ILF POST

By Mary Catherine Bateson At this season of the year, as the days grow longer and spring approaches, households all over the country are awaiting news about college admissions and financial aid. At the same time our philosophy of education is being tested in debates about the federal budget for 2007 and elsewhere. The futures of today’s school children and college applicants depend on the philosophical assumptions that underlie these decisions. Students both choose and are chosen, they select or are rejected, not just in this season but in the years to come.

Everyone is in favor of education, right? Yes and no. Even in this year of budget cuts, politicians know that supporting education is as American as apple pie — but that there are many different ways of supporting it. Americans argue in favor of equal opportunity, but believe that achievement depends on individual potential — and this they define rather differently. “Be all you can be” is a wonderful slogan — more, it is a wonderful aspiration. But it leaves unquestioned the expectation that while Jones has the potential to be an officer and should realize that potential, Smith can’t be much more than a private — hopefully well trained and disciplined to play a subordinate role.

Just as the Bush tax cuts increase differences between income levels, some education systems are designed to sort children into categories that match their backgrounds and probable futures and preserve or strengthen an existing class system. Other systems are designed to seek out and promote a potential elite regardless of background, and still others are based on the assumption that hardy anyone develops up to his or her genetic potential so that better education is always good, regardless of existing limitations or endowments. Some regard education as a source of change, others as a source of continuity. Students should ask themselves how profoundly they expect to change in college, how different they expect their lives to be from those of their parents, and whether the college they have chosen will provide the appropriate challenges.

These assumptions about the goals of education are part of the mindset of high school students choosing colleges, as well as of guidance counselors and admissions officers, and play out in the treatment of those who are admitted. Does the institution assume that everyone who matriculates will be able to finish? Does it follow a sink or swim policy to weed out the weaker? Or does it offer a combination of supportive services and second chances with a realistic appraisal of their limits? Does it assume that aspirations are set and lead to a particular outcome or does it encourage experimentation and even protest? We have all heard stories of students dissuaded from their aspirations.

Liberals believe that positive educational experiences and environments bring about real change, and that people’s “stations in life” are often a result of accident, often unjust and wasteful of human promise. Conservatives, on the other hand, distrust this view as wasting resources and leading to unrealistic expectations. The best example of this difference is that liberals are likely to support rehabilitation programs in prisons, while conservatives tend to talk about career criminals and to doubt the possibilities of all efforts at rehabilitation. There is, of course, case evidence on both sides. Programs for rehabilitation have probably never received the kind of effort that is now invested in at least some children with congenital disabilities, who would once have been institutionalized as ineducable, with extraordinary results. Probably there are criminals who can never be reformed. But institutions tend to be biased toward one assumption or the other and each will err in certain cases. Increasingly, the US criminal justice system follows the fatalistic assumption that people get what they deserve and cannot change: prisoners deserve incarceration and millionaires deserve their mansions.

These are the extreme cases that illustrate assumptions most vividly but the differences are more in higher education. The liberal assumption has favored affirmative action for members of groups that had suffered discrimination in the past, sure of the discovery of otherwise mute inglorious Miltons and of the need to empower Shakespeare’s sister. The conservative assumption rejects that kind of affirmative action but practices affirmative action for the children of alumni, particularly in the most highly privileged sectors.

Fortunately, different kinds of players are involved. America is blessed with a very diverse system of higher ed, ranging from community colleges specifically designed to create opportunity to heavily endowed private institutions. Teachers and faculty tend to be liberals — they need to believe that good teaching will change lives. They are often thrilled to see the achievements of students who are the first members of their families to get to college, and exasperated at the lackluster performance of “legacies” who take their advantages for granted. Boards of trustees tend to be more conservative — often alumni themselves, successful and privileged, they tend to believe that the system that privileged them is properly sorting out those who deserve its benefits, including their sons and daughters. But in a future where less federal money may be available for education and tuitions are rising, we run the risk that inequality will be perpetuated and hidden talents will not be developed.

This is the first of a series of commentaries on the assumptions of education. Subsequent blogs will consider assumptions about learning at different ages, the impact of financial aid on higher education, and the integration or separation of different groups.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Mary Catherine Bateson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.