![dear, wait until you see how I have changed. If I could only live my life over it
would be so different....
Now, dear, please don’t feel that you have no interest in life, for you have our
dear little girl, and just as soon as she is big enough to be a comfort to you—well,
she is yours.
Dean, if you only knew how badly I want to see you. Now, listen—Clarence leaves
here August 31 for Vancouver and will be there until September 6.... So, if you
could send me my fare one way, why, then he could not refuse to let me go.... Let
me know what you are planning, for I want to see you and cook you some good old
meals again.... Yours only, Patsy.[20]
In No. 18 a conventional woman permits herself to have a single
new experience in the field of response, as compensation for a
married relation which lacks everything but security, and then
returns to her security.
18. American woman, forty-five years old, married. Husband is a prosperous real
estate broker, a member of many clubs, a church warden, director of several
corporations, a typical business man of the type termed “successful”, a good citizen
“without one redeeming vice.”
She is a beautiful woman, albeit tired and faded. Her hair is prematurely white,
her youthful face with deep-set brown eyes has a wistful contradictory appearance.
Has many sides to her nature, can play ball with her boys as well as she can preside
at a meeting. Is a good companion, has many friends, and leads a busy life as head
of a prosperous household. Has five children, four boys and one girl. One would
not guess that she is an unsatisfied woman; her friends all think her life ideal and,
in a sense, she does not deny it. This in substance is her view of married life though
not literally word for word:
“I suppose there can never be a school for marriage—how could there be?—yet
how sad it is that every one must begin at the same place to work out the same
problem. I had a good father and mother. They did not understand me but that was
probably more my fault than theirs; I never confided in my mother overmuch. My
father considered my mental progress at all times and I owe him much for the
manner in which he made me think for myself, strengthened my views, and guided
my education. When I left finishing school I played in society for two years and
many of the men I met interested me, though none compelled me. I had never been
given any clear conception of what marriage should be in the ideal sense. I knew
vaguely that the man I married must be in my own class, good and honorable, and
rich enough to maintain a dignified household. I had more of a vision of love at
sixteen than at twenty-six, the year I married, though I was sure I loved my
husband and I do—that is he is as much a part of my life as my religion or my
household conventions. He is wholly a product of civilization and I discovered too
late there is an element of the savage in most women. They wish to be captured,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-56-320.jpg)
![“Our adventure in love came rapidly. He understood me perfectly and I knew
that he cared. We have never told Lawrence for we do not intend to do anything
more that is wrong. He has spent several evenings at the house when Lawrence
was away. There was no deception about this—it just happened and we have talked
and kissed and faced life in the open. We decided quite calmly, and without
passion, that we would have each other entirely just once. I wanted the complete
vision of what my love could mean. If it is wrong I cannot think so; at any rate I
would not give up the memory of that time. It was only once and it was a year ago.
We both knew there could be no continued sex relation. When I have an
opportunity I kiss him and he me. Lawrence never kisses my lips, so they belong to
him. He has helped me to be more patient, and understanding of my life as it has
been and must be. I have my children and must live out the life for their sakes and
for Lawrence who loves me, tamed and domesticated.
“If life could be—what it would mean to give him a child, but life in its entirety
cannot be—for me. Probably that is the creed of many women.”[21]
It is unnecessary to particularize as to the place of response in art.
The love and sex themes are based on response, and they outweigh
the other themes altogether. Religion appeals to fear, fear of death
and extinction, and promises everlasting security, or threatens
everlasting pain, but in the New Testament the element of response,
connected with the concrete personalities of Jesus and Mary,
predominates. Any hymn book will contain many versified love
letters addressed to Jesus. There are on record, also many alleged
conversations of nuns with Jesus which are indistinguishable in form
from those of human courtship.
19. Angela da Foligno says that Christ told her he loved her better than any
woman in the vale of Spoleto. The words of this passage are fatuous almost beyond
belief: “Then He began to say to me the words that follow, to provoke me to love
Him: ‘O my sweet daughter! O my daughter, my temple! O my daughter, my
delight! Love me, because thou art much loved by me.’ And often did He say to me:
‘O my daughter, My sweet Spouse!’ And he added in an underbreath, ‘I love thee
more than any other woman in the valley of Spoleto.’” To amuse and to delight
Gertrude of Eisleben, He sang duets with her “in a tender and harmonious voice.”
The same saint writes of their “incredible intimacy”; and here, as in later passages
of Angela da Foligno, the reader is revolted by their sensuality.... In the diary of
Marie de l’Incarnation there is such an entry as “entretien familier avec J.-C.”; and
during such interviews she makes use of a sort of pious baby talk, like a saintly
Tillie Slowboy.[22]
In general the desire for response is the most social of the wishes.
It contains both a sexual and a gregarious element. It makes selfish
claims, but on the other hand it is the main source of altruism. The
devotion to child and family and devotion to causes, principles, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-58-320.jpg)
![those psychopathic disturbances which the Freudians treat as sexual
in origin.
On the other hand society alone is able to confer status on the
individual and in seeking to obtain it he makes himself responsible to
society and is forced to regulate the expression of his wishes. His
dependence on public opinion is perhaps the strongest factor
impelling him to conform to the highest demands which society
makes upon him.
20. The chief difference between the down-and-out man and the down-and-out
girl is this. The d.-a.-o. man sleeps on a park bench and looks like a bum. The d.-a.-
o. girl sleeps in an unpaid-for furnished room and looks very respectable. The man
spends what little change he has—if he has any—for food and sleeps on a bench.
The girl spends what little change she has—if she has any—for a room and goes
without food.
Not because she has more pride than the man has. She hasn’t. But because cops
haul in girls who would sleep on benches, and well-meaning organizations “rescue”
girls who look down and out. A pretty face and worn-out soles are a signal for those
who would save girls from the perilous path, whereas an anæmic face in a stylish
coat and a pair of polished French heels can go far unmolested....
You will argue that any woman with an empty stomach and a fur coat ought to
sell the coat for a shabby one and spend the money for food. That is because you
have never been a lady bum. A fur coat gets her places that a full stomach never
would. It is her entrée into hotel washrooms when she is dirty from job hunting. It
gets her into department-store rest rooms when she is sore of foot. And in the last
stages it gets her help from a certain class of people who would be glad to help her
if she had suddenly lost her purse, but who never would if she had never had a
purse.
And then, most important of all, it helps her to hang on to her last scraps of self-
respect.[23]
21. Alice ... wants to be somebody, to do great things, to be superior. In her good
moods, she is overwhelmed with dreams of accomplishment. She pines to use good
English, to be a real lady. There is pathos in her inquiry as to what you say when a
boy introduces you to his mother and how to behave in a stylish hotel dining room.
Such questions have an importance that is almost greater than the problem of how
to keep straight sexually. Winning of social approval is an ever-present, burning
desire, but she has no patterns, no habits, no control over the daily details of the
process whereby this is gained. When one tries to place her in a good environment
with girls of a better class, she reacts with a deepened sense of inferiority,
expressed in more open, boastful wildness. She invents adventures with men to
dazzle these virtuous, superior maidens. The craving for pleasures and something
to make her forget increases.[24]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-60-320.jpg)
![22. One of the most tragic lives we have ever known—now ended, and perhaps
happily, with the death of the girl at twenty years of age—was that ensuing from
unusually mixed parentage. An intelligent, English-speaking Chinaman married an
American woman of no mean ability. One of their children was a girl, who
developed splendidly both physically and mentally. She was an exceptionally bright
girl, who at fourteen had already commenced a delinquent career which only
ended with her death.... The fact that she was different, so obviously different, from
other girls attending the public and private schools to which she went, and that
there were many little whisperings about her, served greatly to accentuate her
inner distress. Her capabilities and ambitions were great, but how was she to
satisfy them? As a matter of fact, neither the mother nor I could ever find out that
any great social discomforts came to this girl; the struggle was all within. She
behaved most extravagantly as a direct reaction to her own feelings, of the depth of
which she had rarely given any intimation at home. With us she essayed to
remember and to reveal all that had gone on in her mind for years back: How could
her mother have married this man? Was she really this woman’s child? To what
could she attain with this sort of stigma upon her? Did she not properly belong to a
free-living stratum of society?
This girl wandered and wavered. She tried religion, and she tried running away
from home and living with other people; she assumed a Japanese alias and tried to
make a new circle of acquaintances for herself.[25]
In many cases, both in boys and girls, particularly at the period of
adolescence, the energy takes the form of daydreaming, that is,
planning activity, and also of “pathological lying”, or pretended
activity. The wishes are thus realized in an artistic schematization in
which the dreamer is the chief actor. The following, from the diary of
a sixteen-year-old girl is in form a consistent expression of the desire
for recognition, but very probably the form disguises a sexual
longing, and the daydream is thus an example of the sublimation of
the desire for response, as frequently in poetry and literature.
23. I am between heaven and earth. I float, as it were, on a dream-cloud which
carries me up at times into a glorious atmosphere, and again nearer the mucky
earth, but always on, always on. I see not man, I see not the children of man, the
big ME lies in my head, in my hand, in my heart. I place myself upon the throne of
Kings, and tramp the dusty road, care-free. I sing to myself and call me pretty
names; I place myself upon the stage, and all mankind I call upon for applause,
and applause roars to me as the thunder from the heavens. I reason that mine is
not inevitable stage-madness which comes to all females of my pitiful age; mine is
a predestined prophecy, mine is a holy design, my outcoming is a thing to be made
way for.
I bathe myself in perfumed waters, and my body becomes white and slender. I
clothe myself in loosened gowns, silks as soft as thistledown, and I am transported
to scenes of glory. The even stretch of green, bedecked with flowers to match the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-61-320.jpg)
![color of my pale gold gown, is mine to dance and skip upon. A lightness and a grace
comes into my limbs. What joy is mine! I leap and spring and dart in rhythm with
nature, and music leaps from my steps and movements and before my eyes are
men. Men and women and children with heads bent forward, with eyes aglow with
wonder, and with praise and love for this essence of grace and beauty which is I.
What more, what more! I hang upon this idol of a dream, but it is gone. The height
of happiness is reached; alas, even in dreams there is an end to happiness, the
bubble bursts, and the dust and noise of earth come back to me. I shut my eyes and
ears to these and seek consolation among the poor. In dreams I go often among
them. With my heaping purse of gold, I give them clothes and beds to sleep upon, I
give them food to nourish them and me, to nourish and refresh my fame. But do I
give my gold away, and does my purse cave inwards? Ah, no! Come to my aid, my
imagination, for thou art very real to me today. An endless store of gold is mine in
banks of state. My name is headed on the lists of all, my money does increase even
as I hand it to these poor. The poor bless me, they kneel and kiss my hands. I bid
them rise, and the hypocrisy of my godless soul bids them pray and in this find
restoration.
I grow weary as I walk, and truth is even harder yet to bear than ever before. I
am sad, I have nothing, I am no one. But I speak soothingly to myself, bidding me
treat my hungry self to food, and I promise that the night shall be long and the
dreams and journeys many.[26]
On the contrary, 24 is in form a desire for response, but the details
show that the girl feels keenly the lack of recognition. The response is
desired not for itself alone but as a sign and assurance of
comparative worth.
24. I am in despair, and I want to pour out my bitter heart. When I have once
talked out my heart I feel better afterwards.
Dear editor, why can I not find a boy to love me? I never make a hit with young
people. I never have any success with them. I associate with young people, I like
them, they like me, but nobody ever runs after me. No boy is crazy about me. All
my girl friends are popular with young men. Every single one has a boy or more
who is in love with her and follows her steps. I alone have no luck. Do not think,
dear editor, that I am burning to marry; it is not yet time for that. But the thought
that I am left out makes me very wretched. It distresses me and it hurts me to my
soul’s marrow to know that no one desires me, that people are indifferent toward
me. Oh how happy I should be if somebody would love me, if somebody would
come to see me. It must be such a sweet pleasure to feel that some one is interested
in you, that some one comes to see you, comes to you especially, on account of
yourself. Oh, why can I not have this happiness!
When I go to a party and when I come back I feel so low and so fallen. Young
men crowded around my companions like flies around honey. I alone was an
exception. I have not a jealous nature, but no other girl in my place would feel](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-62-320.jpg)
![otherwise. Can you show me a way to win a boy’s heart? What sort of quality must
a girl possess in order to attract a young man?
It is true I am no beauty. But what do all the girls do? They fix themselves up.
You can buy powder and paint in the drug stores. My companions are not more
beautiful than I. I am not sleepy. When I am in the company of young people I am
joyous, I make myself attractive, I try my best to attract attention to myself. But
that is all thrown to the dogs.
Dear editor, if you only knew with how much care I make my clothes. I go
through the great stores to select out the most beautiful materials. I annoy the
dressmaker to death until she suits me exactly. If it happens that a hook
somewhere on the dress is not in the right place, or a buttonhole has a single stitch
more or less than it should have, I have the greatest distress, and sharpest
heartache.
When I go somewhere to a dance I am full of hopes, my heart is beating with
excitement. Before leaving the house I take a last look in the mirror. When I return
home I have the blues, I feel cold. My teeth grind together. So much exertion, so
much strength lost, all for nothing. A boy has talked to me, another boy has given
me a smile, still another boy has made me a little compliment, but I feel that I am
not near and dear to any one. I feel that my face has not been stamped on the heart
of any one.[27]
From the foregoing description it will be seen that wishes of the
same general class—those which tend to arise from the same
emotional background—may be totally different in moral quality.
The moral good or evil of a wish depends on the social meaning or
value of the activity which results from it. Thus the vagabond, the
adventurer, the spendthrift, the bohemian are dominated by the
desire for new experience, but so are the inventor and the scientist;
adventures with women and the tendency to domesticity are both
expressions of the desire for response; vain ostentation and creative
artistic work both are designed to provoke recognition; avarice and
business enterprise are actuated by the desire for security.
Moreover, when a concrete wish of any general class arises it may
be accompanied and qualified by any or all of the other classes of
wishes. Thus when Pasteur undertook the quest described above we
do not know what wish was uppermost. Certainly the love of the
work was very strong, the ardor of pursuit, the new experience; the
anticipation of the recognition of the public, the scientific fame
involved in the achievement was surely present; he invited response
from his wife and colleagues, and he possibly had the wish also to put
his future professional and material life on a secure basis. The](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-63-320.jpg)
![mir, give some idea of the conditions under which a whole
community, a public, formerly defined a situation.
25. We who are unacquainted with peasant speech, manners and method of
expressing thought—mimicry—if we should be present at a division of land or some
settlement among the peasants, would never understand anything. Hearing
fragmentary, disconnected exclamations, endless quarreling, with repetition of
some single word; hearing this racket of a seemingly senseless, noisy crowd that
counts up or measures off something, we should conclude that they would not get
together, or arrive at any result in an age.... Yet wait until the end and you will see
that the division has been made with mathematical accuracy—that the measure,
the quality of the soil, the slope of the field, the distance from the village—
everything in short has been taken into account, that the reckoning has been
correctly done and, what is most important, that every one of those present who
were interested in the division is certain of the correctness of the division or
settlement. The cry, the noise, the racket do not subside until every one is satisfied
and no doubter is left.
The same thing is true concerning the discussion of some question by the mir.
There are no speeches, no debates, no votes. They shout, they abuse each other,
they seem on the point of coming to blows. Apparently they riot in the most
senseless manner. Some one preserves silence, silence, and then suddenly puts in a
word, one word, or an ejaculation, and by this word, this ejaculation, he turns the
whole thing upside down. In the end, you look into it and find that an admirable
decision has been formed and, what is most important, a unanimous decision.[28]
26. As I approached the village, there hung over it such a mixed, varied violent
shouting, that no well brought-up parliament would agree to recognize itself, even
in the abstract, as analogous to this gathering of peasant deputies. It was clearly a
full meeting today.... At other more quiet village meetings I had been able to make
out very little, but this was a real lesson to me. I felt only a continuous,
indistinguishable roaring in my ears, sometimes pierced by a particularly violent
phrase that broke out from the general roar. I saw in front of me the “immediate”
man, in all his beauty. What struck me first of all was his remarkable frankness;
the more “immediate” he is, the less able is he to mask his thoughts and feelings;
once he is stirred up the emotion seizes him quickly and he flares up then and
there, and does not quiet down till he has poured out before you all the substance
of his soul. He does not feel embarrassment before anybody; there are no
indications here of diplomacy. Further, he opens up his whole soul, and he will tell
everything that he may ever have known about you, and not only about you, but
about your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Here everything is clear
water, as the peasants say, and everything stands out plainly. If any one, out of
smallness of soul, or for some ulterior motive, thinks to get out of something by
keeping silent, they force him out into clear water without pity. And there are very
few such small-souled persons at important village meetings. I have seen the most
peaceable, irresponsible peasants, who at other times would not have thought of
saying a word against any one, absolutely changed at these meetings, at these](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-68-320.jpg)
![moments of general excitement. They believed in the saying, “On people even
death is beautiful”, and they got up so much courage that they were able to answer
back the peasants commonly recognized as audacious. At the moment of its height
the meeting becomes simply an open mutual confessional and mutual disclosure,
the display of the widest publicity. At these moments when, it would seem, the
private interests of each reach the highest tension, public interests and justice in
turn reach the highest degree of control.[29]
27. In front of the volost administration building there stands a crowd of some
one hundred and fifty men. This means that a volost meeting has been called to
consider the verdict of the Kusmin rural commune “regarding the handing over to
the [state] authorities of the peasant Gregori Siedov, caught red-handed and
convicted of horse-stealing.” Siedov had already been held for judicial inquiry; the
evidence against him was irrefutable and he would undoubtedly be sentenced to
the penitentiary. In view of this I endeavor to explain that the verdict in regard to
his exile is wholly superfluous and will only cause a deal of trouble; and that at the
termination of the sentence of imprisonment of Siedov the commune will
unfailingly be asked whether it wants him back or prefers that he be exiled. Then, I
said, in any event it would be necessary to formulate a verdict in regard to the
“non-reception” of Siedov, while at this stage all the trouble was premature and
could lead to nothing. But the meeting did not believe my words, did not trust the
court and wanted to settle the matter right then and there; the general hatred of
horse-thieves was too keen....
The decisive moment has arrived; the head-man “drives” all the judges-elect to
one side; the crowd stands with a gloomy air, trying not to look at Siedov and his
wife, who are crawling before the mir on their knees. “Old men, whoever pities
Gregori, will remain in his place, and whoever does not forgive him will step to the
right,” cries the head man. The crowd wavered and rocked, but remained dead still
on the spot; no one dared to be the first to take the fatal step. Gregori feverishly
ran over the faces of his judges with his eyes, trying to read in these faces pity for
him. His wife wept bitterly, her face close to the ground; beside her, finger in
mouth and on the point of screaming, stood a three-year-old youngster (at home
Gregori had four more children).... But straightway one peasant steps out of the
crowd; two years before some one had stolen a horse from him. “Why should we
pity him? Did he pity us?” says the old man, and stooping goes over to the right
side. “That is true; bad grass must be torn from the field,” says another one from
the crowd, and follows the old man. The beginning had been made; at first
individually and then in whole groups the judges-elect proceeded to go over to the
right. The man condemned by public opinion ran his head into the ground, beat his
breast with his fists, seized those who passed him by their coat-tails, crying: “Ivan
Timofeich! Uncle Leksander! Vasinka, dear kinsman! Wait, kinsmen, let me say a
word.... Petrushenka.” But, without stopping and with stern faces, the members of
the mir dodged the unfortunates, who were crawling at their feet.... At last the
wailing of Gregori stopped; around him for the space of three sazen the place was
empty; there was no one to implore. All the judges-elect, with the exception of one,
an uncle of the man to be exiled, had gone over to the right. The woman cried](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-69-320.jpg)
![sorrowfully, while Gregori stood motionless on his knees, his head lowered,
stupidly looking at the ground.[30]
The essential point in reaching a communal decision, just as in the
case of our jury system, is unanimity. In some cases the whole
community mobilizes around a stubborn individual to conform him
to the general wish.
28. It sometimes happens that all except one may agree but the motion is never
carried if that one refuses to agree to it. In such cases all endeavor to talk over and
persuade the stiff-necked one. Often they even call to their aid his wife, his
children, his relatives, his father-in-law, and his mother, that they may prevail
upon him to say yes. Then all assail him, and say to him from time to time: “Come
now, God help you, agree with us too, that this may take place as we wish it, that
the house may not be cast into disorder, that we may not be talked about by the
people, that the neighbors may not hear of it, that the world may not make sport of
us!” It seldom occurs in such cases that unanimity is not attained.[31]
A less formal but not less powerful means of defining the situation
employed by the community is gossip. The Polish peasant’s
statement that a community reaches as far as a man is talked about
was significant, for the community regulates the behavior of its
members largely by talking about them. Gossip has a bad name
because it is sometimes malicious and false and designed to improve
the status of the gossiper and degrade its object, but gossip is in the
main true and is an organizing force. It is a mode of defining the
situation in a given case and of attaching praise or blame. It is one of
the means by which the status of the individual and of his family is
fixed.
The community also, particularly in connection with gossip, knows
how to attach opprobrium to persons and actions by using epithets
which are at the same time brief and emotional definitions of the
situation. “Bastard”, “whore”, “traitor”, “coward”, “skunk”, “scab”,
“snob”, “kike”, etc., are such epithets. In “Faust” the community said
of Margaret, “She stinks.” The people are here employing a device
known in psychology as the “conditioned reflex.” If, for example, you
place before a child (say six months old) an agreeable object, a kitten,
and at the same time pinch the child, and if this is repeated several
times, the child will immediately cry at the sight of the kitten without
being pinched; or if a dead rat were always served beside a man’s
plate of soup he would eventually have a disgust for soup when
served separately. If the word “stinks” is associated on people’s](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-70-320.jpg)
![girl in the world for him and now he would drown me in a spoonful of water to get
rid of me. Fortunately I have no child as yet.
My husband’s parents hate me even more than my husband and just as I was
turned out of the house for marrying a gentile, so he was shown the door by his
parents for marrying a Jewess.
Well, a few months ago my husband deserted me and I have no idea of his
whereabouts. I was confronted by a terrible situation. Spurned by my own relatives
and by my husband’s, I feel very lonely, not having some one to tell my troubles to.
Now, I want you to advise me how to find my husband. I do not want to live with
him by compulsion, nor do I ask his support, for I earn my living working in a
shop. I merely ask his aid in somehow obtaining a divorce, so that I may return to
my people, to my God and to my parents. I cannot stand the loneliness and do not
want to be hated, denounced and spurned by all. My loneliness will drive me to a
premature grave.
Perhaps you can tell me how to get rid of my misfortune. Believe me, I am not to
blame for what I have done—it was my ignorance. I never believed that it was such
a terrible crime to marry a non-Jew and that my parents would under no
circumstances forgive me. I am willing to do anything, to make the greatest
sacrifice, if only the terrible ban be taken off me.[32]
In the following the writer is not the father of the girl who has just
told her story, but he might well be. His statement shows the power
of family and community customs in determining emotional
attitudes.
30. [My daughter has married an Italian who is a very good man].... My tragedy
is much greater because I am a free thinker. Theoretically, I consider a “goi”
[gentile] just as much a man as a Jew.... Indeed I ask myself these questions:
“What would happen if my daughter married a Jewish fellow who was a good-for-
nothing?... And what do I care if he is an Italian? But I can not seem to answer
these delicate questions. The fact is that I would prefer a refined man; but I would
sooner have a common Jew than an educated goi. Why this is so, I do not know,
but that is how it is, of that there is no doubt. And this shows what a terrible chasm
exists between theory and practice!...”[33]
The tendency of communities and families to regulate so minutely
the behavior of all their members was justified by the fact that in case
of poverty, sickness, death, desertion, or ruin the community or
family assumed the burden, “submitted to the yoke”, as they
expressed it. In case No. 31 the former members of a community still
support an abandoned child though they are in America and the
child in Europe.
31. In the year 1912 in a little [Russian] village a father abandoned his family, a
wife and three children. Of the children two were girls and the third was a boy six](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-72-320.jpg)
![months old. The mother worried along with the children and finally in despair she
changed her religion and married a Christian from a neighboring village. The
children she simply abandoned.
Of course the community of the village where this happened took care of the
three abandoned children. They gave them out to families to be reared, and the
village paid for them by the month. My mother was by no means a rich woman and
felt the need of money, so she took the boy, for which the community paid.
For some years everything went well, until the great World War broke out. The
village in question was impoverished by the war and was plundered by various
bands of pogromists. Great numbers of Jews were killed and the community was
destroyed.
My mother no longer received the monthly payment for the child; there was no
one to make the payment. But my mother did not have the heart to throw the poor
child into the street. They had become attached to each other, the child to my
mother whom he called “mamma” and my mother to the child. So my mother kept
the child without pay. That is, she and the child hungered and suffered together.
Now, dear editor, I come to the point.
The family of the writer of these lines was scattered. My father died at home. I
and two sisters are now in America. My mother and the child are still in the old
home. Of course we send our mother money for her support and this means that
we support not only our mother but also the child of strangers. But it has never
occurred to us here in America to reproach our mother because we are compelled
to send money for a strange child.
On the contrary, we understand that it is our duty not to behave like murderers
toward the innocent, helpless victim of the present social conditions whom fate has
thrown upon us. But the following is also true:
We have heard that the child’s father is in America, somewhere around New
York, and that he is very rich. So we think that it is no more than right that the
father of the child shall take the yoke from us who are strangers and support his
own child. I will say that I and my two sisters are simple working people. Every
cent that we earn is worked for with our ten fingers. Therefore, I appeal to the
father of our mother’s ward to take over the responsibility for his child, which is
without doubt his duty.[34]
As far as possible the family regulates its affairs within itself
without appealing to the community and thus subjecting itself to
gossip. Situations arising within the family where members are not
in agreement, where a conflict of wishes is involved, are defined
through argument, ordering and forbidding, remonstrance, reproof,
entreaty, sulking, tears, and beatings. But as a last resort a member
of a family may provoke gossip, appeal to the community. In case No.
32 the woman defines the situation to her deserting husband
publicly. She does it very tactfully. She uses every art, reminder, and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-73-320.jpg)
![appreciation to influence his return. She wishes to avoid a public
scandal, reminds him of the noble professions he has always made as
man and father, pictures the children as grieving and herself as
ashamed to let them know, and believes that he is fundamentally a
fine man who has had a moment of weakness or suffered a
temporary madness—so she says. In addition the powerful
newspaper through which she seeks publicity will define the
situation to the erring husband. Presumably he will return.
32. I come to you with the request that you will write a few words to my
husband. He has a high opinion of the answers that you give in Bintel Brief and I
hope that some words from you will have a good effect on him so that we shall be
able to avoid a public scandal. In the meantime I am containing my troubles but if
matters get worse I shall have to turn to people for help. I will say that my husband
and I always lived a good life together. He always condemned in the strongest
terms those fathers who leave their children to God’s mercy. “Children,” he said,
“are innocent and we must take care not to make them unhappy”—that was the
way he always talked. And now he has himself done what he always condemned
and regarded as the greatest meanness.
The last night before he went away my husband kissed our youngest daughter so
much that she is now sick from longing for him. The older girl is continually
asking, “When will father come?” I am frightfully upset by the unexpected
misfortune which has struck me.
Dear editor, I have the greatest confidence in the goodness of my husband.
Perhaps he has lost his reason for a time, but he is not corrupt. I am almost sure
that when he reads my letter he will come back to his senses and will behave as a
man and as a decent person should behave. I beg you to print my letter as soon as
possible and help to restore a broken family.[35]
Contrary to this we have the device of public confession, a
definition of the situation in terms of self-condemnation. The
following is a public apology which gives the injured husband
favorable public recognition and seeks a reconciliation.
33. I myself drove out my good and true husband in a shameful manner and
placed the guilt at his door, and although he is angry he is decent enough not to say
anything to anybody. He takes the blame on himself. All my friends and
acquaintances think that he is really the guilty one.
I have been married for the last eleven years and up to two years ago I thought
that somehow I should end my life peacefully, although I have caused many a
quarrel.... My tongue is sharp and burning.... My husband always forgave me.
Many times he cried and a week or two would pass by quietly. And then again I
could not be quiet. Quite often I would start to fire away at the table and he would
get up, leave the house, and go to a restaurant. When he returned he had some
more. And according to my behavior my husband began to treat me roughly....](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-74-320.jpg)
![At this time we tried business for ourselves ... and owing to numerous reasons
my husband had everything in my name; I was the owner of everything that we
had. After that I began to rule over him still more, and when he saw that he could
do nothing with me he stopped speaking to me.
I have tried everything to dirty his name. Oh, now my conscience troubles me
when I see three live orphans wandering about. Would it not be better if the
community had forbidden me to marry in order to avoid such a family-tragedy.
I am a snake by nature and this is not my fault; that’s how I am. My friends meet
him and they tell me that he does not say a word about our tragedy. He says: “I am
doing the best that I can and when I am able to give a home to my children, then I
will worry about them.” And I am afraid that some day he will take away the
children from me and then I shall be left alone like a stone.[36]
The priests in Poland say that if all the influences of the
community are active—the family, the priest, the friends, and
neighbors—there are few necessarily bad men. They say also that
communities tend to be all good or all bad, and that this is
determined largely by majorities. If a community is good the priest
thunders from the chancel against any symptom of badness; if it is
already bad he praises and encourages any little manifestation of
goodness. In examining the letters between immigrants in America
and their home communities I have noticed that the great solicitude
of the family and community is that the absent member shall not
change. Absence and the resulting outside influence are dreaded as
affecting the solidarity of the group. And the typical immigrant letter
is an assurance and reminder that the writer, though absent, is still a
member of the community. I found the following letter in the home
of a peasant family in Poland. It was written from Chicago on
“Palmer House” stationery. The writer was a chambermaid in that
hotel. She was little instructed, could barely read and write. The
letter contained no capitals and no punctuation and was addressed
to a girl who could not write at all. This letter was read by all the
neighbors. No one would understand keeping a letter private. The
introduction, “Praised be Jesus Christ”, to which the reader or hearer
is expected to reply, “For centuries of centuries, Amen”, is a
traditional form expressing common membership in a religious-
social community. The greetings at the end should be complete
enough to recognize every family which ought to be noticed. The
sending of money is a practical sign of community membership. The
poetry and æsthetic writing is the absent girl’s way of participating in
the social gatherings of the community, of doing her turn in the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25962771-250514054837-df01abab/85/School-Choice-Tradeoffs-Liberty-Equity-And-Diversity-R-Kenneth-Godwin-Frank-R-Kemerer-75-320.jpg)
School Choice Tradeoffs Liberty Equity And Diversity R Kenneth Godwin Frank R Kemerer
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- 7. School Choice Tradeoffs liberty, equity, and diversity R. Kenneth Godwin and Frank R. Kemerer University of Texas Press, Austin
- 8. Copyright 2002 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2002 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, University of Texas Press, Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819. ⬁ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Godwin, R. Kenneth. School choice tradeoffs : liberty, equity, and diversity / R. Kenneth Godwin and Frank R. Kemerer.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn 0-292-72842-5 (alk. paper) 1. School choice—United States. 2. Education and state—United States. 3. Educational equalization—United States. I. Kemerer, Frank R. II. Title. lb1027.9 .g63 2002 379.1110973—dc21 2001005081
- 9. To the inner-city children
- 10. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK
- 11. Contents Preface xv 1. School Choice Options and Issues: An Overview 1 Why Change Current Policies? 2 Why Use School Choice to Promote Equity? 5 Types of School Choice 6 Major Issues in the Choice Debate 8 Educational Outcomes 9 Liberal Democratic Theory and Education Policy 12 Parental Rights and Equality of Opportunity 13 The Constitutionality of Vouchers and Tax Credits 14 The Economics of Choice 15 Accountability versus Autonomy 16 Designing a Choice Program That Promotes Equity 17 2. The Outcomes of School Choice Policies 18 Why Proponents Expect Choice to Improve Academic Outcomes 19 The Effects of Competition 19 Increased Parental Involvement and Better Matching of Students and Schools 20 Democratic Control and Bureaucratic Inefficiencies 20 The Particular Problems Facing Inner-City Schools 23 Why Opponents Expect Choice to Lower Academic Outcomes 24 Empirical Hypotheses Concerning the Impacts of Choice 25 School Choice and Segregation 27
- 12. How Do Parents Choose? 37 Policy Implications 40 Do Private Schools Teach Public Values? 42 The Effects of Choice on Teachers and Principals 47 The Effects of Choice on Parents 52 The Effects of Choice on Academic Outcomes 53 The Effects of Competition 53 Comparing Public and Private Schools 55 High School and Beyond 55 Results from Other National Databases 56 Evaluations of Existing Choice Programs 57 Privately Funded Voucher Experiments 60 The Effects of Choice on Children Who Remain Behind 61 Summary and Conclusions 63 3. Political Theory and School Choice (coauthor: Richard Ruderman) 65 Liberal Democracy 67 Liberal Arguments That Education Is in the Private Sphere 68 Liberal Arguments for Including Education in the Public Sphere 72 John Dewey and Progressive Liberalism 73 Sharing Educational Responsibility: The Ideas of Amy Gutmann 76 Diversity or Autonomy 78 Comprehensive Liberalism versus Political Liberalism 79 School Choice and Communitarian Thought 84 Discussion 90 Conclusion 95 4. Parent Rights, School Choice, and Equality of Opportunity (coauthor: Jennifer L. Kemerer) 98 Parent Rights in Education 99 How Fundamental Are Parent Rights? 99 Coupling Parent Rights with Free Exercise of Religion 101 Contemporary Developments 102 Racial and Economic Segregation in Traditional Public Schools 105 Racial Segregation 105 Economic Segregation 112 Continuing Inequalities in Public Schools 115 viii school choice tradeoffs
- 13. Racial and Economic Inequalities in Choice Schools 119 Choice Schools and Ethnic Sorting 119 Racial Balance Measures 124 Achieving Diversity without Unconstitutional Discrimination against Parents 126 The Case for Diversity 126 Proxies for Race 131 Summary 132 5. Vouchers and Tax Benefits: Tradeoffs between Religious Freedom and Separation of Church and State 134 A Tale of Two Judges 135 Judge Higginbotham and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program 135 Judge Sadler and the Cleveland Scholarship Program 137 Differing Perspectives 138 Vouchers, Tax Benefits, and the Federal Constitution 140 Channeling Money to Sectarian Private Schools 142 Channeling Money to Parents and Students 143 The Significance of Federalism 146 Vouchers and State Constitutions 148 Restrictive States 148 Prohibition on Vouchers 148 No Direct or Indirect Aid to Sectarian Private Schools 150 What Is ‘‘Indirect Aid’’? 151 Funding for Public Schools Only 153 Public Purpose Doctrine 154 Judicial Precedent 156 Permissive States 157 No Anti-Establishment Provision 157 Supportive Legal Climate 158 Uncertain States 159 Ambiguous Constitutional Terminology 159 Absence of Authoritative Case Law 161 Pending State Litigation 161 Implications for Voucher Program Design 162 Tax Benefits 164 Summary 167 contents ix
- 14. 6. The Economics of Choice 169 Tiebout Sorting and the Median Voter Theorem 169 Funding Public Schools 171 Present Funding Patterns within States 171 Financing Public Choice Programs 174 Summary 175 Promoting Efficiency in the Production of Education 176 The Apparent Decline in the Efficiency of Public Schools 176 Possible Reasons for the Decline in Productive Efficiency 177 Changes in Student Population 177 Teachers’ Unions 180 The Cost of Educating Students with Disabilities 181 Privatization and Vouchers 182 Arguments That Vouchers Will Increase the Cost of Education 182 Arguments That Vouchers Will Decrease Educational Costs by Increasing Efficiency 183 Regulation versus Incentives 185 Regulating Class Size Reductions (CSR) 186 Summary 188 Equity Considerations and Voucher Policies 188 The Impact of Vouchers on Public Schools 191 Conclusions 191 7. School Choice Regulation: Accountability versus Autonomy 194 Are Markets Preferable to Democratic Control? 195 Classical Economic Theory 195 New Institutional Economics 196 Legal Constraints on Institutional Autonomy 200 State Constitutions, State Regulation, and State Action 200 Unconstitutional Delegation Law 201 State Action 203 State Statutes, Administrative Regulations, Charters, and Contracts 206 School Choice Accountability: Michigan’s Public School Academies 210 x school choice tradeoffs
- 15. Lessons from Privatization of Prisons, Public Housing, and Special Education 211 Privatization of Prisons 211 Privatization of Public Housing 216 Contracting-Out Special Education to Private Schools 218 Vouchers and Private School Regulation 220 Implications for Policymaking 225 8. The Politics of Choice and a Proposed School Choice Policy 227 Political Forces That Oppose Expanding School Choice 228 Producers of Public Education and Their Organizations 229 Liberal and Minority Interest Groups 231 Political Forces Supporting Increased School Choice 232 Attributes of an Equitable and Efficient Policy Proposal 234 A Proposal to Expand School Choice 235 Accountability Provisions 237 Additional Measures to Assist Low-Income Students and New Scholarship Schools 239 Discussion of the Tradeoffs We Made 240 Vouchers for All Income Levels and a Quota for Low- Income Students 240 Allowing Schools to Charge Families Additional Tuition and Fees 241 Transportation 243 Student Admission 243 Home Schooling 244 Additional Benefits and Costs of the Proposed Policy 244 The Political Feasibility of the Proposed Policy 247 Charter Schools and Alternative Choice Proposals 247 Concluding Remarks 249 Notes 251 Selected References 291 Index 303 contents xi
- 16. Figures 1.1. A Model of Student Learning 4 2.1. Path Diagram of the Decision to Choose a Public Multilingual School 34 2.2. Path Diagram of the Decision to Choose a Private School 35 2.3. The Development of Tolerance by Public Schools 43 5.1. Comparing Vouchers and Tax Credits 166 6.1. Increases in Instructional Staff and Other Expenditures per Student, 1890–1990 177 6.2. Mathematics Achievement (NAEP): Seventeen-year-olds by Race/Ethnicity, 1973–1996 178 6.3. Reading Achievement (NAEP): Seventeen-year-olds by Race/Ethnicity, 1973–1996 179
- 17. Tables 2.1. Mean Scores for Characteristics of Nonchoosers, All Choosers, Public Choosers, and Private Choosers 32 2.2. Comparisons among Attendance-Zone, Public Choice, and Private Middle Schools 50 3.1. Alternative Views of the State’s Role in Education 91 4.1. Overlap between Segregation and Poverty in Public Schools, 1995–1996 117 4.2. Urban and Suburban Public High Schools in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, 1995 118 4.3. Racial Characteristics of Charter versus Public Schools in 27 States and All Private Schools 122 4.4. Minority Concentration in Public Schools and in Selected School Choice Programs 123 4.5. Percentages and Corresponding Numbers of Students for Second Half of Boston Latin School Entering Class 125 5.1. State Constitutional Orientation toward Voucher Programs 149 6.1. Foundation Level Spending with District Power Equalization 172 6.2. Foundation Level Spending with Add-on Spending Allowed 173 7.1. Comparison of Arizona, Massachusetts, and Michigan Charter School Statutes (Selected Provisions) 207
- 18. 7.2. Key Accountability Provisions for Michigan’s Privatized Public School Academies (Charter Schools) 212 8.1. The Legislative Process 228
- 19. Preface AN OPTIMAL EDUCATIONAL POLICY in a liberal democracy goes be- yond teaching literacy and numeracy. It also supports the learning of moral reasoning, political tolerance, respect for diversity, and citizenship. Educational policy should value individual liberty and equality of oppor- tunity for all people, and it should create mechanisms to foster efficiency and to hold educational institutions accountable. School Choice Tradeoffs examines how these goals are in a state of tension with each other when government affords parents the means to select the schools their children attend. It shows how school choice offers a rare opportunity to make sig- nificant advances toward equality of opportunity and ethnic integration. While the concept of school choice is simple, seemingly small changes in program design substantially alter policy outcomes. If policy is poorly de- signed, school choice can threaten the basic values that a liberal demo- cratic society holds dear. Thus, while school choice represents an impor- tant policy opportunity, it also presents serious policy risks. School Choice Tradeoffs grows out of our four-year study of public and private school choice in San Antonio that was funded principally by the U.S. Department of Education and the Spencer Foundation. The study enabled us to investigate firsthand the consequences of allowing parents to choose schools for their children. It also prompted us to begin a broader study of school choice from the philosophical, political, and legal perspec- tives, for we quickly realized that school choice represents a fundamental change in the way we educate children. In recent years, a spate of books have been published on school choice. Most emphasize the empirical evidence that supports the author’s preferred policy. Proponents argue that school choice will result in edu- cational gains for choosing students, improved economic efficiency, en- hanced parental rights, and the introduction of a competitive academic
- 20. market that will stimulate all schools to improve. Opponents assert that school choice will harm nonchoosing students, increase segregation and social inequality, and ultimately destroy the public school system. Several factors set School Choice Tradeoffs apart from existing books in this field. First, the book places the topic in a broad theoretical framework based on the idea of opportunity cost. Second, the book anchors the discussion in the conflicting educational goals of such liberal democratic theorists as John Locke, John Dewey, and John Rawls to demonstrate how their dif- ferent priorities have affected thinking in this country about the role of the state versus the parent in schooling. Third, the book encompasses avail- able scholarly research in economics, education, law, and politics. Fourth, the book shows how federal and state constitutional law has great influ- ence over the design and functioning of school choice programs, and how policy design and functioning determine outcomes. School Choice Tradeoffs is not about a ‘‘single best policy.’’ We seek to offer a balanced perspective that goes beyond rhetoric and ideology to provide readers in general and public policymakers in particular insight into the complex tradeoffs that are inherent in the design and implemen- tation of school choice policies. While all policies create winners and los- ers, the key questions concern who these individuals are and how much they gain or lose. By placing school choice within a broader context, the book stimulates reflective thought by all readers. School Choice Tradeoffs first considers the many dimensions that school choice takes and what we know about its consequences. Then the book discusses underlying values at stake, with primary emphasis on lib- erty, equity, and diversity. Included among the questions the book ex- plores are: How much liberty should parents have to control their chil- dren’s education? Does education for effective democratic citizenship require that the state both provide a uniform system of public schooling and regulate alternatives? Should a liberal democratic society allow stu- dents to be educated in ways that eschew such liberal values as gender equality, the priority of rationality, and individual autonomy? Are private schools more or less effective than public schools at teaching political tol- eration? Would a market-based educational system be more efficient and equitable? How would it affect educational funding? Does federal and state constitutional law permit the state’s use of public money to enfran- chise parents with the opportunity to select religious private schools? Will school choice programs balkanize the learning environment into mutually exclusive enclaves along racial, religious, and socioeconomic lines, and, if so, would this be harmful to democratic citizenship? How can the state assure that every parent has an equal opportunity to choose without dis- xvi school choice tradeoffs
- 21. criminating on the basis of race? Does state constitutional law permit the deregulation and privatization of schooling? Is educational privatization possible without subjecting schools to federal and state constitutional constraints? The book concludes with a specific proposal that we believe makes a reasonable tradeoff among the competing values and reflects our priorities for an educational policy that exhibits a strong commitment to pluralism, equality of educational opportunity for all children, parent rights, and institutional autonomy. We owe a strong debt of gratitude to many organizations and indi- viduals who have assisted us in the research leading up to this book. First, we thank the U.S. Department of Education; the Spencer Foundation; and the Covenant, Ewing Halsell, and USAA foundations in San Antonio for funding the San Antonio School Choice Research Project. Encompassing a multifaceted look at both public and private school choice, the study was conducted under the auspices of the Center for the Study of Education Reform at the University of North Texas from 1992 to 1996. Both the Children’s Educational Opportunity (CEO) Program in San Antonio, which sponsored the private school choice program there, and the San Antonio Independent School District were willing participants. We are es- pecially grateful to Robert Aguirre, director of the CEO program, and to the San Antonio I.S.D. school board and the two superintendents we worked with, Victor Rodriguez and Diana Lam, for their cooperation and support. We also thank the Spencer Foundation for funding the toleration study, whose findings are reported in Chapter 2, and the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, for underwriting part of the research on the legal aspects of privatization reported in Chapter 7. Our commissioned research paper for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences fa- cilitated our understanding of the likely policy outcomes of different types of choice policies. We thank the John Templeton Foundation for providing funding for us, together with our colleague Richard Ruderman, to teach a unique interdisciplinary course on educating the liberal democratic citizen that enabled us to think through many of the topics discussed in this book. Finally, we are indebted to Chancellor Alfred Hurley and the University of North Texas for both financial support and encouragement throughout this research. Numerous individuals have helped with facets of this study. First and foremost is Valerie Martinez, who served as co-principal investigator with us in the San Antonio study and was instrumental in orchestrating the survey research. Richard Ruderman, our coauthor in Chapter 3, advanced significantly our understanding of the philosophical dimensions of school preface xvii
- 22. choice. Jennifer L. Kemerer became a collaborator with us through her research on school choice and racial segregation, and we acknowledge her contribution by adding her as coauthor of Chapter 4. We owe a strong intellectual debt of gratitude to Henry Levin, Terry Moe, Stephen Sugar- man, and John Witte, all of whom assisted us at one point or another in the research and writing of this volume. Kay Thomas, Carrie Ausbrooks, and Alice Miller, doctoral students in educational administration at UNT, served as research assistants during the San Antonio project and based their dissertations on the study. Casi Davis also worked as a research as- sistant and drew on the study to complete a master’s thesis in public ad- ministration. University of Texas School of Law students Elizabeth Gon- zález, Kristine Tidgren, and Patricia Esquivel assisted with legal research, as did Marc Gracia of St. Mary’s School of Law in San Antonio. UNT doctoral student Catherine Maloney assisted with charter school research. Eric Juenke read an earlier draft of the book and made valuable contri- butions. Finally, we are indebted to the students in our graduate courses and seminars who helped us think through many school choice issues with their critical comments and insights. To these individuals and the many others who offered assistance during the researching and writing of this book, we offer our deepest gratitude. School choice is a disputatious subject. Coming from different aca- demic disciplines, we began with different opinions on the value of both public and private school choice. Many times over the course of our col- laboration, we have argued intensely about school choice and its policy implications. These differences helped keep us honest, and as we learned more about school choice, the differences narrowed. We hope that this book will stimulate serious thought about the tradeoffs that are inherent in designing a school choice policy that is compatible with the fundamen- tal goals of a liberal democratic society. r. kenneth godwin frank r. kemerer xviii school choice tradeoffs
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- 25. O N E School Choice Options and Issues: An Overview WHEN IT COMES TO EDUCATION POLICY, Americans want it all. We demand better test score results for all students, greater equality of opportunity, respect for diversity, preparation for good citizenship, effi- ciency, regulatory accountability, the development of autonomy in stu- dents, and preparation for jobs in a postindustrial society. But it is impos- sible to maximize educational performance in all these areas at the same time. This book is about the tradeoffs involved in any school choice policy. All decisions make tradeoffs among desirable goals, and education policy is no exception. It cannot simultaneously maximize efficiency and equity, educational outcomes for the most- and the least-advantaged students, or the rights of parents and the rights of the community. We hope that by examining the many tradeoffs that are a necessary part of education poli- cymaking we can clarify the issues involved in answering the question, ‘‘What school choice policy is best?’’ Selecting the most desirable education policies requires that we first identify the most important goals for education. Three educational goals enjoy the support of almost everyone who lives in liberal democratic so- cieties such as the United States and Canada. Students should learn the economic skills necessary to become economically independent, the politi- cal skills and understandings necessary to support the democratic process and to participate rationally in it, and the moral reasoning required to understand what constitutes ethical behavior and why such behavior is the cornerstone of a good society. The justifications for economic skills and political judgment are self- evident in the words ‘‘liberal democratic society.’’ To have full liberty, an individual must have the capability to be economically independent. For democracy to work, people must be able to participate meaningfully in the political process. But why give moral reasoning equal status? Some
- 26. who prefer a strict wall of separation between church and state might ar- gue that moral reasoning is outside the purview of public education. We think a moment’s reflection will convince readers that schools have an obligation to develop moral reasoning in every student. While the U.S. Constitution prohibits the state from teaching religious beliefs in public schools, it does not prohibit teaching the principles of justice that are fun- damental to a civil democratic society. Reasoned political decisionmaking depends heavily on the ability to engage in moral reasoning. More impor- tant, moral reasoning is the key variable leading to moral behavior, an outcome that all of us desire.1 The issue, therefore, is not whether schools should teach moral reasoning, but how they should teach it. We argue that liberal democracy requires one other fundamental pol- icy goal—equal educational opportunity. Liberalism holds that social, po- litical, and economic rewards should result from the combination of rea- son, skill, and hard work. Contemporary liberalism2 maintains that public funding of education is the chief mechanism the state uses to reduce the inequalities in economic and social rewards created by the circumstances of birth and childhood. If the rational application of skills is a necessary condition for achieving rewards, then a just education policy will pro- vide students with equal opportunities to develop rationality and to obtain skills. WHY CHANGE CURRENT POLICIES? There are many other legitimate and important educational policy goals. Most Americans want an educational system that is efficient, respects diversity, assists economic growth, provides accountability to citizens, and gives parents reasonable control over the values their children learn. Americans also want an education that encourages individual autonomy and respect for the common good. In our discussion of these various goals, we make three fundamental assumptions. First, no educational goal has absolute priority. Second, resources spent on any goal are subject to di- minishing marginal returns. And third, every goal conflicts with at least one other. If these assumptions are true, then policymakers must con- stantly make difficult tradeoffs as they allocate scarce resources. The United States has an education system that most of the world would love to emulate. We make available free public education to all res- idents and spend more per pupil than any other country. Graduates of our public schools attend colleges and universities that are among the best in the world. Public opinion polls indicate that most parents are reasonably 2 school choice tradeoffs
- 27. satisfied with the schools their children attend. Why should we change such a system? The most important reasons are that current policies create highly unequal educational opportunities and that most inner-city chil- dren do not receive an adequate education. Current policies discriminate against low-income families and ethnic minorities. They institutionalize this discrimination through the assignment of students, teachers, and re- sources to individual schools. Some of these inner-city schools are so bad that former President Clinton’s Secretary of Education Richard Riley stated that they should not even be called schools.3 To illustrate the inequality of opportunity, we ask you to join us in a brief thought experiment. Assume that we are policy analysts from an- other country. Our government hires us to recommend policies that will result in more equal educational opportunities for students. As U.S. edu- cation journals often discuss that goal, we decide to visit the United States to analyze its education policies and outcomes. Our review of the empiri- cal research finds that the four sets of variables shown in Figure 1.1 are the primary factors that influence educational outcomes. Of these four, the characteristics of classmates and the attributes of schools are the most relevant because policymakers can alter them to a far greater degree than they can change student and parent characteristics.4 The existing research on the effects of classmates on learning finds that students learn more when their classmates value education highly and are easy to teach. The research also demonstrates that students are more likely to have these characteristics if they come from high socioeconomic status (SES) families and live in neighborhoods with a high percentage of non-Hispanic whites. Putting it in economic terms, students from higher SES families and from neighborhoods populated largely by non-Hispanic whites tend to create positive spillovers (externalities) that increase the learning of their classmates. Therefore, policies that cluster students by income and ethnicity disadvantage students assigned to schools with high concentrations of low-income and minority students. Our review of the education literature also indicates that the mone- tary resources that schools receive are correlated with the income and eth- nicity of their students. Schools populated by whites from high SES fami- lies have more resources than schools where students are predominantly from minority and low-income families. Per pupil expenditures in many states differ drastically from one school district to another, and, even within school districts, some schools receive far greater resources than other schools. Some schools are well staffed while others are overcrowded. Some schools have a stable faculty of highly experienced teachers while others have constant turnover and teachers with little experience. Unfor- school choice options and issues 3
- 28. tunately, these inequalities in resources penalize minority and low-income students.5 Our visit to the United States would lead us to conclude that segre- gating students by income and ethnicity is certainly the result, if not the intent, of current public policies. Assigning students to schools on the ba- sis of housing price segregates students by income. Real estate, banking, and government housing practices tend to segregate students by ethnic- ity.6 Therefore, the current school choice policy—assigning students to schools based on where they live (henceforth called ‘‘residence choice’’)— creates enormous inequalities in the spillovers students receive from their classmates and in the resources available to their schools. Many school districts exacerbate these inequalities by separating the most and the least 4 school choice tradeoffs Figure 1.1. A Model of Student Learning.
- 29. academically advantaged students into classes for the ‘‘gifted and tal- ented’’ and the ‘‘academically challenged.’’ If we actually had made this hypothetical fact-finding tour of the United States we probably would conclude that although Americans may pay lip service to equality of educational opportunity, their policies often exacerbate rather than reduce existing inequalities. When we returned home to advise the Minister of Education, what policies could we recom- mend? What politically feasible policies would reduce existing inequalities while not lowering the overall quality of education in our country? WHY USE SCHOOL CHOICE TO PROMOTE EQUITY? Among the reasons that increasing school choice emerged as a policy op- tion is the failure of other policies to integrate schools and to achieve ac- ceptable educational outcomes for inner-city students.7 Every year that these students remain in their neighborhood public schools they fall fur- ther behind their suburban counterparts.8 Since 1973, the segregation in public schools has increased,9 and most states and school districts have been ineffective in achieving equity in school funding.10 The difficulties in achieving funding equity are likely to increase. States that moved toward funding equity across school districts generally have done so not by taking money from rich districts and giving it to poor ones, but by increasing state funding in needy districts more rapidly than in wealthy districts.11 This has been possible because over the last fifty years real per pupil expenditures in public schools have risen by 500 per- cent.12 But the baby boom generation will soon retire, and the yearly in- creases in per pupil expenditures are not likely to continue. Future im- provements in education must come from increased productivity, not from doubling per pupil spending every twenty years. The most daunting challenge to equality of educational opportunity is the achievement of equal positive spillovers from classmates. Unlike funding, where it is not necessary to directly take from the more advan- taged to improve the position of the less advantaged, equalizing spill- overs requires the redistribution of students who are most likely to create positive spillovers. Past efforts to use government coercion to achieve this have failed. We need only to recall public reactions to forced busing to see that voluntary approaches are the only politically acceptable mode of achieving the desired redistributions. We will argue that achieving greater equality of educational opportunity requires a radical expansion of school school choice options and issues 5
- 30. choice. But expanded choice can increase inequalities. Therefore, choice policies must be combined with incentives that encourage the redistribu- tion of educational resources from upper-middle-class schools to schools for low-income and working-class children. TYPES OF SCHOOL CHOICE If one conceives of choice policies as a continuum, the option with the least choice is a policy where families choose a public school by taking up residence in its attendance zone. At the next level is the school-within- a-school. For example, a school may offer a special math and science academy for students whom the school designates as gifted and talented. Qualified students who attend the academy would continue to take other courses with regular students. A more expansive version of this approach is the magnet school. Originally an incentive to school integration, the magnet school concept is evident in today’s thematic schools that attract students from across the school district. Thematic schools emphasize spe- cial subjects such as foreign languages, the arts, math, or science. Stu- dents within the district may enroll in the school of their choice so long as they meet district-determined qualifications. Recently some states have adopted statewide open enrollment policies that allow students to enroll in public schools outside their own district. The newest form of public school choice is the charter school. A char- ter school is, in effect, a new public school started by teachers, parents, or private organizations with the approval of a state-designated authority. Since Minnesota enacted the first charter school legislation in 1991, more than two-thirds of the states have introduced charter schools. But char- ter school laws vary considerably. Some states allow only existing public schools to convert to charter schools, while others permit the creation of new schools as well. In a few states, private schools can convert to char- ter school status. Although charter schools are classified as public schools, in several states private for-profit organizations operate these schools through subcontracts with public entities. A good example is the Boston Renaissance Public Charter School, one of the largest charter schools in the country, with over 1,200 students. Boston Renaissance is operated by the for-profit Edison Schools. The autonomy of charter schools varies from state to state. At one extreme is Arizona, where charter schools op- erate virtually unfettered by state regulations, teacher organizations, and continuing oversight. At the other extreme is Rhode Island, where teach- ers’ unions virtually control the charter schools. 6 school choice tradeoffs
- 31. The most extensive form of school choice would be a state-funded voucher that students may use to attend any public or private school to which they gain admission. Schools would be free to select students using any constitutionally valid criteria. A school might or might not accept the voucher as full payment of tuition and fees. Most proposed voucher poli- cies are not so inclusive. Some restrict vouchers to nonsectarian schools, to low-income students, or to students whose public school has failed to achieve acceptable educational outcomes. To reduce the possibility that private schools would discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or other unacceptable basis, some voucher proposals require participating schools to use a lottery to select new students. Such a provision also re- duces the likelihood that private schools would admit only students who are easily taught and who produce positive spillovers for their classmates. Experience with public school choice shows that the higher a family’s socioeconomic status, the more likely it is that the children will participate in choice programs. This pattern results, at least in part, because of the greater difficulty low-income families have in obtaining informationabout choice programs and arranging transportation to schools outside their attendance zone. To reduce the likelihood that only higher SES families would participate in voucher programs, many proposals include transpor- tation subsidies and parent information programs. Other proposals are designed to facilitate integration and equality of educational opportuni- ties. These plans often require that schools which accept vouchers recruit a quota of low-income students. To see how increased choice can affect equality of opportunity either positively or negatively, imagine two schools in contiguous attendance zones. The majority of students in Zone A are upper-middle-class and produce positive spillovers for their classmates. The majority of students in Zone B come from low-income families and create negative spillovers. To the extent that better classmates (i.e., those that create positive aca- demic spillovers) increase learning, then a student who attends school in Zone A will learn more than an identical student enrolled in the Zone B school. What happens if the school district creates a math and science academy in the Zone A school and allows Zone B students who are in the top 20 percent of their class to transfer into that academy? Such a policy would accentuate inequalities in opportunities to learn because it would increase the concentration of students who create positive spillovers. But increasing school choice need not increase inequalities. Suppose both schools become thematic academies, with Zone A’s school emphasizing math and Zone B’s school emphasizing foreign languages. To the extent that families choose on the basis of curriculum and these choices are un- school choice options and issues 7
- 32. related to the positive spillovers students create, then increased choice will lessen inequalities by reducing the concentration of students who create positive spillovers. MAJOR ISSUES IN THE CHOICE DEBATE Debates over school choice involve numerous empirical and philosophicis- sues. Among these are: Who chooses? Why do they leave their attendance- zone schools? What are the impacts of choice on the students who attend choice schools and on the students who remain behind? Does democratic control of schools cause them to become inefficient and ineffective? What choice policy is most compatible with liberal democratic ideals and prac- tices? How much influence should parents have over what their children will learn? How much authority should the state claim? Will increased choice increase the costs of education? If so, who should pay these costs? Are vouchers constitutional? What state regulations should apply to pri- vate schools that accept vouchers? The goal of this book is to examine each of these questions and to reach a conclusion concerning what policy options make the best tradeoffs among competing educational goals. Why families choose is an issue of intense debate among opponents and supporters of expanded choice. Opponents claim that white students often leave attendance-zone schools to avoid schools with large numbers of minority students. Certainly much of the data on public school choice programs and on private school attendance is consistent with this hy- pothesis.13 Research on magnet schools and open enrollment programs shows that unless a choice policy includes provisions that prevent it, white parents will choose schools that enroll a lower percentage of minority stu- dents than the school their children left.14 Similarly, minority parents tend to choose schools where their child is in the majority group, and all ethnic groups try to avoid schools where their children constitute a small mi- nority.15 If these results from public school choice policies predict what will happen if school choice includes private schools, then, in the absence of steps to prevent it, expanded choice will lead to greater ethnic segrega- tion and greater inequalities in educational opportunities. Even if families receive adequate information and transportation is available, increasing school choice may enlarge the diversity among schools, and this may produce greater ethnic and socioeconomic sorting. Henry Levin has argued that lower SES parents will choose schools that emphasize traditional values and the memorization of basic skills. In con- trast, higher SES parents will choose schools that emphasizeabstractthink- 8 school choice tradeoffs
- 33. ing and the development of problem-solving skills.16 Schools that empha- size bilingual education programs will draw students predominantly from families where English is not the first language. Schools that use an Afro- centrist curriculum are more likely to attract African American students. Vocational schools tend to attract students from working-class families. And, to the extent that religious affiliation is correlated with socioeco- nomic status, then allowing parents to choose sectarian schools may in- crease SES segregation. Proponents of expanded school choice maintain that the goal of par- ents who exercise school choice is not to achieve segregation, but to im- prove educational opportunities for their child. Surveys that ask choosing parents why they decided their children should leave their attendance- zone school uniformly show that the primary reasons are expected aca- demic excellence, safety, and, in the case of private school choosers, reli- gious instruction.17 When magnet and thematic schools provide clear edu- cational incentives, parents will place their children in these schools even if they are more ethnically diverse than the schools the students leave be- hind. Many parents send their children to sectarian schools that are more integrated than the attendance-zone school their children would have at- tended. These patterns suggest that how policymakers design a choice pro- gram will determine whether it increases or decreases economic and ethnic segregation. The likelihood that greater economic and ethnic segregation will oc- cur if the diversity of schools increases and if parents select schools on the basis of religious or cultural values leads to a critical policy question: ‘‘Is having a diverse and responsive educational system worth the cost of increased segregation and increased inequality in educational opportuni- ties?’’ For example, if a voucher policy allows Native American, African American, Jewish, or Baptist families to send their children to schools that stress the particular worldview preferred by the parents, this may result in greater inequalities in educational outcomes. Similarly, if Levin is correct and low SES families send their children to schools that stress memoriza- tion while higher SES children learn problem-solving skills, this too will lead to greater inequalities in outcomes. How do policymakers weigh the costs of these inequalities against the benefit of having a more diverse set of schools that respond to the demands of parents and students? Educational Outcomes Do private schools achieve better academic outcomes than public schools? This question has sparked the most controversy in the choice debate. school choice options and issues 9
- 34. Chapter 2 examines this question and the issue of whether private schools are more efficient than public schools. If any single book energized the school choice debate it was Politics, Markets and America’s Schools.18 Written by political scientists John Chubb and Terry Moe and published by the Brookings Institution, the book uses data from a longitudinal study of high school students to show that students in private high schools learn more than children in public high schools. As we shall discuss in detail in Chapter 2, there are four major sets of influences on student learning: the characteristics of the student, the par- ents, the classmates, and the school (see Figure 1.1 above). If students with higher cognitive ability or greater interest in academic pursuits are more likely to attend private schools, then observing that private school stu- dents learn more does not mean that private schools are better. It may mean only that private schools have students who learn more easily. If parents teach their children at home and induce them to work hard in schools, this improves learning. As parents of private school students value education sufficiently to pay for their children’s schooling, it seems reasonable to expect that those same parents teach their children more at home and induce them to work harder in school. Thus, a positive associa- tion between private school attendance and better educational outcomes may be caused by differences in parents rather than differences in schools. Similarly, students in private schools may learn more because their class- mates create a more positive learning environment. Again, it is not the characteristics of the school that lead to improved learning. If we could take the same student body and place it in a public school, the student might have learned as much or more. Chubb and Moe maintain that democracy is a primary cause of in- efficient and ineffective public schools. They claim that private schools outperform public schools because public schools are bureaucratic and inefficient, and respond to organized political interests rather than to parents and students. Politics, Markets and America’s Schools shows that public school institutions, curricula, and pedagogies are not the product of producers attempting to increase efficiency and quality nor are they responses to the educational demands of parents and students. Rather, they are the result of endless bargaining among political interests and re- flect the political power of those interests. School districts choose policies because politically powerful groups desire them rather than because the policies lead to better educational outcomes. In contrast, private schools must respond to the discipline of the market and to the demands of stu- dents and parents. Chubb and Moe created a stir in the policy community not only because they found that private high schools appear to outper- 10 school choice tradeoffs
- 35. form public high schools, but also because they claimed that democratic control of schools makes public schools inherently inferior to private schools. An example may clarify their argument. During the final days of the congressional session in 1998, President Clinton demanded that the Republican-controlled Congress pass a bill that would increase federal aid to public schools for the purposes of reducing class size and hiring more teachers. The Republicans opposed this proposal, but the president ultimately won the policy battle. Smaller classes, Clinton claimed, would improve student learning. In the spring of 1999, the Republicans attempted to allow school districts to use the money for purposes other than reducing class size and hiring new teach- ers. Once again, President Clinton prevailed.19 How might Chubb and Moe view Clinton’s policy to reduce class size? They might suggest that Clinton’s policy provides a perfect example of why democratic control leads to inefficiency. Smaller classes, Chubb and Moe might respond, do not improve educational outcomes so much as they meet the political demands of teacher organizations. Money spent to reduce class size might better be used in purchasing new technology, funding after-school tutoring programs, providing remedial classes during the summer, or providing merit pay to teachers. If there is a shortage of quality teachers, then requiring smaller class sizes may harm learning by reducing the quality of teaching.20 Why do legislators and presidents seek smaller classes rather than allowing schools and school districts to determine how to use the available resources? Because teacher organizations are perhaps the most important supporters of elected officials in the Democratic Party,21 and these organi- zations lobby hard for class-size regulations.22 Teachers are like every- body else; they prefer higher wages and more pleasant working condi- tions. Regulations that reduce class size guarantee that few teachers who have state certification will be unemployed. A shortage of teachers also puts pressure on state and local governments to increase salaries to attract new teachers into the profession. Finally, even if smaller class sizes do not improve learning, they improve the working conditions of teachers. Chubb and Moe might argue, therefore, that Clinton’s policy victory pro- vides just another example of democracy creating inefficient outcomes. On the other hand, if Chubb and Moe are correct in their analysis that government control of schools leads to inefficiencies, this inefficiency may be a price worth paying. Improved test scores and higher graduation rates are not the only important results of education. We also expect schools to produce citizens who understand and appreciate democratic government and behave in morally responsible ways. Such distinguished school choice options and issues 11
- 36. policymakers and scholars as Horace Mann and John Dewey have argued that public schools are more likely to achieve these results. Mann and Dewey believed that public schools teach a common core of democratic values, develop political tolerance, and help overcome parental prejudice and superstition. Public school advocates claim that private schools are more likely to teach the parochial and prejudiced values of parents and to stress individual success rather than the common good.23 Proponents of private school choice contend that private schools are more likely to teach the moral reasoning and judgment that lead to moral behavior and respect for the rights of others. We examine the empirical research on these com- peting claims in the next chapter. Another reason to accept democratic control is that it may be neces- sary for public accountability and the development of democratic institu- tions. Democratic control of local schools provides an opportunity for citizens to learn political participation and develop a stronger political community.24 There may be an important tradeoff between efficiency and better academic outcomes on the one side and developing tolerance, de- mocracy, and community on the other. Liberal Democratic Theory and Education Policy The question of how well schools teach tolerance, respect for the common good, and moral judgment leads us to two of the most fundamental issues in school choice policy. First, what is the appropriate content of education in a liberal democratic society? Second, how should control over that con- tent be divided between parents and the state? Chapter 3 examines these issues. John Locke, the father of liberalism, advocated parental control and an education that stressed the teaching of rationality, moderation, ci- vility, toleration, and moral judgment. Because Locke’s great concern was government tyranny, he rejected giving government the power to socialize students by controlling the content of their education. Locke argued that the essential characteristics of a liberal state are its limited power and a restriction on using the state’s power to force one conception of the good life and the good person on those who hold different beliefs. By design, therefore, the liberal state is forbidden to advance a positive concept of virtue. But teaching virtue is essential to education. Our understanding of virtue tells us why we should become educated. It makes clear educa- tion’s ultimate purposes and helps us make morally correct judgments. Therefore, if we require state neutrality among reasonable worldviews, then state control over the content of education must be minimal. Dewey, the father of progressive education, took an opposing view. 12 school choice tradeoffs
- 37. He argued that public schools constitute a better culture than any from which the students are likely to come. It is better because it is more demo- cratic, tolerant, and universal. Leaving the education of children under the control of their parents allows parental prejudices to go unchallenged by science and reason. Dewey feared that parents would discourage their children from embracing a scientific outlook that was critical of religious tradition. Without science, what would protect the students from super- stition? What would prevent them from holding the undemocratic beliefs of their parents and from repeating their mistakes? From Dewey’s per- spective, if the teachings of school and home conflict, democratic progress requires that the school wins. Dewey also saw public schools as places to build a community in which students from diverse backgrounds would learn not only reason and science, but also democracy and respect for diversity.25 The opposing views of Locke and Dewey lead us to the tradeoff be- tween encouraging cultural diversity and encouraging the liberal values of democracy, equality, and autonomy. If aspects of students’ cultures or traditions are undemocratic, should schools attempt to weed out those practices? If a student’s culture demands acceptance of beliefs that conflict with current scientific evidence, should schools force the student to ex- amine critically her beliefs? Parents who are faithful to nonscientific be- liefs may argue that forcing students to apply the scientific method and the Enlightenment’s conception of rationality threatens the souls of their chil- dren and the survival of their culture. If liberalism truly respects diversity, should it not facilitate the survival of all reasonable cultures, even those that have illiberal elements? Parental Rights and Equality of Opportunity The claim that education demands rational and critical self-reflection should not be easily dismissed. Teaching autonomy, the ability to critically reflect upon issues and to rationally choose among reasonable conceptions of the good life, is a cardinal goal of a liberal education and has been so since John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant. By teaching their children that certain rational conceptions of life are wrong or by limiting the child’s education in ways that grossly limit future alternatives, are parents unrea- sonably restricting their children’s freedom to choose among meaningful lives?26 While parents have the right to believe irrational and unscientific ideas, do they have the right to prevent their children from developing the intellectual tools that allow them to critically evaluate their beliefs? Publicly funded education creates an inherent tension between the school choice options and issues 13
- 38. right of parents to transmit their culture to their children and the right of society to use the educational system to produce the values that society believes are critical to its continuance. We begin Chapter 4 by exploring how courts have made these difficult tradeoffs, paying special attention to the struggle between parent rights and the desire of the state to socialize children. We then review how courts have attempted to balance the egali- tarian requirement of equal educational opportunity with the demands of parents and local communities to control education according to their own values. Finally, we examine the constraints today’s courts are likely to place on attempts to achieve greater equality of opportunity. We do this by studying how the courts previously have reacted to policies designed to achieve ethnic integration and greater equality in funding. The Constitutionality of Vouchers and Tax Credits Whether a choice policy that includes vouchers is constitutional is a com- plex question. Not only are there questions of federal constitutionality, but also state constitutions vary widely in their degree of restriction on state involvement with sectarian organizations. But if school vouchers en- compassing sectarian private schools cannot pass constitutional muster, they cease to be of value as a school reform. Adding to the complexity of the constitutionality issue is a lack of consensus among judges concerning how vouchers affect the relationship between state and religion. For ex- ample, despite almost identical state constitutional provisions, trial judges reached opposite conclusions on the constitutionality of the Milwaukee and Cleveland voucher programs. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the Cleveland voucher program. As written, the program encompasses suburban public school districts and both religious and nonreligious pri- vate schools. However, because the public school districts and most of the nonreligious private schools chose not to participate, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck the program down as an unconstitu- tional advancement of religion. If the Supreme Court affirms the lower court ruling, what are the implications for voucher program design? If the Supreme Court upholds the program, will the Justices allow states to ap- ply their own constitutional provisions to the queston? States with more stringent anti-establishment provisions would be able to exclude religious private schools. Or might the Justices indicate that such exclusion would violate the rights of parents and discriminate against religion? Drawing upon our intensive examination of constitutional provi- sions, interpretive judicial and state law in all fifty states, and research on 14 school choice tradeoffs
- 39. issues of federalism, Chapter 5 explores the likely outcome of litigation over school vouchers and tax credit programs at both the federal and state levels. Based on this discussion, the chapter sets forth the design features a voucher program should have to pass constitutional muster. The Economics of Choice Chapter 6 reviews the economic tradeoffs involved in the selection of a school choice policy. Too often academic debates over education neglect important economic concerns. This neglect is unfortunate because costs are always important to policymakers. When confronting a policy pro- posal that raises substantially the costs of education, it is a rare elected official who does not ask where the money is going to come from. Educa- tion is the biggest item in the budget for local and state governments. A small percentage increase in the costs of elementary and secondary edu- cation typically requires either new taxes or large cuts in other programs. Neither option is one that elected officials embrace willingly. One of the frustrating aspects of studying public policy is that com- monsensical policies can lead to unanticipated and highly undesirable out- comes. For example, relying on local property taxes to fund schools leads to substantial inequalities in funding across districts. An obvious solution to reduce these inequalities is to have the state rather than local school districts raise and allocate funding for education. Many economists be- lieve that this reform harms education by reducing voter support for edu- cation taxes. Imagine for a moment that you have no school-age children. If you believe your property taxes improve the schools in your district, then you may support these taxes despite the fact that you have no chil- dren attending public schools. The reason for your support is that if your district’s schools decline, so too will the value of your property. If, how- ever, all funding comes from the state level, then the taxes you pay for education are unrelated to the quality of your neighborhood schools. For this reason, cuts in taxes for education will not reduce the value of your property. In this situation, you may choose to support candidates who promise lower taxes. Proposition 13 in California, a measure that greatly reduced the state’s ability to fund schools, may be an example of what happens when a state divorces the funding of public schools from their local financial base.27 Another situation in which common sense may prove incorrect is the claim that private schools will lower the costs of education. Milton Fried- man argued vouchers would impose the discipline of the market on pro- ducers. This would force schools to look for production-enhancing in- school choice options and issues 15
- 40. novations and would reduce wasteful bureaucracies.28 David Boaz and Morris Barrett of the libertarian Cato Institute attempted to show that Friedman’s faith in market discipline was justified. They compared the tu- ition that private schools charge with the per pupil expenditures of public schools. As the latter are generally much higher than the former, Boaz and Barrett claim that Friedman was right and that vouchers would lower edu- cational costs.29 Other economists claim that this comparison is inappro- priate. Sectarian schools often receive subsidies from their religious orga- nizations, do not pay the market value for teachers who are members of religious orders, and typically do not pay the costs of transportation. In addition, private schools do not have the same number of specially chal- lenged or at-risk students, students that cost considerably more to edu- cate. Economists Henry Levin and Cyrus Driver maintain that a voucher system, rather than reducing the cost of education to taxpayers, would increase those costs substantially.30 Accountability versus Autonomy How should choice schools be held accountable to parents and to the state for the education that they provide at public expense? Too much account- ability produces the same plethora of regulations that have created the rule-bound traditional public school. Too little allows unscrupulous en- trepreneurs to benefit at public expense. The tradeoffs are particularly ap- parent when school choice programs encompass private educational or- ganizations. Here there is a narrow and mostly unmarked public policy channel between state constitutional law that restricts the delegation of public schooling to private organizations and federal constitutional law that allows parents to choose private schools, protects freedom of religion, and prevents unreasonable private school regulation. In Chapter 7 we examine how the complexities of the legal frame- work for holding choice schools accountable create an inevitable tension with institutional autonomy. The sources of regulation are many: state constitutions, statutes, regulations issued by state and local agencies, char- ters and contracts, and judicial decisions. Failing to stop school choice outright, opponents often can exert tremendous influence over the design of school choice programs through the exercise of both political clout and litigation. But without autonomy, choice schools are handicapped in ful- filling their missions and offering an alternative to the one-size-fits-all public school. Where should the line be drawn between overreaching ac- countability and unfettered autonomy? Our examination of the account- 16 school choice tradeoffs
- 41. ability versus autonomy tradeoff in Chapter 7 sets the stage for the pro- posal we present in the last chapter. DESIGNING A CHOICE PROGRAM THAT PROMOTES EQUITY Analyses of existing public and private choice programs show that the design features of a program tremendously affect its policy outcomes. The question, of course, is whether or not it is possible to design a program that is politically feasible, that can improve equity and diversity, and that allows more diverse schools to prosper while encouraging efficiency and maintaining an acceptable level of public accountability.31 To understand which future policy options are politically feasible, we must examine the politics that currently surround the choice debate. In the first part of Chapter 8 we review the positions of various interest groups. We pay spe- cial attention to teachers’ unions and the Christian Right and to their re- lationships to the Democratic and Republican parties. After reviewing the political feasibility of various policy options, we propose a school choice policy that we believe makes appropriate trade- offs among competing educational goals. The proposal gives incentives to families and choice schools to behave in ways that promote public goals, particularly equality of educational opportunity and ethnic and income integration. The incentives to parents are greater opportunities to choose the education they prefer for their children and dramatically reduced costs for attending choice schools. The incentives to private schools are the sub- stantial reduction in the tuition and fees they must charge and a substan- tial increase in the demand for their services. As we stress throughout the book, all policies must make tradeoffs among desirable goals. The policy we propose is no exception. We believe, however, that the tradeoffs we make are ones that a liberal democratic society should find acceptable. school choice options and issues 17
- 42. T W O The Outcomes of School Choice Policies IN WILLIAM STYRON’S powerful and poignant novel Sophie’s Choice, a concentration camp guard forces Sophie to choose which of her two children will have a chance to live and which one will not. Opponents of expanding school choice assert that increasing school choice creates a similar choice for our society. Increased choice raises the question ‘‘Which disadvantaged children will receive increased educational opportunities and which ones will have their few existing opportunities reduced?’’ This choice occurs, opponents argue, because any policy that encourages the relatively more advantaged children and more active parents to leave their neighborhood school reduces the opportunities of the most disadvantaged children in that neighborhood. School choice is a zero-sum game. Peers who learn easily and parents who are most active and knowledgeable about education are important educational resources for their classmates and their schools. Whatever one child gains by moving to a choice school another child loses through the parting of the more educationally able stu- dent and her parents. To determine whether school choice is Sophie’s choice we first must examine the arguments that increased choice will improve academic out- comes for all children, including the most disadvantaged, and the claims of those who expect increased choice to harm students. We then can de- duce the testable hypotheses from both sets of arguments and review the results of existing research that relates to those hypotheses. Such an anal- ysis provides substantial insight into the likely outcomes of alternative school choice policies.
- 43. WHY PROPONENTS EXPECT CHOICE TO IMPROVE ACADEMIC OUTCOMES Choice proponents believe that greater choice will improve outcomes through three causal mechanisms: (1) competition will force low- performing schools to either improve or close, (2) greater choice will im- prove student outcomes by increasing parental involvement and matching students’ interests and aptitudes to a school’s pedagogy and curriculum, and (3) choice will reduce the harms caused by political control of schools by eliminating much of that control. We review each of these causal ar- guments and discuss the evidence for and against them. The Effects of Competition Many choice proponents hypothesize that schools would improve if only they had to compete for customers. Adam Smith showed in The Wealth of Nations that in the absence of collusion by firms or intervention by gov- ernment, the real winner in a free market is the consumer. Competition forces all producers to look for ways to improve the product or for a way to lower the cost of production. Either change allows the producer to in- crease sales and, in the short term, profits. But competition forces all other producers to improve their products or lower their costs. If all producers are selling goods of equal quality, then consumers will seek out the lowest price. To see how competition works, take the example of cars. During the 1950s and early 1960s, almost all automobiles sold in the United States were produced by four automakers—General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and American Motors. The average life of a car produced in this period was only about fifty thousand miles, and its reliability and gas mileage were low. The American automakers engaged in price collusion, and they relied on government to protect them from foreign competition. When the government lowered its trade barriers, Volkswagen, Toyota, Datsun (now Nissan), and Mercedes invaded the U.S. market. These cars had life spans of over a hundred thousand miles, were significantly more reliable than their American rivals, and had better gas mileage than comparable cars made in the United States. Within a short time, enough consumers switched to foreign-built cars to force American automakers to improve the quality of their cars and to lower their prices. American Motors was unable to meet the foreign competition and went out of business. Propo- nents of increased choice, particularly proponents of public funding for outcomes of school choice policies 19
- 44. private school choice, argue that what happened with automobiles would happen with schools if the public school monopoly were ended.1 If forced to compete, schools would look for ways to improve their product and lower their costs. Increased Parental Involvement and Better Matching of Students and Schools Proponents of choice believe that giving families greater choice will im- prove student performance in two ways. First, choice will empower par- ents by making them consumers of education rather than targets of social policy. This will encourage parents to become involved in their children’s education, and research shows that greater parental involvement increases the academic success of students. Second, parents can match the learning style and interests of the student with the pedagogy and curriculum of the school. This also improves academic outcomes.2 The increase in parental involvement in schools may have another advantage: it can build social capital. Social capital is the web of trust, cooperation, and communication that allows societies to function efficiently and civilly. Social capital en- courages people to cooperate on collective action problems. A basic build- ing block of trust among citizens is the voluntary association in which people give their time and energy for the common good. Mark Schneider and his colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook have argued that increasing the level of school choice available to parents increases their trust in each other and in social institutions.3 Such trust is particularly important in low-income communities in the inner city where social capital is extremely difficult to build. To the extent that school choice increases participation in voluntary associations and increases par- ents’ satisfaction with the social institutions that supply collective goods, then society is better off. Democratic Control and Bureaucratic Inefficiencies Two political scientists, John Chubb and Terry Moe, developed the best- articulated argument of why school choice that includes publicly funded vouchers or privatizes schools will improve academic outcomes.4 In Poli- tics, Markets and America’s Schools, Chubb and Moe claim that the prob- lem with past educational reforms was that they directed their energies at the wrong questions. Past policy debate discussed how public control should be exercised, but the problem with public schools is that they are 20 school choice tradeoffs
- 45. controlled by the public through the institutions of democratic govern- ment.5 But democratic government is more likely to produce ineffective schools. Effective schools have clear goals, vigorous leadership, autono- mous teachers, rigorous academic goals, and an orderly environment. Democratic control of schools produces inconsistent missions, unclear goals, weak principals, and dependent teachers.6 To see the logic of the Chubb and Moe argument, assume for the moment that you are chair of the Senate Education Committee in your state legislature. You are a Democrat, the governor is a Democrat, and your party controls both legislative chambers. You want to improve pub- lic schools in your state, and you have been convinced that reducing class size in elementary schools to fewer than sixteen students per class is essen- tial to improving educational outcomes. You also believe that this will be of particular help to low-income and minority students. What will you choose to do? Will you propose a bill that requires all public elementary schools to have only small classes, or will you simply increase the educa- tion budget so that school districts (or individual schools) can reduce class size if they believe that smaller classes are the most effective use of the additional funds? If you recommend a new law requiring all elementary schools to have class sizes of sixteen or fewer students, then you are opting for greater regulation of schools. You are attempting to make schools more effective by imposing controls on them. In the abstract, most of us object to large bureaucracies and value principal and teacher autonomy. But when we have the opportunity to impose our favorite law, we almost always are willing to limit the very autonomy we claim to support. One of the great insights of Politics, Markets and America’s Schools is that while any single law or regulation may help schools, the long-term accumulation of such laws inevitably harms schools by bureaucratizing them. Each new law re- stricts the autonomy and flexibility of principals and teachers, and it in- creases the likelihood that public educators will face conflicting goals and rules. Chubb and Moe argue that as different parties and interests replace each other in state government, the list of rules and regulations that govern education will grow. For example, one year the legislature may rule that all public high school students must take a course in environmental policy. The following year a new legislature may decide that each student must take a course on free enterprise. This year the legislature may choose to require sex education. Next year the legislature may choose to exempt the children of parents who object to the sex education course and require outcomes of school choice policies 21
- 46. that the schools provide alternative classes for those children. This year the legislature may require that biology classes teach that evolution and creationism are simply differing theories and that neither has been proven superior to the other. The following year the legislature may require that biology classes teach only the explanation of current life forms that has the backing of the scientific community. The state legislature is only one of many locations where new regu- lations originate. Almost every state has a commissioner of education, a state board of education, and an education agency that has the power to make rules (administrative laws) that are binding on all public schools. In addition, the federal government creates rules concerning the use of funds that it provides and enacts such statutes as the Individuals with Disabili- ties Education Act. Both the state and federal courts may choose to impose legal restraints on schools. Local school boards, local superintendents, and school-based management teams also make new rules and regula- tions.7 The result of this political process is a large and contradictory set of state laws and regulations. In Texas, for example, the combined length of the Texas Education Code and the Texas Administrative Code govern- ing K–12 education totals 1,473 double-column pages. The contract negotiated between teachers’ unions and school districts is another source of school regulations. The agreements that unions reach with school boards have the same effect as laws passed by the legislature. Union contracts determine teacher qualifications, teacher assignment and transfer policies, the relationships between teachers and their principals, teacher duties, and evaluation procedures.8 The 1995 contract between the Milwaukee teachers’ union and the Milwaukee Public Schools illus- trates the extent to which union contracts take away the autonomy of principals and teachers. The contract was more than 150 pages long and included 26 pages governing what the school district or principal could require a teacher to do, 19 pages concerning leaves of absence and absen- teeism, and 5 pages on grievance procedures.9 Teacher organizations often are in a particularly advantaged position to protect themselves from the repeal of regulations they support because teachers typically are the most powerful electoral force in school board elections. Thus, the people who collectively bargain with the teachers’ unions concerning new regulations are the elected representatives of those teachers. These collective bargaining agreements prevent schools from achieving productive efficiency and keep low-performing teachers from being released. For example, the teachers’ union in Milwaukee has made it almost impossible for a principal or a school district to fire bad teach- 22 school choice tradeoffs
- 47. ers. In a school system of more than 5,800 teachers, an average of only 1.5 teachers a year are terminated or forced to resign because of unsatis- factory evaluations.10 The Particular Problems Facing Inner-City Schools There is general agreement among proponents and opponents of increased choice that the worst schooling takes place in the inner cities, and this schooling is particularly bad for low-income, minority children. Chubb and Moe argue that a major reason that inner-city schools are so bad is that these are the schools where bureaucratic regulation is greatest. Chubb and Moe construct their argument as follows. The inner cities of large metropolitan areas are ‘‘teeming with diverse, conflicting interests of political salience—class, race, ethnicity, language, religion—and their schools are plagued by problems so severe, wide-ranging, and deeply rooted in the urban socioeconomic structure that the situation appears out of control and problem filled in the extreme.’’11 When a school is in such an environment, unions are likely to be stronger and more militant. They will demand more protections and use their political power to create pro- cedures, rules, and regulations concerning how each particular problem will be solved. This generates ‘‘a vicious circle of problems and ineffective- ness.’’12 Thus, where the problems are the greatest—in poor urban areas—and thus where strong leadership, professionalism, clear missions, and the other aspects of effective organization are most desperately needed, public authority will be exercised to ensure that schools are highly bureaucratized. There will be little discretion to allow for strong leadership. Teachers will be unable to partici- pate as professionals. . . . Unions will insist on myriad formal protections. Principals will be hamstrung in their efforts to build a cooperative team. And so on.13 For Chubb and Moe, the fundamental obstacle to the effective organiza- tion of the urban public schools is not their problem-filled environment. It is democratic control. In summary, proponents of school choice see public schools as having all the problems inherent in the monopolistic production of goods and services. To be effective, schools must be freed from the regulations that now make it difficult for a public school to have a clear mission and the autonomy to pursue that mission. Autonomy and competition can com- bine to solve the most serious problems in education. outcomes of school choice policies 23
- 48. WHY OPPONENTS EXPECT CHOICE TO LOWER ACADEMIC OUTCOMES Opponents of expanded school choice, particularly of choice that includes public funding for private schools, disagree strenuously with the conclu- sion reached by Chubb and Moe. To see why opponents of increasing choice argue that it will harm society’s most disadvantaged children, we use the 1996 book Who Chooses? Who Loses? Edited by two opponents of private school choice, Richard Elmore and Bruce Fuller,14 the book re- views past research on school choice and forecasts the most likely results of increased choice. Elmore and Fuller suggest that the exacerbation of existing student segregation by race, social class, and cultural background is the most likely result of expanding school choice. This will occur because the value families place on education correlates highly with race, class, and cul- tural background. Elmore and Fuller then make the Sophie’s choice argu- ment. The separation of choosing and nonchoosing families into different schools will injure those children whose families are less supportive of education and less knowledgeable concerning choice alternatives. This will reduce the quality of classmates for those low-income and minority students who already are most vulnerable, and it will remove the most politically active parents from neighborhood schools and thereby reduce pressure on these schools to improve. Another likely outcome of greater choice is that average educational outcomes will not improve. Elmore and Fuller believe that proposed choice policies pay too much attention to school governance and too little attention to reforming what goes on inside the classroom. Without re- forming curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher quality, the competition that Chubb and Moe desire would be irrelevant. An additional problem with market competition among schools is that consumers of education are not sufficiently informed or rational to make value-maximizing choices. Infor- mation has always been the Achilles heel of choice programs, and without highly informed and highly motivated consumers, the competition among schools cannot improve them.15 Can choice programs overcome these problems? Elmore and Fuller argue that a good choice policy requires great attention to the details of the program. If policies do not include regulations or incentives that force integration, then segregation will increase. If choice programs only re- spond to the choices of parents who already are choosers, then the pro- grams will not help children in families where the parents are unwilling or unable to choose. If choice programs do not consider ethnic and cultural 24 school choice tradeoffs
- 49. aspects of different students, then minorities are less likely to choose. If policies exempt private and charter schools from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), then those schools will not develop programs that facilitate participation by students with disabilities. For Elmore and Fuller, the only acceptable choice programs require substan- tial government regulation to ensure that schools do not exclude those who are educationally disadvantaged. Opponents of choice do not limit their attacks to those listed by El- more and Fuller. They argue that any choice policy that includes sectarian schools will have four highly negative consequences. First, it would violate the constitutional barrier between church and state that has played a sig- nificant and largely positive role in America’s political and social life.16 Second, if a child’s teachers and peers share the parents’ religious and cul- tural prejudices, this will imperil the political tolerance and respect for diversity that are important in a multicultural democracy. Opponents argue that a third problem with allowing private school choice is that private schools may not develop a key attribute of a liberal democratic citizen, autonomy. Autonomy has been an important goal of liberalism17 since John Locke and is an important part of a liberal demo- cratic education. Autonomy, along with tolerance and respect for diver- sity, is essential if America is to maintain and improve its democracy.18 Allowing parents to shield their children from competing cultural ideas and values will inhibit their development of autonomy and leave them less able to assume the burdens of citizenship in a democratic society. The fourth problem with private schools is that they will emphasize private values such as success in the competition for social advancement. In contrast, public schools will stress collective goods and collective val- ues. Schools respond to their constituents. As parents and students who are interested in getting ahead in a competitive job market are the con- stituents of private schools, private schools will concentrate on teaching the necessary skills to achieve that goal. But the constituents of public schools are the entire citizenry, and they will require schools to teach the collective values that are important to the maintenance of community and democracy. EMPIRICAL HYPOTHESES CONCERNING THE IMPACTS OF CHOICE One of the best aspects of the choice debate is that it provides us with em- pirically testable propositions. Proponents make the followinghypotheses: outcomes of school choice policies 25
- 50. 1. Parents choose schools to obtain higher academic outcomes and to place their children in a particular type of school. We should be able to test this hypothesis by asking parents why they chose an alternative school and by comparing the schools they chose with those their children left behind. 2. Increased choice will increase parental involvement and student satisfac- tion. We can test this by observing whether parents who move their child from attendance-zone to choice schools become more involved and students become more satisfied. 3. Democratic control of schools leads to unclear missions and goals; reduces teamwork among administrators, faculty, and staff; and lessens teacher autonomy and satisfaction. We can test this hypothesis by ex- amining the degree to which teachers and administrators agree on their school’s central mission, checking the extent of cooperation in the pur- suit of their mission, and asking teachers about their control over their classrooms and their satisfaction with their work. 4. Schools in a more competitive environment will be more productive and more efficient. We can test this in two ways. First, we can compare the cost and effectiveness of public schools in environments where there are many school districts with public schools in areas with few districts. Sec- ond, we can compare the costs and effectiveness of public and private schools. 5. Democratic control of schools reduces school productivity and increases costs. We can test this by determining if, after controlling for the effects of other variables, private schools adopt more effective teaching prac- tices and achieve higher academic outcomes than public schools. The opponents of school choice also have put forth testable propo- sitions. 6. Choosing is difficult for low-income, low SES parents and non-English- speaking parents. We can test this by seeing if choosing parents have higher socioeconomic status and English-language proficiency than non- choosing parents. We also should observe whether higher SES parents are better able to match their preferences with choice schools. 7. Increasing school choice will lead to increased segregation by socioeco- nomic status and by ethnicity. We can test this by comparing the segre- gation in school districts with high levels of choice and school districts with low levels of choice. We also can determine if choice schools are more segregated than the attendance-zone schools in the same district. 8. Parents who are not African Americans will choose schools to avoid 26 school choice tradeoffs
- 51. African Americans. We can test this by comparing the percentages of African American students in the school a student left and the school the student chose. 9. Students in private schools will show less support for democratic norms, political tolerance, and concern for the common good. We can test this by comparing student attitudes and behaviors in public and private schools. 10. Increasing school choice will harm the most disadvantaged students. We can test this by looking at the test scores of students in districts with high and low levels of choice. If the test scores of the students in the lowest quartile are lower in districts with substantial choice than in dis- tricts with little choice, then we can conclude that choice is harming the most disadvantaged students. 11. The differences in the educational outcomes of public and private schools are the result of differences in the resources of students, par- ents, peers, and schools rather than whether the school is public or pri- vate. We can test this by controlling statistically for the differences in resources. What does existing research tell us about the validity of each set of claims? SCHOOL CHOICE AND SEGREGATION Many of the most important services people receive from their govern- ment (police protection, water and sewage, transportation, and education) are financed by local taxes, and local governments decide how much of each service citizens will receive. In most states, the single largest local expenditure is elementary and secondary education. Studies of how fami- lies choose their residence indicate that the quality of local schools is an important influence on the choice of residence for about half of all families whose children attend public schools.19 As their income rises, parents de- mand more education for their children.20 This means that wealthier fami- lies tend to choose houses in school districts where per capita spending for public schools is higher and poorer families tend to choose residences in districts where that spending is lower. Because income and ethnicity are highly correlated, sorting students by the price of their homes segregates them by race and ethnicity. This sorting process has been exacerbated by racially motivated real estate and home mortgage practices and by the preference of most ethnic groups to locate in areas where the percent- outcomes of school choice policies 27
- 52. age of African Americans is small. In short, the current system of school choice through residence choice has developed a system of highly segre- gated public schools that clusters disadvantaged students in the same schools and does not provide them with an easily available opportunity to escape. When we examine the likely impacts of alternative choice policies on ethnic and income sorting, it is important to keep in mind that the current practices have created a system of highly segregated schools. Gary Orfield and John T. Yun of Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project have found that since 1986 the percentage of blacks in schools with a majority of whites has declined from 43 percent to 35 percent and the percentage of African Americans in schools that are over 90 percent minority has in- creased slightly from 32.5 percent to 35 percent. The trend in the segre- gation of Hispanics is even more pronounced and has been going on for a longer time. In 1970, the average Latino student attended a school where 43.8 percent of the students were non-Hispanic whites. By 1996, that per- centage had dropped to 29.9 percent.21 Segregation in the Northeast is par- ticularly pronounced; over half of all black students attend schools thatare 90 percent or more minority students.22 Recent research concerning resi- dential choice and schools indicates that a primary reason that many fami- lies move to the suburbs or send their children to private schools is to avoid schools with large numbers of African American students.23 Segregation by income is also very high, and this reinforces the racial and ethnic segregation. Orfield and Yun found that African American and Hispanic students were eleven times as likely to attend schools with concentrated poverty. The correlation between the percent black and His- panic in a school and the percentage of students eligible for a free lunch is 0.66.24 Because the income difference between the richest and poorest families in America has increased since 1996, it is likely that school seg- regation by income is increasing. How will increasing school choice affect segregation by income and ethnicity? We saw above that both the proponents and opponents of choice have hypotheses concerning who chooses, why they choose, and the effects of choice on segregation. There are three ways that we can study these hypotheses. We can compare the patterns of segregation in areas with high and low levels of choice; we can compare the schools students choose with those they leave behind; and we can ask families why they chose or did not choose an alternative to their neighborhood school. Because the dominant means of school choice is residential choice, we can explore how increasing the opportunity of individuals to choose 28 school choice tradeoffs
- 53. alternative school districts affects segregation. Harvard economist Caro- lyn Hoxby studied the effects of having multiple school districts in a met- ropolitan area. She reasoned that having many school districts makes it easier for families to exercise school choice by changing districts. Hoxby found that having more school districts did increase ethnic and income segregation, but this effect was small.25 Do public choice programs increase or decrease segregation? Magnet schools were originally developed to decrease segregation in metropolitan areas, but to a large degree they have been unsuccessful. Magnet schools nationwide are equally as segregated as neighborhood schools in the same school district.26 However, magnet schools may have had a small effect on preventing further segregation in school districts.27 Because charter schools are so new, very little data exist concerning their impact on seg- regation, but the available data indicate that charter schools are slightly less segregated than other public schools.28 Studies of open enrollment programs indicate that while white and higher socioeconomic status fami- lies participate at higher levels than nonwhite and lower socioeconomic status families, the net effect of these programs on income and ethnic seg- regation is negligible. For example, a study of open enrollment programs in Massachusetts found that they slightly increased the percent minority in both the sending and receiving districts.29 When we look at voucher programs outside the United States, the effects of choice on segregation are unambiguous. Studies in Chile, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, and the Netherlands all indicate that vouch- ers increase ethnic and socioeconomic segregation.30 Regardless of the country, whites tend to avoid schools populated predominantly by people of color. Because religion is correlated with ethnicity and social class, al- lowing sectarian schools to receive public funds increased both ethnic and religious sorting. In all of these countries the size of vouchers is unrelated to family income, and the voucher policies do not attempt to use incentives or regulations to achieve income and ethnic balance. In the United States there are only two publicly funded voucher pro- grams that have been in place for a sufficient length of time to study their impacts on segregation. These programs are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Cleveland, Ohio. Because both programs limited participation in the voucher program to low-income students, neither program increased so- cioeconomic segregation. And, except for schools specifically designed to attract a particular minority ethnic group, the schools in Milwaukee and Cleveland did not increase ethnic segregation. The numerous pri- vately funded voucher programs around the United States also limit finan- cial assistance to either low-income families or to families in low-income outcomes of school choice policies 29
- 54. areas, and, because of this, they have not increased segregation by income or ethnicity.31 Although current school choice programs in the United States have not significantly increased ethnic and income segregation, they may sort students and families in other ways. The key hypothesis in the So- phie’s choice argument is that choice will sort students such that high- performing children attend choice schools while low-performing children will remain behind in their neighborhood schools. This sorting harms the low-performing students because the quality of one’s peer group matters in the learning process. The sorting process also will place active and involved parents in choice schools, and this will deprive neighborhood schools in low-income and minority neighborhoods of the parents who are most likely to pressure policymakers for resources necessary to im- prove the schools. We tested these hypotheses by examining the differ- ences between choosing and nonchoosing students and families. San Antonio, Texas, provided a natural laboratory for answering many questions concerning public and private school choice programs. In 1992 the privately funded Children’s Educational Opportunity (CEO) program offered partial scholarships to low-income children in grades 1– 8 who wished to attend a private school or a public school in another district. Only students who resided in the San Antonio metropolitan area and qualified for free or reduced-price lunches were eligible. The scholar- ships covered approximately half of a school’s tuition up to a maximum of $750. CEO provided 936 students with scholarships for the 1992– 1993 school year. Half of the scholarships went to families whose chil- dren attended public schools in the previous year and half went to families whose children already were enrolled in private schools. CEO selected both sets of recipients on a first-come, first-chosen basis. Of the total en- rollees, approximately 60 percent enrolled in Catholic schools, 30 per- cent in Protestant schools, 9 percent in other denominational schools, and 1 percent in nonsectarian schools. None chose public schools outside their home district. At the same time that CEO was introducing its scholarship program, the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) had an ongoing public choice program, called the multilingual program. The multilingual program was a continuous seven-year curriculum of intensive foreign- language instruction beginning in the sixth grade. Students applied in the fifth grade and gained admission based on superior academic performance as evidenced in test scores, grades, and teacher recommendations. The program included instruction in the same essential elements required of all Texas public schools as well as language enrichment through honors 30 school choice tradeoffs
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- 56. dear, wait until you see how I have changed. If I could only live my life over it would be so different.... Now, dear, please don’t feel that you have no interest in life, for you have our dear little girl, and just as soon as she is big enough to be a comfort to you—well, she is yours. Dean, if you only knew how badly I want to see you. Now, listen—Clarence leaves here August 31 for Vancouver and will be there until September 6.... So, if you could send me my fare one way, why, then he could not refuse to let me go.... Let me know what you are planning, for I want to see you and cook you some good old meals again.... Yours only, Patsy.[20] In No. 18 a conventional woman permits herself to have a single new experience in the field of response, as compensation for a married relation which lacks everything but security, and then returns to her security. 18. American woman, forty-five years old, married. Husband is a prosperous real estate broker, a member of many clubs, a church warden, director of several corporations, a typical business man of the type termed “successful”, a good citizen “without one redeeming vice.” She is a beautiful woman, albeit tired and faded. Her hair is prematurely white, her youthful face with deep-set brown eyes has a wistful contradictory appearance. Has many sides to her nature, can play ball with her boys as well as she can preside at a meeting. Is a good companion, has many friends, and leads a busy life as head of a prosperous household. Has five children, four boys and one girl. One would not guess that she is an unsatisfied woman; her friends all think her life ideal and, in a sense, she does not deny it. This in substance is her view of married life though not literally word for word: “I suppose there can never be a school for marriage—how could there be?—yet how sad it is that every one must begin at the same place to work out the same problem. I had a good father and mother. They did not understand me but that was probably more my fault than theirs; I never confided in my mother overmuch. My father considered my mental progress at all times and I owe him much for the manner in which he made me think for myself, strengthened my views, and guided my education. When I left finishing school I played in society for two years and many of the men I met interested me, though none compelled me. I had never been given any clear conception of what marriage should be in the ideal sense. I knew vaguely that the man I married must be in my own class, good and honorable, and rich enough to maintain a dignified household. I had more of a vision of love at sixteen than at twenty-six, the year I married, though I was sure I loved my husband and I do—that is he is as much a part of my life as my religion or my household conventions. He is wholly a product of civilization and I discovered too late there is an element of the savage in most women. They wish to be captured,
- 57. possessed—not in the sense the suffragists talk about; it is really a sense of self- abasement, for it is the adoration of an ideal. They wish to love a man in the open— a fighter, a victor—rather than the men we know who have their hearts in money making and play at being men. Perhaps it cannot be remedied, it is only a bit of wildness that will never be tamed in women but it makes for unhappiness just the same. “My sex life had never been dominant. I had a commonplace adolescence with physical longings and sensations which were not explained to me and which did me no harm. My relation with my husband was perfectly orthodox, and vaguely I longed for something different. My husband was shocked at any demonstration on my part. If I was impulsive and threw myself in his arms he straightened his tie before he kissed me. Once at our cottage in the mountains I suggested that we spend the night in the woods. I saw a possibility of our getting nearer each other physically and spiritually if we could get out in the wilderness away from the restraints and niceties of our luxurious household. That was the first time I ever felt like a traitor. He told me quite sternly to go to bed, I was not a wild Indian and could not act like one. I went to the nursery for the night and snuggled close to my little boy and was glad he was young and slender and hoped he would never grow fat and complacent. I had noticed for the first time that my husband was growing stout, like any other church-warden. “Since that time I have never been wholly happy. It was not the foolish incident, it was the fundamental principle, and underlying our civilization. Our babies came rather closely together and I was glad that the mother element in me needed to be uppermost. My husband was perfectly content with life, I satisfied him at dinner parties, I could dress well and talk well, managed the household money to advantage and was at hand—tame, quite tame, when he wished to kiss me. I do not mean to sound sarcastic and bitter. It is not what my husband is which troubles me, but what he is not; I think I speak for many women. I am more mated to the vision of what my children’s father might have been than to the good kind man whom I teach them to love and respect. “Perhaps you have guessed I am coming to a confession: I met the man in England two summers ago, but he is an American and is in this country now, a friend of ours whom we both see quite often. Something in both of us flared the very night we met. He and Lawrence (my husband) get along famously; they both believe in many of the same ideals and discuss kindred subjects, but my brain and his supplement each other in a way which is hard to explain. I did not mean to love him. It is an upper strata of myself; I love Lawrence; I mean I belong to him, am part of his very being and he of mine, but I am myself when I am with this other man and I refuse to think what a different self it might have been had I known him before. The very morning after I faced the awful fact that I was thinking of a man other than my husband, Lawrence put a bouquet at my plate at the breakfast table. It was a red geranium, a tiny pink rose, and some leaves of striped grass. Poor Lawrence.
- 58. “Our adventure in love came rapidly. He understood me perfectly and I knew that he cared. We have never told Lawrence for we do not intend to do anything more that is wrong. He has spent several evenings at the house when Lawrence was away. There was no deception about this—it just happened and we have talked and kissed and faced life in the open. We decided quite calmly, and without passion, that we would have each other entirely just once. I wanted the complete vision of what my love could mean. If it is wrong I cannot think so; at any rate I would not give up the memory of that time. It was only once and it was a year ago. We both knew there could be no continued sex relation. When I have an opportunity I kiss him and he me. Lawrence never kisses my lips, so they belong to him. He has helped me to be more patient, and understanding of my life as it has been and must be. I have my children and must live out the life for their sakes and for Lawrence who loves me, tamed and domesticated. “If life could be—what it would mean to give him a child, but life in its entirety cannot be—for me. Probably that is the creed of many women.”[21] It is unnecessary to particularize as to the place of response in art. The love and sex themes are based on response, and they outweigh the other themes altogether. Religion appeals to fear, fear of death and extinction, and promises everlasting security, or threatens everlasting pain, but in the New Testament the element of response, connected with the concrete personalities of Jesus and Mary, predominates. Any hymn book will contain many versified love letters addressed to Jesus. There are on record, also many alleged conversations of nuns with Jesus which are indistinguishable in form from those of human courtship. 19. Angela da Foligno says that Christ told her he loved her better than any woman in the vale of Spoleto. The words of this passage are fatuous almost beyond belief: “Then He began to say to me the words that follow, to provoke me to love Him: ‘O my sweet daughter! O my daughter, my temple! O my daughter, my delight! Love me, because thou art much loved by me.’ And often did He say to me: ‘O my daughter, My sweet Spouse!’ And he added in an underbreath, ‘I love thee more than any other woman in the valley of Spoleto.’” To amuse and to delight Gertrude of Eisleben, He sang duets with her “in a tender and harmonious voice.” The same saint writes of their “incredible intimacy”; and here, as in later passages of Angela da Foligno, the reader is revolted by their sensuality.... In the diary of Marie de l’Incarnation there is such an entry as “entretien familier avec J.-C.”; and during such interviews she makes use of a sort of pious baby talk, like a saintly Tillie Slowboy.[22] In general the desire for response is the most social of the wishes. It contains both a sexual and a gregarious element. It makes selfish claims, but on the other hand it is the main source of altruism. The devotion to child and family and devotion to causes, principles, and
- 59. ideals may be the same attitude in different fields of application. It is true that devotion and self-sacrifice may originate from any of the other wishes also—desire for new experience, recognition, or security —or may be connected with all of them at once. Pasteur’s devotion to science seems to be mainly the desire for new experience,—scientific curiosity; the campaigns of a Napoleon represent recognition (ambition) and the self-sacrifice of such characters as Maria Spiridonova, Florence Nightingale, Jane Addams is a sublimation of response. The women who demanded Juvenile Courts were stirred by the same feeling as the mother in document No. 11, whereas the usual legal procedure is based on the wish to have security for life and property. 4. The Desire for Recognition. This wish is expressed in the general struggle of men for position in their social group, in devices for securing a recognized, enviable, and advantageous social status. Among girls’ dress is now perhaps the favorite means of securing distinction and showing class. A Bohemian immigrant girl expressed her philosophy in a word: “After all, life is mostly what you wear.” Veblen’s volume, “Theory of the Leisure Class”, points out that the status of men is established partly through the show of wealth made by their wives. Distinction is sought also in connection with skillful and hazardous activities, as in sports, war, and exploration. Playwriters and sculptors consciously strive for public favor and “fame.” In the “achievement” of Pasteur (case 6) and of similar scientific work there is not only the pleasure of the “pursuit” itself, but the pleasure of public recognition. Boasting, bullying, cruelty, tyranny, “the will to power” have in them a sadistic element allied to the emotion of anger and are efforts to compel a recognition of the personality. The frailty of women, their illness, and even feigned illness, is often used as a power-device, as well as a device to provoke response. On the other hand, humility, self-sacrifice, saintliness, and martyrdom may lead to distinction. The showy motives connected with the appeal for recognition we define as “vanity”; the creative activities we call “ambition.” The importance of recognition and status for the individual and for society is very great. The individual not only wants them but he needs them for the development of his personality. The lack of them and the fear of never obtaining them are probably the main source of
- 60. those psychopathic disturbances which the Freudians treat as sexual in origin. On the other hand society alone is able to confer status on the individual and in seeking to obtain it he makes himself responsible to society and is forced to regulate the expression of his wishes. His dependence on public opinion is perhaps the strongest factor impelling him to conform to the highest demands which society makes upon him. 20. The chief difference between the down-and-out man and the down-and-out girl is this. The d.-a.-o. man sleeps on a park bench and looks like a bum. The d.-a.- o. girl sleeps in an unpaid-for furnished room and looks very respectable. The man spends what little change he has—if he has any—for food and sleeps on a bench. The girl spends what little change she has—if she has any—for a room and goes without food. Not because she has more pride than the man has. She hasn’t. But because cops haul in girls who would sleep on benches, and well-meaning organizations “rescue” girls who look down and out. A pretty face and worn-out soles are a signal for those who would save girls from the perilous path, whereas an anæmic face in a stylish coat and a pair of polished French heels can go far unmolested.... You will argue that any woman with an empty stomach and a fur coat ought to sell the coat for a shabby one and spend the money for food. That is because you have never been a lady bum. A fur coat gets her places that a full stomach never would. It is her entrée into hotel washrooms when she is dirty from job hunting. It gets her into department-store rest rooms when she is sore of foot. And in the last stages it gets her help from a certain class of people who would be glad to help her if she had suddenly lost her purse, but who never would if she had never had a purse. And then, most important of all, it helps her to hang on to her last scraps of self- respect.[23] 21. Alice ... wants to be somebody, to do great things, to be superior. In her good moods, she is overwhelmed with dreams of accomplishment. She pines to use good English, to be a real lady. There is pathos in her inquiry as to what you say when a boy introduces you to his mother and how to behave in a stylish hotel dining room. Such questions have an importance that is almost greater than the problem of how to keep straight sexually. Winning of social approval is an ever-present, burning desire, but she has no patterns, no habits, no control over the daily details of the process whereby this is gained. When one tries to place her in a good environment with girls of a better class, she reacts with a deepened sense of inferiority, expressed in more open, boastful wildness. She invents adventures with men to dazzle these virtuous, superior maidens. The craving for pleasures and something to make her forget increases.[24]
- 61. 22. One of the most tragic lives we have ever known—now ended, and perhaps happily, with the death of the girl at twenty years of age—was that ensuing from unusually mixed parentage. An intelligent, English-speaking Chinaman married an American woman of no mean ability. One of their children was a girl, who developed splendidly both physically and mentally. She was an exceptionally bright girl, who at fourteen had already commenced a delinquent career which only ended with her death.... The fact that she was different, so obviously different, from other girls attending the public and private schools to which she went, and that there were many little whisperings about her, served greatly to accentuate her inner distress. Her capabilities and ambitions were great, but how was she to satisfy them? As a matter of fact, neither the mother nor I could ever find out that any great social discomforts came to this girl; the struggle was all within. She behaved most extravagantly as a direct reaction to her own feelings, of the depth of which she had rarely given any intimation at home. With us she essayed to remember and to reveal all that had gone on in her mind for years back: How could her mother have married this man? Was she really this woman’s child? To what could she attain with this sort of stigma upon her? Did she not properly belong to a free-living stratum of society? This girl wandered and wavered. She tried religion, and she tried running away from home and living with other people; she assumed a Japanese alias and tried to make a new circle of acquaintances for herself.[25] In many cases, both in boys and girls, particularly at the period of adolescence, the energy takes the form of daydreaming, that is, planning activity, and also of “pathological lying”, or pretended activity. The wishes are thus realized in an artistic schematization in which the dreamer is the chief actor. The following, from the diary of a sixteen-year-old girl is in form a consistent expression of the desire for recognition, but very probably the form disguises a sexual longing, and the daydream is thus an example of the sublimation of the desire for response, as frequently in poetry and literature. 23. I am between heaven and earth. I float, as it were, on a dream-cloud which carries me up at times into a glorious atmosphere, and again nearer the mucky earth, but always on, always on. I see not man, I see not the children of man, the big ME lies in my head, in my hand, in my heart. I place myself upon the throne of Kings, and tramp the dusty road, care-free. I sing to myself and call me pretty names; I place myself upon the stage, and all mankind I call upon for applause, and applause roars to me as the thunder from the heavens. I reason that mine is not inevitable stage-madness which comes to all females of my pitiful age; mine is a predestined prophecy, mine is a holy design, my outcoming is a thing to be made way for. I bathe myself in perfumed waters, and my body becomes white and slender. I clothe myself in loosened gowns, silks as soft as thistledown, and I am transported to scenes of glory. The even stretch of green, bedecked with flowers to match the
- 62. color of my pale gold gown, is mine to dance and skip upon. A lightness and a grace comes into my limbs. What joy is mine! I leap and spring and dart in rhythm with nature, and music leaps from my steps and movements and before my eyes are men. Men and women and children with heads bent forward, with eyes aglow with wonder, and with praise and love for this essence of grace and beauty which is I. What more, what more! I hang upon this idol of a dream, but it is gone. The height of happiness is reached; alas, even in dreams there is an end to happiness, the bubble bursts, and the dust and noise of earth come back to me. I shut my eyes and ears to these and seek consolation among the poor. In dreams I go often among them. With my heaping purse of gold, I give them clothes and beds to sleep upon, I give them food to nourish them and me, to nourish and refresh my fame. But do I give my gold away, and does my purse cave inwards? Ah, no! Come to my aid, my imagination, for thou art very real to me today. An endless store of gold is mine in banks of state. My name is headed on the lists of all, my money does increase even as I hand it to these poor. The poor bless me, they kneel and kiss my hands. I bid them rise, and the hypocrisy of my godless soul bids them pray and in this find restoration. I grow weary as I walk, and truth is even harder yet to bear than ever before. I am sad, I have nothing, I am no one. But I speak soothingly to myself, bidding me treat my hungry self to food, and I promise that the night shall be long and the dreams and journeys many.[26] On the contrary, 24 is in form a desire for response, but the details show that the girl feels keenly the lack of recognition. The response is desired not for itself alone but as a sign and assurance of comparative worth. 24. I am in despair, and I want to pour out my bitter heart. When I have once talked out my heart I feel better afterwards. Dear editor, why can I not find a boy to love me? I never make a hit with young people. I never have any success with them. I associate with young people, I like them, they like me, but nobody ever runs after me. No boy is crazy about me. All my girl friends are popular with young men. Every single one has a boy or more who is in love with her and follows her steps. I alone have no luck. Do not think, dear editor, that I am burning to marry; it is not yet time for that. But the thought that I am left out makes me very wretched. It distresses me and it hurts me to my soul’s marrow to know that no one desires me, that people are indifferent toward me. Oh how happy I should be if somebody would love me, if somebody would come to see me. It must be such a sweet pleasure to feel that some one is interested in you, that some one comes to see you, comes to you especially, on account of yourself. Oh, why can I not have this happiness! When I go to a party and when I come back I feel so low and so fallen. Young men crowded around my companions like flies around honey. I alone was an exception. I have not a jealous nature, but no other girl in my place would feel
- 63. otherwise. Can you show me a way to win a boy’s heart? What sort of quality must a girl possess in order to attract a young man? It is true I am no beauty. But what do all the girls do? They fix themselves up. You can buy powder and paint in the drug stores. My companions are not more beautiful than I. I am not sleepy. When I am in the company of young people I am joyous, I make myself attractive, I try my best to attract attention to myself. But that is all thrown to the dogs. Dear editor, if you only knew with how much care I make my clothes. I go through the great stores to select out the most beautiful materials. I annoy the dressmaker to death until she suits me exactly. If it happens that a hook somewhere on the dress is not in the right place, or a buttonhole has a single stitch more or less than it should have, I have the greatest distress, and sharpest heartache. When I go somewhere to a dance I am full of hopes, my heart is beating with excitement. Before leaving the house I take a last look in the mirror. When I return home I have the blues, I feel cold. My teeth grind together. So much exertion, so much strength lost, all for nothing. A boy has talked to me, another boy has given me a smile, still another boy has made me a little compliment, but I feel that I am not near and dear to any one. I feel that my face has not been stamped on the heart of any one.[27] From the foregoing description it will be seen that wishes of the same general class—those which tend to arise from the same emotional background—may be totally different in moral quality. The moral good or evil of a wish depends on the social meaning or value of the activity which results from it. Thus the vagabond, the adventurer, the spendthrift, the bohemian are dominated by the desire for new experience, but so are the inventor and the scientist; adventures with women and the tendency to domesticity are both expressions of the desire for response; vain ostentation and creative artistic work both are designed to provoke recognition; avarice and business enterprise are actuated by the desire for security. Moreover, when a concrete wish of any general class arises it may be accompanied and qualified by any or all of the other classes of wishes. Thus when Pasteur undertook the quest described above we do not know what wish was uppermost. Certainly the love of the work was very strong, the ardor of pursuit, the new experience; the anticipation of the recognition of the public, the scientific fame involved in the achievement was surely present; he invited response from his wife and colleagues, and he possibly had the wish also to put his future professional and material life on a secure basis. The
- 64. immigrant who comes to America may wish to see the new world (new experience), make a fortune (security), have a higher standing on his return (recognition), and induce a certain person to marry him (response). The general pattern of behavior which a given individual tends to follow is the basis of our judgment of his character. Our appreciation (positive or negative) of the character of the individual is based on his display of certain wishes as against others and on his modes of seeking their realization. Whether given wishes tend to predominate in this or that person is dependent primarily on what is called temperament, and apparently this is a chemical matter, dependent on the secretions of the glandular systems. Individuals are certainly temperamentally predisposed toward certain classes of the wishes. But we know also, and I shall illustrate presently, that the expression of the wishes is profoundly influenced by the approval of the man’s immediate circle and of the general public. The conversions of wild young men to stable ways, from new experience to security, through marriage, religion, and business responsibility, are examples of this. We may therefore define character as an expression of the organization of the wishes resulting from temperament and experience, understanding by “organization” the general pattern which the wishes as a whole tend to assume among themselves. The significant point about the wishes as related to the study of behavior is that they are the motor element, the starting point of activity. Any influences which may be brought to bear must be exercised on the wishes. We may assume also that an individual life cannot be called normal in which all the four types of wishes are not satisfied in some measure and in some form.
- 65. CHAPTER II THE REGULATION OF THE WISHES One of the most important powers gained during the evolution of animal life is the ability to make decisions from within instead of having them imposed from without. Very low forms of life do not make decisions, as we understand this term, but are pushed and pulled by chemical substances, heat, light, etc., much as iron filings are attracted or repelled by a magnet. They do tend to behave properly in given conditions—a group of small crustaceans will flee as in a panic if a bit of strychnia is placed in the basin containing them and will rush toward a drop of beef juice like hogs crowding around swill—but they do this as an expression of organic affinity for the one substance and repugnance for the other, and not as an expression of choice or “free will.” There are, so to speak, rules of behavior but these represent a sort of fortunate mechanistic adjustment of the organism to typically recurring situations, and the organism cannot change the rule. On the other hand, the higher animals, and above all man, have the power of refusing to obey a stimulation which they followed at an earlier time. Response to the earlier stimulation may have had painful consequences and so the rule or habit in this situation is changed. We call this ability the power of inhibition, and it is dependent on the fact that the nervous system carries memories or records of past experiences. At this point the determination of action no longer comes exclusively from outside sources but is located within the organism itself. Preliminary to any self-determined act of behavior there is always a stage of examination and deliberation which we may call the definition of the situation. And actually not only concrete acts are dependent on the definition of the situation, but gradually a whole
- 66. life-policy and the personality of the individual himself follow from a series of such definitions. But the child is always born into a group of people among whom all the general types of situation which may arise have already been defined and corresponding rules of conduct developed, and where he has not the slightest chance of making his definitions and following his wishes without interference. Men have always lived together in groups. Whether mankind has a true herd instinct or whether groups are held together because this has worked out to advantage is of no importance. Certainly the wishes in general are such that they can be satisfied only in a society. But we have only to refer to the criminal code to appreciate the variety of ways in which the wishes of the individual may conflict with the wishes of society. And the criminal code takes no account of the many unsanctioned expressions of the wishes which society attempts to regulate by persuasion and gossip. There is therefore always a rivalry between the spontaneous definitions of the situation made by the member of an organized society and the definitions which his society has provided for him. The individual tends to a hedonistic selection of activity, pleasure first; and society to a utilitarian selection, safety first. Society wishes its member to be laborious, dependable, regular, sober, orderly, self- sacrificing; while the individual wishes less of this and more of new experience. And organized society seeks also to regulate the conflict and competition inevitable between its members in the pursuit of their wishes. The desire to have wealth, for example, or any other socially sanctioned wish, may not be accomplished at the expense of another member of the society,—by murder, theft, lying, swindling, blackmail, etc. It is in this connection that a moral code arises, which is a set of rules or behavior norms, regulating the expression of the wishes, and which is built up by successive definitions of the situation. In practice the abuse arises first and the rule is made to prevent its recurrence. Morality is thus the generally accepted definition of the situation, whether expressed in public opinion and the unwritten law, in a formal legal code, or in religious commandments and prohibitions. The family is the smallest social unit and the primary defining agency. As soon as the child has free motion and begins to pull, tear,
- 67. pry, meddle, and prowl, the parents begin to define the situation through speech and other signs and pressures: “Be quiet”, “Sit up straight”, “Blow your nose”, “Wash your face”, “Mind your mother”, “Be kind to sister”, etc. This is the real significance of Wordsworth’s phrase, “Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing child.” His wishes and activities begin to be inhibited, and gradually, by definitions within the family, by playmates, in the school, in the Sunday school, in the community, through reading, by formal instruction, by informal signs of approval and disapproval, the growing member learns the code of his society. In addition to the family we have the community as a defining agency. At present the community is so weak and vague that it gives us no idea of the former power of the local group in regulating behavior. Originally the community was practically the whole world of its members. It was composed of families related by blood and marriage and was not so large that all the members could not come together; it was a face-to-face group. I asked a Polish peasant what was the extent of an “okolica” or neighborhood—how far it reached. “It reaches,” he said, “as far as the report of a man reaches—as far as a man is talked about.” And it was in communities of this kind that the moral code which we now recognize as valid originated. The customs of the community are “folkways”, and both state and church have in their more formal codes mainly recognized and incorporated these folkways. The typical community is vanishing and it would be neither possible nor desirable to restore it in its old form. It does not correspond with the present direction of social evolution and it would now be a distressing condition in which to live. But in the immediacy of relationships and the participation of everybody in everything, it represents an element which we have lost and which we shall probably have to restore in some form of coöperation in order to secure a balanced and normal society,—some arrangement corresponding with human nature. Very elemental examples of the definition of the situation by the community as a whole, corresponding to mob action as we know it and to our trial by jury, are found among European peasants. The three documents following, all relating to the Russian community or
- 68. mir, give some idea of the conditions under which a whole community, a public, formerly defined a situation. 25. We who are unacquainted with peasant speech, manners and method of expressing thought—mimicry—if we should be present at a division of land or some settlement among the peasants, would never understand anything. Hearing fragmentary, disconnected exclamations, endless quarreling, with repetition of some single word; hearing this racket of a seemingly senseless, noisy crowd that counts up or measures off something, we should conclude that they would not get together, or arrive at any result in an age.... Yet wait until the end and you will see that the division has been made with mathematical accuracy—that the measure, the quality of the soil, the slope of the field, the distance from the village— everything in short has been taken into account, that the reckoning has been correctly done and, what is most important, that every one of those present who were interested in the division is certain of the correctness of the division or settlement. The cry, the noise, the racket do not subside until every one is satisfied and no doubter is left. The same thing is true concerning the discussion of some question by the mir. There are no speeches, no debates, no votes. They shout, they abuse each other, they seem on the point of coming to blows. Apparently they riot in the most senseless manner. Some one preserves silence, silence, and then suddenly puts in a word, one word, or an ejaculation, and by this word, this ejaculation, he turns the whole thing upside down. In the end, you look into it and find that an admirable decision has been formed and, what is most important, a unanimous decision.[28] 26. As I approached the village, there hung over it such a mixed, varied violent shouting, that no well brought-up parliament would agree to recognize itself, even in the abstract, as analogous to this gathering of peasant deputies. It was clearly a full meeting today.... At other more quiet village meetings I had been able to make out very little, but this was a real lesson to me. I felt only a continuous, indistinguishable roaring in my ears, sometimes pierced by a particularly violent phrase that broke out from the general roar. I saw in front of me the “immediate” man, in all his beauty. What struck me first of all was his remarkable frankness; the more “immediate” he is, the less able is he to mask his thoughts and feelings; once he is stirred up the emotion seizes him quickly and he flares up then and there, and does not quiet down till he has poured out before you all the substance of his soul. He does not feel embarrassment before anybody; there are no indications here of diplomacy. Further, he opens up his whole soul, and he will tell everything that he may ever have known about you, and not only about you, but about your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Here everything is clear water, as the peasants say, and everything stands out plainly. If any one, out of smallness of soul, or for some ulterior motive, thinks to get out of something by keeping silent, they force him out into clear water without pity. And there are very few such small-souled persons at important village meetings. I have seen the most peaceable, irresponsible peasants, who at other times would not have thought of saying a word against any one, absolutely changed at these meetings, at these
- 69. moments of general excitement. They believed in the saying, “On people even death is beautiful”, and they got up so much courage that they were able to answer back the peasants commonly recognized as audacious. At the moment of its height the meeting becomes simply an open mutual confessional and mutual disclosure, the display of the widest publicity. At these moments when, it would seem, the private interests of each reach the highest tension, public interests and justice in turn reach the highest degree of control.[29] 27. In front of the volost administration building there stands a crowd of some one hundred and fifty men. This means that a volost meeting has been called to consider the verdict of the Kusmin rural commune “regarding the handing over to the [state] authorities of the peasant Gregori Siedov, caught red-handed and convicted of horse-stealing.” Siedov had already been held for judicial inquiry; the evidence against him was irrefutable and he would undoubtedly be sentenced to the penitentiary. In view of this I endeavor to explain that the verdict in regard to his exile is wholly superfluous and will only cause a deal of trouble; and that at the termination of the sentence of imprisonment of Siedov the commune will unfailingly be asked whether it wants him back or prefers that he be exiled. Then, I said, in any event it would be necessary to formulate a verdict in regard to the “non-reception” of Siedov, while at this stage all the trouble was premature and could lead to nothing. But the meeting did not believe my words, did not trust the court and wanted to settle the matter right then and there; the general hatred of horse-thieves was too keen.... The decisive moment has arrived; the head-man “drives” all the judges-elect to one side; the crowd stands with a gloomy air, trying not to look at Siedov and his wife, who are crawling before the mir on their knees. “Old men, whoever pities Gregori, will remain in his place, and whoever does not forgive him will step to the right,” cries the head man. The crowd wavered and rocked, but remained dead still on the spot; no one dared to be the first to take the fatal step. Gregori feverishly ran over the faces of his judges with his eyes, trying to read in these faces pity for him. His wife wept bitterly, her face close to the ground; beside her, finger in mouth and on the point of screaming, stood a three-year-old youngster (at home Gregori had four more children).... But straightway one peasant steps out of the crowd; two years before some one had stolen a horse from him. “Why should we pity him? Did he pity us?” says the old man, and stooping goes over to the right side. “That is true; bad grass must be torn from the field,” says another one from the crowd, and follows the old man. The beginning had been made; at first individually and then in whole groups the judges-elect proceeded to go over to the right. The man condemned by public opinion ran his head into the ground, beat his breast with his fists, seized those who passed him by their coat-tails, crying: “Ivan Timofeich! Uncle Leksander! Vasinka, dear kinsman! Wait, kinsmen, let me say a word.... Petrushenka.” But, without stopping and with stern faces, the members of the mir dodged the unfortunates, who were crawling at their feet.... At last the wailing of Gregori stopped; around him for the space of three sazen the place was empty; there was no one to implore. All the judges-elect, with the exception of one, an uncle of the man to be exiled, had gone over to the right. The woman cried
- 70. sorrowfully, while Gregori stood motionless on his knees, his head lowered, stupidly looking at the ground.[30] The essential point in reaching a communal decision, just as in the case of our jury system, is unanimity. In some cases the whole community mobilizes around a stubborn individual to conform him to the general wish. 28. It sometimes happens that all except one may agree but the motion is never carried if that one refuses to agree to it. In such cases all endeavor to talk over and persuade the stiff-necked one. Often they even call to their aid his wife, his children, his relatives, his father-in-law, and his mother, that they may prevail upon him to say yes. Then all assail him, and say to him from time to time: “Come now, God help you, agree with us too, that this may take place as we wish it, that the house may not be cast into disorder, that we may not be talked about by the people, that the neighbors may not hear of it, that the world may not make sport of us!” It seldom occurs in such cases that unanimity is not attained.[31] A less formal but not less powerful means of defining the situation employed by the community is gossip. The Polish peasant’s statement that a community reaches as far as a man is talked about was significant, for the community regulates the behavior of its members largely by talking about them. Gossip has a bad name because it is sometimes malicious and false and designed to improve the status of the gossiper and degrade its object, but gossip is in the main true and is an organizing force. It is a mode of defining the situation in a given case and of attaching praise or blame. It is one of the means by which the status of the individual and of his family is fixed. The community also, particularly in connection with gossip, knows how to attach opprobrium to persons and actions by using epithets which are at the same time brief and emotional definitions of the situation. “Bastard”, “whore”, “traitor”, “coward”, “skunk”, “scab”, “snob”, “kike”, etc., are such epithets. In “Faust” the community said of Margaret, “She stinks.” The people are here employing a device known in psychology as the “conditioned reflex.” If, for example, you place before a child (say six months old) an agreeable object, a kitten, and at the same time pinch the child, and if this is repeated several times, the child will immediately cry at the sight of the kitten without being pinched; or if a dead rat were always served beside a man’s plate of soup he would eventually have a disgust for soup when served separately. If the word “stinks” is associated on people’s
- 71. tongues with Margaret, Margaret will never again smell sweet. Many evil consequences, as the psychoanalysts claim, have resulted from making the whole of sex life a “dirty” subject, but the device has worked in a powerful, sometimes a paralyzing way on the sexual behavior of women. Winks, shrugs, nudges, laughter, sneers, haughtiness, coldness, “giving the once over” are also language defining the situation and painfully felt as unfavorable recognition. The sneer, for example, is incipient vomiting, meaning, “you make me sick.” And eventually the violation of the code even in an act of no intrinsic importance, as in carrying food to the mouth with the knife, provokes condemnation and disgust. The fork is not a better instrument for conveying food than the knife, at least it has no moral superiority, but the situation has been defined in favor of the fork. To smack with the lips in eating is bad manners with us, but the Indian has more logically defined the situation in the opposite way; with him smacking is a compliment to the host. In this whole connection fear is used by the group to produce the desired attitudes in its member. Praise is used also but more sparingly. And the whole body of habits and emotions is so much a community and family product that disapproval or separation is almost unbearable. The following case shows the painful situation of one who has lost her place in a family and community. 29. I am a young woman of about twenty; I was born in America but my parents come from Hungary. They are very religious.... When I was fourteen I became acquainted in school with a gentile boy of German parents. He was a very fine and decent boy. I liked his company ... and we became close friends. Our friendship continued over a period of several years, unknown to my parents. I did not want to tell them, knowing quite well that they would not allow my friendship to a gentile. When we grew older, our friendship developed into ardent love and one year ago we decided to marry—without my parents’ consent, of course. I surmised that after my wedding they would forgive my marrying a non-Jewish young man, but just the opposite turned out. My religious parents were full of scorn when they learned of my secret doings, and not only did they not forgive me but they chased me out of the house and refused to have anything to do with me. To add to my misfortune, I am now being spurned by my friend, my lover, my everything—my husband. After our marriage he became a different man; he drank and gambled and called me the vilest names. He continually asked why he married a “damned Jewess”, as if it were my fault alone. Before our marriage I was the best
- 72. girl in the world for him and now he would drown me in a spoonful of water to get rid of me. Fortunately I have no child as yet. My husband’s parents hate me even more than my husband and just as I was turned out of the house for marrying a gentile, so he was shown the door by his parents for marrying a Jewess. Well, a few months ago my husband deserted me and I have no idea of his whereabouts. I was confronted by a terrible situation. Spurned by my own relatives and by my husband’s, I feel very lonely, not having some one to tell my troubles to. Now, I want you to advise me how to find my husband. I do not want to live with him by compulsion, nor do I ask his support, for I earn my living working in a shop. I merely ask his aid in somehow obtaining a divorce, so that I may return to my people, to my God and to my parents. I cannot stand the loneliness and do not want to be hated, denounced and spurned by all. My loneliness will drive me to a premature grave. Perhaps you can tell me how to get rid of my misfortune. Believe me, I am not to blame for what I have done—it was my ignorance. I never believed that it was such a terrible crime to marry a non-Jew and that my parents would under no circumstances forgive me. I am willing to do anything, to make the greatest sacrifice, if only the terrible ban be taken off me.[32] In the following the writer is not the father of the girl who has just told her story, but he might well be. His statement shows the power of family and community customs in determining emotional attitudes. 30. [My daughter has married an Italian who is a very good man].... My tragedy is much greater because I am a free thinker. Theoretically, I consider a “goi” [gentile] just as much a man as a Jew.... Indeed I ask myself these questions: “What would happen if my daughter married a Jewish fellow who was a good-for- nothing?... And what do I care if he is an Italian? But I can not seem to answer these delicate questions. The fact is that I would prefer a refined man; but I would sooner have a common Jew than an educated goi. Why this is so, I do not know, but that is how it is, of that there is no doubt. And this shows what a terrible chasm exists between theory and practice!...”[33] The tendency of communities and families to regulate so minutely the behavior of all their members was justified by the fact that in case of poverty, sickness, death, desertion, or ruin the community or family assumed the burden, “submitted to the yoke”, as they expressed it. In case No. 31 the former members of a community still support an abandoned child though they are in America and the child in Europe. 31. In the year 1912 in a little [Russian] village a father abandoned his family, a wife and three children. Of the children two were girls and the third was a boy six
- 73. months old. The mother worried along with the children and finally in despair she changed her religion and married a Christian from a neighboring village. The children she simply abandoned. Of course the community of the village where this happened took care of the three abandoned children. They gave them out to families to be reared, and the village paid for them by the month. My mother was by no means a rich woman and felt the need of money, so she took the boy, for which the community paid. For some years everything went well, until the great World War broke out. The village in question was impoverished by the war and was plundered by various bands of pogromists. Great numbers of Jews were killed and the community was destroyed. My mother no longer received the monthly payment for the child; there was no one to make the payment. But my mother did not have the heart to throw the poor child into the street. They had become attached to each other, the child to my mother whom he called “mamma” and my mother to the child. So my mother kept the child without pay. That is, she and the child hungered and suffered together. Now, dear editor, I come to the point. The family of the writer of these lines was scattered. My father died at home. I and two sisters are now in America. My mother and the child are still in the old home. Of course we send our mother money for her support and this means that we support not only our mother but also the child of strangers. But it has never occurred to us here in America to reproach our mother because we are compelled to send money for a strange child. On the contrary, we understand that it is our duty not to behave like murderers toward the innocent, helpless victim of the present social conditions whom fate has thrown upon us. But the following is also true: We have heard that the child’s father is in America, somewhere around New York, and that he is very rich. So we think that it is no more than right that the father of the child shall take the yoke from us who are strangers and support his own child. I will say that I and my two sisters are simple working people. Every cent that we earn is worked for with our ten fingers. Therefore, I appeal to the father of our mother’s ward to take over the responsibility for his child, which is without doubt his duty.[34] As far as possible the family regulates its affairs within itself without appealing to the community and thus subjecting itself to gossip. Situations arising within the family where members are not in agreement, where a conflict of wishes is involved, are defined through argument, ordering and forbidding, remonstrance, reproof, entreaty, sulking, tears, and beatings. But as a last resort a member of a family may provoke gossip, appeal to the community. In case No. 32 the woman defines the situation to her deserting husband publicly. She does it very tactfully. She uses every art, reminder, and
- 74. appreciation to influence his return. She wishes to avoid a public scandal, reminds him of the noble professions he has always made as man and father, pictures the children as grieving and herself as ashamed to let them know, and believes that he is fundamentally a fine man who has had a moment of weakness or suffered a temporary madness—so she says. In addition the powerful newspaper through which she seeks publicity will define the situation to the erring husband. Presumably he will return. 32. I come to you with the request that you will write a few words to my husband. He has a high opinion of the answers that you give in Bintel Brief and I hope that some words from you will have a good effect on him so that we shall be able to avoid a public scandal. In the meantime I am containing my troubles but if matters get worse I shall have to turn to people for help. I will say that my husband and I always lived a good life together. He always condemned in the strongest terms those fathers who leave their children to God’s mercy. “Children,” he said, “are innocent and we must take care not to make them unhappy”—that was the way he always talked. And now he has himself done what he always condemned and regarded as the greatest meanness. The last night before he went away my husband kissed our youngest daughter so much that she is now sick from longing for him. The older girl is continually asking, “When will father come?” I am frightfully upset by the unexpected misfortune which has struck me. Dear editor, I have the greatest confidence in the goodness of my husband. Perhaps he has lost his reason for a time, but he is not corrupt. I am almost sure that when he reads my letter he will come back to his senses and will behave as a man and as a decent person should behave. I beg you to print my letter as soon as possible and help to restore a broken family.[35] Contrary to this we have the device of public confession, a definition of the situation in terms of self-condemnation. The following is a public apology which gives the injured husband favorable public recognition and seeks a reconciliation. 33. I myself drove out my good and true husband in a shameful manner and placed the guilt at his door, and although he is angry he is decent enough not to say anything to anybody. He takes the blame on himself. All my friends and acquaintances think that he is really the guilty one. I have been married for the last eleven years and up to two years ago I thought that somehow I should end my life peacefully, although I have caused many a quarrel.... My tongue is sharp and burning.... My husband always forgave me. Many times he cried and a week or two would pass by quietly. And then again I could not be quiet. Quite often I would start to fire away at the table and he would get up, leave the house, and go to a restaurant. When he returned he had some more. And according to my behavior my husband began to treat me roughly....
- 75. At this time we tried business for ourselves ... and owing to numerous reasons my husband had everything in my name; I was the owner of everything that we had. After that I began to rule over him still more, and when he saw that he could do nothing with me he stopped speaking to me. I have tried everything to dirty his name. Oh, now my conscience troubles me when I see three live orphans wandering about. Would it not be better if the community had forbidden me to marry in order to avoid such a family-tragedy. I am a snake by nature and this is not my fault; that’s how I am. My friends meet him and they tell me that he does not say a word about our tragedy. He says: “I am doing the best that I can and when I am able to give a home to my children, then I will worry about them.” And I am afraid that some day he will take away the children from me and then I shall be left alone like a stone.[36] The priests in Poland say that if all the influences of the community are active—the family, the priest, the friends, and neighbors—there are few necessarily bad men. They say also that communities tend to be all good or all bad, and that this is determined largely by majorities. If a community is good the priest thunders from the chancel against any symptom of badness; if it is already bad he praises and encourages any little manifestation of goodness. In examining the letters between immigrants in America and their home communities I have noticed that the great solicitude of the family and community is that the absent member shall not change. Absence and the resulting outside influence are dreaded as affecting the solidarity of the group. And the typical immigrant letter is an assurance and reminder that the writer, though absent, is still a member of the community. I found the following letter in the home of a peasant family in Poland. It was written from Chicago on “Palmer House” stationery. The writer was a chambermaid in that hotel. She was little instructed, could barely read and write. The letter contained no capitals and no punctuation and was addressed to a girl who could not write at all. This letter was read by all the neighbors. No one would understand keeping a letter private. The introduction, “Praised be Jesus Christ”, to which the reader or hearer is expected to reply, “For centuries of centuries, Amen”, is a traditional form expressing common membership in a religious- social community. The greetings at the end should be complete enough to recognize every family which ought to be noticed. The sending of money is a practical sign of community membership. The poetry and æsthetic writing is the absent girl’s way of participating in the social gatherings of the community, of doing her turn in the
- 76. festivities where poems are composed and recited. She writes as prettily as she can in order to provoke recognition. For the convenience of Polish immigrants business enterprise even provides printed letters containing appropriate greetings and assurances, leaving blank space for names and informational matter. 34. I am beginning this letter with the words: “Praised be Jesus Christus”, and I hope that you will answer: “For centuries of centuries, Amen.” Dearest Olejniczka: I greet you from my heart, and wish you health and happiness. God grant that this little letter reaches you well, and as happy as the birdies in May. This I wish you from my heart, dear Olejniczka. The rain is falling; it falls beneath my slipping feet. I do not mind; the post office is near. When I write my little letter I will flit with it there, And then, dearest Olejniczka My heart will be light, from giving you a pleasure. In no grove do the birds sing so sweetly As my heart, dearest Olejniczka, for you. Go, little letter, across the broad sea, for I cannot come to you. When I arose in the morning, I looked up to the heavens and thought to myself that to you, dearest Olejniczka, a little letter I must send. Dearest Olejniczka, I left papa, I left sister and brother and you to start out in the wide world, and to-day I am yearning and fading away like the world without the sun. If I shall ever see you again, then like a little child, of great joy I shall cry. To your feet I shall bow low, and your hands I shall kiss. Then you shall know how I love you, dearest Olejniczka. I went up on a high hill and looked in that far direction, but I see you not, and I hear you not. Dear Olejniczka, only a few words will I write. As many sand-grains as there are in the field, as many drops of water in the sea, so many sweet years of life I, Walercia, wish you for the Easter holidays. I wish you all good, a hundred years of life, health and happiness. And loveliness I wish you. I greet you through the white lilies, I think of you every night, dearest Olejniczka. Are you not in Bielice any more, or what? Answer, as I sent you a letter and there is no answer. Is there no one to write for you? And now I write you how I am getting along. I am getting on well, very well. I have worked in a factory and I am now working in a hotel. I receive 18 (in our money 36) dollars a month, and that is very good. If you would like it we could bring Wladzio over some day. We eat here every day what we get only for Easter in our country. We are bringing over Helena and
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