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 CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

1 David B. Grusky and Jasmine Hill

Poverty and Inequality in the 21st Century 1

PA RT I : TH E C LA SSIC T HE ORY
Overview 11
2 Karl Marx
Classes in Capitalism and Pre-Capitalism 12
3 Max Weber
Class, Status, Party 19
4 W.E.B. Du Bois
The Conservation of Races 27
5 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Women and Economics 30

PA RT I I : THE GRE AT TA KE OFF IN I NC OME

AN D WEALT H INE QUA LIT Y
Overview 37
6 Emmanuel Saez
Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States 39
7 Thomas Piketty
Capital in the 21st Century 42
8 Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz
The Race Between Education and Technology 48
9 Robert Frank
Why Is Income Inequality Growing? 54
10 Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Winner-Take-All-Politics 58
11 Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld
Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality 68
12 Richard Freeman
(Some) Inequality Is Good for You 73

vii
viii | Contents

PART I II: T HE ONE P E RC E NT

Overview 79
13 C. Wright Mills
The Power Elite 80
14 Alvin W. Gouldner
The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class 88
15 David Brooks
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There 95
16 Shamus Khan
Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite 99

PART I V: P OV E RT Y A ND T HE UNDE RC L A S S
Overview 105

The Everyday Life of the Poor

17 Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed 107
18 Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Joanna Miranda Reed
Low-Income Urban Fathers and the “Package Deal” of Family Life 114

The Extent of Poverty in the U.S.

19 Sheldon Danziger and Christopher Wimer
The War on Poverty 121
20 H. Luke Shaefer and Kathryn Edin
The Rise of Extreme Poverty in the United States 126

Why Is There So Much Poverty?

21 Jack Shonkoff
Poverty and Child Development 131
22 William Julius Wilson
Being Poor, Black, and American 133
23 Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton
American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass 142
24 Ann Owens and Robert J. Sampson
Community of Well-Being and the Great Recession 150
25 Patrick Sharkey and Felix Elwert
The Legacy of Multigenerational Disadvantage 154
26 Matthew Desmond
Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty 161
27 Bruce Western and Becky Pettit
Incarceration and Social Inequality 164
 Contents | ix

PA RT V: M O BILIT Y A ND T HE A ME RI C A N DRE A M
Overview 175

The Race for Education

28 Sean F. Reardon
The Widening Academic Achievement Gap Between the Rich and the Poor 177
29 Richard Breen, Ruud Luijkx, Walter Müller, and Reinhard Pollak
Nonpersistent Inequality in Educational Attainment 190
30 Michael Hout
Rationing College Opportunity 200
31 Stephen L. Morgan
A New Social Psychological Model of Educational Attainment 201
32 Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum
Academically Adrift 207

Economic and Occupation Mobility

33 Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez
Economic Mobility 209
34 Florencia Torche
Does College Still Have Equalizing Effects? 214
35 Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong
Paying for the Party 222
36 Jay MacLeod
Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood 226
37 Jan O. Jonsson, David B. Grusky, Matthew Di Carlo, and
Reinhard Pollak
It’s a Decent Bet That Our Children Will Be Professors Too 236

Who Do You Know?

38 Mark S. Granovetter
The Strength of Weak Ties 249
39 Roberto M. Fernandez and Isabel Fernandez-Mateo
Networks, Race, and Hiring 252

Work and Mobility

40 Jacob Hacker
The Great Risk Shift 260
41 Jake Rosenfeld
Little Labor: How Union Decline is Changing the American Landscape 262
42 Ann Huff Stevens
Labor Market Shocks: Are There Lessons for Anti-Poverty Policy? 268
x | Contents

PA RT VI: RA C E , E T HNIC IT Y, A ND I NE QUA L I T Y

Overview 275

Race as a Social Construct

43 Michael Omi and Howard Winant
Racial Formation in the United States 276
44 Aliya Saperstein and Andrew M. Penner
The Dynamics of Racial Fluidity and Inequality 282

Immigration
45 Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou
The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants 289
46 Tomás R. Jiménez
Why Replenishment Strengthens Racial and Ethnic Boundaries 298

Discrimination, Prejudice, and Stereotyping

47 Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan
Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field
Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination 304
48 Devah Pager
Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration 308
49 Claude Steele
Stereotype Threat and African-American Student Achievement 314

Race and Ethnicity in the 21st Century and Beyond

50 William Julius Wilson
The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American
Institutions 319
51 Reanne Frank, Ilana Redstone Akresh, and Bo Lu
How Do Latino Immigrants Fit into the Racial Order? 329
52 Mary Pattillo
Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class 335
53 Jennifer Lee
Tiger Kids and the Success Frame 338

PART VII: GE NDE R, S E XUA L I T Y, A ND I NE QUA L I T Y

Overview 345

Gender and Sexuality as a Social Construct

54 Judith Lorber
The Social Construction of Gender 347
55 C.J. Pascoe and Tristan Bridges
Fag Discourse in a Post-Homophobic Era 352
 Contents | xi

The Division of Labor

56 Arlie Russell Hochschild
The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work 359
57 Christine Percheski
Opting Out? 362
58 Asaf Levanon and David B. Grusky
Why Is There Still So Much Gender Segregation? 370

How Much Discrimination Is There?

59 Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse
Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind” Auditions on
Female Musicians 380
60 Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, and In Paik
Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? 390

How Gender Intersects

61 Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins
Why Race, Class, and Gender Matter 400
62 András Tilcsik
Do Openly Gay Men Experience Employment Discrimination? 401

A Stalling Out?
63 Paula England
The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled 407
64 Cecilia Ridgeway
The Persistence of Gender Inequality 416

PA RT VI I I : HOW INE QUA LIT Y S P I L L S OV E R

Overview 425
65 Sean F. Reardon and Kendra Bischoff
Income Inequality and Income Segregation 426
66 Michael Hout and Daniel Laurison
The Realignment of U.S. Presidential Voting 435
67 Annette Lareau
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life 443
68 Karen Lutfey and Jeremy Freese
The Fundamentals of Fundamental Causality 451

PA RT I X : M OV ING T OWA RD E QUA L I T Y ?

Overview 459
69 James J. Heckman
Skill Formation and the Economics of Investing in Disadvantaged Children 460
xii | Contents

70 Carol S. Dweck
Why Late Investments Can Work 464
71 Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel
Flexicurity 465
72 Harry J. Holzer
Reducing Poverty the Democratic Way 468
73 Lucian A. Bebchuk and Jesse M. Fried
Tackling the Managerial Power Problem 471
74 Michelle Jackson
We Need to Have a Second Conversation 475

About the Editors 481

Index 483
 P RE FACE AND ACKNOW LEDGM ENTS

For the first time in many decades, there is ongoing public discussion of income inequality and the
legitimacy of taxing the rich; indeed the 2016 presidential election was partly a mandate on just
such issues. The Occupy Wall Street movement, which was the first explicitly anti-inequality move-
ment in recent US history, initially receded in the aftermath of the Great Recession but was then
very explicitly invoked and reinvigorated by Bernie Sanders during his campaign. We also have a
new term, the “one percent,” to denote the elite within the United States, a term with a valence that
is not as straightforwardly worshipful as the elite have perhaps come to expect. The study of poverty
and inequality is no longer a sleepy little enterprise confined to the halls of academia.
This growing public interest in matters of poverty and inequality make it especially important
to bring to the public the best available scholarly research in a readable and distilled form. The
simple purpose of this book is to do just that.
This is of course no small order. For all its virtues, academic writing is not known for its brev-
ity and succinctness, and our task was thus to excerpt in ways that eliminated all inessential
material while still preserving the integrity of the contributions. We have excised many clarifying
and qualifying footnotes, almost all decorative theorizing and literature reviews, and much anal-
ysis that was not crucial in advancing the argument. Understandably, some of our readers and
contributors would no doubt oppose all excerpting, yet the high cost of implementing such a
radical stance would be a substantial reduction in the number of readings that could be repro-
duced. We apologize to our authors for being unable to present the selections in their entirety
and encourage our readers to consult the original and full versions of our excerpted pieces. In
some cases, we have alternatively asked the authors themselves to provide trimmed versions of
articles that were originally published elsewhere, an approach that can yield more cohesive pieces
when the excerpting would otherwise have to be very heavy.
The editing rules adopted here were in most cases conventional. For example, ellipses were
used to indicate when content from the original was excised, and brackets were used to mark off
a passage that was inserted for the purpose of clarifying meaning. It should be noted that in some
cases ellipses were not used when the excised text was a footnote or when relatively minor phrases
were omitted and ellipses proved too distracting. When necessary, tables and footnotes were re-
numbered, and all articles that were cited in excised passages were likewise omitted from the list
of references at the end of each chapter. The spelling, grammar, and stylistic conventions of the
original contributions were otherwise preserved.
This book is, as is typically the case for anthologies, the output of a complicated division of
labor with many contributors. In selecting the new contributions, we relied on our own trusted
advisors, especially Michelle Jackson. Over the course of a long production process, we also drew
extensively on the excellent Westview staff, including Marco Pavia and Krista Anderson. Most
importantly, we thank our Westview Press senior editor, James Sherman, for his spot-on advice
at every stage of the process.
David B. Grusky and Jasmine Hill
Stanford, California 2017

xiii
INEQUALITY
IN THE
21ST CENTURY
 1. Poverty and Inequality in the 21st Century
D AV ID B . G R U SK Y AND JASM INE HILL
It was not so long ago that many social scientists
subscribed to a version of “modernization theory” in
which racial inequalities, gender inequalities, and
class-based discrimination were seen as premodern
residues that were destined to wither away. Although
there were always prominent dissenters, this benign
understanding of history was the driving force be-
hind much of the research on inequality until the
late 1970s.
But that was then. Over the last twenty years, this
benign understanding has been largely discredited,
and a wide variety of alternative accounts are now
contending to become the new lens through which
we understand the forces making for change in
inequality.
How did such a dramatic reversal in our under-
standing of the logic of history come about? It will
be useful to organize our introduction to current re-
search on inequality around a description of these
forces that led to an unravelling of modernization
theory and the rise of new worries about extreme in-
come inequality, growing joblessness, persistent rac-
ism, and the stalling-out of historic declines in
gender inequality.
The Modernization Narrative
It should not be too surprising that the moderniza-
tion narrative of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s was a
largely optimistic narrative about the inevitability of
progress. The narrative of the day was likely to be
benign, after all, because many of the key trends
in inequality were in fact quite reassuring. This is
1
especially so for trends in income inequality up to
the mid-1970s. As is well known, there was a precip-
itous decline in income inequality in the 1930s, and
thereafter the United States experienced approxi-
mately thirty years of stability in income inequality
(Saez, Ch. 6; Piketty, Ch. 7).
As important as this decline in income inequality
was, the modernization narrative was more con-
cerned with trends in inequalities of opportunity. In
the United States and other liberal welfare regimes,
even extreme inequalities in income were seen as
quite palatable insofar as the opportunities for getting
ahead were widely available to children from all fam-
ilies, even relatively poor ones. The “race to get
ahead” was the commonly used metaphor of this
time: If that race was fairly run, then the resulting
inequalities in outcomes were viewed as altogether
legitimate.
The featured claim of the modernization narrative
was precisely that this race was becoming ever fairer.
This decline in “inequalities of opportunity” was
partly attributed to the expansion of secondary and
post-secondary schooling and the associated diffusion
of loan and aid programs, such as the G.I. Bill, that
reduced financial constraints on access to schooling.
Although some scholars indeed emphasized this
pathway, others showed that college was a “great
equalizer” in the sense that all college graduates,
those from rich and poor families alike, did equally
well in the labor market (see Torche, Ch. 34). When
a child from a poor family goes to college, the result-
ing degree becomes a “shield” of sorts, in effect pro-
tecting that child from class-based discrimination.
2 | POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
The more general point is that competitive mar-
ket economies should work to reduce all forms of
discrimination based on gender, race, or social class.
In his “taste for discrimination” model, Gary Becker
(1957) argued that such discrimination will gradu-
ally disappear because it entails paying a premium to
the preferred class of labor, a premium that non-dis-
criminating employers do not have to bear (thus giv-
ing them a competitive advantage). The latter
economic account works in tandem with a sociolog-
ical one that emphasizes the diffusion of modern
personnel practices in the form of universalistic hir-
ing practices (e.g., open hiring, credentialism) and
bureaucratized pay scales and promotion procedures.
The essence of such bureaucratic personnel practices
is a formal commitment to universalism (i.e., treat-
ing all workers equally) and to meritocratic hiring
and promotion (i.e., hiring and promoting on the
basis of credentials).
The final component of the modernization narra-
tive has one’s social class becoming a less important
and encompassing identity. The “working class”
within the early-industrial economy was an espe-
cially prominent identity because political parties
and unions carried out the ideological work needed
to convert the working class into a culturally coher-
ent community. The key claim, however, is that this
identity became less central as (a) political parties
abandoned class-specific platforms in favor of “issue
politics,” and (b) unions became narrowly instru-
mental by focusing on tangible benefits rather than
some transformative and politicized class narrative.
In the absence of organizations that explicitly trained
members into a class-based worldview, social classes
increasingly become purely statistical categories de-
ployed by social scientists, not the deeply institu-
tionalized communities of the past (see Weeden and
Grusky 2005).
New Narratives
We have laid out the modernization narrative in
some detail because it still plays the important role
of a discredited approach lurking in the background.
It also remains prominent partly because an alterna-
tive with all the reach of the old narrative has not yet
emerged. In this sense, the contemporary literature
remains unsettled and inchoate, with many accounts
vying for the role of successor to modernization the-
ory. We review some of these competing accounts
below.
Rent and Income Inequality
The most prominent alternative to modernization
theory, an account featuring “rent” and other forms
of competition-restricting regulation, has as its back-
drop the spectacular takeoff in income inequality in
the United States. As Saez (Ch. 6) discusses, income
inequality increased dramatically in the US in the
late 1970s, with it now reaching levels as high as
those prevailing in the 1920s.
There are, of course, many prominent accounts
that understand this development as simply the ex-
pected playing-out of competitive market forces
when confronted with the “exogenous shock” of
computers and other technological innovations that
raised the demand for skilled labor (see Goldin and
Katz, Ch. 8). The theory of skill-biased technical
change, for example, implies that the demand for
skilled workers is rapidly increasing because of these
innovations, that the existing supply of skilled work-
ers cannot meet this rising demand, and that the re-
sulting disequilibrium bids up the price for skilled
labor and leads to an increase in inequality. Although
the higher productivity of skilled workers will lock
in some of this inequality, we should eventually see a
reversal or slowdown in the trend because the high
wages going to skilled workers should induce more
workers to invest in skill (by going to college), which
in turn increases the competition for skilled jobs and
ultimately drives down the pay going to those jobs.
The competitive market should, by this logic, correct
some of the problem.
The “rent narrative” instead rests on the view that
extreme inequality should be partly attributed to the
many opportunities to collect rent. We adopt here
the usual definition of rent as returns on an asset
(e.g., labor) in excess of what is necessary to keep
that asset in production in a fully competitive mar-
ket. By this definition, rents exist (a) when demand
for an asset exceeds supply, and (b) when the supply
of that asset is fixed through “natural” means (e.g., a
shortage of talent) or through social or political bar-
riers that artificially restrict supply. The first condi-
tion implies that those holding some “asset,” like
being tall and agile enough to be a center for a pro-
fessional basketball team, are in short supply and
that employers are therefore in pitched competition
to secure that asset. The second condition, the “fixed
supply” stricture, implies that labor cannot readily
respond to the price increases that arise when de-
mand exceeds supply. It is difficult, for example, for
 POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
workers to respond to the high salaries paid to pro-
fessional basketball centers by willing themselves to
grow seven feet tall (and to become extraordinarily
agile). We, of course, care more about rent that is
generated by changing social institutional con-
straints than rent that is generated by largely con-
stant and enduring genetic constraints. In
contemporary labor markets, the former type of rent
takes on many forms, including the wage premiums
associated with the minimum wage, the wage premi-
ums associated with the union wage, and the capac-
ity of chief executive officers (CEOs) to extract
better remuneration packages (see Red Bird and
Grusky 2015; Piketty, Ch. 7; Hacker and Pierson,
Ch. 10).
How does a rent-based account explain the take-
off? The story is a twofold one focusing on (a) a de-
clining capacity to extract rent at the bottom of the
income distribution, and (b) a growing capacity to
extract rent at the top of the income distribution. At
the bottom of the distribution, the weakening of
labor unions and the decline in the real value of the
minimum wage means that workers are less likely to
benefit from rent, thus lowering their wages and in-
creasing inequality (see Western and Rosenfeld, Ch.
11). The growing capacity to extract rent at the top
arises because of the spread of competition-restrict-
ing norms and regulations. The returns to education
are increasing, for example, because those with col-
lege degrees are increasingly protected from the
competition that would occur under a system in
which everyone, no matter how poor they were, had
full and complete access to higher education. The
highly educated are further advantaged insofar as
they are in occupations that have increasingly
erected barriers to entry (e.g., licensure, certifica-
tion) that then protect them from competition. Fi-
nally, CEO pay takes off because board members are
sitting on the board at the behest of the CEO, a
setup that lends itself to board members favoring
ample compensation packages (see Bebchuk and
Fried, Ch. 73).
It follows that rent-destruction and rent-creation
are asymmetric forces. That is, just as rent is gradu-
ally being destroyed for workers at the bottom of the
income distribution, it is also gradually being created
at the top of the distribution. By this logic, rent is a
driving force behind the rise of inequality and an in-
trinsic part of modern economies, certainly not the
simple vestige that modernization theorists typically
assume.
| 3
The Perverse Effects of Slow Growth
The rent account thus locates the contemporary di-
lemma as proceeding from our relentless commit-
ment to destroying rent at the bottom of the income
distribution while at the same time supporting, at
least implicitly, its equally relentless expansion at the
top. The second main narrative on offer, one that
instead focuses on the dynamics of wealth, plays out
without making any assumptions about possible
changes in market competitiveness. The dynamic on
which it rests could in fact unfold in the context of
perfectly competitive markets.
The starting point for this account (see Piketty,
Ch. 7) is the recent increase in the amount of private
wealth relative to total national income. In the mid-
dle of the 20th century, private wealth in Britain and
France equaled about two or three years of national
income, a relatively low share. This share then rose
sharply to about five or six years of national income
by 2010. The main reason for this change is declin-
ing growth rates: In slowly growing economies, past
wealth becomes ever more important, as even a small
flow of new savings among the already-wealthy will
increase their wealth substantially. This means that
inherited wealth will come to dominate the wealth
that workers can amass from a lifetime of labor. It is
here, then, that we see a very explicit return to Marx’s
(Ch. 2) very famous worries about the growing con-
centration of wealth.
Why is this result so troubling? It is not that
Piketty, like Marx, is pushing some iron law of accu-
mulation that then culminates in an apocalyptic vi-
sion. Instead, Piketty is worried about the
implications of this development for the legitimacy
of capitalism, a legitimacy that rests in part on the
premise that the race to get ahead should be a fair
and open one. What Piketty (Ch. 7) shows is that
this commitment can be undermined by relatively
slow rates of economic growth. This is not, then,
some conventional indictment of the unfair and
“rigged” institutions (e.g., CEO pay institutions) by
which labor is compensated. Although Piketty is also
very troubled by such practices, his is instead an ex-
pose of the unanticipated consequences of slow eco-
nomic growth.
It might be imagined that Piketty would there-
fore push for a pro-growth solution. The main prob-
lem with this solution, as Piketty stresses, is that
there are real limits on the capacity of advanced
economies to restore the high growth rates of the
4 | POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
past. As a result, Piketty’s fallback solution is a pro-
gressive annual tax on capital, a tax that will then
allow for new instances of “primitive accumulation”
among those who are not born into wealth.
The Perverse Effects of Rising
Income Inequality
The foregoing narrative thus lays out the perverse
and underappreciated effects of slow economic
growth. As a natural complement, we might next
consider a narrative that again calls into question the
capacity of contemporary economies to deliver on
their commitment to openness and equal opportu-
nity, although in this case it is rising inequality rather
than slowing growth that is potentially undermining
that commitment.
The main worry here is that, by virtue of the rise
in income inequality, there is an unprecedented in-
fusion of additional resources among the higher
reaches of the class structure, an infusion that will
work to increase the amount of reproduction. By
this logic, inequality of condition and of opportu-
nity are now understood as varying together, even
though scholars have typically been at pains to stress
that they are analytically distinct.
How might parents in privileged classes use their
newfound income? The available evidence (e.g., Put-
nam 2015) suggests that they will increase the
human, cultural, and social capital of their children
via high-quality childcare and preschool, educational
toys and books, after-school training and test prepa-
ration, science-related summer camps, elite prepara-
tory schools, prestigious college degrees, a
“finishing-school” vacation in Europe, and stipends
or allowances that free them from the need to work
during high school and college. As the takeoff plays
out, privileged parents can also more readily afford
privileged residential neighborhoods, with accord-
ingly improved access to high-quality public schools,
neighborhood amenities that assist in human-capital
formation (e.g., libraries), and peers that can provide
all manner of career advantages (see Mitnik, Cum-
berworth, and Grusky 2015).
The implication of this “infusion at the top” is
that it undermines the capacity of liberal welfare re-
gimes to deliver on their commitment to equal op-
portunity. The standard liberal mantra, as has been
so frequently rehearsed, is that extreme inequality is
quite unproblematic as long as it is the result of a fair
and open race. The central dilemma of our time:
How can a fair and open race be delivered when high
incomes afford parents so many opportunities to as-
sist their children? The readings in this book provide
a range of approaches to resolving this defining co-
nundrum of the 21st century.
Commodification
The “commodification narrative,” to which we next
turn, again takes rising income inequality as its start-
ing point (see Grusky and MacLean 2015). It em-
phasizes that extreme inequality not only makes it
difficult for the poor to buy opportunity but also
disadvantages them in a growing range of markets
for goods and services. The key problem here is that
access to all manner of goods and services increas-
ingly depends on the simple capacity to pay for
them. It follows that those at the bottom of the in-
come distribution are now doubly disadvantaged: It
is not just that they have less money (relative to oth-
ers), but it is also that access to goods, services, and
opportunities increasingly requires precisely the
money that they do not have. It may be said, then,
that relentless commodification is what gives rising
inequality its teeth.
This process is playing out very broadly. The mar-
ket is gradually replacing the nuclear family, ex-
tended family, and neighborhood as the go-to source
for delivering childcare, domestic services, af-
ter-school education, financial services, old-age care,
health care, and much more. The resulting com-
modification is closely related to the relentless dif-
ferentiation and specialization of the sort that
modernization theorists, such as Talcott Parsons
(1994), so frequently stressed. The marketization
narrative emphasizes, however, the very special way
in which such functions are differentiating: Namely,
they are differentiating out of the family and into the
market, thus making the capacity to pay for these
functions all important.
It follows that rising inequality is especially con-
sequential because those at the bottom of the distri-
bution are disadvantaged in the competition for ever
more services. If early childhood education has dif-
ferentiated out of the family and is now mainly de-
livered on the market, how will poor families be able
to pay for it? If access to high-quality primary and
secondary schooling, although nominally “free,” is in
principle only available within rich neighborhoods
with a high entry price, how will poor families be
able to access them? If access to marriage (and the
supplementary economic resources it provides) is in-
creasingly a “luxury good” only available to the
 POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
well-off, how will poor men and women gain access
to those supplementary resources and the economies
of scale that marriage affords? These are all simple –
but consequential – examples of the growing neolib-
eral commitment to price goods and services at their
market value rather than “give them away.”
There are two solutions to this fundamental di-
lemma. The first entails capitulation to commodifi-
cation: We can acquiesce to the process but insist
that, insofar as the poor increasingly need money to
buy goods and services, we must then commit to an
aggressively redistributive tax system. We can make
commodification work, in other words, only if there
is enough money at the bottom of the distribution
to enable the poor to purchase the goods and ser-
vices that are increasingly only available on the
market. The second solution entails reversing com-
modification rather than acquiescing to it. This ap-
proach proceeds by reinstalling various types of
public goods, including free college education, free
high-quality childcare, and integrated neighbor-
hoods (which amounts to “giving away” neighbor-
hood amenities rather than selling them). If this
approach were taken, a relatively high level of in-
come inequality becomes more palatable, as so-called
“basic needs” are now met through direct delivery
rather than market mechanisms.
Automation
The next narrative that we review, again one that is
increasingly popular, starts with the very troubling
decline in prime-age employment. Because many
people who would like to work will stop looking
for work during economic downturns (and thus no
longer register as unemployed), the economy’s ca-
pacity to provide jobs is best measured with the
prime-age employment ratio, defined as the ratio of
employed 25–54 year-olds to the population of
that same age. For more than sixty years, the share
of 25–54 year-old men in the labor force has been
declining, with the current level (as of May 2016)
down a full 10 percentage points from the peak of
98 percent in 1954 (see Council of Economic Ad-
visors 2016). This “jobs problem,” which is espe-
cially prominent among low-skilled men, has led to
a sharp rise in the number of poor households
without any working adults, a trend that reverses
the earlier declines in nonworking poverty under
welfare reform.
The looming question of our time is whether
technology and automation may push this rate yet
| 5
lower. The pessimists understand the technologies
of the future as mainly job-destroying with “ro-
bots in the operating room, self-driving cars snak-
ing through the streets, and Amazon drones
dotting the sky” (Thompson 2015, p. 3; Karabar-
bounis & Neiman 2014). These new technologies,
so it is argued, will replace drivers, clerks, and un-
told other occupations and accordingly drive
down prime-age employment far lower than it is
today. Even now, the leading firms (e.g., Apple)
are formed around the control of intellectual
property rights, such as patents, copyrights, and
trademarks, and any tasks unrelated to the pro-
duction of such rights are subcontracted and per-
formed overseas. We can continue to have
record-high profits and declining employment in-
sofar as (a) the main comparative advantage of the
US is ferreting out and exploiting these rent-gen-
erating opportunities, and (b) the resulting em-
ployment effects are mainly felt overseas.
What can be done? The rise of nonworking pov-
erty and the decline in the prime-age employment
ratio have led to (a) renewed calls to provide pub-
lic-sector jobs of last resort, (b) new efforts to ensure
that anti-poverty programs successfully promote
labor force attachment, and (c) new experiments
with unconditional cash transfers to those in pov-
erty. These and other potential reforms will be dis-
cussed in several of the readings that follow.
Camouflaging Ideologies
We have focused to this point on narratives pertain-
ing to inequalities in economic outcomes and op-
portunities. It is useful to conclude our review with a
discussion of narratives that are instead focused on
understanding the contemporary dynamics of racial,
ethnic, and gender inequalities. These new narratives
may be understood as efforts to come to terms with
(a) the extreme forms of inequality that continue to
flourish under late industrialism (e.g., extreme racial
disparities in criminal justice), and (b) recent slow-
downs in the pace of change in many key forms of
gender and racial inequality (e.g., slowing declines in
the gender pay gap). The latter developments are dif-
ficult to reconcile with the long-standing view that
competitive market economies and bureaucratic
forms of organization should work to reduce in-
equalities based on gender, race, or ethnicity. The
simple question here: If bureaucracy and competi-
tion indeed have such equalizing effects, why is it
taking so long for those effects to be fully expressed?
6 | POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
We cannot possibly review within this short essay
the wide range of contemporary answers to that
question. Although there are a host of relevant eco-
nomic and institutional narratives that have recently
emerged (and that will be discussed throughout this
book), we focus here on some of the key cultural
forces in play, if only because we have not made
much of them to this point. We are referring in par-
ticular to the important role of “camouflaging ideol-
ogies” in legitimating inequality as a just and fair
outcome. In the US, the main camouflaging ideol-
ogy is the widespread view that we remain a land of
opportunity in which talent, merit, and effort are
decisive in determining who wins the competition to
get ahead. Because the labor market is viewed by
much of the public as winnowing out talent in this
fair and impersonal way, those who tend to do rela-
tively well in this competition, such as white males,
are then seen as competent, meritorious, and hence
deserving of their fate. This process leads us to have
certain expectations or “priors” about the relative
competence of different groups (see Ridgeway, Ch.
64). Put differently, we tend not only to treat the
individual winners of the race as especially compe-
tent, but we also go on to assume that the groups of
which they are members are intrinsically more com-
petent and meritorious.
This dynamic, which has the effect of slowing the
rate of equalizing change, plays out across various
types of racial, gender, and ethnic inequalities. How,
for example, does this camouflaging ideology make
sense of the disproportionate number of male CEOs?
It implies that men are simply more likely to be
“CEO material” and that the labor market is fairly
recognizing this gender difference in intrinsic capac-
ities to make good decisions, exert authority, or oth-
erwise be a successful CEO. It is in this sense that
equal-opportunity ideologies not only legitimate in-
dividual inequality but also propagate beliefs about
intrinsic group differences in competence. These be-
liefs in turn lend legitimacy to existing inequalities
and make them less vulnerable to critique.
It is useful in this context to distinguish between
(a) the modernization narrative as a story about how
inequality is generated, and (b) the modernization
narrative as an adequate characterization of the way
in which inequality is truly generated. This narrative
has arguably proven to be a better story than factual
account: That is, its great success is its widespread
diffusion as a popular story about inequality, while its
great failure is that the story is very incomplete and
does not provide an adequate characterization of the
actual processes in play. It is especially pernicious
when a meritocratic story about the genesis of in-
equality is adopted without that story having ade-
quate foundation in fact. This combination is
pernicious because that story then serves to “lock in”
illicit inequalities as if they were licit.
Conclusions
The foregoing narratives thus constitute a sea change
relative to the sensibilities that prevailed after World
War II and even into the 1960s and 1970s. To be
sure, the standard-issue sociologist of the past also
embraced the view that poverty and inequality were
important social problems, but overlaid on that sen-
sibility was an appreciation of various “logics of his-
tory” that operated in the main to reduce them, if
only gradually and fitfully. The problem of inequal-
ity was understood, then, as a tractable moral prob-
lem, an unfortunate side effect of capitalism that
would become yet more manageable with the transi-
tion into the increasingly affluent forms of advanced
industrialism.
We have sought to show that the benign narrative
of the past, which now mainly seems naive and
quaint, has been supplanted by a host of new narra-
tives that give far greater weight to the forces making
for inequality of outcome and opportunity. As the
above review reveals, there are a host of overlapping
narratives in play, and it is unclear which of these, if
any, will become an overarching narrative with all the
force and sway of the earlier modernization narrative.
We cannot pretend to have exhausted all the pes-
simistic narratives under discussion (see Red Bird
and Grusky 2016 for a wider discussion). We have
focused on those pertaining to income, wealth, and
opportunity only because they have proven to be es-
pecially prominent. The same pessimistic sensibility
is, however, quite widely in play: We are referring,
for example, to (a) narratives of “globalization” that
describe how the liberalization of financial and capi-
tal markets has harmed poor countries (Cohen and
Sabel, Ch. 71); (b) narratives of “deindustrialization”
that describe the loss of inner-city jobs and the asso-
ciated rise of an urban underclass (Wilson, Ch. 50);
(c) narratives of “segmented assimilation” that de-
scribe the relatively bleak prospects for at least some
new immigrant groups (Portes and Zhou, Ch. 45);
(d) narratives of “opting out” that have highly
trained women eschewing stressful careers in favor of
recommitting to their children, spouses, and domes-
tic responsibilities (see Percheski, Ch. 57); and (e)
 POVERTY AND INEQUALITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
narratives of “essentialist segregation” that describe
how sex-typed occupational ghettos continue to be
built around presumed differences in male and fe-
male aptitudes (Levanon and Grusky, Ch. 58).
Although counternarratives of the more optimis-
tic sort are also being developed, these seem not to
be as frequently generated or as readily embraced;
and the proponents of such narratives find them-
selves beleaguered, outnumbered, and on the defen-
sive. Has the pendulum swung too far? It is child’s
REFERENCES
Becker, Gary S. 1957. The Economics of Discrimination.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Council of Economic Advisors. 2016. “The Long-Term
Decline in Prime-Age Male Labor Force Participation.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page
/files/20160620_cea_primeage_male_lfp.pdf
Grusky, David B., and Alair McLean. 2016. “The Social
Fallout of a High-Inequality Regime.” The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 663,
pp. 33–52.
Karabarbounis, L., and B. Neiman. “The Global Decline
of the Labor Share.” Quarterly Journal of Economic
129(1), pp. 61–103
Mitnik, Pablo A., Erin Cumberworth, and David B.
Grusky. 2016. “Social Mobility in a High-Inequality
Regime.” Annals of the American Academy 663 (Janu-
ary), pp. 140-84.
Parsons, Talcott. 1994. “Equality or Inequality in Modern
Society, or Social Stratification Revisited.” Pp. 670–85
in Social Stratification, Class, Race, and Gender in Socio-
| 7
play to posit any number of nonempirical sources of
our fascination, some might say obsession, with the
pessimistic narrative. It is surely plausible, for exam-
ple, that our exaggerated taste for pessimism might
lead us to downplay the good news, ferret out the
bad, and only rarely consider the silver lining. As im-
portant as these biases may be, it is undeniable that
there are many big inequality transformations un-
derway, at least some of which are troubling regard-
less of one’s normative priors.
logical Perspective, 1st edition, edited by David B.
Grusky. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Putnam, Robert D. 2015. Our Kids: The American Dream
in Crisis. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Red Bird, Beth, and David B. Grusky. 2015. “Rent,
Rent-Seeking, and Social Inequality.” In Emerging
Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, eds., Ste-
phen Kosslyn and Robert Scott. Wiley. Available from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/97811
18900772.
Red Bird, Beth, and David B. Grusky. 2016. “Distribu-
tional Effects of the Great Recession: Where Has All the
Sociology Gone?” Annual Review of Sociology 42, pp.
185–215.
Thompson, Derek. 2015. “A World Without Work.” The
Atlantic (July/August).
Weeden, Kim A., and David B. Grusky. 2005. “The Case
for a New Class Map.” American Journal of Sociology
111, pp. 141–212.
Another random document with
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 The aim should be to reduce the number of subjects taken by any
pupil, and the number of topics under a subject. It is not necessary
that the entire landscape be studied in all its parts and details, if a
thorough knowledge of the most prominent features is gained.

In one important point I was constrained to differ from the reading

of the report, as finally submitted, although the expressions to which
exceptions were taken were due rather to the standpoint of the writer
of the report than the resolutions of the committee. I refer to those
paragraphs in which it is implied that the choice of studies in
secondary schools may be a matter of comparative indifference,
provided good training is obtained from the subjects chosen. This
view makes education formal, without giving due regard to the
content. Here are the world of nature and the world of mind. Nature,
when its meaning is realized, has the same meaning for all, and in its
various phases affects all in substantially the same way. The history
of mankind, in its various kinds and degrees of development, has the
same content for all. The nature of mind in generic characteristics,
and the universal truths that belong to the spiritual world, are the
same for all. Mind has the same powers in all human beings. We all
know, feel, and will; all persons acquire through attention, retain in
memory under the same conditions, obey the same laws of
association, reason, so far as rightly, from the same principles, act
from motives. Men may be classed crudely according to the motives
that will appeal to them. While there are infinite variations in details
of men’s natures, in power of insight, degree of development,
methods of acquisition, predominant motives, in interests and
tendencies, all persons in their growth obey the laws of human
nature. Hence, we may argue that a science of education is possible;
that it is possible to select studies with a view to their universal use
in the primary development of the powers, and with the assurance of
superior value as revealing to man his entire environment and the
nature of his being.
 Mere form, mere power, without content, mean nothing. Power is
power through knowledge. The very world in which we are to use our
power is the world which we must first understand in order to use it.
The present is understood, not by the power to read history, but by
what history contains. The laws of nature and deductions therefrom
are not made available by mere power, but by the power which
comes from the knowledge of them. Hence, the education which
does not include something of all views of the world, and of the
thinking subject, is lacking in data for the wise and effective use of
power.

In view of this position, the committee might well analyze carefully

the nature and importance of each leading subject, representing a
part of the field of knowledge, to the end that a wise correlation of
the work of the conferences might be made. The study of number in
its concrete form and in its abstract relations, the study of space
relations, as founded upon axiomatic truths, are necessary as a
basis of many kinds of knowledge, as representing an essential view
of the world, as a foundation for the possibilities of commerce and
structures, and as furnishing important training in exact reasoning.
Science includes many things; but chemistry and physics, which
explain the manifestations of force in the material world, biology
which reveals important laws of plant and animal life, and
physiography, which acquaints us with our entire environment as to
location, phenomena, and partial explanation—these are connected
with the practical side of civilization and the welfare of humanity, and
are a guard against superstition and error; they are indispensable for
practice in induction, and they should be well represented in a
course of study. History, in which man discovers the meaning of the
present and gains wisdom for the future, which is a potent source of
ethical thought, must not be omitted. English language, as the
means of accurate, vigorous, and beautiful expression, and English
literature, which is the treasury of much of the world’s best thought,
are not subjects to leave to the election of the pupil.
 In addition to the training in observation, memory, expression, and
inductive reasoning which most studies offer, we must consider the
development of imagination, right emotion, and right will. In other
words, æsthetic and ethical training is most essential. Secondary
schools need not employ formal courses of study to this end, but
various means may be employed incidentally. There are a hundred
ways in which taste may be cultivated, and literature is one of the
best means for developing the art idea. Moral character is developed
by right habit, by the right use of the powers in the process of
education, by growth in knowledge of ethical principles, by growth of
the spirit of reverence, and by the ethical code of religion. All of
these means, except the formal use of the last, may be employed by
the schools. And the ethical element is inherent in the very nature of
right education. To educate rightly is to educate ethically. History,
biography, and literature make direct contributions to ethical
knowledge.
We now reach the study of foreign classical tongues. If there is
nothing more than formal training, for instance, in Latin, the sooner
we abandon its study the better. But we find in it also a valuable
content. In the process of development some phases of human
possibility seem to have been almost fully realized, while the world
has continued to develop along other lines. In such cases we must
go back and fill our minds with the concepts that belong to the
remote period. The Greek and Latin classics give us an insight into
the character of ancient peoples and their institutions, give us the
concepts of their civilizations, the beauty of their literatures, and
make a practical contribution to the knowledge of our own language.
From the foreign modern tongues, German may be chosen because
of its valuable literature, its contributions to science, its dignity, and
its relation to the Anglo-Saxon element of our own language.
We have endeavored to show that the choice of studies is not a
matter of indifference, that mathematics, science, history, language
and literature, and art and ethics all belong to the period of
secondary education; and we have tried to suggest the inference
that all should be employed. The relative importance of each cannot
be exactly measured, but experience and reason must guide us.
 FOOTNOTES:
[1] In a report on requirements for admission to college, made
to the National Council of Education in 1891, the following
recommendation appeared:
“That a committee be appointed by this Council to select a
dozen universities and colleges and a dozen high and preparatory
schools, to be represented in a convention to consider the
problems of secondary and higher education.”
In accordance with the recommendation, the committee making
the report, of which the writer was chairman, was authorized to
call a meeting of representatives of leading educational
institutions, at Saratoga in 1892. Invitations were issued and
some thirty delegates responded. After a three days’ session a
plan was formulated, which was adopted by the National Council.
The Committee of Ten, thus appointed and charged with the duty
of conducting an investigation of secondary-school studies, held
its first meeting in New York City in November, 1892, with
President Eliot of Harvard University as chairman. The committee
arranged for nine subcommittees or conferences, each to
consider a principal subject of high-school courses, and submitted
to them definite inquiries. Each conference was composed of
prominent instructors in the particular subject assigned. The
inquiries covered such points as place of beginning the study,
time to be given, selection of topics, advisability of difference in
treatment for pupils going to college and for those who finish with
the high school, methods, etc. The reports of these conferences
in printed form, together with a summary of the recommendations,
were in the hands of the Committee of Ten at their second
meeting in New York, November, 1893. The report of the
Committee of Ten, including the conference reports, through the
good offices of the Commissioner of Education, was published by
the Government.
As a member of the Committee of Ten, the author was invited
to review the Report before the Council of Education, at a
meeting held in Asbury Park, July, 1894.
 EDUCATIONAL VALUES.

We estimate a man’s worth by his intellectual grasp, his æsthetic

and ethical insight, and his power for action toward right and useful
ends. If these characteristics make the ideal man, they should be the
ideal aim of education, and a study is to be valued as it best
contributes toward developing them. The same test of efficiency is to
be applied to the whole curriculum of a school period.
There is a correlation between the field of knowledge and the
knowing being. The objective world, with its varied content, answers
to the mind with its varied powers. It is through the objective world of
nature and of man that the subject comes to a consciousness of
himself. Each important phase of the objective world makes a
distinct contribution in extent or kind of knowledge to that
consciousness. We do not live in a world where cucumbers grow on
trees, or where human beings fail in their ever-recurring
characteristics; and we believe it possible to discover the kind of
value which each source of knowledge may furnish toward the
education of the child, with the expectation that we shall not find the
choice of studies to be a matter of indifference.

Without laying claim to a best analysis, we may use a customary

division of the field of knowledge: (1) mathematical relations, (2)
natural phenomena, (3) human action, (4) human thought, (5)
æsthetic and ethical qualities. The studies corresponding are (1)
mathematics, (2) natural science, (3) history, (4) language and
literature, (5) art and ethics. Mathematics treats of quantitative
knowledge, furnishes a peculiar intellectual training, and makes
possible all commerce, all great structures, and the higher
developments of physical science. Natural science acquaints us with
the field of physical phenomena and of plant and animal life, is the
best training in induction, and is largely the basis of our material
civilization. History reveals the individual and our present civilization
in the light of all human action, is a source of ethical training, and
has high practical value for the problems of government and society.
Literature reveals the ideal thought and the speculations of men,
gives æsthetic and ethical culture, and in a practical way applies
poetry to life. Art and ethics deal with distinct types of knowledge,
cultivate the higher emotional powers, and, like ideal literature, set
up standards of perfection in execution and in conduct of life.
The world in which we live is the world we are to know in order to
adapt ourselves to it in thought, the world we are to know in order to
gain power to work therein with success, the world we are to know
as representing the thought of the Creator and the correlated nature
of man, the world we are to know to gain the soul’s highest
realization, and, for these ends, to know in its various phases. Each
department of study makes its own peculiar contribution to
knowledge, each has its peculiar fitness for developing some given
power of the mind, each makes its own contribution in preparing the
individual for the practical world. In three distinct ways does each
subject have a peculiar value—for knowledge, for power, for practical
life.
While a classification of studies without cross divisions is
impossible, we may say that the first four groups give us the power
of knowledge for action; the fifth, the feeling for perfection of action
and rightness of action; and these, in their exercise and their
tendency, create the right kind of power in action.
Can the exact absolute and relative value of each line of study be
determined? No; but we may make approximate estimates through
philosophical study of the relation of the mind to the world, through
the history of education and the experience of practical teachers.
Every position is tentative and subject to constant readjustment, with
a closer approach to truth. A reinvestigation of many problems
through careful observation of children will doubtless make an
important contribution to knowledge of values, if the experiments are
conducted with a wisdom that takes them out of the realm of fads,
and if the greatest thinkers are not given a seat too far back.
Important as this kind of investigation is, extreme advocates may
undervalue the store of educational philosophy that has become
common property. From Cain and Abel down, the child has always
been the observed of all observers; the adult man recognizes the
nature of the child in his own nature, and has recollections of many
of his first conscious experiences. From the time of the early
philosophers, the data have been sufficient to discover universal
truths. Child study serves, not so much to establish principles, as to
bring the teacher’s mind in close sympathy with the life of the child,
in order to observe carefully facts for the application of principles.

In an ideal course of general training, can there be, in any exact

meaning, an equivalence of studies? As well ask whether one sense
can do the work of another sense in revealing the world to the mind.
To be sure, the fundamental conceptions of the material world can
be obtained through the sense of touch alone; but we also attach
importance to the revelations of sight and hearing, and these
revelations have a different quality. He who lacks these other senses
is defective in sources of soul development. So he who neglects
important fields of knowledge lacks something that is peculiar to
them. Each study helps every other, and before special training
begins each is to be used, up to the time when the student becomes
conscious of its meaning. By contact with nature and society, the
child, before the school period, gets an all-around education. He
distinguishes numerically, observes natural phenomena, notes the
deeds of his fellows, gains the thoughts of others, and begins to
perceive the qualities of beauty and right. The kindergarten promotes
all lines of growth; the primary school continues them. Shall the
secondary school be open to broad election? At a time when some
educators of strong influence are proclaiming the formal theory of
education, that power, without reference to content, is the aim of
study, and some universities encourage a wide choice of equivalents
in preparation for admission, and the homes yield to the solicitation
of pupils to omit difficult subjects, it is important to answer the
question in the light of the previous analysis. And we say no, for the
simple reasons that not until the secondary period can the meaning
of the various departments of knowledge be brought within the
conscious understanding, not until then are the various powers
developed to a considerable degree of conscious strength, not until
then has the natural bent of the student been fairly tested. In this
period one would hardly advocate the exclusive study, for instance,
of history to the entire neglect of mathematics and physics; nor
would he advocate the choice of mathematics to the entire neglect of
history and literature.
The question of college electives is to an extent an open one. But
it is clear that when general education ends, special education
should begin, and that indiscriminate choice of studies without
purpose is no substitute, either for a fixed curriculum or for group
election in a special line. We may fully approve the freedom of
modern university education, but not its license. Its freedom gives
the opportunity to choose special and fitting lines of work for a
definite purpose; its license leads to evasion and dilettanteism. We
hear of a senior who took for his electives Spanish, French, and
lectures in music and art, not because they were strong courses in
the line of his tastes and tendencies, but because they were the lines
of least resistance. There appears to be a reactionary tendency
toward a more careful guarding of college electives, together with a
shortening of the college course, in order that genuine university
work may begin sooner. If this tendency prevails, it will become
possible to build all professional and other university courses upon a
substantial foundation, and we shall no longer see law and medical
students entering for a degree upon the basis of a grammar-school
preparation.
The opportunity to specialize, which is the real value of college
election, is necessary even for general education. To know all
subjects one must know one subject. The deepening of one kind of
knowledge deepens all knowledge. The strengthening of power in
one direction strengthens the whole man. An education is not
complete until one is fairly master of some one subject, which he
may employ for enjoyment, for instruction, and for use in the world of
practical activity. Here we reach the ultimate consideration on the
intellectual side in estimating educational values.

We who are sometimes called conservative know that we have

before us new problems or a reconsideration of old problems. We
believe the trend of educational thought is right, however some may
for a time wander in strange paths. We know that mental capacity,
health, time, money, home obligations, proposed occupation, and
even deviation from the normal type are all to be considered in
planning the education of a pupil. But the deviations from ideal
courses and standards should be made with ideals in view, a
different proposition from denying the existence or possibility of
ideals. We know that the mind is a unit-being and a self-activity, that
it develops as a whole, that there are no entities called faculties. But
suppose the various psychical activities had never been classified,
as they now are, in accordance with the facts of consciousness, the
usage of language and literature, and the convenience of
psychology, what a herald of fresh progress would he be who would
first present mental science in clear groupings! We may call the
world one, but it has many phases; the mind is one, but it has many
phases; these are more or less correlated, and our theory of
educational values stands. We know that interest is the sine qua non
of success in education, and nothing is more beneficent than the
emphasis given this fact to-day. We also know that pleasure is not
the only, not even the most valuable, interest; and that the
disagreeable character of a study is not always a criterion for its
rejection. The pleasure theory will hardly overcome the importance
of a symmetrical education.
In regard to some things, however, some of us must be permitted
to move slowly. We must use the principle of “apperception,” and
interpret the new in the light of that which has for a long time been
familiar—attach it to the “apperception mass”; we must be indulged
in our right to use the “culture-epoch” theory and advance by
degrees from the barbaric stage to that of deeper insight; we must
“concentrate” (concentre) with established doctrines other doctrines
that present large claims, and learn their “correlations” and
“coördinations.”
A new object or idea must be related to and explained by the
knowledge already in mind; it must be so placed and known, or it is
not an idea for us. If “apperception” means the act of explaining a
new idea by the whole conscious content of the child’s mind, then it
is the recognized process of all mental growth. In a given study,
topics must be arranged in logical order, facts must be so organized
as to constitute a consistent whole; important relations with other
studies must be noted, and one subject must be made to help
another as opportunity arises. If “correlation” means to unite and
make clear parts of subjects and subjects by discovery of valuable
mutual relations, then it is a vital principle of all good teaching.
Studies, while preserving their integrity, must be adjusted to each
other in time and sequence so that a harmonious result may be
produced. If “coördination” means the harmonious adjustment of the
independent functions of departments of study, we recognize it as an
old acquaintance.
If the theory of “culture-epochs” finds a parallel, in order of
development, between race and individual, and throws light upon the
selection of material for each stage of the child’s growth, then let the
theory be used for all it is worth. Its place, however, will be a
subordinate one. Here are the world and the present civilization by
means of which the child is to be educated, to which he is to be
adjusted. Select subjects with reference to nature as known by
modern science, with reference to modern civilization, and the
hereditary accumulation of power in the child to acquire modern
conceptions.
If “concentration” means subordinating all other subjects of
learning to a primary subject, as history or literature, which is to be
used as a centre throughout the elementary period, we refuse to give
it a place as an important method in education. Intrinsically there is
no such thing as a primary centre except the child himself. He
possesses native impulses that reach out toward the field of
knowledge, and in every direction. It is difficult to imagine a child to
be without varied interests. Did you ever see a boy who failed to
enumerate his possessions, investigate the interior of his automatic
toy, delight in imaginative tales, applaud mock-heroic deeds, and
appreciate beautiful objects and right action? If the child lacks
normal development and has not the apperceiving mind for the
various departments of knowledge, create new centres of
apperception and interest, cultivate the neglected and stunted
powers. The various distinct aspects of the objective world suggest
the selection of studies; the nature of the mind suggests the manner
in which the elements of knowledge are to be organized. The parts
of a subject must be distinctly known before they are correlated;
subjects must be distinctly known before they are viewed in a system
of philosophy. Knowledge is not organized by artificial associations,
but by observing the well-known laws of classification and reasoning.
Moreover, all laws of thought demand that a subject be developed in
a definite and continuous way, and that side illustration be employed
only for the purpose of clearness. In practice the method of
concentration can but violate this principle.
We may ask whether apperception, correlation, coördination, and
concentration are anything but a recognition of the laws of
association. The laws of association in memory are nothing but the
law of acquisition of knowledge, as all good psychology points out.
These laws include relations of time, place, likeness, analogy,
difference, and cause. Add to these laws logical sequence in the
development of a subject, and you have all the principles of the
methods named. Have these investigations an important value? Yes.
They explain and emphasize pedagogical truths that have been
neglected. Having performed their mission and having added to the
progress of educational theory, they will give way to new
investigations. This is the history of all progress.

The subject of interest deserves a further thought. It goes without

saying that all a man thinks, feels, and does centres around his own
personality, and, in that sense, is a self-interest. But we are not to
infer that, therefore, interest must be pleasure. We are born with
native impulses to action, impulses that reach out in benevolence
and compassion for the good of others, impulses that reach out
toward the truth and beauty and goodness of the world, without
regard to pleasure or reward. These impulses tend toward the
perfection of our being, and the reward lies in that perfection, the
possession of a strong and noble intellectual, æsthetic, and ethical
character. The work of the teacher is to invite these better
tendencies by presenting to them the proper objects for their
exercise in the world of truth, beauty, and right. Interest and action
will follow, and, later, the satisfaction that attends right development.
Whenever this spontaneous interest does not appear and cannot be
invited, the child should face the fact that some things must be,
because they are required, and are for his good. When a course of
action is obviously the best, and inclination does not lead the way,
duty must come to the rescue.
We are not touching this matter as an old ethical controversy, but
because it is a vital practical problem of to-day in education, because
the pleasure theory is bad philosophy, bad psychology, bad ethics,
bad pedagogy, a caricature of man, contrary to our consciousness of
the motives of even our ordinary useful acts, a theory that will make
a generation of weaklings. Evolution does not claim to show that
pleasure is always a criterion of useful action. Herbert Spencer in his
“Ethics” says: “In many cases pleasures are not connected with
actions which must be performed nor pains with actions which must
be avoided, but contrariwise.” He postpones the complete
coincidence of pleasure with ideal action to the era of perfect
moralization. We await the evolutionist’s millennium. Much harm as
well as much good has been done in the name of Spencer by well-
meaning teachers, and much harm has been done in the name of
physiological psychologists; we would avoid a misuse of their noble
contributions to educational insight. Listen to a view of physiological
psychology with reference to the law of habit: “Do every day or two
something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it.
The man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated
attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things,
will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him and when
his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.” The
fact is, it is impossible to create character, energy, and success
without effort that is often painful. This view is an essential part of
our theory of educational values.
 POWER AS RELATED TO KNOWLEDGE.

Try to imagine a material world without force—no cohesion, no

resistance, no gravitation, no sound, no light, no sign from the
outward world, no active mind to receive a sign. Now try to imagine
knowledge without power, a mind that is but a photographic sheet—
no active perception, no imagination, no reflection upon ideas, no
impulses ending in action. On the other hand, mental power without
knowledge is inconceivable. One without knowledge is in the
condition of the newly born infant.
As difficult to understand as the relation between matter and force,
between spirit and body, between thought and its sign, is the relation
between knowledge and power. In a way we may attempt to
separate and distinguish between them, by a process of
emphasizing the one or the other. Knowledge, in the sense of
information, means an acquaintance with nature in its infinite variety
of kind, form, and color, and with man in history and literature;
mental power is the ability to gain knowledge, and the motive to use
it for growth and for valuable ends. Mere knowledge serenely
contemplates nature and history as a panorama, without serious
reflection or effort. Power is able to reflect upon knowledge, and to
find motives for progress and useful action. Knowledge is the
product of the information method; power, of the method of self-
activity.
As we cannot divorce matter and force, so it appears we cannot
clearly separate knowledge and mental power; the distinction is
artificial and almost fanciful. The one cannot exist without the other;
they are the opposite sides of the shield. Through knowledge comes
power. Knowledge is the material for reflection and action.
Knowledge, as it were, creates the mind, and is both the source of
power and the occasion for its use.
 We recall the familiar caricature of the Chinese lack of original
power. A merchant negotiated with a Chinaman for the manufacture
of a few thousand plates of a certain pattern, and furnished a sample
that by chance was cracked. The plates arrived in due season,
admirably imitating the original—and every one was cracked. No
need in this instance to employ the mandate given by a choleric
superintendent to an employee, who on one occasion thought for
himself—“I have told you repeatedly you have no business to think!”
The Chinese character may be expressed by a parody on a familiar
stanza:

For they are the same their fathers have been;

They see the same sights their fathers have seen,
They drink the same stream and view the same sun,
And run the same course their fathers have run.

A timorous cow gazing wistfully over the garden gate at the

forbidden succulent vegetables, and nervously rubbing her nose by
accident against the latch, may open the gate and gain an entrance,
and afterward repeat the process. A new and peculiar fastening will
prevent any further depredations. An ingenious boy will find the
means to undo any kind of unique fastening to the gate that bars him
from the watermelon patch. Charles Lamb humorously describes
how the Chinese learned to eat roast pig. A house burned and the
family pig perished in the flames; a disconsolate group of people
stood around viewing the ruins, when by accident one touched the
pig and, burning his finger, thrust it in his mouth to cool it; the taste
was good, and he repeated the process. Soon there were
marvellously frequent conflagrations—all the neighbors burned their
houses to roast their pigs, that being the only method they had
learned.
From these somewhat trivial illustrations, we may readily draw a
few inferences: First, ingenuity of mind for novel conditions
distinguishes man from the brutes; second, the Chinese method of
education emphasizes too much the information side—it is not good;
third, the human mind is ingenious when it is rightly educated and
has a strong motive; fourth, ingenuity is the power that should grow
from education. In this idea—ingenuity of mind—is the very essence
of what we mean when we emphasize the power side of the soul.
The problem of education is to make men think. Tradition,
authority, formalism have not the place in education which they
formerly occupied. May it not be that we have so analyzed and
formulated the work of the schools that formalism and method have
somewhat taken the place of genuine work, full of the life and spirit
that make power? We may discover that the criticisms from certain
high sources have an element of truth in them. A certain routine may
easily become a sacred code, a law of the tables, and any variation
therefrom an impiety.
A person possesses power when his conception ploughs through
the unfurrowed tissue of his brain to seek its proper affinity, and
unites with it to form a correct judgment. A person who is merely
instructed does not construct new lines of thought to bring ideas into
novel relations; he does not originate or progress. An original thinker
masses all congruous ideas around a dimly conceived notion and
there is a new birth of an idea, a genuine child of the brain. His
ingenuity will open a gate or construct a philosophical system.
Every student remembers well the stages in his education when
there was a new awakening by methods that invited thought, when a
power was gained to conceive and do something not stated in the
books or imparted by the teacher. In the schools, even of to-day,
teachers are not always found who can impart elementary science in
the spirit of science, who can successfully invite speculation as to
causes, who can teach accurate perception, who can interpret
events in history, train pupils in the use of reference books, or invite
original thought in mathematics. There is no high school which does
not yearly receive pupils not trained in original power, no college
which does not annually winnow out freshmen, because they have
not gained the power to grapple with virile methods. The defect is
sometimes innate, but it is oftener due to false methods of
instruction. Our great problem is to make scholars who are not
hopeless and helpless in the presence of what they have not
learned.
 The plant must have good soil, water and air and sun, care and
pruning, in order to grow, but it grows of itself, gains strength by
proper nourishment. The aggregation of material about the plant
does not constitute its growth. The plant must assimilate; the juices
of life must flow through it.
The teacher does his best work when he makes all conditions
favorable for the self-activity of the pupil. Such conditions create a
lively interest in the objects and forces of nature, invite examination
of facts and discovery of relations, arouse the imagination to
conceive results, awaken query and reflection, stimulate the
emotional life toward worthy and energetic action, and make the
pupil ever progressive.

An article in one of our magazines strongly emphasizes the

methods that make power. It considers the kind of training that finally
makes accurate thinkers, that makes original, progressive men, men
of power, and safe and wise citizens. The author shows that clear
observation, accurate recording of facts, just inference, and strong,
choice expression are most important ends to be attained by the
work of the schools, and that these ends become the means for
correcting all sorts of unjust, illogical conclusions as to politics and
morals.
There is much profound thought in the view maintained. Unjust
inferences, fallacies, are nearly the sum of the world’s social and
political evils. False ideas are held as true concerning all sorts of
current problems—notions that take possession of men’s minds
without logical reflection. The fallacy of confounding sequence with
cause is almost universal. All kinds of subjective and objective duties
suffer from illogical minds.
To correct many errors and evils, to make thinking, useful men, we
must emphasize the processes recommended: (1) observation, (2)
faithful recording, (3) just inference, (4) satisfactory expression.
 The author shows wherein the work of the grades fails to give the
desired results. He holds that arithmetic, so emphasized, contributes
nothing because it employs necessary reasoning, and does not give
practice in inference from observation and experience, a process
which develops scientific judgment. Inductive reasoning alone can
give scientific power. Reading, writing, spelling, geography as
usually taught, contribute but little; grammar does not add much.
For invention, for correct estimates of the problems of society,
government, and morals, the original power of inference from
observed facts is necessary. It is asked: Do our schools give this
power to a satisfactory and attainable degree? It is claimed in the
article that the high schools and colleges fail more or less, because
so much time is given to memory work and formulated results. In the
high schools the work to be most emphasized is not chosen with
discrimination. The courses include too many studies, not well done.
There should be fewer studies so pursued as to give power.
May it not be well to make the inquiry in all grades as to what
proportion of the work contributes toward the final result of accurate
reflection upon the world of facts. Let us again repeat the author’s
list in logical order: (1) observation, (2) recording, as in noting
experiments, (3) inference, (4) expression.
President Eliot’s paper here referred to admirably emphasizes the
methods that make power. Perhaps the author gives too little
importance to knowledge as the basis of power, and fails to
emphasize the æsthetic power and the value of ideals. It is true that
poetry implies accurate observation, fine discrimination, discovery of
just relations, and true insight, but it is equally true that science study
does not make poets.

The times have changed. The old idea of the scholar was of one
who, in the serene contemplation of truth, beauty, and goodness,
found a never-failing source of delight for himself, and felt little
obligation to the world that sustained him, or the social environment
that nurtured and humanized him. The devotion to truth for its own
sake, the love of nature in repose, the admiration of great deeds, fine
sentiments and noble thoughts, were for him sufficient, as if he were
isolated in a world of his own. We do not depreciate such interest, for
life is worth nothing without it. But there is a demand for action, a call
to externalize the power of one’s being. Each man is a part of the all,
from eternity destined to be a factor in the progress of all. The
thoughts and impulses that evaporate and accomplish nothing are
not of much more value to the individual than to his neighbor. “Do
something” is the command alike of religion and of the nature of our
physical being. Every sentiment and idea that leads to action forms a
habit in the mysterious inner chambers of our nervous system for
action, and we gain in power, grow in mental stature, day by day.

Power comes through knowledge. There may be too great a

tendency to emphasize power to the loss of that knowledge
necessary to marshal in one field of view the necessary facts.
Imagine a judge trying to reach a decision without the points in
evidence before his mind; a statesman that would interpret current
events without a knowledge of history; an investigator in science who
had not before him the results of the investigations of others.
Ideally, knowledge should be varied and comprehensive; it should
cover, at least in an elementary way, the entire field of nature and of
man. Then only is the student best prepared for his life work, if he
would make the most of it. A man lost in a forest directs not his steps
wisely; when thoroughly acquainted with his surroundings, he moves
forward with confidence. One who has trained all the muscles of his
body delivers a blow with vigor. One who has trained all the powers
of his mind summons to his aid the energy of all, when he acts in a
given direction. His knowledge is the light thrown on his endeavor.
This view is opposed to the extreme doctrine that knowledge is of
little value. Knowledge is necessary to power; the abuse lies in not
making it the basis of power.
 This theory also militates strongly against the position that a
student should specialize at too early a period, before he has
traversed in an elementary way the circle of studies and gained a
harmonized general development.
The discussion of a growing fallacy naturally appears in this place,
that it makes no difference what knowledge is used provided it gives
power. It does make a difference whether one gains power in
deciphering an ancient inscription in hieroglyphics, or gains it by
studying a language which contains the generic concepts of our
native tongue, or in pursuing a scientific study which acquaints him
with the laws of nature’s forces. In the one case, while the power is
great, the knowledge is small; in the other, an essential view of the
thought of mankind or of the nature of the world in which we live is
gained, and the knowledge is broadly useful for various exercise of
power.
Another fallacy is the doctrine that actual execution in practical
ways alone gives power. It may give ready specific power of a limited
kind, but it may leave the man childlike and helpless in the presence
of anything but his specialty.
Here we find an argument for higher education, for an
accumulation of knowledge and power that comes through
prolonged labor in the field of learning, under wise guidance and
through self-effort. Many a youth, through limited capacity, limited
time and means, must begin special education before he has laid a
broad foundation, but this is not the ideal method. The true teacher
will always hold the highest ideals before the pupils, will guide them
in the path of general education, until that education becomes what
is called liberal. The broad-minded men who conduct schools for
special education are strong advocates of the highest degree of
general training as a foundation.
Four years of college life, with the methods of to-day, more than
quadruple the capital of the graduate of the secondary school. They
broaden the field of knowledge, and enlarge the capacity for doing.
The world is full of demands for men of knowledge and power. There
is to-day a lack of men sufficiently equipped in knowledge, power,