. AND | Deltona ap tort es p ‘Edited an and with an Introduc MONACO nen Clclela sap CovaPOWER AND IDEOLOGY IN EDUCATION Edited and with an Introduction by JEROME KARABEL and A.H. HALSEY NEW YORK OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1977Introduction 1. Educational Research: A Review and an Interpretation JEROME KARABEL AND A. H. HALSEY Over the last generation educational research has come from the humblest ‘margins of the social sciences to occupy a central position in sociology, as well as to receive considerable attention from economists, historians, and anthro- pologists. A parallel growth in the use of research for educational policy-making has been no less evident. To attempt a general appraisal of this branch of scholarship and its applications is to embark on a formidable task, not only because of the sheer volume of the relevant literature, but also because we write at a time when the relation between thought and political action is one of unusual if not unprecedented contention. We must therefore disclaim at the outset any pretension either to encyclopedic coverage or to cosmic objectivity. Nonetheless we have ventured to put forward a general view and to criticize, both broadly and in detail, the authors whose work we have chosen as illustrative of what we take to be the significant developments of research since 960. Finally, we have examined, with special reference to the work of Durkheim and Bernstein, the potential for a new synthesis in educational research. To classify schools and traditions of thought is inevitably to oversimplify a complex social reality, but it is also indispensable to coherent exposition. Our remarks on the outstanding trends, theories, and preoccupations of recent work are therefore grouped under the following headings: (1) Funetionalist theories of education (2) The economic theory of human capital (3) Methodological empiricism (within which we attach a special importance to empirical studies of educational inequality) (4) Conflict theories of education (3) The interactionist tradition in educational research and the challenge of| the “new” sociology of education2 KARABEL AND HALSEY These categories, however, are no more than flags of convenience; they do not represent mutually exclusive definitions of legitimate theories and methods, so that both particular studies and individual scholars may be discussed in more than one of them. Our purpose in identifying more or less distinct schools of thought is not to classify individuals but rather to throw into sharper relief the diverse theoretical and empirical developments of the last fifteen years. An assessment of educational research is, in any case, overdue. It has not been attempted on a comprehensive scale since 1958, when Jean Floud and A.H. Halsey reviewed the literature in an issue of Current Sociology.’ We shall not recapitulate the history of the sociology of education as outlined in this earlier work except to note that, despite the brilliant exposition of the subject by Emile Durkheim in the early years of the present century and the inspiration to be found in the works of Marx? and Weber,® the achievements of this branch of the discipline before the 1950s were meager. When social scientists invaded the realm of educational research on a large scale during the 1950s, however, their characteristic tone was one of buoyant optimism. The study of education had, in their view, been dominated by unrigorous and mediocre “educationalists,” but that period, which was already drawing to a close, would belong to the prehistory of the discipline once the superiority of the social scientific approach became widely recognized. And indeed, the optimism of those who advocated treating educational institutions with the scientific precision and detachment befitting the study of any social organization seemed well grounded, for by 1958 one well-known review of the field was able to assemble an impressive list of one hundred works.* Of all the social sciences it was sociology that was at the forefront of the movement to make the study of education a scientific endeavor. The relation- ship between sociology and education did not, to be sure, date from the postwar period; the founding of the American Journal of Educational Sociology in 1927 is but one example of a long-standing interest in uniting the two disciplines. Yet the articles appearing in the Journal of Educational Sociology reflected less the application of general sociological principles than the concerns 1, Floud and Halsey (1958), The reader edited by Halsey, Floud, and Anderson, Education, Feonomy, and Society (New York: Free Pres, 1961), was based on this review of previous work. 2. Fora summary essay on Marx see Bran Simon (1971). 3. A sample of some of Weber's writings on education and social stratification is available in Cosin (1972: 211-241). For a brief summary of Weber's early formulation of a typology of edvcational systems in Telaton fo the power structure of society, see Halsey (1968). 4. This review of the literature, conducted under the auspices ofthe Russell Sage Foundation, was caried ‘ut by Brim (1958). Halsey (1959), ina review of this work, challenged the omision of Veblen's classic esay on the higher learning and suggostod that the omislons “stemmed in part from (Brim) obvious aifiity to functionlism, which in its modem Partonian form, places socialization and valuos rather than Interests or the ‘substratum in the center of sociological analy.” as ————EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION a of a subject that considered itself more a branch of education than one of sociology. The institutional correlate of this self-conception was the employ- ‘ment of most educational sociologists in schools of education rather than in university departments of sociology. The problem-oriented, applied sociological outlook that was predominant in the subject and the low esteem accorded to schools of education together constituted a serious barrier to scientific respectability. The founding of the American journal Sociology of Education in 1963 may be seen as an attempt both to integrate the subject with the larger concerns of sociology and to benefit from the growing prestige of the parent discipline By the 1950s the prevailing orthodoxy in American sociology of education ‘was structural functionalism. As formulated by Talcott Parsons it offered an emerging subject both an all-encompassing theoretical framework and a valuable conceptual guide for setting research priorities. When these were combined with the canons of scientific procedure, which sociologists of education planned to follow with the utmost rigor, an approach of seemingly unlimited possibilities had been developed. It would hardly seem an exaggeration to say that researchers in the field, armed with the dual weapons of structural functionalist theory and scientific method, envisaged few problems that would ultimately prove intractable. There were, of course, sociologists of education who worked in other traditions. In Britain, for example, socialist influence on the choice of problems was strong before the war, and continued after it, in the long tradition of empirical inquiry by royal commissions and private investigators of public issues. ‘A Fabian social democratic use of data from such inquiries was concentrated characteristically on the analysis of social inequalities of educational op- portunity. Floud and Halsey (1958:171), who worked in this tradition of “political arithmetic,” had explicit reservations about functionalism: “The structural functionalist is preoccupied with social integration based on shared ‘values—that is with consensus—and he conducts his analysis solely in terms of the motivated actions of individuals. For him, therefore, education is a means of motivating individuals to behave in ways appropriate to maintain the society in a state of equilibrium. But this is a difficult notion to apply to developed especially industrialized societies, even if the notion of equilibrium is interpreted dynamically. They are dominated by social change, and ‘consensus? and ‘integration’ can only be very loosely conceived with regard to them.”* 5. However, their own approach (see Halsey ct al (1961: 13]), which strestod the emergence of technological society, converged with fanctionaism at many points, and the uso of a structural functional {st framework, strongly influenced by the Webern concept of “structures of domination,” was the basis of alsoy's analysis (1961:456-465) ofthe changing functions of universities in industrial societies,‘ KARABEL AND HALSEY ess, functionalism, with its distinguished leadership from such men as ss, Shils, Merton, and Lazarsfeld, remained dominant in the 1950s not only America but also in France, Germany, Scandinavia, and Japan. The sociology of education reflected the larger empire of theoretical sociology. A considerable number of empirically minded researchers did, to be sure, continue to gather and analyze data untroubled by the lack of any overarching theoretical scheme, but their inquiries posed no challenge to the hegemony of the functionalist framework. During the 1960s, when the theory of structural functionalism found itself at the center of controversy in sociology at large, it became inevitable that the debate would ultimately penetrate the sociology of education itself. The overall effects of this debate, which has been stimulated by the resurgence of various forms of Marxism, phenomenology, and interactionist theory in Europe and America, have been liberating, for the consensual elements in functionalism had Proved, despite Merton’s (1968:92-96) demonstration of a certain logical neutrality in its analyses of social phenomena, to inhibit the raising of a number of crucial questions more easily treated by other approaches, both Marxist and non-Marxist, which focus on conflict. Yet the acrimony of the debate is not without its dangers, including, as Basil Bernstein (1974: 145-159) has suggested, a proliferation of approaches to problems rather than’ explana- tions of them, Controversy, for example between Marxists and functionalists in the United States, or over the “old” and “new” sociology of education in Britain, is now sufficiently intense to have created something of a crisis in educational research. We propose to try to make sense of recent and current debates by placing them in their social and historical context.” We shall focus on a few salient problems in educational research with the object of showing how an awareness of the social settings from which they emerged can contribute to a deeper understanding of them. In this way we hope not only to offer a rough map on which to place the leading current schools of thought but also to provide an added dimension to the necessary task of critical assessment. We shall attend §. Merton's Socil Theory and Social Structure (1968) isa clase source on functionalist theory 2. Alvin Gouldner (1971:490), one of the founders ofthe sociology of sociology perspective, captures the fssence of our intent when he demands that “sociologists must-at the very feast-acquie the ingrained habit of viewing (theit) own beliefs as (they) now view those held by others," This perspective, which i erived from the sociology of knowledge, has guined momentum in recent years and would. sem Particularly well suited to offer insight into the work of educational researchers, for few ares of social Scientific investigation are more profoundly marked by thei social context. Apart from Gouldner's (1968; 1971) ow contributions to the sociology of sociology, we have found paticlaly helpful the wutngs of C. Wright Matis (1963) collected under the heading of “knowledge” in Power. Polites and People (ose especially “The Profesional Ideology of Social Pathologist”) and his casi, The Sociological Imagination (1959), We have. also found useful the research of Mannheim (1936; 1952), Marx and Engels (1949), ‘Merion (1968), Anderson (1968), Ringer (1969), Kuhn (1970), Shils (1970), Friedrichs (1970), Malling (1973), anda numberof the studies reported in Tiryakian (1971),EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION, s in particular to functionalism, human capital, methodological empiricism, conflict theory, and “interpretative” sociology. THE SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ‘The influx of social scientific researchers into education coincided with a period of enormous growth of public expenditure on schools and universities. Between 1950 and the end of the 1960s, educational expenditure in the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development increased at an average rate of more than 10 percent a year, which was double the rate of increase of gross national product and one-and-a-half times the rate of growth of total public expenditure. Student numbers rose concurrently: over 30 percent in primary education, almost 100 percent in secondary education, and 200 percent in tertiary education (Emmerij, 1974:61). The magnitude of this expansion was unprecedented, and it brought with it a number of problems. At the same time, educational systems everywhere had become arenas of political and social conflict, and it is therefore hardly surprising that governments gave increased priority to the funding of educational research Particularly in those countries whose institutions embody planning and welfare ideologies, there is also a widespread tradition of eagerness to base institutional reform on prior empirical inquiry. At the same time, both the supporters and the critics of the status quo, and not least members of the social science community, have been anxious to gain access to relevant information and to use it in order to offer policy recommendations, whether critical of current policy or offering “scientific” legitimation for it. Thus the involvement of members of the academy, particularly of sociologists and economists, is a familiar feature of the academic-governmental landscape: royal and presidential commissions, consultations, and the execution of government-commissioned studies are but the most conspicuous examples of the intimate relation prevailing between state policy-makers and a segment of the educational research community. Man’s attempts at understanding the world through the social sciences are more than a century old, but if the point is to change the world through the systematic application of the findings of research to public decision-making processes, the social sciences are new. And what, specifically, is new is the existence of an identifiable and organized social science community whose ‘members are in contact with the government. Keynes's aphorism about the academic scribbler of yesteryear who stands behind the current theories of the practical politician is well known. The academic scribbler has since become an available expert. But itis only in the last generation that connections between government and social science have been strongly institutionalized. The social sciences are, in other words, caught up in a process of incorporation into theKARABEL AND HALSEY state apparatus, partly through their dependence on state funding, partly in their own right as the disciplinary bases of economic and social planning, and—most recently—partly through the emergence of a new style of administration which is potentially of immense importance: experimental public policy formation. Since World War Il, governments everywhere have increasingly and explicitly accepted responsibility for the management of economic growth. The assimilation of ‘economists was brought about by their capacity to generate consensus as to the ‘means to that end and the method of measurement of progress towards its attainment. The still more recent arrival of the sociologist reflects a shift in ‘emphasis on the part of governments towards concern with distribution as well as production, with social order as well as economic progress, with the quality of social life as well as the quantity of economic resources. There is, however, a serious underlying problem. It is in the interests of established government to define the social sciences as apotitical and organized social science as, in effect, an extension of the civil service. On such a view, problems are essentially technical and the role of the social scientist is that of a handmaiden, Research strategies and priorities, from this perspective, are finally left in the hands of the government. Within this framework, the social sciences can lay no claim to independence. ‘Theoretically informed exchanges between social scientists and governments may well reveal that there are “social problems” that cannot be formulated adequately in terms approximating those of medical problems and in which the social scientist is defined, by analogy, as a skilled diagnostician. Such a model, apart from assuming that there is a social science theory to be applied in the same way that doctors apply medical theory, also takes it for granted that there is agreement about social ends just as there is consensus about the nature and desirability of good health. If there were such agreement on all social problems, there would be no need for politicians. In fact, the language of “social problems” may all too often disguise an underlying conflict of political and social interests. The historic role of the social scientist as critic of the social order must set limits to his incorporation into administration just as the maintenance of political democracy must set strict limits to his participation in the making of decisions.* Government influence on the scope and shape of social science research may be exercised through control of the bulk of research funding.* Private 8, Foran elaborated exposition of this view, se Halsey (1970). 9. Useem (1976a) and MeCariney (1971) provide useful studies of this topic. McCartney (1970:32-33) reports that, in thirteen of fifteen areas of sociology, articles acknowledging financial support were much ‘more likely to use statistical methods. This is indirect evidence suggesting that sponsors are more likely (0 accept projeets proposing quantitative analysis of data, but direct evidence requires study of the funding proces ivelf. Such a study would ideally place particular emphasis on the characteristic of rejected proposals and would investigate the factors determining Whether a researcher even attempts to obtain funds. ‘The decision to allocat state funds often makes ot breaks a given resorch project. I the sample studied byEDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION 7 philanthropy plays a minor part even in non-communist countries. State financial support flows in two main forms—through research councils and the general funding of state institutions of higher education and through direct contracting by government departments and agencies. In the former type of financing social scientists are directly involved in determining the principles and practices of allocation.° The question of how far priorities, problems, and methods reflect governmental interest and how far they reflect a social science interest therefore becomes a subtle one. In the case of direct commissioning by government it is reasonable to suppose that the priorities will lie in the direction of policy-oriented studies. In the case of private philanthropy it may be that funding flows more easily for the support of what is fashionable and congruent with the interests of socially dominant groups and the mass media. ‘The interest of government in educational research is apparent, but the empirical evidence is too undifferentiated to determine with any precision what ‘type of educational research the state tends to sponsor and what consequences this funding pattern has on the development of the field. Yet the findings of the available studies give us reason to suspect that in educational research, as in other domains, the government will favor policy-oriented, quantitative studies. Similarly, it seems reasonable to suppose that if government priorities can influence the distribution of research within a discipline, then it is equally likely that the allocation of funds can affect the distribution of funds within a sub-discipline—in this case, the sociology of education. There is, as we have already suggested, a multitudinous array of approaches vying for influence within educational research, and the absence of an intellectual orthodoxy or “paradigm” governing research priorities makes the field particularly vulnerable to external pressure. Among these pressures the role of government agencies obviously looms large. State allocation of research monies does not, of course, exhaust the ways in which social context influences the development of educational research. From ‘our own experiences as researchers, we would be among the first to admit that both our choice of problems and our manner of treating them have been influenced, independent of the question of funding, by our presence in a given social setting and in particular by our personal values. Yet to judge from that same experience, it would seem plausible to suggest that social factors are more relevant to questions of emphasis and neglect than to questions of validity and ‘Useem (1996a) nearly one-half ofthe social slentiss whose proposals were rejected dropped thelr projects altogether. 10, Where social scence applications are judged by social scientists an clement of subtlety i introduced into the question of state allocation of research funds, Nevertheless, it remains posible thatthe scholars ‘who serve on committees reviewing research proposals are themscler selected so ao distribute funds in a ‘manner roughly corresponding to state priorities, There is tle empirical evidence on the characteristics of such socal scientists. One of tho few avaiable studies (Useom, 1976b) concludes that thelr owm research x ‘ore quantitative and poicj-oriented than that of thet collegues of siniae professional standing,8 KARABEL AND HALSEY error. It follows from this that social context perhaps exerts its most profound influence on the development of educational research in its capacity to lead us to be selectively inattentive to problems that are nonetheless real. Alvin Gouldner, in his call for a reflexive sociology (1971:498), has asserted the paradox “that those who supply the greatest resources for the institutional development of sociology are precisely those who most distort its quest for knowledge” (italics his). Whether this proposition is true or false (and its exploration is one of the themes of this essay) we would not ourselves suggest that government funding in Western Europe or America is the sole, or even perhaps the most significant, external influence on educational research. Nor would we intend to imply that to place a school of thought socially is thereby to accomplish the task of substantive criticism. Assessment of the validity of ideas remains a vital enterprise independent of any attempt to trace their origins. An analysis of the social origins of the various approaches to education research, however, may direct our attention toward those elements of each perspective that are particularly susceptible to distortion from external sources. Further, if the fates of schools of thought are, as we believe, contingent not only upon their intellectual stature, but also upon the extent to which they correspond to changes in the surrounding political and cultural context, then an exploration of the social setting of educational research becomes indispensable to an understanding of recent developments in the field. As we keep these considera- tions in mind, the case of the functionalist theory of education offers a promising place to begin our analysis. FUNCTIONALISM. After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union became engaged in a “cold war,” a crucial component of which was the “battle of production.” Could the Western powers, emerging from the dislocations of depression and war, surpass the impressive material and technological progress of their Soviet rival? The development of nuclear weapons had provided dramatic evidence that technological superiority could be converted into military dominance. Both countries therefore looked to their systems of education to produce an adequate flow of scientists and engineers, and this added to the traditional concern with “human resources,” which, at least in America, dated from the Depression. In 1949, the four major American national research councils appointed a Commission on Human Resources and Advanced Training. The Commission, directed by Dael Wolfle, sponsored a widely influential study, America’s Resources of Specialized Talent, which appeared in 1954. In a statement characteristic of the period, Wolfle warned that “survival itself may depend on making the most effective use of the nation’s intellectual resources” (quoted in Husén, 1974:40). Later but similarly in Britain, the Robbins ReportEDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION ° on Higher Education, which appeared in 1963, was at pains to stress the importance of educating potential talent and to attack traditionally entrenched conceptions of a limited pool of educable ability. This concer with the preservation of human resources marked the particular variety of functionalist theory that was most popular in educational research in the 1950s." Thus Burton Clark, a prominent contributor to the sociology of education in America, in 1962 published a textbook under the title Educating the Expert Society in which he put forward a lucid version of what might be called technological functionalism. Emphasizing the rapidity of technological change, Clark declared that, “our age demands army upon army of skilled technicians and professional experts, and to the task of preparing these men the educational system is increasingly dedicated” (1962-3). Seen in this light, the expansion and the increasing differentiation of the educational system were inevitable outcomes of technologically determined changes in occupational structure requiring ever more intricate skills. At the same time, the drive for educational efficiency was congruent with the traditional socialist critique of inequality of educational opportunity between classes. At the level of policy Clark’s functional analysis supported a program of transformation of the schools both to promote equal opportunity at home and to turn back “the expanding thrust of totalitarianism abroad” (1962: 1). Clark’s formulation seems in retrospect to reflect some of the underlying ideological components of the technological functionalism which became fashionable after Russia launched Sputnik in 1957. Greater schooling for greater numbers also has brought with it and evidently implies, a ‘greater practicality in what the schools teach and what they do for students. The existence of children of diverse ability calls forth the comprehensive school, or the ‘multischool comprehensive structure, within which some students receive a broad general education but others take primarily a technical or commercial training. In short, ‘increased quantity means greater vocationalism . . . Sorting must take place at some point in the education structure. If, at that level, it does not take place at the door, it ‘must occur inside the doors, inthe classroom and counseling office. Democracy encourages aspiration, and generous admission allows the student to carry hhis hopes into the school or now principally the college. But there his desires run into the standards necessary for the integrity of programs and the training of competent workers. The college offers the opportunity to try, but the student's own ability and his accumulative record of performance finally insist that he be sorted out . (1962:79-80; italics ours) What is most striking about these passages is the necessitous implication of | the italicized phrases. At the same time, since the description offered seemed to | 11. For an introduction to fanctional analysis, se the articles by Marion J. Levy and Francesca M. Cancian in The International Encyclopedia ofthe Socal Science (1968).10 KARABEL AND HALSEY fit both modern America and modem Russia (Clark, 1962:45-57), it served to validate some general applicability of technological functionalism. But the differences between these countries in economics, politics, and education surely also reflect specifically different “structures of domination,” as Weber would have put it. The use of the language of necessity implies that there are no alternatives to present structures and thus has the effect of legitimating the } status quo and of diverting attention from the possibility at least of functional alternatives (see Merton, 1968:86-91). In Britain in the 1950s a theory of “technological society” also provided the dominant framework for educational research. The essence of the theory was that technical change in the system of production provided the impetus for ‘educational change, though there was also, as in the United States, some ‘emphasis on the active role of education through its contribution to research and innovation. Where the characteristic outlooks of researchers in the two countries differed was mainly in the varying emphasis on “conflict and friction in the movement towards a technological society” (Halsey et al., 1961:2) and in the reluctance in Britain to embrace a functionalist theory of social change (Floud and Halsey, 1958:173). There was in any case an inherently reformist aspect of the theory of “technological society,” which in the course of its natural development would climinate onerous manual work while simultaneously establishing equal opportunity through the abolition of obsolete class-based ascription. The locus classicus of this kind of theory is in the work of the nineteenth-century Cambridge economist Alfred Marshall.!* Marshall's theory of educational embourgeoisement, modified by T-H. Marshall’s analysis (1965:71-134) of the rise of the welfare state as a principle of citizenship exercising increasing countervailing power against the force of class stratifica- tion, strongly supported the possibility of realizing a welfare society in which equality and liberty would be optimally balanced. British researchers in education were as preoccupied with “wastage” and “dysfunctions” as their American colleagues but perhaps more animated by the egalitarian concerns of a country with a long-established and politically organized Labour movement. Nevertheless, these egalitarian sentiments were linked to concern for efficiency in education so as to preserve “human resources.” The attack by British sociologists on inequality of educational opportunity was not only that it was unfair, but also that it was inefficient. And the historical context in which arguments about “matching ability and opportunity” (Floud and Halsey 1961:80) were put forward was one of political and ideological struggle over the structure of British education. As Bernstein put it in a recent essay on the history of the sociology of education in Britain, “it is 12, Fora discussion of this element in Marshalign theory, see Halsey (1978).EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION " important to realise that Floud and Halsey used the manpower and equality argument as a double-barrelled weapon to bring about change in the procedures of selection and the organizational structure of schools” (1974: 152, italics his). The characteristic methodology of the British school of sociology of education was “political arithmetic” calculating the chances of reaching various stages in the educational process for children of different class origins. This, approach derived from the mobility studies carried out under the direction of D.V. Glass at the London School of Economics and drew its larger framework from research in the area of social stratification. At the time when the studies were being carried out, the sociology of education was not a recognized subdiscipline in British universities, and it is likely that it was less the implicit, structural-functionalist framework than the already-established respectability of the study of social stratification that served to legitimate the sociological study of educational institutions. In either case, however, given that education was held in poor repute as a field of research, the institutionalization of the sociological study of education was greatly facilitated by the prestige derived from borrowing theories, procedures, and substantive concems from the larger and more respected fields of stratification and general sociology." Functionalist analysis is now in wide disrepute. In the educational field it has been criticized for exaggerating the role of technology and underestimating the importance of conflict and ideology (Collins, 1971, and Bowles and Gintis, 1972). The criticism has also been made that this framework, with its emphasis on selection and technical training, has led to a neglect of the content of the educational process (Young, 197 1a). Yet during the period of its greatest influence functionalism undoubtedly advanced the sociological study of education by emphasizing connections between education and other major institutions such as the economy and the polity. A number of studies deriving from one form of functionalism or another (Parsons, 1959; Clark, 1960; Turner, 1960; Trow, 1961) are among the most respected achievements of educational research, and the attention given by functionalist analysis to the selective functions of educational institutions led to the accumulation of data that have proved extremely useful to researchers whether or not they adhere to a functionalist paradigm. Reflecting the spirit of the period in which it came to prominence, func- tionalist theory, particularly as formulated by American scholars, placed undue emphasis on consensus and equilibrium in society. Technological functionalism also served to justify educational growth in the post-war period. Yet, if sociology provided a convineing theoretical rationale for the expansion and differentiation 13. The strugae to institutionalize a discipline will obviously intuene its development, 1 the sociology of education deserves historical study from this point of view. For some interesting remarks on the British ‘ase in its formative period after Wort War I, see Bernstein (1974).n KARABEL AND HALSEY of education, it was unable to answer the economic question with which policy-makers were much concerned, namely, whether educational investment was worthwhile. This was a question for economists, and their response, which took the form of the theory of human capital, exerted a considerable influence not only in the academy but also on the development of educational systems throughout the world. HUMAN CAPITAL THEORY ‘The rate of growth of educational systems after World War II dwarfed even the earlier lurch of European societies in the nineteenth century into universal primary education. In the United States, postwar expansion brought literally millions of students into higher education. Popular demand for expansion was in part motivated by the high rate of return to individuals who received extended schooling. But expansion was expensive and, to a variable but large degree, subsidized in most countries from the public purse. The question of the efficiency of these massive expenditures therefore arose and, at least in the United States, took on an added urgency in the context of international competition with the Soviet Union for military und economic supremacy. Delivered in the context of public concern about the preservation of “human resources,” Theodore W. Schultz’s 1960 Presidential Address to the American Economic Association on the theme “Investment in Human Capital” not surprisingly evoked an enthusiastic response, His message was a simple one: the process of acquiring skills and knowledge through education was not to be viewed as a form of consumption, but rather as a productive investment. “By investing in themselves, people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. Itis the one way free men can enhiance their welfare” (1961:2). As Schultz made clear in the remainder of his address, investment in human capital not only increases individual productivity, but, in so doing, also lays the technical base of the type of labor force necessary for rapid economic growth. ‘These ideas were not new. We have already mentioned their place in the work of Alfred Marshall, and they can be traced to earlier nineteenth-century economists (if not to Adam Smith). They are, moreover, susceptible to a variety of political interpretations. But the tenor of Schult2’s formulation was particularly apt for the social and political climate of the times, especially in the United States.!* For the businessman there was the attractive appeal of 14. 1 interesting to speculate why human capital theory flourished in the United States. The cultural fetting,in'which the viltsian values of the bourgeoisie are uncontested either by the remains of at Sntocrate ethos (asin England) or by the communitarian values of «mass workingclass movement, is ‘Goubuiess one factor. Another important element of any adequate explanation would be the scale of the ‘American expansion of higher education as compared with that of Wester Europe. SeEDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION B education as investment. For university teachers and researchers there was an apparently scientific justification for the expansion of their activity. For some politicians, at least, there was support for democratization of access to education, and for the “consumers” of education there was the prospect of widening ‘opportunities for well-paid jobs. Yet because of the magnitude of finance involved and the suspicion that there might be more direct and hence more efficient ways of promoting economic growth, a clear-cut demonstration of the value of investment in education was needed. The theory of human capital was consonant with the forms of technological functionalism which attracted many sociologists in the 1950s. Both theories stress the technical function of education and emphasize the efficient use of human resources. A concem with the elimination of waste also supports the liberal notion of equality of opportunity. For the technological functionalist there is the enemy of ascription and for the human capitalist the blight of under-investment. Both formulations justify the greater rewards accruing to the educated as incentives necessary to encourage extended study. Thus in their formulation of the functionalist theory of stratification Davis and Moore (1945:244) asserted that “a medical education is so burdensome and expensive that virtually none would undertake it if the M.D. did not carry a reward commensurate with the sacrifice”; for Schultz (1968:285), education can admittedly be considered a consumption good, but the benefit deriving therefrom is “undoubtedly small, for school days entail much hard work and long hours.” But what must further be remarked about the theory of human capital is the direct appeal to pro-capitalist ideological sentiment that resides in its insistence that the worker is a holder of capital (as embodied in his skills and knowledge) and that he has the capacity to invest (in himself). Thus in a single bold conceptual stroke the wage-earner, who holds no property and controls neither the process nor the product of his labor, is transformed into a capitalist. We cannot be surprised, then, that a doctrine reaffirming the American way of life and offering quantitative justification for vast public expenditure on education should receive generous sponsorship in the United States. Government agencies, private foundations, and such international organizations as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were actively involved in the promotion of the theory of human capital.!® The compatibility of the theory with the ideology of liberal progressivism and its ability to align itself with the increasingly powerful 15. The role of financial support in the insttutonaliation of a discipline or a school of thought goes beyond the subsidizing of individual studies in universities. Inthe ease of human capital, the theory Was ‘widely diffused through sponsored publications, international conferences, and consultations with leading {educational policy-makers. The role of sich sponsored support in the instivutionalizaion ofan approach in fhe socal sciences is worthy of careful sy.“ KARABEL AND HALSEY interests of the higher education industry were doubtless factors in its attractiveness to the holders of research funds, quite apart from its intrinsic, ‘merits as an intellectual tool of analysis and its precise quantitative methods. The scientific value of the theory of human capital is much disputed. Critics frequently point to one of its unrealistic assumptions—that the perfect competition prevailing in labor markets ensures that greater earnings reflect greater productivity."® Wages, they point out, are not so determined in the real world. This is not to say that the supply side of the wage and employment process is irrelevant; even an economist as critical of human capital as Bluestone (1972:46-47) admits that the characteristics of workers in a given industry affect that industry's wage scale. But many other factors besides worker characteristics determine wages: among them are unionization, the existence of a minimum wage, traditions of status, customary differentials, and “dual labor markets.”!” Furthermore, the wages of state employees are directly adminis- tered. Their market may be influenced by wages in the private sector, but they are not the outcome of perfect competition. Finally, it is essential not to lose sight of the fact that the degree of inequality of wages prevailing at any given historical moment is in part a result of struggles between social classes over the distribution of the national income. Nevertheless, this does not undermine the proposition that an individual may find it advantageous to invest in an education for himself and that a society may also find it advantageous. It is true, of course, that the individual who profits from educational investment may do so in part because of selective mechanisms prevalent in his society, but a society may find that its rate of growth depends to some extent on the level of educational attainment of its workers. The actual level and type of educational investment that are optimal for economic growth is a matter of complex debate, but the idea that there is a social rate of return to education is not intrinsically unsound. Despite its theoretical and empirical shortcomings, the influence of the human capital approach on social policy extended beyond the advanced capitalist countries into the nations of the Third World. The idea of using the theory of human capital in underdeveloped countries ‘to help them achieve economic growth” was adumbrated by Schultz's Presidential Address (1961:15). Struck by the rapid economic recovery of countries that had suffered massive destruction of physical capital during World War IT, Schultz suggested that the “economic miracle” had been due, in no small part, to the reservoir of human capital that remained after the war. His conclusion was that underdeveloped countries, 16, Among the eitical works sre Bluestone (1972), Thurow (1972), Piore (1973), Taubman and Wales (2973), Carer and Camoy (1974), and Bowles and Ginis (19758). 17. See Doeringer and Piore (1971), Gordon (1971), and Reich e al. (1973) for detailed discusions of “dual labor markets" Some interesting empirical evidence is presented in Bluestone ct a. (1975),EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION 6 lacking in “the knowledge and skills required to take on and use efficiently the superior techniques of production,” should be provided with aid designed to increase the quality of their human capital (1961:15-16), Organizations such as the World Bank and the Ford Foundation responded to Schultz’s appeal by providing funds for economists of education to spread the gospel of human capital among the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, There was, to be sure, some truth in the theory, and the socialist countries of the Third World were equally concemed to organize their educational systems so as {0 promote economic growth (see Bastid, 1970, and Carnoy and Werthein, 1977). But the appeal of human capital theory to capitalist institutions such as {he International Monetary Fund and the World Bank resided substantially in the comforting ideological character of its message. The nations of the Third World, the theory suggested, were poor not because of the structure of international economic relations, but because of internal characteristics-most notably their lack of human capital. As with the poor within the advanced countries, nothing in the situation of the Third World countries called for fadical, structural change; development was possible if only they would improve the quality of their woefully inadequate human resources. Attention was thus deflected from structural variables onto individuals."* Application of this theoretical framework led to diverse and often unsuccessful results. For example, a study of Ghana by Philip Foster (1965) shows that the active {Ronsorship of technical and vocational education evoked little popular response because the populace, apparently more aware of the actual structure of job Spportunities in Ghana than foreign economists, recognized that the exchange sector was simply too small to absorb very many graduates, Virtually uncontested when it came into prominence in the early 1960s, the theory of human capital was under vigorous assault a decade later." Discredited in the eyes of many by policy failures both in the American “war on poverty” and in the attempts to promote economic growth in the Third World, the human capital approach, though still retaining the loyalties of intelligent and articulate defenders,?? no longer seemed to provide an adequate framework for understanding the relationship between education and the economy. And once seo Bia%s (1972) and Layard and Psicharopoulos (1974) for recent defenses of the human capital approach,16 KARABEL AND HALSEY under attack, human capitalists found themselves in a difficult position, for their input-output models had never offered insight into what was going on in the “black box” of education that would explain its correlation with earnings. This inattention to the education process was not unique to human capitalists.® It was also characteristic of the approach favored by perhaps more educational researchers than any other: that of methodological empiricism. It is to this, highly influential school of thought that we will now tum. METHODOLOGICAL EMPIRICISM AND THE DEBATE OVER INEQUALITY Although we now focus our attention on a branch of sociology that is defined in terms of its method, we are, at the same time, concerned substantively with the problem of inequality. While by no means identical, the method and the substance are closely linked in postwar educational research. In reviewing their development, we refer particularly to the works of Duncan, Coleman, Jencks, and their associates in America and to the “action-research” program in the British educational priority areas (Halsey, 1972). These authors and studies, however, are taken as illustrative of a larger body of work including that of ‘Sewell in America, Boudon in France, Husén in Sweden, J.W.B. Douglas in Britain, and many others. ‘The debate over inequality has been at the center of political conflict in this century with respect to class and more recently with respect to race and sex. Particularly since World War II, with the spread of egalitarian ideologies, popular demand for equal educational opportunity has intensified. On the theoretical level, the debate has received new vigor from Marxist and other forms of conflict theory, to which we tum in the next section. Methodologically, research has de- veloped in two directions. On the one hand, much energy and many of the nificant results have taken the form of empirical, usually quantitative, studies of the role of education in reducing or maintaining structures of inequality that co- exist with increasingly widespread egalitarian ideologies. On the other hand, there has been the development of action-research in the form of quasi-experi- ‘ments, in most cases conducted under governmental auspices. This latter type of development raises in a sharp form the issue of the relation between government and social science to which we have referred. But much of the quantitative work has also been directly funded by government in the service of policy interests. There are, of course, other forms of methodological empiricism, including the politically and morally committed work of such writers as D.V. Glass in Britain or Christopher Jencks in America and also including the high methodological sophistication of, for example, Keith Hope in Britain or O.D. Duncan in 21. The neglect of the content of education by sociologists was noticed and regretted in the 1961 reader by Halsey, Floud, and Anderson (1961/10)EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION 7 America. Nevertheless, when the emphasis is on neutrality and the method is numerical, methodological empiricism is well adapted to the interests of administration, for it leaves ends in the hands of policy-makers and concentrates the efforts of the social scientist on the means by which these ends may be attained (Gouldner, 1971). ‘We have earlier suggested that the influence of government funding on the character of educational research is likely to be in the direction of policy- oriented, quantitative studies.*® Yet it is important not to overestimate the ex- tent to which the high repute of methodological empiricism is a consequence of government funding. For one thing, mathematically informed analysis is in part an outcome of intellectual challenges intrinsic to the social sciences themselves. For another, a suspicion of theory as metaphysical and a preference for positivistic methodology is deeply rooted in Anglo-Saxon culture (Anderson, 1968) and pervades the history of the social sciences in Great Britain and the United States. For these reasons alone, therefore, the preeminence of metho- ological empiricism in educational research clearly has sources of social support that are quite independent of the source of research funds. At the same time, it would be naive not to recognize that state patronage has contributed to promoting atheoretical forms of methodological empiricism and has given less encouragement to other approaches. ‘The rise of methodological empiricism within the sociology of education may also be seen as a response to its simultaneous association with the poorly esteemed fields of education and sociology. A highly technical style of research ‘was well suited to the needs of a discipline much concerned with showing that it, too, could be rigorous.”* In their eagerness to establish their scientific 22. Despite our debt to Gouldner (1971445), our use of the term “methodological empiricism” differs ‘om his in that we do not wish to imply that in methodological empiricist sties there is typically “s sect of substantive concepts and assumptions concerning specifically human behavior and social ations” (talies is), Nor do we wish to imply that government agencies are wholly dedicated. 10 raging the social seence community to produce work atthe highest level of quantitative sophistice ‘on. Indeed, the "Royal Commission method” that sso quntesventially par of the welfare state tradition ® often criticized by socal scientists for its failure to use the most advanced methods of sock sence in assembling and analyzing evidence. In some ways, our concept of “methodological empiricism!” borrows from C. Wright Milles (1959-3075) exique of “abstracted empleiciam” than from Gouldnes, Within ‘amework of abstracted empiricism, writes Mills (1989:57), “the kinds of problems that will be taken ‘snd the way in which thy ate formulated are quite severely limited by The Seientifie Method.” Williamson (1974:6-7), in discussing the social demgeratic tradition of “pliielarithmetic™ in the sish soctology of education, points to iis “pragmatism” as one of its distineive features. He sees such +5 as LW.B, Douglas and A.M. Halsey as having hada cose relationship with polieal decision makers therefore having been pressed “to formulate thelr work and writing In such a way that some kind of or policy action can flow from it.” And, as Wllamson notes, a great deal of the work which up the old sociology has been to sieaer or lesser degree sponsored” by official and sem-offial Another factor that contributed to the prominence of methodological empiricism was that it provided ogy with a standardized approach to social inguiry in a period in which sociological research Was ning a mass enterprise, In educational research, many sociologists of education had found th sant functionalist theory of litle ssistance In guiding thie own investigations; with the growth of the18 KARABEL AND HALSEY credentials, methodological empiricists sometimes tended to confuse the ‘empirical with the statistical, and frequently neglected those problems that did not readily lend themselves to quantification. Yet despite the narrowness of its approach, methodological empiricism has made a considerable contribution to the advancement of educational research, especially on the problem of schooling and social inequality. {a) Blau and Duncan, The American Occupational Structure One of the most influential studies carried out in the methodological empiricist tradition—and one that addressed itself to important substantive as well as methodological issues—was Blau and Duncan's book The American Occupational Structure (1967). Primarily concerned with the question of occupational mobility, the study included considerable material on the role of education in the intergenerational transmission of inequality. Its importance resided not only in its substantive findings but also in its methodological innovations. In particular, an imaginative use of path analysis, which Duncan had introduced to the sociological community in a famous 1966 article in the American Journal of Sociology, has powerfully influenced subsequent research in the sociology of education. Blau and Duncan's statistical methods have been used within a wider theoretical framework of evolutionary functionalism. In its Parsonsian form this theory postulates a general movement in industrial societies from ‘particularism’ to ‘universalism’ with a correlative movement from ‘ascription’ to ‘achievement’. In the final chapter of their book Blau and Duncan conclude that there is indeed “g fundamental trend towards expanding universalism (which) characterizes industrial society” (Blau and Duncan, 1967:429). A careful look at the data, however, brings this conclusion seriously into question. If the postulated movement were taking place there should be a diminishing correlation over time between parental and filial occupational status. Blau and Duncan’s correlations with respect to total mobility and using four age cohorts were, however, .384, 388, .377, and .380, moving from the oldest to the youngest. Similarly, the Correlation of the son’s education with the status of his first job would be expected to increase over time with the waning of ascription and the waxing of achievement. These correlations in fact fluctuate between .557 and .554 for the inaltimacy of methodological emplsioim, they could dispense with theory and pet down: Pathaas be tgeting the facts” During this same period, what C. Wright Mis (1989:101-118) bas called & aanecetic ethos” srew up in the sociological community; the statesponsored research institutes that “cnbodied it deeply tsoubled hin, for “they provide employment for samiskiled technicians ona scale and runner not known before; they offer to them career having the security ofthe older academic fe but ic roqulting te older srt of individual accomplishment” (19S9:56). One may not fully subsite to Mill's ‘ther hati aavesament of the consequences of What he referred to as “abstracted empiricism,” but the Uprervation that the new research style served the needs of an expanding profession remains a pereeptiveEDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION 9 two oldest cohorts and .532 and .574 for the youngest (1967:178). The lack of any discernible pattern in these figures would seem to cast considerable doubt on the thesis of a trend toward universalism. Another serious problem with Blau and Duncan’s data, especially with respect to the Parsonsian theory of a movement from ascription to achievement, is that they do not permit us to measure how much occupational mobility occurs irrespec- tive of changes in the occupational structure, ice, to distinguish between total mobility and exchange mobility. The correlations presented above conflate exchange mobility with the consequences of a well-known movemeni ‘occupational structure that has replaced traditional manual with modern technical occupations. Unless and until a measure of exchange mobility is established we cannot be clear about trends towards ‘achievement’ as characteris- tics of modem society.25 Alternative evidence for the trend from ascription to achievement is provided by Blau and Duncan in their demonstration that family background has no significant effect on occupational status independent of educational attainment. On the basis of path analysis they conclude that “superior status cannot any more be directly inherited but must be lesitimated by actual achievements that are socially acknowledged” (1967:430). This is an important finding, but it does not dispose of the problem. If, as Bourdieu (1973) and other writers suggest, the inheritance of status in modern societies takes place through the transmission of ‘cultural capital’, then the distinction between ascription and achievement becomes a misleading one. With the decline of the family firm, the privileged no longer reproduce their positions solely through property but also through the acquisition of superior education for their children. Rather than describing this process as heightened universalism it would seem more accurate to view it as a new mechanism performing the old function of social reproduction. Social inheritance, whether through the transmission of property or through the transmission of cultural capital, is still social inheritance.* (b) The Coleman Report Blau and Duncan’s study represents the academic pole of educational research in the tradition of methodological empiricism. For an example of a more directly 25. In his forthcoming contribution to the volume reporting on the British social mobility study of 1972, Hope hss produced a method of measuring exchange mobility on the basis of which he shows no trend towards greater fluidity or openness. His father-son correlations for diferent cohorts within the 1972 sample have no secular direction, 26. ‘See Crowder (1974) for a general critique of Duncans research on social stratification. Another group of researches who have done important work on education in the wadition of methodological emplscism ‘hs been centered around Wiliam Swell tthe University of Wisconsin (oo Sewell and Shah, 1967; Sowell, 1971; Sewell and Hauser, 1975) Haller and Portes (1973) provide a luid discussion of the differences, ‘which may look rather minor to an outsider, between the Duncan approach and the more sociakpyehologt al Sewell approach, Par the major work of the Dunean school specially concerned with education, see Duncan et al (1973),Ey KARABEL AND HALSEY policy-oriented work we may turn to James Coleman’s Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966). ‘This study was a response to Section 402 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ordered the Commissioner for Education to “conduct asurvey and make a report to the President and the Congress, within two years of the enactment of this title, concerning the lack of availability of equal educational opportunities for individuals by reasons of race, color, religion, or national origin in public educational institutions at all levels in the United States.” It was widely expected that the study would show glaring inequalities between black and white schools and that differential scholastic achievement by race could be substantially explained by these differences. The Congressmen who sponsored the legislation hoped not only to document these differences in order to legitimate massive Federal intervention in ghetto schools, but also to determine which school characteristics could be most effectively changed in order to improve academic achievement. In a period in which riots in black ghettos threatened to unravel the social fabric of American life, continuing inequality of educational opportunity was widely held to be intolerable, and the Coleman study was designed to help bring it to an end. Coleman’s findings, most notably that black and white school characteristics were surprisingly equal and that school facilities seemed to have relatively little effect on student achievement, are now familiar and so, also, is the heated political and intellectual controversy that ensued.?* Two features of the study and its aftermath are especially worth noting here. On the one hand, the survey ‘was conducted in terms of an “official definition” of the problem of educational opportunity; on the other, a new academic definition of the problem was afterwards formulated by Coleman himself. The Congressmen who commis- sioned the survey suspected that ghetto schools had suffered from inadequate expenditures and their preoccupation with this issue meant that the survey design reflected the concerns of policy-makers rather than researchers. There were ‘thus very little data either on the internal workings of schools or on the components of “family background.” For this, the collection of qualitative data, preferably longitudinal, on interaction in the school and in the family would have been necessary. Given the unexpected result that the distribution of ‘material resources in the education system itself was fairly equal, the structure of the survey did not permit adequate explanation of inequalities of perfor- mance between classes and races despite the imaginative analyses of those quantifiable variables that had been included. 27, The British equivalent of the Coleman study, and one that has a remarkably similar flavor, is the Plowden Report (Cental Advisory Council for Education, 1967). 2k. See, for example, Hartrd Educational Review's (Winter 1968) special isue on “Dgual Faucational Opportunity” and the reanalyses of the Coleman data reported in Moselle and Moynihan (1972). Hodgson (1973) provides an illuminating journalistic account of the debate in the United States over schooling and inequalityEDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION a Before turning to Coleman’s redefinition of the problem we must note that his data led him to the conclusion that family background was much more important than school characteristics in explaining differential achievement among school children. This finding permitted an interpretation in terms of the theory of cultural deprivation of ghetto families, a formulation that gave apparent scientific approval to widespread commonsensical belief and that was to guide Federal policy in later years.® Yet the conclusion that families rather than schools are responsible for relative failure does not necessarily follow from the data. For there may be something characteristic of all the schools that tends to inhibit the academic achievement of poor and black children; the fact that differences between schools fail to account for much variation would be decisive only if the schools did in fact differ significantly among themselves. That the workings of the schools themselves may be a source of inequality of educational opportunity is suggested by one of Coleman’s findings: the difference between minority and majority children increases with time spent in school. It seems likely, then, that schools at least reinforce the inferior position of disadvantaged children with respect to educational opportunity. In any case, the core of what goes on in school can only be grasped by careful observation of the content and process of education, and about these Coleman had, of necessity, little to say. Even within the constrictions of the “official definition” of the problem of educational inequality the findings of the Coleman Report constituted an important advance over previous research. They showed the inadequacy of attending to the most superficial and visible aspects of schools and therefore discredited some of the cruder strategies of educational reform. But what was more important was that Coleman's inquiry into the problem of inequality of educational opportunity led him to make a crucial distinction between the relatively passive notion of equality of opportunity and the more active one of equality of results (Coleman, 1968). It no longer sufficed simply to offer individual children exposure to the schools; what was demanded was the active involvement of the school in the provision of equality of outcomes for identifiable social groups. This formulation of the question of equality of educational opportunity, with its insistence on the primacy of substance rather than procedure and of the group rather than the individual, marked a decisive advance in American thinking on the subject. At the same time, it should be noted, this radical conception of equality of results was in one sense consistent with the older liberal notion of equality of opportunity. The distinctive feature of the demand for equality of output, its emphasis on groups, meant that a proportionate share of blacks, women, and other subordinated groups was to 29, For ertiqus ofthe theory ofthe culture of poverty, see Valentine (1968) and Leacock (1971). 30, We texte, however, that Coleman (1975) has recently argued against the utlty of this important Aistinetion for poliey purposes.2 KARABEL AND HALSEY attain “success” in numbers commensurate with their proportions in the population, Such an eventuality would, to be sure, produce a dramatic change in the distribution of opportunity in America or in any other society, but it would not necessarily lead to a reduction in the underlying structure of inequality. (c) Christopher Jencks and Inequality The distinction between the ideals of mobility and social equality was clearly drawn by Michael Young in The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958), but it was not until the publication of Christopher Jencks’s Inequality in 1972 that the distinction was made part of the conceptual framework of a major methodologi- cal empiricist study. Jencks’s concern with the question was a long-standing one and was already evident four years earlier in his chapter on “Social Stratification and Mass Higher Education” in The Academic Revolution. In it he declared that “there seems to be something basically perverse and sadistic in trying to make society any more competitive and status conscious than it already is” and concluded that “America most needs . .. not more mobility but more equality” Gencks and Riesman, 1968:150). This value position, rather unusual among American educational researchers, provided the underlying premise of Inequality. Jencks himself (1973: 138) explains that the origins of the study go back to his work in Washington from 1961 to 1967 and his disenchantment with the liberal social reform programs of the 1960s. An active participant in public policy-making, Jencks concluded that the reformist programs of the New Frontier and the Great Society would never be effective in confronting the problem of inequality. The reformists’ obsession with education was, Jencks believed, ill-suited to the attainment even of the lesser goal of equality of opportunity. In 1966, at the Institute for Policy Studies, Jencks began work on a book designed to show the inadequacy of a reform strategy centered on education. Revealingly titled The Limits of Schooling, this was the beginning of a project that culminated in the publication of /nequality.”" ‘An example of methodological empiricism at its best, Inequality merits careful attention for what it can reveal about both the contributions and the limitations of this approach. Essentially a continuation of the research by Blau and Duncan and by Coleman to which we have referred, the study offers a synthesis of existing sources of data on education and inequality. Pethaps its 31. Money for the project, an indispensable precondition for is realization considering the intricate and costly analyses of data cased out, came primarily from the Carnegie Corporation, but support was also provided by the Department of Health, Education, and Wolfe, the Office of Feonomic Opportuaity, the oid and Guggenheim Foundations, and other private and governmental agencies (Jencks etal, 1972:EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: A REVIEW AND AN INTERPRETATION 2 most important contribution was the heavy blow it dealt to any strategy placing exclusive reliance on the equalization of education as a means of obtaining either equality of opportunity or equality. Scholars familiar with the research of Sewell, Blau and Duncan, and other major American contributors to the study of education and social stratification were, of course, already aware that schools, are limited instruments of social reform, but there can be little doubt that Jencks's study did much to disabuse policy-makers and the larger public of the notion, recurrent in American history, that educational reform can serve as a substitute for more fundamental change. Further, as a description of the empirical relations prevailing in America among variables such as family background, education, and occupational attainment, Inequality provides a statistical portrait that will serve as a foundation for research on the subject for years to come.** Finally, in its explicit raising of the previously submerged issue of equality, Jencks's study has done much to advance the debate, in academic and policy circles alike, on education and social class. ‘There are, nonetheless, a number of serious problems in Inequality, many of them deriving from the book’s polemical purpose. Intent on discrediting educational reform as a strategy for equality, Jencks was much concerned to show that schooling is a relatively modest determinant of adult success. His preferred technique of demonstrating the marginality of schooling in the process of social stratification—one that James Coleman (1973: 1524) qualifies as the “skillful but highly motivated use of statistics”—is to compare the magnitude of the variance explained by education with all the unexplained variance. The resulting feebleness of education contrasted to the vast extent of the variance which remains unaccounted for must seem imposing to the lay reader, but to the researcher accustomed to the limited explanatory power of social science statistics, many of the relationships seem very substantial indeed. Education, for example, shows a correlation of .65 with occupational status (Jencks et al., 1972:181)~a remarkably high figure, which Jencks (1972:192) attempts to de-emphasize by noting that it leaves more than half of the variance unex- plained.*? Jencks himself has, in public discussion of the book, referred to the problem of emphasis in interpreting the statistics reported in Inequality as the “half glass empty, half glass full” phenomenon, and it is by no means impossible 32. For technical critiques of Jnequality and Jenckss response, soe the symposiums in Harard Educottonal Review (Fall 1973), Sociology of Education (Winter 1973), and The American Educational Research rma (Spring. 1974). ‘Sewell (1973), in a generally sympathetic review of Tenck, takes him to task for an “overconeezn with iR*™ Ge, explained variance) that accounts for his “easy rejection of many relationship that by usbal Standards in quantitative social scionce would be considered quite important." Jencks, Sewell notes, “really Somes down to settings standard that says a causal variable (or st of eausal variables) unimportant ft oes not explain most ofthe variance inthe dependent variable of interest” (1973'1537)-o * KARABEL AND HALSEY to imagine that someone with a different polemical intention could have used the same statistics to put forward a powerful argument about the role of education as a determinant of inequality. The obsession with “unexplained variance” in Inequality leads Jencks to conclude that “luck” is a major source of income inequality. Income, he suggests, depends on chance occurrences such as “whether bad weather destroys your strawberry crop, whether the new superhighway has an exit near your restaurant, and a hundred other unpredictable accidents” (Jencks et al., 1972:227), The identification of unexplained variance with “luck” seems a peculiar one for a sociologist, but it is a logical result of Jencks’s decision to gather data only about individuals. Yet as Boudon (1974) has argued in a review of Jencks, relationships that are objectively indeterminate for the individual may be anything but random when viewed from the perspective of social structure. The limited but still high correlation of .65 between schooling and occupational status may, for example, be partially determined by changes in the occupational structure that create a disjuncture between the educational system and the world of work. Inequality, through its neglect of structural variables, adds the problems of methodological individualism to the limitations of methodological empiricism.° One of the most interesting—but also one of the most problematic—aspects of Inequality is its effort to measure the magnitude of the effects that would result from the equalization of schooling. The characteristic procedure used by Jencks to measure the maximum potential effect of a given variable is to hold all other variables constant and then to determine how much effect the equalization of the variable in question would have on the dependent variable. The nature of this procedure is well illustrated by an example Jencks himself uses (1973: 160): since the 1940 Census showed that schooling explained 21 per cent of the variance in income among men aged 35 to 44, “statistical logic therefore implies that reducing the variance in years of schooling could never reduce the variance 234, For examples ofa type of methodotogical empiricist analysis of education and inequality chat does not neglect the role of social structure, see Boudon (1973 and 1974). 435. Even within the framework of methodological mdividvlism, iti posible to eritcize the measures of| amily socioeconomic status (generally a composite measure of parents education and fathers occupation) used in many of the studies (eg, Blau and Duncan) upon which negualty relies. Mullet (1972), ina study in-a mediumsized German town which includes direct data on brothers, finds that similarities in father’s education and occupation explain 35 percent of the variance in son's occupational status, but that ‘unmeasured “family residual” effects account for an additional 24 percent of the variance in the case of| brothers (1972:242). What this finding strongly suggests is that there are elements in family background ‘that, although they are important in the determination of adult status, are not captured by the usual techniques. Bowles (19723), who also suspects that the usual methods of measuring the effects of soeioeconomic stats have the systematic consequence of underestimating them, suggests that the transmis sion of personality attributes, determined in part by parental position inthe hierarchy of Work relations, is an important component of Family background