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PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOLS
The Impact of Communities 
James S. Coleman

(James Coleman was educated under the Transformational Marxist Paul Lazarsfeld, and was a major source for information for the Supreme Court's decisions on education issues.)

"the schools as a means of emancipation from the family"
"releasing a child from the blinders imposed by [the] family."

"Public schools represent an orientation that sees the school as an instrument of the society to free the child from constraints imposed by accident of birth."

"Private schools represent an orientation that sees the school as an agent not of the society but of the family, with authority vested in loco parentis, an extension of the parent's will, but with greater resources."

                             

 

TWO RELIGIOUS SCHOOL ORIENTATIONS

The first sees the school not directly as an agent of the family but rather as an agent of the religious community of which the family is a part. The school is an institution of this community, the family is a part of the community, and the child attends the school as a part of this functional community.

The second, the orientation on which independent private schools are based, sees the school as the direct agent of the family in a very individualistic sense.

 

THREE SCHOOL ORIENTATIONS

 

1. The school as agent of the larger society or the state;

2. The school as agent of the community; religion is not intrinsic to the orientation; the school is an outgrowth not of the individual family, but of a community of families.

3. The school as an agent of the individual family. If the school does not meet expectations, [parents] attempt to intervene, or more likely, move the child to another school.

PUBLIC VS. IN LOCO PARENTIS

SOCIETY/COMMUNITY VS. FAMILY

Two orientations have created a dilemma for educational policy.

A direct confrontation of these orientations can be a step toward resolving the dilemma in a way that will benefit America and its children.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL

The first orientation sees schools as society's instrument for releasing a child from the blinders imposed by accident of birth into this family or that family. Schools transcend the limitations of the parent's disparate [different, dissimilar, diverse] cultural backgrounds. They have been a major element in social mobility, freeing children from the poverty of their parents and the low status of their social origins. They have been means of stripping away identities of ethnicity and social origin and implanting a common American identity.

IN LOCO PARENTIS

The second orientation to schooling sees a school as an extension of the family, reinforcing the family's values.
The school is in loco parentis, vested with the authority of the parent to carry out the parent's will.

The school is, in this orientation, an efficient means for transmitting the culture of the community from the older generation to the younger.

It helps create the next generation in the image of the preceding one.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION:
THE FAMILY, COMMUNITY, STATE, NATION, AND SOCIETY BECOME HOMOGENEOUS.

When the community is an extension of the family, when the society is a homogeneous nation that is an extension of the communities within it, and when the state expresses the aims of the homogeneous nation, then these two orientations coincide for most families.

But when one or more of these conditions does not hold, a conflict arises.

CAUSE OF CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION

United States was homogeneous
Protestant, English origin population

conflict created

Irish Catholic immigrants--Catholic schools
German immigration--(transformed during WW1 nationalism)

Conflict: (Separate but equal)

Southern white dominated, segregationalist [families and communities] conflict with the egalitarian, color blind orientations of the nation as a whole.

Resolution:

US Supreme Court in 1954
Brown v. Board of Education.

CONFLICT CREATED

In the late 1960's was a period of great value conflict between the dominant traditional values of the generation in control and values extolling freedom for youth and release from the narrow views of the past.

CONFLICT UNRESOLVED

 In the 1970's and 1980's, a number of conservative Christian schools and evangelical Christian schools have been established by parents concerned about the values transmitted by the public schools, secular and in opposition to Christian virtues as they perceive them.

THE PROBLEM OF PRIVATE SCHOOLS

These schools represent attempts to recreate a cultural and value homogeneity for the children that insulates them from the values which permeate the larger society.

These examples of conflict between the functioning family and the schools as a means of emancipation from the family shows the diverse setting in which the conflict arises, as well as its fundamental character.

 

PUBLIC - PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOLS STUDENT SURVIVAL RATE IN COLLEGE

higher survival from private schools strongly related to
    academic performance
    amount of homework done
    weakly related to behavior problems

If private sector policies have an impact on survival in college, it is more through the academic preparation they provide and study habits they inculcate than it is to shaping behavior patterns.

PUBLIC - PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT SURVIVAL RATE AT WORK

Success in work is also related to grades in high school but is more highly related to discipline related behavior than is survival in college.

Implications--social context of school:

1. the kinds of families whose children are in the school

2. the kinds of social structures in which family and school are embedded.

WARNING: HOW EVERYONE IS TO BE ASSESSED!

SOCIAL CAPITAL
↓
HUMAN CAPITAL
↓
PHYSICAL CAPITAL

PHYSICAL CAPITAL, HUMAN CAPITAL, AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

Physical capital is created by working with materials to create tools that facilitate production . . . can include human capital.

Human capital is created by working with persons to produce in them skills and capabilities that make them more productive. Schools constitute a central institution for the creation of human capital.

Social capital exists in the relations between persons. Trust is a form of social capital.

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE FAMILY

The social capital of the family is the relations between children and parents.

It is irrelevant to the child's educational growth that the parent has a great deal, or a small amount of human capital, if the human capital possessed by parents is not complemented by social capital.

‘DEFICIENCIES’ IN THE FAMILY

Structural-Functional Deficiencies

The situation in which many children of well educated parents find themselves today is that human capital exists in the family, but social capital does not. [bourgeoisie]

It is the absence of social capital within the family that we have labeled ‘deficiencies’ in the family .

Structural deficiency is the physical absence of family members:

single parent families and families in which the mother worked before the child entered elementary school.

The nuclear family itself can be seen as structurally deficient, lacking the social capital which comes with the presence of grandparents or aunts and uncles in or near the household.

Functional deficiency in the family is the absence of strong relations between children and parents despite their physical presence in the household and opportunity for strong relations. The child does not profit from [the parents' human capital] because the social capital is missing.

The social capital that has value for a young person's development does not reside merely in the set of common values held by parents who choose to send their children to the same private school.

HIGH DEGREE OF CLOSURE

Social capital resides in the functional community.

the actual social relationships that exist among parents and in their relations with the institutions of the community.

Part of that social capital is the norms that develop in communities with a high degree of closure.

relations between one child and the parent of another.

LOW DEGREE OF CLOSURE

. . . when students relate with one another in school and the parents are not in a position to discuss their children's activities, to develop common evaluations of these activities, and to exercise sanctions that guide and constrain these activities.

It is the absence of intergenerational closure that prevents the human capital that exists among the adults from playing any role in the lives of the youth.

This lack of intergenerational closure constitutes missing social capital.

Social capital once existed for many public schools, when they served a clientele in which

mothers worked in the home, and

everyday contacts were largely with neighbors.

But neither in most modern public schools nor in most nonreligiously based private schools does that intergenerational closure now exist.

The evidence presented in this book indicates that the absence of this social capital represents a real resource loss for young persons growing up.

Physical capital is ordinarily a private good--proper rights.

Human capital, produced in schools, reaps its benefits, in the form of higher paying jobs, more satisfying or higher work status, or even the pleasure of greater understanding of the surrounding world.

Social capital as a public good.
Social capital that does not exist for physical capital and human capital threatens the social, psychological, and cognitive growth of young persons in the United States and, indeed, throughout Western society.

[LEADERSHIP TRAINING IN DIAPRAX]

The decision to move from a community may be entirely correct from the point of view of [a] family, but because social capital consists of relations between persons, other persons may experience extensive losses by the severance of those relations, a severance over which they had not control . . . [ie.] the weakening of norms and sanctions that aid the school in its task.

For each family, the total cost it experiences as a consequence of the decisions it and other families make may outweigh the benefits of those few decisions it has control over.

SOCIAL CAPITAL ― DROPOUTS FROM SCHOOL

Dropout [from school] was least in those which were grounded in a religious body and served a religiously homogeneous set of students. . . . emphasize(ing) the importance of the embeddedness of young persons in the enclaves of adults most proximate to them, first and most prominently the family and second, a surrounding community of adults.

The decreased strength of the family and the local community

deficiencies are growing rather rapidly
rise in proportions of women working outside the household
follows that of the man (from an agricultural environment).

. . . the household progressively denuded of its adult members. . .

. . . the declining number of adults in the household of the average American child

the extended family vanish

one of the parents vanishing

decline of adult social capital available to children in the community outside the family

the decreased embeddedness of children and youth in family and community

. . . increasing psychic involvement of the youth with the mass media.

attention directed to these media is attention directed away from the adults who have traditionally constituted the social support for education and social development of the youth.  fn p. 230

. . . because of the declines of family and community the youth with strong psycho social foundations are decreasing in numbers.

The former institutions supported and strengthened the formal educational institution in which children and youth are placed

the goals of schools become increasingly difficult to attain, as the social base that supports them comes to be less and less important in the lives of children and youth

. . . something must give, and the most likely direction would appear to be a radical transformation of the institutions into which children are placed.

INTERGENERATIONAL CLOSURE

intergenerational closure constitute social capital that is widespread value for young persons in high school

social capital is particularly valuable for young persons from families in which the social capital or the human capital of the parents is especially weak.

students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and perhaps those from deficient families, would do less well in schools surrounded by strong functional communities.

‘Expectation theory’ or its close relative in sociology, ‘labeling theory,’ asserts that persons live up or down to others' expectations of them or to the labels attached to them by others.

According to this theory and research, higher expectations and standards will be held by teachers for those students from families with high status, while those students from low status families will be stigmatized with the reputations of their parents, low expectations for their achievement will be held by teachers, and adult members of the community outside the school will treat them differently.

LABELING THEORY

intergenerational inheritance of status

The best know of these is Elmstown's Youth (Hollingshead 1949), based on research in a small Illinois town.

Hollingshead's evidence was suggestive and illustrative rather than conclusive

. . . a graphic portrayal of how a functional community can strengthen the advantages of the already advantaged and block the opportunities of the disadvantaged.

theoretical positions, expectation theory and labeling theory, lead to the general prediction that those private schools based on a functional community will confer more benefits on those students from advantaged backgrounds relative to those from disadvantaged backgrounds than is true for public schools, or for those private schools not based on a functional community.

based on the single dimension of religious association encompasses all arenas of social and economic life.

COMMUNITY RECREATED AND SUSTAINED THROUGH THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Given the changes that have reduced the social capital outside the school, what can be done to increase the social capital available to children?

COMMUNITY IS HINDERED BY PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Intergenerational Close

. . . a private school may destroy some of the remaining social capital that can still be found in residential neighborhoods.

TRADITION THE RISK TO POTENTIAL

. . . when the decisions made by one person have extensive consequences for others . . . [decisions] that affect social relationships which provide resources for schools.

REBUILDING COMMUNITY RELATIONS

. . . build and strengthen relations among parents of children in the school, as well as relations between parents and the school

A NATION AT RISK
AND
THE IMPLICATIONS

The young are seriously at risk because of the decline in strength of the family and those institutions that spring from it.

It is important that government policy be made in full recognition of this risk and of potential ways of reducing it.

 (all emphasis and charts added)

 © Institution for Authority Research 2006 Dean Gotcher

Box 233, Herndon, KS  67739