activities that were specifically linked to the Mexican American community helped them acquire college skills
while maintaining their racial/ethnic identity. They were not compelled to interpret their mobility as evidence of
assimilation.
The correlation of race/ethnicity with poverty promotes the belief that middle-class status and whiteness are
one and the same. As a result, Mexican American students have to negotiate their educational mobility against
the broader social perception that this mobility represents assimilation to whiteness. Such assimilation is
resisted and gets played out as intraethnic tension in peer groups when Mexican American vocational students
accuse college preps of “acting white.” These working-class, upwardly mobile girls received an occasional
“acting white” accusation from their working-class peers, but they interpreted this as a joke that, although
painful at times, was not taken as a real challenge, and their racial/ethnic identity remained unthreatened by
their college prep status.
I conclude that class is a salient factor in the formation of a bicultural racial/ethnic Mexican American
identity. Consistent with Matute-Bianchi (1991), I found both a caste-like orientation and an immigrant
orientation among nonimmigrant Mexican American students. But while Matute-Bianchi described these as
“ethnic strategies,” I suggest naming them “race/ethnic-class strategies” because of the equal salience of class.
Although the girls discussed here were upwardly mobile, because they grew up working class, their identity as
Mexican American was unwavering. Their Mexican identity seemed less challenged than it was for some
middle-class Mexican American girls (Bettie 2000, 2003).
As Mariana explained, “I’m not really acting white because look at where I live and who my friends are and
what I do.” Mariana lived in a Mexican American neighborhood; hung out socially with other working-class,
college prep, Mexican American girls; and was heavily involved in school and church activities that focused on
her community.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Comparing the upward mobility of working-class white and Mexican American high school girls is one way to
see class, race/ethnicity, and gender are intersecting identity constructions and axes of inequality that inform the
overall reproduction of inequality. This comparison goes beyond the limitations of previous research on the
reproduction of educational inequality and educational mobility by attending to the simultaneous interaction of
class, race/ethnicity, and gender. I have been able to illustrate similarities and differences between white and
Mexican American working-class girls’ experiences of mobility and thus to show how mobility is experienced
in racial/ethnic-specific ways, to demonstrate how class identity (or the lack thereof) shapes the mobility
experience, and to consider the gender-specific experience of mobility as well.
I found some similarities between working-class white and Mexican American girls’ experiences in
relationship to both questions I posed: Why does mobility occur? and How is it experienced? Both white and
Mexican American students defined themselves in opposition to an older male sibling. Sport was a route to
mobility for those girls who did not experience gender identity conflict in relationship to it. There is some
evidence that working-class girls, across race, may be more academically oriented than their male peers. Both
sets of girls were aware of having exceeded their parents’ academic ability early on. Both experienced some
confusion and ambivalence around the distance between themselves and their parents because of this, although
the experience was far more dramatic for Mexican American girls. As a consequence of their location in a
college prep curriculum, both sets of girls seemed to have a greater understanding of class differences relative to
other working-class girls, although this was articulated obscurely in class terms by white girls and almost solely
in racial terms among Mexican American ones.
I found important racial/ethnic differences between white and Mexican American girls’ experiences as well.
Not surprisingly, racism sometimes informed white working-class mobility, as for the two girls whose parents’
wanted them to be segregated from Mexican American students. The greater salience of race over class (in a
society that lacks a discourse on class) means that white girls’ mobility is less encumbered in some ways than
Mexican American girls’. Mexican American students, in contrast, are pressured (though not necessarily
successfully) to sacrifice racial/ethnic identity by educational curriculums that routinely work to colonize their
Mexican identities, but at the same time, they may be pressured by their peer group not to “act white.”
Upward mobility also may be informed by gender. In some cases, feminine norms allowed girls to forgo the
delinquent paths their working-class brothers felt compelled to follow when they engaged in rituals of proving
masculinity. In other cases, girls’ mobility was enabled by their interest in sports and the fact that they did not
experience a gender conflict in relationship to it. But there is another way in which gender is potentially salient
to these girls’ mobility. Both the white and the Mexican American upwardly mobile girls performed the same
school-sanctioned femininity that middle-class, white, college prep girls did. That is, they wore little or no
makeup and less sexualized clothing than most of their vocational track counterparts who enacted various forms
of dissident femininity (Bettie 2003). This school-sanctioned femininity signifies middle-classness to school
personnel who view these girls, in contrast to many vocational track girls, as modest and tasteful, their
demeanor as “nice” and “not hard.” Nonetheless, a comparative study of upwardly mobile boys would be
necessary to confidently argue the salience of gender on the mobility experience.
Because the nature of ethnographic methodology leads to small sample sizes, I cannot make generalizations
about the reasons for mobility, and my findings here should be taken as suggestive and exploratory. But
ethnographic data do allow me to elaborate on the meaning of mobility for the girls studied. The mobility
experience differs, of course, for whites and people of color, as the latter often are more consciously aware of
themselves as a community of people as a consequence of having in common a history of oppression based on
being historically defined as a racial/ethnic group. This can be experienced as an advantage when it produces an
awareness of structural barriers based on race/ethnicity and thus helps to explain the difficulty of individual
achievement. It also can be experienced as a disadvantage, as when upwardly mobile students of color feel the
burden of representing an entire people.
In contrast, whites often do not experience themselves as members of the racial/ethnic category white but as
individuals. Without a cultural discourse of class identity, they do not readily experience themselves as
members of a class community either. Evidence of this can be seen in the way white, working-class, college
prep girls expressed their experience of how education was distancing them from their parents. They did not
articulate this as a distancing from their working-class community; their pain was more often articulated in
relationship to an individual family, not a people. For white working-class students, this can be an advantage.
Their mobility is less complicated because they are not made to feel that they are giving up racial/ethnic or class
belonging in the process. And while an unarticulated sense of loss, a class longing, may remain—precisely
because it is unarticulated—it may be a less salient force, making their mobility somewhat less encumbered.
Although I have focused primarily on students’ constructions of identity within the peer culture, this occurs
within an institutional context. The influence of the structure of schooling on student identity formation and the
responsibility of schools to provide the context for mobility should not be underestimated or ignored.
The possibility of, and perhaps ease of, upward mobility for white working-class students appears greater
than for Mexican American girls, who were more likely to experience tracking as a consequence of counselors’
perceptions and stereotypes about Mexican American students. The relationship between race and class means
that counselors are likely to make assumptions that students of color are from low-income families (even when
they are not) and therefore assumptions about what educational resources they need and can handle. White
working-class students can escape tracking more easily because their class does not as easily appear encoded
onto the body.
Social and educational policy can potentially assist social mobility. Becoming middle class requires doing
well in school, and for Mexican American students, doing well in school too often means learning a colonialist
history, English, and the suppression of one’s own culture (Darder 1991). Schools routinely fail to provide
genuine bicultural education, and consequently, the curriculum makes it difficult to embrace an identity that is
both middle class and Mexican American at the same time. Therefore, school programs could promote mobility
by offering a bicultural identity, the possibility of being middle class and maintaining a racial/ethnic identity of
color simultaneously. As noted, upwardly mobile Mexican American students were more involved in school
extracurricular programs than their vocational counterparts. They were involved in activities not dominated by
white middle-class students but that specifically linked them to their culture and community.1
Moreover, these research findings are relevant to affirmative action policy. California’s Proposition 209
appropriated a discourse on class and used it to help dismantle affirmative action based on race/ethnicity.
Although affirmative action without attention to class is of little help to the mass of working-class students
(white and of color) who are tracked out of a college prep curriculum in junior high and early high school years,
affirmative action based on race/ethnicity, class, and gender can help this handful of upwardly mobile working-
class girls.

NOTE

1. Mehan, Hubbard, and Villanueva (1994) found that students who participated in an Advancement via
Individual Determination program, in particular, had higher rates of school success.

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SOURCE: Julie Bettie, “Exceptions to the Rule: Upwardly Mobile White and Mexican American High School
Girls.” Gender & Society 16:403–22. (2002) Reprinted with permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
25
BLACK STUDENTS’ SCHOOL SUCCESS
Coping With the “Burden of ‘Acting White’”
SIGNITHIA FORDHAM AND JOHN U. OGBU

O ur main point in this [chapter] is that one major reason black students do poorly in school is that they
experience inordinate ambivalence and affective dissonance in regard to academic effort and success.
This problem arose partly because white Americans traditionally refused to acknowledge that black
Americans are capable of intellectual achievement, and partly because black Americans subsequently began to
doubt their own intellectual ability, began to define academic success as white people’s prerogative, and began
to discourage their peers, perhaps unconsciously, from emulating white people in academic striving, i.e., from
“acting white.” Because of the ambivalence, affective dissonance, and social pressures, many black students
who are academically able do not put forth the necessary effort and perseverance in their schoolwork and,
consequently, do poorly in school. Even black students who do not fail generally perform well below their
potential for the same reasons. We will illustrate this phenomenon with data from a recent ethnographic study of
both successful and unsuccessful students in a predominantly black high school in Washington, D.C.
• • •

“ACTING WHITE” AT CAPITAL HIGH

The setting of the study, Capital High School and its surrounding community, has been described in detail
elsewhere (Fordham 1982b, 1984, 1985). Suffice it here to say that Capital High is a predominantly black high
school (some 99% black—1,868 out of 1,886 students at the start of the research effort in 1982). It is located in
a historically black section of Washington, D.C., in a relatively low-income area.
The influence of fictive kinship [that is, the specific worldview of those persons who are appropriately
labeled “black”] is extensive among the students at Capital High. It shows up not only in conflicts between
blacks and whites and between black students and black teachers, who are often perceived to be “functionaries”
of the dominant society, but also in the students’ constant need to reassure one another of black loyalty and
identity. They appear to achieve this group loyalty by defining certain attitudes and behaviors as “white” and
therefore unacceptable, and then employing numerous devices to discourage one another from engaging in those
behaviors and attitudes, i.e., from “acting white.”
Among the attitudes and behaviors that black students at Capital High identify as “acting white” and
therefore unacceptable are: (1) speaking standard English; (2) listening to white music and white radio stations;
(3) going to the opera or ballet; (4) spending a lot of time in the library studying; (5) working hard to get good
grades in school; (6) getting good grades in school (those who get good grades are labeled “brainiacs”); (7)
going to the Smithsonian; (8) going to a Rolling Stones concert at the Capital Centre; (9) doing volunteer work;
(10) going camping, hiking, or mountain climbing; (11) having cocktails or a cocktail party; (12) going to a
symphony orchestra concert; (13) having a party with no music; (14) listening to classical music; (15) being on
time; (16) reading and writing poetry; and (17) putting on “airs,” and so forth. This list is not exhaustive, but
indicates kinds of attitudes and behaviors likely to be negatively sanctioned and therefore avoided by a large
number of students.
As operationally defined in this reading, the idea of “coping with the burden of ‘acting white’” suggests the
various strategies that black students at Capital High use to resolve, successfully or unsuccessfully, the tension
between students desiring to do well academically and meet the expectations of school authorities on the one
hand and the demands of peers for conformity to group-sanctioned attitudes and behaviors that validate black
identity and cultural frame on the other. Black students at Capital High who choose to pursue academic success
are perceived by their peers as “being kind of white” (Weis 1985, p. 101) and therefore not truly black. This
gives rise to the tension between those who want to succeed (i.e., who in the eyes of their peers want to “act
white”) and others insisting on highlighting group-sanctioned attitudes and behaviors. Under the circumstance,
students who want to do well in school must find some strategy to resolve the tension. This tension, along with
the extra responsibility it places on students who choose to pursue academic success in spite of it, and its effects
on the performance of those who resolve the tension successfully and those who do not, constitute “the burden
of ‘acting white.’” The few high-achieving students, as we will show, have learned how to cope successfully
with the burden of acting white; the many underachieving students have not succeeded in a manner that
enhances academic success. It is this tension and its effects on black students’ academic efforts and outcomes
that are explored in the case study of Capital High students.
Ethnographic data in the study were collected over a period of more than one year. During the study some
33 students in the eleventh grade were studied intensively, and our examples are drawn from this sample.

Underachieving Students
Underachieving black students in the sample appear to have the ability to do well in school, at least better
than their present records show. But they have apparently decided, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid
“acting white.” That is, they choose to avoid adopting attitudes and putting in enough time and effort in their
schoolwork because their peers (and they themselves) would interpret their behaviors as “white.” Their main
strategy for coping with the burden of acting white tends, therefore, to be avoidance.
. . . Like most students in the sample, Sidney took the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and did
fairly well, scoring at the 67th percentile on the math section of the test and at the 54th percentile on the verbal
section. His scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) in the ninth grade indicate that he was
performing well above grade level: His composite score in reading was 12.2; he scored at the college level on
the language component (13.6); on the math component he scored just above eleventh grade (11.3), making his
total battery on these three components 11.8. He scored above college level in the reference skills, science, and
social studies sections. On the whole, his performance on standardized tests is far higher than that of many high-
achieving males in our sample.
In spite of this relatively good performance on standardized tests, his grade point average is only C. Sidney
is surprised and disgusted with his inability to earn grades comparable to those he earned in elementary and
junior high school. While he takes most of the courses available to eleventh graders from the Advanced
Placement sequence, he is not making the A’s and B’s at Capital High that he consistently made during his
earlier schooling.
Sidney is an outstanding football player who appears to be encapsulated in the very forces which he
maintains are largely responsible for the lack of upward mobility in the local black community. He is very much
aware of the need to earn good grades in school in order to take advantage of the few opportunities he thinks are
available to black Americans. However, he appears unable to control his life and act in opposition to the forces
he identifies as detrimental to his academic progress.
His friends are primarily football players and other athletes. He is able to mix and mingle easily with them
despite the fact that, unlike most of them, he takes advanced courses; he claims that this is because of his status
as an athlete. His friends are aware of his decision to take these advanced courses, and they jokingly refer to him
as “Mr. Advanced Placement.”
Sidney readily admits that he could do a lot better in school, but says that he, like many of his friends, does
not value what he is asked to learn in school. He also reluctantly admits that the fear of being called a “brainiac”
prevents him from putting more time and effort into his schoolwork. According to him, the term “brainiac” is
used in a disparaging manner at Capital High for students who do well in their courses:
 Anthropologist: Have you heard the word “brainiac” used here?
Sidney: Yes. [When referring to students who take the Advanced Placement courses here.]
That’s a term for the smartest person in class. Brainiac—jerk—you know, those terms.
If you’re smart, you’re a jerk, you’re a brainiac.
Anthro: Are all those words synonyms?
Sidney: Yes.
Anthro: So it’s not a positive [term]?
Sidney: No, it’s a negative [term], as far as brilliant academic students are concerned.
Anthro: Why is that?
Sidney: That’s just the way the school population is.

Although Sidney takes the Advanced Placement Courses, he is not making much effort to get good grades;
instead, he spends his time and effort developing a persona that will nullify any claims that he is a brainiac, as
can be seen in the following interview excerpt:

Anthropologist: Has anyone ever called you a [brainiac]?

Sidney: Brainiac? No.
Anthro: Why not?
Sidney: Well, I haven’t given them a reason to. And, too, well, I don’t excel in all my classes
like I should be—that’s another reason. . . . I couldn’t blame it on the environment. I
have come to blame it on myself—for partaking in the environment. But I can tell you
that—going back to what we were talking about—another reason why they don’t call
me a “brainiac,” because I’m an athlete.
Anthro: So . . . if a kid is smart, for example, one of the ways to limit the negative reaction to
him or her, and his or her brilliance, is. . . . .
Sidney: Yeah, do something extracurricular in the school . . . [like] being an athlete, cheerleader
squad, in the band—like that . . . . Yeah, something that’s important [emphasis added],
that has something to do with—that represents your school.

Sidney admits that the fear of being known as a brainiac has negatively affected his academic effort a great
deal. The fear of being discovered as an “imposter” among his friends leads him to choose carefully those
persons with whom he will interact within the classroom; all of the males with whom he interacts who also take
Advanced Placement courses are, like him, primarily concerned with “mak[ing] it over the hump.”
He also attributes his lack of greater effort in school to his lack of will power and time on task. And he
thinks that his low performance is due to his greater emphasis on athletic achievement and his emerging
manhood, and less emphasis on the core curriculum. He does not study. He spends very little time completing
his homework assignments, usually fifteen minutes before breakfast. On the whole, Sidney is not proud of his
academic record. But he does not feel that he can change the direction of his school career because he does not
want to be known as a brainiac.

• • •

High-Achieving Students
Students at Capital High who are relatively successful academically also face the problem of coping with the
“burden of ‘acting white.’” But they have usually adopted strategies that enable them to succeed. These students
decide more or less consciously (a) to pursue academic success and (b) to use specific strategies to cope with
the burden of acting white.

• • •
Katrina’s performance on the math component of the PSAT was at the 95th percentile. Only one other
student . . . scored higher and another student had a comparable score. Katrina’s score on the verbal component
was not as high, being at the 75th percentile. But her overall score far surpassed those of most other students.
Her performance on the CTBS was equally impressive, with an overall grade equivalent of 13.6, or college
level, in every section—math, reading, and language, and in every subsection, as well as in the ancillary
sections, namely, reference skills, social studies, and science. She also performed well on the Life Skills
examination which measures students’ ability to process information in nine different areas. Katrina scored
100% in each of the nine areas.
In the classroom her performance has been equally outstanding. She had A’s in all subjects except
handwriting in the elementary school. Her final grades in the ninth grade (i.e., junior high school) were all A’s;
and in the tenth grade, her first year at Capital High, her final grades were all A’s.
Katrina has heard of the term “brainiac” not only at Capital High, but as far back as at the elementary and
junior high school levels. And she is very much aware of the nuances associated with the term. She explains:

When they [other students] call someone a “brainiac,” they mean he’s always in the books. But he probably
isn’t always in the books. Straight A, maybe—you know, or A’s and B’s. A Goody-Two-Shoes with the
teacher, maybe—you know, the teacher always calling on them, and they’re always the leaders in the class
or something.

She acknowledges that she is often referred to as a brainiac, but that she always denies it because she does
not want her peers to see her that way. To treat her as a brainiac “blows her cover” and exposes her to the very
forces she has sought so hard to avoid: alienation, ridicule, physical harm, and the inability to live up to the
name.
How does Katrina avoid being called a brainiac and treated with hostility while at the same time managing
to keep up her outstanding academic performance? Katrina admits that she has had to “put brakes” on her
academic performance in order to minimize the stress she experiences. She says that she is much better at
handling subject matter than at handling her peers. To solve the peer problem, she tries not to be conspicuous.
As she puts it:

Junior high, I didn’t have much problem. I mean, I didn’t have—there were always a lot of people in the
classroom who did the work, so I wasn’t like, the only one who did this assignment.
So—I mean, I might do better at it, but I wasn’t the only one. And so a lot of times, I’d let other kids
answer—I mean, not let them, but. . . . All right, I let them answer questions [laughter], and I’d hold back.
So I never really got into any arguments, you know, about school and my grades or anything.

She is extremely fearful of peer reactions if she were identified as acting white. Since she wants to continue
doing well in school, she chooses to “go underground,” that is, not to bring attention to herself. Her reluctance
to participate in Capital High’s “It’s Academic” Club, a TV competition program, illustrates her desire to
maintain a low profile. “It’s Academic” is perhaps the most “intellectual” extracurricular activity at the school.
To participate in the three-person team, a student must take a test prepared by the faculty sponsoring it. The
three top scores are eligible to represent the school in the TV competition. Katrina reluctantly took the test at the
suggestion of her physics teacher, the club sponsor. However, she had a prior agreement that she would not be
selected to participate on the team even if she had the top score. She was one of the three top scorers, but
because of the prior agreement was made only an alternate member of the team.

• • •
 To summarize, . . . high-achieving students wrestle with the conflict inherent in the unique relationship of
black people with the dominant institution: the struggle to achieve success while retaining group support and
approval. In school, the immediate issue is how to obtain good grades and meet the expectations of school
authorities without being rejected by peers for acting white. . . . [S]uccessful students at Capital High generally
adopt specific strategies to solve this problem.

• • •

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS

We have suggested . . . that black students’ academic efforts are hampered by both external factors and within-
group factors. We have tried to show that black students who are academically successful in the face of these
factors have usually adopted specific strategies to avoid them. Although we recognize and have described
elsewhere in detail the external, including school, factors which adversely affect black adolescents’ school
performance (Fordham 1982a, 1985; Ogbu 1974, 1978), our focus . . . is on the within-group factors, especially
on how black students respond to other black students who are trying to “make it” academically.

• • •

Fictive kinship is, then, not only a symbol of social identity for black Americans, it is also a medium of
boundary maintenance vis-à-vis white Americans. The school experience of black children is implicated
because, under the circumstance, schooling is perceived by blacks, especially by black adolescents, as learning
to act white, as acting white, or as trying to cross cultural boundaries. And, importantly, school learning is
viewed as a subtractive process. In our view, then, the academic learning and performance problems of black
children arise not only from a limited opportunity structure and black people’s responses to it, but also from the
way black people attempt to cope with the “burden of ‘acting white.’” The sources of their school difficulties—
perceptions of and responses to the limited opportunity structure and the burden of acting white—are
particularly important during the adolescent period in the children’s school careers.
We chose to focus our analysis on the burden of acting white and its effects on the academic effort and
performance of black children because it seems to us to be a very important but as yet widely unrecognized
dilemma of black students, particularly black adolescents. In other words, while we fully recognize the role of
external forces—societal and school forces—in creating academic problems for the students, we also argue that
how black students respond to other black students who are trying to make it is also important in determining
the outcome of their education.
In the case study of Capital High School in Washington, D.C., we showed that coping with the burden of
acting white affects the academic performance of both underachieving and high-achieving students. Black
students who are encapsulated in the fictive kinship system or oppositional process experience greater difficulty
in crossing cultural boundaries, i.e., in accepting standard academic attitudes and practices of the school and in
investing sufficient time and effort in pursuing their educational goals. Some of the high-achieving students do
not identify with the fictive kinship system; others more or less deliberately adopt sex-specific strategies to
camouflage their academic pursuits and achievements.
The strategies of the academically successful students include engaging in activities which mute perceptions
of their being preoccupied with academic excellence leading eventually to individual success outside the group,
i.e., eventual upward mobility. Among them are athletic activities (which are regarded as “black activities”) and
other “team”-oriented activities, for male students. Other high-achieving students camouflage their academic
effort by clowning. Still others do well in school by acquiring the protection of “bullies” and “hoodlums” in
return for assisting the latter in their schoolwork and homework. In general, academically successful black
students at Capital High (and probably elsewhere) are careful not to brag about their achievements or otherwise
bring too much attention to themselves. We conclude, however, from this study of high-achieving students at
Capital High, that they would do much better if they did not have to divert time and effort into strategies
designed to camouflage their academic pursuit.
There are several implications of our analysis, and the implications are at different levels. As this analysis
clearly demonstrates, the first and critically important change must occur in the existing opportunity structure,
through an elimination of the job ceiling and related barriers. Changes in the opportunity structure are a
prerequisite to changes in the behaviors and expectations of black adolescents for two salient reasons: (1) to
change the students’ perceptions of what is available to them as adult workers in the labor force and (2) to
minimize the exacerbation of the extant achievement problem of black adolescents who are expected to master
the technical skills taught and condoned in the school context but who are, nonetheless, unable to find
employment in areas where they demonstrate exemplary expertise. Barring changes in the opportunity structure,
the perceptions, behaviors, and academic effort of black adolescents are unlikely to change to the extent
necessary to have a significant effect on the existing boundary-maintaining mechanisms in the community.
Therefore, until the perceptions of the nature and configuration of the opportunity structure change (see J.
Williams 1985), the response of black students in the school context is likely to continue to be one which
suggests that school achievement is a kind of risk which necessitates strategies enabling them to cope with the
“burden of acting white.” Second, educational barriers, both the gross and subtle mechanisms by which schools
differentiate the academic careers of black and white children, should be eliminated.
Third, and particularly important in terms of our analysis, the unique academic learning and performance
problems created by the burden of acting white should be recognized and made a target of educational policies
and remediation effort. Both the schools and the black community have important roles to play in this regard.
School personnel should try to understand the influence of the fictive kinship system in the students’
perceptions of learning and the standard academic attitudes and practices or behaviors expected. The schools
should then develop programs, including appropriate counseling, to help the students learn to divorce academic
pursuit from the idea of acting white. The schools should also reinforce black identity in a manner compatible
with academic pursuit, as in the case of Sargent (1985).
The black community has an important part to play in changing the situation. The community should
develop programs to teach black children that academic pursuit is not synonymous with one-way acculturation
into a white cultural frame of reference or acting white. To do this effectively, however, the black community
must reexamine its own perceptions and interpretations of school learning. Apparently, black children’s general
perception that academic pursuit is “acting white” is learned in the black community. The ideology of the
community in regard to the cultural meaning of schooling is, therefore, implicated and needs to be reexamined.
Another thing the black community can do is to provide visible and concrete evidence for black youths that the
community appreciates and encourages academic effort and success. Cultural or public recognition of those who
are academically successful should be made a frequent event, as is generally done in the case of those who
succeed in the fields of sports and entertainment.

REFERENCES

Fordham, S. 1982a. “Black Student School Success as Related to Fictive Kinship: An Ethnographic Study in
the Washington, DC, Public School System.” Research proposal submitted to the National Institute of
Education.
_____. 1982b. “Cultural Inversion and Black Children’s School Performance.” Paper presented at the 81st
Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, Washington, DC, December 3–7.
_____. 1984. “Ethnography in a Black High School: Learning Not to Be a Native.” Paper presented at the 83rd
Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, Denver, November 14–18.
_____. 1985. “Black Students School Success as Related to Fictive Kinship.” Final Report. Washington, DC:
The National Institute of Education.
Ogbu, J. U. 1974. The Next Generation: An Ethnography of Education in an Urban Neighborhood. New York:
Academic Press.
_____. 1978. Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York:
Academic Press.
Sargent, E. 1985. “Freeing Myself: Discoveries That Unshackle the Mind.” The Washington Post (February
10).
Weis, L. 1985. Between Two Worlds: Black Students in an Urban Community College. Boston: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Williams, J. (1985). The vast gap between black and white visions of reality. The Washington Post, March 31,
pp. KI, K4

SOURCE: Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu, “Black Students’ School Success: Coping with the Burden of
‘Acting White,’” Urban Review 18 Copyright © 1986, Agathon Press, Inc. With kind permission rom Springer
Science and Business Media
26
IT’S NOT “A BLACK THING”
Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other
Dilemmas of High Achievement
KAROLYN TYSON, DOMINI R. CASTELLINO, AND WILLIAM DARITY, JR.

A lmost 20 years have passed since Fordham and Ogbu (1986) published the article “Black Students’
School Success: Coping with the ‘Burden of “Acting White’”.” Yet it remains among the most
influential publications addressing the academic underachievement of black students and the black-
white achievement gap. Social scientists have produced little empirical evidence to substantiate the claim that an
“oppositional peer culture” or a “burden of acting white” is pervasive in the black community, or that either
explains the underachievement of black students or some part of the black-white achievement gap. Still, there is
strong public belief in these assertions. Indeed, as we found in this study, the acting white theory significantly
influences how schools address problems related to black underachievement, which, in turn, helps to determine
whether these solutions ultimately can be effective. Thus, further assessment of this hypothesis is a critical step
toward understanding and addressing the problem of the black-white achievement gap.

THE “BURDEN OF ACTING WHITE” HYPOTHESIS

Among black Americans, the term “acting white” is used in reference to blacks who use language or ways of
speaking; display attitudes, behaviors, or preferences; or engage in activities considered to be white cultural
norms (Bergin and Cooks 2002; McArdle and Young 1970; Neal-Barnett 2001; Perry 2002; Tatum 1997).
Although understandings of what comprises acting white may vary (by region, social class, or age, for
example), some understandings remain remarkably constant (e.g., listening to heavy metal music is almost
always considered a “white” preference). The term also has come to be used with respect to indicators of
academic performance and success (Bergin and Cooks 2002; Neal-Barnett 2001). For example, using focus
groups to understand how black teenagers define “acting white,” Neal-Barnett (2001:82) reported that the list of
items the students identified included “being in honors or advanced placement classes,” in addition to “speaking
Standard English, dressing in clothes from the Gap or Abercrombie and Fitch rather than Tommy Hilfiger and
FUBU, [and] wearing shorts in the winter.”
Fordham and Ogbu (1986), drawing on Fordham’s qualitative study of one predominantly black urban high
school and the narratives of eight academically capable black students, posited that acting white was part of a
larger oppositional peer culture constructed by black Americans in response to their history of enslavement, and
the discrimination and persistent inequality they face (including discriminatory treatment in the labor market).
The oppositional identity was said to be “part of a cultural orientation toward schooling which exists within the
minority community” (p. 183). Academic achievement is not valued in the community because it is perceived as
conforming to standard norms of success among white Americans (see Spencer et al. 2003 for a
counterargument). Moreover, it does not pay off for blacks as it does for others. Consequently, black students
striving for academic success have their cultural authenticity as blacks called into question and are accused of
acting white.
Fordham and Ogbu (1986) claimed that the choice between representing an authentic “black” self and
striving for academic success creates a “burden of acting white” and contributes to the relatively low academic
performance of black students (for examples of similar assertions, see Herbert 2003; McWhorter 2000;
Wasonga and Christman 2003; Weissert 1999). However, the findings did not show that any informant in the
original study related accusations of “acting white” directly to academic achievement, or ever used the term.
Only within the past 10 years have the main propositions of the oppositional culture thesis, including “the
burden of acting white,” been examined empirically. Two high-profile studies (Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey
1998; Cook and Ludwig 1998), both using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS),
found little evidence of either an oppositional culture or a burden of acting white among black adolescents.
Key questions remain. Do high-achieving black students experience a burden of high achievement distinct
from that experienced by other adolescents? Are black students concerned about excelling academically because
of a belief that academic striving and high achievement is antithetical to black cultural authenticity, or that it
may be perceived as such by others and therefore negatively sanctioned?
We provide answers by drawing on data from a larger study investigating North Carolina public schools.
Specifically, we evaluate the evidence for a burden of acting white in light of the following premises. To claim
a burden of acting white, two primary conditions must be present: ridicule or criticism directed toward black
students must be racialized and it must be specifically connected to academic behaviors (rather than behaviors
such as dress or speech), decisions, or performance. However, even if those two conditions are met, the burden
of acting white cannot be implicated in the black-white achievement gap unless such peer criticisms are
demonstrably part of the local school culture (i.e., widespread) and shown to affect black students’ academic
behaviors (e.g., withholding of effort) or decisions (e.g., electing not to take high-ability courses). Similarly, the
burden of acting white cannot be implicated in the black-white achievement gap if the criticisms directed toward
high-achieving black students are no more significant than those directed toward high-achieving students in
general.
We used data collected annually by the NCDPI from all public schools to assess the extent of minority
underrepresentation in rigorous courses and programs statewide. For each school, we developed a Disparity
Index to calculate the ratio of the percentage of minority students in advanced courses and programs relative to
the percentage of minority students enrolled in the school. We then measured underrepresentation of minority
students in the AP and honors courses that most North Carolina high schools offer. Next, in cooperation with
the NCDPI staff, we designed a survey to assess the programs and courses available at each school, the criteria
for enrollment, and the processes for identification. Elementary/middle school surveys gathered current (2000–
2001) data on gifted programs and enrollment by race and gender. High school surveys gathered data on
advanced curricular offerings, but not enrollment.1 The surveys were completed by principals, assistant
principals, or school counselors.
For this analysis,2 we focus on the presence of black students, rather than all minorities, in rigorous courses
and programs. As shown in Table 26.1, black students were underrepresented in the gifted program at one
middle school (Jackson) and well represented at the other middle school (Kilborn).3 Both schools also offered
accelerated classes in math (pre-algebra in seventh grade and algebra in eighth grade) and language arts, open to
any qualified student. Kilborn Middle School also offered AP courses, for which students received high school
credit.
Across the high schools, black students were underrepresented in all but 2 of 19 AP courses and 1 of 13
honors courses under consideration, although in a few cases, the ratio approached parity. Dalton High School
showed the most severe underrepresentation of black students in both AP and honors courses. A general pattern
of underrepresentation statewide limited our ability to select a more varied sub-sample of schools. However,
one school (Banaker High School) showed a black majority in each of the courses studied. Most schools offered
an average of 6 AP courses per year, but Avery High School offered just 3 and Banaker offered 10. Banaker
also offered an International Baccalaureate (IB) program that provides in-depth study of subjects from an
international perspective. A few schools also offered college prep classes, which are less exclusive than honors
or AP courses.4

Table 26.1 Selected Characteristics of Schools 1999–2000

NOTE: Percentages do not total 100 due to rounding. Data for 2000–2001 are similar in most cases and identical in others (e.g.,
middle school figures are identical for both years). White and black incomes are of those living in school county. WM = white male;
BM = black male; WF = white female.
a. Race and gender of school principal.
b. Percent of lunches that are free or reduced price.

Interviews
A team of three or four black female interviewers spent one day at each school conducting interviews. We
interviewed a total of 85 secondary school students (Table 26.2): 40 black, 36 white, and 9 other students of
color (this report focuses on the black and white students only). The duration of the interviews was 45 to 75
minutes. Eight students requested not to be tape-recorded. The remaining interviews were taped and transcribed.

Black Adolescent Achievement Orientation

Contrary to the notion that black students do not value academic achievement, we found an expressed desire
to do well academically among all informants. In explaining their course choices, students’ responses
overwhelmingly centered on how they thought they would fare in the class, including whether they thought they
were academically prepared, how willing they were to take on the anticipated amount or level of work, and
whether they were likely to earn a good grade. The following statement highlights this trend:

As far as the honors class, don’t take it unless you absolutely have to. [laughs] I wouldn’t advise that. It’s
not—it will bring your grade point average down, just taking it will bring anybody’s grade point average
down. [Whitney, black female senior at Avery High School]

Many black students opted out of advanced classes, but none reported doing so because of concerns about
negative peer reactions to achievement, even when they encountered such reactions.
Each middle school offered a gifted program and accelerated classes for qualified students. We asked
students whether they participated in these courses and programs and whether they had a desire to do so.
Shandra, a black female seventh grade student at Jackson Middle School, gave the following response when
asked if she wanted to be in the gifted program, which is one of the most visible and, as far as students are
concerned, unequivocal signs of superior ability: “Well, not really, because I’m lazy and you have to do more
projects and stuff, but besides the projects, yes.” Although Shandra had not been invited to participate, she was
not opposed to being in the gifted program, so long as it did not entail more work for her. Shandra reported
earning As and Bs, and was enrolled in the seventh grade pre-algebra class, so there was no evidence that she
was averse to academic success.

A Burden of Acting White

Dalton High School’s high-achieving black students contended with more than social isolation. This rural
school with more than 1,700 students was the only school in which we found evidence of a burden of acting
white with respect to achievement. Sociologically, this case is significant because, as Buroway (1991) has
argued, as an exception to the pattern found at the other seven schools, it can provide important theoretical
insight that may improve the theory as a whole.
Both students and school personnel mentioned oppositional attitudes among blacks. Teachers, principals,
and counselors repeatedly traced the underrepresentation of minority students in the school’s advanced courses
to aspects of an oppositional culture among minority students. Some adults noted that it is not “cool for minority
students to be smart,” and that black students are “embarrassed” about their ability. Others maintained that black
students “don’t place a high value on education,” and that males, especially, are “averse to success” because it
constitutes “betraying their brothers.” Thus, to address the problem of minority underrepresentation in advanced
courses, the school sought to ease high-achieving black students’ isolation in the courses and insulate them from
the criticisms of their peers by establishing a club for these students to come together.

Table 26.2 Selected Characteristics of Informants by Race and Gender

NOTE: Data are shown as number (n) with exception indicated. MS = middle school; HS = high school; AP = advanced placement.
a. Data are based on school’s identification of a mix of white and minority students enrolled in different courses.
b. This count does not include students who have ever taken AP.
c. Information on mother’s education is more complete than that on father’s education.

Our two black student informants confirmed the presence of an oppositional culture, and particularly a
burden of acting white, at Dalton High School. Our interviewees, one senior and one junior, were high-
achieving females enrolled in honors and AP courses. Both had been accused of acting white by their black
peers because of their academic behaviors.5 We emphasize these cases to acknowledge that this experience is
real, and as many journalistic accounts attest (see, for example, the New York Times series “How Race Is Lived
in America,” June to July 2000), it can be extremely difficult and painful for some.

Interviewer: Okay, do your friends have any reaction to you being in the AP and honors courses?
Tamela: Oh man, they—a lot of people, well my good friends that are, that are in my honors
 English class, most of ’em, we take almost the same kinda course loads so, I mean, we
support each other. And then I have some other black friends that say that I’m too smart,
I’m trying to act white, or whatever, because I’m in such hard classes. [black female
junior at Dalton High School]

Tamela did not seem upset by these remarks. She continued to hang out with some of the same students who
accused her of acting white. The other student, Alicia (black female senior at Dalton High School), experienced
harsher treatment and reacted more strongly. She recalled being called “white girl” and “Oreo” by fellow blacks
in middle school after she had been placed in an accelerated class with only whites. She described that period as
“hell.” Alicia’s middle-class background, which differed from Tamela’s more modest socioeconomic status,
further distinguished her from the many black students at Dalton High School who lived in nearby housing
projects.6 It also may have contributed to how Alicia’s white peers perceived her. She quoted one white female
as saying, “Alicia, you’re not black—you speak correct English, you take honors courses. You’re not what I
picture as black.” High-achieving black students in other research (Tatum 1997) report similar incidents.
A black counselor at Dalton High School recalled that a few years earlier her daughter “was the only black
on the principal’s list” and often “the only black in the core courses.” At the principal’s request, the counselor
had conducted a survey of minority students and found that many were concerned about social and racial
isolation in advanced courses:

They did not like being in honors courses because often they were the only ones. . . . Also, some of the kids
felt that if they were in these honors classes, that there appears, the black kids look at them as if they were
acting white, not recognizing that you could be smart and black. A lot of white kids looked at them,
basically, “You’re not supposed to be smart and black, so why are you here?”

An important and often overlooked consequence of the underrepresentation experienced by minorities in

advanced classes is the perpetuation among both blacks and whites of stereotypes about black intellectual ability
and the value of education in the black community.
Stark underrepresentation in honors and AP classes also leaves high-achieving black students vulnerable to
being perceived as arrogant by their peers. As Alicia put it, “I’ve had to deal with things from other black
students, black students who see that I am smart; they seem to think that I think I’m better than them.” Her
conscious efforts to avoid “com[ing] off like I think I’m better than other people” were undermined by the
visual disparity of her presence in advanced classes, leaving Alicia feeling frustrated and angry:

I think when you walk by a door and see one or two spots [blacks] in a class, I think that’s when you start
perceiving, “Oh, they must be stuck up, rich preppy people.” The problem comes from society because it is
ingrained in us that blacks must act, speak, dress a certain way and if you deviate from those expected
norms your blackness is questioned. I question it myself. I’m being denounced and rejected by blacks and
that’s ridiculous. . . . I’ve changed so much since ninth grade. I came in here timid because I am black, and I
was the only black person in my honors classes.

For some students, the visual image of racial patterns of academic placement may mean little. For others,
however, it may be a constant reminder of the cultural system of white superiority, prompting ideas that link
whiteness with certain academic behaviors. Thus, the threat posed to black students by such stereotypes can
extend beyond the test-taking situation that Steele (1997) described. Alicia found her most basic self-
understandings called into question:

If you make all As, you’re white. If you’re not coming in here with Cs and Ds and Fs, then something’s
wrong with you. You don’t have a life—that’s what it was. They thought I didn’t do anything else but
study. . . . You are called a betrayer of your race, and then you start questioning your blackness as I did. And
I was like, “Well, what is wrong with me?”
 Although Dalton High School was the only school at which informants explicitly linked academic
achievement to accusations of acting white, one student at Jackson Middle School, located in a suburb of a
county with a relatively large gap in black-white median income, discussed acting white with regard to other,
nonacademic behaviors. This important distinction is clear in the following exchange.

Interviewer: What about different racial groups in this school? Are there, is it integrated, do black and
white students hang out together all the time, or are they more separate? How does that
work?
Marc: Most of the time, but a lot of the black people think that they’re better than the white
people, or vice versa. Or the black people will always pick on the white people about
what they do [inaudible], and if you’re black and you act like you’re white, then they
would hold it against you. The black people would not like you as much. . . . Well if
you’re black and you act like you’re—you do stuff that the white people do, then, then,
like skateboarding and stuff like that, then they say that you’re white and that you, I
don’t know how to really say it, they just say that you’re really white and that you don’t
care about everybody else that’s black. And stuff like that. Like if you surf or if you talk
differently, like “dude” or something like that. ‘Cause sometimes I say that. [black male,
seventh grade at Jackson Middle School]
Interviewer: Okay. So do black students tease you sometimes?
Marc: Sometimes.
Interviewer: Are there other things besides skateboarding or surfing that are labeled as white?
Marc: Mm, just about everything that black people don’t do. Like if it’s not associated with,
like—I’m not talking about with the school—but drugs or shooting or something like
that, then it’s considered black.
Interviewer: What about AG?
Marc: AG is really mixed up. I mean, most of the people in AG that I know of are white. I’m
one of the few black people that are in AG.
Interviewer: Okay. So, does anybody say, “You’re in AG, you’re white, you act white”?
Marc: No.
Interviewer: They don’t associate that, only when you say “dude” and talk about surfing?
Marc: Yeah, stuff like that.

In the schools we studied, a burden of acting white was not pervasive in black peer groups. Black students
sometimes were teased for achievement or for being smart, but that teasing was not usually racialized, and
therefore was no different from the typical teasing (i.e., general oppositionality) other high-achieving students
experience. Moreover, as the following quotations from black and white students illustrate, some of our
informants perceived much of this teasing as harmless, and most downplayed its importance.

Interviewer: What kind of reaction did your friends have about you being in this (IB) program? You
said most of your friends are in it, right?
Barbara: Yeah. But like people that were my friends before I came here and stuff, are like, “Oh,
she’s a smart girl now.” And like, when someone needs help, everyone comes to me and
like, “I know you know how to do this, cause you’re in IB.” And every—a lot of people
joke about it and stuff. [black female sophomore at Banaker High School]
 Interviewer: How do your friends react to your being in this program (honors and AP)?
Lila: They’re like, “Geesh, what’s wrong with you?” [laughs] I don’t know. They make fun of
me a lot for my grade point average. They call me by the number instead of my name.
But, I don’t know, it’s a lot of playful joking. [white female junior at Avery High
School]
Ned: If they know you are in honors or AG, they think you are a genius. People see you in
different ways, mostly it’s a good way, but they also see you as limited in scope, like
someone that does nothing but study all day long. [white male junior at Franklin High
School]
Maggie: There were like five of us in the [gifted] class, and then in my [gifted] math class there
was about ten, it doubled for math, but it was like I felt kind of left out from everybody
else, and people would like, be like “You guys are too smart, y’all smarty-pants.” And it
kind of got better like in the eighth grade because a lot more people came into the AG
program . . . and in high school it’s like more accepted and it’s okay to be in honors, but
in fifth grade it was kind of like a funny thing. [white female junior at Avery High
School]

Clearly, among both whites and blacks, perceptions of high-achieving students are not entirely positive. Nor
is the experience of the white high achiever always positive. Comments such as “What’s wrong with you?”
“Limited in scope,” “kind of a funny thing,” and “felt kind of left out” highlight the negative side of being
perceived as “too smart” and are consistent with other research findings. Thus, contrary to the implications of
the burden of acting white and oppositional peer culture hypotheses—that white students generally have
superior standards for academic achievement and are embedded in peer groups that support and encourage
academic striving—the experiences described by some of our white informants indicate the presence of a much
less achievement-oriented academic culture. Our findings are consistent with those of other studies showing
black and white students differing little in the degree to which they value academic achievement (Cook and
Ludwig 1998; Ferguson 2001).
Hannah, a white female senior at Clearview High School, described a particularly egregious form of ridicule
she experienced from white peers. Explaining that some girls at her school did not like her or her friends
because they were “smart” and played sports, Hannah reported that one girl taunted her by saying, “I used to
have a friend like you who was perfect. She killed herself. . . . It just got to be too much for her; she was number
one in her class too; she played volleyball and everything and she ended up killing herself.” We asked if she
thought a lot of people saw her as “perfect”:

Hannah: No, because I’m wild.

Interviewer: Wild, how?
Hannah: I don’t try to act, it’s like I still want to be [Hannah], I don’t try to be like arrogant and
everything in front of everybody else, like I’ll be the first one to declare, “I’m going to
write on this desk,” or “I’m stupid,” I don’t try that arrogance.

Hannah’s strategy of acting “wild” is similar to tactics described by black students in Fordham and Ogbu’s
(1986) article. Hannah did not say she acted wild specifically to camouflage her achievement, but she
acknowledged that this behavior deflected attention from her achievement and reminded people that she was not
“perfect.”

A Burden of High Achievement Among Whites

Hannah’s narrative uncovers a pattern of deep-seated animosity between higher- and lower-achieving
students in some schools, especially when the former group is perceived to be socially or economically
advantaged. We found the most striking cases of such animosity at Clearview High School and Kilborn Middle
School. Evidence of similar animosity also was present at East High School and Dalton High School. All but
East High School have relatively large percentages of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and are
located in rural areas. We found no animosity toward higher-achieving students at Banaker or Franklin high
schools. At Franklin, school staff emphasized that most students came from similar, modest backgrounds (Table
26.1). One white teacher, when asked to explain why minority students at Franklin were well represented in
advanced courses (Table 26.2), offered the following opinion:

Well, you know, we’re from a very low-wealth county and, uh, it’s not, the wealth is not, the whites don’t
have all the money. It’s just as many poor whites as there are poor blacks or poor Indians. We’re all in the
same boat together. So in some areas it may be a racial, socioeconomic breakdown to it; it’s not here. We
don’t really have an upper class.

At Dalton High School, few white students mentioned animosity between high and low achievers, but that
omission may reflect the fact that all white informants were high achieving and, with the exception of one,
Lexie, all were socioeconomically advantaged (e.g., parents had at least a four-year degree). Lexie, whose
parents had no more than a high school education, had experiences in the advanced classes similar to those
Tamela and Crystal described. Lexie felt alienated from her AP classmates and did not socialize with them,
apparently because, beginning in middle school, the social class differences between them created a boundary.
“I was the rejected alien, the one in the corner,” she told us, and she continued to view her peers as not
“approachable.” The group boundaries drawn between students in middle school carried over to high school.
Even as a senior, Lexie continued to maintain distance from her more privileged peers.7
Socioeconomically disadvantaged whites at Clearview High School told similar tales.8 For example, Ingrid,
whose parents held working-class jobs, explained why she was “not close to” fellow AP students:

We have like, out here we have like the high spots [unclear], I guess you would say, the ones that were well
brought up with the wealthy parents and things like that. And then we have the middle class and their
parents work for what they get, they work hard and everything, but they’re just not as well off, and then we
have like the low class, the ones that have hardly nothing and things like that. I would say, I’m not being
judgmental, not trying to be, but the majority of the smarter kids taking the honors courses are the well-off
kids, because I think a lot of them are pressured into it maybe by their parents. [white female senior at
Clearview High School]

Ingrid noted that “the low class” students in advanced classes sometimes were ridiculed for trying to be like
the high-status “well-off” students.

Interviewer: And would they [lower class students] typically be in honors classes?
Ingrid: Most of them aren’t. Now you have some of them that are really smart and that are
[sounds like imitate] and they get picked on for it because they don’t look as nice as
some of the other ones do.
Interviewer: Who picks on them?
Ingrid: Different people, not necessarily the people actually in the class with them but the other
people saying, “I don’t know why you’re in there, you’re not smart enough, you’re not
like them.”
Interviewer: So they get picked on for being in the honors classes?
Ingrid: I guess for, because other people can look at them like they’re trying to be like them, but
you know you can’t be.
 The unmistakable similarity between this account and the “burden” Fordham and Ogbu described as
peculiar to black students suggests that the composition of advanced courses may encourage the development of
these attitudes and help breed animosity.
The sense that students enrolled in the accelerated classes were arrogant may partly explain why these
students were ridiculed by others, and why being smart might be burdensome in some schools. At Kilborn
Middle School, where nearly half of the student body received free or reduced-priced lunches, and where the
accelerated classes were perceived as dominated by the “rich people,” low-status students seemed to turn
academic striving and smartness on its head, a process of inverted social closure, demeaning what they once
publicly valued. To the extent that students value smartness, its uneven distribution is problematic. Studies
investigating what happens when students are not able to realize the goal of academic success have found that
some students construct subcultures that reject, at least outwardly, the school’s values and assessments (Sennett
and Cobb 1972; Stinchcombe 1964). Subsequently, these students seek ways to earn respect and esteem that do
not depend on the school’s valuation. Our findings show a similar pattern. Some groups of students—in this
case, low achievers, earn respect and esteem at the expense of others—in this case, high achievers.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This study assessed the burden of acting white hypothesis. Our interviews revealed ambivalence toward
achievement among black students at just one of eight secondary schools. Contrary to the burden of acting white
hypothesis, the black students in this study who avoided advanced courses did so for fear of not doing well
academically. Their decision to opt out was motivated by their own concern that they might not be able to
handle the amount or level of work required, and that their grades might suffer. With few exceptions (e.g.,
Spencer et al. 2003), researchers have not considered that black adolescents, like other students, need to feel
competent, and that they work to preserve a positive self-concept.
Racialized ridiculing of high-achieving black students was evident for only 2 of 40 black adolescents, both
of whom attended the same school.9 A similarly designed study with a larger sample of schools, including more
with characteristics similar to Dalton High School’s (e.g., racially mixed, large black-white income and
placement gaps) would likely have shown more evidence of a burden of acting white for black students.
Significantly, however, despite the real pain and frustration allegations of acting white may cause, it did not
deter our informants from enrolling in advanced courses or striving for academic success. Thus, our data
provide little evidence to suggest, as Fordham and Ogbu (1986) claimed, that a burden of acting white is a
“major reason” why black students do poorly in school and a key contributor to the achievement gap.
In constructing the theory of a burden of acting white, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) overlooked important
similarities between the experiences of their informants and those of white students. Indeed, the narratives of
black and white students at the eight schools in our study suggest that a burden of high achievement (either
racialized or class-based oppositionality) may be a common experience in some schools in which high-status
groups are perceived to be privileged in placement and achievement. Our results support Blau’s (2003:54)
assumption that “the racial composition of a school’s body of retained students and low-status students sends a
signal to all students in the school,” because when socioeconomically advantaged students appear to be
overrepresented in advanced courses, we also find a pattern of animosity directed at that group.
We do not have data on the social class composition of courses to substantiate the students’ views that
“rich” students dominated the higher-level courses, but many studies on tracking confirm their perception that
these students have an unfair advantage in course placement (Gamoran 1992; Gamoran and Mare 1989;
Hallinan 1994; Lucas 1999; Oakes 1985). Moreover, given that “situations defined as real are real in their
consequences,” it seems likely that some students may choose lower-level academic classes, in which they can
expect the comfort of being among peers of similar background, rather than advanced courses, in which they
may anticipate feeling socially isolated or conspicuous in their difference. Some students also seem especially
concerned to avoid being perceived as exhibiting the arrogance of privilege.
The charge of acting white directed toward black students striving for academic success involves much
more than opposition to white cultural norms. In a society characterized by patterns of race and class privilege,
the charge of acting white is loaded with the resentment (misdirected) of the less privileged toward the few
individuals among them who receive the coveted rewards bestowed by those in power. Where black students do
possess oppositional attitudes, this orientation is not likely to arise merely from their having been born black.
Rather, oppositional attitudes appear to be connected to everyday experiences of inequality in placement and
achievement. Mickelson and Velasco (2006) came to a similar conclusion in their study of high-achieving black
students. For black adolescents, academic achievement can become yet another characteristic delineating the
boundaries of whiteness—a conspicuous marker similar to “wearing shorts in the winter.”
We found a similar process among low-status whites. Class distinctions provided a way for them to
understand their relative underachievement while maintaining a sense of dignity and respect in the face of
disparate outcomes. For low-income white students, patterns of placement and achievement can become another
indicator of social class, marking the boundary between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Most problematic for
whites, similar to that for blacks who faced a burden of acting white, was the perception that the low-status
student was attempting to assume the characteristics of the “other,” especially an air of superiority or arrogance.
Inconsistencies in research findings related to an oppositional peer culture among black students become
more understandable once the importance of context is recognized. Thus, we speculate that a focus on school
structures rather than culture may produce greater insight and more consistent results. As we found in the
current study, the degree of inequality and how it is perceived by students varies across schools. The
combination of particular factors (e.g., percentage of student body receiving free or reduced-priced lunches and
the gap in black-white median income in the area) appears to affect how students perceive inequality. The
patterns identified in this study suggest that institutional structures may shape how culture is enacted in school
in response to a burden of high achievement among black students, whether it manifests itself in opposition to
white norms or—as is common to most adolescents—as concern about being perceived as arrogant, a “dork,” or
a “nerd.” Students in all racial and ethnic groups confront similar dilemmas of high academic achievement, and
they also tend to use similar strategies of downplaying achievement (Harter 1990; Kinney 1993; Steinberg
1996). Thus, we join Mary Patillo-McCoy (1999:208) in concluding that “radical systemic changes, not the
reorganization of people’s cultural beliefs,” are the solution to oppositional peer cultures in schools. Patterns of
social inequality reproduced and affirmed in tracking exacerbate the well-documented anti-achievement ethos
among America’s youth.
Our study suggests that there are three distinct types of oppositionality to high achievement. The first is a
general oppositionality, in which peer taunts take the form of labels such as “nerd,” “dork,” or “brainiac,” and
may cross racial and class lines. The second type, which is the form we set out to detect and explain in this
study, is racialized oppositionality, in which peer taunts directed at black high achievers by other blacks include
labels such as “Oreo” or the charge of “acting white.” The third type, also found in this study, is class-based
(intraracial) oppositionality, in which peer taunts include “snooty” and charges of persons acting “high and
mighty” or like they are better than others.10 The second type is more likely to be part of the local school culture
of schools in which socioeconomic status differences between blacks and whites are stark and perceived as
corresponding to patterns of placement and achievement. Similarly, the third type of oppositionality is more
likely to be part of the local school culture of schools in which socioeconomic status differences among whites
are stark and perceived as corresponding to patterns of placement and achievement.11 Further research is needed
to further refine and test these hypotheses.
Commonplace notions concerning the burden of acting white have captured the sociological imagination.
Yet, surprisingly, sociologists have not paid enough attention to similarities in the daily experiences of black
and white students in schools. Designing studies that provide greater detail on students’ experiences will allow
researchers to identify the nuances that distinguish a burden of acting white from other more generic problems
of high achievement that confront the average teenager. The empirical foundation underlying the burden of
acting white thesis is fragile at best. Until we recognize that these processes generalize beyond one specific
group, we will continue to go astray in our efforts to understand the black-white achievement gap.

NOTES
 1. We received 866 (47%) completed elementary/middle school surveys and 231 (52%) completed high
school surveys. These mail-in rates are higher than average for school surveys (U.S. Department of
Education 1997).
2. To ensure anonymity, the names of all schools and informants have been changed.
3. Data for 1999-2000 were used to assess the minority presence in rigorous courses in high school and to
select the subsample of schools. The figures for most courses in 2000-2001 were not significantly different.
However, we use the 1999-2000 figures in this report because it takes time for attitudes to form, and the
attitudes we assess in the interviews likely developed from recent rather than current experiences.
4. At Avery High School, the standard courses, which generally do not have grade point average (GPA)
enrollment requirements and have not been weighted, are called “college prep.”
5. We do not know whether Dalton High School’s high-achieving black males encountered the same
problems, but we did observe that some attended a meeting of the school club for high-achieving black
students.
6. According to students’ reports, blacks at Dalton High School were noticeably less well off than whites.
7. Another white informant at Dalton High School indicated that because she was “smart” her friends thought
“I think I’m better than them.” She did not refer to status group distinctions, however, nor did the white
informant at Avery High School who described an almost identical situation.
8. Socioeconomic data by race for the schools were not available, but our interviews with black students at
Clearview High School showed less perception of class differences between blacks and whites than found
at Dalton High School (where we interviewed far fewer black students). Intraracially, however, the
interviews showed more animosity among white students at Clearview tied to a greater perception of class
differences among that group.
9. We found evidence of a burden of acting white in another study we conducted involving 65 high-
achieving black students at 19 high schools. However, it was not widespread, and the school context
mattered. For example, preliminary analyses identified about ten cases in which students reported
encountering racialized oppositionality. All were cases of students attending racially mixed schools, and
almost all the students were isolated from other blacks in advanced classes. Few of these students were in
schools in which an oppositional culture was embedded, however.
10. The accusation of acting as if you are “better than” others usually is linked to charges of acting white as
well. Among blacks, class-based condemnations may also include the label “bourgie.”
11. Our data suggest that school locale (e.g., urban, rural) also may be significant, but it is not clear how or
why. Moreover, other research (including our own and that of Mickelson and Velasco [2006]) shows that a
burden of acting white exists for black students in urban schools. It seems likely that certain combinations
of school factors can create a “perfect storm” effect, producing a burden of acting white for some students.

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27
STRADDLING BOUNDARIES
Identity, Culture, and School
PRUDENCE L. CARTER

R ace, ethnicity, culture, and identity: We can almost guarantee that these four social factors play a role
in the academic well-being of all students—complexly so. Yet verifiable explanations for why and
how they matter continue to elude social science researchers and educators. For most, if not all of us,
our socialization as racial and ethnic beings begins early in life, and much of this socialization occurs during the
compulsory years of schooling, from preschool to high school, and even further during the collegiate years and
beyond. Racial and ethnic identities emerge in the contexts of macrostructural, cultural, and individual-level
forces; they are neither static nor one dimensional; and their meanings, as expressed in schools, neighborhoods,
peer groups, and families, vary across time, space, and region (Dolby 2001; McCarthy 1993; Yon 2000). But
perhaps, more critically, what is relevant in the field of educational research is how ethnic and racial identity
and the concomitant cultural behaviors matter to educational outcomes. This question has been most pressing
when researchers have examined the significantly lower levels of educational achievement of racial and ethnic
minority students, such as African Americans and various ethnic groups that are categorized under the panethnic
label “Latino” (Kao and Thompson 2003).
From academic texts to newspaper articles, scholars and writers have contended with identity-based and
cultural explanations for the observed achievement gap among African American, Latino, and white students
(Datnow and Cooper 1997; Ford and Harris 1992; Jencks and Phillips 1998; Lewin 2000). One of the most
popular cultural explanations that has been offered is the resistance-to-acting-white thesis. With the 1986
publication of their often-cited and well-received article, Fordham and Ogbu (1986) defined the contours of a
continuous debate. Specifically, they discussed how African American students residing in an impoverished
neighborhood in Washington, DC, came to define achievement-oriented behaviors and attitudes as acting white
and were therefore resistant to studying hard and getting good grades. Fordham and Ogbu concluded that many
African American students have come to perceive high academic achievement as the territory of white students,
since whites are believed to be the primary beneficiaries of opportunity in U.S. society. Hence African
American students, they argued, perceive academic excellence as a form of whiteness.
The acting-white thesis exemplifies a certain component of Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory, one of the
most dominant theoretical frameworks in the race, culture, and achievement literature explaining why
“involuntary” or native minority students perform less well in school than do “voluntary” or immigrant minority
students. Briefly, Ogbu (1978, 1988, 1991; see also Fordham and Ogbu 1986; Ogbu and Simons 1998) posited
that the descendents of persons who were involuntarily brought to the United States via slavery, conquest, or
colonization react negatively to continual experiences with subjugation, racism, and discrimination. And as a
form of collective resistance, these descendants reject behaviors that are considered to be the province of the
dominant white middle class. Consequently, they develop a cultural identity that departs from that of middle-
class whites, which these students view as threatening to their minority identity and group solidarity (Ogbu
1991:16, 2004:5).1
The prevalent narratives about native minorities’ school achievement generally tend to differ from those of
some immigrant minority youths, who are more often characterized as assimilative and willing to subscribe to
the cultural codes of academic success (Gibson 1988; Ogbu and Simons 1998; Waters 1999; Zhou and
Bankston 1998). Some researchers, however, have been careful to explode the “model minority” myth and to
note the diversity in educational experiences and ethnic orientations within immigrant minority groups (Lee
1996). For example, segmented assimilation theorists have argued that depending on contextual and social
factors, immigrant minority youths can pursue a mobility trajectory by emulating middle-class white society
(acculturation), availing themselves of resources in a productive ethnic enclave, or undermining their attainment
by adopting the adversarial stance of a downwardly mobile native minority culture (Portes and Zhou 1993).
Nonetheless, the spectrum of cultural orientation and identity, as it pertains to school achievement, is seemingly
much wider and more diverse for immigrant students than for native minority students.
When researchers apply binary markers to ethnic and racial minority students—for example, native minority
versus immigrant minority, oppositional minority versus model minority, acting black versus acting white—
their explanations frequently obscure the heterogeneous cultural and educational experiences of students within
various ethnoracial groups. While psychologists have conceptualized and observed multiple dimensions in the
identities of African Americans (Phinney and Devich-Navarro 1997; Sellers et al. 1998), many sociological
studies have tended to mask the diversity in academic experiences and cultural approaches, especially when
they did not analyze the behavioral variations within these groups.
This article reports on an investigation of the following questions: (1) How do low-income African
American and Latino youths negotiate the boundaries between school and peer-group contexts? (2) Do variable
forms of negotiation exist? (3) If so, what are they, and how do they manifest? In addressing these questions, I
also posit two arguments that directly challenge the acting-white thesis: First, black and Latino students’
academic, cultural, psychological, and social experiences are heterogeneous.2 That is, multiple frames of
ethnoracial identity and cultural orientation exist among African American and Latino students that supplant
either purely assimilative or assimilative versus oppositional stances in society. Relying on a multidimensional
perspective of racial identity, I show how three groups of black and Latino students in a similar economic
position differ in their interpretations of how race and culture affect their day-to-day academic and personal
lives. These students differ in their racial and ethnic ideology and in their cultural orientations. Here, ideology
concerns the individuals’ beliefs, opinions, and attitudes about how they feel group members should act, which
would include students’ perspectives about what it means to act white or act black or “act Spanish”—the phrase
invoked by Latino students in this study (Sellers et al. 1997).3
Some students may filter most of their interactions with whites and others outside their group through the
lens of their racial and ethnic identities, while others may be less apt to invoke race and ethnicity and to view
experiences through other social identities (O’Connor 1999). In an article published after his death, Ogbu
(2004:28) conceded a similar point when he discussed five conceptual categories of black Americans and
claimed that “only one of the five categories . . . among both adults and students is explicitly opposed to
adopting white attitudes, behaviors and speech”; he referred to this group as the resisters.4 This chapter, in
comparison, presents actual empirical evidence of the coexistence of students who share the same social-class
backgrounds but who maintain different racial and ethnic ideologies and school behaviors.
Second, this article returns to the sociological signification of phenomena, such as (resistance to) acting
white, and highlights how student agents respond to the social boundaries that collective identities engender and
that status hierarchies in schools produce. Generally, studies using qualitative methods have focused more on
either confirming or disconfirming that acting white pertains to academic achievement or on providing a list that
enumerates the concept’s various meanings (Bergin and Cooks 2002; Horvat and Lewis 2003; Neal-Barnett
2001; O’Connor 1997; Tyson, Darity, and Castellino 2005). As a result, black and Latino students’ practices
have been detached from their structural, political, and cultural significances or, rather, the interracial and
intraracial group dynamics that are played out for students inside the school and within peer groups. The
analyses presented here interrogate the sociological meaning behind four specific dimensions of (resistance to)
acting white: (1) language and speech codes; (2) racial and ethnic in-group/out-group signifiers centered on
cultural style via dress, music, interaction, and tastes; (3) the meanings of group solidarity symbolized by the
racial composition of students’ friendship and social networks at school; and (4) interracial dynamics about the
superiority of whites and the subordinance of racial and ethnic minority groups. The findings highlight the
complexity of the (resistance to) acting-white phenomenon and shift the focus away from an overly simplistic
equivalence of this phenomenon with the rejection of academic excellence.
Finally, the findings indicate that the students who strike the best academic and social balance are those
whom I refer to as “cultural straddlers.” Straddlers understand the functions of both dominant and nondominant
cultural capital (Carter 2003) and value and embrace skills to participate in multiple cultural environments,
including mainstream society, their school environments, and their respective ethnoracial communities. While
straddlers share cultural practices and expressions with other members of their social groups, they traverse the
boundaries across groups and environments more successfully. The straddler concept illuminates another place
on the spectrum of identity and cultural presentations for African American and other ethnic minority youths
that splinters the acculturative/oppositional binary divide.

METHODS

This study’s findings draw extensively on a mixed-methods approach, both survey and interview data collected
from a sample of 68 low-income, native-born African American and Latino male and female youths, ranging in
age from 13 to 20. The 26 Latinos (38 percent of the 68 participants) were primarily first- and second-
generation Puerto Rican and Dominican youths, while the ancestral roots of the 42 African Americans (62
percent of the participants) stretched mainly from the South to New York. Slightly more than half the
participants (56%) were female, and 69% were younger than age 18. The participants, along with other
members of their families, were participants in a larger quasi-experimental longitudinal and separately funded
study of 317 low-income African American and Latino families from different neighborhoods in Yonkers, New
York. I contacted and sampled all the youths who had participated in the larger study and who lived in one of
two large low-income housing complexes that were located in two different areas of the city—one, a high-
minority and high-poverty area, and the other, a predominantly white and middle-income area.5 All the
participants’ families were poor and qualified for government-subsidized housing. At least 90 percent of them
were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children from 1994 to 1998. Over half lived in homes with an
annual household income of less than $10,000, and 71 percent lived in single female-headed households.
To ascertain the participants’ racial or ethnic ideology, I asked each one the following questions: (1) In your
family, are there expectations related to your [racial or ethnic] background, to how you should act? (2) What
about among your friends? (3) How do you feel about these rules? What are your feelings about the ways you’re
“supposed” to behave as a [member of racial or ethnic group]? (4) What are your feelings about how you’re
“supposed” to behave as a (racial/ethnic identity)? (5) How much say or power do you think black [Spanish or
Latino] people have in American life and politics? (6) Why do you say that? and (7) For you personally, do you
think that your chances in life depend more on what happens to black [Spanish or Latino] people as a group, or
does it depend more on what you yourself do?
Each student was coded as a cultural mainstreamer, a cultural straddler, or a noncompliant believer on the
basis of how he or she responded to these questions, specifically how the student felt in-group members should
behave regarding language, dress, friendships, political attitudes, and so forth. Although they may have
commented on and recognized the degree of social inequality in U.S. society, those who maintained an
assimilationist perspective on how to incorporate themselves in school and beyond were coded as cultural
mainstreamers; 5 of the 68 students fell into this category. Those who openly criticized systemic inequalities
and described how they strategically moved between the mainstream worlds of school and work and their peers
drawing on multiple cultural codes were characterized as cultural straddlers; 21 students met these criteria.
Finally, those who criticized systemic inequalities and made explicit comments about maintaining their own
specific ethnoracial or cultural styles and lambasted other same-race or co-ethnic peers for choosing to emulate
whites were coded as noncompliant believers; 38 students fell into this category.
In terms of academic achievement, I divided the students into two categories on the basis of their self-
reported GPAs. Of the 49 students who were still in secondary school (either junior high school or high school),
approximately 20 percent were categorized as high achieving; these students had achieved at least one standard
deviation above the GPA of the entire sample. The remaining students were categorized as “lower” achievers. I
use lower instead of low to capture the idea that this group performed less well than the high achievers, but not
at the expense of characterizing the average students (included in this group) as low achievers.
BELIEFS ABOUT EDUCATION AND ACHIEVEMENT

As in prior studies (Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey 1998; Cook and Ludwig 1997; Solorzano 1992), the
findings confirm that this group of low-income black and Latino youths maintained high aspirations and
subscribed to the dominant ideology about the value of education. Using Mickelson’s 7-item scale of abstract
educational attitudes (or dominant achievement ideology), ranging from a low of 1 (very strong pessimism) to a
high of 5 (very strong optimism), I found a mean linear scale score of 4.3, which supports the conclusion that
the participants maintained the belief that education is critical to social mobility. That is, 97 percent of the
students agreed that high achievement in school pays off in the future for young black and Hispanic youths, and
94 percent believed that education is a practical means to success. Furthermore, being poor and African
American or Latino did not limit the possibilities of their career choices, although their actual breadth and
knowledge of career choices were limited. Although they hailed from families with extremely limited means, 84
percent of these youths wanted to attend college or a higher level of school, and 60 percent of them aspired to
hold professional and managerial jobs, with physician, lawyer, and businessperson the top three career
preferences (see Table 27.1).
How did the students compare across the three racial ideological groups? Table 27.2 shows no significant
statistical differences among the three groups in their normative beliefs about education. In general, all the
students upheld the normative belief that education is a means to social and economic mobility. However, the
cultural mainstreamers and cultural straddlers were significantly more optimistic than were the noncompliant
believers about the actual impact of education, given their social circumstances—namely, that once they were
educated, discrimination would not impede their full economic attainment. As Table 27.2 reveals, in terms of
concrete attitudes, the cultural mainstreamers and straddlers had average scores of 3.36 and 3.10, respectively,
and, as I predicted, the noncompliant believers were the most pessimistic, with a score of 2.76. In addition, the
cultural straddlers had the smallest gap between their views about education’s ideals and their views about how
education influences access to opportunity, given one’s race, ethnicity, and class-background. In other words,
their concrete and abstract attitudes deviated, on average, by fewer points than did those of the cultural
mainstreamers and the noncompliant believers, which implies that the cultural straddlers’ beliefs converged
more in terms of their perceptions of the ideal and real effects of education.

Table 27.1 School Enrollment, Performance, and Aspirations (N = 68)

NOTES: a. Based only on those who were currently enrolled in middle and high school (N = 49).
b. Based on the 1980 National Opinion Research Council occupational codes.

Furthermore, these concrete-attitude scores correspond significantly to the mean GPAs provided by the
students who were in middle or high school at the time of the interviews. Table 27.2 shows that the cultural
mainstreamers had GPAs of about 90 (out of a possible 100), while the cultural straddlers had GPAs of 80, and
the noncompliant believers had GPAs of 73.
So what does all this mean? As in Mickelson’s (1990) study, I found a positive association between the
students’ concrete attitudes and their GPAs. In addition, the students’ scores on the concrete scale support the
finding that racial and ethnic minority students do not fully subscribe to the myth that schooling and education
are the great equalizers. Despite their rankings, all three groups had mixed feelings about the benefits of
education, especially for people from racial and ethnic minorities. It should come as no surprise that these
students doubted that educational systems and job markets work for them. In fact, their responses resonate with
researchers’ findings that even middle- and upper-middle-class African Americans, in spite of their economic
successes, maintain critical political views of the opportunity structure in U.S. society because of experiences
with racial discrimination and prejudice (Collins 1989; Feagin 1991; Hochschild 1995). But their critical views
do not deter them from their desire for upward mobility.

Table 27.2 Mean Abstract and Concrete Educational Attitudes and GPAs, by Racial
Ideological Orientation (1 = very strong pessimism to 5 = very strong
optimism)
NOTES: a. GPAs are based only on the number of those in secondary school at the time of the interviews.
b. Significant mean differences among all three groups (p =.00).
c. Marginally significant mean group differences between the noncompliant believers and the other two groups—p <.10.
d. Significant mean group differences between the noncompliant believers and the other two groups.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF (RESISTANCE TO) ACTING WHITE

In the analyses, I counted 51 explicit references to the phenomenon of (resistance to) acting white across 37
interviews. Either these references arose spontaneously, or the students explained in detail when I probed after
their implicit references to it. Generally, all three groups agreed on what acting white meant, but they differed in
how they responded to or embraced these behaviors. Four main dimensions of acting white emerged: (1)
collective and individual signifiers in language and speech codes; (2) racial and ethnic in-group/out-group
signifiers centered on cultural style via dress, music, interaction, and tastes; (3) the meanings of group solidarity
symbolized by the racial composition of students’ friendship and social networks at school; and (4) interracial
power dynamics of superiority and subordination.

Samurai: Yeah. Like I might be talking on the phone, and he might be like, “Oh you see the new
Jordans out. Oh they is butters, they is phat.” A white person ain’t gonna say that. Fine.
[He mimics what he perceives as “white talk.”] “Did you see the new Charles
Barkley’s? They’re nice; I really like them. My mother says that she’s gonna buy them
for me on Wednesday.” It’s like that. It’s not the proper English that they use; it’s
just . . . they’re not hip to everything. It goes all back to the rap and the neighborhood
that you in. It’s like that. So [they’re] not used to being all around, “Oh that’s phat.”
Like different words come out like every year that person, every week different words
come out.
Prudence: Does acting white and acting black go beyond language? Is there anything else that
makes a person act black or white other than how they speak?
Samurai: No.
Prudence: So it’s not about any other kind of behavior. What you want to do in life?
Samurai: No, definitely not what you want to do in life.
 Samurai, a noncompliant believer who did not link whiteness to achievement and aspirations, chose to speak
what he dubbed as “black talk.” From my interactions with him, it was clear, however, that he was aware of the
distinctions between how he spoke and the principles of Standard English, as was evident by the sudden change
of subject-verb agreement in his elaboration of these differences. When either a same-race or co-ethnic peer
avoided using an established local lexicon, which, according to Samurai, could include a compilation of easily
made-up and variable words and phrases that defied the grammatical structures of Standard English, and spoke
only in Standard English in a certain style that the students associated with either whites or white youth culture,
they were acting white.
Samurai’s references to peers’ dress styles and tastes, another site of adolescent “coolness” (Danesi 1994)
and ethnoracial and cultural boundary making, characterize the second most frequent reference to acting white
(mentioned 31 percent of the time). Having forged a distinction among their white peers, other racial and ethnic
groups, and themselves, these students dressed in a variety of clothing fashions or listened to different genres of
music, in addition to creating their own speech codes, to preserve their sense of cultural uniqueness. Again, I
found that if a student crossed the racial or ethnic peer group’s dress boundary, then he or she, like Rosaria, an
18-year-old Dominican American cultural mainstreamer, was teased for acting white:

Rosaria: Like I like to dress preppy, with the khakis, the crisp shirt, and a scarf around my neck.
The kids in my class are all like: “You dress so preppy. Why are you so preppy?”
Prudence: How do they want you to dress?
Rosaria: I guess like they do.
Prudence: What’s that, the hip-hop style?
Rosaria: Yeah, with the baggy pants and stuff.
Prudence: How do they want you to talk?
Rosaria: That’s another thing. Like they say you talk . . . you talk . . . cause I speak intelligently,
they want to say that I talk white. I speak intelligently. It’s not Spanish, it’s not black,
it’s not white. No one has claim on who can talk intelligently. My friend is always
saying that to me.
Prudence: Well, who are the kids who tend to have tastes in clothes and music more like you?
Rosaria: That’s a hard question that I don’t want to answer. It makes me uncomfortable.
Prudence: Why? Because it makes you . . .
Rosaria: . . . seem like I really am white. Because it would fit right in with what my friend wants
to say. I just like these things, and I don’t think that my friend is right.

Rosaria’s last comments proved to be a poignant moment as I gathered from her tone and demeanor that she
wanted to answer the question about which students tended to have tastes in clothes and music like hers. Yet,
she felt a need to preface her comments about why the question would make her feel uncomfortable because she
feared how others and I would perceive them. A self-conscious Rosaria felt that her answer might confirm her
Dominican and black friends’ beliefs about her acting white. Although she liked to dress preppy and listened to
pop singer Michael Bolton, she felt strongly that she had the liberty as a Dominican American to maintain these
tastes as much as some of her co-ethnic friends valued hip-hop music and clothing styles. Students like Rosaria,
who held an ascribed minority identity but who did not conform to their co-ethnic peers’ cultural styles,
threatened the already-tenuous reins that their Dominican and black peers held over this youthful domain of
status and identity. Consequently, Rosaria risked being charged that she acted white.
Yet Rosaria wanted to avoid being perceived as less ethnic than her peers. Thus, she challenged the racial
and ethnic dress code, just as Adrienne challenged the coding of the usage of Standard English. Speaking
Standard English and dressing in a preppy style had to be devoid of any racial and ethnic proprietorship. That
way, if either Adrienne or Rosaria chose to embrace Standard English, not ethnic youth slang, or even certain
styles of dress, in their minds they would still be black and Latina (or “Spanish”), respectively. This strategy
resembles the “racelessness” described by Fordham’s (1988) interviewees, who tended to disassociate
themselves from their ethnic group. However, unlike Fordham’s interviewees, Adrienne and Rosaria identified
strongly as African American and Dominican, respectively, and asserted their pride in their heritages, as was
evident in their “very proud” responses to the survey questions about their racial and ethnic heritages.
While cultural mainstreamers like Rosaria confronted the boundaries of alleged “black,” “Spanish” and
“white”6 cultural practices through their peers’ evaluations of speech and dress styles, the noncompliant
believers perceived that they faced the evaluations of teachers, the cultural gatekeepers of school, who policed
the boundaries of either appropriate or respectable dress. One student who did not share Rosaria’s more preppy
and standard tastes explicitly discussed his thoughts about how a teacher perceived him as a drug dealer because
of his “hip-hop” or “black” dress style:

Alberto: Toward the end of the year [the teacher] asked me . . . [s]o he would characterize me
because the watch and the clothing that I wore once. He was like that he knew what I
did. And I asked him what that was. And he was like that [he] knew . . . and whatever it
is that I do leads nowhere in life—that all it does is just catch me a death. He didn’t
actually say it, but he just gave hints in what he was getting at.
Prudence: So he thought that you were a drug dealer?
Alberto: Yeah.
Prudence: How did you feel about that?
Alberto: Of course, you get insulted.
Prudence: Did you say something back to him?
Alberto: No. I paid no mind to him. But deep down inside, you feel insulted him saying that when
you actually work hard and try to succeed. And you try to show something for it that
they stereotype you as thinking, or whatever he got. He got it as just being another drug
dealer . . . and not even thinking that he worked for it or that he worked hard for it.

Alberto, aged 17, was a noncompliant believer, yet the product of a Dominican family with two high-
achieving sisters, one of whom was a college graduate and the other, Alma (whom I introduce later), was
enrolled in a local college and aspired to attend Syracuse University. Yet, he grappled with the idea that his
teacher perceived him as a participant in illegal activities. Alberto dressed like a typical urban youth with a taste
for hip-hop music and its attendant dress styles: long gold chains, baggy pants, and a baseball cap cocked to the
side. In comparison, John, a 13-year-old African American cultural straddler, a high achiever and a popular
school athlete, said that he felt the pressure to negotiate his peers’ expectations about his dress, his friendships,
and his schooling. As a cultural straddler, John had found a way to maintain his popularity by keeping up with
the styles of his black peers, in addition to hanging out with students at school who were perceived to be nerdy
and not particularly sociable.7

John: You know, being who I am [my schoolmates] expect me to wear name-brand
stuff . . . hang with such and such people like, you know, they say, like they don’t want
you to hang with the low-profile people.
Prudence: Who are the low-profile people?
John: The kids that usually do all their schoolwork, and they don’t really go anywhere after
school, you know, they just go home and do their homework and stay in the house.
 In this section, I have described the two most common references to acting white or to acting black or
Spanish that the participants used. These findings confirm what other researchers have documented (Bergin and
Cooks 2002; Neal-Barnett 2001), namely, that students explicitly discuss the idea of (resistance to) acting white
in terms of linguistic and dress styles. The findings also show that the application of this idea transcends a
student’s achievement level—that is, whether the student is a high achiever or a low achiever. In addition, the
findings highlight the social significance of the processes of (resistance to) acting white, how students create in-
group/out-group stylistic boundaries to maintain ethnospecific identities. Students’ respect for the value of
education is not at stake, however. Rather, what is at stake is how students use the symbols and meanings they
attach to different racial, ethnic, and cultural identities as measures of inclusion and exclusion. In the next
section, extrapolating from the students’ comments, I discuss how the institutional practice of tracking fueled
the dynamics of inclusion, exclusion, and boundary making as the students evaluated the racial and ethnic
makeup of their peers’ social networks at school. Consequently, students in high tracks who had primarily white
friends were viewed as acting white.

PEER TIES AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF TRACKING

A third set of findings reveal how the students used acting white to describe co-ethnics whose primary social
interaction at school was with whites. Twelve percent of the references to acting white referred to primary social
interactions with whites. Moreover, strong, primary peer ties with white students in school are likely to allow
more exposure to cultural attributes described as acting white and thus suggest reasons why minority high
achievers could be more likely described as acting white.
In multiracial schools, few African American and Latino students are placed in higher ability-grouped
classes (Hallinan and Sorensen 1983; Oakes 1985). If white students occupy the top of the educational
achievement hierarchy in racially integrated schools, then numerous African American and Latino students may
perceive that section as the “white” niche and may even want to avoid it. As a result, the token few who are
given the opportunity to enroll in these classes may have the reservations that 13-year-old Jeremy, one of the
cultural straddlers, had. Jeremy dreaded entering the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program, which included
advanced courses that may be eligible for college credit, because his mostly black friends would be attending
the “regular” high school. Although he protested, his mother insisted that he attend the school with the IB
program the following year.
In their predominantly white, high-track classrooms, the highest achievers are more likely to have contact
with the styles and behaviors that were perceived as white (dress styles, musical tastes, linguistic forms, and
types of social interaction), since students tend to share and transmit various cultural attributes through their
associations with one another. Alma, a college sophomore at Manhattan College, contrasted her and her brother
Alberto’s school experiences. Alma was both a high achiever and a cultural straddler, while Alberto was an
average high school student and a noncompliant believer. Alma explained: “I think that it [the difference] had to
do with what classes . . . most of my classes in high school were honors classes, and there was a different crowd
there than with those kids who were in more comprehensive classes.”
Alma and the other high achievers in the study were significantly more likely to mention that whites were
part of their social network. A much higher proportion of the high achievers (55 percent) than of the lower
achievers (18 percent) responded that their classes were comprised of either “almost all” or “very many” white
students. The lower achievers were more than twice as likely as the high achievers to report that the majority of
the students in their classes were black and Latino (see Figure 27.1). Moreover, the high achievers mentioned
more whites as friends than did the lower achievers, probably because of the composition of their classrooms
and the ties they made within them. A cultural straddler who had both Dominican and white friends, Alma
admitted that she had to negotiate between them in terms of their expectations of her self-presentation:

Alma: I think that my Hispanic friends always want me to speak Spanish and like be proud. My
white friends, if they find out that I’m Hispanic, they go “Oh, you’re Hispanic. You
 don’t act like it.” And I’m like “Oh, how should we act?”
Prudence: What do they say?
Alma: They give me the same stereotypes like “Do you know how to dance?” I’m like but do
all Dominicans [know how to dance]?

Alma and several of the other high achievers in the study told me that they generally were either the only or
one of a few students of color in their classes. And although Alma admitted that she maintained friendships with
non-Hispanic white and Dominican students who were not in her classes, if she had maintained friendships with
mainly white students, she would likely be characterized as acting white.8 Eighteen-year-old Maxwell, a
noncompliant believer, would agree. While discussing racial and ethnic relations in schools with me, Maxwell
was apt to sanction peers who refused to hang with their same-race or co-ethnic peers in school:

Prudence: Now do any black students try to behave like the white students?
Maxwell: Umhmm [affirmative]. There are some “white boys.” They don’t want to be with no
black kids. They rather hang with some Indians or white boys or Puerto Ricans, kids
like that.

Without hesitation, Maxwell explicitly labeled peers who chose not to interact primarily with other black
youths as “white boys,” when I questioned him about black students who emulated whites. Prior research has
shown that epithets, such as “whitewashed,” have been used to express disapproval of members who appear to
have rejected an affiliation with their respective racial or ethnic communities (Benjamin 1991; Landry 1987;
Neckerman, Marchena, and Powell 1998). Showing his allegiance to same-race friendships, Maxwell was also
critical of his black classmates who chose to socialize primarily with other racial or ethnic groups, indicating
that he thought it was essential for his black peers to maintain an association with other black youths.

SMART STATUS AND “LOOKING DOWN”

The last set of findings appear to articulate further Maxwell’s beliefs about racial loyalty and affiliation and
reveal how students linked other aspects of blacks’ and Latinos’ comparatively lower status than whites in a
racially polarized society with meanings of acting white. Approximately 1 in 10 of the students’ evocations of
the acting-white label dealt with their beliefs and perceptions of when the boundaries of ethnic solidarity were
being transgressed, specifically when they felt that co-ethnics acted in ways that either disrespected or
denigrated other members of their ethnic or racial group. Some students believed that when co-ethnic or same-
race peers touted their smartness at the expense of another or put on “airs,” then those students believed that
they were better than other students. In these moments, putting on airs or acting in a superior manner reeked of
the same dynamics of racial dominance that these students encountered, and, consequently, they were likely to
describe students who behaved this way as acting white. I found that the noncompliant believers were the most
sensitive to these dynamics. As Monique, a 13-year-old noncompliant believer, said: “People don’t really care
[if you are smart].” For Monique, being smart was valued. If students teased smart students in school, however,
according to 16-year-old Raul Juarez, another noncompliant believer, they did so because they felt that the
smart students “were conceited, that they didn’t want to do nothing for nobody.”
A cultural straddler, 15-year-old Valerie, who was one of the highest achievers in the study and who was
enrolled in the gifted program, navigated between the cultural politics of race and her peers at school
differently. On the one hand, Valerie shared similar ideas about the meanings of acting white as the other
participants across all three groups. On the other hand, in responding to the issue of putting on airs, Valerie
attempted to distinguish between behaving naturally and authentically and merely “acting” instrumentally to
achieve a popular or higher status: “There are a lot of [black] people who have a lot of white friends who see
nothing wrong with it. If you don’t try to act like what you are not, if this is the way that you naturally are, then
there is no problem with it. But if you are just acting, then it is no good.” In the meantime, Valerie refused to
embrace any behaviors that would denigrate her race: “Don’t do nothing that would degrade you, and don’t do
anything that would make people think less of your race, even when they already think less of it.” Valerie
moved back and forth between the cultural worlds of her mostly white classmates in the gifted program and her
mostly black friends, all of whom were enrolled elsewhere in less rigorous high school courses, more fluidly.
Unlike some of the cultural mainstreamers in the study, however, she never alluded to any instances of being
described as acting white. She did not dismiss her co-ethnic peers’ cultural forms, nor did she brand them as
ignorant, unlike Adrienne, the cultural mainstreamer introduced earlier. Like John, Valerie negotiated between
her peers and her work: “I hang out with them [her friends]. I talk to them and conversate [sic]. If I didn’t like
[what they were doing] or I thought that it was a bad idea, I would tell them, ‘No, I’ll see you later.’ That’s all
right. And they understand.”
Within marginalized communities, distancing oneself from the racial group has historically played itself out
along class lines. Middle-class African Americans—a group that has burgeoned since the advent of the civil
rights era—have been chided for distancing themselves from their lower-income co-ethnics (Benjamin 1991;
Landry 1987). Some writers have suggested that in poor urban schools and neighborhoods, this social and
economic mobility has come to be defined as inconsistent with an “authentic” black identity (Fordham 1988).
However, as the analyses of the findings of this within-class study have shown, the issue of distancing is not just
a class phenomenon. “Groupness” for these students who had inherited a legacy of subordinate social and
economic statuses also engendered strands of “fictive kinship” (see Fordham 1988). Peers who dared to
desecrate these fictive kinship lines by looking down on co-ethnic peers who did not embrace or have the
dominant cultural markers of academic success, competence, and strong aptitude were equated with the racial
group in U.S. society that has historically appeared to wield power in inequitable ways. In other words, they
were acting white.

Figure 27.1 Students’ Reports of Classroom Racial/Ethnic Composition

NOTE: These data are based on perceptual questions that asked students to report on whether certain racial or ethnic groups comprised
either “almost all” or “very many” of their classmates. The reader will note that for the low achievers, the percentages do not sum to
100, which indicates some overlap in their perceptions of black and Latino students in the classroom. By chance, the percentages total
100 for the high achievers. The main intent of this figure is to show the contrasting differences in reports (which most likely
correspond to the actual percentages) between the two achievement groups. The light shade at the bottom of the bars represents reports
of white students in class; darker shades represent black and Latino students.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The dimensions of acting white discussed in this article have some connection to how this select group of low-
income black and Latino students approached school and one another. The findings presented here offer four
key insights. The first insight is that black and Latino students who share similar socioeconomic backgrounds
vary in their approaches to the (resistance to) acting white phenomenon. The results suggest that defining the
avoidance of acting white as an antischool stance and as a central feature of specific minority cultures masks the
diversity of ideological and cultural perspectives within these groups.
Those who appeared to traverse best the social boundaries between their ethnic peer cultures and their
school environments were the cultural straddlers—students who demonstrated multiple cultural competences
and deployed varied cultural tools and resources to strike a more effective balance among the various cultural
spheres in which they participated. Rather than succumb to the acculturative/oppositional culture divide,
straddlers navigated between dominant and nondominant communities, choosing to be intercultural (for a
review of this concept, see Sussman 2000) and accepting and seeking facility with multiple cultural repertoires.
Yet as other researchers have shown, the continuum of culture and identity is not necessarily linear or bipolar.
Phinney and Devich-Navarro (1997), for example, offered a more complex, multidimensional understanding of
identity, suggesting that variation exists even among those who have bicultural identities. That is, biculturalism
is not just a fixed midway point on the identity spectrum between sole identification with one’s ethnic culture or
with the larger society. Some students can move back and forth among different cultural environments,
strategically alternating and turning cultural codes on and off, while others appear to be more “blended” and
identify with their multiple social identities simultaneously.
The second insight is that students who are labeled as acting white vary in achievement levels, ranging from
low achievers to high achievers. Of the four participants who declared they had been labeled as acting white,
two were either average- or lower-achieving students, and the other two were high achievers. Overall, the black
and Latino participants subscribed to the dominant achievement ideology, which supports the findings of other
studies that black youths have more optimistic attitudes than do white students (Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey
1998; Portes and Wilson 1976; Solorzano 1992). Contrary to the view that black and Latino students perceive
high achievement as acting white and thus reject schooling, the findings suggest that resistance to acting white
is mainly about the assertion of particularistic cultural styles that are not perceived to be incongruous with
achievement and mobility.
The third insight is that students’ contention with acting white has broader sociological meanings than the
ones that are generally ascribed to it in the literature on the sociology of education. For those in this study,
resistance to acting white connotes more than anything else their refusal to adhere to the cultural default setting
in U.S. society that is seen as normative or “natural”—white American middle-class tastes for speech and
interaction codes, dress and physical appearance, music, and other art forms. Moreover, the label “acting white”
also signifies group members’ proclivity to associate mainly with students from outside their ascribed racial or
ethnic group. Some of these behaviors included these members’ exclusive association with whites. The
participants also challenged co-racial or ethnic members who behaved in ways that suggested they were
“looking down upon” another member or thinking that they were better.” That is, acting white signified a
refusal to adhere to social actions that purportedly derogate these students’ own racial and ethnic groups.
The final insight is related to the question of what connection these descriptive meanings have to schooling
and inequality. The data indicate that high-achieving minority students may be more likely to be exposed to
styles that are deemed white. They suggest that if a correlation between high achievement and accusations of
acting white exists, it may be mediated by students’ placements in school and these placements’ influences on
the racial and ethnic composition of students’ friendship networks (Moody 2002). For instance, Tyson et al.
(2005) found that when black students are disproportionately underrepresented in high-track classes, peers
outside these classes are more likely to accuse their co-ethnic peers of acting white, but when black students are
proportionately represented across the tracks in schools, evidence of accusations of acting white to high-
achieving students is not found. Using the Adolescent Health data, economists have shown that the popularity of
black students with GPAs of 3.5 or higher (out of 4.0) in all-black high schools does not decrease among co-
ethnic peers, as it does among the same achievers in predominantly white schools (Fryer and Torelli 2005.)
These studies have also confirmed that resistance to acting white is not really a core ethnoracial feature but,
rather, an indication of something about race and group dynamics among black, Latino, and white students in
different school contexts. Racially integrated schools may structure peer associations in the classroom through
ability grouping or tracking that places high-achieving African American and Latino students mainly in contact
with white students. This type of grouping likely facilitates the idea that some students of color disassociate
themselves from others, since they may maintain peer ties with other racial or ethnic groups and thus tastes and
preferences that are different from those that are used to mark in-group membership. In short, peers may
perceive their classmates who are situated in white-dominant settings where different cultural styles and tastes
prevail as acting white.
Since the results of this study are based on a small sample of low-income students, more research is needed
before generalizations can be made. Further research could show how the results may vary if the study included
a mixed-class sample of black and Latino youths. Although reports have shown that middle-class minority
youths invoke the notion of acting white (Belluck 1999; Kaufman 1996), these youths may either emphasize
different social factors or have significantly greater access to resources that would help them more effectively
negotiate their cultural styles. To facilitate a more fine-tuned understanding of how race, ethnicity, and class
determine these meaning systems about acting black, Spanish, white, or even other racial and ethnic groups,
larger studies could also include more variation by race, ethnicity, and region. Such studies could highlight the
extent to which these meaning systems both converge and diverge between classes and across racial/ethnic
group classification in different parts of the country. Some findings from this study suggest that some white
youths are described as acting black or acting Spanish. How do these white youths negotiate their school, peer,
and home spaces both similarly and differently from their African American and Latino peers? Do they
categorize themselves as such? (cf. Perry 2002)
This article aims to encourage researchers to reconceptualize how resistance to acting white is argued to be
associated with academic and mobility outcomes for black and Latino youths. The prevalent articulation of
resistance to acting white in various bodies of social science literature is a value system that deters the social,
economic, and political progress of many poor African Americans and Latinos. Such a view implies that to
embrace acting white means to be success oriented, while to resist acting white signifies a rejection of
achievement-oriented behaviors. As is evident from the findings presented here, that claim cannot be made
unequivocally. Nonetheless, several of the cultural styles and preferences that have been described as acting
white may underwrite dominant forms of cultural capital, such as the use of Standard English and styles of
dress. Studies have shown that the impact of certain cultural tool kits extends beyond the school and is
connected to mobility in the workplace (Kirschenman and Neckerman 1991; Moss and Tilly 1996). Thus,
success in both school and the labor market may depend on the degree to which these youths can primarily
embrace some of the styles that they label as acting white, especially in relation to language and interactions
with whites.
Invariably, it is a matter of individual choice whether to listen to soft rock, dress in hip-hop style, speak
Standard English, or maintain certain peer associations. We know that different students’ abilities to deploy and
use certain cultural styles can determine how they become classified when social boundaries exist among
groups—that is, an “us” versus “them” phenomenon. Yet, when privileged and socially powerful groups define
and circumscribe what is appropriate for success and achievement, the choices that some students in this study
made, especially the noncompliant believers, will have unintended consequences. For socially marginalized
students, success in and attachment to school have “never been simply a matter of learning and competently
performing technical skills; rather, and more fundamentally, [they have] been a matter of learning how to
decode the system” (Stanton-Salazar 1997:13). The system encompasses the school’s cultural environment,
which engenders an allocation of resources, including prestige, social standing, and evaluations that are based
on the degree to which students possess dominant cultural capital (Bourdieu 1977; Farkas et al. 1990; Lareau
2003; Lewis 2003). Rather than take an either-or approach, cultural straddlers, compared to noncompliant
believers and cultural mainstreamers, broker the boundaries among multiple cultural environments, instead of
choosing one set of cultural codes over another. One implication is that schools that implement practices that
promote interculturalism may yield better academic and social results among their minority students than those
that do not. The challenge will be to create school societies in which educators, parents, and students value and
work to incorporate effective methods for developing cultural expansion among all the principle stakeholders.

NOTES

1. Classic works in the field, meanwhile, have revealed that the oppositional culture phenomenon is not a
specific ethnoracial one, since white poor and working-class boys have been found to have attitudes that
are contrary to those of the mainstream and low academic achievement (Gans 1962; MacLeod 1995; Willis
1981).
2. Throughout the text, I use black and African American interchangeably. Racial terms comprise numerous
ethnic groups, however. All the black students in this study, with the exception of one, are African
American. The youths of Hispanic heritage in the study varied in their racial identification as black, white,
or no race at all. I use the term Latino to refer to the group of students whose parents immigrated to the
United States from countries in Central and Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean.
3. In the academic literature, the terms Hispanic and Latino are generally used to refer to all people in the
United States whose ancestry is predominantly from one or more Spanish-speaking countries. However,
the Dominican and Puerto Rican American participants in my study referred to their ethnic groups under
the rubric Spanish—referring to the one obvious commonality they share, language.
4. Ogbu’s four other categories of blacks included the assimilationists, the accommodators without
assimilation, the ambivalents, and the encapsulated.
5. Although the original study from which I selected my participants examined neighborhood differences in
the attainment of low-income families, a comparison of these youths by neighborhoods is not my intent
here.
6. Generally, I found that almost all the participants were more likely to describe certain high-achieving
students as either “low-profile” or nerdy, rather than as acting white, when they believed that these peers
focused on their academic achievement at the expense of not having a social life (Kinney 1993). Also, they
were primarily ridiculed for either having low levels of social skills, being unpopular or not dressing in the
faddish clothing styles.
7. According to the participants, the converse was possible, too. White students could emulate black and
Spanish cultural styles and practices that were more prevalent in a minority-dominant high school. During
my interviews and field observations, it was not uncommon to hear students talk about white peers who
tried to act black or Spanish.

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SOURCE: Prudence L. Carter, “Straddling Boundaries: Identity, Culture, and School.” Sociology of Education,
Vol. 79, No. 4 (Oct., 2006), pp. 304–328. Reprinted with permission from the American Sociological
Association and the author.
28
DIGITAL DIVIDE
Navigating the Digital Edge
S. CRAIG WATKINS

INTRODUCTION: FROM DIGITAL DIVIDES TO PARTICIPATION GAPS

In the United States many of the issues related to technology, equity, and diversity remain viable. However, by
the close of the first decade of the new millennium the contours of the digital divide had shifted in noticeable
ways. Much of the early reporting on the digital divide focused on household access to computers and the
Internet (U.S. Department of Commerce 1995). Since 2000 the media environment of black and Latino youth,
like that of young people in general, has evolved as a result of social, economic, cultural, and technological
change. In its first national study of young people’s media environment, the Kaiser Family Foundation (Roberts
et al. 1999) found that white youth were significantly more likely than black or Latino youth to live in
households that owned computers with Internet access. Among youth 8–18 years old, 57% of white youth, 34%
of black youth, and 25% of Latino youth lived in homes with Internet access. Consequently, black and Latino
youth were less likely than their white counterparts to experience computer-mediated forms of communication,
play, and learning from home. A decade later, the Kaiser Family Foundation (Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts
2010) revealed a dramatically different media ecology in the making.
The sharp rise in daily media exposure among young people in general and specifically among black and
Latino youth provides evidence of a youth culture and daily life that is saturated with media—television, music
media, video games, computers, books, DVDs. According to the 1999 Kaiser report, young people, on average,
were exposed to roughly six and a half hours of media per day. The 2010 report finds that young people are
spending substantially more time with media. Based on self-reported data, Latino and black youth are exposed
to about 13 hours of media a day, largely through media multitasking. By contrast, white youth report spending
a bit over eight and a half hours a day with media. Probe further and the 2010 Kaiser report is revealing for
another reason: the amount of time youth report spending online. On a typical day white youth report spending
about one hour and 17 minutes online compared with Latino and black youth, who report spending one hour and
49 minutes and one hour and 24 minutes, respectively. The rising rates of online media among black and Latino
youth are supported elsewhere.
By 2005, white, Latino, and African-American teens were more likely to go online than adults of any racial
or ethnic group (Lenhart, Hitlin, and Madden 2005). During this period the migration of black and Latino teens
to the digital word intensified, and they were just as likely as their white counterparts to use social networking
sites (Lenhart et al. 2007; Watkins 2009). The number of young people from households with more modest
incomes going online and participating in digital media cultures has been increasing (Lenhart et al. 2005).
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, urban teens as well as less affluent teens are more
likely than suburban or rural teens to create and share original artistic content such as artwork, photos, stories,
and videos online (Lenhart and Madden 2005). African Americans are 30% more likely than the average
American to use Twitter (Pearson-McNeil and Hale 2011).
In years past the great fear was that the digital divide would leave black and Latino youth disconnected from
the social, educational, and civic opportunities the Internet affords. However, some of the most urgent questions
today are less about access and more about the context and quality of engagement. Specifically, how do race,
class, gender, and geography influence the digital media practices of young people? Even as a growing diversity
of young people adopts digital media technologies, not all digital media ecologies are equal. Accordingly,
noteworthy risks and opportunities are associated with young people’s digital lives. But how are the risks and
opportunities distributed? And are some youth more likely to experience the risks than the opportunities?

GENRES OF PARTICIPATION

For most teens, digital media and mobile phones represent crucial aspects of youth culture, community, and
identity. Even as black and Latino participation in the digital media world continues to evolve, the specific
attributes of their digital media ecologies remain largely understudied. Empirically, we know little about the
content or context of their daily digital media practices. Investigations of the digital lives of black and Latino
youth must focus less on the access gap and more on the “participation gap.” Whereas the former defines the
issues of technology and social inequality largely as a matter of access to computers and the Internet, the latter
considers the different skills, competencies, knowledge, practices, and forms of capital that different
populations bring to their engagement with networked media. Jenkins and colleagues refer to the participation
gap as “the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and knowledge that will prepare youth for
full participation in the world of tomorrow” (Jenkins et al. 2006, p. 3).
Black and Latino youth are remaking the participation gap in ways that are both promising and perilous
(Watkins 2010). Young people’s adoption of digital media is shaped by a mix of factors—social, familial,
economic, cultural, political—that situate a wide range of digital media activities and forms of engagement.
What kinds of digital media practices do black and Latino youth engage in? And how do their practices compel
a serious rethinking of the more conventional ideas and theories about young people’s digital media behaviors?
Drawing principally from a number of finely crafted ethnographic studies, Ito and collaborators (2010)
identify some of the distinct digital media practices—what they call genres of participation— among young
people. One of the main domains of youth participation in digital media culture is what the researchers
characterize as friendship-driven practices. This is a reference to the online activities that many young people
find not only appealing but increasingly necessary as they build social communities, peer relations, and cultural
identities. In instances like these, young people primarily build spaces through social networking sites and
mobile communication in order to socialize, communicate, and maintain social ties while also navigating the
drama of teen life. Through this genre of participation young people learn how to grapple with many of the
long-standing rituals of adolescent life, including the management of their peer networks, sexual identities,
romantic interests, and in-group status. Through this genre young people also learn how to grapple with
challenges that are unique to the digital world, such as online privacy, publicity, and identity (boyd 2007; Ito et
al. 2010).
Ito and colleagues refer to another domain of youth participatory culture as interest driven. “These are
contexts where kids find relationships that center on their interests, hobbies, and career aspirations” (Ito et al.
2010, p. 16). In instances like these, young people seek to develop connections and networks that help them
develop expertise in areas of great interest. Participation in digital media culture in cases like these is not about
hanging out with friends but rather finding what Gee (2003) refers to as “affinity spaces,” which may include
similarly aged peers and adults who share a passion for an interest, hobby, or activity. Interest-driven forms of
participation offer an opportunity for deep engagement, learning, expertise, and mastery with a community that
extends beyond classmates, neighbors, and local peers.
Ito and colleagues establish a useful framework for thinking in greater detail about the different dimensions
of participation that characterize young people’s involvement with digital media. Friendship and interest-driven
forms of participation clearly situate distinct literacy practices and learning outcomes. Some of the outcomes
associated with interest-driven forms of participation—depth expertise, engagement, efficacy, production, and
diverse social networks—make this a potentially rich social and learning experience. When interest-driven
activities allow young people to move fluidly between informal and formal learning environments, the
opportunity for “connected learning” emerges.
Whereas most young people engage in friendship-driven genres of participation, this is not necessarily true
of interest-driven genres. What are the pathways associated with participation in interest-driven practices?
Moreover, how do interest-driven genres of participation track social and demographic indicators such as race,
ethnicity, class, gender, and geography?

MAPPING THE DIGITAL LIVES OF BLACK AND LATINO YOUTH

The digital media lives of Latino and black youth are marked by steady shifts and contradictions. Even as they
are more connected than ever before, Latino and African-American youth continue to grapple with social and
economic inequalities that influence their engagement with digital media. Previous studies suggest that the
digital divide is not exclusively attributable to economic matters (i.e., the inability to afford computers or
Internet access) but also implicates attitudinal and dispositional developments. Seiter (2008) argues that because
of the assumptions and ideologies associated with early computer use—namely, that it is middle class, white,
and “geeky”—the consequences for working-class youth who strive to acquire cultural capital related to the use
of computers might be unpleasant. “It is the penalty of being a nerd, a geek, a kid too identified with school and
teachers,” Seiter (2008, p. 41) writes. For kids who attend schools, live in homes, and connect to social
networks that lack sufficient opportunities to use computers, developing an aptitude for the technology offers no
real currency.
At least, the attitudes reported by Seiter were likely true when computers were associated with spread-
sheets, word processing, and office work. As computers have evolved and the social and creative capacities of
the Internet have emerged, black, Latino, and working-class youth have become as likely as their white and
middle-class counterparts to appreciate and pursue these interests. In one of the first ethnographic studies of
Internet use in the home, the HomeNet field trial (Kraut et al. 1995) found almost no difference across race or
class in terms of the time and interest that teens devote to the Internet. By the mid-2000s the rising popularity of
computer-mediated social networks, especially MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/), had transformed the
disposition of black and Latino teens toward computer-mediated communication. A considerable part of the
appeal of MySpace among black and Latino teens was the opportunity it provided to write and craft social
identities and social spaces and connect with peers through popular culture and other shared interests.

HIP-HOP, CULTURAL CAPITAL, AND THE YOUNG AND THE DIGITAL

Historically, the investment of black and Latino youth in social and communication-based technologies has
been overlooked. Yet the technological aspirations of black and Latino youth are long-standing. Nowhere is this
more evident than in the context of hip-hop culture, a complex cultural terrain marked by various consumption
and production practices.
The origins of hip-hop bear a striking resemblance to the participatory norms and practices of early 21st-
century digital media culture. Some of the most iconic creative practices associated with early hip-hop—aerosol
art (graffiti) and turntablism—reflect a serious social and creative investment in technology for the expression
of identity and community. Early hip-hop was interest based, peer driven, and propelled by a rich informal
learning ecology. Young hip-hop enthusiasts did not learn how to remix turntables, rock rhymes, or make a
name for themselves (literally) with graffiti art in formal learning spaces. They learned from one another other
in dynamic and supportive social and informal learning ecologies. Black youth were also early and unlikely
adopters of one of the first popular mobile communications devices, the pager. In many cases, however, the
adoption of pagers by black youth was linked with deviant and criminal behavior, especially drug dealing. The
adoption of technological innovation in hip-hop has long been a source of cultural capital—that is, a form of
prestige and social currency among a community of peers.
Through hip-hop black and Latino youth develop specific symbols, cultural objects, and expressions of
taste, knowledge, and consumption—the “distinctions” Bourdieu (1984) refers to as cultural capital. Whereas
Bourdieu links cultural capital to the affluent classes, other applications posit that cultural capital is context
specific. Thus, what emerges as prestigious and status conferring in one context may be viewed as lacking
prestige or status in another context. Cultural capital, from this perspective, is not exclusive to the privileged
classes. Rather, cultural capital is situational, defined and acquired in specific social contexts (Hall 1992).
The formation of status-conferring goods, practices, and forms of knowledge in the social and economic
margins has variously been referred to as subculture (Hebdige 1979), subcultural capital (Thornton 1996), and
nondominant cultural capital (Carter 2005). In her study of black students, schools, and achievement, Carter
(2005) explores what she calls “black cultural capital,” a reference to the group identity, fashion, style,
language, music, and specific repertoires of knowledge acquired by the young people she examined. Black
cultural capital, Carter maintains, enables young African Americans to gain what they perceive to be an
authentic position of cultural status in their peer community. Though cultural capital is not the exclusive domain
of the exclusive classes, not all formations of cultural capital are equal. For example, middle-class–oriented
forms of cultural capital—a preference for classical music or modern American literature—are assigned greater
recognition and institutional value. Carter explains that teachers and school administrators often interpret black
cultural capital—sartorial style, street slang, and an affinity for rapping—as deviant, disruptive, and counter to
the established norms and expectations maintained by schools.
Still, hip-hop is a vital source of cultural capital for young people around the world (Mitchell 2002).
Knowledge of hip-hop culture and engagement in distinct practices such as rapping, music production, spoken
word, dancing, sartorial style, and poetry represent the many formations of cultural capital—embodied and
objectified—outlined by Bourdieu (1986). Through the accumulation of hip-hop–inflected cultural capital,
youth gain social status, recognition, and mobility in their peer communities and participatory digital media
cultures.
Hip-hop culture is the dominant medium through which black and Latino teens construct their digital
identities, master unique linguistic practices, assemble social ties, and navigate their interests in pop music,
videos, fashion, sports, and civic life. Throughout its history hip-hop has been variously condemned and
celebrated. But the most insightful investigations of the making and meaning of hip-hop typically illuminate
how the cultural practices—graffiti art, dancing, deejaying, emceeing, spoken word, literature, film-making,
fashion—that make up this unique universe of youth culture are connected to larger social, economic,
demographic, political, cultural, and global-local formations (Forman 2002; Mitchell 2002; Perry 2004; Chang
2005; Watkins 2006; Forman and Neal 2011).
Take, for example, the analysis of how young black men use social networking sites. Drawing from
sociology (Anderson 1999), urban history (Kelley 1997), media and cultural studies (Watkins 1998), hip-hop
studies (Forman and Neal 2011), and race and digital media (Watkins 2009), Adam Williams (2011) argues that
the digital media identities, performances, and self-creation practices of young black men—how they navigate
the popular cultural landscape to gain recognition and prestige—are based largely on the desire to gain respect
from their male peers. This bid for respectability is visible across the many platforms that converge in the use of
sites like MySpace and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/), including music, video, photos, animation, wall
posts, and status updates. Williams argues, based on a series of focus-group interviews and analyses of social
network profiles, that the young black males in his study use digital media both to consume and to produce the
masculine poses, scripts, and behaviors they strive to master.
Focusing on MySpace profiles, Williams observes the many ways young black men maneuver to
accumulate power and prestige within their peer community through distinct online cultural practices and
dispositions. The music and wallpaper they choose align with the hypermasculine poses that are popular in hip-
hop. Additionally, the meticulous posing for photos that consistently display bare chests, flexed muscles, and
bodies decorated with tattoos and jewelry are used to convey strength, sexual prowess, and what Majors and
Mancini Bilson (1993) refer to as the “cool pose.” The digital media practices and identities of young black men
reflect the extent to which they covet the fantasies of fame, wealth, and status that color the most popular
expressions of black masculinity in the production of corporate hip-hop. In this context, content creation and
authorship with digital media develop culturally specific notions of authenticity, social currency, and cultural
capital within a distinct peer community.

CREATING AND CRITIQUING WITH DIGITAL MEDIA

While many of the online behaviors of black and Latino teens conform to the participatory genres documented
by Ito and colleagues (2010)—namely, the friendship-driven practices—other behaviors do not. Engagement
with digital media varies among young people who bring different motivations, inclinations, and life
experiences to their use of digital media. What does digital media mean for youth who may be negotiating
economic and familial instability, low-performing schools, and marginalized social networks? What if anything
is unique about young people’s use of digital media in edge communities?
In addition to observing them creating with digital media, my research has also observed black and Latino
youth critiquing with digital media. Such youth are thus participating not only in friendship-driven genres but in
“civic-oriented genres.” These are not necessarily explicitly organized acts of civic engagement but rather
casual reflections, content, and modes of expression that broaden the scope of youth digital media practices.
Whereas friendship-driven genres reflect how digital media are used to negotiate the inward-looking world
of peer cultures, the civic-oriented genres illuminate some of the distinct ways in which digital media are used
to look outward and critically at the world. The experiences of race, class, and geography can play a crucial role
in shaping the civic inclinations that mark the digital media practices of black and Latino teens.
In fieldwork I conducted in 2007, I encountered teens who were part of the massive evacuation of New
Orleans families caused by Hurricane Katrina. In the wake of the epic storm a number of educators, doctors,
psychiatrists, and social workers labored to help children and adolescents develop effective coping strategies to
recover socially and emotionally from the hurricane. Some of the teens I met had turned to social media to
develop their own ways of coping with the disaster. In addition to grappling with things like a new home,
neighborhood, and school, teens were also coping with the sudden and often difficult immersion into completely
new peer communities. The teens displaced by Katrina “not only had to deal with the disruption in their families
and their own loss, they also had to come to terms with the loss of their friends and classmates” (Fothergill and
Peek 2006, p. 106). For many teens displaced by Katrina, the sudden introduction into a new middle or high
school presented serious social, emotional, and personal challenges.
In several cases social media emerged as a tool for teens to cope with their own anxieties, fears, and hopes
about life in a post-Katrina world. One young man I met was part of the trail of families forced to relocate after
the catastrophe. As I learned more about the life he was making after Katrina, I saw that his use of digital media
was evolving. Prior to Katrina, a period when MySpace was still the social network of choice for many black
and Latino youth (boyd 2011; Hargittai 2007; Watkins 2009), he did not use social networking sites. “I always
thought that MySpace was a waste of time,” he explained. But after Katrina he began to look at online social
networks differently. Social media, he explained, “is important for me now. Especially after Katrina. . . . like all
of my friends got spread all over the U.S. and I found some of them through MySpace.”
In the wake of tragedy, social media developed a unique resonance in the lives of some teen evacuees. For
others, the mobile phone became, quite literally, a lifeline to the peer community they knew before Katrina. In
instances like these, teens’ digital media repertoire expanded to include reestablishing important social ties at a
time when many were going through a period of great social, personal, and emotional upheaval. Fothergill and
Peek note that young evacuees used friendships as a support system through the crisis: “[B]y working to
maintain friends, be with them, and connect with them, they were seeking ways for their friendships to provide
a sense of security” (Fothergill and Peek 2006, p. 120). This was true among the teens I met too. They used
social media as a source of social support and emotional security in their efforts to restore their lives and social
ties after Hurricane Katrina.
Another example of civic-oriented digital media use is a public memorial that was posted on Facebook and
dedicated to the memory of a young man who was the victim of homicidal violence. The young people who
contributed to this virtual public memorial used social media to express their thoughts and critiques about life in
a socially dislocated community. A few weeks after the page was created, more than 400 comments had been
posted, including remarks from teens and adults. Several posts expressed condolences for the family, reflections
on the loss of a young life, and anger about the local conditions that fostered what was consistently described as
a senseless murder. Many of the comments contributed to the formation of a community-oriented conversation
about race, social inequality, geography, and the hidden injuries of racial and class disadvantage that make life
in poor neighborhoods a perilous experience. Young people and adults posted comments that assertively
questioned the poor quality of life in their community.
Ito and collaborators (2010) remind us that contrary to popular opinion, young people are developing
important social, technical, and civic skills while hanging out online. Young people’s adoption of social media
defies the broad generalizations that typically dismiss their digital media practices as “nonproductive” and a
“waste of time.” By bringing distinct cultural sensibilities, social critiques, and lived experiences to their
engagement with digital media, black and Latino youth are not only remaking the digital divide; they are also
expanding the genres of participation that mark young people’s engagement with digital media.

THE MOBILE PARADOX

One of the biggest social and technological shifts in the new millennium has been the growing number of teens
who own mobile devices, including iPods, laptops, e-book readers, and mobile phones. In 2004 roughly 40% of
12- to 17-year-olds owned a mobile phone (Lenhart 2009). By 2010 three in four, or 75%, owned a mobile
phone (Lenhart et al. 2010). The mobile phone is a hub of teen life, serving variously as the center for teen
communication, identity, peer networks, and media consumption (Ling 2007; Lenhart et al. 2010). Although
young people in general have migrated to mobile phones, black and Latino youths’ engagement with these
devices is especially robust compared with their white counterparts. Take, for example, the use of the Internet
via mobile phones. Latinos are more likely than whites to use mobile phones for accessing the Internet and
email and for instant messaging, and African Americans are slightly more likely than Latinos or whites to use
mobile phones to perform these activities (Livingston 2011). From 2007 to 2009 handheld Internet use on an
average day grew by 73% for the general U.S. population, but for African Americans it grew by 141%
(Horrigan 2009).
Much of the empirical data suggest that black and Latino youth are much more active than their white and
Asian American counterparts when it comes to using their mobile devices to play games, watch video, listen to
music, and manage their online social networks. According to Rideout et al. (2010), black and Latino youth are
the heaviest consumers of media content via the mobile phone. Among racial and ethnic groups, black youth
spend the most time using their phones on a daily basis for music, games, and videos: almost an hour and a half
(88 minutes), compared with 64 minutes for Hispanics and 26 minutes for white youth.
Data points likes these compel some to argue that mobile devices are closing America’s digital divide
(Wortham 2009). In reality, a more complex picture is forming. If we define the digital divide as largely a
matter of access to technology, then Internet-capable phones, to the degree that poor and working-class
communities can afford them, may be bridging the access gap. A surging number of poor households are
choosing to go with a mobile phone over a landline, largely because they cannot afford both (Tavernise 2011).
In 2009 the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that African Americans were more likely than any
other racial or ethnic group to go online via a mobile phone. Latinos, Asian Americans, and African Americans
are more likely to own smart-phones than are whites (Kellogg 2011). But if we define the divide in terms of
participation and social ecology, the issue of mobile phones and equity is cloudy at best. If mobile phones are
primarily being used as an anytime, anywhere source to access games, music, and video, then the capacity of
these devices to bridge the participation gap may not be realized.
The mobile lives of black and Latino youth raise a number of interesting questions about the shifting
contours of the digital divide and represent, more generally, a mobile paradox. On the one hand, the adoption of
mobile phones and the mobile Internet among African Americans and Latinos suggests they are early adopters
and mobile trendsetters in the United States (Horrigan 2009). On the other hand, the environment in which
black and Latino teens use mobile devices suggests that they continue to grapple with the social and economic
disadvantages associated with life in the social and economic margins. Paradoxically, even as black and Latino
youth are early adopters of mobile devices they are also less likely than white youth to grow up in households
with access to broadband Internet.
A 2010 report by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration titled Digital Nation:
21st Century America’s Progress toward Universal Broadband Internet Access found that broadband
households tend to be younger, white or Asian, highly educated, married, and with higher incomes. Conversely,
households without broadband tend to be older, black or Latino, less educated, low income, and
underemployed.
Home broadband is associated with a richer Internet experience. Households with broadband, for instance,
are much more likely than those without to use the Internet for a wider array of activities—social, educational,
political, and recreational. Broadband households are also much more likely to create and share content. Youth
with home access to broadband have more opportunities than youth without to build rich informal learning
ecologies that promote digital exploration, experimentation, and content creation (Seiter 2008). These outcomes
are related to interest-driven forms of digital media participation and potentially richer learning experiences.
For Latino and African-American youth the mobile phone has become an alternative gateway to the kinds of
digital media activities they prefer—social networking, status updates, sharing photos, and consuming media
like games, music, and video. But is this path to the online world limited? While mobile phones can be a tool
for creativity, learning, and civic engagement, credible concerns have been raised that teens who are restricted
to mobile phones for home Internet use may also be restricted to media ecologies and social networks that
rarely, if ever, afford access to these kinds of experiences. Although only a small percentage of young people
are using mobile devices as a powerful learning tool today, the percentage is growing. The issue is not whether
rich and meaningful mobile learning ecologies will develop. As the NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition
(Johnson, Adams, and Haywood 2011) shows, they already exist. Rather, the real question is, will these mobile
learning ecologies be distributed in ways that close or maintain America’s learning divide?

LEARNING FUTURES: DIGITAL MEDIA, LITERACY, AND THE EDUCATION ACHIEVEMENT

GAP

The increasing use of digital media among black and Latino youth comes at a time when educators, researchers,
policymakers, parents, and technology advocates are beginning to think in more nuanced ways about the risks
and opportunities associated with young people’s digital lives (Livingstone and Haddon 2009). Shifts in the
digital media practices of black and Latino youth raise crucial questions and suggest that delivering a more
equitable digital future requires more than access to technology. Although black and Latino youths’ engagement
with digital media redefines how we think about digital divides and participation gaps, a number of issues
related to technology and social inequality persist. One area of growing interest is the potential impact of digital
media in the learning futures of Latino and African-American students.
Even as black and Latino youth have built a robust informal media ecology, a debate has emerged: To what
extent does their participation in digital media culture enhance learning outcomes such as motivation (Ames and
Archer 1988), grit (Duckworth et al. 2007), and academic success (Datnow and Cooper 1997) while also
encouraging the development of hybrid learner identities such as writers, designers, journalists, scientists,
researchers, and teachers (Salen et al. 2011)? And what evidence exists that Latino and African-American
engagement with media technology produces behaviors and learning outcomes that might impact the academic
achievement gap?
Despite the recent gains by black students in, for example, educational testing, they lag far behind their
white counterparts (Barton and Coley 2010). A 2009 report by the U.S. Department of Education (Vanneman et
al. 2009) found that white students score, on average, at least 26 points higher than black students in
mathematics and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams. The achievement gap in
civic literacy—a key predictor of youth civic engagement—is also wide among youth of different race and
ethnic identities (National Center for Education Statistics 2011).
Several school-related factors have been identified to explain the achievement gap, including poorly
equipped schools, academic tracking (Oakes 2005), low teacher expectations (Downey and Pribesh 2004; Delpit
2005), student attitudes toward academic achievement (Fordham and Ogbu 1986; Cook and Ludwig 1998;
Carter 2005), and student academic skill level (Harris 2011). Other researchers look beyond the classroom—to
neighborhood context, familial dynamics, demographic shifts—to understand the racial achievement gap.
Ferguson (2006) attributes the racial differences in academic performance to sharp racial and ethnic disparities
in the home media ecologies and intellectual lifestyles of students.
In a survey of more than 3,000 students, blacks and Latinos were much more likely than their white or Asian
counterparts to have a television and computer in their bedroom (Ferguson 2006). Some note-worthy
differences can also be found in what Ferguson characterizes as the intellectual lifestyles of young people.
White and Asian students, for example, are much more likely than black and Latino students to report that they
“read almost everyday at home” (Ferguson 2006). Assessing data drawn from the U.S. Department of
Education, Ferguson finds that white children have access to substantially more books at home compared with
their black counterparts. The findings regarding books are similar to other studies that report a vast difference in
the “literacy environments” that poor and middle-class youths inhabit (Neuman and Celano 2001).
In their study of young people’s home media ecology, Rideout, Foehr, and Roberts (2010) find that books
are the only media that white youth own more of than do African-American or Latino youth. Also, black and
Latino youth are more likely than their white, Asian, and Latino counterparts to report that at home they watch
television more than they participate in any other activity (Ferguson 2006). These and other factors, Ferguson
maintains, establish home environments and lifestyles that orient young people toward certain media behaviors,
literacy practices, and learning dispositions that contribute to disparate educational outcomes.
Historically, the research literature on youth media consumption has consistently reported that black youth
consume more entertainment media than their white counterparts. Television is a commonly cited example
(Greenberg and Dominick 1970; Poindexter and Stroman 1981). As digital media platforms—computers,
mobile phones, the Internet—have become more entertainment oriented and affordable, their use among
modest- to low-income households has steadily increased—a fact that should come as no great surprise, given
the historical trends.
Though several factors explain the sharp differences in the leisure lives, media behaviors, and literacy
practices of young people, the most important factor might be the familial context. The after school activities of
children in middle-class households are heavily structured and often include adult supervision and instruction.
By contrast, children in poor house-holds tend to have more unstructured time, and thus the conditions of their
leisure lives vary greatly from those of their middle-class counterparts (Lareau 2003). Because poor kids find
themselves with fewer opportunities for out-of-school extracurricular activities and adult supervision, they may
turn to media entertainment as a way to fill in considerable portions of their non-school-related day.
The practices associated with the “making up” of the middle-class child (Ball and Vincent 2005) attempt to
fill time away from school with educationally enriching activities. This represents what Walkerdine (1999) calls
the “full diary syndrome,” a reference to youth whose out-of-school schedules are filled with a variety of
activities that leave little time for leisure in general and media consumption specifically.
Even as digital and mobile media platforms are available in a greater diversity of households, the different
cultural environments in which young people use technology leads to different intensities of engagement and,
ultimately, to different learning outcomes.

CONCLUSION: DIGITAL LITERACY = DIGITAL EQUITY

Ongoing concerns about the digital divide notwithstanding, black and Latino youth maintain active digital
media lives. Not that long ago black and Latino youth rarely figured in the national conversation about young
technology users. The data today, however, strongly suggest that in many respects they are among the earliest
and most resilient adopters of communications technologies. Through sheer determination and innovation
young people in the social and economic margins are changing the shape of the digital divide (Watkins 2010).
These changes, however, are marked by both promise and peril.
One of the most urgent challenges regarding technology, diversity, and equity is the need to expand digital
literacy; that is, the development of young people’s capacity not only to access and use digital media but to use
digital media in ways that create more enhanced and more empowered expressions of learning, creative
expression, and civic engagement. The emphasis on digital literacy shifts the focus from access to the skills and
expertise that establish more robust and more meaningful learning outcomes. The divide that deserves
increasing attention from educators, media researchers, and practitioners is the “digital literacy divide.”
 Digital literacy is defined in many ways but is most useful when understood along a continuum of
competencies (Lankshear and Knobel 2008). One end of the continuum involves what Kathleen Tyner (1998)
calls “tools literacy.” This domain emphasizes lower-order computing skills and involves teaching students to
use some of the most basic computer applications, including those for word processing, Web browsing, search,
and navigation. The other end of the continuum involves the ability to use information effectively and in the
context of specific life situations in order to enable constructive social action (Martin 2008). This domain
emphasizes higher-order computing skills such as communication across multiple platforms and the ability to
create multimodal texts—Web pages, video, blogs, documents, games, and mobile applications.
Beyond basic digital literacy is the need to support a vision that defines digital literacy as a life skill that is
connected to the everyday lives and situations of youth and their communities. Call it “design literacy”—that is,
the capacity to engage in critical thinking, inquiry and discovery, and real world problem solving. Tools literacy
is foundational; design literacy is transformational.
Whereas the digital media practices of Latino and black youth are generally considered marginal, current
population patterns strongly suggest otherwise. The 2010 U.S. census presents a revealing snapshot of a young
America undergoing profound demographic transitions. In many of the major metropolitan areas in the United
States, the youth population is significantly shaped by the growing presence of young Latinos, Asians,
multiracials, and African Americans. The child population represents what William Frey (2011c), senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution, calls a “demographic pivot.”
From 2000 to 2010 the U.S. population under age 18 grew by less than 3%. Latinos, Asians, and multiracial
youth drove almost all of the growth that did occur. The 2010 U.S. census shows an interesting trend: Among
Americans age 85 and older, nonwhites make up 15% of the population, but they make up nearly half, 49%, of
the population under age 5 (Frey 2011a). A growing number of states (10) and major metropolitan areas (35)
currently have minority white child populations (Frey 2011b). If current birth rates and immigration trends
continue, America will achieve a national majority-minority child population in a little more than a decade, by
2023.
These trends underscore the primary crisis in public education: the failure to provide Latino, immigrant, and
African-American youth with an education that adequately prepares them for the 21st century. The dropout rates
among Latinos and African Americans remain remarkably high (Greene 2002). Similarly, the poverty rates for
Latino children, 35%, and African-American children, 39%, are substantially higher than the 12% rate for
whites (Lopez and Velasco 2011). Any discussion of the future of public education must consider these
demographic shifts and the implications for the kinds of schools, learning environments, and literacy practices
that are forming today. Any serious effort to secure America’s future labor force, public health, and civic life
must include the transformation of public education. Digital literacy should be one of the core goals of the
transformation. Although digital literacy is still considered a luxury in schools located in low-income
communities, it is, in reality, a necessity.

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Technology. Reprinted with permission from MIT Press.
29
RACE IN THE SCHOOLYARD
Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and
Communities
AMANDA LEWIS

A lthough much research has been done with regard to race in urban educational settings and in schools
populated predominantly by students of color, much less work has examined how race operates in all-
white or almost-all-white settings. There is some wonderful research on multiracial or desegregated
schools; these studies are nevertheless part of a tradition that acknowledges the importance of race only in
settings where racial minorities are present.1 As Carby (1992: 198) argues, too much of this work has
marginalized the processes of racialization and given them meaning only “when the subjects are black. . . . We
should be arguing that everyone in this social order has been constructed . . . as a racialized subject.” In this
sense it is important to study the construction of whiteness and white racial identities (perhaps especially in
white settings). Most white students in the United States are still attending schools that are almost entirely white
(Orfield 1993; Orfield and Monfort 1992). In fact, most live in highly racially segregated neighborhoods and
have little regular, substantial contact with people of other races (Massey and Denton 1993). Understanding
how white students develop their racial subjectivities and understandings is crucial to understanding future
possibilities for racial equity in the United States. In this chapter I examine the racial meanings and messages
operating in Foresthills, a (mostly) white, suburban school. I look at not only the explicit curriculum in the
school but the multiple lessons about race, racial difference and sameness, and racial equity offered in both
overt and implicit ways by staff, parents, and children.

MULTICULTURALISM

When asked about examples of multicultural curricula at Foresthills, the principal listed the state-mandated
textbooks, which had themselves been the subject of some controversy for being multicultural in often
superficial ways,4 and activities like black history month and the practice of counting to ten in different
languages during physical education class. As at many other schools in the United States, the little
multiculturalism that existed at Foresthills took traditional forms. When asked how she dealt with issues of race
and multiculturalism in her classroom, one teacher immediately started talking about demographics rather than
curriculum. “Haven’t had a whole lot of it, uh uh um . . . other than Asian/Caucasian, uh . . . Have—sometimes
have one black child, in a year like we did this year. [coughs] Um, my own attitude is, people are people,
and . . . we treat people with respect, and that’s what you get back.” When pressed about multicultural
classroom activities, she explained that the district mandated they do some. Her class had performed a skit. Mrs.
Moch’s class constructed posters about famous African Americans. Even for these somewhat limited activities,
however, the school did not have the proper materials available. As Mrs. Moch reported, “[The one black staff
member] was wonderful because she knew my kids were researching and were having a hard time finding
books at the school. She went to this black bookstore. She went there, she came in one day and she had
bought . . . must have been over a hundred dollars’ worth of books—brought them into my classroom, for my
kids to use.” For their participation in the activity, students drew on their available knowledge of African
Americans and reported on those they were familiar with—athletes and, in one case, Oprah. Even so, the posters
they produced (along with the teacher’s store-bought posters about famous African Americans) all came down
March 1st, as soon as black history month was over.
During my time at the school, I saw Mrs. Moch make some attempt to offer a multicultural history of the
state. She explained her efforts this way:

Well, let’s see, we start off with things like California Native Americans, and I do not have a high opinion
of Junipero Serra. . . . You know. I talk about genocide, I talk about whether it was deliberate genocide, or it
was because the Spanish knew that they had a higher moral . . . sense. And therefore were going to use
force, but that it still was wrong. But it was right in their eyes historically, and therefore, you know you have
to look at it, um, that way. I do look for and purchase as many books as I can that have representations of
color, in California. Particularly in California, but in general. And have them available for kids, so that they
see it was, was not a state or country that was ever really white. It never was. It never will be. And it
shouldn’t be. And so, I try to tie those things in.

Though she did more than other teachers in the school, even these lessons were somewhat ambivalent (e.g.,
she asked students to empathize with Spanish motivations as well as with Native American subjugation), and
they were not used by students to inform their understanding of the present. For example, when I interviewed
children from her class and asked why some people were rich and others poor, most talked about hard work and
laziness.5
As with Wills’s (1996) findings in his study of high school social studies classes, if the goal of the
curriculum was to sensitize students to others’ experiences, then the curriculum was at least partially successful.
But if the goal was to have students use history to inform their understanding of events today, then the
curriculum fell far short. Students saw the injustices they learned about as specific to an earlier point in time, as
problems that were solved rather than being linked to contemporary forms of racial exclusion (Wills 1996). For
example, the students did not appear to use anything they had learned about the settling of California, the
genocide of Native Americans, or the subjugation of the Chinese to understand or interpret present-day racial
realities (e.g., wage inequality, wealth inequality, Native Americans’ socioeconomic status).
Ironically, the little multiculturalism that was introduced at the school was not always received well by
parents. Several parents I spoke to were, in the end, quite cynical if not outright hostile about explicit efforts to
inject multiculturalism into their children’s classes. When asked about multiculturalism in the school, most
immediately referred to black history week (or day, or month as they described it). Though they would initially
say they thought it was okay, once probed, most expressed a number of reservations or objections: “we should
all be Americans” or “talking about race is divisive.” One mother exclaimed, “I’m so tired of Martin Luther
King!” For the most part they did not object to the history curriculum because they viewed it (just as their
children did) as just that, history, not lessons about the present. In regard to current race relations, most white
parents believed (or hoped) that their kids were just taught that everyone is the same, that they should be color-
blind.

COLOR CONSCIOUSNESS

When I raised the subject of race at Foresthills, its salience was downplayed, trivialized, or challenged. From
the beginning, people made it clear that they were not certain why I wanted to conduct my research there, and
they also wanted to make sure I did not misread anything I saw. When I first contacted the school the principal
clarified the situation for me: “You understand that this is a pretty homogeneous school. We don’t have much
diversity here.” She was not the only suburban principal I spoke to who felt that the absence of students of color
(or the presence of only white children) in their school would make it a less-than-interesting place to conduct
research on race.
On my first day in the classroom, Mrs. Moch pulled me aside before the children arrived and said, “You
should know one thing: we have one mixed-race child whose father is black and mother is white. She’s dealing
with a lot of fourth-grade girl stuff, but she tends to play the race card a lot.” Even as Mrs. Moch explained to
me that Sylvie was misreading the significance of race in her daily experience at the school, she explained that
she had asked the one black staff member in the school to explain this issue to Sylvie.
These were early signs of a pattern that was clear throughout my time at Foresthills: members of the school
community had complicated and conflicting understandings of the relevance of race. When they did talk about
race, it was primarily in relation to “others”—people of color, primarily blacks. For example, during an
interview, I asked a mother what the school did to teach about issues of diversity and multiculturalism. She
responded, “Well, I think that a certain part of that they don’t have to deal with because the school’s not
extremely multicultural. You know. It’s not . . . uh there’s not a . . . a lot, a lot, a lot of black people that go
there. So I think maybe they don’t have to address it too much.”
Was it true, as many adults claimed, that race did not matter at Foresthills? Were community members truly
color-blind, treating everyone the same? Was, for example, Mrs. Moch right about Sylvie (the one black student
in her class) playing the race card? Was Sylvie misreading (or misrepresenting) her school experiences? In her
conversation with me, Sylvie’s mother talked about Sylvie’s early time at the school:

Mrs. Cooper: I mean it started from the very beginning, you know . . . an incident happened where
somebody used the “N” word with her. And she waits until she’s going to bed to tell me
these things, so of course I run to the phone and leave this scathing message to the
principal, who avoids me . . . and then when I talk to her she says she’ll talk to Sylvie.
Well, I keep asking Sylvie, “no, I haven’t talked to her, haven’t talked to her,” so I’m
just getting angrier and angrier. And then it turns out that she’s trying to get Sylvie to
confront this boy, and deal with this. And I’m thinking to myself, why does Sylvie have
to deal with this? This is the teacher’s responsibility . . . or the principal’s. Sylvie
shouldn’t have to deal with this. This is, you know, she has to be protected. And then I
find out that . . . she keeps . . . she won’t discuss it. Her grades are getting worse, and
everything and . . . and then finally we have a sit-down, with the teacher and the
principal and find out that the teacher dealt with it. Sylvie had been avoiding the
meetings with the principal, with understandable valid reasons, you know. But nobody
was communicating with me. So, I—I’m not very happy with the way things are
handled like that. It just—I shouldn’t have to bug the principal, force a meeting, to
get . . . to get some answers. And, just this week she had two other incidences.
Amanda: Oh really? What kind of thing?
Mrs. Cooper: Uh, middle-school boys out on the playground during the after-school care, calling her
“Blackie”—which they said they couldn’t do anything about ‘cause it wasn’t one of the
schoolkids. And then a little kindergartner [used a racial epithet] . . . and, you know, I
tried to explain to her, the kindergartner’s like trying out a cuss word, you know, but it’s
—and I told her, I said that the sad thing is that he heard it somewhere . . . but it’s just
the idea that she knows that this is gonna come up over and over and over again.

Sylvie’s mom then described how Sylvie, after making one good friend, began to rebound. Clearly Sylvie
was dealing with a stressful situation. I got independent confirmation of Sylvie’s reading of the world in
interviews with students. In response to generic questions about why some kids do not like to play with other
kids, over half of them acknowledged that kids did not want to play with Sylvie at first because she was
“different.”
In fact, blackness was not the only color that carried negative connotations, and Sylvie was not the only
student to confront racial hostility in school. One day I was standing in the schoolyard checking on the kids,
and, as was not unusual, the three biracial fourth-grade boys (Angus, Cedric, and Michael—each of whom had
either a Latino or an Asian parent) were playing together. After a few minutes, Angus ran over to me and asked,
“Is it illegal to call someone something because of their race. I mean can you sue them?” I asked him what he
meant, and he told me that Ricky, a white fifth-grader, had just called Cedric a “black boy.” When I asked
Cedric what had happened, he told me that Ricky called him and Michael “you brown boy.” I looked around the
yard but could not find Ricky. Mrs. Moch told me where to look for him, and then we got them all together.
After giving each side a chance to tell its version, she told Ricky not to use “derogatory names” and headed
back to the classroom. Interestingly there was some confusion about whom exactly Ricky was directing his
comments to. Angus assumed it was not him, Michael assumed it was only Cedric, and Cedric assumed it was
both him and Michael. Michael and Cedric both have brown complexions whereas Angus is light-skinned.
Cedric and Michael were especially hurt, while Angus was just angry and wanted to talk more about the
legalities of such a comment. Later, trying to understand what he thought he was doing, I talked to Ricky and
asked him why he had said it.

Ricky: Just because. . . .

Amanda: Is it okay to say that to people?
Ricky: [Looking down at the ground and speaking slowly] Nooo.
Amanda: Why?
Ricky: Because of racism.

Unfortunately our conversation was cut off by the bell, but the exchange made it clear that Ricky was quite
purposefully using a designation of color, of racial otherness, as a put-down. In truth, Cedric, a fairly dark-
skinned Filipino, is a “brown boy.” But it is telling that in this setting the mere allusion to color substituted for a
racial epithet. These kids and their teacher seemed to understand that, in this case, in this context, to “see” or to
acknowledge race (particularly to identify one as black or brown) was negative or, as Mrs. Moch put it,
“derogatory.”
In her interview with me another mother related how upset her Latina daughter had recently been after
school.

Mrs. Carter: The other day, it was this year, she was—I guess having lunch at the cafeteria. And
somebody says, “Oh, Catherine . . . since you’re Mexican you can have free lunches.”
You know. And then, and then this other kid said to her, “Where’s your sombrero?”
But, um, I said to her, “If you don’t feel comfortable, then talk to a teacher because she
shouldn’t be doing that.” And she did.
Amanda: And how did the teacher respond?
Mrs. Carter: Well, [the other student] . . . she got benched [lost her recess], and that was it.

Mrs. Carter was also especially upset by the incident because they are Colombian, not Mexican.
As these examples of racial logic in operation at Foresthills show, school personnel’s limited interventions
in or downplaying of such incidents did little to address the anxiety and upset of those who were the victims of
the hurtful behavior. Nor did it go far to address the ignorance or hurtful behavior of the white students.
Moreover, it demonstrated that rather than being benign, the trivialization of racial incidents had a pernicious
effect. In fact, there was some evidence that teachers were at least moderately aware of these kinds of incidents,
but they understood them to be relatively unimportant and, to some extent, deracialized them: Mrs. Moch said to
me, “I don’t see a lot of racism in the class, I mean occasionally a remark’s made . . . but frequently what I find
with the remarks is that they aren’t as clearly defined as racist as they are . . . kid put-downs. And that they kind
of—sometimes just can get lumped into everybody else’s put-down kinds of things. So I haven’t seen much
here.”
Here racist put-downs were glossed over as not really being racial—as being just the regular things kids say
to one another. As Essed (1997) has discussed, this strategy of deracializing incidents where racist slurs are used
implies that they are like regular, everyday conflicts in which both parties should be held equally responsible;
such ways of addressing racist events make it seem as if the victims rather than the perpetrators are the ones
with the problem, as if they are making a big deal out of nothing. Implying that racist slurs are like other put-
downs and just happen to be racial functions as tolerance for the slurs. As Essed (1997: 140) argues, these kinds
of microevents crystallize “the structural and experiential differences between the two parties; one party enjoys
the safety of dominant group protection, whereas the other experiences the unsafe conditions of his ‘race,’ a
group subjected to violence and discrimination.” Such events, though sometimes seemingly minor, can reinforce
the victims’ sense of outsiderness.

COLOR-BLIND TALK

In addition to their tendency to deracialize racial incidents, Foresthills community members denied the cogency
of race in a variety of other ways.6 For example, when asked what role she thought race had played in her life,
Mrs. Moch stated, “Not a whole lot.” When pushed further she offered a nonracial, individualized
characterization of herself:

Amanda: When you think—are there ever times now that you think of it or it comes up or you
think about your own racial identity?
Mrs. Moch: Not to any great extent, I just think of myself as . . . me. I’m just that kooky lady at the
school.

However, as discussed earlier, she did seem to recognize the importance of race in others, as in her decision
to have the one black teacher in the school explain to the one black student in her class that the student was
blowing incidents out of proportion.
Although we might generally assume it is good that adults in the community asserted that race did not
matter, these adults’ color-blind ideals were expressed along with color-conscious, group-level racial
understandings. For example, a white mother, Mrs. Morning, stated, “I really don’t think these kids see black or
white . . . which is good.” Moments later when asked how she would explain racism to her kids, she offered a
quasicultural explanation of racial-group difference and why she would not want to live in a black
neighborhood.

Amanda: If, if um, one of the kids asked what racism was, how would you define it for them?
Mrs. Morning: Um . . . I guess I would define it that, there’s different cultures, and, with different races
—um, like Chinese—they have their own culture and their own churches that they go
to, and their own food that they eat, and the same way with black people. I mean
they . . . like certain things, and when they go to their place of God or whatever, um, it
seems to be more . . . when I drive around or whatever, you know you see all these
blacks coming out of a church, well that’s where they go—I don’t know what goes on in
there and stuff, but it seems that certain . . . people seem to gravitate, and, and live in
certain areas. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it, it seems. I mean personally, I
don’t think that we’d go looking in a neighborhood that was black.

Another Foresthills parent, Mrs. Carter, a high school teacher in a multiracial school in another district, told
me, “Well I try to tell ’em that people are who they are, and you have to not make a judgment on what they look
like or anything like that.” She explained that she wouldn’t even be able to tell me how many African
American, Latino, or Asian students she had in her classes because she just didn’t “notice” such things. Later in
the conversation, however, she talked about her displeasure with some groups’ behavior and performance in
class and explained how she understood the differential success of the kids in her school: “Do I think of those
groups differently? . . . yeah. I do. I think that the backgrounds, that a lot of the—the attitudes that those people
have towards . . . how to be successful, are different. And I think that, um, the Asian attitude, from parents who
aren’t far from being, you know, born in, in some place in Asia. That their attitudes towards success are that you
work hard, and you keep working hard, and you keep working hard, that’s how you’re successful. I don’t find
that attitude among Latinos or blacks.”
She was not the only one who had quite different assessments of different racial minorities. Mrs. Karpinsky
was one of the few parents I spoke to who admitted to being “a little prejudiced.” She was emphatic, however,
that she did not pass these ideas on to her kids. She regularly affirmed for them that everyone was equal. Later
she provided an indication of exactly how equal.

Amanda: Um hm. Do you think it would be a problem for you or your husband if your daughter or
your son married someone from a different race?
Mrs. Karpinsky: It depends what race . . . I do, to me, Asians aren’t—to me it is, I hate to say this, it
sounds so prejudiced, but to me it’s more like blacks are, African Americans would be
the only . . . to me Asians are just like—white. And I guess I just am realizing I am
saying that [laughs]. . . . But I wouldn’t feel um, uncomfortable at all if my daughter,
you know, married a, an Asian person or I wouldn’t have felt strange dating an Asian
person in college, but I would have felt a little bit—I would have felt uncomfortable
dating a black man.

Within each of these parents’ comments was a clear understanding of race and social phenomena—that is,
individuals live segregated lives because they choose to, because of racial/cultural differences; different groups
succeed or fail because of cultural differences; certain groups would be okay for interracial contact but not
others. As some authors have discussed, these sorts of cultural explanations of achievement and segregation
ignore the role of institutional racism in producing these racial realities (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Bobo, Kluegel, and
Smith 1997).
In a slightly different example, when asked how she talked to her kids about race, Mrs. Harry, another
parent, explained that she would tell her kids, “Well, it’s just like, I say, ‘Well, you know, everybody’s . . . try to
be like everybody’s the same.’” She soon after related events she had witnessed in which race clearly mattered

Mrs. Harry: Well, I feel . . . it’s terrible when a black . . . I mean uh, in [the nearby suburb where I
grew up] I remember a black family moved in, and they were forced out. They went to
the church, and they were just like . . . my mother said, “Well they’re just gonna have to
move—it’s horrible.”
Amanda: Oh. That’s when you were a kid?
Mrs. Harry: It wasn’t that long ago.

Yet, events like these were understood as being the result largely of the unfortunate racism of a few, other,
“bad whites.”
In fact, many of these parents contended that racism was not the issue; it was the attitude of racial minorities
and blacks in particular that kept them down. One mother stated that the problem was racial minorities’ “chip-
on-the-shoulder” attitude: “There is a certain amount of that racism that I feel like is brought on by the groups
themselves and not by the outside group. Because, there’s a certain amount of, um . . . kind of chip-on-their-
shoulder attitude, that they kinda carry around with them, whomever they meet. And it, it is apparent to
whomever they meet, and it turns you off. And that doesn’t help the black image. . . .[laughs] It doesn’t
help . . . it doesn’t help their case, if they’re try . . . if, if you know, we’re all trying to work together . . . it
doesn’t help a race’s case, for them to always be sayin’, ‘Well you’re givin’ me an F because I’m black, and you
are . . . keeping me out of being homecoming king ‘cause I’m black,’ you know. Always using that as an excuse
constantly.”
In another interview, when I asked whether she ever talked to her kids about race-related current events,
Mrs. Karpinsky stated, “I mean maybe Rodney King, because he was kind of playing the black card, you know,
‘It’s because I’m black.’” Even in extreme cases such as this (the severe beating of a black man at the hands of
white police officers), this parent doubted minority claims of harm.
In another example, a parent expressed frustration at what she perceived to be the “whininess” of blacks on
television:

Amanda: Anything recently that caused you to think about [your own racial identity] or any
interactions you had, or. . . .
Mrs. Miller: [pause] N-no—not recently, no. I do get annoyed when I see all of these black family
TV shows on TV. I have to say that. There’s one of these stations that has a lot of those.
And I do get annoyed. I don’t like to watch them. That’s why I know I might be a little
more unaccepting. Because it bugs me. It just—it just bothers me the, the portrayal I
guess, of it.
Amanda: Which part of it?
Mrs. Miller: Maybe that, maybe the hints they might make against the white people. Or . . . I don’t
like the corny attitude. I just—that kind of stuff. I’m very strongly into “we’re in
America, now be an American.”

In this case, the identification of race as a problem in African Americans lives, even as expressed in sitcoms,
was understood as un-American, divisive, and possibly itself racist against whites (see Hochshield (1995) for a
related argument).
We can see both from the experiences of the few students of color and from the racial logic of the adults in
the community (school personnel and parents) that race mattered at Foresthills. Yet, in almost every way, whites
there denied that it mattered locally or nationally—with a few exceptions. The three parents interviewed with
biracial children (one Latino mother, one Asian American mother, and one white mother of a biracial
black/white child) had different outlooks. All affirmed that race mattered both in their lives and in the lives of
their children. Although they varied in the extent to which they thought race shaped their children’s day-to-day
school experiences, they all talked about it as a community issue. They worried about the lack of diversity and
were careful about whom they let their kids play with or whom they themselves socialized with—avoiding those
who were “close-minded” or “backward.” All had grown up in and moved from much more diverse
surroundings and expressed some ambivalence about Sunny Valley. In many ways the experiences of these
families—for example, having to be strategic about which of their supposedly color-blind neighbors they spent
time with—highlight the contradictions in how race is thought about and lived in the community.
Foresthills, West City, and Metro2 were very different educational institutions. They had different
demographics, dynamics, and cultures. Yet, in each place, racial processes were at work. Each was what
Thompson (1975) and Wacquant (2002) have labeled a “race-making institution.” As Wacquant elucidates,
“They do not simply process an ethnoracial division that would somehow exist outside of and independently
from them. Rather each produces (or co-produces) this division (anew) out of inherited demarcations and
disparities of group power” (54). Schools play a role in the production of race as a social category both through
implicit and explicit lessons and through school practices. Children at Foresthills, West City, and Metro2
learned what it meant to be white, black, Asian, or Latino within the contexts of those institutions. They were
becoming what teachers assumed they already were—racial subjects. Race is not merely a fixed characteristic of
children that they bring to school and then take away intact but something they learn about through school
lessons and through interactions with peers and teachers. Moreover, schools do not merely produce children as
racial subjects—they produce racial disparities in life outcomes. Children were not only learning racial lessons
but were receiving different educational opportunities. Racial inequalities then are, at least in part, products of
racialized institutional and interactional practices within the education system.
Educational research that ignores these racialization processes and that treats race simply as a variable
reifies racial categories and misses the role schools play in the production and reproduction of race, racial
identities, and racial inequality. Race is never a finished product; it functions as a dynamic, artificial, and
powerful category that applies to us—and that we react to—in new and old ways on a daily basis. Racial
ascriptions, racial identities, and even racial categories are continually constructed, reconstructed, struggled
over, and resisted. Racial identities and racial categories, then, are less stable than much of our sociological
discussion and analysis implies. I have heeded Almaguer and Jung’s exhortation to study “how racial
lines . . . are being re-drawn contemporarily” (1999: 213). However, as I have tried to emphasize throughout
this [chapter] that same drawing and redrawing involves not merely ideas and identities but also power and
resources. The color line is unstable, but its power to shape life chances is not abating. Long histories of racial
oppression leave us with unequal resources; continuing discrimination and institutional racism perpetuate and
exacerbate these old racial hierarchies and help create new ones. Too often schools, which might ameliorate
some of these inequities, instead reinforce them.

NOTES

1. For some of the best of this research, see Patchen 1982; Peshkin 1991; Schofield 1982; and Wells and
Crain 1997.
2. Source: California Association of Realtors. This figure is slightly above the county median of $197,000.
3. Although class sizes in the upper grades are larger (more than thirty), statewide legislation had lowered
class sizes in the early grades (K-3) to twenty.
4. For more on this criticism, see Wills 1994, 1996.
5. When asked similar questions, students at the two urban schools talked about inheritance, opportunities to
go to college, and discrimination.
6. For other examples of such denial in schools see Schofield 1986 and Rist 1974.

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SOURCE: From Race in the Schoolyard: Negotiating the Color Line in Classrooms and Communities, by
Amanda Lewis. Copyright © 2003 by Amanda Lewis. Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.
30
SHADES OF WHITE
White Kids and Racial Identity in High Schools
PAMELA PERRY

T he bell rings and students burst through classroom doors as if they just met depressurized space. Once-
empty corridors are now swift rivers of bodies—bodies that are tall, short, wide, thin, brown, olive,
pink, gray, chocolate, high-yellow, beige, bald, spiked, conked, limp, blue, wrapped, nappy, gangly,
stocky, pierced, fierce, laughing. This heterogeneous mass flows out of the halls and into the open areas of the
campus where the physics of “race” take over and fragment students into murky currents of “black,” “white,”
“Asian,” and “Latino.” Black youth pool up in central spaces, whites and Asians in distinct off-center locales,
Latinos and newly arrived immigrant groups in niches along the margins. Some youth grab french fries, corn
dogs, and packaged snacks from cafeteria vendors, others take the time to greet friends. Before long, it is time to
begin the slow trip, against the tide, to class.
This is Clavey High, a large, urban public school in a metropolitan area on the Pacific Coast of California.
Valley Groves is a large, suburban public school located not twenty miles from Clavey. At 10:30 a.m.
“brunch,” the savory smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls beckons students into the Quad, a large patio area in
the middle of campus. Students fly into the Quad like so many downy seeds of a cottonwood tree on a breezy
day. They glide, dive, swoop, and twirl, hover in suspension momentarily, then resume gliding, diving,
swooping, twirling. Everywhere, rosy-cheeked girls with hair that banners out into silky golden flags greet
broadly grinning boys with sun-burned noses. Youth who look otherwise are not here, are elsewhere, beyond
purview. The class bell rings and within moments the Quad is barren and quiet. All that remains are the last
lingering smells from the kitchen.

A NORMAL DAY AT SCHOOL.

From the winter of 1994 through spring 1996, I spent most weekdays at either Clavey or Valley Groves high
school talking with students and participating in their daily activities. I was interested in what being “white”
meant to European American students in those schools and curious to see if the racial consciousness and
identities of white students in a multiracial school like Clavey, differed from those of white students in a
predominantly white school, like Valley Groves. I went into the schools equipped with some working
assumptions, mainly that all identities spring from social relations and that one needs to confront a “racial other”
for there to be a “racial self.” Given this, I expected the white youth at Clavey to have reflected on their
whiteness more than whites at Valley Groves. I also had a methodology—participant observation1 and in-depth
interviews that ideally would help me examine not only what students said about their identities, but what they
meant by what they said, and what they could not say but only perform in daily, unexamined practice.
What I was not prepared for was the extent to which white youths’ identities would differ and vary between
whites in the same schools and even within individuals’ minds. This was particularly true in the multiracial
school, where some youth stumbled when trying to answer “What does it mean to be white?” and some spoke
eloquently. Some could discuss white identity only as something with social-political meaning and not cultural
meaning, others could do both. Most believed that to be white meant that you had no culture, all the while
marking “white” boundaries in personal interests, clothing styles, musical tastes, and other cultural forms. Some
felt victimized as whites, some felt privileged, many felt both. Some felt “racist,” some felt nonracist, many felt
both.
In this chapter, I present students’ narratives and my observations and interpretations of the everyday, lived
processes of white identity formation at Valley Groves and Clavey high schools. I argue that white students’
identities, like all racial identities, were fickle, multiple, and often contradictory. They were so because, in order
to make sense of race and one’s own racial identity and social location, students looked to large- and small-scale
local (in this case, school) social-political structures and their personal experiences of interracial relations.
When their associations with racialized groups were impersonal and distant, as at Valley Groves, whites
fashioned identities of a kind very different from those of whites at Clavey, who had personal and up-close
relations with students of color. Moreover, in both cases, but at Clavey especially, white students’ experiences
of racial-ethnic2 difference were complicated by such things as the ways gender, class, age-group, and other
indentities influenced the experience of race in a given moment; the degree of diversity whites saw among
people of color; and the different sentiments and meanings attached to different racialized relations, such as
white-Asian or white-black relations.
Overall, this work supports contemporary theories of race and ethnicity that argue that race, culture, and
identity are not static, immutable things; they are social processes that are created and recreated by people in
their daily lives and social interactions.3 Considerable research has illuminated the ways historical, political,
and/or economic processes constitute and alter the meanings and ideologies of race and white domination,4 but
much less has been done with respect to the more intimate, everyday processes that link the self to the racial
order.5 Whereas the former tends to see change over long periods of time, the latter observes the daily shifts and
turns identities can take as individuals negotiate their social landscapes.
My emphasis on the mutability and multiplicity of white identities has particular relevance for contemporary
scholarship on “whiteness” and white racism, which have tended to represent white identities and attitudes as
fixed and stable. Whiteness scholars have taken on the important task of revealing the invisibly pernicious ways
that white cultural and political domination permeates people’s lives, from interpersonal relationships, to
classrooms, the law, the color of “flesh”-tone make-up, and commonsense notions of good and bad, right and
wrong, the beautiful and the damned.6 In the process of illuminating whiteness, however, scholars have tended
to reify it into a monolithic “fact” that affects more or less all whites certainly and consistently.7 Sociologists of
“modern” or “new” racism similarly assign coherency and fixity to white racial consciousness. By their account,
inconsistencies and contradictions in white people’s attitudes, behaviors, and self-perceptions are nothing more
than a contemporary form of anti-black sentiment that, because blatant racism is no longer socially accepted,
hides behind egalitarian beliefs and good intentions.8 This [chapter] seeks to challenge whiteness and “new
racism” theories by vividly illuminating the ambivalences and contradictions in white identity and showing how
they are products of the socially constructed nature of race. Furthermore, I assert that contradictions need not be
seen as nefarious, but as potential inlets for nurturing antiracism.
“How would you describe white American culture?” I ask Laurie. The espresso machine in the café where
Laurie and I are talking is hissing, spitting, and growling, making me lean across my soup-size bowl of mocha
latte to feel certain I can be heard. Laurie is a white middle-class senior and self-described “popular” girl at
Valley Groves High. Medium-length sandy hair dances around her open and friendly face when she speaks. She
is popular, she explains, by virtue of knowing a lot of people, being well liked, and involved in a lot of school
activities. She is a member of the school council, chair of the Conflict Resolution Club, and overall coordinator
for all the club activities around school.
Laurie pauses, her expression at first visibly perplexed, as if she didn’t understand the question, and then
reflecting that she might be drawing an absolute blank. Wondering if she heard me over the roar in the
background, I awkwardly reiterate, “You know, like, what would you say white American culture is like?”
“I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I don’t know.” She pauses and laughs nervously. “When you think about it,
it’s like . . . [a longer pause]. I don’t know!”
I try to help her out by suggesting that she imagine she has met a Martian who is very interested in hearing
things about what her society is like, what foods she eats, what she does for fun, that sort of thing. The
perplexed look on her face barely softens, “You mean, how would I describe the society?”
 “Yeah.”
She thinks a bit. “I don’t know! It’s so hard! Materialistic in a sense. Lots of people care about what they
look like. Stuff like that. I don’t know. I can’t!”
I then ask her what it means to her to be white. “Nothing really,” she says after a moment’s reflection.
“Do you have an ethnic background you are tied to?”
She replies,

We’re a bunch of everything. My great-great-grandmother is Cherokee. Whenever I fill out [questionnaires]

about what’s my ethnic background I write “white” because everything is so random. We have German,
some family from Wales—but that means nothing to me. So, I guess not. It’s not that I’m so much of
something that I—or, maybe it’s the way that we’ve been taught. Like Filipinos care about where they came
from and the hardships, but whites don’t. We don’t even have a student club for whites. So I don’t have any
ties to anything. I haven’t heard about anything my parents have been through except for my grandparents in
wars. It’s all been about people, not culture.
Food. Food. Everybody eats different kinds of food. . . . It’s an incredible bond, eating.

Jessie chuckles self-consciously and continues.

Actually I have a whole philosophy worked up around food, the way people work around food. I’ve noticed,
like, okay—of my Asian friends: food. You eat. You got something on the table, you eat. Okay. Like my
friend Anita. She is eighth-generation Chinese on her dad’s side and second on her mom’s and [eating] is
important to her. She eats, eats, eats. Also, Monique, who’s Filipino, eats, eats, eats. Then all my white
girlfriends go, ‘Oh, I’ve been anorexic three times and bulimic eight times,’ and deh-deh-deh-deh. And you
see that in white culture—skinny, you know? Nice figure, okay, but you go to other parts of the world and a
full-figured woman is more appreciated, you know?

Jessie is a middle-class white senior girl who attends Clavey High. She is a talented writer and assists the
English teacher in his first-year creative writing class. Like Laurie, Jessie is involved in peer mediation and
conflict resolution in her school and is well-liked among white kids on campus, but unlike Laurie, she is not
popular—but that is only because “popular” isn’t a category of distinction in the social organization of students
at Clavey. We talk for several hours in a room in the school library. The space is small and sterile but quiet,
which is important, because Jessie has much to say.
“Oh wait!” Jessie interrupts as I am about to ask another question. “I have something to add.” Then she
continues,

I think that white culture is much more thoroughly defined in places outside of the Bay Area, like Denver,
Arizona, and places like that. Minnesota! It seems like, Minnesota especially they’ve got the whole thing
going on. Like beer bread . . . [inaudible moment in tape recording] the knitting and making of quilts or
whatever. I don’t know. It’s all these different things and you’re like “Oh, okay, this is along the lines of
what you can consider culture,” you know? The whole attitude of what people do and, you know, polka,
parades, apple pie, and things like that. It’s like “Oh, okay, white culture, funky tune!” It doesn’t feel rich to
you because it’s not exotic but at the same time, you go home and say “I went to a polka bar” and your
friends say “Wow, you must have been in Minnesota!”

Laurie’s and Jessie’s responses to the question “What is white American culture?” represent two ends of a
continuum ranging from, on the one end, a “cognitive gap”—a total inability to define “white” as a culture—
and, on the other, relatively effusive distinctions between white and other American cultures. In my discussions
and interviews with white students at both Valley Groves and Clavey, the young people’s answers to my probes
into white culture ran along that continuum, but Valley Groves youth tended to congregate predominantly
around the cognitive gap end and Clavey youth around the loquacious end.
In this chapter I will compare what white students at Valley Groves and Clavey could explicitly say about
“white” as an identity or culture. Interesting differences obtain between the two schools. At Valley Groves,
where students had virtually no association with people who were actively marking racial-ethnic identities and
cultural boundaries, white students believed they lacked culture. At Clavey, where white youth were forced into
both explicit and implicit dialogues about race-ethnic distinctions, cultures, and identities, white students
struggled to mark and define a white racial identity and culture. Between the two schools, three narratives of
white culture were most salient: normal, European American ethnic, and postcultural.

VALLEY GROVES: WHITE MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE ETHNIC

Billy was a senior at Valley Groves, a popular boy active in athletics and school leadership whom I met in his
advanced college placement (ACP) government class. The teacher of that course, Mr. Riley, always welcomed
my participation in his class, which I appreciated because many of the school’s most popular and mainstream
students were enrolled in it. I interviewed Billy at his home, a small family farm near the outskirts of Rancho
Nuevo. We sat at the dining room table and talked while his parents did chores outside. I asked Billy what he
called himself when asked about his ethnic or racial identity. He said, “White. I just say I’m white.” When I
asked what that meant to him he responded, “Nothing. Means nothing, really. Color of my skin, that’s about it.”
Given that Billy said being white meant nothing to him but skin color, it seemed to me at the time that any
further inquiry into how he might describe “white” as a culture would not bear much fruit. So I asked him what
would be his first response to the question “What are you?”
“I’d say I’m an American.”
“And what does being ‘American’ mean to you?” I asked.
“Mainly living in America, being free, having choices, being able to vote and just being here, I guess.”
I then asked, “What do you think is culturally specific about American culture?”
A long “hmmmm” told me that Billy’s mind was at work. Then he asked, “Like, what’s American culture?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hmmmm,” he sang again. Then, after a fairly long pause, he added, “I don’t really know, cause it’s like
[pause] . . . just [pause] . . . I’m not sure! I don’t know!

For Laurie, Billy, and most white students I spoke to at Valley Groves, especially the more mainstream
students, “white” was an empty cultural category. When explicitly asked to describe white American culture or,
simply, “American” culture, they fell into what I call a cognitive gap. The cognitive gap, I believe, is little more
than what Gramsci called “commonsense” and Bourdieu “doxa”—that which goes without saying because it
comes without saying. It is that which is so embedded in the hegemonic that it is taken for granted, not reflected
upon because it is experienced as “natural” or “normal.” In this respect, it is understandable that youth who
were most identified with and integrated into the mainstream culture would be least reflective about that culture.
And, indeed, the youth at Valley Groves I spoke to who positioned themselves outside the mainstream had a
little more ease in responding to questions about white American culture. Carli was a self-made rebel whose
style and allegiances were not easy to pin down—semihippie, semialternative, semipunk, semigeek. She lived
alone with her mom in an apartment house not far from school, in a “middle-lower”-class part of town, as Carli
called it. Carli had this to say when I asked her what it meant to be “American”:

I think—I’ve thought about this lately, being American. I used to hate it because I’d think, man, I shouldn’t
even be here, you know? This isn’t even my country, you know? But it is. I was—you know, I was born
here. I think it’s just a dreaming country. It’s for the dreamers, because really we came over here for—I like
why we came here. I don’t like what we did when we came here. It was wrong. But I like why we came
here. We came here for something new. I mean lots of dreams, lots of goals, lots of happiness, lots of
expectations, lots of excitement for a new—and I love that. That’s why I love excitement for new things, for
change. So I love being an American because I am a direct—uh—I don’t know what to say. [I try to help:
“Descendant?”] Yeah, descendant of that dream. So I’m glad that I’m here for that reason. So I’m proud of
being an American, even though I feel like you don’t have much of a culture because I think the cultures
come with origin, and really our origin is just a bunch of politics [chuckle].
 Carli then said, “But . . .” with enough pause to suggest that she was wanting me to break in, so I did. “You
know, that’s an interesting point ‘cause, well, you originated here. I mean, you know, at least in this corporeal
form.” Carli laughed with me at my insinuation that she may have appeared in some other corporeal form
elsewhere, an idea I don’t know how or why came into my head. I rearticulated the point by saying, “I mean,
your parents are from here and their parents, so, like, there’s an origin here.”
“Yeah,” Carli chimed in.
“So why doesn’t it feel like you have an origin here?”
She replied,

Why doesn’t it feel like an origin? I think because this generation is so lazy, I think. ‘Cause our—it seems
like American culture is television. And that’s why I feel like I don’t have [cutting herself off]—I’m just not
happy with our, with my culture right now. I don’t like living in the houses we live in. I don’t like going by
the systems that we go by. I don’t like the patriarchalness of our system. I don’t. I don’t think it’s—I don’t
think it originated that way. I like to go—I want to go back. I want to study ancient, ancient, ancient things,
and maybe—[cutting herself off]. I don’t know where purity comes in. I want to find that. I mean I’m sure,
you know, medieval wasn’t pure. I’m sure—[cutting herself off]. I don’t know. I can’t say what this is—but
that’s why I don’t like it. I don’t like this culture. I want to go back to what was before, because this culture
to me is television, television.

“And what does ‘television’ mean?” I asked.

Just escape, craziness. Your brain doesn’t have to think. Everything’s there for you. You don’t have to think
and you don’t have to figure it out. You don’t have to contemplate it. You just see it. Go to sleep. I hate that.

In Carli’s narrative, although she doesn’t explicitly refer to “white” American culture, she implies this when
she asserts that we did wrong when we came here. In context, her “we” is implicitly referring to white
Europeans and their various acts of domination. She acknowledges, with ambivalence, her ancestral link with
those white Europeans. And she is critical of the contemporary “American” culture she sees those ancestors
largely responsible for: types of houses, patriarchy, impurity, escapist television. She also suggests that white
American culture is not a culture because it has no “origin.”
Carli’s response differed from Laurie’s in that it was not stunted by a cognitive gap. She had reflected on
and could talk about some of the common practices, habits, or characteristics of white American culture. This
difference, I believe, was attributable to the fact that Carli was more countercultural than Laurie in her style,
self-image, and political views. She positioned herself outside the mainstream, and from there she could more
easily objectify it. However, Carli and Laurie did share a certain perspective on white American culture—that it
somehow had no origin or, as Laurie put it, no “ties to anything.”
The idea that being white meant that you had no origin or ties to a past was widespread among all the white
youth I spoke to at Valley Groves. Mara was a middle-class senior honors student who was active in leadership
and a star athlete. She was Mormon and described herself as “conservative” politically, but her views on
affirmative action were not set in stone. We talked in a small conference room on campus, and quite quickly
after preliminary introductions I told her a true story about a census taker who recently had come to my house.
The census taker introduced herself and then asked, without any prompting, “What are you?” I asked Mara, if
she had met that census taker, what would have been her first response to the question “What are you?”
“Like a race?” Mara asked.
“Could be a racial category . . .” I replied, trying not to influence her response. “I’d have to answer ‘Very
white.’ I am, yeah. I am 100 percent white. Whenever I hear that ‘What are you?’ I think either of race or
religion. But race usually first and religion second.”
Her answer struck me because, over at Clavey, white youth referred to suburban whites as “very white” to
suggest their shelteredness, lack of interaction with people of color, and naivete about racial issues, if not
explicit racism. Mara, however, used the phrase unabashedly and matter-of-factly to express how she viewed
herself. Also, on the consent form I gave Mara for her and a parent to sign for this interview, I included a
section where I asked students to name the racial category with which they identify. Mara noted that she had a
mix of European backgrounds and wrote “pretty much white” on the form. So I asked her if being white meant
having a European mix.
Mara replied, “I just think that there’s not much . . . I don’t really think of myself as European. I think of
myself as a white American girl. I wish I had a little more uniqueness to me, I mean, I don’t know . . . [inaudible
tape] I don’t really go back to my roots, though I know I have family and where they come from but they’re all
white races.”
“You don’t have any heartfelt devotion to your European past?” I asked.
“Not really. We’ve done a lot of genealogy work in church. That’s how I know where everybody is from
and I appreciate that as my background, but my family has lived here for generations, so I don’t really draw on
that.”
In sum, to Mara, the more distant you were from your ancestors, the more white you became.
One day I asked Mr. Riley if he knew any conservative students to whom he could introduce me. He
suggested Jonathon, a senior in his government class who was an outspoken conservative Republican and a big
fan of Rush Limbaugh. Jonathon was an athlete and very active in school leadership. He and I met in an empty
classroom during his study period, a time more easy to negotiate than taking him away from one of his many
extracurricular activities during lunch or after school.
I told Jonathon about the census taker who came to my house and asked him how he would have responded
to “What are you?”
“Like in what context?” Jonathan asked.
Once again hoping not to influence the first response, I said, “Well, traditionally census takers count people
and place them in broad categories of race, class, gender, religion. This census taker seemed to be curious about
what people call themselves, how they categorize themselves without any particular prompting, like without
saying, ‘What race, or gender, or nationality are you?’”
“Uh huh,” Jonathon uttered, as if hoping for a little more prompting.
“So what comes to mind first, how would you categorize yourself?”
“I’m . . . white, if anyone asks me. I’m a white boy. I have—you know?”
“Yeah?”
“I have no minority standing,” Jonathon continued. “Any scholarships or anything like that, just out of
bounds for me. All that kinda stuff. I’m just white. I come from like some—I think I come . . . primarily from
Sweden, Germany whatever, you know, but those European cultures have probably been mixed in so much that
I’m just white.”
“Right. You don’t have any—there’s no strong pull toward your European ancestry?” I asked.
“Well, I know for a fact [that I have] ancestors from Sweden, the ones that I’ve heard about. But we’ve lived
in America for a long time. . . . [My last name] is a German name, but it’s not. It’s my dad’s, it was his step-
dad’s name and it has no ties to us. I think [my ancestry is] a lot of, kind of Norwegian, Sweden, those kind of
cultures.”
“Yes?”
“Pretty much white,” he concluded.
Matt was another boy I met in Mr. Riley’s class. I was interested in talking to him because he made
comments in class that suggested to me that he was fairly liberal on issues concerning race. He lived with both
of his parents, who had working-class jobs and a house near campus.
“What does being white mean to you?” I asked Matt after we had spent some time getting acquainted and
talking about the different types of kids at school.
“I feel like an American. But I guess I’m kind of jealous because I don’t have this kind of ethnic background
that I can claim and get college scholarships and stuff. You never see the young white American scholarship
foundation, which I think they should have. . . . I guess because the so-called minorities have a lot of ethnic
heritage, I don’t think white people really have that. Not a strong racial background. They’re just kinda there.”
To sum up these responses white youth at Valley Groves gave to questions regarding white identity as an
identification with a “culture”: Billy, Laurie, Carli, Mara, Jonathon, and Matt represented a wide swath of
different types of white students at Valley Groves: mainstream/alternative, liberal/conservative, middle-
class/working-class, male/female. Yet they all had fairly similar definitions of white identity and culture. Most,
especially the more mainstream white students, experienced a cognitive gap when asked to describe white
American culture, and when asked to define what being “white” meant to them, they all said that it meant you
had no culture, specifically no ties to some kind of European ancestry or heritage. Moreover, this understanding
did not particularly disturb them, with the exception that some believed that having an ancestry entitled people
to special treatment when it came to college scholarships and admissions. Another exception was Carli, who
dreamed of going “back” to a more “pure” time.
I expected white youth to be somewhat more concerned over not having an ethnic ancestry. There is
considerable research claiming that multigenerational European Americans who, through the melting pot, have
lost all semblance of their ancestral culture will retain symbolic attachments to a European ancestry because it
makes them feel unique and gives them a sense of belonging to a community.9 Besides Carli, the only youth I
talked to at Valley Groves who felt some attachment to an “ethnic” past were first-generation European
immigrants who were still tied to a non-American culture. But even for Carli, her desires for a “past” were not
driven by a longing for “meaning” as much as freedom from the aspects of American culture she disliked—
patriarchy, consumerism, and television.
Another commonality in youth’s constructions of what “white” meant was the us-them formulation
white/majority versus ethnic/minority. This is most evident in Jonathon’s and Matt’s narratives, where Jonathon
said he had “no minority standing,” and Matt said that “so-called minorities have a lot of ethnic heritage” and
whites do not. In other conversations with white students at Valley Groves, they tended not to distinguish much
between the different peoples that comprise U.S. minorities. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Filipinos were all alike in
certain respects: they all had culture, “close family ties,” uniqueness, and certain advantages over whites
because of their “standing.” A Filipino girl I interviewed corroborated this observation without direct
solicitation. I had asked her what stereotypes she thought the white students had of different racial-ethnic
groups, and she replied, “The white kids don’t really stereotype, like, specific groups. Just
generally . . . minorities.”

CLAVEY HIGH: SITUATED RENDERINGS OF WHITE CULTURE

Jessie was referred to me through two sources: Eric, one of the more radical, critical-minded students I met at
Clavey and with whom I became friends, and Barry, a conservative Republican whom we will hear more from
shortly. Both described Jessie as articulate and smart and respected her insights into their school experience. I
started my interview with her by asking her why she chose to attend Clavey High School. She said that she had
gone to a predominantly white middle school and wanted a “better shot at being an individual, a better shot at
having a balanced collection of minority friends and being able to know more about other people and, hence, to
know more about myself.”
I asked her what caused her to believe that a racial-ethnic balance of friends would be a good thing for her.
She said that she had never really felt that she had a culture, that she could “identify [her]self as a culture.”
However, during the preceding summer she had lived for a week on an Apache reservation. She said, “It was an
incredible experience to me. They were very open about the importance of their culture and I was able to
participate in a sunrise ceremony. [The Apache culture] was absolutely intriguing to me and that [experience]
was one of the most powerfully wholly cultural experiences I’ve ever had. It really changed how I felt about
having something like that.”
Another factor that contributed to her desire to know more about her culture was not only that she felt she
might be missing out on something meaningful but also that not having a clear identity made her susceptible to
self-hatred as a white person. “You cannot love yourself and hate your culture,” Jessie said. “A lot of African
American activists have said that. I don’t think that [culture] is at the root of everything, but I do think that it’s
important to have some respect for that facet of who you are because you see it every time you look in the
mirror.”
These concerns, raised largely from her experiences of close association with people who had culturally
bounded self-identities and, to an extent, negative ideas about white people, inspired Jessie to explore just what
white American culture was. The extent to which she could articulate traits she believed to be of white culture—
negative obsession with food, skinny figures, quilts, polka, and beer bread, to name just a few—was exceptional
among the white students I spoke to at Clavey, but not too far off the spectrum. Every white kid I spoke to at
Clavey had something to say about white American culture, even if that something was that they took white
culture for granted. As Eric told me, “I think I’m too immersed in [white culture] to be able . . . It’s probably a
lot of things I take for granted. I’m sure of that.”
Overall, the term most descriptive of the ways the youth I spoke to at Clavey dealt with the question of
white culture would be “pained.” Youth were aware of the difficulty in defining white culture and identity and
struggled to make sense of that. Linda, Sera, Melissa, and Ann were four close friends who were finishing their
sophomore year when we first met to talk. All three were in high-tracked courses and had aspirations to attend
universities after high school. Sera, Melissa, and Ann described themselves as “alternative” and wore the
understated clothes and hair that went with that identity. I didn’t learn explicitly from Linda, an orthodox Jew,
where she placed herself in the spectrum of youth styles and tastes, but she tended to dress semistraight and
semialternative.
We met at Linda’s place, a single-family house not far from Clavey in a predominantly white, high-middle-
income neighborhood. We sat in the den. Melissa and Linda spread out on opposite ends of a large, overstuffed
sofa, and Sera, Ann, and I alternately sat or stretched out on the floor. Between us was a bag of cookies I had
brought. About thirty minutes into our discussion, in which we made introductions and talked casually about the
girls’ experiences at Clavey, I asked, “What is white American culture?”
Linda spoke up first. “White American cu’—I mean, like—just the three people in this room. White? I
consider myself Jewish. I don’t know what this ‘white’ is.” She looked at Ann and asked, “If someone asked
you, would you say you’re Lutheran or you’re white?”
“Well, I’m white,” Ann replied. “But I don’t know about my white heritage.”
Speaking over Ann’s last words, Linda broke in, “Like, white. So I’m, like, white?”
“Yeah, I’m white,” Ann repeated with a slight tone of defiance.
“That has nothing to do with me,” Linda said.
Then Ann continued, “So like why do we say color, I mean, okay [she points to me], you’re tan. We should
have a tan group.” Pointing to her bare arm she said, “I’m white now—no—this [pointing to paper] is white.
Am I white? [pointing again to her arm] No.”
Linda: “To me, like African Americans, when they have the AASU [African American Student Union], their
race in a way is different than say ‘white’ because ‘white’ is so general. African Americans have . . . fewer
divisions [among them] than we have. They’re more one, and we’re more different.”
Sera, who until now had been lying on the floor with her eyes closed, suddenly came to life and said, “I
think it’s the opposite. We’ve grown up—we don’t know but, TV is our culture, everything about us is our
culture so we don’t think of it as special or significant. Africa has so many different cultures and they combine
as Africa. And [then people] say ‘I’m African American’—half the people [identified as such] have no
connection to Africa.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” said Linda, enthusiastically, “So many white people don’t— [cutting herself off].
Either you’re religious and you know your ancestry, you know your culture, your background.”
Melissa then chimed into the discussion, “I know my background but I’m not religious.”
Linda, defensively: “I’m saying or you know whatever, or you don’t. You’re not religious and you’re just a
part of the color. I know so many African American people who don’t know anything about Africa.”
Ann again: “Why do people have a label? African American, European American or whatever. We are
American, period, that’s it. Yes, I’m European. I’m glad I know my European history . . . but we’re American.”
“We shouldn’t have any labels,” said Sera. “It shouldn’t be like us and them, it should be we.” Ann,
agreeing, said, “We are of the human race,” as Sera kept talking. “Why do we have labels? What’s the purpose
of saying you belong to this group—already saying you have this difference?”
“Remember the day we had to wear labels? You wore, ‘I am proud to be a virgin!’” Ann said, directing this
to Sera.
“I’m proud to be a human being.”
“But most of them had a culture!”
 Sera replied. “It’s good to be proud of who you are, but . . .”
“But that’s like a blockade!” Ann said, exuberantly finishing Sera’s sentence.
“I’m white and I’m proud, like ‘Oh my god!’” Sera said, in a tone indicating that to say such a thing would
be impossible without severe sanction.
“I have a question,” continued Ann. “I want to discuss this—Why are white people racist and other cultures
aren’t? Why? Why, like about the label ‘I am proud to be white’—’Oh my god she’s a racist!’ [But] ‘I’m proud
to be Asian’—’Oh wow, that’s so cool!’”
Returning to the conversation, Linda replied, “I don’t know; to me, when I hear people say, I am proud to be
white versus I am proud to be Asian, there is a big difference because people don’t understand how to be
white.”
“But why?” asked Ann.
“White is American,” asserted Sera. “White culture and American culture are the same thing.”
Ann: “But why are white people only American, why aren’t they European American?”
In quick succession, Sera: “They are.” Ann: “No they’re not.”
“Whatever . . . to say, like, ‘I’m white’ is nothing, white isn’t considered culture because it’s American. We
all have the American culture born within us.”
Cutting Sera off, “Why because you’re white does that equal not having a culture?” Ann asked.
Linda: “It does if you—It’s so divided within the white race. White is more general than anything else.
That’s why I’m saying to say ‘I’m proud to be white’ doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t think you would say
‘I’m glad to be white.’ You’d say, I’m proud to be me. I’m proud to be liberal. I’m proud to be a democrat—I
don’t know. I don’t think anyone says ‘I’m proud to be white.’ I think people say ‘I’m proud to be black’ easily.
It’s like they’re a group together, it’s like we’re . . .” [“not,” interrupts Ann]. “‘We [African Americans] are here
to fight against everyone else. I’m so proud to be African American, we have our ties, we have our
connection’—but really they don’t. Some of them don’t even know their background. It’s just the whole, like,
I’ve got to watch out for my fellow—whatever.”
“Which is good, but not to an extreme,” added Sera.
At this point, I put one of my own thoughts into the mix, “I know, when I hear ‘I’m proud to be white’ I
immediately think, ooh, that sounds really racist.” This elicited responses from everyone simultaneously,
“Yeah!” “It’s weird!” “Slave-owners!” “We’re so evil!”
Ann, persisting with the hard questions, asked, “How come? Why do they think that? They think that we did
it. We didn’t do it. Our ancestors did it. That’s behind us. We are not like that.”
Linda, in a tone of disgust, “The word ignorant comes to mind. It’s the same thing as like saying, ‘Well,
you’re German; you persecuted my people.’ Like, I have to forget that, you know what I mean?”

Ann: “But people don’t understand that not all our ancestors did that.”
Sera: “None of my ancestors were slave owners, but if [somebody’s ancestor] was I wouldn’t
be, well, ‘You must be a racist.’”

Linda added, “We’re living in a different world. A different society. We can’t look back and drag on and
judge people from their ancestors.”
For no obvious reason, except that the topic seemed to be spent, with Linda’s comment the subject changed
to the fat content of the cookies we were heartily chowing down. (“Ah-ha!” Jessie might say, “White culture
—skinny, you know?”) Still curious, however, about what the girls’ responses would be to questions about their
ethnicity as opposed to racial identity, I asked what they said when people asked them what their ethnicity was
and how they felt about their “ethnic” heritage.
Both Ann and Sera simultaneously replied, “I’m white.” And Linda said, “I say ‘white’ because that’s the
closest thing. But I don’t relate to white. I am white, I guess, but there’s no. . . .”
Ann, cutting Linda off, “I guess white is basically European. Like, it’s basically asking, ‘Are your ancestors
from Europe?’”
I have presented this conversation at length in order to do justice to the complexities and confusions Ann,
Sera, Melissa, and Linda dealt with when confronted with the question of what is white culture. They had no
ready answers, and that fact seemed to enflame, not diminish, the emotional charge of the topic. Numerous
themes emerge in the discussion: white as an arbitrary ascription, as heterogeneous, as “American,” as an
amorphous amalgamation without community, without culture, without pride in itself. The tension between
“white” as an impersonal social ascription and as a personal, cultural category with which one can identify runs
throughout, too. This is best summed up in Linda’s final comment: “I say I’m white . . . but I don’t relate to
‘white.’” And, finally, the ways the racial-ethnic identities and behaviors of nonwhite students help the girls
think about their whiteness are evident.
Similar struggles and themes emerged in my interview with Barry, with some added twists. Barry was
introduced to me by a student who described him as “the only Republican in the school.” I was thrilled to meet a
more conservative student since I had met several at Valley Groves but none at Clavey. At least, not one who
was admittedly conservative. I had been on campus for most of the year and had never seen Barry, a thin,
medium-height, dark-blonde boy. I came to learn that he didn’t hang out much in the public spaces. At lunch
and during breaks he stayed in classrooms to work or talk to friends and did not participate in school activities.
Barry and I started our conversation on the topic of his politics. He said that he wasn’t the only Republican
on campus, but he was the most vocal and the most “extreme.” By that he meant that he was actively involved
in Republican politics, something his mother and he shared. We then got into talking about school life at Clavey
High and eventually came to the subject of white American culture because, in the course of our conversation,
Barry had mentioned “suburbany kids” who dressed “normal,” and “Asians” who were “plain ol’ Americans”
whom he “considered to be white.” I asked him to define the terms white, American, and normal.
He said, “Let’s start with the ‘white’ and ‘American’ thing. When I mentioned about the Asians who are
white, they generally are people whose families have been in America for five or six generations or whatever
and they don’t have—don’t take on a lot of the Asian traditions and Asian cultural things. You ask them about
Chinese new year and they have less idea about it than you do. They’ve adopted the American culture rather
than hanging on to the old world culture. You know?”
“And then, there is some sort of equation for you between what is white culture and what is American
culture?” I asked.
“I suppose, yeah.”
“And how would you describe that? What is American culture? And maybe that gets us back to ‘normal’?”
“Yeah, normal to me,” Barry replied. “I guess just that plain old nuclear family, kinda—you know. Two
kids and a dog. House in the suburbs or somewhere near the suburbs. One or both of the parents work, I guess.
Middle class.”
“Are there cultural things in terms of clothing and food and stuff like that?”
Laughing as though the question felt a little awkward to answer, Barry said, “I suppose” then paused to
think. “The clothing’s just, you know, normal clothes. Not anything cultural, not extremely grunge, not
extremely formal all the time. Food I guess just not any—no culture dominates. You know? The family will
have Chinese food every once in a while but they won’t every night or anything.”
Barry seemed to be a little self-conscious and unsure of himself as he spoke, so I added, “One reason I ask
this is because it can be very difficult to describe white American culture.”
With a sound of relief as if he had been taken off the hook, Barry replied “Describe that, yeah!”
“Why do you think it is difficult to describe what white American culture is?” I asked.
“I guess it seems so—[I’m] so used to seeing it that it’s hard to pick out what things it is that makes it what
it is, you know? It’s like it’s so much easier to pick out the differences in someone else’s culture than to pick out
the characteristics of your own.”
Of all the students I spoke to at Clavey, Barry came the closest to falling into a cognitive gap on the question
of white culture. His responses also resonated the most with the responses from several Valley Groves students,
such as Jonathon (who was also a Republican) and Billy (who was not), for whom white, American, middle-
class, and normal were closely connected if not synonymous. Moreover, his definition of “normal” matched
closely with the ways “normal” was defined at Valley Groves—as basically mainstream conventional.
At the same time, however, Barry was more racially conscious and reflective of whiteness than most whites
I spoke to at Valley Groves. He understood that the reason he struggled to talk about white culture was because
he was “so used to seeing it” and took it for granted. He pointed out that, because white American culture is
hard to “pick out,” he relied on “the differences in someone else’s culture” to illuminate his own. Finally, Barry
was mindful of the race-class dimensions of that which is considered “normal.” Elsewhere in our conversation
he revealed a fairly sophisticated understanding of the links between the constructions of class and racial
difference:

I think [tastes, interest, behaviors] have mostly to do with the situation you’re in. I think a lot of the black
families—maybe their parents were teenagers when they were born or they come from broken families or
poor families, they’re on welfare, public assistance. Maybe they come from abusive families or bad
situations. And a lot of the white kids don’t. And I think that if you put a white kid in the same situation as a
black student and a black student in the same situation as a white student, they would come out following
the stereotype. I don’t think it’s a racial thing, I think it’s more the situation that you’re in. And it’s just that
black people tend to be in a bad situation that multiplies down the line. So everyone stays where they’ve
always been.

Although Barry’s description of the black families was somewhat stereotypical, he spoke to ways that
racialized distinctions are often class distinctions, the differences between people living in concentrated poverty
and those not.10 Putting that aside momentarily, the point I wish to put across here is that, overall, Barry, like
Sera, Ann, Melissa, and Linda, floundered a little bit when challenged to discuss white American culture, but
rose well to the task. Common themes that came up for all of them were “white” as heterogeneous, middle-
class, eclectic, American, normal, and taken-for-granted.

COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PAST

So far, I have focused on the extent to which white students at Clavey reflected upon whiteness as “cultural” in
the sense of it being bounded by certain shared practices, habits, or assumptions. The above discourses also
reflect what youth had to say about the cultural origins of white people. Interestingly, whites at Clavey, much
like whites at Valley Groves, defined “white” as having “ancestors from Europe,” but no ties there. Or as Eric
said, “We don’t have lengthy traditions. A lot has been lost in the good ol’ melting pot.”
However, Clavey whites had very different responses to their fuzzy cultural history than did their
counterparts at Valley Groves, for whom having no cultural ties was a matter of fact that caused no apparent
distress. At Clavey, the informal culture of the school impressed on youth the importance of knowing your
racial-ethnic background. As one white student, Tina, put it, “I think [knowing your ancestry] is important to
anybody you ask. Everybody wants to know who they are, where they come from. It’s a major part of being [at
this school].” Hence, at Clavey, the lack of an origin story was a charged issue for Clavey whites I spoke to. For
Jessie, for example, her self-perceived lack of identity made her susceptible to low self-esteem in the face of
groups who not only found pride in their heritage but looked at her and saw the history of white oppression.
There were two different ways in which Clavey students resolved their discomfort over having no clearly
defined ancestry. One way was the “ethnic option”11 or “symbolic ethnicity.”12 Those terms refer to the ways
that multigenerational white Americans, in the absence of ethnic community and cultural practices such as
language, will choose an ethnicity and embrace it largely in name only for the purpose of providing meaning
and a sense of community. Jessie chose one kind of ethnic option—defining “white” as a cultural community
with traditions that, although “funky,” gave her a sense of roots. Barry chose another type of ethnic option. I
asked him if being at Clavey or living in Clavey City caused him to think about his background. He responded,
“It’s made me think about it a lot more. You’ll see on my [consent] form that I’m German and my grandparents
are extremely German. My grandmother grew up in a family of immigrants, learned all the German traditions. I
found that I would ask her about them more mostly because of the Asian kids. I really respect the way that they
carry out all those traditions here, and I’m really interested by that. And I sort of found myself being more
interested in what a German family would do, culturally.”
I asked, “Do you feel that your German ancestry is a part of you—more than just an interest—something
that you carry with you, that gives you something meaningful?” He responded,

I don’t know. I didn’t realize how many German traditions my family followed until I went there and
noticed, “gee!” And I was there with a group of students and we’d go through the town and we’d see
churches and things and they’d say how interesting that was and I’d think, “Well, we do that. We do things
that way. My church service is like that.” I didn’t realize how much of it I had until I saw how much of it
other people don’t. [“And at home?” I interjected.] I discovered my family’s diet’s pretty different because
my family eats red meat seven times a week sometimes. We eat a lot of pork and beef and I discovered that
a lot of people don’t. [Laughs] A lot of potatoes, too! I guess that’s very different. I’ve discovered, too, my
parents are both very heavy drinkers. Not to the point where it bothers me that much, but I’ve also noticed
that people seem to have more fun at my house than at other houses. At my house there’s the nightly
cocktail hour, dinner conversation can get kind of loud.

With that last comment, Barry laughed out loud and added, “My family seems to laugh more than other
families do.”
Barry’s association with Asians inspired him to reflect on his own cultural background, just as Jessie’s
experience on the Apache reservation caused her to reflect on hers. In doing so, Barry looked to the types of
foods and manners of his family culture to represent his ethnic culture. This is most common among European
Americans who have lost touch with traditional communities and cultural practices.13 And the family can
represent the ethnic culture regardless of whether or not family practices actually originate from European
traditions.14 For example, we can imagine that parents who drink a lot and get loud at dinner are probably
randomly distributed across the whole population of white (and other) people, yet Barry has attributed that to his
parents’ German ancestry.
Another way in which youth resolved the issue of having no clear ties to an ancestry was through adopting a
romantic or postcultural notion of the self.15 By “postcultural” I mean a self-concept that dismisses all relevance
of and indebtedness to the past. It is a decidedly present- or future-oriented identity that emphasizes innovation
and genius, as opposed to an ethnic identity, which is past-oriented and emphasizes tradition and continuity.16
Linda touched on the postcultural when she said, “We’re living in a different world [from slavery times]. A
different society. We can’t look back and drag on and judge people from their ancestors.”
Murray was a white Jewish senior and the first person I interviewed at Clavey. He caught my attention at a
student-faculty meeting about multicultural education where he was the only white student and one of the most
outspoken on behalf of greater representation in the school curriculum of all the different cultures at Clavey. In
our interview, Murray told me that he was the only white male on the football team and, at home, had an
adopted black brother. For these reasons, he was very aware and intolerant of racial-ethnic injustices and
“realized what white means,” especially with respect to white privilege. He added, however, that “in terms of
my background and everything, I have no clue and I’m glad about that.”
“Why are you glad?” I asked. Murray replied,

Because . . . I don’t believe in tearing about the past. Guaranteed, relatives of mine were in the Holocaust,
but does that mean that I should be upset about that? No, I should realize that happened, but there was a
holocaust here against Native Americans, a lot worse than in Germany, but no one ever talks about that. It’s
happened in a lot of societies because there’s always going to be a dominant race. But I don’t think that
white means that I should know everything about my whole past, my whole heritage, just as I don’t think
any race should because I don’t think that’s important. What’s important is being able to get your own life
on your own track. Being able to direct your life not for what your ancestors did . . . but to do the best thing
for you for where you want to go. . . . What happens is if you harp on the past and believe this door is closed
because of what happened four hundred years ago, then doors keep closing for you because of what you
believe.

Daniel, whose father was Portuguese, gave a response similar to Murray’s, but with a bit of ethnic option
mixed in. Daniel was a sophomore when we first met. Of all the students I came to know, he had the strongest
antiracist principles—so strong that he did not reduce a vicious attack on him in the bathroom by two black
boys in his sophomore year to a “racial” incident nor make it into an excuse to stereotype, fear, or dislike all
black people. I asked him if, given the semidark complexion he inherited from his father, he considered himself
white or Latino. He said,

People have suggested I am a person of color or mixed. There was a lot of pressure in junior high to have
ethnicity, be a minority so you could claim stuff. Then I decided, no, I’m European American. I mean, that’s
what I am. Ancestry doesn’t matter. I mean, things have changed. People look back in the past and judge
you for it, and I don’t think that’s right. Sure, people enslaved people. At one time every race had slaves. I
think you need to move on and see what’s going on now. History is important but you have to work on
getting together now and don’t use that to divide.

“Are there any things you’re proud of or ashamed of for being white?” I asked.

None of that stuff comes up. I don’t think of myself as a white person. If I’m talking to someone I don’t
think, “Oh god I’m a white person” and all these things go through my head. I don’t hold any of that stuff.
I’m proud of my Portuguese culture. I think everybody needs to look back to their ancestry and be proud of
it, but not to a point where you’re using it to dictate or make decisions.

Daniel felt ancestry did not matter; “now” (which, to him, owed little to the past) mattered most. In the now,
he was simply himself, without racial baggage. At the same time, ancestry did matter; it was a source of pride.
Though logically contradictory, the co-occurrence of postcultural and cultural, or “symbolic,” identities arose in
several other discussions with students. Often, the postcultural identity was attached to a particular us-them
relationship and the symbolic identity to another. For example, recall that Barry said that he became interested
in his German ancestry through his relations with Asians and respect for the way they continued their Asian
cultural practices here in the United States. Later in our conversation, the topic shifted to African Americans,
and Barry said,

In the black American culture I sort of get this feeling that it’s fashionable to be black and try and separate
yourself from white society. There’s a whole thing about how minorities should be able to get tax cuts and
black people are saying “Let’s try to get paid back from slavery.” And I’m just sort of like “That was a long
time ago.” And this whole—I don’t understand the whole concept of trying to tie themselves with the
African heritage thing, because, you know, you’re not African. I mean, unless your family immigrated or
something from a much later date but for the most part you’re American. That’s all you are, you know?
Your culture over there is gone. It’s too many generations to dig back for it now. It seems like people are
trying to separate themselves just to be different. Not for any real purpose.

When thinking about black efforts to revive a cultural ancestry, Barry’s thoughts about the value of ancestry
became hardened and dismissive, and by virtue of saying that black ancestry is too far gone to have meaning
now, he implies the same should be true of whites, who for the most part, also have long-gone ancestries. Yet,
earlier in the conversation, when thinking about Asian Americans, Barry spoke enthusiastically about his
amusement and intrigue in discovering traces of his distant German ancestry in his current practices. Overall,
when students at Clavey thought about or embraced a symbolic ethnicity, the stimulus came from their
relationships with Asians, Native Americans, and, to a lesser extent, Latinos. When they spoke from a
postcultural identity, the stimulus was their relationships with African Americans.
To sum up all the responses white youth at Clavey gave to the question of white “cultural” identity: First,
somewhat like their counterparts at Valley Groves, most white youth at Clavey found it difficult to describe
white American culture, but none fell entirely into a cognitive gap and some could say quite a lot. Themes or
characteristics of white culture that youth expressed included heterogeneous, middle-class,
commercial/consumerist, American, normal, and taken-for-granted. Second, unlike whites at Valley Groves,
white youth at Clavey were not content to believe that whiteness was a culturally empty category. They
struggled to make sense of it and to resolve that struggle. One resolution was an ethnic option, finding some
sense of pride and continuity with either white American culture or with a European ancestry, and another
resolution was a postcultural identity that dismissed the contemporary significance of ethnic identity and the
past. Third, for Clavey students, “minorities” were not a homogeneous mass but were composed
heterogeneously of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and other racial-ethnic
groups. The images of or beliefs about a specific people influenced what white youth thought about their own
whiteness and, in that regard, defined what it meant to be “white.” Finally, all in all, white students at Clavey
were not particularly uniform—not between themselves nor within themselves—on their reflections upon white
as a cultural identity.

Notes

1. As a participant observer, I attended class with students, hung out with them during lunch and school
breaks, worked with them on school committees or in after-school activities, attended school games,
rallies, and other events, and chaperoned the Junior Prom and Senior Balls of each school.
2. I use the term racial-ethnic with some hesitation. At their core, race and ethnicity are two very different
concepts. Racial groups tend to be marked by phenotypical characteristics that locate them within a power
hierarchy that privileges “white” people. Ethnic groups tend to be bound by a sense of shared culture,
religion, or history, and will not necessarily be in power relationships with other ethnic groups. Moreover,
people of different ethnicities can be categorized as one race. Nonetheless, in common usage and popular
common sense, the two concepts have become quite fused. As well, through shared experiences of
oppression, culturally heterogeneous peoples can develop common cultures and a sense of peoplehood. I
believe this can be said of African Americans in the United States. In his article “New Ethnicities” (in
Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. Morley and Chen [London: Routledge, 1996], 441–
59), Stuart Hall makes a brilliant argument for decoupling ethnicity from race and recoding ethnicity to
take on broader meanings that might take us beyond “race.” For the time being, I have simply adopted the
term “racial-ethnic.” For a closer examination of this argument, see Philomena Essed, Diversity: Gender,
Color, and Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
3. Barrie Thorne’s work, Gender Play (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), argues this well
and from early on influenced the analytical and methodological foci of my research. See also Gloria
Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute Book
Company, 1987); Paul Gilroy, “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”: The Cultural Politics of Race
and Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Steven Gregory, Black Corona: Race and the
Politics of Place in an Urban Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Stuart Hall,
“Ethnicity: Identity and Difference,” Radical America 23, no. 4 (1991): 9–20; John Hartigan Jr., Racial
Situations: Class Predicaments of Whiteness in Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); bell
hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990); Renato Rosalda,
Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); Jonathan Rutherford,
Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990); Howard Winant, Racial
Conditions: Politics, Theory, Comparisons (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
4. Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994); George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in
American and South African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); David Theo Goldberg,
Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993); Michael
Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York:
Routledge, 1986); Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic (New York: Verso, 1990);
William J. Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Winant, Racial Conditions.
5. Hartigan Jr., Racial Situations; Lorraine Delia Kenny, “Doing My Homework: The Autoethnography of a
 White Teenage Girl,” in Racing Research, Researching Race: Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race
Studies, ed. France Winddance Twine and Jonathan Warren (New York: New York University Press,
2000), 111–33; Howard Pinderhughes, Race in the Hood: Conflict and Violence Among Urban Youth
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); France Winddance Twine, “Brown-Skinned White
Girls: Class, Culture, and the Construction of White Identity in Suburban Communities,” in Displacing
Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, ed. Ruth Frankenberg (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1997), 214–43.
6. For whiteness in literature, art, and popular culture, see Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, ed., Critical
White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); Richard Dyer,
White (New York: New York University Press, 1997); hooks, Black Looks; Toni Morrison, Playing in the
Dark: Whiteness in the Literary Imagination (New York: Random House, 1993); Fred Pfeil, White Guys,
Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference (New York: Verso, 1995). For whiteness in work and
educational structures, see Philomena Essed, Diversity; Michelle Fine et al., eds., Off White: Readings on
Race, Power, and Society (New York: Routledge, 1997). For issues concerning whiteness and pedagogy,
see Henry Giroux, “Rewriting the Discourse of Racial Identity: Towards a Pedagogy and Politics of
Whiteness,” Harvard Educational Review 67, no. 2 (1997), 285–320; Joe L. Kincheloe et al., eds., White
Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Cameron McCarthy and
Warren Crichlow, eds., Race, Identity and Representation in Education (New York: Routledge, 1993).
There are some very interesting works on law, property rights, and whiteness. See Ian. F. Haney Lopez,
White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Cheryl
Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106(1993): 1707–92; George Lipsitz, “The
Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American
Studies,” American Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1995): 369–87.
For interrogations into the values and identities of whites in the historical past, see Theodore Allen, The
Invention of the White Race, vol. 1, Racial Oppression and Social Control (London: Verso, 1994);
Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines; Goldberg, Racist Culture; Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White
(New York: Routledge, 1995); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European
Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Eric Lott, Love and
Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);
David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York:
Verso, 1991); David Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 1994); Alexander
Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic (New York: Verso, 1990); Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale:
White Women, Racism, and History (New York: Verso, 1992).
For investigations of white identities in the historical present, see Ruth Frankenberg, White Women,
Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993);
Ruth Frankenberg, ed., Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1997); Charles A. Gallagher, “White Reconstruction in the University,” Socialist Review
24, no. 1 & 2 (1995): 165–87; Charles A. Gallagher, “White Racial Formation: Into the Twenty-First
Century,” in Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, ed. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 6–11; John Hartigan Jr., “Locating White Detroit,” in
Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism, ed. Ruth Frankenberg (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1997), 180–213; Hartigan Jr., Racial Situations; Lorraine Delia Kenny, Daughter of
Suburbia: Growing Up White, Middle Class, and Female (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
2000); Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peace and Freedom,
July/August 1989: 10–12; Pamela Perry, “White Means Never Having to Say You’re Ethnic: White Youth
and the Construction of ‘Cultureless’ Identities,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 30, no. 1 (2001):
56–91; Mab Segrest, Memoirs of a Race Traitor (Boston: South End Press, 1994); David Wellman,
Portraits of White Racism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Matt Wray and Annalee
Newitz, eds., White Trash: Race and Class in America (New York: Routledge, 1997).
7. Hartigan Jr., Racial Situations.
 8. See, for example, Lawrence Bobo et al., “Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystalization of a ‘Kinder, Gentler’
Anti-Black Ideology,” in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, ed. Steven A. Tuch and
Jack K. Martin (Westport: Praeger, 1997), 15–42; Howard Schuman et al., Racial Attitudes in America:
Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); David R. Williams et al.,
“Traditional and Contemporary Prejudice and Urban Whites’ Support for Affirmative Action and
Government Help,” Social Problems 46, no. 4 (1999): 548–71.
9. See, for example, Richard Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990); Herbert J. Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures
in America,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, no. 1 (1979): 1–20; Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth: Race,
Ethnicity, and Class in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981); Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing
Identities in America (Berkeley: University of Calfornia Press, 1990).
10. Barry’s narrative resonates somewhat with W. J. Wilson’s argument in The Declining Significance of Race
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) that economic class is more important than race in
determining one’s life chances.
11. Waters, Ethnic Options.
12. Herbert Gans was the first to coin this term. In “Symbolic Ethnicity” Gans argues that, because of
acculturation and assimilation, third- or fourth-generation European immigrant groups are less interested in
sustaining traditional cultures than in merely sustaining an ethic identity through ways of “feeling and
expressing that identity in a suitable way” (7–8). In this respect, he argues, ethnic identity for many of
European origin is less an ascriptive identity than a voluntary one, maintained by as little as “feeling”
ethnic. See also Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth.
13. Waters, Ethic Options; Alba, Ethnic Identity.
14. See Philomena Essed, Diversity: Gender, Color and Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,
1996).
15. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
16. See George A. De Vos et al., Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change (Palo Alto: Mayfield,
1975); Pamela Perry, “The Politics of Identity: Community and Ethnicity in a Pro-Sandinista Enclave on
Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 36 (1991): 115–36.

SOURCE: “Introduction,” pp. 1–22 and “Situated Meanings of White as a Cultural Identity,” pp. 75-95 in
Shades of White by Pamela Perry. Copyright, 2002, Duke University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by
permission of the Copyright holder, www.dukeupress.edu.
31
THE NEW SECOND GENERATION
Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants
ALEJANDRO PORTES AND MIN ZHOU

My name is Herb
and I’m not poor;

I’m the Herbie that you’re looking for,

like Pepsi,
a new generation

of Haitian determination—
I’m the Herbie that you’re looking for.

A beat tapped with bare hands, a few dance steps, and the Haitian kid was rapping. His song, titled
“Straight Out of Haiti,” was being performed at Edison High, a school that sits astride Little Haiti and
Liberty City, the largest black area of Miami. The lyrics captured well the distinct outlook of his
immigrant community. The panorama of Little Haiti contrasts sharply with the bleak inner city. In Miami’s
Little Haiti, the storefronts leap out at the passersby. Bright blues, reds, and oranges vibrate to Haitian merengue
blaring from sidewalk speakers.1 Yet, behind the gay Caribbean exteriors, a struggle goes on that will define the
future of this community. As we will see later on, it involves the second generation—children like Herbie—
subject to conflicting pressure from parents and peers and to pervasive outside discrimination.
Growing up in an immigrant family has always been difficult, as individuals are torn by conflicting social
and cultural demands while they face the challenge of entry into an unfamiliar and frequently hostile world. And
yet the difficulties are not always the same. The process of growing up American oscillates between smooth
acceptance and traumatic confrontation depending on the characteristics that immigrants and their children
bring along and the social context that receives them. In this article, we explore some of these factors and their
bearing on the process of social adaptation of the immigrant second generation. We propose a conceptual
framework for understanding this process and illustrate it with selected ethnographic material and survey data
from a recent survey of children of immigrants.
Research on the new immigration—that which arose after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act—has
been focused almost exclusively on the first generation, that is, on adult men and women coming to the United
States in search of work or to escape political persecution. Little noticed until recently is the fact that the
foreign-born inflow has been rapidly evolving from single adult individuals to entire family groups, including
infant children and those born to immigrants in the United States. By 1980, 10 percent of dependent children in
households counted by the census were second-generation immigrants.2 In the late 1980s, another study put the
number of students in kindergarten through twelfth grade in American schools who spoke a language other than
English at home at 3 to 5 million.3
The great deal of research and theorizing on post-1965 immigration offers only tentative guidance on the
prospects and paths of adaptation of the second generation because the outlook of this group can be very
different from that of their immigrant parents. For example, it is generally accepted among immigration
theorists that entry-level menial jobs are performed without hesitation by newly arrived immigrants but are
commonly shunned by their U.S.-reared offspring. This disjuncture gives rise to a race between the social and
economic progress of first-generation immigrants and the material conditions and career prospects that their
American children grow to expect.4
Nor does the existing literature on second-generation adaptation, based as it is on the experience of
descendants of pre–World War I immigrants, offer much guidance for the understanding of contemporary
events. The last sociological study of children of immigrants was Irving Child’s Italian or American? The
Second Generation in Conflict, published fifty years ago.5 Conditions at the time were quite different from those
confronting settled immigrant groups today.
Two such differences deserve special mention. First, descendants of European immigrants who confronted
the dilemmas of conflicting cultures were uniformly white. Even if of a somewhat darker hue than the natives,
their skin color reduced a major barrier to entry into the American mainstream. For this reason, the process of
assimilation depended largely on individual decisions to leave the immigrant culture behind and embrace
American ways. Such an advantage obviously does not exist for the black, Asian, and mestizo children of
today’s immigrants.
Second, the structure of economic opportunities has also changed. Fifty years ago, the United States was the
premier industrial power in the world, and its diversified industrial labor requirements offered to the second
generation the opportunity to move up gradually through better-paid occupations while remaining part of the
working class. Such opportunities have increasingly disappeared in recent years following a rapid process of
national deindustrialization and global industrial restructuring. This process has left entrants to the American
labor force confronting a widening gap between the minimally paid menial jobs that immigrants commonly
accept and the high-tech and professional occupations requiring college degrees that native elites occupy.6 The
gradual disappearance of intermediate opportunities also bears directly on the race between first-generation
economic progress and second-generation expectations, noted previously.

ASSIMILATION AS A PROBLEM

The Haitian immigrant community of Miami is composed of some 75,000 legal and clandestine immigrants,
many of whom sold everything they owned in order to buy passage to America. First-generation Haitians are
strongly oriented toward preserving a strong national identity, which they associate both with community
solidarity and with social networks promoting individual success.7 In trying to instill national pride and an
achievement orientation in their children, they clash, however, with the youngsters’ everyday experiences in
school. Little Haiti is adjacent to Liberty City, the main black inner-city area of Miami, and Haitian adolescents
attend predominantly inner-city schools. Native-born youths stereotype Haitians as too docile and too
subservient to whites and they make fun of French and Creole and of the Haitians’ accent. As a result, second-
generation Haitian children find themselves torn between conflicting ideas and values: to remain Haitian they
would have to face social ostracism and continuing attacks in school; to become American—black American in
this case—they would have to forgo their parents’ dreams of making it in America on the basis of ethnic
solidarity and preservation of traditional values.8
An adversarial stance toward the white mainstream is common among inner-city minority youths who,
while attacking the newcomers’ ways, instill in them a consciousness of American-style discrimination. A
common message is the devaluation of education as a vehicle for advancement of all black youths, a message
that directly contradicts the immigrant parents’ expectations. Academically outstanding Haitian American
students, “Herbie” among them, have consciously attempted to retain their ethnic identity by cloaking it in black
American cultural forms, such as rap music. Many others, however, have followed the path of least effort and
become thoroughly assimilated. Assimilation in this instance is not into mainstream culture but into the values
and norms of the inner city. In the process, the resources of solidarity and mutual support within the immigrant
community are dissipated.
 An emerging paradox in the study of today’s second generation is the peculiar forms that assimilation has
adopted for its members. As the Haitian example illustrates, adopting the outlooks and cultural ways of the
native-born does not represent, as in the past, the first step toward social and economic mobility but may lead to
the exact opposite. At the other end, immigrant youths who remain firmly ensconced in their respective ethnic
communities may, by virtue of this fact, have a better chance for educational and economic mobility through
use of the material and social capital that their communities make available.9
This situation stands the cultural blueprint for advancement of immigrant groups in American society on its
head. As presented in innumerable academic and journalistic writings, the expectation is that the foreign-born
and their offspring will first acculturate and then seek entry and acceptance among the native-born as a
prerequisite for their social and economic advancement. Otherwise, they remain confined to the ranks of the
ethnic lower and lower-middle classes.10 This portrayal of the requirements for mobility, so deeply embedded in
the national consciousness, stands contradicted today by a growing number of empirical experiences.
A closer look at these experiences indicates, however, that the expected consequences of assimilation have
not entirely reversed signs, but that the process has become segmented. In other words, the question is into what
sector of American society a particular immigrant group assimilates. Instead of a relatively uniform mainstream
whose mores and prejudices dictate a common path of integration, we observe today several distinct forms of
adaptation. One of them replicates the time-honored portrayal of growing acculturation and parallel integration
into the white middle-class; a second leads straight in the opposite direction to permanent poverty and
assimilation into the underclass; still a third associates rapid economic advancement with deliberate
preservation of the immigrant community’s values and tight solidarity. This pattern of segmented assimilation
immediately raises the question of what makes some immigrant groups become susceptible to the downward
route and what resources allow others to avoid this course. In the ultimate analysis, the same general process
helps explain both outcomes. We advance next our hypotheses as to how this process takes place and how the
contrasting outcomes of assimilation can be explained. This explanation is then illustrated with recent empirical
material in the final section.

VULNERABILITY AND RESOURCES

Along with individual and family variables, the context that immigrants find upon arrival in their new country
plays a decisive role in the course that their offspring’s lives will follow. This context includes such broad
variables as political relations between sending and receiving countries and the state of the economy in the latter
and such specific ones as the size and structure of preexisting coethnic communities. The concept of modes of
incorporation provides a useful theoretical tool to understand this diversity. As developed in prior publications,
modes of incorporation consist of the complex formed by the policies of the host government; the values and
prejudices of the receiving society; and the characteristics of the coethnic community. These factors can be
arranged in a tree of contextual situations, illustrated by Figure 31.1. This figure provides a first approximation
to our problem.11
To explain second-generation outcomes and their segmented character, however, we need to go into greater
detail into the meaning of these various modes of incorporation from the standpoint of immigrant youths. There
are three features of the social contexts encountered by today’s newcomers that create vulnerability to
downward assimilation. The first is color, the second is location, and the third is the absence of mobility ladders.
As noted previously, the majority of contemporary immigrants are nonwhite. Although this feature may appear
at first glance as an individual characteristic, in reality it is a trait belonging to the host society. Prejudice is not
intrinsic to a particular skin color or racial type, and, indeed, many immigrants never experienced it in their
native lands. It is by virtue of moving into a new social environment, marked by different values and prejudices,
that physical features become redefined as a handicap.
The concentration of immigrant households in cities and particularly in central cities, as documented
previously, gives rise to a second source of vulnerability because it puts new arrivals in close contact with
concentrations of native-born minorities. This leads to the identification of the condition of both groups—
immigrants and the native poor—as the same in the eyes of the majority. More important, it exposes second-
generation children to the adversarial subculture developed by marginalized native youths to cope with their
own difficult situation.12 This process of socialization may take place even when first-generation parents are
moving ahead economically and, hence, their children have no objective reasons for embracing a counter-
cultural message. If successful, the process can effectively block parental plans for intergenerational mobility.
The third contextual source of vulnerability has to do with changes in the host economy that have led to the
evaporation of occupational ladders for intergenerational mobility. As noted previously, new immigrants may
form the backbone of what remains of labor-intensive manufacturing in the cities as well as in their growing
personal services sector, but these are niches that seldom offer channels for upward mobility. The new hourglass
economy, created by economic restructuring, means that children of immigrants must cross a narrow bottleneck
to occupations requiring advanced training if their careers are to keep pace with their U.S.-acquired aspirations.
This race against a narrowing middle demands that immigrant parents accumulate sufficient resources to allow
their children to effect the passage and to simultaneously prove to them the viability of aspirations for upward
mobility. Otherwise, assimilation may not be into mainstream values and expectations but into the adversarial
stance of impoverished groups confined to the bottom of the new economic hourglass.

Figure 31.1 Modes of Incorporation: A Typology

SOURCE: Adapted from Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990), p. 91. Copyright © 1990 by The Regents of the University of California.
NOTES: 1. Receptive policy is defined as legal entry with resettlement assistance, indifferent as legal entry without resettlement
assistance, hostile as active opposition to a group’s entry or permanence in the country.
2. Prejudiced reception is defined as that accorded to nonphenotypically white groups; nonprejudiced is that accorded to European
and European-origin whites.
3. Weak coethnic communities are either small in numbers or composed primarily of manual workers; strong communities feature
sizable numerical concentrations and a diversified occupational structure including entrepreneurs and professionals.
4. Examples include immigrant groups arriving from the start of the century to the present. Dates of migration are approximate.
Groups reflect broadly but not perfectly the characteristics of each ideal type.

The picture is painted in such stark terms here for the sake of clarity, although in reality things have not yet
become so polarized. Middle-level occupations requiring relatively modest educational achievements have not
completely vanished. By 1980, skilled blue-collar jobs—classified by the U.S. census as “precision production,
craft, and repair occupations”—had declined by 1.1 percent relative to a decade earlier but still represented 13
percent of the experienced civilian labor force, or 13.6 million workers. Mostly clerical administrative support
occupations added another 16.9 percent, or 17.5 million jobs. In 1980, occupations requiring a college degree
had increased by 6 percent in comparison with 1970, but they still employed less than a fifth—18.2 percent—of
the American labor force.13 Even in the largest cities, occupations requiring only a high school diploma were
common by the late 1980s. In New York City, for example, persons with 12 years or less of schooling held just
over one half of the jobs in 1987. Clerical, service, and skilled blue-collar jobs not requiring a college degree
represented 46 percent.14 Despite these figures, there is little doubt that the trend toward occupational
segmentation has increasingly reduced opportunities for incremental upward mobility through well-paid blue-
collar positions. The trend forces immigrants today to bridge in only one generation the gap between entry-level
jobs and professional positions that earlier groups took two or three generations to travel.
Different modes of incorporation also make available, however, three types of resources to confront the
challenges of contemporary assimilation. First, certain groups, notably political refugees, are eligible for a
variety of government programs including educational loans for their children. The Cuban Loan Program,
implemented by the Kennedy administration in connection with its plan to resettle Cuban refugees away from
South Florida, gave many impoverished first- and second-generation Cuban youths a chance to attend college.
The high proportion of professionals and executives among Cuban American workers today, a figure on a par
with that for native white workers, can be traced, at least in part, to the success of that program.15 Passage of the
1980 Refugee Act gave to subsequent groups of refugees, in particular Southeast Asians and Eastern Europeans,
access to a similarly generous benefits package.16
Second, certain foreign groups have been exempted from the traditional prejudice endured by most
immigrants, thereby facilitating a smoother process of adaptation. Some political refugees, such as the early
waves of exiles from Castro’s Cuba, Hungarians and Czechs escaping the invasions of their respective
countries, and Soviet Jews escaping religious persecution, provide examples. In other cases, it is the cultural and
phenotypical affinity of newcomers to ample segments of the host population that ensures a welcome reception.
The Irish coming to Boston during the 1980s are a case in point. Although many were illegal aliens, they came
into an environment where generations of Irish Americans had established a secure foothold. Public sympathy
effectively neutralized governmental hostility in this case, culminating in a change of the immigration law
directly benefiting the newcomers.17
Third, and most important, are the resources made available through networks in the coethnic community.
Immigrants who join well-established and diversified ethnic groups have access from the start to a range of
moral and material resources well beyond those available through official assistance programs. Educational help
for second-generation youths may include not only access to college grants and loans but also the existence of a
private school system geared to the immigrant community’s values. Attendance at these private ethnic schools
insulates children from contact with native minority youths, while reinforcing the authority of parental views
and plans.
In addition, the economic diversification of several immigrant communities creates niches of opportunity
that members of the second generation can occupy, often without a need for an advanced education. Small-
business apprenticeships, access to skilled building trades, and well-paid jobs in local government bureaucracies
are some of the ethnic niches documented in the recent literature.18 In 1987, average sales per firm of the
smaller Chinese, East Indian, Korean, and Cuban enterprises exceeded $100,000 per year and they jointly
employed over 200,000 workers. These figures omit medium-sized and large ethnic firms, whose sales and
work forces are much larger.19 Fieldwork in these communities indicates that up to half of recently arrived
immigrants are employed by coethnic firms and that self-employment offers a prime avenue for mobility to
second-generation youths.20 Such community-mediated opportunities provide a solution to the race between
material resources and second-generation aspirations not available through competition in the open labor
market. Through creation of a capitalism of their own, some immigrant groups have thus been able to
circumvent outside discrimination and the threat of vanishing mobility ladders.
In contrast to these favorable conditions are those foreign minorities who either lack a community already in
place or whose coethnics are too poor to render assistance. The condition of Haitians in South Florida, cited
earlier, provides an illustration of one of the most handicapped modes of incorporation encountered by
contemporary immigrants, combining official hostility and widespread social prejudice with the absence of a
strong receiving community.21 From the standpoint of second-generation outcomes, the existence of a large but
downtrodden coethnic community may be even less desirable than no community at all. This is because newly
arrived youths enter into ready contact with the reactive subculture developed by earlier generations. Its
influence is all the more powerful because it comes from individuals of the same national origin, “people like
us” who can more effectively define the proper stance and attitudes of the newcomers. To the extent that they do
so, the first-generation model of upward mobility through school achievement and attainment of professional
occupations will be blocked.
Fifty years ago, the dilemma of Italian American youngsters studied by Irving Child consisted of
assimilating into the American mainstream, sacrificing in the process their parents’ cultural heritage in contrast
to taking refuge in the ethnic community from the challenges of the outside world. In the contemporary context
of segmented assimilation, the options have become less clear. Children of nonwhite immigrants may not even
have the opportunity of gaining access to middle-class white society, no matter how acculturated they become.
Joining those native circles to which they do have access may prove a ticket to permanent subordination and
disadvantage. Remaining securely ensconced in their coethnic community, under these circumstances, may be
not a symptom of escapism but the best strategy for capitalizing on otherwise unavailable material and moral
resources. As the experiences of Punjabi Sikh and Cuban American students suggest, a strategy of paced,
selective assimilation may prove the best course for immigrant minorities. But the extent to which this strategy
is possible also depends on the history of each group and its specific profile of vulnerabilities and resources.
The present analysis represents a preliminary step toward understanding these realities.

NOTES

1. Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick, City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993), chap. 8.
2. Defined as native-born children with at least one foreign-born parent or children born abroad who came to
the United States before age 12. See Leif Jensen, Children of the New Immigration: A Comparative
Analysis of Today’s Second Generation, paper commissioned by the Children of Immigrants Research
Project, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, reprinted as Institute for Policy Research and
Evaluation Working Paper no. 1990–32 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, Aug. 1990).
3. Joan N. First and John W. Carrera, New Voices: Immigrant Students in U.S. Public Schools (Boston:
National Coalition of Advocates for Students, 1988).
4. Michael Piore, Birds of Passage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Herbert Gans, “Second-
Generation Decline: Scenarios for the Economic and Ethnic Futures of the Post-1965 American
Immigrants,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15:173–92 (Apr. 1992).
5. Irving L. Child, Italian or American? The Second Generation in Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1943).
6. See, for example, Saskia Sassen, “Changing Composition and Labor Market Location of Hispanic
Immigrants in New York City, 1960–1980,” in Hispanics in the U.S. Economy, ed. George J. Borjas and
 Marta Tienda (New York: Academic Press, 1985), pp. 299–322.
7. See Alex Stepick, “Haitian Refugees in the U.S.” (Report no. 52, Minority Rights Group, London, 1982);
Alex Stepick and Alejandro Portes, “Flight into Despair: A Profile of Recent Haitian Refugees in South
Florida,” International Migration Review, 20:329-50 (Summer 1986).
8. This account is based on fieldwork in Miami conducted in preparation for a survey of immigrant youths in
public schools. The survey and preliminary results are described in the final section of this article.
9. On the issue of social capital, see James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,”
American Journal of Sociology, supplement, 94:S95-121 (1988); Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou,
“Gaining the Upper Hand: Economic Mobility among Immigrant and Domestic Minorities,” Ethnic and
Racial Studies, 15:491–522 (Oct. 1992). On ethnic entrepreneurship, see Ivan H. Light, Ethnic Enterprise
in America: Business and Welfare among Chinese, Japanese, and Blacks (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972); Kenneth Wilson and W. Allen Martin, “Ethnic Enclaves: A Comparison of the
Cuban and Black Economies in Miami,” American Journal of Sociology, 88:135–60 (1982).
10. See W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1945); Thomas Sowell, Ethnic America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
11. See Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut, Immigrant America: A Portrait (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990), chap. 3.
12. See Mercer L. Sullivan, “Getting Paid”: Youth, Crime, and Work in the Inner City (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1989), chaps. 1, 5.
13. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Population and Housing, 1980: Public Use
Microdata Samples A (MRDF) (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1983).
14. Thomas Bailey and Roger Waldinger, “Primary, Secondary, and Enclave Labor Markets: A Training
System Approach,” American Sociological Review, 56:432–45 (1991).
15. Professionals and executives represented 25.9 percent of Cuban-origin males aged 16 years and over in
1989; the figure for the total adult male population was 26 percent. See Jesus M. Garcia and Patricia A.
Montgomery, The Hispanic Population of the United States: March 1990, Current Population Reports, ser.
P-20, no. 449 (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1991).
16. Portes and Rumbaut, Immigrant America, pp. 23–25; Robert L. Bach et al., “The Economic Adjustment of
Southeast Asian Refugees in the United States,” in World Refugee Survey, 1983 (Geneva: United Nations
High Commission for Refugees, 1984), pp. 51–55.
17. The 1990 Immigration Act contains tailor-made provisions to facilitate the legalization of Irish
immigrants. Those taking advantage of the provisions are popularly dubbed “Kennedy Irish” in honor of
the Massachusetts Senator who coauthored the act. On the 1990 act, see Michael Fix and Jeffrey S. Passel,
“The Door Remains Open: Recent Immigration to the United States and a Preliminary Analysis of the
Immigration Act of 1990” (Working paper, Urban Institute and RAND Corporation, 1991). On the Irish in
Boston, see Karen Tumulty, “When Irish Eyes Are Hiding . . . ,” Los Angeles Times, 29 Jan. 1989.
18. Bailey and Waldinger, “Primary, Secondary, and Enclave Labor Markets”; Min Zhou, New York’s
Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1992); Wilson and Martin, “Ethnic Enclaves”; Suzanne Model, “The Ethnic Economy: Cubans and
Chinese Reconsidered” (Manuscript, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1990).
19. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Survey of Minority-Owned Business Enterprises, 1987,
MB-2 and MB-3 (Washington, DC: Department of Commerce, 1991).
20. Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick, “Unwelcome Immigrants: The Labor Market Experiences of 1980
(Mariel) Cuban and Haitian Refugees in South Florida,” American Sociological Review, 50:493-514 (Aug.
1985); Zhou, New York’s Chinatown; Luis E. Guarnizo, “One Country in Two: Dominican-Owned Firms
 in New York and the Dominican Republic” (Ph.D. diss. Johns Hopkins University, 1992); Bailey and
Waldinger, “Primary, Secondary, and Enclave Labor Markets.”
21. Stepick, “Haitian Refugees in the U.S.”; Jake C. Miller, The Plight of Haitian Refugees (New York:
Praeger, 1984).

SOURCE: Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou, “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its
Variants,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1993). Reprinted with
permission of Sage Publications, Inc.
32
BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER . . . BUT MOSTLY APART
BARRIE THORNE

T he landscape of contemporary childhood includes three major sites—families, neighborhoods, and

schools. Each of these worlds contains different people, patterns of time and space, and arrangements
of gender. Families and neighborhoods tend to be small, with a relatively even ratio of adults and
children. In contrast, schools are crowded and bureaucratic settings in which a few adults organize and
continually evaluate the activities of a large number of children.1 Within schools, the sheer press of numbers in
a relatively small space gives a public, witnessed quality to everyday life and makes keeping down noise and
maintaining order a constant adult preoccupation. In their quest for order, teachers and aides continually sort
students into smaller, more manageable groups (classes, reading groups, hallway lines, shifts in the lunchroom),
and they structure the day around routines like lining up and taking turns. In this chapter I trace the basic
organizational features of schools as they bear upon, and get worked out through, the daily gender relations of
kids. As individuals, we always display or “do” gender, but this dichotomous difference (no one escapes being
declared female or male) may be more or less relevant, and relevant in different ways, from one social context
to another.
• • •

THE CHOREOGRAPHY OF GENDER SEPARATION AND INTEGRATION

A series of snapshots taken in varied school settings would reveal extensive spatial separation between girls and
boys. This phenomenon, which has been widely observed by researchers in schools, is often called “sex
segregation among children,” a term evoking images of legally enforced separation, like purdah in some Islamic
societies. But school authorities separate boys and girls only occasionally. Furthermore, girls and boys
sometimes interact with one another in relaxed and extended ways, not only in schools but also in families,
neighborhoods, churches, and other settings. Gender separation—the word “segregation” suggests too total a
pattern—is a variable and complicated process, an intricate choreography aptly summarized by Erving
Goffman’s phrase “with-then-apart.”2
Boys and girls separate (or are separated) periodically, with their own spaces, rituals, and groups, but they
also come together to become, in crucial ways, part of the same world. In the following verbal snapshots of
classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and school playgrounds, it is crucial to note that although the occasions of
gender separation may seem more dramatic, the mixed-gender encounters are also theoretically and practically
important. Note also that groups may be formed by teachers, aides, or by kids themselves, and that criteria of
group formation may or may not be explicitly mentioned or even in conscious awareness.

The “With-Then-Apart” of Classrooms

In organizing classroom seating, teachers use a variety of plans, some downplaying and others emphasizing
the significance of gender. When Mrs. Smith, the kindergarten teacher at Ashton School, assigned seats, she
deliberately placed girls and boys at each table, and they interacted a great deal in the formal and informal life
of the classroom. Mrs. Johnson, the second-grade teacher at the same school, also assigned seats, but she
organized her classroom into pairs of desks aligned in rows. With the layout came a language—”William’s
row” . . . ”Monica’s row” . . . ”Amy’s row”—for the five desks lined up behind William, Monica, Amy, and the
other three students seated at the front. The overall pattern mixed girls and boys, and they participated together
in much of the classroom whispering and byplay.
I asked Mrs. Johnson, who was nearing retirement after many years of teaching, what she had in mind when
she assigned classroom seats. She responded with weary familiarity: “Everybody is sitting somewhere for a
reason—hearing, sight, height. No two in the same reading group sit together, so I make sure they do their own
work in their workbook. Or they sit in a particular place because they don’t get along, or get along too well,
with someone else.” Differences of hearing, sight, height, and reading performance cut across the dichotomous
division between boys and girls; sorting the students according to these criteria led to largely gender-integrated
seating. However, the last of Mrs. Johnson’s criteria, the degree to which two children get along, embeds a
gender skew. Since friends are usually of the same gender, splitting up close friends tends to mix girls and boys.
Instead of assigning seats, Miss Bailey, the teacher of the combined fourth-fifth grade in Oceanside School,
let the students choose their own desks in a U-shaped arrangement open at the front of the room. Over the
course of the school year there were three occasions of general choosing. Each time, the students’ choices
resulted in an almost total cleavage: boys on the left and girls on the right, with the exception of one girl, Jessie,
who frequently crossed gender boundaries and who twice chose a desk with the boys and once with the
girls. . . . The teacher and students routinely spoke of “a boys’ side” and “a girls’ side” in the classroom.3
Miss Bailey made clear that she saw the arrangement as an indulgence, and when the class was unusually
noisy, she threatened to change the seating and “not have a boys’ side and a girls’ side.” “You have chosen
that,” she said on one occasion, “you’re sitting this way because you chose to do it at the first of the year. I may
have to sit you in another way.” The class groaned as she spoke, expressing ritualized preference for gender-
separated seating. Miss Bailey didn’t carry out her threat, and when she reseated individual students in the name
of classroom order, she did so within each side. Miss Bailey framed the overall gender separation as a matter of
student choice and as a privilege she had granted them, but she also built on and ratified the gender divide by
pitting the girls against the boys in classroom spelling and math contests. . . .
Physical separation of girls and boys in regular classroom seating affects formal and informal give-and-take
among students. One day Miss Bailey wrote sentences on the board and said she would go around the room and
give each student a chance to find an error in spelling, grammar, or pronunciation. “We’ll start with Beth,” she
said, gesturing to the right front of the U-shaped layout of the desks. Recognizing that to go around the room
meant she would call on all the girls first, Miss Bailey added, “that leaves the hard part for the boys.” Picking up
the theme of gender opposition, several boys called out, “We’re smart!” The divided seating pattern also
channeled informal byplay, such as whispering, casual visiting, and collusive exchanges, among boys and
among girls, whereas in classrooms with mixed-gender seating, those kinds of interaction more often took place
between girls and boys.
When Miss Bailey divided the class into smaller work groups, gender receded in formal organizational
importance. On these occasions, the teacher relied on sorting principles like skill at reading or spelling, whether
or not someone had finished an earlier task, counting off (“one-two-one-two”), or letting students choose from
alternative activities such as practicing for a play or collectively making a map out of papier-mâché. Sometimes
Miss Bailey asked the fourth- and fifth-graders to meet separately and work on math or spelling. These varied
organizational principles drew girls and boys out of separate halves of the classroom and into groups of varied
gender composition standing at the blackboard or sitting on the floor in front or at round tables at the side of the
room. When they found places in these smaller groups, girls often scrambled to sit next to girls, and boys to sit
next to boys. But if the interaction had a central focus such as taking turns reading aloud or working together to
build a contour map, boys and girls participated together in the verbal give-and-take.
Although I did not do systematic counting, I noticed that during formal classroom instruction, for example,
when Miss Bailey invited discussion during social studies lessons, boys, taken as a whole, talked more than
girls. This pattern fits with an extensive body of research finding that in classroom interaction from the
elementary through college levels, male students tend to talk more than female students.4

• • •
Life on the Line
When Mrs. Smith announced to her kindergarten class, “This is what you call a line . . . one at a time,” she
introduced a social form basic to the handling of congestion and delay in schools, In Ashton School, where
classrooms opened onto an indoor hallway, kids rarely moved from the classroom unless they were in carefully
regulated lines. The separate lines meandering through the hallways reminded me of caterpillars, or of planes on
a runway slowly moving along in readiness to take off. In the layout of the Oceanside School each of the
classrooms opened to the outside, an arrangement facilitated by the warm California climate. Although this
lessened the problem of noise and thereby relaxed the amount of adult control, the Oceanside teachers still
organized students into loose lines when they headed to and from the library and the playground and when they
went to the lunchroom.
Gender threaded through the routines of lining up, waiting and moving in a queue, and dispersing in a new
place. In Oceanside School it was customary for girls and boys to line up separately, a pattern whose roots in the
history of elementary schooling are still evident on old school buildings with separate entrances engraved with
the words “Girls” and “Boys.”5 Several adults who have told me their memories of elementary school recall
boys and girls lining up separately to go to different bathrooms. One woman remembered waiting in the girls’
line several feet away from a row of boys and feeling an urgent need to urinate; she held her legs tightly
together and hoped no one—especially the boys—would notice. This experience of bodily shame gave an
emotional charge to gender-divided lines.
Like the schools of these adult memories, Oceanside had separate girls’ and boys’ bathrooms shared by
many classrooms. But unlike the remembered schools, Oceanside had no collective expeditions to the
bathrooms. Instead individual students asked permission to leave the classrooms and go to either the boys’ or
girls’ bathroom, both of which, like the classrooms, opened to the outside. In Ashton School, as in many
contemporary school buildings, each classroom had its own bathroom, used one-at-a-time by both girls and
boys. This architectural shift has eliminated separate and centralized boys’ and girls’ facilities and hence the
need to walk down the hall to take turns going to the toilet.
In Oceanside School the custom of separate girls’ and boys’ lines was taken for granted and rarely
commented on. One of the fourth graders told me that they learned to form separate boys’ and girls’ lines in
kindergarten and had done it ever since. A first-grade teacher said that on the first day of school she came out to
find the boys and the girls already standing in two different lines. When I asked why girls and boys formed
separate lines, the teachers said it was the children’s doing. With the ironic detachment that adults often adopt
toward children’s customs, Miss Bailey told me that she thought the gender-separated lines were “funny.” A
student teacher who joined the classroom for part of the year rhetorically asked the kids why they had a girls’
line and a boys’ line. “How come? Will a federal marshal come and get you if you don’t?” There was no reply.
Miss Bailey didn’t deliberately establish separate lines for boys and girls; she just told the students to line
up. It took both attention and effort for the kids to continually create and recreate gender-separated queues. In
organizing expeditions out of the classroom, Miss Bailey usually called on students by stages, designating
individuals or smaller groups (“everyone at that side table”; “those practicing spelling over in the corner”) to
move into line as a reward for being quiet. Once they got to the classroom door—unless it was lunchtime, when
boys and girls mixed in two lines designated “hot lunch” and “cold lunch”—the students routinely separated by
gender. The first boy to reach the door always stood to the left; the first girl stood to the right, and the rest
moved into the appropriate queue.
The kids maintained separate boys’ and girls’ lines through gestures and speech. One day when the class
was in the library, Miss Bailey announced, “Line up to go to assembly.” Judy and Rosie hurried near the door,
marking the start of one line on the right; Freddy and Tony moved to the left of the door. Other girls lined up
behind Rosie, who became a sort of traffic director, gesturing a boy who was moving in behind her that he
should shift to the other line. Once when the recess bell had rung and they began to line up for the return to
class, a boy came over and stood at the end of a row of girls. This evoked widespread teasing— “John’s in the
girls’ line”; “Look at that girl over there”—that quickly sent him to the row of boys. Off-bounds to those of the
other gender, the separate lines sometimes became places of sanctuary, as during the close of one recess when
Dennis grabbed a ball from Tracy, and she chased after him. He squeezed into line between two boys, chanting
“Boys’ line, boy’s line,” an incantation that indeed kept her away and secured his possession of the ball.
• • •

The Gender Geography of Lunchroom Tables

Seating in school lunchrooms falls between the more fixed spaces of classroom desks and the arrangements
kids improvise each time they sit on the floor of the classroom or the auditorium; an Oceanside teacher once
referred to “their strange conglomeration way of sitting,” describing the clusters, primarily of either girls or
boys, arrayed on the floor. Eating together is a prime emblem of solidarity, and each day at lunchtime there is a
fresh scramble as kids deliberately choose where, and with whom, to eat. The scrambling takes place within
limits set by adults and defined by age-grading. In both schools, each classroom, in effect an age-grade, had two
designated cafeteria tables, placed end to end from the wall.
Table seating takes shape through a predictable process: the first arrivals (who have cold lunches, a reason
some children say they prefer to bring lunch from home) stake out territory by sitting and spreading out their
possessions, usually at the far ends of each table. The tables fill through invitations, squeezing in, or individuals
or groups going to an empty space. The groups who maneuver to eat together are usually friends and mostly of
the same gender. The result is a pattern of separated clusters; many of the tables have a mix of girls and boys,
but they are divided into smaller same-gender groupings. On the other hand, late-arriving individuals, who have
less choice of where to sit, move into leftover spaces and tend to integrate the seating.
The collective table talk often includes both boys and girls, as do some daily rituals, like one that
accompanied the opening of plastic bags of cutlery in both schools. As kids pulled out their plastic forks, they
looked for and announced the small numbers stamped on the bottom: “I’m twenty-four, how old are you?” “I
must have flunked; I’m in the fourth grade and I’m forty-five.” “Ninety-three.” “You’re stupid; you were really
held back in school.”
Even when boys and girls are seated at the same table, their same-gender clustering may be accompanied by
a sense of being on separate turfs. This became apparent when there were temporary changes in the physical
ecology at Oceanside School. The combined fourth-fifth-grade class usually had two tables, but one day when
the kids arrived for lunch, one of the tables was temporarily designated for another class. The kids began to
crowd around the remaining table. Sherry, who had a cold lunch and arrived first, chose her usual seat by the
wall; girls usually filled up that end. Scott and Jeremy sat down across from her, while three girls with hot
lunches chose seats at the other end of the table. Scott looked around and asked, “Where are all the boys? Where
are all the boys?” Four boys arrived and sat across from Scott and Jeremy and next to Sherry, who began to
crouch in her corner. In a small anxious voice she asked them, “What are you doing on the girls’ side?” “There
isn’t room,” one of the newly arrived boys explained.
Occasionally those who are already seated look around, take the lay of the developing table, and change
places, sometimes with a gender-marking pronouncement. In the Ashton School lunchroom when the two
second-grade tables were filling, a high-status boy walked by the inside table, which had a scattering of both
boys and girls. He said loudly, “Oooo, too many girls,” and headed for a seat at the other, nearly empty table.
The boys at the inside table picked up their trays and moved to join him. After they left, no other boy sat at that
table, which the pronouncement had made effectively taboo. So in the end, girls and boys ate at separate tables
that day, although this was not usually the case.
• • •

Playground Divisions of Space and Activity

In classrooms, hallways, and lunchrooms boys and girls do the same core activities: working on math or
spelling, moving from one area to another, or eating a meal. Same-gender groups might add their own,
sometimes collusive agendas, such as a group of girls passing around a tube of lip gloss during a grammar
lesson or a group of boys discussing sports or setting up arm wrestling during lunch. But there is no pronounced
division of activity by gender.6 In contrast, on the playground, an area where adults exert minimal control and
kids are relatively free to choose their own activities and companions, there is extensive separation by gender.
Activities, spaces, and equipment are heavily gender-typed; playgrounds, in short, have a more fixed geography
of gender.
My inventories of activities and groups on the playground showed similar patterns in both schools. Boys
controlled the large fixed spaces designated for team sports: baseball diamonds, grassy fields used for football
or soccer, and basketball courts. In Oceanside School there was also a skateboard area where boys played, with
an occasional girl joining in. The fixed spaces where girls predominated—bars and jungle gyms and painted
cement areas for playing foursquare, jump rope, and hopscotch—were closer to the building and much smaller,
taking up perhaps a tenth of the territory that boys controlled.7 In addition, more movable activities—episodes
of chasing, groups of younger children playing various kinds of “pretend,” and groups milling around and
talking—often, although by no means always, divided by gender. Girls and boys most often played together in
games of kickball, foursquare, dodgeball, handball, and chasing or tag.
Kids and playground aides pretty much take these gender-divided patterns for granted; indeed, there is a
long history in the United States of girls and boys engaging in different types of play, although the favored
activities have changed with time. The Ashton School aides openly regarded the space close to the building as
girls’ territory and the playing fields “out there” as boys’ territory. They sometimes shooed away children of the
other gender from what they saw as inappropriate turf, especially boys who ventured near the girls’ area and
seemed to have teasing in mind.

• • •

OTHER RESEARCH ON GENDER SEPARATION AMONG CHILDREN

My observations of extensive separation in the activities and social relations of boys and girls echo a recurring
finding in the research literature. In fact, in nearly every study of school situations where kids from age three
through junior high are given the opportunity to choose companions of the same age, girls have shown a strong
preference to be with girls, and boys with boys. (Because as much as 90 percent of research on children’s peer
groups has been done in schools, the finding of gender separation among children dominates the literature.8
Studies of children’s social relations in neighborhoods and a study in a children’s museum have found much
more mixing of girls and boys than is typical in schools.)
To grasp the magnitude of the gender divide, a number of researchers have counted the relative proportions
of mixed and same-gender groups in various school settings. For example, Zella Luria and Eleanor Herzog did
inventories of the playground groups of fourth- and fifth-graders in two elementary schools in Massachusetts.
They found that in a private, upper-middle-class school, 63 percent of the groups were same-gender, compared
with 80 percent same-gender groups in a middle-class public school of about the same size and racial
composition. In another study on the East Coast, Marlaine Lockheed and Abigail Harris found that in twenty-
nine fourth- and fifth-grade classrooms where students constituted their own work groups, 86 percent were
same-gender.9
In short, there is ample evidence of extensive separation between girls and boys within contemporary
coeducational schools. Numerical counts, moreover, may underestimate the degree of separation. Luria and
Herzog note that their method of counting all playground clusters regardless of activity may overrate the extent
and “quality” of cross-gender activity. For example, in the public school in their study, half of the 20 percent of
play groups mixed by gender were integrated by one girl and hence were token situations.10 The method of
simply counting all-boy, all-girl, and boy-girl groups also neglects meanings. For example, by these researchers’
counting methods, girls-chase-the-boys, a favorite game on both the Ashton and Oceanside playgrounds, would
be chalked up as a mixed-gender group or interaction. However, . . . the organization of this activity dramatizes
gender boundaries and maintains a sense of separation between the girls and the boys as distinctive groups.
Information not only about the quantity of gender separation, but also about the quality and meaning (e.g.,
the degree of felt intimacy or social distance) of kids’ social relations can be found in their perceptions of
friendship. Researchers who have asked kids of different ages to name their best friends have found that in at
least 75 percent of the cases, boys name only boys and girls name only girls.11 Sociometric studies that go
beyond “best” friendships to ask about and map broader self-reported patterns of affiliation and avoidance have
also documented a deep division by gender. For example, in a study of four fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade
classrooms, Maureen Hallinan found that all the cliques that the students identified were either of girls or of
boys; not one crossed the line of gender.12 Although she observed, and the students reported, some cross-gender
friendships, they were not integrated into the larger, more public and visible groupings or cliques.
In short, although girls and boys are together and often interact in classrooms, lunchrooms, and on the
playground, these contacts less often deepen into friendship or stable alliances, while same-gender interactions
are more likely to solidify into more lasting or acknowledged bonds. Much of the daily contact between girls
and boys, as Janet Schofield comments, resembles that of “familiar strangers” who are in repeated physical
proximity and recognize one another but have little real knowledge of what one another are like.13 Some of the
students in the middle school where Schofield observed felt that the gulf between boys and girls was so deep
that it was fruitless to try to form cross-gender friendships, which they saw as different from romantic liaisons.
Whether painted with narrative or by numbers, the prevalence of gender separation, especially on school
playgrounds and in patterns of children’s friendship, is quite striking. But separation between boys and girls is
far from total, and the “with” occasions should be sketched into view. An obvious question is, When given a
choice, why do girls and boys so often separate from one another? The answers, I suggest, should be far more
complex and contextual than the approaches currently offered by developmental psychologists.

NOTES

1. Philip W. Jackson (Life in Classrooms) highlights the centrality of crowds, praise, and power in the
organization of schools.
2. Erving Goffman, “The Arrangement between the Sexes,” p. 316.
3. Cynthia A. Cone and Berta E. Perez (“Peer Groups and the Organization of Classroom Space”) observed a
similar pattern. . . .
4. See reviews of research in Barrie Thorne et al., eds., Language, Gender, and Society; Jere E. Brophy and
Thomas L. Good, Teacher-Student Relations; and in the American Association of University Women
Educational Foundation and the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, How Schools
Shortchange Girls.
5. See Tyack and Hansot, Learning Together.
6. Goffman observes that this “parallel organization,” in which similar activities are organized in a
segregated manner, provides a “ready base for elaborating differential treatment,” such as having a row of
girls file in before a row of boys (“The Arrangement between the Sexes,” p. 306).
7. My observations resemble those of Janet Lever, who recorded differences in the playground activities of
fifth-graders in Connecticut. She found that boys most often engaged in team sports, whereas girls focused
on turn-taking play. (See Lever, “Sex Differences in the Games Children Play” and “Sex Differences in the
Complexity of Children’s Play and Games.”)
8. This estimate comes from Willard W. Hartup, “Peer Relations.”
9. Zella Luria and Eleanor W. Herzog, “Gender Segregation across and within Settings”; Marlaine S.
Lockheed and Abigail M. Harris, “Cross-Sex Collaborative Learning in Elementary Classrooms.”
10. Luria and Herzog, “Gender Segregation across and within Settings.”
11. For example, when Maureen Hallinan and Nancy B. Tuma (“Classroom Effects on Change in Children’s
Friendships”) asked fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders to name their “best friend,” 77 percent named
 someone of the same gender.
12. Maureen Hallinan, “Structural Effects of Children’s Friendships and Cliques.”
13. Schofield, Black and White in School. Schofield found that race, as well as gender, was a barrier to the
development of friendship; in the racially balanced middle school where she observed, close friendships
between students of different genders or races were quite rare.

REFERENCES

American Association of University Women Educational Foundation and the Wellesley College Center for
Research on Women. 1992. How Schools Shortchange Girls. Washington, DC: AAUW Educational
Foundation.
Brophy, Jere E. and Thomas L. Good. 1974. Teacher-Student Relations. New York: Holt.
Cone, Cynthia A. and Berta E. Perez. 1986. “Peer Groups and the Organization of Classroom Space.” Human
Organization 45:80–88.
Goffman, Erving. 1977. “The Arrangement between the Sexes.” Theory and Society 4:301–336.
Hallinan, Maureen and Nancy B. Tuma. 1978. “Classroom Effects on Change in Children’s Friendships.”
Sociology of Education 51:270–82.
Hartup, Willard W. 1983. “Peer Relations.” Pp. 103–96 in Handbook of Child Psychology, vol. 4:
Socialization, Personality and Social Development, 4th ed., edited by Paul H. Mussen and E. Mavis
Heatherington. New York: Wiley.
Jackson, Philip W. 1968. Life in Classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Lever, Janet. 1976. “Sex Differences in the Games Children Play.” Social Problems 23:478–87.
Lockheed, Marlaine S. and Abigail M. Harris. 1984. “Cross-Sex Collaborative Learning in Elementary
Classrooms.” American Educational Research Journal 21:275–94.
Luria, Zella and Eleanor W. Herzog. “Gender Segregation across and within Settings.” Paper presented at
annual meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Toronto, Canada, 1985.
Schofield, Janet W. 1982. Black and White in School. New York: Praeger.
Thorne, Barrie, Cheris Kramarae, and Nancy Henley, eds. 1983. Language, Gender, and Society. New York:
Newbury House.
Tyack, David and Elizabeth Hansot. 1990. Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Schools.
New Haven: Yale University Press.

SOURCE: From Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School by Barrie Thorne. Copyright © 1993 by Barrie Thorne.
Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.
33
TEACHING AND “WOMEN’S WORK”
A Comparative and Historical Analysis
MICHAEL APPLE

W omen’s work is very often the target of both rationalization and attempts to gain control over it.
Such attempts and the resistances to them become quite significant economically and politically,
to say nothing of educationally, in schools. In this chapter, I would like to inquire into how it came
about that women were in the position to be so targeted. Not only here in the United States, but in other
countries as well, the control of teaching and curricula had a strong relationship to sexual and class divisions. I
shall focus historically here on the United States and England, though the arguments I shall present are not
necessarily limited to these countries.
• • •

In general, there seems to be a relatively strong relationship between the entry of large numbers of women
into an occupation and the slow transformation of the job. Pay is often lowered and the job is regarded as low-
skilled so that control is “needed” from the outside. Added to this is the fact that “those occupations which
became defined as female were expanded at a time when the skills needed to do them were [seen as being]
commonly held or easily learned and when there was a particularly high demand for labour, or an especially
large pool of women seeking work.”1

• • •
In my presentation of data to show the progression of teaching from being largely men’s work to women’s
work, in many ways we shall want to pay close attention to how teaching may have changed and to the
economic and gender conditions surrounding this. In essence, we may not be describing quite the same
occupation after elementary school teaching became women’s work. For jobs are transformed, often in
significant ways, over time. A good example here is again clerical work. Like teaching, this changed from being
a masculine occupation in the nineteenth century to being a largely female one in the twentieth. And the labor
process of clerical work was radically altered during this period. It was deskilled, came under tighter conditions
of control, lost many of its paths of upward mobility to managerial positions, and lost wages at the end of the
nineteenth century in the United States and England as it became “feminized.”2 Given this, it is imperative that
we ask whether what has been unfortunately called the feminization of teaching actually concerns the same job.
I will claim, in fact, that in some rather substantive economic and ideological aspects it is not the same job. This
transformation is linked in complex ways to alterations in patriarchal and economic relations that were
restructuring the larger society.

GENDER AND TEACHING OVER TIME

Where does teaching fit in here? Some facts may be helpful. What has been called the “feminization” of
teaching is clearly seen in data from England. Before the rapid growth of mass elementary education, in 1870,
men actually outnumbered women slightly in the teaching profession. For every 100 men there were only 99
women employed as teachers. This, however, is the last time men have a numerical superiority. Just ten years
later, in 1880, for every 100 males there are now 156 women. This ratio rose to 207 to 100 in 1890 and to 287 in
1900. By 1910, women outnumbered men by over three to one. By 1930, the figure had grown to closer to four
to one.3
Yet these figures would be deceptive if they were not linked to changes in the actual numbers of teachers
being employed. Teaching became a symbol of upward mobility for many women, and as elementary schooling
increased so did the numbers of women employed in it—points I shall go into in more detail later on. Thus, in
1870, there were only 14,000 teachers in England, of which more were men than women. By the year 1930,
157,061 teachers worked in state-supported schools in England and Wales, and close to 120,000 of these were
women.4 The definition of teaching as a female enclave is given further substantiation by the fact that these
numbers signify something quite graphic. While the 40,000 men employed as teachers around 1930 constitute
less than 3 percent of the occupied male workers, the 120,000 women teachers account for nearly 20 percent of
all women working for pay outside the home.5

Table 33.1 Teachers in Public Elementary Schools in England and Wales, 1870–1930

SOURCE: Reconstructed from Barry Bergen, “Only a Schoolmaster: Gender, Class, and the Effort to Professionalize Elementary
Teaching in England, 1870–1910,” History of Education Quarterly 22 (Spring 1982), p. 4.

If we compare percentages of male to female teachers in the United States with those of England for
approximately the same time period, similar patterns emerge. While there was clear regional variation, in typical
areas in, say, 1840, only 39 percent of teachers were women. By 1850, the figure had risen to 46 percent.6 The
increase later on is somewhat more rapid than the English experience. The year 1870 finds women holding
approximately 60 percent of the public elementary school teaching positions. This figure moves up to 71
percent by 1900. It reaches a peak of fully 89 percent in 1920 and then stabilizes within a few percentage points
over the following years.

Table 33.2 Teachers in Public Elementary Schools in the United States, 1870–1930
SOURCE: Adapted from Willard S. Elsbree, The American Teacher (New York: American Book Co., 1939), p. 554, and Emery M.
Foster, “Statistical Summary of Education, 1929–30,” Biennial Survey of Education 1928–1930, Vol. 2 (Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1932), p. 8.

Given the historical connection between elementary school teaching and the ideologies surrounding
domesticity and the definition of “women’s proper place,” in which teaching was defined as an extension of the
productive and reproductive labor women engaged in at home,7 we should not be surprised by the fact that such
changes occurred in the gendered composition of the teaching force. While there are clear connections between
patriarchal ideologies and the shift of teaching into being seen as “women’s work,” the issue is not totally
explained in this way, however. Local political economies played a large part here. The shift to non-agricultural
employment in male patterns of work is part of the story as well. Just as important was the relationship between
the growth of compulsory schooling and women’s labor. As we shall see, the costs associated with compulsory
schooling to local school districts were often quite high. One way to control such rising costs was in changing
accepted hiring practices.8 One simply hired cheaper teachers—women. Let us examine both of these dynamics
in somewhat more detail. In the process, we shall see how class and gender interacted within the limits set by
the economic needs of our social formation.
Some simple and well-known economic facts need to be called to mind at the outset. In the U.K., although
women teachers outnumbered their male colleagues, the salaries they were paid were significantly lower. In
fact, from 1855 to 1935, there was a remarkably consistent pattern. Women were paid approximately two-thirds
of what their male counterparts received.9 Indeed, Bergen claims that one of the major contributing factors
behind the schools’ increased hiring of women was that they would be paid less.10
In the United States, the salary differential was often even more striking. With the rapid growth of schooling
stimulated by large rates of immigration as well as by struggles by a number of groups to win free compulsory
education, school committees increased their rate of hiring women, but at salaries that were originally half to a
third as much as those given to men.11 But how did it come about that there were positions to be filled in the
first place? What happened to the people who had been there?
Elementary school teaching became a woman’s occupation in part because men left it. For many men, the
“opportunity cost” was too great to stay in teaching. Many male teachers taught part-time (e.g., between
harvests) or as a stepping stone to more lucrative or prestigious jobs. Yet with the growth of the middle class in
the United States, with the formalization of schools and curricula in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and
with the enlarged credentialling and certification requirements for teaching that emerged at this time, men began
to, and were often able to, look elsewhere.

• • •
Thus, patriarchal familial forms in concert with changes in the social division of labor of capitalism combine
here to create some of the conditions out of which a market for a particular kind of teacher emerges. (In
England, we should add, a considerable number of men sought employment both there and abroad in the civil
service. Many of the men who attended “training colleges,” in fact, did so as a point of entry into the civil
service, not into teaching.12 The “Empire,” then, had a rather interesting effect on the political economy of
gendered labor.)
Faced with these “market conditions,” school boards turned increasingly to women. Partly this was a result
of women’s successful struggle. More and more women were winning the battles over access to both education
and employment outside the home. Yet partly it is the result of capitalism as well. Women were continuing to
be recruited to the factories and mills (often, by the way, originally because they would sometimes be
accompanied by children who could also work for incredibly low wages in the mills).13 Given the exploitation
that existed in the factories and given the drudgery of paid and unpaid domestic labor, teaching must have
seemed a considerably more pleasant occupation to many single women. Finally, contradictory tendencies
occurred at an ideological level. While women struggled to open up the labor market and alter patriarchal
relations in the home and the paid workplace, some of the arguments used for opening up teaching to women
were at the expense of reproducing ideological elements that had been part of the root causes of patriarchal
control in the first place. The relationship between teaching and domesticity was highlighted. “Advocates of
women as teachers, such as Catherine Beecher, Mary Lyon, Zilpah Grant, Horace Mann and Henry Barnard,
argued that not only were women the ideal teachers of young children (because of their patience and nurturant
qualities) but that teaching was ideal preparation for motherhood.”14 These same people were not loath to argue
something else. Women were “willing to” teach at lower wages than those needed by men.15 When this is
coupled with the existing social interests, economic structures, and patriarchal relations that supported the
dominance of an ideology of domesticity in the larger society, we can begin to get a glimpse at the conditions
that led to such a situation.
Many men did stay in education, however. But as Tyack, Strober, and others have demonstrated, those men
who stayed tended to be found in higher-status and higher-paying jobs. In fact, as school systems became more
highly bureaucratized, and with the expansion of management positions that accompanied this in the United
States, many more men were found in positions of authority than before. Some men stayed in education; but
they left the classroom. This lends support to Lanford’s claim that from 1870 to 1970, the greater the
formalization of the educational system, the greater the proportion of women teachers.16 It also tends to support
my earlier argument that once a set of positions becomes “women’s work,” it is subject to greater pressure for
rationalization. Administrative control of teaching, curricula, and so on increases. The job itself becomes
different.
Thus, it is not that women had not been found in the teaching ranks before; of course they had. What is more
significant is the increasing numbers of women at particular levels “in unified, bureaucratic, and public schools”
with their graded curricula, larger and more formally organized districts, growing administrative hierarchies,17
and, just as crucially, restructuring of the tasks of teachers themselves.
Such sex segregation was not an unusual occurrence in the urban graded school, for instance. At its very
outset, proponents of these school plans had a specific labor force and labor process in mind. “Hiring,
promotion and salary schedules were routinized.” Rather than leaving it up to teachers, the curriculum was quite
standardized along grade level lines, with both teachers and students divided into these grades. New managerial
positions were created—the superintendent and non-teaching principal, for instance—thereby moving
responsibility for managerial concerns out of the classroom. Again, women’s supposed nurturing capabilities
and “natural” empathic qualities and their relatively low salaries made them ideally suited for teaching in such
schools. Even where there were concerns about women teachers’ ability to discipline older students, this too
could be solved. It was the principal and/or superintendent who handled such issues.18
This sexual division of labor within the school had other impacts. It enhanced the ability of urban school
boards to maintain bureaucratic control of their employees and over curriculum and teaching practices.

• • •
Given these ideological conditions and these unequal relations of control, why would women ever enter
such labor? Was it the stereotypical response that teaching was a temporary way-station on the road to marriage
for women who loved children? While this may have been partly accurate, it is certainly overstated since in
many instances this was not even remotely the case.
In her collection of teachers’ writings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Nancy Hoffman makes
the point that most women did not enter teaching with a love of children or with marital plans as the main things
in mind. Rather, uppermost in their minds was one major concern. They entered teaching in large part because
they needed work. The teachers’ comments often document the following facts:
Women had only a few choices of occupation; and compared with most—laundering, sewing, cleaning, or
working in a factory—teaching offered numerous attractions. It was genteel, paid reasonably well, and required
little special skill or equipment. In the second half of the century and beyond, it also allowed a woman to travel,
to live independently or in the company of other women, and to attain economic security and a modest social
status. The issue of marriage, so charged with significance among male educators, emerges in stories of
schoolmarms pressured reluctantly into marriage by a family fearful of having an ‘old maid’ on their hands,
rather than in teachers’ accounts of their own eagerness or anxiety over marriage. There are also explicit
statements, in these accounts, of teachers choosing work and independence over a married life that appeared, to
them, to signify domestic servitude or social uselessness. Finally, the accounts of some women tell us that they
chose teaching not because they wanted to teach children conventional right from wrong, but in order to foster
social, political, or spiritual change: they wanted to persuade the young, move them to collective action for
temperance, for racial equality, for conversion to Christianity. What these writings tell us, then, is that from the
woman teacher’s perspective, the continuity between mothering and teaching was far less significant than a
paycheck and the challenge and satisfaction of work.19
We should be careful about overstating this case, however. Not a few women could and did train to be
teachers and then worked for a relatively short period. As Angela John puts it, “Because the dominant ideology
argued that woman’s place was in the home, it conveniently enabled elementary teaching to be viewed in theory
(if not in practice) as a profession for which women could train and work for a limited time.”20 Obviously,
constructing the image of teaching as a transient occupation “permitted the perpetuation of low wages,” since
such waged labor was merely a way of “tiding women over until they were married.”21 Many women teachers
in England, the United States, and elsewhere, however, never married and, hence, the situation is considerably
more complicated than conventional stereotypes would have it.22
Yet while many teachers in the United States and undoubtedly in the U.K. approached their jobs with a
sense that did not necessarily mirror the stereotypes of nurturance and preparation for marriage, this did not stop
such stereotypes from creating problems. The increase in women teachers did not occur without challenge.
Conservative critics expressed concern over the negative effects women teachers might have on their male
pupils. Such concerns increased as the proportion of students going on to secondary schools rose. “While
recognizing the beneficial effects on primary-level pupils, the continuation of the female teacher-male student
relation into higher grades was viewed as potentially harmful.”23 (The longer tradition of single-sex schools in
England partially mediated these pressures.) That this is not simply a historical dynamic is evident by the fact
that even today the proportion of male teachers in high school is considerably higher than in the elementary
school.

CLASS DYNAMICS AND TEACHING

The general picture I have painted so far has treated the constitution of teaching as primarily a part of the sexual
division of labor over time. While this is crucially important, we need to remember that gender was not the only
dynamic at work here. Class played a major part, especially in England, but most certainly in the United States
as well.24 Class dynamics operated at the level of who became teachers and what their experiences were.
It was not until the end of the nineteenth century and the outset of the twentieth that middle-class girls began
to be recruited into teaching in England. In fact, only after 1914 do we see any large influx of middle-class girls
entering state-supported elementary school teaching.25
 Class distinctions were very visible. While the concept of femininity idealized for middle-class women
centered around an image of the “perfect wife and mother,” the middle-class view of working-class women
often entailed a different sense of femininity. The waged labor of working-class women “tarnished” them
(though there is evidence of between-class feminist solidarity).26 Such waged labor was a departure from
bourgeois ideals of domesticity and economic dependence. With the emergence of changes in such bourgeois
ideals toward the end of the nineteenth century, middle-class women themselves began to “widen their sphere of
action and participate in some of the various economic and social changes that accompanied industrialization”
and both the restructuring of capitalism and the division of labor. Struggles over legal and political rights, over
employment and education, came to be of considerable import. Yet because of a tension between the ideals of
domesticity and femininity on the one hand and the struggle to enlarge the middle-class woman’s economic
sphere on the other, particular jobs were seen as appropriate for women. Teaching (and often particular kinds of
stenographic and secretarial work) was one of the predominant ones.27 In fact, of the white women who worked
outside the home in the United States in the mid- to late nineteenth century, fully 20 percent were employed at
one time or another as teachers.28
This entrance of women, and especially of middle-class women, into paid teaching created important
pressures for improvements in the education of women in both the United States and England.29 Equalization of
curricular offerings, the right to enter into traditional male enclaves within universities, and so on, were in no
small part related to this phenomenon. Yet we need to remember an important social fact here. Even though
women were making gains in education and employment, most, say, middle-class women still found themselves
excluded from the professions and other areas of employment.30 Thus, a dynamic operated that cut both ways.
In being limited to and carving out this area of employment, women “held on to it as one of the few arenas in
which they could exert any power, even at the expense of further reinforcing stereotypes about women’s
sphere.”31
Having said this, we again should not assume that teachers were recruited primarily from middle-class
homes in the United States or England. Often quite the opposite was the case. A number of studies demonstrate
that working-class backgrounds were not unusual. In fact, one American study completed in 1911 presents data
on the average woman teacher’s economic background. She came from a family in which the father’s income
was approximately $800 a year, a figure that places the family among skilled workers or farmers rather than the
middle class.32
These class differences had an impact not only on an ideological level, but in terms of education and
employment within education as well. Girls of different class backgrounds often attended different schools,
even when they might both wish to be teachers.33 Furthermore, by the end of the nineteenth century in England,
class differences created clear distinctions in patterns of where one might teach. While middle-class women
teachers were largely found working in private secondary and single-sex schools “which catered especially to
middle class girls” or as governesses, women teachers from working-class backgrounds were found elsewhere.
They dominated positions within state-supported elementary schools—schools that were largely working-class
and mixed-sex.34 In many ways these were simply different jobs.
These class distinctions can hide something of considerably significance, however. Both groups still had low
status.35 To be a woman was still to be involved in a social formation that was defined in large part by the
structure of patriarchal relations. But again patriarchal forms were often colonized and mediated by class
relations.
For example, what was taught to these aspiring teachers had interesting relationships to the social and sexual
divisions of labor. Many aspiring working-class “pupil teachers” in England were recruited to teach in working-
class schools. Much of what they were expected to teach centered around domestic skills such as sewing and
needlework in addition to reading, spelling, and arithmetic. For those working-class pupil teachers who might
ultimately sit for an examination to enter one of the teacher training colleges, gender divisions were most
pronounced. In Purvis’s comparison of these entrance tests, the different expectations of what men and women
were to know and, hence, teach are more than a little visible. Both men and women were examined in dictation,
penmanship, grammar, composition, school management, history, geography, French, German, Latin, and
Welsh. Yet only men were tested in algebra, geometry, Euclid, and Greek. Only women took domestic economy
and needlework.
The focus on needlework is a key here in another way, for not only does it signify clear gender dynamics at
work but it also points again to class barriers. Unlike the “ornamental sewing” that was more common in
middle-class households, these working-class girls were examined on “useful sewing.” Questions included how
to make the knee part of “knickerbocker drawers” and the sewing together of women’s petticoats of a gored
variety. (This was one of the most efficient uses of material, since less material is needed if the fabric is cut and
sewn correctly.)36 The dominance of utility, efficiency, and cost saving is once more part of the vision of what
working-class girls would need.37 As Purvis notes, “it would appear then that female elementary teachers were
expected to teach those skills which were linked to that form of femininity deemed appropriate for the working
classes.”38
But teaching, especially elementary school teaching, was not all that well paid, to say the least, earning
somewhat more than a factory operative but still only the equivalent of a stenographer’s wages in the United
States or England.39 What would its appeal have been for a working-class girl? In England, with its very visible
set of class relations and articulate class culture, we find answers similar to but—given these more visible class
relations—still different from the United States. First, the very method by which girls were first trained in the
1870s to become teachers was a system of apprenticeship—a system that was “indigenous to working class
culture.” This was especially important since it was evident at the time that female pupil teachers were usually
the daughters of laborers, artisans, or small tradesmen. Second, and here very much like the American
experience, compared to occupations such as domestic service, working in factories, dressmaking, and so on—
among the only jobs realistically open to working-class women—teaching had a number of benefits. It did
increase status, especially among working-class girls who showed a degree of academic ability. Working
conditions, though still nothing to write home about, were clearly better in many ways. They were relatively
clean and, though often extremely difficult given the overcrowded conditions in schools, had that same potential
for job satisfaction that was evident in my earlier quotation from Hoffman and that was frequently missing in
other employment. And, just as significantly, since teaching was considered to be on the mental side of the
mental/manual division of labor, it gave an opportunity—though granted a limited one—for a certain amount of
social mobility.40 (This question of social mobility and “respectability” may have been particularly important to
those women and families newly within a “lower-middle-class” location, as well, given the increasing
proportion of such people in teaching in England by the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth
century.)
There was a price to pay for this “mobility” and the promise of improved working conditions that
accompanied it. Women elementary school teachers became less connected to their class origins, and at the
same time class differences in ideals of femininity still kept them from being totally acceptable to these classes
above them. This contradictory situation is not an abstraction. The fact that it was lived out is made clear in
these teachers’ frequent references to their social isolation.41 Such isolation was of course heightened
considerably by other lived conditions of teachers. The formal and contractual conditions under which teachers
were hired were not the most attractive. As many of you already know, women teachers in the United States, for
example, could be fired for getting married, or if married, getting pregnant. There were prohibitions about being
seen with men, about clothes, about makeup, about politics, about money, about nearly all of one’s public (and
private) life.
It would be wrong to trace all of this back to economic motives and class dynamics. For decades married
women were prohibited from teaching on both sides of the Atlantic. While single women were often young, and
hence were paid less, the notion of morality and purity as powerful symbols of a womanly teaching act
undoubtedly played a large part. The above-mentioned array of controls of women’s physicality, dress, living
arrangements, and morals shows the importance of these concerns. Ideologies of patriarchy, with the teacher
being shrouded in a domestic and maternal cloak—possibly combined with a more deep-seated male suspicion
of female sexuality—are reproduced here.42 It is the very combination of patriarchal relations and economic
pressures that continue to work their way through teaching to this day.
These controls are strikingly evident in a relatively standard teacher’s contract from the United States for the
year 1923. I reproduce it in its entirety since it condenses within itself so many of the ideological conditions
under which women teachers worked (see Figure 33.1).
In many ways, the contract speaks for itself. It is important to note, though, that this sort of thing did not end
in 1923. Many of these conditions continued for decades, to be ultimately transformed into . . . more technical
and bureaucratic forms of control. . . .
Let me give one further concrete example. The larger political economy, in combination with patriarchal
ideological forms, shows its power once again whenever the question of married women who engage in waged
work appears historically. By the turn of the century hundreds of thousands of married women had begun to
work outside the home. Yet during the Depression, it was very common for married women to be fired or to be
denied jobs if they had working husbands. The state played a large role here. In England, governmental policies
and reports gave considerable attention to women’s domestic role.43 In the United States, in 1930–31 the
National Association of Education reported that of the 1,500 school systems in the country 77 percent refused to
hire married women teachers. Another 63 percent dismissed any woman teacher who got married during the
time of her employment. This did not only occur at the elementary and secondary levels. Some universities
asked their married women faculty to resign. Lest we see this as something that only affected women teachers,
the Federal government itself required in 1932 that if a married couple worked for the government, one must be
let go. This law was applied almost invariably to women only.44

Figure 33.1 1923 Teacher Contract

 The very fact that these figures seem so shocking to us now is eloquent testimony of the sacrifices made and
the struggles that women engaged in for decades to alter these oppressive relations. These struggles have been
over one’s control of one’s labor and over the control of one’s very life. Given the past conditions I have just
pointed to, these historically significant struggles have actually brought no small measure of success. . . .

NOTES

1. Linda Murgatroyd, “Gender and Occupational. Stratification,” Sociological Review 30 (November 1982),
p. 588.
2. Veronica Beechey, “The Sexual Division of Labour and the Labour Processes: A Critical Assessment of
Braverman.” P. 67 in The Degradation of Work? edited by Stephen Wood. London: Hutchinson, 1982.
3. Barry H. Bergen, “Only a Schoolmaster: Gender, Class, and the Effort to Professionalize Elementary
Teaching in England, 1870–1910,” History of Education Quarterly 22 (Spring 1982), p. 12.
 4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 5.
6. Myra Strober, “Segregation by Gender in Public School Teaching: Toward a General Theory of
Occupational Segregation in the Labor Market.” Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, 1982, p.
16.
7. See, for example, Sheila Rothman, Women’s Proper Place (New York: Basic Books, 1978), and Michele
Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today (London: New Left Books, 1980).
8. John Richardson and Brenda Wooden Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching, 1870–
1920,” Work and Occupations 10 (February 1983), p. 84.
9. Bergen, “Only a Schoolmaster,” p. 13.
10. Ibid., p. 14.
11. Nancy Hoffman, Women’s “True” Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching (Old Westbury: The
Feminist Press, 1981), p. xix.
12. See the discussion in Frances Widdowson, Going Up into the Next Class: Women and Elementary Teacher
Training, 1840–1914 (London: Hutchinson, 1983).
13. David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Workers: Divided Workers: The
Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
p. 68.
14. Strober, “Segregation by Gender in Public School Teaching,” p. 19.
15. Strober, “Segregation by Gender in Public School Teaching.” This “willingness” often had religious roots.
16. Lanford, quoted in Strober, “Segregation by Gender in Public School Teaching,” p. 21.
17. Richardson and Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching,” p. 82.
18. Myra Strober and David Tyack, “Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage?: A Report on Research on
Schools,” Signs 5 (Spring 1980), p. 499.
19. Hoffman, Women’s “True” Profession, pp. xvii–xviii.
20. Angela V. John, “Foreword” to Widdowson, Getting Up into the Next Class, p. 9.
21. Ibid.
22. See, for example, Marta Danylewycz and Alison Prentice, “Teachers, Gender, and Bureaucratizing School
Systems in Nineteenth Century Montreal and Toronto.” History of Education Quarterly 24 (Spring 1984).
23. Richardson and Hatcher, “The Feminization of Public School Teaching,” p. 87–88.
24. On the importance of thinking about the United States in class terms, see David Hogan, “Education and
Class Formation: The Peculiarities of the Americans,” in Michael W. Apple, ed., Cultural and Economic
Reproduction in Education: Essays on Class, Ideology and the State (Boston and London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 32–78, and Erik Olin Wright, Class, Crisis and the State (London: New Left
Books, 1978).
25. June Purvis, “Women and Teaching in the Nineteenth Century,” in Dale et al., eds., Education and the
State, Vol. 2, p. 372. See also Widdowson, Going Up into the Next Class.
26. See the interesting historical analysis of the place of socialist women here in Mari Jo Buhle, Women and
American Socialism, 1870–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981).
27. Purvis, “Women and Teaching in the Nineteenth Century,” pp. 361–63.
28. Carl Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York:
 Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 381.
29. Purvis, “Women and Teaching in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 372.
30. Strober and Tyack, “Why Do Women Teach and Men Manage?” p. 496.
31. Sandra Acker, “Women and Teaching: A Semi-Detached Sociology of a Semi-Detached Profession,” in
Stephen Walker and Len Barton, eds., Gender, Class and Education (Barcombe, Sussex: Falmer Press,
1983), p. 134.
32. Degler, At Odds, p. 380. Paul Mattingly, too, argues that by the 1890s even many normal schools had
become almost exclusively female and had directed their attention to a “lower-class” student body.
33. Interestingly enough, some believed that upper-middle-class young women were at an academic
disadvantage compared to working-class young women in teacher training institutions in England. See
Widdowson, Going Up into the Next Class.
34. Purvis, “Women and Teaching in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 364.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid., p. 366.
37. I wish to thank Rima D. Apple for this point.
38. Purvis, “Women and Teaching in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 366.
39. Rotham, Women’s Proper Place, p. 58.
40. Purvis, “Women and Teaching in the Nineteenth Century,” p. 367.
41. Ibid.
42. See Barrett, Women’s Oppression Today, pp. 187–226.
43. See Ann Marie Wolpe, “The Official Ideology of Education for Girls.” Pp. 138–59 in Educability, Schools
and Ideology, edited by Michael Flude and John Ahier. (London: Halsted Press, 1974).
44. Degler, At Odds, pp. 413–14.

SOURCE: Michael Apple, “Teaching and ‘Women’s Work’: A Comparative and Historical Analysis,” Teachers
College Record (1985) 86/3:455–473. Reprinted with permission.
34
REWRITING RACE AND GENDER HIGH SCHOOL LESSONS
Second-Generation Dominicans in New York City
NANCY LÓPEZ

A t high school graduation ceremonies across the country, a curious gender gap has emerged—more
women graduate than men, particularly in Latino and Black communities. It is predicted that by 2007
the gender gap will reach 2.3 million, with 9.2 million women enrolled in college, compared with 6.9
million men (Lewin, 1998). It is significant that although the gender gap occurs across all racial and ethnic
groups, it is most pronounced in Latino and Black communities (Dunn, 1988). In the Boston public high school
graduating class of 1998, it was estimated that there were 100 Black and Hispanic males for every 180 Black
and Hispanic females attending a 4-year college (Sum, Kroshko, Fogg, & Palma, 2000). In New York City
public high schools, where the majority of the student population is nonwhite (86%), more women graduate
than men (Board of Education, 2000). Even at the City University of New York (CUNY) women also comprise
the majority of enrolled Black and Latino undergraduates—up to 70% in graduate programs.
Despite the social, cultural, and political significance of this trend, there is little research on the race-gender
gap in education (Kleinfeld, 1998; López, 2002; Sum, et al., 2000; Washington & Newman, 1991). This trend
begs several questions: Why do more women graduate than men? How do formal and informal institutional
practices within high schools “race” and “gender” students? How do racializ(ing) and gender(ing) processes
intersect in the classroom setting? Finally, how can teachers work toward dismantling race, gender, and class
oppression in their classrooms? A guiding premise of the study is that race and gender are socially constructed
processes that are overlapping, intertwined, and inseparable.1 This understanding of race differs in fundamental
ways from the essentialist perspective, which assumes that race is an innate and static biological essence (Omi
& Winant, 1994).
To understand why women attain higher levels of education than men, I investigated race(ing) and
gender(ing) processes in the high school setting. High school is a crucial site for exploring the origins of the
gender gap because it is in this institution where it begins to become most pronounced. I therefore focus on how
ordinary day-to-day school practices and classroom dynamics are racial(ized) and gender(ed), and in turn shape
men’s and women’s views about the role of education in their lives. My primary data come from 5 months of
participant observation at Urban High School, a New York City public high school that is 90% Latino; most of
the students are second-generation Dominicans who were born in the United States or had most of their
schooling in the United States.
During the spring of 1998, for 3 days a week, I regularly observed four mainstream classes in the social
studies department: two economics classes for seniors, one American history class for juniors, and one global
studies class for sophomores. The two economics courses were taught by Mr. Green, a self-described biracial
man in his early 20s, who could “pass” for white in terms of phenotype. Ms. Gutierrez, a Latina teacher in her
early 20s, who was from South America but could not “pass” for white, taught the American history course.
And Mr. Hunter, a white man also in his mid-20s, taught the global studies class for sophomores. Each of these
classes had between 25 and 30 students. Only Mr. Green’s classes had unequal gender proportions. In his first
class, less than a third of the students were female. Conversely, in the second class, only a third of the class was
male. This skewed gender balance in the classroom proved quite useful for examining how race and gender
intersect in the school setting.
Reactions to my presence in the field were varied. Depending on my attire, despite the fact that I was in my
late 20s, students and teachers alike often mistook me for an older high school student. One morning, a white
male, middle-aged teacher came to Mr. Hunter’s class to conduct a teacher evaluation. Because I was wearing a
pair of jeans and a T-shirt, he assumed that I was a student and asked me if he could see yesterday’s class notes.
Students, on the other hand, saw me as a fellow Dominican; they usually approached me in Spanish, sometimes
inquiring about what part of “the DR” my family was from. Sometimes, if I were dressed in more professional
clothing, students whom I would meet in the hallways and lunchroom asked me in Spanish if I was a
psychologist reporting on students who were “bad.” Other students simply saw me as a college student and
asked me about getting into college.
Before beginning my analysis of how race and gender processes intersect in the classroom setting, I describe
the neighborhood and institutional context in which Urban High School is embedded. Next, I bring into focus
some of the invisible race(ing) and gender(ing) processes that transpire in high school classrooms as well as
through school policies. And, finally, I outline some of the ways in which teachers and school administrators
can interrupt the cycle of race, class, and gender oppression of racially stigmatized and language minority
students.

UNEARTHING RACE-GENDER LESSONS IN THE CLASSROOM

Regrettably, classrooms are not impervious to the social narratives that frame Latino and Black students,
particularly young men, as “problems” (Fine, 1991). The following analysis of Mr. Green’s third- and fourth-
period economics class for seniors provides a window to the invisible ways in which race(ing) and gender(ing)
transpire in many high school classrooms across the United States. Mr. Green was a well-intentioned and
hardworking teacher I often bumped into during my morning commute. To compensate for the lack of books in
his classroom, Mr. Green used his own money to purchase newspapers and make photocopies. In an effort to
prepare his class for the statewide Regents examinations, Mr. Green assigned journal writing at the beginning of
each class. Because he did not have a space in which to leave his students’ work, at the end of every semester,
Mr. Green could be seen lugging a green duffel bag filled with student journals. Mr. Green was emblematic of
the hardworking teachers that sacrifice for our students. However, despite his good intentions (Fine, 1991), Mr.
Green, like other dedicated teachers across the country, was unaware of the ways in which his pedagogical style
and demeanor inadvertently contributed to the growing race-gender gap in education.
One morning, Mr. Green, who always wore a shirt and tie to class, locked the door shut after the bell rang
and announced, “You will have exactly seven minutes to complete this quiz. Please take off your hats.” Because
the doors were locked shut from the inside, all latecomers had to knock to be let in, and they were required to
sign the late book. While students were completing the quiz, Mr. Green inched his way down the crowded aisle
checking for homework, often walking over desks to get to the next row. Disappointed at the number of students
who did not hand in their homework, Mr. Green remarked, “Students, this is unacceptable; only a handful of
you have submitted your homework. Many of you will lose points for not handing in homework.”
One young man in the class called out, “How come you didn’t used to give us homework last year?” Mr.
Green retorted, “You guys quiet down! Do you want to be here? I suggest that you follow the rules,” pointing to
the blackboard. A large piece of cardboard stapled over the blackboard listed “Mr. Green’s rules for success”:

1. Be present every day.

2. Be in your seat when the bell rings.
3. Homework is due at the beginning of class.
4. Do not wear hats, walkmans, or beepers.
5. Be quiet and attentive when someone is speaking.
6. Do not bring food or drinks to the classroom.
7. Raise your hand and wait to be recognized before speaking.
8. Be prepared for school.
 9. Treat faculty and other students with respect.

Another informal rule in Mr. Green’s class was “English only.” Sometimes during classroom discussions,
students replied in Spanish but were completely ignored by Mr. Green.
Exactly 6 minutes after the quiz began, Mr. Green warned, “Okay students, you have one minute,” and
seconds later added, “Okay students, time is up. Put your pens down. Put your names and pass them forward. If
I see you writing I will take points off.” Mr. Green’s classroom often felt like a very controlled environment that
had a definite, inviolable time schedule.
During classroom discussions, Mr. Green inadvertently framed Latino young men as potential drug and
crime statistics (Fine, 1991). Another morning, Mr. Green began class by asking students to talk about the
problems that existed in contemporary society. Students called out, “Crime, drugs, pollution.” Mr. Green
continued, “Is crime directly or indirectly caused by poverty?” Leo, a male student replied, “Drugs are a way to
escape from reality; therefore we have a drug problem. But poverty doesn’t necessarily cause crime. People
come from New Jersey, buy their drugs and what kind of life do they lead?” Leo argued that white suburban
youth come to Latino neighborhoods in New York City to purchase drugs, but they are not low income.
Likewise, José chided, “I read about a study in the newspaper that states that 40% of ‘weedheads’ are in the
‘inner city,’ but 60% are from the suburbs!” The rest of the young men clapped, made remarks in Spanish, and
cheered Leo’s and José’s social critique of the racialization of low-income Black and Latino communities as the
only space where criminal activity takes place. Noticeably upset, Mr. Green responded, “Students, I don’t need
the heckles. You need to raise your hands.”
Due in part to the fact that Mr. Green had to cover a given amount of material within the 40-minute time
block, the time allowed for substantive dialogue was constrained. Mr. Green responded in a textbook fashion,
“In an indirect way poverty can lead to drugs.” Flustered by the symbolic taint that was cast on his community,
one young man muttered under his breath, “Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean that you use drugs.” Given
that the majority of the students at Urban High School are from low-income and working-class Dominican
families, and that the media have stigmatized Latino and Black men as drug lords, the young men in Mr.
Green’s class were understandably upset by his comments.
In an effort to contribute to the classroom discussion, José continued the debate by saying, “Many of the
people who engage in crime do not have drugs.” Again the rest of the class applauded and made remarks in
Spanish. Oblivious to his students’ social critique, Mr. Green continued to press them to agree with his
prescriptions: “What is the broad social goal of the minimum wage? Come up with alternative methods.”
After a deafening silence, which can be interpreted as form of resistance to the racialization processes that
had taken place in the class thus far, Mr. Green offered another textbook solution: “Tax breaks to employers
who create jobs.” After another pause, Viscaino, a young man, offered, “train people for higher skilled jobs.”
Other students clapped, and from his seat Viscaino took a bow and smiled at his friends. But, Jose chided,
“What good is job training if the jobs are not there?” Mr. Green reproached, “There is a demand for skilled
workers, such as actuaries. They make over a hundred thousand dollars a year.” Lionel rejoined, “You have to
understand that there are people out there who have an education but who still sell drugs because the jobs are
already taken by people out there who have experience.”
Time and again Mr. Green’s laudable attempts to encourage classroom discussion were undermined by his
authoritarian pedagogy. Although Mr. Green was a hard-working teacher, his pedagogical style was quite
authoritarian and alienating. Mr. Green appeared to promote participation only if students agreed with the
official responses. The young men in Mr. Green’s economics class were participating in classroom discussion
by making biting references to job ceilings, racism, and police brutality, but their social critique was often
muffled by an oppressive pedagogy fixated on maintaining order and producing “correct” answers. More
important, once again young men who wanted to participate in a classroom dialogue were defined as disruptive
and as problems.
The gender balance of the class had a visible effect on Mr. Green’s social interactions with students. While
Mr. Green was always on guard for his third-period class, which consisted mostly of men, his demeanor
changed almost instantaneously during his fourth-period class, in which the majority of the students were
women. Mr. Green described these two classes as being like night and day.
 One morning, just as Mr. Green began to take attendance in his fourth-period class, Juan, who arrived a few
minutes late, knocked on the door to be let in.3 While Juan was signing the late book, Mr. Green demanded that
he remove his hat. Juan refused and asked why Mr. Green had not asked the women in the class to remove their
hats. (Indeed four women were wearing hats.) At Urban High School, school rules stated that no student could
wear a hat inside the school building. However, although this rule was strictly enforced for young men, it was
never enforced for young women.
Angrily, Mr. Green replied, “Ladies can wear it because it’s fashion!” Unscathed by Mr. Green’s insistence,
Juan, who was dressed in designer sportswear, rejoined, “I’m fashion too, Mr. Green.” At that point, Mr. Green
was noticeably irate and threatened to send Juan to the principal’s office, but Juan would not budge. After an
uncomfortable silence, Mr. Green glanced at me, then back at Juan, and reluctantly asked the women to remove
their hats. Juan then finally obliged. Before the end of the class, however, the “ladies” (but not Juan) had their
hats back on; without a word from Mr. Green. Shortly thereafter, Juan stopped coming to class. Later that month
I found Juan in the college office. When asked why he had stopped attending class, Juan said he left because he
had “problems” with Mr. Green.
The next month in the same fourth-period class, Ani, another class clown who, like Juan, sometimes came in
late wearing a baseball cap, joked about Mr. Green’s resemblance to television personality Pee Wee Herman. In
part because of Mr. Green’s likeness to the comedian, of course, the entire class burst out laughing, including
Mr. Green. In disbelief, a young man turned to another young man sitting behind him and whispered, “Imagine
if we had said that, he would have kicked us out of the class!”
While I did note that young women misbehaved less often than men, teachers, regardless of gender and race,
were generally more lenient with young women who transgressed school rules. In part because some teachers
did not feel physically threatened by female students, but they may have felt intimidated by their male
counterparts, they tended to be more understanding of young women who were absent from class, came in late,
or did not hand in homework. Moreover, in many overcrowded urban schools, so-called feminine traits, such as
silence and passivity, are valued and rewarded. Therefore, the “good” student is profiled as a “young lady,”
whereas the “bad” student is constructed as a male troublemaker.

REWRITING RACE-GENDER HIGH SCHOOL LESSONS

How can we erase the race-gender gap in education? How can we begin rewriting some of the race and gender
lessons students learn in high schools about who they are and who they can be? There is ample evidence
pointing to how large public institutions can be successfully recreated into alternative spaces in which students
who were previously defined as “at risk” are turned into scholars, citizens, and activists (Fine & Sommerville,
1998; Fine, Weis, & Powell, 1997; Hartocollis, 1999; Meier, 1995).
Ms. Gutierrez was emblematic of a transformative teacher who nurtured social critique and critical
consciousness among her students (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993). In her American history class, Ms. Gutierrez
created a safe space for student social critique, empowerment, and social change. A key aspect of Ms.
Gutierrez’s success was due in large part to her willingness to be innovative and take risks with pedagogical
strategies (Hooks, 1994). Instead of employing traditional pedagogical practices, which constitute students as
empty receptacles that should be ready for the educational “deposits” made by an authoritative teacher, Ms.
Gutierrez worked toward teaching students how to transgress the illusion that teachers are omniscient (Freire,
1985; Hooks, 1994).4 Her classes were often structured as semicircles and students worked on small-group and
multiple-group projects. Students cotaught lessons, wrote and performed plays depicting historical events, and
conducted research on their immigrant neighborhood and family experiences. During one of Ms. Gutierrez’s
classes, the Industrial Revolution was brought to life as students simulated a 19th century sweatshop in Lower
Manhattan.
In terms of content, Ms. Gutierrez tried to make sure that topics that were not deemed important for
inclusion in the standardized statewide Regents exams, such as the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America
and the Caribbean, were covered in her class. In a deviation from the official curriculum, Ms. Gutierrez took her
juniors on a class trip to the Native American Museum. “Although you will not be tested on this in the Regents,
I still think this history is important for you to know.” Of course, because Urban High School had limited
funding for extracurricular activities, Ms. Gutierrez paid for the lunch of the 60 students who attended. As a
chaperone for this trip, I accompanied the group to a special lecture and film presented by one of the staff
members at the museum. Here students linked the decimation of the Tainos, the indigenous peoples of the
Dominican Republic and Haiti, with the current experiences of the indigenous peoples of South America. By
weaving her students’ experiences, history, and culture into her course on American history, Ms. Gutierrez
successfully inspired students to become lifelong learners.
Ms. Gutierrez’s success with students stemmed from her efforts to make their culture and language an
integral part of the class; students did not have to leave their culture outside the classroom door (Delgado, 1992;
López, 1997; Nieto, 1992, 1999; Stanton-Salazar, 1997; Ybarra, 2000). Unlike teachers who often viewed the
use of any language other than English as a deficit and an impediment to “real” learning, Ms. Gutierrez
welcomed the use of different languages in the classroom, including languages she did not know, such as
Haitian Creole. Moreover, Ms. Gutierrez was not fixated on maintaining an artificial order in the classroom. For
instance, with the exception of the day that state inspectors were visiting the school, Ms. Gutierrez generally
allowed men to wear their hats in class. Young men felt accepted and welcomed in her classroom and therefore
were not experienced as “problems.” In turn, young men volunteered to come early to rearrange desks, decorate
the classroom, erase the chalkboard, and clean up the classroom. In short, young men felt that they were
genuinely appreciated for who they were in the classroom.
Both young men and women respected and admired Ms. Gutierrez because she truly admired and respected
her students. Although she was from South America, Ms. Gutierrez practiced a sense of solidarity with her
predominantly Caribbean Latino students. Of course, part of the reason Ms. Gutierrez was successful with her
students was that she was a second-generation Latina herself, who spoke Spanish fluently. However, it was her
pedagogical praxis and genuine respect for her students that made her so successful with both her male and
female students. For instance, my own high school experience with some Latino teachers in a New York City
public school throughout the 1970s and 1980s was completely different from what I witnessed in Ms.
Gutierrez’s classroom. A couple of my Latina teachers held disdain for Dominican culture and ridiculed
Dominican Spanish. To be sure some of the teachers who early on took an interest in me and proclaimed that I
was “college material” were Jewish, Italian, and African American teachers who did not speak a word of
Spanish. However, these teachers practiced a politics of caring and genuinely respected my language and
cultural heritage (Valenzuela, 1999). In short, that a teacher’s racial and ethnic background is different from that
of her students should not necessarily pose an impediment to creating a classroom environment where her
students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences are validated and affirmed. In an environment where the culture
and history of students are an integral part of the learning process, the race-gender gap in education will be
eradicated.

CONCLUSION

In examining the race-gender gap in educational attainment among Dominicans, I found that both institutional
practices and classroom pedagogy are important spaces in which to work toward reversing the race-gender gap
in education. At Urban High School, like at other low-income public urban schools, young men from racially
stigmatized groups are viewed as threatening and potential problem students, whereas young women are treated
in a more sympathetic fashion. In effect, although males and females attend the same high schools and come
from the same socioeconomic backgrounds, they have fundamentally different cumulative experiences with the
intersection of race and gender processes in the school setting. In turn, these experiences shape men’s and
women’s views about the role of education in their lives in fundamentally different ways (López, 2002). Given
the race(d) and gender(ed) ways in which school rules and policies are implemented at many urban schools, it is
not a surprise that Latino and Black men comprise a disproportionate number of students who drop out, are
discharged, expelled, and tracked into low-level curriculum tracks, including special education.
What would a school that seeks to eliminate the race-gender gap in education look like? There are many
changes, both institutional and pedagogical, that can be made in an effort to dismantle the race-gender gap in
education. At the institutional level, principals and other school administrators must pay close attention to the
ways in which overcrowding translates into increased authoritarian practices informally directed toward young
men, particularly those from racially stigmatized groups. Are security guards only patrolling young men? Are
school rules applied in an excessive fashion toward young men? Is there a bridge between low-income public
schools and the prison industrial complex? Zero-tolerance regulations in school and the presence of metal
detectors and armed police officers in the schools may be creating an inhospitable school environment for
racially stigmatized young men, especially Latinos and Blacks.
As the heads of their schools, principals can work toward ending race, gender, and class oppression by
actively seeking to create a school climate that provides a space for the democratic discussion of racial, class,
and gender inequality (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993; Ayvazian, 1995; Cummins, 1993; Freire, 1993). Instead of
ignoring issues of race, class, and gender oppression, principals can counteract power relations between Latino
students and the dominant society by opening a dialogue on these issues. In this environment, issues of diversity
are not relegated to particular “ethnic” days, months, or festivals but rather are constitutive of the curriculum,
institutional practices, and the relationship between the school and the surrounding community.
At the classroom level, teachers can be attentive to the ways in which they are interacting with students. Are
authoritarian pedagogical practices undermining the education of Latinos? Are young men perceived as
disruptive and punished disproportionately when compared with their female counterparts? Are the history and
experience of students reflected in the curriculum? The omission and repression of Latino students’ culture,
language, and experience is a form of academic violence, which seriously undermines their learning, as well as
their democratic right to express themselves in any language.
If our goal is to eliminate the race-gender gap in education, it is extremely important that we examine the
processes through which students are racialized and gendered in schools through school policies and through
classroom pedagogy. Once we become aware of the invisible ways in which gender(ing) and race(ing) processes
take place at both the macro and micro levels in schools, we can begin to rewrite the race and gender lessons
many students, particularly Black and Latino students, learn about who they are and who they can be (Meier,
1995). It is my hope that by paying attention to the race(ing) and gender(ing) in the classroom and school
policies we will be on our way to eradicating the race-gender gap in education.

NOTES

1. I draw on the insights of critical theory and critical race theory, which seek to unveil and dismantle
processes of domination, oppression, and resistance (Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1996;
Delgado, 1995; Fine, 1991; Gramsci, 1971; Collins, 1990; Hurtado, 1996; Omi & Winant, 1994).
2. Omi and Winant (1994, p. 56) define a racial project as “simultaneously an interpretation, representation,
or explanation of racial dynamics and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular
racial lines. Racial projects connect what race means in a particular discursive practice and the ways in
which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning.”
3. As previously mentioned, Mr. Green kept the door locked after the bell rang.
4. As explained by Freire (1985) “banking education,” where a student records, memorizes, and repeats
information, without perceiving issues of relative power and contradictions, serves as an instrument of
oppression.

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SOURCE: Nancy López, “Rewriting Race and Gender High School Lessons: Second-Generation Dominicans in
New York City.” Teachers College Record 104 (6): (2002): pp. 1187–1203. Reprinted with permission.
35
GENDER, RACE, AND JUSTIFICATIONS FOR GROUP
EXCLUSION
Urban Black Students Bussed to Affluent Suburban Schools
SIMONE ISPA-LANDA

Scholars have examined how race and class relations shape evaluations of students’ gender performances.
This research shows that teachers and peers often view ethnic minorities’ behavior as gender-inappropriate.
Many authors conclude that teachers and students explain the inferior achievement of lower-class and non-white
students with references to the inappropriateness or undesirability of their gender performances (Bettie 2003;
Ferguson 2000; Lewis 2003; López 2002; Morris 2007; Pascoe 2007; Schippers 2007; Tyson 2011). However,
researchers have yet to theorize the conditions under which dominant groups use subordinate groups’ gender
performances to maintain race/class hierarchies. Without such an examination, it appears as if the gender
performances of all individuals belonging to subordinate groups are used against them, all the time. This
assumption prevents a more specific understanding of how idealized definitions of masculinity or femininity can
serve race/class hierarchies. To address these gaps, I conducted an in-depth study of adolescent culture within a
network of affluent, intentionally racially integrated suburban schools. Empirically, the goal was to identify
when and how minority participants’ gender performances would be used as the rationale for their exclusion
from peer cliques. The findings and analysis have broad theoretical implications for the study of gender in
racially integrated settings.
The study compares the everyday experiences of male and female black adolescents participating in
Diversify, a voluntary urban-to-suburban racial integration program.2 The Diversify program busses black
students from poor and working-class, majority-minority neighborhoods to a participating network of affluent,
majority-white suburban schools. Thus, Diversify students are not only ethnically different from their (mostly
white) suburban classmates, but also come from a lower-class background. Previous research has shown that
minority students in such circumstances have a heightened likelihood of experiencing incomplete belonging in
majority peer networks (Gaztambide-Fernandez and DiAquoi 2010; Horvat and Antonio 1999). The Diversify
students’ experiences of peer culture offer an excellent platform for understanding when and how members of a
lower-class minority group’s gender performance are used as the grounds for its exclusion.
I found that black boys in the Diversify program reported being popular and included in suburban social and
dating networks, while the black girls reported the opposite (Ispa-Landa 2011). Upon investigation, I discovered
that although the boys in Diversify were popular, they were also perceived as incapable of academic “success.”
This called into doubt their ability to reap the economic rewards associated with masculine dominance in adult
social circles. Thus, the Diversify boys’ role in the suburbs supported masculine ideals and also did not threaten
white dominance. In contrast, the Diversify girls were unpopular and excluded from suburban social and dating
networks. The suburban students and the Diversify boys explained that the Diversify girls were unpopular and
sexually undesirable because they were coded as “ghetto” and “loud.” Thus, Diversify boys and suburban
classmates criticized the Diversify girls’ “loudness” according to a discourse about feminine norms. They also
used this discourse to rationalize the Diversify girls’ social isolation. From their standpoint, the Diversify girls
claimed that their “loud’ reputation came from their direct style of handling interpersonal conflict and racially
insensitive remarks.
Morris (2007) and Fordham (1996) also analyzed black girls’ so-called loudness. In their accounts,
“loudness” represents resistance to pressure to conform to idealized white middle-class womanhood. I propose
to extend this line of analysis by using a relational lens to yield a different interpretation of similar findings. A
relational perspective highlights that actors evaluate others’ gender performances according to a gender system
in which masculinity and femininity are co-constituted. It draws attention to the way gender performances are
sorted and ranked, not just as within-gender comparisons (a femininity compared to another femininity), but
also vis-à-vis their ability to uphold the idealized relationship between masculinity and femininity (femininity
and masculinity evaluated according to their ability to uphold masculine dominance). My focus on gender
relationality revealed that the Diversify girls were sanctioned not only because they were perceived as different
from white suburban girls, and not only because they expressed outward resistance to white dominance, but also
because they symbolically threatened the overall gender order. Drawing on these findings, I offer two key
contributions to research on peer relations, gender, and racialization. First, I add nuance to previous treatments
of the issue of black girls’ “loudness” by examining the experiences of urban black students attending affluent
suburban public schools where most children are upper-middle-class. Second, I attend to the specific
circumstances under which gender performances are used as the rationale for a group’s exclusion.

THE IDEALIZED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY

In a recent article, Schippers (2007) describes how as analysts increasingly focus on multiple masculinities and
femininities, they neglect the complementary and hierarchical relation of masculinity vis-à-vis femininity.
Critiquing this trend, she writes, “the implicit relationship between genders becomes a taken-for-granted feature
of interpersonal relationships, culture, and social structure” (p. 91). In this research, I analyzed the Diversify
boys’ and girls’ seemingly opposite social situations. In so doing, I sought to go beyond an analysis of the
Diversify girls’ social situation vis-à-vis the femininities deemed desirable within the suburban school. My
approach is complementary to, yet distinct from, previous treatments of black girls’ “place” within schools
(Grant 1984; Morris 2007), which have largely emphasized how black girls may be sanctioned for failing to live
up to standards of white femininity. In seeking to understand how the black girls’ social position related to the
overall gender order, I brought a relational gender lens to bear on analysis.
Schippers (2007) emphasizes that the idealized features of masculinity and femininity are those that ensure a
complementary and hierarchical relationship between the two. On the masculine side, these include desire for
the feminine object, violence, and authority. On the feminine side, these include desire to be the object of
masculine desire, physical vulnerability, and compliance. Gender is a set of practices, rather than a property of
individuals. Thus, women can embody masculine characteristics. However, when they do, these characteristics
are constructed as deviant feminine characteristics (the bitch, the bad-ass, the slut). For masculinity to remain a
legitimate property of men, feminine access to it must be denied. Thus, when a man exhibits hegemonic
feminine characteristics—such as desiring to be the object of masculine desire—he is viewed as contaminating
social relations. He has violated the idealized relationship between masculinity and femininity. When men enact
the quality content of femininity, they are therefore constructed as feminine (the fag, pussy, or mama’s boy).
Masculinity is superior and desirable. Therefore, masculinity cannot “sustain” stigma and contamination—only
femininity can (Schippers 2007).
Within this theoretical framework, the characteristics and practices that hetero-sexualize femininity in
relation to masculinity are valued. For example, in both elite boarding school and college cultures and in more
working-class educational environments, womens and girls’ bodies are the stage for communicating class-
specific definitions of feminine desirability. In elite school settings, cultivated slimness, expensive brand-name
clothing, jewelry, and purses signal feminine desirability (Chase 2008; Gaztambide-Fernandez 2009; Khan
2010; Stuber, Klugman, and Daniel 2011). In lower-class settings, the accoutrement of femininity may be less
expensive or luxurious (Bettie 2003), but being sexually desirable to men is just as valued. Thus, similar gender
processes operate in many group settings, although the traits or behaviors that hetero-sexualize femininity and
masculinity may be group-specific.
Moreover, the seeming “gender differences” between women and men within an ethnically or
socioeconomically diverse setting are actually race and class differences in gender performance or social
organization. Race and class differences in gender performance legitimate class and race hierarchies (Schippers
2007:100). For example, the gender performances of those in low-status positions are often constructed as
problematic or deviant—as in the well-known tropes about the hyper-sexual “welfare queen” or the black rapist
(Collins 2004). Many school ethnographies describe rites, rituals, and patterns of behavior consistent with the
basic relational insight that race and class domination hinge, in part, on the ability to deem illegitimate or
inappropriate the real or stereotyped gender performances of others.
Pascoe’s (2007) analysis of a student-led “Revenge of the Nerds” skit reflects a relational analysis. In the
skit, several African American boys dance and cheer after a group of white male nerds, turned strong and
masculine after working out, rescue their girlfriends from a group of black gangstas who have kidnapped them.
Pascoe interprets the African American boys’ masculinity not only in relation to other masculinities, but
critically, also in relation to femininity. She stresses how the African American dancers are alternately
constructed as feminine (they dance and cheer the white nerds) and as morally or socially problematic (the
problem of the black criminal/predator, as represented by the black gangstas). The African American boys
occupy a feminized masculinity.
As Schippers (2007) points out, Women without Class, Bettie’s (2003) ethnography of a working-class
school in California, also reflects relational insights. Rather than conceptualizing femininity in isolation from
masculinity, Bettie (2003) shows how working-class Mexican American (Las Chicas) and middle-income white
(preps) high school girls’ femininity is built around their embodiment of characteristics that support an idealized
relationship between masculinity and femininity. Both groups of girls experienced their embodiment of
femininity as appropriate in relation to girls and boys within their ethnicity and class location.
In Bettie’s (2003) description, teachers, administrators, and peers disapproved of the working-class Mexican
American Las Chicas’ gender performance. They interpreted it as hyper-(hetero)sex-ual and as interfering with
school achievement. In contrast, they validated the middle-class white preps’ performances of femininity,
associating it with being a “good (heterosexual) girl” and a “good student.” Thus, a discourse of gender suffused
perceptions of Las Chicas and preps. Yet, as Bettie notes, the hierarchies themselves are about race and class
difference, not gender” (Bettie 2003:99). Indeed, Bettie showed that many of the girls’ actions—from their
clothing to their conflicts—were driven by race and class. (See also Warikoo 2011 for how youth culture
reflects students’ concerns with racial and ethnic boundaries.) Yet, teachers and peers continually reduced these
issues to gender and sexuality.

RACIALIZATION WITHIN SCHOOLING

Research on racialization within schooling shows that racism often constructs black students’ gender
performances as inferior and incompatible with school achievement (Bettie 2003; Carter 2005; Ferguson 2000;
Lewis 2003; López 2002; Morris 2007; Tyson 2003). Many black students endure harsh and gender-specific
training in how to “conform to the norms of the ‘Other’” (Fordham 1996). Studies of racialization within
schooling have thus identified everyday interactions that contribute to cumulative racial advantage and
disadvantage (Diamond 2006; López 2002). They demonstrate that the racialized educational terrain exists
alongside, and intersects with, society-wide norms about gender-appropriate behavior.
Prior research shows that race and class shape perceptions of femininity for black girls. In many schools,
black girls learn that to succeed, they must reform their self-presentation to be more like their (real or imagined)
white, middle-class counterparts (Grant 1984). Yet, being forceful, loud, and visible can promote academic
success, and thus represents a positive strength and resource for black girls and women (Morris 2007). Previous
researchers have associated black girls’ supposed “loudness” with African American women’s resistance to
being defined against white, middle-class standards of femininity (Fordham 1996). I use my findings—
especially those gathered from interviews with male Diversify students—to complicate this analysis. I suggest
that in addition to stereotyping, negative views of black girls as “loud” are also a response to the perception that
these traits constitute a threat to masculinity. In other words, in addition to being racially stereotyped, the
Diversify girls were also sanctioned for symbolically threatening men’s exclusive access to the characteristics
(assertiveness and aggression) that define masculinity’s superiority and social dominance.
CONTEXTS, PARTICIPANTS, AND ANALYTIC METHODS

Background on the Diversify Program and the Suburban Schools

The Diversify program is an urban-to-suburban racial integration program. It busses ethnic minority students
from an urban public school district to schools located within a network of 40 suburban school districts. All the
participating suburban school districts have voluntarily elected to participate in Diversify, generally with the
stated goal of increasing racial diversity within their predominantly white suburban school districts. Diversify
students often wake up at 5 or 6 a.m. to board the busses that take them to school in the suburbs. There,
Diversify students are a visible minority, as there are rarely more than two Diversify students in a classroom,
and they are usually the only black students there.
Of these 40 suburban school districts, 11 are located in extremely racially segregated (over 97 percent white
and Asian) areas of concentrated affluence. I focused on schools in these districts to maximize the race/class
differences between the Diversify and the suburban students. As I found during my fieldwork, these suburbs
were filled with quiet, tree-lined residential areas with single-family homes and professionally landscaped
lawns. Property values ranged from roughly $450,000 to well over $1 million. The schools had well-stocked
and attractive libraries, lush athletic fields, and competitive programs in the performing and visual arts. In the
hallways, I saw signs advertising summer abroad opportunities for students enrolled in foreign language
courses. Most schools offered AP classes in math, science, and English. Not surprisingly, in a recent parent
survey of Diversify parents (citation omitted to preserve program anonymity), nearly three-fourths cited
academic opportunity as the primary reason for enrolling a child.
Course placement and tracking in the suburban schools reflect broad national trends, wherein black students
are consistently placed in the least advantaged settings for learning (see also Diamond 2006; Tyson 2011). In
one suburban school district that I studied, for example, I was told that not a single Diversify student had been
recommended for honors English courses and that over 50 percent of the Diversify students had been
recommended for the “low” level English course (field notes, June 2, 2011).
There are stark differences between these affluent suburbs and the urban areas where Diversify students live.
Most live in neighborhoods where African Americans are the majority. Further, although they come from a
variety of class backgrounds, none of the Diversify students live in wealthy neighborhoods. Their
neighborhoods had median household incomes ranging from $27,000 to $47,000 (U.S. Census 2000). Many live
in tidy triple-decker houses in working-class neighborhoods that are safe, but far from posh or professionally
landscaped. Others live in more crowded and dangerous apartment complexes. Several of my participants faced
serious challenges, such as food insecurity, a homeless or imprisoned parent, and recent gang-related deaths in
the family. Nearly 50 percent of the Diversify students who attend suburban schools are eligible for free or
subsidized school lunches (conversation with Diversify administrator, June 2, 2011). (State department of
education statistics show that nearly 70 percent of students in the local public schools are eligible.) Thus, across
multiple dimensions, the Diversify students are disadvantaged relative to the suburban students with whom they
attend school.

Participant recruitment: Diversify students. Using U.S. Census (2000) statistics, I identified 11 suburbs as
affluent. These were suburbs where the median family income was over $100,000, over 60 percent of the adult
population has a BA or higher, and the percentage of black people was less than 2.30 percent of the total
population. Using the Diversify database, I identified and sent letters to the parents/guardians of all black
Diversify students (n = 109) in Grades 8 through 10 in these affluent suburban school districts. My interest in
adolescent peer cliques and how race, gender, and sexuality would shape Diversify students’ peer experiences
guided my decision to sample students in Grades 8 through 10 in three ways. First, adolescents in middle and
high school are highly sensitive and aware of the peer context (Kinney 1993). Second, they are old enough to
reflect self-consciously on social categories and identities (Eckert 1989). Third, many adolescents date and/or
are sexually active (Eder, Evans, and Parker 1995).
I formally interviewed all the Diversify students who agreed to be interviewed and turned in consent forms,
yielding 38 Diversify students for my sample. Most interviews were conducted at students’ homes or, if the
parent wished, in a private booth of a nearby McDonald’s or Burger King. Five interviews were conducted in
November 2008, with parental and teacher permission, in an empty classroom at one of the suburban schools
where I did fieldwork.

Suburban students. The principal of one of the affluent suburban schools randomly selected for me 30 non-poor
eighth-grade students and gave me a list of their names and contact information. I contacted all 30, but only 7
agreed to be interviewed. Several parents of the remaining 23 students told me their children were either not
interested or “too busy.” I interviewed all the suburban students who consented to be interviewed. I refer to the
Diversify and suburban students as either Diversify or suburban students. To reduce the reader’s confusion, I
call any suburban area either Chilton or Glenfield, rather than providing a pseudonym for each of the 11
suburban school districts. Although the suburban sample is small, it was nonetheless informative, as all the
suburban students confirmed that the black girls were generally isolated and marginalized while the black boys
tended to be popular and high-status.3

Diversify coordinators. I spoke with nine Diversify coordinators, all of whom I initially met at Diversify, Inc.
staff meetings. I contacted them by e-mail after introducing myself to them at staff meetings, telling them about
my project, and letting them know that I might contact them in the future to ask if they would be willing to be
formally interviewed.

Observations. I observed a school cafeteria and hallway in a Diversify school for two months and attended
several ice cream socials aimed at increasing contact between the Diversify and suburban school communities. I
also attended a few Diversify Alumni meetings and social events. A Diversify staff member, whom I had met at
a staff meeting, put me in touch with an alumna who was active in the alumni association. I interviewed her
informally, in a mall food court, after which she invited me to attend the alumni association meetings. I used my
field notes from these observations as a form of triangulation, examining whether the Diversify students’ reports
of gender-differentiated friendship and dating patterns were accurate.

Strategies for addressing potential error and bias. I took three measures to reduce the potential for error and
bias. First, I triangulated my interview data from the Diversify students with interviews of suburban students,
Diversify coordinators, and ethnographic observations. Thus, data from participants who were positioned
differently within the same setting revealed a consensus around the place of the black Diversify students in the
suburban schools. Second, I used strategic member checking toward the end of my fieldwork (Lofland et al.
2006) to corroborate main findings. I asked two Diversify coordinators to assess my findings and analysis. Both
confirmed that my basic observations were accurate. (I describe one member-checking incident in the findings
section.) Third, although I solicited personal narratives from students, much time was spent on the social
landscape of the suburban schools. We talked about how the Diversify students’ reputations were socially
constructed. Although the Diversify students experience their reputations individually, these reputations are also
integral to the social system of the suburbs. Thus, students’ reports about the reputation of Diversify students,
and the consensus around those reputations, seem to be an accurate representation of the collective perceptions.

Data analysis. I used a modified version of grounded theory, one that emphasizes the utility of moving between
inductive and deductive modes of analysis (Fine 2004). I entered the research with an interest in how gender
and race would influence the Diversify students’ social experiences in the suburbs. These categories functioned
as “sensitizing concepts” that “suggested directions along which to look” (Blumer 1954:7). They narrowed my
focus as I took field notes, developed and revised the semi-structured interview guide, and selected topics of
conversation for my meetings with coordinators and counselors.
In the first stages of coding, I labeled elements of data that spoke to the Diversify students’ experiences of
inclusion and exclusion. I used codes such as “feels included,” “feels excluded,” “feels Blackness valued,” and
“feels Blackness devalued.” I did first-level of coding descriptively, seeking to recognize and recontextualize
the data, allowing a fresh view of what is there” (Coffey and Atkinson 1996:45). Later, I conducted what
grounded theorists call theme or pattern coding (Miles and Huberman 1994). I looked for how these initial
elements related to one another and explored how patterns emerged differently across participants. During this
and later stages, I continued to refine and modify my coding scheme, working iteratively between labeling text
with codes and looking for patterns among the codes.

Key points about my social location. My social location as a white, middle-class woman from the Midwest
doubtless influenced what participants told me and what I noticed. As a child and adolescent, I attended schools
that were more racially and economically diverse than the affluent, predominantly white schools I observed.
When I first gained entrée to the suburban schools, I sometimes felt like a “foreigner,” even though by my
appearance and academic credentials I fit right in. Later, these insider attributes gave me a sense of ease and
comfort. I enjoyed feeling relatively unnoticed and invisible in the suburban schools. Indeed, I was often taken
for a teacher or other staff member in the suburbs. (In the inner-city neighborhoods, I was usually taken for a
social worker, community health worker, or teacher.)
At the beginning, I also felt like a “foreigner” in the inner-city neighborhoods. I was frequently the only
white person, and people often stared. Further, residents often reminded me of my outsider status through
comments like “You have to be careful around here; people aren’t used to seeing whites after dark” or by
driving me to the train station when it was late (rather than letting me walk).
At times, the participants and their families may have been trying to impress me with their hospitality; they
also appeared genuinely concerned for my well-being. Some (but not all) of these incidents suggested that
participants were constructing me as a higher-status but vulnerable “visitor” who needed protection. At other
times, particularly in informal group (noninterview) settings, I was humorously positioned as a foolish and
naive outsider. I experienced these moments of teasing as bonding events. They seemed to cement my position
as someone who was different and perhaps a bit strange, but also trustworthy. In these moments, the
interpersonal power relations between my respondents and their families (mostly poor and working-class ethnic
minorities) and me (a white graduate student attending an elite university) diverged from the status hierarchies
of the broader society: I was put into the role of a dependent and a dupe.
Overall, I do not believe that my cultural, geographic, and racial background invalidate my data. Rather, I
think they influenced my interactions in the field and what participants shared with me. Some participants may
have tried to paint a rosier picture of their lives in hopes of impressing me. Undoubtedly, some participants were
reluctant to share negative beliefs and experiences about whites. Others (both black and white) pretended that
race does not exist or influence their lives in any way. At the same time, after establishing rapport with me,
many black participants would begin to talk about white people. They prefaced their statements with, “No
offense, ’cause I know you’re white and all, but. . . .”
Perhaps my background caused me to misconstrue (or simply miss) the intended meaning of some
participants’ words or actions. However, my position as an outsider was also helpful. I often asked participants
to “explain” the meanings of events to me. For example, I would say (to both suburban and urban participants),
“You know, I’m sorry, it’s hard for me to understand this—I grew up really differently. . . . Can you clue me
in?” Responses to such questions were frequently vivid. Participants enjoyed “teaching” me about their lives,
and did so with great detail and interest. Thus, the ways that my own perceived or real status influenced the data
I gathered does not seem to fall into any easy pattern. (See Horvat and Antonio 1999 and Morris 2007 for
similar points about “outsider” interviewing.)

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, I describe the social landscape and ideological environment of the suburban schools. Following
that, using my interview and observation data to illustrate key points, I analyze the Diversify girls’ and boys’
seemingly opposite experiences of social integration.

Valuing Achievement— A Racialized Context

 It is important to know that the suburban schools the Diversify adolescents attend are not only well-funded
and largely white, they are also intensely achievement focused. The teachers and white students I talked to put
high value on a strong work ethic, excellent grades and test scores, and professional accomplishment.
Acceptance at Ivy League colleges was a common goal. Moreover, the white students I talked to felt that their
parents “deserved” the right to live in their affluent neighborhoods because they had worked hard. Noah, the
white 14-year-old son of two endocrinologists, illustrated this view, adding that the suburban parents had passed
their work ethic and motivation to succeed to their children. He went on to say that he felt the Diversify kids had
a reputation for not being as hard-working or successful:

I mean most kids that live in Chilton, their parents are successful because it cost a lot of money to live here.
So yeah, I’d say the attitude of most kids is obviously to do well and turn out like their parents, or if not,
even better. Yeah, there are very few kids that don’t care and just give up. . . .
Like Chilton is pretty overwhelming, the amount of work and like the amount of pressure, because there are
a lot of smart kids. There’s a lot of work and things. . . . But like the Diversify kids, I guess,—they’re seen
as not trying their hardest or just not doing as well academically.

Within this racial and socioeconomic context, the Diversify boys correctly perceived that their suburban
classmates saw them as “underachievers” and “troublemakers.” For example, Ebo, 15, a high-achieving
Diversify freshman, complained about the stereotypes of black students as “troublemakers” and
“underachievers” and was very critical of his school’s placement policies, saying, “They put the black kids in
the stupid classes. Like if you’re from the city going to there, they put you in the stupidest classes ever. Like
Pre-Algebra I?! Like I can do that stuff, I’m not that stupid!”
Consistent with Diversify students’ complaints about race and class stereotyping, the suburban students
questioned the Diversify students’ presence in the suburban schools, speculating that perhaps they didn’t
“deserve” the high-quality suburban education they were getting. In so doing, they redefined Diversify as a
“scholarship” (rather than a racial integration) program.
Noah, quoted earlier to illustrate the white students’ high valuing of achievement, told me that in contrast,
the Diversify students were not as hardworking or interested in school. When I asked him how the Diversify
program could be improved, he stated that perhaps the Diversify kids could be given an extra “incentive” for
working hard:

I think the point of Diversify is . . . to give kids that don’t come from the same background and don’t have
what most kids here have, give them a chance to have a great opportunity to have better teachers and better
activities. . . . But I see a lot of kids I know are from Diversify are just skipping class. . . . I don’t know what
they [school faculty and staff] do to motivate them. . . . I think they . . . need to somehow motivate them
more . . . like say, give them like a prize if they do well, or something.

All the suburban students I interviewed liked the idea of offering urban minorities spots in “their” schools
(Ispa-Landa 2011). However, they felt that suburban schools should try to recruit (in their words) “better, more
“hardworking,” or “more intelligent” Diversify students. As Joel, another 14-year-old white suburban student,
explained, “We need kids who . . . would make more of an effort to make use of their opportunities. Thus,
nested within the discourse about the Diversify students’ supposed underachievement was another discourse,
one that questioned the Diversify students’ presence and/or “deservingness” to a suburban education. Further,
echoing popular and scholarly concerns about the well-being of affluent youth (e.g., Demerath 2009), Diversify
coordinators stated that the suburban students were, if anything, excessively achievement oriented. Thus,
achievement (and anxiety about achievement) was racialized, making it seem as though “stress” and ‘‘doing
well” were suburban (white or Asian) concerns.

COOL AND DIFFERENT: THE SOCIAL SITUATION OF THE BOYS

Nonetheless, in a seemingly paradoxical pattern, all the Diversify boys also reported that because they were
black and from the city, they had a reputation for being popular. Recall Ebo’s complaint about pervasive racial
stereotyping about black students as “troublemakers” and “underachievers.” Yet, when I asked Ebo if he spends
time in the suburbs at friends’ houses, he answered, “Well, because I’m black, yeah.” He went on to explain,
“It’s like, if you’re a black guy and you’re not popular, it’s like something must be wrong with you, you know?
I don’t know what they like about black people, but . . . uh, yeah [they do].” Some Diversify boys reported that
they practically “lived in the suburbs.” For example, Ronnell, 14, described himself as having like “ten moms”
in the suburbs:

Ronnell: I’m always out there.

Interviewer: Oh. Like doing what, what do you do?
Ronnell: Well, it like depends who I’m with . . . with a certain friend, I can probably
spend . . . like if it’s my best friend, I’ll probably spend like two weeks with them, like
just stay out there and spend the night. . . . ’Cause so technically I have like ten moms,
pretty much. . . . ‘Cause like, with my best friend, she [friend’s mom] just got like used
to me and stuff, . . . like I was her own son. So like I can hang out there, days at a time.

Tough facades. My analysis suggests that the Diversify boys’ popularity hinged on their embodiment or
exaggeration of stereotypes of black masculinity. For example, some of the Diversify boys consciously
exaggerated the perceived differences between themselves and the suburban boys. They tried to appear “street
smart” and tough, even as they privately acknowledged (in interviews) that they were not. As 14-year-old
Christopher, a black boy in Diversify explained, being tough is part of Diversify boys’ unique social status in
the suburbs:

Interviewer: What do the [suburban] kids think of the city kids . . . do you think?
They think we’re cool and different. Like we’re not the same as them, we come from
rougher neighborhoods. And they learn different things from us . . . like different slang.
And like since some of these—most of these kids are from Glenfield [a suburb], so they
don’t like, they don’t go for like gangs and stuff like that. So the Diversify kids act
tough because they are from the city. Like it helps your coolness to be from a tougher
area. For the [city] kids and the suburban kids.

Christopher went on to explain that Diversify boys sometimes fight one another to support their image as
tough:

I have been in fights with a couple of people but then we ended up being friends later.
Interviewer: Were they kids in Diversify?
Yeah. Because we all have our differences and like, some us try to act tough because
we‘re from [the city]. It’s like a way of making yourself look better. . . . Cause it helps
your coolness to be from the tougher areas.

Although Christopher emphasized his toughness in the suburban context, he admitted to me that while
suburban kids might think he is tough, he knows that he is not tough by city standards and in fact is afraid of the
kids in his own neighborhood. He said that he would be “trying to hide all the time” if he went to his
neighborhood school.4
Diversify directors also displayed awareness of the unique social position of black Diversify boys in the
suburbs. One complained that “a lot of the Diversify guys get head-swell. . . . Cause out here, they are the big
guys, whereas if you put them back in [City] High, they’d just be another guy . . . nothing special.” The director
went on, “Can you imagine, what it does to the girls (implying it turns them on), to hear their names all over the
loudspeaker (from sports wins) all the time? They are like the big guys out here!” The language used in these
comments—“big guys”—underscores how the Diversify boys’ gender performance was positively evaluated. It
could also be an evocation of racial stereotypes about black men’s penis size and sexual prowess—stereotypes
that reduce black masculinity to bodies and body parts (Collins 2004). Finally, the director’s comment about
“what it does to the girls” seems to signal the possibility that a “correct” relationship between masculinity and
femininity—one of submission/mastery— would be performed.

Sexual politics and dating. Many Diversify boys dated white suburban girls, and being in an interracial,
heterosexual dating relationship was seen to raise both parties’ status. Tania, 15, an African American girl in
Diversify explained, ‘‘It’s like fashionable for them [the suburban girls] to be seen dating a Diversify boy, like
they’ll be like, ‘Oh my god, do you hear that so-and-so are dating?!!’ and get all excited.”
Indeed, interracial dating appeared to offer the suburban girls a set of highly visible opportunities to perform
prescribed notions of femininity. Comments from Michael, a 15-year-old black Diversify student, highlighted
how the Diversify boys’ relationships with suburban girls captured an idealized and complementary relationship
between femininity (compliance) and masculinity (goal-seeking). He explained,

Of course we [Diversify boys] are going to be all nice to the white girls, you know . . . like, we are trying
to . . . um, get something [sexual] from them. I mean, like, uh, why wouldn’t we be? And like, uh, from my
side, you know, they are easier. No offense [looking at the interviewer, a white woman], but yeah, they
[white girls] are easier to handle. Just easier, yeah.

Here, it appears that the Diversify boys’ enactment of masculinity may have provided an ideal backdrop for
the suburban girls to enact a complementary femininity of compliance or sexual submission (being “easy”).
These dating dynamics suggest that the Diversify boys were constrained to performing blackness and
masculinity in fairly narrow, heterosexual ways—but also that the Diversify boys social status and popularity
hinged on these same hyper-masculine enactments of gender and race. From their perspective as heterosexual
males seeking sexual attention from females, the Diversify boys were rewarded for their gender performances.
From their side, it is possible that suburban girls gained peer approval from revolting against the expectation
that they develop into the girlfriends, mothers, and wives (however unequal) of white men, reaping the
economic and social benefits associated with these roles (see Hurtado 1989). Indeed, comments from adults also
suggested that adolescent rebellion had its role in interracial dating. At a meeting for Diversify alumni, a 25-
year-old Diversify alum explained that “They [suburban girls] just want to flout to their parents, that they’re
dating a black boy, because they know their parents won’t like it.”
Many Diversify boys and girls and suburban residents attributed the black boys’ popularity and integration
to their sports involvement. Researchers using contact theory also argue that sports participation is integral to
the social success of African American males in integrated schools because sport provides ideal conditions for
interracial contact. (See Holland 2012 for a recent example.) However, my findings did not confirm this folk
thesis. Even individual Diversify boys who did not play sports benefited from collective images of black
masculinity as cool and athletic. Indeed, Diversify boys who did not play sports were just as likely to spend time
in the suburbs at friends’ houses as Diversify boys who did play sports. Further, Diversify girls who played on
school sports teams were even less likely to spend time in suburbs at friends’ houses than girls who did not play
on suburban sports teams. It therefore seems that collective images of black masculinity—more so than the
successful individual embodiment of these images—were a decisive factor in Diversify boys’ popularity.
Two years after finishing the interview portion of my project, I returned to a suburban school to talk with a
Diversify guidance counselor. Ms. Robinson is a black woman in her late 40s or early 50s, much liked by the
Diversify students. The goal was to feed the findings and analysis back to an informant, checking to see if she
would corroborate them (Miles and Huberman 1994). While we were catching up, several Diversify boys
walked in.
Ms. Robinson asked them whether they would ever invite a white girlfriend to their home. Morris, a black
Diversify boy, explained that he would not. The underlying reason appeared to be that his mother and sister
would not approve of the relationship, although his response also indicated that his girlfriend would feel
uncomfortable with his mother and sister.

Ms. Robinson: So what’s the deal, why do white girls love the black boys?
Morris: Well . . . (laughing).
Ms. Robinson: Yeah, you’ve tasted a couple flavors, tell us what it’s all about!
Morris: I uh (snickering about the sexual allusion to flavors), I can’t, I can’t get into details.
Ms. Robinson: Did you ever bring your girlfriend home? ’Cause she’s white!
Morris: Oh no, I would never do that. My sister, she’s like all thug, and that just would not be
comfortable [for the girlfriend], she wouldn’t know what to do. . . . I can just see her
[my girlfriend] coming in all like “hi” and stuff (imitates uptalk associated with
suburban girls), and my mom and my sister would just be like uh-uh (shaking his head
to show that they wouldn’t approve).

In this excerpt, Morris seems proud of his sister’s strength. After all, she is a “thug,” not a “hoodrat.” Thugs
have hard lives; they fight against victimization. The students in my sample used the term thug (an adjective
that was applied to boys and girls) in a complimentary manner. In contrast, they used the terms hoodrat and
ghetto (terms typically used to describe girls) to convey disapproval. From a relational perspective, it is not
surprising that the term thug had positive connotations. It is not insulting to be masculine. Masculinity is never
inferior. (This helps explain why adopting a “tomboy” or “thug” identity is so popular among girls.) However,
because femininity is contaminating and inferior, the terms ghetto and hoodrat expressed the speaker’s
contempt (Schippers 2007).
Clearly, Morris cares about his mother’s and sister’s approval. Yet, he is dating a white classmate against
their wishes. Perhaps this choice (dating a suburban white girl) reinforces his masculinity and positive
reputation at school. (Morris was popular, both when I interviewed him as a high school sophomore and two
years later as a senior.)
I observed many boys in my sample showing respect and deference to their mothers, sisters, aunts, and the
black Diversify guidance counselors. At the same time, they did not seem to consider the Diversify girls eligible
for dating. Perhaps their masculinity was threatened by the specter of the angry black female, who would
remove their exclusive access to masculine characteristics (Collins 2004).
In any case, racial stereotypes about black men’s intelligence, coupled with the Diversify boys’ reluctance to
bring their white girlfriends home, seem to undermine the legitimacy of their future masculinity as adult men. If
we understand adolescent masculinity as a form of dominance usually expressed through sexualized discourses
and heterosexuality (Chase 2008; Pascoe 2007), then the Diversify boys are having a short-term run of success.
As in Pascoe’s (2007:5) study, the Diversify boys symbolized “failed, and at the same time, wildly successful
men in their heterosexual claim on the girls.” Indeed, perhaps the very traits that made the Diversify boys’
gender performances attractive within the suburban context also ensured their “place” within the suburbs as
failed adult men. Ultimately, their ability to dominate adult women through economic power was questioned.
Given that all the suburban students whom I interviewed said that Diversify kids were “troublemakers” and poor
students, it is clear that they did not predict that Diversify students would have successful futures.5

Isolated and Aggie [Aggravated]: The Social Situation of the Girls

The Diversify girls’ evaluations of their social acceptance were different from the boys’. They felt that being
black and from the city were social liabilities and, that as a result, they preferred to keep company with one
another.6 Sabrina, 14, lived with her parents in a three-bedroom house they owned in a quiet working-class
section of the city. Her comments were typical:

They [suburban kids] know us [Diversify kids] as like . . . loud and obnoxious . . . and I hate that. And like
they think that we like wear the same clothes every day and live in an apartment and don’t have food every
night. . . . I hate it, that’s why I try to stay in my own little group [of black Diversify girls].

Even the six Diversify girls in my sample who did spend time in the suburbs complained about the
characterizations of blacks as aggressive, overly tough, and poor. For example, Apryl, 15, attended many social
events in the suburbs. She was clearly popular with both her Diversify and suburban classmates. Nonetheless,
during my interview with her, she complained about racial stereotyping and the constraints it imposed on her
behavior, saying, “They [suburban kids] . . . think that black people have to act a certain way. Have to talk a
certain way. . . . It’s really annoying.”
Like the black teenage girls whom Jones (2010) observed in inner-city Philadelphia, the Diversify girls used
the folk definitions of both mainstream and black standards of respectability to evaluate and describe
themselves. However, the suburban students were unaware of the existence of a “folk category” of strong black
woman familiar to the Diversify students—the black middle-class “respectful” or “lady.” For the adolescent
Diversify girls, like Anderson’s (1999:35) adult participants who characterized the world in terms of “street”
versus “decent,” “ghetto” and “respectful” represented “two poles of value orientation, two contrasting
conceptual categories that structure moral order.” The Diversify girls were frustrated and demoralized by the
suburban students’ use of the term ghetto to describe them. Not only did they find it insulting, but it also
indicated social and cultural distance between the suburban culture and that of the black students. The suburban
students seemed unfamiliar with labels (like “respectful”) that the Diversify girls routinely used to describe
appropriately feminine behavior within their own communities.
For the Diversify girls and for many Diversify coordinators, being a black “lady” or “respectful” was
desirable. This was perhaps most vividly illustrated to me in a conversation with Kathryn, 14, a Diversify
student who spoke proudly about her recent evolution from acting “ghetto” to being more “ladylike”:

My dad, he says, well, ’cause I’m loud a lot, or I used to be, and he says I used to be really obnoxious. So he
used to tell me stuff like that. And my mom, she would say, I need to lower my voice. She said I need to be
more ladylike. So like, I piped down a lot . . . and being obnoxious, like I stopped doing that. And um, I
used to be like stubborn a lot and rude, so my maturity level came up a lot on that.

Further, while both suburban and Diversify boys seemed to interpret the Diversify boys’ urban clothing
styles as “cool,” the opposite was true in regards to Diversify girls’ clothing. (Almost all the Diversify girls
wore some urban styles, like bright sneakers with distinctive shoelaces, and they mostly favored the same hip-
hop/athletic clothing brands as the Diversify boys.) Over and over, they told me that people called them, and
their clothing, “ghetto” and that they found this characterization to be wrong and insulting. Malika, a 15-year-
old student in Diversify, complained:

They think I’m ghetto, ’cause I’m black. . . . I mean, I mean they think I’m loud, but I’m not.7 And, like, the
kind of jewelry that I like, they call me ghetto, ’cause I wear these earrings with my name in it. . . . And like
I have the rings that say my name in them across here.

The term ghetto clearly has multiple connotations and has—like the broader issue of black girls’ loudness—
been analyzed before (e.g., Jones 2010). In the suburbs, adjectives like ghetto seemed to symbolize not just
failure to live up to upper-middle-class white standards of femininity (not being “loud,” wearing discrete
jewelry), but also failure to embody characteristics of femininity that support subordination to masculinity and
whiteness. In what follows, I show the connection between these adjectives and the ways the Diversify girls
posed a symbolic threat to racial privilege and men’s exclusive access to aggression.
Diversify girls recognized that they were stigmatized in the suburbs. They, like the white students, attributed
this to their conflict management styles, which, importantly, included directly confronting racial insensitivity.
Jade, 14, a Diversify student, talked about black girls’ unwillingness to be silent when racist remarks are made.
She believed that her suburban classmates expected her and other black girls to act “defensive” during
conversations about race, as well as in interactions where respect was not sufficiently demonstrated:

And then there is, “Ohh she lives in The City. She’s from the projects.” So you are expected to act all loud
and stuff. And, um . . . um . . . you’re expected to always be defensive. . . . Mostly [about] race, but like,
if . . . you are approached the wrong way, you are supposed to get defensive.

Some Diversify girls depicted the suburban girls as “fake,” while they were more “upfront.” Tellingly,
Ranah, 15, a Diversify student, used the term boyish to describe the black girls’ more direct style of
confrontation:

The Chilton girls . . . they’ll talk about you behind your back. . . . Or it’s like, “Oh we’re going to make up a
Facebook group about you and say how much we hate you.” But it’s never to your face. And City girls, the
way we hold ourselves, it’s like maybe we’re a lot more argumentative, we’re more like boyish in a way.
We feel like we can fight. . . . We’re upfront. . . . Cause like, like how we were taught was if you have
problem with somebody, say it to their face!

In the end, the Diversify girls did not succeed in promoting a definition of their more aggressive or assertive
behavior as “authentic.” Thus, the Diversify girls’ widespread concern and preoccupation with the ghetto label
and other pejorative terms reflects the discursive power of the dominant group. In many ways, it was the
dominant group’s worldviews that were recognized (even by the Diversify girls) as legitimate, something that
merited attention and concern.

Out of the dating picture. The Diversify girls reported that neither the white suburban nor the black Diversify
boys were interested in dating them. Jade explained that the suburban boys didn’t want to get “mixed up”
(involved) with the Diversify girls because they were too “aggressive:” The [suburban] boys, they’re like, ‘Oh,
she’s a black girl, she has attitude,’ all that stuff, so they don’t want to get mixed up in it. Other Diversify girls
said that the suburban boys didn’t like the black girls physically, preferring the “Barbie doll” look. Fourteen-
year-old Ruth, a Diversify student, explained:

The boys from the suburbs, they don’t pursue the City girls, because . . . they typically prefer blonde hair
and blue eyes. . . . Like, the Barbie doll thing. You know? And well, that’s just not us, you know—we’re
ethnic, we have colored skin, we have curly hair, and all that.

For their part, Diversify boys also referred to black girls’ assertiveness when explaining why the black girl
—white boy dating combination was rare. Jordan, 15, a Diversify boy dating a popular white suburban girl told
me, “So you know, most of the white boys, well they just can’t handle the black girls. They just can’t handle
them. The black girls, you know, they can be really aggie!” Jordan’s comment that the white boys “can’t
handle” the black girls underscores how the Diversify girls failure to support masculine dominance—perhaps
coupled with Eurocentric beauty standards and the Diversify girls’ so-called defensiveness about race—played
into their exclusion from the suburban social and dating scene.
The Diversify girls rejected the idea that they could—or would want to—date the black Diversify boys. For
the most part, they said they were “too familiar,” “too close,” or “too much of friends to date. They reminded
me that they had been riding the bus to/from the suburbs together every day since they were small children. As
Ruth, quoted earlier, explained, “We’re sort of like family . . . it would be kind of like incest or something.”
Thus, the Diversify girls felt socially excluded from the suburban social and dating scene, and there are
many reasons for their relative isolation. As these data show, one powerful reason is that suburban students and
Diversify boys perceived their behavior as threatening to the gender order. In this order, adolescent women’s
heterosexual desirability is partially predicated on being “easy” for men and boys to “handle.” This includes
being deferential in many circumstances, including but not limited to racially insensitive and ignorant remarks.
Limitations. A goal of the current study is to offer new theoretical directions for the study of gender within
racially integrated settings. Although not interfering with this goal, it is worth noting that several aspects of the
study limit the generalizability and transferability of the findings. (See Firestone 1993 on generalizability or
transferability.) In terms of generalizability, the Diversify program doubtless attracts students who are not
representative of the total population of eligible minority students. For example, children whose parents are
concerned about racial discrimination and tracking in the suburbs—or who feel that a suburban education is
worth these potential difficulties—may be underrepresented among Diversify students. It is also possible that
children whose parents are knowledgeable about local educational programs and resources are overrepresented.
In addition, the suburban-residing students’ participation rates in this study were low. It is impossible to
determine all the sources of possible selection bias. Future research with a larger sample size could doubtless
provide even more insight into how suburban-residing students view Diversify students. Nonetheless, the
suburban students’ reports about the Diversify students’ place in the suburban schools was consistent with the
Diversify students’ and coordinators’ reports, as well as my own observations. Thus, this study offers a valid
portrait of the social position of the Diversify students.
Regarding transferability, the students I interviewed were voluntarily attending public schools in affluent
suburban school districts. I would hesitate to use their experiences to understand the social position of black
students participating in mandatory or intradistrict racial integration programs—or programs involving
attendance at nonaffluent schools.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

In this study, interviews and observations with students attending affluent, intentionally racially integrated
suburban schools provided a rich set of data for examining when and how an ethnic minority group’s gender
performance is used as the rationale for social exclusion. Suburban students, Diversify students, and suburban
counselors and coordinators agreed that the suburban students generally accepted the African American boys,
but not the girls. Diversify boys were included in various suburban social cliques and cast as desirable dating
partners. Further, the suburban students seemed to valorize and celebrate the Diversify boys masculinity,
complimenting them for being “cool” and “tough.” In stark contrast, suburban students and Diversify boys
excluded the Diversify girls from white-dominant social cliques and the suburban dating scene. They justified
the Diversify girls’ exclusion and social isolation as the natural consequence of Diversify girls’ assertiveness
and aggression.
A central contribution of this research involves the use of a relational lens to build on the insights of
previous scholars who have examined black girls’ so-called loudness. Previously, Morris (2007) and other
scholars (e.g., Grant 1984) emphasized that teachers may negatively evaluate younger black girls for failing to
live up to standards of white femininity. While not rejecting the notion that black adolescent girls in Diversify
were penalized by their peers for not living up to white feminine norms, the data presented here suggest it is not
the full story.
The African American girls in my study may have been sanctioned and stigmatized in part because they did
not embody the same gender performances as their suburban classmates. Critically, however, their gender
performance also threatened the boys’ exclusive access to the characteristics that provide “cultural insurance’
(Schippers 2007:96) for male dominance. This is a plausible explanation for why the white suburban boys
disavowed them, making them “invisible.” It also suggests a reason why the Diversify boys said the Diversify
girls were said to be too “aggie” to date. The Diversify girls’ contamination of the gender hierarchy also
explains the choice epithet of “ghetto” to describe the Diversify girls. This epithet referred to the girls’ loud,
obnoxious behavior—behavior that, when embodied by a man, might be interpreted as assertive or confident.
In addition to the symbolic threat that Diversify girls posed to male dominance, gender differences in
friendship patterns may also contribute to the Diversify girls’ exclusion. Boys’ networks are larger, more
inclusive, and less intimate than girls’ networks (Eder 1985; Eder and Enke 1991). This could imply that the
Diversify girls’ experiences of exclusion (and the boys’ experiences of inclusion) had little to do with race and
were instead driven by differences in normative friendship patterns between boys and girls. However, gender
differences in friendship exclusivity do not explain key findings. The Diversify girls felt that suburban
classmates and black male peers devalued their femininity and blackness, even as the Diversify boys reported
that their masculinity was respected. Overall, a framework that focuses on gender differences in friendship
patterns can elucidate some aspects of Diversify students’ experiences, but I believe that a relational framework
provides a more complete fit for these data.
As the findings indicate, the idealized relationship between masculinity and femininity maintains not only
masculine dominance, but also hierarchies of race and social class. Thus, black masculinity and femininity stand
in relation not only to one another, but also to white norms. This dynamic is perhaps most poignantly expressed
in the Diversify students’ shared experience of constraint. Racial stereotypes limited the Diversify boys’ and
girls’ possibilities for being full participants in the suburban social scene. Although Diversify boys could draw
on perceptions of black masculinity to gain access to suburban social networks, they—in stark contrast to the
white suburban boys—appeared to have few alternative status options. For example, none of the Diversify boys
in my sample occupied the niche of the “smart and nice [popular] band boy.” Instead, it seems like academically
gifted boys like Ebo were accepted in suburban peer networks despite their achievement, rather than because of
it—as white boys in some high-achieving schools seem to be (e.g., Khan 2010). Further, as Ebo and several
others pointed out, it was the Diversify boys’ blackness (underscored through their masculinity) that positioned
them as less smart and academically talented than the other male students.8 These dynamics highlight the
intersection of racial and gender oppression within the suburban schools I studied, as well as within the broader
social and cultural discursive contexts in which these processes are situated.
Other authors who have studied affluent schools have also found that students of color are faced with a
narrower set of social identity options than white upper-class students (Gaztambide-Fernandez 2009; Horvat
and Antonio 1999). This is troubling from a policy perspective. Gender performances are also racial
performances, and the Diversify students were constrained in how they enacted both. Further, their claims to
belonging were limited, as indicated by how suburban students talked about the Diversify program and the
Diversify students. Like students of color in other privileged settings, the burden was on them to adapt to the
setting (e.g., Gaztambide and DiAquoi 2010).
Indeed, the positioning of the Diversify students, especially the boys, as less intelligent and hardworking
than suburban students poses a serious challenge to the viability of racial integration programs.9 The intent of
such programs is to reduce the racial and social isolation of white communities as well as to provide black
students with opportunities to become full academic and social participants in the educational settings from
which they have historically been excluded. Yet, as this article shows, views of racial integration and of black
students’ role in integrating white-dominant schools reflect the strength and shifting nature of ideologies that
even today justify racial and ethnic exclusion and hierarchy.
The Diversify students’ experiences of valorized and temporary inclusion (the boys) and stigmatized
exclusion (the girls) could not have clearer historical roots. In Black Sexual Politics, Collins (2004:11949)
observed that prior racial formations drew on ideas about black sexuality to justify formal structures of racial
subordination. In the early twentieth century, a church-based “politics of respectability” attempted to define a
standard of white femininity to which black female industrial and domestic workers should aspire. This standard
was rooted in traditions of white southern chivalry, and it also reflected a desire for white approval
(Higginbotham 1993). As Collins (2004) notes, ideas about black sexuality still legitimate the ongoing—if less
formally organized—racial segregation of the black poor and working-class.
The suburban students in my sample believed that not all black students were eligible or appropriate
candidates for a racial integration program. This placed an unfair burden of visibility on the black students.
Further, their presence in the predominantly white suburbs sometimes appeared to be embraced as a commodity,
as the “spice that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream White culture” (hooks 1992:14). This orientation
to racial progress, like the view of racial integration as a “scholarship” program for deserving blacks, maintains
the racial hierarchy. It exoticizes and otherizes blackness while rendering whiteness normative and mainstream.
A truly progressive social justice program would include a call for racial integration that requires as much
adaptation from its white and middle-class participants as from its black ones.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For feedback, I thank Prudence Carter, Jeannette Colyvas, Matt Desmond, Gary Fine, Wendy Griswold,
Jonathan Guryan, Masha Hedberg, Matthew Kaliner, Mark Pachucki, Orlando Patterson, Brenna Marea Powell,
James Quane, Lauren Rivera, Robert Sampson, Jim Spillane, Chana Teeger, Natasha Warikoo, William J.
Wilson, and Chris Winship.

FUNDING

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: The National Science Foundation (Dissertation Improvement Grant #0824564), the Weatherhead
Center for International Affairs, and a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship funded this research.

NOTES

1. All names of people, the program, and the suburban towns are pseudonyms. Information that could
potentially identify any individual I interviewed is also altered.
2. I use the term black instead of African American to describe my research participants, as this was the term
most often used by participants themselves. The term black also has the added benefit of not implying a
particular immigration status or family history. When citing others’ research, I use the terms preferred by
that author.
3. All of the adults whom I interviewed were initially contacted as the result of their publicly advertised
professional duties or because I met them from attending Diversify alumni association events.
4. See McCready (2010) for more on the need to make space for diverse masculinities within urban
environments where many black boys face pressure to conform to highly scripted masculine roles.
5. There is evidence that Diversify students perform worse than their suburban classmates academically.
According to recent reports, students in Diversify have substantially lower test scores than their classmates
who live in the suburbs. Yet, almost 90 percent of Diversify high school seniors continue on to two- and
four-year colleges, whereas only 66 percent of high school seniors in their urban public school district do
so (citation omitted to preserve program anonymity).
6. These trends were reflected in the high proportion (14/20) of boys who reported spending time in the
suburbs at friends’ houses. In contrast, girls were less likely to be integrated into suburban peer networks,
and they were also less likely to report spending time in the suburban friends’ houses (6/18).
7. Use italics throughout the findings section to indicate the respondent’s own emphasis.
8. Thank an anonymous reviewer for a clear articulation of this dynamic.
9. I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this discussion.

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SOURCE: Ispa-Landa, Simone. “Gender, Race, and Justifications for Group Exclusion: Urban Black Students
Bussed to Affluent Suburban Schools” in Sociology of Education July 2013 86, 3: 218–233. Reprinted with
permission from the American Sociological Association and the author.
36
NOTES ON A SOCIOLOGY OF BULLYING
Young Men’s Homophobia as Gender Socialization
C. J. PASCOE

When I started researching adolescent masculinity over a decade ago, it didn’t occur to me that I would end up
writing a book, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School, that was, in essence, about
bullying.1 This book investigates how American young people understand, enact, and resist contemporary
definitions of masculinity. During a year and a half of researching young peoples’ understandings and practices
of masculinity at a working-class high school, River High, in Northern California, I watched as boys came to
think of themselves and others as acceptably masculine largely through the homophobic harassment of other
boys and through sexual harassment of girls. In other words, I found that a large part of what constituted
adolescent masculinity were practices that looked a lot like bullying. Curiously, however, in the resulting text I
only refer to the concept of bullying three times.
Looking back from the vantage point of 2013, this seems strange. Mentions of bullying in the New York
Times increased from 160 in 2000 to 6,730 by 2012.2 The White House now hosts summits and runs a Web site
about bullying. Driven by reports of youth cruelty, Lady Gaga started a foundation to promote kindness and
resiliency, the Born This Way Foundation. In response to a seeming epidemic of homophobic bullying, the It
Gets Better Project targets inspirational videos at GLBTQ youth.3 A critically acclaimed documentary, “Bully,”
depicts the devastating outcomes of bullying for victimized young people. One author even claims that we live
in a society that is characterized by bullying, a veritable “bully society.”4
It is true that over the past several years we have heard too many tragic stories of young people taking their
lives due to bullying, specifically homophobic bullying. Tyler Clementi, Eric Mohat, Carl Joseph Walker
Hoover, Jaheem Herrera, Billy Lucas, Jadin Bell, among myriad nameless others, left this world by their own
hands, unable to bear the homophobic bullying of which they were targets. They suffered this form of
harassment regardless of their own self-identification as gay or straight.5 Their stories have become rallying
cries for ending homophobia and homophobic bullying.
Even the most cursory statistics indicate that homophobic bullying is a problem. Nationally, 93 percent of
youth hear homophobic slurs occasionally; 51 percent hear them on a daily basis.6 Evidence overwhelmingly
indicates that this form of harassment is gendered—homophobic language and attitudes are disproportionately
deployed by boys.7 Indeed, straight boys are often the recipients of these slurs.8 Boys use these epithets more
than girls and rate them much more seriously.9 Perhaps not surprisingly, 90 percent of random school shootings
have involved straight-identified boys who have been relentlessly humiliated with homophobic remarks.10
These statistics are not incidental. They indicate that homophobia and homophobic language are central to
shaping contemporary heterosexual masculine identities.11 That is, it is not just gay kids who are bullied
because they are gay; rather, this sort of homophobic bullying is a part of boys’ gender socialization into
normatively masculine behaviors, practices, attitudes, and dispositions.12 In other words, it is through this kind
of homophobic behavior that boys learn what it is to “be a boy.”
Understanding homophobic bullying as a part of boys’ gender socialization processes suggests that the
current discourse about bullying needs some reworking. Framing young men’s aggressive behavior solely as
“bullying” can elide the complicated way in which their aggressive interactions are a central part of a gender
socialization process that supports and reproduces gender and sexual inequality. Looking at bullying as the
interactional reproduction of larger structural inequalities indicates that current popular and academic discourses
about bullying might be missing some important elements, resulting in responses to bullying that are largely
individualistic and symbolic rather than structural and systemic.
This article suggests that paying critical attention to inequality might best be accomplished through the
development of a sociology of bullying. A sociology of bullying would frame these aggressive interactions not
necessarily as the product of pathological individuals who are ill-adjusted socially, but as the interactional
reproduction of larger structural inequalities. A sociology of bullying would shift the unit of analysis from the
individual to the aggressive interaction itself, attend to the social contexts in which bullying occurs, ask
questions about meanings produced by such interactions, and understand these interactions as not solely the
province of young people. In doing so it would account for social forces, institutionalized inequality and cultural
norms that reproduce inequality. Using young men’s homophobic interactions as a particular case study, this
article will trace the current academic discussion of bullying, examine the meaning-making processes in young
men’s homophobic bullying, and outline a sociology of bullying. All of this might expand the current discussion
of bullying, not just in terms of gender and sexuality, but along other lines of inequality as well, such as body
size, race, and class.

FRAMING BULLYING

Current popular and academic understandings of bullying, its causes, definitions, participants, effects, and
solutions are largely framed by psychological research. The literature rests on a narrow definition that limits the
sort of aggressive interactions that count as bullying. It is largely focused on individual-level variables
pertaining to aggressors, victims, and the causes and effects of bullying.
Much of the bullying scholarship has been influenced by scholar Dan Olweus’s definition.13 This definition
rests on three characteristics—intentionality on the part of the aggressor, a power imbalance between the
aggressor and victim, and the repetition of the aggressive interactions.14 However, legally,15 colloquially, and in
terms of public policy, the meaning of “bullying” often varies.16 In addition, scholars point out that young
people often understand bullying differently than adults.17 Other scholars have suggested that there are forms of
bullying—direct, verbal, physical, verbal and sexual harassment, for instance18—not taken into account by
Olweus’s definition. In the absence of a universal characterization as well as the limitations imposed by
Olweus’s definition, scholars are calling for improving and refining understandings of bullying because it is “a
disadvantage to organize a field around a concept whose definition is so difficult to pin point.”19
Given the difficulty defining the subject,20 it is hard to provide exact figures on its prevalence. Reported
rates of bullying vary from 10–35 percent to 70 percent of young people.21 Although Internet bullying seems to
have increased in the 2000s, bullying in general seems to have been on the decline since 1992.22
Young people get bullied for a variety of reasons. The most common trigger for bullying is the victim’s
appearance,23 frequently in terms of body size. Young people who qualify as obese are more likely to
experience bullying from peers, family, and teachers.24 Other frequent victims of bullying are GLBTQ youth
and youth with disabilities.25
Long-term negative outcomes are associated with bullying and victimization.26 Bullying is related to anti-
social development and elevated rates of psychiatric disorders in adulthood.27 Victims might have increased
aggression later in life and are at greater risk for suicidal thoughts or behavior.28 Bullying based in personal bias
seems to have a more negative impact than other forms of bullying.29
Bullying behaviors are related to age, class, peer group, emotional state, gender, and self esteem.30 Bullying
practices vary by age, peaking during middle-school years, then decreasing with age.31 Group norms and
individual attitudes also influence bullying-related behaviors.32 Bullies are often popular, high-status individuals
who are school leaders, especially in early adolescence.33 That said, bullies come from a range of social groups
in school settings.34 Their social standing is related to the type of bullying in which they engage.35
 Findings on the emotional states of bullies and victims are mixed. Although Nansel et al. argue that poorer
psychosocial adjustment characterizes bullies and Seals and Young make the case that higher levels of
depression are found in both bullies and victims,36 others argue that bullies often do not have low self-esteem
but feel good about themselves and their interactions with peers.37 This contradicts popular understandings of
bullies as suffering from low self-image.38
There are marked gender differences in bullying practices.39 Simply put, boys bully more than girls in both
on- and offline environments.40 They are also more often the victims of bullying than are girls.41 Boys are more
likely to engage in physical and verbal types of bullying.42 Yet, perhaps contrary to some of the claims made
about the gendering of “relational aggression,”43 evidence indicates that girls do physically intimidate others
and that boys also spread rumors.44
Looking at boys’ participation in homophobic bullying builds on and challenges some of these framings of
bullying as located in individual traits and as constituted by categorical differences. Rather, analyzing bullying
as part of a gender socialization process suggests that these interactional practices may be as tied to structural
inequalities, and gendered and sexualized meaning-making processes as they are to individual-level variables.

HOMOPHOBIC BULLYING

When looking at young men’s understandings and enactments of masculinity, it becomes increasingly clear that
behaviors that look an awful lot like bullying are a central part of their socialization process. Scholars of
masculinity have pointed out that homophobia is central to how boys come to think of themselves as men.45
Indeed, bullying is part a rite of passage for many boys. As such, their homophobia is a distinctly gendered
homophobia. To call their interactions homophobic bullying without paying attention to their gendered content
obfuscates the way in which this sexuality-related bullying works as a socialization process for contemporary
American boys.
Young men’s homophobic practices often take the form of a “fag discourse” consisting of jokes,46 taunts,
imitations, and threats through which boys publicly signal their rejection of that which is considered
unmasculine. In other words, homophobic harassment has as much to do with definitions of masculinity as it
does with fear of gay men.47 These insults are levied against boys who are not masculine, if only momentarily,
and boys who identify as gay.48 Interactions like this set up a complicated daily ordeal in which boys
continually strive to avoid being subject to epithets, but are constantly vulnerable to them. But, as I found,
looking at the individual characteristics of boys engaging in this practice fails to yield significant insights about
bullying, because it is the practice, rather than the individual, to which we ought to be paying more attention.
In talking to young men at River High about their use of the word, they repeatedly tell me that “fag” is the
ultimate insult for a boy. One high school student, Darnell, stated, “Since you were little boys you’ve been told,
‘hey, don’t be a little faggot.’” Another, Jeremy told me that this insult literally reduced a boy to nothing, “To
call someone gay or fag is like the lowest thing you can call someone. Because that’s like saying that you’re
nothing.” Many boys explained their frequent use of epithets like “queer,” “gay,” and “fag” by asserting that, as
Keith put it, “guys are just homophobic.” However, boys make clear that this homophobia is as much about
failing at tasks of masculinity as it is about fear of actual gay men. As J. L. said, “Fag, seriously, it has nothing
to do with sexual preference at all. You could just be calling somebody an idiot, you know?” As one young man
succinctly wrote on Twitter, “a faggot isn’t gay; its someone who acts like a woman.” Homophobia becomes a
catch-all for anything that can be framed—even in an instant—as unmasculine.
In asserting the primacy of gender to the definition of these homophobic insults, boys reflect what Riki
Wilchins calls the Eminem Exception,49 in which Eminem explains that he doesn’t call people “faggot” because
of their sexual orientation, but because they are weak and unmanly. Although it is not necessarily acceptable to
be gay, if a man were gay and masculine, he would not deserve the label. Whether or not these boys are actually
homophobic is rendered moot by this definition.50 What previous scholarship has largely ignored is that boys’
homophobic taunting simultaneously has everything and nothing to do with boys’ sexual identities. What is
significant here is that these homophobic epithets play a central role in boys’ gender socialization processes.
What renders a boy vulnerable to the epithet often depends on local definitions of masculinity. Being subject
to homophobic harassment has as much to do with failing at masculine tasks of competence, heterosexual
prowess, or revealing weakness as it does with a sexual identity. Boys have told me that seeming “too happy or
something,” “turning a wrench the wrong way,” or serenading one’s girlfriend could all render them vulnerable
to homophobic epithets.51
The complicated way boys use these insults require a rethinking of the way current discussions of bullying
are framed. That is, homophobic bullying is not just about punishing gay people for their sexual desire and
practices, it also is a normative part of the gendered interactional practices through which young men become
masculine.
The more aggressive forms of this “fag discourse” are easy to recognize. They often mirror Olweus’s
definition of bullying.52 When Ricky, a gender transgressive and gay high school student at River High was
relentlessly harassed by more popular, heterosexual, gender normative male students it is easily recognizable as
bullying. When he attended a football game and his classmates yelled things like “there’s that fucking fag” or
threatened to beat him up, that is clearly bullying.53 Acknowledging and addressing this kind of overt bullying
is critically important.
Yet, much of what constitutes homophobia in young men’s relationships is much less easily recognizable as
bullying. Analyzing boys’ homophobia as a form of gender socialization, rather than an individual
psychological disposition, requires attending to the role of humor in these interactions, the way in which these
interactions are not just the province of young people, and the way unequal power relationships are produced by
the aggressive interactions themselves. To do otherwise fails to account for what is likely the vast majority of
bullying.
Take the famous “know how I know you are gay?” scene from the movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin, for
instance. In it, two straight friends tease each other by alternately asking and answering the question “know how
I know you’re gay?” while sitting next to each other in easy chairs playing a violent videogame in which, at one
point, one player rips off the other player’s head. The answers they provide include listening to Coldplay, Celine
Dion, Miami Sound Machine, or public radio; wearing macramé shorts, white ties, suits, vests, v-necked
sweaters; making spinach dip in sourdough bowls; watching particular television shows; driving particular cars;
not having sex; wearing false teeth; and trimming one’s beard. Only a minority of answers—having sex with
men, giving blow jobs, having a “ball rest” on one’s face—have to do with sexual desire and practices. Cleary,
neither thinks the other is actually gay, because both have established themselves as straight throughout the rest
of the film. Indeed, these characters behave much like the boys at River High who say they deploy homophobic
epithets not because someone else is gay, but because the other person is unmanly.54 A masculine man does not
prepare particular foods, listen to particular music, wear particular clothes, drive particular cars, and certainly
doesn’t sleep with other men.
This scene highlights the centrality of humor in young men’s gender socialization processes. Sociologists
have pointed out that joking is central to men’s relationships in general.55 In a variety of settings, men manage
their anxiety concerning emotional intimacy or other unmasculine practices and cement friendship bonds with
one another through joking.56 Yet, research has also shown that joking plays a critical and pernicious role in
identifying outsiders in a group and in the reproduction of social inequalities.57 Indeed, much of the
homophobic bullying that goes on among young people happens between friends,58 in a seemingly joking way.
Joking, however, does not make the messages about masculinity any less serious.
This scene also illustrates the way in which homophobic bullying does not necessarily take place in a static
power relationship between high- and low-status young men. Rather, the insult can move from one boy to
another quickly, often between friends.59 Indeed, it indicates the way in which the power imbalance that the
common definition of bullying requires is actually constituted in and by the interaction itself. Part of what
happens in these aggressive joking interactions is a struggle for dominance such that a power imbalance is
created through the deployment of insults, regardless of the status the participants held when they entered the
interaction. In other words, young men gain social status by using humor as an interactional resource.60
Finally, this scene indicates that the sort of homophobic interactions where the goal is to emasculate one’s
“opponent,” either jokingly or not, are not the sole province of youth. Though it might not be clear from much
of the research on bullying or male homophobia, both of these behaviors are found in the adult world as well.
Take, for instance, the Arizona school principal who used homophobic humiliation to punish two boys for
fighting, by making them sit in front of the school holding hands.61 Or observe the photograph taken by
members of the U.S. military who scrawled “High Jack this Fags [sic]” on a bomb to be dropped over
Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.62 Homophobia is a feature of adult masculinity as well.63
These examples of young men’s homophobic interactions necessitate expanding current popular and
academic discussions on bullying. Homophobic interactions occur between boys of varying backgrounds and
statuses. They also take place between intimate friends. Humor is a central ingredient of these interactions.
These interactions are in no way limited to young people. They have gendered meanings as well as sexual
meanings. However, the messages about gender socialization embedded within these interactions are often lost
in larger discussions about homophobic bullying, which position these interactions as pathological, rather than a
normative part of boys’ gender socialization.

A SOCIOLOGY OF BULLYING

Reframing boys’ homophobic bullying as a “fag discourse” indicates that homophobic bullying—rather than
stemming from emotional distress,64 bad home lives, a lack of education, or deep disdain for same-sex desire,
etc.—is a normative part of boys’ gender socialization processes. This suggests that, as Finkelhor, Turner, and
Hamby argue,65 the current conversation about bullying needs some attention. A sociology of bullying indicates
that these sort of aggressive interchanges function as interactional reproductions of structural inequalities. Much
as the frame of homophobia has been criticized for being a simplistic “psychologized” understanding of a
complex social process,66 so too is bullying an individualist understanding of a complicated and sometimes
contradictory social phenomenon.

STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES

A sociology of bullying would first address the sort of things for which kids get bullied. Simply put, kids get
bullied for being different. But these differences are not neutral. They often reflect larger structural inequalities.
When boys are engaging in homophobic bullying they are teaching each other a lesson about what it means to
be masculine in a way that reflects legal and cultural disparities. When people who are gender variant are not
protected in 44 states,67 this bullying doesn’t seem so divorced from the adult world. When discourses of
masculinity are used to insult opponents in political races,68 it is clear that boys’ gender-based aggression
reflects concerns in which adults seem deeply invested as well. Indeed, when people in same-sex relationships
are discriminated against at the federal level and when young people do not learn about gender variation and
nonheterosexual identities in school it is hardly surprising that they interact this way.
When bullying is framed as an interactional reproduction of social inequality, a picture emerges wherein
young people can be seen as doing the dirty work of social reproduction, socializing each other into accepting
inequality. In many ways, this is a much more complicated and serious issue than framing their behavior as
teasing one another for neutral, random, isolated, or undesirable forms of difference. Thinking of these
aggressive interactions as the reproduction of inequality frames them as normative rather than pathological
behaviors. And when considered in this light, a sociology of bullying illustrates that the problem is larger and
more complex than pathological models have made it appear.
This reframing also necessitates that young people are taken seriously as social actors. If they are doing the
dirty work of social reproduction, then their behavior cannot be dismissed as youthful bad decision making or
rendered marginal by the word “bullying.” As sociologists of youth point out, we often don’t take young people
seriously as actors in their own social worlds, but instead frame them as beings in the process of becoming
actual people.69 The deployment of the word “bullying,”70 is part of the process of infantilizing and
delegitimizing youth as full-fledged social actors; it minimizes these interactions, allowing adults to be blind to
the way in which bullying often reflects, reproduces, and prepares young people to accept inequalities
embedded in larger social structures.

INTERACTIONS, NOT IDENTITIES

Currently, most research on bullying focuses on individuals. Who is likely to bully? Who is likely to be bullied?
My research on adolescent masculinity suggests that interactions might be an equally useful unit of analysis.
That is, instead of looking at the type of boy who engages in a “fag discourse,” research will be more productive
when it simultaneously considers what bullying interactions look like, when they occur, where they occur, what
actors are involved, and what social meanings are embedded in them. In addition to looking at individual-level
variables that might predict aggressors and victims, researchers ought to consider the interaction as a unit of
analysis, which would reveal bullying as a dynamic behavior that does not always have a static victim or
aggressor. Indeed, that the two can switch place—even within a single interaction—is evidence enough that
trait-based research can only take us so far.
This becomes important in discussions about bullying and violence like the one that followed the Columbine
shootings, in which some analysts claimed that the shooters were bullied, whereas others claimed that they were
bullies.71 Prioritizing the interaction over the individual renders this discussion unimportant; instead, it enables
analysts to understand how aggressive interactions were an important part of the social world at this particular
school. Both sides argued past one another because each relied on a conceptualization of bullying that conceives
of “the bullies” and “the bullied” as two discrete groups. Focusing on the interactions, rather than individuals,
enables us to understand how both sides may have been right and refocuses the discussion on solutions.
Although popular stories about bullying often show aggressive, indeed scary, forms of youth aggression,
these messages about masculinity frequently appear in seemingly friendly interactions among boys and young
men. If we start to think about these sorts of interactions as things that also happen within friendships we can
begin to understand how they are not just individual, but collective and ritualized. That is, homophobic bullying
is not just about one kid beating up on another, but something that boys do together.72 In fact, it is the
interaction itself that can produce the relational power imbalance. However, that status inequality is continually
up for grabs in the next interaction. So, although the word “bully” intimates that there is something
psychologically wrong with the individual doing the bullying, bullying is better understood when these boys are
seen as acting out structural and cultural inequalities in their interactions.

RETHINKING BULLYING

So, why didn’t I specifically address bullying in a book focused on young men’s gender-based homophobic
interactions? The answer is that I was too focused on the reproduction of inequality, something that is not taken
into account by current popular and academic discourses on bullying. Thinking about bullying as something that
goes on in boys’ friendships, not just between enemies, calls into question the dominant framing of bullying as
something that happens when one individual targets another. Looking at bullying in this way suggests that it is
not necessarily about an individual pathology (though, of course, it certainly can be), but also be about shoring
up definitions of masculinity. To take into account this sort of social phenomena, the current discussion of
bullying needs to be expanded and reframed. This article suggests that developing a sociological approach to
bullying will refocus this discussion on the aggressive interactions between peers while relating them to larger
issues of inequality.73
A sociology of bullying would look at a range of aggressive social behaviors. This approach would take
seriously Finkelhor et al.’s call to examine a range of violative behaviors74—property offensives, violence,
sexual victimization, psychological, or emotional victimization— and the relationship contexts in which these
violations take place. In addition, there would be an examination of structural and cultural inequality. In doing
so, a sociology of bullying could reframe issues like sexist interactions, racist comments, and weight-based
shaming as forms of interactional reproductions of structural and cultural inequalities. Some scholars have
already begun to move in this intellectual direction. Nan Stein reframed sexual harassment as a form of
bullying.75 Elizabeth Meyer linked both sexism and homophobia to bullying behaviors.76 Hoover and Olson
have done the same with teasing in general.77 Rather than see these aggressive interactions as “motivated by
bias” or the province of one’s psychological disposition, a sociology of bullying would position them as
interactional reproduction of larger racial, embodied, and gendered inequalities. What might well happen
through the development of a sociology of bullying is a rendering of the actual term “bully” as irrelevant by
indicating that it is artificially separating some aggressive interactions from others.78
This shift in focus would suggest different solutions to the problem of bullying than are currently being
offered. Rather than zero-tolerance policies, psychological counseling, or individual-level solutions, the new
focus would reflect the practices and goals of organizations like Gender JUST, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project,
and Queers for Economic Justice. These organizations focus on addressing structural inequalities regarding
gender and sexuality from an intersectional approach. Instead of waiting for school bullying to “get better” or
seeing gay marriage as a solution to the ills of homophobia, they recognize that oppressions are linked and that
fighting one necessarily means challenging others. As such, I would suggest that specific anti-bullying
interventions are short-sighted and that programs, organizations, and curricula that focus on emotional literacy,
social injustice, and inequality offer more effective ways of addressing social change than programs focusing on
specific prevention measures.
When we call aggressive interactions between young people, in this case boys, bullying and ignore the
messages about inequality (e.g., gender inequality, embedded serious and joking relationships), we risk
divorcing what they are doing from larger issues of inequality and sexualized power. Doing so discursively
contains this sort of behavior within the domain of youth, framing it as something in which adults play no role.
It allows adults to project blame on kids for being mean to one another, rather than acknowledging that their
behavior reflects society-wide problems of inequality and prejudice.79 It allows adults to tell them “it gets
better,” as if the adult world is rife with equality and kindness. It allows the rest of society to evade blame for
perpetuating the structural and cultural inequalities that these kids are playing out interactionally.

NOTES

1. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2007).
2. A number that had remained relatively stable through the 1990s; down from over 19,000 mentions in
2011.
3. It Gets Better Project, “What is the It Gets Better Project?,” March 1, 2013,
http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/.
4. Jessie Klein, The Bully Society (New York: New York University Press, 2012).
5. Michael S. Kimmel and Matthew Mahler, “Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia, and Violence: Random
School Shootings, 1982–2001,” American Behavioral Scientist 46 (June, 2003): 1439–58.
6. National Mental Health Association, What Does Gay Mean? Teen Survey Executive Summary (2002).
7. Poteat and Ian Rivers, “The Use of Homophobic Language Across Bullying Roles During Adolescence,”
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 31 (2010): 166–72.
8. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag.
9. Crispin Thurlow, “Naming the ‘Outsider Within’: Homophobic Pejoratives and the Verbal Abuse of
 Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual High-School Pupils,” Journal of Adolescence 24 (2001): 25–38.
10. Kimmel and Mahler, “Adolescent Masculinity.”
11. Michael D. Kehler, “Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The Complications of Young Men
(Re)negotiating Heterosexualized Identities,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 28
(2007): 259 –77; Nathaniel Levy, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasser, Edward Crowley, Meredith Beaton, June
Casey, and Caroline Nolan, Bullying in a Networked Era: A Literature Review (Cambridge, MA: Berkman
Center for Internet and Society Research Publication Series, 2012), 2012–17; Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag;
V. P. Poteat, Michael S. Kimmel, and Riki Wilchins, “The Moderating Effects of Support for Violence
Beliefs on Masculine Norms, Aggression, and Homophobic Behavior During Adolescence,” Journal of
Research on Adolescence 21 (2011): 434–47.
12. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag.
13. Dan Olweus, Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993).
14. David Finkelhor, Heather A. Turner, and Sherry Hamby, “Let’s Prevent Peer Victimization, Not Just
Bullying,” Child Abuse and Neglect 36 (2012): 21; Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area.
15. For an example of the varied legal definitions please see the state by state analysis of anti-bullying
statutes, see V. Stuart-Cassel, A. Bell, and J. F. Springer, “Analysis of State Bullying Laws and Policies,”
U.S. Department of Education, (2011), http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/bullying/state-bullying-
laws/state-bulling-laws.pdf.
16. Jeanne M. Hilton, Linda Anngela-Cole, and Juri Wakita, “A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Factors
Associated with School Bullying in Japan and the United States,” Family Journal 18 (2010): 413–22; Levy
et al., Bullying in a Networked Area.
17. Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area; Alice E. Marwick and Danah Boyd, “The Drama! Teen
Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics” (Paper presented at A Decade in Internet Time:
Symposium on the Dynamics of the Internet and Society, 2012); referring to particular interactions as
“drama” rather than bullying, for instance.
18. Lee A. Beaty and Erick B. Alexeyev, “The Problem of School Bullies: What the Research Tells Us,”
Adolescence 43 (Spring 2008): 1–11.
19. Finkelhor et al., “Lets Prevent Peer Victimization,” 2.
20. Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area.
21. Finkelhor et al., “Lets Prevent Peer Victimization”; Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area; Beaty and
Alexeyev, “The Problem of School Bullies.”
22. David Finkelhor, Trends in Bullying and Peer Victimization (Durham, NH: Crimes Against Children
Research Center, 2013).
23. Ann Frisen, Anna-karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson, “Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying: Who is the
Victim? Who is the Bully? What Can Be Done to Stop Bullying?” Adolescence 42 (Winter 2007): 749–61.
24. Griffiths, D. Wolke, A. S. Page, and J. P. Horwood, “Obesity and Bullying: Different Effects for Boys and
Girls,” Archives of Disease in Childhood 91 (2005): 121–5; Rebecca M. Puhl, Jamie Lee Peterson, and
Joerg Luedicke, “Weight-Based Victimization: Bullying Experiences of Weight Loss Treatment—Seeking
Youth,” Pediatrics (December 24, 2012): 1–9.
25. Levy et al., Bullyingin a Networked Area.
26. Finkelhor et al., “Lets Prevent Peer Victimization”; Hilton et al., “A Cross-Cultural Perspective”; Tonja R.
Nansel, Mary Overpeck, Ramani S. Pilla, W. J. Ruan, Bruce Simons-Morton, and Peter Scheidt, “Bullying
Behaviors Among US Youth,” JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (2001): 2094–
100; Rebecca Puhl and Joerg Luedicke, “Weight-Based Victimization Among Adolescents in the School
 Setting: Emotional Reactions and Coping Behaviors,” Journal of Youth & Adolescence 41 (2012): 27–40;
Puhl et al., “Weight-Based Victimization.”
27. Doris Bender and Friedrich Lösel, “Bullying at School as a Predictor of Delinquency, Violence and Other
Anti-Social Behaviour in Adulthood,” Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 21 (2011): 99 –106;
William E. Copeland, Dieter Wolke, Adrian Angold, and E. Jane Costellom, “Adult Psychiatric Outcomes
of Bullying and Being Bullied by Peers in Childhood and Adolescence,” JAMA Psychiatry (2013): 1–8.
28. Levy et al., Bullyingin a Networked Area.
29. Ibid.
30. Beaty and Alexeyev, “The Problem of School Bullies”; Christina Salmivalli and Marinus Voeten,
“Connections Between Attitudes, Group Norms, and Behaviour in Bullying Situations,” International
Journal of Behavioral Development 28 (2004): 246–58; Dorothy Seals and Jerry Young, “Bullying and
Victimization: Prevalence and Relationship to Gender, Grade Level, Ethnicity, Self-Esteem, and
Depression,” Adolescence 38 (Winter 2003): 735–47.
31. Frisén et al., “Adolescents” Perception of Bullying; Seals and Young, “Bullying and Victimization”; Levy
et al., Bullying in a Networked Area.
32. Salmivallie and Voeten, “Connections Between Attitudes.”
33. Juvonen, Y. Wang, and G. Espinoza, “Bullying Experiences and Compromised Academic Performance
Across Middle School Grades,” Journal of Early Adolescence 31 (2010): 152–73.
34. Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area; Tracy Vaillancourt, Shelley Hymel, and Patricia McDougall,
“Bullying is Power: Implications for School-Based Intervention Strategies,” Journal ofApplied School
Psychology 19: 157–76; Margot Peeters, Antonius Cillessen, and Ron Scholte, “Clueless or Powerful?
Identifying Subtypes of Bullies in Adolescence,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 39 (2010): 1041–52.
35. Peeters et al., “Clueless or Powerful.”
36. Nansel et al., “Bullying Behaviors”; Seals and Young, “Bullying and Victimization.”
37. Vaillancourt et al., “Bullying is Power.”
38. Frisén et al., “Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying.”
39. Ibid.; Melissa Fleschler Peskin, Susan R. Tortolero, and Christine M. Markham, “Bullying and
Victimization among Black and Hispanic Adolescents,” Adolescence 41 (Fall 2006): 467–84; Seals and
Young, “Bullying and Victimization.”
40. Qing Li, “Cyberbullying in Schools: A Research of Gender Differences,” School Psychology International
27 (2006): 157–70.
41. Frisen et al., “Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying”; Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area; Seals and
Young, “Bullying and Victimization”; Özgür Erdur-Baker, “Cyberbullying and its Correlation to
Traditional Bullying, Gender and Frequent and Risky Usage of Internet-Mediated Communication Tools,”
New Media & Society 12 (2010): 109 –25.
42. Peskin et al., “Bullying and Victimization Among.”
43. See, for instance, Gail S. Rys and George G. Bear, “Relational Aggression and Peer Relations: Gender and
Developmental Issues,” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly (1982–) 43 (January 1997): 87–106.
44. Jaana Juvonen, Yueyan Wang, and Guadalupe Espinoza, “Bullying Experiences and Compromised
Academic Performance across Middle School Grades,” Journal of Early Adolescence 31 (2011): 152–73;
Levy et al., Bullying in a Networked Area.
45. Michael Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender
Identity,” in The Masculinities Reader, ed. Stephen Whitehead and Frank Barrett (Cambridge, MA: Polity
 Press, 2001), 266–87; Gregory Lehne, “Homophobia among Men: Supporting and Defining the Male
Role,” in Men’s Lives, ed. Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 237–
49; Mary Jane Kehily and Anoop Nayak, “‘Lads and Laughter’: Humour and the Production of
Heterosexual Masculinities,” Gender and Education 9 (1997): 69–87; Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag;
Douglas Schrock and Michael Schwalbe, “Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts,” Annual Review of
Sociology 35 (2009): 277–95; George W. Smith, “The Ideology of ‘Fag’: The School Experience of Gay
Students,” Sociological Quarterly 39(1998): 309–35.
46. Pascoe, “Multiple Masculinities? Teenage Boys Talk about Jocks and Gender,” American Behavioral
Scientist 46 (2003): 1423–38.
47. Ken Corbett, “Faggot = Loser,” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 2 (2001): 3–28; Kimmel, “Masculinity as
Homophobia.”
48. Or are identified by others.
49. Pascoe, “Multiple Masculinities.”
50. That said, there are scholars who argue that because boys use these terms jokingly they are divorced from
their original meaning and as such are not homophobic (for example, see Mark McCormack, The Declining
Significance of Homophobia: How Teenage Boys are Redefining Masculinity and Heterosexuality [New
York: Oxford University Press, 2012]).
51. Presumably a heterosexual activity.
52. Olweus, Bullyingat School.
53. Though many of these instances would fail Olweus’s test as they were perpetrated by different students.
54. Or they wish to render the other person unmanly.
55. Kehily and Nayak, “Lads and Luaghter”; Peter Lyman, “The Fraternal Bond as a Joking Relationship: A
Case Study of the Role of Sexist Jokes in Male Group Bonding,” in Men’s Lives, 4th ed., ed. Michael
Kimmel and Michael Messner (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 171–93.
56. Tristan S. Bridges, “Men Just Weren’t Made to Do This: Performances of Drag at ‘Walk a Mile in Her
Shoes’ Marches,” Gender and Society 24 (February 2010): 5–30.
57. Michael Billing, Laughter and Ridicule: Toward a Social Critique of Humor (London: Sage Fine and de
Soucey, 2005); Bridges, “Men Just Weren’t Made.”
58. In this instance, adulthood!
59. Pascoe, Dude, You ’re a Fag.
60. Tuija Huuki, Sari Manninen, and Vappu Sunnari, “Humour as a Resource and Strategy for Boys to Gain
Status in the Field of Informal School,” Gender & Education 22 (2010): 369.
61. Kevin Dolack, “Principles Punishes High School Boys with Public Hand Holding,” ABCnews, November
30, 20i2, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/principal-punishes-high-school-boys-with-
public-hand-holding/.
62. “‘High Jack This Fags’: Where Gay Men and Lesbians Fit Into the New World Disorder,” Democracynow,
93:28, October 30, 2001, http://www.democracynow.org/ 2001/10/30/high_jack_this_fags_where_gay.
63. Not to mention sexism.
64. Or in addition to.
65. Finkelhor, H. Turner, and S. Hamby, “Questions and Answers about the National Survey of Children’s
Exposure to Violence,” Juvenile Justice Bulletin (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
20ii): i–4.
66. Karl Bryant and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, “Introduction to Retheorizing Homophobias,” Sexualities 11
(2008): 387–96; Gregory M. Herek, “‘Beyond Homophobia’: Thinking about Sexual Prejudice and Stigma
in the Twenty-First Century,” Sexuality Research and Social Policy 1 (2004): 6–24; Kenneth Plummer,
The Making of the Modern Homosexual (London: Hutchinson, 1981).
67. To say nothing of the lack of federal protection; please see “Transgender Issues: A Fact Sheet”
(http://www.transgenderlaw.org/resources/transfactsheet.pdf) for more information.
68. See for instance the campaign discourses in the Kerry versus Bush presidential campaign; A. C. Fahey,
“French and Feminine: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Emasculation of John Kerry in the 2004
Presidential Race,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24 (2007): 132–50.
69. William Corsaro, The Sociology of Childhood (London: Pine Forge Press, 1997).
70. Often used to describe young people’s behavior and not adult behavior.
71. See Dave Cullen, Columbine (New York: Twelve, Hatchet Book Group, 2009) for more on this
discussion.
72. Of often equal status.
73. Finkelhor et al., “Lets Prevent Peer Victimization.”
74. Finkelhor et al., “Questions and Answers.”
75. Nan Stein, “Bullying as sexual harassment,” in The Jossey-Bass Reader on Gender in Education, ed.
Susan M. Bailey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), 409 –28.
76. Elizabeth Meyer, Gender, Bullying, and Harassment: Strategies to End Sexism and Homophobia in
Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, 2009).
77. Hoover and G. Olson, “Sticks and Stones May Break Their Bones: Teasing as Bullying,” Reclaiming
Children and Youth: Journal of Strength-Based Interventions 9 (2000): 87–91.
78. This would conflict with some researchers who argue that the term itself is important as studies using it
results in fewer “false positives” of reports of bullying; Michele L. Ybarra, Danah Boyd, Josephine
Korchmaros, and Jay Oppenheim, “Defining and Measuring Cyberbullying within the Larger Context of
Bullying Victimization,” Journal of Adolescent Health 51 (2012): 53–58.
79. And reinforces.
 PART III DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How does class background influence school attainment? In what ways do both quantitative and
qualitative studies illustrate the patterns and processes of social reproduction?
2. In what ways do boys’ ideas about masculinity impact how they enact their working-class identities in
Willis’s ethnographic work?
3. What are the main characteristics of each of the parenting styles Annette Lareau presents? Is Lareau
arguing that one style is better than the other? If not, what does Lareau argue?
4. Fordham and Ogbu are in direct conversation with Tyson, Castellino, and Darity. What does each reading
argue? Which explanation do you find more compelling? Why?
5. The majority of states in the United States have adopted or will soon adopt Common Core Standards for
K−12 education, which will be accompanied by nearly ubiquitous use of computers to administer
achievement tests. What are the implications of the “digital divide” that S. Craig Watkins discusses for
racial inequality in standardized achievement tests? What steps could schools and communities take to
minimize the potentially unequally negative effects of computerized testing?
6. How do Pamela Perry and Amanda Lewis conceptualize race? How does this change the way you
understand race? Why do you think both authors chose to study schools as sites of racial identity
formation?
7. In what ways do Portes and Zhou contrast the process of identity formation of native-born youth with that
of immigrant youth? How do sending country and American receiving contexts influence identity
development of immigrant youth?
8. In the readings by Prudence Carter, Nancy López, and Simone Ispa-Landa, how do race and gender
intersect to influence the experiences and expectations of students who attend urban high schools? What
are the similarities and differences between their studies and how do they influence their conclusions?
9. Thinking back to homophobic bullying you may have observed or experienced during your own middle
and high school years, how does adopting Pascoe’s “Sociology of Bullying” perspective change your
focus of analysis compared to the psychological perspectives that dominate discussions of bullying? What
would a sociological study of bullying focus on that is overlooked by most psychological examinations?

SOURCE: C.J. Pascoe. “Notes on a Sociology of Bullying: Young Men’s Homophobia as Gender
Socialization,” in QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, Fall 2013, pages 87–103. Reprinted with
permission.
PART IV

STUDENT BEHAVIOR AND ADOLESCENT

SUBCULTURES

S chools are not only places at which societal inequality is perpetuated or diminished; they are also
settings in which children and adolescents spend a large amount of their lives. Over the last century,
high school students have increasingly formed their peer relationships in school, generating what
researchers term adolescent subcultures. Additionally, students at school exhibit rebellious behavior toward one
another, their teachers, and authority in general. Earlier selections in this reader attest to the importance of peer
climates in determining student outcomes (e.g., Coleman and Hoffer, Part I; Shamus Khan, Part II; Coleman et
al., Part II). The readings in Part IV focus on the character of peer climates by investigating adolescent
subcultures and student behavior. The readings span the past four decades and thus also provide a portrait of
changing adolescent behavior in schools.
The first reading is a classic 1960 study of adolescent subcultures by James Coleman, which foreshadowed
his later contention in “The Coleman Report” (Part II) that peer relationships are highly influential in structuring
student outcomes. Coleman argues that an adolescent subculture has emerged in post−WWII society. He
believes that the increased importance of peer relationships came about because of changes in family dynamics
and labor market trends, which resulted in a prolonged period of adolescence, most of which was spent in
schools. Further, the growing capabilities of mass media to target a youth audience provided a common source
of cultural information for adolescents. Although this study is 50 years old, the broad patterns of peer
orientations and gender experiences in schools today have (arguably) remained strikingly similar to the schools
Coleman once investigated.
The next piece, by Mimi Ito et al., takes a look at the digital culture and experiences of youth. Young people
spend an estimated twelve hours a day (Watkins, Part III) interacting with digital media, much of that time is
spent using social media platforms. Ito’s work investigates the varied ways that youth use digital media to learn,
to interact with peers, and to create.
The next reading, by Daniel McFarland, suggests that individual acts of disturbance in schools may seem
spontaneous and chaotic; however, these daily acts of student resistance or disruption—social dramas—are
actually quite patterned. McFarland maps the four phases that make up each act of student resistance: a breach,
crisis, redress, and reintegration. Each social drama is a disruptive social episode that affects micro- or
macrolevel change and potentially transforms the social order.
In the next reading of this section, Kimmel and Mahler discuss the connection between masculinity and
bullying. They demonstrate that sexualized teasing is linked to school shootings in the 1990s, in which many of
the perpetrators were taunted with the “gay” and “fag” epithets prior to their rampages, even though no evidence
suggests that the young men were actually gay.
While McFarland investigates quotidian instances of disorder in classrooms, the next selection looks at
college student experiences and organizational structures. Armstrong and Hamilton’s 2013 book Paying for the
Party (and accompanying articles) exposed the ways that class interacts with the institutional environment to
shape students’ pathways through college. Monica and Karen are two of the young women whom they follow
from their freshman year floor in a party dorm through college and two years into the labor market. While
educational scholars sometimes express that college is the great equalizer, the experiences of Monica and Karen
illustrate that family background plays a role in college experiences and which pathway students take through
college. While individual choices and characteristics contribute to Monica and Karen’s successes (and failures),
the institutions they attend structures their experiences in no small part.
Mary Grigsby takes a more general look at campus culture. Through interviews with students at a
Midwestern university, Grigsby concludes that there are four central values to what she terms generalized
college student culture. These elements include knowledge of how to take care of oneself, cultivate
relationships, develop as a unique individual, and strike a balance between fun and academics. Grigsby asserts
that most students believe that college is primarily about social learning and secondarily about academic
learning. Grigsby highlights a contradiction that is not easily reconciled in the text: While students value the
idea of forging a unique sense of self, they rapidly gravitate toward tight friendship groups with strong
subcultures.

REFERENCES

Armstrong, E. A., & Hamilton, L. T. (2013). Paying for the party: How college maintains inequality.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
37
THE ADOLESCENT CULTURE
JAMES COLEMAN

T he simple fact that adolescents are looking to each other rather than to the adult community for their
social rewards has a number of significant implications for educational theory and practice. To be
sure, parents and parental desires are of great importance to children in a long-range sense, but it is
their peers whose approval, admiration, and respect they attempt to win in their everyday activities, in school
and out. As a result, the old “levers” by which children are motivated—approval or disapproval of parents and
teachers—are less efficient.
As long as meaningful social rewards could be directly supplied by adults, there was little need to be explicit
about them in educational theory, for they were naturally provided by the very process of interaction between
parent and child, or student and teacher. To be sure, these rewards were often distributed in ways that reinforced
the stratification system and took away the lower-class child’s meager chance for equality; as some authors have
shown very well, the middle-class backgrounds of teachers often made them unable to hold out reasonable
rewards for reasonable achievement to lower-class children.1 The situation, however, was fundamentally
simpler than it is today, because teachers and parents had direct control over the levers they could apply to
motivate children. Now the levers are other children themselves, acting as a small society, and adults must come
to know either how to shape the directions this society takes, or else how to break down the adolescent society,
thus re-establishing control by the old levers.
I suspect that this latter solution would be exceedingly difficult, for it flies in the face of large-scale social
changes, and would seem to require a reorganization of work and community, which is hardly in the offing. The
major thesis of this [chapter] is that it is possible to take the other tack, to learn how to control the adolescent
community as a community, and to use it to further the ends of education.
The first step is to examine a number of adolescent communities themselves, in order to discover just what
the value systems are. On what grounds do adolescents give approval to one another or withhold it? How does a
boy or girl become a member of the “inner core” or “leading crowd”? What makes a boy or girl popular,
admired, and imitated by his or her fellows? There are differences from community to community and from
school to school, some of which will be examined in detail later; there are also similarities, which make it
worthwhile investigating first the values of the general adolescent culture and the possible effects of these
values on children. The similarities among different schools suggest there are some general elements in the role
to which adolescents are relegated by the adult society. The differences indicate that it is not hopeless for adults
to attempt to modify the adolescent cultures.

THE GENERAL INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES OF TEENAGERS

Because adolescents live so much in a world of their own, adults remain uninformed about the way teen-agers
spend their time, the things that are important to them, and the things that friends have in common. Several
questions were asked in the study that give a picture of these patterns of activities and interests. Every boy and
girl was asked: (I.108) “What is your favorite way of spending your leisure time?”
The boys’ responses (see Table 37.1) indicate that boys like to spend a great deal of their time in fairly
active outdoor pursuits, such as sports, boating, and just going around with the fellows. They also spend time on
hobbies—the most frequent of which is working on their car—and on such passive pursuits as movies,
television, records, and the like. Being with girls does not, as adults sometimes think, constitute a large part of
their leisure activities—although it comes to occupy more time as they go from the freshman year to the senior
year.
Girls’ leisure-time activities show a sharp contrast in some categories. Girls’ favorite leisure activities less
often include the active outdoor pursuits of boys. More frequent are activities like “just being with their
friends,” watching television and movies, attending games, reading, and listening to records. Their more active
pursuits include one that never exists for boys—dancing among themselves. Perhaps this is an activity that
substitutes for the sports at which boys spend their time; in part, it is certainly preparation for dancing with
boys. In any case, it suggests the oft-heard quip that boys are interested in sports and girls are interested in boys.
The general pattern of these leisure pursuits, showing considerably more activity among the boys, is
indicative of a situation that seems to be quite general in the adolescent community: boys have far more to do
than girls. Whether it is athletics, or cars, or hunting, or model-building, our society seems to provide a much
fuller set of activities to engage the interests of boys. Thus, when girls are together, they are more often just
“with the group” than are boys. A frequent afternoon activity is simply “going up town” to window shop and
walk around.2
There is a point of particular interest in these responses, in relation to the school. Only one of the categories,
organized sports, has any direct relation to school. Some of the hobbies and other activities may, of course, have
their genesis in school, but except for such hobbies and organized sports, school-related activities are missing.
No one responds that doing homework is his favorite way of spending his leisure time. This is at least in part
because homework is assigned work, and cannot be leisure. Yet athletics, which involves work during practice,
manages to run over into leisure time, breaking the barrier that separates work from leisure. Perhaps it is not too
much to expect that other in-school activities directly tied to learning could—if the right way were found—
similarly spill over into leisure and be a favored way of spending free time.

• • •

THE LEADING CROWDS IN THE SCHOOLS

Let us examine what it takes to “rate” in these schools, both among one’s own sex, and with the other sex. What
does it take to be in the “leading crowd” in school? This question, of course, presumes that there is a leading
crowd in school. To be sure, when students were asked such a question, some, particularly in the smallest
school, did object to the idea that there was a leading crowd. Yet this kind of objection is in large part answered
by one of the boys in another small school, Maple Grove, in a group interview. A friend of his denied that there
was any leading crowd at all in the school, and he responded: “You don’t see it because you’re in it.”

Table 37.1 Leisure Activities of Boys and Girls in the Nine Public High Schools
 Another boy in the same school had this to say in an interview:
(What are some of the groups in school?)

You mean like cliques? Well, there’s about two cliques. There’s one that’s these girls and boys—let’s see,
there’s ——, ——, and ——. I’m in it, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m not crazy about being in it. I tell you, it
wasn’t any of my doing, because I’m always for the underdog myself. But I’d rather be with a bunch like that,
you know, than have them against me. So I just go along with them.

(What’s the other clique?)

Well, I don’t know too much about it, it’s just another clique.

(Kind of an underdog clique?) Sort of.

(Who are some of the kids in it?)

Oh—I couldn’t tell you. I know, but I just can’t think of their names.

(How do you get in the top clique?)

Well, I’ll tell you, like when I came over here, I had played football over at ——. I was pretty well known by all
the kids before I came over. And when I came there was —— always picking on kids. He hit this little kid one
day, and I told him that if I ever saw him do anything to another little kid that I’d bust him. So one day down in
the locker he slammed this kid against the locker, so I went over and hit him a couple times, knocked him down.
And a lot of the kids liked me for doing that, and I got on the good side of two or three teachers.

(What are the differences between these two cliques?)

Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t like this top clique, myself. Just to be honest with you, they’re all scared of me,
because I won’t take anything off of them, and they know it. I’ve had a run-in with this one girl, she really
thinks she’s big stuff. And I don’t like her at all, we don’t get along, and she knows it and I know it, and they
don’t say nothing. But a lot of them in the big clique, they’re my friends. I get along with them real good, and
then I try to be real nice to the underdogs, the kids that haven’t got—not quite as lucky—they haven’t got as
much money, they have a hard time, maybe they don’t look as sharp as some of the others.

(What are the main interests of the top clique?)

Just to run everything, to be the big deal.

(Are most of the boys in athletics?)

Yeah—you couldn’t really say that in this town, though. The really good athletes, a couple of them may be in
the clique—the clique’s a funny thing, it’s just who they want to be in it. They don’t want to have anybody in
there they think might give them trouble. They want to rule the roost.

(Do most of them have fathers that have good jobs, are well-to-do?)

Most of them. They come from families that have money.

• • •

This account of the leading crowd in one school gives a vivid picture of how such crowds function; not that
the leading crowd in every school functions in just the same way. Most interviews in other schools suggested a
somewhat less closed circle than in this school, yet one that is not greatly different.
In every school, most students saw a leading crowd, and were willing to say what it took to get in it. This
should not be surprising, for every adult community has its leading crowd, although adults are less often in such
close and compelling communities. Adults, however, are often blind to the fact that the teen-agers in a high
school do constitute a community, which does have a leading crowd. Consequently, adult concern tends to be
with questions of better ways to teach “the child,” viewed as an isolated entity—whether it is the “gifted child”
or the “backward child.”
The major categories of response to the question, “What does it take to get into the leading crowd in this
school?” are shown in Figure 37.1. Consider first the girls’ responses. Most striking is the great importance of
“having a good personality.” Not only is this mentioned most often in the total responses, but it is mentioned
most often in seven of the nine schools.
The importance of having a good personality, or, what is a little different, “being friendly” or “being nice to
the other kids,” in these adolescent cultures is something that adults often fail to realize. Adults often forget how
“person-oriented” children are; they have not yet moved into the world of cold impersonality in which many
adults live. This is probably due to their limited range of contacts. In the world of grade school, a boy or girl can
respond to his classmates as persons, with a sincerity that becomes impossible as one’s range of contacts grows.
One of the major transitions for some children comes, in fact, as they enter high school and find that they move
from classroom to classroom and have different classmates in each class.
After “a good personality” come a wide range of attributes and activities. The diversity of responses is
indicated by the collection of remarks listed below—some respondents were hostile to the leading crowd, and,
in their hostility, often thought it immoral; others were friendly to it, and, in their friendliness, attributed
positive virtues to it.
(What does it take to get into the leading crowd in this school?)
 Wear just the right things, nice hair, good grooming, and have a wholesome personality.
Money, clothes, flashy appearance, date older boys, fairly good grades.
Be a sex fiend—dress real sharp—have own car and money—smoke and drink—go steady with a popular
boy.
Have pleasant personality, good manners, dress nicely, be clean, don’t swear, be loads of fun.
A nice personality, dress nice without overdoing it.
Hang out at ——’s. Don’t be too smart. Flirt with boys. Be co-operative on dates.

Among these various attributes, the graph shows “good looks,” phrased in some fashion, to be second to
“personality” in frequency. Having nice clothes, or being well dressed, is the third most frequent item
mentioned. What it means to be well dressed differs sharply in a well-to-do suburb and in a working-class
school, of course. Nevertheless, whether it is the number of cashmere sweaters a girl owns or simply having
clean and attractive dresses, the matter of “having good clothes” is important. The importance of clothes appears
to derive partially from the fact that clothes symbolize family status. However, it also appears to stem from the
same source that gives importance to “good looks”; these items are crucial in making a girl attractive to boys.
Thus, in this respect, the values of the girls’ culture are molded by the presence of boys—and by the fact that
success with boys is of overriding importance.
Another attribute required if one is to be in the leading crowd is indicated by the class of responses labeled
“having a good reputation,” which was fourth in number of times mentioned. In all these schools, this item was
often mentioned, although in each school, some saw the leading crowd as composed of girls with bad
reputations and immoral habits.
A girl’s “reputation” is crucial among adolescents. A girl is caught in a dilemma, posed by the importance of
good looks, on the one hand, and a good reputation, on the other. A girl must be successful with the boys, says
the culture, but in doing so she must maintain her reputation. In some schools, the limits defining a good
reputation are stricter than in others, but in all the schools, the limits are there to define what is “good” and what
is “bad.” The definitions are partly based on behavior with boys, but they also include drinking, smoking, and
other less tangible matters—something about the way a girl handles herself, quite apart from what she actually
does.
It is not such an easy matter for a girl to acquire and keep a good reputation, particularly if her mother is
permissive in letting her date whom she likes as a freshman or sophomore. Junior and senior boys often date
freshman and sophomore girls, sometimes with good intentions and sometimes not. One senior boy in Green
Junction, in commenting upon the “wildness” of the leading girls in his class, explained it by saying that when
his class was in the eighth grade, it was forced to go to school in the high-school building because of a
classroom shortage. A number of the girls in the class, he explained, had begun dating boys in the upper classes
of high school. This, to him, was where the problem began.
Another criterion for membership in the leading crowd was expressed by a girl who said simply: “Money,
fancy clothes, good house, new cars, etc.—the best.” These qualities are all of a piece: they express the fact that
being born into the right family is a great help to a girl in getting into the leading crowd. It is expressed
differently in different schools and by different girls—sometimes as “parents having money,” sometimes as
“coming from the right neighborhood,” sometimes as “expensive clothes.” These qualities differ sharply from
some of those discussed above, for they are not something a girl can change.3 Her position in the system is
ascribed according to her parents’ social position, and there is nothing she can do about it. If criteria such as
these dominate, then we would expect the system to have a very different effect on the people in it than if other
criteria, which a girl or boy could hope to meet, were the basis of social comparison. Similarly, in the larger
society a caste system has quite different effects on individuals than does a system with a great deal of mobility
between social classes.
It is evident that these family-background criteria play some part in these schools, but—at least, according to
these girls—not the major part. (It is true, however, that the girls who are not in the leading crowd more often
see such criteria, which are glossed over or simply not seen by girls who are in the crowd.) Furthermore, these
criteria vary sharply in their importance in different schools. . . .
Another criterion for being in the leading crowd is scholastic success. According to these girls, good grades,
or “being smart” or “intelligent,” have something to do with membership in the leading crowd. Not much, to be
sure: it is mentioned less than 12 percent of the time, and far less often than the attributes of personality, good
looks, clothes, and the like. Nevertheless, doing well in school apparently counts for something. It is surprising
that it does not count for more, because in some situations, the “stars,” heroes, and objects of adulation are those
who best achieve the goals of the institution. For example, in the movie industry, the leading crowd is composed
of those who have achieved the top roles—they are, by consensus, the “stars.” Or in a graduate school, the
“leading crowd” of students ordinarily consists of the bright students who excel in their work. Not so for these
high school girls. The leading crowd seems to be defined primarily in terms of social success: their personality,
clothes, desirability as dates, and—in communities where social success is tied closely to family background—
their money and family.
Perhaps, however, achievement in other areas within the school is important in getting into the leading
crowd. That is, participation in school activities of one sort or another may be the entree for a girl into the
leading group.
A look at the frequency of responses in Figure 37.1 indicates that this is not true. Activities in school, such
as cheerleading and “being active in school affairs” were mentioned, but rather infrequently. The over-all
frequency was 6.5 percent, and in none of the schools were these things mentioned as much as 10 percent of the
time. It may very well be, of course, that activities help a girl’s access to the leading crowd through an indirect
path, bringing her to the center of attention, from whence access to the leading crowd is possible.
What about boys? What were their responses to this question about criteria for the leading crowd? Figure
37.1 shows the boys’ responses, grouped as much as possible into the same categories used for the girls. The
first difference between these and the girls’ responses is the over-all lower frequency. The girls sometimes set
down in great detail just what is required to get in the leading crowd—but the matter seems somewhat less
salient to the boys.
For the boys, a somewhat different set of attributes is important for membership in the leading crowd. The
responses below give some idea of the things mentioned.

A good athlete, pretty good looking, common sense, sense of humor.

Money, cars and the right connections and a good personality.
Be a good athlete. Have a good personality. Be in everything you can. Don’t drink or smoke. Don’t go with
bad girls.
Athletic ability sure helps.
Prove you rebel the police officers. Dress sharply. Go out with sharp Freshman girls. Ignore Senior girls.
Good in athletics; “wheel” type; not too intelligent.

By categories of response, Figure 37.1 shows that “a good personality” is important for the boys, but less
strikingly so than it is for the girls. Being “good-looking,” having good clothes, and having a good reputation
are similarly of decreased importance. Good clothes, in particular, are less important for the boys than for the
girls. Similarly, the items associated with parents’ social position—having money, coming from the right
neighborhood, and the like—are less frequently mentioned by boys.
What, then, are the criteria that are more important for boys than girls? The most obvious is athletics. Of the
things that a boy can do, of the things he can achieve, athletic success seems the clearest and most direct path to
membership in the leading crowd.
Academic success appears to be a less certain path to the leading crowd than athletics—and sometimes it is
a path away, as the final quotation listed above suggests. It does, however, sometimes constitute a path,
according to these responses. The path is apparently stronger for boys, where scholarly achievement is fifth in
frequency, than for the girls, where it is eighth in frequency. This result is somewhat puzzling, for it is well
known that girls work harder in school and get better grades than boys do. The ambivalence of the culture
concerning high achievement among girls will be examined in some detail later. At this point, it is sufficient to
note that academic achievement is apparently less useful for a girl as a stepping stone to social success in high
school than it is for a boy.

Figure 37.1 Attributes Seen as Important for a Boy’s or a Girl’s Membership in the
Leading Crowd

NOTE: These questions were asked in a supplementary questionnaire, filled out in the nine schools by the 6,289 students who
completed the basic fall questionnaire early.

An item of considerable importance for the boys, as indicated on the bar graph, is a car—just having a car,
according to some boys, or having a nice car, according to others. Whichever it is, a car appears to be of
considerable importance in being part of the “inner circle” in these schools. In four of the five small-town
schools—but in none of the larger schools—a car was mentioned more often than academic achievement. When
this is coupled with the fact that these responses include not only juniors and seniors but also freshmen and
sophomores, who are too young to drive, the place of cars in these adolescent cultures looms even larger.
As a whole, how do the boys’ membership criteria for the leading crowd differ from the criteria for girls?
Several sharp differences are evident. Family background seems to matter less for boys—it is apparently
considerably easier for a boy than for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks to break into the crowd. Clothes,
money, and being from the right neighborhood hold a considerably higher place for the girls. Similarly with
personal attributes, such as personality, reputation, good looks—all of which define what a person is. In
contrast, the criteria for boys include a much larger component of what a person does, whether in athletics or in
academic matters. Such a distinction can be overdrawn, for a girl’s reputation and her personality are certainly
determined by what she does. However, these are not clear-cut dimensions of achievement, they are far less
tangible. Furthermore, they are pliable in the hands of the leading crowd itself, who can define what constitutes
a good reputation or a good personality, but who cannot ignore football touchdowns or scholastic honors.
Numerous examples of the way the leading crowd can shape reputations were evident in these schools. For
example, a girl reported:

It is rumored that if you are in with either —— or —— that you’ve got it made. But they are both my
friends. You’ve got to be popular, considerate, have a good reputation. One girl came this year with a rumor
started about her. She was ruined in no time, by —— especially.

The girl who had been “ruined” was a top student and a leader in school activities, but neither of these
things was enough to give her a place in the leading crowd. At the end of the school year she was just as far out
of things as she was at the beginning, despite her achievements in school.
The matter is different for boys. There are fewer solid barriers, such as family background, and fewer
criteria that can be twisted at the whim of the in-group than there are for girls. To be sure, achievement must be
in the right area—chiefly athletics—but achievement can in most of these schools bring a boy into the leading
crowd, which is more than it can do in many instances for girls.
There is the suggestion that the girls’ culture derives in some fashion from the boys: the girl’s role is to sit
there and look pretty, waiting for the athletic star to come pick her. She must cultivate her looks, be vivacious
and attractive, wear the right clothes, but then wait—until the football player, whose status is determined by his
specific achievements, comes along to choose her. This is, of course, only part of the matter, for in a community
where the leading crowd largely reflects the “right families” in town (as in Maple Grove, whose leading crowd
was described in the earlier quotation from an interview), the girls have more independent power. Furthermore,
the fact that girls give the parties and determine who’s invited gives them a social lever that the boys don’t have.
It is as if the adolescent culture is a Coney Island mirror, which throws back a reflecting adult society in a
distorted but recognizable image. And, just as the adult society varies from place to place, so, too, the
adolescent society varies from school to school. . . .

• • •

BOY-GIRL RELATIONS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE CULTURE

What are the implications of these results? Let us suppose that the girls in a school valued good grades more
than did the boys. One might expect that the presence of these girls would be an influence on the boys toward a
higher evaluation of studies. Yet these data say not; they say that a boy’s popularity with girls is based less on
doing well in school, more on such attributes as a car, than is his popularity with other boys. Similarly for girls
—scholastic success is much less valuable for their popularity with boys than for their popularity with other
girls.
We have always known that the standards men and women use to judge each other include a large
component of physical attractiveness, and a smaller component of the more austere criteria they use in judging
members of their own sex. Yet we seem to ignore that this is true in high schools just as it is in business offices,
and that its cumulative effect may be to de-emphasize education in schools far more than we realize.4 In the
normal activities of a high school, the relations between boys and girls tend to increase the importance of
physical attractiveness, cars, and clothes, and to decrease the importance of achievement in school activities.
Whether this must be true is another question; it might be that schools themselves could so shape these relations
to have a positive effect, rather than a negative one, on the school’s goals.
The general research question is this: what kinds of interactions among boys and girls lead them to evaluate
the opposite sex less on grounds of physical attraction, more on grounds that are not so superficial? It seems
likely, for example, that in some private schools (e.g., the Putney School) where adolescents engage in common
work activities, bases develop for evaluating the opposite sex that are quite different from those generated by
the usual activities surrounding a public high school. The question of practical policy, once such a research
question has been answered, is even more difficult: what can a school do to foster the kinds of interactions that
lead boys and girls to judge the opposite sex on grounds that implement the school’s goals?
It is commonly assumed, both by educators and by laymen, that it is “better” for boys and girls to be in
school together during adolescence, if not better for their academic performance, then at least better for their
social development and adjustment. But this may not be so; it may depend wholly upon the kinds of activities
within which their association takes place. Coeducation in some high schools may be inimical to both academic
achievement and social adjustment. The dichotomy often forced between “life-adjustment” and “academic
emphasis” is a false one, for it forgets that most of the teen-ager’s energy is not directed toward either of these
goals. Instead, the relevant dichotomy is cars and the cruel jungle of rating and dating versus school activities,
whether of the academic or life-adjustment variety.
But perhaps, at least for girls, this is where the emphasis should be: on making themselves into desirable
objects for boys. Perhaps physical beauty, nice clothes, and an enticing manner are the attributes that should be
most important among adolescent girls. No one can say whether girls should be trained to be wives, citizens,
mothers, or career women. Yet in none of these areas of adult life are physical beauty, an enticing manner, and
nice clothes as important for performing successfully as they are in high school. Even receptionists and
secretaries, for whom personal attractiveness is a valuable attribute, must carry out their jobs well, or they will
not be able to keep them. Comparable performance is far less important in the status system of the high school,
with its close tie to the rating and dating system. There, a girl can survive much longer on personal
attractiveness, an enticing manner, and nice clothes.
The adult women in which such attributes are most important are of a different order from wives, citizens,
mothers, career women, secretaries: they are chorus girls, models, movie and television actresses, and call girls.
In all these activities, women serve as objects of attention for men and, even more, objects to attract men’s
attention. These are quite different from the attributes of a good wife, which involve less superficial qualities. If
the adult society wants high schools to inculcate the attributes that make girls objects to attract men’s attention,
then these values of good looks and nice clothes, discussed above, are just right. If not, then the values are quite
inappropriate.
A second answer to what’s wrong with these values is this: nothing, so long as they do not completely
pervade the atmosphere, so long as there are other ways a girl can become popular and successful in the eyes of
her peers. And there are other ways, as indicated by the emphasis on “a nice personality” in the questions
discussed above. Yet the overall responses to these questions suggest that in adolescent cultures these
superficial, external attributes of clothes and good looks do pervade the atmosphere to the extent that girls come
to feel that this is the only basis or the most important basis on which to excel.

Effects on Girls of the Emphasis on Attractiveness

There are several sets of responses in the questionnaire indicating that girls do feel these attributes of
attractiveness are most important. One is the responses to question 68 . . . in which more girls checked “model”
as the occupation they would like than any of the other three—“nurse,” or “schoolteacher,” or “actress or artist.”
As suggested above, a model is one of the occupations that most embodies these attributes of beauty and
superficial attractiveness to men.
Further consequences of this emphasis on being attractive to boys are indicated by responses to a set of
sentence-completion questions. Comparing the boys’ responses and the girls’ gives some indication of the
degree to which the high school culture impresses these matters upon girls. The questions are listed in Table
37.2, together with the proportions responding in terms of popularity with the opposite sex or relations with the
opposite sex.
To each one of these sentence-completion questions, girls gave far more responses involving popularity and
relations with others than did boys. These responses suggest that the emphasis on popularity with boys has
powerful consequences for these girls’ attitudes toward life and themselves. A further indication that success
with boys is tied to rather superficial external qualities is shown by the great proportion of girls who say that
they worry most about some personal characteristic—most often an external attribute such as weight or figure or
hair or skin, but also including such attributes as “shyness.”
One might suggest, however, that the girls’ concern with popularity and with the physical attributes that help
make them popular would be just as strong in the absence of the adolescent culture. A simple comparison of
these four sentence-completion questions suggests that this is not so. The question in which girls most often give
responses involving relations with the opposite sex is the one referring directly to the school life: “The best
thing that could happen to me this year at school would be. . . .” When the question refers to life in general
(“The most important thing in life is. . . .”), then the boy-girl differential is sharply reduced. This suggests that it
is within the adolescent social system itself that relations with boys and physical attractiveness are so important
to girls.
The emphasis on popularity with the opposite sex has other effects on the girls, of which we have only the
barest knowledge. One of the effects is on her feelings about herself. We may suppose that if a girl found herself
in a situation where she was not successful in “the things that count,” she would be less happy with herself, and
would want to change, to be someone different. On the other hand, the more successful she was in the things
that counted, the more she would be satisfied with herself as she was.
We have no measure of the objective beauty of girls, and we are not able to separate out those who are
particularly unattractive in dress or beauty, to see the impact that these values have upon their conceptions of
themselves. However, we can pick out those girls who are, in the eyes of their classmates, the best-dressed girls.
This will allow an indirect test of the effect of the emphasis on clothes. On the questionnaire, we asked every
girl: (I.40b.i.) “Of all the girls in your grade, who is the best dressed?” The girls named most often by their
classmates are at one end of the continuum. Thus, if this is an important attribute to have, these girls should feel
considerably better about themselves than do their classmates. Table 37.3 shows that they do, and that those
named most often felt best about themselves.
The effect of being thought of as “best dressed” by her classmates is quite striking, reducing by nearly half
the likelihood of her wanting to be someone different. Or, to put it differently, the effect of not being thought of
as “best dressed” by her classmates nearly doubles a girl’s likelihood of wanting to be someone different.

Table 37.2 Boys’ and Girls’ Sentence-Completion Responses Related to Popularity—

Totals for Nine Schools
 To see the strength of this effect, relative to the effect of competing values, it is possible to compare these
responses with those of girls who were highly regarded by their classmates, but in other ways. The following
questions were asked along with the “best-dressed” question: (I.40b.) “Of all the girls in your grade, who . . . is
the best student? . . . do boys go for most?”
The girls who were named most often by their classmates on these two questions and the previous one can
be thought of as “successful” in each of these areas—dress, studies, and relations with boys. Insofar as these
things “count,” they should make the girls feel happier about themselves—and conversely, make the girls who
are not successful less happy about themselves.

• • •
Altogether, then, it appears that the role of girls as objects of attention for boys is emphasized by the
adolescent values in these schools. Its consequences are multifarious, and we have only touched upon them, but
one point is clear: just “putting together” boys and girls in the same school is not necessarily the “normal,
healthy” thing to do. It does not necessarily promote adjustment to life; it may promote, as is indicated by these
data, adjustment to the life of a model or chorus girl or movie actress or call girl. It may, in other words,
promote maladjustment to the kind of life that these girls will lead after school.
Common sense is not enough in these matters. It is not enough to put boys and girls in a school and expect
that they will be a “healthy influence” on one another. Serious research is necessary in order to discover the
kinds of activities and the kinds of situations that will allow them to be such, rather than emphasizing the
superficial values of a hedonistic culture.

Table 37.3 If I Could Trade, I Would Be Someone Different from Myself

The way in which such interactions can affect the value system pervading a school is shown clearly by a
comparison with one of the two supplementary schools in the study, school 10. This is a private school, with
students of upper-middle-class backgrounds similar to those of the students in Executive Heights, but in a very
scholastic university setting. Figure 37.2 shows the importance over the four years of “good looks” as an
attribute for membership in its leading crowd, together with the over-all average for the nine schools of the
study. The contrast is striking. They start out at almost the same point in the freshman year. But in school 10,
the importance of good looks goes down sharply over the four years; in nine schools of the study, the average
even rises slightly, as dating begins in earnest in the sophomore and junior years, before dropping off somewhat
in the senior year. This graph gives only the faintest hint of the different experiences these two school situations
would present for a girl.5

Figure 37.2 Proportion of Girls Mentioning Popularity or Good Looks as Important for
Membership in the Leading Crowd. In All Schools and in a University
Laboratory School (#10)
 This is not to suggest that all the schools of the nine in the study showed this same pattern; some did not. In
particular, Marketville showed a continual decline similar to that of school 10, while several others showed a
sharp rise in the sophomore and junior years, before decreasing among the seniors.

NOTES

1. This is graphically illustrated by A. B. Hollingshead, Elmtown’s Youth (New York: Wiley, 1949), a study
showing the various mechanisms by which the school reinforced the class structure. Because the present
study includes “Elmtown” as one of its ten schools, it will be possible to show the greater cross-cutting of
social-class lines that occurs in Elmtown today as compared to 1941.
2. A teen-age girl comments: This greater activity among boys is the reason that “being accepted” or being in
the “right clique” means more to the girls, who have less to occupy their leisure time. Boys engaged in
many activities have many different kinds of friends. They have different interests in common with
different friends. Although they are friends they may have only one interest in common with a certain other
boy and therefore could not be in a successful clique with all their friends. Because girls have fewer
interests they form small cliques according to these interests.
3. To be sure, she sometimes has a hard time changing her looks or her personality; yet these are her own
personal attributes, which she can do something about, except in extreme situations.
4. One cannot infer from the above considerations that single-sex high schools would produce more attention
to academic matters. One other matter, evident in later chapters at St. John’s, is the tendency of some
adolescents in a single-sex school to have few interests in school. The opposite sex in a school pulls
interests toward the school, and then partly diverts it to non-scholastic matters.
5. One author who studied a group of adolescents says this: “In the adolescent culture itself girls encounter
many changes in the conception as to what constitutes desirable behavior, changes and even reversals in
 the value system and in the relative ranking of traits which are important for popularity and prestige.
Perhaps the principal single change which we have found in our California group is that at the beginning of
adolescence the group standards for conduct among girls emphasize a quiet, demure, rather lady-like
demeanor. By the age of fifteen this has altered, and we find that the girls who are now most popular in
their set are active, talkative, and marked by a kind of ‘aggressive good fellowship.’ These traits, which
may in part be adaptations to the hesitant and immature social approaches of boys, must again undergo
considerable change in the later years of adolescence, if a girl is to maintain her status in the group”
(Harold E. Jones. 1953. “Adolescence in Our Society.” P. 60 in The Adolescent, edited by Jerome
Seidman. New York: Dryden Press.). Jones’s results show changes which are in part due to maturation. It
may be that the rise in importance of “good looks” among our sophomore girls, and the decline among
seniors, are a result of this maturation. The example of school 10, however, shows that far more than
maturation shapes the character of the culture from grade to grade.

SOURCE: Reprinted with permission. The Adolescent Subculture and Academic Achievement James S.
Coleman, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Jan., 1960), pp. 337–347. Published by: The
University of Chicago Press.
38
HANGING OUT, MESSING AROUND, AND GEEKING OUT
Findings from the Digital Youth Project
MIMI ITO, HEATHER HORST, MATTEO BITTANTI, DANAH BOYD, BECKY HERR-
STEPHENSON, PATRICIA G. LANGE, C. J. PASCOE, AND LAURA ROBINSON

D igital media and online communication have become pervasive in the lives of youth in the United
States. Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets such as iPods and mobile
phones are now fixtures of youth culture. They have so permeated young lives that it is hard to
believe that less than a decade ago these technologies had barely registered in the lives of U.S. children and
teens. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for autonomy and identity as did their predecessors,
but they are doing so amid reconfigured contexts for communication, friendship, play, and self-expression.
We are wary of claims that a digital generation is overthrowing culture and knowledge as we know it and
that its members are engaging in new media in ways radically different from those of older generations. At the
same time, we also believe that this generation is at a unique historical moment tied to longer-term and systemic
changes in sociability and culture. While the pace of technological change may seem dizzying, the underlying
practices of sociability, learning, play, and self-expression are undergoing a slower evolution, growing out of
resilient social and cultural structures that youth inhabit in diverse ways in their everyday lives. We sought to
place both the commonalities and diversity of youth new media practice in the context of this broader social and
cultural ecology.
Our values and norms in education, literacy, and public participation are being challenged by a shifting
landscape of media and communications in which youth are central actors. Although complaints about “kids
these days” have a familiar ring to them, the contemporary version is somewhat unusual in how strongly it
equates generational identity with technology identity, an equation that is reinforced by telecommunications and
digital media corporations that hope to capitalize on this close identification.
Public sentiment is growing (both hopeful and fearful) around the notion that young people’s use of digital
media and communication technologies defines this generation as distinct from their elders. In addition to this
generational divide, these new technology practices are also tied to what David Buckingham has described as a
“‘digital divide’ between in-school and out-of-school use.” He sees this as “symptomatic of a much broader
phenomenon—a widening gap between children’s everyday ‘life worlds’ outside of school and the emphases of
many educational systems.”1 Both the generational divide and the divide between in-school and out-of-school
learning are part of a resilient set of questions about adult authority in the education and socialization of youth.
Some argue that new media empower youth to challenge the social norms and educational agendas of their
elders in unique ways.
This white paper and its corresponding book, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living
and Learning with New Media, investigate these claims. How are new media being integrated into youth
practices and agendas? And how do these practices change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over
literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge? The study approached these questions by documenting new
media practices from the youth point of view, rather than beginning with adult expectations and agendas. The
goal of this work is to have youth perspectives inform current debates over the future of learning and education
in the digital age.
Despite the widespread assumption that new media are tied to fundamental changes in how young people
are engaging with culture and knowledge, there is still relatively little research that investigates how these
dynamics operate on the ground. This white paper summarizes a three-year ethnographic investigation of youth
new media practices funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader
initiative on digital media and learning. The project began in early 2005 and was completed in the summer of
2008, with the bulk of the fieldwork taking place in 2006 and 2007. This effort is unique in its breadth and the
number of case studies that it encompasses. Spanning 23 different case studies conducted by 28 researchers and
collaborators, this study sampled from a wide range of different youth practices, populations, and online sites,
primarily in the United States.

RESEARCH APPROACH

Although a growing body of research is examining youth new media practices, we are still at the early stages of
piecing together a more holistic picture of the role of new media in young people’s everyday lives. A growing
number of quantitative studies document the spread of new media and related practices among U.S. youth.2
In addition to these quantitative indicators, ethnographic case studies of youth engagement with specific
kinds of new media practices and sites continue to increase.3 Although the United Kingdom has funded a
number of large-scale qualitative studies on youth new media engagements,4 there are no comparable studies in
the United States that look across a range of different populations and new media practices. What is generally
lacking in the research literature overall, and in the United States in particular, is an understanding of how new
media practices are embedded in a broader social and cultural ecology. Although we have a picture of
technology trends on the one hand, and spotlights on specific youth populations and practices on the other, we
need more work that brings these two pieces of the puzzle together. This study begins to address this gap
through a large-scale ethnographic study that integrates findings across a range of different youth populations
and their new media practices.
We approached the descriptive goal of our study with a qualitative research approach that was defined by
ethnographic method, a youth-centered focus, and the study of the changing new media ecology. We designed
the project to document the learning and innovation that accompany young people’s everyday engagements with
new media in informal settings. We aimed to transcribe and translate the ways youth understand their own use
of new media and, at times, the barriers they encounter in their desires to use them. Our focus on youth-centered
practices of play, communication, and creative production locates learning in contexts that are meaningful and
formative for youth, including friendships and families, as well as young people’s own aspirations, interests,
and passions.
The practices we focused upon incorporated a variety of geographic sites and research methods, ranging
from questionnaires, surveys, semi-structured interviews, diary studies, observation, and content analyses of
media sites, profiles, videos, and other materials. Collectively, the research team conducted 659 semi-structured
interviews, 28 diary studies, and focus group interviews with 67 participants in total. We also conducted
interviews informally with at least 78 individuals and participated in more than 50 research-related events such
as conventions, summer camps, award ceremonies, and other local events. Complementing our interview-based
strategy, we also clocked more than 5,194 observation hours, which were chronicled in regular field notes, and
collected 10,468 profiles on sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Neopets (among others), 15 online discussion
group forums, and more than 389 videos as well as numerous materials from classroom and afterschool
contexts. In addition, our Digital Kids Questionnaire was completed by 402 participants, with 363 responses
from people under the age of 25.
The analysis in our book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out and this white paper draws upon
work across 20 distinctive research projects that were framed by four-main areas: homes and neighborhoods,
institutional spaces, online sites, and interest groups.5 When we present ethnographic material in this white
paper, we indicate the researcher’s name and which of the case studies the example is drawn from. Because we
wanted to acknowledge young people as agents, we use the pseudonyms and ethnic and racial categories that
our interviewees used to describe themselves.
Ethnography
An ethnographic approach means that we work to understand how media and technology are meaningful to
people in their everyday lives. We rely on qualitative methods of interviewing, observation, and interpretive
analysis in an effort to understand patterns in culture and social practices from the point of view of participants
themselves, rather than beginning with our own categories. Our goal is to capture the youth cultures and
practices related to new media, as well as the surrounding context, such as peer relations, family dynamics, local
community institutions, and broader networks of technology and consumer culture.
The strength of an ethnographic approach is that it enables us to document young people’s understanding
and use of new media and, in turn, draw from this empirical material to identify the important categories and
structures that determine new media practices and learning outcomes. This approach does not lend itself to
testing existing analytic categories or targeted hypotheses but asks more fundamental questions about what the
relevant factors and categories of analysis are. For example, rather than assume that video games have particular
“effects,” we examine how video games relate to peer relations, development of technical expertise, and other
kinds of media engagement, as well as the relative significance of video games in different kids’ lives. We
believe that an initial broad-based ethnographic understanding, grounded in the actual contexts where
engagement takes place, is crucial in grasping how youth understand and incorporate new media in their
everyday lives.

Focus on Youth
Adults often view children in terms of developmental “ages and stages,” focusing on what they will become
rather than seeing them as complete beings “with ongoing lives, needs and desires.”6 By contrast, we take a
“sociology of youth and childhood” approach, which means that we take youth seriously as actors in their own
social worlds and look at childhood as a socially constructed and contested category whose definition has varied
historically over time.7 Our work has focused on documenting the everyday new media practices of youth in
their middle-school and high-school years, and we have made our best effort to document the diversity of youth
identity and practice. We have also engaged, to a lesser extent, with parents, educators, and young adults who
participate in or are involved in structuring youth new media practices.
Readers will see the study participants referred to by a variety of age-related names. We use the term “kids”
for those 13 and under, “teens” for those ages 13 to 18, and “young people” for teens and young adults ages 13
to 30. We use the term “youth” to describe the general category of youth culture that is not clearly age
demarcated but centers on the late teenage years. Interviews with young adults are included to provide a sense
of adult participation in youth practice as well as to provide retrospective accounts of growing older with new
media. While age-based categories have defined our object of study, we are interested in documenting how
these categories are historically and culturally specific, and how new media use is part of the redefinition of the
youth culture and “age-appropriate” forms of practice.

New Media
We use the term “new media” to describe a media ecology where more traditional media, such as books,
television, and radio, are “converging” with digital media, specifically interactive media and media for social
communication.8 In contrast to work that attempts to isolate the specific affordances of digital production tools
or online networks, we are interested in the media ecology that youth inhabit today. We have used the term
“new media” rather than terms such as “digital media” or “interactive media” because we are examining a
constellation of changes to media technology that can’t be reduced to a single technical characteristic. Current
media ecologies often rely on a convergence of digital and online media with print, analog, and non-interactive
media types.
The moniker of “the new” seemed appropriately situational, relational, versatile, and not tied to a particular
media platform. Our work has focused on those practices that are “new” at this moment and that are most
clearly associated with youth culture and voice, such as engagement with social network sites, media fandom,
and gaming. The aim of our study is to describe media engagements that are specific to the life circumstances of
contemporary youth, at a moment when we are seeing a transition to participation in digital media production
and “networked publics.” Following from our youth-centered approach, the new media practices we examine
are almost all situated in the social and recreational activities of youth rather than in contexts of explicit
instruction.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Our analysis is guided by four areas of focus: genres of participation, networked publics, peer-based learning,
and new media literacy. In examining these different areas, we draw from existing theories in literacy studies,
new media studies, learning theory, and childhood studies that are in keeping with our ethnographic approach.
The frameworks we draw from focus on social and cultural context rather than on individual psychology in
understanding learning and media engagement.

Genres of Participation
To understand new media engagement, we draw from models of learning that examine learning in everyday
activity and rely on a notion of social and cultural participation.9 We see learning with new media as a process
of participation in shared culture and sociability as it is embodied and mediated by new technologies. In our
descriptions of youth practice, we rely on a framework of “genres of participation” to describe different modes
or conventions for engaging with new media.10 Instead of looking to rigid categories that are defined by formal
properties, genres of participation are a way of identifying, in an interpretive way, a set of social, cultural, and
technological characteristics that participants recognize as defining a set of practices.
While we remain attuned to many of the power dynamics that shape society, we have not relied on
distinctions based on given categories such as gender, class, or ethnic identity. Our genres are based on what we
saw in our ethnographic material, patterns that helped researchers and participants in our project interpret how
media intersect with learning and participation. By describing these forms of participation as genres, we hope to
avoid the assumption that they attach categorically to individuals. Rather, just as an individual may engage with
multiple media genres, we find that youth will often engage in multiple genres of participation in ways that are
specific to the situation. We have also avoided categorizing practice on the basis of technology or parameters
defined by media, such as media type or measures of frequency or media saturation. Genres of participation
allow us to identify the sources of diversity in how youth engage with new media in a way that does not rely on
a simple notion of “divides” or a ranking of more or less sophisticated media expertise. Instead, these genres
represent different investments that youth make in particular forms of sociability and differing forms of
identification with media genres.
• By friendship-driven genres of participation, we refer to the dominant and mainstream practices of youth as
they go about their day-to-day negotiations with friends and peers. These friendship-driven practices center on
peers whom youth encounter in the age-segregated contexts of school but might also include friends and peers
whom they meet through religious groups, school sports, and other local activity groups. For most youth, these
local friendship-driven networks are their primary source of affiliation, friendship, and romantic partners, and
their lives online mirror this local network. MySpace and Facebook are the emblematic online sites for these
sets of practices.

• In contrast to friendship-driven practices, interest-driven genres of participation put specialized activities,

interests, or niche and marginalized identities first. Interest-driven practices are what youth describe as the
domain of the geeks, freaks, musicians, artists, and dorks, who are identified as smart, different, or creative, and
who generally exist at the margins of teen social worlds. Youth find a different network of peers and develop
deep friendships through these interest-driven engagements, but in these cases the interests come first, and they
structure the peer network and friendships. It is not about the given social relations that structure youth’s school
lives but about both focusing and expanding on an individual’s social circle based on interests. Although some
interest-based activities such as sports and music have been supported through schools and overlap with young
people’s friendship-driven networks, other kinds of interests require more far-flung networks of affiliation and
expertise.

Friendship-driven and interest-driven genres provide a broad framework for identifying what we saw as the
most salient social and cultural distinction that differentiated new media practice among youth. In addition, we
have identified three genres of participation that describe different degrees of commitment to media
engagement: hanging out, messing around, and geeking out.
These three genres are a way of describing different levels of intensity and sophistication in media
engagement with reference to social and cultural context, rather than relying exclusively on measures of
frequency or assuming that certain forms of media or technology automatically correlate with “high-end” and
“low-end” forms of media literacy. In the second half of this white paper, we present an overview of our
research findings in terms of these three genres of participation and related learning implications.

Participation in Networked Publics

We use the term “networked publics” to describe participation in public culture that is supported by online
networks.11 The growing availability of digital media-production tools, combined with online networks that
traffic in rich media, is creating convergence between mass media and online communication.12 Rather than
conceptualize everyday media engagement as “consumption” by “audiences,” the term “networked publics”
places the active participation of a distributed social network in producing and circulating culture and
knowledge in the foreground. The growing salience of networked publics in young people’s everyday lives is an
important change in what constitutes the social groups and publics that structure young people’s learning and
identity.
This research delves into the details of everyday youth participation in networked publics and into the ways
in which parents and educators work to shape these engagements. Youths’ on-line activity largely replicates
their existing practices of hanging out and communicating with friends, but the characteristics of networked
publics do create new kinds of opportunities for youth to connect, communicate, and develop their public
identities. In addition to reshaping how youth participate in their given social networks of peers in school and
their local communities, networked publics also open new avenues for youth participation through interest-
driven networks.

Peer-Based Learning
Our attention to youth perspectives, as well as the high level of youth engagement in social and recreational
activities online, determined our attention to the more informal and loosely organized contexts of peer-based
learning. Our focus is on describing learning outside of school, primarily in settings of peer-based interaction.
Although parents and educators often lament the influence of peers, as exemplified by the phrase “peer
pressure,” we approach these informal social settings as a space of opportunity for learning. Our cases
demonstrate that some of the drivers of self-motivated learning come not from institutionalized “authorities”
setting standards and providing instruction, but from youth observing and communicating with people engaged
in the same interests, and in the same struggles for status and recognition, as they are.
Both friendship-driven and interest-driven participation rely on peer-based learning dynamics, which have a
different structure from formal instruction or parental guidance. Our description of friendship-driven learning
describes a familiar genre of peer-based learning, in which online networks are supporting those sometimes
painful but important lessons in growing up, giving youth an environment to explore romance, friendship, and
status just as their predecessors did. Just like friendship-driven networks, interest-driven networks are sites of
peer-based learning, but they represent a different genre of participation, in which specialized interests are what
bring a social group together. The peers whom youth are learning from in interest-driven practices are not
defined by their given institution of school but rather through more intentional and chosen affiliations. In these
groups, peers are defined differently than in more local networks, as is the context for how peer-based
reputation works. They also receive recognition for different forms of skill and learning.

New Media Literacy

Our work examines the current practices of youth and asks what kinds of literacies and social competencies
they are defining with this set of new media technologies. We have attempted to momentarily suspend our own
value judgments about youth engagement with new media in an effort to better understand and appreciate what
youth themselves see as important forms of culture, learning, and literacy. To inform current debates over the
definition of new media literacy, we describe the forms of competencies, skills, and literacy practices that youth
are developing through media production and online communication in order to inform these broader debates.
Our work is in line with that of other scholars who explore literacies in relation to ideology, power, and social
practice in other settings where youth are pushing back against dominant definitions of literacy that structure
their everyday life worlds.13
In the following sections, we identify certain literacy practices that youth have been central participants in
defining: deliberately casual forms of online speech, nuanced social norms for how to engage in social network
activities, and new genres of media representation such as machinima, mashups, remix, video blogs, web
comics, and fansubs. Often these cultural forms are tied to certain linguistic styles identified with particular
youth culture and subcultures.14 The goal of our work is to situate these literacy practices within specific and
diverse conditions of youth culture and identity as well as within an intergenerational struggle over literacy
norms.

GENRES OF PARTICIPATION WITH NEW MEDIA

Our goal has been to arrive at a description of everyday youth new media practice that sheds light on related
social practices and learning dynamics. Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out are three genres of
participation that describe different forms of commitment to media engagement, and they correspond to
different social and learning dynamics. In this section, we draw from the lengthier description in our book
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out to highlight the key features of these genres of participation,
supported with illustrative examples.15 The examples highlighted here represent only a portion of the more
substantial ethnographic support for the findings in our book, which are organized according to key domains of
youth practice: friendship, intimacy, family, gaming, creative production, and work. Here we draw from this
material in order to highlight the three genres of participation and focus specifically on the learning dynamics
that we documented.

HANGING OUT

For many American teenagers, coming of age is marked by a general shift from given childhood social
relationships, such as families and local communities, to peer- and friendship-centered social groups. Although
the nuances of these relationships vary in relation to ethnicity, class, and family dynamics, kids and teenagers
throughout all of our studies invested a great deal of time and energy in creating and finding opportunities to
“hang out.”16
Unlike with other genres of participation (e.g., messing around and geeking out), parents and educators tend
not to see the practices involved in hanging out as supporting learning. Many parents, teachers, and other adults
we interviewed described young people’s hanging out with their friends using new media as “a waste of time,”
and teenagers reported considerable restrictions and regulations on these activities at school, home, and in
afterschool centers. Moreover, limited availability of unrestricted computer and Internet access, competing
responsibilities such as household chores, extracurricular activities (e.g., sports and music), and lack of mobility
(e.g., transportation) frequently reflect the lack of priority adults place on hanging out.
 In response to these regulations, most teenagers developed “work-arounds,” or ways to subvert institutional,
social, and technical barriers to hanging out. These work-arounds and back channels are ways in which kids
hang out together, even in settings that are not officially sanctioned for hanging out, such as the classroom,
where talking socially to peers is explicitly frowned upon. Young people also use work-arounds and back
channels as a strategy at home when they are separated from their friends and peers. Because these work-
arounds and back channels take place in schools, homes, vehicles, and other contexts of young people’s
everyday lives, teens become adept at maintaining a continuous presence, or co-presence, in multiple contexts.
Once teens find a way to be together—online, offline, or both—they integrate new media within the
informal hanging-out practices that have characterized their social worlds ever since the postwar emergence of
teens as a distinctive youth culture, a culture that continues to be tightly integrated with commercial popular
cultural products targeted to teens. While the content, form, and delivery of popular culture (e.g., music,
fashion, film, and television) continue to change, the core practices of how youth engage with media while
hanging out with peers remain much the same.17 This ready availability of multiple forms of media, in diverse
contexts of everyday life, means that media content is increasingly central to everyday communication and
identity construction. Mizuko Ito uses the term “hypersocial” to define the process through which young people
use specific media as tokens of identity, taste, and style to negotiate their sense of self in relation to their
peers.18
While hanging out with their friends, youth develop and discuss their taste in music, their knowledge of
television and movies, and their expertise in gaming. They also engage in a variety of new media practices, such
as looking around online or playing games, when they are together with friends. For example, GeoGem, a 12-
year-old Asian American girl living in Silicon Valley, describes her time after school:

And then when I come home, I invited a friend over today and we decided to go through my clothes. My
dad saw the huge mess in my room. I had to clean that up, but then we went on the computer. We went on
Millsberry [Farms]. And she has her own account too. So she played on her account and I played on mine
and then we got bored with that ‘cause we were trying to play that game where we had to fill in the letters
and make words out of the word. That was so hard. And we kept on trying to do it and we’d only get to level
two and there’s so many levels so we gave up. And we went in the garage and we played some GameCube.
And that was it and then her mom came and picked her up (Heather Horst, Silicon Valley Families)19.

In addition to gaming, which is pervasive in youth culture, technologies for storing, sharing, and listening to
music and watching, making, and uploading videos are now ubiquitous among youth. Teens frequently
displayed their musical tastes and preferences on MySpace profiles and in other online venues by posting
information and images related to favorite artists, clips and links to songs and videos, and song lyrics. Young
people watch episodes of shows and short videos on YouTube when they are sitting around with their friends at
home, at their friends’ houses, in dorms, and even at afterschool centers. The ability to download videos and
browse sites such as YouTube means that youth can view media at times and in locations that are convenient
and social, providing they have access to high-speed Internet. These practices have become part and parcel of
sociability in youth culture and, in turn, central to identity formation among youth.
Through participation in social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo (among others) as well
as instant and text messaging, young people are constructing new social norms and forms of media literacy in
networked public culture that reflect the enhanced role of media in their lives. The networked and public nature
of these practices makes the “lessons” about social life (both the failures and successes) more consequential and
persistent.

Always-On Communication
Young people use new media to build friendships and romantic relationships as well as to hang out with
each other as much and as often as possible. This sense of being always on and engaged with one’s peers
involves a variety of practices, varying from browsing through extended peer networks through MySpace and
Facebook profiles to more intense, ongoing exchanges among close friends and romantic partners.20 Youth use
MySpace, Facebook, and IM to post status updates—how they are faring in their relationships, their social lives,
and other everyday activities—that can be viewed by the broader networked public of their peers. In turn, they
can browse other people’s updates to get a sense of the status of others without having to engage in direct
communication. This kind of contact may also involve exchanging relatively lightweight (in terms of content)
text messages that share general moods, thoughts, or whereabouts.
This keeps friends up-to-date with the happenings in different people’s lives. Social network site profiles are
also key venues for signaling the intensity of a given relationship through both textual and visual
representations.
Most of the direct personal communication that teens engage in through private messages, IM, and mobile
phone communication involves exchange with close friends and romantic partners, rather than the broader peer
group with whom they have more passive access. Teens usually have a “full-time intimate community” with
whom they communicate in an always-on mode via mobile phones and IM.21 Derrick, a 16-year-old Dominican
American living in Brooklyn, New York, explains to Christo Sims the ways he moves between using new media
and hanging out (Rural and Urban Youth):

My homeboy usually be on his Sidekick, like somebody usually be on a Sidekick or somebody has a PSP or
something like always are texting or something on AIM. A lot of people that I be with usually on AIM on
their cell phones on their Nextels, on their Boost, on AIM or usually on their phone like he kept getting
called, always getting called.

For Derrick and other teens like him, new media are integrated within their everyday hanging out practices,
dragon, a white 10-year-old who was part of Heather Horst and Laura Robinson’s study of Neopets, also
illustrates that hanging out together in a game is important when friends are spread across time and space. At the
time of his interview with Horst, dragon had recently moved from the East Coast to California. While he was in
the process of making friends at his new school, dragon regularly went online after school to play Runescape on
the same server as his friends back East, talking with them via the game’s written chat facility. In addition to
playing and typing messages together, dragon and his friends also phoned each other using three-way calling,
which dragon placed on speakerphone. The sounds of 10-year-old boys arguing and yelling about who killed
whom, why one person was slow, and other aspects of the game filled the entire house, as if there were a house
full of boys. New media such as social network sites, IM programs, mobile phones, and gaming sites work as
mediums for young people to extend, enhance, and hang out with people they already know.
Across the projects, we also saw evidence of more intense relationships, what Mizuko Ito and Daisuke
Okabe call “tele-cocooning in the full-time intimate community,” or the practice of maintaining frequent and
sometimes constant (if passive) contact with close friends or romantic partners.22 For example, C. J. Pascoe
(Living Digital) has described the constant communication between Alice and Jesse, two 17-year-olds who have
been dating for more than a year. Each day, the couple wakes up together by logging onto MSN to talk between
taking their showers and doing their hair. They then switch to conversing over their mobile phones as they
travel to school, exchanging text messages throughout the school day. After school they tend to get together to
do their homework, during which they talk and play a video game. When not together, they continue to talk on
the phone and typically end the night on the phone or sending a text message to say good night and “I love
you.”23 As becomes evident in the case of couples and close friends such as Alice and Jesse, many
contemporary teens maintain multiple and constant lines of communication with their intimates over mobile
phones, IM services, and social network sites, sharing a virtual space that is accessible with specific friends or
romantic partners. Due to the affordances of media such as social network sites, many teens also move beyond
small-scale intimate friend groups to build “always-on” networked publics inhabited by their peers.

Flirting and Dating

Teens interested in romantic relationships also use new media to initiate the first stages of a relationship,
what many teens refer to as “talking to” someone they have met and know through school or other settings. In
this stage of the relationship, young people “talk” regularly over IM and search sites such as MySpace and
Facebook to verify and find out more information about the individuals, their friends, and their likes and
dislikes. The asynchronous nature of these technologies allows teens to carefully compose messages that appear
to be casual, a “controlled casualness.” John, a white 19-year-old college freshman in Chicago, for instance,
likes to flirt over IM because it is “easy to get a message across without having to phrase it perfectly” and
“because I can think about things more. You can deliberate and answer however you want” (C. J. Pascoe,
Living Digital).
Many teens say they often send texts or leave messages on social networking sites so that they can think
about what they are going to say and play off their flirtatiousness if their object of affection does not seem to
reciprocate their feelings. For example, youth use casual genres of online language to create studied ambiguity.
From the outside, sometimes these comments appear so casual that they might not be read as flirting, such as the
following early “wall posts” by two Filipino teens, Missy and Dustin, who eventually dated quite seriously.
After being introduced by mutual friends and communicating through IM, Missy, a Northern California 16-
year-old, wrote on Dustin’s MySpace wall: “hey. . hm wut to say? iono lol/well i left you a comment . . . u sud
feel SPECIAL haha =),”24 Dustin, a Northern California 17-year-old, responded a day later by writing on
Missy’s wall: “hello there. . umm i dont know what to say but at least i wrote something . . . you are so G!!!”25
(C. J. Pascoe, Living Digital). Both of these comments can be construed as friendly or flirtatious, thus protecting
both of the participants should one of the parties not be romantically drawn to the other. These particular
comments took place in public venues on the participants’ “walls” where others could read them, providing
another layer of casualness and protection.
If a potential couple later becomes more serious, these same media are used to both announce a couple’s
relationship status and to further intensify and extend the relationship. Social network sites play an increasing
role as couples become solidified and become what some call “Facebook official.” At this point in a
relationship, teens might indicate relationship status by ordering their Facebook or MySpace Friends26 in a
particular hierarchy, changing the formal statement of relationship status, giving gifts, and displaying pictures.
Youth can also signal the varying intensity of intimate relationships through new media practices such as
sharing passwords, adding Friends, posting bulletins, or changing headlines.
The public nature and digital representations of these relationships require a fair degree of maintenance and,
if the status of a relationship changes or ends, may also involve a sort of digital housecleaning that is new to the
world of teen romance, but which has historical corollaries in ridding a bedroom or wallet of an ex-intimate’s
pictures.27 Given the persistence of new media—old profiles can always be saved, downloaded, copied, and
circulated—the severing of a romantic relationship may also involve leaving, or changing, the social network
sites in the interest of privacy.
For contemporary American teens, new media provide a new venue for their intimacy practices, a venue that
renders intimacy simultaneously more public and more private. Young people can now meet people, flirt, date,
and break up outside of the earshot and eyesight of their parents and other adults while also doing these things
in front of all of their online friends. The availability of networked public culture appears to be particularly
important for marginalized youth, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered (GLBT) teens, as well as for
teens who are otherwise marked as different and cannot easily find similar individuals in their local schools and
communities. For such youth, web sites and other new media may emerge as a place to meet different people.
As C. J. Pascoe’s work on the Living Digital Project reveals, for many gay teens the Internet can become a
place to explore their identities beyond the heterosexual normativity of their everyday lives. As a result, dating
web sites and modes of communication among GLBT teens provide marginalized young people with greater
opportunities to develop romantic relationships, with the same or similar level of autonomy experienced by their
heterosexual peers. Moreover, participation in these online sites can represent an important source of social
support and friendship.

Transformations in the Meaning of “Friends” and Friendship

In addition to changes in how romantic relationships develop, the integration of Friends into the
infrastructure of social network sites has transformed the meaning of “friend” and “friendship.” As with the
construction of deliberately casual online speech, development of social norms for how to display and negotiate
online Friends involves new kinds of social and media literacy. These negotiations can be both enabling and
awkward. For example, as Bob, a 19-year-old participant in Christo Sims’s (Rural and Urban Youth) study,
explains, becoming Friends on Facebook

sets up your relationship for the next time you meet them to have them be a bigger part of your
life. . . . Suddenly they go from somebody you’ve met once to somebody you met once but also connected
with in some weird Facebook way. And now that you’ve connected, you have to acknowledge each other
more in person sometimes.

As Bob suggests, the corresponding ritual of Friending lays the groundwork for building a friendship. The
practice of Friending not only acknowledges a connection, but does so in a public manner. Young people’s
decisions surrounding whom they accept and consider a Friend also determines an individual’s direct access to
the content on their Friends’ profile pages. This sense of publicness is further heightened through applications,
such as MySpace’s ‘Top Friends” which encourage young people to identify and rank their closest friends. As
in declaring someone a best friend, the announcement of a preferred relationship also marginalizes others
omitted from the Top Friends lists and, in many instances, leads to conflict between friends. Although these
“dramas,” as teens phrase it, have been prevalent among teens in offline public spaces such as the school
lunchroom or the mall, social network sites illuminate and intensify these tensions.
Although youth constantly negotiate and renegotiate the underlying social practices and norms for
displaying friendship online, a consensus is emerging about socially appropriate behavior that largely mirrors
what is socially appropriate in offline contexts.28 As at school, the process of adding and deleting Friends is a
core element of participation on social network sites, one that is reinforced through passwords, nicknames, and
other tools that facilitate and reinforce the segmentation of their friend and peer worlds. Young people’s
decisions surrounding whom they accept and thus consider a Friend determine an individual’s direct access to
the content on their profile pages as well as the ways in which their decisions may affect others. These processes
make social status and friendship more explicit and public, providing a broader set of contexts for observing
these informal forms of social evaluation and peer-based learning. In other words, it makes peer negotiations
visible in new ways, and it provides opportunities to observe and learn about social norms from their peers.
Finally, and despite the perception that media are enabling teens to reach out to strangers online, the vast
majority of teens use new media to reach out to their friends; they overwhelmingly define their friends as peers
they met in school, summer camps, sports activities, and places of worship. Even when young people are online
and meet strangers, they define social network sites, online journals, and other online spaces as friend and peer
spaces. Teens consider adult participation in these spaces as awkward and “creepy.” Furthermore, while
strangers represent one category of people with whom communication on these sites feels “creepy,” parents’
participation is often perceived as controlling and disrespectful. As a 14-year-old female named Leigh in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa (danah boyd, Teen Sociality in Networked Publics), complains, “My mom found my Xanga and
she would check it every single day. I’m like, ‘Uh.’ I didn’t like that ‘cause it’s invasion of privacy; I don’t like
people invading my privacy, so.” As many teenagers such as Leigh acknowledge, most of these parental acts are
motivated by the desire to protect their kids’ well-being. However, much like parents who enter their kids’
bedrooms without knocking or listen in on their conversations, kids view these acts as a violation of trust. They
also see these online invasions as “clueless,” ill informed, and lacking in basic social propriety.

Media and Mediation between Generations

Although young people tend to avoid their parents and other adults while using social network sites and IM
programs, much of their new media engagement occurs in the context of home and family life. Not surprisingly,
parents, siblings, and other family members use media together while they are hanging out at home. Studies by
the Entertainment Software Association find that 35 percent of American parents say they play computer and
video games.29 Among “gamer parents,” 80 percent report that they play video games with their children, and
two-thirds (66 percent) say that playing games has brought their families closer together.30 In our studies of
gaming, we found that video games are part of the common pool, or repertoire, of games and activities that kids
and adults can do while spending time together socially.31 Dan Perkel and Sarita Yardi discuss a 10-year-old in
the San Francisco Bay Area named Miguel who talked with them about playing Playstation with his dad and
cousins (Digital Photo-Elicitation with Kids). Miguel described the time together as follows:

Well, my dad, we used to play like every night. . . . every Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night,
whatever . . . and he would invite my cousins to come over and stuff. We’d borrow games from my
uncles. . . . They taught me how to play. Like, I used to . . . you know how when you play car games the car
moves to the side and stuff? I would go like this with the control [moves arms wildly from side to side
simulating holding a game controller as if he were racing]. So . . . they taught me how to keep still and look.

Although boys most closely identified with games, many of the girls we interviewed said they played games
such as Mario Kart, Dance Dance Revolution, and other popular games with their brothers when they were
hanging out at home on the weekends or evenings. Other families liked to talk while family members played
different games, creating an atmosphere of sociality and communion around new media.32
Although gaming and television watching (using Tivo and other DVR devices) were the most pervasive
shared family activities, one of the most interesting developments involved families who created digital projects
together. In these instances, kids take advantage of the media available at home and get help from their parents
with some of the more technical aspects of the devices. Among middle-class families the tools were often digital
cameras, video cameras, and other editing software, and parents (typically fathers) often mobilized around their
kids by trying to learn about and buy new things. In the case of the Miller family in Silicon Valley (Heather
Horst, Silicon Valley Families), the kids used a video camera at a family reunion and took turns helping to edit
and sort through the best footage. In such families, parents use new media in their efforts to stay involved with,
keep abreast of, and even participate in their kids’ interests. This level of involvement was also evident in
families with less access to the latest gadgets and software and with less confidence and knowledge of new
media.
We also found that kids in many families play an important role as the technology “expert” or “broker,”
interpreting web sites and other forms of information for their parents. Twelve-year-old Michelle in Lisa Tripp
and Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study (Los Angeles Middle Schools) says that she taught her mother, a single
parent from El Salvador, how to use the computer, send emails, and do other activities. Michelle says that “1
taught her how to like . . . sometimes, she wants to upload pictures from my camera, and I show her, but she
doesn’t remember, so I have to do it myself. Mostly, I have to do the picture parts. I like doing the pictures.”33
In contrast to the generational tensions that are so often emphasized in the popular media, families do come
together around new media to share media and knowledge, play together, and stay involved in each other’s
lives.

MESSING AROUND

Unlike hanging out, in which the desire is to maintain social connections to friends, messing around represents
the beginning of a more intense, media-centric form of engagement When messing around, young people begin
to take an interest in and focus on the workings and content of the technology and media themselves, tinkering,
exploring, and extending their understanding. Some activities that we identify as messing around include
looking around, searching for information online, and experimentation and play with gaming and digital media
production. Messing around is often a transitional stage between hanging out and more interest-driven
participation. it involves experimentation and exploration with relatively low investment, where there are few
consequences to trial, error, and even failure.
Messing around with new media requires an interest-driven orientation and is supported by access to online
resources, media production resources, and a social context for sharing of media knowledge and interests.
Online and digital media provide unique supports for tinkering and self-exploration. When something piques
their interest, given access to the Internet, young people can easily look around online. As Eagleton and Dobler,
Hargittai, Robinson, and others have noted, the growing availability of information in online spaces has started
to transform young people’s attitudes toward the availability and accessibility of information.34 Among our
study participants who completed the Digital Kids Questionnaire, 87 percent (284 youth) reported using a
search engine at least once per week, varying from Google, Yahoo!, and Wikipedia to other more specialized
sites for information.35
The youth we spoke to who were deeply invested in specific media practices often described a period in
which they discovered their own pathways to relevant information by looking around with the aid of search
engines and other forms of online exploration. While the lack of local resources can make some kids feel
isolated or in the dark, the increasing availability of search engines and networked publics where they can
“lurk” and observe (such as in web forums, chat channels, etc.) effectively lowers the barriers to entry and thus
makes it easier to took around and, in some cases, dabble or mess around anonymously. In addition to online
information and resources, digital production tools also enable kids to mess around by customizing and
tinkering with these digital tools for casual media creation.
Messing around with new media generally involves social exchanges centered on new media and
technology. This social context can be the family, friendship-driven networks, interest-driven networks, or
educational programs such as computer clubs and youth media centers. The most important factors are the
availability of technical resources and a context that allows for a degree of freedom and autonomy for self-
directed learning and exploration. In contrast to learning that is oriented toward a set, predefined goal, messing
around is largely self-directed, and the outcomes of the activity emerge through exploration.

Getting Started
Youth invested in specific media practices often describe a period in which they first began looking around
online for some area of interest and eventually discovered a broader palette of resources to experiment with, or
an interest-driven online group. For example, Derrick, the 16-year-old teenager who lives in Brooklyn, New
York, mentioned previously, also looked to online resources for initial information about how to take apart a
computer. He explains to Christo Sims (Rural and Urban Youth) how he first looked around online and did a
Google image search for “video card” so he could see what it looked like. After looking at photos of where a
video card is situated in a computer, he was able to install his own. He did the same with his sound card. He
explains, “I learned a lot on my own that’s for computers. . . . Just from searching up on Google and stuff.”
In addition to searching online for information of interest, messing around can be initiated by a range of
different technology-related activities. Many young people described how they first got started messing around
with digital media by capturing, modifying, and sharing personal photos and videos. Interviews with youth who
are active online are often peppered with references to digital photos they have taken and shared with family
and friends. These photos and videos, taken with friends and shared on sites such as PhotoBucket and MySpace,
become an initial entry into digital media production. Similarly, the friendship-driven practices of setting up a
MySpace profile provide an initial introduction to web page construction. Sociable hanging out while gaming is
also a pathway into messing around with technology as youth get more invested in learning the inner workings
and rules underlying a particular game.
These efforts can lead to more sophisticated and engaged forms of media production. For example, Alison,
an 18-year-old video creator from Florida of white and Asian descent in Sonja Baumer’s study, notes that her
personal media creations help her to become reflexive about herself and her own work:

I like watching my own videos after I’ve made them. I am the kind of person that likes to look back on
memories and these videos are memories for me. They show me the fun times I’ve had with my friends or
the certain emotions I was feeling at that time. Watching my videos makes me feel happy because I like
looking back on the past (Sonja Baumer, Self-Production through YouTube).

Although the practices of everyday photo and video making are familiar, the ties to digital distribution and
more sophisticated forms of editing and modification open up a new set of possibilities for youth creative
production. In other words, digital media help scaffold a transition from hanging out genres to messing around
with more creative dimensions of photo and video creation (and vice versa).
Whether it is self-directed searching, taking personal photos and videos, or creating a MySpace profile, what
is characteristic of these initial forays into messing around is that youth are pursuing topics of personal interest.
Young people who were active digital media creators or deeply involved in other interest-driven groups
generally described a moment when they took a personal interest in a topic and pursued it in a self-directed
way.36 This may have been sparked by a school project or a parent, but they eventually took it further on their
own initiative. For example, Snafu-Dave, a successful web comics writer whom Mizuko Ito (Anime Fans)
interviewed said, “Basically, I had to self-teach myself, even though I was going to school for digital
media . . . school’s more valuable for me to have . . . a time frame where I could learn on my own.” Similarly,
Allison, a 15-year-old white girl from Georgia, describes how she learned to use video tools:

Trial and error, I guess. It’s like any—whenever I learn anything with computers, I’ve taught myself how to
use computers, and 1 consider myself very knowledgeable about them, but I just—I learn everything on my
own, just figure it out, and the same with cameras. It’s like a cell phone. I just figure out how to do it, and
it’s pretty quick and easy” (Patricia Lange, YouTube and Video Bloggers).

The media creators we interviewed often reflected this orientation by describing how they were largely self-
taught, even though they might also mention the help they received from online and offline resources, peers,
parents, and even teachers.

Tinkering and Exploration

Messing around is an open-ended activity that involves tinkering and exploration that is only loosely goal
directed. Often this can transition to more “serious” engagement in which a young person is trying to perfect a
creative work or become a knowledge expert in the genre of geeking out. It is important to recognize, however,
that this more exploratory mode of messing around is an important space of experimental forms of learning that
open up new possibilities and engagements.
Tinkering often begins with modifying and appropriating accessible forms of media production that are
widely distributed in youth culture. For example, Dan Perkel describes the importance of copying and pasting
code in the process of MySpace profile creation, a practice in which youth appropriate media and code from
other sites to create their individual profiles. This form of creative production, which Perkel calls “copy and
paste literacy,” may appear purely derivative, but young people see their profiles as expressions of their
personal identities.37 This mode of taking up and modifying found materials has some similarities to the kinds
of reframing and remixing that fan artists and fan fiction writers do. For some youth, one of the main draws of
MySpace is not only its social dimensions but that it also provides an opportunity to negotiate and display a
visual identity because of the customization involved. Ann, an 18-year-old white girl in Heather Horst’s Silicon
Valley Families study, saw her MySpace profile as a way to portray her personal aesthetic. She designed a
MySpace page in her signature colors of pink and brown, the same colors as her bedroom.
Although young people did take time to mess around and modify their profiles, what they ended up posting
was usually not the result of planning and careful consideration, but what- ever they happened to see while
making or revisiting their profiles. For instance, danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics) spoke with
Shean, a 17-year-old black male from Los Angeles, who said, “I’m not a big fan of changing my background
and all that. I would change mine probably every four months or three months. As long as I keep in touch with
my friends or whatever, I don’t really care about how it looks as long as it’s, like, there.” This approach toward
tinkering and messing around is typical of the process through which profiles are made and modified. Youth
who considered online profiles primarily as personal social spaces typically took this casual approach to their
profiles, and they tended not to update them with much frequency, or only when they grew tired of one. Nick, a
16-year-old male from Los Angeles who is of black and Native American descent, told danah boyd (Teen
Sociality in Networked Publics):

That’s the main time I have fun when I’m just putting new pictures and new backgrounds on my page. I do
 that once every couple of months because sometimes it gets real boring. I’ll be on one page. I’ll log on to
my profile and see the same picture every time. I’m, man, I’m gonna do something new.

Similarly, youth frequently start engaging with a new web site or blog, or start writing a piece of fan fiction,
but eventually discard these experiments. The Internet is full of this evidence of youth experimentation in online
expression.
This casual approach to messing around with media is also characteristic of a large proportion of video
game play that we observed. Because interactive media allow for a great deal of player-level agency and
customization, messing around is a regular part of game play. In the early years of gaming, the ability to do
player-level modifications was limited for most games, unless one were a game hacker and coder, or it was a
simulation game that was specifically designed for user authoring. Today, players take for granted the ability to
modify and customize the parameters of a game. Not only were youth in our study constantly experimenting
with the given parameters and settings of a game, they also relied on game modifications and cheats to alter
their game play. In Lisa Tripp and Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study of Los Angeles Middle Schools, Herr-
Stephenson had the opportunity to see how cheat codes operated in the everyday game play of Andres, a 12-
year-old Mexican American. In her field notes she describes how Andres pulled out of his pocket a sheet of
paper that had game cheat codes written on it. After he used a series of codes to “get the cops off his back,”
make his character invisible, and get free money, she asked him where he got the codes. He explained that he
got them from some older kids. Herr-Stephenson writes: “I don’t think he’s ever thought about it as cheating
(despite calling them “cheat codes”) and instead just thinks that such codes are a normal part of game play.”
Cheat codes are an example of casual messing around with games and experimenting with their rules and
boundaries.
Another example of casual messing around with game parameters is players who enjoyed experimenting
with the authoring tools embedded in games. Games such as Pokemon or Neopets are designed specifically to
allow user authoring and customization of the player experience in the form of personal collections of
customized pets.38 This kind of customization activity is an entry point into messing around with game content
and parameters. In Laura Robinson and Heather Horst’s study of Neopets, one of Horst’s interviewees describes
the pleasures of designing and arranging homes in Neopets and Millsberry. She did not want to have to bother
with playing games to accrue Neopoints to make her Neohome and instead preferred the Millsberry site, where
it was easier to get money to build and customize a home.

Yeah, you get points easier and get money to buy the house easily [in the Millsberry site]. And I like to do
interior design. And so I like to arrange my house and since they have, like, all of this natural stuff, you can
make a garden. They have water and you can add water in your house.

Similarly, Emily, a 21-year-old from San Francisco, tells Matteo Bittanti (Game Play): “I played The Sims
and built several Wii Miis. I like to personalize things, from my playlists to my games. The only problem is that
after I build my characters I have no interest in playing them, and so I walk away from the game.”
Whether it is creating a MySpace profile, a blog, or an online avatar, messing around involves tinkering with
and exploration of new spaces of possibilities. Most of these activities are abandoned or only occasionally
revisited in a lightweight way. Although some view these activities as dead-ends or a waste of time, we see
them as a necessary part of self-directed exploration in order to experiment with something that might
eventually become a longer-term, abiding interest in creative production. One side effect of this exploration is
that youth also learn computer skills they might not have developed otherwise.

Social Contexts for Messing Around

Messing around with digital media is driven by personal interest, but it is supported by a broader social and
technical ecology, where the creation and sharing of media is a friendship-driven set of practices.39 Online sites
for storing and circulating personal media are facilitating a growing set of options for sharing. Youth no longer
must carry around photo albums to share photos with their friends and families; a MySpace profile or a camera
phone will do the trick. Consider the following observation by Dan Perkel (Judd Antin, Christo Sims, and Dan
Perkel, The Social Dynamics of Media Production) in an afterschool computer center:

Many of the kids had started to arrive early every day and would use the computers and hang out with each
other. While some kids were playing games or doing other things, Shantel and Tiffany (two apparently
African American female teenagers roughly 15 to 16 years old from a low-income district in San Francisco)
were sitting at two computers, separated by a third one between them that no one was using. They were both
on MySpace. I heard Shantel talking out loud about looking at pictures of her baby nephew on MySpace. I
am fairly sure she was showing these pictures to Tiffany. Then, she pulled out her phone and called her
sister and started talking about the pictures.

This scene that Perkel describes is an example of the role that photos archived on sites such as MySpace
play in the everyday lives of youth. Shantel can pull up her photos from any Internet-connected computer to
share casually with her friends, much as youth do with camera phones.40 That personal photos about one’s life
are readily available in social contexts means that visual media become more deeply embedded in the everyday
communication of young people. The tinkering with MySpace profiles and the attention paid to digital
photography are all part of the expectation of an audience of friends that makes the effort worthwhile. Youth
look to each other’s profiles, photos, videos, and online writing for examples to emulate and avoid in a peer-
driven learning context that supports everyday media creation.
In the case of MySpace and other forms of media production that are widely distributed among youth, youth
often seek technical support from their local friendship network. For most of the cases that we documented, at
least one other person was almost always directly involved in creating kids’ profiles. When asked how they
learned to share and create their profiles, the common response was that a sibling, a cousin, or a friend showed
them how to do it. In their research at an afterschool program, Judd Antin, Christo Sims, and Dan Perkel (The
Social Dynamics of Media Production) watched how teens would call out asking for help and others willingly
responded and came to help (literally taking the mouse and pushing the buttons) or guided them through the
process. In an interview at a different afterschool site, Carlos, a 17-year-old Latino from the East Bay, told
Perkel that he had initially found the whole profile-making process “confusing” and that he had used some free
time in a Saturday program at school to ask different people to help him. Then later, when he knew what he was
doing, he had shown his cousin how to add backgrounds, explaining to her that “you can just look around here
and pick whichever you want and just tell me when you’re finished and I’ll get it for you.”
Gamers, too, find support for their messing-around activities in their local social relationships. Among boys,
gaming has become a pervasive social activity and a context where they casually share technical and media-
related knowledge. For example, several active fansubbers whom Mizuko Ito interviewed in her Anime Fans
study described how they initially met the members of their group through shared gaming experiences. When
we had the opportunity to observe teens, particularly boys, in social settings, gaming was a frequent focus of
conversation as well as topic of activity that often veered into technical subjects. In Katynka Z. Martinez’s
Computer Club Kids study, she notes that most of the boys associated with the club are avid gamers. After the
computers in the lab became networked (in a moment they called “The Renaissance”), the boys would show up
during lunch and even their 15-minute nutrition breaks to play Halo and Counter-Strike against one another.
The hanging out with gaming was part of their participation in a technically sophisticated friendship group that
focused on computer-based interests.
In other words, messing around with media is embedded in social contexts where friends and a broader peer
group share a media-related interest and social focus. For most youth, they find this context in their local
friendship-driven networks, grounded in popular practices such as MySpace profile creation, digital
photography, and gaming. When youth transition to more focused interest-driven practices, they will generally
reach beyond their local network of technical and media expertise, but the initial activities that characterize
messing around are an important starting point for even these youth.

Transitions and Trajectories

 Although most forms of messing around start and end with casual tinkering and exploration that tends not to
move beyond the context of everyday peer sociability, we have observed a range of cases in which kids
transitioned from messing around to the genre we describe as geeking out. We have also seen cases in which
messing around has led to the eventual development of technical expertise in tinkering and fixing, which
positions youth as local technology or media experts.
For example, 22-year-old Earendil describes the role that gaming played in his growing up and developing
an interest in media technology. Earendil was largely home-schooled, and though his parents had strict limits on
gaming until he and his brother were in middle school, Earendil describes how they got their “gaming kicks” at
the homes of their friends with game consoles. After his parents loosened restrictions on computer time, his first
social experiences online, when he was 15, were in a multiplayer game based on the novel Ender’s Game and in
online chats with fellow fans of Myst and Riven. When he started community college, he fell in with “a group
of local geeks, who, like myself, enjoyed playing games, etc.” These experiences with online gamers and gamer
friends in college provided a social context for messing around with a diverse range of media and technology,
and he branched out to different interests such as game modding and video editing. He plans to eventually
pursue a career in media making (Mizuko Ito, Anime Fans).
We also encountered a small number of youth who leveraged messing around with media into messing
around with small ventures.41 Toni, a 25-year-old who emigrated from the Dominican Republic as a teen
(Mizuko Ito, Anime Fans), describes how he was dependent on libraries and schools for his computer access
through most of high school. This did not prevent him from becoming a technology expert, however, and he set
up a small business selling Playboy pictures that he printed from library computers to his classmates. Zelan, a
16-year-old youth whom Christo Sims interviewed (Rural and Urban Youth), first learned to mess around with
digital media through video game play while his parents prospected for gold. Sims writes:

After getting immersed in the Game Boy he pursued newer and better consoles. As he did so he also learned
how they worked. His parents did not like buying him gaming gear so he became resourceful. When his
neighbors gave him their broken PlayStation 2, he took it apart, fixed it, and upgraded from his PlayStation
1 in the process.42

Driven by economic necessity, Zelan tinkered and learned how to manipulate technology. Eventually he
began to market his skills as a technology fixer and now envisions the day when he will start his own business
repairing computers or “just about anything computer-wise.” In her study of Computer Club Kids, Katynka
Martinez also encountered a young entrepreneur who inherited the spirit of tinkering from his father, who is
proficient with computers and also likes to refurbish classic Mustangs with his son. Martinez writes about Mac
Man, a 17-year-old boy:

. . . when he learned that a group of teachers were going to be throwing away their old computers, he asked
if he could take them off their hands. Mac Man fixed the computers and put Windows on them. The
computer club was started with these computers. Mac Man still comes to school with a small bag carrying
the tools that he uses to work on computers. Teachers and other adults kept giving him computers that were
broken and he had to figure out what to do with them. He fixed them and realized that he could sell them on
eBay. He makes $100 profit for every computer that he sells.43

These are not privileged youth who are growing up in the Silicon Valley households of start-up capitalists.
Instead, they are working-class kids who embody the street smarts of how to hustle for money. Raised in a
context where economic constraints remain part and parcel of childhood and the experience of growing up,44
they were able to translate their interest in tinkering and messing around into financial ventures that gave them a
taste of what it might be like to pursue their own self-directed careers. While these kinds of youths are a small
minority among those we encountered, they demonstrate the ways in which messing around can function as a
transitional genre that leads to more sustained engagements with media and technology.
GEEKING OUT

The ability to engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous, and interest-driven way is a unique
feature of today’s media environment. Particularly for kids with newer technology and high-speed Internet at
home, the internet can provide access to an immense amount of information related to their particular interests,
and it can support various forms of “geeking out”—an intense commitment to or engagement with media or
technology, often one particular media property, genre, or type of technology. Geeking out involves learning to
navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practice and participating in communities that traffic in these forms
of expertise. It is a mode of learning that is peer-driven, but focused on gaining deep knowledge and expertise in
specific areas of interest.
Ongoing access to digital media is a requirement of geeking out. Often, however, such access is just part of
what makes participation possible. Family, friends, and other peers in on- and offline spaces are particularly
important in facilitating access to the technology, knowledge, and social connections required to geek out. Just
as in the case of messing around, geeking out requires the time, space, and resources to experiment and follow
interests in a self-directed way. Furthermore, it requires access to specialized communities of expertise.
Contrary to popular images of the socially isolated geek, almost all geeking out practices we observed are
highly social and engaged, although not necessarily expressed as friendship-driven social practices. Instead, the
social worlds center on specialized knowledge networks and communities that are driven by specific interests
and a range of social practices for sharing work and opinions. The online world has made these kinds of
specialized hobby and knowledge networks more widely available to youth. Although generally considered
marginal to both local, school-based friendship networks and to academic achievement, the activities of geeking
out provide important spaces of self-directed learning that is driven by passionate interests.

Specialized Knowledge Networks

When young people geek out, they are delving into areas of interest that exceed common knowledge; this
generally involves seeking expert knowledge networks outside of given friendship-driven networks. Rather than
simply messing around with local friends, geeking out involves developing an identity and pride as an expert
and seeking fellow experts in far-flung networks. Geeking out is usually supported by interest-based groups,
either local or online, or some hybrid of the two, where fellow geeks will both produce and exchange
knowledge on their subjects of interest. Rather than purely “consuming” knowledge produced by authoritative
sources, geeked out engagement involves accessing as well as producing knowledge to contribute to the
knowledge network.
In her study of anime music video (AMV)45 creators (Anime Fans), Mizuko Ito interviewed Gepetto, an 18-
year-old Brazilian fan. He was first introduced to AMVs through a local friend and started messing around
creating AMVs on his own. As his skills developed, however, he sought out the online community of AMV
creators on animemusicvideos.org to sharpen his skills. Although he managed to interest a few of his local
friends in AMV making, none of them took to it to the extent that he did. He relies heavily on the networked
community of editors as sources of knowledge and expertise and as models to aspire to. In his local community,
he is now known as a video expert both by his peers and adults. After seeing his AMV work, one of his high-
school teachers asked him to teach a video workshop to younger students. He jokes that “even though I know
nothing,” to his local community “I am the Greater God of video editing.” In other words, his engagement with
the online interest group helped develop his identity and competence as a video editor well beyond what is
typical in his local community.
In the geeked-out gaming world, players and game designers now expect that game play will be supported
by an online knowledge network that provides tips, cheats, walk-throughs, mods, and reviews that are generated
both by fellow players and commercial publishers. Personal knowledge exchange among local gamer friends, as
well as this broader knowledge network, is a vital part of more sophisticated forms of game play that are in the
geeking out genre of engagement. Although more casual players mess around by accessing cheats and hints
online, more geeked out players will consume, debate, and produce this knowledge for other players. Rachel
Cody notes that the players in her study of Final Fantasy XI routinely used guides produced both commercially
and by fellow players. The guides assisted players in streamlining some parts of the game that otherwise took a
great deal of time or resources. Cody observed that a few members of the linkshell in her study kept Microsoft
Excel files with detailed notes on all their crafting in order to postulate theories on the most efficient ways of
producing goods. As Wurlpin, a 26-year-old male from California, told Rachel Cody, the guides are an essential
part of playing the game. He commented, “I couldn’t imagine [playing while] not knowing how to do half the
things, how to go, who to talk to.”

Interest-Based Communities and Organizations

Interest-based geeking-out activities can be supported by a wide range of organizations and online
infrastructures. Most interest groups surrounding fandom, gaming, and amateur media production are loosely
aggregated through online sites such as YouTube, LiveJournal, or DeviantArt, or more specialized sites such as
animemusicvideos.org, fanfiction.net, and gaming sites such as Allakhazam or pojo.com. in addition, core
participants in specific interest communities will often take a central role in organizing events and administering
sites that cater to their hobbies and interests. Fan sites that cater to specific games, game guilds, and media
series are proliferating on the Internet, as are specialized networks within larger sites such as LiveJournal or
DeviantArt. Real-life meetings such as conventions, competitions, meet-ups, and gaming parties are also part of
these kinds of distributed, player- and fan-driven forms of organization that support the ongoing life and social
exchange of interest-driven groups.
As part of Mizuko Ito’s case study on Anime Fans, she researched the practices of amateur subtitlers, or
“fansubbers,” who translate and subtitle anime and release it through Internet distribution. In our book Hanging
Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out, we describe some of the ways in which fansubbers form tight-knit
work teams with jobs that include translators, timers, editors, typesetters, encoders, quality checkers, and
distributors.46 Fansub groups often work faster and more effectively than professional localization industries,
and their work is viewed by millions of anime fans around the world. They often work on tight deadlines, and
the fastest groups will turn around an episode within 24 hours of release in Japan. For this, fansubbers receive
no monetary rewards, and they say that they pursue this work for the satisfaction of making anime available to
fans overseas and for the pleasure they get in working with a close-knit production team that keeps in touch
primarily on online chat channels and web forums. Fansubbing is just one example of the many forms of
volunteer labor and organizations that are run by fans. In addition to producing a wide range of creative works,
fans also organize anime clubs, conventions, web sites, and competitions as part of their interest-driven
activities.
The issue of leadership and team organization was a topic that was central to Rachel Cody’s study of Final
Fantasy XI. Cody spent seven months participant-observing in a high-level “linkshell,” or guild. Although many
purely social linkshells do populate FFXI, Cody’s linkshell was an “endgame” linkshell, meaning that the group
aimed to defeat the high-level monsters in the game. The participants organized the linkshell in a hierarchical
system, with a leader and officers who had decision-making authority, and new members needed to be approved
by the officers. Often the process of joining the linkshell involved a formal application and interview, and
members were expected to conform to the standards of the group and perform effectively in battle as a team.
The linkshell would organize “camps” where sometimes more than 150 people would wait for a high-level
monster to appear and then attack with a well-planned battle strategy. Gaming can function as a site for
organizing collective action, which can vary from the more lightweight arrangements of kids getting together to
play competitively to the more formal arrangements that we see in a group such as Cody’s linkshell.
In all of these cases, players are engaging in a complex social organization that operates under different sets
of hierarchies and politics than those that occupy them in the offline world. These online groups provide an
opportunity for youth to exercise adult-like agency and leadership that is not otherwise available to them.
Although the relationships they foster in these settings are initially motivated by media-related interests, these
collaborative arrangements and ongoing social exchange often result in deep and lasting friendships with new
networks of like-minded peers.
Feedback and Learning
Interest-based communities that support geeking out have important learning properties that are grounded in
peer-based sharing and feedback. The mechanisms for getting input on one’s work and performance can vary
from ongoing exchange on online chat and forums to more formal forms of rankings, critiques, and competition.
Unlike what young people experience in school, where they are graded by a teacher in a position of authority,
feedback in interest-driven groups is from peers and audiences who have a personal interest in their work and
opinions. Among fellow creators and community members, the context is one of peer-based reciprocity, where
participants can gain status and reputation but do not hold evaluative authority over one another.
Not all creative groups we examined have a tight-knit community with established standards. YouTube, for
example, functions more as an open aggregator of a wide range of video-production genres and communities,
and the standards for participation and commentary differ according to the goals of particular video makers and
social groups. Critique and feedback can take many forms, including posted comments on a site that displays
works, private message exchanges, offers to collaborate, invitations to join other creators’ social groups, and
promotion from other members of an interest-oriented group. Study participants did not value simple five-star
rating schemes as mechanisms for improving their craft, although they considered them useful in boosting
ranking and visibility. Fansubbers generally thought that their audience had little understanding of what
constituted a quality fansub and would take seriously only the evaluation of fellow producers. Similarly, AMV
creators play down rankings and competition results based on “viewer’s choice.” The perception among creators
is that many videos win if they use popular anime as source material, regardless of the merits of the editing. Fan
fiction writers also felt that the general readership, while often providing encouragement, offered little in the
way of substantive feedback.
In contrast to these attitudes toward audience feedback, a comment from a respected fellow creator carries a
great deal of weight. Creators across different communities often described an inspiring moment when they
received positive feedback and suggestions from a fellow creator whom they respected. In Dilan Mahendran’s
study (Hip-Hop Music Production), Edric, a 19-year-old Puerto Rican rapper, described his nervousness at his
first recording session and the moment when he stepped out of the booth. “And everyone was like, ‘Man, that
was nice. I liked that.’ And I was like, ‘For real?’ I was like. ‘I appreciate that.’ And ever since then I’ve just
been stuck to writing, developing my style.” Receiving positive feedback from peers who shared his interest in
hip-hop was tremendously validating and gave him motivation to continue with his interests. Some communities
have specific mechanisms for receiving informed feedback from expert peers. Animemusicvideos.org has
extended reviewer forms that can be submitted for videos, and it hosts a variety of competitions in which editors
can enter their videos. All major anime conventions also have AMV competitions in which the best videos are
selected by audiences as well as by fellow editors.
Young people participating in online writing communities can get substantive feedback from fellow writers.
In fan fiction, critical feedback is provided by “beta readers,” who read “fics” before they are published and
give suggestions on style, plot, and grammar. Clarissa (17 years old, white), an aspiring writer and one of the
participants in C. J. Pascoe’s study “Living Digital,” participates in an online role-playing board, Faraway
Lands (a pseudonym). Aspiring members must write lengthy character descriptions to apply, and these are
evaluated by the site administrators. Since receiving glowing reviews of her application, Clarissa has been a
regular participant on the site, and she has developed friendships with many of the writers there. She has been
doing a joint role play with another participant from Spain, and she has a friend from Oregon who critiques her
work and vice versa. She explains how this feedback from fellow writers feels more authentic to her than the
evaluations she receives in school. “It’s something I can do in my spare time, be creative and write and not have
to be graded,” because, “you know how in school you’re creative, but you’re doing it for a grade so it doesn’t
really count?” 47

Recognition and Reputation

In addition to providing opportunities for young people to learn and improve their craft, interest-driven
groups also offer a way to gain recognition and reputation as well as an audience for creative work. Although
participants do not always value audience feedback as the best mechanism for improving their work, most
participants in interest-driven communities are nevertheless motivated by knowing that their work will be
viewed by others or by being part of an appreciative community.
For example, zalas, a Chinese American in his early 20s and a participant in Mizuko Ito’s study of Anime
Fans, is an active participant in the anime fandom. zalas is an officer at his university anime club, a frequent
presenter at local anime conventions, and a well-known participant in online anime forums and IRC (Internet
Relay Chat), where he is connected to fellow fans 24/7. He will often scour the Japanese anime and game-
related sites to get news that English-speaking fans do not have access to. “It’s kinda like a race to see who can
post the first tidbit about it.” He estimates that he spends about eight hours a day online keeping up with his
hobby. “I think pretty much all the time that’s not school, eating, or sleeping.” He is a well-respected expert in
the anime scene because of this commitment to pursuing and sharing knowledge.
Specialized video communities, such as AMVs or live-action “vidding,”48 will often avoid general-purpose
video-sharing sites such as YouTube because they are not targeted to audiences who are well informed about
their genres of media. In fact, on one of the forums dedicated to AMVs, any instance of the term “YouTube” is
automatically censored. Even within these specialized groups, however, creators do seek visibility. Most major
anime conventions now will include an AMV competition in which the winning works are showcased, in
addition to venues for fan artists to display and sell their work. The young hip-hop artists Dilan Mahendran
spoke to also participated in musical competitions that gave them visibility, particularly if they went home with
awards. Even fansubbers who insist that quality and respect among peers are more important than download
numbers will admit that they do track the numbers. As one fansubber in Ito’s study of Anime Fans put it, “Deep
down inside, every fansubber wants to have their work watched, and a high amount of viewers causes them
some kind of joy whether they express it or not.” Fansub groups generally make their “trackers,” which record
the number of downloads, public on their sites.
Young people can use large sites such as MySpace and YouTube as ways of disseminating their work to
broader audiences. In Dilan Mahendran’s Hip-Hop Music Production study, the more ambitious musicians
would use a MySpace Music template as a way to develop profiles that situated them as musicians rather than a
standard teen personal profile. The style of these kinds of MySpace pages differs fundamentally from the more
common profiles that center on social communication and the display of friendships. Similarly, video makers
who seek broader audiences gravitate toward YouTube as a site to gain visibility. YouTube creators monitor
their play counts and comments for audience feedback. Frank, a white 15-year-old male from Ohio who posts
on YouTube, stated, “But then even when you get one good comment, that makes up for 50 mean comments,
‘cause it’s just the fact of knowing that someone else out there liked your videos and stuff, and it doesn’t really
matter about everyone else that’s criticized you” (Patricia Lange, YouTube and Video Bloggers).
In some cases, young people parlayed their interests into income and even a sustained career. Max, a 14-
year-old boy in Patricia Lange’s “YouTube and Video Bloggers” study, turned into a YouTube sensation when
he recorded his mother, unaware that people around her could hear her and had started to laugh, singing along to
the Boyz II Men song playing in her headphones. Max posted the video on YouTube and it attracted the
attention of the ABC television show Good Morning America, on which the video eventually aired. In the two
years since it was posted, the video received more than 2 million views and more than 5,000 text comments,
many of them expressing support. Max’s work also attracted attention from another media company, which
approached him about the possibility of buying another of his videos for an online advertisement. We also found
cases of hip-hop artists who market their music, fan artists who sell their work at conventions, and youth who
freelance as web designers. Among the case studies of anime and Harry Potter fans, a handful of youth
successfully capitalized on their creative talents. Becky Herr-Stephenson’s study of Harry Potter fans (Harry
Potter Fandom) focuses in part on podcasters who comment on the franchise. Although most podcasters are
clearly hobbyists, a small number have become celebrities in the fandom who go on tours, perform “Wizard
Rock,” and in some cases, have gained financial rewards.
By linking niche audiences,49 online media-sharing sites make amateur-and youth-created content visible to
other creators and audiences. Aspiring creators do not need to look exclusively to professional and commercial
works for models of how to pursue their craft. Young people can begin by modeling more accessible and
amateur forms of creative production. Even if they end there, with practices that never turn toward
professionalism, youth can still gain status, validation, and reputation among specific creative communities and
smaller audiences. The ability to specialize, tailor one’s message and voice, and communicate with small
publics is facilitated by the growing availability of diverse and niche networked publics. Gaining reputation as a
rapper within the exclusive community of Bay Area Hyphy-genre hip-hop,50 being recognized as a great
character writer on a particular role-playing board, or being known as the best comedic AMV editor for a
particular anime series are all examples of fame and reputation within specialized communities of interest.
These aspirational trajectories do not necessarily resolve into a vision of “making it big” or becoming famous in
established commercial media production. Yet these aspirations still enable young people to gain validation,
recognition, and audience for their creative works and to hone their craft within groups of like-minded and
expert peers. Gaining recognition in these niche and amateur groups means validation of creative work in the
here and now without having to wait for rewards in a far-flung and uncertain future in creative production.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The goal of our project has been to document the everyday lives of youth as they engage with new media and to
put forth a paradigm for understanding, learning, and participation in contemporary networked publics. We have
worked to understand youth culture, and to bring this youth-centered perspective into the debates about digital
media and learning. Although youth are often considered early adopters and expert users of new technology,
their views on the significance of new media practice are not always taken seriously. Adults who stand on the
other side of a generation gap can see these new practices as mystifying and, at times, threatening to existing
social norms and educational standards. Although we do not believe that youth hold all the answers, we feel that
it is crucial to listen carefully to them and learn from their experiences of growing up in a changing media
ecology. In this concluding section, we translate some of what we learned from youth to adult concerns,
summarizing the findings of our research in relation to implications for learning, education, and public
participation.

Participation in the Digital Age Means More than Being Able to Access “Serious”
Online Information and Culture; It also Means the Ability to Participate in Social
and Recreational Activities Online.
The notion of networked publics offers a framework for examining diverse forms of participation with new
media in a way that is keyed to the broader social relations that structure this participation. In describing new
media engagements, we have looked at the ecology of social, technical, and cultural conditions necessary for
certain forms of participation. We found that ongoing, lightweight access to digital production tools and the
Internet is a precondition for participation in most of the networked publics that are the focus of attention for
U.S. teens. Contemporary social media are becoming one of the primary “institutions” of peer culture for U.S.
teens, occupying the role that was previously dominated by the informal hanging out spaces of the school, mall,
home, or street. Further, much of this engagement is centered on access to social and commercial entertainment
content that is generally frowned upon in formal educational settings.
Although public institutions do not necessarily need to play a role in instructing or monitoring kids’ use of
social media, they can be important sites for enabling participation in these activities and enhancing their scope.
Social and recreational online activities are jumping-off points for experimenting with digital media creation
and self-expression. Rather than seeing socializing and play as hostile to learning, educational programs could
be positioned to step in and support moments when youth are motivated to move from friendship-driven to more
interest-driven forms of new media use. This requires a cultural shift and a certain openness to experimentation
and social exploration that is generally not characteristic of educational institutions, though we did see many
instances of media production programs and parents supporting these activities.
In Addition to Economic Barriers, Youth Encounter Institutional, Social, and
Cultural Constraints to Online Participation.
Fluent and expert use of new media requires more than simple, task-specific access to technology. Youth
who engaged in a dynamic range of learning opportunities with new media generally had robust technology
access, ample time and autonomy to experiment and explore, and a network of peers who supported their new
media interests. Sporadic, monitored access at schools and libraries may provide sufficient access for basic
information seeking, but is insufficient for the immersed kind of social engagements with networked publics
that are becoming a baseline for participation on both the interest-driven and the friendship-driven sides. Adult
lack of appreciation for youth participation in popular culture has created an additional barrier to access for kids
who do not have Internet access at home. We are concerned about the lack of a public agenda that recognizes
the value of youth participation in social communication and popular culture. When kids lack access to the
Internet at home, and public libraries and schools block sites that are central to their social communication,
youth are doubly handicapped in their efforts to participate in common culture and sociability.
Although we have not systematically analyzed the relation between gender and socioeconomic status and
participation in interest-driven groups, our work indicates a predictable participation gap. Particularly in the
case of highly technical interest groups and complex forms of gaming, the genre itself is often defined as a
masculine domain. These differences in access are not simply a matter of technology access but represent a
more complex structure of cultural identity and social belonging. In other words, girls tend to be stigmatized
more if they identify with geeked out practices. Although we may recognize that geeked out participation has
valuable learning properties, if these activities equate with low status in friendship-driven networks, many kids
are likely to opt out even if they have the technical and social resources at their disposal. The kinds of identities
and peer status that accompany certain forms of new media literacy and technical skills (and lack thereof) are an
area that deserves more systematic research attention.

Networked Publics Provide a Context for Youth to Develop Social Norms in

Negotiation with Their Peers.
Young people are turning to online networks to participate in a wide range of public activities and
developing social norms that their elders may not recognize. On the friendship-driven side, youth see online
spaces and communications media as places to hang out with their friends. Given constraints on time and
mobility, online sites offer young people the opportunity to casually connect with their friends and engage in
private communication that is not monitored by parents and teachers. The ability to browse the profiles and
status updates of their extended peer network in sites such as MySpace and Facebook offers youth information
about others in an ambient way, without the need for direct communication. On the interest-driven side, youth
turn to networked publics to connect with like-minded peers who share knowledge and expertise that may not
be available to them locally. By engaging with communities of expertise online in more geeked out practices,
youth are exposed to new standards and norms for participation in specialized communities and through
collaborative arrangements. These unique affordances of networked publics have altered many of the conditions
of socializing and publicity for youth, even as they build on existing youth practices of hanging out, flirting, and
pursuing hobbies and interests.
In our work, contrary to fears that social norms are eroding online, we did not find many youth who were
engaging in behaviors that were riskier than what they did in offline contexts. Youth online communication is
conducted in a context of public scrutiny and structured by shared norms and a sense of reciprocity. At the same
time, the actual shape of peer-based communication, and many of its outcomes, are profoundly different from
those of an older generation, and are constantly being redefined. We found examples of parents who lacked
even rudimentary knowledge of social norms for communicating online or any understanding of all but the most
accessible forms of video games. Further, the ability for many youth to be in constant private contact with their
peers strengthens the force of peer-based learning, and it can weaken adult participation in these peer
environments. A kid who is highly active online, coupled with a parent who is disengaged from these new
media, presents the risk of creating an intergenerational wedge. We do not believe that educators and parents
need to bear down on kids with complicated rules and restrictions and heavy-handed norms about how they
should engage online, particularly if they are not attuned to the norms that do exist among youth. Simple
prohibitions, technical barriers, or time limits on use are blunt instruments; youth perceive them as raw and ill-
informed exercises of power.
The problem lies not in the volume of access but the quality of participation and learning, and kids and
adults should first be on the same page on the normative questions of learning and literacy. Parents should begin
with an appreciation of the importance of youth social interactions with their peers, an understanding of their
complexities, and a recognition that children are knowledgeable experts on their own peer practices and many
domains of online participation. If parents can trust that their own values are being transmitted through their
ongoing communication with their children, then new media practices can be sites of shared focus rather than
anxiety and tension. We believe that if our efforts to shape new media literacy are keyed to the meaningful
contexts of youth participation, then there is an opportunity for productive adult engagement. Many of the
norms that we observed online are very much up for negotiation, and we often uncovered divergent perspectives
among youth about what was appropriate, even within a particular genre of practice. For example, the issue of
how to display social connections and hierarchies on social network sites is a source of social drama and
tension, and the ongoing evolution of technical design in this space makes it a challenge for youth to develop
shared social norms. Designers of these systems are central participants in defining these social norms, and their
interventions are not always geared toward supporting a shared set of practices and values. More robust public
debate on these issues that involves both youth and adults could potentially shape the future of online norms in
this space in substantive ways.

Youth Are Developing New Forms of Media Literacy that Are Keyed to New
Media and Youth-Centered Social and Cultural Worlds.
We have identified a range of different practices that are evidence of youth-defined new media literacies. On
the friendship-driven side, youth are developing shared norms for online publicity, including how to represent
oneself in online profiles, norms for displaying peer networks online, the ranking of relationships in social
network sites, and the development of new genres of written communication such as composed casualness in
online messages. On the interest-driven side, youth continue to test the limits of forms of new media literacy
and expression. Youth are developing a wide range of more specialized and sometimes exclusionary forms of
new media literacies that are defined in opposition to those developed in more mainstream youth practices. In
geeked out interest-driven groups, we have seen youth engage in the specialized “elite” vocabularies of gaming
and esoteric fan knowledge and develop new experimental genres that make use of the authoring and editing
capabilities of digital media. These include personal and amateur media that are being circulated online, such as
photos, video blogs, web comics, and podcasts, as well as derivative works such as fan fiction, fan art, mods,
mashups, remixes, and fansubbing.
It is important to understand the diverse genre conventions of youth new media literacy before developing
educational programs in this space. Particularly when addressing learning and literacy that grows out of
informal, peer-driven practices, we must realize that norms and standards are deeply situated in investments and
identities of kids’ own cultural and social worlds. For example, authoring of online profiles is an important
literacy skill on both the friendship- and interest-driven sides, but one mobilizes a genre of popularity and
coolness, and the other a genre of geek cred. Similarly, the “elite” language of committed gamers involves
literacies that are of little, and possibly negative, value for boys looking for a romantic partner in their school
peer networks. Not only are literacy standards diverse and culturally specific, but they are constantly changing
in tandem with technical changes and a rising bar of cultural sophistication. Following from this, it is
problematic to develop a standardized or static set of benchmarks to measure kids’ levels of new media and
technical literacy.
On the interest-driven side, we saw adult leadership in these groups as central to how standards for expertise
and literacy are being defined. For example, the heroes of the gaming world include both teens and adults who
define the identity and practice of an elite gamer. The same holds for all of the creative production groups that
we examined. The leadership in this space, however, is largely cut off from the educators and policymakers who
are defining standards for new media literacy in the adult-dominated world. Building more bridges among these
different communities of practice could shape awareness on both the in-school and out-of-school sides, if we
could respond in a coordinated and mutually respectful way to the quickly evolving norms and expertise of
technically sophisticated experimental new media literacies.

Peer-Based Learning Has Unique Properties That Suggest Alternatives to Formal

Instruction.
We see peer-based learning in networked publics in the mainstream friendship-driven sites like MySpace
and Facebook as well as in geeked out interest-driven groups. In these settings, the focus of learning and
engagement is not defined by institutional accountabilities but rather emerges from kids’ interests and everyday
social communication. Although learning in both of these contexts is driven primarily by the peer group, the
structure and the focus of the peer group differ substantially, as does the content of the learning and
communication. While friendship-driven participation is largely in the mode of hanging out and negotiating
issues of status and belonging in local, given peer networks, interest-driven participation happens in more
distributed and intentional knowledge networks. In both the friendship-driven and interest driven networks,
however, peers are an important driver of learning. Peer-based learning is characterized by a context of
reciprocity, where participants feel they can both produce and evaluate knowledge and culture. Whether it is
comments on MySpace or on a fan fiction forum, participants both contribute their own content and comment
on the content of others. More expert participants provide models and leadership but do not have authority over
fellow participants. When these peer negotiations occur in a context of public scrutiny, youth are motivated to
develop their identities and reputations through these peer-based networks, exchanging comments and links and
jockeying for visibility. These efforts at gaining recognition are directed at a network of respected peers rather
than formal evaluations of teachers or tests. In contrast to what they experience under the guidance of parents
and teachers, with peer-based learning we see youth taking on more “grown-up” roles and ownership of their
own self-presentation, learning, and evaluation of others.
In contexts of peer-based learning, adults can still have an important role to play, though it is not a
conventionally authoritative one. In friendship-driven practices, direct adult participation is often unwelcome,
but in interest-driven groups we found a much stronger role for more experienced participants to play. Unlike
instructors in formal educational settings, however, these adults are passionate hobbyists and creators, and youth
see them as experienced peers, not as people who have authority over them. These adults exert tremendous
influence in setting communal norms and what educators might call “learning goals,” though they do not have
direct authority over newcomers. The most successful examples we have seen of youth media programs are
those based on kids’ own passionate interests and allowing plenty of unstructured time for kids to tinker and
explore without being dominated by direct instruction. Unlike classroom teachers, these lab teachers and youth-
program leaders are not authority figures responsible for assessing kids’ competence, but are rather what Dilan
Mahendran has called “co-conspirators,” much like the adult participants in online interest-driven groups. In
this, our research aligns with Chavez and Soep,51 who identified a “pedagogy of collegiality” that defines adult-
youth collaboration in what they see as successful youth media programs.
Kids’ participation in networked publics suggests some new ways of thinking about the role of public
education. Rather than thinking of public education as a burden that schools must shoulder on their own, what
would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and
institutions? And rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what
would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids’ participation in public life more generally, a
public life that includes social, recreational, and civic engagement? And finally, what would it mean to enlist
help in this endeavor from an engaged and diverse set of publics that are broader than what we traditionally
think of as educational and civic institutions? In addition to publics that are dominated by adult interests, these
publics should include those that are relevant and accessible to kids now, where they can find role models,
recognition, friends, and collaborators who are co-participants in the journey of growing up in a digital age. We
hope that our research has stimulated discussion of these questions.
NOTES

1. David Buckingham, Beyond Technology: Children’s Learning in the Age of Digital Culture (Malden, MA:
Polity, 2007), 96.
2. Maggie Griffith and Susannah Fox, “Hobbyists Online,” in Pew Internet & American Life Project
(Washington, DC: Pew/Internet, 2007); Amanda Lenhart and others, “Teens and Social Media: The Use of
Social Media Gains a Greater Foothold in Teen Life as They Embrace the Conversational Nature of
Interactive Online Media,” in Pew Internet & American Life Project (Washington, DC: Pew/Internet,
2007), http://www.pewInternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Social_Media_Final.pdf; Lee Rainie, “Video Sharing
Websites,” in Pew Internet & American Life Project (Washington, DC: Pew/Internet, 2008); Donald F.
Roberts, Ulla G. Foehr, and Victoria Rideout, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds (Menlo
Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005).
3. See for example Naomi S. Baron, Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (Oxford, UK,
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); David Buckingham, ed., Youth, Identity, and Digital
Media. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda, eds., Personal,
Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005); Rich Ling, The
Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society (San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman, 2004);
Sonia Livingstone, “Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation: Teenagers’ Use of Social
Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy, and Self-Expression,” New Media & Society 10 no. 3 (2008): 393-
411; Sharon Mazzarella, ed., Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity (New
York: Peter Lang, 2005).
4. See Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, Cyberkids: Children in the Information Age (London:
RoutledgeFalmer, 2003); Sonia Livingstone, Young People and New Media (London, UK, and Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002).
5. Full descriptions of individual research studies conducted by members of the Digital Youth Project are
provided online at http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/projects.
6. William A. Corsaro, The Sociology of Childhood (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1997), 8.
7. Corsaro, Sociology of Childhood; Gary Alan Fine, “Adolescence as Cultural Toolkit: High School Debate
and the Repertoires of Childhood and Adulthood,” The Sociological Quarterly 24 no.1 (2004):1–20;
Allison James and Alan Prout, eds., Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in
the Sociological Study of Childhood (Philadelphia, PA: RoutledgeFarmer, 1997); Michael Wyness,
Childhood and Society: An Introduction to the Sociology of Childhood (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2006).
8. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York
University Press, 2006).
9. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York and London:
Routledge, 1992); Jenkins, Convergence Culture; Joe Karaganis, “Presentation,” in Structures of
Participation in Digital Culture, ed. Joe Karaganis (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2007),
8–16; Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge,
UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
10. Mizuko Ito, “Engineering Play: Children’s Software and the Productions of Everyday Life” (PhD diss.,
Stanford University, 2003); Mizuko Ito, “Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play: The Case of
Japanese Media Mixes,” in The International Handbook of Children, Media, and Culture, eds. Kirsten
Drotner and Sonia Livingstone (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2008), 397–412.
11. Arjun Appadurai and Carol A. Breckenridge, “Why Public Culture,” Public Culture 1 no.1 (1988): 5–9.
12. Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006); Mizuko Ito, “Introduction,” in Networked Publics, ed.
Kazys Varnelis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming); Jenkins, Convergence Culture; Clay Shirky,
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations (New York: Penguin Press,
2008); Kazys Varnelis, ed., Networked Publics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming).
13. See Vivian Chávez and Elisabeth Soep, “Youth Radio and the Pedagogy of Collegiality,” Harvard
Educational Review 75 no. 4 (2005): 409–34; Glynda Hull, “At Last Youth Culture and Digital Media:
New Literacies for New Times,” Research in the Teaching of English 38 no. 2 (2003):229–33; Jabari
Mahiri, ed., What They Don’t Learn in School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth (New York: Peter
Lang, 2004).
14. Penelope Eckert, “Vowels and Nail Polish: The Emergence of Linguistic Style in the Preadolescent
Heterosexual Marketplace” in Gender and Belief Systems, eds. Natasha Warner and others (Berkeley, CA:
Berkeley Women and Language Group, 1996), 183–90.
15. Ito et al., Hanging Out.
16. See Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard, eds., Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in
Twentieth-Century America (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Julie Bettie, Women without
Class: Girls, Race, and Identity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2003);
Penelope Eckert, Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School (New York:
Teachers College, 1989); Jonathon S. Epstein, ed., Youth Culture: Identity in a Postmodern World
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Press, 1998); C.J. Pascoe, “Dude, You’re a Fag”: Masculinity and Sexuality in
High School (Berkeley, CA, and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2007); Pamela Perry,
Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identities in High School (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2002); Robert Snow, “Youth, Rock ’n’ Roll and Electronic Media,” Youth & Society 18 no. 4 (1987): 326–
43; Barrie Thorne, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1993).
17. See Heather A. Horst, Becky Herr-Stephenson, and Laura Robinson, “Media Ecologies,” in Ito et al.,
Hanging Out.
18. Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1972); William A. Corsaro,
Friendship and Peer Culture in the Early Years (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985); Thomas Frank, The
Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1997); James Burkhart Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage: America’s Reaction to
the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Thomas Hine, The Rise
and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Perennial, 1999); Snow, “Youth, Rock ’n’ Roll and
Electronic Media.”
19. Ito, “Mobilizing the Imagination.”
20. This and all other parenthetical references are to the Digital Youth Project; a description is provided in
Appendix I.
21. Baron, Always On.
22. Misa Matsuda, “Mobile Communication and Selective Sociality,” in Ito, Okabe, and Matsuda, Personal,
Portable, Pedestrian, 123–42.
23. Mizuko Ito and Daisuke Okabe, “Intimate Connections: Contextualizing Japanese Youth and Mobile
Messaging” in Inside the Text: Social, Cultural and Design Perspectives on SMS, eds. Richard Harper,
Leysia Palen, and Alex Taylor (New York: Springer, 2005), 137.
24. See C.J. Pascoe, “Intimacy,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
25. Like many teens, Missy wrote using typical social media shorthand. Translated, her comment would read:
 “Hey, hmm, what to say? I don’t know. Laughing out loud. Well I left you a comment … You should feel
special haha (smiley face).
26. “G” is slang for “gangsta,” in this case an affectionate term for a friend.
27. We capitalize the term “Friends” when we are referring to the social network site feature for selecting
Friends.
28. Pascoe, “Intimacy.”
29. danah boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social
Life,” in Buckingham, Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, 119–42; danah boyd, “Friendship,” in Ito et al.,
Hanging Out.
30. Entertainment Software Association, Facts and Research Top Ten Facts 2007. Retrieved June 28, 2007
(http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp); see also Reed Stevens, Tom Satwicz, and Laurie McCarthy, “In-
Game, In-Room, In-World: Reconnecting Video Game Play to the Rest of Kids’ Lives,” in The Ecology of
Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning, ed. Katie Salen. The John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007),
41–66.
31. Entertainment Software Association, Facts and Research.
32. Heather A. Horst, “Families,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out; Mizuko Ito and Matteo Bittanti, “Gaming,” in Ito
et al., Hanging Out.
33. Heather A. Horst, “The Miller Family: A Portrait of a Silicon Valley Family,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
34. Lisa Tripp, “Michelle,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
35. Maya B. Eagleton and Elizabeth Dobler, Reading the Web: Strategies for Internet Inquiry (New York:
Guilford Press, 2007); Eszter Hargittai, “Do You ‘Google’? Understanding Search Engine Popularity
Beyond the Hype,” First Monday 9 no. 3 (2004) retrieved June 28, 2008
(http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_3/hargittai/index.html); Eszter Hargittai, “The Social, Political,
Economic, and Cultural Dimensions of Search Engines: An Introduction,” Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 12 no. 3 (2007), article 1 retrieved June 28, 2008
(http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue3/hargittai.html); Laura Robinson, “Information the Wiki Way:
Cognitive Processes of Information Evaluation in Collaborative Online Venues” (paper, International
Communication Association Conference, May 24–28 2007, San Francisco, CA); see also Eszter Hargittai
and Amanda Hinnant, “Toward a Social Framework for Information Seeking,” in New Directions in
Human Information Behavior, ed. Amanda Spink and Charles Cole (New York: Springer, 2006), 55–70;
USC Center for the Digital Future, Ten Years, Ten Trends: The Digital Future Report Surveying the
Digital Future, Year Four (Los Angeles, CA: USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, 2004),
retrieved June 28, 2008 (http://www.digitalcenter.org/downloads/DigitalFutureReport-Year4-2004.pdf).
36. Although a variety of search engines are available to digital youth, across different case studies there are
frequent references to Google. Some youth use various permutations such as “Googling,” “Googled,” and
“Googler” as normative information-seeking language. The ubiquitous nature of Google may indicate that
the idea of “Googling” has been normalized into the media ecology of digital youth such that for many
Googling may be considered synonymous with information seeking itself.
37. See Patricia G. Lange and Mizuko Ito, “Creative Production,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
38. Dan Perkel, “Copy and Paste Literacy? Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile,” in
Informal Learning and Digital Media: Constructions, Contexts, Consequences, eds. Kirsten Drotner, Hans
Siggard Jensen, and Kim Schroeder (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).
39. Ito, “Mobilizing the Imagination;” Mizuko Ito and Heather A. Horst, “Neopoints and Neo Economies:
Emergent Regimes of Value in Kids Peer-to-Peer Networks” (paper, American Anthropological
 Association Meetings, November 16, 2006, San Jose, CA), retrieved September 18, 2008
(http://www.itofisher.com/mito/itohorst.neopets.pdf).
40. See boyd, “Friendship;” Pascoe, “Intimacy.”
41. Daisuke Okabe and Mizuko Ito, “Everyday Contexts of Camera Phone Use: Steps Toward Techno-Social
Ethnographic Frameworks,” in Mobile Communications in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Views,
Observations, and Reflections, eds. Joachim Höflich and Maren Hartmann (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2006),
79–102.
42. Mizuko Ito, “Work,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
43. Christo Sims, “Technological Prospecting in Rural Landscapes,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
44. Katynka Z. Martínez, “Being More Than ‘Just a Banker’: DIY Youth Culture and DIY Capitalism in a
High-School Computer Club,” in Ito et al., Hanging Out.
45. See Elizabeth Chin, Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture (Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press, 2001).
46. Anime music videos (AMVs) are remix fan videos, in which editors combine footage from anime with
other soundtracks. Most commonly, editors use popular Euro-American music, but some also edit to movie
trailer or TV ad soundtracks or to pieces of dialogue from movies and TV.
47. Lange and Ito, “Creative Production.”
48. C.J. Pascoe, “‘You Have Another World to Create’: Teens and Online Hangouts,” in Ito et al., Hanging
Out.
49. Vidding, like AMVs, is a process of remixing footage from TV shows and movies to soundtracks of an
editor’s choosing. Unlike AMVs, however, the live-action vidding community has been dominated by
women.
50. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (New York:
Hyperion, 2006).
51. Hyphy is a rap genre that originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and is closely associated lii. with the
late rapper Marc Dre and with Fabby Davis Junior. Hyphy music is often categorized as rhythmically up-
tempo with a focus on eclectic instrumental beat arrangements, and it is also tightly coupled with particular
dance styles.

SOURCE: Mizuko Ito, Heather Horst, Matteo Bittani, Danah Boyd, Becky Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange,
C. J. Pascoe, and Laura Robinson, with Sonja Baumer, Rachel Cody, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Z. Martinez,
Dan Perkel, Christo Sims, and Lisa Trip. Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the
Digital Youth Project, pp. 1-39. Copyright © 2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission of The
MIT Press.
39
RESISTANCE AS A SOCIAL DRAMA
A Study of Change-Oriented Encounters
DANIEL A. MCFARLAND

SOCIAL DRAMAS OF RESISTANCE

The empirical dimension of this article is student resistance to learning. When students resist learning, they
symbolically invert cultural forms in subtle and dramatic ways, such that the norms and pre-established codes of
conduct in the school and classroom are distorted or undermined. As such, resistance is an oppositional form of
nonconformity that can commence drawn-out episodes of conflict, which often span a succession of
interactions. This conflict has the potential to change the normative pattern of interaction in a classroom and
school. Such resistant behavior can be expressed in passive and active forms. Passive resistance is a tacit or
indirect subversion of the normative codes of schooling (Goffman 1961; Scott 1990). In contrast, active
resistance is an open attempt to subvert and undermine teacher instruction and the norms established by school
authorities. Therefore, passive resistance is at most an expression of malcontent and critique (i.e., diagnostic
framing), while active resistance entails an open effort to reject or alter the situation (i.e., prognostic framing;
Benford and Snow 2000).1 Serious forms of resistance, then, are change- oriented efforts that galvanize the
social order and commence a dramatic series of events.
When acts of resistance breach classroom affairs and demobilize participation, they commence an extended
social drama that resembles a story with discernible phases and stages of development and resolution. Social
dramas of resistance first entail a phase of ceremonial deconstruction, where “students are transformed into
combatants and antagonists: hidden grudges and tensions are mobilized for the purpose of rupturing the cultural
axiomatic rules of the school and subverting the grammars of mainstream classical discourse” (McLaren 1986,
p. 83). Dramas of resistance also entail a phase of ceremonial reconstruction, where meanings are reconstructed
such that a new agreement and definition of the situation is formed and actors know how to go on (Van Gennep
1960). As such, social dramas are change-oriented processes wherein an actor’s understanding of what is going
on is undermined, wrought over, and remade. The deconstruction phase of the social drama can be further
reduced to stages of breaching and crisis, and the reconstruction phase can be reduced to stages of redress and
reintegration (Turner 1974, 1982). The aim of the breach is to demobilize the current situation and to posit the
resistance’s ideological position. Hence, resisters adopt aggressive maneuvers that undermine class tasks,
question teacher roles, and attempt to instantiate a new sociocultural order that is either an altered version of the
prior academic framework or another framework altogether (Goffman 1967).
In many regards, resistant acts are student efforts at frame contestation (Benford and Snow 2000, p. 625). In
order to contest and breach academic affairs, students adopt a standpoint or interpretive mode (of, say, the
academic framework or the social framework) and then attack current affairs from that perspective. Often, this
critique, inversion, or profanation of the current social order is accompanied by an alternative interpretation of
events that either reorients the academic framework or jettisons that interpretive model altogether for another
(e.g., a social framework and a person framework). In this manner, students shift the flow of resources and
mobilize participation in directions different from those the teacher desires.
After an initial breach, it is possible for the problem to implode on the resister or for it to expand as it strikes
a chord in the audience. In the latter case, there is a mounting crisis. The breach escalates as one claim of
unfairness snowballs into a series of collective remarks about competence, cruelty, style, and so on. Bystanders
begin to take sides so as to support the rule-breaker or the target of resistant actions (Turner 1982, p. 108), and
the conflict expands as latent tensions manifest and old wounds are reopened. Matters can even escalate to the
point of becoming “coextensive with some dominant cleavage in the widest set of relevant social relations to
which the conflicting or antagonistic parties belong” (Turner 1974, p. 39). In a crisis, the hidden intrigues and
motives of teachers and students are exposed, and the true state of affairs is revealed—there is something
“rotten” in the situation. The public crisis now has liminal characteristics because actors no longer don masks of
their academic roles and they no longer pretend “schooling” is actually happening. Interaction fails, and the
crisis cannot be wished away.
In the crisis, the social drama has reached a turning point as representatives of order are pressed to grapple
with the situation. To limit the spread of the crisis, key actors of either party perform redressive actions that
direct how the classroom situation is to be reconstructed. Key actors have legitimate authority in some form;
they are usually teachers, principals, or popular students representing peer concerns. Efforts to contain the
breach and dispel the crisis are often instigated by the teacher, who uses official or personal authority to get
students back on task (Waller 1932; Metz 1978). At the redressive stage, protagonists and antagonists use rituals
of aggressive facework and engage in character contests as they seek to win others to their cause (Goffman
1967). Teachers use rituals of frame contestation to demobilize student resistance, and they use rituals of frame
alignment to draw students back into academic affairs (e.g., amplifying grades, costs of transgression, relevance
of tasks, etc.). As the crisis becomes more extensive and serious, teachers use increasingly radical efforts at
framing in an effort to co-opt students. In like fashion, students adopt a series of framing efforts to counter the
teacher and to mobilize participants in the direction of their definitional claims. Given these competing efforts at
redress, it is not uncommon for a crisis to escalate even further and eventually to make the annihilation or
removal of some party a necessary condition for the conflict’s resolution (Turner 1974, pp. 39–41). It is also
possible that the drama may stall between crisis and redress as responses get debated and disparately received.
Eventually, the drama reaches a final stage (see Figure 39.1) where participants either reintegrate the
situation or recognize that an irreparable schism or a state of dissonance exists between the contesting parties
(Turner 1974, pp. 41–42).2 In reintegration, certain frame alignment and frame contestation strategies succeed
in convincing class members how the social situation should progress. In most cases of reintegration, the teacher
wins and the prior social order is reproduced, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the prior social order. In
such instances, the student opposition commences a remedial interchange by acknowledging its failure and
complying with teacher demands (Goffman 1967). However, this reintegration is often accomplished through
displays of humor and complaint that enable the resistance to save face. In other instances, participants will
negotiate a resolution such that combative parties become allies, asymmetric ties between teachers and student
become reciprocal, and status differences are rendered more egalitarian. In such cases, the contesting parties
will either engage in open negotiations by offering concessions and compromises aimed at mutual gain, or they
will engage in closed negotiations where parties avoid offering concessions or apologies and only begrudgingly
compromise (Woods 1978). It is also possible for the student resistance to win and to create a social revolution
in the classroom social order by transforming the classroom situation as planned. In these cases, it is the teacher
who begrudgingly acknowledges the failure of the prescribed academic affairs, and the teacher’s action is
subsumed by the mores students define.
Most every social drama of student resistance is resolved within a single class period. However, once
enacted each of these social dramas can become an agreed-upon pathway for conflict resolution. Participants
recall how similar problems were collectively managed in the past, and they invoke the memory of those
narratives to repeat or further their academic or resistant efforts. Hence, even though dramas have immediate
resolutions, they may be repeatedly enacted and invoked as a means to more substantial, long-term change in
the social order. Ad hoc narratives become important resources for future resistance episodes.
In what follows, I describe a few extended examples where breaches are either undermined or reinforced so
as to illustrate the process by which crises mount. In the examples, there are stages of breach, crisis, redress, and
resolution, so my descriptions jump ahead somewhat beyond the article’s current stage of explanation. In the
next section, on redress, I will come back to these examples and describe how responses can escalate or
diminish the crisis.
The first example shows that not all breaches of the social order escalate and draw in the wider populace so
as to become a serious social drama. The episode comes from my field notes on a tenth grade English class at
Rural High. It describes a student breach that implodes on itself when a relatively unpopular female student,
Heather, challenges the teacher but is undermined by her peers (re677, 10/31/97).

Example 1
Failed crisis.—Today I observed a loud, uncomfortable episode of interaction: a student named Heather openly
challenges the teacher and finds herself undermined by peers. Without being provoked the student shouts at the
teacher in a confrontational manner as they write in their daily journals, “Why do you give us all this work,
make us write all this stuff, and we do it, and it then sits in a folder useless! What’s the point?! There isn’t one is
there?!” This comment leads to a brief hush but is quickly followed by side comments from two boys sitting
near her, “Shut up, Heather.” “Yeah, shut up.” Heather looks visibly upset and then shouts at them, “You shut
up assholes!! I’m tired of you guys’ shit!” She even strikes one on the shoulder really hard, but their reaction is
just to laugh and scoot their chairs away from her. At this point, the teacher asks her what she meant, but she is
so angry at the two boys that she drops her attack on the teacher and says, “Forget it!” The teacher then moves
on in the lesson, but Heather sits fuming at the boys for the remainder of the class period.

Figure 39.1 Resistance as Social Drama

This was an uncomfortable episode to observe because Heather makes a big scene when she confronts the
teacher and then an even bigger one when she shouts and hits her classmates. Her challenge was active and
loud, but it was not reinforced by peers. She did not represent the class’s views and lacked the social support
required to mount an extensive crisis that would undermine and redirect academic affairs.
The next example also involves a student challenge, and it again fails to diffuse throughout the class.
However, this episode shows how a student can work the audience to extend the breach, while the teacher can
work the audience to redress and contain any resistance effort. The episode takes place in an accelerated
trigonometry class at Magnet High (mm173, 2/4/97). A popular African-American female, Jocelyn, jumps to the
defense of her peers in disputes with her teacher, Mr. M, who is a rigid taskmaster.

Example 2
Challenge followed by crisis management.—In lesson today, Jocelyn interrupts the teacher, who is explaining
math problems from the board (recitation and demonstration). She asks him about more difficult math problems
that he says he will answer later as the lesson progresses. But she grows angry at being put on hold and
challenges the teacher from her seat, saying, “We know that already! Let’s go on!” There is a brief hush in the
class this time, but again, the teacher asks Jocelyn to hold off just a little longer. Jocelyn repeats her challenge
and interrupts the lesson yet again. This time, the teacher demands she desist or take a detention.
At this point, Jocelyn withdraws from the lesson and starts griping quietly to her neighbors. Mr. M sees this
and seems to adopt certain strategies of action to legitimate the lesson and his instructional style. He offsets his
sanctioning of Jocelyn by complimenting other students who participate correctly. “Todd, what do we do here?”
“Right, very good!” Moreover, he acts as if nothing is wrong and attempts to draw others implicitly to his side
in the dispute. “I want this to be crystal clear, you see? . . . It will be on the test and probably on the PSAT too,
you see?” In certain regards, Mr. M tries to convince the class (and Jocelyn) that he is right by showing them
that students are successfully learning the material his way. I interpret this as an intentional countermove to
Jocelyn’s recruitment effort because he continually monitors her reactions. Meanwhile, Jocelyn covertly turns to
her friends and neighbors to generate support for her cause. She complains about the teacher to her neighbor and
privately mocks his mannerisms with distorted facial expressions. She even frames others’ experiences as
similar to her own in an effort to align perspectives and build consensus. A neighboring student, Jennifer, asks
Mr. M a question, and he answers it by discussing another problem like it rather than explaining the same one
again. After the exchange, Jocelyn turns to Jennifer and says, “Did he answer your question?” Jennifer replies,
“No!” Jocelyn agrees, “I didn’t think so. He gets me soo mad!” Jennifer agrees, “Yup, me too!” Thus, Jocelyn
and Jennifer share interpretations and align their opinions. This reinforces Jocelyn’s initial breach and
encourages her to try again.
At another point in the lesson, Jocelyn openly reinforces another student’s dispute so as to give voice to her
own anger and discontent. A couple of seats away from her, a student asks if it is fair to use a state exam as part
of their grade in the class. The teacher does not understand the question and simply restates that the exam is part
of their grade. Jocelyn then comes to that student’s defense, shouting, “No! You didn’t answer her question!”
Mr. M glares at Jocelyn and warns her, “One more time Jocelyn, one more time! [and detention].” The conflict
becomes covert as teacher and student play the audience to their sides once again.3
Jocelyn makes explicit attempts to diffuse her anger and acquire the support of peers for the challenges she
directs at the teacher. The teacher redresses the breach by containing it and mobilizing support in his direction
as well. As a result, Jocelyn’s challenges are kept under control but fester for another day.
A mounting crisis will not just happen. In this class, many of the students are alienated from the tasks and
the teacher, but they have infrequent opportunity to mount a crisis and negotiate changes in the academic frame
because the teacher tightly controls participation via recitation routines. That means he carefully monitors
student behavior and catches transgressions whenever they arise in mild forms. In this context, Jocelyn breaches
the tasks and then works to build reinforcement to her view, while the teacher suppresses her breaches and
works to acquire reinforcement for academic affairs. Relative to other classes, this classroom is very “stable”
and “controlled,” but this stability and control is less an “equilibrium state” than a negotiation process where
protagonists and antagonists work to mobilize audience members to become constituents and adherents of their
cause.
A third episode describes a crisis that successfully mounts and eventually undermines a lesson because the
students reinforce the claims of a resistant student. In this class, the social drama opens when a student refuses
to comply with the prescribed task for personal reasons (rh349, 9/5/96).

Example 3
Rebellion grows into crisis.—The teacher for a basic-level tenth grade English class asks students to speak in
front of their peers. Students are asked to either read a paragraph they wrote or talk about a topic that interests
them. The teacher calls upon one student who refuses:

Teacher: Okay Chris, it’s your turn [to talk].

Chris: I don’t feel like it!
Teacher: C’mon Chris, there must be something you can say. [The teacher offers Chris
encouragement and extends the scope of relevance so he can speak on whatever he
likes.]
Chris: There’s lots I don’t want to talk about. . . . I don’t like talking in front of people.
 Peers: He shouldn’t have to talk if he doesn’t want to! [Chris’s friends and neighbors reinforce
his rationale for not speaking.]

An argument ensues, and the lesson fails from students’ supporting the refusal to speak on personal grounds
(i.e., “personal rights”). Some even elaborate, explaining that they see the school psychologist to talk about
themselves if they want to (several are troubled individuals who do use the on-site counseling program). The
student who refused also happens to be physically handicapped, and this was the second week that the teacher
had been in a classroom alone with his students. It appeared as if the students “worked” whatever angle they
could to disassemble tasks and avoid work. At the same time, this new teacher was trying to “get by.” He
confessed to me after this class that he made up the lesson as he went—they were to give speeches and then
remark on what was said—and that he lacked a lesson plan since things seldom went as planned anyway.4
Chris’s refusal is reinforced by his peers, and the teacher finds it difficult to argue with this stand presented
from the person frame. The point here is that the crisis mounts by peers’ elaborating and reinforcing the
ideological standpoint that justifies the student’s rebellion. The teacher’s inability to contain their resistance
eventually leads to the task’s demise.
In each of these examples, the extent of the crisis differed. In the first, the crisis was brief and the breach
imploded in on itself from lack of support. In the second, the crisis was again brief due to teacher containment
efforts, but, nonetheless, we saw how students attempted to broaden the sense of discontent and shore up
reinforcement for future episodes of resistance. In the third example, the breach quickly diffused and got
reinforced while the teacher was unable to mount a redress that would save the task from being demobilized on
personal grounds. All three episodes entail active resistance that develops into crises, but only the third diffuses
enough to pit all the students against the teacher.
More extensive, dramatic crises than these tend to arise from repeated cycles of crisis and redress that
ratchet up the stakes and pit all the students against the teacher. In a full-blown crisis, the legitimacy of the
academic role frame is undermined (not just a task), and its repair requires some form of structural change so
that the class can be reintegrated. In the next section, I turn to rituals of redress that are adopted by teachers, so
as to contain a crisis, thwart resistance efforts, and redirect the classroom audience back on task.
In the redress stage, each party presents their solution to the crisis, tries to attract support, and takes
aggressive definitional measures against (Fligstein 2001). Hence, whereas the breach emphasizes deconstruction
and usually offers only vague prognoses, the redress stage is characterized by debate. When a teacher is faced
with student resistance, the first response is to counterattack the resistance so as to contain the breach, and the
second response is to draw participants back into the prescribed academic affairs (i.e., the academic frame).
Conversely, the resisters counterattack the teacher’s claims and academic affairs, trying to convince additional
persons to be defiant. As such, the stage of redress is characterized by contestation and alignment maneuvers. In
field observations and interviews, it is apparent that every type of frame-alignment strategy had an opposite
form of frame contestation. Drawing on Snow and colleagues’ initial description of framing, I relate four types
of frame alignment/contestation: amplify/dampen, bridge/detach, extend/limit, and transform/reverse (Snow et
al. 1986). The analytic distinction of these opposing maneuvers is useful because it highlights the fact that, in a
crisis, actors take sides so that, on the one hand, they act as protagonists of their own frame and, on the other,
they act as antagonists of other interpretive frames. Thus, frame alignment strategies are adopted by
protagonists to attract others to one’s own frame, and contestation strategies are adopted by antagonists to
malign a competing frame (whether it be a resistant stand or other collective action frame).
Social dramas of resistance come full circle when students and teacher reach some resolution or working
agreement to their conflict or when they acknowledge an irreparable schism. At this point, the students have
consistently staged challenges and rebellions, and the teacher has come to recognize that the lesson can no
longer proceed “as usual.” This crisis impels the teacher to align and adjust the academic framework such that,
on the one hand, participants are drawn in that reinforce the instructional efforts and, on the other, participants
that disrupt or thwart such efforts are kept out. At the same time, the resistance adopts mirror moves, drawing in
recruits to their defiance and disrupting the teacher’s tasks. Both the teacher’s effort at controlling resistance
and the students’ effort to foster it may not take hold and overcome the crisis. Hence, a series of such conflicts
may arise before teacher and student perspectives realign. It is this final stage of reintegration that the article
turns to next.
Reintegration of the classroom situation takes place when students and teacher agree on “what is going on”
and “how to proceed.” When students and teacher interpret events from the same framework (whether old,
altered, or new) and gesture their acceptance of the situation, the class begins to move on in a collaborative
manner. As such, resolutions to social dramas are accomplished via microrituals of acceptance and outward
displays of agreement that bring the debate to a close. Various forms of reintegration are essentially defined by
who accepts which redress, and how.
Social dramas have at least four states of resolution: reproduction, negotiation, revolution, and schism. Each
outcome is the cumulative result of certain types of breach, degrees of crisis, forms of redress, and rituals of
acceptance that bring the conflict to a close. Reproduction outcomes occur when students lose in their effort at
resistance and get reintegrated into class tasks. Typically, students lose because the breach is weak, the crisis
does not spread, and teacher redress goes unchallenged. Resisters lose and fall back into the fold by signaling
their acceptance of the academic frame that the teacher prescribes. Almost invariably, this process is
accompanied by expressions of reluctance and humor that enable the resister to save face and distance him- or
herself from the failure (Goffman 1961b). Negotiated outcomes occur when a party offers concessions. In these
instances, challenges and mild rebellions breach tasks, crises are more extensive, and teacher redress usually
entails frame extension and bracketed frame transformations. Here, acceptance is acquired via bargaining,
contracts, and signals of acceptance and compliance. Social revolutions arise when the teacher is unable to
contain student rebellions and finds he must concede victory to the students’ social order in some form. Long-
term revolutions arise when a collective rebellion creates a crisis that pits students against teacher, and all the
teacher’s redressive efforts are used up and fail. Here, the teacher is overwhelmed and eventually performs
rituals of avoidance and reluctant compliance, and he is forced to approach students through the social frame
they have established in the setting.
The last outcome of social dramas is not a form of reintegration but of schism. Schisms are unstable
outcomes where all parties agree to live in a state of dissonance because the costs of compromise seem too high.
Schisms follow challenges and rebellions and arise when crises are extensive and the redress is overly harsh. All
too often, a schism results when participants on each side reveal their hidden grudges without resolving them.
As such, both parties move on but with great malice for one another. The situation remains sour as actors voice
animosity and repressed aggression.

• • •

Example 6
Political rebellion to begrudging compliance.—About halfway through the class period, an African-American
student, Tanya, is reading her assignment and stares at her book in disgust. She complains about the assignment
and refuses to do it. Classmates stop their work and turn to listen to her. Tanya’s friend, Clarissa, asks her why,
and Tanya remarks (loud enough so everyone can hear) how “Puerto Rican” is capitalized but “black” is not.
She then elaborates for all to hear that this means the author does not recognize “black” as an identity or
legitimate culture and is therefore racist for not recognizing it as such (the author is Puerto Rican). Clarissa
agrees and adds to Tanya’s claims, “Figures we’d have to read this at Magnet!” Tanya loudly slaps the book
down on her desk and refuses to cater to the “racist” task. Clarissa follows with a loud complaint. Other students
stop their work and stare at the teacher waiting for the response.
The teacher (a middle-age African-American female), Ms. Washington, recognizes this public refusal and
tells Tanya and Clarissa that they are using race as an excuse not to do the work. Tanya denies this and accuses
Ms. Washington of not sticking up for her race. At this, the class and teacher get very quiet, and the teacher asks
Tanya and Clarissa to come out into the hall with her. They follow and are overheard arguing by everyone in the
class. Both question the other’s representation of ethnic identity and take the issue very seriously (racial identity
is claimed as a central facet of the student selves [in survey responses]). I overhear Ms. Washington say, “As an
African-American female, a black woman, I can tell you. . . !” Within 10 minutes, all three march back in, but
Tanya and Clarissa sit quietly, still fuming. Clarissa picks up her work, but Tanya quietly refuses. The rebellion
is contained, but the teacher does not accept Tanya’s refusal to do the assignment and says she will eventually
have to do it.
The next day, Tanya does the work but openly criticizes and challenges the teacher, saying she’s moody and
misinterpreted her refusal (personal frame). The teacher warns Tanya to let it go or else. Tanya then turns to
Clarissa and tries to get further support—”She took it out on us. I have a right to an opinion. She doesn’t make
anything we learn relevant to the real world.” Clarissa does not reinforce her claims and instead tries to
normalize the situation by saying the teacher’s not all bad, even if she’s misguided on this issue. Ms.
Washington goes on to help other students but frequently checks over her shoulder to make sure Tanya’s
complaints do not spread. The drama ends with both students doing the work but occasionally bad-mouthing the
teacher to one another in private (me116, English 12, 3/26/97).5
In sum, this is a case where a rebellion is contained and the task is repaired. The resistance of Tanya is
reinforced by Clarissa, but when the teacher isolates Tanya and Clarissa in the hall, they debate about which
framework is applicable—the academic frame or the one concerning racial equality. When the students and
teacher return to the class, the academic frame subordinates their concerns about racial inequity. Tanya is still
upset about this, but she fails to persuade Clarissa to reinforce further efforts at resistance. The end result is the
girls’ begrudging compliance with the teacher’s demands.
The example illustrates how warring parties frame themselves as agents of particular ideological standpoints
and how they debate the legitimacy of those stands. The immediate concern is to deconstruct the claims of the
other party and shore up those of their own. The end resolution of begrudging compliance also illustrates a
common outcome of many teacher-student arguments. Eventually, most students comply with their teachers, but
they do not fully embrace the outcome of the conflict as part of their virtual selves (Goffman 1961a). This
means students subordinate themselves but carry latent discontent that can manifest as anger in future situations.
Not all social dramas end in reintegrated classrooms. Irreparable schisms can arise where participants get so
entrenched in their opposing views that compromise seems impossible. In these instances, the social drama of
resistance escalates to the point where it is hard to imagine the academic situation being reintegrated without
one of the parties losing their membership in the setting. In fact, the schism is often reinforced by the forced
role-exit of a resistant student, which, in turn, confirms and expands the chasm between teacher and students
(Turner 1974, p. 41). Schisms are therefore dissonant outcomes because the long-term resolution is an
agreement to continue in a state of animosity and it is often sparked by some tragic outcome like role-exit
(Ebaugh 1988).

• • •

Example 10
Chaos and schism.—The first seven minutes of class concern maintenance and are characterized by students
loudly socializing and teasing the teacher. At the end of the segment, the teacher hands back homework and
criticizes the fact that only 8 of the 19 turned in anything. The students openly guffaw at this.
With maintenance out of the way, the teacher starts the day’s assignment and distributes a handout that
describes how sources are cited in research papers (10:17 a.m.). She explains to students that they are to
complete note cards and cite works in their papers. She then reads from the handout, “First, as you take notes
for your research paper, you will be gathering different kinds of information . . . (she continues).” After a couple
of minutes, Jefe, one of the more popular, disinterested students at the back of the class starts complaining. He
exclaims, “This class is so boring!” and the teacher responds with a sanction, “Quiet, Jefe.” Jefe challenges her
further, “You need to make it more interesting!!” (10:18 a.m.), but the teacher ignores Jefe and moves on with
the lesson. “Number two. If you wish to paraphrase . . . (and on she goes).” Meanwhile, students are carrying on
social conversations in private, and several do so openly. A female student named Erin asks the teacher a
clarification question to which the teacher responds. Erin feels the teacher’s response makes little sense. They
snap exchanges that end with the teacher quieting Erin and Erin dismissing the teacher. Erin sarcastically
retorts, “Whatever!” Meanwhile, another student (Angelo) asks, “Why do we need to do this work?” (10:23
a.m.). Mrs. M quickly replies, “Because you’ll flunk if you don’t.” Angelo and Erin then ask odd procedural
questions that throw Mrs. M off. She tries to end this barrage of distracting questions with an honest answer, “I
don’t know.” She then moves on to describe the assignment and her expectations. A couple of minutes later,
another student (Jon) loudly remarks, “This is stupid!” (10:25 a.m.). Mrs. M does not reply to him directly but
to the entire class, and she attempts to mobilize them into a more focused state. She shouts, “Come on! You
guys can handle it!” Mrs. M coaxes them along and explains the assignment yet again but in more simplistic
terms than before. She then attempts to get the class to actually begin writing their research papers.
As the seatwork segment begins, a student at the front of the class (Hanah) challenges the teacher’s
instructional methods, “You are really making too much work for yourself (grading all the speeches and
papers).”
The student is actually trying to persuade the teacher to make the assignment easier in an effort to lessen the
workload (10:27 a.m.). But Mrs. M is on to this and tells Hanah to be quiet and do the work. Moreover, when
publicly addressing Hanah (so that the rest will hear), she tries to justify the task she has assigned so the class
will begin doing it. She argues that if she made the assignment even easier, sure they could do it, but they would
not learn anything.
At the back of the class, Jefe has qualms with this justification. He interrupts the teacher and refers to the
teaching style of his favorite teacher (who, in student surveys, also happens to be the least demanding): “Mr. B
makes it easier and more interesting and we do it (work) in there!!” (10:29 a.m.). A couple of male classmates
agree with Jefe’s claim, thus reinforcing the challenge (to 10:30 a.m.). At this point, the teacher looks
overwhelmed by her students. They continually complain, goof around, interrupt her, and challenge her efforts
to instruct them. The students fight her at every turn.
Mrs. M gets visibly upset and almost shouts at the disgruntled students, stating that she does not care what
other teachers do and that the students need to quit whining and just do the work. She tries to shift from arguing
about the assignment to the students’ actually doing it quietly in their seats.
Jefe says, “Why should I do it? I don’t need this for my future! I’m not going to college! I can just work at
my brother’s club.” (His brother manages a nightclub in a suburb over an hour away; 10:32 a.m.). A male
student across the room (Jon) counterclaims Jefe to say, “Yeah you do!” Mrs. M then tries to build on this
student’s counterclaim by explaining to Jefe that Jon is right and that writing is important even if he does not go
to college. She even tries to give examples of when he will need to write, such as job applications, business
proposals, and so on. However, Jefe is not persuaded by this explanation and continues to complain to the
teacher and those sitting around him (Ryan). He also jokes with a friend across the room (Mike). Jefe’s
neighbors laugh at what he says and reinforce his claims, but the teacher puts her foot down and says, “Just do
it!” After about 30 seconds of quiet, Jefe stands up, loudly crumples his paper into a wad (it consisted of two
sentences he wrote), and tosses it halfway across the room into the waste bin. His classmates laugh and
compliment him on his shot (10:35 a.m.).

Mrs. M: Jefe! Ask me to get out of your seat!

Jefe: [Defiantly, Jefe stands up again and crumples another piece of paper] I can get up or out
whenever I want. Can I get up? [Throws paper across the room into the wastebasket;
few of his peers giggle.]
Mrs. M: You keep it up and you’ll be gone for good.
Zach: Jefe, remember your contract, you’ve used one.
Jefe: Good, do it.
Mrs. M: Okay—you’re gone. [She goes to her desk drawer, pulls out a pink slip and writes him
up—the class is now finally completely quiet. She stands at the front of the room,
holding the pink slip for Jefe.]
Jefe: [Grabbing the slip at the front of the room] I’m happy to not be in here! [Smiles and
walks out the door with the pink slip in hand; 10:37]
 The students are somewhat quiet after Jefe leaves, but within a minute, they begin to openly complain. The
students now complain how harsh Mrs. M was on Jefe, and they take up his cause, albeit in a less rebellious
form. Mrs. M tries to ignore their complaints. Two friends of Jefe joke openly about the teacher, “Yeah she’s a
dumb sub. . . . I hear she lives down by the river!” (implying she’s a hick/loser). The teacher contains student
expressions of discontent by asking them to be quiet and do the work. This maintains some modicum of order,
but the class teeters close to chaos. At one point, two female students shout loudly across the room to each other
and the teacher shouts at them to stop. Both characterize Mrs. M’s shouting at them as overly harsh and say,
“No need to shout, jeez! You need to see a psychiatrist!” This causes an uproar of laughter, as many students
openly joke about the remark with their neighbors. At this, the teacher turns on Eva, who tries to avoid
responsibility, “I just wanted to talk to Sarah (to tell her something)” (10:45 a.m.). Mrs. M makes short
directives and sanctions until everyone is more focused again (“Work, don’t talk!” “Turn around!” “Shhh!”).
After a minute or two, she withdraws to her desk, only intermittently sanctioning students who are very loud.
More students begin to do their work (10 of 18 work on their papers, 8 still openly socialize), but even in this
slightly more sedated state, she must deal with complaints, socializing, and students trying to get out of doing
the homework.
As for Jefe, he was put on out-of-school suspension and never attended Mrs. M’s class again. Students
openly taunted the teacher as overly harsh. Toward the end of the class period, the teacher sanctions a student
for talking, and her friend uses it as an opportunity to bring up the Jefe incident, “Watch out, she might expel
you too!” When the teacher tells Sarah to be quiet, Sarah asks, “Why are you always so mean to Jefe!” The
teacher counters this claim and explains, “I’m not. He was rude and went too far.” Sarah then gives a
counterinterpretation, “He’s nice. He just doesn’t want to look bad, that’s all.” Just then the bell rings and all
interaction comes to a close.
Jefe became somewhat of a martyr, signifying the teacher’s illegitimacy as a leader and leading students to
further distance themselves from tasks (Turner 1974). Students used the Jefe incident to remind the teacher of
how “unfairly” harsh she was. The next day, several students brought the incident up (re683, 12/10/96): Eva
—“Why do you talk about Jefe with other classes? You hate Jefe, don’t you?” (suggesting she was mean and
badmouthing him); Sarah (says to Eva)—”She probably talks about you with her other classes as well.” Hence,
even the severest sanction Mrs. M could apply was eventually used to mock and challenge her, furthering the
tension in the class. Her expulsion of Jefe did have a temporary effect—students made fewer public outbursts in
the next day of class (approximately 15 instead of 32), but the teacher became even more concerned with
control (about 51 teacher reprimands instead of 41).
The example of Jefe and Mrs. M illustrates several things about social dramas and irreparable schisms. First,
initial acts of defiance define the warring parties, and then peer reinforcement and redressive actions serve to
widen the breach and build a mounting crisis. Jefe and the teacher attempt to build coalitions and get
reinforcement for their viewpoints. Jefe seeks his classmates’ approval, and they egg him on. Similarly, the
teacher seeks her pupils’ approval, and she tries to justify her actions and interpretation so as to garner student
support for her side of the dispute. She even builds on a student’s (Jon’s) challenge of Jefe, since this frames
Jefe’s rebellion as an illegitimate effort lacking support and reason. Hence, the social drama’s progression is
mutually constructed and negotiated by teacher and students, as each seeks to establish authority within the
crowd. Second, acts of defiance and redress are repeated and increasingly serious. There arises a mounting crisis
that everyone observes. The teacher’s inability to cope with problems creates a sense of liminality where
anything goes. When the teacher redresses Jefe’s resistant efforts, a crisis arises where the teacher and Jefe
become foes enmeshed in a character contest (Goffman 1967). Third, this episode of rebellion ends in tragedy
when Jefe is expelled. Even though the teacher re-establishes a tenuous academic situation in the class, the
social structure has changed. Students use the episode to goad the teacher into looser sanctions, while the
teacher uses it to threaten students into compliance. As a result, this tragic outcome becomes a key event in the
class’s shared experience, and it is referenced in future conflicts so as to drive a deeper wedge between teacher
and students over time.6
In the case of the schism (example 10), the ad hoc telling of the drama became a tool of the resistance. Jefe’s
dramatic departure from the class was characterized as “overly harsh,” and students would remind the teacher of
this overstep at every turn—”Watch out, she might expel you too!” Over time, this reinforced a situation of
mutual animosity and further divided teacher from students. In sum, then, social drama episodes not only reveal
patterns of immediate social change, but they also become pathways to more substantial, long-term change
when repeatedly invoked or used as a guiding narrative.

CONCLUSION

Social change is often commenced by episodes of resistance. But resistance is not just a discrete act that loses
social relevance after it has been uttered. A series of interactions follow these incipient events and characterize a
larger social process of deconstruction and reconstruction that I have called a social drama of resistance. Every
social drama of resistance is promulgated by intentional actors who cue cultural forms (rituals) in order to guide
interaction in certain desired directions. By viewing resistance as a larger change-oriented process, the
importance of processual units is elevated and sociological research gains a better understanding of how
situations are reproduced, altered, and revolutionized.
This article has illustrated how dramas of resistance can follow certain trajectories of events. Each trajectory
is defined by actors who invoke ritual interactions or framing strategies at each stage of the drama, attempting to
turn the sequence of events in directions most favorable to their preferred definition of the classroom situation.
Most resistant behavior remains passive critique and fails to demobilize academic affairs and incite a social
crisis in the classroom. Jokes and complaints diagnose problems and deconstruct the seriousness of academic
endeavors, but they do not posit an alternative way of doing things. Instead, it is active, collective forms of
resistance like challenges and rebellions that demobilize tasks and posit alternative frameworks of interaction.
These overt forms of nonconformity must find resonance in the classroom audience and must call actors to take
sides or else the breach implodes on itself. However, even when the crisis successfully mounts, it can be
redressed effectively by teachers so as to minimize support for the resistance, undermine the voiced cause, and
reinforce the prior academic routine. Initially, teachers use minor forms of framing and contestation, but
students may reject these efforts and their initial breach may be so severe that the teacher must resort to more
drastic forms of redress, such as extension, limitation, transformation, and reversal. In this iterative cycle of
debate and redress, the platforms of teacher and students get developed and elaborated. The crisis ratchets up
until the collective situation explodes and adopts some form of resolution. Should the resistance retain its
support, collective challenges can result in various negotiated outcomes, while collective rebellion can result in
schism and social revolution. The resolution is therefore contingent on the initial breach and the dynamic
retention of social support as mutually defined in the teacher’s and the students’ persuasive efforts at redress.
What results is a resistance drama that has certain primary channels or patterns of flow across stage-specific
rituals of interaction.
Remiss in this work is some discussion of how larger cultural frames of race, gender, and class affect the
process of resistance dramas (Hoyle and Adger 1998; Antaki and Widdicombe 1998; Turner 2002). There is
research that suggests certain minorities (Goodwin 1980), working-class groups (Willis 1977), and genders
(Tannen 1993) will use different forms of resistance to breach situations. Hence, boys, minorities, and working-
class adolescents may adopt more active rebellious stands, whereas girls, whites, and wealthy adolescents may
adopt more passive forms of noncompliance or challenges (Phelan, Davidson, and Cao 1991). In addition, some
work even suggests that teacher and student strategies of redress may vary due to biased expectations and
attributions of motives (Cummins 1986). This work found only mild evidence for this at the breach stage
(McFarland 2001) and saw most students adopt the remaining maneuvers in equivalent fashion as responses.
However, more systematic research may find that wider categorical frames affect the processual structure of
resistance at every stage, leading actors to perceive a narrower range of appropriate interaction rituals for them
to adopt.
NOTES

1. Goffman makes a similar distinction between disruptive and contained adjustments (1961a, p. 199).
Disruptive and contained adjustments correspond to active and passive forms of resistance.
2. Figure 39.1 is discussed further below.
3. The steps in this episode can be identified as follows: (1) breach task—Jocelyn challenges; (2) crisis—
repeated challenges but no reinforcement (low extent); (3) teacher redress—detach Jocelyn from floor and
narrow relevance to academic frame; (4) reintegrate— reproduction with some schism; (5) teacher
redresses others to build support—bridge and amplify academic frame; (6) Jocelyn redresses neighbors—
bridge, amplify other elements of academic frame; (7) breach task—Jocelyn challenges; (8) crisis—
problem with unspoken reinforcement (low extent); (9) teacher redress—detach and amplify academic
frame (threatens); then basically a repeat of (4) or (5)/(6).
4. A breakdown of the drama’s steps are as follows: (1) breach—refusal-rebel (personal grounds); (2) crisis
—task stops; (3) teacher redress—extension/encouragement to redo; (4) student redress—elaborates
personal grounds for refusal; (5) crisis mounts—peers reinforce.
5. The drama can be broken down as follows: (1) complaint; (2) elaborates resistant stand; (3) friend
reinforces; (4) rebellion—public refusal to do “racist” task; (5) crisis—friend openly reinforces; (6) teacher
redress—counterclaims using racist claim to avoid work (really the individual’s interest, not race); (7)
student redress—insults teacher as disloyal to race; (8) teacher redress—detach and argue; (9) student
redress—argue; (10) teacher redress—stops debate, gives choice; (11) reintegrate—students
comply/schism is latent.
6. Jefe gets expelled for a few days and gets placed in another class. However, the schism of this class
actually expands over time until eventually Mrs. M mysteriously resigns in the middle of the second
semester. The school’s official line was “family obligations,” but it is possible that the job became too
much to bear.

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SOURCE: Daniel MacFarland, “Resistance as a Social Drama: A Study of Change-Oriented Encounters.”

American Journal of Sociology,109:1249–1318 (May 2004). Copyright © 2004, The University of Chicago
Press. Reprinted with permission‥
40
ADOLESCENT MASCULINITY, HOMOPHOBIA, AND
VIOLENCE
Random School Shootings, 1982–2001
MICHAEL S. KIMMEL AND MATTHEW MAHLER

Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no
power.
—Hannah Arendt

Violence is one of the most urgent issues facing our nation’s schools. All over the country, Americans are
asking why some young people open fire, apparently randomly, killing or wounding other students and their
teachers. Are these teenagers emotionally disturbed? Are they held in the thrall of media-generated violence—in
video games, the Internet, rock or rap music? Are their parents to blame?
Indeed, school violence is an issue that weighs heavily on our nation’s consciousness. Students report being
increasingly afraid to go to school; among young people aged 12 to 24, 3 in 10 say violence has increased in
their schools in the past year and nearly two-fifths have worried that a classmate was potentially violent (“Fear
of Classmates,” 1999). More than half of all teens know somebody who has brought a weapon to school
(although more than three-fifths of them did nothing about it), according to a PAX study (“Half of Teens,”
2001). And nearly two thirds (63%) of parents believe a school shooting is somewhat or very likely to occur in
their communities (Carlson & Simmons, 2001). The shock, concern, and wrenching anguish shared by both
children and parents who fear that our nation’s schools may not be safe demands serious policy discussions.
And such discussions demand serious inquiry into the causes of school violence.1
We begin our inquiry with an analysis of the extant commentary and literature on school violence. We argue
that, unfortunately, there are significant lacunae in all of these accounts—the most significant of which is the
fact that they all ignore the one factor that cuts across all cases of random school shootings—masculinity. Thus,
we argue that any approach to understanding school shootings must take gender seriously—specifically the
constellation of adolescent masculinity, homophobia, and violence.
We go on to argue that in addition to taking gender seriously, a reasoned approach to understanding school
shootings must focus not on the form of the shootings—not on questions of family history, psychological
pathologies, or broad-based cultural explanations (violence in the media, proliferation of guns) but on the
content of the shootings—the stories and narratives that accompany the violence, the relationships and
interactions among students, and local school and gender cultures. Using such an approach to interpret the
various events that led up to each of the shootings, we find that a striking similarity emerges between the
various cases. All or most of the shooters had tales of being harassed—specifically, gay-baited—for inadequate
gender performance; their tales are the tales of boys who did not measure up to the norms of hegemonic
masculinity. Thus, in our view, these boys are not psychopathological deviants but rather overconformists to a
particular normative construction of masculinity, a construction that defines violence as a legitimate response to
a perceived humiliation.

MISSING THE MARK

The concern over school shootings has prompted intense national debate, in recent years, over who or what is to
blame. One need not look hard to find any number of “experts” who are willing to weigh in on the issue. Yet
despite the legion of political and scientific commentaries on school shootings, these voices have all singularly
and spectacularly missed the point.
At the vanguard of the debates have been politicians. Some have argued that Goth music, Marilyn Manson,
and violent video games are the causes of school shootings. Then-President Clinton argued that it might be the
Internet; Newt Gingrich credited the 1960s; and Tom DeLay blamed daycare, the teaching of evolution, and
“working mothers who take birth control pills” (“The News of the Week,” 1999, p. 5). Political pundits and
media commentators also have offered a host of possible explanations, of which one of the more popular
answers has been violence in the media. “Parents don’t realize that taking four year-olds to True Lies—a fun
movie for adults but excessively violent—is poison to their brain,” notes Michael Gurian (Lacayo, 1998, p. 39).
Alvin Poussaint, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, wrote that

in America, violence is considered fun to kids. They play video games where they chop people’s heads off
and blood gushes and it’s fun, it’s entertainment. It’s like a game. And I think this is the psychology of these
kids—this “Let’s go out there and kill like on television.” (Klein & Chancer, 2000, p. 132)

And Sissela Bok, in her erudite warning on violence, Mayhem (1999), suggests that the Internet and violent
video games, which “bring into homes depictions of graphic violence . . . never available to children and young
people in the past,” undermine kids’ resilience and self-control (p. 78).
For others, the staggering statistics linking youth violence and the availability of guns point to a possible
cause. Firearms are the second leading cause of death to children between age 10 and 14 and the eighth leading
cause of death to those age 1 to 4 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001). In 1994, 80% of juvenile
murders used a firearm; in 1984, only 50% did (Kelleher, 1998). Barry Krisberg, president of the National
Council on Crime and Delinquency, argues that both the media and guns are at fault. He says, “The violence in
the media and the easy availability of guns are what is driving the slaughter of innocents” (Lacayo, 1998, p. 39).
Or perhaps, if we are to believe National Rifle Association (NRA) president Charlton Heston, the problem is not
that there are too many guns but that there are not enough guns. He argues that had there been armed guards in
the schools, the shooting would have ended instantly (Lacayo, 1998). These accounts, however, that blame a
media purportedly overly saturated by violence and a society infatuated with guns are undercut by two
important facts, which are often conveniently forgotten amid the fracas. The first is that whereas the amount of
violent media content has ostensibly been increasing, both youth violence, in general, and school violence, in
particular, have actually been decreasing since 1980. And second, juvenile violence involving guns has been in
decline since 1994 (largely as a result of the decline of the crack epidemic).2 As Michael Carneal, the boy who
shot his classmates in Paducah, Kentucky, said, “I don’t know why it happened, but I know it wasn’t a movie”
(Blank, 1998, p. 95).
Finally, some have proposed psychological variables, including a history of childhood abuse, absent fathers,
dominant mothers, violence in childhood, unstable family environment, or the mothers’ fear of their children, as
possible explanations (see, e.g., Elliot, Hamburg, & Williams, 1998; Garbarino, 1998). Although these
explanations are all theoretically possible, empirically, it appears as though none of them holds up. Almost all
the shooters came from intact and relatively stable families, with no history of child abuse. If they had
psychological problems at all, they were relatively minor, and the boys flew under the radar of any school
official or family member who might have noticed something seriously wrong. In a term paper, Eric Harris, of
Columbine infamy, quoted Shakespeare’s The Tempest, “Good wombs hath borne bad sons.”
This search for causal variables is also misguided because it ignores a crucial component of all the
shootings. These childhood variables would apply equally to boys and to girls.3 Thus, they offer little purchase
with which to answer the question of why it is that only boys open fire on their classmates.
Government-supported investigations, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) report (O’Toole,
2000), the Surgeon General’s report on youth violence (Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General,
2001), the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2000 (U.S. Department of
Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000), as well as the latest study of bullying (Nansel et al., 2001) all
concentrate on identifying potential psychological or cultural antecedents of school violence, for example,
media influence, drugs and alcohol behavior, Internet usage, father absence, and parental neglect. That is to say,
they focus on “form”—who the perpetrators were—not the “content.” None examine local cultures, local school
cultures, or on gender as an antecedent or risk factor.
Most important for our argument is the fact that these studies have all missed gender. They use such broad
terminology as “teen violence,” “youth violence,” “gang violence,” “suburban violence,” and “violence in the
schools” as though girls are equal participants in this violence. Conspicuously absent is any mention of just who
these youth or teens are who have committed the violence. They pay little or no attention to the obvious fact that
all the school shootings were committed by boys—masculinity is the single greatest risk factor in school
violence. This uniformity cuts across all other differences among the shooters: Some came from intact families,
others from single-parent homes; some boys had acted violently in the past, others were quiet and unsuspecting;
and some boys also expressed rage at their parents (two killed their parents the same morning), whereas others
seemed to live in happy families. And yet, if the killers in the schools in Littleton, Pearl, Paducah, Springfield,
and Jonesboro had all been girls, gender would undoubtedly be the only story (Kimmel, 2001; see also Klein &
Chancer, 2000). Someone might even blame feminism for causing girls to become violent in vain imitation of
boys.
But the analytic blindness of these studies runs deeper than gender. We can identify two different waves of
school violence since 1980. In the first, from 1982 to 1991, the majority of all the school shootings were
nonrandom (i.e., the victims were specifically targeted by the perpetrators). Most were in urban, inner-city
schools and involved students of color. Virtually all involved handguns, all were sparked by disputes over
girlfriends or drugs, and all were committed by boys.
These cases have not entirely disappeared, but they have declined dramatically. Since 1992, only 1 of the
random school shootings occurred in inner-city schools (it was committed by a Black student), whereas the
remaining 22 have been committed by White students in suburban schools. Virtually all involved rifles, not
handguns—a symbolic shift from urban to rural weaponry. However, once again, all shootings were committed
by boys.
As the race and class of the perpetrators have shifted, so too has the public perception of school violence.
No longer do we hear claims about the “inherent” violence of the inner city or, what is even more pernicious,
the “inherently” violent tendencies of certain racial or ethnic groups. As the shooters have become White and
suburban middle-class boys, the public has shifted the blame away from group characteristics to individual
psychological problems, assuming that these boys were deviants who broke away from an otherwise genteel
suburban culture—that their aberrant behavior was explainable by some psychopathological factor. Although it
is no doubt true that many of the boys who committed these terrible acts did have serious psychological
problems, such a framing masks the significant role that race and class, in addition to gender, play in school
violence. If all the school shooters had been poor African American boys in inner-city schools, it is much less
likely that their acts would have been seen as deviant or pathological. Instead, discussions would have centered
on the effects of the culture of poverty or the “normality” of violence among inner-city youth.

WHO SHOOTS AND WHY?

Still, most students—White or non-White, male or female—are not violent, schools are predominantly safe, and
school shootings are aberrations. As a public, we seem concerned with school shootings because its story is not
“when children kill” but specifically when suburban White boys kill. To illustrate the distribution of shootings
across the country, we have mapped all cases of random school shootings since 1982 (see Figure 40.1). There
were five cases documented between 1982 and 1991; there have been 23 cases since 1992 (see the appendix for
a list of the shootings).
Figure 40.1 reveals that school shootings do not occur uniformly or evenly in the United States, which
makes one skeptical of uniform cultural explanations such as violent video games, musical tastes, Internet,
television, and movies. School shootings are decidedly not a national trend. Of 28 school shootings between
1982 and 2001, all but 1 were in rural or suburban schools (1 in Chicago). All but 2 (Chicago again and Virginia
Beach) were committed by a White boy or boys. The Los Angeles school district has had no school shootings
since 1984; in 1999, San Francisco, which has several programs to identify potentially violent students, had
only two kids bring guns to school.
School shootings can be divided even further, along the lines of a deep and familiar division in American
society (see Figure 40.2).
Contrary to Alan Wolfe’s assertion that we are “one nation, after all,” it appears that we are actually two
nations: “red states” (states that voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election) and “blue states”
(states that voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election). Of the 28 school shootings, 20 took place in red states
(marked with light gray in Figure 40.2). Of those in the blue states (marked with dark gray in Figure 40.2), 1
was in suburban Oregon, 1 was in rural (Eastern) Washington, 2 were in Southern California, 1 was in rural and
another in suburban Pennsylvania, 1 was in rural New Mexico, and 1 was in Chicago. Of those 8 from blue
states, half of the counties in those blue states (Santee, CA; Red Hill, PA; Moses Lake, WA; and Deming, NM)
voted Republican in the last election.
What this suggests is that school violence is unevenly distributed and that to understand its causes, we must
look locally—both at “gun culture” (percentage of homes owning firearms, gun registrations, NRA
memberships), local gender culture, and local school cultures—attitudes about gender nonconformity, tolerance
of bullying, and teacher attitudes. We need to focus less on the form of school violence—documenting its
prevalence and presenting a demographic profile of the shooters—and more on the content of the shootings;
instead of asking psychological questions about family dynamics and composition, psychological problems, and
pathologies, we need to focus our attention on local school cultures and hierarchies, peer interactions, normative
gender ideologies, and the interactions among academics, adolescence, and gender identity.

Figure 40.1 Map of the United States, Showing All Cases of Random School Shootings,
1982–2001
 With this as our guiding theoretical framework, we undertook an analysis of secondary media reports on
random school shootings from 1982 to 2001. Using the shooters’ names as our search terms, we gathered
articles from six major media sources—the three major weekly news magazines: Time, Newsweek, and U.S.
News and World Report (in order from greatest circulation to least); and three major daily newspapers: USA
Today, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.4 In conducting our analysis, we found a striking
pattern from the stories about the boys who committed the violence: Nearly all had stories of being constantly
bullied, beat up, and, most significantly for this analysis, “gay-baited.” Nearly all had stories of being
mercilessly and constantly teased, picked on, and threatened. And most strikingly, it was not because they were
gay (at least there is no evidence to suggest that any of them were gay) but because they were different from the
other boys—shy, bookish, honor students, artistic, musical, theatrical, nonathletic, “geekish,” or weird. Theirs
are stories of “cultural marginalization” based on criteria for adequate gender performance, specifically the
enactment of codes of masculinity.

Figure 40.2 Map of the United States, Showing All Cases of Random School Shootings,
1982–2001, Superimposed on Map of State-by-State Voting for President,
2000

In a recent interview, the eminent gender theorist Eminem poignantly illustrated the role of “gay-baiting” in
peer interactions. In his view, calling someone a “faggot” is not a slur on his sexuality but on his gender. He
says,

The lowest degrading thing that you can say to a man . . . is to call him a faggot and try to take away his
manhood. Call him a sissy. Call him a punk. “Faggot” to me doesn’t necessarily mean gay people. “Faggot”
to me just means taking away your manhood. (Kim, 2001, p. 5)
 In this rationalization, Eminem, perhaps unwittingly, speaks to the central connection between gender and
sexuality and particularly to the association of gender nonconformity with homosexuality. Here, homophobia is
far less about the irrational fears of gay people, or the fears that one might actually be gay or have gay
tendencies, and more the fears that heterosexuals have that others might (mis)perceive them as gay (Kimmel,
1994). Research has indicated that homophobia is one of the organizing principles of heterosexual masculinity,
a constitutive element in its construction (see, e.g., Epstein, 1995, 1998; Herek, 1998, 2000; Herek & Capitano,
1999). And as an organizing principle of masculinity, homophobia—the terror that others will see one as gay, as
a failed man— underlies a significant amount of men’s behavior, including their relationships with other men,
women, and violence. One could say that homophobia is the hate that makes men straight.
There is much at stake for boys and, as a result, they engage in a variety of evasive strategies to make sure
that no one gets the wrong idea about them (and their manhood). These range from the seemingly comic
(although telling), such as two young boys occupying three movie seats by placing their coats on the seat
between them, to the truly tragic, such as engaging in homophobic violence, bullying, menacing other boys,
masochistic or sadistic games and rituals, excessive risk taking (drunk or aggressive driving), and even sexual
predation and assault. The impact of homophobia is felt not only by gay and lesbian students but also by
heterosexuals who are targeted by their peers for constant harassment, bullying, and gay-baiting. In many cases,
gay-baiting is “misdirected” at heterosexual youth who may be somewhat gender nonconforming. This fact is
clearly evidenced in many of the accounts we have gathered of the shootings.
For example, young Andy Williams, recently sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for shooting and killing
two classmates in Santee, California, and wounding several others was described as “shy” and was “constantly
picked on” by others in school. Like many of the others, bullies stole his clothes, his money, and his food, beat
him up regularly, and locked him in his locker, among other daily taunts and humiliations (Green & Lieberman,
2001). One boy’s father baited him and called him a “queer” because he was overweight. Classmates described
Gary Scott Pennington, who killed his teacher and a custodian in Grayson, Kentucky, in 1993 as a “nerd” and a
“loner” who was constantly teased for being smart and wearing glasses (Buckley, 1993). Barry Loukaitas, who
killed his algebra teacher and two other students in Moses Lake, Washington, in 1996 was an honor student who
especially loved math; he was also constantly teased and bullied and described as a “shy nerd” (“Did Taunts
Lead to Killing?” 1996). And Evan Ramsay, who killed one student and the high school principal in Bethel,
Alaska, in 1997 was also an honor student who was teased for wearing glasses and having acne (Fainaru, 1998).
Luke Woodham was a bookish and overweight 16-year-old in Pearl, Mississippi. An honor student, he was
part of a little group that studied Latin and read Nietzsche. Students teased him constantly for being overweight
and a nerd and taunted him as “gay” or “fag.” Even his mother called him fat, stupid, and lazy. Other boys
bullied him routinely and, according to one fellow student, he “never fought back when other boys called him
names” (Holland, 1997, p. 1). On October 1, 1997, Woodham stabbed his mother to death in her bed before he
left for school. He then drove her car to school, carrying a rifle under his coat. He opened fire in the school’s
common area, killing two students and wounding seven others. After being subdued, he told the assistant
principal, “The world has wronged me” (Lacayo, 1998, p. 38). Later, in a psychiatric interview, he said,

I am not insane. I am angry. . . . I am not spoiled or lazy; for murder is not weak and slow-witted; murder is
gutsy and daring. I killed because people like me are mistreated every day. I am malicious because I am
miserable. (Chua-Eoan, 1997, p. 54)

Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal was a shy and frail freshman at Heath High School in Paducah,
Kentucky, barely 5 feet tall, weighing 110 pounds. He wore thick glasses and played in the high school band.
He felt alienated, pushed around, and picked on. Boys stole his lunch and constantly teased him. In middle
school, someone pulled down his pants in front of his classmates (Adams & Malone, 1999). He was so
hypersensitive and afraid that others would see him naked that he covered the air vents in the bathroom. He was
devastated when students called him a “faggot” and almost cried when the school gossip sheet labeled him
“gay.” On Thanksgiving, 1997, he stole two shotguns, two semiautomatic rifles, a pistol, and 700 rounds of
ammunition and after a weekend of showing them off to his classmates, brought them to school hoping that they
would bring him some instant recognition. “I just wanted the guys to think I was cool,” he said. When the cool
guys ignored him, he opened fire on a morning prayer circle, killing three classmates and wounding five others.
Now serving a life sentence in prison, Carneal told psychiatrists weighing his sanity, “People respect me now”
(Blank, 1998, p. 94).
At Columbine High School, the site of the nation’s most infamous school shooting, this connection was not
lost on Evan Todd, a 255-pound defensive lineman on the Columbine football team, an exemplar of the jock
culture that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris found to be such an interminable torment. “Columbine is a clean,
good place, except for those rejects,” Todd said.

Sure we teased them. But what do you expect with kids who come to school with weird hairdos and horns
on their hats? It’s not just jocks; the whole school’s disgusted with them. They’re a bunch of homos. . . . If
you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease ’em. So the whole school would call them homos. (Gibbs
& Roche, 1999, p. 48)

Ben Oakley, a soccer player, agreed. “Nobody liked them,” he said, “The majority of them were gay. So
everyone would make fun of them” (Cullen, 1999). Athletes taunted them: “Nice dress,” they’d say. They
would throw rocks and bottles at them from moving cars. The school newspaper had recently published a rumor
that Harris and Klebold were lovers.
Both were reasonably well-adjusted kids. Harris’s parents were a retired Army officer and a caterer—
decent, well-intentioned people. Klebold’s father was a geophysicist who had recently moved into the mortgage
services business and his mother worked in job placement for the disabled. Harris had been rejected by several
colleges; Klebold was due to enroll at Arizona in the fall. But the jock culture was relentless. Said one friend,

Every time someone slammed them against a locker and threw a bottle at them, I think they’d go back to
Eric or Dylan’s house and plot a little more—at first as a goof, but more and more seriously over time.
(Pooley, 1999, p. 30)

The rest is all too familiar. Harris and Klebold brought a variety of weapons to their high school and
proceeded to walk through the school, shooting whomever they could find. Students were terrified and tried to
hide. Many students who could not hide begged for their lives. The entire school was held under siege until the
police secured the building. In all, 23 students and faculty were injured and 15 died, including one teacher and
the perpetrators.
In the videotape made the night before the shootings, Harris says, “People constantly make fun of my face,
my hair, my shirts.” Klebold adds, “I’m going to kill you all. You’ve been giving us shit for years.” What
Klebold said he had been receiving for years apparently included constant gay-baiting, being called “queer,”
“faggot,” “homo,” being pushed into lockers, grabbed in hallways, and mimicked and ridiculed with
homophobic slurs. For some boys, high school is a constant homophobic gauntlet and they may respond by
becoming withdrawn and sullen, using drugs or alcohol, becoming depressed or suicidal, or acting out in a blaze
of overcompensating violent “glory” (see Egan, 1998).
The prevalence of this homophobic bullying, teasing, and violence is staggering. According to the Gay,
Lesbian, Straight Education Network, 97% of students in public high school in Massachusetts reported regularly
hearing homophobic remarks from their peers in 1993; 53% reported hearing anti-gay remarks by school staff
(Youth Risk Behavior Surveys, Massachusetts and Vermont; cited in Bronski, 1999). The recent report Hatred
in the Hallways paints a bleak picture of anti-gay harassment but pays significant attention to the ways in which
gender performance—acting masculine—is perceived as a code for heterosexuality (Human Rights Watch,
2001).
And if we are to believe recent research, the effects of such hectoring should not be underestimated. In a
national survey of teenagers’ attitudes, students suggested that peer harassment was the most significant cause
of school shootings (Gaughan, Cerio, & Myers, 2001). Nearly 9 of 10 teenagers said that they believed that the
school shootings were motivated by a desire “to get back at those who have hurt them” (87%) and that “other
kids picking on them, making fun of them, or bullying them” (86%) were the immediate causes. Other potential
causes such as violence on television, movies, computer games, or videos (37%); boredom (18%); mental
problems (56%); access to guns (56%); and prior physical victimization at home (61%) were significantly lower
on the adolescents’ ratings. “If it’s anyone it’ll be the kids that are ostracized, picked on, and constantly made
fun of,” commented one boy (36).
Also interesting is the fact that in all four geographic regions of the country— East, South, Midwest, and
West—students in rural high schools rated their schools as most dangerous; in the South and West, students in
suburban high schools thought their schools more dangerous than urban schools (Gaughan et al., 2001). Equally
interesting is that perceptions of issues related to school shooting varied by race, because Blacks are less likely
than other racial groups to believe that getting back at others could be a reason for violence, less likely to see
bullying as a significant problem than Whites, and less likely to believe that lack of friends could be blamed for
school violence.
Before we continue, let us be completely clear: Our hypotheses are decidedly not that gay and lesbian youth
are more likely to open fire on their fellow students. In fact, from all available evidence, none of the school
shooters was gay. But that is our organizing hypothesis: Homophobia—being constantly threatened and bullied
as if you are gay as well as the homophobic desire to make sure that others know that you are a “real man”—
plays a pivotal and understudied role in these school shootings. But more than just taking gender performance
and its connections to homosexuality seriously, we argue that we must also carefully investigate the dynamics
of gender within these local cultures, especially local school cultures and the typically hegemonic position of
jock culture and its influence on normative assumptions of masculinity, to begin to understand what pushes
some boys toward such horrific events, what sorts of pressures keep most boys cowed in silence, and what
resources enable some boys to resist.
Obviously, some boys—many boys—are picked on, bullied, and gay-baited in schools across the country on
a daily, routine basis. How do they cope? What strategies do they use to maintain their composure, their self-
esteem, and their sense of themselves as men? Unfortunately, there are few answers to these questions in the
existing work that has been done on bullying. When researchers have examined bullying, they have tended to
focus on the prevalence of bullying and occasionally the social characteristics of bullies and victims (Ma, 2001;
Olweus, 1978, 1991; Salmon, James, & Smith, 1998; see especially Smith & Brain, 2000, and the remainder of
that special issue of the journal). But these researchers have yet to address the crucial component of the content
of bullying. As a result, the important questions have yet to be asked. What do bullies say about their victims?
Why are certain students targeted? How do students who are targeted respond? And what are the structural
elements to bullying? What kinds of social supports do bullies get from peers? From teachers and
administrators? Of the limited research that does ask these questions, there seems to be initial support for our
hypothesis. Ma (2001), for example, suggests that bullies are likely to have at one point been victims and that
boys bully more for “indirect compensation,” seeking “revenge on innocent others rather than bullies,” than for
“social power.”
To understand the specificity of these events and the continuing power of gender as an analytic category
through which to view them and the dynamics they represent, we conclude here with three important questions
and suggest some tentative answers.

WHY BOYS AND NOT GIRLS?

Despite the remarkable similarities between the sexes on most statistical measures, the single most obdurate and
intractable gender difference remains violence, both the willingness to see it as a legitimate way to resolve
conflict and its actual use. Four times more teenage boys than teenage girls think fighting is appropriate when
someone cuts to the front of a line. Half of all teenage boys get into a physical fight each year (Kimmel, 2000).
Psychological inventories that measure attitudes and ideologies of masculinity invariably score propensity to
violence and legitimacy of violence as “masculine.” Undoubtedly, violence is normative for most boys (see also
Lefkowitz, 1997).
This association of violence and virility starts early for boys and takes on particular resonance at around age
7 or 8, according to developmental research conducted by Judy Chu (2000). Unlike girls, boys do not lose their
voice, they “gain” a voice, but it is an inauthentic voice of constant posturing, of false bravado, of foolish risk-
taking and gratuitous violence—what some have called the “boy code,” the “mask of masculinity.” The once-
warm, empathic, communicative boy becomes, very early, a stoic, uncommunicative, armor-plated man. They
“ruffle in a manly pose,” as William Butler Yeats once put it, “for all their timid heart.”
Historically, no industrial society other than the United States has developed such a violent “boy culture,” as
historian E. Anthony Rotundo (1993) calls it in his book American Manhood. It is here where young boys, as
late as the 1940s, actually carried little chips of wood on their shoulders daring others to knock it off so that they
might have a fight. It is astonishing to think that “carrying a chip on your shoulder” is literally true—a test of
manhood for adolescent boys. And it is here in the United States where experts actually prescribed fighting for
young boys’ healthy masculine development. The celebrated psychologist G. Stanley Hall, who invented the
term “adolescence,” believed that a nonfighting boy was a “nonentity” and that it was “better even an occasional
nose dented by a fist . . . than stagnation, general cynicism and censoriousness, bodily and psychic cowardice”
(cited in Stearns, 1994, p. 31). His disciple, J. Adams Puffer, was even bold enough to suggest in his successful
parental advice book The Boy and His Gang (1912) that it is not unreasonable for a boy to fight up to six times a
week and maybe even more depending on the circumstances:

There are times when every boy must defend his own rights if he is not to become a coward, and lose the
road to independence and true manhood. . . . The strong willed boy needs no inspiration to combat, but often
a good deal of guidance and restraint. If he fights more than, let us say, a half-dozen times a week—except
of course, during his first week at a new school—he is probably over-quarrelsome and needs to curb. (cited
in Kimmel, 1996, p. 161)

It is interesting to note that in a recently thwarted school shooting in New Bedford, Massachusetts, it was a
young woman, Amylee Bowman, 17, who could not go through with the plot and decided to reveal the details to
the authorities. Eric McKeehan, 17, one of the coconspirators, was described in media accounts as constantly
angry, especially at being slighted by other students. The mother of a second boy accused in the plot said, “Eric
has a temper. He says what’s on his mind. He’s been known to hit walls and lockers, but what teenage boy
hasn’t?” (Heslam & Richardson, 2001, p. 6).
Indeed, what teenage boy hasn’t? Eminem had that part right. Calling someone a “faggot” means
questioning his manhood. And in this culture, when someone questions your manhood, we do not just get mad,
we get even.

WHY WHITE BOYS?

There may be a single “boy code” but there are also a variety of ways in which different boys and men relate to
it, embrace it, and enact it—in short, there are a variety of young masculinities. The deft interplay between
generalized normative constructions and local iterations are vital to explore and something that is rarely done by
the myriad books that have counseled parents to attend to the needs of their boys. Making gender visible ought
not to make other elements of identity—age, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class—invisible. It is for this reason that
we have come to use the term “masculinities” to denote these differences. What it means to be a 71-year-old
Black, gay man in Cleveland is probably radically different from what it means to be a 19-year-old White,
heterosexual farm boy in Iowa.
At the same time, we must also remember that all masculinities are not created equal. All American men
also contend with a singular hegemonic vision of masculinity, a particular definition that is held up as the model
against which we all measure ourselves. We thus come to know what it means to be a man in our culture by
setting our definitions in opposition to a set of subordinated “others”—racial minorities, sexual minorities, and
above all, women. As the sociologist Erving Goffman (1963) once wrote,

In an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America: a young, married, white,
urban, northern, heterosexual, Protestant, father, of college education, fully employed, of good complexion,
weight, and height, and a recent record in sports. . . . Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways
is likely to view himself—during moments at least—as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior. (p. 128)
 It is crucial to listen to those last few words. When we feel that we do not measure up we are likely to feel
unworthy, incomplete, and inferior. It is here, from this place of unworthiness, incompleteness, and inferiority,
that boys begin their efforts to prove themselves as men. And it is here where violence has its connections to
masculinity. As James Gilligan says in his book Violence (1996), violence has its origins in “the fear of shame
and ridicule, and the overbearing need to prevent others from laughing at oneself by making them weep instead”
(p. 77). Shame, inadequacy, vulnerability—all threaten the self; violence, meanwhile, is restorative,
compensatory.
By pluralizing the term masculinity, we also make it possible to see places where gender appears to be the
salient variable but may, in fact, be what sociologist Cynthia Fuchs Epstein calls a “deceptive distinction,”
something that looks like gender difference but is in fact a difference based on some other criterion. Thus, for
example, we read of how male cadets at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) or the Citadel would be distressed by
and uncomfortable with women’s presence on campus. Of course, in reality, there were plenty of women on
campus—they cleaned the rooms, made and served the food, taught the classes, and were readily available as
counselors and medical personnel. What bothered the men was not gender but class, that is, women’s
institutional equality. (Similar analyses can be made about male doctors or corporate executives who are not at
all uncomfortable with female nurses or secretaries or male athletes who are not at all uncomfortable about
female cheerleaders but seem threatened by female athletes.)
Most important for our current discussion, though, is the fact that failure to see race while looking at gender
will cause us to miss the real story. We know that African American boys face a multitude of challenges in
schools—racial stereotypes, formal and informal tracking systems, low expectations, and underachievement.
But the one thing they do not do is plan and execute random and arbitrary mass shootings. And this is
particularly interesting because the dynamics of the classroom and academic achievement have different
valences for African American girls and African American boys. In their fascinating ethnographies of two
inner-city public high schools, both Signithia Fordham (1996) and Ann Ferguson (2000) discuss these
differences. When African American girls do well in school, their friends accuse them of “acting White.” But
when African American boys do well in school, their friends accuse them of “acting like girls.”
We might posit that cultural marginalization works itself out differently for subordinates and superordinates.
Even if they are silenced or lose their voice, subordinates—women, gays and lesbians, and students of color—
can tap into a collective narrative repertoire of resistance. They can collectivize their anguish so that the
personally painful may be subsumed into readily available political rhetorics. White boys who are bullied are
supposed to be real men, supposed to be able to embody independence, invulnerability, and manly stoicism. In
fact, the very search for such collective rhetorics can be seen as an indication of weakness. Thus, we might
hypothesize that the cultural marginalization of the boys who did commit school shootings extended to feelings
that they had no other recourse: They felt they had no other friends to validate their fragile and threatened
identities, they felt that school authorities and parents would be unresponsive to their plight, and they had no
access to other methods of self-affirmation.

WHY THESE PARTICULAR BOYS AND NOT OTHERS WHO HAVE HAD SIMILAR
EXPERIENCES?

Walk down any hallway in any middle school or high school in America and the single most common put-down
that is heard is “That’s so gay.” It is deployed constantly, casually, unconsciously. Boys hear it if they try out
for the school band or orchestra, if they are shy or small, physically weak and unathletic, if they are smart, wear
glasses, or work hard in school. They hear it if they are seen to like girls too much or if they are too much “like”
girls. They hear it if their body language, their clothing, or their musical preferences do not conform to the
norms of their peers. And they hear it not as an assessment of their present or future sexual orientation but as a
commentary on their masculinity.
But not all boys who are targeted like that open fire on their classmates and teachers. In fact, very few do.
So how is it that some boys—many boys, in fact— resist? As Pedro Noguera writes in “The Trouble With Black
Boys” (2001), “We know much less about resilience, perseverance, and the coping strategies employed by
individuals whose lives are surrounded by hardships, than we do about those who succumb and become victims
of their environment” (p. 25). What is the constellation of factors—the trajectories and relations, individual,
social, and institutional—that facilitate resistance?
Perhaps there is what Robert Brooks, of Harvard Medical School, calls the “charismatic adult” who makes a
substantial difference in the life of the child. Most often this is one or the other parent, but it can also be a
teacher or some other influential figure in the life of the boy. Perhaps the boy develops an alternative
substantive pole around which to organize competence. Gay-baiting suggests that he is a failure at the one thing
he knows he wants to be and is expected to be—a man. If there is something else that he does well—a private
passion, music, art—someplace where he feels valued—he can develop a pocket of resistance.
Similarly, the structures of his interactions also can make a decisive difference. A male friend, particularly
one who is not also a target but one who seems to be successful at masculinity, can validate the boy’s sense of
himself as a man. But equally important may be the role of a female friend, a potential if not actual “girlfriend.”
Five of the school shooters had what they felt was serious girl trouble, especially rejection. Luke Woodham was
crushed when his girlfriend broke up with him. “I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep. It destroyed me,” he testified at trial.
She was apparently his primary target and was killed. Michael Carneal may have had a crush on one of his
victims. Mitchell Johnson was upset that his girlfriend had broken up with him.
Although all the shooters have been boys, that does not mean that girls are inconsequential in boys’
cognitive mapping of their social worlds. It may be that the boys who are able to best resist the torments of
incessant gay-baiting and bullying are those who have some girls among their friends, and perhaps even a
girlfriend, that is, girls who can also validate their sense of masculinity (which other boys do as well) as well as
their heterosexuality (which boys alone cannot do). If masculinity is largely a homosocial performance, then at
least one male peer, who is himself successful, must approve of the performance. The successful demonstration
of heterosexual masculinity, which is the foundation, after all, of gay-baiting, requires not only the successful
performance for other men but also some forms of “sexual” success with women.5
These sorts of questions—the dynamics of local culture, the responsiveness of adults and institutions, and
the dynamics of same-sex and cross-sex friendships—will enable us to both understand what led some boys to
commit these terrible acts and what enable other boys to develop the resources of resistance to daily
homophobic bullying.

CONCLUSION

In a brilliant passage in Asylums, Erving Goffman (1961) touched on the interplay between structure and
agency, between repression and resistance:

Without something to belong to, we have no stable self, and yet total commitment and attachment to any
social unit implies a kind of selflessness. Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a
wider social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our
status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the
cracks. (p. 320)

It is our task, as researchers concerned with gender and education, to understand how those structural forces
shape and mold young men’s identities and to explore the seams of resistance, where they might carve out for
themselves a masculinity that is authentic, grounded, and confident.

APPENDIX

All Cases of Random School Shootings, 1982–2001

March 19, 1982, Las Vegas, Nevada. Patrick Lizotte, age 18.

March 2, 1987, DeKalb County, Missouri. Nathan Faris, age 12.

February 11, 1988, Pinellas Park, Florida. Jason Harless, age 16.

December 16, 1988, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Nicholas Elliott, age 15.

September 27, 1990, Las Vegas, Nevada. Curtis Collins, age 15.

November 20, 1992, Edward Tilden High School, Chicago, Illinois. Joseph White, age 15.

January 18, 1993, East Carter High School, Grayson, Kentucky. Gary Scott Pennington, age 17.

February 22, 1993, Reseda High School, Reseda, California. Robert Heard, age 15.

March 18, 1993, Harlem High School, Harlem, Georgia. Edward Gillom.

May 24, 1993, Upper Perkiomen High School, Red Hill, Pennsylvania. Jason Michael Smith, age 15.

November 1, 1993, Sullivan High School, Chicago, Illinois. Troy Jones, age 15.

April 12, 1994, Margaret Leary Elementary School, Butte, Montana. James Osmanson, age 10.

September 30, 1995, Tavares Middle School, Tavares, Florida. Keith Johnson, age 14.

November 15, 1995, Richland High School, Lynnville, Tennessee. Jamie Rouse, age 18.

February 2, 1996, Frontier High School, Moses Lake, Washington. Barry Loukaitas, age 14.

September 25, 1996, DeKalb Alternative School, Stone Mountain, Georgia. David Debose Jr., age 16.

January 27, 1997, Conniston Middle School, West Palm Beach, Florida. Tonneal Mangum, age 14.

February 19, 1997, Bethel Regional High School, Bethel, Alaska. Evan Ramsey, age 16.

October 1, 1997, Pearl High School, Pearl, Mississippi. Luke Woodham, age 16.

December 1, 1997, Heath High School, West Paducah, Kentucky. Michael Carneal, age 14.

March 24, 1998, Westside Middle School, Jonesboro, Arkansas. Andrew Golden, age 11, and Mitchell
Johnson, age 13.

April 24, 1998, Parker Middle School, Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Andrew Wurst, age 14.

May 19, 1998, Lincoln County High School, Fayetteville, Tennessee. Jacob Davis, age 18.

May 21, 1998, Thurston High School, Springfield, Oregon. Kipland Philip Kinkel, age 15.

June 15, 1998, Armstrong High School, Richmond, Virginia. Quinshawn Booker, age 14.

April 20, 1999, Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado. Eric Harris, age 18, and Dylan Klebold, age
17.

May 20, 1999, Heritage High School, Conyers, Georgia. Anthony Solomon, age 15.
 November 19, 1999, Deming Middle School, Deming, New Mexico. Victor Cordova, age 12.

March 5, 2001, Santana High School, Santee, California. Charles Andrew Williams, age 15.

NOTES

1. This despite the fact that school shootings—where a young student opens fire on school grounds,
apparently randomly, and shoots teachers and students—are the only type of school violence that has
increased since 1980 (Glassner, 1999a, 1999b; see also Anderson et al., 2001). More than 99% of public
high schools have never had a homicide. In the 1992–1993 school year, there were 54 violent deaths on
high school campuses; in 2000, there were 16 (Cloud, 2001). Less than 1% of all school-associated violent
deaths are the result of homicide (Anderson et al., 2001).
2. This is not to entirely dismiss the potential links between school shootings and the availability of guns.
Although many boys are frustrated, harassed, and saturated with media violence, not all of them have equal
access to guns.
3. This same critique also could be directed at the aforementioned arguments blaming the media and/or the
prevalence of guns.
4. These articles were selected because they comprise three of the top four daily newspapers in circulation.
The Wall Street Journal, which has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United States, was
not included in our analysis because its substantive focus is on business-related issues. To extend our
analysis to local media outlets, we also selectively sampled from smaller regional newspapers. We
recognize that using secondary media reports as indicators of “what really happened” leading up to and
during these shootings is a questionable tactic. To further tease out the causes of these shootings, one
would have to conduct firsthand interviews with those directly involved in the shootings—the shooters
themselves, classmates, teachers, administrators, parents, and so forth. However, we feel that an analysis of
media reports is nevertheless a valuable approach in this instance because one of our major points is that
although virtually all of these accounts contained some evidence indicating the connections between
masculinity, homophobia, and violence, they all somehow overlooked this fact.
5. The word sexual is in quotations because this does not necessarily mean actual sexual contact but rather a
sexualized affirmation of one’s masculinity by girls and women.

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41
THE (MIS)EDUCATION OF MONICA AND KAREN
LAURA HAMILTON AND ELIZABETH A. ARMSTRONG

M onica grew up in a small, struggling Midwestern community, population 3,000, that was once a
booming factory town. She was from a working-class family, and paid for most of her education at
Midwest U, a “moderately selective” residential university, herself. She worked two jobs,
sometimes over 40 hours a week, to afford in-state tuition. Going out-of-state, or to a pricey private school, was
simply out of the question without a large scholarship. Attending MU was even a stretch; one year there cost as
much as four years at the regional campus near her hometown.
Karen grew up in the same small town as Monica, but in a solidly middle-class family. Her college-educated
parents could afford to provide more financial assistance. But even though MU was only three hours away, her
father “wasn’t too thrilled” about her going so far from home. He had attended a small religious school that was
only 10 minutes away.
Neither Karen nor Monica was academically well prepared for college. Both had good, but not stellar,
grades and passable SAT scores, which made admission to a more selective school unlikely. Given the lower
cost, ease of admission, and opportunity to commute from home, they might have started at the regional
campus. However, MU offered, as Monica’s mother put it, a chance to “go away and experience college life.”
Karen refused to look at any other school because she wanted to leave home. As she noted, “I really don’t think
I’m a small town girl.” Monica’s family was betting on MU as the best place for her to launch her dream career
as a doctor.
Karen and Monica’s stories offer us a glimpse into the college experiences of average, in-state students at
large, mid-tier public universities. Though they struggled to gain entrance to the flagship campus, they soon
found that the structure of social and academic life there served them poorly—and had deleterious effects.

THE GREAT MISMATCH

Most four-year residential colleges and universities in the United States are designed to serve well-funded
students, who have minimal (if any) caretaking responsibilities, and who attend college full-time after they
graduate from high school.
Yet only a minority of individuals who pursue postsecondary education in the United States fit this profile.
There is a great gap between what the vast majority of Americans need and what four-year institutions offer
them.
This mismatch is acutely visible at Midwest U, where Karen and Monica started their college careers.
Almost half of those attending four-year colleges find themselves at schools like this one. Students from modest
backgrounds who have above average, but not exceptional, academic profiles attend state flagship universities
because they believe such schools offer a surefire route to economic security.

There is a great gap between what the vast majority of Americans need and what four-year
institutions can offer them.

Public universities were founded to enable mobility, especially among in-state populations of students—
which contributes to their legitimacy in the eyes of the public. In an era of declining state funding, schools like
Midwest U have raised tuition and recruited more out-of-state students. They especially covet academically
accomplished, ambitious children of affluent families.
As sociologist Mitchell Stevens describes in Creating a Class, elite institutions also pursue such students.
While observing a small, private school, Stevens overhead an admissions officer describe an ideal applicant:
“He’s got great SATs [and] he’s free [not requiring any financial aid]. . . . He helps us in every way that’s
quantifiable.” Once private colleges skim off affluent, high-performing students, large, middle-tier, public
universities are left to compete for the tuition dollars of less studious students from wealthy families.
How, we wondered, do in-state students fare in this context? To find out, for over five years we followed a
dormitory floor of female students through their college careers and into the workforce, conducted an
ethnography of the floor, and interviewed the women and their parents. What we found is that schools like MU
only serve a segment of their student body well—affluent, socially-oriented, and out-of-state students—to the
detriment of typical in-state students like Karen and Monica.

“I’M SUPPOSED TO GET DRUNK”

Monica and Karen approached the housing application process with little information, and were unprepared for
what they encountered when they were assigned to a room in a “party dorm.” At MU, over a third of the
freshman class is housed in such dorms. Though minimal partying actually took place in the heavily policed
residence halls, many residents partied off-site, typically at fraternities, returning in the wee hours drunk and
loud. Affluent students—both in and out-of-state—often requested rooms in party dorms, based on the
recommendations of their similarly social siblings and friends.
Party dorms are a pipeline to the Greek system, which dominates campus life. Less than 20 percent of the
student body at MU is involved in a fraternity or sorority, but these predominately white organizations enjoy a
great deal of power. They own space in central campus areas, across from academic buildings and sports arenas.
They monopolize the social life of first-year students, offering underage drinkers massive, free supplies of
alcohol, with virtual legal impunity. They even enjoy special ties to administrators, with officers sitting on a
special advisory board to the dean of students.

Students are not necessarily better served by attending the most selective college they can get
into.

Over 40 percent of Monica and Karen’s floor joined sororities their first year. The pressure to rush was so
intense that one roommate pair who opted out posted a disclaimer on their door, asking people to stop bugging
them about it. The entire campus—including academic functions—often revolved around the schedule of Greek
life. When a math test for a large, required class conflicted with women’s rush, rather than excusing a group of
women from a few rush events, the test itself was rescheduled.
Monica, like most economically disadvantaged students, chose not to rush a sorority, discouraged by the
mandatory $60 t-shirt, as well as by the costly membership fees. Karen, who was middle class, had just enough
funds to make rushing possible. However, she came to realize that Greek houses implicitly screened for social
class. She pulled out her boots—practical rain boots that pegged her as a small town, in-state girl instead of an
affluent, out-of-state student with money and the right taste in clothing. They were a “dead give-away,” she
said. She soon dropped out of rush.
Like all but a few students on the 53-person floor, Monica and Karen chose to participate in the party scene.
Neither drank much in high school. Nor did they arrive armed with shot glasses or party-themed posters, as
some students did. They partied because, as a woman from a similar background put it, “I’m supposed to get
drunk every weekend. I’m supposed to go to parties every weekend.” With little party experience, and few
contacts in the Greek system, Monica and Karen were easy targets for fraternity men’s sexual disrespect. Heavy
alcohol consumption helped to put them at ease in otherwise uncomfortable situations. “I pretty much became
an alcoholic,” said Monica. “I was craving alcohol all the time.”
 Their forced attempts to participate in the party scene showed how poorly it suited their needs. “I tried so
hard to fit in with what everybody else was doing here,” Monica explained. “I think one morning I just woke up
and realized that this isn’t me at all; I don’t like the way I am right now.” She felt it forced her to become more
immature. “Growing up to me isn’t going out and getting smashed and sleeping around,” she lamented. Partying
is particularly costly for students of lesser means, who need to grow up sooner, cannot afford to be financially
irresponsible, and need the credentials and skills that college offers.

ACADEMIC STRUGGLES AND “EXOTIC” MAJORS

Partying also takes its toll on academic performance, and Monica’s poor grades quickly squelched her pre-med
dreams. Karen, who hoped to become a teacher, also found it hard to keep up. “I did really bad in that math
class, the first elementary ed math class,” one of three that were required. Rather than retake the class, Karen
changed her major to one that was popular among affluent, socially-oriented students on the floor: sports
broadcasting.
She explained, “I’m from a really small town and it’s just all I ever really knew was jobs that were around
me, and most of those are teachers.” A woman on her floor was majoring in sports broadcasting, which Karen
had never considered. “I would have never thought about that. And so I saw her, and I was like that’s something
that I really like. One of my interests is sports, watching them, playing them,” she reasoned. “I could be a
sportscaster on ESPN if I really wanted to.”
Karen’s experience shows the seductive appeal of certain “easy majors.” These are occupational and
professional programs that are often housed in their own schools and colleges. They are associated with a higher
overall GPA and, as sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report in Academically Adrift, lower levels of
learning than majors in the more challenging sciences and humanities housed in colleges of arts and sciences.
In many easy majors, career success also depends on personal characteristics (such as appearance,
personality, and aesthetic taste) that are developed outside of the classroom— often prior to entering college.
Socially-oriented students flock to fields like communications, fashion, tourism, recreation, fitness, and
numerous “business-lite” options, which are often linked to sports or the arts, rather than the competitive
business school. About a third of the student body majored in business, management, marketing,
communications, journalism, and related subfields.
Karen’s switch to sports broadcasting gave her more time to socialize. But education is a more practical
major that translates directly into a career; hiring rests largely on the credential. In contrast, success in sports
broadcasting is dependent on class-based characteristics—such as family social ties to industry insiders. Several
of Karen’s wealthier peers secured plum internships in big cities because their parents made phone calls for
them; Karen could not even land an unpaid internship with the Triple-A baseball team located 25 minutes from
her house.
No one Karen encountered on campus helped her to assess the practicality of a career in this field. Her
parents were frustrated that she had been persuaded not to graduate with a recognizable marketable skill. As her
mother explained, “She gets down there and you start hearing all these exotic sounding majors. . . . I’m not sure
quite what jobs they’re going to end up with.” Her mother was frustrated that Karen “went to see the advisor to
make plans for her sophomore year, and they’re going, ‘Well, what’s your passion?’” Her mother was not
impressed. “How many people do their passion? To me, that’s more what you do for a hobby. . . . I mean most
people, that’s not what their job is.”
Halfway through college, when Karen realized she could not get an internship, much less a job, in sports
broadcasting, her parents told her to switch back to education. The switch was costly: it was going to take her
two more years to complete. As her mother complained, “When you’re going through the orientation . . . they’re
going, ‘oh, most people change their major five times.’ And they make it sound like it’s no big deal. But yeah,
they’re making big bucks by kids changing.”
LEAVING MIDWEST U BEHIND

Monica left MU after her first year. “I was afraid if I continued down there that I would just go crazy and either
not finish school, or get myself in trouble,” she explained. “And I just didn’t want to do that.” She immediately
enrolled in a beauty school near her home. Dissatisfied with the income she earned as a hairstylist, she later
entered a community college to complete an associate degree in nursing. She paid for her nursing classes as she
studied, but had 10,000 dollars in student loan debt from her time at MU. Still, her debt burden was
substantially smaller than if she had stayed there; some of her MU peers had amassed over 50,000 dollars in
loans by graduation.
Because her GPA was too low to return to elementary education at MU, Karen transferred to a regional
college during her fourth year. Since the classes she took for sports broadcasting did not fulfill any
requirements, it took her six years to graduate. Karen’s parents, who reported that they spent the first 10 years of
their married life paying off their own loans, took out loans to cover most of the cost, and anticipated spending
even longer to finance their daughter’s education.
Monica and Karen were not the only ones on their dormitory floor to leave MU. Nine other in-state women,
the majority of whom were from working-class or lower-middle-class backgrounds, did as well. The only out-
of-state student who transferred left for a higher-ranked institution. While we were concerned that the in-state
leavers, most of whom were moving down the ladder of prestige to regional campuses, would suffer, they
actually did better than in-state women from less privileged families who stayed at MU. Their GPAs improved,
they selected majors with a more direct payoff, and they were happier overall.
The institutions to which women moved played a large role in this transformation. As one leaver described
the regional campus to which she transferred, it “doesn’t have any fraternities or sororities. It only has, like, 10
buildings.” But, she said, “I just really love it.” One of the things she loved was that nobody cared about
partying. “They’re there just to graduate and get through.” It prioritized the needs of a different type of student:
“Kids who have lower social economic status, who work for their school.”

Those who moved down the ladder of prestige to regional campuses actually did better than in-
state women from less privileged families who stayed at MU.

Without the social pressures of MU, it was possible to, as Karen put it, “get away from going out all the
time, and refocus on what my goal was for this part of my life.” Few majors like sports broadcasting and fashion
merchandising were available, reducing the possible ways to go astray academically. Those who attended
regional or community colleges trained to become accountants, teachers, social workers, nurses or other health
professionals. At the conclusion of our study, they had better employment prospects than those from similar
backgrounds who stayed at MU.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

It is tempting to assume that academic success is determined, in large part, by what students bring with them—
different ability levels, resources, and orientations to college life. But Monica and Karen’s stories demonstrate
that what students get out of college is also organizationally produced. Students who were far more
academically gifted than Monica or Karen sometimes floundered at MU, while others who were considerably
less motivated breezed through college. The best predictor of success was whether there was a good fit between
a given student’s resources and agendas, and the structure of the university.
Monica and Karen’s struggles at MU can be attributed, in part, to the dominance of a “party pathway” at
that institution. These organizational arrangements—a robust, university-supported Greek system, and an array
of easy majors—are designed to attract and serve affluent, socially-oriented students. The party pathway is not a
hard sell; the idea that college is about fun and partying is celebrated in popular culture and actively promoted
by leisure and alcohol industries. The problem is that this pathway often appeals to students for whom it is ill
suited.
Regardless of what they might want, students from different class backgrounds require different things.
What Monica and Karen needed was a “mobility pathway.” When resources are limited, mistakes—whether a
semester of grades lost to partying, or courses that do not count toward a credential— can be very costly.
Monica and Karen needed every course to move them toward a degree that would translate directly into a job.
They also needed more financial aid than they received— grants, not loans—and much better advising. A
skilled advisor who understood Karen’s background and her abilities might have helped her realize that
changing majors was a bad idea. But while most public universities provide such advising support for
disadvantaged students, these programs are often small, and admit only the best and brightest of the
disadvantaged—not run-of-the-mill students like Monica and Karen.
Monica, Karen, and others like them did not find a mobility pathway at MU. Since university resources are
finite, catering to one population of students often comes at a cost to others, especially if their needs are at odds
with one another. When a party pathway is the most accessible avenue through a university, it is easy to stumble
upon, hard to avoid, and it crowds out other pathways.
As Monica and Karen’s stories suggest, students are not necessarily better served by attending the most
selective college they can get into. The structure of the pathways available at a given school greatly influences
success. When selecting a college or university, families should consider much more than institutional
selectivity. They should also assess whether the school fits the particular student’s needs.
Students and parents with limited financial resources should look for schools with high retention rates
among minority and first-generation students, where there are large and accessible student services for these
populations. Visible Greek systems and reputations as party schools, in contrast, should be red flags.
Families should investigate what majors are available, whether they require prerequisites, and, to the extent
it is possible, what additional investments are required to translate a particular major into a job. Are internships
required? Will the school link the student to job opportunities, or are families expected to do so on their own?
These are some questions they should ask.
Collectively, the priorities of public universities and other higher education institutions that support “party
pathways” should be challenged. Reducing the number of easy majors, pulling university support from the
Greek system, and expanding academic advising for less privileged students would help. At federal and state
levels, greater commitment to the funding of higher education is necessary. If public universities are forced to
rely on tuition and donations for funding, they will continue to appeal to those who can pay full freight. Without
these changes, the mismatch between what universities offer and what most postsecondary students need is
likely to continue.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Arum, Richard, and Josipa Roksa. Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of
Chicago Press, 2011). Uses survey data from 24 institutions to offer an evaluation of what students are
really learning during their time at college.
Bowen, William G., Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael S. McPherson. Crossing the Finish Line: Completing
College at America’s Public Universities (Princeton University Press, 2009). Offers a systematic analysis of
the factors shaping college completion at American public universities.
Brint, Steven (ed.). The Future of the City of Intellect: The Changing American University (Stanford University
Press, 2002). Provides an assessment of how postsecondary education is changing, the forces behind such
change, and the future prospects for the sector from top scholars of higher education.
Deil-Amen, Regina. “The ‘Traditional’ College Student: A Smaller and Smaller Minority and Its Implications
for Diversity and Access Institutions,” paper prepared for the Mapping Broad-Access Higher Education
conference (2011). Available online at cepa.stanford.edu. Discusses the diverse group of non-traditional
college students who are marginalized despite forming a majority of the college-going population.
Stevens, Mitchell. Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites (Harvard University
Press, 2007). Provides an inside perspective on how admissions officers at elite private colleges construct
an incoming class.
Stuber, Jenny. Inside the College Gates: How Class and Culture Matter in Higher Education (Lexington
Books, 2011). Offers a comparison of how college social life and extracurricular activities contribute to
social class inequities at a large public and small private institution.

SOURCE: Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong, “The (Mis)Education of Karen and Monica.” Contexts
Fall 2012 Vol. 11(4): 22–27. Copyright © 2012 by the American Sociological Association. Reprinted by
permission of Sage Publications.
42
COLLEGE LIFE THROUGH THE EYES OF STUDENTS
MARY GRIGSBY

Don’t take life too seriously; you’ll never get out alive.
—Van Wilder in National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002)

T his chapter outlines the key elements of the generalized college student culture at Midwest University
by exploring what students say they focus on as they enter and acclimate to the university setting.
Students at Midwest University describe a generalized college student culture that values four things
highly: (1) Knowing how to “take care” of yourself; (2) Knowing how to cultivate and manage relationships
(this includes being able to “get along” with others, which includes making new friends, cultivating “close”
friends, building friendship networks, seeking similar others for support, and having romantic involvements; (3)
Developing as a unique individual; and (4) Knowing how to balance “having fun” with academics. Social
learning is said to be “fun.” Classroom learning, on the other hand, is “work.”
Virtually all students at Midwest are aware of this generalized culture that has at its core an individualistic
ethos that invites and challenges them to make lifestyle choices and to engage in activities that express their
unique identity and ability to manage their lives and thus to affirm a sense of ontological security and stable life
trajectory aimed at coming of age and finding fulfillment in the “real” world beyond college. Most students
want to claim that they are having a “real” college experience, describe these common elements, and work to
make sure that they have some version of these experiences during their time in college.
The expectation that people will leave their parents’ home and make their way in the world is deeply
ingrained in contemporary American culture (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, et al. 1985). When students come to
Midwest University, they have most often literally left “home” and are embarking on the next phase in
individuation and separation from parents, and they are challenged with the self-development project of finding
their way in new relationships and activities.

Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves. And if that is
the case with respect to families, it is even more so with our ultimate defining beliefs. The irony is that here,
too, just where we think we are most free, we are most coerced by the dominant beliefs of our own culture.
For it is a powerful cultural fiction that we not only can, but must, make up our deepest beliefs in the
isolation of our private selves. (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, et al. 1985, 65)

Students faced with this challenge describe a generalized college student culture that is in part centered in
the individualistic ethos of self-sufficiency and developing as autonomous unique individuals and at the same
time focused on finding a sense of belonging through making new friends and developing a friendship network
in their new setting as quickly as possible.
The language of independent individualism is accompanied by behavior that demonstrates a strong need for
social bonds. These “new” connections are, from the perspective of students, their responsibility to make and
maintain. They generally say that their friends are people to whom they were drawn, and that they chose to
become friends with them because they shared common interests. Most students establish a small group of
networked friends. The sense of collective belonging that they find in these groups is very important to them.
Friends are described by most students as being the most important part of college life. The choice of friends,
like the choice of living arrangements and what to major in, is a very important “lifestyle” (Giddens 1991)
choice they face as college students.
 About 70 percent of the students in the sample feel that social learning in college is more significant for
them than academics. Twenty women (62.5 percent of women) and twenty-two men (78.5 percent of men)
expressed this view. Angela, a junior majoring in communications, sums up her ideas about balancing work and
“fun” this way.

I don’t think college should be about drifting . . . not really caring. I definitely think there should be
investment, you know, work for whatever it is that you want to do, but most importantly, more than
anything else, in college, you should have fun. It shouldn’t necessarily come at the expense of your studies
(or) the overall goal of graduating, but if you’re finding yourself at a point where this is no longer enjoyable,
then something is wrong. Take this time to have fun and enjoy your youth! Try not to take it too seriously.

Most students do not say that academics do not matter, but they believe that the social learning they do with
peers in college is more important. The types of social learning that the students in this group value vary, with
some focusing on more traditional, institutionally supported social activities such as making new friends
through church and religious student organizations, joining fraternities and sororities, and becoming involved in
formal student organizations and student government, while others value informal socializing as central for
them. Very few students say that their academic learning is the most significant part of their learning while in
college. Only two women and two men said that the academics in college were most central to their learning
experiences in college. Ten women and four men, about 23 percent of the students in the sample, felt that their
significant learning was taking place in a relatively balanced way, maintaining that academic and social
activities were equally important.
Much of the learning engaged in by college students involves gaining the skills needed to traverse the
cultural boundaries between public, semipublic, semiprivate, and private spaces that often appear unbounded
and unmarked to the uninitiated arrival on campus. Appropriate behavior in the shared cultural space of the
campus is generally approved of, while inappropriate behavior, for a given context, is harshly judged. Observe
the way that students act toward the student who asks frequent content-related or intellectually challenging
questions in class versus the one who asks what is going to be covered on the exam. The first type of student
will be viewed as breaking the generalized student culture’s norm of subordinating academics to peer fun and
shunned by most students, the second as savy. The ability to move across cultural spaces and navigate them well
is highly valued and is practiced as students learn to get along with others, make friends, and balance social and
academic activities.
The college student shared culture is learned, constructed, carried, and contested by students in interaction
with each other within the institutional structures of the university and the larger culture that surrounds the
institution. Parents, peers, and others from their home communities, popular culture images, and the interactions
they have with college student peers and university personnel, framed by the institutional structures of the
university, all play a role in forming the sense of what the college student culture at Midwest is like for students,
how they fit into it, and the ways that they make use of it as college students.
Popular images of what college life is like, as portrayed in movies and on television, influence the
construction of college student culture and the ways that students make meaning of their experience. The ideas
about focusing on having fun and social learning that dominate the shared culture draw heavily on dominant
middle-class, white, popular culture images of college fun. Popular culture images of college life depicted in
movies such as National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002) give the impression that a hedonistic collegiate culture
is dominant. When, in the fall of 2005, I asked students in my large introductory classes to list three movies they
had seen about college life, Van Wilder was the most frequently named movie of the last decade, with over 60
percent of the students including it on their lists. It was surpassed in frequency by only one movie, the old
classic in the same genre, Animal House. One aspect of the generalized college student culture that this type of
movie is consistent with is the belief that the source of fulfillment and meaning while in college comes
primarily from college social life and personal relationships rather than from academics.
While most students say this version of college student culture is not really what college ends up being like
most of the time, it continues to be the most visible popular culture view of which the majority of them are
aware. In fact many students describe everyday college life as boring or routine once the newness has worn off.
Still, a majority of students carry popular culture images of the quintessential college life, such as in Van Wilder
or Animal House, and these images are intertwined with their sense of the generalized college student culture
they feel exists around them at Midwest.
Linking to the power of popular culture images that privilege nonacademic aspects of college life, such as
parties and hedonistic activities like excessive drinking, having sex, and sports, is the fact that the most visible
and sizeable collective gatherings where a cohesive college student culture can be acted out at Midwest are
football games, home-coming, and men’s basketball games. These events are notably removed from academics,
are male-centered sports, and highlight traditional gender roles, with women as spectators, cheerleaders, and
queens of homecoming and men as spectators, athletes, and kings of homecoming (Foley 1994).
These events, of course, do not attract all students, but they are the primary types of events that offer
opportunities for a large number of students to come together and gain a sense of collective identity connected
to college life at Midwest. Even if students reject participating in these cultural activities, they still must do so in
the shadow that the generalized culture casts at Midwest, a culture that in many respects is institutionally
supported. The generalized form of collective identity that is institutionally supported is compatible with the
deeper consumerist, individualistic, choice-based culture of the campus that most students take for granted and
embrace. After all, many of those who chose Midwest from a wide range of possibilities chose it so they could
have lots of choices academically and socially, earn a relatively high-quality degree, enjoy a state-of-the-art
recreation center and excellent information technology access, and the wins of the football and basketball teams
of the university. Even the sense of collective belonging that is constructed at homecoming and at football and
basketball games rests on entertainment and private enjoyment as the goal for spectators.
The generalized college student culture that students enter at Midwest University privileges peer interactions
that take place in a private college student cultural space that students believe largely excludes adult authority.
For most the residence hall is the first place they inhabit and share with peers at college and is very important in
establishing a sense of what the shared college student culture is for them. About 85 percent of freshman
students live in residence halls.
Students think of residence halls as student-dominated space and their rooms as their own private space.
Despite this perception, adult institutional authority that monitors student behavior in residence halls is always
present in the form of resident assistants who report to university personnel and who are responsible for
monitoring the activities of students and enforcing the rules specified by the university administration. But
resident assistants are not perceived by most students as adults or as having a great deal of authority over them.
It is true that adults rarely visit their residence hall rooms or even traverse the hallways. Parents may be there
when they move into the residence hall and for parents’ day. A faculty member may come to the residence hall
in her or his role as a sponsor of a learning community or to present a program at the request of a resident
assistant, but most of the time adults in positions of authority are not physically present in the residence halls.
The only students unlikely to live in residence halls during freshman year are men who pledge fraternities and
move into their fraternity houses or fraternity annexes. The fraternity houses have relatively less adult authority
from the university inserted into the day-to-day living setting than do residence halls, which may be one of the
reasons for their popularity.
At Midwest University, like many universities, a new type of residence hall is being built in response to
consumer demands for more privacy by students and their parents. At Midwest, four new residence halls
housing over 1,000 students in two-bedroom suites with a shared bathroom and single rooms with private baths
have been built, and another is under construction. The total room capacity of the residence halls is over 5,000
so the private residence halls now make up about a fifth of residence hall housing capacity. The types of
relationships that students build with each other in these residence halls are different from those that develop in
the shared-room residence halls with communal bathrooms, according to university personnel and resident
assistants who have worked in both types of facilities. The impact that these new residence halls will have on
the shared culture of the university overall remains to be seen but, as this chapter will show, there are early signs
that it is consistent with a general shift toward an even more consumer-driven, institutionally mediated, and
individualistic shared student culture.
In my visits to shared-room residence halls what stood out was the flow of people up and down the halls, the
open doors and the visiting taking place, the knowledge students have of one another’s activities, interests, and
quirks, and the openness with which students express their views to each other in that setting as compared to the
classroom.
In contrast to the shared-room residence halls with communal bathrooms, the private-suite residence halls
foster less visiting from room to room, giving the first impression that they are little different from an apartment
building. Gabriel, a resident assistant in a shared-room residence hall where I had given a fairly well-attended
session on race and identity, had told me how hard it is to get students to attend such sessions. He had gone door
to door right before the event, drumming up attendance. At the time he mentioned to me that he had a friend
who was a resident assistant in one of the new residence halls, where students could choose a two-bedroom
suite with a shared bath, a two-bedroom suite with a shared living room and bath, or a private room and bath,
where building community was even harder. He offered to put me in touch with her.
Amy had first worked as a resident assistant in a shared-room residence hall and was then recruited to work
in Integrity Hall, one of the new private-suite residence halls. Her experience gave her the ability to compare the
student cultures fostered by each. She summed up the contrast this way: “Where students in the other dorms
(with shared rooms and communal baths) resented my enforcing rules because they said I was ‘just one of
them,’ in this dorm they complain because I’m just ‘the hired help’ and have no right to tell them what to do
since they are paying for their privacy and have a right to do what they want in their rooms.” According to Amy
and others working there, the suite and single-room residence halls attract more affluent students, and their
parents display a sense of what Amy referred to as “entitlement.” She noted, “They expect us to cater to their
needs and to be available twenty-four hours a day, even though we are taking classes, and their parents treated
us the same way, like hired help, on move-in day.” She goes on to describe how difficult it is to get students in
the new residence halls to participate in organized events or programs. “We’ve just about given up. We have
given up!” She went on to describe how a student living on her floor agreed to plan a program for the residents
once she learned it could go on her resume, but that she didn’t even come to the event she had planned. No one
did. Amy explained, “The only reason she did it was to get it on her resume.” “Most recently,” she says, “we
organized a progressive dinner at the homes of faculty members. It was really fun. But only two students
showed up. It was disappointing. I don’t think they will build any more of this type of dorm after the one
already under construction is completed. It’s a disaster! It doesn’t work.”
The suites are much more expensive than shared-room and communal-bathroom residence halls and are a
new development at Midwest that mirrors similar trends across the country at comparable schools. They have
only recently opened. The private-suite residence halls have created a housing stratification system that had not
previously been as pronounced in residence hall options at Midwest. The least expensive shared-room residence
halls without meals are $3,225, while the cost of a shared suite is $5,080 in FY 2006. The cheapest residence
hall has shared rooms, communal baths, and no air conditioning and is referred to by many students as “the
ghetto.” Competition for students by universities and perceptions on the part of the decision makers that parent
and student consumers want upscale facilities, along with beautiful grounds, up-to-date recreation centers, and
glamorous sports stadiums, have led Midwest to invest heavily in such construction.
Sororities and fraternities, contrary to popular belief, are no longer the most expensive living arrangements
and are instead in a range comparable to and at times even less costly than some residence halls with meal
plans. It is easier to make friends in the ghetto or the fraternity or sorority house than it is in private-suite
residence halls. Pledging a fraternity or sorority provides housing, parking, computer and study facilities, and
meals and, like the high-end residence-hall rooms, is usually an option for those whose parents can afford the
costs and who value participation in the Greek system. Those without parental financial support can sometimes
afford them, but they have to work and/or go into substantial debt to do so. One woman who did have to work
to pay for college said that she quit the sorority as it was too difficult to keep up her academics while living in
the sorority house and working. She ended up living in low-cost housing with several roommates.
Walking down the hall in one of the new residence halls with suites and private rooms, I feel like I am in a
large hotel hallway. It is quiet and clean. All of the doors are closed. Someone sits in the commons watching a
program on the large-screen television. There are very few decorated doors in Integrity Hall and those that have
been are sparse. The difference between Integrity Hall and the ghetto is startling. The ghetto doors were heavily
decorated, and bulletin boards were filled with announcements. Integrity Hall seems sterile and empty in
comparison. When I asked Amy, the resident assistant in Integrity Hall, why there were not very many
decorations on the doors in the new suite residence halls compared to the shared-room residence halls, she told
me that there was a rule in the new residence halls that you had to use a particular brand of double-stick tape for
mounting decorations, and that the requirement discouraged students from decorating. This explanation may
have some validity, but the tape is readily available and not extremely expensive, so I suspect that the lack of
decorating is also linked to the difference in the ways students perceive the space of the shared-room residence
hallway and the suite and private-room residence hall hallway. The suite and private-room residence halls are
more like an apartment house, inhabited by individuals who come and go, living their lives behind closed doors.
The living arrangements that students make after freshman year usually are influenced by their economic
situation and reflect their goals and orientations toward academics and social life upon entering college. The
choices they make throughout college are shaped by this beginning, both the economic and cultural resources
they have, and the orientations toward academics and social life with which they enter college are central in
shaping how they make meaning of college and how they choose to use it. Most students will move off campus
and live with small groups of similar friends. Some will opt to live close to campus. Not surprisingly, many of
these students will be those who do not own a car. Though Midwest City has public transportation, and some
apartment complexes have shuttles, students without cars often like the flexibility of walking to campus and
downtown. The type of housing and furnishings they have will depend on what they, and/or their parents, can
afford or can borrow. It is common practice for parents with adequate resources to buy suburban homes in
Midwest City for their college-age children and to manage them as rental property. The student will select
several other student friends to live with them as renters, and the parents will make the house payments on the
property with the rental income. Some students will live in a fraternity or sorority house for at least some of
their college years where they have a network of sisters and brothers with whom to sit in classes and socialize
intensely. The most expensive option of the private-room residence halls will be chosen by students who want
the convenience of being close to campus, having meals provided, and having a high degree of privacy.
While it is much less likely, for instance, that a first-generation college student who is taking out student
loans to finance college will choose the most expensive living arrangement offered in residence halls, that of a
single room with a private bath, some do. None of the students in this sample who worked to support
themselves through college opted to live in the more expensive residence halls, preferring to limit their student
loan debt.
Living arrangements, along with other formal institutional structures designed to manage and organize the
process of educating students in the large rationalized bureaucracy of Midwest University, play a significant
role in what students learn both inside and outside of the classroom. How students are situated, for instance,
which residence hall they live in, shapes what they learn about college student culture. Deciding to live in a
residence hall with shared rooms and communal baths or in one with two-room suites and a shared bath, or
opting for a single room with a totally private bath will shape the experience a student will have and is often
dictated by parental economic status and willingness to pay. The more privacy one has, the more expensive the
cost of living in a residence hall. It is from their locations in residence halls and fraternities, where they live and
do most of their socializing, that college freshmen at Midwest begin their lives as college students. They move
in before classes start and find themselves in a setting that privileges peer relations and requires what many say
seems like a long walk to get to classes.

KNOWING HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

I had a lot of anxiety about being able to care for myself. My mother had always done everything for me.
(Iris, sophomore, prejournalism major, 2003)

Once freshmen are situated in a residence hall or fraternity house, the first big concern for many of them is
taking care of themselves in basic ways. While it might seem as if they would be well equipped for doing this,
many have anxiety and struggle during the first months of college to work out the basics of taking care of
themselves on a daily basis. Some students also describe basic skills such as doing their own laundry, managing
their time, and figuring out how to eat a healthy diet as challenges.
 Iris connected the notorious “freshman fifteen,” or fifteen pounds or more that many freshman gain, to her
not having had to pay attention to her diet prior to coming to college because her mother took care of managing
it for her.
Todd, a sophomore in health professions, who is hoping to be admitted into the physical therapy program, is
from a big city in the state. He is slim with brown hair and eyes and wears black shorts and a T-shirt that
features a local restaurant-bar. He pledged a fraternity and lived in the fraternity annex his freshman year. He
explains:

I’m the baby of the family. I don’t have to wash my own clothes. I don’t have to clean up after myself. I had
trouble with that for awhile (in the fraternity), and after awhile I shut my mouth and did my stuff and did
really good as a pledge. I grew into the person, well I grew as a man because they (my fraternity brothers)
taught me (what) life was really like and the responsibility.

Todd, Iris, and many students at Midwest found that college was an adjustment, not only socially but in
terms of the basics of taking care of themselves. Todd was not used to doing his own laundry or cleaning up
after himself and had to learn to do these things. His description, like many of the descriptions by men of the
different aspects of coming of age while in college, is linked to masculine identity work and becoming a man.
Women did not make similar explicit connections to feminine identity work or becoming women.
Being able to take care of themselves is more often discussed as a concern by students from college-
educated, two-parent, middle- or upper-middle-class families in which their mothers took care of the laundry,
cooking, and errands for them while they lived at home. It was less frequently discussed as an issue by first-
generation college students and students from single-parent or reconstituted families.

CULTIVATING AND MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS

Getting Along With Others

I think the major thing is learning how to get along with people, especially living in the residence halls here.
(Iris, sophomore)

Concern with learning to get along with a wide range of people is most central for students during their first
semester and generally through the first year of college. Most student described how important it is to be able to
get along with others and to be tolerant of differences, and how their experiences in college helped them get
along better with all types of people. Most of the white students believe that Midwest is very diverse with
respect to race, ethnicity, and religion. Most racial and ethnic minority students do not think Midwest is racially
or ethnically very diverse but recognize some diversity in rural and urban backgrounds. The students who are
not from metropolitan suburbs sometimes claim that Midwest University is really a university for people from
the two big cities in the state, and that people from those cities in the state dominate the scene.
Unstated directly, but embedded within the shared culture, is also a value for the presentation of self in
public and quasiprivate/public cultural spaces of the university that is easygoing and tolerant. The easygoing
self is presented in places such as classrooms and in standing in line to buy books at the bookstore. It is honored
in common rooms and in other public spaces. This self is based in a polite, tolerant, superficial approach to
interactions and requires little from the authentic person beyond conforming to a polite form of interaction with
others. Opinions of students that would lead to conflict are left beneath the surface in these settings, cloaked in a
high value for easygoing tolerance of difference that quickly leads to a cordial detachment on the part of most
students. Institutional interests often coincide with and play a role in constructing this dynamic. After all, heated
discussions about sensitive issues can result in problems for the institution.1
Iris, like most students at Midwest University, emphasizes the importance of social rather than academic
learning as being significant to her as a college student.
 One of my friends in the dorm said college is not all (about) academic(s), you learn other things (too).
Which is true, because the whole academic aspect to further your learning academically, learn more about
all of the subjects you are interested in, (and) somehow end up getting a job with that learning (is only part
of it.) There is also the whole aspect of learning to get along with people, learning how to take care of
yourself. . . . I think the major thing is learning how to get along with people, especially living in the
residence halls here.

The centrality of being able to get along with people is touched upon early in her discussion, as it is with
most of the students. Iris, like most, mentions the residence hall as the place where she had to learn how to get
along with people, even if they do not always act the way you are used to people acting. She lives in a residence
hall that has shared rooms and communal baths. Both of her parents have college educations, and they are
paying for some, but not all, of her college education. She works full time during the summer and does some
part-time work at a restaurant during the school year. She also works as a resident assistant in her residence hall.

Making Friends
The Importance of Friends: “I think it’s the people I meet, the friends I make that really matter.” (Jane,
sophomore)

By far the biggest concern for most students, from day one in college, is making friends. Tim, a junior in
mechanical engineering, summed it up by saying, “To survive at Midwest, you have to make friends fast!
Otherwise, you’ll be out there all alone. You’ll crash and burn. Midwest is just too big a place not to have a
network.”
Most students report that their friendships develop with people who have similar interests, those they meet
in residence halls or fraternity houses. Some of the choices students make, such as whether to join a club or an
organization, or pledge a sorority or fraternity, do influence their friendship networks, where they make their
close friendships, and how and where they meet the people with whom they have romantic relationships. About
60 percent of the freshmen at Midwest choose to participate in a freshman learning community (FLC), or a
freshman interest group (FIG). Freshman interest groups, also called curriculum-based learning communities,
are made up of students who take the same classes together. This gives them a ready-made friendship support
group in their classes and when studying. Both types of groups usually are made up of other people who are
interested in the same career or who share an intellectual interest, and those who live nearby in the same
residence hall.
Starting during the first semester of college, most of the private daily lives of students takes place in a
cultural space they experience as separated from the adult-controlled academic activities of the classroom.
Behind the doors of their residence hall rooms, in off-campus places largely inhabited by peers, or where they
socialize in groups of peers and later in off-campus housing or sorority and fraternity houses is where students
say much of their social learning takes place. Most establish a group of closer friends with whom they have
more authentic friendships, not the easygoing, more superficial relationships associated with the public-self
identity work that is salient in the public spaces associated with residence hall commons and hallways, the
recreation center, dining halls, libraries, student service centers, classrooms, computer labs, offices, and the
lawns and benches of the campus. Most students also assume that college is a time for romantic involvements
and potentially developing partnerships. Those who do not become romantically involved or even go out with
potential romantic partners often describe their experiences as inconsistent with what they perceive as the norm
of having involvements while in college.
You cannot miss the constant use of cell phones by students as they traverse the sidewalks of campus on
their way to classes and head back to their car, residence hall, or fraternity or sorority. Listen in on several
hundred of them, as I have over a two-year period, and you will hear mostly calls aimed at networking with
peers to meet. Immediately after class, some students flip open the cell and begin the calls. They last until they
get to the next class. Occasionally the calls are to parents, once in a while they are emotionally charged conflicts
with peers, and a number are logistical calls about being picked up or meeting for lunch. The desire to network
has a frantic, almost desperate, tone at times. Students describe wanting to make sure that they are not left out of
anything the group is doing or planning, and that they know everything that is going on with people in the
group. It is very important to be “in the know,” an insider, not an outsider. Some students describe feeling as if
they have to spend more time socializing than they should because they fear being left out of the group if they
do not. The desperate feeling of needing to belong and the pressures when you do belong are mentioned by
students fairly frequently in reference to their freshman year, but not so much later because they usually have
established a core of friends that they network with through the remainder of their college years.
Iris, like a number of the women, spends time describing how she is friends with both men and women.
Some of the men also specifically mention women friends, but more men mention having a “girlfriend” and go
on to focus their discussion of friendships mostly on other men.

I definitely have more guy friends than I did in high school. I mean, I hung out with guys in high school
partly because I was in the music department at my high school, and we were all very close-knit because we
spent a lot of time together, so you get to know everybody. You get to know everybody’s pet peeves. One or
two guys I was really close with. But here, there are nights where I would much rather hang out with the
guys than with the girls! Just because the guys just want to watch a movie and the girls want to talk, and I
don’t feel like talking, so just sitting there and watching the movie is great.

Iris, like many of the students, talks about building friendships and the types of friends she has. She reveals
that she is aware of differing gendered relational cultural styles and lets me know she is comfortable operating
across them, and at times she even prefers the masculine form of social interaction that requires less talking.
Some students, more women than men, emphasize the importance of developing friendships with both men and
women in order to view themselves as well rounded. For some, developing friendships with both men and
women in college is important, because they feel that they were unsuccessful in building such friendships in
high school and want to have that experience.

SEEKING SIMILAR OTHERS

People Like Us (Me): “You’re always drawn to people like you.” (Daryl, sophomore agricultural education
major)

Daryl, a sophomore, is from a small town in the state where Midwest is located. He, like Iris, continues to
live in a residence hall as a sophomore. He is one of over 175 dorm resident assistants at Midwest University
that make up 1.16 percent of the 12 percent who remain in the residence halls after their freshman year. He is a
tall, stout man with sandy brown hair, a fair complexion, ruddy cheeks, and twinkling blue eyes. He clearly
takes pleasure in describing how important living with a diverse range of people while at college has been for
him. Classroom learning, he explains, is not the most important part of the college experience for him, it is the
social learning.

You learn stuff in the classroom, but I mean, you can read a book anywhere. There’s just so many different
life experiences that you learn coming to college just because there are so many different kinds of people
and they’re bringing their experiences and you are bringing your experiences, and it’s just so different from
each other, so I would say that would be the most significant thing that I’ve learned. . . . I come from a very
small rural community with very little diversity. So coming to Midwest, I mean the diversity is almost
overwhelming at first. Well, I shouldn’t say that, but I mean it’s different, just living with a diverse
population. I like sports, hanging out with friends, playing video games, stuff like that. . . . I’ve made a lot of
friends.

For Daryl and many students at Midwest, “diversity” means people who are not like themselves in
background, with variations of region, metro, and nonmetro home communities. Religious upbringing, and
tastes, and racial and ethnic diversity are included in the meaning of “diversity” by these students.

CONSTRUCTING A UNIQUE SELF

Facebook Interests: “Politics and tits”2 (Trevor, senior political science major)

Recently the introduction of Facebook on campuses across the United States has led to it becoming a very
important venue for the aspect of identity work aimed at defining oneself as a sought-after, unique personality.
Popular culture provides much of the material for developing this aspect of self, along with photographs of
oneself having lots of fun with peers. Facebook is a powerful social networking tool that enables students to
easily maintain knowledge of and/or a connection to many people they know from high school, meet in person
at college, or connect with electronically through Facebook alone. This study suggests, however, that most
students do not build key relationships primarily through Facebook but instead use it to build and maintain a
network of friends and as a tool for comparative identity work.
The construction of the unique self of most students is shaped by the framework provided by the generalized
college student culture and is starkly outlined by the categories Facebook provides for achieving this goal. Even
establishing uniqueness has a script that must be followed. The categories that matter and the ways that
communication, networking, and interaction are structured reflect a value system that is consistent with the
individualistic, consumerist, cultural norms of the generalized college student culture. And Facebook makes the
identities that are constructed readily available for consumption and potential acquisition as “friends.”

BALANCING WORK AND PLAY

Jane, now a senior, is majoring in biology. As a freshman she lived in a residence hall where a number of other
pledges to her sorority lived. Jane’s friendship circle is made up mostly of sorority sisters and fraternity
brothers. As a sophomore she moved into the sorority house. Jane has fond memories of her time living in the
sorority house too, but she says the constant “drama” eventually grew old, and in her junior year she opted to
live off campus with several of her sorority sisters. She dated the student government president for a time and
has dated others throughout college. Just recently her relationship with a boyfriend who is in a fraternity ended.
Jane, like Talisha and Iris and most women at Midwest, assumes a norm of dating and romantic involvements
while in college. She dates and socializes with friends. She usually goes to a couple of downtown restaurant
bars when she goes out with them. She describes friendships with women and men as important. Jane tries to
balance academics with having fun, but she views the social learning she has done in college as the most
significant and regrets the lack of time for having fun.

Honestly I feel like nothing I’ve learned in the classroom will help me do what I want to do in the end. I
think it’s the people I meet, the friends I make, that really matter, just, just how I express myself to this
university and what, what I can retain back from them.

Jane believes that social learning has been more significant for her while in college, but she has consistently
tried to balance the time and energy she spends on academics and socializing so that she succeeds in her career
aspirations. Her parents are very insistent that she make good grades and continue to pursue a career in one of
the health-related professions. Jane, like Roy, had one of her best learning experiences while in college in
connection to the leadership role she played for the Greek system, at the campus level, in planning
homecoming. But, unlike Roy, she does not link these experiences to attaining adult gender identity, instead
linking them to gaining interpersonal and organizational skills that she hopes will transfer to her professional
career.
Students describe a generalized culture that expects them to use their college years as a time to learn how to
take care of themselves; to get along with diverse others; to make new friends, build networks, and more
generally learn how to relate to others; to develop their own unique selves, personality, and direction; and to
learn to balance work and play, in preparation for real life, which will require all of these capabilities.

NOTES

1. An email directive issued by a top university administrator after 9/11, for instance, cautioned faculty
members not to discuss 9/11 in the classroom. Some students said that they wanted to be able to discuss it
in classes. One student said in an exasperated tone, “We can’t ever really discuss the important things in
class!”
A public forum facilitated by trained personnel was held specifically to deal with 9/11. In the context of
the social relations within which the university as an institution exists, this is the bureaucratically rational
and safe approach to take and cannot be faulted. Still, the message received by college students over time is
that issues that really matter to them, and that things that are really important in the “real world” are not
discussed in class. This contributes to a superficial quality in the public and quasipublic “shared” college
student culture. This points to a failure in our culture to create spaces where difference can be discussed
and “better versions” of reality can be established for the collective [Lara 1998].
2. Trevor is a multicomposite.

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 PART IV DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Coleman’s central argument was that high schools host an adolescent peer culture whose norms and
values differ from those of the mainstream adult culture. Do you think Coleman’s work, now written fifty
years ago, is outdated? What norms and values exist in American adolescent peer cultures today?
2. Drawing from Ito’s research on youth digital media and communication technology and Coleman’s
classic piece, how have new technologies transformed adolescent cultures? At the same time, how have
digital media retained many of the elements of adolescent culture that Coleman observed?
3. In their examination of the factors related to random school shootings, Kimmel and Mahler note that “all
the school shootings were committed by boys.” How does recognizing this fact influence what policy
solutions one would recommend to curtail random school shootings? How do such policy prescriptions
differ from those you might suggest if you were focused on more psychological (e.g. mental health) or
cultural (e.g. video games) explanations for school violence?
4. McFarland puts forth a formula for how classroom conflicts come to pass. Think of a social drama that
you have witnessed in a classroom. Narrate the classroom conflict using McFarland’s work. Does his
formulation of the elements of a social drama help to explain the incident? Does it fit exactly? If not,
where does McFarland’s understanding of social drama falter in explaining your example?
5. Hamilton and Armstrong argue that it is important to consider how colleges’ institutional priorities shape
student opportunities for success. How does social class, in particular, intersect with institutional
characteristics to shape student experiences in college? Think of examples from the reading as well as
from your own experiences and observations. What are some solutions for helping students, especially
socioeconomically disadvantaged students, succeed academically in college and achieve upward social
mobility? Think of solutions at the individual, institutional, familial, and cultural levels.
6. Grigsby investigates peer culture on a college campus. Based on her research, what do students value?
What kinds of attitudes and behaviors are normative?

SOURCE: Reprinted by permission from College Life Through the Eyes of Students By Mary Grisby. The State
University of New York Press © 2009, State University of New York. All rights reserved.
PART V

THE ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENT

I n recent years, sociologists have refocused attention on the relationship between schools and
communities. These efforts have identified the cultural, economic, political, demographic, and
institutional forces that produce variation in the structure of schooling (Arum, 1996; Walters,
McCammon, & James, 1990). Although such efforts are not new (see Durkheim, 1977; Waller, Reading 9),
scholars increasingly have focused on institutional factors responsible for this variation (Arum, 2000). Part V
consists of two sections: First, we present readings highlighting cultural and institutional factors underlying
school variation; then, we conclude the book with four readings providing sociological perspectives on the
recent politics of school reform.
In the first reading, James E. Rosenbaum and Amy Binder examine the actions employers take in the
attempts to hire workers with specific skills. Through interviews with employers, the authors discovered that
employers screen people for entry-level jobs through linkages with schools. Employers seek workers with
mathematical and English skills, and some go to great lengths fostering links with school personnel to attract
well-skilled employees. Once an employee holds an entry-level job, supervisors employ further screening
measures to determine the person’s readiness for employment in more advanced occupations. This reading
demonstrates not only which skills employers value but also how a school’s institutional linkages with
community businesses have important implications for student outcomes.
John Meyer lays out his “legitimacy theory,” describing the power of schools as organizations that
manufacture legitimacy for society. Meyer asserts that, historically, debates within the field of educational
sociology have supported either a position that schools serve to socialize children or the position that schools
are great systems of sorting, selecting, and allocating. Meyer contends that this debate has concealed the fact
that the two ideas are not really mutually exclusive—schools socialize students as well as serving the function
of allocating opportunities and resources. However, Meyer’s main argument is that schools do more than the
sides of the debate allow. Schools also legitimate certain types of knowledge as extant and authoritative.
Furthermore, schools legitimate elites and citizens, supporting the position of elites and perpetuating
inequalities.
Stephen Brint and Jerome Karabel, in the third reading, present a neo-institutionalist account of the growth
and vocationalization of community colleges. Brint and Karabel argue that these changes in community college
practices were due neither to international student demand nor to external labor market needs. Rather,
community college administrators defined a market niche for their organizations to satisfy their own
institutional self-interest. Although the Brint and Karabel account is compelling, subsequent research by
Dougherty (1994) suggests that their analysis did not properly appreciate the role of the state and local political
forces.
In the following reading, Richard Arum chronicles how appellate and Supreme Court rulings have
systematically undermined the moral authority of schools. Although the study surveys all 1,200 court cases
involving student rights, it highlights Goss v. Lopez as the turning point in judicial decisions concerning
schools. In 1971, Dwight Lopez and other students were part of a disorderly protest in an Ohio high school. In
response, the principal suspended the students without a hearing. Lopez and the other students sued, and
eventually, the Supreme Court ruled in their favor—defining an expanded sense of due process and students’
rights. Goss v. Lopez set a precedent for an outpouring of related trials in subsequent decades. Arum argues that
an unintended consequence of the legal precedent set by Goss v. Lopez has been the erosion of the moral
authority of adults in public schools. Furthermore, moral authority is central to a school’s ability to promote
academic achievement and socialize youth effectively.
In the next reading, Mitchell Stevens explores a particular aspect of educational organizational culture—an
admissions office of an elite college. Stevens argues that two conflicting moral imperatives are at work as
applications are sorted for acceptance or rejection. On one hand, there is the ideal that everyone should be
evaluated on the same terms. On the other hand, there is the ideal that each person should be given specific
consideration as a unique individual. Stevens demonstrates how admissions committees tenuously balance such
contradictory values. He describes how admissions officers sift applications, first using “coarse sorts” and then
making finer distinctions using “evaluative story-telling.” Throughout the admissions process, Stevens finds that
class privilege is both subtly and explicitly reinforced.
In the next selection, Amy Binder and Kate Wood study how conservative college students in different
institutional settings express their political views. They find that conservative students at a large, Midwest,
public university favor political action that creates a spectacle around hot button issues. Binder and Wood
provide the illustrative example of Affirmative Action bake sales, events where cupcakes are sold to white
students for full price and students of color for a discounted price. In contrast, conservative students who attend
a private, elite university on the East coast were more likely to want to engage in a dialogue with students who
had differing political beliefs. These two different political orientations, Binder and Wood argue, are the product
of the organizational environment surrounding students.
In the next selection, Roberto G. Gonzales builds on work from other sociologists (example Alejandro
Portes and Min Zhou, Reading 31) to explore how social contexts and experiences impact processes of
immigrant identity formation. In this piece, Gonzales examines the transition out of secondary education for
undocumented immigrants. Public schools in the United States educate students regardless of their immigration
status. However, this ethos of inclusion does not extend beyond 12th grade. After high school, undocumented
youth are not able to legally participate in the workforce and other aspects of citizen adulthood (i.e., voting,
acquiring a driver’s license, eligibility for college loans or in-state tuition) are not legally accessible to them.
The final section of our reader explores some recent trends in education policy and school reforms. First,
Alejandro Portes outlines the benefits of bilingualism, while conceding that policies promoting English-only
programs have won out in the United States. Drawing on a wide body of research, Portes asserts that
bilingualism is associated with higher cognitive functioning, robust self-esteem, and a variety of social and
economic advantages.
In the next piece, Jennings asks important questions about which parties are actually making the choices in
school choice. Traditionally, the school choice literature puts the agency to choose in the hands of parents; the
rhetoric goes that parents choose the school that their child is to attend. Through careful observation and
interviews, Jennings suggests that charter schools are doing more choosing than scholars had previously
thought. In fact, systems of school choice allow schools to exclude and disqualify students whose attendance
they perceive would strain their resources or hurt their measureable outcomes.
In the next reading, Roksa and Arum ask the question, how much are students learning in college? They
answer this simple question by assessing and surveying a group of college students at various points throughout
their college careers. They demonstrate that college students are not making the kinds of gains in critical
thinking and problem solving that colleges promise or students expect when paying steep tuition bills. Forty-
five percent of the students in the sample showed no measurable gains on assessments between their freshman
and sophomore years. The chapter concludes with suggestions for universities and students to recommit to their
central enterprise: student learning.
Our book closes with a reading by Pamela Barnhouse Walters and Annette Lareau that calls for a higher
standard of rigor in educational research. Walters and Lareau suggest that in the late 1990s an earthquake shook
the foundations of educational research, revealing its products to be haphazard and its practitioners to be
incompetent. These authors assert the necessity for strong educational research to guide policy makers and
school practitioners.

REFERENCES
Arum, R. (1996). Do private schools force public schools to compete? American Sociological Review, 96, 29–
46.
Arum, R. (2000). Schools and communities: Ecological and institutional dimensions. Annual Review of
Sociology, 26(23), 395–418.
Dougherty, K. (1994). The contradictory college: The conflicting origins, impacts and future of the community
college. New York: State University of New York Press.
Durkheim, E. (1977). On education and society. In J. Karabel & A. H. Halsey (Eds.), Power and ideology in
education (pp. 92–105). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975).
Walters, P., McCammon, H., & James, D. (1990). Schooling or working? Public education, racial politics, and
the organization of production in 1910. Sociology of Education, 63(1), 1–26.
43
DO EMPLOYERS REALLY NEED MORE EDUCATED
YOUTH?
JAMES E. ROSENBAUM AND AMY BINDER

A lthough there is little doubt that many high school graduates lack strong academic skills (NAEP
1990), sociologists have raised some doubts about whether employers really need better-educated
workers. Berg (1971) contended that employers’ reliance on education in making hiring decisions is
not based on the actual skills needed for jobs. Rather, he argued, it fulfills an organizational desire for some
kind of sorting criteria. Berg, Squires (1979), and Collins (1971) reviewed numerous studies that showed that
educational attainments are unrelated to workers’ productivity, turnover, or absenteeism.1 Expanding on this
argument, Collins (1971: 1018) concluded that “employers tend to have quite imprecise conceptions of the skill
requirements of most jobs.”
More recent multivariate studies, however, found relationships between academic achievement and
productivity. Many studies in personnel psychology have demonstrated that cognitive ability is the strongest
predictor of on-the-job performance in many occupations (Hunter and Hunter 1984). Similarly, econometric
analyses have shown associations between test scores and performance (Barrett and Depinet 1991; Bishop 1993;
National Research Council 1989) and between course work (and academic skills) and wages and employment
(Cameron and Heckman 1993; Daymont and Rumberger 1982; Gamoran 1994; Kang and Bishop 1986). After
an extensive review, Gamoran (1994) concluded that the preponderance of evidence suggests that there is a
positive relationship between academic schoolwork and labor market outcomes.
Yet it is not clear whether employers act on these relationships. Research has found that employers fail to
reward high school graduates for academic skills in terms of hiring, better jobs, or better pay (Bills 1988; Crain
1984; Griffin, Kalleberg, and Alexander 1981; Kang and Bishop 1986; Rosenbaum and Kariya 1991). Using
data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS:72), Griffin et al. (1981)
found that aptitude, class rank, and other school-performance measures have small and often insignificant
effects on unemployment and job attainments of high school graduates who directly enter the workforce. Meyer
and Wise (1982) showed that rank in the high school class of 1972 had insignificant effects on wage rates two
years after graduation (1974), and Willis and Rosen (1979) observed that increased mathematics and reading
scores of high school graduates slightly lowered the wages of their first jobs. Despite their claims that they need
workers with academic skills, employers do not offer immediate rewards to high school graduates with better
academic performance. It is interesting that although grades did not improve the wages of new high school
graduates in the 1980s cohort of High School and Beyond, they had a strong payoff for these graduates’
earnings 10 years later (Rosenbaum and Roy 1996).
Ray and Mickelson (1993) indicated that studies need to consider employers’ actions, which sometimes
convey messages that contradict executives’ speeches. As if responding to this point, some recent research has
looked at actions that employers take to get better workers. Studies of employers’ responses to school-work
programs have found that employers have a limited commitment to such initiatives, offer few positions to
students, and have low perseverance in these programs (Bailey 1994; Lynn and Wills 1994; Pauly, Kopp, and
Haimson 1995). Bailey concluded that employers’ behaviors raise some doubts about their commitment to
skills. But these were studies of employers’ responses to special programs, not the ordinary actions that
employers routinely take to hire workers.
Nor do employers respond to their purported problems in obtaining workers with skills by providing
academic-skills training. Zemsky (1994) noted that employers express highly negative views of the academic
skills of high school graduates, but they do not use training programs to redress these deficiencies. In a survey
of 2,800 employers, Boesel (1994, Table 2) discovered that 71 percent provided training to their employees, but
less than 3 percent provided basic training in academic skills. Another survey of 3,000 employers found
extensive complaints by employers about academic skills, but little indication of tuition benefits or remedial
programs to address academic shortcomings (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1994). Commenting on these findings,
Cappelli (1995:1) noted, “There has been a fair amount of noise in the business community about
establishments having to provide remedial training. But it does not appear that they’re doing it. It appears to be
just noise.” Cappelli raised the same issue as Berg (1971) did: Do employers really need academic skills, or are
they complaining for other reasons?
Bowles and Gintis (1976) interpreted findings like those just mentioned to mean that employers do not
really have a need for better academic skills and that employers’ calls for academic skills are, at best,
unwarranted and, at worst, a means of accomplishing some kind of social sorting, social control, or reduction in
pay. Although empirical tests have not supported Bowles and Gintis’s contention that employers need
compliance, not academic skills (Cappelli 1992; Olneck and Bills 1980), these studies suffered from the same
problems of measuring “needs” and “skills” noted earlier.

METHODS

To discover whether employers actually value academic skills and act in accordance with their valuations,
researchers must go to the right informants and use methods that are sensitive to the task. Rather than rely on
the views of corporate executives (as blue-ribbon panels do), we interviewed the plant or office managers who
actually hire entry-level workers. In the less frequent cases in which human resources departments handled the
hiring of high school graduates, we interviewed managers in these departments.
To gain detailed information about the hiring process, we conducted one-hour interviews in employers’
offices. Although observational methods would have yielded even better information, it is difficult to conduct
observations in many organizations. Employers’ detailed statements about their behaviors are a useful way to
get at the intervening processes in a large number of organizations.
• • •

Since we were interested in how employers’ attitudes limited youths’ access to jobs in the primary labor
market, we excluded businesses that are likely to offer only “youth jobs” without opportunities for advancement
(such as restaurants and small stores). The sample cannot be considered a random sample of all employers, so
statistical analyses would have been inappropriate. Yet it includes employers that have a wide variety of the
kinds of entry-level jobs that are potentially available to high school graduates in graphics, manufacturing,
skilled trades, financial services, office work, and so forth. These are mainly ordinary firms, not leading-edge,
best-practice ones that are known for their high-skill demands (Murnane and Levy 1996), but they may offer the
possibility of access to the primary labor market. They are appropriate for our purposes of discovering the range
of academic skills that employers may need, the job conditions they may provide, and the range of costly
actions they may take to obtain these skills.
Twenty-three of the 51 employers in this sample were located in the city of Chicago, and 28 were located in
suburbs west of Chicago. The sample was composed mostly of small or medium-size firms, but it included a
few large ones; the companies ranged in size from fewer than 10 to more than 80,000 employees.

FINDINGS

This section probes the sociological contention that employers overstate their need for skilled workers. It
investigates whether employers report a need for workers with specific academic skills and whether they
indicate the relevance of specific academic skills to specific job requirements. It then examines if employers
take any costly actions to realize their stated needs and, if so, what strategies they use and whether these actions
are taken by those who report difficulty finding workers with academic skills.

Skills Needed for Entry-Level Jobs

Though one should be skeptical about the needs voiced by the top executives on American blue-ribbon
panels, our first-line managers expressed similar concerns. Of the 51 urban and suburban managers who were
interviewed, 35 stated that basic academic skills in mathematics and English are needed for the entry-level jobs
they are seeking to fill, and many described specific job conditions or tasks that demand these skills. They were
most certain about the requirements of their jobs after they had experience with workers with poor skills.

Mathematical Skills. Thirteen of the 35 managers described the tasks that require mathematics skills in their
entry-level jobs. Most reported that the jobs require workers who can do simple arithmetic and sometimes add
fractions and that some jobs require algebra and trigonometry. The general manager of one Chicago steel
manufacturing company said that the general-labor jobs in his plant require “the concept of adding or reading a
ruler or tape measure.” He added: “We would like to hire people who know eighth-grade math, such as knowing
the difference between a fraction and a decimal, but kids aren’t getting that from high school, and we generally
don’t see that level of knowledge.” A manager at another Chicago manufacturer complained that many workers
have fallen short in basic mathematics. When asked what experiences she has had with young employees, she
recounted the story of a young man she just hired to work full time in the shipping department:

He came in my office and said, “You know, down in that shipping room you’ve got a lot of numbers out
there.” I said, “We’ve got a lot of numbers out there? Well yes, I guess we do.” And he said, “I don’t know a
lot about numbers.” I said, “Oh, do you want to learn?” He said, “Yeah, I think so.” I said, “Have you
noticed that there are periods between some of the numbers?” He said, “Yeah, what’s that all about?” I said,
“Where were you when they learned decimals in school?” He said, “I must have been absent.”

English Skills. Another 10 of the 35 managers reported that reading, writing, and communication skills are
needed for their jobs and that their employees who are high school graduates do not even have simple skills.
One office manager in a small suburban graphics company told of a secretary “who tried to spell quick with a
‘w.’ She didn’t know that . . . all words that have ‘q’ need a ‘u’!” Echoing an often-reported condition, a
recruiter for a Chicago insurance company said that applicants for data-entry and claims-adjustment jobs “can’t
understand some of the questions on the job application” and that some men bring girlfriends to fill out the
applications.
Another Chicago manager unhappily stated that many of his applicants for unskilled labor jobs “can’t read
and write beyond, I suspect, a fifth- or sixth-grade level, and when they can read, they certainly can’t
comprehend what they have read.” This is often a serious shortcoming because many employers think that their
jobs require better than eighth-grade reading and writing skills. A manager for a suburban manufacturer
observed that “today’s high school graduates don’t comprehend as much. It takes them longer to catch on to
instructions, and they can’t read manuals for instructions as well as they used to, which are written at the 12th
grade level.” Another manager noted the needed to find workers who can “put together two or three sentences in
a complete thought.”

Both Mathematical and English Skills. Another 12 managers cited high school graduates’ problems with both
mathematics and English, saying that both types of skills are needed in today’s entry-level jobs. A manager at a
Chicago metal-parts manufacturer complained that even though his entry-level jobs require only seventh-grade
reading and mathematics skills, he has a “terrible time getting even a 10 percent yield” for these skills in the
applicants he interviews.
Of the 16 managers who stated that they had no need for employees with academic skills, 11 said that their
entry-level jobs simply require no skills, and 3 more said that their jobs require occupational skills, but not
academic skills.2 A suburban production manager noted: “There aren’t a lot of qualifications other than wanting
to work.” A suburban plant manager observed that academic skills are actually counterproductive; for such
people, “within a year or so, they’ll get bored and move on.” A manager at a Chicago custom-gearing
manufacturer reported that his company needs people with “technical ability . . . [for] grasping the skills needed
for machine jobs.”

Promotion to Higher-Level Jobs

Some managers noted that although academic skills are not needed in their entry-level jobs, these skills are
needed for higher jobs in their companies that entry-level workers can move into. Even though these entry-level
jobs are largely in the secondary labor market, in that they offer minimal pay, benefits, and job security, they
can sometimes lead to the bottom rung of a career ladder to better jobs. Doeringer and Piore (1971:167) referred
to such jobs as “secondary jobs . . . attached to internal labor markets.”
Employers note that upward movement is possible from such entry-level jobs only if workers possess
adequate basic skills at the time of entry. Of the 35 managers who stated that they need workers with academic
skills, 17 (48.6 percent) reported that although their entry-level jobs are undemanding, they allow some workers
to move into higher-skilled jobs, and those jobs do require academic skills. Indeed, some employers prefer to
recruit for their skilled jobs from entry-level workers who can learn the firm’s procedures and techniques by
observation.

• • •

On-the-Job Screening
Other employers used their entry-level jobs for what may be called on-the-job screening. A manager at a
printing plant reported that his firm uses entry-level jobs as a way to discover if workers have the ability to
advance in the future:

Well, one of the questions I ask the pressman [the employee’s supervisor] is, “Are they fast learners?” I ask,
“How are they doing? Can they read and write? Are they picking up on the math and the instructions fine?”
If that’s true, there’s no problem. I ask [their supervisors], “Hey, are these our future pressers?” They say,
“Yeah.” So that’s the answer I’m looking for. That’s what I’m looking for when we’re hiring somebody:
Are they going to be able to go up the ladder and become the feeder and the second man, then up to the first-
man spot?

In entry-level jobs that offer on-the-job training or screening, if workers do only what is demanded by their
simple daily tasks, they will not need academic skills. But if they can do only these daily tasks and lack
academic skills, then they will not advance to more demanding jobs, which employers expect to fill from these
positions.
Jobs that offer on-the-job screening may illustrate Berg’s (1971) findings on the artificially high premium
placed on academic skills, but they suggest a possible limitation of his study. That is, Berg may have found
workers “overqualified” for the task demands of their present jobs because employers were preparing these
workers to advance into higher jobs or were testing their capabilities. To the extent that employers use some
jobs to train or screen workers for higher jobs, their job requirements will include skills needed for the higher
jobs, but not for the entry-level jobs. . . .
• • •

Strategies to Increase Retention

When faced with workers who fall beneath a certain level of academic skills on the job, do companies
undertake expensive actions that are designed to compensate for their workers’ poor skills? If they do, we could
infer that these companies have some commitment to their professed need for academic skills. We found that
employers take three types of compensatory actions: increasing supervisors’ responsibilities to assist and
supervise less skilled workers, simplifying job tasks to match workers’ poor skills, and accommodating good
workers when they come along.

Increasing Supervisors’ Responsibilities to Assist and Supervise Less Skilled Workers. Many employers assign
more experienced—and expensive—workers the task of assisting less skilled workers in performing their jobs,
explaining the tasks in minute detail, and supervising their performance more closely. Often this is an additional
task for a supervisor or manager. This kind of strategy occurred in 11 companies in our sample—in 9 of the 35
(25.7 percent) whose managers stated that their companies needed workers with academic skills, but in only 2
of the 16 (12.5 percent) who stated that their companies did not. Apparently, those who said that their
companies had jobs that required such academic skills were more likely to increase supervisors’ responsibilities.
A manager at a Chicago manufacturer noted that her firm compensates for high school graduates’ lack of
basic reading and mathematics skills by repeatedly spelling out each task that must be done:

We find if they can’t understand the reading, they have to have an illustration, like we’ll take a gauge and
show them where it has to be. Instead of the workers being able to say to themselves, “This part has to be
made within thousandths of an inch” and taking the part and measuring it to those thousandths, the foreman
has to go over to the employee, pick up the part, pick up the gauge, set the gauge, and say, “If it does this,
OK. And if it doesn’t, not OK” and has to set up a scenario each and every time.

The plant manager of a small company succinctly summed up this strategy when he observed that he
“basically just spend[s] time with them on the floor with a ruler and show[s] them the basic marks, and show[s]
them how it works.”

Simplifying Job Tasks to Match Workers’ Poor Skills. This strategy often requires additional costs. Of the 51
managers we interviewed, 23 (45.1 percent) reported that they must adapt job tasks to make up for the basic
academic skills that their entry-level employees lack. Although 20 of the 35 (57.1 percent) managers who stated
that the jobs at their companies need academic skills adapt job tasks to respond to entry-level workers’
shortcomings in skills, only 3 of the 16 (18.8 percent) who did not mention such needs take such actions.
Apparently, those who said that they need employees with academic skills are more likely to take these actions.
Many of those who were interviewed were matter-of-fact about the need to make jobs easier, as when one
plant manager in a Chicago manufacturing firm said, “Yes, [simplifying] is a must. What I’ve done is gone all
the way down to the grammar-school level to get them to understand simple, simple math.” The plant manager
at a suburban metal fabricator stated that his company has taken the ultimate step in bypassing workers’ poor
reading skills: “We have eliminated a need for math and reading skills altogether; every instruction we give
workers is now verbal.” A plant manager at a Chicago manufacturer agreed: “[We] only give people
instructions for a certain amount of instructions at a time. Spoon-feed them a little bit.” Both these managers
thought that such “spoon-feeding” is an additional and costly burden that they would prefer to avoid, but they
are struggling with problems of poor skills and find it is an unanticipated cost. There is much concern about the
low-paid, low-skilled jobs in the work world and much criticism of employers for not offering better jobs. In
these examples, however, we see employers who feel compelled to reduce the skill demands of entry-level jobs
because of workers’ limitations.

Altering Job Conditions or Rules to Accommodate Good Applicants or Workers. Such accommodations can
occur either at the time of hiring (such as when an employer changes the hiring schedules to meet the needs of a
valued applicant) or as a way to retain valued employees (such as when an employer allows an employee to
work at home, rather than at the job site).
Of the 51 managers who were interviewed, 16 said that their companies try to accommodate valued
employees in some way—13 of the 35 (37.1 percent) who reported the need for workers with academic skills,
but only 3 of the 16 (18.8 percent) who did not. Again, those who stated the need for academic skills were more
likely to take these actions.
 • • •

Once a worker proves to be a valuable employee, supervisors are loath to lose them. To retain valued
workers, some employers will accommodate their workers by allowing them to work flexible hours, at home, or
in jobs they ordinarily would not hold. When the manager of a manufacturing firm in Chicago received a call
from a valued former young worker who was moving back to the city, he enthusiastically asked, “How soon can
you start?” Although it was a small firm and it did not have a job vacancy, he added that the company would
“reorganize to have her back.” The manager of a suburban metal shop explained: “When you see a guy or girl
[is working] out well, has a good work ethic, you hate to let [him or her] go. I’ll find a place for them. Because
somewhere down the line I’m going to need that person again.” This manager said that even in periods of slack
demand, he will accommodate a skilled employee.
• • •

Recruitment Strategies
Employers participate in several different types of contacts with schools and other institutions to seek skilled
high school graduates for their entry-level positions and use some of these linkages to provide information about
prospective workers. Some activities, like apprenticeship programs, do not involve schools, but they are
sometimes related to the need for workers with academic skills. School-related activities range from minimal
involvement (job fairs) to high involvement (long-term links with teachers). Some of these linkage activities
seem to be a form of investment in prescreening.

Apprenticeships. Although apprenticeships have been praised as a type of training (Hamilton 1989), in
Germany, apprenticeship programs also have a screening function (Faist 1992). The managers of four of the
companies use apprenticeships, and all four stressed that apprenticeship programs are a dependable way to
screen their applicant pool for academic skills. Asked whether his company has trouble finding high school
graduates with sufficient mathematics and reading skills, one manager of a Chicago manufacturing firm referred
to his use of an apprenticeship program for hiring young, entry-level machinists-in-training: “They won’t be in
here if they don’t have [academic skills].” Even before we asked about academic skills, this manager explained
that the apprenticeship test of academic and job skills creates an “up-or-out” situation. For entry-level workers
to become apprentices at his firm, they either have to pass the test that the apprenticeship program “administers
and then they are enrolled in the apprenticeship program, or they [fail] the test and they are out of a job.”
When asked if his company is willing to hire employees who have not passed the apprenticeship test, the
manager at a suburban manufacturer responded, “Oh yeah, we’ll put them out here and give them the work
experience. But of course, it would be a lesser-degree job.” Both these employers place a value on basic skills,
and both have found a means of ensuring that their better entry-level positions are filled by high school
graduates with these skills: They use apprenticeship linkages. Three of the four managers at manufacturing
plants that use apprenticeship referrals were among those who said that their firms need workers with academic
skills. But while apprenticeships are a means of selecting applicants with academic skills, they are not common.

Close Links With Schools. Employers’ contacts with schools are far more common. Indeed, 42 of the 51
employers (82.4 percent) in our study have minimal contacts with schools—through job fairs at schools, talks to
classes, or notices of openings for part-time jobs. But employers view these activities as community services to
help students learn about work: they rarely regard them as leading to full-time jobs.
Some employers, however, have long-term, close linkages with school staff. Those who do frequently
devote a substantial amount of time to these relationships; they serve on school advisory boards and try to hire
recommended graduates of certain vocational programs. Unlike school-business partnerships, which are often
short-lived (Lynn and Wills 1994), these contacts usually carry long-term obligations and last many years.
When these employers have job openings, they ask school staff to nominate students. Employers see these long-
term linkages as a way to get the straight scoop on young graduates’ skills.
Of the 51 employers in our study, 13 have long-term contacts with teachers and counselors.3 These linkages
are much more common among employers who said they need academic skills; 12 of the 35 (34.3 percent)
managers who said their firms need employees with academic skills used a close form of school linkage,
compared to only 1 (6.3 percent) of the 16 who said his firm does not.
Despite the costs, several managers suggested that the investment of time involved in the closer form of
contacts (trusted links with school staff) pays off in employees with better academic skills. One executive at a
family-owned printing company in Chicago said that his company is still able to get workers with good
academic skills from a local high school on the basis of the personal relationship his father established with a
teacher from that school more than 10 years ago. Although this relationship is not without its costs (volunteered
time on the school’s advisory council), its benefits have been worth the sacrifices:

I think we’ve had success because we have been able to reach inside the schools and talk specifically to
certain teachers. . . . And the positive [aspect] of those contacts for us is that we’re getting the straight
scoop. And there [are] many times [when] we’ve called, and the teachers, the instructors, have told us,
“Look, I’ve got a classroom full of kids, but there’s no way I would send any of them to you.” So, I don’t
know if the schools are doing a great job, but our success has been good because we’ve been handed, I
think, a few of the better ones.

Asked to speculate why these links with schools work, one supervisor at a suburban metal company
observed: “If someone is willing to put their name behind somebody and say, ‘I think that this guy would work
out good,’ well, most people nowadays will not personally endorse anybody unless they’re pretty confident they
won’t wind up with egg on their face.” Because he expects the teachers he knows to care about their reputations,
this supervisor trusts them to tell him the truth about applicants’ skills. Through this link, he can efficiently and
effectively prescreen applicants and hire only those who come highly recommended.
But employers’ actions to recruit employees through selected networks has adverse implications for
alternative channels, even from the same school. The managers of several companies that maintain long-term
contacts with trusted teachers said that they are not willing to make an open channel of recruitment from the
entire school, such as through co-op placement programs or the counseling office. When asked whether he
would consider using other school programs to recommend potential workers, the manager at a Chicago printing
plant with strong links to teachers reported:

We bypass the typical channels. . . . I think the placement offices in . . . schools . . . they’re out there, God
bless them for it, but they’re out there trying to get kids jobs, and I think they probably have less sensitivity
to the workplace. I think the best of them probably have the idea that if they get the [kids] placed into [jobs],
then they’ve done their job. And that’s good [for their kids]. That probably is their role. But I don’t know
that it means that they fully understand what [my job requirements are] or whether they fully understand the
students either. The teachers on the front line, I think they have their finger on the pulse a lot more.

Similarly, a manager at a suburban printing firm said that the principal of a local high school has done a
laudable job in referring qualified applicants to him, but the counselors have disappointed him:

You get a very strong distaste for working with high school counselors. I have very little use for high school
counselors altogether because I don’t know if their background is sociology with a specialty in psychology,
or whatever it is, but the only applicants I’ve ever gotten from high school counselors have been absolutely
worthless. . . . [They] have all just been really a waste of time.

In addition to distrusting conventional school channels for recommendations, employers who seek teachers’
assistance in hiring students are also wary of putting too much stock in high school grades. Of the 13 employers
with strong links to teachers or counselors, 8 reject the idea of using grades to measure employability. When
asked if he thinks that school grades predict anything about work performance, the manager of a Chicago firm
with such a link responded:

Not in all cases. And that works both ways. There’s a lot of people that come out of high school that have
 some great credentials and just never do anything, and then there are other young people who come out of
high school with below-average grades that just have the will to succeed. For whatever reason, high school
didn’t grab them. So, actually, at this point in time, I wouldn’t put too much weight on grades. The
[teacher’s] comments I would put a lot of weight on if I know the teacher, but not typically the objective
measures.

These comments help to clarify a puzzle in past research. Many employers (both in our sample and in the
society at large, cf. Crain 1984; Griffin et al. 1981; Rosenbaum and Kariya 1991) choose not to use grades as a
hiring criterion, even when they complain about not getting skilled workers. These findings suggest that the
skills students learn in school are valued by some employers, but the traditional ways of reporting those skills—
grades—are perceived as untrustworthy. Given this situation, employers’ investments in long-term linkages may
be the one way of getting trusted information instead of using the grades they do not trust (cf. Miller and
Rosenbaum 1997).
These findings also indicate that although employers pursue the productivity goals that economists assume,
some employers’ means of obtaining trustworthy information about applicants’ potential productivity actually
restrict access to those jobs to only students with the right contacts. Even students who have good grades but
who lack access to these contacts will have their qualifications mistrusted and may not be considered by some
employers. These links provide a good channel of access for students who have classes with linked teachers,
and in inner-city schools, these students’ best chance of getting a job is through their teachers. But only a small
proportion of teachers have such contacts (Rosenbaum and Jones 1995), and these links represent structural
barriers that prevent the labor market from operating in the unfettered way envisioned by economic theory, even
though the links are created in pursuit of that theory’s goal.

NOTES

1. Berg (1971:94) noted that measures of job performance are more dubious for white-collar jobs and that
findings for professional and managerial work suffer even more from this problem.
2. Three managers did not directly answer the question, “Do you often find that high school graduates do not
have the reading and math skills to work here?” One answered the question by discussing his applicants’
poor vocational skills, one responded with information about his company’s English-as-a-Second-
Language program, and the other said that he had not noticed. All three of these ambiguous responses were
coded as employers saying that basic academic skills are not lacking and were included in the subsample of
16 noncomplainers.
3. This rate (13/51—25.4 percent) is likely to be higher than average. Holzer’s (1995) four-city survey of
employers indicated that 3–7 percent of firms’ most recent hires came through school referrals, and
analyses of the High School and Beyond data found that less than 10 percent of first jobs were found with
help from schools (Rosenbaum and Roy 1996). Our exclusion of employers in the secondary labor market
(such as restaurants and small stores) probably contributed to the higher rate here.

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Crain, Robert. 1984. “The Quality of American High School Graduates: What Personnel Officers Say and Do.”
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SOURCE: James E. Rosenbaum and Amy Binder, “Do Employers Really Need More Educated Youths?”
Sociology of Education, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 70–80. Reprinted with permission from the American
Sociological Association and the authors.
44
THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION AS AN INSTITUTION
JOHN W. MEYER

H ow does education affect society? The dominant view has it that the schools process individuals.
They are organized networks of socializing experiences which prepare individuals to act in society.
More direct macro-sociological effects have been given little attention. Yet in modern societies
education is a highly developed institution. It has a network of rules creating public classifications of persons
and knowledge. It defines which individuals belong to these categories and possess the appropriate knowledge.
And it defines which persons have access to valued positions in society. Education is a central element in the
public biography of individuals, greatly affecting their life chances. It is also a central element in the table of
organization of society, constructing competencies and helping create professions and professionals. Such an
institution clearly has an impact on society over and above the immediate socializing experiences it offers the
young.
Recently, the traditional socialization view has been attacked with an argument which incorporates a more
institutional conception of education, though in a very limited way. Education is seen as an allocating institution
—operating under societal rules which allow the schools to directly confer success and failure in society quite
apart from any socializing effects (e.g., Collins 1971; Bowles and Gintis 1976). Allocation theory leaves open
the possibility that expanded educational systems have few net effects on society. The polemic controversy has
obscured the fact that allocation theory (and institutional theory in general) has many unexplored implications
for socialization theory and research; those implications are considered here. For instance, allocation theory
suggests effects of expanded educational institutions both on those who attend and those who do not attend
schools. It also can explain why completing a given level of schooling often matters much more in determining
educational outcomes than do the features of the particular school attended.
But conventional allocation theory, while considering the institutional properties of educational systems,
focuses mainly on the outcomes for individuals being processed. It tends to be assumed that education has no
effect on the distribution of political, economic, and social positions in society. Allocation theory is thus a
limited special case of a more general institutional theory—legitimation theory—which treats education as both
constructing or altering roles in society and authoritatively allocating personnel to these roles. Modern
educational systems involve large-scale public classification systems, defining new roles and statuses for both
elites and members. These classifications are new constructions in that the newly defined persons are expected
(and entitled) to behave, and to be treated by others, in new ways. Not only new types of persons but also new
competencies are authoritatively created. Such legitimating effects of education transcend the effects education
may have on individuals being processed by the schools. The former effects transform the behavior of people in
society quite independent of their own educational experience.
In this paper, I develop the ideas of legitimation theory and propose comparative and experimental studies
which could examine the effects of education on social structure, not simply on the individuals it processes. I
move away from the contemporary view of educational organization as a production system constructing
elaborated individuals. Modern education is seen instead as a system of institutionalized rites transforming
social roles through powerful initiation ceremonies and as an agent transforming society by creating new classes
of personnel with new types of authoritative knowledge.

THE TRADITIONAL SOCIALIZATION MODEL

Prevailing research on school effects is organized around a simple image of socialization in society: Schools
provide experiences which instill knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values in their students. These students then
have a revised and expanded set of personal qualities enabling them to demand more from, and achieve more in,
the role structure of modern society. As the competence and orientation of the personnel of society are expanded
and modernized, so society as a larger system is modernized and expanded.
Three general propositions are at issue here and make up a simple model, which is diagramed in Figure
44.1:

Proposition 1 (Socialization). Schooled persons are socialized to expanded levels of knowledge and
competence and expanded levels of modern values or orientations.
Proposition 2 (Socialization and Adult Competence). Early socialization to higher levels of knowledge,
competence, and modern values or orientations creates higher levels of adult status and competence.
Proposition 3 (Individual Competence and Social Progress). The expansion of the number of skilled adults
expands the complexity and wealth of society and social institutions.

Research on proposition 1 is rather clear-cut. Children and youth in schools learn a good deal more, and
acquire more expanded social capacities than those not in school, even when background factors are controlled
(see, e.g., Holsinger 1974; Plant 1965). The main problem in the research on this subject is the finding that the
particular school students attend often seems to make little difference (see Jencks et al. [1972]; or the studies
reviewed in Feldman and Newcomb [1969]). I return to this issue below; the point here is that something about
participation in schools creates notable effects on all sorts of socialization—from knowledge to social values to
status expectations.
Little direct empirical research has been done on proposition 3—the idea that changed people produce a
changed social structure—though this kind of “demographic” explanation (Stinchcombe 1968) has been a main
theme of sociological theories of social change. In recent decades some doubts have arisen, with a conservative
fear that “overeducated” people create more social instability and breakdown than they do social development.
There is no evidence of this, but the issue remains.

Figure 44.1 Traditional Socialization Theory

Proposition 2 has been one source of doubt about the whole model. Traditional socialization theory in
sociology (and child development research) becomes an adequate account of social structure only if (a)
socialized qualities remain with the person with some stability over long periods of time, and (b) such qualities
predict adult effectiveness in roles. But current research on personal qualities often suggests low
autocorrelations over time (see the review by Mischel [1971]). Many empirical studies suggest that the personal
qualities schooling creates do not effectively determine occupational success, once occupational entry has been
obtained (see the polemic review by Berg [1971]). Even if socialized qualities have fair stability and offer fair
predictive power, it is unlikely that the product of these effects (which amounts to a very low overall effect)
explains the high correlation of education with adult status.
Thus, socialization theory, as an account of educational effects on society, has one area of success and two
of failure. On the positive side, schooling does predict, with other variables held constant, many of the outcomes
of socialization. On the negative side, many of the measurable socialization outcomes of schooling have little
long-run staying power or predictive power.1 Also on the negative side, variations among schools in their
socialization programs show small effects on outcomes—if schools socialize through the immediate experiences
they provide, schools providing different experiences should produce very different effects. The research
literature provides little encouragement on this subject.2

INSTITUTIONAL THEORIES: ALLOCATION THEORY AS A LIMITED CASE

Traditional socialization theory defines education as an organized set of socializing experiences. It treats as
peripheral the fact that modern educational systems are society-wide and state-controlled institutions. In
discussions of socialization theory this property of educational settings barely appears (e.g., Wheeler 1966).
Partly in reaction to this limitation, but more in reaction to the empirical weakness of socialization theory
and in polemic reaction to the earlier optimism about the socially progressive effects of education, allocation
theories have been developed. It is argued that people in modern societies are allocated to adult roles on the
basis of years and types of education, apart from anything they have learned in schools. Education is thus more
a selector, sorter, and allocator than it is a socializer.
Education, in allocation theories, is a set of institutional rules which legitimately classify and authoritatively
allocate individuals to positions in society. Allocation theories are limited in that they define only a few
consequences of this system and consider effects mainly on the individuals being allocated, but they open up a
broader range of institutional theories which are discussed below.
The power of the allocation idea arises from its obvious empirical validity. We all know that status positions
in modern societies are assigned on the basis of education. Sometimes, as with civil service and professional
positions (e.g., medicine, law, teaching), this is a matter of law. To teach in a high school one must have an
educational credential. Whether one knows anything or not is less relevant. Often, rules about credentials are
simply part of established organizational practice, as in the assignment of college and business-school graduates
to managerial positions and of others to working-class jobs. Sometimes the whole process is informal, as in the
inclination of juries and informal friendship groups to attend to the advice of their more educated members.
In any event, the relationship between education and social position—over and above socialization or
learning—is quite direct. The line of research pursued by Blau and Duncan (1967) and Duncan, Featherman,
and Duncan (1972) shows large direct effects of education on status attainment, sometimes with ability
measures held constant. Education plays a direct causal role in occupational transition even late in the
individual’s career (Blau and Duncan 1967, chap. 5)—decades after any direct socialization effects must have
decayed or become outmoded.
The basic idea is clear:

Proposition 4 (Educational Allocation). In modern societies, adult success is assigned to persons on the basis
of duration and type of education, holding constant what they may have learned in school.

Educational allocation rules, that is, give to the schools social charters to define people as graduates and as
therefore possessing distinctive rights and capacities in society (Meyer 1970a; see also Clark 1970). Thus the
schools have power as an institutional system, not simply as a set of organizations processing individuals.
IMPACT OF ALLOCATION RULES ON SOCIALIZATION

The polemic contrast between socialization and allocation ideas—education as a socializing process versus
education as a status competition—has concealed the fact that the two are not really inconsistent. Further,
allocation theory offers interesting and useful extensions of traditional socialization ideas.
Assume that educational allocation rules in fact hold in society. Students and members of their social
networks (e.g., parents, peers, teachers, and counselors) are informed members of society—not simply passive
objects of educational production—and know these rules with some accuracy. Graduates, of course, experience
the rules through the distinctive experiences and treatments they receive in society. Now if we assume a most
elementary idea of social psychology, that people adapt and are adapted by others to their actual and expected
experiences, two major propositions follow:

Proposition 5 (Chartering). Students tend to adopt personal and social qualities appropriate to the positions
to which their schools are chartered to assign them.
Proposition 6 (Lagged Socialization). Adults tend to adopt qualities appropriate to the roles and expectations
to which their educational statuses have assigned them.

These propositions argue that education functions for individuals as a set of initiation ceremonies of great
and society-wide significance (Ramirez 1975; Garfinkel 1956). These ceremonies transform the futures and
pasts of individuals, greatly enhancing their value in all sorts of social situations. On the basis of their
education, individuals are expected to treat themselves, and others are expected to treat them, as having
expanded rights and competencies. Given allocation rules, educational labels are of the greatest significance for
the social identity of individuals.
Proposition 1 and proposition 5 parallel each other and in many instances overlap in accounting for the same
findings. It is often unclear to what extent given socialization effects are generated by the immediate socializing
situation in a given school and to what extent they are produced by the institutional authority in which the
school is embedded.
However, proposition 5, in contrast to proposition 1, offers a direct explanation of the most puzzling general
research paradox in the sociology of American education. The level of schooling achieved has substantial
effects on all sorts of personal qualities. But outcome variations among schools—even though these schools
differ greatly in structure and resources—are very small. This finding shows up in studies of college effects
(Feldman and Newcomb 1969), high school effects, and effects at the elementary school level. If schools have
their socializing effects as ritually chartered organizations (Meyer 1970a; Kamens 1971, 1974) rather than as
organized collections of immediate socializing experiences, then all schools of similar ritual status can be
expected to have similar effects. Since for many personnel assignment purposes all American high schools (or
colleges) have similar status rights, variations in their effects should be small. But because all high schools are
chartered to create “high school graduates”—a critical status in our society for college and occupational entry—
all of them tend to produce marked effects on students. Proposition 5, in other words, argues that the most
powerful socializing property of a school is its external institutional authority, derived from the rules of
educational allocation, rather than its network of internal socializing experiences. Educators, who attend with
great vigor to the accreditation of their schools, seem more aware of this process than do socialization
researchers.
Thus, the educational contexts which vary substantially in the change and learning they produce in students
do not usually include specific schools. They include contexts which are distinctively chartered:

1. Schooling per se. Life prospects (and hence changes in students) are vitally affected by being in an
institution chartered as a school.
2. Type of school, when the types are differently chartered. Himmelweit and Swift (1969) and Kerckhoff
(1975) show marked differences in outcomes for similar British students between grammar and
secondary modern schools. American researchers have not looked for differences in expectations
 between initially similar students in general and vocational high schools. Some studies show distinct
occupational effects of teachers, colleges, and engineering schools (Astin and Panos 1969).
3. Curriculum, when it is distinctively chartered. For instance, being in a college preparatory curriculum (in
contrast to a vocational one) makes a considerable difference in the aspirations and expectations of
American high school students (Alexander and Eckland 1975; see also Rosenbaum 1975).3

Proposition 6—the idea that education socializes adults by allocating them to expanded roles and role
expectations—explains a second major paradoxical finding in the current sociology of education. The direct
long-run effects of schools on graduates are thought to be rather moderate. But surveys of adults with regard to
almost any dependent variable—attitudes, values, information, or participation—almost uniformly show that
education plays a dominant role. For instance, Almond and Verba (1963) show with data on five countries that
education is closely associated with political information, attitudes, and participation. Inkeles and Smith (1974)
show the same result with data on six countries and are surprised to discover that the impact of education is
much greater than that of work experience. Kohn’s research (1969, and subsequently) shows exactly the same
result, and again the author is surprised. But these findings make eminent sense. Educational allocation rules
create a situation in which schooling is a fixed capital asset in the career of the individual, more durable than
work or income, more stable than family life and relations, and less subject to market fluctuations than “real”
property. Is it surprising that the attitudes and orientations of educated individuals continue to reflect such
enhanced life prospects over long periods of time? They perceive these prospects and are surrounded by others
who see them too.
Proposition 6 suggests that in explaining such long-run effects of education we do not need to look back to
the details of the experience of socialization. Correlations between education and personal qualities can be
maintained and increased by a structure or subsequent allocation which provides distinctive life experiences and
anticipations for the educated. For instance, education can affect a person’s sense of political efficacy by
making him politically influential as well as by socializing him to a civic culture.

FURTHER IMPLICATIONS OF ALLOCATION THEORY

If taken seriously, and not simply used as a cynical critique of education, allocation theory would completely
reorganize current research styles in the sociology of education. Allocation rules, unlike simple socialization
effects, reign over both the students and the nonstudents, the educated and the uneducated, the graduates and
those who never attended.

Research Implication 1: Effects on Nonstudents. Let us examine the following hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1. The creation of social rules allocating status and competence to graduates leads to the
socialization of students for expanded social roles.
Hypothesis 2. But such rules lower the prospects of nonstudents, and in a sense desocialize them.

The more binding the allocation rules, the earlier and more convincingly are nonstudents committed to
passive roles in society. This means that the society relying on credentials could well lower (below the previous
floor) the modern competence of people of low education. Comparative contextual research is required to test
this idea, since the independent variable is a property of the social system.
This argument has it that in a modern society education allocates its dropouts to failure. They (and their
parents and friends) anticipate and adapt to this.

Hypothesis 3. Similarly, subsequent to the period of schooling, nongraduates are socialized through life
experiences to the meaning of their failure just as graduates are socialized to the meaning of their success.
The lagged differentials created by education should be greater the more firmly the principle of educational
 allocation is established.
Hypothesis 4. Those admitted to chartered educational organizations find their prospects enhanced even
before attendance, while those rejected find their prospects lowered. They adapt their personal qualities in
anticipation, even prior to attendance. These differentials should be greater the stronger the allocative
position of the school.

For example, Benitez (1973) finds that students admitted to a national elite high school in the Philippines
seem to gain in self-esteem and “competence” even before their socialization begins. Wallace’s (1966) data
suggest a similar interpretation.
Comparative research on effects such as these should help distinguish allocation theory from traditional
socialization ideas.

Research Implication 2: Aggregate Effects. A major implication of allocation theory is that inferences to the
aggregate effects of education made from individual data on the basis of traditional socialization ideas are
almost completely illegitimate. Researchers in the economics of education conventionally infer aggregate
economic effects of education from income differentials between the educated and the less educated (see, e.g.,
the papers in Blaug 1968, 1969). It is assumed that these income differentials reflect real added value—the
socialization gains of the educated. But if education is simply an allocation system, the gains of the educated
may simply occur with equivalent losses for the uneducated. The expansion of education and educational
allocation may have no effect on the aggregate product at all (Collins 1971).
Similarly, researchers on the political effects of education often infer that, because the educated occupy
politically central positions, education must have helped create these positions (see the papers in Coleman
1965). But if education is simply a system of allocation, huge positional and attitudinal differences between the
educated and the uneducated may exist with no aggregate effect at all. Igra (1976), in fact, shows (using
Inkeles’s data) that increases in the aggregate development of societies lower the political participation of
individuals of given education (though the political information of individuals is found to be enhanced). Such
“frog-pond effects” at lower levels of analysis are discussed by Davis (1966), Meyer (1970b), and Alexander
and Eckland (1975).
The main arguments of allocation theory are added to those of socialization theory in Figure 44.2.
Allocation ideas are discussed with some frequency in the current literature, though their implications for
research remain little explored.

THE LIMITATIONS OF ALLOCATION THEORY

Allocation theories, by conceiving of education as an institution, add a good deal to traditional socialization
theory. But they do so in a very narrow way.
Education is seen in these theories as possessing its power because it is built into the rules and
understandings which guide all sorts of personnel allocation processes in society. But its impact is considered
only for those individuals being processed by the system—the students and nonstudents who are being sorted.
And even this impact is defined in a limited way: these people are understood to respond only to their own role
prospects as they are affected by education. Does the fact that all the other individuals around him are being
magically transformed by powerful initiation ceremonies have no effect on a given student? And has it no effect
on other members of society?

Figure 44.2 Allocation Theory and Its Implications for Socialization Theory. (Pure
allocation theory suggests that 3 is irrelevant. If a given set of adult
competencies are simply allocated by education, no net societal gain in
number of competent individuals need occur.)
 The problem here is that allocation theories ordinarily see education as allocating individuals to a fixed set
of positions in society: a distribution of positions determined by other economic and political forces. Bowles
and Gintis (1976) propose slight additional effects—education is thought to socialize people to accept as
legitimate the limited roles to which they are allocated. Spence (1973) and Thurow (1975) see some marginal
gains to society through more efficient selection by education. But the main development of allocation theory
defines the structure of society as little affected by education.
Allocation theory, then, can be seen as a special case of a more general argument according to which
education constructs and alters the network of positions in society in addition to allocating individuals to these
positions. We simply need to abandon the assumption that the positions to which education allocates people
cannot be built, expanded, and altered by education itself.
It is becoming more common to speak of education as legitimating the structure of modern society (Bowles
and Gintis 1976), or of modern societies as in some essential way “schooled” (Illich 1971). If we want to
understand the societal impact of education, not just its effects on the careers of individuals, we need to
understand what this means.

THE GENERAL CASE: LEGITIMATION THEORY

Allocation theory is a special case of institutional theories of educational effects: it considers the effects of
education as an institution (a) only on the individuals being processed and (b) with the structure of society held
constant. We now turn to the general case: theories of the institutional impact of education on social structure
itself—on the behavior of people throughout society.
Modern extended and institutionalized systems of education build into society certain rules which actors
take for granted, know others take for granted, and incorporate in their decisions and actions.4 For instance,
institutionalized educational systems create a situation in which social gatekeepers (e.g., personnel officers)—
even if they read and believe Ivar Berg’s book—nevertheless know that they must hire people on the basis of
educational credentials.
Two closely related aspects of modern educational systems are relevant here as independent variables: (1)
they are extended as systems of classification, categorizing entire adult populations by level and specialty; and
(2) they are institutionalized, with their classifications often controlled by the state and enforced in daily life by
rules about credentials written into law and applied in organizational practice. Almost everywhere, education is
made compulsory and universal by national law, often in the national constitution (Boli-Bennett 1976). In most
countries its structure is closely regulated by the nation-state (Ramirez 1973; Rubinson 1973).
Why does this occur? Whatever the economic origins of the process, the fact that it is usually accomplished
and regulated by the state—unlike many aspects of economic development, which are left to individuals and
subunits—suggests that its immediate origins lie in the political system: society as corporate organization
(Swanson 1971) rather than as a system of exchange. Formalized educational systems are, in fact, theories of
socialization institutionalized as rules at the collective level. The three core propositions used above to
summarize traditional socialization theory become the structural basis of the educational system. Proposition 1
—the idea that the schools teach critical skills and values—becomes institutionalized as the basic educational
classification system: Education proceeds in a sequence (irreversible by ascriptive definition) from kindergarten
through postdoctoral study and covers a defined series of valued substantive topics. The student is a “high
school graduate” and has had compulsory units of history and English and mathematics. It is an institutionalized
doctrine, since for many purposes one must treat the student as having acquired this knowledge by virtue of the
units or credits completed, not by direct inspection. Proposition 2—the idea that schooled qualities are carried
into adult effectiveness—is institutionalized in the basic rules for employing credentialled persons which
dominate personnel allocation in modern society. If one hires an executive, a civil servant, or a teacher one must
inspect educational credentials—it is optional whether one inspects the person’s competence. A teacher or a
doctor who graduated from school in 1930 is still frequently treated as a socially and legally valid teacher or
doctor. Proposition 3—the idea that educational allocation creates social progress—is institutionally embedded
in our doctrines of progress: it consists of modernity, professionalization, and rationalization. The possession of
the best certified and educated people is a main index of the advanced status of a hospital, a school, often a
business organization, and indeed a society itself.
Educational systems themselves are thus, in a sense, ideologies. They rationalize in modern terms and
remove from sacred and primordial explanations the nature and organization of personnel and knowledge in
modern society. They are, presumably, the effects of the reorganization of modern society around secular
individualism, which is a main theme of Marx and Weber. Our problem here, however, is to discuss their
effects.5

LEGITIMATING EFFECTS OF EXPANDED AND INSTITUTIONALIZED EDUCATION

Legitimating effects of education can be discussed in four general categories created by the intersection of two
dichotomies. First, education functions in society as a legitimating theory of knowledge defining certain types of
knowledge as extant and as authoritative. It also functions as a theory of personnel, defining categories of
persons who are to be treated as possessing these bodies of knowledge and forms of authority.
Second, education validates both elites and citizens. Discussions of the legitimating function of education
often emphasize only its role in supporting elites and inequality (e.g., Bowles and Gintis 1976; Carnoy 1972).
But the overwhelmingly dominant kind of education in the modern world is mass education (Coombs 1968),
closely tied to the modern state and notion of universal citizenship (Marshall 1948; Bendix 1964; Habermas
1962).
These two distinctions define four types of legitimating effects of education, as specified in Figure 44.3. I
discuss them in turn.

Figure 44.3 Types of Legitimating Effects of Education

1. The Authority of Specialized Competence. Education does not simply allocate people to a fixed set of
positions in society. It expands the authoritative culture and the set of specialized social positions entailed by
this culture. Thus the creation of academic economics means that new types of knowledge must be taken into
account by responsible actors. The creation of psychiatry means that former mysteries must now be dealt with in
the social organization. The creation of academic programs in business management brings arenas of decision
making from personal judgment, or luck, to the jurisdiction of rationalized knowledge. Social problems call for
human-relations professionals (occasionally even sociologists). Safety or environmental problems call for
industrial or environmental engineering.
The point here is that, quite apart from the immediate efficacy of these bodies of knowledge, they are
authoritative and must be taken into account by actors at the risk of being judged negligent or irrational. The
business manager who plans by the seat of his pants—unblessed by economic projections—has no excuse for
ignoring the best advice. The political leader who sees social problems as beyond analysis or cure is reactionary
and primeval. The emotionally disturbed person who rejects psychiatry is displaying irrationality.
Thus the knowledge categories of the educational system enter authoritatively into daily life. Mysteries are
rationalized, brought under symbolic control, and incorporated into the social system. Society and its subunits
are buffered from uncertainty (Thompson 1967):

Proposition 7. The expansion (and institutionalization) of education expands the number of functions that are
brought under social control and that responsible actors must take into account.6

2. Elite Definition and Certification. Education as an institution creates and defines particular categories of elite
personnel. This has two aspects. (a) Education consists of allocation rules and initiation ceremonies designating
which persons possess the authority and competence for various elite roles. This is the core idea of allocation
theory. (b) But institutionalized education also defines the nature and authority of the elite roles themselves—
helping to create the categories of personnel as well as to designate the particular occupants of these categories.
In this way, expanded modern educational systems function as a personnel theory in society, justifying in
modern cultural terms the expansion and specialization of modern elites.
Education, that is, not only creates “economic knowledge” which must be taken into account by rational
actors. It is also a structure helping to create the role of economist, to justify economists’ authority claims in
society, and to define precisely who is an economist. Education thus creates, not only psychiatry, but
psychiatrists; not only modern management ideology, but M.B.A.’s. The rational actor must take into account
medical knowledge, and to do so he must consult a doctor. Thus, the modern organizational structure of society
incorporates legitimated bodies of knowledge by incorporating the designated personnel.7
We take too narrow a view if we see this process as involving only a few specialized occupations. The most
important rules concerning credentials are more general: the set of rules which connect the educational status of
college graduate (and high school graduate) with all sorts of formal and informal elite positions. These rules
define a generalized body of elite knowledge and specify its legitimate carriers.
It now becomes clear why views of educational allocation as “zero-sum”—allocating a fixed set of social
statuses—are wrong. Education helps create new classes of knowledge and personnel which then come to be
incorporated in society:

Proposition 8. The expansion (and institutionalization) of education expands the number of specialized and
elite positions in society. It defines and justifies their occupancy by particular people.8

The point here is that institutionalized education does more than simply allocate some to success and others
to failure. The educated learn to claim specialized functions and to legitimate the specialized functions of others.
The less educated learn that they are part of a social world of rights and duties elaborated far beyond the
traditional community. This is one of the core meanings of the modern social status citizen.

3. The Universality of Collective Reality. Mass education creates a whole series of social assumptions about the
common culture of society and thus expands the social meaning of citizenship, personhood, and individuality
(modern ideas, all). It establishes a whole series of common elements for everyone.9 (a) It creates the
assumption of a national language or languages and defines universal literacy. (b) It reifies a given national
history. (c) It constructs a common civic order—common heroes and villains, a common constitutional and
political order with some shared cultural symbols and with legitimate national participation. (d) It validates the
existence of a common natural reality through science and a common logical structure through mathematics and
in this way constructs a myth of a common culture intimately linked to world society. (e) It constructs broad
definitions of citizen and human rights as part of the modern worldview.
Regardless of what people actually learn in school about their language and culture, nationally
institutionalized mass education creates the assumptions of a national culture. For many purposes, both elite and
citizen actors must take them into account:

Proposition 9. The expansion (and institutionalization) of education expands the content and jurisdiction of
the elements taken for granted as part of collective reality.

4. The Extension of Membership: Nation-Building and Citizenship. Beyond defining and extending national
culture, mass education defines almost the entire population as possessing this culture, as imbued with its
meanings, and as having the rights implied by it. Mass education defines and builds the nation (Marshall 1948;
Bendix 1964). It allocates persons to citizenship—establishing their membership in the nation over and above
various subgroups. And it directly expands the definition of what citizenship and the nation mean and what
obligations and rights are involved. Mass education helps create a public: as education expands, ideas about
public opinion as a vital force in society rise (Habermas 1962; Bergesen 1977). Individuals come to be defined
as possessing the competencies and the moral orientations to participate in an expanded collective life:

Proposition 10. Mass education expands the number of persons seen as possessing human and citizenship
responsibilities, capacities, and rights. It also expands the prevailing definitions of these roles and their
associated qualities.

In expanding both the meaning of citizenship and the set of persons who are seen as citizens, education
plays a dual role. Certainly it opens up new possibilities for citizens—in particular, new claims for equality
which can be made on society. It also, however, redefines individuals as responsible subordinate members (and
agents) of the state organization, and opens them to new avenues of control and manipulation.

THE IMPACT OF EDUCATIONAL LEGITIMATION ON ALLOCATION AND SOCIALIZATION

The socializing impact of education as an institution is discussed above (propositions 5 and 6) in the review of
the allocation theory version of the larger idea of legitimation. The intervening discussions make necessary two
extensions in the arguments presented there:

1. It is now clear that rules of educational allocation are not simply arbitrary social constructions which
happen to have power over people. These rules are part of the basic institutional ideology of modern society:
they represent equity, progress, and technical sophistication. As part of a larger institutional system, that is, the
rules of educational allocation are highly legitimate, not merely instances of the exercise of power. This
legitimacy intensifies the operation of rules of educational allocation, and intensifies the effects of these rules on
individuals being socialized and allocated:

Proposition 11. The more institutionalized the modern system of education, the more intensified the causal
relationships of allocation and socialization.

Educational allocation rules become more common, and their socializing consequences increase in intensity,
under conditions of high educational institutionalization. The lagged socialization of the allocated (proposition
6) becomes, not simply an adaptation to their increased power, but an affirmation of their authority and an
account of a legitimate moral biography. Similarly, the process by which students acquire chartered qualities
(proposition 5) takes on additional meaning because of its legitimacy. Students and nonstudents are learning
more than their own futures. They are also learning that the practical categories and topics of education give
legitimate meaning to these futures (see also Bowles and Gintis 1976). For instance, the college student learns a
little sociology because he is taught it (traditional socialization) and because he knows graduates may be
expected to know a bit about it (chartering). Both processes are intensified by the legitimating reality of
sociology: students (and nonstudents) learn that it exists as a body of knowledge and a personnel category,
entirely over and above their personal acceptance of the utility of the field. Thus students acquire their sociology
with a dutiful passivity which reflects the understanding that whether or not they accept this discipline their
degrees—valid throughout society—will reflect so many units of sociology.
Thus the objectified moral authority of the schools—over and above their raw power—undoubtedly
intensifies socialization over and above that found in routine training organizations (Bidwell and Vreeland
1963).

2. In broader versions of institutional theory than allocation ideas, the effects of education are no longer
fixed in sum: education may expand and alter the role structure of society. This means that there is no reason to
believe that the socializing effects of allocation rules would be fixed in sum as is implied by hypotheses 1–3
above, in “Further Implications of Allocation Theory.” If education expands the status order, anticipatory gains
for students and their socialization consequences do not need to be balanced by losses for nonstudents. The new
roles being created can simply be added to the status structure and to the socialization process. More commonly,
the creation of a given new elite role also creates expanded rights and duties for others. Thus the expansion of
medical authority in modern societies involves creating and expanding the role of doctor. But other people do
not simply become nondoctors—they become patients. Education expands roles and sets them into proper
relation with the rest of the society.
Once institutionalized education is seen as a legitimating system—not just a mechanism for allocating fixed
opportunities—it can have many net consequences on both allocation and socialization of people being
processed, just as on the rest of society.

THE IMPACT OF EDUCATIONAL LEGITIMATION ON EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The legitimating effect of educational organizations—but also much of their socializing and allocating power—
is derived from their highly institutionalized status in society. Operating at the institutional level as an
authoritative theory of personnel and knowledge in society, the schools constitute a crucial ritual system: a
system of initiation ceremonies (personnel) and of classifications of information (knowledge).
This makes it clear why schools often seem to act as ritual organizations, sacrificing “effectiveness” for
classificatory rigidity (Meyer and Rowan 1975; Kamens 1977). Their larger social effectiveness (and their claim
to resources) inheres precisely in this ritual structure: the apparatus of classes and levels and degrees and
subjects. By emphasizing their formal ritual structures, schools maximize their links to their main source of
authority, their main resources, and quite possibly their main effectiveness. Dramatizing their structures as
socially legitimated and legitimating initiation ceremonies informs students (and others) both about the payoffs
to which they can adapt and about the fact that those payoffs are highly proper, deriving from the core meaning
and values of society (Clark 1970). Ritualism, thus, by the process stated in proposition 11, reinforces the
immediate effectiveness of schools in dealing with students.

Summary of Legitimation Theory. Legitimation theory suggests two general ideas concerning the effects of
schooling. First, institutionalized education, as a theory of personnel and knowledge, affects society directly,
apart from the training and allocation of students. Second, institutionalized education creates and intensifies the
individual effects of socialization and allocation. In Figure 44.4 these two main themes are added to the
explanatory structure presented earlier.

CONCLUSION

Schools may teach people useful skills and values. Whether they do or not in particular cases, they certainly
allocate people to positions of higher social status, and this affects the anticipations and socialization of the
students (and nonstudents) as well as the experience and later socialization of the graduates (and nongraduates).
The allocating power of the schools is one aspect of their status as social institutions creating and validating
categories of personnel and knowledge. The schools increase the number and legitimacy of these categories—
far beyond levels possible with more primordial myths of the origins of personnel and knowledge—and thus
expand the whole rationalized modern social structure. These legitimating effects of schools reconstruct reality
for everyone—the schooled and the nonschooled alike. They also intensify the effects of allocating and
socializing processes.

Figure 44.4 Legitimation Effects of Education

 So a student is in a position of experiencing (a) the immediate socializing organization, (b) the fact that this
organization has the allocating power to confer status on him, and (c) the broader fact that this allocation power
has the highest level of legitimacy in society. The education he receives has a very special status and authority:
its levels and content categories have the power to redefine him legitimately in the eyes of everyone around him
and thus take on overwhelming ceremonial significance.
Research on such questions must examine the effects of education as an institution, considering effects of
variables quite beyond the level of the classroom, the peer group, or the school as an organization. Either
experimentally or with cross-societal (or time series) analyses, we need to consider the contextual effects of
variations in the extension and institutionalization of education on the perspectives of students and nonstudents,
graduates and nongraduates, citizens and elites. If education is a myth in modern society it is a powerful one.
The effects of myths inhere, not in the fact that individuals believe them, but in the fact that they “know”
everyone else does, and thus that “for all practical purposes” the myths are true. We may all gossip privately
about the uselessness of education, but in hiring and promoting, in consulting the various magi of our time, and
in ordering our lives around contemporary rationality, we carry out our parts in a drama in which education is
authority.

NOTES

1. Socialization researchers, of course, continue to pursue the grail, looking for new properties of individual
socialization that are stable and that do effectively predict long-run success. The search has been going on
for a long time.
2. A number of ideas have been suggested in defense of traditional theory: (1) we have not yet found or
measured the relevant aspects of school structure; (2) schools tend to be random collections of teachers and
thus to appear alike even though teaching is of great importance; (3) on the relevant properties—normative
 commitment and organization, or simply the time devoted to various topics—most schools in a country are
very similar and thus have similar effects. I pursue a related, but more general, line below.
3. Intervening variables in all these effects would include the expectations of the students and those of their
parents, teachers, counselors, and peers.
4. Actors may also internalize these rules as personal commitments, but this is less important—the critical
aspect is that they internalize them as social facts and social realities (institutions which rely on personal
beliefs, or even permit the question of personal beliefs to be relevant in social action, are less highly
legitimated in important senses than are those which operate as realities).
5. The discussion which follows deals exclusively with the effects of institutionalized education on other
aspects of society. Obviously, important causal effects also run the other way (see Meyer and Rubinson
[1975] for a review). Empirically disentangling the reciprocal effects requires data on societies over time.
6. This assertion, incidentally, parallels an idea of Schumpeter (1950, chap. 12) about the way in which the
intellectual optimism of modern capitalistic society generates its own institutionalization and destruction.
The intellectuals rationalize more and more social functions, which are then brought under collective social
and political control and removed from the market.
7. Imagine, for example, the consequences that would flow from the rise of routinely accredited university
programs and degrees in astrology. Organizations would incorporate astrologers, the state would fund their
programs and consult or incorporate them. Of course a justificatory literature would grow. The same basic
processes have gone on with many occupational groups.
8. This proposition is impossible in conceptions of social status as simply a rank position and thus as fixed in
sum. But there is no reason to assume that the total amount of status (or for that matter power) in society is
fixed. Independent of their ranks, statuses (and whole status distributions) may vary in the expansion of
their substantive rights and powers. I have argued above that education expands the status rights attached
to many positions in society, without necessarily altering the rank structure. This conception of status
reflects Weber’s original formulation.
9. I provide here a conventional list of the putative effects of mass education. But my argument is that, actual
effects aside, they enter into social life as taken-for-granted assumptions. Many Americans are not literate
in the national language. But we treat each other, expect elites to treat us, and organize our public life as if
we all were. According to proposition 5, the existence of these effects as social assumptions greatly
increases the likelihood that the schools actually produce them.

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45
COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND THE AMERICAN SOCIAL
ORDER
STEPHEN BRINT AND JEROME KARABEL

T oday, the idea that the education system in general, and higher education in particular, should provide
ladders of upward mobility is so familiar as to be taken for granted. Yet viewed from a comparative
perspective, the emphasis in the United States on individual mobility through education is quite
remarkable. To this day, no other society—not Japan, not Canada, not Sweden—sends as many of its young
people to colleges and universities as the United States does (Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development 1983). The vast and expensive system of educational pathways to success that has been
constructed in this country is both the institutional embodiment of this commitment to the ideology of equality of
opportunity and a constant source of reinforcement of this ideology. The shape of today’s enormous system of
colleges and universities—a system in which in recent years almost half the nation’s young people have
participated—is incomprehensible apart from this commitment.
Central to this distinctive system of higher education is an institution—the two-year junior college (or
community college, as it came to be called)—that came into being just when the American educational system
was being transformed so as to provide new ladders of ascent. The two-year college . . . has from its very
origins at the turn of the century reflected both the egalitarian promise of the world’s first modern democracy
and the constraints of its dynamic capitalist economy. Enrolling fewer than ten thousand students in 1920, the
American junior college had by 1980 grown to enroll well over four million students (Eells 1931:70; U.S.
Bureau of the Census 1987:138). The most successful institutional innovation in twentieth-century American
higher education, the two-year college has in recent years spread beyond the United States and established roots
in a growing number of foreign countries, among them Japan, Canada, and Yugoslavia.

COMMUNITY COLLEGES AND DEMOCRATIC IDEOLOGY

With over one-half of all college freshmen now enrolled in two-year institutions (U.S. Department of Education
1986:111), the community college has come to be an integral feature of America’s educational landscape. Yet
as recently as 1900, the junior college was no more than a dream in the minds of a few administrators at a
handful of America’s leading universities. Enrolling under 2 percent of all college freshman in 1920 (U.S.
Office of Education 1944:4, 6), the year in which the American Association of Junior Colleges (AAJC) was
founded, the junior college came to play an increasingly pivotal role in the transformation of the nation’s system
of colleges and universities. Perhaps more than any other segment of postsecondary education, the community
college was at the forefront of the postwar demographic expansion that changed the face of American higher
education.
The transformation of American higher education was organizational as well as demographic. For the birth
of the two-year college marked the arrival of an entirely new organizational form in the complex ecological
structure of American postsecondary education. In terms of sheer numbers, no other twentieth-century
organizational innovation in higher education even begins to approach the success of the two-year college,
which grew from a single college in 1901 to over 1,200 institutions in 1980, representing almost 40 percent of
America’s 3,231 colleges. In 1984, over 4.5 million students were enrolled in two-year colleges nationwide
(U.S. Bureau of the Census 1987:138).
 When the junior college first appeared, the outlines of a hierarchical system of colleges and universities
were already becoming visible. Nonetheless, the emergence of the junior college fundamentally altered the
shape of American higher education, for it introduced a new tier into the existing hierarchy. Thus the two-year
institution was not simply another of the many lower-status colleges that dotted America’s educational
landscape; it was a different type of institution altogether. Unlike even the humblest four-year institution, it
failed to offer what had come to be considered the sine qua non of being an “authentic” college—the bachelor’s
degree.
What was behind the birth of this new institutional form with roots in both secondary and higher education?
What explains the extraordinary growth of the two-year college during the twentieth century? And why has the
provision of terminal vocational education—a function that, as we shall see, was for decades peripheral to the
mission of the junior college—come to occupy an increasingly central place in the community college? The
answers to these questions require an understanding of the peculiar political and ideological role that education
has come to play in American life.

AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE MANAGEMENT OF AMBITION

All industrial societies face the problem of allocating qualified individuals into a division of labor characterized
by structured inequalities of income, status, and power. Since occupying the superordinate positions in such
systems provides a variety of material and psychological gratifications not available to those who occupy
subordinate positions, the number of individuals who aspire to privileged places in the division of labor not
surprisingly tends to surpass, often by a considerable margin, the number of such slots that are available. In
advanced industrial societies, all of which have renounced to one or another degree the ideologies that have
historically legitimated the hereditary transmission of positions, this problem of a discrepancy between ambition
and the capacity of the opportunity structure to satisfy it is endemic. All such societies face, therefore, a
problem in what might be called the management of ambition.1
In the United States, the management of ambition is a particularly serious dilemma, for success—as Robert
Merton (1968:185–214) and others have pointed out—is supposed to be within the grasp of every individual, no
matter how humble his (and, more recently, her) background.2 Moreover, ambition and hard work have been
held in more unambiguously high regard in America—a society that was bourgeois in its very origin—than in
many European societies, with their aristocratic residues. From Benjamin Franklin to Norman Vincent Peale,
the desire to succeed and the willingness to work hard to do so have been seen by Americans as among the
highest moral virtues. One consequence of this belief that the “race of life” is both open and well worth winning
is that more Americans from subordinate social groups harbor aspirations of making it to the top.
To be sure, not all Americans have joined the race to get ahead. Educational and occupational aspirations
are systematically related to social class (Kerckhoff 1974; Spenner and Featherman 1978), and some segments
of the population, especially in the racial ghettos of the nation’s inner cities, have withdrawn from the
competition altogether (Ogbu 1978, 1983).3 Even among those individuals who do harbor hopes of upward
mobility, the depth of their commitment is highly variable and shifts in aspirations are common. Upward
mobility has real social and psychological costs, and not everyone is willing—or able—to pay them. For many
Americans, hopes of a “better life” crumble in the face of obstacles; consigned to low-status jobs, they
nonetheless find fulfillment in the private sphere of family and friends. Moreover, aspirations to move ahead are
often accompanied by a belief in the legitimacy of inequalities that are based on genuine differences in ability
and effort4—and by doubts about whether one measures up.
The problem of managing ambition is particularly difficult in the United States. In 1980, for example, over
half of high school seniors “planned” (not “aspired to”) careers in professional/technical jobs. But in that same
year, only 13 percent of the labor force was employed in such jobs (Wagenaar 1984). Even if one assumes that
there will be a considerable increase in the number of such jobs in the future and that there is significant
uncertainty in many of these “plans,” it seems clear nonetheless that American society generates far more
ambition than its structure of opportunity can satisfy.
 • • •

In light of the extraordinary emphasis in the United States on individual economic success and on the role of
education as a pathway to it, it is hardly surprising that there has been such a powerful demand from below to
expand the educational system. What is perhaps more difficult to understand is the readiness of the state to
provide the additional years of schooling demanded by the populace. After all, one can well imagine the state
trying to control public expenditures by limiting the amount of education. Yet for the most part, governing elites
have joined in a broad national consensus that favored the construction of an educational system of unparalleled
dimensions.
There have been many sources of elite support for the expansion of education, among them adherence to the
classic Jeffersonian view that a democratic citizenry must be an educated one, and a related commitment to the
task of nation building (Meyer et al. 1979). But also critical, we wish to suggest, has been the implicit
recognition that a society that promises its subordinate classes unique opportunities for individual advancement
needs to offer well-developed channels of upward mobility.
No one could deny the inequalities of wealth and power in the United States. But what made these
inequalities tolerable, perhaps, was that everyone—or so the national ideology claimed—had a chance to
advance as far as his ability and ambition would take him. And once education became established as the
principal vehicle of this advancement, it became politically difficult for any group to oppose its expansion.
The result of this interplay of popular demand and elite response was the creation of a huge but highly
differentiated educational system, with unequaled numbers of students enrolled in it. America’s commitment to
the idea of equal opportunity guaranteed that there would be a tremendous amount of ambition for upward
mobility among the masses; somehow the educational system would have a way to manage the aspirations that
its own relative openness had helped arouse. The junior college was to play a critical role in this process, and it
is to the complex pressures it has faced both to extend and to limit opportunity that we now turn.

THE CONTRADICTORY PRESSURES FACING THE JUNIOR COLLEGE

From its very beginnings, the junior college has been subjected to contradictory pressures rooted in its strategic
location in the educational system in a society that is both democratic and highly stratified. Its growth in
substantial part a product of the responsiveness of a democratic state to demand from below for the extension of
educational opportunity, the junior college’s trajectory has also been shaped by the need to select and sort
students destined to occupy different positions in the job structure of a capitalist economy. In the popular mind
—and in the eyes of the many dedicated and idealistic men and women who have worked in the nation’s two-
year institutions—the fundamental task of the junior college has been to “democratize” American higher
education, by offering to those formerly excluded an opportunity to attend college. But the junior college has
also faced enormous pressure to limit this opportunity, for the number of students wishing to obtain a bachelor’s
degree—and the type of professional or managerial job to which it has customarily led—has generally been far
greater than the capacity of the economy to absorb them. Poised between a burgeoning system of secondary
education and a highly stratified structure of economic opportunity, the junior college was located at the very
point where the aspirations generated by American democracy clashed head on with the realities of its class
structure.
Like the American high school, the community college over the course of its history has attempted to
perform a number of conflicting tasks: to extend opportunity and to serve as an agent of educational and social
selection, to promote social equality and to increase economic efficiency, to provide students with a common
cultural heritage and to sort them into a specialized curriculum, to respond to the demands of subordinate groups
for equal education and to answer the pressures of employers and state planners for differentiated education, and
to provide a general education for citizens in a democratic society and technical training for workers in an
advanced industrial economy.5
Burton Clark, in a seminal article on “The ‘Cooling-Out’ Function in Higher Education,” put the dilemma
facing the junior college well: “a major problem of democratic society is inconsistency between encouragement
to achieve and the realities of limited opportunity” (Clark 1961:513). By virtue of its position in the structure of
educational and social stratification, the junior college has confronted the necessity of diverting the aspirations
of students who wish to join the professional and managerial upper middle class, but who are typically destined
by the structure of opportunity to occupy more modest positions. In such a situation, Clark notes bluntly, “for
large numbers failure is inevitable and structured” (Clark 1961:515, emphasis his).
The junior college has thus been founded on a paradox: the immense popular support that it has enjoyed has
been based on its link to four-year colleges and universities, but one of its primary tasks from the outset has
been to restrict the number of its students who transfer to such institutions. Indeed, the administrators of elite
universities who developed the idea of the junior college (and who later gave the fledgling organizational form
crucial sponsorship) did so, . . . with the hope that it would enable them to divert from their own doors the
growing number of students clamoring for access to higher education. These university administrators
recognized that the democratic character of American culture and politics demanded that access to higher
education be broad; in the absence of alternative institutions, masses of ill-prepared students would, they feared,
be clamoring at their gates.
The junior college thus focused in its early years on offering transfer courses. The reason was simple:
Students who attended two-year institutions did so on the basis of their claim to be “real” colleges, and the only
way to make this claim convincing was for them to offer liberal arts courses that would in fact receive academic
credit in four-year institutions. For the first three decades of their existence, the junior colleges thus
concentrated on constructing preparatory programs that, as the catalogues of the two-year institutions were fond
of characterizing them, were of “strictly collegiate grade.”
There was almost a missionary zeal among the predominantly small-town Protestant men who presided over
the early junior college movement; their task as they saw it was to bring the blessings of expanded educational
opportunity to the people. Proudly referring to their institutions as “democracy’s colleges,” they viewed the
two-year institutions as giving thousands of worthy students who would otherwise have been excluded a chance
to attend higher education. Yet they were also aware that the educational and occupational aspirations of their
students outran their objective possibilities by a substantial margin; while some of their students had great
academic promise, well under half of them, they knew, would ever enter a four-year college or university.
Something other than college preparatory courses, therefore, would have to be provided for them if they were to
receive an education appropriate for their future place in the division of labor.
The solution that the leaders of the junior college movement devised bore a striking resemblance to the one
developed earlier by the administrators of secondary education at the point when the high school was
transformed from an elite to a mass institution: the creation of a separate vocational education track. The
underlying logic of the vocational solution is perhaps best captured in a speech given in 1908 by Dean James
Russell of Teachers College, Columbia University, to a meeting of the National Education Association.
Entitling his presentation “Democracy and Education: Equal Opportunity for All,” Russell asked:

How can a nation endure that deliberately seeks to raise ambitions and aspirations in the oncoming
generations which in the nature of events cannot possibly be fulfilled? If the chief object of government be
to promote civil order and social stability, how can we justify our practice in schooling the masses in
precisely the same manner as we do those who are to be our leaders? (quoted in Nasaw 1979:131)

Russell’s answer was unequivocal: The ideal of equal education would have to be forsaken, for only
differentiated education—education that fit students for their different vocational futures—was truly
democratic. Paradoxically, then, if mass education were to realize the promise of democracy, separate
vocational tracks had to be created.
In a society that generated far more ambition for upward mobility than its structure of opportunity could
possibly satisfy, the logic of vocationalism, whether at the level of secondary or higher education, was
compelling. The United States was, after all, a class-stratified society, and there was something potentially
threatening to the established order about organizing the educational system so as to arouse high hopes, only to
shatter them later. At the same time, however, the political costs of turning back the popular demand for
expanded schooling were prohibitive in a nation placing so much stress on equality of opportunity. What
vocationalism promised to do was to resolve this dilemma by, on the one hand, accepting the democratic
pressure from below to provide access to new levels of education while, on the other hand, differentiating the
curriculum to accommodate the realities of the economic division of labor. The aspirations of the masses for
upward mobility through education would not, advocates of vocationalization claimed, thereby be dashed;
instead, they would be rechanneled in more “realistic” directions.6
The leaders of the junior college movement enthusiastically embraced the logic of vocationalism and, by the
1930s, had come to define the decided lack of student enthusiasm for anything other than college-transfer
programs as the principal problem facing the two-year institution. Their arguments in favor of expanding
terminal vocational education in the junior college were essentially identical to those used by advocates of
vocational education in the high school: Not everyone could be a member of the elite; vocational programs
would reduce the high dropout rate; and occupational training would guarantee that students would leave the
educational system with marketable skills.

CURRICULAR CHANGE IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Observers of the transformation of the community college from an institution oriented to college-preparatory
transfer programs to one emphasizing terminal vocational training have tended to focus on one of two forces as
the principal cause: either the changing preference of student “consumers” of community college education or,
alternatively, the decisive influence of business elites. In the first, which might be called the consumer-choice
model, institutions of higher education are regarded as responding exclusively to students’ curricular
preferences: what the consumers of higher education demand, they receive. In the second, which we shall refer
to as the business-domination model, the curricular offerings of the community colleges are seen as reflecting
the imprint of powerful business interests, which prefer programs that provide them with technically trained
workers. Drawing, respectively, on classical liberal and Marxist approaches to the problem of institutional
change, each of these models provides a theoretically plausible explanation for the trajectory of community
college development, and, accordingly, commands our attention.

The Consumer-Choice and Business-Domination Models

Both the consumer-choice and the business-domination perspectives capture something important, we
believe, about the forces shaping community college development. Market forces have influenced student
preferences, and the downturn in the labor market for college graduates in the early 1970s was indeed a major
factor in the rapid community college vocationalization of the following years. And especially since the mid-
1970s, business has influenced (occasionally directly, but more often indirectly) the shape and content of the
curricula from which community college students select their programs.
Today student “consumers” eagerly enroll in community college occupational programs that they hope will
lead them into relatively high-paying, secure jobs with opportunities for advancement. These choices, though
based, we shall argue, on imperfect labor market information, are in part logical responses to the overcrowded
market for college-trained persons and the difficulties of competing in such a market. The programs in which
these occupational students enroll, in turn, are determined in part by industry’s needs for particular types of
“middle-level” manpower.
We believe that the indirect influence of business on community college curricula has always been great.
The colleges have for some time sought to keep pace with manpower developments in the private economy.
Indeed, the more enterprising two-year college administrators have studied regional and national labor
projections almost as if they were sacred texts. Arthur Cohen, now director of the ERIC Clearinghouse for
Junior Colleges at the University of California at Los Angeles, was hardly exaggerating when he wrote that
“when corporate managers . . . announce a need for skilled workers . . . college administrators trip over each
other in their haste to organize a new curriculum” (Cohen 1971:6).
Yet despite the consumer-choice and business-domination models’ contributions to our understanding of
recent developments in the community college, neither is an adequate guide to the past. Rather, they are most
useful for the period since 1970, the year of the first signs of decline in the labor market for college graduates—
and of little help for the period before that year. Since some of the most influential community college officials
have been attempting . . . to vocationalize their institutions since at least 1930, that leaves forty years of history
almost entirely unaccounted for by either model. Moreover, we shall argue, neither model captures some of the
key dynamics of the process of vocationalization since 1970.
Before 1970, our study reveals, neither students nor businessmen were very interested in vocational
programs. Most students (and their families) desired the prestige of a baccalaureate degree and resisted terminal
vocational training. But despite the students’ overwhelming preference for liberal arts programs, the leaders of
the American Association of Junior Colleges and their allies pursued a policy of vocationalization for over four
decades before there was any notable shift in the students’ preferences. This policy decision cannot be explained
by the consumer-choice model.
Similarly, most members of the business elite were indifferent to community colleges before the late 1960s.
Indeed, for almost another decade after that, business interest in the community colleges remained modest and
picked up only in the late 1970s, after the colleges had already become predominantly vocational institutions.
The indifference of business people to programs ostensibly developed in their interests cannot be readily
explained by the business-domination model. An adequate explanation of the community college’s
transformation thus requires a fundamental theoretical reformulation.

Toward an Institutional Approach

The framework that we propose to account for the transformation of American community colleges may be
called, albeit with some oversimplification, an institutional model. Inspired in part by the classical sociological
tradition in the study of organizations,7 this approach can, we believe, illuminate processes of social change
beyond the specific case of education. Perhaps the model’s most fundamental feature is that it takes as its
starting point organizations themselves, which are seen as pursuing their own distinct interests. Within this
framework, special attention is focused upon “organizational fields” (e.g., education, medicine, journalism),
which may be defined as being composed of “those organizations that in the aggregate, constitute a recognized
area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other
organizations that produce similar services or products” (DiMaggio and Powell 1983:148).8
Relations among organizations within the same field are often—but not always—competitive; accordingly,
understanding the historical trajectory of a particular organization generally requires an analysis of its
relationship to other organizations offering similar services. The dynamics of specific institutions, in turn, are
rooted in their relationships to other major institutions. For example, the educational system must be analyzed in
relation to the state and the economy. If the focus of the consumer-choice and the business-domination models
is on the individual and the class respectively, the focus of this approach will be, accordingly, on the institution.
According to this perspective, neither the consumer-choice nor the business-domination model pays
sufficient attention to the beliefs and activities of the administrators and professionals who typically have the
power to define what is in the “interest” of the organizations over which they preside. Much of our analysis will
focus, therefore, on explaining why these administrators chose to vocationalize despite what we shall document
was the opposition of the student consumers (an opposition that casts doubt on the consumer-choice model) and
the indifference of potential sponsors in the business corporations (which in turn undermines the business-
domination model). Our analysis assesses the beliefs and organizational interests of those who pursued the
vocationalization policy and the techniques they used to implement this policy over time. It also examines the
forces, both external and internal to the community college movement, that facilitated or hindered
implementation of the policy at different historical moments.
In skeletal form, our basic argument is that the community colleges chose to vocationalize themselves, but
they did so under conditions of powerful structural constraints. Foremost among these constraints was the
subordinate position of the community college in the larger structure of educational and social stratification. Put
more concretely, junior colleges were hampered by their subordinate position in relation to that of the older and
more prestigious four-year colleges and universities and, correspondingly, a subordinate position in the
associated competition to place their graduates into desirable positions in the labor market.
 Perhaps the best way to capture this dual structural subordination is to think of the structure of stratification
faced by community colleges in terms of two parallel but distinct components—one a structure of labor market
stratification and the other a structure of institutional stratification in higher education. From this perspective,
educational institutions may be viewed as competing for training markets—the right to be the preferred pathway
from which employers hire prospective employees. Access to the most desirable training markets—those
leading to high-level professional and managerial jobs—is, and has been for decades, dominated by four-year
colleges and, at the highest levels, by elite graduate and professional schools. Community colleges, by their very
location in the structure of higher education, were badly situated to compete with better-established institutions
for these training markets. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that by the time that two-year colleges
established a major presence in higher education, the best training markets were effectively monopolized by
rival institutions.
Training markets are critical to the well-being of higher-education institutions. In general, those that have
captured the best markets—for example, the top law, medical, and management schools—are the institutions
with the most resources, the greatest prestige, and the most intense competition for entry. Viewed historically,
community colleges had lost the most strategic sectors of this market before they could enter the competition.
The best that the community colleges could hope to do, therefore, was to try to situate themselves favorably for
the next available market niche. Therein resided the powerful organizational appeal of the two-year college’s
long-standing vocationalization project, a project that, as we shall show, had become widely accepted among
community college administrators long before there was any decline in the demand for graduates of four-year
colleges or any demand for vocational programs from the community college students themselves.
Because of their precarious position in the competition for training markets, community colleges tried
desperately to fit themselves to the needs of business despite the absence of direct business interest in the
colleges. Indeed, far from imposing on the community colleges a desire for a cheap docile labor force trained at
public expense, as the business-domination model would have it, big business remained indifferent to the
community colleges for the first sixty years of their existence. Yet because of the structural location of business
in the larger political economy—and, in particular, its control of jobs—community colleges had little choice but
to take into account the interests of their students’ future employers. Thus business exerted a profound influence
over the direction of community college affairs and pushed them in the direction of vocationalization without
any direct action whatsoever. This capacity to exert influence in the absence of direct intervention reflects the
structural power of business.9
Reduced to its essentials, then, our argument is that the community colleges found themselves in a situation
of structured subordination with respect to both other higher-education institutions and business. Within the
constraints of this dual subordination, the vocationalization project was a means of striking the best available
bargain. We refer in the text to this deference to the perceived needs of more powerful institutions—even when
such institutions made no conscious efforts to control their affairs—as anticipatory subordination.
This anticipatory subordination was rooted in the recognition by the community colleges that if they tried to
compete with the existing better-endowed, higher-status institutions on their own terrain, they would face
certain defeat. A far better strategy, it was determined after much internal debate with the junior college
movement, was to try to capture an unexploited—albeit less glamorous—market in which they would not
compete directly with institutions with superior resources. In return for accepting a subordination that was, in
any case, inherent in their structural location, the community colleges would use vocationalization to bring a
stable flow of resources linked to a distinctive function, a unique institutional identity, and above all, a secure—
indeed, expanding—market niche. . . .

NOTES

1. The idea that all educational systems, capitalist and socialist alike, face a problem in the management of
ambition is borrowed from Hopper (1971).
2. The belief that America remains a land of opportunity is a recurrent finding of sociological studies of
 American communities (see, for example, Warner and Lunt 1941, and Hollingshead 1949).
3. White youths, especially those from the most disadvantaged segments of the urban working class, may
also withdraw from the competition to get ahead. For a powerful portrait of “leveled aspirations” in a low-
income neighborhood, see MacLeod’s ethnographic study of youths in a public housing project, Ain’t No
Makin’ It (1987).
4. Kluegel and Smith (1986), for example, in a nationally representative survey of 2,212 Americans, find that
economic differences among groups are often attributed to individual differences in such qualities as “hard
work” and “talent.” Moreover, many of the survey respondents view economic inequality as being
legitimate in principle (Kluegel and Smith 1986:75–142).
5. The idea that education in the United States is pulled in contradictory directions by the logics of capitalism
and democracy is discussed in Shapiro (1982; 1983) and developed at length in Carnoy and Levin’s book,
Schooling and Work in the Democratic State (1985). Katznelson and Weir (1985), in their historical study
of education and the urban working class, also develop this theme, focusing in particular on the conflicting
pressures inherent in preparing students for life as both democratic citizens and workers in a highly
inegalitarian division of labor.
6. The sources of the powerful impact that the ideology of vocationalism has had on American education are
explored in Lazerson and Grubb (1974) and Kantor and Tyack (1982). On “career education,” a form of
vocational education that exerted considerable influence during the 1970s, see Grubb and Lazerson (1975).
7. Among the key works on organizations that have informed our approach are Robert Michels’ Political
Parties, 1911, and Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 79, especially the sections on “Domination and
Legitimacy” and “Bureaucracy.”
8. Our concept of “organizational field” is similar to Meyer and Scott’s (1983:137–39) concept of a “societal
sector” which, while building on the economists’ concept of “industry,” is broader in that it includes
organizations that contribute to or regulate the activities of a focal industry group.
9. But we also emphasize, drawing on Bourdieu (1971, 1975, 1984), that fields are arenas of power relations,
with some actors—generally those possessing superior material and/or symbolic resources—occupying
more advantaged positions than others. The concept of “structural power” used here is indebted to the
illuminating discussion of the relationship between power and participation in Alford and Friedland (1975).
Our formulation differs somewhat from theirs, however, and is in fact closer to their concept of “systemic
power.”

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SOURCE: From The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in
America, 1900–1985, by Stephen Brint and Jerome Karabel. Copyright © 1989 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
By permission of Oxford University Press, USA.
46
JUDGING SCHOOL DISCIPLINE
A Crisis of Moral Authority
RICHARD ARUM

T he current focus of educational research on improving cognitive development, measured often

narrowly by standardized test score performance, has distracted attention away from other critical
problems associated with contemporary schooling in this country. While educational achievement in
many public schools certainly leaves ample room for improvement, discipline and student socialization also
have often been ineffective and clearly are a cause of widespread public anxiety. Our research focuses on these
issues and examines in detail the extent to which judicial court decisions have been one factor that has affected
public school discipline.
In recent years, there has been academic debate over the extent to which low educational achievement in
public schools should be qualified as a crisis. The optimists have noted that in the past two decades more
students were likely to finish high school and develop basic literacy and mathematic skills. Whereas in the
1950s only 60 percent of students finished high school, by the end of the twentieth century close to 90 percent
of students finished secondary school.1 At century’s end, we had come closer to providing basic educational
training for all than ever before in the country’s history. Hence educational researchers David Berliner and
Bruce Biddle concluded that public schools suffered more from inflated expectations and distorted perceptions
of their performance than from any fundamental pedagogical problems.2
We are skeptical of Berliner and Biddle’s claim that no serious problems face American public schooling
and that a crisis has simply been manufactured by political interests hostile to public education. If there is a
crisis in American schooling, however, its components include the erosion of moral authority and associated
ineffectiveness of school discipline as well as low educational achievement. Certainly there is little evidence
supporting the contention that the level of disorder and violence in public schools has reached pandemic
proportions. Yet such is indeed the case in certain urban public schools, where institutional factors related to
court climates—the primary focus of this [chapter]—have combined with other social factors to create school
environments that are particularly chaotic, if not themselves crime-producing. While the situation in general
thus does not qualify as a crisis in a pedagogical or criminological sense, it might accurately be considered one
in broader political and organizational terms.3 Problems of moral authority in public schools—recognized as
such by widespread public opinion—have prevented many public schools from socializing youth effectively.
More critically, these problems have undermined public school legitimacy, eroded popular support necessary
for maintenance and expansion of these institutions, stimulated political challenges and the growth of
competitive organizations, and thus have come to threaten public school organizational survival in many state
and local settings.
Public concern over ineffective discipline in schools is long-standing in the United States and clearly
predates more recent legal challenges to these practices. For example, in the 1950s Gallup public opinion polls,
nearly two-thirds of respondents felt that school discipline was not “strict” or “severe” enough.4 This
generalized cultural dissatisfaction has arguably become more acute in recent decades, as school disorder now
not only distracts from classroom instruction, but often takes a particularly violent turn. Recent national data
from the U.S. Department of Education and the School Crime and Safety report by the Department of Justice
provide a sense of the empirical dimensions of the current problem. At the end of the last century,
approximately thirty students per year died of homicides committed on school grounds; 10 percent of all public
school teachers were threatened with injury by students; and 4 percent of teachers were physically attacked in
the course of the year. In urban public schools the rate was even higher, with 14 percent of teachers threatened
with injury and 6 percent attacked. More than 10 percent of high school males reported carrying a weapon on
school property over the past month, while 34 percent of urban high school seniors reported that street gangs
were present in their schools.5 Although many of these threats and actual incidents of student and teacher
victimization were relatively minor, they created an atmosphere of disorder that disrupted the educational
process, particularly in urban settings where poverty was rife.6 Disorder in schools coupled with much
publicized shootings also undermined individuals’ sense of school safety. Following the Columbine school
shooting, for example, 45 percent of parents with children in elementary and secondary schools reported that
they feared for their children’s physical safety in schools.7 In addition, as incarceration rates have tripled in
recent decades, schools have been held partly responsible for these trends, with 73 percent of adults believing
that “poor quality of schools” has been either a “critical” or “very important” cause of crime.8
Problems of moral authority strike at the core of public education, because primary and secondary schooling
is as much about the socialization of youth as it is about teaching rudimentary cognitive skills. Émile Durkheim,
one of the founders of modern sociology, argued that “the nature and function of school discipline . . . is not a
simple device for securing superficial peace in the classroom—a device allowing the work to roll on tranquilly.”
Schools, instead, are often the first social institution outside the family responsible for contributing to the
process of molding youths for productive adult roles in society. Discipline, according to Durkheim, “is
essentially an instrument—difficult to duplicate—of moral education.”9 From this perspective, public schools
are as much about shaping individuals’ attitudes and dispositions as about imparting specific sets of cognitive
skills. High school students in particular often confront school authority as well as school adolescent peer
cultures when they struggle with serious developmental questions: Who am I? Am I a good student or a bad
student? Am I moral or immoral? Do I respect school and parental authority or reject the influence of such
adults?10 When Americans think about what is wrong with contemporary public schooling, survey responses
suggest that they are often struck by the failure of public schools to provide institutional encouragement for the
proper socialization of youth.11 When middle-class parents remove their kids from public schools and place
them in private schools, are they as much concerned with how public schools fail to provide school climates
conducive to socialization as they are troubled by how little learning takes place? The two concerns are of
course not unrelated: if schools fail to exercise moral authority over their students, they are unable to socialize
students adequately and become chaotic places where teaching and learning fall by the wayside.
To be sure, other educational researchers in the past have thought about these problems, yet our work is
novel and path-breaking for a number of reasons. First and foremost, we do not assume that an erosion of moral
authority in schools was inevitable or that it simply reflects broader changes in political and popular culture—
similar cultural changes in European countries, for example, did not result in the institutional changes that
occurred in U.S. schools. Instead, we attempt to identify the specific institutional mechanisms that undermined
the moral authority of schools. Rather than assume that problems of school discipline were associated with the
general, culturally defined attitudes of students, parents, teachers, and administrators (which would indeed be
quite difficult to change), we look for evidence that it was the institutional environment around schools that
changed the parameters within which disciplinary practices emerged and were constituted. Specifically, we
focus attention on the involvement of U.S. courts. Their rulings overturning school discipline had a significant
role in contributing to the decline in moral authority and the erosion of effective disciplinary practices in
American public schools. The role of judicial oversight and the level of court interference in school decisions
concerning discipline is unique to the United States and not found in most other developed countries. U.S. court
decisions have varied over time and across jurisdictions, however; some have tended to favor students, some
school authorities. We provide evidence that this variation in the direction of court decisions was partly
responsible for the difficulties schools encountered when they attempted to implement disciplinary practices
that fostered both learning and effective socialization. While our account emphasizes the role of court decisions
in structuring disciplinary practices related to the emergence of student peer climates, we do so because of the
overlooked importance of this influence. Clearly, a myriad of other individual, school, and societal influences
are also implicated in affecting school discipline and youth socialization.
 The research presented in this book is quite novel in its methodology.12 New technology now allows social
scientists to examine court decisions systematically and thoroughly, whereas previously such an approach
would have been technically impossible. Specifically, we were able to search a modern computerized legal
archive that includes records of all contemporary state and federal appellate cases. We identified every court
case that made its way to the state and federal appellate courts and involved contestation of school discipline.13
Rather than simply examining important relevant Supreme Court cases (such as the Goss v. Lopez decision), we
examined 6,277 legal cases from 1946–1992 and conducted detailed analysis on more than 1,200 relevant cases
to identify patterns of systematic variation in judicial decisions. In the last two decades, great improvements
have also occurred in the systematic collection of data on students, teachers, and administrators. We were thus
able to combine four separate nationally representative data sets with detailed information on tens of thousands
of students, teachers, and schools to identify how variation in court decisions was related to changes in school
disciplinary practices and how school discipline affected student learning and socialization. We chose 1992 as
an end date for our analysis, as that was the last year when detailed data on individual student perceptions and
outcomes were available.
The significance of our research findings convinced us of the need to write a book accessible to the widest
possible audience. We have relegated all discussion of technical analysis and detailed statistical findings to end-
notes and appendix. When we discuss results in the text, we do so with the aid of maps, easily understood
charts, and qualitative descriptions of the relevant processes. We believe that by writing for a larger audience
we can stimulate the public discussion of these critical issues that is essential for improving American public
schools.

CHALLENGES TO LEGITIMACY

To understand why the moral authority of school discipline has recently been eroded requires one to consider
how the expansion of individual rights has come into conflict with the schools’ prerogative to control student
misbehavior. Social scientists have referred to the growth of “adversarial legalism and litigation in recent
decades. Educational litigation increased dramatically during the late 1960s and early 1970s, a period we will
term the student rights contestation period.14 While the volume of litigation has subsequently stabilized or
moderately declined, both the threat of legal challenges to school authority and the effects of litigation on school
practices remain. Today’s schools inherit from that period a historical legacy with two prominent features. First,
students have developed a sense of legal entitlement that—although not firmly grounded in accurate
understanding of case and statutory law—has produced skepticism about the legitimacy of school disciplinary
practices as well as a general familiarity with resorting to legal avenues to contest such practices. Second,
contestation of student rights has left an organizational legacy that has been institutionalized in school forms,
practices, and culture—including widespread normative taken-for-granted assumptions about the necessity of
organizing school discipline in particular ways.
Educational litigation increased dramatically in the late 1960s and early 1970s for complex political,
cultural, and institutional reasons. The political and cultural aspects have been generally well understood, while
the institutional determinants have been less well appreciated. Identification of the latter is particularly
important for making the argument that changes in public school discipline in the United States were unusual,
distinctive, and far from historically inevitable. The extent to which challenging school authority in the late
1960s and early 1970s was related to the general political and cultural context of the times has been clearly
recognized in prior scholarship.15 Many American citizens, particularly among racial minorities and students,
had become politicized and mobilized to fight racism and poverty at home and U.S. military involvement
abroad. The students in this social movement (many of middle-class origins) often explicitly celebrated the
questioning of authority. School authority thus inevitably came into direct contact with this generalized youth
rebellion, which resulted in conflict and challenges over school practices.16
That the judicial system became a principal arena for challenges to school authority and that these
challenges would produce profound changes in school practices requires further explanation. Youth advocates
in the late 1960s and early 1970s embraced a political-legal strategy that had been successfully developed by the
Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, organizations interested in advancing the well-being of youth—
particularly disadvantaged youth—began to utilize court challenges to advance the social interests of children.
In a 1973 article in The Harvard Educational Review, for example, a young idealistic lawyer who later served as
president of the Legal Services Corporation explicitly advocated this position:

Although the introduction of the adversarial system into juvenile court proceedings is deplored by many,
lawyers representing children should ensure three critical prerequisites for fairness. First, they can articulate
and argue the child’s position . . . Second, they can require that the law be strictly followed. And third, they
can make new law in the area by appealing cases and lobbying for statutory changes. Independent counsel
for children should not be restricted to children accused of delinquency, but should be required in any case
where a child’s interests are being adjudicated. The courts must become more sensitive to such cases.17

The idea that advocacy groups could “make new law in the area by appealing cases” was a political strategy
that had gained adherents with the successes of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. (NAACP Fund).18 The NAACP Fund was founded in 1939 to
coordinate litigation to challenge racial segregation and discrimination. By the time of the Brown v. Board of
Education decision in 1954, the organization had won thirty-four of the thirty-eight cases its attorneys argued
before the Supreme Court.19 Success for public interest law reformers continued to increase with the frequent
sympathetic decisions from the Warren Supreme Court (1953 to 1969). These decisions led to a dramatic
expansion of the applicability of the Bill of Rights to individuals challenging state and local institutions,
including public schools, and advanced “a view of democracy as one in which individuals can effectively claim
rights against the state.”20 As importantly, decisions by the Warren Court inspired the law profession to
embrace the notion that “most of the ‘flaws’ in American society could and would be corrected through legal
means.”21
With the successes during the Warren Court of the NAACP Fund and other early public interest law
advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), social reformers with legal backgrounds
turned to creating appellate case law precedent to promote social change. In the early 1970s new public interest
law firms were established, usually with financial support from large private and corporate foundations, and
often with an explicit interest in litigating issues related to youth and schooling. The Ford Foundation and other
similar organizations (including the Carnegie Corporation, the Field Foundation, the Stern Family Fund, the
Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund) were particularly prominent in the
establishment of this legal sector.22 Law and society scholars Joel Handler, Ellen Jane Hollingsworth, and
Howard Erlanger found that 17.6 percent of docket entries for a sample of public interest law firms in 1973 had
education as their focus, the most frequent response category identified.23 Yet these law firms, while important,
were only one feature of the institutional context during the period of student rights contestation. In 1975, the 72
public interest law firms that comprised the core of this legal sector employed only 478 lawyers (an average of
seven per firm).24
While the student rights contestation period can be partially understood as emerging in general from a
period of political youth rebellion that coincided with the rise of public interest litigation and the Warren
Court’s increasing willingness to apply the Bill of Rights to individuals challenging local government
institutions, an important and somewhat ironic piece of this institutional context has yet to be clearly identified
in our historical account. Much of the institutional impetus that supported and instigated challenges to school
disciplinary practices in U.S. courts emerged neither spontaneously from private citizens nor indirectly through
the efforts of nonprofit public interest law firms, such as the Children’s Defense Fund. Instead, legal challenges
to local public school disciplinary practices occurred in large part because of federal funding and support for
legal activism during this period. Specifically, the major institutional actor advancing legal challenges to public
school disciplinary practices was the Legal Services Program established by the Office of Economic
Opportunity (OEO). The OEO was established in 1965 with a mandate that was interpreted to include
promoting law reform as part of the War on Poverty under President Johnson. While about forty percent of
initial OEO legal funding went to support existing local legal service organizations that provided basic legal
services for the poor, more than half of federal funding went toward creating new legal service organizations
that stressed law reform. In 1966 Clinton Bamberger, the first national director of OEO legal services, stressed
the law reform goals of this new organization: “Lawyers must uncover the legal causes of poverty, remodel the
systems which generate the cycle of poverty and design new social, legal and political tools and vehicles to
move poor people from deprivation, depression, and despair to opportunity, hope and ambition.”25 Earl Johnson
Jr., the director of legal services in 1967, shared this commitment and asserted that “the primary goal of legal
services in the near future should be law reform.”26 While subsequent OEO leaders, such as Nixon appointee
Donald Rumsfeld, clearly did not always share much enthusiasm for this legal activism, political and
administrative opposition to the program was generally unsuccessful in altering the activist orientation of OEO-
funded legal service organizations until at least 1975, when federal legislation set up the Legal Service
Corporation to reorganize the units in the previously named Legal Services Program and “cut down on law
reform litigation.”27
Legal Services organized its law reform efforts through coordinating local offices with “back-up centers”
specializing in particular areas of law. The former director of the Legal Services Program, Earl Johnson Jr.,
boasted that eight percent of federal resources were devoted to “back-up” and “regional advocacy” centers,
which specialized in “high-impact legal work” (such as appellate litigation), and one-fourth of local legal
service organizations had created “‘appellate units’ composed of attorneys devoting full time to appellate
litigation and other high-impact work.”28 The Center for Law and Education was established at Harvard
University as a “back-up center” to provide support for change in statutory law and appellate litigation in the
area of education that would “protect and advance the interest of the poor.”29 From 1967 to 1972, the Legal
Services Program expanded even when many other anti-poverty programs organized in the Office of Economic
Opportunity were in decline. In 1967, the OEO Legal Services Program received $27 million in federal funding
and employed nearly 1,200 lawyers; by 1972, the program received $71.5 million and employed over 2,000
lawyers.30 In addition, during this period, OEO law reform work increasingly focused on challenging local
public school practices—OEO law offices more than doubled the proportion of time spent on challenging
educational practices (from 3.7 to 7.7 percent).31
Legal Services was remarkably effective at deflecting legislative pressures for accountability and outcome
assessment, which plagued other Office of Economic Opportunity programs.32 In the words of Earl Johnson Jr.,

The Legal Services presents a many-fold more complex evaluation task than “Head Start,” Job Corps, and
most other OEO programs. . . . At this point in time, it is not necessarily stretching the facts to argue that
because of Serrano v. Priest, its desegregation cases and other actions influencing educational policy, Legal
Services constituted a better investment in education than Head Start which absorbed most of OEO’s
“education” budget.33

In similar fashion, New York City Legal Services Program Director Lester Evans suggested in 1972 that the
program could “measure our success by the amount of attacks on us.”34 The Legal Services Program also
historically enjoyed not just powerful opponents (such as Ronald Reagan), but influential political allies,
including prominent members of the legal establishment and Republicans and Democrats in Congress—many of
whom had law degrees.35 Legal Services lawyers were explicitly encouraged by federal legislators to focus
attention on expanding student rights. For example, Walter Mondale in 1970 delivered his “Justice for
Children” address to the U.S. Senate, promoting the expansion of “rights of children vis-à-vis institutions—
rights of children in school to engage in free expression and not to be subjected to discipline without due
process, rights of children in court not to be subject to being disposed of without adequate counsel or real rules
of law.”36 With legislative support, OEO “back-up centers” like the Center for Law and Education continued to
receive 99 percent of their funding from federal sources between 1972 and 1975.37 It is worth emphasizing that
during the period we have termed the student rights contestation period, OEO funding supported the maximum
level of federally sponsored legal activism designed to promote educational reform; OEO lawyers were also
responsible for key court decisions during this time—including the Goss v. Lopez decision—that dramatically
expanded student rights in public schools. In addition, corporate and private foundations provided significant
support to establish and maintain public interest law firms that focused on educational litigation during this
period.
The phenomenon of local schools being subjected to coercive federally sponsored litigation can only be
understood with reference to the unique political institutional character of the U.S. system of government. Prior
to Brown v. Board of Education and the War on Poverty, the federal government played almost no role in either
providing support to or structuring the character of public education in the United States.38 Johnson’s War on
Poverty program had two important elements relevant to our study: 1) additional federal attention and support
was focused on improving public education; and 2) appellate case law was appreciated as a vehicle capable of
promoting liberal reform. Federal spending on public elementary and secondary education in the 1963–64
academic year amounted to only 4.4 percent of school revenues; by 1967–68, federal support had doubled and
accounted for 8.8 percent.39 As John Meyer and his colleagues have pointed out,

The U.S. constitutional pattern—differing greatly from that obtained in many other modern states—has also
heavily influenced the evolution of federal funding and authority in education in recent decades. Rather than
expanding direct national controls in the management of education, reform efforts during the 1960s and
1970s took the form of categorical or special-purpose programs. No programs were created for the general
support and management of education, and none defined or attempted to assist its primary goals or core
processes. Rather, special purposes were defined and furthered with specially organized funding in a highly
fragmented system.40

While Meyer and his colleagues were correct in their observations, they neglected to emphasize the role of
federally sponsored litigation that was increasingly used to create compliance and conformity in shaping local
school practices.41
At the time when the War on Poverty was launched, educational reformers were relatively united in their
advocacy of an increased government role in supporting and controlling public education. Leading sociologists,
of course, were no exception in this regard. James Coleman’s expertise was fully engaged in conducting and
drafting the seminal Equality of Educational Opportunity Report mandated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and
Christopher Jencks—who later with a group of distinguished colleagues would suggest that “living in the right
school district seems to make relatively little difference to an individual’s educational attainment . . . the
average effect of any given school is . . . small”—wrote in 1965 that “the scientific revolution has made the
localism of America’s schools and colleges intellectually ineffectual and socially obstructionist” and that an
increased federal role was inevitable and generally desirable.42
Since educational reformers working through the federal government had only a limited capacity to affect
local public school policies, efforts to exercise influence were often structured indirectly, through meager
financial incentives provided by federally supported categorical programs or through the use of federally
sponsored litigation. The latter instrument, of course, was not only indirect, but also imprecise: by definition,
regulations emerged not from professional educators and policy makers carefully considering pedagogical
issues, but rather, haphazardly and with inherent contradictions and ambiguities, through the actions of legal
professionals (lawyers and judges) who advanced and considered arguments based primarily on legal precedents
and personal judgment.
While reformers who pursued their aim through legal interventions were clearly motivated by the best of
intentions and were responding to real inadequacies and inequalities in schooling, their own professional and
institutional orientations were likely to affect their work significantly. Social scientists, noting the elite
background of many of these lawyers, have commented on the extent to which at the time “the legal
profession’s image of itself” included a belief that “lawyers were by training and work experience particularly
suited to grapple with complex social problems.” Legal Services was able to attract ambitious and idealistic law
school graduates—often by granting them prestigious fellowships—and they sought to “manage or reorder
society” by making precedent-setting appellate case law.43 The high caliber of these individuals as well as the
institutional backing of a large federal agency had a profound impact on the law. While prior to 1965 Legal Aid
lawyers had never appealed a case to the Supreme Court, between 1965 and 1974 OEO Legal Services brought
164 cases to the high court and found much success there: a 63 percent success rate overall. OEO cases
challenging state government practices, as most school litigation did, had a 67 percent success rate.44 The model
of reform embraced by these adversarial lawyers was a conception of legal liberalism wherein social progress
was equated with an expansion of individual rights. As legal historian Laura Kalman has suggested, “The
(Warren) Court made liberals happy for it dodged the tension between liberty and equality . . . by using
liberalism’s language of individual rights and freedom to help children, the disenfranchised, non-Christians,
suspected criminals, minorities and the poor.”45 Critics of this brand of liberalism included conservatives who
joined legal realists in objecting to the creative judicial rationales used to support court decisions;
communitarian advocates, who saw expansion of individual rights as entailing costs to community interests and
the common good; and neo-Marxist and other critics on the left, who interpreted these rights as “bourgeois
liberties” that would detract attention from political mobilization designed more fundamentally to alter social
structures and inequality.
While the Legal Services Program thus had some features of a “social movement” designed to advance a
particular form of liberalism—albeit one comprised of bourgeois foot soldiers with significant elite sponsorship
—it also must be recognized as “a government bureaucracy” that “drew lawyers from a variety of backgrounds
who joined for a variety of reasons.”46 Legal Services and similar groups thus could be characterized as
involving, at an individual level, lawyers motivated by a liberal missionary zeal and a sense of self-righteous
assurance to correct injustices found in individual cases as well as inequalities found in society. At a more
mundane institutional level, they were bureaucratic entities involved in efforts to discover and exploit
organizational weaknesses so as to foster institutional expansion, increased resource allocations, and greater
organizational influence.47 The increased focus on educational litigation from these law reform organizations
from the late 1960s to the early 1970s likely involved both sorts of motivations. When public school educators
were confronted with institutional adversaries who were willing to assert that court challenges were more
effective than preschool programs in improving educational opportunities for the poor, it is not surprising that
public schools as organizations would creatively adapt to these external legal challenges in unanticipated ways
that produced unintended negative consequences affecting the quality of schooling for all students.
In the case of school discipline, we believe these unintended consequences have been quite pronounced. The
reason that “adversarial legalism” has been so costly with regard to school discipline is that the legal challenges
produced not only changes in organizational practices, but also undermined the legitimacy of a school’s moral
authority more generally. That is, schools were likely to reduce their disciplinary responses to student
misbehavior while at the same time students became less willing to accept school authority or discipline as
legitimate. Legal challenges thus undermined school discipline in multiple ways.
Evidence that organizations adopt new practices in response to legal challenges has been well established in
social scientific research.48 After the Supreme Court’s 1975 Goss v. Lopez decision extended the right of
“rudimentary” due process for public school students faced with short-term suspension and “more formal
procedures” for students facing more serious disciplinary sanctions, schools became more reluctant to expel
students or discipline them with sanctions other than short-term suspension.49
While business firms in the private sector often utilized strategies of “symbolic compliance” when faced
with legal challenge,50 public schools were likely to respond by simply eliminating or reducing practices that
were subject to litigation. School administrators had few incentives to maintain school discipline when
controlling student misbehavior was difficult to measure and yielded few rewards. School administrators also
recognized that utilizing school disciplinary practices aggressively had the risk of attracting not only unwanted
negative attention and criticism, but also hostile litigation that could be quite expensive for school districts—in
terms of public relations as well as costs for legal counsel—and thus damaging to an administrator’s reputation
and promotion opportunities. When faced with hostile legal threats, administrators opted simply to reduce the
use of school discipline in general, rather than avoid specific practices that courts had questioned.
The effectiveness of school discipline and the related capacity of schools to socialize youth for a
constructive role in society was even more threatened by the extent to which “adversarial legalism” undermined
the legitimacy and moral authority of schools as institutions. “Since the mid-1960s,” as noted scholar and
founding director of the Center for Law and Education, David Kirp, has acknowledged, “little remains about the
unreviewability of school disciplinary action.”51 Sociologists have considered legitimacy and moral authority to
be the core components of effective discipline ever since Émile Durkheim’s critique of the philosophical
position of Thomas Hobbes. While Hobbes argued that because individuals were governed by passions and
desires, the threat of sanctions from a greater authority was necessary to constrain individual actions and
promote social order, Durkheim countered that the strength of external sanctions was ultimately dependent on
individuals internalizing restrictions as legitimate normative rules.
Durkheim, like Hobbes, believed that discipline was needed “to teach the child to rein in his desires, to set
limits on his appetites of all kinds, to limit and, through limitation, to define the goals of his activity.” But the
Durkheimian mechanism for imposing discipline was quite different from Hobbesian authoritarian sanctions.
Punishment was necessary, according to Durkheim, because it unequivocally communicated that a normative
rule had been broken: “it is not punishment that gives discipline its authority; but it is punishment that prevents
discipline from losing this authority, which infractions, if they went unpunished, would progressively erode.”52
Challenges to school disciplinary practices associated with adversarial legalism would be particularly
unsettling to the normative order of the school. For Durkheim,

What lends authority to the rule in school is the feeling that the children have for it, the way in which they
view it as a sacred and inviolable thing quite beyond their control; and everything that might attenuate this
feeling, everything that might induce children to believe that it is not really inviolable can scarcely fail to
strike discipline at its very source. To the extent that the rule is violated it ceases to appear as inviolable; a
sacred thing profaned no longer seems sacred if nothing new develops to restore its original nature.53

Successful legal challenges to school authority taught students that school rules were indeed violatable. If
youths experienced their first nonfamiliar social institution (other than perhaps organized religion) as having
rules that were not “sacred,” consistently enforced, or necessarily judged as legitimate by outside evaluators, the
ability to socialize them to accept the rules of a larger society would correspondingly be undermined.

CHANGING COURT CLIMATES

Schools are organizations and as such exist in specific institutional environments. These environments are
critical in shaping individuals’ taken-for-granted assumptions about how school practices should be structured.
When school officials confront misbehavior that warrants some form of disciplinary response, they attempt to
adopt behavior and practices that will be considered appropriate and reasonable in their own eyes and in the
judgment of other relevant individuals. In the case of school disciplinary practices, school personnel in recent
decades faced quite ambiguous and shifting regulations and assumptions about how disciplinary practices
should be applied. In the face of such uncertainty, organizational actors typically look to the external
environment for suggestions as to what attitudes and behaviors to adopt. While in the past school personnel
might often have looked to local neighborhoods to determine culturally appropriate disciplinary practices, today
a school’s relevant community is often defined in institutional terms.
Specifically, as contemporary society has experienced changes in technology, significant individual
mobility, increased male and female labor market participation away from the home, and a dispersed pattern of
spatial organization of metropolitan areas, traditional forms of neighborhood organization have been
undermined. Robert Putnam, for example, has noted that over the past few decades not only have voter
participation in elections and membership in unions declined, but so too has citizen participation in many local
voluntary organizations (such as church-related groups, civic institutions, fraternal organizations, and parent-
teacher associations).54 While many traditional forms of civic community involvement have been in decline,
new forms of community organization, activity, and influence have replaced them.55 In particular, new
communities have been organized around shared identities and have often pressed their demands in legal and
other (political and professional) institutional settings.56 In many areas of educational practice, courts—not
parent-teacher associations or local school boards—have become the primary social context affecting school
organization. In other areas of educational practice, educational communities are organized around professional
schools, occupational associations of teachers and administrators, and state departments of education. In short,
today more than ever a school’s relevant community is not just a neighborhood comprised of individuals, but
equally an institutional environment made up of courts, professional associations, and other organizations.57
Just as school practices are structured by organizational factors that are relatively autonomous from local
neighborhood influences, so too are court decisions structured. When making legal decisions affecting school
practices, judges do not simply embrace cultural biases of local communities over which they preside, nor do
they simply make decisions based on narrow interpretations of legal precedent. Rather, legal decisions emerge
through the enactment of the legal process itself as well as through a variety of personal, political, and
institutional influences on judicial action. Courts at times act more conservatively than the local communities
over which they have jurisdiction; at other times, courts act more liberally. Only in the most general terms, and
from the most removed and historically distant point of observation, would one want to assert that law simply
reflects the biases of the political culture or ideology of the times. For our purposes, we examine how courts
have varied in their opinions related to defining appropriate school discipline, how this variation was not a
simple reflection of local political milieus, and how legal decisions were one of the institutional mechanisms
whereby larger political and social pressures were translated and communicated to schools—effectively
challenging and restructuring school disciplinary practices in complex ways.
In our research we originally examined 6,277 cases and then identified a subset of 1,204 cases that directly
involved individuals or organizations contesting a school’s right to discipline and control students. Detailed
readings of the subset of cases provided a rich qualitative sense of how the issues involving school discipline
were understood at the time by individuals having an active role in the judicial proceedings. The set was large
enough so that we were also able to analyze patterns systematically through content coding specific details of
these discipline cases.
Content coding is a way to measure the presence or absence of particular characteristics found in qualitative
records. Specifically, we read cases to identify the direction of the court decision (whether court opinions
favored either schools or students), the form of school discipline challenged (suspension, expulsion, corporal
punishment, or student transfer), and the type of student behavior that produced the initial sanction (freedom of
expression, political protest, general misbehavior, possession or use of drugs or alcohol, possession or use of
weapons and violence). In addition, cases were content coded to indicate the race, gender, and disability status
of students, if identified, and whether discrimination was alleged. Lastly, we measured several characteristics of
schools (including whether it was public or private sector and what grades it covered) and courts (geographic
location and jurisdictional level). Our analysis of legal cases thus enabled the identification of systematic
variation in characteristics of court cases, while simultaneously allowing in-depth descriptions of important
details regarding the substance of the matters contested.
Our research identified several distinct historic periods of court climates related to school discipline. Prior to
1965 and the establishment of the OEO’s Legal Services Programs, very few individuals or groups used the
legal system at the appellate level to challenge school disciplinary practices. When student discipline was
contested in courts, schools were supported in approximately two thirds of the cases. From 1965 to 1968, as
Legal Services and other public interest law firms began to devote resources to litigation promoting educational
reform, only a few challenges to school disciplinary practices went up to the appellate level. These early legal
challenges to school discipline were cases typically involving schools using suspension and expulsion to
sanction students for free expression or political protest. In this historic transition period, court decisions were
more likely than in later years to favor students. In approximately half of these cases, judges sided with forces
challenging school discipline.
A good example of these early challenges to school discipline can be found in a case involving students in
Des Moines, Iowa, which by 1969 had worked its way up to the Supreme Court and was decided as Tinker v.
Des Moines Independent Community School District. The case involved three students in the middle and high
schools, children of parents active in the pacifist American Friends Service Committee. The students, with the
consent of their parents, wore black armbands to school to “publicize their objections to the hostilities in
Vietnam.” They were suspended from school until they would agree to appear without the armbands. While
lower courts had varying opinions on this case, the Supreme Court found in favor of the students and warned
school administrators: “it can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to
freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”58
Subsequent to these early legal challenges, courts between 1969 and 1975 witnessed a dramatic increase in
appellate case loads related to school disciplinary practices. Much of this litigation did not emerge
spontaneously from grassroots student and parental efforts, but required a supportive legal infrastructure willing
and able to devote significant resources to advance challenges at the appellate level. Without institutions like
OEO’s Legal Services and other public interest law firms, much of this litigation would never have occurred,
and even if it had, would likely have been settled by the concerned parties well before the cost and efforts
required to advance the cases aggressively through the appellate level. As an early Legal Service manual
explicitly noted in 1966: “How can the legal service unit develop test cases to bring about social change and
changes in agency practices if the agencies settle the cases before they get to hearing boards or courts?” The
report noted how public agencies were often willing to “‘back down’ on their stands on certain cases in order to
avoid litigation.”59 Successful appellate challenges required strategy, tenacity, and institutional persistence. We
therefore chose 1969 as the beginning of the student rights contestation period, because it was the year when
litigation on this issue dramatically increased, and because it was the date when OEO opened the Center for
Law and Education at Harvard to spearhead and coordinate efforts to advance educational law reform.
Prior to 1960 it was difficult to find any appellate cases related to school disciplinary practices and only 72
cases in state and federal appellate courts were found between 1960 and 1968; by contrast, in the student rights
contestation period from 1969 to 1975, 76 cases per year occurred on average. There were likely more
challenges to school discipline in the case law records of 1969 and 1970 alone, than in all prior years of
American history combined. During this period of dramatic increase in legal challenges to school discipline,
many of the general patterns found in embryonic form in the 1965–1968 transition years became consistently
present at all court levels, including the Supreme Court.
The cases overwhelmingly involved expulsion or suspension of students for misbehavior, often on the
grounds of free expression or political protest. Approximately half of appellate court cases involved students
disciplined for protest or free expression. The political character of these cases was often clear. Cases such as
Goss v. Lopez—brought forward all the way to the Supreme Court through the efforts of OEO-sponsored Legal
Service offices in Columbus, Ohio, and the Center for Law and Education in Cambridge—attracted amici
curiae (“friends of the court”) briefs from organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Children’s Defense Fund, which argued
that they had a compelling interest in the outcome of the case. In the Goss v. Lopez case, the Supreme Court
extended due process guarantees to students subjected to even minor disciplinary sanctions in a case that
involved students being suspended for disruptive protest against a school that failed to provide adequate
recognition of Black History Week.
Courts in this period remained relatively sympathetic to student challenges and often found in their favor
(pro-student decisions occurred approximately 44 percent of the time). It is worth noting that many courts in the
South (with the exception of a few conservative state appellate courts) found in favor of students in spite of
deeply held conservative regional cultural traditions. Federal district and appellate courts in the South during
this time period often had judicial appointments that did not simply mimic local demographic, cultural, or
political environments.
During the period of student rights contestation, legal opinions on occasion would be based explicitly on the
severe and irreparable psychological harm students had suffered when disciplined by schools. While some
might associate such language with cases involving the use of corporal punishment, only four percent of
appellate cases involved such forms of discipline, and in these instances courts were not particularly
sympathetic to students.
A case in New York appellate courts captured how judges during this period often focused primarily on the
well-being of individual students who had been disciplined. The case involved Anna Ladson, an eighteen-year-
old public school student who faced long-term suspension and was denied participation in a graduation
ceremony after the school charged that she had struck and threatened the principal. The alleged altercation with
the principal occurred in the midst of severe racial disturbances, including evacuation because of a bomb threat
and “stonings between white and black students.”60 Ladson and her mother challenged the school’s right to bar
her from the graduation ceremony (the school had scheduled a time when the student could receive her diploma
privately). Consistent with the pattern of courts being more likely to favor students during this time period and
especially when racial bias was invoked, the court supported the student. As interesting as the decision was the
language used in the legal opinion:

The court is persuaded that punishment and discipline should be responsive to the educational goals to
which the school system is dedicated. Courts are dedicated not only to the administration of laws, but to the
pursuit of justice, and the two ideals must come together. The justice of the situation favors graduation
attendance. We have here a student of demonstrated dedication, who has persevered through all of her term
in high school and has completed her final year under adversity, even though some of that adversity may be
of her own doing. She has been accepted at college. Her graduation ceremony is important and meaningful
to her personally and in her family which has never before had a high school graduate. She has no other
record of school disorder than the one incident here involved. It would indeed be a distortion of our
educational process in this period of youthful discontentment to snatch from a young woman at the point of
educational fruition the savoring of her educational success. The court believes that not to be a reasonable
punishment meant to encourage the best educational results.61

The court explicitly asserted several interesting propositions. First, it suggested that “justice” was more
important than the “administration of law.” This part of the decision was quite unusual: typically, judges relied
partially on deference to the “administration of law” when supporting students against school authority. Second,
the court asserted greater expertise than school officials in determining how educational goals were to be
reached. Last, the court emphasized how the school sanction could have damaging effects on the individual
punished. During this period judges made fewer claims than in later periods that punishment was either in the
long-term best interest of the student or that determinations of these matters must focus on the well-being of the
student body as a whole (rather than the individual student bringing the case). The court dramatically concluded
its opinion in the case with a clear admission of a pro-student bias: “If an error is being made, the court must err
on the side of the youngster seeking to make her way and to fortify her to continue with her education.”62
A second case two years later, in Ohio, demonstrated similar judicial attitudes toward students and schools.
Junior high school student William Jacobs had been disciplined for violating the Northwest School District
dress code and more specifically for having “long hair.” He refused to comply with new regulations prohibiting
student mustaches and defining the allowed hair length. The school punished Jacobs by removing him from
office as president of the student council, taking him off the honor roll, reducing his grades, and suspending him
from school. The student and his mother challenged and overturned the school’s discipline in a state trial court.
A higher Ohio State appellate court concurred with the lower court judgment; the earlier judges’ “carefully
drafted” opinion was cited approvingly in the opinion:

A rule restricting hair length and style and prohibiting mustaches affects the student in the most intimate and
personal way. History, literature and simple observation make this abundantly clear. Furthermore, ‘hair’
rules control the student not only during the 35 hours per week he spends in school but control his
appearance the other 133 hours of the week as well. It seems belaboring the obvious to point out that there
are thousands of ways for schools to teach discipline and limits and an awareness of relationships with
others and with the community without requiring that students cut off their hair and shave their mustaches.
It seems equally obvious that to teach students that they must accept arbitrary authority, particularly in a
matter as personal as this, is wholly alien to our concepts of a free society and the dignity of the
individual.63

In a fashion similar to the earlier New York case, the court justified the decision by invoking the detrimental
effects discipline could have on individual students, as well as challenging the degree to which school officials
could design school practices with respect to appropriate educational goals.
 These twin themes—that courts must protect the well-being of vulnerable children and that school officials
do not align school practices with appropriate pedagogical ends—appeared repeatedly in judicial opinions
during this time period. The language was applied not simply to students disciplined for freedom of expression
or student protest (as in the examples above), but also in cases involving “search and seizure” issues related to
the suppression of drug dealing on campus. For example, a seventeen-year-old student in New York had been
under observation for six months for alleged drug dealing, was “observed by a teacher, twice during the same
morning within one hour, entering a toilet room in the school with a fellow student and both exiting within 5 to
10 seconds,” and was subsequently searched in the principal’s office. The student was disciplined and turned
over to the police after the search uncovered “a vial containing 9 pills” and a wallet with “13 glassine envelopes
containing a white powder.” The court overturned the punishment and warned school officials: “the
psychological damage that would be risked on sensitive children by random search insufficiently justified by the
necessities is not tolerable.”64 In later years, judges did not seem to worry so much about the “psychological
damage” experienced by students found in possession of significant quantities of illicit substances.
Following 1975 a new period began that coincided not only with a shift in judicial orientation at the
Supreme Court, but as importantly with institutional changes in the level of support for aggressive educational
law reform. Specifically, in the course of that year federal legislation imposed a Legal Service Corporation to
oversee the OEO Legal Service program, with an explicit mandate to curb appellate litigation focused on
promoting social reform. In the mid-1970s, corporate and private foundations also became less enthusiastic
about funding these pursuits. Likewise, the number of legal challenges declined slightly from its earlier peak
level, though it remained significantly higher than it had been before 1969. Specifically, between 1976 and
1992, there were on average 57 cases in state and federal appellate courts per year. As Law and Society scholars
have suggested in other areas, prior legal challenges provided individuals with a sense of legal entitlement as
well as scripts and strategies to mobilize law when desired.65 Moreover, the cases involved substantively
different matters than the earlier cases. After 1975, protest and free expression issues took up only 8 percent of
cases. School discipline was challenged over student use or possession of drugs (16 percent), alcohol (6
percent), weapons (6 percent), violence (14 percent), and general misbehavior (50 percent). Courts also became
somewhat less sympathetic to students, deciding in favor of schools at levels similar to those of the early 1960s
(that is, in approximately two thirds of cases). This was true even after the content of the cases had significantly
shifted from freedom of expression and protest to drugs, alcohol, weapons, violence, and general misbehavior.
While in earlier days judges referred to psychological harm inflicted on individuals and arrogantly held forth
on what was appropriate educational practice, later opinions more often took diametrically opposing positions.
Judges were likely to acknowledge the need to defer to the authority of school officials in determining
appropriate educational practices and to emphasize how the absence of school discipline did damage to the
school climate and community as a whole. In short, they tended to see the student body as vulnerable and in
need of protection, rather than to define individual miscreants in such terms.
The shift in judicial attitudes was captured well in a 1986 Alabama appellate case involving the expulsion of
a student for alcohol possession. Christopher Adams, a ninth grader at Dothan High School, in Alabama,
admitted to school administrator Richard Grisby that he had brought alcohol to the campus and allowed a fellow
student to drink some, contrary to school rules. Christopher was expelled from October to the end of the spring
semester and readmitted the following year. His attempts to challenge the expulsion in court were ineffective. In
finding against the student, the judges—unlike in the earlier cited cases—explicitly emphasized deference to
local school authorities. “School disciplinary matters are best resolved by the local community school boards
and officials,” the court found, and should be overturned only in the rare cases when the school actions were
“clearly unconstitutional” and when there was a “shocking disparity between offense and penalty.”66 The court
also justified its decision in terms of protecting a vulnerable student body as a whole, weighed against the
vulnerability of an individual student suffering the school’s sanction. As the judges noted,

In the case before us, the school officials testified that the use of alcohol and drugs had become a very
serious problem in the Dothan City School system. Woodham testified that school officials felt that making
students aware of the possibility of expulsion for possession of alcohol and drugs on school campus would
have a significant deterrent effect on the students. Christopher brought alcohol onto the campus and
 permitted a fellow student to drink some. The Board’s subsequent expulsion of Christopher was a response
to what it perceived to be a major crisis of drug and alcohol abuse in the schools. Although Christopher’s
punishment may have been severe, we cannot say that, under the above circumstances, it was so severe as to
be arbitrary and unjust. Nor do we find that it was grossly unfair for the school officials to refer Christopher
to law enforcement officers. Such action was provided for in the (School’s) Code.67

Students and parents had entered a new era which continues to this day: underage drinking was no longer
dismissed as a relatively harmless right of passage for youth and instead could be subject to serious sanction.
This new emphasis on the vulnerability of the school community and a greater explicit deference to school
discretion appeared more frequently and repeatedly in other cases. An Ohio appellate court in 1989 supported
school authorities for suspending a high school senior after the student attended wrestling practice with beer on
his breath (consumed while the student attended a college visitation day at a local campus). The court made
explicit reference to a “growing epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse plaguing young people today.”68 In the
context of such an epidemic,

A school board certainly has the right to prohibit students’ use of drugs and alcohol in the school setting. We
are all aware of the current drug and alcohol crisis and the need to educate young people as to the hazards of
substance abuse. If a school board cannot establish a rule to stop the use of drugs and alcohol among its
students absent the students’ becoming disruptive, then the school administrators will be helpless to enforce
and maintain discipline in our schools.69

While student survey data reported that drug and alcohol consumption was actually significantly lower in
1989 than a decade earlier, the perception of an “epidemic” was widespread and was socially significant in its
own right.70
In a similar move, a Virginia court supported a school’s right to expel a high school student for possessing
five “Pink Heart” look-alike amphetamines which contained nothing more than 200 milligrams of caffeine. The
court argued that

The school board adopted the regulation and its interpretation of its own regulation should be given
considerable deference. That the use of illegal drugs is a matter tearing at the vitals of our society must have
been well known to the school board. This school board, having thousands of pupils for whose care and
tutelage it is responsible, could not help but be acutely aware of the difficulties posed and the dangers to
their charges presented by the presence of illegal drugs, whether in the form of statutorily defined controlled
substances or anything else directly related to them, including look-alikes or imitations.71

Courts also emphasized the vulnerability of the school community when deciding cases involving weapons.
When an Illinois high school’s expulsion of a student for carrying a gun on campus was challenged, state
appellate courts had little sympathy or concern with the well-being of the student (who, incidentally, had
otherwise demonstrated model behavior). Rather, in a curt and forceful decision, the judges noted:

A high school student ought not carry a .357 Magnum pistol, jammed between his waistband and his belly,
with a live round of ammunition in his pants pocket while he is in a lunch line in a high school cafeteria.
Expulsion of that student is no abuse of discretion. . . . A gun in school is dangerous. A gun in school
sweeps all into harm’s way. Carrying a gun in school cannot be endorsed. Carrying a gun in school must be
condemned. Expulsion is condemnation, appropriate condemnation. This expulsion is not arbitrary, is not
unreasonable, is not capricious or oppressive.72

Note the strident, defensive language in this case. Indeed, students and parents were now challenging school
discipline on procedural grounds that had been legally established in earlier cases of freedom of expression and
the right to protest. Students, parents, and schools were now all operating under a shared perception that courts
could be effectively utilized to overturn school discipline. In fact, the perception that courts could be used in this
fashion was realistic, as a lower court had on procedural grounds found in favor of the student who carried the
.357 Magnum.
Yet on the whole courts had become less explicitly worried about the well-being of students who had been
disciplined. In North Carolina, for example, Shelly Gaspersohn, a female senior high school student, received
corporal punishment from a male assistant principal that left “bruises on her buttocks for approximately three
weeks.” A psychologist, Dr. Irwin A. Hyman (a noted opponent of corporal punishment) “diagnosed her as
having post-traumatic stress syndrome, a psychological condition which leaves a permanent mental scar.”73
Hyman testified that “she had recurring nightmares about the event, she could not talk about it without crying
and she had a fear of men who reminded her of (the assistant principal) Mr. Varney.” The court was not swayed
by arguments about psychological harm, however; the judges asserted that “a teacher has the right to administer
corporal punishment to students so long as it is done without malice and to further an educational goal.”74
At this point judges were not only more likely to endorse school discipline, but also explicitly to recognize
the need to support school authority. A Louisiana appellate judge noted in an opinion: “Discipline is a necessary
ingredient to public education. If the frail remnants of authority in our society are not to be totally eroded, the
disciplinarians in our public school system should be encouraged, not deterred, from enforcing stern but
reasonable discipline.”75
Schools slowly gained strongly sympathetic judicial allies. Certain regions, such as the South and the
Western Mountain states, had particularly staunch conservative pro-school court supporters in this period; in
other areas of the country, such as California and New York, courts were more favorable to students.
Although courts became less receptive to arguments in favor of student challenges after 1975, it is worth
emphasizing that significant case law affecting school discipline had already been established in the student
rights contestation period and continued to be expanded and promoted by liberal advocacy lawyers. For
example, not long after the Goss v. Lopez decision, the Center for Law and Education published a legal primer
of over five hundred pages entitled School Discipline and Student Rights: An Advocate’s Manual. In the
introduction, the author Paul Weckstein—without any reflection on how increased litigation might negatively
affect the quality of schooling—summarized the purpose of the document as follows:

This manual is designed to help students’ advocates in their work on school discipline issues—when
representing students in school disciplinary hearings, preparing court challenges, or working with groups of
students and parents to change school disciplinary policy and practices. It was developed because of the
frequency with which we get requests for legal assistance from legal services staff and their clients on
school discipline matters.76

In 1990, the Center for Law and Education found it necessary to publish a separate publication of nearly two
hundred pages devoted solely to updating the earlier document’s section on procedural due process rights. By
then, the revised legal primer had ten separate sections on application of due process procedures to distinct
“specific forms of discipline.” The primer described how due process applied in eight areas other than short-
and longer-term suspensions, including disciplinary transfer; in-school suspension; removal from particular
classes; exclusion from extracurricular activities; exclusion from graduation ceremonies; corporal punishment;
exclusion from school buses; as well as in matters related to grading, diploma denial, and other “academic”
decisions.77

SCHOOL ADAPTATIONS

The implication of these court challenges for school disciplinary practices might seem fairly obvious and
straightforward for many readers: courts altered the rules whereby schools had the authority to control student
misbehavior, and school discipline correspondingly became less effective. While such a direct connection
between law and social organizations might appear intuitively correct, many social scientists would be critical
of such an assumption. Specifically, they would argue that variation in court climates over time and across
regions was interesting but largely irrelevant, given that public schools tend to ignore external environmental
influences altogether. According to educational researchers, public schools have developed institutional cultures
that are “encapsulated” and organizational structures that are only “loosely coupled”; schools thus potentially
were largely protected from external efforts to alter their behaviors.78
Legal scholars such as Gerald Rosenberg have also argued that courts were not always effective in their
efforts to change school practices. In The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change, Rosenberg
suggested that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Brown v. Board of Education decision had little direct and
immediate influence on promoting school desegregation. Ten years after the Federal Supreme Court decision,
more than 95 percent of African-Americans in the South still attended completely segregated schools. It was
only subsequent federal legislation such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, plus administrative intervention, local
political pressure, and further court challenges that reduced school segregation significantly. Rosenberg noted
that courts were often limited in their ability to alter school practices because not only are constitutional rights
supporting intervention limited, but the judiciary also lacked independence and competence in formulating and
implementing policies.79
Other social scientists would also doubt that public school disciplinary practices varied significantly in the
United States in the first place. Neo-institutionalists (such as John Meyer, Walter Powell, Paul DiMaggio, John
Chubb, and Terry Moe) would likely argue that public schools were subject to common organizational
environments and thus share common practices. Although their theories support the notion that courts could
heavily influence school practices and schools could change over time, these scholars would not expect
significant variation in either court climates or school disciplinary practices across American states in a given
year.80
We have already described significant variation in court climates. We must therefore now ask: To what
extent does discipline in public schools vary? Were differences in court climates systematically associated with
how schools disciplined children? While there is no existing data that could answer these questions
unequivocally, we were able to provide suggestive answers by relying on multiple indicators from a variety of
sources. Thus we examined administrative reports of the use of corporal punishment in public schools from
1976 to 1992 that were collected by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. We also
examined administrative reports on whether public schools in 1980 and 1990 had adopted a set of particular
school rules applying to closed campus, dress codes, hall passes, and smoking. We also explored 1980 and 1990
student survey results to assess the degree to which public school students believed that discipline in their
schools was strict and fair. Lastly, we examined surveys of public school teachers in the early 1990s that probed
whether school rules were being enforced by teachers and whether the principal enforced student conduct and
supported teachers in their efforts to discipline youth. Given the data limitations, our results are not definitive,
but we were able to identify suggestive findings that provide the best possible estimates of the effects that court
decisions had on school disciplinary practices.
First, our data suggested that school disciplinary practices and student-teacher perceptions of them varied
systematically in the United States. For example, in 1976 virtually every state in the country reported the use of
corporal punishment in public schools. In the decade and a half following 1976, public schools in most areas of
the country began to eliminate the use of this form of discipline. In the deep South, however, public schools did
not end the use of corporal punishment; in fact in the early 1990s corporal punishment in these states was
practiced more often than in the 1976 reports. These differences in state use of corporal punishment were
closely associated with our measures of court climate. Public schools in states with more hostile court climates
(that is, with higher rates of pro-student decisions in courts with direct jurisdiction over school practices) had
lower rates of corporal punishment generally and more of them quickly discontinued the use of the practice.
Once corporal punishment was eliminated in state schools—partially, we believe, in response to hostile
court climates—it was quite unlikely to return, regardless of subsequent conservative changes in the direction of
court decisions. This institutional finality occurred because elimination of the practice in a state’s public school
system created taken-for-granted assumptions amongst local educators that the use of the practice was ill-
advised and “unthinkable” as an appropriate method. How these assumptions created obstacles that would resist
challenges from subsequent shifts in political and judicial opinions was captured well in the debate around 1996
legislative efforts to reintroduce corporal punishment in California schools. Liberal newspaper editorials
commented that “it seems incredible in this day and age that anyone would have to argue the case”81;
Democrats in the state assembly were reported “aghast at the testimony”82; and the state superintendent of
public schools worried about “teachers having that sort of responsibility, let alone liability.”83 The sponsor of
the legislation commented in frustration over the lack of Republican Party unity on the issue: “Some young
Republicans have never lived under anything but the psychobabble of touchy-feely, feel-good . . . and all
that. . . . They totally misunderstood what I was trying to say.”84 Conversely, in locations where corporal
punishment had not been eliminated, court decisions began to lean more heavily in favor of school authority,
and schools not only continued the use of corporal punishment but often actually increased the application of
this sanction.
In other areas of school discipline, we were able to identify clear associations between court climates and
school disciplinary practices. When court decisions were more hostile to school authority, schools tended to
have fewer rules and teachers and administrators were more reluctant to enforce rules and utilize discipline
aggressively. School personnel in these settings probably had increased apprehension that their exercise of
authority could be effectively challenged in courts. Students in these settings might also have been quicker to
confront school personnel attempting to control disorder with the now all too common classroom refrain: “I’ll
sue you!” While we have no direct measure of the legal perceptions of students and staff in existing data sets,
we do have results that examine these issues indirectly. We find that when court climates were more hostile to
school discipline, teachers reported fewer positive responses to prompts such as “rules for student behavior are
enforced by teachers” and “the principal enforces student conduct rules and supports me.”
In our review of existing ethnographic, survey, and historical research on the changing experience of
teachers during this period, we were also able to uncover a great deal of additional evidence in support of our
contention that legal challenges undermined teachers’ willingness to exercise authority. Ellen Jane
Hollingsworth, Henry Lufler, and William Clune in the late 1970s surveyed 207 Wisconsin teachers and found
the widely held attitude that “the courts were robbing teachers and administrators of the opportunity to
discipline students the way they once did.” While 25 percent of teachers reported that they “weren’t sure” about
the effect of court decisions, 59 percent reported that “teachers and administrators have been hampered by court
decisions in their application of discipline,” and 45 percent reported that “too much interference from courts”
was a “very important” cause of school discipline problems.85 Gerald Grant, in his historical account of the
transformation of a New York state public high school, suggested a similar role court decisions played in
shaping the perceptions and actions of school personnel:

In the past decade many teachers came to recognize that neither the law nor the parents were behind them.
What happened in the 1970s at Hamilton High was not unique. Teachers often thought the law reflected
distrust of their judgment or intentions, and was a weapon for disciplining them rather than their students.
Where the law once upheld the teacher’s right to exercise reasonable corporal punishment, they could now
be threatened with a suit for child abuse or dismissal.86

Educators could no longer assume that courts would support them. Whereas teachers trained in the 1930s
were taught to do whatever was necessary to “get order” in the classroom and to remember when wavering that
“you have the law back of you, you have intelligent public sentiment back of you,”87 by the late 1970s teacher
training often included instructions on recognizing the legal limitations of teachers’ classroom disciplinary
discretion. Books instructing educators on effective discipline began to have chapters with ominous titles such
as “How to Work Within the Legal Limits of Proper Disciplinary Action” and included recommendations that
educators should ensure that their districts “establish adequate liability insurance,” “supplement this coverage
through additional insurance available from many professional organizations,” and “negotiate a ‘hold harmless’
clause in their master contract” to protect them “from litigation that may occur after they have left the
system.”88
We also found clear associations between court climates and student perceptions of school discipline. In
particular, we were interested in whether court climates were associated with student perceptions of strict
discipline, and equally, whether they were related to student perceptions of fair discipline. Student reports of the
strictness and fairness of discipline suggest the degree to which court decisions hostile to school authority have
affected the level of discipline (measured partially by student perceptions of strictness) and have undermined
the legitimacy of school discipline. We found that when courts were supportive of student rights, students
reported that school discipline was both less strict and less fair: that is, schools were less likely to apply
discipline and the limited discipline they did apply was considered even less legitimate than elsewhere. When
courts supported school authority, students were more likely to report that discipline was both stricter and fairer.
Strictness and fairness of discipline were themselves interrelated, and this relationship produced interesting
regional variations in the findings. Students were most likely to report that school discipline was unfair in the
same instances when discipline was also reported as least strict. In school settings with little discipline, authority
often could appear arbitrarily exercised and unjust. As students reported increasing levels of the strictness of
school discipline, higher levels of fairness were also reported up to a certain point. When students reported the
highest levels of school strictness, however, they said that discipline was applied less fairly than when school
discipline was reported at a more moderate level of strictness. This curvilinear association suggests that students
believed that increased strictness was legitimate at moderate levels; if discipline became too strict, however, it
was often viewed as authoritarian and lost some of its legitimacy. The interesting regional variation identified in
our research involved perceptions of school discipline in the South. In 1980 students in Southern states reported
high levels of both strictness and fairness in school discipline. By 1990, however, Southern states again had
high reports of strictness (consistent with our findings of increased use of corporal punishment there), but
students had begun to perceive the discipline as less fair than in many other settings, an evaluation that suggests
they viewed their schools as too strict and authoritarian.

MORAL AUTHORITY, SCHOOL DISCIPLINE, AND STUDENT SOCIALIZATION

Academics and educators have long debated how disciplinary practices might affect student outcomes. We
believe that by ignoring the degree to which the effectiveness of school discipline is related to legitimacy and
moral authority, much of the recent debate and prior research on the subject has limited utility.
At a practical level, school discipline can generate student compliance and peer pressure toward academic
performance. In recent work, James Coleman and his associates argued that private schools outperform public
schools in part because they were able to maintain stricter disciplinary climates with less absenteeism,
vandalism, drug use, and disobedience.89 Sociologists Tom DiPrete, Chandra Muller, and Nona Shaeffer also
found that rates of misbehavior during the senior year were lower in schools that had a higher frequency of
disciplining sophomore students.90 Conservatives have long argued that without proper order and discipline,
schools were unable to function properly and thus provide little education.91
Progressive liberal educators have countered these arguments on both theoretical and empirical grounds.
Theoretically, the challenge largely relied on the work of John Dewey, who argued that traditional authoritarian
disciplinary practices alienated students from educational institutions. Authoritarian discipline served “to cow
the spirit, to subdue inclination” and to increase “indifference and aversion” to schools.92 Dewey maintained
that students would develop productive internal self-discipline only when schools changed their curriculum to
engage individuals’ interests as active learners.
Dewey argued that the most strict school authority could accomplish would be to create an external
appearance of student orderliness. If the teacher is “a good disciplinarian, the child will indeed learn to keep his
senses intent in certain ways, but he will also learn to direct his fruitful imagery, which constitutes the value of
what is before his senses, in totally other directions.”93 This external appearance of orderliness carries
significant pedagogical costs: “To repress interest is to substitute the adult for the child, and so to weaken
intellectual curiosity and alertness, to suppress initiative, and to deaden interests.”94 Progressive educators thus
argued that if traditional authoritarian disciplinary practices were eliminated from public schools, students
would be less alienated from their educational environments and more likely to remain in school and apply
themselves to their studies.
Empirical research has suggested that use of strict disciplinary practices, such as corporal punishment, could
lead to lower educational achievement and higher rates of delinquency.95 Researchers also argued that these
school practices could foster the formation of oppositional peer groups that resisted formal education.96 In
schools where teachers and students were from different racial backgrounds, “principled opposition” to the use
of school discipline was particularly likely.97 In racially mixed school settings nonwhite students might both
perceive use of school discipline as particularly unfair and resist school authority in ways that would lower their
educational achievement.98
While conservative critics of public education have attributed the failure of public schools to lax discipline,
liberals have argued, conversely, that regimentation and overly strict discipline alienated students and reduced
the effectiveness of schools. Both of these claims have some merit: school discipline was ineffective when it
was either too strict or too lenient. What both liberals and conservatives usually missed, however, was the
central principle underlying effective school discipline and accounting for the paradox that school discipline
would have limited utility when perceived as either too harsh or too permissive. For discipline to be effective,
students must actually internalize school rules. This internalization occurs much more readily when school
discipline is equated with the legitimately exercised moral authority of school personnel. If school discipline is
perceived as either too lenient or too strict, it would lose legitimacy. Moreover, when courts challenge the
authority of school personnel to exercise control over their campuses, the moral authority of school discipline is
also undermined.
Our belief in the significance of moral authority led us to focus on the effects on student outcomes of their
perceptions of fairness and strictness of school discipline. Rather than focus solely on the effects of school
discipline on student performance on standardized tests, we identified a broader set of outcomes (such as
willingness to disobey rules, student disruption of class, fighting in school, and adolescent arrest) that have
often been associated more with youth socialization than educational achievement. We were constrained in this
analysis by limitations in existing observational data, but still identified a set of suggestive findings.
Our research indicates that when discipline was perceived as both fair and relatively strict, schools were
successful in promoting educational achievement and youth socialization. Students in such schools were more
likely to demonstrate commitment to the educational process, and had better grades and higher test scores.
Conversely, they were less likely to assert that it was acceptable to disobey rules or to report being arrested as
adolescents. Overly strict schools, however, risked being considered authoritarian, unfair, and illegitimate.
Schools perceived as both strict and unfair yielded negative consequences in certain areas. Students in these
schools had lower grades, were more apt to report a willingness to disobey rules, and had a higher incidence of
arrests.
Our research identifying associations between student perceptions of school discipline and subsequent
student outcomes suggests that the problem is not simply that school discipline is either too strict or too lenient.
Rather, discipline is often ineffective—and at times actually counterproductive or detrimental to students—
because the school’s legitimacy and moral authority have been eroded. Courts were partially responsible for this
situation, as they have challenged schools’ legal, moral, and discretionary authority in this area. Hampering
public schools’ capacity to socialize youth effectively has become a particularly acute problem in recent years,
as changes in the way we live have simultaneously reduced parental supervision and parental involvement in
children’s lives. Specifically, changes in the organization of economic production and the transportation system
began to remove adult male workers from proximity to their children early in the twentieth century. More recent
changes dramatically increased the number of mothers working outside the home.99 Today schools must accept
greater responsibility for the socialization of youth; yet, simultaneously, their authority to assume such a role
has been seriously undermined by court decisions.
School disciplinary climates, while important for all students, were likely to be of greatest significance to
youth at risk for delinquency and incarceration. Educational reforms aimed solely at improving test scores often
implicitly assumed that students finished high school, received some additional training, and then commenced
work. Such assumptions were erroneous for many students. High schools now rarely provide vocational
training, so graduates who do not successfully complete any subsequent training are ill-prepared for the labor
market. Instead of preparing students for school-to-work transition, disorder in urban public schools and the
absence of vocational programs often mean a transition only from school to prison.
 School socialization was likely a significant factor in determining whether students were subsequently
oriented toward work and capable of being employed in a stable manner—that is, failure in the labor market
was often partially the result of inadequate socialization of young adults, who failed to embrace conventional
attitudes, dispositions, and activities. School failures in this area have been growing in recent years, as U.S.
youth incarceration rates have increased dramatically. From 1980 to the mid 1990s, the number of individuals in
jails and prisons has tripled from around 500,000 to more than one and a half million. The majority of these
individuals were young males with little education. The percentage of incarcerated who were African-American
has increased from one-third in the 1960s to over one-half today.

NOTES

1. See U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Educational Statistics, 1995 (Washington, D.C., Government
Printing House 1995), table 8.
2. David Berliner and Bruce Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s
Public Schools (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1996).
3. Although one would not want to rule out the extent to which the erosion of moral authority in schools may
also relate to stagnation in test scores and the tripling of the U.S. prison population in the last three
decades.
4. George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1935–1971 (New York: Random House, 1972), 1281,
1587.
5. Jill F. Devoe, et al., Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2002 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Departments of
Education and Justice, NCES 2003–009/NCJ 196753), 48, 78–80, 86.
6. See, for example, Denise Gottfredson, Schools and Delinquency (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001), 21. Also Gary Gottfredson and Denise Gottfredson, Victimization in Schools (New York: Plenum
Press, 1985).
7. George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 2001 (Wilmington Del: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994),
78.
8. George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1993 (Wilmington Del: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1994),
184–85.
9. Émile Durkheim, Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education
(New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1973 [1925]) 148, 149.
10. Developmental psychologists such as Erik Erikson and Carol Gilligan have suggested that adolescent
development has this moral character.
11. See, for example, Gallup Poll surveys over the past several decades that have listed discipline as the
primary educational concern for citizens.
12. For other examples of how social scientists have begun to examine court decisions systematically, see
recent work by sociologists examining Equal Employment Opportunity Law, esp. Paul Burstein, “Legal
Mobilization as a Social Movement Tactic: The Struggle for Equal Opportunity,” American Journal of
Sociology 96 (1991): 1201–25; and Robert Nelson and William Bridges, Legalizing Gender Inequality:
Courts, Markets and Unequal Pay for Women in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
13. Our analysis has focused on court cases that have reached the appellate level and thus were relevant to
defining case law in the area. Cases at the trial level have not been systematically collected. Justification
for examining cases at this level was articulated by Paul Burstein in his analysis of similar cases applying
to Equal Employment Opportunity Law. Burstein argued that “the justification for studying appellate cases
 is not in their being a random sample but rather in their great importance: they influence the judgment of
employees (and their lawyers) about whether particular disputes are worth pursuing and set the terms
within which employees bargain with employers or unions in the hope of settling out of court.” Burstein,
“Legal Mobilization,” 1208.
14. Research by Perry Zirkel has reported the following annual averaged volumes of state and federal case
decisions by decade: 1,552 for the 1940s; 2,452 for the 1950s; 3,413 for the 1960s; 6,788 for the 1970s;
6,714 for the 1980s; and 6,053 estimated for the 1990s. See “The ‘Explosion’ in Educational Litigation: An
Update,” Education Law Reporter 114 (January 1997): 341–51. David Tyack, Tom James and Aaron
Benavot identified a fairly steady increase of litigation up to the mid 1960s, utilizing a methodology based
on sampling cases (thus the Zirkel and Tyack, James, and Benavot figures are not directly comparable).
See David Tyack, Tom Jones and Aaron Benavot, Law and the Shaping of Public Education, 1785–1954
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1987).
15. See, for example, Gerald Grant and John Briggs, “Today’s Children are Different,” Educational
Leadership 40 (March 1983): 4–9.
16. On protest activities at college campuses, see Nella Van Dyke, “Protest Cycles in the United States, 1930–
1990,” in Jack Goldstone, ed., Parties, Politics and Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002).
17. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Children Under the Law,” Harvard Educational Review 43 (November 1973):
487–514.
18. We used “NAACP Fund” rather than the more conventionally used “NAACP Fund, Inc.” for convenience.
Readers should be aware that since 1957 the NAACP Fund has been organizationally distinct from the
NAACP, with a separate board, program, staff, office and budget.
19. See Joel Handler, Betsy Ginsberg and Arthur Snow, “The Public Interest Law Industry,” in Burton
Weisbrod, Joel Handler and Neil Limesar, eds. Public Interest Law: An Economic and Institutional
Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 42–79.
20. Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: Free Press, 1998),
249. See also Laura Kalman, The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1996).
21. David Trubeck, “Back to the Future: The Short, Happy Life of the Law and Society Movement,” Florida
State University Law Review 18 (1990). Cited in Kalman, The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism, 43.
22. Joel Handler, Ellen Jane Hollingsworth, and Howard Erlanger, Lawyers and the Pursuit of Legal Rights
(New York: Academic Press, 1978), 43. See also Handler, Ginsberg, and Snow, “The Public Interest Law
Industry,” 50, 54. They estimated that 81 percent of the 72 largest public interest law firms in 1976 were
established between 1969 and 1974. While their estimates may be somewhat exaggerated as a result of a
sampling methodology that did not consider effects of firm formation during this period. Their Table 4.4
estimated Foundation Grants as comprising between 42 and 45 percent of sources of income for their
firms.
23. Handler, Hollingsworth, and Erlanger, Lawyers and the Pursuit of Legal Rights, 73.
24. Handler, Ginsberg, and Snow, “The Public Interest Law Industry,” 51. The authors analyzed the firms
identified in the National Inventory of the Public Interest Law Programs (Washington D.C.: Council for
Public Interest Law, 1976).
25. H.P Stumpf, “Law and Poverty: A Political Perspective,” Wisconsin Law Review (1968): 711.
26. Earl Johnson, Jr., Proceeding of the Harvard Conference on Law and Poverty (March 1967), 1–6.
27. Handler, Hollingsworth, and Erlanger, Lawyers and the Pursuit of Legal Rights, 37.
28. Earl Johnson, Jr., “Discussion (on Ellen Jane Hollingsworth, “Ten Years of Legal services for the Poor”),”
 in Robert Haveman, ed., A Decade of Federal Antipoverty Programs (New York Academic Press, 1979),
316–317.
29. See Center for Law and Education website, “Center for Law and education—Celebrating 29 years,”
http://www.cleweb.org/aboutcle/timeline.htm.
30. Handler, Hollingsworth, and Erlanger, Lawyers and the Pursuit of Legal Rights, 33.
31. Ibid.,73.
32. Ellen Jane Hollingsworth noted: “Given the dearth of experience in other countries from which to borrow,
and the lack of United States precedents, Legal Services as a program felt less pressure for evaluation than
many other programs of the Great Society. Even those who pushed for early evaluation of Legal Services
could not agree upon conceptualization of methodology appropriate to apply.” Ellen Jane Hollingsworth,
“Ten Years of Legal Services for the Poor, in Robert Haveman, ed., A Decade of Federal Antipoverty
Programs (New York Academic Press, 1979), 287.
33. Johnson Jr., “Discussion” in Robert Haveman, ed., A Decade of Federal Antipoverty Programs (New
York Academic Press, 1979), 319. Emphasis in original. On Legal Services’ relationship to the America
Bar Association, see Hadler, Hollingsworth and Erlanger. On support for Legal Services in 1981 for the
deans of 143 out of 168 accredited law schools in the country, see Stuart Taylor, “Legal Aid for the Poor
Did Work, and That’s the Rub,” New York Times, 15 March 1981, sec. 4, p. 3.
34. New York Times, 8 July 1972, p. 17. Cited in Stuart Scheingold, The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public
Policy and Political Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 192.
35. Johnson suggested that Legal Services enjoyed “a firm political base in the U.S. Congress,” and noted that
Republican Senators Robert Taft, Jacob Javits, Richard Schwiker, and William Stafford joined Democrats
Walter Mondale, Ted Kennedy, and Alan Cranston in being vocal defenders of the program, Johnson,
“Discussion,” 316–319.
36. Walter Mondale, “Justice for Children” (speech delivered to the U.S. Senate on December 9, 1970)
(Washington, D.C.: Select Committee on Equal Educational Opportunity, 1972), 29.
37. This compares to about 7 percent of funding that major public interest law firms received from federal
sources. See Handler, Ginsberg, and Snow, “The Public Interest Law Industry,” 55 and 70.
38. There are, of course, exceptions to this, including federal promotion of vocational education as early as the
Smith-Hughes Act of 1917. Even with vocational education, however, federal support for these programs
increased dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s; see Richard Arum, “The Effects of Resources on
Vocational Student Educational Outcomes: Invested Dollars or Diverted Dreams,” Sociology of Education
71 (1998): 130–151.
39. See U.S. department of Education, Digest of Educational Statistics, 1995 (Washington DC, Government
Printing House 1995), table 158.
40. John Meyer, W. Richard Scott, and David Strang, “Centralization, Fragmentation and School District
Complexity,” in W. Richard Scott, John Meyer and Associates, Institutional Environments and
Organizations: Structural Complexity and Individualism (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994),
166.
41. In the new institutional literature this conformity has been termed “institutional isomorphism.” Meyer and
his colleagues have tended to emphasize normative and mimetic pressures for isomorphism rather than
coercive ones. See editors’ introduction in Walter Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The New
Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
42. While Jencks saw this increased federal role as inevitable and mostly desirable, he also suggested that the
federal government should consider sponsoring expanded school choice through the provision of
scholarships (i.e. vouchers). Christopher Jencks, “The Future of Education,” in Hans J. Morgenthau, ed.,
 The Crossroad Papers: A Look into the American Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965), 92–111;
Christopher Jencks et al., Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America
(New York: Harper Torch books, 1972), 148; James Coleman et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity
(Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1966).
43. Ellen Jane Hollingsworth, “Ten Years of Legal Services for the Poor,” 291. On the fellowships used to
attract young legal talent, see details about the REGGIE Fellowship Program in Earl Johnson Jr., Justice
and Reform: The Formative Years of the American Legal Services Program (New York: Russell Sage,
1974).
44. See Susan Lawrence, The Poor in Court: The Legal Services Program and Supreme Court Decision
Making (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), esp. 100; and Martha Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers
and the Welfare Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 10-22.
45. Kalman, “The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism”, 43.
46. Joel Handler, Ellen Jane Hollingsworth, and Howard Erlanger, Lawyers and the Pursuit of Legal Rights
(New York: Academic Press, 1978), 8. On the elite (as opposed to grassroots) origins of the Rights
Revolution, see John David Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002).
47. While we have not attempted to conduct the archival work required to document this institutional-level
orientation, we have been willing to assume its presence given the insights of social science research and
theory on organizations. See, for example, Philip Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1949); Philip Selznick, Leadership in Administration (Evanston, IL: Row Preston,
1957); Jeffrey Pfeffer and Gerlad Salancik, The External Control of Organizations: A Resource
Dependence Perspective (New York: Harper and Row, 1978).
48. Robert Kagan, “Regulating Business, Regulating Schools,” in David Kirp and Donald Jensen, eds., School
Days Rule Days: The Legalization and Regulation of Education (Philadelphia: Falmer Press, 1986), 64–90.
49. As Arthur Wise noted in Legislated Learning, “once courts insist that due process be granted, ‘the logic of
that position must be worked out’. Legislatures begin to draft legislation; executives begin to draft
guidelines. The schools begin to develop procedures to conform to the court ruling, to the legislation, and
the guidelines. The procedures, if they are to satisfy the legal concept of due process, must mimic the
judicial process. If the procedures fail to guarantee due process, appeal is made again to the courts.” Arthur
Wise, Legislated Learning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 119; see also Nathan Glazer,
“Toward an Imperial Judiciary,” The Public Interest 41 (Fall 1975):113.
50. See Lauren Edelman, “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structure: Organizational Mediation of Civil
Rights,” American Journal of Sociology 97 (1992); 1531–76.
51. While Kirp referred here explicitly to the possibilities of court review, the larger social implications were
also inescapable. David Kirp and Mark Yudof, Educational Policy and the Law: Cases and Materials
(Berkeley: McCutchan, 1974), 135.
52. Durkheim, Moral Education, 43, 167.
53. Ibid., 165.
54. Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1995):
65–78.
55. Theda Skocpol, “The Tocqueville Problem,” Social Science History 21 (1997): 455–479.
56. Mark Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life (New York: Free Press 1998).
57. See Richard Arum, “Schools and Communities: Ecological and Institutional Dimensions,” Annual Review
of Sociology 26 (2000): 396–418.
58. Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 [503, 506] (Supreme Court
of the United States, 1969).
59. Jane Handler, Neighborhood Legal Services— New Dimensions in the Law (Washington D.C.: U.S.
Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1966), 8.
60. Ladson v. Board of Education, Union Free School District No. 9, 67 Misc. 2d 173 [173] (Supreme Court
of New York, Special term, Nassau County, 1974).
61. Ibid. [177]. Emphasis added.
62. Ibid.
63. Jacobs v. Benedict, 39 Ohio App. 2d 141 [142–143] (Court of Appeals Ohio, First Appellate District,
Hamilton, 1973). Emphasis added.
64. The People of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Scott D., 34 N.Y. 2d 483 [485, 486, v and 490] (Court
of Appeals of New York, 1974).
65. See, for example, Sally Riggs Fuller, Lauren Edelman, and Sharon Matusik, “Legal Readings: Employee
Interpretations and Mobilization of Law,” Academy of Management Review 25 (2000): 200–16.
66. Adams v. City of Dothan Board of Education, 485 Sl. 2d 757 [761] (Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama,
1986). For precedent on the last point, the judges cited Lee v. Macon County Board of Education, 995 F.2d
184 (U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, 1993).
67. Adams v. City of Dothan Board of Education,[761]. Emphasis added.
68. In re Appeal to Huffer, 47 Ohio St. 3d 12 [15] (Supreme Court of Ohio, 1989).
69. Ibid.
70. Survey data have indicated that adolescent drug and alcohol consumption peaked between 1979 and 1981,
and has been in significant decline since. Survey results for senior high school students from the class of
1980 indicated that in the prior thirty days, 72 percent had consumed alcohol, 19 percent had used
marijuana, and 18 percent had used illicit drugs other than marijuana. Twelve years later, seniors in the
high school class of 1992 reported 51 percent drinking alcohol, 8 percent using marijuana, and 6 percent
using illicit drugs other than marijuana. See U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Educational
Statistics, 1995 (Washington, DC: Government Printing House 1995), table 146.
71. Fishel v. Fredrick County School Board, 11 Va. Cir. 283 [285–86] (Circuit Court of Frederick County,
Virginia, 1988).
72. Lusk v. Triad Community Unit No. 2, 194 Ill. App. 3d 426 [427–28] (Appellate Court of Illinois, Fifth
District, 1990).
73. Gaspersohn v. Harnett County Board of Education, 75 N.C. App. 23 [25] (Court of Appeals of North
Carolina,1985).
74. Ibid. [32, 37].
75. Guillory v. Ortego, 449 So. 2d 182 [185] (Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Third Circuit, 1984).
76. Paul Weckstein, School Discipline and Student Rights: An Advocates Manual (Cambridge, MA: Center for
Law and Education, 1982), 1.
77. Robert Pressman and Susan Weinstein, Procedural Due Process Rights in Student Discipline: An Update
and Revision of the Procedural Due Process Section of School Discipline and Student Rights by Paul
Weckstein (Cambridge, MA: Center for Law and Education, 1990).
78. Seymour Sarason, Revisiting the Culture of the School and the Problem of Change. (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1996 [1971]; Karl Weick, “Educational Organizations as Loosely coupled Systems,”
 Administrative Science Quarterly 21 (1976): 1–19.
79. Gerald Rosenberg, Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991).
80. See John Meyer and Brian Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and
Ceremony,” American Journal of Sociology 83 (1977): 340–363; Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, “The
Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,”
American Sociological Review 48 (1983): 147–160; John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets and
American Schools (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1990).
81. “Politics of Paddling,” editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, 30 January 1996, sec. A, p. 14.
82. Robert Gunnison, “Assemblyman Calls for Paddling,” in ibid.
83. Eric Bailey, “Conroy Files Bill to Allow the Paddling of Students Legislation: The Orange County
Lawmaker’s Proposal Is Designed to Undo the 1986 Ban on Corporal Punishment,” Los Angeles Times, 10
January 1995, p. 1.
84. Dana Wilkies, “School Spanking Bill Beaten in Assembly.” San Diego Union Tribune, 31 January 1996,
sec. A, p. 1.
85. Ellen Jane Hollingsworth, Henry Luffler, and William Clune, School Discipline: Order and Autonomy
(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984), 124.
86. Gerald Grant, The World We Created at Hamilton High (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
1988), 147.
87. William Bagley, Classroom Management (New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1914), 95–96. Cited in Grant
147.
88. Robert Ramsey, Educator’s Discipline Handbook (West Nyack, N.Y: Parker Publishing, 1981), 129–149.
89. James Coleman and Tom Hoffer, Public and Private High Schools (New York: Basic Books, 1987).
90. Tom DiPrete, Chandra Muller and Nona Shaeffer, Discipline and Order in American High Schools
(Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1981).
91. Jackson Toby, “The Schools,” in James Wilson and Joan Petersilia, eds., Crime (San Francisco: Institute
for Contemporary Studies, 1995).
92. John Dewey, On Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York:
Free Press, 1916), 129.
93. John Dewey, “Interest in Relation to Training of the Will,” in Reginald D. Archambault, ed., John Dewey
on Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974 [1895]), p. 267.
94. John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed,” in ibid., 436.
95. Wayne Welsh, Patricia Jenkins, and Jack Greene, Building a Culture and Climate of Safety in Public
Schools in Philadelphia: School-Based Management and Violence Reduction (Philadelphia: Center for
Public Policy, 1997). See also Wayne Welsh, Jack Greene and Patricia Jenkins, “School Disorder: The
Influence of Individual, Institutional and Community Factors,” Criminology 37 (1999): 73–115.
96. Paul Willis, Learning to Labor (New York: Teachers College Press, 1979).
97. Mary Metz, Classrooms and Corridors: The Crisis of Authority in Desegregated Secondary Schools
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
98. Pedro Noguera, “Preventing School Violence,” Harvard Educational Review 62 (1992): 189–212.
99. The percentage of mothers with children under age 18 active in the labor force increased from 45 percent
in 1975 to 70 percent in 1999. U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Statistical Abstracts (Washington, D.C.:
 Government Printing House, 2000), 409.

SOURCE: Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Judging School Discipline: A Crisis of Moral
Authority by Richard Arum, pp. 1–37, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2003 by the
President and Fellows of Harvard College.
47
CREATING A CLASS
College Admissions and the Education of Elites
MITCHELL STEVENS

DECISIONS

In the summer of 2003 the United States Supreme Court handed down two decisions regarding selective
admissions. At issue in both cases was whether and how admissions officers could consider race in the
assessment of applicants. In one case, Gratz v. Bollinger, the Court ruled that the affirmative action system used
at the University of Michigan’s undergraduate college was unconstitutional. That system added a fixed number
of points to applicants from certain racial groups on the numerical scores used to make undergraduate
admissions decisions. The Court’s ruling in the other case, Grutter v. Bollinger, regarding the University of
Michigan law school, was a cautious endorsement of racial affirmative action when conducted in the context of
what Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for a narrow majority, called the “individualized consideration” of
applications:

We find that the Law School’s admissions program bears the hallmarks of a narrowly tailored [race-
conscious admissions] plan. As Justice Powell made clear in Bakke, truly individualized consideration
demands that race be used in a flexible, nonmechanical way. It follows from this mandate that universities
cannot establish quotas for members of certain racial groups or put members of those groups on separate
admissions tracks. . . . Universities can, however, consider race or ethnicity more flexibly as a “plus” factor
in the context of individualized consideration of each and every applicant.1

The term “individualized consideration” was sprinkled throughout the Grutter decision, leaving little doubt
about the kind of evaluation the Supreme Court regarded as optimal.2

• • •

Consideration of the Early Decision (ED) applications began each year around Thanksgiving. There was a
palpable excitement in the office about it, this first of a long series of meetings called “committee,” a sense of
anticipation heightened by the coincidence of the winter holidays. After ED there would be weeks of reading, in
December and January, when officers spent very long days and nights poring through applications and the
office hired additional staff simply to open the flood of incoming mail. Committee recommenced for Regular
Decision applications in late January and continued well into March, when the “fat packets” of admission and
the “thin envelopes” of rejection were posted in time for delivery by the notification deadline religiously heeded
by most selective schools, April 1.
Committee is the dramatic crest of the annual admissions cycle. It is when all of the many exigencies that
officers are charged with managing get explicitly negotiated, and when officers do what the general public
perceives them as doing primarily. The other aspects of admissions work—the travel, the courting of applicants
and counselors and parents, the endless maintenance of databases and files—all seem a little mundane in
comparison. The thrill of committee wore off long before it was finished, but in mid-November the job was as
fresh and welcomed as the recently falling snow.
Previous accounts of selective admissions have tended either to over- or underestimate the importance of
committee. On the one hand, journalists and admissions officers themselves often overplay it. They tend to see
committee as the crucial moment for applicants rather than the conclusion of the years-long, incremental series
of preparatory evaluations that it actually is. They tend to believe in the version of reality dramatized by
committee itself, namely, that the evaluation of applications happens at a specific time and place by a relatively
small number of people. On the other hand, social scientists have tended to discount the importance of
committee in the overall architecture of educational transitions. Because they have been interested primarily in
population-level relationships—in the characteristics of who is and is not admitted to elite schools in the
aggregate—social scientists have not recognized the importance of the fact that, at the most prestigious
institutions, admissions decisions are made about individuals. Consequently, they have scarcely considered the
importance of individualized consideration to the structure of inequality in elite higher education in America.
My primary argument in this chapter is that individualized consideration creates peculiar and heretofore
unacknowledged forms of class bias in selective college admissions. Considering applicants as individuals and
not just as the attributes listed in their files obliges admissions officers to glue attributes together into coherent
and aesthetically compelling composites—characters, in other words, with names. I call this glue evaluative
storytelling. When applications are not accompanied by sufficient raw material for crafting compelling stories,
they remain mere types that officers have seen hundreds or even thousands of times. As types, applications are
easy enough to categorize. Types, however, have little that compels the making of exceptions, or what officers
call “stretching,” for them. This is why evaluative storytelling is most elaborate for borderline applicants. When
decisions are tough calls, a good story can be a decisive advantage.

READING AND RATING

At the College, evaluation was a three-stage process: reading and rating, storytelling, and class crafting.6 Each
stage had components of coarse sorts and fine distinctions, but their mixture varied. Reading and rating was
largely a coarse sort. In this stage officers applied standard evaluative criteria to the applications and scored
them with a summary number that made it possible to group the applications into three large categories: easy
accept, easy deny, and a large middle category. Yet reading and rating also entailed some fine distinction,
because officers always read each file individually. They never categorically rejected an application on the basis
of a single attribute. Instead each app was assessed on its own, in light of a large battery of standard criteria, and
rejected only if multiple indications summed to a composite case for elimination. In other words, reading and
rating took the form of a very inefficient ring buyer, someone who takes the time to assess every piece of
jewelry individually and regardless of its source of origin. The work quickly became tedious. Officers often
took it home, fifty or so files at a time, where they could nurse themselves through it with creature comforts like
pajamas and hot tea. They made their way through each application using two standardized forms as their
guides.
The form titled “Applicant Rating” was a worksheet for a quantitative evaluation system indigenous to the
office and honed from year to year. The nine-point scale (1 = low; 9 = high) was a rough numerical estimate of
the desirability of each candidate, and itself was a composite of other estimates. The worksheet featured
subsidiary scales with which to estimate the quality of the app’s high school (measured by the percentage of its
graduates who attend four-year colleges); the strength of the app’s chosen curriculum (measured by the number
and difficulty of academic courses, including the number of Advanced Placement [AP] courses); the app’s
grades; and rank in high school class. Values on these four scales subsequently were averaged to determine the
“Academic” component of the overall score, worth 4 of the total 9. SAT/ACT scores also were converted for
incorporation into the 1–9 overall scale, worth 3 of the 9. Accomplishment in extracurricular activities was
summarized in the “Personal” score, worth 2 of the 9. The final score was referred to as the app’s fin rating—
short for financial aid. The score was used partly to distinguish the most desirable candidates for merit
scholarships and to facilitate the hard choices that the limits of institutional budgets always made inevitable.
In addition to calculating the fin, officers also completed a “pink sheet” for each applicant that summarized
the case in more detail. Printed on two sides of pink paper, it contained designated spaces for approximately
thirty pieces of information that could be culled from each file. The pink sheets were crib notes for oral
discussions about apps, and they contained most, but not all, of the information that was the basis for final
decisions. Grades, class rank, and test scores were on the pink sheets. So too was fairly detailed information
about high school transcripts and extracurricular activities. Pink sheets carried descriptive information about
households—parents’ educational backgrounds and occupations; number of siblings in college and the names of
their schools; race/ethnicity; and whether or not paperwork had been filed with Financial Aid. The aid question
allowed only for answers of yes or no; amounts were specified in other documents produced by the financial aid
officers. Apps for which the answer to the aid question was no were described colloquially as “free,” because
their acceptance would not “cost” the College any of its financial aid budget. Those who would need a lot of
financial aid to be able to attend the College often were colloquially described as “expensive” or “needy.”
There were spaces on the pink sheets where officers could describe the content and quality of the personal
essays. There were lines for summarizing the content of recommendation letters sent from teachers and
guidance counselors. There were spaces for the name of the applicant’s high school and for the percentage of
graduates from that school who went directly on to four-year colleges. There were spaces for filling in the
athletic ratings supplied by the College’s own coaching staff. There was a place for indicating whether the app
was the son or daughter of a College alumnus.
When they were thoroughly filled in, pink sheets represented virtually every asset of an applicant that
mattered to the College. A story could be told about a kid on the basis of the pink sheet alone.

STORYTELLING

One day in the winter of 2000, I stopped by Val Marin’s office to touch base with her about a grant proposal I
was writing at her request. The grant, which the College ultimately was awarded, was to provide scholarship
funds for academically accomplished applicants from the new Eastern European republics. When I poked my
head through Val’s door, I found her with Beth Cole, surrounded by several stacks of applications through
which they seemed to be making their way rather quickly. “Watcha doing?” I asked.
“Z-ing incomplete international apps,” Val said. Z was office code for deny. Val and Beth were trying to cut
down on the committee workload by rejecting many, but not all, of the applicants from abroad whose files were
lacking vital information. The sorting was not being done carelessly. I watched as Beth put a Z on one of the
folders, paused over it for a moment, then handed it off to Val.
“I think I may have Z-d this one too quickly,” she said.
Val looked through the file for a minute and said, “Yep, too fast. I’ll follow up on it.” I don’t know why that
particular application was reconsidered, but Val did convey some clues about the kinds of attributes that got
files second looks. She flipped through one app from a small African nation. The kid attended a boarding school
in northern Italy. “That school is fifty thousand dollars a year. Yep. Fifty grand,” she repeated, plunking the file
back on its stack. “They take all the kids in the school, every year, from November to January, and move the
entire school into the mountains so the kids can ski. It’s incredible.”
While I took a moment to drop my jaw at this, Val picked up the file again and said, “I bet the kid’s father
owns half the country.” She flipped through the papers, looking for dad’s occupation. “What do you know,
‘prime minister.’ Interesting, huh? I know the counselor [at the Italian school], she’s a nice lady. I’ll give her a
call and see what’s up with the file.”
About a week later when I was in Val’s office again, she asked me to look through a half dozen of the
applications the office had received that year from Bulgaria. “I’ve narrowed it down to six,” she said, “and
they’re all excellent. Don’t even look at their grades because they all have [the equivalent of straight A’s].
They’ve all got great test scores. I’m wondering if you can help me distinguish them.” Val knew that she would
be able to advocate for only one of the six Bulgarians in committee, because all of them would need more or
less full scholarships to attend the College and officers were loath to admit students unless they also could offer
the necessary financial aid. In a tone flavored equally with admiration and regret, Val often said that the College
could fill each year’s entering class with Eastern European valedictorians. Academic numbers were not the only
data to which Admissions was obliged to attend, however, so my eyes and fingers sought out aspects of the six
Bulgarian files that might enable me to read beyond all of the uniform statistics. I looked for the
recommendation letters, the personal essays, and any other evidence that might enable me to make fine
distinctions.
Both of these visits to Val’s office were occasions for what I call evaluative storytelling: the work of
assembling narratives about applicants that become the basis for fine distinctions. Once cases have been placed
into a category (incomplete international apps, the top six Bulgarians), discrimination among them tends to take
the form of stories about how one or a few cases should be distinguished from all the others. Evaluative
storytelling often happens at the tops of decision hierarchies, after coarse sorts have weeded out all of the cases
that do not meet baseline criteria yet there are still more candidates than there are goodies to award. This is what
Harvard sociologist Michèle Lamont and her colleagues find in their studies of the blue-ribbon panels
assembled to select the winners among finalists for prestigious scholarly fellowships. Because all of the
candidates who make it to the final rounds of consideration are good or excellent, judges tend to distinguish the
best from the rest by crafting moral accounts about winners that distinguish them in kind from the others.9
Evaluative storytelling also happens when the attributes of a case make it difficult to categorize. Its mix of
assets and deficits puts it in the grey zone between yes and no, admit and deny. Under either condition,
evaluators’ abilities to tell compelling stories about a case are consequential for its ultimate fate.10
Evaluative storytelling is always a collaborative endeavor, because it requires not only the participation of
the story’s teller but also the producers of the narrative raw materials from which the story is made. If
admissions officers are going to tell stories about college applicants, there must be things for officers to say, and
those things are supplied by others: external testing agencies, high school guidance counselors, and the
applicants themselves. Val Marin got some of the material for her story about the African kid from his
application. There she found the name of his school, which was the beginning of the story. Val filled it in with
material from her own prior knowledge of the place: that it was extraordinarily costly; that it sent all of its
students skiing each winter. The next piece of material came from the application, which listed the app’s
father’s occupation. Prime minister added sufficient intrigue that Val decided to seek out information for
another chapter. I know the counselor . . . she’s a nice lady. I’ll give her a call and see what’s up with the file.
The stories Val would be able to tell about the six Bulgarians would be less intriguing—not because the
applicants themselves were less compelling or worthy, but because Val would have very little material with
which to craft distinctive stories about needy Bulgarians. She would not know guidance counselors at the high
schools the Bulgarians had attended, so there would be no counselor calls. She would not have visited the
Bulgarians’ high schools, so there would be fewer details of setting and circumstance with which to embellish
the narratives. And because none of the six Bulgarians had made the trip to the College for a campus interview,
features of the applicants as embodied people, with appearances and gestures and personalities, would go
missing from the stories, too. So a story about one of the six Bulgarians would get told in committee, but it
would have a generic quality. It would be another story about another Eastern European valedictorian. Listening
officers would recognize that they had heard stories just like it many times before.
Previous students of elite college admissions often have recognized that applicants from privileged
backgrounds tend to have many advocates lobbying for them through the evaluation process. High school
guidance counselors, in particular, are crucial brokers of applicants at selective colleges because they have
enduring and reciprocally beneficial relationships with admissions officers.11 But previous observers have
tended to presume that it is applicants, and not information about them, that high schools and colleges are
brokering. My observations suggest that information is the essential medium of exchange between guidance
counselors, admissions officers, and indeed a wide web of college personnel. All of the parties in this evaluative
economy use information as a form of currency to buy respect, curry influence, and direct the outcomes of those
decisions in which their own interests are implicated. Evaluative stories are the glue that binds all of this
information together, creating a narrative subject—the applicant—whose ultimate fate can be adjudicated by a
single, summary admission decision.

CLASS CRAFTING
The individualized consideration of committee took place in serial fashion over many weeks. Officers remained
mindful, throughout committee season, of the exigencies that ultimately would inform the overall cohort of
admitted students. They knew they ultimately would have to bring in the class “on budget”—attending to the
numbers from Financial Aid while also admitting enough full payers to meet annual targets for tuition income.
They knew that composite statistics describing the SAT scores and class ranks of admitted students were
consequential for the College’s academic reputation. They knew that broad geographic representation and
official minority numbers mattered for institutional status, too. Finally, they knew that each admitted class
would have to appease influential parties in other offices: Athletics, Development, President Evers, Mr. Carlisle.
However it was difficult, if not impossible, in the thick of committee, to track precisely what the admitted
cohort would look like as a whole. As soon as officers were finished with committee, evaluation moved to class
crafting—a step designed to ensure that all of the various jobs officers needed the admitted classes to do for the
College were taken care of, before decision letters were posted.
Class crafting took the form of highly consequential meetings called “F rounds” (for financial aid), in which
officers honed the overall composition of the admitted cohort. In F rounds, some of the files marked for
admission in committee inevitably were changed to Z, and vice versa. Previously accepted applicants whose
decisions were changed through this process were said to have been “F-d.” I did not directly observe F rounds.
They were not scheduled in advance because it was impossible to predict precisely when the office would finish
with committee, and they happened relatively swiftly. In my layman’s life I already had unchangeable
commitments elsewhere when F rounds took place, so I here rely on the firsthand accounts of College officers.
As their name implies, F rounds had a lot to do with money. “We’ll go over [our financial aid budget] by a
million [dollars]—or something like that, we always do,” Susan Latterly said,

and so what you have to do is go back through and revisit the kids getting aid and see who we need to let go.
Which is very hard because a lot of times you have already psychologically admitted the kid, and probably
are happy about that, and now you have to go back and revisit that decision. It’s very difficult.

They were not just about money, however. Susan continued:

And then after that we spend some time going over the admits trying to make sure that we have enough
singers and enough athletes and enough whatevers, talking to the coaches and seeing what we’ve done with
them—just really checking to make sure we’ve covered what we want.

Over lunch one day with Alan Albinoni, I made an early attempt at formulating the perspective on
committee presented in these pages. I told Alan that I was intrigued by the performative aspect of committee
evaluation, with how applicants were first assessed as bundles of quantifiable attributes, then transformed by
committee into persons, then reconfigured as numbers in the form of composite statistics describing the entering
class. From there, Alan took the discussion to the topic of F rounds:

In that meeting we work very hard to keep that process from happening, to keep them as numbers. Because
it’s much easier that way. It’s much easier to deny the kid—especially after you already have accepted them
—if you just see them as SAT scores and financial aid. The hard part about F-ing [financial aid rounds]
committee is that you already have admitted them. And, you know, particular ones of us may have already
committed to them. It’s like you know them. So that makes it a lot harder. Which is why, in [regular]
committee I always say, I always try to look at the bottom line, look at the numbers, because you know
what? It doesn’t get any easier to deny them later. It doesn’t get any easier to say no after you have talked
about them. It only gets harder.

Alan took it as good practice to keep in mind that applicants always were numbers as well as stories. It was
harder to become emotionally invested in the numbers, harder to fall in love with numbers than with someone
who had a story and a name.
The integrity of the characters produced by evaluative storytelling in committee should not be
underestimated. “It’s like you construct a hologram of the kid with the information in the file,” I ventured to
Alan, “and you discuss this version of the kid that you’ve created.” To illustrate, I used my hands to sculpt a
figure out of the air between us.
Alan agreed, adding, “In fact that’s a part of the work that I really enjoy, because if it weren’t for that I
would have very little contact with the kids.” He paused here, using his hand to gesture at the invisible figure
between us. “That’s a lot of my contact with them,” he said.

INDIVIDUALISM AND EVALUATION

One of the happier aspects of each committee season was a practice I came to call the Rule of One Pick. Liam
and Susan extended the Rule of One Pick to all of the junior officers; it entitled each of them to choose a single
candidate for admission entirely at their own discretion. Talk about potential picks laced many committee
discussions. People would sometimes ask officers presenting tough calls if they liked the apps enough to name
them as their picks. Liam asked Chris Winn, for example, if he wanted to make Jennifer Cable his pick for that
year. Chris deferred, opting to save his pick for some other candidate with whom he might be more taken.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Grutter case embodies the same optimism about individualized
consideration reflected in the Rule of One Pick. In their admittedly very different ways, Grutter v. Bollinger and
the Rule of One Pick both assert that individualized consideration enables decision makers to coalesce the
myriad details of particular applications into more or less compelling wholes. Both assert that decisions made
on the basis of what Justice O’Connor called “highly individualized, holistic review”14 have a different and
higher value than decisions rendered on the basis of a few facts in each file. But the Rule of One Pick was an
exception to everyday practice. Grutter v. Bollinger, by contrast, asserts the virtue of holistic review “for each
and every applicant.” This is problematic. My observations suggest that individualized consideration is neither
as humane nor as remedial of social inequality as Justice O’Connor and her colleagues in the majority for
Grutter might have hoped.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger does not attend to two crucial features of evaluation in
selective admissions. First, it does not attend to the fact that the storytelling essential to individualized
consideration is dependent upon a generous supply of information, and that the social machinery that delivers
information to decision makers is not equally distributed throughout the population. Socioeconomically
privileged applicants enjoy the most elaborate information delivery, so their applications come loaded with lots
of the raw materials evaluators need to tell individually compelling stories. This is how individualized
consideration is discriminatory. It systematically favors applicants who are able to deliver the right kinds of
information to the right parties at the right times, while systematically disadvantaging those without the
necessary infrastructure to get word of themselves across.
Second, the Supreme Court’s decision in Grutter fails to recognize the political implications of the fact that
different kinds of assets coveted by schools are embedded inside each and every college applicant. Admissions
officers usually do not have the luxury of making decisions entirely on the basis of their own holistic reviews,
because influential people in the Development, Athletics, and President’s offices, and on the board of trustees,
also are invested in the outcome of admissions decisions. My observations suggest that, in practice, the
individualized consideration of applications endorsed by the Supreme Court in Grutter serves as much to
appease the demands of various intramural stakeholders as it does to preserve the integrity of the cases
represented in the files. When the fate of applications is decided individually and narratively, over time, there is
more wiggle room for negotiation among all of the parties who have a stake in the outcomes. This is why the
Rule of One Pick was so special. It momentarily suspended all of the exigencies that otherwise constrained
officers’ discretion. Each year, the Rule of One Pick allowed each officer to be fully in charge of the decision
for one application. The rest of the time officers were obliged to share the decision with others. It may be that
the Supreme Court’s endorsement of individualized consideration was predicated on the faulty assumption that
admissions decisions are made by autonomous offices. They are not. My observations suggest that, in practice,
individualized consideration is an intramural negotiation among multiple stakeholders about how particular
decisions will turn out. When applicants come with assets valued by influential insiders—family wealth, trustee
connections, official minority status, and athletic skill—they have advocates unavailable to others. The ethical
implications of this fact are not trivial.

NOTES

1. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 334 (2003). The case regarding Michigan’s undergraduate college is
Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).
2. In November 2006, Michigan voters passed a referendum banning affirmative action in public education,
public employment, and state contracts, effectively ending the University of Michigan’s ability to
explicitly consider race as a factor in admissions decisions.
3. Journalistic and “insider” accounts of selective admissions elsewhere suggest that the organization of
decision making at the College is broadly representative of practices elsewhere. See, for example, Jacques
Steinberg, The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College (New York: Viking,
2002); and Rachel Toor, Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection
Process (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001).
4. Joshua Guetzkow, Michèle Lamont, and Gregoire Mallard, “What Is Originality in the Humanities and the
Social Sciences?” American Sociological Review 69 (2004): 190–212.
5. My thinking on this matter has recently been informed by Charles Tilly’s essay, Why? (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2006). I found that Tilly’s four categories of reasons—conventions, stories,
codes, and technical accounts—all were represented at different points and in different syncretic
combinations, throughout the College’s evaluation process. Finding out if there is parallel syncretism in
other settings might give new texture to our understanding of just how complex evaluation in formal
organizations can be.
6. See, for example, Caroline Hodges Persell and Peter W. Cookson Jr., “Chartering and Bartering: Elite
Education and Social Reproduction,” Social Problems 33 (1985): 114–129; also Patricia M. McDonough,
Choosing Colleges: How Social Class and Schools Structure Opportunity (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997).
7. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 337 (2003).

SOURCE: Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Creating a Class: College Admissions and the
Education of Elites by Mitchell L. Stevens. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2007 by
the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
48
BECOMING RIGHT
How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives
AMY BINDER AND KATE WOOD

I n 2004 and again in 2007, members of the College Republicans on a campus we call Western Flagship,
the main campus of the Western Public university system, staged an eye-popping event known as the
Affirmative Action Bake Sale.1 The Bake Sale is a widely recognized piece of political theater that
conservative students put on at many universities across the country, at which members of right-leaning campus
organizations sell baked goods at a higher price to white passers-by than they do to, say, African Americans or
Latinos/as. The event is said to highlight while also parodying the deleterious effects on all students of
affirmative action policies. Student sponsors contend that the event opens up important campuswide discussions
of a pressing issue that all too frequently remains unacknowledged on university campuses. But when students
talk about what it is like to actually stage the event, and to get others’ reactions to it, it is clear that they revel in
the sheer fun and provocation their activity stirs up. According to one interviewee, the Flagship campus chapter
of College Republicans elicited a strong response from liberals in 2004:

So we’re out there and it’s like five College Republicans, wearing our little College Republican
stickers. . . . And for about half-an-hour, community members would come by and say, “Oh, I’m a white
guy and I’ve got to pay a dollar” and “Oh, I’m a Hispanic guy, damn I feel so oppressed by the white man.
I’ve got to pay 75 cents.” I mean, people really were getting into it. But of course, meanwhile, there’s a
noontime rally organized by the diversity thugs with the tacit approval of the [university] administration and
stuff. They’ve got their bullhorns out, they’re angry, they’ve got their signs. They’re out there for half an
hour getting themselves all ginned up. And of course, [a Flagship administrator] is there, the [Flagship]
police commander is there, all this stuff, and so we’re sitting there. And I have no problem with protesters; I
want the protesters there! There’s cameras everywhere! (Chuck Kelley, Western Flagship)

This event, which drew crowds of campus administrators, police, and protesting students, is one of a number
of confrontational actions that conservative students stage on college campuses across the country, alongside
Catch an Illegal Alien Day (when students marked as illegal immigrants are chased down and mock-
imprisoned), the Global Warming Beach Party (during which environmental concerns are ridiculed with suntan
oil and beer), and the Conservative Coming Out Day (a twist on LGBT coming-out celebrations, when
conservatives proudly announce their presence to the campus). Even in university systems like the University of
California, where affirmative action in admissions has been banned since 1996, conservative students stage
these kinds of events, such as Berkeley’s highly publicized Affirmative Action Bake Sales in 2003 and again in
2011.2 Conservative students who put on events that we have labeled “provocative” are tickled to rile liberals at
their universities and are supported in their theatricality by national organizations established to foster such
conservative activism on campus.
On a different college campus 2,000 miles away from Western Flagship, which we call Eastern Elite
University, such an event is considered verboten—not by college administrators and faculty so much as by
conservative Eastern Elite students themselves. At this private university, most right-leaning undergraduates
denounce the act of pushing liberals’ buttons as sophomoric, as well as ineffective at recruiting potential fellow
travelers or encouraging debate on an issue. The head of Eastern’s College Republicans said:
 Look, I don’t think something like that is helpful. Yes, maybe it gets a point across to some students. But
overall it just makes people mad. . . . If you’re making someone mad in the course of trying to make a
broader point or in the course of trying to influence someone, then great, go for it. . . . [But] what person
walks up to a table to buy a cupcake and realizes that “[this] is an Affirmative Action Bake sale,” and then
walks away thinking, “Wow, that was a great illustration of the problems with affirmative action. Maybe I
will rethink my views on that.” . . . The only thing that I have ever seen come from putting on events like
that is divisiveness and anger and lack of communication. (Derek Yeager, Eastern Elite)

Others at Eastern make it a point to say that such an event would be unsuitable for the sensibility of their
campus, where “[students] tend to be a little bit more intellectual” (Calvin Coffey, Eastern Elite). At Eastern
Elite, most conservative students argue that it is beneficial to conduct respectful arguments and to try to reach
out to the other side, to learn from their political adversaries, and to create a well-tempered conservative
presence on campus. While their conservative beliefs are no less ardent than those of their counterparts on the
Western Public campuses, Eastern Elite University students disdain the national conservative organizations that
encourage such theatrical events, accusing those groups of having a reputation for being “not as thinking”
(Nicole Harris, Eastern Elite). Instead of engaging in provocative public actions, most students at Eastern Elite
extol the virtues of a style that is more deliberative—we call it “civilized discourse”—to be used among
themselves, as well as with faculty, administrators, and their liberal peers.
There is, however, more to this story. These dominant styles of conservative expression on the Western
Public and Eastern Elite campuses exist within a broader spectrum of activity that includes some additional
options. While the two styles described above are the most highly valued forms of conservative expression on
their respective campuses, other approaches can be found as subordinate, or what we call “submerged,” styles,
appearing sometimes with greater and sometimes with lesser intensity, depending on student leadership in any
given year.3 At Western Flagship, for example, members of the College Republicans in some years may lean
toward wanting less confrontational actions and engage in relatively institutionalized forms of party
participation to create a style we call “campaigning.” Going against the prevailing wisdom requires a stiff spine,
however. When student leaders on the Western Public campuses use this submerged style and try to get others
to support campaigning over provocation, they often draw criticism from their peers for not being “super-
conservative” enough (Kody Aronson, Western Flagship), for being “an abomination” insofar as campaigning
encourages students to “[kiss] the ass of the National GOP” (Chuck Kelly, Western Flagship), or for simply
being “lame” (Karl Hayes, Western Satellite). (We should note quickly that Western Flagship is part of the
larger Western Public university system, which also includes the Western State and Western Satellite campuses.
When we refer only to this main campus, we will say Western Flagship; when we refer to these schools as a
group, we will call them Western Public.)
At Eastern Elite University, meanwhile, the submerged style of campaigning gets a decent amount of
support from a subset of students—particularly those in the College Republicans, and especially in election
years—because it is seen to be reasonably aligned with civilized discourse. Campaigning is simply an added
layer of practical activity on top of what most Eastern Elite conservative students are already trying to do:
convince folks to think about conservative ideas, consider GOP platform positions, and have good debates. But
more notably, an expressive submerged style of conservative insurgency, which we label “highbrow
provocation,” thrives in the pages of the campus’s conservative newspaper and is a kind of pedigreed National
Review style. Though often producing extreme discomfort among those conservative students who practice
civilized discourse, a handful of conservatives at Eastern Elite participate actively in penning intense,
philosophical, and at times vitriolic editorials and essays within the paper’s pages. Targeting the “ironies of
campus life” (Henry Quick, Eastern Elite)—by which this interviewee meant multiculturalism, political
correctness, the overprotection of campus minority groups and women—newspaper staff are provocative, just
not in the same way that student activists staging Catch an Illegal Alien Day or the Bake Sales are. Highbrow
provocation is not “activist” in the sense that activism means going out on the quad and publicly riling people
up; instead, it mainly takes place in the world of words and ideas. And it is also more thoroughly submerged at
Eastern Elite, meaning that however much negative attention highbrow provocation gets, there are only a few
people on campus who actually use it, whereas on the Western Flagship campus, provocation is mainstream. It
should also be pointed out that the highbrow provocation style fails utterly on the Western Public campuses:
Although one of our Western State students tried to engage this style on his campus, he conceded there was no
audience for it.
What all of this means is that the patterns in conservative styles across the two universities we studied are
strong, stark, and deserve sustained analysis: Something is happening on college campuses such that
provocation prevails in the Western Public system (with campaigning as a submerged style), whereas civilized
discourse dominates at Eastern Elite University (with both campaigning and high-brow provocation in
submerged positions). These patterns suggest that while conservative students may have a steady presence at
universities across the country, and that they are also to a large extent ideologically united under a conservative
banner across these campuses, students’ political styles, their ways of expressing their conservative ideas, are
systematically varied. This holds true not only for students’ styles and tactics as articulated through political
events but also for their everyday perceptions of the classroom experience, their thoughts about the activities of
faculty and peers, and the ways they conduct their social lives. While this does not mean that every last
conservative student on these campuses comports with the dominant or submerged styles prevalent there, when
we look at the overall patterns among groups of students, the patterns are striking.
Should we be surprised to discover that there is such considerable variation in conservative styles across
different university campuses? In some important ways, yes: this is an unanticipated finding. In the few years
leading up to the 2008 presidential election, when we were collecting the bulk of our data, and since, there has
been a visible trend toward a narrowing conservative style promoted within the core of the Republican Party,
with highly partisan confrontational tactics emerging as the regular means of doing business.4 Examples include
members of the Republican Party shutting down the government in 1994 under the leadership of then Speaker
of the House Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin’s mocking tone at the 2008 Republican National Convention when
referring to the Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s history of community organizing.5 While
the Republican Party is not synonymous with conservatism, most people who identify as conservative vote that
party’s ticket. Given the party’s trend toward confrontation, it is therefore not unreasonable to imagine that
during the time of our data collection, 18- to 22-year-olds with conservative leanings would have participated in
a more or less shared repertoire of national-level, right-of-center beliefs and values, and that all students would
have used at least some elements of the provocative style on their home campuses. In addition, this age group is
wired in to multiple forms of widely disseminated media, from Facebook pages devoted to conservative causes,
to 24/7 streaming cable news channels featuring such celebrity pundits as Sean Hannity, to constantly updated
blogs written by those on the political right. Had they been interested in investigating conservative views on
“what is wrong with the liberal campus,” our interviewees would have encountered mostly the thoughts and
ideas of “movement conservatives” who are located in conservative-funded think tanks, foundations, and media
outlets and who often champion the cause of right-of-center undergraduates.6 Students could even have laid
their hands on the Campus Conservative Battleplan, distributed by the Young America’s Foundation, an
organization that provides ready-made posters and flyers depicting Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, Hillary
Clinton, and Noam Chomsky as the bugaboos of the Left and sends out prepackaged plans for staging protests
against liberal policies.7
On the other hand, we also know that despite American conservatism’s shift toward a narrower stylistic
range since the 1990s, the political Right, like any other ideological grouping, is a varied camp.8 Conservatism
has always been heterogeneous—if not racially and ethnically, then at least in terms of the issues that fall under
its umbrella, the organizations that are in place to advance its goals, the intellectual concerns of its most
scholarly advocates, and the styles to which its different proponents adhere.9 As the conservative author and
columnist David Brooks writes, there is a long-standing division between mainstream Republicans and “self-
described conservative revolutionaries,” a typology that was updated in 2011 by the Pew Research Center for
the People & the Press, which divides self-identified conservatives into “staunch conservatives,” “mainstream
Republicans,” and more independent-minded “libertarians.”10 National conservative political figures such as the
2012 GOP primary candidates Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney differ on both issues and style of address, and
pundits such as Bill O’Reilly, George Will, and Charles Krauthammer offer different modes of political
analysis.
 The same is true of conservative organizations targeting college students. While the national organizations
sponsoring battle plans are the largest, most vocal purveyors of conservative ideology to undergraduates, a
handful of other organizations, such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, educate, sponsor, and mobilize a
more self-styled intellectual student. Some of these organizations espouse a type of conservatism more in the
manner of Edmund Burke, in which “corrections” to the established order are tolerated and the tempered
disposition is valued. Or they may hark back to William F. Buckley’s “full-throated passion of the agitator” in
his book God and Man at Yale, whose style today can be found in such media outlets as the Weekly Standard
and National Review and which is redolent of the highbrow provocation style we see at Eastern Elite
University.11
But the larger political culture of conservatism in the United States is not the only context influencing right-
leaning college students. At the level of the college campus, students’ academic and social experiences also
shape their conservative styles. As both Burton Clark and Mitchell Stevens have pointed out in separate studies,
universities cultivate unique institutional characters.12 Selectivity in admissions, the quality and frequency of
faculty-student interactions, differences in historical institutional sagas, the promotion of particular types of
student career aspirations, the physical landscape of campus life—all of these affect the in-college experiences
of students on any given campus, and may be supposed to influence the styles of political discourse and action
that are seen to be reasonable there.13 What is utterable or even celebrated political discussion or classroom
interaction on one campus might be viewed by students at another school as questionable or even completely
outside the realm of possibility. While such known campus features as a school’s reputation for academic
excellence or for being a party school clearly lead to selection effects—eager college applicants choose
campuses that fit who they think they are now and who they would eventually like to become; likewise,
selective colleges choose those applicants who they believe will enhance their school environment—we should
also expect that elements of the campus culture will influence students once they are enrolled in college.
Further, though undergraduates certainly enter colleges and universities with differing personal histories,
including varying experiences of social class, race and ethnicity, and religion, an extensive and long-established
body of literature indicates that the campus itself is an institutional environment that influences students in
significant ways.14
So, to be sure, students’ background characteristics and experiences with the wider political culture are
salient for their political development, but at the same time, the influence of the school context in which
students find themselves immersed cannot be ignored.15 In this [chapter] we demonstrate that conservative
students on any given campus share unique, local repertoires of conservative ideas and styles that differ from
those available on other campuses, and that these local repertoires for action influence students’ understandings
of what is appropriate to say and do politically at their university.16 The kinds of interactions that conservative
students have with one another, with members of their broader campus settings, and with the traditions and
everyday practices of their schools provide the crucible in which conservative politics are forged out of
individuals’ pasts and the broader political culture in which they participate. Political actors, we argue, are
made, not born, as colleges nurture and enhance particular forms of student conservatism.
Making sense of the styles and discourses of conservative students on the campuses of Eastern Elite
University and the Western Public system, then, is both complex and important. It is important to understand the
range of conservative styles that exist and to track the extent to which college-age conservatives across
university settings are similar, and thus have sufficient unity to form and maintain a national constituency for
right-leaning action—perhaps particularly these days, as members of the Tea Party express disdain for more
deliberative-style “Establishment” conservatives and moderates.17 One might say that conservative style—as
much as, if not more so, than political ideology—is what primarily differentiates right-leaning candidates,
pundits, and intellectuals in our current political culture. We therefore need to know how these styles develop in
the first place and what role universities play in this process. It is equally important to know where divergences
among conservative students lie, since such knowledge can help explain the factionalization that has occurred
among current conservative leaders.
But the project is also complex, since understanding these styles requires looking at several components of
college students’ lives in combination with one another. At the broadest scale, understanding these styles
involves tracking the many different national organizations with which conservative students come in contact,
with an eye to each organization’s rhetoric and preferred targets of attack. The styles promoted by national
organizations such as the Young America’s Foundation often reflect the repertoires of still larger political
entities, such as the conservative base of the Republican Party or various right-leaning media outlets such as
Fox News. At a level closer to students’ everyday experiences, it also involves analyzing conservative
undergraduates’ extensive dealings with the different structures and cultural practices on their home campuses,
from the campuswide organizational arrangements that all students encounter (classrooms, dorms, course
registration policies) to the smaller groups that are specifically political, such as right-leaning campus clubs. If
campuses influence political styles, as we believe they do, it is in large part through students’ concrete
interactions with their campus’s shared cultural ideas and organizational structures that such an impact occurs.
We think of these as opportunity spaces for political styles.
These campus-level opportunity spaces come in many different forms. Universities that house students all
four years, for example, create a different sense of community than do institutions where most students live off
campus in apartments or in the fraternity or sorority system. Students who live in on-campus housing during
their college years sometimes describe themselves as existing in a bubble or a hothouse, where they get to know
a large number of their peers. This sense of community affects how “in your face” conservative students might
be willing to be with their politics, since being overly confrontational risks losing precious social capital built up
through close spatial proximity. At universities where most undergraduates live off campus, on the other hand,
it is easier to take the gloves off when expressing political views, since any given student knows fewer people
on the whole campus, and those who remain anonymous—well, their feelings don’t matter as much. Another
example: universities that have deep pockets and can provide ample funding to all student clubs may breed a
greater sense of trust among conservative undergraduates than do institutions that are suspected of funneling
limited resources toward favored groups. Such largesse makes it more likely that conservative students will tend
to be solicitous, not snarky, toward administrators. Conversely, conservative students who go to schools where
resources are tight (a common situation at large public universities) and who regard the distribution of those
resources as far from transparent are more likely to feel alienated from administrative decision makers and to
think they have a right to be combative. This sets a different tone for political discourse and style on their
campus. Still another form of contingency: universities that have smaller student-to-faculty ratios and generally
teach students in seminar settings rather than large lecture halls allow students to see faculty as generally
approachable fellow human beings. On the other hand, on campuses with larger student-to-faculty ratios and
bigger classes, faculty may seem more like inaccessible aliens than concerned supervisors and, therefore,
subject to more confrontational attitudes. The list of examples goes on, but all of these opportunity spaces, in
one form or another, influence the types of political behavior that students will think are appropriate for
engagement on their campus. The particularities of campus settings, from this perspective, play a critical role in
creating distinctive types of political actors.
At present, social scientists know very little about the organizational structures and cultures that affect
conservative students’ thinking and action. A small number of scholars have studied the original conservative
student movement of the 1960s and 1970s (led by the Young Americans for Freedom), and there is a growing
literature on the conservative movement at large, which has changed American society enormously in the past
several decades, written by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and journalists.18 But very few authors
have written specifically about today’s conservative college students’ thoughts about their education and their
lives beyond college, let alone how conservative styles might manifest distinctively on different university
campuses. The few exceptions among scholars who have studied contemporary college students—such as April
Kelly Woessner and Matthew Woessner, who have used national survey data to research conservative students’
perceptions of their professors and experiences in college, and Ethan Fosse, Jeremy Freese, and Neil Gross, who
have looked at the question of why conservative students do not pursue doctoral degrees—have not been able to
capture the greater context of conservative students’ college experiences or their varying modes of expression.19
We should know much more about who conservative college students are and which parts of conservatism they
identify with, how they become conservative in the first place and how they develop their political identities on
campus, and whether and how they intend to be active in politics in the future.20 Since college-age activism is
often an important step to leadership in the larger political arena, knowing about students’ activities in college
across different campuses—and across the conservative spectrum—is a crucial area of study.
In presenting the argument that universities have a large influence on conservative political development,
we must introduce two caveats. First, to argue that political style is an organizational accomplishment that
occurs on campuses is not to claim that students arrive at college with no ideological commitments derived from
family, community, media exposure, or prior political and schooling experiences, or that students are blank
slates to be written on by educational institutions. Students’ prior identities are important and must be accounted
for, even while we observe that once students enter a university, that institution’s existing structures and culture
channel them into distinctive types of conservative style. Second, and related, students are not automatons
molded seamlessly into these styles. There is plenty of agency to go around, as students take stock of their
identities on campus and think strategically about how their actions will ultimately connect with their future
careers and social lives. There is evidence in our cases that students assess their options, and then sometimes
actively defy dominant styles by taking up submerged styles, or create new hybrid forms of expression out of
multiple different styles. They also sometimes decide to opt out of political life on campus if the conservative
organizations they are interested in don’t seem like the right fit. Or they plot to put together a new slate of club
officers when the time is right.
Nonetheless, it is also clear that the informal group settings and formal organizational arrangements that
students participate in on campus present considerable supports for leaning heavily into the dominant style of
their university and considerable constraints against easily branching off into different styles.21 Foregrounding
these local settings of interaction and negotiation, and particularly the cultural meanings that are shared in them,
allows us to complicate the picture of how people become politically involved. Americans seem alternately
predisposed to holding, on the one hand, an individualist account of action, in which independent actors are seen
to be the crux of rational decision making about how to conduct their lives, politically or otherwise, and on the
other, a culturally deterministic account of action—a sort of “their culture made them do it” stance.22 But
looking at how conservative students are embedded in campus-level organizational structures reveals how
neither individual identities nor broader cultural repertoires, in isolation, fully capture variation in political
styles.
Another way to say this is that we understand higher education to be a politically formative institution that
hones preexisting ideological commitments into particular political actions. The importance of universities to
students’ politics goes far beyond affecting their attitudes or educating them in vague lessons of service learning
or civic participation. Rather, we see universities playing a fundamental role (at least for some students) in
providing the cultural tools for constructing political selves: individuals who not only hold certain values or
beliefs about the world but who have learned how to express and practice those ideas in real time and in real
situations. The importance of this cannot be overstated: college is not just about academics and human capital
formation and the social network ties forged with friends and future colleagues. It is also about the production
of certain forms of citizenship in vital and frankly partisan ways.

STUDYING CONSERVATISM AT EASTERN ELITE AND WESTERN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

To this point we have said a lot about how we will analyze the experiences of conservative students but little
about the two cases we studied, or the details of how we conducted our research. In this project we focus on
Eastern Elite University, a single campus, and the Western Public university system, which is home to a
flagship campus, a land-grant university, and smaller satellite campuses. As stated earlier, our main focus in the
Western Public system is on the Western Flagship campus, though we draw on data from two other campuses in
the system, Western State and Western Satellite, which are more conservative than the main campus.
Obviously, the generic names of our comparative campuses are pseudonyms, as are the names of most of the
campus organizations and individual student and alumni/ae interviewees we use throughout the book. Although
it was not our first choice to keep the institutions anonymous, we did so as a necessary concession to the
Institutional Review Board at Eastern Elite, whose administrators granted us approval to interview
undergraduates on their campus only on the condition that the campus not be identified in our work. We have
taken great pains to obscure the identifying characteristics of our two universities, which we accomplished by
commingling the actual attributes of the two universities we studied with the attributes of two peer institutions
of each. For example, to come up with specific descriptions of Eastern Elite’s social organization—its physical
landscape, residential arrangements, student-to-faculty ratio, general education curriculum, and conservative
clubs (all of which we think in some significant ways influence conservative styles)— we combined
information from Eastern Elite itself with that of two other private, elite universities on the East Coast. We did
the same for Western Flagship, blending its specific characteristics with those of two other public flagship
campuses in the western United States. In creating these composite school profiles we veiled the specific
identifying features of the universities while keeping the general institutional flavor of each. This should not be
interpreted to mean that we think all eastern private universities are just like Eastern Elite, or that Western
Flagship is perfectly representative of its peer institutions.23 They are not. We simply use these profiles to be
able to discuss our main campuses with a good deal of specificity while keeping their identities anonymous.
During the summer, fall, and winter of 2008 and into early 2009, the first author conducted 58 in-depth
interviews with members of the Eastern Elite and Western Public communities.24 Four out of five of the
interviews we conducted on our case-study campuses were with students and recent alumni/ae who self-
identified as conservative (for a total of 46), and 12 other interviews were with faculty, administrators, donors,
and other students on those campuses who had unique perspectives on campus conservatism. Of the 22 total
conservative student or alumni interviewees on the Western Public campuses, 15 respondents were current
students and 7 were alumni/ae.25 Of the 24 total conservative student/alumni interviewees on the Eastern Elite
campus, 10 respondents were current students and 14 were alumni/ae.26
In addition to the 58 campus interviews, the first author also conducted 15 interviews with leaders of
national and regional conservative organizations that lend support to conservative students and alumni/ae from
across the country (and often specifically to those who have interned at those organizations), as well as with 19
students and alumni/ae at UC San Diego, some as pilot interviews and some later to check what we had been
finding at Eastern and Western.27 The total number of interviews conducted for the project is 92. As we stated
above, in keeping with our guarantee to mask the identities of our universities, all campus interviewees were
assigned pseudonyms, but with their consent, we use the real names of the national organizational leaders whom
we interviewed. All interviews lasted from one to two hours. After the interviews were completed and
transcribed, the second author systematically coded the interviews so that both authors could identify trends and
generate concrete empirical claims about our findings.
Initial student and alumni/ae interviewees were selected on each campus after we read about conservative
activities on the Internet, and then located students who were active members in such clubs as College
Republicans, antiabortion groups, pro-abstinence groups, student government, anti-gun control clubs, religious
clubs, and campus newspapers (both mainstream campus newspapers for which our interviewees served as
conservative columnists and conservative newspapers). We did not seek out, nor did we hear about, groups at
either of these two universities that supported overt racist extremism, as has been evidenced at Michigan State
University, where an infamous British neo-fascist, Nick Griffin, was invited to speak to a Young Americans for
Freedom chapter.28 Nor did we seek to interview students whose predominant form of conservative identity was
religious, first, since other scholars have already studied such students quite thoroughly, and second, since there
were no organizations that we became aware of on campus that were both foundationally religious and
explicitly politically conservative.29 That said, we talked with several students of faith who were involved in the
conservative-oriented campus organizations that we did study, and several of our interviewees identified with
the Christian Right’s primary social issues, such as opposing abortion and gay rights. Some of our interviewees
also were actively involved in nonpartisan religious organizations, such as Catholic student clubs or evangelical
campus ministries.
After we came up with an initial pool of interview subjects, we then asked early respondents for the names
of other conservative students and alumni/ae they knew, and interviews were conducted with all students on
these lists who were willing to be interviewed. This chain-referral sample methodology mostly ruled out
students who were not visibly active in conservative politics on campus since it was more difficult to find out
about them, although a few such respondents were located on each of the campuses and were important sources
of information. But in general, our student and alumni/ae interviewees were known at their universities for the
conservative politics they wrote about, ran political campaigns on, staged events for, or otherwise expressed in
their campus political activities. They were generally enthusiastic members in their organizations, even if they
didn’t always think of themselves as activists or as the key leaders of those groups. We sought students who
represented the dominant style on campus as well as those who seemed skeptical about the ways things were
usually done. We do not claim that the students we interviewed are representative of all conservatives on these
campuses, and certainly not conservative students at all other types of universities and colleges in the nation,
from Christian liberal arts institutions to community colleges. But what we do have in our sample are
conservative students who have been educated in state-system public universities and a national elite university
—in other words, the types of young people who are likely to be the conservative leaders of tomorrow.
Although we have missed some forms of conservativism as a result of our case-study design and our decision to
study the most active students on campus, our methodology does allow us to understand—with a depth and
detail that are unique to our project—the kind of conservative college students who will make a difference to
conservative intellectual thought and conservative politics in the future.30
Although all of our interviewees identified one way or another as conservative in ideology, they varied on
many demographic characteristics. The majority of students interviewed from both Western Public and Eastern
Elite were white men; however, people of color and women also are represented within the sample. Students
from both schools came from a range of class backgrounds. The interviewees’ social class standing—nearly
always a difficult variable to deal with in this type of study—was determined using qualitative data. Rather than
inquiring as to individuals’ families’ net worth or specific cultural competencies, we asked our respondents
about the occupations of any coresiding parents or guardians during their pre-college years. We also inquired as
to the highest level of education completed, and the institution(s) their parents or guardians attended. With as
complete information as possible (some of our interviewees were quite masterful at evading questions about
their family backgrounds), we found that while Eastern Elite respondents on average tended to come from
families with higher educational and occupational status, students at both Eastern Elite and Western Public
displayed extensive variance.31 Both groups included parents whose highest level of education was a high
school diploma or GED, as well as parents who had received graduate degrees. Correspondingly, parents’ jobs
ranged from unskilled labor to the professions. Interviewees also varied considerably in their religious beliefs,
with Catholicism the most common faith among religious students at Eastern Elite and various forms of
Protestant Christianity among those at Western Public. Perhaps surprisingly, given the state’s reputation for
being a stronghold of the Christian Right, more conservative students in our sample at Western Public identified
with mainline Protestantism than with evangelicalism, and more Western Public students than Eastern Elite
students declared themselves nonreligious, perhaps because of greater libertarian leanings in that western state.
Finally, though students on all three Western Public campuses were more likely to come from within the state,
the Western Flagship campus in particular attracts a significant population of out-of-state students, and
interviewees from both Eastern Elite and Western Public represented all regions of the United States.
In addition to conducting interviews, we also collected and analyzed newspaper articles from both campuses
and garnered troves of data ranging from a box of nostalgia given to us by one of our Western Flagship
conservative club leaders to publicly available online data on conservative organizations. Finally, we analyzed a
national dataset made up of surveys of first-time matriculating undergraduates at four-year universities that had
been collected in 2001 by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). We use these national
surveys to map the political composition and demographics of student bodies across four-year American
universities, which serves as the context in chapter 2 for the information we collected at our two case-study
universities.
The logic of the comparison of Eastern Elite University to Western Flagship University rests on several
dimensions of institutional similarity and difference. First, we selected these two campuses as our primary
locations because both are prominent examples of campuses that conservative critics often point to as
paradigmatically liberal strongholds, though for somewhat different reasons. (Western Flagship University
employs particular faculty members who have come under heavy attack in the conservative media; Eastern Elite
University is just generally known as spawning liberal elites.) These two universities are also similar insofar as
they are both religiously unaffiliated and they are Research I institutions, meaning that they train both
undergraduates and graduate students through the PhD level and give high priority to research in addition to
teaching. Notable differences distinguishing Eastern Elite from Western Flagship include geographic region, the
public/private divide, admissions selectivity, visibility to East Coast centers of power, and having or not having
sister institutions in a larger state system. In its selectivity and prestige, Eastern Elite represents somewhat of an
outlier or an extreme case for university campuses. Likewise, in its reputation for being located in a very liberal
community, the Western Flagship campus also represents something of an extreme case for a public state
university. But using these extreme cases provides considerable analytical leverage, revealing institutional
attributes that would be difficult to tease out among more similar institutions.32 Although it is not possible to
generalize from these two case studies—two universities cannot capture the full array of higher education in this
country—our findings are suggestive for understanding many of the experiences that conservatives have had in
university environments in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and for how different political styles are
crafted in the early years of peoples’ lives.
In the next section we briefly describe our primary campuses and then proceed to an outline of the rest of the
book.

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE TWO CAMPUSES

Eastern Elite University is one of the leading institutions of higher education in the world, boasting faculty
members at the top of their fields in virtually every department. Yet Eastern Elite is not just a research
institution. It is a university that showers its undergraduate students with individualized attention and nurtures in
them the sense that they are a special population and entitled to the very best that higher education has to offer.
The university crafts this impression of student worthiness via many avenues, from the online testimonials
prospective applicants can read years before ever setting foot on campus, to a freshman orientation program
brimming with activities that underscore students’ belonging to a close-knit community, to daily occurrences of
centuries-old traditions, like bell-ringing, that become the pleasant background noise to life as an Eastern
student, to the academic environment on campus, which creates occasions for students to regularly interact one-
on-one with faculty.
Unlike state schools (and indeed, unlike many other private institutions), which cannot afford a seven-to-one
student-to-faculty ratio and a huge number of small seminar classes, Eastern Elite’s impressive endowment
allows it to place enormous emphasis on faculty accessibility and professors’ clear demonstrations of concern
for the welfare of their undergraduate students. Ladder rank faculty, not graduate students or adjuncts, teach
undergraduate classes, which makes Eastern a fortunate institutional holdout in the changing structure of
American higher education. But of course, this is one of the main reasons (besides bragging rights) that students
work like crazy to get into Eastern; why they apply to this school, which has just a 9 percent acceptance rate;
and why parents who can afford it invest roughly $50,000 a year for their sons and daughters to go there. In
classes, office hours, and many other settings, the high-octane, ambitious Eastern Elite student is reminded why
she has chosen this campus and what the payoffs of graduating from this school will be. This university is one
of the institutions on the American landscape that truly has what Burton Clark would call an “organizational
saga”—an account of its place in the educational pantheon that is widely circulated and revered not only by
anybody who is directly involved in the university’s day-to-day operations but also by everybody else across the
globe who pays attention to postsecondary education.33
Western Flagship University has a different sort of aura. While it is also a Research I university with
distinguished faculty and several top-ranked departments, many undergraduate students come to the Western
Flagship campus with the idea that it will provide an all-American college experience.34 Western Flagship is the
jewel in the Western Public university system, with beautifully landscaped grounds, handsome Ivy-League-
meets-the-West-styled buildings, a lively college town surrounding it, and a stunning natural backdrop that sets
off the campus. Western Flagship has also consistently been ranked as one of the top party schools in the nation.
As one student commented in a national ranking of party schools, “It’s true, we’re just that excellent at partying.
It’s our way of life.”35 Accompanying this affinity for partying, though, Western Flagship is easygoing and
casual, welcoming and friendly, and home to many students who have come from within the state because
Western Flagship offers the best education available for reasonable in-state tuition prices. Students earning top
grades in high school and receiving SAT scores around the 1200 mark thus want to come to Western Flagship
for the educational value as well as the recreational opportunities.36 That said, admissions are not especially
selective; 80 percent of those who apply for admission get in—suggesting that high-GPA students and relatively
strong standardized test-takers self-selectively apply to this campus.37 In addition to in-state students, Western
Flagship has a sizable number of out-of-state students (30 percent), who come to enjoy the Western Flagship
experience and whose parents are willing to pay a substantially higher price for that privilege in the form of out-
of-state tuition and fees.
Although the town in which the Western Flagship campus is located is highly equated with the experience
of being a Western Flagship student (students, like other community members, have access to great boutique
shops and restaurants, performing arts venues, bike lanes, and bars), neither the town nor the campus itself
creates that same sense of belonging to a special, bounded community that students at Eastern Elite enjoy.
While school spirit is carefully crafted at Western Flagship through high-profile NCAA sports programs, some
factors militate against the “we”-ness that is apparent at Eastern Elite. For one, while more than 90 percent of
freshmen at Western Flagship live on campus, that number drops precipitously in subsequent years as students
move off campus into apartments or Greek houses. In addition, because of a much more constrained budget and
larger class sizes, students do not have nearly the same access to faculty or to university-sponsored events as do
undergraduates at Eastern Elite. And although there are freshmen orientation programs and traditions that are
designed to pull in all members of the campus community and to create a sense of “who we are,” it is notable
that the most visible and student-lauded annual event is an informal, if enormous, yearly illicit drug celebration.
The “organizational saga” at Western Flagship, then, is quite different from Eastern Elite’s, a point to which we
return often in this study. Table 48.1 shows some of the key similarities and differences between Eastern Elite
University and Western Flagship University.

Table 48.1 Comparison of Eastern Elite University and Western Flagship University on
Attributes of Interest
NOTE: This information is the product of compiling data on three elite private universities for Eastern Elite University and three
public flagship universities for Western Flagship University. Sources of this information were multiple. Data came from the
universities themselves (e.g., from their websites), US News & World Report, College Confidential, collegeprowler.com, and other
such sources. Although these data are accurate for no single institution in either category, they are indicative of the general features of
our two case-study universities.

NOTES

1. The names of campuses, campus organizations, and individual students and alumni/ae are pseudonyms.
Some identifying details have been altered to protect their anonymity. For a full discussion of our methods
and data and why we are masking the identities of these two universities, see the discussion later in this
chapter.
2. For the 2003 Berkeley event, see Fox News (2003). For the 2011 event, sec CNN.com (2011).
3. For more on submerged styles, see Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003).
4. Sam Tanenhaus writes about the increasingly confrontational factions in the GOP in The Death of
Conservatism (2009).
5. There are many other examples from more recent years, but both of these examples had occurred by the
time of our data collection.
6. For examples of conservative writing on the “liberal campus,” see Horowitz (2007); Kors and Silverglate
(1998); and Maranto, Redding, and Hess (2009).
7. The Pelosi-Moore-Clinton-Chomsky poster was distributed by the Young America’s Foundation to email
subscribers in 2008. Other organizations sponsoring this conservative style include the Leadership
Institute, David Horowitz’s Students for Academic Freedom, and the Heritage Foundation. We discuss the
Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute, as well as one other national conservative
organization, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in chapter 3.
8. There are many fine scholarly works on conservative politics and its varieties. For two recent examples,
see Farber (2010) and Gross, Medvetz, and Russell (2011).
9. On the high rates of racial and ethnic homogeneity of Republican voters, see the September 2010 Gallup
poll report, “Republicans Remain Disproportionately White and Religious” (Newport 2010).
10. Brooks (1996, vv). For the Pew report, see Pew Research Center (2011).
11. See Tanenhaus (2009, 43). For information on William F. Buckley’s agitator style, see his God and Man
at Yale (1951).
12. See Clark (1992) and Stevens (2007). This process also occurs at earlier stages of schooling; see, e.g.,
Shamus Khan’s (2011) ethnography of the institutional character of the elite St. Paul’s boarding school in
Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, and Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez’s
(2009) ethnographic study of the “Weston School.”
13. For other sources on campus culture and its effects on discourse and action, see Colby (2003, 2007).
14. A variety of studies have demonstrated the impact of a college’s cultural context on students. For
examples, see Pascarella and Terenzini (2005); Astin (1993); Feldman and Newcomb (1994); Holland and
Eisenhart (1990); Knox, Lindsay, and Kolb (1993); Arum and Roksa (2011); and Trow (1979).
15. Both Steven Brint (2009) and Mitchell Stevens (2008) have written insistently on this point, especially
how culture and education should be studied more thoroughly. See also how Stevens, Elizabeth Armstrong,
and Richard Arum (2008) think of higher education institutions serving as “incubators” for particular types
of cultural competencies and social paths in “Sieve, Incubator, Temple, Hub.”
16. This is the idea of cultural repertoires developed by Ann Swidler (1986) and expanded by Nina Eliasoph
(199S) and Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman (2003). As we develop our ideas about these repertoires below, it
is important to note that when we refer to the shared meanings of these symbols, practices, and so forth, we
do not mean to imply that all bits of culture are equally, coherently, and consistently used by all members
of a group. We do emphasize, though, that there are prevailing ideas and practices on campuses that are
familiar to students on that campus, and that these ideas and practices exert considerable power.
17. Although much about the provocative style would suggest that our Western Public respondents would be
involved with the Tea Party, the majority of our interviews done on the Western Public campuses predated
the rise of this movement. We did most of our data collection in the summer and fall of 2008; the Tea Party
movement really gained steam in February 2009. For a sociological analysis of the Tea Party’s effects on
the Republican Party, see Skocpol and Williamson (2012).
18. Both Rebecca Klatch (1999) and John Andrew (1997) have written about Young Americans for Freedom.
For a few key entries in this growing library on conservatism, see Gross, Medvetz, and Russell (2011);
Micklethwait and Wooldridge (2004); Himmelstein (1990); and Glenn and Teles (2009).
19. For studies of conservative students, see Woessner and Woessner (2006, 2007). For work on students’—
including conservative students’—plans for graduate school, see Fosse, Freese, and Gross (2012).
20. For one study of conservative student mobilization into pro-life activity, see Ziad Munson (2010).
21. Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa make a similar point about academic effort, writing that “both
institutional and individual characteristics shape students’ life in college. Although individual-level
characteristics are a powerful determinant of many social choices, differing campus cultures influence
which options are available or are more widely embraced” (2011, 84).
22. For more information on the individualistic account of human action, see Bellah et al. (1986). For an
example of how scholars rather simplistically attribute causality to “culture,” see Fordham and Ogbu
(1986).
23. In addition, our choice of generic-sounding names for these universities should not be interpreted to mean
that we think of our case-study campuses as perfectly representative of other institutions of the same type.
24. We conducted our interviews before the Tea Party movement really caught fire, which means that we can
only speculate in this book how our interviewees might connect to that ideology and its various actors—
grassroots activists, government leaders, and very wealthy donors.
25. Four of the seven alumni/ae were within four years of graduating.
26. Twelve of the 14 were within four years of graduating.
27. Binder and undergraduate students in a small seminar class on college-age conservatism conducted the
interviews at UC San Diego.
28. The Young Americans for Freedom chapter at Michigan State University has a reputation for sponsoring
extremist actions and was labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2007. As
the SPLC writes, the chapter not only organized a Catch an Illegal Alien Day but also “sponsored a ‘Koran
desecration contest,’ jokingly threatened to distribute smallpox infected blankets to Native American
students, posted ‘Gays spread AIDS’ fliers, called Latino students and faculty members ‘savages,’ and
invited Nick Griffin, the chairman of the neo-fascist British National Party, to speak on the MSU campus.”
http://www.splccntcr.org/blog/?s=%22Young+Americans+for+Freedom%22 & submit (accessed May 12,
2011).
29. For example, the Social Science Research Council has a whole initiative related to questions of college
students’ religious expression. See http://religion.ssrc.org/reguide.
30. Other conservative college students who may have an especially strong influence on national politics are
those who attend Christian liberal arts colleges such as Liberty University and Patrick Henry College.
31. Interestingly, most of this difference came from Eastern Elite students’ fathers’ occupations and
educational levels. There was not a substantial difference between the education levels and occupations of
Eastern Elite and Western Public students’ mothers.
32. Methodologists who write about case-study analysis argue that the potential for learning from an extreme
case is a “different and sometimes superior criterion to representativeness” in selecting cases. See, e.g.,
Stake (2000, 243).
33. Clark (1992).
34. For more on the all-American education ideal, see the work in progress by Kate Wood (2012).
35. This quotation has been slightly altered from a report on http://collegeprowler.com.
36. According to the College Board, a senior scoring 1200 on the combined critical reading and mathematics
SAT tests in 2006 is in the 79th percentile, which means that the average Western Flagship student scored
better than 79 percent of all other college-bound seniors taking the test that year. See “SAT Percentile
Ranks: 2006 College-Bound Seniors—Critical Reading + Mathematics,”
http://www.collegeboard.comeprod_downloads/highered/ra/sat/SATPercentilcRanksCompositeCR_M.pdf
(accessed December 13, 2011).
37. Western Flagship has higher SAT admissions criteria than other campuses in the Western Public system,
which means that applicants self-select, based on their perceived ability to get in. These rates of admission
would suggest that students with combined SAT scores lower than 1200 mostly do not apply to the
Western Flagship campus.
38. For an overview of such studies, see Stevens, Armstrong, and Arum (2008).
39. Fosse and Gross (2012); Bérubé (2006).
40. Wendy Roth and Jal Mehta write about how to analyze contested events, in their case, school shootings.
Their article includes a very nice meditation on positivist and interpretivist approaches to studying such
events. See Roth and Mehta (2002, 132).

SOURCE: Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood. Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives.
Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
49
LEARNING TO BE ILLEGAL
Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the
Transition to Adulthood
ROBERTO G. GONZALESA

D uring the past 25 years, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has grown
substantially, from an estimated 2.5 million in 1987 to 11.1 million today (Passel 2006; Passel and
Cohn 2010).1 Scholars contend that this demographic trend is the unintended consequence of policies
designed to curb undocumented migration and tighten the U.S.–Mexico border (Nevins 2010), transforming
once-circular migratory flows into permanent settlement (Cornelius and Lewis 2006; Massey, Durand, and
Malone 2002). Making multiple migratory trips back and forth became increasingly costly and dangerous
throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, so more unauthorized migrants began
creating permanent homes in the United States. And they brought their children with them. According to recent
estimates, there are more than 2.1 million undocumented young people in the United States who have been here
since childhood. Of these, more than a million are now adults (Batalova and McHugh 2010). Relatively little is
known about this vulnerable population of young people, and their unique circumstances challenge assumptions
about the incorporation patterns of the children of immigrants and their transitions to adolescence and
adulthood.
Building on prior scholarship about immigrant incorporation and the life course, this article offers an up-
close examination of the ways in which public schooling and U.S. immigration laws collide to produce a shift in
the experiences and meanings of illegal status for undocumented youth at the onset of their transition to
adulthood. I am interested in how these young people become aware of, and come to understand, their status
under the law—that is, when they begin to notice their legal difference and its effects, and how they experience
this shift as they move through late adolescence and young adulthood. The multiple transformations that
undocumented youth experience have important implications for their identity formation, friendship patterns,
aspirations and expectations, and social and economic mobility, and they also signal movement of a significant
subset of the U.S. immigrant population into a new, disenfranchised underclass. In developing a conceptual and
theoretical map of how undocumented youth learn to be illegal, this article identifies important mechanisms that
mediate transitions to adulthood for the children of immigrants. Therefore, it helps us understand the
consequences of non-legal status for undocumented youth as they move from protected to unprotected status,
from inclusion to exclusion, and from de facto legal to illegal, during their final years of secondary schooling.

UNDOCUMENTED YOUTH AND SHIFTING CONTEXTS

Assimilation and Public Schooling

As today’s children of immigrants come of age, contemporary immigration scholarship challenges the
conventional expectation that they will follow a linear generational process of assimilation into mainstream U.S.
life (Gans 1992; Portes and Rumbaut 2006; Portes and Zhou 1993). Much current theorizing has moved away
from a singular focus on human capital toward nuanced approaches that more fully appreciate the context of
reception (Portes 1981; Portes and Bach 1985; Portes and Rumbaut 2006). This approach stresses that multiple
factors channel the children of immigrants into different segments of society (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, 2006;
Portes and Zhou 1993). Studies suggest that increasing fault lines of inequality along race and ethnicity, poor
public schools, and differential access to today’s labor market may cause recent immigrants’ children to do less
well than the children of previous waves (Gans 1992; Portes and Rumbaut 2001, 2006; Portes and Zhou 1993;
Rumbaut 1997, 2005, 2008; Zhou 1997).
Given the changes in the U.S. economy and labor market, educational attainment has become critical to the
social mobility of all children, and the link between school outcomes and future success is a thread that runs
throughout much of the literature (Kasinitz et al. 2008; Portes and Rumbaut 2001, 2006; Suárez-Orozco and
Suárez-Orozco 1995; Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, and Todorova 2008; Waters 1999; Zhou and Bankston
1998). While some young people with modest levels of education manage to find skilled blue-collar jobs, most
need a college degree to qualify for jobs that offer decent wages, benefits, job security, and the possibility of
advancement. Children from poor and minority families, however, have historically experienced difficulty
attaining significant levels of education (Alba and Nee 2003; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008).
Disadvantaged students are particularly harmed by highly differentiated curricula and de facto tracking (Lucas
and Berends 2002; Oakes 1985), although scholars have found that supplementary educational programs (Zhou
2008), extrafamily mentors (Portes and Fernandez-Kelly 2008; Smith 2008), and positive support networks
(Stanton-Salazar 2001) can help overcome these disadvantages.
For generations, the public school system has been the principal institution that educates and integrates the
children of immigrants into the fabric of U.S. society. This is especially true today, as more immigrant children
spend more waking hours in school than ever before. Suárez-Orozco and colleagues (2008:2–3) identify public
schools’ critical role in shaping immigrant youths’ understanding of their place in society: “It is in school
where, day in and day out, immigrant youth come to know teachers and peers from majority culture as well as
newcomers from other parts of the world. It is in schools that immigrant youth develop academic knowledge
and, just as important, form perceptions of where they fit in the social reality and cultural imagination of their
new nation.” Certainly, the role of public schools is increasingly critical, as the returns on education have
sharply increased over the past few decades. But public schools’ socialization mechanisms are also powerful
catalysts for promoting the acculturation processes of the children of immigrants. Schools foster what Rumbaut
(1997:944) calls a “unity of experiences and orientation” among their pupils that aid in the development of a
“community of purpose and action” with “primary social contacts.” This assimilating experience is profoundly
different from what most adult immigrants encounter. While their parents may be absorbed into low-wage labor
markets and often work with co-ethnics who speak their language and share their cultural practices, children are
integrated into the school system, where they grow up side-by-side with the native-born (Gleeson and Gonzales
forthcoming). Their “unity of experiences” with friends and classmates promotes feelings of togetherness and
inclusion (Rumbaut 1997:944), and these feelings, in turn, shape immigrant youths’ identification and
experience of coming of age.

Today’s Children of Immigrants Come of Age

Scholarly consensus on contemporary transitions to adulthood suggests that the process of coming of age is
taking much longer today (Furstenberg et al. 2002). In particular, young people are spending more time in
postsecondary schooling and are delaying exit from the parental household, entry into full-time work, and
decisions about marriage and children (Settersten, Furstenberg, and Rumbaut 2005).
Life-course scholars traditionally define the transition to adulthood in terms of five milestones or markers:
completing school, moving out of the parental home, establishing employment, getting married, and becoming a
parent. The developmentally dense period of transition entails a large number of shifts out of roles that support
and foster childlike dependence and in-to roles that confer adulthood in a relatively short time (Rindfuss 1991).
Drawing from Erikson’s (1950) early work, life-course scholarship views the transition to adulthood as
composed of adolescence (ages 12 to 17 years) and young adulthood (ages 18 to 35 years). Yet recent decades
have brought significant shifts in the roles of social institutions as well as changes in the opportunities for entry
into the labor market. By delaying entry into the workforce in favor of additional education, young adults build
human capital that will make them more competitive in the high-skilled labor market. Some parents aid this
process by assisting children over a longer period and using financial resources to help pay for college,
providing down payments for their children’s first homes, or defraying some of the costs associated with having
children (Rumbaut and Komaie 2010). Theorists have responded to these changes by conceptually
disaggregating young adulthood into shorter periods of time that better define contemporary transitions and
permit a better understanding of the relationship between broader contexts and life transitions. Arnett (2000)
adds emerging adulthood, a stage between adolescence and young adulthood, roughly between ages 18 and 25
years, and Rumbaut (2005) differentiates between the early transition (18 to 24 years), the middle transition (25
to 29 years), and the late transition (30 to 34 years).
Within the larger national context of coming of age, scholars have uncovered key differences by social class,
country of origin, nativity, and immigrant generation (Mollenkopf et al. 2005; Rumbaut and Komaie 2010).
Many youngsters from less-advantaged immigrant households put off postsecondary schooling because their
parents are not able to provide financial assistance or because they carry considerable financial responsibilities
in their households that make it impossible for them to make tuition payments (Fuligni and Pedersen 2002;
Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1995). Many of the 1.5 and second generations of certain immigrant groups
are in reciprocal financial relationships with their parents, often even supporting them (Rumbaut and Komaie
2010). As a result, they do not enjoy the same degree of freedom from the stresses and responsibilities of adult
roles. These differences suggest that we should expect the children of immigrants—documented and
undocumented alike—to experience coming of age differently from the native-born.

Conceptualizing the Transition to Illegality for Undocumented Youth

For undocumented youth, the transition into adulthood is accompanied by a transition into illegality that sets
them apart from their peers. Undocumented youngsters share a confusing and contradictory status in terms of
their legal rights and the opportunities available to them (Abrego 2008; Gonzales 2007). On the one hand,
because of the Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe (1982), they have the legal right to a K to 12 education.2
Furthermore, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prevents schools from releasing any information
from students’ records to immigration authorities, making school a protected space in which undocumented
status has little to no negative effect. On the other hand, undocumented young adults cannot legally work, vote,
receive financial aid, or drive in most states, and deportation remains a constant threat. Unauthorized residency
status thus has little direct impact on most aspects of childhood but is a defining feature of late adolescence and
adulthood and can prevent these youth from following normative pathways to adulthood. Therefore, coupled
with family poverty, illegal status places undocumented youth in a developmental limbo. As family need
requires them to make significant financial contributions and to assume considerable responsibility for their own
care, they become less likely to linger in adolescence. At the same time, legal restrictions keep them from
participating in many adult activities, leaving them unable to complete important transitions.
Researchers studying immigrant incorporation and the life course have not systematically considered the
effects of the legal context on the children of immigrants, that is, the specific challenges facing undocumented
immigrant youth and their complex and contradictory routes to adulthood. Current scholarship is limited to
conjecture based on what is known in general about children of immigrants from low-skilled groups. Failure to
focus on legal status also limits what we know about the linkages between important mechanisms such as
education and social mobility. K to 12 schooling certainly plays an important role in the development and
integration of immigrant children, but significant questions remain about how undocumented status shapes
educational trajectories and how, in turn, it affects the link between educational attainment and social and
economic mobility. The scant existing research on undocumented youth notes that undocumented status
depresses aspirations (Abrego 2006) and sensitizes them to the reality that they are barred from integrating
legally, educationally, and economically into U.S. society (Abrego 2008).
For conceptual help, I turn to recent advances in the literature that move beyond the binary categories of
documented and undocumented to explore the ways in which migrants move between different statuses and the
mechanisms that allow them to be regular in one sense and irregular in another. In describing the experiences of
Salvadoran migrants caught in the legal limbo of Temporary Protected Status, and their feelings of being legally
and socially in-between, Menjívar (2006) introduced the concept of liminal legality. This phrase underscores
that documented and undocumented categories do not adequately capture the gray areas experienced by many
migrants. Menjívar’s analysis builds on Coutin’s (2000) exploration of the contradictions that lie between
migrants’ physical and social presence and their official designation as illegal. Several other scholars have
called for a shift from generally studying unauthorized migrants and migrations to a more deliberate
investigation of the mechanisms that produce and sustain what they term migrant illegality (Coutin 2000; De
Genova 2002; Ngai 2004; Willen 2007). This deliberate shift in focus allows us to pay attention to the effects
laws have on migrants’ day-to-day lives, revealing the ways in which undocumented persons experience
inclusion and exclusion and how these experiences can change over time, in interactions with different persons,
and across various spaces. It also points to the two-sided nature of citizenship, which can allow the same person,
citizen or not, to experience belonging in one context but not in another.
Portes and Rumbaut (2006) emphasize that it is the combination of positive and negative contexts that
determines the distinct modes of immigrants’ incorporation. While school contexts foster expectations and
aspirations that root undocumented youngsters in the United States (Abrego 2006), they leave these young
people grossly unprepared for what awaits them in adulthood. This article focuses on the interactions between
such favorable and unfavorable contexts during what I call the transition to illegality. I conceptualize this
process as the set of experiences that result from shifting contexts along the life course, providing different
meanings to undocumented status and animating the experience of illegality at late adolescence and into
adulthood. The transition to illegality brings with it a period of disorientation, whereby undocumented youth
confront legal limitations and their implications and engage in a process of retooling and reorienting themselves
for new adult lives. But this process is not uniform among undocumented youth. Previous qualitative work on
youth populations coming of age has uncovered key mechanisms within the school setting that shape divergent
trajectories (MacLeod 1987; Willis 1977). Because comparisons between differently achieving youth may help
to more clearly identify mechanisms that mediate undocumented status during the transition to adulthood, I
compare the experiences of college-going young adults (i.e., collegegoers) with those who exit the education
system after high school graduation or earlier (i.e., early-exiters).

METHODS

While many recent immigrants have dispersed to new destination states in the South and the Midwest (Marrow
2009; Massey 2008; Singer 2004; Zúñiga and Hernández-León 2005), California remains home to the largest
undocumented immigrant population in the country. The numbers of undocumented immigrants from countries
outside of Latin America have risen slightly since 2000, but immigrants from Mexico continue to account for
the majority. In fact, no other sending country constitutes even a double-digit share of the total (Passel and Cohn
2009). I thus focus on Mexican-origin immigrants in California, drawing on 150 individual semi-structured
interviews with 1.5-generation young adults ages 20 to 34 years (who migrated before the age of 12). The
interviews focused on respondents’ experiences growing up in Southern California without legal status. Such
close study of the 1.5 generation permits an examination of the unique ways in which undocumented status is
experienced in childhood and adolescence (Rumbaut 2004; Smith 2006).

Table 49.1 Educational Attainment of Study Participants by Gender (N = 150)

 Until very recently, it has been difficult to study undocumented young adults like those interviewed for this
study because their numbers have been prohibitively small. Researching hard-to-reach populations adds layers
of difficulty, time, and cost to any study. While previous large-scale efforts have been successful at locating and
interviewing undocumented Mexicans on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, and have provided useful
direction for random sampling,3 today’s anti-immigrant climate and localized immigration enforcement present
challenges to finding respondents in the United States. These conditions lead many unauthorized migrants to be
more fearful in their everyday lives, thus posing significant challenges to random sampling efforts. Data
collection for this study involved nearly four and a half years of field work in the periods 2003 to 2007 and
2008 to 2009, during which I conducted interviews and did additional ethnographic research in the Los Angeles
Metropolitan Area.4 I began conducting interviews after spending lengthy periods of time in the field gaining a
rapport with respondents and community stakeholders. I recruited respondents from various settings, including
continuation schools, community organizations, college campuses, and churches. After gaining trust, I
accompanied respondents throughout their school and work days, volunteered at local schools and
organizations, and sat in on numerous community meetings. I built on the initial group of respondents by using
snowball sampling to identify subsequent respondents.
All 150 1.5-generation respondents interviewed spent much of their childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
with undocumented status. With the exception of eight Central Americans (Guatemalan and Salvadoran), all
were born in Mexico. I drew the sample from the five-county Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, and respondents
come from all five counties. Most had parents who were undocumented (92 percent) and had fewer than six
years of schooling (86 percent). Most respondents were also raised by two parents; one-quarter were raised by
single parents and six were raised by other family members.
I designed the sampling process to include relatively equal numbers of males and females (71 males and 79
females) and equal numbers of individuals who dropped out of or completed high school (73) and those who
attended some college (77) (see Tables 49.1 and 49.2). Of the 77 college respondents, nine had advanced
degrees at the time of the interview, 22 had earned bachelor’s degrees, 26 were enrolled in four-year
universities, and 20 were enrolled in or had attended community college. The majority attended a California
public college or university. Of the 73 respondents who exited school at or before high school graduation, 31
had not earned a high school degree at the time of interview, and 42 had high school diplomas.
The life history interviews included questions regarding respondents’ pasts and their present lives as well as
future expectations and aspirations. Interviews ranged in length from 1 hour and 40 minutes to 3 hours and 20
minutes. To analyze interview transcripts, I used open coding techniques. I placed conceptual labels on
responses that described discrete events, experiences, and feelings reported in the interviews. Next, I analyzed
each individual interview across all questions to identify meta-themes. Finally, I examined responses for
common meta-themes across all interviews.

THE TRANSITION TO ILLEGALITY

To better conceptualize the ways in which legal status affects the transition to illegality, I focus on three
transition periods—discovery (ages 16 to 18 years), learning to be illegal (ages 18 to 24 years), and coping (ages
25 to 29 years). While the life-course literature defines the early and middle transitions as ages 18 to 24 and 25
to 29, respectively, I add an earlier period to capture the awakening to newfound legal limitations, which elicits
a range of emotional reactions and begins a process of altered life-course pathways and adult transitions. Next,
as undocumented youth enter early adulthood, they engage in a parallel process of learning to be illegal. During
this period, many find difficulty connecting with previous sources of support to navigate the new restrictions on
their lives and to mitigate their newly stigmatized identities. At this stage, undocumented youth are forced to
alter earlier plans and reshape their aspirations for the future. Finally, the coping period involves adjusting to
lowered aspirations and coming to grips with the possibility that their precarious legal circumstances may never
change.

Discovery: Ages 16 to 18
Most life-course scholars focus on age 18 as a time of dramatic change for young people. In the United
States, 18 is the age of majority, the legal threshold of adulthood when a child ceases to be considered a minor
and assumes control over his actions and decisions. This is traditionally the time when young people exit high
school and enter college or full-time work. Yet young people adopt semi-adult roles, such as working and
driving, while still in high school. Most respondents in this study began to experience dramatic shifts in their
daily lives and future outlooks around age 16.
Because public schooling provided respondents with an experience of inclusion atypical of undocumented
adult life in the United States (Bean, Telles, and Lowell 1987; Chavez 1991, 1998), respondents spent their
childhood and early adolescence in a state of suspended illegality, a buffer stage wherein they were legally
integrated and immigration status rarely limited activities. Through school, respondents developed aspirations
rooted in the belief that they were part of the fabric of the nation and would have better opportunities than their
parents (Gans 1992). They learned to speak English, developed tastes, joined clubs, dated, and socialized—all
alongside their U.S.-born and legal resident peers. During this period, school-based relationships with peers and
adults provided key sources of support and identity formation (Portes and Fernandez-Kelly 2008). As Marisol, a
college-goer, explained, relationships with teachers and friends provided a comfortable space for many like her
to learn and develop: “School was an escape from home. I felt happy, calm. . . . I could be myself. I could be
recognized at school. My teachers encouraged me to keep going. And my friends, we believed in education and
pushed each other. We helped each other with homework and talked about college.”

Table 49.2 Age Distribution of Study Participants by Educational Attainment (N = 150)

 Such positive relationships, however, were not uniformly experienced by respondents. Many early-exiters
(those who left the school system at or before completion of high school) recounted feeling disconnected from
school and lacking significant relationships with teachers or counselors. They felt they were left to fall through
the cracks and cut off from important services; they also reported having limited visits with counselors. Juan,
for example, did not meet with a college counselor until late in his junior year. “I wanted to go to college,” he
told me, “but the counselors didn’t let me know the requirements for four-year colleges. I tried to go to see
them, but they didn’t have time for me.” Nevertheless, even respondents who reported having trouble in school
believed they would have more options than their parents. Eric, an early-exiter who grew up in Riverside
County, told me he had grown up thinking he was going to have a “better life”: “I saw my older [U.S.- born]
cousins get good jobs. I mean, they’re not lawyers or anything like that, but they’re not in restaurants or mowing
lawns. I thought, yeah, when I graduate from school, I can make some good money, maybe even go to college.”
Respondents uniformly noted a jolting shift at around age 16, when they attempted to move through rites of
passage associated with their age. Life-course scholars refer to critical events in one’s life as “turning points”
that “knife off” past from present and restructure routine activities and life-course pathways (Elder 1987:452).
These turning points can enable identity transitions and set into motion processes of cumulative advantage and
disadvantage (Rumbaut 2005). For undocumented youth, the process of coming of age is a critical turning point
that has consequences for subsequent transitions. Finding a part-time job, applying for college, and obtaining a
driver’s license—all markers of new roles and responsibilities—require legal status as a basis for participation.
As respondents tried to take these steps into adult life, they were blocked by their lack of a Social Security
number. These incidents proved to be life changing and were often accompanied by the realization that they
were excluded from a broad range of activities. Rodolfo, an early-exiter who is now 27 years old, spoke of his
first experience of exclusion:

I never actually felt like I wasn’t born here. Because when I came I was like 10 and a half. I went to school.
I learned the language. I first felt like I was really out of place when I tried to get a job. I didn’t have a
Social Security number. Well, I didn’t even know what it meant. You know Social Security, legal, illegal. I
didn’t even know what that was.

Until this time, Rodolfo had never needed proof of legal residency. The process of looking for a job made
the implications of his lack of legal status real to him for the first time. Like Rodolfo, many early-exiters (a little
over 68 percent, see Table 49.3) made such discoveries while applying for jobs or for driver’s licenses.
On the other hand, as Table 49.3 shows, most college-goers (almost 60 percent) reported finding out they
were undocumented in the course of the college application process. Jose, for example, was on the academic
decathlon and debate teams. He did well in school and was well-liked by teachers. During his junior year, he
attempted to enroll in classes at the community college to earn college credits. But without a Social Security
number, he could not move forward.
While most respondents did not know of their unauthorized status until their teenage years, some reported
knowing in childhood. This was more true of early-exiters (almost 30 percent, compared with a little over 9
percent among college-goers), many of whom lived in households where older siblings had gone through the
process of discovery before them. But even these respondents did not realize the full implications their illegal
status would have for their futures until much later. Being undocumented only became salient when matched
with experiences of exclusion. Early-exiter Lorena started cleaning houses with her mother and sisters at age 12.
Even before she began working, reminders from her mother made her aware that she did not have “papers.” But
she explained to me that “it really hit home” when she tried to branch out to other work in high school and was
asked for her Social Security number.

Table 49.3 Study Participants’ Discovery of Illegal Status, by Educational Attainment (N

= 150)
 Discovery of illegal status prompted reactions of confusion, anger, frustration, and despair among
respondents, followed by a period of paralyzing shock. Most respondents conveyed that they were not prepared
for the dramatic limits of their rights. They struggled to make sense of what had happened to them, many
feeling as though they had been lied to. “I always thought I would have a place when I grew up,” David, an
early-exiter, told me. “Teachers make you believe that. It’s all a lie. A big lie.” They often blamed teachers and
parents for their feelings of anger and frustration. Cory, a college-goer, locked herself in her bedroom for an
entire week. When she finally emerged, she moved out of her parents’ house, blaming them for “keeping [her]
in the dark during childhood.” Cory said: “They thought that by the time I graduated I would have my green
card. But they didn’t stop to think that this is my life. . . . Everything I believed in was a big lie. Santa Claus was
not coming down the chimney, and I wasn’t going to just become legal. I really resented them.”
Respondents reported that soon after these discoveries, they experienced a second shock as they came to
realize that the changes they were experiencing would adversely affect their remaining adult lives. As they came
to grips with the new meanings of unauthorized status, they began to view and define themselves differently.
Miguel, a college-goer who has been caught in the part-time cycle of community college and work for six years,
told me: “During most of high school, I thought I had my next 10 years laid out. College and law school were
definitely in my plans. But when my mom told me I wasn’t legal, everything was turned upside down. I didn’t
know what to do. I couldn’t see my future anymore.” Miguel’s entire identity was transformed, and the shift
placed him, like many other respondents, in a state of limbo. Cory put it this way: “I feel as though I’ve
experienced this weird psychological and legal stunted growth. I’m stuck at 16, like a clock that has stopped
ticking. My life has not changed at all since then. Although I’m 22, I feel like a kid. I can’t do anything adults
do.”
Respondents’ illegality was paired with a movement into stigmatized status that reinforced their legal
exclusion. While laws limited their access to grown-up activities and responsibilities, fears of being found out
curbed their interactions with teachers and peers. Ironically, while many respondents believed they had been
lied to in childhood, they adopted lying themselves as a daily survival strategy that separated them from the
very peer networks that had provided support and shaped a positive self-image. Many reported they were afraid
of what their friends would think or how they would react if they learned of their illegal status. These fears were
validated by observations of friends’ behavior. Chuy, a college-goer who played sports throughout school,
explained that after he saw a teammate on his high school soccer team berate players on an opposing team as
“wetbacks” and “illegals,” he was reticent to disclose his status even to good friends. “I grew up with this guy,”
he said. “We had classes together and played on the same team for like four years. But wow, I don’t know what
he would say if he knew I was one of those wetbacks.”
Frustration with the present, uncertainty about the future, and the severing of support systems caused many
respondents to withdraw, with detrimental effects on their progress during the last half of high school (see also
Abrego 2006; Suárez-Orozco et al. 2008). In my interview with Sandra, an early-exiter, she recalled her
struggles during junior year: “I felt the world caving in on me. What was I going to do? I couldn’t ask my
parents. They didn’t know about college or anything. I was kind of quiet in school, so I didn’t really know my
teachers. Besides, I was scared. What would they do if they knew? I was scared and alone.” Throughout high
school, Luis, an early-exiter, hoped to attend college. During the latter part of his sophomore year, his grades
fell considerably. As a result, he did not meet the requirements to gain entrance into the University of California
system. His girlfriend convinced him to apply to the lower-tier California State University, but when he found
out he was not eligible for financial aid, he gave up: “It took a while to get accepted. But I ended up not going
(because of) financial aid. . . . It just kinda brought down my spirit, I guess.” Like Sandra and Luis, many
respondents had done moderately well in school before the cumulative disadvantages resulting from the
transition to illegality caused them to lose motivation to continue. Lacking trusting relationships with teachers
or counselors who could help them, they ended up exiting school much earlier than they had planned (Gonzales
2010).
Nationally, 40 percent of undocumented adults ages 18 to 24 do not complete high school, and only 49
percent of undocumented high school graduates go to college. Youths who arrive in the United States before the
age of 14 fare slightly better: 72 percent finish high school, and of those, 61 percent go on to college. But these
figures are still much lower than the numbers for U.S.-born residents (Passel and Cohn 2009). The combination
of scarce family resources and exclusion from financial aid at the state5 and federal levels makes the path to
higher education very steep for undocumented high school students. Estimates reveal that as few as 5 to 10
percent of all undocumented high school graduates ever reach postsecondary institutions (Passel 2003), and the
vast majority attend community colleges (Flores 2010). In several states, laws allowing undocumented students
to pay in-state tuition have increased the number of high school graduates matriculating to college over the past
decade (Flores 2010). Nonetheless, steep financial barriers prohibit many undocumented youth from enrolling
in college.
While depressed motivation contributed to many respondents’ early exit from the school system, limited
financial resources within their families and a general lack of information about how to move forward also
played a part in causing early departures. Karina, an early-exiter, maintained a B average in her general- track
high school classes. When she applied to college, she had no guidance. Unaware of a California provision that
should have made it possible for her to attend school at in-state tuition rates, Karina opted not to go to college:
“I didn’t know anything about AB 540.6 Maybe if I knew the information I could have gotten a scholarship or
something. That’s why I didn’t go. I don’t know if my counselors knew, but they never told me anything.”
The experiences of successful college-goers, by contrast, unlock a key variable to success missing from the
narratives of early-exiters: trusting relationships with teachers or other adults. Portes and Fernandez-Kelly
(2008:26) find evidence linking school success to the presence of what they call “really significant others” who
“possess the necessary knowledge and experience” and “take a keen interest in [their students], motivate [them]
to graduate from high school and to attend college.” When Marisol began to exhibit decreasing levels of
motivation, for instance, her English teacher was there to intervene. Although Marisol felt embarrassed, she was
able to talk frankly with her teacher because they had developed a trusting relationship. As a reward for her
trust, Marisol’s teacher helped her obtain information about college and also took up a collection among other
teachers to pay for her first year of tuition at the community college.
Most college-goers reported they had formed trusting relationships with teachers, counselors, and other
mentors in high school. These respondents were concentrated in the advanced curriculum tracks in high school;
the smaller and more supportive learning environments gave them access to key school personnel. Compared to
early-exiters, they disclosed their problems more easily and were able to draw on relationships of trust to seek
out and receive help. At critical times when the students’ motivations were low, these relationships meant the
difference between their leaving school or going to college. When difficulties arose during the college
admissions process for college-goer Jose, for instance, he went straight to his counselor, with positive results.
The counselor called the college and found out about the availability of aid through AB 540, which neither he
nor Jose had been aware of.
Learning to Be Illegal: Ages 18 to 24
For the children of unauthorized parents, success means improving on the quality of jobs and opportunities.
Many youths end up only a small step ahead, however. Lacking legal status and a college degree, early-exiters
confront some of the same limited and limiting employment options as their parents. Economic circumstances
and family need force them to make choices about working and driving illegally. Nearly all respondents
contributed money to their families, averaging nearly $300 per month. After high school, early-exiter Oscar,
who at 27 still gives his parents $500 a month, moved through a string of short stints in the workforce, not
staying in any one job more than six months at a time. He quit jobs because he was dissatisfied with the meager
wages and generally uneasy about the ways in which employers treated him. Each new job proved no better
than the previous one. Over time, Oscar realized he had few job choices outside of physical labor: “I wasn’t
prepared to do that kind of work. . . . It’s tough. I come home from work tired every day. I don’t have a
life. . . . It’s not like I can get an office job. I’ve tried to get something better, but I’m limited by my situation.”
The effects of stress and difficult work took their toll on other respondents. Simon, who used to play piano,
showed me calluses and cuts on his hands. “Can you believe this? I’m so far away from those days,” he said.
Janet, who has been employed by various maid services, told me she cried every day after work for the first two
months: “I can’t believe this is my life. When I was in school I never thought I’d be doing this. I mean, I was
never an honors student, but I thought I would have a lot better job. It’s really hard, you know. I make beds, I
clean toilets. The sad thing is when I get paid. I work this hard, for nothing.” Janet and others expressed
difficulty coming to terms with the narrow range of bad options their illegal status forced on them.
While financial need forced respondents into the workforce, lack of experience put them at a disadvantage
in the low-wage job sector, where they became part of the same job pool as their parents and other family
members who have much less education but more work experience. During Josue’s final year of high school,
his grandparents, who had raised him since childhood, decided to move. Instead of enrolling in a new school,
Josue decided to try his luck in the labor market. But he soon realized what a great disadvantage his lack of
experience was:

[At first] I thought, “I’m not gonna bust my ass for someone who can be yelling at me for like $5.75, five
bucks an hour.” Hell no. If I get a job, I wanna get paid 20 bucks an hour. I speak English. But actually I
didn’t have any experience. So, it’s really hard to get a job. Especially now, because those kinds of
jobs . . . they’re looking for a more experienced person who knows how to work in the field and ain’t gonna
complain.

Respondents also recounted difficulty negotiating precarious situations because their undocumented status
forced them to confront experiences for which K to 12 schooling did not prepare them. Pedro found himself in
legal trouble when, after completing a day job, he tried to cash his check at the local currency exchange. A teller
called Pedro’s employer to verify its legitimacy, and he denied writing the check and called the police. When
the police arrived, they found multiple sets of identification in Pedro’s possession and took him to jail for
identity fraud. This incident awoke Pedro to the reality that his inexperience with undocumented life could have
grave consequences, including arrest and even deportation.
Given the limited employment options available to undocumented youth, moving on to college becomes
critical. Making a successful transition to postsecondary schooling requires a number of favorable
circumstances, however, including sufficient money to pay for school, family permission to delay or minimize
work, reliable transportation, and external guidance and assistance. Respondents who enjoyed such conditions
were able to devote their time to school and, equally important, avoid activities and situations that would place
them in legal trouble. As a result, they suspended many of the negative consequences of unauthorized status.
When I met Rosalba, she had associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees. Her parents had prohibited her
from working, thus allowing her to concentrate fully on school. Throughout her time in school, she benefited
from assistance from a number of caring individuals. “I’ve made it because I’ve had a support system,” she said:

At every step of my education, I have had a mentor holding my hand. It’s a thousand times harder without
someone helping you. Being undocumented, it’s not about what you know, it’s who you know. You might
 have all of the will in the world, but if you don’t know the right people, then as much as you want to, you’re
gonna have trouble doing it.

When I interviewed Nimo, he was in his final year of college and considering graduate school. His college
years had been enjoyable, lacking many of the stressors of legal limitations. A financial sponsor paid his tuition
and fees and provided money for books. Nimo worked only minimally, because his mother did not ask for his
financial assistance. He was usually able to secure rides to and from school; on other days, he took the bus.
Although the two-hour commute each way was time consuming, the time allowed him to “read and think.”
Nimo’s case is exceptional, but it is also instructive. Without the various barriers of financing college,
supporting family, and having to work and drive, he was able to concentrate on school. As a result, he
maintained a positive attitude and has high aspirations for his future.
Many other respondents, however, found postsecondary education to be a discontinuous experience, with
frequent stalls and detours. Several took leaves of absence, and others enrolled in only one school term per year.
Faced with the need to work, few scholarships, debt, and long commutes, these respondents managed to attend
college, but completing their schooling was an arduous task that required them to be creative, keep their costs
low, and in many cases join early-exiters in the low-wage labor market. Several respondents’ dreams of higher
education did not materialize because financial burdens became too overwhelming. Margarita, for example,
aspired to be a pharmacist, but after two years of community college, her mother started asking her to pay her
share of the rent. She left school to clean houses, which she had been doing for almost four years when I met
her.

Coping: Ages 25 to 29
The impact of not having legal residency status becomes particularly pronounced for respondents in their
mid-20s, when prolonged experiences of illegality force them to begin viewing their legal circumstances as
more permanent. By this time, most young adults in the United States have finished school, left the parental
home, and are working full-time. They have also started to see the returns on their education in better jobs and
have gained increased independence from their parents. Although sharp differences in educational returns
persist among legal young adults, I found a high degree of convergence among college-goers and early-exiters
as they finished the transition to illegality. By their mid- 20s, both sets of respondents held similar occupations.
While both groups were also starting to leave the parental home, early-exiters were already settled into work
routines. Years on the job had provided them with experience and improved their human capital. Many had let
go of hopes for career mobility long ago, opting instead for security and stability. While college-going
respondents spent much of their late teens and early 20s in institutions of higher learning, by their mid-20s most
were out of school and learning that they had few legal employment options, despite having attained advanced
degrees.
In his study of working-class youth in Clarendon Heights, MacLeod (1987) chronicled the experiences of
two groups of differently achieving working-class students as they came to realize their limitations in the job
market. As their aspirations flattened over time, they put a “lid on hope” (p. 62). For my respondents, day-to-
day struggles, stress, and the ever-present ceiling on opportunities similarly forced them to acknowledge the
distance between their prior aspirations and present realities. The realization was especially poignant for those
who managed to complete degrees but ultimately recognized that the years of schooling did not offer much
advantage in low-wage labor markets—the only labor markets to which they had access.
These are young people who grew up believing that because their English mastery and education surpassed
those of their parents, they would achieve more. Instead, they came face-to-face with the limits on their
opportunities—often a very unsettling experience. Early-exiter Margarita underscored this point:

I graduated from high school and have taken some college credits. Neither of my parents made it past fourth
grade, and they don’t speak any English. But I’m right where they are. I mean, I work with my mom. I have
the same job. I can’t find anything else. It’s kinda ridiculous, you know. Why did I even go to school? It
should mean something. I mean, that should count, right? You would think. I thought. Well, here I am,
 cleaning houses.

Others conveyed a tacit acceptance of their circumstances. When I interviewed Pedro, he had been out of
school for nine years. He had held a string of jobs and was living with childhood friends in a mobile home. He
was slowly making progress toward his high school diploma but was not hopeful that education would improve
his opportunities or quality of life. I asked him what he wanted for himself. He replied:

Right now, I want to take care of my legal status, clean up my record for the stupidity I committed and get a
decent job. I’m thinking about five years from now. I don’t want to extend it any longer. I wish it could be
less, you know, but I don’t want to rush it either, because when you rush things they don’t go as they should.
Maybe 10 years from now. I like where I live, and I wouldn’t mind living in a mobile home.

Other respondents had similarly low expectations for the future, the cumulative result of years of severely
restricted choices. When I first met Gabriel, he was 23 years old. He was making minimal progress at the
community college. He had moved out of his mother’s home because he felt like a financial burden, and he left
his job after his employer received a letter from the Social Security Administration explaining that the number
he was using did not match his name. He was frustrated and scared. When I ran into him four years later, near
the end of my study, he seemed to be at ease with his life. He was working in a factory with immigrant co-
workers and participating in a community dance group. He told me he was “not as uptight” about his situation
as he had once been:

I just stopped letting it [unauthorized status] define me. Work is only part of my life. I’ve got a girlfriend
now. We have our own place. I’m part of a dance circle, and it’s really cool. Obviously, my situation holds
me back from doing a lot of things, but I’ve got to live my life. I just get sick of being controlled by the lack
of nine digits.

Undoubtedly, Gabriel would rather be living under more stable circumstances. But he has reconciled himself
to his limitations, focusing instead on relationships and activities that are tangible and accessible.
Such acceptance was most elusive for respondents who achieved the highest levels of school success. At the
time of their interviews, 22 respondents had graduated from four-year universities, and an additional nine held
advanced degrees. None were able to legally pursue their dream careers. Instead, many, like Esperanza, found
themselves toiling in low-wage jobs. Esperanza had to let go of her long-held aspiration to become a journalist,
in favor of the more immediate need to make ends meet each month. In high school, she was in band and AP
classes. Her hopes for success were encouraged by high-achieving peers and teachers. Nothing leading up to
graduation prepared her for the reality of her life afterward. Now three years out of college, she can find only
restaurant jobs and factory work. While she feels out of place in the sphere of undocumented work, she has little
choice:

The people working at those places, like the cooks and the cashiers, they are really young, and I feel really
old. Like what am I doing there if they are all like 16, 17 years old? The others are like senoras who are 35.
They dropped out of school, but because they have little kids they are still working at the restaurant.
Thinking about that makes me feel so stupid. And like the factories, too, because they ask me, “Que estas
haciendo aqui? [What are you doing here?] You can speak English. You graduated from high school. You
can work anywhere.”

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The experiences of unauthorized 1.5-generation young adults shed some important light on the powerful role
played by immigration policy in shaping incorporation patterns and trajectories into adulthood. Contemporary
immigration theory has made great strides in its ability to predict inter-generational progress. In doing so,
however, it has paid less attention to the here-and-now experiences and outcomes of today’s immigrants and
their children. As Portes and Fernandez-Kelly (2008) point out, focusing exclusively on inter-generational
mobility contributes to a failure to uncover key mechanisms that produce delayed, detoured, and derailed
trajectories. Indeed, by focusing on individuals they call the “final survivors”—two to three generations out—
we neglect the struggles of individuals today who end up disappearing from view. Many respondents in this
study possess levels of human capital that surpass those of their parents, who tend to speak little English and
have fewer than six years of schooling. We may be tempted to see this outcome as a sign of inter-generational
progress. But these young men and women describe moving from an early adolescence in which they had
important inclusionary access, to an adulthood in which they are denied daily participation in most institutions
of mainstream life. They describe this process as waking up to a nightmare.
While life-course scholars note that most U.S. youngsters today face some difficulty managing adolescent
and adult transitions, undocumented youth face added challenges. Their exclusion from important rites of
passage in late adolescence, and their movement from protected to unprotected status, leave them in a state of
developmental limbo, preventing subsequent and important adult transitions. Their entry into a stigmatized
identity has negative and usually unanticipated consequences for their educational and occupational trajectories,
as well as for their friendships and social patterns. Unlike documented peers who linger in adolescence due to
safety nets at home, many of these youngsters must start contributing to their families and taking care of
themselves. These experiences affect adolescent and adult transitions that diverge significantly from those of
their documented peers, placing undocumented youth in jeopardy of becoming a disenfranchised underclass.
Positive mediators at the early (discovery) and middle (learning to be illegal) transitions help cushion the
blow, and a comparison of early-exiters and college-goers reveals a lot about the power, and the limitations, of
these intermediaries. The keys to success for my respondents—extrafamilial mentors, access to information
about postsecondary options, financial support for college, and lower levels of family responsibility—are not
very different from those required for the success of members of other student populations. For undocumented
youth, however, they take on added significance. In adult mentors, they find trusting allies to confide in and
from whom to receive guidance and resources. The presence of caring adults who intervene during the
discovery period can aid in reducing anxiety and minimizing barriers, allowing undocumented youth to delay
entry into legally restricted adult environments and to make successful transitions to postsecondary institutions.
Eventually, however, all undocumented youth unable to regularize their immigration status complete the
transition to illegality.
My findings move beyond simply affirming that immigrant incorporation is a segmented process. Analyses
of this group of undocumented young adults also suggest that successful integration may now depend, more so
than ever before in U.S. history, on immigration policy and the role of the state. Historically, assimilation theory
has been concerned with the factors that determine incorporation into the mainstream. Scholars argue that
human capital is a key determinant for upward mobility (Zhou 1997). However, as I demonstrate here, blocked
mobility caused by a lack of legal status renders traditional measures of inter-generational mobility by
educational progress irrelevant: the assumed link between educational attainment and material and
psychological outcomes after school is broken. College-bound youths’ trajectories ultimately converge with
those who have minimal levels of schooling. These youngsters, who committed to the belief that hard work and
educational achievement would garner rewards, experience a tremendous fall. They find themselves ill-prepared
for the mismatch between their levels of education and the limited options that await them in the low-wage,
clandestine labor market.
The young men and women interviewed for this study are part of a growing population of undocumented
youth who have moved into adulthood. Today, the United States is home to more than 1.1 million
undocumented children who, in the years to come, will be making the same sort of difficult transitions, under
arguably more hostile contexts (Massey and Sánchez 2010). These demographic and legal realities ensure that a
sizeable population of U.S.-raised adults will continue to be cut off from the futures they have been raised to
expect. Efforts aimed at legalizing this particular group of young people have been in the works for more than
10 years without success. Political experts believe there will not be legislative movement at the federal level for
at least two more years. In the meantime, proposals aimed at ending birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children
of undocumented immigrants and barring their entry to postsecondary education threaten to deny rights to even
greater numbers. These young people will very likely remain in the United States. Whether they become a
disenfranchised underclass or contributing members to our society, their fate rests largely in the hands of the
state. We must ask ourselves if it is good for the health and wealth of this country to keep such a large number
of U.S.-raised young adults in the shadows. We must ask what is lost when they learn to be illegal.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Joanna Dreby, Cecilia Menjívar, Rubén G. Rumbaut, Celeste Watkins-Hayes, the ASR editors and reviewers,
and audiences at Brown University, Cornell University, UC-Berkeley, the University of Michigan, the
University of Kansas, and the University of Washington provided helpful comments on previous versions of this
article.

FUNDING

This project was supported by the National Poverty Center using funds received from the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, grant number 1 U01
AE000002-01. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author and should not be
construed as representing the opinions or policy of any agency of the Federal government. To protect
confidentiality, all names of individuals have been replaced with pseudonyms.

Notes

1. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 provided the last large-scale legalization
program. The 1987 estimate represents the undocumented population after many of the 2.7 million
estimated illegal immigrants had moved into legal categories under IRCA.
2. Under Plyler, the Supreme Court ruled that undocumented children are entitled to the equal protection
under the law afforded by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution and therefore cannot be denied access
to public elementary and secondary education on the basis of their legal status (see Olivas 2005).
3. See, in particular, the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), a bi-national research effort co-directed by Jorge
Durand (University of Guadalajara) and Douglas S. Massey (Princeton University). Since 1982, the MMP
has collected economic and social data from more than 140,000 Mexicans including many migrants; most
of the households in the MMP random samples were interviewed in Mexico.
4. Given the respondents’ immigration status, I went to great lengths to ensure confidentiality. Having gone
through a thorough Human Subjects process, I took several measures to avoid any identifiers that would
directly link data to specific respondents. I gave pseudonyms to all respondents at the time of the initial
meeting, and I never collected home addresses. Because of these precautions, personal information does
not appear anywhere in this research. Respondents provided verbal consent rather than leaving a paper trail
with a written consent form. I destroyed all audio tapes immediately after transcription. I conducted all
interviews in English, and I gave respondents gift cards for their participation.
5. Only New Mexico (SB 582) and Texas (HB 1403) allow undocumented students to apply for state aid.
6. Assembly Bill 540 (2001) gives undocumented youth in California who have gone to a state high school
for three years and graduated the ability to pay tuition at in-state rates. Many undocumented immigrant
students have benefited from this provision.
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50
ENGLISH-ONLY TRIUMPHS, BUT THE COSTS ARE HIGH
ALEJANDRO PORTES

T he surge of immigration into the United States during the past 30 years has brought a proliferation of
foreign languages, and with it fears that the English language may lose its predominance and cultural
unity may be undermined. Several conservative national organizations, including the powerful U.S.
English, have been established to combat this trend. U.S. English describes the cultural threat in somber tones:

Where linguistic unity has broken down, our energies and resources flow into tensions, hostilities,
prejudices and resentments. These develop and persist. Within a few years, if the breakdown persists, there
will be no retreat. It becomes irrevocable, irreversible. Society as we know it can fade into noisy Babel and
then chaos.

What is the likelihood of such a catastrophe? Every period of high immigration has given rise to nativist
movements warning of cultural disintegration, and thus calling for the immediate linguistic assimilation of
foreigners. Almost a century before the emergence of the U.S. English organization, President Theodore
Roosevelt wrote: “We have room for one language here and that is the English language; for we intend to see
that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house.”
These fears are proving unfounded.

NEW “THREATS” TO ENGLISH

German, Polish, and Italian immigrants were targeted as threats to cultural unity in the past, as migrants from
Mexico, Russia, and China are today. The agents vary, but the perceived threat is the same. In the past, these
fears have proven unfounded. In no other country, among 35 nations compared in a detailed study by sociologist
Stanley Lieberson and his colleagues, did foreign languages fade as swiftly as in the United States. Linguists
such as Joshua Fishman and Calvin Veltman have documented how this process takes place. First-generation
immigrants learn as much English as they can, but continue to speak their mother tongue at home. The second
generation grows up speaking the mother tongue at home, but English in school and at work. By the third
generation, English becomes the home language and the transition to monolingualism is completed.
Illustrative of this trend, the 1990 census found that 92 percent of the U.S. population spoke only English.
The remaining 8 percent were almost exclusively first-generation immigrants undergoing the initial stages of
linguistic assimilation. Immigration accelerated during the 1990s, raising the question of whether language
assimilation continues to be as swift today as it was in the past. In part to address this question, Rubén G.
Rumbaut and I surveyed a large sample of children of immigrants—the new second generation—attending
public and private schools in Miami/Fort Lauderdale and San Diego, two of the metropolitan areas most
affected by contemporary immigration. The resulting Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS)
collected data on over 5,200 students from 77 different nationalities attending eighth and ninth grades in 1992–
93. We followed the sample and reinterviewed 82 percent of them three years later, when most were about to
graduate from high school.
Miami is the main entry and settlement area for immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and other
Caribbean and South American countries. San Diego is a primary destination for migrants from Mexico, El
Salvador, the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Despite this diversity, the patterns of language assimilation were
uniform. At the time of the first survey, 94 percent of respondents spoke English fluently by the age of 14, and
the figure rose to 98 percent three years later. The overwhelming majority not only knew but preferred English,
with 72 percent preferring English over their native tongue in middle school and 88 percent preferring it by
senior high school. Remarkably, more than 95 percent of Cuban-American children attending private bilingual
schools in the heart of the Cuban enclave in Miami preferred English.

LOSING MOTHER TONGUES

Relatively few retained their parental tongues. If one defines fluency as the ability to speak, understand, read,
and write well, no second-generation group was fluent in its mother tongue by age 17. Less than one-third of the
sample (29 percent) were able to communicate easily in both English and a foreign tongue. English-Spanish
bilingualism was the most common, but most Latin-American children (65 percent) had lost fluency in their
parental language. Among other nationalities, more than 90 percent of the children lacked native language
fluency. Languages that literally disappeared in this second-generation sample included Chinese, French,
Haitian Creole, Korean, Portuguese, Philippine Tagalog and Vietnamese. By age 17 on the average, the majority
of these youths had become exclusively English-speaking.

IS COMPLETE LANGUAGE ASSIMILATION DESIRABLE?

These trends raise the question of whether complete language assimilation—acquisition of fluent English and
abandonment of native languages—is desirable. There are good reasons for this concern.
Seventy years ago, the case for exclusive English speaking was buttressed by the scholarship of the time that
considered migrant children’s retention of their native language as a sign of intellectual inferiority. Madorah
Smith, a prominent psychologist in the 1930s, declared bilingualism to be a hardship devoid of any advantage.
In her view, echoed by most of her colleagues, “An important factor in the retardation of speech is the attempt
to make use of two languages.” The studies that supported this conclusion commonly paired poor immigrant
children with middle-class native-born Americans. The studies also did not distinguish between fluent bilinguals
and limited bilinguals whose command of one language or the other was poor.

BILINGUAL STUDENTS BETTER?

This perception started to change in the 1960s, with a study of French-Canadian children conducted by
psychologists Elizabeth Peal and Wallace E. Lambert. They compared a sample of monolingual 10-year-old
children with a group of fluent bilinguals matched by sex, age and family status. Contrary to the common
wisdom of the time, this study found that bilinguals outperformed their monolingual counterparts in almost all
cognitive tests. Similar results were subsequently obtained by other psychologists with any number of language
combinations including English-French, English-Chinese, German-French and English-Spanish. The association
of bilingualism with better cognitive development raised the question of cause and effect. Did brighter children
perform better in school and retain their parental languages better, or did bilingualism itself produce enhanced
cognitive performance?
In an attempt to shed light on this relationship, psychologists Kenji Hakuta and Rafael Diaz examined
Puerto Rican students in New Haven, Connecticut. They discovered that bilingualism at an early age influenced
subsequent cognitive development. Linguists contributed a series of studies that sought to clarify the nature of
this relationship. According to Werner Leopold, bilinguals’ enhanced cognitive performance is explained by
their having more than one conception for a concrete thing, thus liberating them from the “tyranny of words.”
For another linguist, Jim Cummins, bilinguals are able “to look at language, rather than through it, to the
intended meaning.”
 Although all of these studies were based on small samples, sociologists working with larger samples have
reinforced these findings. For example, Rumbaut and Cornelius compared fluent bilingual students with limited
bilinguals of the same national origin and with English monolinguals in the entire San Diego school system in
the late 1980s. Without exception, fluent bilinguals outperformed limited bilinguals and English-only students
in standardized tests and grade point averages, even after statistically controlling for parental status and other
variables.

GREATER SELF-ESTEEM

More recently, our CILS study in south Florida and southern California confirmed the positive association
between bilingualism and better academic performance. We also found that children who were fluent bilinguals
in the early high school years had significantly higher educational aspirations and self-esteem three years later.
There are positive social aspects of bilingualism as well. Retaining the parental tongue allows children to
better understand their cultural origins. This, in turn, reinforces their sense of self-worth. Bilingualism also
increases communication between immigrant youths and their parents, reducing the generational conflicts
commonly found in families in which parents remain foreign monolinguals and the children have shifted
entirely to English. Family cohesion and open communication enable parents to better guide their children.
Family cohesion is also important for immigrant communities. Immigrant children—now numbering 13.8
million—already make up one-fifth of the American population under age 18. Their presence is even greater in
those metropolitan areas where immigrants concentrate. Due to low average incomes, immigrants cluster in
central city areas and their children attend neglected public schools. There they are exposed to behavior and role
models that are not conducive to school achievement. Parental guidance and control are often the only
counterweights to the lure of youth gangs and drugs. How many in this growing population will assimilate
“downward” into the urban underclass or move upward into the middle-class mainstream largely depends on
how much solidarity, guidance, and support their families can provide.
The importance of bilingualism is underlined by statistical analyses Lingxin Hao and I conducted on the
CILS survey. Fluent bilinguals are more likely than English-only speakers who are similar to them in age, sex,
national origin, time in the United States, and other factors to have greater solidarity and less conflict with their
parents, as well as higher levels of self-esteem and ambition.

ENGLISH-PLUS

There is a final argument for an “English-plus” approach. Economic globalization and the expansion of the
immigrant population in the United States have resulted in a growing labor market for skilled bilingual workers.
This demand ranges from multinational corporations to government agencies to retail outlets. As Saskia Sassen
has noted, New York, and to a lesser extent other American metropolitan areas, have become “global cities”
with a primary economic function of coordinating and managing financial and information flows worldwide.
The pressure of linguistic assimilation results in a growing shortage of bilingual and multilingual personnel,
often in the very cities experiencing accelerated immigration. As a Miami business leader recently tellingly
observed, “There are 600,000 Hispanics in this area and my firm has difficulty finding a bilingual person
capable of writing a proper business letter in Spanish.”
The individual and family advantages of fluent bilingualism combine with the growing requirements of the
American labor market to make it preferable to either form of monolingualism. The question is whether school
programs can be put in place to bring about this outcome or whether forces of assimilation will continue to
prevail.

THE BILINGUAL EDUCATION DEBATE

In 1998, California voters approved by an overwhelming margin Proposition 227, the so-called English for the
Children initiative. Its primary proponent, millionaire Ronald Unz, made this argument: “Inspired in part by the
example of my own mother, who was born in Los Angeles into a Yiddish-speaking immigrant home but had
quickly and easily learned English as a young child, I never understood why children were being kept for years
in native-language classes, or why such programs continued to exist.”
Unz was motivated to action by the spectacle of immigrant children confined, year after year, to inferior
foreign language classes and unable to learn English. He proposed instead to shift them to English-immersion
classes following the model of his erstwhile Yiddish-speaking mother. In public school bureaucracies, bilingual
education had come to mean remedial education in foreign languages that led to both inferior schooling and
delayed learning of English. Not surprisingly, many immigrant parents lobbied in favor of Proposition 227 as a
means to obtain proper education for their children.
The system against which Unz and his supporters rallied is not bilingual education at all, but a well-
intentioned albeit misguided security blanket thrown at immigrant children. The terminological confusion of
calling this “bilingual education” has clouded the issue in the public mind. True bilingual education for
immigrant students involves vigorous instruction in English, along with deliberate efforts to preserve the
parental tongue through teaching of selected topics in that language. For native English speakers, true bilingual
instruction starts early, in grammar school if possible, and is followed by regular teaching of certain subjects in
the chosen foreign language.
True bilingual education is currently practiced in only a handful of “dual language” schools, either private or
public “magnet” units. These schools obtain remarkable results, both sustaining fluency in two languages
among foreign students and creating it among native English speakers. Moreover, maintaining bilingual fluency
in high school requires only one or two hours per day rather than half the total class time. In the CILS sample,
the only group in which fluent bilinguals predominated were Cuban-American students attending private
bilingual schools in Miami. These schools combine regular teaching of most subjects in English with one or two
hours of daily instruction in Spanish.
In part as a result of the success of these schools, the U.S. Department of Education has called for a
significant expansion of magnet language programs in public school systems across the country. In defense of
this position, former Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley noted the sharp difference between American
students, most of whom end up as English monolinguals, and European students, who commonly speak two or
more languages fluently. Riley saw no reason why American children could not equal the linguistic
accomplishments of their European peers. There is indeed no psychological reason why Riley’s vision cannot be
realized. The obstacles are rather social and political.
The strong assimilationist bent of American society, supported by the militant advocacy of nativist
organizations, has rendered the preservation of foreign languages a near impossibility. Only in large ethnic
enclaves, such as that of Cubans in Miami or in a few elite schools, have such efforts proven successful.
Linguist Joshua Fishman has noted that Americans generally approve of foreign languages learned in Paris or in
elite universities, but disapprove of immigrants’ efforts to pass their languages on to their offspring. The
implementation of this ideology by school systems across America has led to the present situation in which
activists treat acquisition of English and preservation of foreign languages as a zero-sum game. Fluent
bilingualism is a casualty. The result is a massive loss of a cultural resource that should be the birthright of
immigrant children. Additional costs are added burdens in the upbringing of these children and unnecessary
shortages of fluent multilingual workers. English-only is winning, but its costs are high for immigrant families,
the communities where they settle, and society as a whole.

SOURCE: Alejandro Portes, “English-Only Triumphs, but the Costs Are High,” Contexts 1 (2002): 10–15.
51
SCHOOL CHOICE OR SCHOOLS’ CHOICE?
Managing in an Era of Accountability
JENNIFER L. JENNINGS

S chool choice has played a central role in American education policy debates for the past three decades.
Numerous choice policies have been implemented, including open enrollment plans, magnet schools,
vouchers, and charter schools. At the same time, federal, state, and local policy makers have turned to
quantitative performance indicators to hold schools accountable for students’ performance. The No Child Left
Behind Act explicitly couples these policies, enabling parents whose children attend “failing” schools to use
these indicators to identify the best schools for their children. How school choice and accountability policies
may interact at the school level, however, remains an open question.
To date, American studies of school choice have focused on the family, rather than the school, as the agent
empowered with choice (Bast and Walberg 2004; Bifulco, Ladd, and Ross 2007; Coleman, Hoffer, and Kilgore
1982; Coleman, Schiller, and Schneider 1993; Cullen, Jacob, and Levitt 2001; Hastings, Kane, and Staiger
2005; Hastings, Van Weelden, and Weinstein 2007; Holme 2002; Lankford, Lee, and Wyckoff 1995; Lauen
2007; Lee 1993; Lee, Croninger, and Smith 1994; Schneider and Buckley 2002; Wells and Crain 1992).
However, scholars examining choice outside of the United States have considered the agency of the school.
These scholars contend that schools competing in an educational marketplace seek students who will enhance
their test scores and reputations (Ball 1994, 2003; Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz 1995; Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe
1995; Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998). Students who disproportionately demand additional resources, such as
special needs students, English language learners, or students with behavior problems, are avoided through both
“overt and covert” means (Bartlett and Le Grand 1993; Gillborn and Youdell 2000; West and Hind 2003). To
attract and select the population most advantageous to the school, English schools have engaged in targeted
marketing, taken advantage of nebulous language in national admissions guidelines to select higher achieving
students, and interviewed both parents and students in order to evaluate applicants’ desirability (Ball et al. 1995;
Gewirtz et al. 1995; Hesketh and Knight 1998; Macguire, Ball, and Maccrae 1999, 2001; West, Hind, and
Pennell 2003). Even after the point of selection, the need to compete in the marketplace has affected student
retention; school exclusions, especially for minority children, have increased rapidly in the United Kingdom
(Vulliamy and Webb 2000). “Unofficial exclusions,” through which students are encouraged to transfer to
another school, have also risen (Blyth and Milner 1996; Parffrey 1994; Stirling 1996). A number of authors
have suggested that exclusions help maintain a market reputation of being “tough on discipline” while removing
students perceived to pull down test scores (Bridges 1994; Gillborn 1996). While the educational values of head
teachers have mediated their management of admissions and retention, scholars have argued that head teachers
find themselves increasingly constrained by the demands of the marketplace, with their educational values
pitted against the strategies necessary to succeed in the market (Ball 1994; Gewirtz et al. 1995; Gillborn and
Youdell 2000).
Taken together, these studies have made important contributions to our knowledge of the distributional
impacts of school choice policies. However, they leave unaddressed the social processes associated with
schools’ potentially variable responses to choice policies and thus perpetuate a black-box theory of
organizational responses to incentives. This gap in the literature is surprising because studies of accountability
systems have established substantial variability in schools’ and teachers’ responses. It is possible that some
schools act vigorously to shape their student populations, while others may not. The question, then, is what
social processes contribute to these disparate organizational responses. As education policy makers increasingly
introduce incentives to alter educational actors’ behaviors, achieving a better understanding of this variation is
crucial.
This article draws on 17 months of ethnographic data collection at three newly founded New York City
small high schools. Students must choose to attend these schools, but the city Department of Education does not
permit these schools to screen applicants on academic or affective characteristics. In what follows, I will address
two research questions:

1. Do schools of choice actively shape the types of students that attend and persist in their schools?
2. What social processes are associated with principals’ divergent responses to the school choice system?

In answering these questions, this article builds on existing research to offer a sociological theory of
schools’ management of choice in an era of accountability.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: INCENTIVES IN ORGANIZATIONS

A tremendous body of literature, primarily by economists, has examined how schools respond to accountability
incentives. While some studies have investigated whether accountability systems increase student achievement
(Carnoy and Loeb 2002; Hanushek and Raymond 2004; Jacob 2005), the majority of studies focuses on
strategic behavior that creates the illusion of improvement, sometimes referred to as “gaming the system.”
These studies address a diverse range of gaming activities, including classifying students as special education
(Figlio and Getzler 2002; Jacob 2005), exempting students from tests (Cullen and Reback 2006; Jacob 2005),
focusing on marginal or “bubble” students (Booher-Jennings 2005; Neal and Schanzenbach 2007; Reback
2008), suspending low-scoring students close to the test date (Figlio 2005), and changing the focus of
instruction (Jacob 2005, 2007).
Sociologists have informed this literature by questioning whether all organizational actors perceive and react
to the organizational environment similarly (Coburn 2001, 2005, 2006; Diamond 2007; Spillane et al. 2002).
Drawing on sensemaking theory (Weick 1969), these authors take seriously the possibility that organizational
actors both within and between organizations construct the demands of, and appropriate responses to,
accountability systems differently. As a result, schools respond in varied ways that are not simply a function of
their short-term incentives. According to these scholars, organizational actors cognitively struggle to make
sense of the environment, filter different signals, and make choices in the context of these perceived
opportunities and constraints. Rather than assuming that signals exist in the environment and are waiting there
for principals to read, sensemaking theorists investigate how particular cues are selected as relevant while other
cues are ignored. These scholars contend that human actors do not react to the environment but instead enact it.
The enactment process is grounded in professional biographies and the social contexts in which sensemakers are
embedded. As organizational actors decide which information is relevant and place this information in the
context of their own experiences and beliefs, they develop a set of understandings about how the world outside
of their organizations works (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978).
This literature does not view teachers as atomized actors, and it argues that intraorganizational networks
matter (Coburn 2001). While studies have addressed sensemaking in teacher professional communities (Coburn
2001) and the role of the principal in influencing teachers’ sensemaking (Coburn 2005), only one study has
examined the sensemaking of principals themselves. Spillane et al. (2002), examining responses to
accountability in Chicago, argued that school leaders’ sensemaking is influenced by their professional
biographies, the unique histories of the schools in which they work, and their roles as intermediaries between
the district and teachers. While Spillane et al. noted that principals’ relationships with other principals were
important to sensemaking, the role of principals’ own social networks was largely unexplored.
Building on the extant literature, I contend that principals enact the organizational environment (Weick
1969)—in other words, they diagnose the demands, possibilities, and constraints of the environment—by
engaging in “collective sensemaking” in conversation with their colleagues (Coburn 2001). In this case, the
actors constructing the environmental demands (the accountability environment) and opportunities (the school
choice process) are administrators. The principal is charged with monitoring the school’s overall performance
and occupies a unique structural position within the school organization. The principal generally serves as the
primary point of contact with the school district, and information about the local accountability environment
remains lodged in this role. Principals, then, have little to gain by making sense of these indicators with
teachers, since teachers are disconnected from the administrative apparatus of the district. Drawing on social
network theories, I argue that principals’ sensemaking about the accountability and choice systems occurs
within the interorganizational networks in which they are embedded and is strongly conditioned by their own
professional biographies and worldviews.
In this study, principals’ interorganizational networks were an outgrowth of their own professional
biographies, work histories, and the varying pathways through which they founded their schools. Principals
founding their schools as mom-and-pop organizations were firmly grounded in a geographic community, and
their networks consisted of dyadic ties with local educators, ties that were generated not by their educational
philosophies but by their shared work experiences in the same schools. Principals founding their schools as part
of a franchise were embedded in dense, socially closed network of franchise principals; these ties flowed not
from geography, their work histories, or their educational views but from their collective investment in the
franchise enterprise. Principals founding their schools as professional organizations were embedded in a dense,
socially closed network of educators linked together by their commitment to a common set of professional
principles.
Networks did little work on their own, however. Principals’ networks offered access to resources that could
be activated to make sense of—and to subsequently manage—the accountability and choice systems. But access
alone did not guarantee activation (Lareau 2003; Lin 2001; Smith 2005). To provide benefits, networks had to
be activated by principals themselves or by the formal organizations in which they were embedded (i.e., through
creating regular opportunities to interact). Principals’ own beliefs about how accountability and choice systems
work, the presence of structured opportunities for principals to make use of these networks, and the social
closure of their personal (i.e., ego) networks influenced the extent to which they used their networks to make
sense of the accountability and the school choice systems, as well as to what ends they used these networks.
Social closure refers to networks in which ties are dense and overlapping (Coleman 1990). This structure allows
for the emergence of common identities and the maintenance of social norms, although these norms need not be
prosocial (Haynie 2001). Networks characterized by social closure also promote trust, which facilitates ongoing
exchanges. In this study, principals embedded in networks characterized by social closure were more likely to
engage in sustained collective sensemaking, although we cannot ascertain whether social closure was a cause or
consequence of this process. Moreover, how principals framed the “problems” of accountability and choice
influenced whether they turned to colleagues for guidance and to whom they turned. It was in these social
interactions that they further refined their understandings of the accountability and choice systems.
However, once principals’ networks were activated, all networks were not equally able or willing to deliver
instrumental and expressive support. Social closure contributed not only to principals’ willingness to draw on
their networks but also to their colleagues’ willingness to help. Social closure worked in tandem with the type of
resources embedded in these networks to shape the outcomes of principals’ attempts to activate their networks
for both instrumental and expressive purposes (Lin 2001). For searching for new information, the most
advantageous network was one that provided bridges to parties one did not know, while a dense local network
undergirded by shared values was more useful for fortifying existing ideological commitments, facilitating
exchanges, and enforcing obligations (Lin 2001). An example is useful in making this point. Suppose that
Principal A meets regularly with a group of like-minded principals working in the same geographic area to
discuss best practices. Each of these principals provides meaningful support to the others and reinforces their
shared values and commitments. Because of their dense, overlapping ties, principals in this network feel
comfortable asking peers for assistance, and their colleagues feel obligated to help them. But if a principal
wants to hire a new teacher or is searching for information about how things work in other corners of the city,
this network will be of limited utility. Conversely, Principal B meets regularly with a group of principals, each
of whom is located in a different geographic area of the city, and interacts regularly with principals that she does
not know. The density and social closure of this small group, her personal network, provides benefits similar to
Principal A’s. Yet unlike the network of Principal A, when Principal B searches for strategies that principals are
using to navigate the school choice system, she has a better chance of gaining information to which she
otherwise would not have access (Burt 1992). While Principal A receives critical social support and insight into
best practices from her peers, Principal B’s relationships with other principals are more useful for navigating
district systems and policy. Principals’ social networks, then, should be understood not hierarchically as better
or worse but as more or less useful for specific functions.
In the case of the district’s school choice system, the critical resource to which principals’ social networks
provided access was information about how to manage the school choice process to achieve the principals’
desired ends, ends that had been established, in part, through the principals’ sensemaking about the local
accountability environment. For those principals who sought to select a higher achieving population even
though their schools were prohibited from selecting students based on their performance, information about
what actions would be sanctioned was particularly valuable. As Weick (1969) has argued, much of what
organizations perceive as constraints are actually based on avoidance tests, or assumptions that actions are not
allowed by the environment. By virtue of having access to a broader and more diverse pool of information about
the bounds of acceptable action, principals who sought to manage their intake constructed a more accurate
portrait of the extent to which they could push the formal rules of the choice process.
The proposed theory brings together sensemaking and social network theories to illuminate the role of
individual and social cognition in influencing how principals interact with their networks and make sense of the
information available to them through these networks.1 The nexus of these two theories helps to explain how
principals’ understandings of accountability and choice are co-constructed through interaction with colleagues,
how their framing of accountability and choice influences whether and how they activate these networks for
assistance of various kinds, how principals catalog messages gained through their networks, and how principals’
networks are differentially poised to offer instrumental and expressive assistance once they are activated. In
what follows, I provide a brief overview of the school choice process in New York City, followed by a
description of data and method. I then tum to my findings.

HIGH SCHOOL CHOICE IN NEW YORK CITY

In 1992, there were 99 high schools in New York City; in 2009, only 17 years later, there were almost 400. This
growth is due to the founding of new small high schools, which began opening in 1993 with the support of
grants from the Diamond and Annenberg foundations. Students have the option to choose these schools and are
not zoned into them based on their residential location. In addition, these schools are not free-standing
buildings. Rather, the schools are allocated sections of a larger building. Between 1993 and 2000,
approximately 75 new high schools opened, with the majority of them located in Manhattan. In 2002, the tempo
with which small schools were being brought to scale quickened with the centralization of the school system
under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the infusion of millions of dollars to start small schools from the Carnegie
Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Gates Foundation. More than 200 new small schools have
opened since 2002. Central to this reorganization is the replacement of neighborhood high schools with
campuses of autonomous small schools. This plan is far reaching in its scope. For example, in the Bronx, 10 of
the 13 neighborhood comprehensive schools have been closed or downsized and converted into campuses of
small schools.
New York City is unique in that all students must apply to high school. Students can list up to 12 schools on
their applications, and students are no longer allocated to their zoned schools if they do not file a school choice
form. The choice process is now modeled after hospital residency admissions procedures. A student’s name
appears on the applicant lists of each of the 12 schools that she or he ranks, but the schools do not know whether
the student ranked the school 1st or 12th. Students are ultimately offered a seat at one school only.
Currently, five different types of school selection mechanisms exist. Almost all new small schools,
including the three schools that are the focus of this study, are unscreened. Admission to these schools is not
based on the student’s performance but on the school’s confirmation that the student is making an “informed
choice” to attend the school. At the time of the study, schools were told to identify two groups of students:
students who made an informed choice, and students who did not make an informed choice but whom the
school was willing to accept. Students in the informed choice group were given first preference in the lottery,
and if seats remained, students in the second group were then admitted. As I discuss later, what constitutes an
informed choice was left to the discretion of individual schools. In an effort to ensure a strong incoming class,
some schools used this discretion to raise the bar for admission.

DATA AND METHOD

The data presented in this article were collected as part of an ethnographic study of the founding of new schools
in New York City. The larger purpose of the study was to understand how school founders use their social
structural position and the network resources associated with this position to garner human, social, and financial
resources for their organizations. To sample schools, I operationalized social structural position as different
status positions within the school system, which proxy access to different types of resources available through
networks. By status, I refer to the Weberian conception of this term, where a status group is defined by social
interaction; as Weber relates, a key measure of entry into a status group may include the attainment of certain
levels or types of education.
The three schools that are the focus of this study were sampled from the population of 55 new high schools
that opened in the 2004–2005 school year. By compiling and reviewing information available about the
founding teams and their principals, I found that the status characteristics of their founders were generally
associated with three different founding configurations: mom-and-pop schools (a group of educators currently
working together), franchise schools (an organization opening multiple schools), and professional organization
schools (a professional development or community organization, or a group of such organizations working
together). Mom-and-pop schools were founded by individuals working within the system who lacked elite
educational credentials or other forms of political stature within the New York City system. On the other hand,
franchise and professional organization schools were generally founded by individuals with elite educational
credentials, participants in selective alternative principal preparation programs, or central district administrators.
After examining these patterns, I then created a list of three sets of three schools, including a professional
organization school, a franchise school, and a mom-and-pop school, and invited nine schools to participate. The
preferred set of three schools, which was advantageous because two schools were located in the same
comprehensive high school, agreed to participate in the study. In this article, I refer to these schools by the
pseudonyms of Excel Academy (the mom-and-pop school), Horizons High School (the professional
organization school), and Renaissance High School (the franchise school).
The primary mode of data collection was participant observation, which took place between March 2004
and September 2005. I conducted approximately 1,200 hours of observation at the three schools and at the
office and the principals’ meetings of Renaissance Schools, the franchise organization that sponsors
Renaissance. At the school sites, the majority of my time was spent observing the activities of the principals and
administrative staff; shadowing them through their days; and attending meetings with their supervisors, parents,
students, and teachers. At the two schools that incorporated common planning time for teachers, I regularly
observed their meetings; at all three schools, I observed professional development activities. When I discovered
the importance of the network of schools affiliated with Renaissance for understanding the focal principal’ s
decision making, I sought permission from the executive director of Renaissance Schools to conduct fieldwork
in its office and to attend the monthly principals’ meetings; the insights of these other principals are integrated
only as they are relevant to understanding Renaissance’s actions. Finally, at the end of the study period, I
conducted semistructured interviews with each of the administrators and teachers; this amounted to 29
interviews that each lasted one to two hours. Interviews were taped and transcribed. This article includes only
interviews with administrators, which included a core battery of questions about the central processes of school
founding—that is, gathering and managing human, social, and financial resources. These interviews also
included questions specific to individual schools that were shaped by my observations over the course of the
year and were intended to fill in any gaps in my field observations.
 Since a significant fraction of this article focuses on understanding how principals use their social networks,
it is worth commenting on how this study approached the collection of qualitative social network data. When
principals were first brought into the study, I collected data on their work histories and professional and
organizational associations. I also asked for the names of the principals in the city that they knew and would
consider contacting if they had a question or problem—what Lin (2001) refers to as “accessed networks”—and
asked this question again in September, March, and June. To capture the principals they actually relied on for
assistance (principals’ “activated” contacts), I recorded in my field notes each instance in which a principal
contacted another principal for assistance, described a new policy that she or he borrowed from another school,
or reported receiving advice from a principal at a meeting. I also asked principals regularly if other principals
came to them for help, and I recorded such contacts in my field notes.
A limitation of qualitative and ethnographic studies of individuals’ social networks, in contrast to “name
generator” studies that collect network data for all members of an organization, is that the researcher cannot
locate principals in the overall social structure of the district or quantify network characteristics such as density
in continuous terms. Thus, the two descriptive network characteristics referenced in this article—density and
social closure—are understood in dichotomous terms. In two of the three cases, principals’ primary
conversation networks were groups that met regularly and included the same members; I coded these as high
density networks in which all members knew each other well and hence were socially closed. While this
approach has disadvantages, scholars have questioned the utility of name generators and the network measures
derived from them for understanding how actors use their networks for instrumental and expressive purposes
(Bearman and Parigi 2004). For understanding how and under what conditions network resources are drawn
upon and the processes through which different types of network resources are made available to members, the
extended observation afforded by ethnography is critical.
Field notes and interview data were first coded openly using thematic categories generated from the data:
Examples of codes used included principals’ social networks, attempts to reach out to fellow principals,
attitudes toward accountability, and strategies used to manage the school choice process. Within each of these
categories, a series of subcodes was generated inductively. After this phase of inductive coding, I returned to the
data and coded using theoretically driven codes developed from the sensemaking and social network theory
frameworks; on the suggestion of the reviewers, I later coded principals’ accessed and activated contacts to
investigate network activation. Synthesizing the thematically and theoretically coded data, I then developed case
summaries for the principals, describing their attitudes about accountability and the choice process and the
strategies that they used to manage these processes. These insights were then integrated into my within-case
summaries. The creation of these within-case summaries then aided in my subsequent cross-case comparison,
the result of which are the findings that follow.

RESULTS

The Three Principals and Their Networks

In this section, I introduce the three schools and their principals, and I describe their professional
biographies and the networks in which they are embedded. Mom-and-pop organizations are firmly grounded in
a geographic community. Educators in these schools are not newcomers to urban education, and they have lived
out their careers in a limited radius. Many of these educators grew up in the local community themselves. Anna,
the principal of Excel Academy, is a veteran teacher who graduated from New York City schools. After
teaching for many years, Anna worked as an administrator and spearheaded the founding of Excel Academy by
bringing together a group of fellow teachers; she assumed the principalship when the school opened. Anna’s
network consists of dyadic ties with local educators, growing out of their shared experiences in a small set of
schools. Anna’s orientation toward communicating with other principals reflects her lack of trust in the
intentions of her colleagues:

I keep in touch with principals that I knew from [the schools I used to work at] because a lot of us are going
 through the same crap. Other than that, I don’t really reach out to people, because I don’t think everybody
has the best intentions. I don’t reach out to [a principal] because I know she has her own issues. I don’t
reach out to [another principal] because I think he is very political and has his own agenda that has nothing
to do with collegiality.

This lack of trust limits Anna’s willingness to widely activate the relationships in which she is embedded,
which makes her sensemaking process about accountability and choice more isolated than those of the other two
principals in the study. Here, we see that access—the acquaintance with others who might provide help—is a
necessary but not sufficient condition for drawing on network resources. In addition, her orientation toward
activating her network limits access to information about how to manage the school choice system. At the same
time, her strong dyadic ties to a small number of principals working in her borough allow sensitive information
about managing the school choice system to be shared.
Franchises, on the other hand, open multiple schools throughout the city and are conscious of the need to
protect their brands. Scrupulously attendant to the bottom line, these schools know that they will be judged both
by their cache and their performance statistics. Significant attention is devoted to managing impressions and
standardizing their products. Marlena, the principal of Renaissance High School, is engaged in ongoing
conversation about the accountability and school choice systems with the network of principals affiliated with
Renaissance Schools. Spanning multiple geographic areas of the city, the Renaissance network has significant
instrumental benefits in managing the external environment, providing access to valuable information about
district policy and systems. Rather than relying solely on principals to activate the expertise embedded in this
network of principals, the franchise has structured information pooling by requiring regular meetings. A senior
executive of Renaissance Schools highlighted the benefits of this network’s social closure:

The necessity for a network is much greater than it would be when these educators are veterans and who
have figured this out and internalized all of this information. I do think that our networks are different
because they are completely honest. There is never going to be an honest network within the Department of
Education. It just can’t exist within that context, because these are the people responsible for hiring and
firing these principals. . . . I also think that our network works because of the diversity represented. . . . The
only reason a network makes sense is because you don’t have things in common.

In this comment, the executive director highlights the primary difference between the formal networks
organized by the Department of Education, which were intended to encourage collaboration and information
sharing, and the Renaissance network. That the reputation of the Renaissance brand affects every principal
means that each principal has an interest in supporting the others, an interest that is bolstered by the affective
ties they develop through their frequent interactions and the dense overlapping ties that exist within this group.
The administrators at Renaissance High School also understood the benefits of the Renaissance franchise in
terms of the access and information made available through peer principals. As one administrator explained,

It’s the network, it’s the information sharing, it’s the experience. . . . If you do your homework, the people
of Renaissance Schools come with a past. With a past, you bring contacts. It’s just the political muscle that
Renaissance brings. . . . It’s the ability to shoot an email off when I don’t know what to do . . . and then get
l0 responses. So that’s what makes it . . . the experience, the network, and the political muscle.

The Renaissance network exposes Marlena to new contacts in a venue where the ongoing relations
facilitated by a common brand engenders trust and thus makes information sharing more likely (Uzzi 1996).
From their more experienced peers, new principals share diverse information about running a school, ranging
from “best” organizational practices, to when they can safely bend the rules, as well as what actions are ignored
by the Department of Education.
Finally, in the view of professional organizations, teaching is not a job or a vocation but a profession much
like law or medicine. The hallmark of a profession is an external set of standards against which performance is
judged. Strict adherence to bottom-line measures is frowned upon. Public schools have an obligation to serve all
students, these educators believe, even if doing so creates monumental challenges for the organization. Rachel,
the principal of Horizons High School, founded the school with the assistance of multiple professional
development organizations. Her commitment to advancing social justice goals led her to start Horizons, as she
reminded her teachers one day before the school first opened:

I want to remind you of why you’re doing this. The kids on your lists, six of 10 of them, statistically
speaking, had they gone to a large school, would not have graduated. Six out of 10! It’s criminal. It’s
disgusting, and it’s wrong. Part of being a small school is showing that poor kids in tough communities can
learn, and that when they do learn, they’ll stay in school. And when they stay in school, they deserve a good
school. (Field notes, 9/10/04)

While she has ties to a number of principals in different corners of the city, Rachel’s primary interactions
with principals occur in a dense network of educators linked together by their commitment to social justice and
progressive education. Like the Renaissance network, this network is socially closed, but the purposes for which
Rachel draws on the network are quite different. She frames the benefits of her network solely in terms of
exposing herself to others’ best practices:

I basically said to the [other progressive principals in my borough] I need someone to talk to about my job
and you do too. . . . I can’t do this if I don’t have somebody to talk to. How to delegate and share my work is
my largest issue that I talk to people about. How to lead teachers. What works, specifically what works for
instruction.

In contrast to the networks of the other two principals in the study, which they used primarily to manage the
external environment of the schools, Rachel drew on her network to provide critical support in her efforts to
manage the internal operations of her school. Her network, as I discuss in the next section, also supported her
commitment to improving outcomes for the most disadvantaged students, even if serving these students
ultimately depressed her school’s accountability indicators.

Constructing the Demands of the Accountability Environment

Despite operating within the same local, state, and federal frameworks, each of the three principals made
sense of the accountability environment differently. These principals faced uncertain accountability pressures
and consequences from the district and relied on their past experiences and their social networks for guidance.
Unlike the No Child Left Behind Act, which clearly outlines the sanctions applied to schools failing to make
adequate yearly progress, the carrots and sticks attached to local accountability targets for attendance rates,
course passage rates, and promotion rates remained open to interpretation during the study period. Principals
had a loose understanding that the district’s goals for new schools were an attendance rate of 90 percent and
course passage and promotion rates of 80 percent. However, their own worldviews, professional biographies,
and the colleagues with whom they discussed this issue influenced their social construction of these targets’
significance, the consequences for failing to meet them, and the appropriate stances toward these targets.
Principals’ diagnoses of the demands of the accountability environment involved three processes: gathering
information about the targets’ importance through networks, interpreting signals through the filter of principals’
past experiences and professional biographies, and framing accountability demands with a logic of agency or a
logic of constraint (Lareau 2003).
Principals in the Renaissance network used large portions of their regular meetings to discuss the
importance of meeting local accountability targets. In this socially closed context where all principals knew
each other well, principals voiced their fears openly about how these data, which did not take into account the
initial performance levels of students, would be used to evaluate their schools. As one Renaissance principal
gravely advised his colleagues,

You need to hit numbers and that is a reality. If you lose sight of that, you are going to be lost. If I go into
my superintendent and say to him, “I didn’t get my numbers in math, but let me tell you something, I moved
these kids [up],” he’ll tell me to move my stuff, and somebody else will move in [to my job] the next day.
 That’s the reality. (Field notes, 5/4/05)

Marlena interpreted her fellow principals’ advice as indications that she needed to adapt her management to
ensure that she produced good numbers, although the numbers themselves were decoupled in her mind from the
educational reality they were intended to represent. As she often explained, her first priority was “protecting her
stats.” Marlena constructed her school as facing additional pressure from Renaissance Schools, which is
extremely vigilant about monitoring student outcome data. Marlena explained her understanding of Renaissance
Schools’ demands in the following way:

Renaissance Schools is run by philanthropists and . . . they need our schools to be, and I don’t want this to
sound negative at all, but a sound bite. They need . . . me to be able to showcase in laymen terms, in a way
that a CEO guy who has never been around teenagers, is able to look at a school in a way that really entices
this man who has been meaning to help urban youth for 20 years to say, “What do you need?” They also
know politically what other people need. They need data. . . . Some folks who don’t understand schools,
really do understand results.

Marlena felt that she had significant agency in handling performance indicators. Performance statistics could
be “managed” and subsequently repackaged as sound bites, and she saw the production of good performance
data as necessary to receive the political benefits associated with Renaissance Schools. As she related,
“Renaissance Schools has that political clout. . . . They are a force to reckon with. With that comes a lot of
responsibility.” In sum, Marlena filtered signals from the Department of Education, her partner organization,
and her fellow principals and interpreted these signals to mean that her energy should be directed at producing
favorable accountability statistics. Marlena believed that the attendance rate was taken most seriously by the
district and thus focused much of her time and attention on monitoring these statistics.
In contrast to Marlena, Anna, the principal of Excel Academy, made sense of the district’s accountability
environment in isolation. Although she believed that the Department of Education would hold new schools
accountable for their results, she did not view these numbers as something that she should fixate on daily,
largely because they were out of her control. As she related,

It’s very important. That’s what drives everything. All reports that are generated are significant for you
personally as a principal and for the Region. . . . So I think that in this time and age, bottom line, that’s what
drives everything. On a day-to-day basis, though, you go in to do your job. You can’t have that on your
mind. . . . But when it all goes on paper, they are going to look at their numbers and they don’t care what I
spent the last five months doing. . . . They just go, “How many passed? How many were still in school?”

An experienced educator in the New York City system, Anna appreciated the importance of these targets but
felt that excessive attention to them would impede her ability to do her job as an instructional leader well on a
day-to-day basis. Nonetheless, she accepted that her job evaluation would depend on these numbers. While
Marlena expressed a sense of agency in reacting to the importance of these demands, Anna’s discourse was
marked by a sense of constraint. She would do what she could to meet these targets but did not believe that
these numbers were manipulable to the degree that Marlena did. Like Marlena, Anna believed attendance was
the most important metric on which the school would be evaluated.
Rachel, the principal of Horizons High School, recognized the importance of achieving outcome targets but
also maintained a parallel set of professional standards against which she evaluated her school’s work. Although
grounded in her own professional biography and worldview, these standards were buttressed by the like-minded
principals in her network. Rachel and these principals saw themselves as part of the “small schools movement,”
a movement they believed was committed to educational equity and progressive education. Rachel thus viewed
the accountability environment only through the broader lens of what she was trying to accomplish, which
involved multiple educational ends:

These stats are the only thing that’s important. . . . I don’t have any issue with the Regents pass rate being at
a certain level, or the attendance rate, and I don’t feel like I have much room to argue with the
 measures. . . . Now we have to find ways to get kids ready for it. But I don’t think it increases kids’ love of
learning or gets them to think about things holistically or prepares them well for college.

Rachel’s guiding logic was grounded in educator professionalism. According to Rachel, educators had a
responsibility to act within the confines of what she called “professional standards.” Thus, achieving the targets
was important not because of the threat of sanctions but because of what the targets actually measured in terms
of the education of Horizons students. Rachel philosophically agreed with being held to a set of targets and
believed that it was reasonable for all schools to meet these targets, regardless of matriculating students’ prior
achievements. The imperative to achieve accountability targets was always framed in terms of the school’s
moral and professional obligation to serve all kids well.
In sum, even though these principals operated in the same regulatory context, their own professional
biographies and worldviews and, for Marlena and Rachel, the relationships in which they were embedded,
interacted to shape their orientation toward the accountability system. As I discuss in the next section,
principals’ sensemaking about the accountability system influenced whether and how they used their networks,
and the information available through these networks, to actively manage the types of students attending their
schools.

Reacting to Perceived Opportunities in the Environment

In addition to making sense of the district’s accountability targets, principals in the study had to navigate a
complex school choice system. Through their relationships with other principals, Marlena and Anna recognized
the lack of real oversight by the Department of Education, determined the range of safe behavior, and adopted
multiple strategies to acquire a higher achieving ninth-grade class. Yet the principals’ social networks provided
them with access to different information about strategically managing the school choice system, and the
principals varied in the extent to which they activated these networks. While Marlena used the Renaissance
Schools network to learn of manifold tactics to game the system and the social closure of this group aided in the
sharing of information, Anna’s repertoire was more limited. Rachel, who was opposed to selecting higher
performing students, did not turn to her network to glean strategies for managing the choice system and acted in
accordance with the official rules for unscreened schools.
The term network activation overstates the intentionality involved in some of the information transfers
between principals about the school choice system. Certainly, many of these transfers occurred through
principals’ purposive actions to gather information. But networks could also be activated on behalf of principals
by formal organizations like the Renaissance franchise. In some cases, principals learned of strategies passively,
simply by inhabiting spaces in which other principals’ use of these strategies were visible.
This section details four strategies that Marlena and Anna learned of through their networks and
subsequently used. Both of their networks alerted them to the potential to signal their expectations to applicants
during recruitment and to use data from the Department of Education’s application system to manage their
intake. However, Marlena’s network made her aware of two additional strategies unknown to Anna: forming
alliances with junior high schools and discovering the ranking structure of applicants.
Signaling. Marlena and Anna attempted to control their schools’ populations by sending signals to parents
and students about what kinds of students were a “good fit” for the schools. In transmitting these messages, the
principals sought to weed out less-desirable students. Following the example of other schools in her network,
Marlena accomplished this feat by presenting a polished, expectation-oriented organizational identity to
potential students. Renaissance Schools hired professional graphic designers to create a logo for each
Renaissance school. At each of the recruitment fairs, the Renaissance table was furnished with logo T-shirts,
posters, and water bottles. Renaissance also used its connections to well-known organizational partners to draw
students, displaying the logos of its partners on the posters behind its table. Renaissance’s pitches to students
focused on its high expectations for students and its internship opportunities. Students were told that they had to
accept the expectations of Renaissance; parents and students who questioned Renaissance’s policies were told to
look elsewhere.
Although she rejected the marketing in which Renaissance engaged, Anna saw enrolling the “right” students
as the most important input to Excel Academy and used strategies shared by her colleagues to do so. Anna
perceived that how schools presented themselves during these fairs influenced the population they attracted. For
example, Anna was warned against creating a brochure in Spanish; a fellow principal told her that doing so
would attract the “wrong” population, and she followed this advice. Anna also stressed the uniform policy
during her discussions with students and parents, suggesting that if the student did not want to wear one her
school might not be “a good fit.” Anna emphasized to parents that the school would not have the resources to
serve special education students and encouraged them to apply to other schools. At these fairs, Anna would
place a star next to the names of the parents and students with whom she had particularly positive conversations
as a reminder to choose these students.
But Marlena and Anna did not adopt many of the strategies they observed other schools using at these
school information fairs. In fact, in the distribution of signaling strategies that I observed, both Marlena and
Anna were significantly less involved in signaling to deflect students than their peers were. My observations
revealed that many schools used applications, mandatory information sessions, and much stronger language to
deter unwanted applicants. For example, 12 unscreened schools shared a similar application requiring that
students provide the most recent report card and two letters of recommendation, one from an eighth-grade
teacher and one from a guidance counselor, assistant principal, or principal. The application also asked for the
student’s test scores, retention history, and involvement in advanced courses during the eighth grade. Finally,
the application included additional questions requiring a narrative response:

1. What are three things your current teachers would say about you?
2. What makes you want to attend a school that will demand your very best academically and will expect
you to work harder than you probably ever have before?
3. What are five future goals you have for yourself?
4. What are some activities to which you belong either in school or outside of school?
5. What is the last book you read outside of school? Would you recommend that book to a friend? Why or
why not?

Schools often asked parents and students to engage in additional activities, such as requiring attendance at
an information session with a parent or guardian, before they would consider the student.
During the fairs, many principals emphasized to potential applicants that they “could afford to be picky.” As
one principal that I observed said to a student and her mother,

“I need to know, right here and now, if you have commitment. I only have 108 spaces in the middle of the
South Bronx, so you’d better believe that I’m going to have over 2,000 applications. I can afford to be
picky, and I don’t want to waste this opportunity on someone who doesn’t have commitment. So the person
who does this,” and then he sucks his teeth, scowls, and cocks his head, “when I tell them that we have a
uniform. I need to know that if I call you and tell you that you need to come in on Saturday because we have
to get you ready for the SAT that’s happening in a month, that you aren’t going to have that problem coming
in. I need to hear that we have commitment from the parent too.” (Field notes, 2/6/05)

In short, other schools used much stronger signaling tactics than did Marlena and Anna, and neither Marlena
nor Anna chose to adopt many of the strategies they witnessed. The link between exposure and adoption, then,
is mediated by professional biographies, worldviews, and the sensemaking process itself. For Anna, excessive
marketing represented an unfortunate trend in which she did not want to take part, irrespective of its effects on
her student population. For Marlena, simply knowing that other schools were using applications was not
enough; exposure was a necessary but not sufficient condition for adopting new strategies that she perceived as
risky.
Unlike the other two principals, Rachel did not attempt to deflect applicants. At recruitment fairs, Rachel
explained the idea behind the school and talked to students about what kind of school they were looking for.
She told students that they should consider whether they wanted to learn in a large or small environment and
asked them questions about their interests. If a student was interested in a theme not offered at Horizons, she
would go through the catalog of school options and provide the student with potential options. Rachel was
equally welcoming to parents who asked if there were special education or bilingual services and parents who
did not, explaining that the school would have a separate special education class if it had enough students and
otherwise would have additional teachers as support within regular classrooms.

Using data from the Department of Education’s application system. The district’s application system provided
opportunities for unscreened schools to choose higher achieving students. Through this computer system, each
school received a list of students applying to the school, although the school did not know whether the student
ranked it, for example, 1st or 12th. This data file included each student’s English-language-learner and special
education classification, reading and math test scores, absences, grades, address, and junior high school. Schools
were told to identify students who made an “informed choice” by assigning them a 1, while students who did
not make an informed choice but the school was willing to accept were assigned a 2. If the school did not fill all
of its seats with students making an informed choice, additional seats would be filled by students in the second
category.
The Department of Education prohibits unscreened schools from using student performance data to select
students. Nonetheless, both Marlena and Anna learned through their relationships with other principals that such
regulations were loosely enforced. Indeed, these rules were difficult to enforce since the provision that students
must make an informed choice to attend these schools devolved significant decision-making authority to the
schools about the meaning of informed choice. Here we see principals’ sensemaking about the accountability
environment in action, as each principal made somewhat different decisions about what kinds of students would
create problems for the school’s accountability statistics. These decisions were informed both by their own prior
experiences and by the input of the principals in their networks. In addition to the English language learners and
full-time special education students whom new schools had a waiver to eliminate, Renaissance eliminated part-
time special education students and chose only those with 90 percent or higher attendance. Excel eliminated
full- and part-time special education students and chose students with attendance rates of 93 percent or higher.
As Anna explained, attendance was the key outcome monitored for new schools, and “it’s putting us behind the
eight-ball already to start out with kids with truant problems” (Field notes, 5/15/04). However, Excel did not use
the waiver to screen for English proficiency status so long as students had greater than 93 percent attendance;
her staff included multiple native Spanish speakers, and she believed they could effectively educate these
students. In choosing students for the second year, the school also did not rank the student unless she or he had
an 80 grade point average or above. Inviting me to sit with her as she ranked the students, the guidance
counselor walked me through her thinking on identifying students making an “informed choice.” For students
with missing data, she related, “No information. Sorry! Why would I take a kid that I know nothing about? I
feel bad for those kids because no one is going to take them” (Field notes, 1/19/05). From her perspective, the
goal of this screening process was to reduce uncertainty for the organization.
While Marlena and Anna saw getting the right students as the most important input for the school, Rachel
felt that it was important to be open to all students. As she explained,

These are the kids and the kids need a school. So, I mean, yeah, there are kids who are coming in who had
80 absences the year before, so we know they are going to continue to have attendance problems. But they
do deserve a high school to go to.

The Department of Education’s criterion was that students made an informed choice, which was loosely
defined as attending a recruitment fair or information session or contacting the school in some way. Thus, she
identified all students that she met at recruitment events as making an informed choice.
When I asked Rachel whether other schools were screening, she related, in a matter-of-fact manner, that
schools were not allowed to use this information and that schools that did so would be punished. But Rachel
also noted that if her peers were selecting students, they would not tell her because they know doing so conflicts
with her educational philosophy. Nonetheless, she understood their actions as a byproduct of an accountability
system focused on a small number of quantitative indicators. As she explained,
 The problem with using only quantitative indicators is that it forces people to do unethical things. They feel
like they don’t have any choice but to do that. It’s not that they’re bad people—they’re put in this position.
There’s tons of evidence from the business world that this is what happens when you use only one indicator.
(Field notes, 1/28/05)

Forming alliances with junior high schools. Through the Renaissance network, Marlena learned of two
additional strategies: forming alliances with junior high schools and discovering the ranking structure of
applicants. To recruit students for its first ninth-grade class, Renaissance forged a relationship with a selective
junior high school that channeled applicants to the school. This alliance allowed the school to reduce the
contingency associated with the application process. The junior high school guidance counselor provided the
names of those students ranking the school first, provided that the school would choose these students.
In choosing students for the school’s second ninth-grade class, Marlena decided that she did not want to rely
on student fairs to recruit students. Instead, she wanted to go to “feeder schools”—the schools from which
Renaissance High School received good students in its first year—and recruit students from there. Marlena
identified 10 schools from which Renaissance should recruit, the majority of which selected students based on
their test scores. Renaissance then contacted the feeder schools with a letter stating how well their former
students were doing at Renaissance and thanking them for their contribution to the students’ growth. The
balance of the letter encouraged the school to send other students to Renaissance. Renaissance also arranged
appointments at these schools to plug its school to the students.
Marlena and the administrative assistants that helped her with the choice process were candid about the
rationale behind controlling the student population. Ultimately, these choices were framed by how they made
sense of the accountability environment. As Joanne, an assistant to Marlena, explained upon my asking how
they would select their students,

You know, I’m torn about it. We want to be open to everyone, but we have to meet these targets. And all of
the kids that they’ve just given us have been total disasters. . . . We could probably get them there in a few
years, but not in one. (Field notes, 11/8/04)

Marlena’s strategy of focusing on strong feeder schools was not one she developed alone; rather, through
the network of Renaissance principals of which she was a part, she learned that one of the franchise’s most
successful schools used this technique.

Discovering the ranking structure of applicants. Marlena borrowed another technique from one of her fellow
principals whose staff called potential students to determine which students ranked the school first. This way,
the school would not waste spots on those students who were unlikely to be placed at the school anyway and
gave the school more control over the admissions process. This fellow principal, whose behavior Marlena
wished to emulate, shared at a principals’ meeting that because there was a lag period between the school
learning the names of the candidates that ranked it and having to choose the students, the following strategy
could be used:

Theoretically we could talk to some kids that ranked us second or third and tell [them], “Hey, you really
want us, you need to put us first.” Which means you can utilize the month of February to have information
sessions at your school, and invite certain kids to come in to get more info. If you can sell them on your
school, you can’t ask them what they ranked you. You can get into trouble for that. But the reality is you can
say, “Do you want to come here? Because if you don’t rank this [school] as 1 and you rank us as 2 through
12, you are playing Russian roulette. All bets are off.” (Field notes, 1/16/05)

In response to this advice, Marlena asked the guidance counselor to call the 25 parents who visited the
school during open houses or on individual tours to find out which families ranked her school first.
In summary, principals talked about the selection of their students as a matter of organizational survival and
turned to their peers for assistance in managing this process. As one of the Renaissance Schools principals aptly
summed up,
 [The admissions process] is your lifeline, and if you don’t deal with it, you’re dead. I put six people on that.
You’d be a fool not to put all of your resources into that because it will make or break your school. (Field
notes, 3/9/05)

In this discourse, selecting the school’s population is understood not as a choice but as necessary for
survival. In the next section, I demonstrate that, for some schools, the formal admissions process was only the
first step in managing the school’s population.

Managing Organizational Uncertainty

To develop a comprehensive understanding of whether and how schools shape their populations, we must
also examine how schools managed their populations during the school year and how principals’ relationships
with other principals influenced this process. “Over-the-counter” students, or OTCs as New York City educators
call them, are those students who arrive in the fall and either are new to the country or the school district or
were not placed in any high school. Principals believed these students were problematic both in terms of their
behavior and their academic performance. If schools’ registers fell below their capacity, the central placement
office could send them OTCs. Schools that were not selective at the front end of the process, like Horizons,
were particularly vulnerable. In selecting students indiscriminately, Horizons chose a population that was more
disadvantaged and thus more likely to be residentially mobile. As a result, while Renaissance High School and
Excel Academy confronted a small number of OTC placements, Horizons filled almost half of its class with
OTCs. Schools’ management of OTCs, as I will demonstrate, can be understood as an effort to reduce
organizational uncertainty in an environment where performance statistics were of the utmost importance. Yet
as with their management of the admissions process, their networks provided different access to information
about how to do so successfully.
Marlena proactively fended off OTC students. To keep the school from receiving OTCs, she kept students
already transferred to other schools on her register throughout the fall. This way, the placement office would not
“push in” with students that she did not want. Marlena became aware of this tactic through the Renaissance
Schools network, through which principals would share strategies for deflecting these students. Again, in this
instance Marlena benefited from a network that had been activated by the Renaissance organization. As this
exchange from a principals meeting revealed, strategies for avoiding OTCs proliferated:

Principal I: I’ve been thinking a lot about the numbers game, and I was worried about having classes of 30,
but it’s so much better to be overenrolled than underenrolled [so you don’t get OTCs].
Principal 2: We can review eighth-grade report cards coming in. I had a student that failed every subject and
was absent 97 days. It did bounce back and forth for a really long time, but that student was eventually
returned to his middle school. Next year, take a look at the eighth-grade report cards.
Principal 3: I did two kids like that. I went to the middle school and met with the principal. One hundred
thirteen days absent, 122 days absent, these guys are just tornados. They [the middle schools] get rid of their
headaches, and they become your headaches. Call them on the carpet on that. (Field notes, 9/28/05)

Renaissance’s relationships with local politicians proved helpful in the realm of placement. As I explain
from my field notes below, Marlena cut a deal with a city councilwoman that she would take a student that the
councilwoman wanted to place at the school if the councilwoman would help Marlena remove two students that
she did not want:

Marlena says to her secretary, “Joan, we need to focus on getting Maritza and Alissia in the door. Get the
councilwoman on the phone and tell her that if she doesn’t move soon, we won’t get Maritza in. And we
need to get those two on roll before we do anything else, and get those other two off.” Later, someone from
the high school placement office calls Marlena to discuss Maritza’s mother, “a parent who has a team of
council people and lawyers behind her. She has an army. She would be great for the school, but this woman
is going to get what she wants. It may be at my school, or at another school, but she’s going to get it. I don’t
 have room in my school. I’m packed. But I don’t mind—it’s just one kid. I have other kids that I don’t
want.” (Field notes, 11/15/04)

Marlena did receive a call from the director of the student placement office advising her not to admit
students in this way again, but she was not sanctioned. In short, although there are official rules specifying
appropriate procedures, they are loosely enforced. Savvy principals who are willing to test the environment are
able to easily circumvent them.
At Excel Academy, the school did fall below register and thus enrolled a handful of OTCs, but the volume
was not substantial enough to significantly affect the school. At Horizons High School, many admitted students
did not materialize at the beginning of the school year, leaving the school with a large number of open seats.
While at the beginning of the year Rachel did not manage her school’s population because of her own
professional standards, by the middle of the year she expressed a desire to limit the OTCs who continued to
trickle in throughout the school year, as she felt they destabilized the school. That these new students had not
been socialized in the school’s norms since the beginning of the year, she explained, made it difficult to
maintain a common culture. Note that Rachel’s rationale for wanting to exclude these students differs from that
of Marlena, who also considered the contribution of these students to the school’s performance statistics.
Although the network of professional educators in which Rachel was embedded provided many benefits, these
educators could not tell her how to deflect these students. Moreover, because of the social justice norms of the
network, the few principals who had developed strategies to successfully deflect OTCs did not share this
information.
According to Rachel and Horizons teachers, these OTC students were poorer, were lower scoring, and had a
disproportionate number of serious problems at home. Day-to-day life at Horizons verified their hypothesis, as
Horizons teachers and administrators spent large amounts of time attempting to identify and meet these
students’ social, emotional, and academic needs. The magnitude of the problems faced by Horizons students had
very real consequences for the school on a day-to-day basis, and the district and Horizons’ partner organization
became concerned with the school’s performance statistics. Nonetheless, absent knowledge of how to limit her
OTC population, Rachel was not successful in doing so.

Counseling Out “Problem Students”

Principals’ understandings about accountability also influenced how they framed and managed “problem
students.” Renaissance exercised control over its population by counseling out these students. Students were
understood as problematic either in terms of their behaviors or in terms of their poor attendance, which affected
the organization’s statistics. At Renaissance, in meetings with parents of problematic students, Marlena would
indicate that if another incident occurred, they would have to discuss whether the student could remain at the
school. Marlena technically lacked the authority to peremptorily dismiss students. Because parents were
unschooled in the rules of the system, they often acceded to her requests.
At Renaissance, students were often identified as potential transfers because of their contribution to the
statistical indicators crucial to the school. Marlena saw attendance as the primary indicator on which the
Department of Education was holding schools accountable. As Marlena said about a student with many
absences whom she wanted to counsel out, “He’s ruining our stats. At this point, he’s becoming a statistical
problem” (Field notes, 11/8/04). Because behavior and attendance were often related, Marlena would then use a
behavioral justification for having the student transferred out of the school, although she exaggerated the extent
of the problem in her communications with department officials. For example, she labeled a student who asked
a friend to back him up in a fight as “inciting gang violence” under the city’s discipline code.
Students with bad behavior were not the only students whose statistical contribution was considered. At
Renaissance, performance statistics also played a role in whether the school encouraged certain students not to
transfer. For example, two girls with strong attendance and grades both wanted to reapply to a selective school
from which they were rejected the previous year. They needed the guidance counselor’s assistance to complete
the application process, but Marlena instead requested a meeting with the two girls, the guidance counselor, and
herself. The purpose of the meeting was to convince both of these girls to remain in the school. During this
hour-long meeting, Marlena told the students that they would fall through the cracks at the new school and
might not even make it to college, and she stressed that they were in better hands at Renaissance. Both girls still
wanted to move forward with their applications, but Marlena requested that she meet with both of their parents
before she would allow their applications to move forward. Only one of the two girls ultimately filed an
application.
Although Excel Academy responded at the front end of the admissions process in a manner similar to
Renaissance, the school was less successful in transferring students once the school year began. Instead, Excel
relied on chance opportunities to remove students from the school. Administrators viewed students with low
attendance to be problematic, as they damaged the school’s statistics, but the school’s efforts to remove students
arose from behavioral issues, which were highly correlated with poor performance statistics. Teachers at Excel
understood that attending the school was a privilege, not a right. Accordingly, they often spoke with students
about transferring if they did not want to be part of the school culture. Jonathan, a teacher at Excel, related his
approach to this issue:

Jonathan explains that kids often threaten to transfer when they’re faced with a rule that they don’t like.
Earlier today, Vanessa was rowdy in class and started saying to Jonathan, “I hate this school. I want to
transfer.” He replied to her, “Great. If you don’t want to be here, I’ll help you fill out your transfer
application.” He tells me that this school is for kids who want to make their dreams come true and to prepare
to go to college. “If you don’t want to be here,” he says, “there are plenty of other average schools in the
city where you can just go and act like you want to, and I tell them that they can spend the rest of their lives
asking people if they want fries with that.” (Field notes, 3/14/05)

In other cases, having confrontational conversations with parents led them to transfer their own students.
Excel used this strategy with a small number of students, asking parents to come in to school each time there
was an infraction. Parents often tired of returning to the school for conferences and decided to pull their students
out of the school.
Anna, however, understood that some schools were more able to select and discharge their students than
other schools were, relating,

Everything with this is political. People are using their political capital to do everything—to get the right
location, to get the students that they want, to get more space. We could have tried to play politics, but we
don’t even know the rules of the game. (Field notes, 11/23/04)

Lacking relationships with those who could teach her “the rules of the game” and only willing to trust the
intentions of those principals with whom she had strong ties, Anna recognized that some schools were better
positioned than others to manage their student populations.
Because Rachel’s philosophy precluded her from pushing difficult students out of her school, the manner in
which problems were dealt with was quite different. One such example emerged in her reaction to one of the
most troubled, lowperforming, and oppositional ninth-grade students. For the first five months of school, Nikki
had a conflict with a teacher or with a student almost every day. In February, she stopped coming to school. The
principal continued to call her house and her emergency contacts but could not get in touch with her or any
member of her family. In theory, Rachel could have petitioned to have Nikki taken off of their roster at this
point, as Marlena often did. Certainly, her persistent absence was damaging the school’s statistics. Nonetheless,
Rachel continued to contact her family. A month and a half after she disappeared, Nikki called Rachel’s cell
phone, saying that she had not been able to come to school because she did not have a Metrocard and thus had
no transportation to school. Rachel said that she would bring a Metrocard to her apartment and brought the card
to her a few hours later. Nikki was in school the next day.
Rachel demonstrates that information garnered through networks is a necessary but not sufficient condition
for gaming the system. For the most part, Rachel would refuse to use this information if it were available. Yet in
the domain in which Rachel was willing to manage her intake, such as limiting OTCs who arrived late in the
school year, Rachel did not have the necessary information to accomplish this feat. Other like-minded principals
dominated her network, and these principals all shared her orientation; the few principals who did strategically
manage their intake concealed their gaming activities.

DISCUSSION

This study asked whether schools actively managed the school choice process and sought to identify social
processes that were associated with principals’ disparate approaches. In this section, I summarize this study’s
substantive findings, discuss its theoretical contributions to sensemaking and social network theories, and close
by considering the implications of these findings for education policy.
I found that the family should not be understood as the sole actor influencing the outcomes of school choice
policies. Two of the three schools in this study did not sit idly and wait for their students to be allocated to them.
Rather, they actively attempted to influence their student intakes. Schools used multiple methods to enroll a
higher achieving student population, including signaling to families during the recruitment process, using the
city’s data management system to their advantage, creating alliances with junior high schools, and learning the
ranking preferences of the students. Once the school year began, one school in the study counseled out students
and attempted to deflect OTC students. These strategies are strikingly similar to those used by headmasters in
the United Kingdom, as were the justifications used for these actions. In both contexts, principals felt that in the
current accountability environment, leaving their student intakes to chance meant jeopardizing the survival of
their schools.
But the three principals in the study varied significantly in how they managed the choice process, despite the
fact that they had similar incentives to respond strategically. A number of factors interacted to influence
principals’ approaches. First, the principals’ own biographies and worldviews influenced how they made sense
of the accountability environment and also affected how they engaged with principals in their social networks
on issues of choice and accountability. After all, access to social networks means little unless the networks are
activated, and understanding how principals made sense of the environment provided insight into why they used
these networks in different ways. While a network structure characterized by social closure seemed to aid
principals’ activation by promoting trust, activation should not be understood solely as an individual
phenomenon. Instead, formal organizations played an important role in creating and structuring opportunities
for regular interaction. Network activation, then, is a joint accomplishment, one to which both individuals and
organizations contribute.
Principals’ networks provided access to two major kinds of support. First, they provided instrumental
benefits, which amounted to access to information about how to approach the choice and accountability systems
for Marlena and Anna. In contrast, Rachel used her network to derive a different kind of instrumental benefit—
access to other principals’ best practices—while also reinforcing her commitment to educational equity and the
goals of the small-schools movement. For all three principals, networks served to reinforce their educational
views and beliefs. Because principals’ networks varied in the types of resources embedded in them, however,
these networks were differentially poised to provide instrumental and expressive support. Marlena’s network,
which included principals with access to vast stores of information she did not already have, helped her
understand how to strategically manage the system. Critically, these principals informed her of what actions
would be overlooked by the district. Anna’s strong ties with a small number of principals also provided
guidance on how to strategically manage the system, although she had access to a less comprehensive set of
strategies.
It is important to emphasize that information garnered through networks was a necessary but not sufficient
condition for gaming the system. If Rachel had access to the information available through Marlena’s network,
it is unlikely that she would have used this information in the same way. Although she might have chosen to
deflect OTCs who arrived late in the year if she knew how to navigate the system, she otherwise would not have
used this information. But for principals like Marlena and Anna who are risk averse and wary of getting caught,
networks provided critical information about safe methods for strategically managing their intake. This study
demonstrates that embeddedness in ongoing social relations potentially has both a bright and a dark side
(Granovetter 1985). The same conditions that produced the sharing of best practices to increase equity in
Rachel’s network also enabled the sharing of strategies of how to game the choice system in Marlena’s network
(Vaughan 1999).
From a theoretical standpoint, this study contributes to both sensemaking and social network theories. Too
often in sociology, social networks are invoked as a full explanation for social phenomena. But the existence of
networks tells us little about the functioning of networks and the mechanisms through which networks shape
social action. Bringing together sensemaking theory with social network theory demonstrates that how people
perceive and define the problems they face influences whether and how they use their networks for assistance.
By the same token, sensemaking theory has always recognized that sensemaking is a social process but has not
documented how the nature and structure of the relationships in which sensemakers are embedded affect this
process (however, see Coburn 2001). A network perspective highlights that sensemakers have access to
different information and support through their networks and that the structural features of these networks (such
as social closure) may affect the assistance that sensemakers are willing to request, as well as their peers’
willingness to contribute. By drawing attention to the role of networks and their structural features in the
sensemaking process, sensemaking theorists can bring structure back into their theory and, in doing so, address
the frequent critique that sensemaking gives actors too much agency. In sum, to understand how networks
contribute to individual and organizational behavior and opportunities, we must examine how individual and
social cognition shape actors’ use of their networks as well as the benefits that they derive from them, and the
synthesis of these two theories helps to advance that goal.
Beyond these theoretical contributions, this study has two key implications for education policy. First, my
findings suggest that when schools simultaneously face strong accountability pressures, schools may respond
strategically to weakly regulated choice systems. Increasing the oversight and auditing of the choice process—
in this case, by eliminating the informed choice criterion that effectively allowed unscreened schools to select
students or by closely monitoring student retention—would go a long way toward eliminating some of these
problems. The findings of this article indicate that the microstructures of school choice systems influence their
implementation and thus should be closely scrutinized. Most notably, providing unscreened schools access to
students’ performance data unwittingly assisted principals in screening students. However, schools’ less visible
attempts to select students will be more challenging to regulate, as these processes unfolded in small, subtle
ways—for example, by stressing the school uniform rule or marketing the school to particular middle schools—
but these actions aggregated to produce very different student populations in these schools. Ultimately, policy
makers face difficult trade-offs between the movement toward school autonomy that generally accompanies
market-based choice systems and the transparency and uniformity in the student allocation system.
Finally, if policy makers wish to minimize or eliminate the selection processes documented in this study,
they must restructure principals’ incentives by designing accountability systems that do not penalize schools
serving low-performing students. Because the No Child Left Behind Act does not take into account students’
starting points, schools of choice are rewarded for educating students who are higher performing to begin with.
Until these systems are fundamentally redesigned, the outcomes of school choice policies are likely to reflect
not only students’ choices but schools’ choices as well.

NOTE

1. I thank an anonymous reviewer for making this point.

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Achievement.” Journal of Public Economics 92:1394–415.
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Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 24: 133–44.
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Spillane, James P., John B. Diamond, Patricia Burch, Tim Hallett, Loyiso Jita, and Jennifer Zoltners. 2002.
“Managing in the Middle: School Leaders and the Enactment of Accountability Policy.” Educational Policy
16:731–02.
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Organizations: The Network Effect.” American Sociological Review 61:674–98.
Vaughan, Diane. 1999. “The Dark Side of Organizations: Mistake, Misconduct, and Disaster.” Annual Review
of Sociology 25:271–305.
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and Possibilities.” British Journal of Educational Studies 48:119–33.
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52
THE STATE OF UNDERGRADUATE LEARNING
Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum1

H ow much are students learning in college? That question begs another one: What should students be
learning in college? In Our Underachieving Colleges, former president of Harvard, Derek Bok,
proposed a range of goals, from learning to communicate to developing character and learning to live
in a diverse and global society. He also pointed out that while faculty rarely agree on the purposes of higher
education and tend to shy away from discussions of values and morals, they overwhelmingly agree that their
students should learn how to think critically. Indeed, a recent study by the Higher Education Research Institute
noted that virtually all faculty report that developing students’ ability to think critically is a very important or
essential goal of undergraduate education, as is promoting students’ ability to write effectively.
But even if faculty concur that students should develop critical thinking and writing skills (among many
others) during college, the question remains of how those skills should be assessed. In its critique of higher
education, the Spellings’ Commission claimed, based on findings from the National Assessment of Adult
Literacy, that “the quality of student learning at U.S. colleges and universities is inadequate and, in some cases,
declining.” The Commission also highlighted some promising attempts to assess collegiate learning, including
the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). Since then, the CLA, along with the Collegiate Assessment of
Academic Proficiency (CAAP) and the Measure of Academic Proficiency and Progress (MAPP), has been
adopted by the Voluntary System of Accountability (VSA) as a measure that institutions may use to report on
the learning of their students in the VSA’s College Portrait.
The CLA focuses on general skills such as critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written
communication. It consists of three components: a performance task and two analytical writing exercises (make
an argument and break an argument). The performance task is the CLA’s most innovative component. Students
have 90 minutes to respond to a writing prompt representing a “real-world” scenario, in which they are
presented with a task or a dilemma and need to use a range of background documents (from memos and
newspaper articles to reports, journal articles, and graphic representations) to solve it. The testing materials,
including the background documents, are accessed through a computer. (Go to the CLA website at
http://www.collegiatelearnin gassessment.org for examples of representative performance tasks and scoring
rubrics).
In Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, we use the performance-task component of
the CLA to gauge learning in higher education. While recognizing that critical thinking, analytical reasoning,
and writing are not the only skills to be developed in college and that the CLA is not the only way to measure
them, an analysis of students’ performance on the CLA can provide useful insights into college-level learning.
Our findings emerge from a study organized by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), as part of its
partnership with the Pathways to College Network. In 2005, we joined the effort by the Council for Aid to
Education (CAE) to assess the development of students’ critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing
skills using the CLA.
Over 2,300 students across 24 four-year institutions took the CLA in fall 2005, at the beginning of their
freshman year, and again in spring 2007, at the end of their sophomore year. The colleges and universities were
representative of four-year institutions across the country based on demographics (gender and race/ethnicity)
and academic preparation (as measured by the SAT/ACT scores of entering freshmen).
It is important to note that we focused on traditional-age students. Assessing the learning of non-traditional
students, such as those who enter college years after high school graduation or who typically attend community
colleges, presents a unique set of challenges which were beyond the scope of our study.
LIMITED LEARNING

So, how much are students learning? Based on our analysis of the CLA, the answer for many undergraduates is:
not much. In the first two years of college, students on average improve their critical thinking, analytical
reasoning, and writing skills by only 0.18 standard deviations. This translates into a 7 percentile point gain,
meaning that freshmen who entered higher education at the 50th percentile would reach a level equivalent to the
57th percentile of the incoming freshman class by the end of their sophomore year.
Since standard deviations and percentiles are not the most intuitive ways of describing learning, we also put
it this way: how many students show no statistically significant gains in learning over the first two years of
college? Answer: 45 percent. A high proportion of students are progressing through higher education today
without measurable gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing skills as assessed by the CLA.
While this overall portrayal of learning is not encouraging, there is much variation among students. By
asking students about their college experiences during their sophomore year, we were able to explore how
different factors are related to student learning, as measured by improvement in CLA scores over the first two
years of college.

INVESTING TIME IN LEARNING

We find a positive association between hours spent studying and gains on the CLA: Not surprisingly, the more
time students spend studying, the more they learn. As much educational research has argued, time on task
matters. But college students today do not spend much time on task.
Students in our sample reported studying on average only 12 hours a week during their sophomore year.
Even more alarming, over 40 percent reported preparing for their courses for less than ten hours per week, and
almost 40 percent dedicated less than five hours per week to studying alone. Students also went to classes and
labs for an average of 15 hours a week. Taken together, this means that students on average spent less than one
fifth (16 percent) of their seven-day week in academic pursuits.
This is not an anomaly of our sample or a “sophomore slump.” Findings from the National Survey of
Student Engagement show that almost half (44 percent) of students from freshmen to seniors spend 10 or fewer
hours per week studying. And for those who are tempted to suggest that students never spent much time
studying, recent work by labor economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks indicates that the precipitous drop
in study time occurred after the 1960s. In the first half of the 20th century, students spent twice as much time
studying as they do today.
If they are not studying, what are students doing with their time? Some of it is spent working, volunteering,
and participating in clubs and other organized college activities. However, on average, students in four-year
institutions spend most of their “free time” (i.e., time outside of class) socializing and recreating.
A recent study of University of California undergraduates by sociologist Steven Brint reported that while
students there spent thirteen hours a week studying, they also spent twelve hours socializing with friends, eleven
using computers for fun, six watching television, six exercising, five on hobbies, and three on other forms of
entertainment. Students were thus spending on average 43 hours per week outside of the classroom on these
activities—i.e., over three times more than the time they spent studying.
Crucially, not all study hours are the same. We find a positive relationship between learning and time spent
studying alone but a negative association between learning and time spent studying with peers. This finding
holds even after we control for a host of background characteristics, including academic preparation (students’
high school grades, SAT/ACT scores, and AP courses) and institutions attended. Regardless of model
specification, the more time students spend studying alone, the more they improve their CLA performance. In
contrast, the more time they spend studying with peers, the lower their gains on the CLA.
This finding appears to contradict a long research tradition. The work of Vincent Tinto, Alexander Astin,
and others has emphasized the importance of social engagement in higher education, particularly with respect to
persistence. Astin also proposed that engagement (assessed with a student-student interaction scale)—by which
he meant academic activities such as discussing course content with other students and working on group
projects for classes, as well as social activities such as participating in student clubs or organizations—is related
to learning (as indicated by GPA and students’ self-reports). Focusing more specifically on active and
collaborative learning, a recent review of the literature by George Kuh and his colleagues concluded that “active
and collaborative learning is an effective educational practice because students learn more when they are
intensely involved in their education and are asked to think about and apply what they are learning in different
settings.”
But a recent article by Robert Carini, George Kuh, and Stephen Klein showed no correlation between
NSSE’s benchmark for active and collaborative learning (in either bivariate or multivariate forms for the full
sample) and a RAND measure of critical thinking. Recent findings emerging from the Wabash National Study
of Liberal Arts Education similarly show no association between cooperative learning (measured by students’
working in study groups or with peers on projects in and outside of class) and the CAAP’s measure of critical
thinking.
This is not to suggest that no form of active and collaborative learning is beneficial. Extensive efforts
following Uri Treisman’s pioneering work on collaborative learning in mathematics have shown promise,
particularly for less-advantaged groups of students. Similarly, the Association of American Colleges and
Universities (AAC&U) has highlighted the benefits of peer learning and learning communities. Early results
from the Opening Doors Demonstration Project in particular are also promising regarding the benefits of
learning communities.
These discrepancies reflect the fact that the studies vary along a number of dimensions, including the
measures of active and collaborative learning, the specific contexts and structures within which that learning
occurs (e.g., whether it occurs inside or outside of the classroom), and the outcomes considered. For example,
while the work of Carini and his colleagues showed no relationship between NSSE’s measure of active and
collaborative learning and a test of critical thinking, active and collaborative learning was related to students’
GPA. The relationships also varied across groups: lowest-ability students seemed to benefit more from active
and collaborative learning with respect to both their GPA and critical thinking.
Active and collaborative learning occurring within structured programs, such as Treisman’s Emerging
Scholars model or learning communities, differs from the learning that occurs (or doesn’t) when students work
together without guidance. The diversity of possible practices and their results highlights the need to think
carefully about how to structure collaborative activities so that they can produce desirable educational
outcomes.

EXPECTATIONS AND COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Students may not be spending a lot of time studying, but that may at least in part reflect the finding that they are
not being asked to do much by their professors. Fifty percent of students in our sample reported that they had
not taken a single course the prior semester that required more than twenty pages of writing. One-third of
students did not take a course the prior semester that required on average even 40 pages of reading per week.
Combining these two indicators, we found that a quarter of the students in the sample did not take any
courses that included either of these two requirements, and only 43 percent of students experienced both of
these requirements the prior semester. If students are not being asked to meet even these modest reading and
writing requirements, how can we expect that they will improve their critical thinking, analytic capacities, and
writing skills in college?
When faculty members include reading and writing requirements in their courses, even at these modest
amounts (i.e., reading more than 40 pages a week and writing more than 20 pages over the course of a
semester), students improve their performance on the CLA. Having either reading or writing requirements is not
sufficient. Only when students take both courses with reading and courses with writing requirements do they
substantially improve their critical thinking, analytic reasoning, and writing skills.
For skeptical faculty members who think that increasing requirements is a waste of time because students
will not complete the assignments anyway, we find that students are responsive to faculty demands. When
students report that they have taken a course where they had to read more than 40 pages a week and a course
where they had to write more than 20 pages over the course of the semester, they also report spending two more
hours per week studying than students who do not have to meet such requirements. Two hours may not seem
like a lot, but it is substantial given the meager average investment of 12 hours a week.
Moreover, when faculty have high expectations, students learn more. Students who reported that faculty had
high expectations developed their critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and writing skills during the first two
years of college more than those who reported that their professors had low expectations. These findings align
with an established sociological model of educational attainment, which has highlighted how expectations of
significant others, including teachers, are important for spurring students’ educational success.

CONCLUSIONS

Changing higher education to focus on learning will require transforming students’ curricular experiences —
not only the time they spend sitting in their chairs during a given class period but everything associated with
coursework, from faculty expectations and approaches, to the kind of teaching we do, to course requirements
and feedback. Our findings indicate that spending time alone studying, having faculty who have high
expectations, and taking courses that require substantial reading and writing—what previous research has
termed “academic press” and “academic challenge”—are associated with students’ learning over the first two
years of college.
Our findings regarding academic rigor corroborate results from previous research. The distinctiveness of our
study is the ability to relate what students do in college to changes in an objective measure of student learning
over time, and to do so for a large number of students across two dozen four-year institutions. The simple
answer is that in order for students to learn more, we need to increase our demands and expectations of them.
Increasing academic rigor may appear a simple proposition, but these findings highlight how challenging it
is. Even after decades of conversations on the topic, only 43 percent of students in our sample took both a
course that required more than 40 pages of reading a week and one that required more than 20 pages of writing
over the course of the semester—which are arguably pretty modest demands. Moreover, fewer than 20 percent
of sophomores in our study reported studying at least 20 hours per week, and fewer than 10 percent spent that
amount of time studying alone, a level that several decades ago was considered merely an average or modest
amount of class preparation.
Faculty members can raise expectations and course requirements. Administrators can communicate a greater
sense of institutional purpose, one that assumes greater responsibility for shaping the developmental trajectories
of students and prioritizes that organizational goal in decision making. Graduate students can be better trained,
not only in pedagogy but also in understanding the importance and value of teaching.
These propositions, however, run afoul of the incentive structures that exist in contemporary higher
education. While faculty spend a sizable proportion of their time teaching and preparing for classes, reward
structures generally do not focus on these activities. Research is increasingly the key requirement for tenure in
four-year colleges and universities of whatever type.
The current system seems to produce what George Kuh has termed a “disengagement compact” in which
faculty do not require much of students and in return are not bothered by them. Perhaps even more
problematically, graduate students, the future professoriate, are trained primarily to do research. Although
recent decades have seen an increased interest in improving the preparation of graduate students for teaching, a
recent survey of doctoral students by Chris Golde and Timothy Dore reported that only half had been given an
opportunity to take a teaching assistant (TA) training course or to learn about teaching in their disciplines
through workshops and seminars.
Similarly, administrators are rewarded for leading “successful” institutions. This tends to imply increasing
the selectivity of the student body, since college-ranking systems place a disproportionate weight on the
characteristics of the entering student body and pay no attention to whether and how much students are learning.
Increasing one’s position in the prestige hierarchy thus becomes equivalent to restricting access, not improving
learning. Building the endowment (or in general securing financial resources, whether from private donors, state
governments, granting agencies, or other sources) is another priority for administrators.
Having an academically prepared student body and an abundance of resources are obviously desirable
characteristics. But they are not a reality for many institutions of higher education, and in chasing them, leaders
can be diverted from pursuing what should be regarded as the core mission of colleges and universities:
learning.
Actions of the federal government have exacerbated the situation. Since the 1970s, it has increasingly
shifted financial aid from institutions to students, solidifying their role as consumers. In recent years, this
market-based logic has been further extended by federal policies that rely on tax credits and student loans.
Moreover, the federal government has heavily invested in research, while teaching barely registers on the
radar. The funds allotted to the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary
Education (and that are not spent on pork-barrel projects) are minuscule in comparison to the federal budget for
research and development. Public investment in research is a worthy end; at the same time, federal and state
governments would do well to balance it with greater funding commitments tied to improving undergraduate
learning.
At the turn of the 21st century, higher education is abuzz with conversations and activities regarding
learning. Some institutions, such as those participating in the Voluntary System of Accountability or the
initiatives of the New Leadership Alliance for Student Learning and Accountability, are measuring learning and
considering different practices that may facilitate it (although, as the recent assessment institute at Indiana
University-Purdue University at Indianapolis made clear, changing practices is even more challenging and less
prevalent than measuring learning).
Meanwhile, higher education organizations such as the Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AAC&U), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and the Association of
Public and Land-Grant Universities (APLU) have issued statements and organized activities to encourage
institutions to assess and improve undergraduate learning. And organizations such as the National Institute for
Learning Outcomes Assessment have disseminated information regarding assessment efforts.
But collegiate student culture at four-year institutions continues to be described by scholars such as Mary
Grigsby and “Rebekah Nathan” (a pseudonym) as focused on social experiences, not academics. The National
Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) still reports that students dedicate a limited amount of time to studying
and infrequently take rigorous courses. Pressures for research are not abating, many graduate students are
earning degrees without having much (if any) training in pedagogy, federal money is not making a substantial
shift to focus on learning, and popular institutional rankings are still based largely on who enrolls rather than on
what students learn.
Perhaps the multitude of recent activities will gain momentum and lead to the slow transformation of higher
education. That will only happen, though, if individually and collectively, we recommit ourselves to the
fundamental mission of higher education: to educate the next generation.

NOTE

1. Josipa Roksa is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. Richard Arum is a
professor of sociology and education at New York University and program director of educational research
at the Social Science Research Council. They are co-authors of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on
College Campuses (University of Chicago Press). The authors thank the Lumina Foundation, the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the Teagle Foundation for their generous financial
support for this project and are grateful to the Council for Aid to Education for its collaboration and
assistance with data collection.

WEBSITES
 Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA). http://www.collegiatelearningassessment.org/

Social Science Research Council. Learning in higher education. Retrieved from http://highered.ssrc.org/

Voluntary System of Accountability. Retrieved from http://www.voluntarysystem.org/index.cfm?

page=homePage

Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts. Retrieved from
http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/

RESOURCES

Arum, R., & Roksa, J. (2011). Academically adrift: Limited learning on college campuses. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Astin, A. (1993). What matters in college? Four critical years revisited. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Babcock, P., & Marks, M. (forthcoming). The falling time cost of college: Evidence from half a century of time
use data. Review of Economics and Statistics.
Bloom, D., & Sommo, C. (2005). Building learning communities: Early results from the Opening Doors
Demonstration at Kingsborough Community College. New York, NY: Manpower Demonstration Research
Corporation.
Bok, D. (2006). Our underachieving colleges: A candid look at how much students learn and why they should
be learning more. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Stanford, CA: The Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
Brint, S., & Cantwell, A. M. (2010). Undergraduate time use and academic outcomes: Results from UCUES
2006. Teachers College Record, 112, 2441–2470.
Carini, R. M., Kuh, G. D., & Klein, S. P. (2006). Student engagement and student learning: Testing the
linkages. Research in Higher Education, 47, 1–32.
Golde, C. M., & Dore, T. M. (2001). At cross purposes: What the experiences of today’s graduate students
reveal about doctoral education. Philadelphia, PA: The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Grigsby, M. (2009). College life through the eyes of students. Albany, NY: State University of New York
Press.
Higher Education Research Institute (HERI). (2009). The American college teacher: National norms for 2007–
2008. Los Angeles, CA: HERI, University of California at Los Angeles.
Kuh, G. D. (2003). What we are learning about student engagement from NSSE? Change, 35(March/April),
24–32.
Kuh, G. D., Kinzie, J., Buckely, J. A., Bridges, B. K, & Hayek, J. C. (2006). What matters to student success: A
review of the literature. Washington, DC: National Postsecondary Education Cooperative.
National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). (2007). Experiences that matter: Enhancing student learning
and success. Bloomington, IN: Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University-Bloomington.
Nathan, R. (2006). My freshman year: What a professor learned by becoming a student. New York, NY:
Penguin Books.
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Department of Education.
 SOURCE: Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum. “The State of Undergraduate Learning,” in Change Magazine, Vol.
43, Issue 2: 35-38. Copyright © 2011 Routledge. Reprinted with permission.
53
EDUCATION RESEARCH THAT MATTERS
Influence, Scientific Rigor, and Policy Making
PAMELA BARNHOUSE WALTERS AND ANNETTE LAREAU

V ociferous criticism of education research as “shoddy,” “not scientific,” and “low quality” has
prompted a debate.1 Some have rushed to repair the field of education research2 and others have
rushed to defend it. For both sides, the primary focus has been whether critics are right when they
charge that education research is not of sufficiently high quality. Lost in this dispute is the opportunity to move
the field of education research forward by building on the strengths of the past. We suggest that taking up the
question of what the field has done well is a useful complement to the debate over what it has (or has not) done
poorly.
Thus in this chapter we look backward in order to look forward. We ask broad questions: What have been
the main advances in educational theory and research? Which studies have been widely honored and recognized
as being influential? To be clear, this line of questioning speaks explicitly to only one of the two main criticisms
that critics have leveled against the field in recent years—that it fails to meet commonly accepted standards for
the conduct of good science. The second main criticism—that the education research community has hindered
policy making by failing to provide the research findings policy makers need to make good decisions—is a
separate matter. We will turn to it after addressing the question of the studies that have done the most to move
the research field forward.
As we will explain in more detail below, it is possible to identify a set of studies that are widely viewed as
highly influential, and that have had a lasting impact. And it is also possible to identify a group of researchers
whose work is considered exemplary. There is wide consensus, for instance, that Albert Bandura’s (1977a,
1977b, 1986, 1997, 2001) work on self-efficacy and social cognition, Carol Gilligan’s (1982) findings
concerning gender differences in moral development, James Coleman’s (1964, 1966, 1990) studies of school
effects, Lee Shulman’s (1998, 1999, 2004) models of teacher education, Shirley Brice Heath’s (1983) research
on cultural differences in language and learning, John Dewey’s (1916, 1938, 1959) theories of active learning,
and Benjamin Bloom’s (1956, 1976) taxonomy of cognitive skills are responsible for significant advances in the
field of education research.3 However, as we will also show, these highly influential studies (and others like
them) generally have had a limited direct impact on policy development, particularly at the federal level.
Nonetheless, we find that what Sheri Ranis terms the low-utility charge is overstated: Some studies held in high
regard by the research community have shaped policy development, albeit in fairly diffuse ways that have gone
relatively unrecognized in the current attempts to “rehabilitate” education research. Some of Coleman’s
research, for example, changed the very terms of public discussion about what is wrong with schools and how
best to fix them.
Our analysis reveals that the studies held in high regard by education policy experts include few random-
assignment experiments. The lauded studies are empirically rigorous but, in general, are more broadly focused
and theoretically informed than those that conform to contemporary standards of “scientific rigor.” Studies that
use the random-assignment model currently being promoted for education research in order to identify effective
treatments and interventions typically address narrowly-framed questions of “what works” in education. The
two random-assignment experiments most widely considered to have significantly shaped educational policy,
the Tennessee class-size experiment (Word et al. 1990) and the evaluation of the Perry Preschool Project
(Weikart, Bond, and McNeil 1978), were large-scale organizational transformations, not narrowly focused
treatments; and the research on their effects shed light on complex educational questions and processes.
From the perspective of many critics of the field of education research, the whole point of the efforts to
rehabilitate it is to put education policy and practice on a firm scientific footing—that is, to make the vast
system of schooling in the United States into an “evidence-based field.” Thus we conclude the chapter by
considering whether this is a reasonable assumption: We review what research on policy development has to say
about the typical conditions under which research findings influence policy makers’ decisions. We find the
model of policy development that implicitly informs recent attempts to turn education into an evidence-based
field is based on an assumption that decisions are made primarily on politically neutral grounds; that policy
makers reach rational decisions about policy and practice after carefully weighing available technical
information about what works and does not work in education. This rational-technical, and thus neutral, model
is, we show, simplistic. Most notably, it fails to account for the fundamentally political nature of policy
development.

HIGHLY INFLUENTIAL RESEARCH

One problem with identifying the most influential studies and scholars within the field of education research is
that the field is large and diverse. The research that has been most influential in, say, educational psychology
will likely not be the same as the research that has been most influential in, say, educational leadership and
administration. But the most significant research, we contend, has an influence that transcends subfields. Thus
we focus on those studies and lines of inquiry that have helped set the research agenda in multiple subfields, and
whose questions and findings it is reasonable to expect are familiar to most scholars across the field as a whole.4
To minimize the biases likely to characterize personal assessments, we base our discussion on two different
and complementary institutionalized systems for assessing educational researchers’ impact on the discipline.
First, we consulted citation indices—counts of numbers of times an individual study or an individual scholar is
listed in bibliographies in articles published in a set of journals—to identify the most frequently cited studies
and scholars. Citation analysis has limitations, including potential bias and incompleteness of data sources, an
over-reliance on journals rather than books, and the fact that a citation is an imperfect measure of influence
(because, for example, the counts do not distinguish between a study cited positively versus negatively).
Nonetheless, it is the most common method in academia for gauging the influence of individual studies and
lines of research, and it is a useful way to take stock of a field as a whole.
Second, we consulted the list of recipients of prizes for outstanding scholarship awarded by the leading
scholarly association in the field, the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Since 1964 the
AERA has given an annual award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education. This award is
given to those who exemplify “educational research at its best.” After considering the works that have been
highly cited by researchers in the field and identified as exemplars by the field’s leading scholarly association,
we reflect on the elements they share, before turning to the separate question of what research has to date had
the greatest influence on educational policy and practice.

Citation Analysis
In 2003 the National Academy of Education–Social Science Research Council (NAE-SSRC) committee on
education research5 contracted with Thomson Scientific (formerly the Institute for Scientific Information) to
analyze citation patterns in education journals. As Barbara Schneider notes (in Chapter 3), Thomson Scientific’s
citations database is the one most commonly used to identify influential journals, studies, and researchers in a
wide range of scholarly fields. We drew on this database to identify the major journals in the field of education
(a set of 129), and examined the period 1981 to 2002. During that period those 129 journals contained 125,658
distinct source articles. Those articles, in turn, contained citations to over one million works (including many
that had been published prior to 1981). The questions we explore here are which of these one million-plus items
were cited most frequently, and which scholars were most frequently cited in the source articles.
 Table 53.1 lists the titles and authors of the 14 individual pieces of scholarship—books, reports, and journal
articles—that were most frequently cited. The first thing we note about these pieces is that few are examples of
“research” as that term is generally understood within scientific fields—that is, analyses and interpretations of
original empirical findings from a particular study or a series of related studies. Two (A Nation at Risk and
Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics) are committee or commission reports. Each
draws in part on results of prior research as a basis for formulating recommendations for new directions in
educational policy, but neither is itself a research study. Five of the most frequently cited pieces are
philosophical or theoretical essays by scholars whose main focus was not education or schooling per se but
whose ideas are often applied to questions about educational theory, research, or practice: L. S. Vygotsky on
language and cognition, Donald Schön on professional learning, Carol Gilligan on moral development, Albert
Bandura on self-efficacy, and Thomas Kuhn on the philosophy of science. Two (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for
Children and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) are handbooks related to tests,
measurement, and assessment, reflecting the importance of diagnosis and testing for the educational enterprise.
Two (The Discovery of Grounded Theory and Naturalistic Inquiry) are methodological guides that,
significantly, focus on the conduct of qualitative research, perhaps reflecting the qualitative turn the field of
education research took in the 1970s and 1980s.

Table 53.1 Publications Most Frequently Cited in Source Articles in 129 Education
Journals, 1981–2002
 Only three of the 14 pieces are studies based primarily on original empirical research: Shirley Brice Heath’s
(1983) ethnographic study of language use in two southern communities; an article reporting a pair of studies by
Annemarie Palincsar and A. L. Brown on instruction of school-age children (Palincsar and Brown 1984); and
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’ (1976) historical study of the development of public education in the U.S.
Apart from the commission/committee reports discussed above, these are the only frequently cited pieces in
which the primary focus is education or schooling.
We turn next to individual authors. Table 53.2 lists the authors who were most frequently cited in the same
source articles examined above. When we exclude the two organizations on the list (the American
Psychological Association and the U.S. Department of Education), we are left with 11 highly-cited individuals.
The strong tie between the field of education research and the discipline of psychology is evident here: all but
one (French anthropologist/sociologist Pierre Bourdieu) of the 11 individuals is or was a psychologist or
educational psychologist. Further, research on and theoretical expositions about cognitive development,
intelligence, and teaching and learning are the main preoccupations of the vast majority of scholars in this
influential group. This might seem to be in line with current calls to make education research more useful for
improving learning and instruction, but these authors’ primary focus is not assessment of the efficacy of new
instructional approaches or interventions. Rather, they are chiefly interested in better understanding how
children learn. This type of work may indeed have important implications for educational policy and practice,
but not in the tightly-linked way envisioned by those who call for more rigorous research on “what works” in
schools and classrooms.

Table 53.2 Authors Most Cited in Source Articles in 129 Education Journals, 1981–2002

One thing these citation analyses highlight, then, is the high degree to which scholars of education draw on
the theoretical and methodological contributions of other fields. Clearly, the dominance of psychology in the
field of education research was not shaken by the “paradigm wars” that racked the field in the 1970s and 1980s.
Our analyses also show that the bodies of work and the individual publications to which scholars of education
most commonly turn are broad works of fairly general theoretical significance. In that respect, our findings are
in line with the point frequently made by recent critics of the field of education research: Education scholars
favor work of abstract theoretical significance over work of immediate practical significance. Some see this as a
key reason why education research has little influence on policy. Others, however, argue that we cannot develop
policies and practices that “work” without developing a theoretical understanding of the processes that produce
the desired outcomes.

AERA Awards
Since 1964 the American Educational Research Association has made an annual award to a scholar who has
made distinguished contributions to research in education. This award is for a scholar’s body of work, not an
individual piece of scholarship, and is intended to honor the field’s exemplary researchers. Table 53.3 provides
a list of the recipients, along with their major areas of research.
One thing that sets the individuals listed in Table 53.3 apart from the most frequently cited authors listed in
Table 53.2 is that the bulk of the awardees’ contributions were based on empirical research rather than the
development of new theories. Many, but not most, of those who received the distinguished research contribution
award focused on the technical core of education and schooling, as did virtually all of the most-cited authors:
They posed questions about intellectual development, language development or use, learning, and instruction.
Another large group of award recipients made their major contributions in the methodological subfields of
statistics, measurement, testing, or research methods. Also well represented are those who focused on the
organizational, rather than the technical/instructional, side of schooling, particularly on questions about school
reform and the organization of teaching. Compared to the authors of the most highly cited articles and the most
highly cited authors themselves, this group of scholars is more strongly rooted in the field of education. Only 15
of the 44 award recipients did not hold at least a partial appointment in a department, college, or school of
education. Those with disciplinary affiliations other than professional schools of education were drawn
overwhelmingly from psychology.
With respect to the current debates about the appropriateness of randomized controlled trials for education
research, it is noteworthy that the scientists who have done the most to promote experimental research in
education are past recipients of the AERA distinguished contributions award. In 1980 and 1981, awards were
bestowed on Julian C. Stanley and Donald T. Campbell, respectively, the joint authors of the highly influential
volume Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research (Campbell and Stanley 1963). No scholar
who is primarily known for conducting random-assignment evaluation studies in education or other kinds of
assessments of the efficacy of particular educational programs or interventions, however, has been honored with
the AERA award. As we saw with the most frequently cited studies and most frequently cited authors, those
who have received the AERA award for distinguished research contributions have asked quite broad questions
about complex educational processes and outcomes.
In sum, one striking characteristic of the most important and influential studies is that, despite their
considerable diversity, they have in common the defining nature of their research question. Generally, these
studies’ authors have not asked narrow technical questions disconnected from current intellectual debates.
Instead, they have answered the “so what?” question, rooting their specific research concern in broader
intellectual concerns. At times, they have framed a “big picture” question that zeroed in on a core issue. For
example, Coleman’s research explored questions about the relative significance of families and schools in
shaping educational achievement. Bandura’s work offered an important corrective to existing psychological
research by showing social-psychological dimensions previously underexamined. These are topics widely
recognized as important. In other instances, researchers began with a relatively small issue, which they then
used as a springboard to address a question of interest to a broader group. But regardless of their chosen
approach, all of the AERA awardees made a connection between their own study and broader theoretical
debates. They offered a critique of existing literature or they challenged educational researchers to think
differently about an issue. They modified, challenged, or advanced the literature. They focused their question so
that it was clear what they were studying and what they were not studying rather than blurring foreground with
background. They did not try to study everything. Instead, they all sought to rethink one or more of the field’s
existing conceptual ideas. We believe that the way in which researchers frame a question and influence the
course of future research is an important policy impact, and one that today often goes unaddressed. We return to
this point at the end of the chapter.

Table 53.3 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Recipients of

Distinguished Contributions to Research in Education Award
NOTE: Those whose names are listed in italics held an academic appointment in a unit other than a department or college of
education; the discipline is listed.
SOURCE: Award listing on the American Educational Research Association website. Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://www
.aera.net/AboutAERA/Default.asdpx?menu_id=20&id=226. Additional information gathered from multiple sources and listings of
published works.

RESEARCH THAT HAS INFLUENCED POLICY

Many have complained about the limited value of education research for educational policy and practice. In this
section we look at what education research has done right—that is, at studies that have been identified as having
had a positive influence on educational policy and practice. To do so, we take advantage of two prior
stocktaking enterprises. The first is a recent survey of policy experts. The second is a series of essays by key
leaders in the field of education research, commissioned by the Spencer Foundation in 2006. As with our
citations analyses, we focus on exemplars, their shared traits, and the degree to which they conform to the
models of “scientific rigor” presently being promoted for education research.
In 2006 the Editorial Projects in Education (EPE) Research Center,6 with funding from the Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation, conducted a survey of experts in education research and education policy in order to
identify the research studies that had had the greatest influence on educational policy during the prior decade
(see Swanson and Barlage 2006). The investigators identified persons considered experts in education policy
and then selected 888 individuals from this group to participate in the first phase of the survey, which asked
respondents to nominate those “studies, organizations, people, and information sources that have most strongly
influenced educational policy during the past decade” (Swanson and Barlage 2006:3). The response rate was
somewhat low (12%), but in line with the typical response rate for surveys of experts. In a follow-up survey of
834 individuals, respondents were asked to rate the leading nominees that emerged in each category from the
open-ended survey. The response rate for the rating survey was higher (21%). The expert ratings were
supplemented by an analysis of citations in leading news sources (based on Lexis-Nexis) and in scholarly
journals (based on EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier data system).
Here, we focus on the 13 studies that emerged from the EPE Research Center’s survey as having most
influenced education policy in the last decade. (See Table 53.4.) From our perspective, the most striking thing
about this list is that it, like our list of the studies most cited in articles in major education journals (see Table
53.1), contains so few research studies. The two most influential studies—the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)—are
not scholarly publications by any definition. They are datasets that provide baseline information on educational
achievement. The achievement benchmarks revealed by these regularly collected data are widely reported in the
news media and have provided the basis for a huge number of separate publications. Their most significant
contribution to education policy is, in our view, that the baseline indicators of educational achievement they
establish have been taken to indicate that American students’ achievement levels are lagging. The anxiety
generated by this interpretation of the benchmark data has contributed significantly to the turn in American
education policy discussions toward a focus on poor performance of American education and worrisome
achievement gaps between and among student groups. In other words, the greatest significance of the NAEP
and TIMSS publications lies in naming an educational problem that begs for remediation, rather than in
identifying effective remedies.
A number of the publications listed in Table 53.4 are not single studies but instead are lines of research by a
single investigator or organization on a single topic; some are syntheses of research in a given area, published
by multiple investigators or by investigating organizations. Teaching Children to Read, the National Reading
Panel’s synthesis of prior experimental and quasi-experimental research on reading, is a prominent example.
Perceptions among policy makers that existing experimental research on reading had settled long-contentious
issues regarding the best instructional practices for reading were an especially important catalyst for policy
makers’ calls to the education research community to more strongly embrace random-assignment experiments.
The only classic individual empirical study on the list of work viewed as significantly influencing education
policy over the past decade is the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) experiment. STAR
was a large-scale random-assignment experiment on the effect on student achievement of smaller class sizes.
The experts in education policy whose opinions are reflected in this assessment cited the experiment itself rather
than any one of the multiple scholarly publications that analyzed or reported its findings. The results of the
STAR study have clearly influenced educational policy making. For example, the findings spurred various
initiatives to reduce class size (not all of which have been successful, a problem that raises issues about scaling
up the results of relatively small-scale random-assignment studies). The study’s results also have clearly
influenced the debates about the need for educational researchers to more broadly adopt random-assignment
experimental methods. That is, STAR is widely touted as an exemplar of “rigorous” research that informs
education policy and practice.
The under-representation of experimental studies on the list is telling. Besides the STAR experiment, only
two other of the 13 highly influential publications have a strong experimental component. All of the studies
reviewed in the National Reading Panel report are experimental or quasi-experimental; and some of the studies
done by Peterson on vouchers and school choice use random assignment. Both have figured prominently in the
often-contentious debates about whether educational researchers should more fully embrace random-assignment
experimental methods. But their significance lies mostly in being examples of random-assignment experiments
to which advocates of such methods can point, rather than being strong guides to new forms of educational
policy or practice. Indeed, educational practitioners remain strongly divided over the best methods for teaching
reading, and although the voucher studies have undoubtedly influenced education policy, they have done so in a
way that departs from the model of scientific influence on which efforts to transform education into an
evidence-based field are founded. First, the soundness of the results most widely reported from Peterson’s
voucher research remains hotly debated among scholars.7 Second, there is little evidence that the findings of
these studies have swayed policy makers’ opinions about whether vouchers (or other forms of school choice)
should be more widely implemented. The major impact of research studies on policy making appears to be to
legitimate existing policy preferences. As Susan H. Fuhrman (2001) said, “Research is often used to justify
political positions already taken rather than to set a new direction for policy.” It does not appear to have
frequently led policy makers to abandon old policy preferences and embrace radically different ones, although it
often serves to entrench or ratify preexisting preferences. And it does not necessarily have to have passed
standard scientific muster to do so. We return to this point later in a discussion of the fundamentally political
nature of policy making.

Table 53.4 Studies That Most Influenced Education Policy

SOURCE: Compiled from Swanson and Barlage (2006, Exhibit 4 [p. 14] and Exhibit 3 [p. 12]).
NOTES: 1. National Center for Education Statistics. Various years. National Assessment of Educational Progress: The Nation’s
Report Card. U.S. Department of Education. A large-scale American data set collected at regular intervals.
2. National Center for Education Statistics. Various years. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). U.S.
Department of Education, organized by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. A large-scale
cross-national data set collected at regular intervals.
3. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 2000. Report of the National Reading Panel. Teaching Children to
Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction
(NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. An identification of findings of prior research on
reading that utilized experimental or quasi-experimental designs.
4. Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) experiment. A large-scale random-assignment experiment, the results of
which have been widely analyzed by education scholars. See Swanson and Barlage (2006:39) for selected list of specific studies.
5. Snow, Catherine E., M. Susan Burns, and Peg Griffin (eds.). 1998. Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press. A report on factors related to normal reading development, based on an extensive review
of prior research.

6. William L. Sanders on value-added methodology and the Tennessee Value-Added Accountability System. A series of articles that
introduces a new method for measuring student academic progress. See Swanson and Barlage (2006:41) for selected list of specific
studies.
7. Education Trust on teacher quality. A series of reports on the issue of impact of good teachers on student achievement, based on
evidence from prior research. See Swanson and Barlage (2006:42) for selected list of specific studies.
8. National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. 1996. What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future. New York:
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. This report argues that teacher quality is the key to improving American
education, and lays out a plan for providing every American student with high-quality teachers.
9. Bransford, John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking (eds.). 1999. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press. A report that synthesizes research evidence from a variety of scholarly fields on learning
processes.
10. Richard F. Elmore on school reform. A series of studies evaluating the process of school reform. See Swanson and Barlage
(2006:45) for selected list of specific studies.
11. Jay P. Greene on high-school graduation rates. A series of studies that use a new method for calculating high-school graduation
rates and indicate that graduation rates are generally lower than the most commonly-reported statistical methods show. See Swanson
and Barlage (2006:46) for selected list of specific studies.
12. American Diploma Project. Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts. 2004. Retrieved May 14, 2008
(http://www.achieve.org/files/ADPreport_7.pdf). A forward-looking report that proposes new high-school graduation requirements.
13. Paul E. Peterson on school choice and vouchers. A series of studies, some of which are random-assignment experiments, on
academic gains on the part of students in school choice and voucher programs. See Swanson and Barlage (2006:48) for selected list of
specific studies.

The Spencer Foundation Essays

In 2006 the Spencer Foundation, a non-profit education research foundation, asked a group of prominent
education scholars to take stock of the impact of education research on policy and practice. Each scholar was
asked to provide “five examples of research . . . that have had an impact on practice and/or policy; a brief
description of the impact (your interpretation) and why you think it had influence; [and] views on how you
believe the influence evolved—further research by others in the academy, discussion and debate in the policy
circles, use by practitioners.”8 Fifteen individuals provided essays in response.9 Briefly, these essays provide a
sense of the churning nature of debates about the relationship between education research and policy and
practice. The essays by Amy Gutmann, Richard Rothstein, and Patricia Wasley highlight research showing that
early intervention in children’s lives is highly consequential for later outcomes, a point buttressed by the
findings from an exemplar of random-assignment experimental research, the evaluation of the Perry Preschool
Project.10 Those findings have supported funding decisions in preschool and various early-intervention
programs. Other scholars (Mike Rose, in particular, but see also the essays by Anne Haas Dyson, James Paul
Gee, and Patricia Wasley) point to research on reading which had an impact on instruction, particularly the
lively policy debate about whole language compared to phonetics. Susan Moore Johnson (along with Rothstein
and others) discusses the Tennessee class-size “STAR” study, but this is a rare example of randomized
experiments among the works cited by the essayists. Johnson notes that the STAR study affirmed established
findings from other research: “For decades, teachers have reported in surveys and interview studies that smaller
classes (15–20 students) enable them to meet the varied needs of their students and to provide more attention
and response to their work. However, it wasn’t until the STAR study in the late 1980s that the importance of
class size was confirmed in a large-scale randomized experiment.” Johnson goes on to note that although
“subsequent reductions in K–3 classes in California in 1996 were correlated with improved student
performance,” the policy’s unintended consequences—it created a teacher shortage and prompted the hiring of
many unlicensed teachers—were significant.11
Maureen Hallinan views the research on ability grouping and tracking as having “focused attention on ways
in which institutional and organization inequities exist in schools and how they can be eliminated.” She suggests
some educators responded by eliminating these practices, while others “implemented reforms to reduce or
eliminate the inequitable aspects . . . of grouping by ability.” Charles Payne concludes that the research on the
negative consequences of retention “took most of the steam out of what seemed a few years earlier like a
national movement around the ending of social promotion. They were methodologically sophisticated studies,
on an issue that ordinary people know about and understand, [and] were well covered by the press and were
timely.” Thus a “national movement” to insist that children repeat a grade until they had achieved the requisite
skills dissolved in light of evidence that showed long-term hardships for youth, particularly in the form of high
levels of high-school dropout rates. Promotion to a next grade, regardless of the level of academic performance,
is currently the norm. In short, the essays not only make clear that a number of important education studies have
had an impact, but also show how and why they have made a difference to policy and practice.12
In sum, institutionalized rankings reveal that there are studies of “iconic” status that are widely seen as
influential. As we have noted, educational experts have also documented studies that they believe have had an
impact on public policy. Yet it is striking that, with a few notable exceptions, there is relatively little overlap
between works cited as influential education research studies and studies that have had an impact on educational
policy. We believe that this lack of overlap is linked to the differing characteristics of these two categories of
studies. Table 53.5 summarizes the differences. Particularly striking is the difference in framing and theoretical
significance of studies in each realm.13 As we have noted, widely influential education research studies often
ask theoretically important questions. They also often change the terms of the intellectual debate by asking
questions that have not previously been posed. By contrast, the studies seen as having influenced policy tend to
have a much narrower framework. Many assess the impact of an educational program.14 It is very unlikely that
the studies that have been seen as influencing policy would be hailed as award-winning studies that have
advanced the profession. This distinction between the characteristics of studies that influence education research
and those that influence policy generally has been ignored, however. The failure to recognize this distinction is
unfortunate since it leads to unrealistic expectations for the role of research.

Table 53.5 What Research Has Made a Difference?

 There are, on the other hand, conditions under which research does influence policy development in
education. But here the primary factor is not the quality of the research per se; rather, it is the consistency of the
research findings with prevailing political concerns, with prevailing understandings of what is wrong with
schools and schooling, and with already-formed policy preferences of powerful social groups. As Weiss
(2007:285) succinctly puts it, “when research supports the position favored by other pressures in the system, it
is more likely to make headway.” Similarly, in his Spencer essay, Chester Finn argues that scholarly research
shapes educational policy making when “advocates, policy-makers, and journalists . . . [are] able to use these
studies to devise, justify, or sustain a reform agenda. Thus the research is less a source of change and more an
‘arsenal’ for those already fighting the policy wars.” Further, a set of what Michael Mintrom (1997) calls
“policy entrepreneurs” needs to be in place to distill the research findings and take them to the key political
decisionmakers, or to those David Cohen (2007) calls “influential agents,” who are themselves not typically in a
position to make independent judgments about the scientific quality or validity of these data. In other words,
absent a political pathway from the research community to the policy community, good research will not inform
policy making.
An examination of the studies or lines of research that have influenced educational policy development
shows something else of great importance: that timing is everything. Take, for example, the famous report by
Coleman and associates, Equality of Educational Opportunity, released in 1966 and widely considered to have
been pivotal in the shift away from the equality reforms of the 1960s toward an emphasis on the small effects
schools had on student achievement (Coleman et al. 1966). Cohen (2007) asserts that the Coleman report’s
effect on policy did not follow directly or solely from the quality of the research that went into it (indeed, the
scientific legitimacy of the findings was hotly debated within the scholarly community):

Rather, [the report] helped to focus attention and change ideas in tandem with other developments.
Coleman’s survey was federally sponsored at a time of unprecedented interest in civil rights, and it was
published during the nation’s most intense engagement with that issue. That interest and engagement helped
to provoke the survey and create an audience for Coleman’s ideas; had the study been privately sponsored
and done a decade earlier, it likely would have done little to focus attention or to prompt change in
understanding. Similarly, Americans’ attention to academic outcomes grew during decades in which federal
and state policymakers, reformers, and business leaders kept up steady criticism of schools’ weakness and
devised highly visible policies that aimed to improve academic outcomes.

In other words, the political “stars” were in perfect alignment for the Coleman report to be heard and to
reshape the public’s and policy makers’ understanding of the key problem with schools and schooling that
educational policy needed to address.
Similarly, A Nation at Risk (National Commission 1983) synthesized existing research and descriptive
survey data to highlight the lagging academic achievement of American students in comparison to students in
other countries. The report’s huge effect on educational policy took the form of focusing the public’s and policy
makers’ attention on the problem of declining achievement among U.S. students, which in turn led to a number
of significant policy reforms. These included “increased course requirements for high school graduation, a
longer school day and year, and performance-based compensation for teachers” (McDonnell 1988:94). A Nation
at Risk was released in the midst of widespread demands that the government take steps to restore American
economic competitiveness. Because of this coincidence of timing, the research findings the report publicized
helped shape “the terms of the policy debate and the range of acceptable options” (p. 94). Thus it appears that
research is most likely to come into play in policy development when major changes in policy direction are
already on the political agenda.
Consider as yet a third example Jay Greene’s highly influential work on high-school graduation rates. Finn
points out in his Spencer essay that Greene “benefited from good timing. He hit upon this idea just as the high
school reform movement was getting off the ground (thanks largely to Gates Foundation largess). His numbers
fit into the reformers’ story line.”
There are also important cases that show that “bad” timing can blunt the influence of “good” studies. Take
Shirley Brice Heath’s Way with Words, a study of race and cultural differences in language development
published in 1983 and considered an exemplar of good scholarship by the scholarly community. If her study had
been published in the 1960s, at the height of the War on Poverty and national concern over racial inequality in
education, it might have shaped the terms of the policy discussion in ways similar to the influence exerted by
Coleman, Greene, and A Nation at Risk. Instead, it was published just as the attention of the public and of policy
makers had shifted to an overwhelming concern with problems of school quality and low achievement. In that
climate, Heath’s careful examination of the importance of cultural differences garnered little attention or interest
outside of academia.

CONCLUSION

Critics who assail education research as generally “shoddy” have often called for change that would render
education research rigorous, evidence based, and relevant to policy questions. Indeed, in many debates, critics
presume that the goals of being high quality and policy relevant are one and the same.
In this chapter we take issue with this presumption. We have assessed studies and scholars that have been
widely viewed as important and influential. The citation counts, award lists, and expert surveys do reveal a
group of highly acclaimed educational researchers. There are, as well, many studies that are considered to be
high quality, rigorous, and important. There also have been numerous studies that have had an influence on
policy, including studies on class size, reading instruction, social promotion, and ability grouping. These studies
are more narrowly framed. For the most part, the highly acclaimed studies and the studies with a large impact
on policy do not overlap. Generally, they are very different works.
Moreover, political context, rather than the quality of research per se, appears to be crucial in determining if
research has an impact. Thousands of empirical studies are completed annually. There are many political factors
that bring a particular study to the attention of policy makers and lead that study to have an impact. As we have
seen, the tremendous influence of the Coleman report was connected to a fortuitous alignment of political and
social factors. Many high-quality studies are ignored; they arrive either too early or too late to be in sync with
the political and policy agenda. As we have suggested, the alignment of research results with interest groups’
goals is a key factor. The political priorities become paramount. Thus there are ample examples of politicians
ignoring high-quality research which conflicts with other priorities (e.g., research denouncing one-shot
professional development seminars). In addition, in some cases research whose validity was hotly contested
within the scientific community (e.g., Peterson’s work on vouchers, discussed earlier) has been used widely by
policy makers and politicians to lend scientific support to their policy preferences.
We conclude with a reminder that because educational policy takes shape at many different levels (e.g.,
within federal, state, and local agencies, across a school district, in interactions among educators in a specific
school, etc.), there are multiple opportunities for research, including broadly focused and theoretically rich
studies, to have an effect—by influencing legislators in drafting legislation, for example, or shaping what
principals tell teachers in meetings, or helping to set priorities in the reallocation of federal funding. Most
importantly, theoretically rich studies can change the very terms of the debate. For example, the Coleman report
changed how researchers conceptualized the relative impact of schools and families on educational outcomes. It
also moved the terms of the debate from educational opportunities to educational outcomes.16 This was a critical
shift. It reverberated through many different levels of the system and, in crucial ways, became taken for granted.
This was an important policy impact.
Acclaimed researchers often tie a specific case of education research to a broader, more far-reaching,
theoretical issue. They tell a story of significance. The best studies, as we have seen, ask important questions.
By being attuned to the important role of conceptualization in theory and in policy, as well as being aware of the
different characteristics of educational studies, researchers and policy makers have the potential to avoid
common mistakes. More importantly, they are also better positioned to bring about genuine advancement in the
field of education research in the future.
NOTES

1. For details regarding the criticisms directed toward education research, see Chapters 1, 2, and 7.
2. Foremost among the means advocated for repair is greater use of the randomized controlled trial. See
Chapter 6 in [source] volume for a longer discussion of the use of randomized controlled trial methods.
3. This list is not exhaustive. Indeed, reasonable people will disagree over which studies and scholars have
most significantly advanced the field. Those cited here, however, emerge consistently as important
exemplars, as we show in more detail below. The citations we provide for each of the scholars whose work
we mention here are intended to provide examples of their highly influential research for those readers who
may be unfamiliar with their work. The citations are illustrative rather than exhaustive. Given the body of
work by these scholars, the selection of a short list to cite here is somewhat arbitrary.
4. As described more fully by Walters, the most renowned scientists within any scientific field set the
standard within that community for what constitutes exemplary research (see, e.g., Collins 1989; Friedkin
1998).
5. See the acknowledgments to original source for further details about this joint committee and its work.
6. The Research Center is a division of Editorial Projects in Education, Inc., publisher of Education Week.
For more information about the surveys the Center conducts and the data it collects and analyzes, see the
Center’s web page (www2.edweek.org/info/about/research.html).
7. The best source for the findings as reported by Peterson is Howell and Peterson (2002). For an influential
example of the critique of the scientific validity of the reported finding that vouchers improved the
performance of African-American students, see Krueger and Zhu (2004). For examples of the media
coverage of the debate over the scientific validity of the key finding reported by Peterson and Howell, see
Winerip (2003) and Dillon (2003). What we find noteworthy is that while Peterson’s originally-reported
finding of a positive effect of vouchers on black students received enormous attention from the media and
conservative politicians and policy makers, the critique of the scientific soundness of this finding offered
by a number of well-respected scholars did not blunt most policy makers’ enthusiasm for vouchers.
8. See http://www.spencer.org/publications/Grant_ Analysis/GAMain.htm.
9. They are: Harris M. Cooper, Professor and Director of Education, Duke University; Anne Haas Dyson,
Professor, Teacher Education, Michigan State University; Chester E. Finn, Jr., President, Thomas B.
Fordham Foundation; James Paul Gee, Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading, University of Wisconsin-
Madison; Patricia Albjerg Graham, Charles Warren Professor of the History of Education Emerita,
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University; Amy Gutmann, President, University of Pennsylvania;
Maureen Hallinan, William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology,
University of Notre Dame; Susan Moore Johnson, Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and
Learning, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University; James G. March, Professor Emeritus,
Stanford University; Charles M. Payne, Sally Dalton Robinson Professor of History, African American
Studies and Sociology, Duke University; Andrew Porter, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational
Leadership and Policy, Vanderbilt University; Mike Rose, Professor, Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles; Richard Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute,
Vanessa Siddle Walker, Winship Distinguished Research Professor, Division of Educational Studies,
Emory University; Patricia Wasley, Dean, College of Education, University of Washington. The text of
each essay is available on the Spencer Foundation website
(http://www.spencer.org/publications/Grant_Analysis/GAMain.htm).
10. Indeed, the Perry Preschool Project is one of the few pieces of education research considered to have been
based on a well-designed randomized controlled trial and thus one of the few that has yielded valid
information to guide policy makers’ decisions, according to the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, an
 organization devoted to identifying for policy makers scientific studies whose findings are reliable. In light
of the considerable attention garnered by the Tennessee class-size experiments, it is notable that that study
does not appear on the Coalition’s list. See Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy (n.d.).
11. Johnson also writes, “There were so many other potential explanations for the change, the seeming success
of this policy did little to advance the cause of smaller classes.”
12. A number of the essayists, however, take a different stance, arguing that few studies have had an impact
on policy. Harris Cooper points to the decentralized character of policy. He writes, “Often, change in
education is a ground up exercises [sic], occurring in classrooms, schools, and school districts, rather than
at the state or national level. [But] when most people seek evidence about the impact of research they want
to see the big effects, not the small, hard-to-document ones that happen in individual classrooms, schools
and communities.” Charles Payne notes that “the non-authoritative character of much educational research
is an obvious problem. On many questions (Which comprehensive school reform is best? Is progressive
pedagogy superior to didactic ones?), research does not allow a confident answer, notwithstanding plenty
of research on these issues.” Patricia Albjerg Graham stresses the misinterpretation of research and
“erroneous conclusion[s]” that were drawn from research. It is important to note, however, that
shortcomings in the research itself is not the only problem highlighted; the essayists also identified
problems with the policy- making process.
13. It is possible that there has not been sufficient time for the new wave of “evidence-based” and “scientific”
studies of education to make their mark. Theoretically, in a decade or two the most influential studies
might include more works that use randomized trials. But we think this is an unlikely development. By
definition, randomized control trials seek to “hold constant” all of the variables in the equation with the
exception of one variable. This means that not only the current wave but also future randomized control
trials studies are likely to be very narrowly conceived rather than being the kind of “big picture” studies
with a clear theoretical framework that have long tended to be the most widely acclaimed. Thus if past
patterns hold, these kinds of studies are unlikely to appear on a future list of acclaimed work in education
research.
14. At times the policy-focused studies have been able to demonstrate an outcome but have limited insight
into the mechanisms that brought it about. Payne addresses this in his essay for the Spencer Foundation;
“Policymakers, including leaders of foundations, bear some culpability for what I think has proven to be an
ill-advised emphasis on outcome studies. The question they really want answered is, ‘Did it Work?’
Questions about context and process get pushed to the side. Thus, even when we know that such-and-such
a program has ‘worked’ somewhere, we may not understand the operations well enough to help it work
somewhere else.”
15. It is important to note that education is not the only policy domain in which policy development is shaped
primarily by political factors. Recent analyses of the development of American healthcare policy, for
example, similarly highlight the crucial ways in which policy has been shaped by institutional
arrangements, the actions of competing interest groups (especially the insurance industry and the medical
profession), and broad political values (see, e.g., Hacker 2002; Quadagno 2005).
16. The Coleman report, in many respects, is grandfather to the current emphasis on measuring growth in
academic achievement through standardized tests.

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 PART V DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. In the first three readings of this section, the authors apply the lens of organizational theory to schools. In
the readings by James E. Rosenbaum, Amy Binder, and John Meyer, how do educational institutions
shape the lives of individuals and society? Alternately, how do Stephen Brint and Jerome Karabel suggest
external social and political forces shape educational institutions?
2. Gonzales vividly illustrates how navigating educational institutions during the transition to adulthood is
complicated for undocumented youth due to the immigration legal environment. How do you think
gender, class, racialization, and sexuality intersect to influence this process?
3. Based on Stevens’s portrayal of decision making in a college admissions office, what do you think would
be the most fair or equitable way to admit a new cohort?
4. Studies of school choice often focus on the actions of parents in the process of choosing schools. Jennifer
Jennings highlights the importance of principals in managing their enrollments in school choice
environments. How are social networks important to the process that Jennings describes? Relate her
observations to the discussion of social capital among parents in Part 1 (Reading 7). What policies could
be developed to ensure more equitable implementation of school choice systems?
5. Roksa and Arum argue that student learning in college suffers from low expectations and limited demand
on the part of professors. In conjunction with other readings on college student experiences (Hamilton and
Armstrong, Reading 41; Grigsby, Reading 42), this work suggests that many colleges and universities
have drifted away from a focus on educating students. What are the consequences of this shift for
individual students and for the broader economy? What strategies do you think would be effective for
improving student learning on college campuses?

SOURCE: Pamela Barnhouse Walters, Annette Lareau, and Sheri H. Ranis “Education Research that Matters:
Influence, Scientific Rigor and Policy Making,” in Education Research on Trial: Policy Reform and the Call for
Scientific Rigor. Copyright © 2009 Taylor & Francis. Reprinted with permission.