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Making Sense of School Choice
Making Sense of School Choice

Politics, Policies, and Practice under

Conditions of Cultural Diversity

Joel A. Windle
making sense of school choice
Copyright © Joel A. Windle, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-48352-2

All rights reserved.

First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United ®

States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and
has companies and representatives throughout the world.

® ®
Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the
United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-56548-1 ISBN 978-1-137-48353-9 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/9781137483539

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Windle, Joel A.
Making sense of school choice : politics, policies and practice under
conditions of cultural diversity / Joel A. Windle.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. School choice—
United States. 2. Educational equalization. I. Title.
LB1027.9.W57 2015
379.1'11—dc23
2015006838

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Amnet.

First edition: August 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 Contents

List of Tables vii

Acknowledgments ix

1 Choice, Equity, and Diversity 1

2 School Choice as Policy Regime and Cultural Ideal 23
3 Socially Restricted Choice in Multicultural Neighborhoods 47
4 Socially Exposed Schooling: The Majority Experience 77
5 The Meaning of Choice for Schools: Curriculum and
Market Hierarchies 97
6 The Many Lives of School Choice: Common Sense,
Coercion, and Control 119
7 Toward Democratic Schooling 145

Appendix: Research Methods and Data Sources 163

Notes 165
References 167
Index 187
 List of Tables

2.1 Multiple schools considered (logistic regression) 43

2.2 Use of MySchool (logistic regression) 44
5.1 Top-ranked Victorian schools in examination results 100
 Acknowledgments

The research upon which this book is based was funded by the Australian
Research Council. I also draw on research supported by an Endeavour Award
from the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations, and projects financed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education’s
research agency (CAPES). I am particularly grateful to the parents, students,
teachers, and principals who generously participated in this research. The
data collection relied on the contribution of a team of coworkers, to whom I
am extremely grateful: Ben Crichton, Cemen Polat, Zuhal Caliskan, Simone
Cassidy, Taghreed Jamal Al Deen, Hai Nguyen, Huyen Le, Miriam Faine,
Thi Lan Anh Phan, Musa Kilinc, Cunhzen Yang, and Denise Beale. Particular
thanks and recognition are due to Greg Stratton, who played an invaluable
role in fieldwork, analysis, and project management; and to Rodrigo Rocco
and Malcolm Anderson, who played important roles in data analysis. I also
wish to thank colleagues who have supported my work and provided valu-
able insights and stimulation in the development of the project: Jane Kenway,
Lindsay Fitzclarence, Ilana Snyder, Mary Lou Rasmussen, Terri Seddon, John
Loughran, Sue Willis, Jenny Miller, Michael Henderson, Scott Bulfin, Dat
Bao, Le-Ha Phan, Gerald Burke, Anne Harris, Fida Sanjakdar, Peter Sullivan,
Ros Winter, John Whelen, Miranda McCallum, Malia Spofford-Xavier, Lynn
Mario de Souza, Walkyria Monte Mor, and Christopher Lubienski. Finally,
for their support throughout, I wish to thank my family, particularly Chris-
tine and Rohan Windle for editing drafts, and Jonas Avelino da Silva for his
constant encouragement.
 CHAPTER 1

Choice, Equity, and Diversity

S
chool choice is one of the most prominent planks of an education
reform movement that has taken hold in dozens of developed and
developing nations alike (OECD, 2012). A key argument in favor of
establishing a market-place of educational options from which parents may
choose is that schools will be more responsive to cultural diversity. Para-
doxically, school choice policies have tended to aggravate ethnic segregation
and narrow curriculum and pedagogy. The purpose of this book is to offer
an explanation for this paradox through analysis of the workings of school
choice in multicultural societies, focusing on Australia as an extreme case
of marketized schooling. However, the analysis is international in scope,
considering school choice in relation to the uneven spread of mass second-
ary education and the rise of neoliberalism. Examples are drawn from such
contrasting institutional and cultural settings as Brazil, the United States,
and France.
The availability of choice among schools aims to reduce inequalities by
empowering parents to abandon poorly performing schools and send their
children to better quality alternatives (Hirsch, 2002). Governments have
variously supported parental choice by removing geographical zoning, estab-
lishing new alternatives, devolving managerial control to school level, and
providing incentives for the establishment of a marketplace of private and
community-run educational options. In the United States, for example,
autonomous charter schools have been established with the promise to “lib-
erate community-based groups of parents, educators, and students who want
to celebrate their own cultural heritage” (Wells, Lopez, Scott, and Holme,
1999, p. 181).
While part of the appeal of school choice is the potential to grant mar-
ginalized and minority populations educational freedom and quality, in
practice choice has not usually favored the most disadvantaged. Even
2 ● Making Sense of School Choice

community-run schools, a minority option among those that have emerged,

tend to represent groups of parents who are relatively privileged within their
local context (Goldring, 2005; Wells et al., 1999). Indeed, one of the most
distinctive effects of school choice regimes globally has been an increase of
various forms of segregation—economic, academic, and ethnic. The United
States, Canada, New Zealand, England, and Australia stand out as developed
nations where such divisions have deepened (Lubienski, 2006; Mavisakalyan,
2012; Scott, 2005). In developing nations too, with Chile standing as the
leading example, segregation has been increased by school choice regimes
(M. Schneider, Elacqua, and Buckley, 2006). This phenomenon is also evi-
dent in settings where school choice is not overtly part of the policy regime,
but occurs covertly—such as in France (Van Zanten, 2009).
Taken at face value, the call for choice in education has obvious, com-
monsense appeal. It is easy to imagine education systems improved through
greater availability and range of options. The argument of this book is that
school choice behaves the way it does because it sits within a wider logic
of social restriction that underpins contemporary schooling. It is this logic,
therefore, that is the central analytical focus for making sense of school choice
as a set of policies, political moves, and practices to the logic of social restric-
tion is structured over time by cultural and cognitive hierarchies embedded
in curriculum and pedagogical structures. These hierarchies present a level of
continuity with “non-choice” systems that has been downplayed amid rheto-
ric of educational transformation and market revolutions.
Independent of the mechanisms of selection, only a certain number of
schools enjoy a level of demand that allows them to pick and choose. Such
schools gain much of their appeal from their very selectivity, becoming
“schools of choice.” This phenomenon can be observed in systems that
prohibit schools from selectivity or parents from making choices, as well
as in systems that allow such freedoms. The term I shall use to refer to
education under such conditions is “socially restrictive schooling.” This
allows for a discussion that identifies the common attribute of a range
of organizational forms—charter schools, private schools, academies,
magnet schools, specialist schools, select-entry schools, and high-demand
public schools. These schools, the success stories of school choice regimes,
function as socially restricted sites, while the remainder operate as socially
exposed sites. The terms “socially restricted” and “socially exposed” are
used to discuss opposite poles within the logic of social restriction that
frames school choice, recognizing that schools may be differently posi-
tioned between these poles.1
Culture, in this analysis, is taken as a structuring element of socially
restrictive schooling, drawing on Bourdieu’s analysis of the development
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 3

over time of an alignment between ruling class tastes, practices, and styles
on the one hand, and the formal and informal demands of pedagogy
and curriculum on the other (Bourdieu, 1973; Bourdieu and Passeron,
1979, 1990). However, neither elite nor popular cultures are fixed. They
are changing, hybrid, and situationally produced entities—constructed
through processes including migration, residential segregation, and strug-
gles for control over various social institutions, of which formal education
is one. This dynamic is shaped by the historical and contemporary mani-
festations of colonialism and imperialism (Bhabha, 1994; Connell, 2007).
In many culturally diverse societies, the dividing lines of socially restric-
tive schooling also represent racial and ethnic hierarchies, with Indigenous,
migrant, and black populations subject to an educational double standard
established in colonial times. Such double standards can be found even at
the origins of school choice advocacy, in the work of US economists. It
is important, therefore, to map both the ideological history of the rise of
school choice, and its connections to logics of socially restrictive schooling,
in order to make sense of the school choice paradox.

The Origins of School Choice

US economist Milton Friedman was the first to propose a voucher system
for education, in 1955 (Friedman, 1955). Under his scheme, families would
receive a set amount of money per child from the government to spend on
any school they wished. At the same time, any person or institution would be
free to set up a school and seek to attract students. Friedman was influential
both within the United States and internationally, particularly as an advisor
to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in the late 1970s and later to the Reagan
administration.
Friedman identified the ultimate objective of society as freedom of the
individual, which he then refined as freedom of the family as the “basic” or
“responsible” unit of society. He saw a self-interested bureaucratic class as
the main obstacle to the free-market takeover of education. While Fried-
man noted the possible risk of segregation through school choice, his main
concern was provision of a minimum basic level of education needed to
promote citizenship within a market framework. Quality, equity, and aca-
demic outcomes are not concerns for the state, in his analysis. The focus was
on socialization—the transmission of expressive culture (cohesive values
and outlook), rather than instrumental culture (specific skills). Indeed, the
higher and more vocational reaches of the educational system were under-
stood by Friedman as a private concern to be personally funded through
a debt scheme. In later advocacy, Friedman expanded his focus on private
4 ● Making Sense of School Choice

entrepreneurs as both drivers and beneficiaries of school choice (Friedman,

1997).
The most influential contemporary advocates of school choice, Chubb
and Moe, like Friedman, frame their arguments around the need to do
away with the obstacle of educational bureaucracies. Published by the US
think tank the Brookings Institution, with which both authors were con-
nected, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools identifies the losers in the
emergence of mass schooling in the United States as “the lower classes,
ethnic and religious minorities, and citizens of rural communities” (Chubb
and Moe, 1990, p. 4). The authors argue that prior to the mass expansion
of education and its bureaucratization, such groups enjoyed control over
local schools. Chubb and Moe write glowingly of the pre-massification era
in which they imagine that, due to local control, “the great heterogeneity
of the nation came to be reflected in the diversity and autonomy of its local
schools” (p. 3). This idealized period was, in their analysis, interrupted by
the reforms of the first half of the twentieth century that established com-
prehensive schooling.
Despite identifying the downtrodden as the main beneficiaries of school
choice, Chubb and Moe note that the demand for reform has come not from
the “losers” of comprehensive schooling, but from a vanguard within the busi-
ness community mobilizing their political resources. This mobilization came
in response to the economic crisis of the late 1970s, when low productivity
was linked to the incapacity of schools to adequately produce human capital.
According to Chubb and Moe, the business community, without a vested
interest in the existing system, was well placed to bring a cold, hard analysis,
but lacked a research infrastructure independent of such interests. Into this
breach stepped an emerging network of think tanks, producing ready-made
policy solutions appealing to big business, and within which Chubb and Moe
themselves were located.
Chubb and Moe argue that the characteristics of effective schools are most
frequently found under conditions of autonomy, and that top-heavy bureau-
cratic control, the product of political institutions controlling schools, is the
key block to school autonomy. The kind of autonomy envisioned by Chubb
and Moe is that modeled on property rights:

The owners of a school have legal authority to create whatever kind of school
they please, but they cannot require anyone to attend or finance it. They have
authority over their own property, not over the property of others. Similarly,
parents and students have the right to seek out whatever kinds of schools
they like. But they cannot force schools to adopt specific courses, hire certain
teachers, or pursue certain values. Nor can they force schools to grant them
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 5

admission. They make decisions for themselves, not for the schools. (Chubb
and Moe, 1990, pp. 29–30)

Chubb and Moe depart from Friedman’s analysis in arguing that the
underlying problem is really that of academic quality. They identify a catalyst
for reform in the government-commissioned report A Nation at Risk (1983),
which emphasized a crisis in educational standards based on declining exami-
nation results. In fact, the assessment scores for ethnic-minority and work-
ing-class students were rising, and more were remaining through to the end
of secondary schooling. The overall drop in scores reflected a broadening of
school completion beyond an academic elite of white, economically privi-
leged students (Stedman, 1994). Other work has since identified a pattern of
“manufactured” crises in public schooling as a catalyst for neoliberal reforms
(Berliner and Biddle, 1995; Lubienski and Lubienski, 2013; Ravitch, 2013).
The “problem” to be resolved in such crises is always that of poor and minor-
ity populations, and their wishes are almost always irrelevant to market solu-
tions—creating a double standard between the abstract worship of freedom
and autonomy and the imposition of top-down reform measures on certain
populations.
The work of Friedman, Chubb, and Moe is revealing of some of the key
characteristics of school choice as a global movement:

● Emergence in response to a particular form of massified schooling—the

comprehensive public school;
● An ideological foundation in neoliberal economics that seeks solutions
for social problems in markets regulated and generated by government;
● Promotion through think tanks via the work of neoliberal economists;
● A normative model of the individual as the male head of the family
entering into contracts in the public sphere and managing women and
children in the private sphere of the home;
● Presentation as a solution for disadvantaged and disenfranchised popu-
lations coming from social forces external to such groups;
● Identification of business interests as the motor of reform, driven by
concern with national competitiveness and that present themselves as
disinterested;
● Identification of a crisis in public education and presentation of a
“magic bullet.”

What has been neglected in subsequent school choice research is Friedman’s

insistence on schooling as playing a specifically cultural role of socialization,
rather than merely economic roles of selection or human capital development.
6 ● Making Sense of School Choice

Similarly ignored is that the sense of crisis in schooling is itself the product of
the mass expansion of secondary education to new social groups, as revealed
by reanalysis of the Nation at Risk data. This neglect of the longer history of
educational massification is common to both advocates and critics of school
choice, and results in an underplaying of schooling as a fundamentally cul-
tural institution.

The Persistance of Educational Inequalities

Theoretical tools for understanding the dynamics of educational expansion
can be found in the sociology of education. The sociology of education began
developing cultural explanations of educational inequality when spectacular
growth in participation in secondary schooling in the years following the
World War II was revealed to have failed to translate into equality of out-
comes (Young, 1971). Social class remained closely tied to educational tra-
jectories in France (Girard and Bastide, 1963), England (Plowden, 1967),
and the United States (Blau and Duncan, 1967; Coleman, 1966). In fact,
social inequalities in schooling remained remarkably stable throughout the
twentieth century in a wide range of societies (do Valle Silva and Hasenbalg,
2000; Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993). They are a characteristic carryover in the
move from elite to mass (or massified) secondary education models.
An initial wave of neo-Marxist interpretation of this phenomenon pointed
to a correspondence between the workings of schooling and the demands of
the capitalist economy for the preparation of workers and managers (Baude-
lot and Establet, 1971; Bowles and Gintis, 1976). This work also, impor-
tantly, identified the key role of schooling in legitimizing such divisions and
socializing working-class students to accept their own oppression. An alterna-
tive analysis, taking as its starting point the uneven costs and rewards of edu-
cation, looked to the lower returns of schooling for working-class and black
students as an explanation for their lower investment and belief in schooling
(Boudon, 1973; Kerckhoff, 1976). This tradition further sees educational
ambition and investment as conditioned by the educational levels and status
of parents and community (Boudon, 1973; Breen and Goldthorpe, 1997).
Another line of analysis has focused on the social foundations of curricu-
lum and assessment (Apple, 2004; Whitty, 1999). Most influentially, Bour-
dieu identified the expansion of participation in French secondary schools in
the 1960s as generating a breakdown in in traditional schooling:

It is when the perfect attunement between the educational system and its cho-
sen public begins to break down that the “pre-established harmony” which
upheld the system so perfectly as to exclude all inquiry into its basis is revealed.
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 7

The misunderstanding which pervades pedagogic communication remains

tolerable only so long as the school system is able to eliminate those who do
not meet its implicit requirements and manages to obtain from the others the
complicity it needs in order to function. (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990, p. 99)

Bourdieu and Passeron go on to argue that such breakdown occurs when

all students no longer bring to school a narrow set of cultural practices and
sensibilities developed in the home:

An educational system based on a traditional type of pedagogy can ful-

fil its function of inculcation only so long as it addresses itself to students
equipped with the linguistic and cultural capital—and the capacity to invest
it profitably—which the system presupposes and consecrates without ever
expressly demanding it and without methodically transmitting it. It follows
that, for such a system, the real test is not so much the number as the social
quality of its public. (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990, p. 99)

The “failure” of massified education, and the manifold tensions experi-

enced in the comprehensive secondary school in particular, can be under-
stood as resulting from this disruption and disequilibrium. Such cultural
tensions, embedded in relations to curriculum and pedagogy, are minimal in
educational settings that retain a high level of social restriction, and amplified
in those socially exposed settings that concentrate the “new” student popula-
tions. Learning requires students to meet a cultural ideal that involves not
merely academic skills, but personality traits and a system of values, as Teese
explains:

Intellectual training through school subjects imposes cultural demands on stu-

dents’ language mastery and depends on acceptance of the ‘rules of the game’
(in the absence of clear purpose or meaning). It also requires confidence in
learning, pride in achievement, a desire for distinction through achievement
and the capacity to concentrate for long periods of time, to memorize masses of
detail, and to marshal learning from different points in a pedagogical sequence
(or from different branches of study). (Teese, 2007, pp. 6–7)

The traditional academic subjects, therefore, place demands on the whole

person to submit to abstraction cognitive system on a deeply personal level:

Each [subject] in its own way crystallizes a view about human worth and
agency, about self-distinction and style of life through academic merit, about
teaching as a kind of anointment and learning as a rite of passage, so that the
secondary teacher must be a subject expert and can relate to the student only to
the extent that the student relates well to the subject, obeys it, and surrenders
8 ● Making Sense of School Choice

to its requirements, however abstract, remote and irrelevant it may be. (Teese,
2007, p. 8)

These demands are all the more revealing of uneven cultural preparation
once secondary schooling can no longer guarantee the kind of employment
prospects that it once did, and thus offers limited immediate rewards (Der-
ouet, 2002). The collapse of youth employment options compels young
people with even the weakest connections to the cultural order of senior
secondary schooling to remain within the most-lowly reaches of the sys-
tem, becoming those who might be described as the “excluded from within”
(Bourdieu and Champagne, 1998).
At the institutional level, educational structures that previously only catered
to a small academic elite have increasingly been confronted with students from
all social classes (Beaud, 2002). As expansion continued in the 1980s, atten-
tion also turned to the “new inequalities” of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and
ability (Dubet, 2003; Duru-Bellat, 1989; Gomes, 2012). Standardized tests,
for example, were shown to disadvantage black students (Jencks and Phil-
lips, 2011), and demands were raised for recognition and respect of culturally
diverse groups in school curricula (Olneck, 1993). Olneck frames the question
of educational justice for different groups around equal “respect, status, dignity
and honour in schools,” equal influence over “the symbolic systems and social
practices that schools help construct and legitimate,” and equal “autonomy
and authority to determine the nature of their own and others’ educations”
(Olneck, 1993, p. 236). Olneck further argues that schooling contributes to a
wider symbolic order, defined as the “realm of rhetoric and ritual in which col-
lective identity is depicted, status recognized, normative orthodoxy expressed
and sanctioned, and social phenomena authoritatively defined” (p. 245).
Today, the process of massification continues apace in developing nations.
In Brazil, for example, secondary schooling has only recently undergone
mass expansion and only half of young people complete secondary school
at the “regular age.” A literature has already emerged on teachers’ struggles
with working-class and popular youth culture (Moreira and Candau, 2006;
Nunes, 2001) and the alienation of the “new” student populations (S. M.
Schneider and Ferreira Reis Fonseca, 2013). The conflicts that have con-
fronted educational systems in many developed nations from the 1970s and
1980s onward will only intensify in those systems, including China’s, that are
currently undergoing rapid expansion (Lamb and Guo, 2007).
Of course, the conflicts of broadening educational participation are not
merely cultural. The crisis of mass education, not least in developing nations,
is one of stretched and inadequate resourcing. The effect of school resources,
which is minimal in the United States, is far greater in poorer nations where
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 9

there is greater variation in resources between poor and well-resourced

schools (Gamoran and Long, 2007). The US crises in urban schooling in the
1960s and 1970s also had their foundation in the overcrowding and under-
resourcing of schools serving disadvantaged populations (Lipman, 2004). As
reliance on education grew, concern about issues such as high dropout rates
intensified. In cities such as Chicago, where these problems were concen-
trated in racially segregated schools attended by black and Latino students,
social movements around schooling raised consciousness of racism and racial-
ization and strengthened collective solidarities.
As a response to the tensions of mass secondary school expansion, school
choice has focused on administrative form, funding mechanisms, and effi-
ciency, leaving curriculum innovation to the creative genius of the market. To
date, innovation in curriculum and pedagogy has not been a characteristic of
school choice regimes internationally (Lubienski, 2009). Rather, innovation
has been concentrated in the areas of marketing, student recruitment, and the
division of labor within schools (Bagley, Glatter, and Woods, 2005; Wylie,
1995). Anti-racism education, equal opportunity, and multicultural educa-
tion suffered under devolution policies in England. These reforms resulted
in a narrowing of the curriculum and a “revival of traditionalism” (Whitty,
Power, and Halpin, 1998, p. 89). In the schools frequented by black and
Latino students in the Chicago education market, Lipman (2004) observed
mechanical, formulaic lessons with no rationale or discussion, only appeals to
the standardized testing to come.
It is no surprise that the origins of the modern school choice movement
are to be found in the world’s most precociously massified school system—
the United States. When Milton Friedman proposed his voucher scheme in
1955, the United States already had an established system of public second-
ary education, and the proposal included transitional measures to account
for this. School choice has subsequently gained purchase in other settings as
the historical processes of massification have faltered under a series of social
tensions and other approaches have failed to contain them. Systems that
have resisted school choice have either had better success in suppressing such
tensions through other means (such as academic streaming), have not yet
reached an advanced stage of massification (i.e., are still seeking to provide
a universal minimum option), or lack a political elite that is well integrated
into networks of global capital. By contrast, systems that have histories of
comprehensive secondary schools, have reached a high point in universal
access and retention across all social groups, and have a political elite that
is well integrated into global capital are leaders in school choice (the United
States, England, New Zealand, Australia). The appeal of school choice, there-
fore, is, at least in part, as a strategy for legitimation of social domination
10 ● Making Sense of School Choice

under conditions of mass schooling when other (bureaucratic, meritocratic)

avenues have been exhausted, and where the legitimate order of other fields is
increasingly structured with reference to market and consumer values.

The Politics of Neoliberalism

So far I have suggested that school choice offers—or appears to offer—a
solution to a problem that is specific to the field of education: the conflict
of the narrow cognitive and cultural system of traditional schooling with
a diverse student population. However, this does not explain why school
choice has so firmly taken hold. An answer can be found in the spread of
neoliberalism and the establishment of a global educational policy field (Lin-
gard, 2011). A number of authors have observed global similarities in school
choice policies, situated within the broader policy settings of marketization
and privatization (Forsey, Davies, and Walford, 2008). Lingard characterizes
the movement thus:

The global policy convergence in schooling has seen the economisation of

schooling policy, the emergence of human capital and productivity rationales
as meta-policy in education, and new accountabilities, including high-stakes
testing and policy, as numbers, with both global and national features. (Lin-
gard, 2010, p. 136)

International similarities have been characterized as the product of an

emerging global social imaginary consisting of ideological positions, policies,
and repertoires of practice (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). Angus, for example,
writes that “participating in school choice is participating in the construc-
tion and legitimation of the most powerful and dominant social imaginary
in the current historical period” (Angus, 2013, p. 3). This field is constituted
through transnational organizations, such as the OECD and World Bank.
Lingard argues, with reference to standardized testing programs, that “global
and within-nation comparisons are today a central feature of governance,
making the globe and the nation legible for governance” (Lingard, 2010,
p. 136). Neoliberal education policy also emerges from the more direct fram-
ing of policy by politicians and the media, and the sidelining of traditional
policy actors such as bureaucrats and education academics (Hattam, Prosser,
and Brady, 2009; Lingard and Rawolle, 2004).
Neoliberalism as social imaginary appears to be a kind of “soft power” that
works by establishing consensus among policy elites; however, some analyses
emphasize its ability to establish itself more broadly. Kumashiro argues that
“to reform schools in a fundamental way, one must redefine common sense
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 11

and reframe how we think about education” (Kumashiro, 2008, p. 5). The
ascendency of the educational Right in reframing “common sense” can be
understood as a product of “its capacity to supress its differences in order
to build an ideological ensemble within which the themes and language of
one group’s polemic intersect with and confirm those of the others” (Ken-
way, 1987, p. 192). Theorizations of the rise of neoliberalism inspired by
the concept of hegemony (Gramsci, 1971) emphasize that such reframing
has a basis in elements of shared experience and the construction of alliances
with non-dominant class fractions (Apple, 2006; Lipman, 2004). Apple pres-
ents an analysis of this coalition-building as involving a cast of four groups:
neoliberals, neoconservatives, authoritarian populists, and members of a new
managerial middle class (Apple, 2006).
However, neoliberal education policy does not always travel through such
subtle means. The hold of neoliberalism in Latin America can be traced, in
part, to the coercive application of structural adjustment programs by the
IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank (Stromquist,
2007). Multilateral organizations favor—and are in a position to extort—
organizational reforms and privatization in education, particularly aimed at
efficiency rather than equity (Krawczyk, 2002). Stromquist notes that, in
this policy context, the content of schooling tends to be ignored with regard
to issues such as oppressive gender relations. School “continues to be seen
as basically neutral” (Stromquist, 2007, p. 218). Stromquist contrasts the
priorities of these international agencies with the actual collective demands
made by Chilean secondary school students for “psychological help and sup-
port for pregnant students, talks on sexuality, abuse, and violence, and respect
for sexual orientation, with an emphasis on dialogue when addressing sexual
issues in schools” (Stromquist, 2007, p. 218).
Neoliberalism in Latin America is driven not merely by the hegemonic
right-wing influences of the United States and Europe, but in response to
local ruling-class and government problems. Connell argues that in the global
south, neoliberalism emerged as a national development strategy based on
reshaping and expanding global trade and regressive agricultural reform
(Connell and Dados, 2014). In Chile, neoliberal policies offered a pathway
to boosting profits through the sidelining of industrially militant sectors of
the economy and opening up export industries and foreign investment (Silva,
1996). In Australia and New Zealand, neoliberalism similarly appeared as an
economic growth strategy for left- and right-wing governments alike, based
on a reorientation to export industries and a reformed state (Connell and
Dados, 2014).
Driving both the national and transnational dynamics of the neoliberal
policy movement is a polarization of social class divisions. Neoliberalism can
12 ● Making Sense of School Choice

be understood as a political response to the relative decline of ruling-class

profits and power in the postwar period (Duménil and Lévy, 2004). Restruc-
turing of the labor market in the United States has resulted in the loss of
stable industrial employment, replacing it with low-paid, precarious employ-
ment in the service sector where people of color, immigrants, and women are
overrepresented (Lipman, 2004; Sanjek, 1998). At the same time, high-paid
employment has also grown, and executive salaries have skyrocketed, benefit-
ing primarily white males. This polarization, with its basis at least partly in
academic credentials, raises the stakes of schooling.
Inequality has grown globally since the early 1980s, both in income and
wealth. Research led by Piketty shows that the income share of the wealthi-
est fell after World War I, and was at its lowest in the economic boom
years of the 1960s and early 1970s (Piketty and Goldhammer, 2014)—the
period of the construction of mass secondary schooling in most developed
nations. The low point of elite share of income was reached in 1968 in
the United States, 1973 in the United Kingdom, and 1976 in France. In
Australia, the years in the mid-1970s when income inequality was at its
lowest were also those in which public schools educated the greatest share
of students and the proportion enroled in private schools declined. From
1974 to 1980, the share of income of the wealthiest 1 percent hovered
around 5 percent, reaching a historic low in 1975, when public schools
enrolled 75 percent of all students for the first time. The share of income of
this elite had doubled by the 2000s, reaching 10.06 percent in 2004, a level
not seen since the 1940s, but still half the proportion of income controlled
by the US elite (19.34 percent in 2005) (Alvaredo, Atkinson, Piketty, and
Saez, 2015).
Oxfam estimates that the richest 85 individuals in the world now control as
much wealth as the poorest half of the globe’s population (3.5 billion people)
(Oxfam Australia, 2014). The three richest Australians are estimated to control
more wealth than the poorest million (Leigh, 2014). The super-rich largely
inherit their wealth, rather than relying on qualifications and earned wages, but
they are keen to flex their muscle across policy areas that include education.
Recent work by Ball attributes a central role to elite global policy networks
and the involvement of finance capital in schooling through mechanisms that
he terms network governance (Ball, 2012; Ball and Junemann, 2012). The flex-
ing of economic muscle in education, particularly through its opening up to
for-profit ventures, works through the sponsorship of think tanks and founda-
tions by corporations and wealthy individuals. This sits alongside the influence
of more direct political lobbying and donations. In the United States, pro-
school-choice institutions (foundations, think tanks, pressure groups) either
disregard or seek to discredit evidence pointing to stronger performance by
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 13

public schools relative to charter schools. This disassociation from academic

research has been termed the “conservative paradigm” (Howe, 2008, p. 61).

School Choice and Class Practices

Social class is used here to refer to the idea of conflicting interests that are
collective in nature. Class works through economic relations, but is also con-
stituted through hierarchies of education and employment that in turn are
mapped onto other, less-visible forms of privilege—cultural and social capital
(Bourdieu, 1986). These forms of capital are sustained, and made possible, by
economic domination, but they also play an essential role in legitimating that
domination through their symbolic function. The recognition and consecra-
tion of cultural capital through educational credentials in particular serves to
make privilege appear natural and deserved.
Work on parental engagement in school choice has argued that the middle
class—a group defined by high levels of cultural capital—is both particularly
reliant on education for its status and particularly well resourced to put in
place successful educational strategies (Ball, 2003; Campbell, Proctor, and
Sherington, 2009). This privileged relationship is based on a decline of the
old petite bourgeoisie, whose wealth was in the form of property, business
assets, and money—and the rise of a new professional middle class (Bourdieu
and Passeron, 1979). This new class is culturally aligned with an economic
elite that itself is ever more heavily invested in schooling, and in whose image
schooling has historically been made.
Middle-class investment in education is strongly gendered, and relies on
the unpaid labor of mothers, for the most part (Graue, 1993; Smith, 1998).
A normative model of “intensive mothering” has emerged in the United
States and the United Kingdom (Vincent, 2010), aligned with the notion of
concerted cultivation (Lareau, 2002, 2011)—both fashioned on the practices
and resources of middle-class families. Intensive mothering expectations cre-
ate a moral pressure to conform to standards of self-sacrifice, devotion, thera-
peutic nurturing, and intensive engagement in explicit educational practices
(Hays, 1996).
Within the family, self-sacrificing altruism is expected from mothers, but
in the public sphere, a new neoliberal and entrepreneurial middle-class ideol-
ogy of self-interest, connected to forms of managerial labor, has emerged as
a building block of policy. This ideological bent, combined with the size and
electoral power of the middle class, is held to provide an explanation for the
political uptake of school choice policies (Ball, 2003).
Research suggests that despite their competitiveness, middle-class parents
do not select schools on the basis of academic performance with factors such
14 ● Making Sense of School Choice

as social and ethnic composition playing an important role (even when this is
not a declared influence) (Lubienski, 2008). Bell notes:

Parents’ preferences are shaped by their interactions with schools and therefore
are not stable over time. Preferences shift during the choice process in response to
the messages parents gather from schools about what to expect from their child as
well as the resources available at their child’s current school. (Bell, 2008, p. 143)

School choice brings into the foreground certain family strategies and
efforts focused on education, while obscuring many other kinds of invest-
ment in education. As Le Pape and Van Zanten (2009) note, family strategies
are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to defining relationships with
schooling. Modes of interaction with teachers and principals, the manage-
ment of leisure time, dinner table conversations (indeed the very existence
of a dinner table), all play a part in constituting a collective habitus that is
more or less in tune with—and able to strategically manipulate—educational
structures (Lareau, 2011).
There exists, therefore, a tradition of family-focused research on choice
that analyzes practices, and engagements, alongside the tradition that focuses
on elite global political policy and ideological flows. School-level analysis
tends to demonstrate the influence of one of these two pressures—the strate-
gies enacted by middle-class families or the pressures from neoliberal politics
and policy. Schools, as strategic agents, attempt to navigate these pressures—
adapting pedagogy and enrollment processes to position themselves within a
quasi-market. However, some processes that are specific to schooling, and to
defining class relationships to schooling, are underplayed in such analyses. In
particular, the curriculum as a cultural system and social relationship remains
hidden from view. As such, educational strategies separating students along
class or racial lines appear to be guided by prejudice of predilection, rather
than having a cultural foundation in the cognitive and cultural hierarchy of
the classroom and examination systems. Without a clear historical analysis
of this hierarchy, the rise of school choice appears as an external imposition
rather than as a response to the tensions emerging from within massified
schooling. In the externalized explanation of school choice, it is an expansion
of an economic logic promoted by local and global elites as part of a wider
neoliberal program. This is an important part of the story, provides only an
incomplete explanation, as analysis of some concrete examples will show.

Limiting Cases of School Choice

In order to develop my argument on school choice as part of a logic of social
restriction, I will present a series of examples from different national settings,
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 15

and seek to show how they are related to each other. The central point of
reference is Australia, a case of extreme marketization, a paradoxical vision
of both the future of laissez faire school choice and a past where socially
restricted private schools dominated.
Australia also led the way in devolution of managerial autonomy to
schools in the 1990s, and today 96 percent of students attend a school that
is in competition with others in the same neighborhood (OECD, 2013). As
well as being an extreme case of marketization, Australia presents some of
the tendencies evident in many other systems, the first of which is centraliza-
tion of accountability measures. Australia’s public schools are run by state
governments, but have faced increasing involvement from federal govern-
ment through testing and funding regimes (Lingard, 2010). Australia has
embarked on an ambitious project of encouraging school choice through the
publication of performance data for use by parents, and it is one of the most
generous funders of private educational options (meeting up to 80 percent
of costs). Finally, Australian schooling provides an example of the segregative
effects of school choice policies over time in a setting that is characterized by
a high level of cultural and linguistic diversity.
Since my argument around school choice is that it fits within a wider logic
of social restriction that is characteristic of a range of responses to the tensions
of educational expansion, I offer some comparisons with systems in which
do not have school choice regimes, but which present some similar tenden-
cies: France and Brazil. France has in common with Australia a high level of
cultural diversity resulting from postwar migration, but has for the most part
resisted the shift to marketization. As in Australia, the French massification
of secondary schooling occurred during the economic boom of the 1960s and
1970s, with retention rates subsequently bolstered by the collapse of youth
employment markets from the late 1970s onward. Brazil offers a contrast as a
developing nation whose education system is currently undergoing a process
of secondary school massification. Although Brazil’s cultural diversity is also
partly a product of twentieth century migration, educational stratification is
much more closely tied to the legacies of slavery and ongoing racism, with
Afro-Brazilian students the most disadvantaged. The Brazilian and Australian
systems, in particular, offer examples of the global influence of US policy
processes and capital.

From Comprehensive Schooling to School Choice in Australia

The pertinence of Australia as a limiting case arises from the early histori-
cal establishment and consolidation of school choice, and in the trajectory
that it is following toward ever-greater heights of marketized school choice
16 ● Making Sense of School Choice

(Campbell et al., 2009). One of the architects of the 1990s decentralization

of Victorian schools, Brian Caldwell (2011), suggested that “Australia has a
virtual voucher scheme to the extent that significant public funding follows
students to their schools of choice.”
While the United States is undoubtedly a key international reference point
for policy borrowing, school choice achieved a hegemonic status in Australia
earlier and more completely; it lacks the jurisdictional and constitutional lim-
its that have hampered the progress of charter schools in the United States.
Certainly, countries as Chile harbor histories of even more extreme and vio-
lent imposition of school choice. Other examples of limiting cases could be
cited as well—New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, and so forth. Still, it
is the combination of conditions favorable to school choice and their relative
longevity and hegemony that makes Australia stand out. In contrast with
planned school choice experiments implemented in the 1980s and 1990s, a
distinctive feature of the Australian case is the accumulation since the 1970s,
of these conditions and their gradual coalescence into a coherent ideological
framework (Windle, 2014).
When the Australian colonies joined together to become a federation in
1901, no responsibilities for education were mentioned in the constitution.
The new nation had only five public secondary schools, one in Adelaide
and four in Sydney (Burke and Spaull, 2001). Melbourne, capital of the
state of Victoria, was already well supplied with private schools, but would
gain its first public secondary school only in 1905. Roman Catholic par-
ish schools were established in the 1880s and “Grammar school” tradi-
tions were imported from British counterparts starting in the middle of
the nineteenth century. Both private and public schooling grew in the early
decades of the twentieth century; however, even in 1946, just 7 percent of
16–17-year-olds were attending school full-time (Burke and Spaull, 2001).
There followed three decades of spectacular growth in enrollment and the
establishment of a system of public secondary schools. While these initially
operated through curriculum streaming, the model of the suburban com-
prehensive secondary school gradually came to dominate (Campbell and
Sherington, 2006). If the development of the Australian system of mass
public education can be dated from the period of the 1950s to the 1970s,
the most rapid growth in student retention occurred the late 1970s to the
1990s, with rates increasing from 34.7 percent in 1979 to 92.1 percent
in 1992 (Thomson and Holdsworth, 2003). This period coincided with
growth in the numbers of migrant-background students attending school,
and policy attention to equity was framed through multicultural, gender-
inclusive, and disability-inclusive approaches (Thomson and Holdsworth,
2003).
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 17

The crisis in Australian comprehensive schooling dates from the mid-

1970s, when retention rates were swelled by growing youth unemploy-
ment and curriculum structures remained academically traditional and
competitively oriented (Campbell et al., 2009; Connell, 1982). Campbell
et al. note that:

Middle-class parents, who now sought more credentials for their children in
an increasingly competitive world, were disturbed to see disruptive children,
sometimes working class, but also ill-disciplined middle-class youth, with little
interest in academic studies, sitting alongside ‘their own’ in the same classroom
and at the same school. (Campbell et al., 2009, p. 53)

The public share of secondary enrollments reached 75.9 percent in 1975,

before dropping 5 percent a decade until 2005, when it reached 61.9 percent
(Campbell et al., 2009, p. 57). Subsequent drops have been much smaller,
with the public share in Victoria, the state with the smallest proportion of
students in public schooling, currently sitting at 59.5 percent (ABS, 2014).
These shifts in enrollment followed the establishment of federal grants to
private schools in the late 1960s and the systematization of such subsidies
in the 1970s. From that time on, official support for the principle of school
choice has consistently strengthened, and the extent of subsidies has risen
to be among the highest in the OECD (Windle, 2014). In 1980, the Com-
monwealth Schools Commission and state education departments put out
a joint document calling for the promotion of a greater range of choices
among government schools that would create a market dynamic and pres-
sure for improved quality (Commonwealth Schools Commission, 1985). The
1980s also saw the reemergence of more hierarchical control over curriculum
and examinations, amid fears of lowered standards. Student involvement was
reduced to picking subject areas that were organized into an informal hier-
archy streaming students both socially and academically. Student and local
community voices were silenced in the 1990s as more rigid state curriculum
standards were imposed and the division between elite (academically selec-
tive) government and private schools, on the one hand, and suburban open-
entry government schools, on the other, widened.
Private schooling contributes to segregation in a number of countries, but
these results stand out in Mexico, Spain, Chile, and Australia. In Austra-
lia, private schooling caters to 20 percent of the lowest socioeconomic sta-
tus quartile but over 60 percent of the highest quartile. In Chile, this figure
jumps from just under 40 percent of the poorest students to over 80 percent
of the wealthiest (OECD, 2012). Only a small number of systems appear
able to “guarantee” a more even level of involvement in private schooling, and
18 ● Making Sense of School Choice

those are where non-government provision has become virtually universal—

as is the case of Hong Kong—or where access is free and regulated by the
state—as is the case in the Netherlands.
Private schools in Australia have used government subsidies as a boost to
resourcing, simultaneously raising fees to parents and maintaining their social
exclusivity. The federal government took the lead in promoting school choice
under prime minister Howard (1996–2007), with ideological cover provided
by conservative think tanks (Campbell et al., 2009). By international stan-
dards, Australia now has a low proportion of students attending schools with
a balanced socioeconomic mix. Low socioeconomic status students are more
likely to be in socially homogenous, disadvantaged schools than their coun-
terparts in similar OECD countries, and the socioeconomic contrast between
public and private schools is also greater than in other OECD countries
(Nous Group, 2011). The most disadvantaged schools are virtually all pub-
lic, with more socially mixed schools including Catholic and “independent”
schools. Just 10 percent of low socioeconomic status children are educated in
non-Catholic private secondary schools and 15 percent in Catholic schools
(Nous Group, 2011, p. 27). The most socioeconomically advantaged schools
are predominantly non-Catholic private schools, along with small numbers
of public and Catholic schools. The relationship between a school’s social
profile and its academic performance on standardized tests is strong, that is
to say, Catholic and independent schools do not produce uniformly good
academic results; instead, these depend on the socioeconomic status of their
student body in a way similar to public schools. Analysis prepared for the
Gonski review in 2011 found no difference in individual student performance
between school sectors once school-level and individual socioeconomic status
is controlled for (Nous Group, 2011).
Australia’s culturally diverse population has a mixed experience of this
marketized system. Indigenous students, who overwhelmingly attend low
socioeconomic status public schools, perform poorly on standardized tests,
even when controlling for socioeconomic status. Being born outside of Aus-
tralia and speaking a language other than English at home appears to have
a negative effect in some academic areas (reading and science); however, a
high concentration of English-language learners appears to boost mathemat-
ics scores (Nous Group, 2011). Overall, migrant-background students stand
out as strong performers in the Australian system relative to others, reflect-
ing the higher educational and professional levels of recent migration flows.
When migration streams are broken down, it is clear that some groups are
performing poorly (Windle, 2004). Australia is somewhat unusual in that the
highest-performing schools, as well as the lowest-performing ones, have stu-
dent enrollments greater than 80 percent from language backgrounds other
 Choice, Equity, and Diversity ● 19

than the official national language (English). This complicates the issue of
white flight that is evident in settings where minority and migrant students
are concentrated in disadvantaged schools.

A Neoliberal Education
I am a child of school choice. The six students in my final year of primary
school in a small rural town went on to four different secondary schools—
one to a regional catholic college, one to a low-fee Christian school, one to a
selective government girls’ school, and three (including myself ) to the closest
public school. I began secondary school in the industrial city of Geelong, in
the Australian state of Victoria, in 1992 in the midst of a radical corporatiza-
tion and the slashing of the state’s public schools. Managerial powers were
devolved to principals, schools were encouraged to compete for students and
resources, 351 schools were closed, class sizes swelled, and over 8,000 teachers
resigned or were retrenched (Spauld, 1999). Victoria’s schools remain among
the world’s most autonomous (Jensen, 2013).
This era marked an early high point in neoliberal educational marketiza-
tion. The Victorian reforms were known as “Schools of the Future,” echoing
the “Tomorrow’s Schools” title given to the similarly radical New Zealand
reforms three years earlier (Blackmore, Bigum, Hodgens, and Laskey, 1996).
Both reforms followed hard on the heels of the school-choice-promoting
1988 English Education Reform Act, while charter schools got off the ground
in in the United States in 1991. Voucher schemes, with a longer history, were
introduced in Sweden in 1991, but had already completed a decade of opera-
tion in Chile in 1990.
The early 1990s was a time of recession in much of the world; with high
unemployment in deindustrializing manufacturing towns like Geelong,
financial institutions collapsed and factories closed. Student retention to the
end of secondary school reached a high point as teenagers sought refuge from
a punishing job market. Youth unemployment in Geelong hit 40 percent
(Le Grand, 2014), and the city’s population shrank. My school was a recent
amalgamation of an academic and a technical school, the latter category hav-
ing been abolished in 1989 in an attempt to create a more integrated com-
prehensive system and do away with the stigma attached to the less-academic
curriculum of the technical schools. Another technical school later amalgam-
ated with the college, with the three original campuses having all now closed
and been replaced by a single new campus. Thus, over the 1990s, school
choice in Geelong actually reduced. Small schools, like the rural, one-teacher
primary schools my parents had taught in, were also driven out of existence.
Some school closures met with fierce resistance, with scenarios such as the
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PORTRAITS.

Anderson, Robert, Brig.-Gen. 253

Banks, Nathaniel P., Maj.-Gen. 405
Bates, Edward, Attorney-Gen. 2
Blair, Montgomery, Postmaster-Gen. 2
Burnside, Ambrose E., Maj.-Gen. 67
Butterfield, Dan., Maj.-Gen. 15
Butler, Benj. F., Maj.-Gen. 67
Buell, Don Carlos, Maj.-Gen. 215
Casey, Silas, Brig.-Gen. 15
Couch, Darius N., Maj.-Gen. 15
Corcoran, Michael, Brig.-Gen. 253
Chase, Salmon P., Sec. of Treasury 2
Clay, Cassius M., Maj.-Gen. 315
Dix, John A., Maj.-Gen. 405
Doubleday, Abner, Brig.-Gen. 253
Duryea, Abeam, Brig.-Gen. 253
Dupont, S. F., Rear-Admiral 271
Ellsworth, Elmer E., Col. 315
Farragut, D. G., Rear-Admiral 173
Foote, D. G., Rear-Admiral 173
Fremont, John C., Maj.-Gen. 315
Franklin, Wm. B., Maj.-Gen. 271
Goldsborough, L. M., Rear-Admiral 173
Grant, Ulysses S., Maj.-Gen. 215
Halleck, Henry W., Maj.-Gen. 233
Hancock, Winfield S., Brig.-Gen. 15
Hamlin, Hannibal, V. Pres. of U. S. 2
Hooker, Joseph, Maj.-Gen. 253
Heintzelman, Saml. P., Maj.-Gen. 67
Hunter, David, Maj.-Gen. 315
Kenly, J. R., Brig.-Gen. 315
Kelley, Brig.-Gen. 15
Kearney, Philip, Maj.-Gen. 253
Lander, Fred. W., Brig.-Gen. 253
Lyon, Nathaniel, Brig.-Gen. 315
Lincoln, Abraham, Pres. U. S. 2
Mansfield, J. K. F., Brig.-Gen. 15
McCook, Alex. McD., Brig.-Gen. 315
McClellan, Geo. B., Maj.-Gen. 197
McDowell, Irwin, Maj.-Gen. 405
McCall, Geo. A., Maj.-Gen. 67
McClernand, John A., Maj.-Gen. 271
Pope, John, Maj.-Gen. 215
Porter, D. D., Rear-Admiral 173
Reno, Jesse L., Maj.-Gen. 271
Rosecrans, W. S., Brig.-Gen. 15
Richardson, Israel B., Brig.-Gen. 15
Sickles, Daniel E., Maj.-Gen. 405
Sedgwick, Maj.-Gen. 315
Sprague, Wm., Gov. of R. I. 253
Stringham, S. H., Rear-Admiral 173
Stevens, Isaac I., Brig.-Gen. 15
Schurtz, Carl, Brig.-Gen. 15
Shields, James, Brig.-Gen. 405
Smith, Caleb B., Sec. of the Interior 2
Seward, Wm. H., Sec. of State 2
Stanton, Edwin M., Sec. of War 2
Sigel, Franz, Maj.-Gen. 215
Scott, Winfield, Lieut.-Gen. 127
Viele, E. L., Brig.-Gen. 253
Wallace, Lewis, Maj.-Gen. 215
Wool, John E., Maj.-Gen. 67
Welles, Gideon, Sec. of Navy 2
Winthrop, Theodore, Maj. 253
Wilkes, Charles, Com. 271
Weber, Max, Brig.-Gen. 313
Wadsworth, James S., Brig.-Gen. 315
 WAR FOR THE UNION.

On the 4th of March, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln took the

inaugural oath in front of the National Capitol, his footprints upon
the marble marked the great and terrible epoch in the history of our
government. The scene was imbued with a grandeur undiscovered
and without acknowledgment from the thousands and thousands of
freemen who crowded and surged like an ocean at his feet.
An old man, bowed both by responsibility and years, stood by his
side, then and there to render up his august position over a great
country, at the very moment struggling with the first throes of civil
war. How weary he had become, and how gladly he laid down the
burden of his power, no heart save his own can tell. But the darkness
and the thunders of coming strife followed alike James Buchanan in
his retirement and Abraham Lincoln into the thorny splendors of the
White House. Solemn and very sad were these two men as they stood
for a brief space before the people. The splendor of power brought no
happiness either in the giving or receiving. No two men upon the face
of the earth ever stood before a people in an attitude so imposing, so
fraught with terrible events. When they shook hands peace veiled her
face, and, shuddering, shrunk away into the shadows which have
darkened around her closer and thicker, till she is now buried so
deep beneath the gathered death-palls that no one can tell where she
is hidden. For months and even years she had been threatened by
factions, disturbed by reckless speech and still more reckless pens,
but now, behind all these, warcries swelled, and bayonets glistened
in the distance, bloodless as yet, but threatening storms of crimson
rain.
There, upon the verge of this coming tempest, the two Presidents
parted, one for the solitude of a peaceful home, the other outward
bound into the wild turmoil of contesting thoughts and heroic deeds.
As I have said, no one fully realized the coming terror, or thought
how easy a thing it is for a war of passions to verge into a war of
blood. Still the signs of the last three months had been painfully
ominous. The strife of opinions and clash of factions, which had been
waxing deeper and stronger between the North and the South,
concentrated after Lincoln’s election, and the heart of the nation was
almost rent in twain before he took the inaugural oath. When he
stood up, the central figure of the imposing picture presented to the
nation on the fourth of March, a southern government had already
been organized at Montgomery, and Jefferson Davis had been sworn
in as its president, while the men who had abandoned their seats in
the United States Senate now held place in the Confederate Cabinet.
Between the time of President Lincoln’s election and his
inauguration, five States had followed the lead of South Carolina and
declared themselves out of the Union. One by one the representatives
of these States had left Congress, some in sullen silence, others
eloquent with passion and sophistry.
The nation saw all this, but would not comprehend the imminence
of its danger. At a New England dinner, given in New York,
December 22d, 1860, one of the most astute statesmen of the
country had prophesied, in words that amounted to a promise, that
sixty days would be sufficient time in which to tranquilize all this
turbulent discontent, and the people believed him; but the sixty days
had long since passed, and instead of peace a Confederate
government had planted itself on the Alabama river; secession flags
floated over more than one of our forts, and another fort in
Charleston harbor had only been preserved by the forethought and
bravery of Major Anderson, who was then engirdled by hostile
batteries, and half-starving from lack of supplies. In the North also
the spirit of sedition was abroad. Southern travellers still lingered in
our great cities, and conspiracies grew up like nightshade in the dark
—conspiracies that threatened not only the government, but the very
life of its elected President.
Even on his way to the Capitol Lincoln had been called from his
bed at Harrisburg and hurried forward to Washington in the night,
thus, without a shadow of doubt, escaping the assassination that
awaited him in Baltimore. Still so blind were the people, and so
resolute to believe that nothing serious could result from a rebellion
that had been preceded by so much bravado, that even the
President’s preservation from the death prepared for him was taken
up by the press and echoed by the people as a clever joke, calculated
to bring out a Scotch cap and long cloak in strong relief, but of
doubtful origin. Yet the absolute danger in this case might have been
demonstrated to a certainty had any one possessing authority cared
to investigate the facts. But the nation had not yet recovered from the
excitement of a popular election, and everything was submerged in
the wild rush of politicians that always follows close on an
inauguration.
In this whirlpool of political turmoil rebellion had time to grow
and thrive in its southern strongholds, for its imminence could not
be forced upon the cool consideration of a people whose traditions
had so long been those of prosperous peace. The idea of a civil war,
in which thousands on thousands of brave Americans would redden
the soil but just denuded of its primeval timber, was an idea so
horrible that the most iron-hearted man failed to recognize it as a
possibility. That the revolt of these Southern States would in less
than a year fill the whole length and breadth of the land with widows
and orphans—that American brothers could ever be brought to stand
face to face in mortal strife as they have done—that women, so lately
looked on with love and reverence, should grow coarse and fiendish
from a scent of kindred blood, mocking at the dead and sending
victims into a death-snare by their smiles, alas! alas! who could have
foreseen it? The very angels of Heaven must have turned away from
the suggestion in unbelief.
Never on the face of the earth has a war so terrible been waged on
so little cause. The French Revolution—whose atrocities we have not
yet emulated, thank God—was the frenzied outbreak of a nation
trodden under foot and writhing in the grasp of tyranny such as no
American ever dreamed of. If the people became fiends in their
revenge, it was the outgrowth of fearful wrongs. But where is the
man North or South in our land who had been subject to tyranny or
aggression from its government when this war commenced?
No wonder the government looked upon the rebellion with
forbearance. No wonder it waited for the sober second thought which
it was hoped would bring its leaders back to the old flag, under which
the contending parties might reason together. But no, the first step,
which ever counts most fatally, was taken, and every footprint that
followed it is now red with American blood.
A month passed. President Lincoln was in the White House,
besieged by office-seekers almost as closely as Major Anderson was
surrounded in Fort Sumter. Ambassadors, consuls, postmasters,
collectors, and all the host of placemen that belong to the machinery
of a great nation, made their camping ground in Washington, and
their point of attack the White House. But amid all this excitement,
great national events would force themselves into consideration.
News that Jefferson Davis was mustering troops, and that rebellion
was making steady strides in the disaffected States, broke through
the turmoil of political struggles.
But the state of the country gave painful apprehension to men who
stood aloof from the struggles for place going on at Washington, and
those who had time for thought saw that the rebellion was making
steady progression. The Border States—Virginia, Kentucky,
Tennessee and Missouri—with the non-slaveholding States verging
upon them, had made a desperate effort to unite on some plan of
pacification, but in vain. The border slave States, being in close
neighborhood with the North, hesitated in joining the cotton States
already in revolt. But disaffection was strong even there, and no great
mind, either in Congress or out of it, had arisen strong enough to
check the spirit of revolution. Before Lincoln’s inauguration
Governor Letcher had declared that any attempt of the United States
government to march troops across the State of Virginia, for the
purpose of enforcing the Federal authority anywhere, would be
considered “an invasion, which must be repelled by force.” Never was
the government placed in a more humiliating position. President
Buchanan was surrounded by advisers, many of whom were secretly
implicated in the rebellion, and felt himself powerless to act in this
emergency, while leading officers of the Federal government were
daily making use of their high powers to consummate the designs of
the conspirators.
Immediately after the act of secession of South Carolina, Governor
Pickens had commenced the organization of an army.
Commissioners had appeared in Washington to demand the
surrender of the fortifications in Charleston harbor, and the
recognition of the State as a distinct nationality. Castle Pinckney,
Forts Moultrie and Sumter were the government fortifications in the
harbor. Fort Moultrie was garrisoned by a small force, which had
been reduced far below the ordinary peace complement, under the
command of Major Anderson, a noble and brave man. On the night
of December 26, in order to place his command in a more secure
fortification, Major Anderson had removed his men and material to
Fort Sumter, where, from its isolated position, he had nothing to
fear, for a time at least, from the armed masses that were gathering
about him. This movement, peaceable in itself, placed his little band
in a position where it could inflict no injury on the inhabitants of
Charleston. The city was thus placed beyond the range of his guns.
But the movement was received with outbursts of indignation from
the people of South Carolina.
The then Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, of Virginia, had
promised the South Carolina seceders that everything in the harbor
of Charleston should be left undisturbed. But of this promise both
President Buchanan and Major Anderson were ignorant. In making a
movement of signal importance, that resulted in a terrible
inauguration of war, the Major had exercised an undoubted right,
conferred by his position as an independent commander.
President Buchanan, when called upon to interfere, repudiated the
pledge made by his Secretary, and peremptorily refused to sanction it
in any way.
 FORT SUMTER.

This threw the people of Charleston into a fever of indignation.

The Charleston Courier denounced Major Anderson in the most
cutting terms. “He has achieved,” said that journal, “the unenviable
distinction of opening civil war between American citizens, by a gross
breach of faith. He has, under counsel of a panic, deserted his post at
Fort Moultrie, and by false pretexts has transferred his garrison and
military stores to Fort Sumter.” The Mercury, still more imperative,
insisted, “that it was due to South Carolina and good faith, that
Major Anderson’s act should be repudiated by his government, and
himself removed forthwith from Fort Sumter.”
Meantime Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie were occupied and
garrisoned by the troops of South Carolina. The small guard left in
charge of these posts by Major Anderson were disarmed and kept by
force from joining their commander.
That day the Palmetto flag was hoisted over the Custom House and
Post Office of Charleston. That day, also, Captain L. N. Costa,
commander of the revenue cutter William Aiken, betrayed his
government and delivered his vessel over to the State authorities,
carrying with him a majority of his men.
These proceedings at Fort Sumter resulted in the withdrawal of
John B. Floyd, of Virginia, from Mr. Buchanan’s counsellors, and
ultimately in breaking up his cabinet only a few weeks before his
term of office expired; for there, as elsewhere, arose a conflict of
opinion, northern members taking one side and Southern members
another. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, and
Jacob Thompson, of the Interior, soon followed Floyd, and after
them went General Cass, of Michigan. Their places were supplied for
the brief time of Buchanan’s term by Holt, of Kentucky, Stanton, of
Pennsylvania, Dix, of New York, and Horatio King, who had been a
leading mind in the Post Office Department for twenty years.
The military authorities of South Carolina, strengthened by
volunteers and contributions from other States, commenced the
siege of Fort Sumter in earnest. They planted heavy batteries on
James Island, Morris Island, and Cummings Point. In every spot
where guns could be brought to bear on the fort, powerful
earthworks were erected, and an immense floating battery of
unexampled construction was planned. This, anchored within short
range when the day of attack should arrive, was expected to work
terrible execution.
Thus encircled by bristling guns at every point, forbidden all
intercourse beyond the walls, and denied the privilege of procuring
fresh provisions almost entirely, Major Anderson and his noble band
could only wait for the help which was slow in coming.
Thus day by day the isolated fort stood like a solitary rock, against
which the angry surges of an ocean were stormfully mustering.
Girdled in by an army that grew stronger every moment, its noble
commander and his scarcely less heroic men, stood firmly by the flag
that floated above its battlements, the only stars and stripes now
visible from horizon to horizon.
The God of heaven, and that small handful of men, only know the
anxieties that beset them. With no means of intelligence, no certainty
of support, if an emergency arose demanding an assumption of
prompt responsibility, with nothing but gloom landward or seaward,
Anderson and his little forces stood at bay. Every hour, every
moment, restricted their privileges and consumed their stores; they
began to look forward to a lack of food, and many an anxious eye was
turned toward the ocean, in a wistful search after the succor that did
not come.
The government in Washington was painfully aware of the peril
which hung over these brave men. Still, some hope of an amicable
adjustment lingered, and President Buchanan hesitated in taking
measures that might inaugurate a civil war. But his obligations to
these suffering men were imperative. The heroic band, so faithful to
their trust, so true to their national honor, must not be left to starve
or fall for lack of food and re-enforcements.
On the 5th of January the Star of the West set sail from New York,
laden with stores, ammunition, and two hundred and fifty men. Fort
Sumter was at length to be relieved. But the North abounded with
secession sympathizers, and in a few hours after the steamer sailed,
the people of Charleston were informed of her destination by
telegraph. Preparations were promptly made for her reception.
Captain McGowan had intended to enter Charleston harbor at night,
hoping to veil himself in darkness, and reach Fort Sumter
undiscovered. But the buoys, sights and ranges had been removed,
and, thus baffled, he was compelled to lie outside the harbor till
daylight.
At half-past 7, A. M., January 9th, the Star of the West started for
the fort. A shot from Morris Island cut sharply across her bows. She
run up the stars and stripes, sending that first aggressive shot a noble
answer, in red, white and blue, but keeping steadily on her course.
Again and again the audacious guns on Morris Island ploughed up
the waters in her path, and, thus assailed, she slowly changed her
course, and left the besieged fort without succor.
The little garrison in Fort Sumter watched these proceedings with
keen anxiety; though ignorant of the nature and errand of the
steamer, this attack aroused the patriotism in every heart. They saw
the stars and stripes deliberately fired upon. Seventeen guns sent
their iron messages from Morris Island, and then, ignorant of the
cause, ignorant of everything, save that the old flag had been
assaulted, the garrison fell to work. The guns of Fort Sumter were
run out ready for action, but just then the steamer veered on her
course and moved seaward.
Had Major Anderson known that the Star of the West was
struggling to give him succor, those seventeen shots would never
have been fired with impunity.
While the steamer was yet hovering on the horizon, Anderson sent
a flag to Governor Pickens, inquiring if a United States steamer had
been fired upon by his authority. Governor Pickens replied that it
was by his authority. Immediately on the receipt of this answer,
Lieutenant Talbot left Fort Sumter with despatches for Washington,
asking for instructions.
From that time the garrison remained in a state of siege, until the
5th of April, one month after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as
President of the United States.
At this time the fort had become more closely besieged. The little
garrison was refused fresh provisions from the city, and its supplies
by the Government were almost consumed. Starvation or surrender
lay before Major Anderson and his handful of men.
Though cut off from communication with the fort, the Government
was not unmindful of its needs. From the 5th to the 11th of April
three vessels of war, three transports, and three steamers sailed from
New York and Norfolk, with men, horses, and munitions of war. The
destination of these vessels was kept secret, and public curiosity
became intensely excited. The Confederate Government, now
assembled at Montgomery, Alabama, was promptly notified, by its
secret emissaries, of these movements. Indeed, it is doubtful if
Jefferson Davis was not better informed, regarding the destination of
this expedition, than the people of the North. The result was, a
formal demand on Major Anderson for the surrender of Fort Sumter
by General Beauregard, commander of the Confederate forces
investing the fort, which now numbered 7,000 men, protected by
batteries mounting 140 siege guns.
President Lincoln had notified Governor Pickens that provisions
would be sent to the garrison of Fort Sumter, peaceably, if possible, if
necessary, by force.
General Beauregard, commander of the Confederate forces, knew
of the succor at hand, but deeming Anderson ignorant of its coming,
hoped that the state of semi-starvation to which the garrison was
reduced, might enforce the surrender before help arrived. But the
astute rebel found himself matched by a soldier, cautious in
negotiation as he afterwards proved himself heroic in battle.
On Thursday, the 11th of April, a boat was seen approaching the
work, with Colonel Chesnut, Colonel Chisholm and Captain Lee, aids
to General Beauregard. They handed Major Anderson a
communication from General Beauregard, which was a summons to
evacuate the fort. It was to this effect: that the Confederate
authorities had refrained from any hostile act against Fort Sumter in
anticipation that the government of the United States would
withdraw its troops from that fort; that it appeared probable at one
time that this would have been done, but that the authorities of the
Confederate States could no longer refrain from taking possession of
a fort that commanded the entrance to one of their principal harbors,
and that the order to evacuate the fort was now made upon the
following terms: The troops to be allowed to carry with them their
arms, all personal baggage and company property of every
description, and the flag which had been maintained with so much
fortitude, might be saluted when hauled down.
Major Anderson replied, that his word of honor, and the duty he
owed to his government, forbade his compliance with the demand.
These gentlemen then left the fort, displaying a red flag.
At half-past 1 A. M., on Friday, a boat containing Colonel Chesnut,
Captain Lee and Colonel Roger A. Pryor, approached the work with a
communication from General Beauregard, making inquiry as to what
day Major Anderson would evacuate the work, and asking if he
would agree not to open his batteries unless Fort Sumter was fired
upon. Suspecting from the urgency of this midnight negotiation,
some strong necessity on the part of his opponent, but convinced
that an evacuation would be inevitable, Major Anderson made a
written reply, stating that he would evacuate the fort at noon, on the
15th, provided he did not receive supplies or controlling instructions
from his government to the contrary. That he would not open his
batteries unless the flag of his country was fired upon, or unless
some hostile intention on the part of the Confederate forces should
be manifested.
Being in hourly expectation of the arrival of a United States fleet
with reinforcements off the harbor, and urged to instant action by
dispatches from Montgomery, General Beauregard had prepared his
messengers for this answer. Anderson’s communication was handed
to Colonel Chesnut shortly after 3 o’clock, who, after a short
consultation with the officers who had accompanied him, handed a
communication to Major Anderson, and said,
 “General Beauregard will open his batteries in one hour from this
time, sir.”
Major Anderson looked at his watch, and said,
“It is half-past three. I understand you, sir, then, that your
batteries will open in an hour from this time?”
Colonel Chesnut replied, “Yes, sir, in one hour.”
They then retired.
 FORTIFICATIONS IN CHARLESTON
HARBOR.

Fort Sumter is a pentagonal structure, built upon an artificial

island at the mouth of Charleston harbor, three and three-eighths
miles from the city of Charleston. The island has for its base a sand
and mud bank, with a superstructure of the refuse chips from several
northern granite quarries. These rocks are firmly embedded in the
sand, and upon them the present fortification is reared. The island
itself cost half a million dollars, and was ten years in construction.
The fortification cost another half million dollars, and at the time of
its occupancy by Major Anderson, was so nearly completed as to
admit the introduction of its armament. The walls are of solid brick
and concrete masonry, built close to the edge of the water, and
without a berme. They are sixty feet high, and from eight to twelve
feet in thickness, and are pierced for three tiers of guns on the north,
east and west exterior sides. Its weakest point is on the south side, of
which the masonry is not only weaker than that of the other sides,
but it is unprotected from a flank fire. The wharf and entrance to the
fort are on this side.
The work is designed for an armament of one hundred and forty
pieces of ordnance of all calibres. Two tiers of the guns are under
bomb-proof casements, and the third or upper tier is open, or, in
military parlance, en barbette; the lower tier for forty-two pounder
paixhan guns; the second tier for eight and ten-inch columbiads, for
throwing solid or hollow shot; and the upper tier for mortars and
twenty-four pound guns. The full armament of the fort, however, had
not arrived when Major Anderson took possession; but after its
occupancy by him, no efforts had been spared to place the work in an
efficient state of defence, by mounting all the available guns and
placing them at salient points. Only seventy-five of the guns were in
position at the time of the attack. Eleven paixhan guns were among
that number, nine of them commanding Fort Moultrie, which is
within easy range, and the other two pointing towards Castle
Pinckney, which is well out of range. Some of the columbiads, the
most effective weapon for siege or defensive operations, were not
mounted. Four of the thirty-two pounder barbette guns were on
pivot carriages, which gave them the entire range of the horizon, and
others have a horizontal sweep of fire of one hundred and eighty
degrees. The magazine contained seven hundred barrels of
gunpowder, and an ample supply of shot, powder and shells for one
year’s siege, and a large amount of miscellaneous artillery stores. The
work was amply supplied with water from artificial wells. In a
defensive or strategical point of view, Fort Sumter radiates its fire
through all the channels from the sea approach to Charleston, and
has a full sweep of range in its rear or city side. The maximum range
of the guns from Sumter is three miles; but for accurate firing,
sufficient to hull a vessel, the distance would require to be reduced
one-half of that figure. The war garrison of the fort is six hundred
men, but only seventy-nine were within its walls at the time of the
attack, exclusive of laborers.
Fort Sumter is three and three-eighths miles from Charleston, one
and one-fourth mile from Fort Moultrie, three-fourths of a mile from
Cummings Point, one and three-eighths mile from Fort Johnson, and
two and five-eighths miles from Castle Pinckney. The city of
Charleston is entirely out of range of the guns of Fort Sumter.
The forts and batteries in the possession of the Confederate forces
at this time may be briefly described as follows:
 FORT MOULTRIE.
Fort Moultrie, which first opened its batteries upon Major
Anderson and his command, is one of the sentinels that guard the
principal entrance of Charleston harbor. It is opposite to and distant
from Fort Sumter about one and a half miles. Its armament consists
of eleven guns of heavy calibre and several mortars. The outer and
inner walls are of brick, capped with stone and filled with earth,
making a solid wall fifteen or sixteen feet in thickness.
 THE IRON FLOATING BATTERY.
This novel war machine, designed for harbor operations, was
anchored near Sullivan’s Island, commanding the barbette guns of
Fort Sumter. It was constructed of Palmetto logs, sheathed with plate
iron, and supposed to be impregnable against shot. It was
embrasured for and mounted four guns of heavy calibre, requiring
sixty men to operate it. The outer or gun side was covered with six
plates of iron—two of them of the T railroad pattern, placed
horizontally, and the other four bolted one over the other, in the
strongest manner, and running vertically. The wall of the gun side
was full four feet thick, constructed of that peculiar palmetto wood so
full of fibrous material that sixty-four pounders cannot pierce it. The
main deck was wide and roomy, and kept in place by four heavy
wedges, driven down by a species of ram, which held it fast,
preventing any swaying around by the tide.
 CUMMINGS POINT IRON BATTERY.
The nearest point of land to Fort Sumter is Cummings Point,
distant 1,150 yards. On this point was the celebrated railroad iron
battery, having a heavy framework of yellow pine logs. The roof was
of the same material, over which dovetailed bars of railroad iron of
the T pattern were laid from top to bottom—all of which was riveted
down in the most secure manner. On the front it presented an angle
of about thirty degrees. There were three port-holes, which opened
and closed with iron shutters of the heaviest description. When open,
the muzzles of the columbiads filled up the space completely. The
recoil of the gun enabled the shutters to be closed instantly. The
columbiad guns, with which this novel battery was equipped bore on
the south wall of Sumter, the line of fire being at an angle of about
thirty-five degrees.

The Fort Johnson batteries consist of two large sand works,

containing mortar and siege-gun batteries.