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SCHOOL REFORM:
CATCHING TIGERS IN RED
WEATHER
Sally Geis , Jill Hilton & William Plitt
Published online: 17 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Sally Geis , Jill Hilton & William Plitt (1976) SCHOOL
REFORM: CATCHING TIGERS IN RED WEATHER, Educational Studies: A Journal
of the American Educational Studies Association, 7:3, 244-257, DOI: 10.1207/
s15326993es0703_3

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15326993es0703_3

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 244 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES [Vol. 7

SCHOOL REFORM: CATCHING TIGERS

IN RED WEATHER

SALLYGEIS
JILLHILTON
WILLIAMPLITT
Colorado Women 's College
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The pedagogical problem is, then, posed for us with greater urgency than it was for
the men of the seventeenth century. It is no longer a matter of putting verified
ideas into-practice, but of finding ideas to guide us. How to discover them if we do
not go back to the very source of educational life, that is to say, to society? It is
society that must be examined; it is society's needs that must be known, since it is
society's needs that must be satisfied. To be content with looking inside ourselves
would be to turn our attention away from the very reality that we must attain.
Emile Durkheim
Sorbonne 1902

Reform is not possible unless one understands the nature of the

institution one seeks to reform. Our purpose is to address the issue of
school reform by suggesting that it has failed primarily because
reformers have been working with a dysfunctional model of the
school as a subsystem within our social world. Much of the
disillusionment with reform measures of the sixties comes from a
misunderstanding of the place schools have held in industrial
American society. Schools are being criticized for failing to
accomplish tasks they were never designed to accomplish. Social
Scientists must accept much of the blame since it is they who have
popularized the dysfunctional model of schools and the beliefs about
what can be accomplished, through schooling, within a social system.
Finally, we will consider an emerging model, suggested by the works
of futurists including Bell, Boulding and Shane, and how this model
can be used to create a better understanding of what school reform
can and cannot accomplish . l

Nature of criticism
Liberals and conservatives alike have decided that institutional
reform, born in the discontent of the fifties and nurtured through the
social engineering of the sixties, has failed. Now, Kennedy's Camelot
is seen as either a naive fantasy or a bad joke, depending on the
viewer's philosophical orientation. The thought that idealism and
commitment alone would make the world a better place to live has
come to be regarded as insufficient.
The atmosphere since Watergate is permeated with the feeling that
no social engineering or planning can save us. Problems seem too
 19761 SCHOOL REFORM 245
complex and too large for individuals or institutions to gain enough
control to achieve solution. Furthermore, if control were attainable,
there would still be a failure of confidence in human ability to solve
the social problems which face us today.
If the nature of the social system is changing from a limitless
growth structure to an altered industrial structure, as indicated by
Bell, Boulding and Heilbroner, there is legitimacy for criticism and
anxiety about the specific institutions, schools included, that make up
the social s t r u c t ~ r e There
.~ are two distinct types of pressure, often
similar in content but different in source, affecting the American
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public school. As the Hechingers and others have implied, these

pressures are taxing the endurance of the school as it has never been
taxed before if not to the breaking point, at least to the point of pain
and crisis for those who teach and leam within school walls.3
One source of pressure is the anxiety that grows out of the
confusion of a society in transition. As the whole system strains to
meet the demands of future shock-pollution, limited resources, the
population crisis and potential nuclear war-the inherent weaknesses
of all the institutions within society become more visible than when
the entire system is running smoothly. Schools, like families,
governments and churches, have never been utopian institutions
administered by sages and peopled by perfect human beings. But
when all the basic assumptions of a culture seem under attack, as
they do now, there is a tendency to forget that institutions are neither
perfect nor infallible. This forgetfulness promotes a tendency to
scapegoat existing institutional policy and suggests that if schools,
along with families, governments and churches, had only been doing
their jobs properly in the past, we never would have found ourselves
in the mess we have today. Furthermore, it suggests that if existing
institutions would do their traditional jobs better, or even as well as
they used to, the social system could be made to run smoothly again,
as it did in the time of our grandfathers.
This type of pressure and criticism assumes that today's world
can be viewed from the same perspective that it always was before
and the problems can be controlled by looking back into past
experiences for understanding and direction. This is a seductive
argument, for schools are readily vulnerable to such criticisms.
Examples come quickly to mind. Concerns over curricular issues are
legitimate. Community complaints that skills are poorly handled are
often justifiable. Some students do leave high school unable to read,
write or do simple arithmetic. Minority complaints that opportunity
is unequal are also sometimes justifiable. Some black and brown
students, as well as women, have been counseled to find suitable
jobs-meaning menial laboring tasks with poor pay-traditionally
assigned to persons of low ~ t a t u s .Examples
~ abound, as do the
 246 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES [Vol. 7

reform and remedial programs designed to cure such old and

recurring ills. But, like the common cold, these nagging old symptoms
seem impervious to dramatic change. This is discouraging. Criticism
seems unending and viable resolution unattainable.
The content of complaints from a second source is quite similar,
often identical, to those heretofor described. The source of these
complaints is worthy of examination, however, for within the sQurce
may lie a clue for resolution. This second source of pressure on
schools emanates directly from the functional changes within a
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transforming society and not from anxiety alone. Criticisms generated

from this source do not focus solely upon the traditional
imperfections of given school systems but rather upon the nature of
the schooling process itself. When Illich suggested the value of
deschooling society, he challenged the functionality of this basic
institution, its structure and p r o c e s ~ We
. ~ are contending that some
seemingly more pedestrian complaints emanate from this same
source. For example, some of the criticism about the school's
handling of vocational skills and preparation for work reflects a
change in the nature of the work place rather than a change in the
nature of schooling. If an altered society is characterized by a
changed nature of information, work habits and required skills, then a
school designed to prepare workers and citizens for an industrial
factory society is, by definition, inadequate to prepare the young to
enter an altered adult ~ o c i e t y In
. ~ this case, schools are judged as
failures not because they do their traditional jobs poorly but rather
because they are doing the wrong job. It does not matter very much
whether they do well or poorly, for industrial model schools will be
dysfunctional in the era of an altering and altered society.
School reform is not possible unless one understands what tasks
schools have been asked to perform in industrial society and why
schools have faltered. Have they faltered because they have failed in
performance or because an altered society is making different
demands? We believe that the problem lies more with the changed
demands of society than with the failure of schools to perform. It is at
precisely this point that social scientists have been, albiet unwittingly,
of more disservice than help to school people who turned so
trustingly to them in the decades of the 50s and 60s to seek assistance
in diagnosing the ills of school^.^

Role of the social science perspective

When lay people and educators felt the pressures hereto described
and turned like sick people to their doctor, what help did they receive
from social scientists? They found professionals, schooled in viewing
the world through a given perspective that defined reality in ways
that led to the asking of certain questions about the nature of the
 19761 SCHOOL REFORM 247
schooling process. The perspective, however, excluded by definition
certain other questions. The inadequacies of the questions that the
traditional theoretical perspectives addressed are crucial. Until those
are clear they cannot -be restated. The relationship between
industrial-growth perspective and the questions derived from it must
be understood before we can move to a new perspective and to new
questions. Until we are asking new questions, we cannot hope to
formulate new responses. To requote Durkheim: "The pedagogical
problem is, then, posed for us with greater urgency. . . It is no longer
a matter of putting verified ideas into practice, but of finding ideas to
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guide us."8
An example may be instructive. If the question before society is
now, as it was in industrial-growth society, "how can people achieve
more equally in a competitive environment," then the answer that
follows logically involves the manipulation of school environment to
give better chances to the weak and the slow while allowing those
who are ahead to wait for their fellow students to catch up. If, on the
other hand, we need to rethink the meaning of equality and
competition in a world so changed that bigger no longer means
better-a world in which more quantity does not necessarily equate
with better quality-a useful manipulation of the school environment
will need to be viewed in quite different ways. Shane's suggestion
that we start considering equity rather than equality lends itself to
such new thinking about alterations in school p r o c e ~ s . ~
What is critical to remember is that the application of any given
perspective to the external social world will beget profoundly
different logical culminations.1° The role of a given perspective and
the function of eye glasses is similar. If one happens to be near
sighted, the external world as viewed without lenses is a soft blur.
Angles are muted, lines are softened and anything in the distance is
beyond perception. Viewed through lenses ground for myopic eyes,
however, external reality becomes remarkably sharpened. Vaguely
perceived entities become acutely perceived and the world in the
distance becomes a concrete reality rather than a mass of fuzzy
shadows.
When a reformer adopts a theoretical stance implied by a given
model or paradigm, the world will be ordered in a particular way. As
with myopic eyes, social realities may be dimly perceived until seen
through the paradigm lenses. Once a world view has been adopted,
however, social phenomenon become cognitively acute and easily
patterned into logical sequences. What you "see" determines what
you do and how you do it.
What is happening in this period of societal transition is that the
traditional models used by social scientists are being questioned as
inadequate lenses through which the empirical world may be viewed.
 248 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES [Val. 7

This is the phenomenon s o well described by Kuhn in The

Structure of Scientifc revolution^.^^ Kuhn suggests that a given
model must be reflective of the boundaries of human cognition
regarding the external nature of the physical world. Before European
sailors began testing the physical nature of the earth, the earth was
perceived as being flat. Believing that the earth was flat worked well
for a time. But when ships ventured far enough to test and discover
that they did not fall off the edge, the model lost its power.
Perceptions of the earth's flatness were of little value. The discovery
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of a no-edged earth was a monumental and intellectually shattering

discovery-easily as shattering as the deduction that bacteria rather
than evil spirits caused illnesses. Quite literally these sorts of
discoveries transformed paradigms and forced humankind to adopt
new ways of looking at the world, ways which better reflected the
new boundaries of cognition regarding the nature of the physical
universe.
Mannheim suggested that human awareness concerning the nature
of the physical and social worlds is ever growing and changing.12 The
discovery of a no-edged earth was a necessary step before Einstein
could posit his theory of relativity. Similiarly, the discovery of
increasingly complex forms of social organization was necessary
before Weber could formulate his theory of bureaucratization.13 The
discovery that natural resources could be extracted, transformed and
made to do work was a necessary step before industrialization could
take place. The consequences of each of these paradigm
transformations are many. The theory of relativity opened the
proverbial door to the universe. Bureaucracy provided a model for
efficient government. Industrialization gave birth to urban growth,
job specialization and factory work orientation.14
The combination of industrialization and bureaucratization gave
rise to a schooling model which reflected some of the empirical and
philosophical characteristics peculiar to bureaucracies, industrial
states and the people who believed in them. Thomas has noted that
schools have long depended upon a factory model where success is
perceived as a by-product of the fulfillment of the achievement
ethic.15
Thus, what must be recalled is that the school in America is
reflective of an industrial milieu and that the milieu is a consequence
of the application of an industrial model. If this notion of reflectivity
is a viable one, then by delineating the functions, roles and promises
of schooling in an industrial setting, one may intuit the nature of that
setting and, as a consequence, the nature of the industrial model.16
If one thing marks our historical time, this late 70's milieu, it is
confusion. It is precisely the same kind of confusion that plagued the
intrepid European sailors when they sailed round and round instead
 19761 SCHOOL REFORM 249
of off. It is the confusion that comes when a prevailing model ceases
to describe the external reality.

The school as a reflection of the industrial model

What tasks were American public schools asked to perform in the
past hundred years? There were three that were fundamental to the
organization of industrial society as we have known it. In other
words, these were tasks that some institution would have had to
perform if industrial society were to survive and flourish. They
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became the province of the public school, but they are not
intrinsically school tasks. Prior to industrialization, they were the
province of the family and the church.'' In an altered industrial
society, they may be reshuffled and reassigned again, but that is a
later discussion.
The tasks that were crucial to the development of the American
industrial state were: (1) Teaching the values and behavior ap-
propriate to the factory mode of life, e.g., conformity to authority and
rigid time orientation. Pluralism was not an assembly line concept. In
describing the American public school, Donald Thomas says
"organized education has always been characterized as economical,
possibly even frugal, singular and didactic about its purpose of
producing one cultural ideal. . . ."Is Students are viewed as raw
material input to be transformed into useful cultural output. (2)
Monitoring the vertical mobility within the social system.19
Monitoring has two parts. First, the myth of an open social system
built on achievement and competition had to be kept alive and
credible due to some functional reality. Some persons of modest
means had to rise to high status through schooling. Second, the
system could not be flooded with more high status workers than it
could absorb. So the school also served to sort out, as Waller would
say, or cool out, as Clark would say, an appropriate number of
people into the lower ranks.20 These less successful had to be made
to feel that their failure to attain was a personal failure and not the
failure of the system.21 (3) Maintaining the continuity of the social
system by passing along ideas from the elders to be accepted by the
youth. This third task is subsidiary to the other two, but still
important. It is the most frequently cited task of schooling in
sociological literature, and it is a function that seems to falter when
society is in t r a n s i t i ~ n .Traditional
~~ institutions have difficulty
transmitting the past as a viable explanation for the future to
generations that see a new world before them.
If these were, in truth, the tasks of the American public school
during the past hundred years, the record is not as bad as it is
sometimes made out to be. Schools successfully took over skill
 250 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES [Vd. 7

training from the family, the traditional socializing institution of

pre-industrial society. The old apprenticeship model gave way to the
factory model and industrial America moved forward.23 Schools took
over monitoring mobility within the social system from church and
state.
This function is too frequently belittled. Consider the alternatives:
If one's station in life is not to be earned through achievement in
school, how else should it be earned? Should it be assigned by some
form of ascription, by birth or heritage? Should differences in status
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be denied? To us, the first seems unfair and the second-

unreal is ti^.^^ The fact that Americans complain about the inadequate
functioning of the school as an agent to facilitate upward mobility for
the poor should not be interpreted as a disbelief in the principle of
upward mobility nor even the school's ability to help individuals to
attain it. It should be regarded as .a complaint about imperfect
performance. The school remains credible to many, though we will
say more later about the significant erosion of confidence in possible
upward mobility and from whence it comes.
Finally, schools have functioned as relatively successful agents of
cultural transmission. Enough commonality of purpose, belief in our
heritage, and understanding of a national purpose prevailed to take us
through two world wars as a relatively united people. Even with
growing uncertainty since World War 11, the school has struggled
with some measure of success to maintain a level of homogeneity
sufficient to allow the culture to function as a political whole. Rioting
in the streets, yes. But civil war, no.
Hence, the school as an institution is perceived as a means to an
end, that end being the achievement of the American dream in the
land of plenty. The dream encompasses much: achievement, success
and material goods. The achievement of the dream is the achievement
of individual utopia, a state of being in which each human has
through hard work and proper schooling attained perfection. This
model of the world, and the school which functioned to give it
meaning, seemed consistent and workable in an expanding economy.
As the pie became larger and larger, each person's share could grow.

Reforms continued to reflect the industrial model

As preoccupation with the public and personal problems created
by the Second World War dissipated, the credibility of the American
dream myth began to ebb. The specific issue that interested reformers
of schools, who wanted to shore up the viability of the myth through
schooling, was the failure of all or even of many to move up the
mobility ladder. As a permanent underclass developed and a culture
of poverty was identified, the reformers of schools, still working with
the factory model, tried to revitalize schools.25 Students were still
 19761 SCHOOL REFORM 25 1
seen as raw material to be input to the system. The end product was
still the upwardly mobile adult. Factory retooling for schools seemed
possible through the spending of federal funds, the redesign of
curriculum and the reorganization of school structure.
The 1954 U. S. Supreme Court ruling that separate was not equal
is a n example of a reform that was designed to correct an abuse of
the dream. Under the ruling, hopefully all children would be on equal
footing to begin the chase for the dream's success. The children who
had been impeded by poverty or neglect could be given extra
attention and encouragement, the gaps between achievement and
success levels might be closed. In the early 60s, a variety of
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gap-closing programs were undertaken. Project Head Start, a telling

name indeed, and other Great Society programs endeavored to make
the dream come true for all Americans, not just those of fleet mind
and body and a secure socio-economic background. But these
programs did not fulfill the promise of the dream and many have been
abandoned. The 'haves' still have and the 'have nots' still have not.
Furthermore, reformers are plagued by the gnawing feeling that no
amount of money, commitment or social engineering is going to make
inequality go away.
Another problem is the confusion over the relationship of skill
training and upward mobility. Jencks has noted that the "definition of
competence varies greatly from one job to another, but it seems in
most cases to depend more on personality than on technical skills.
This makes it hard to imagine a strategy for equalizing competence. A
strategy for equalizing luck is even harder to conceive."26 Even if
one quibbles about the oversimplification in Jencks' analysis of the
relationship between schooling and status, there are many pieces of
evidence that cannot be dismissed lightly. Carnoy has pointed out
that even if people have skills they cannot find jobs that use full
potential of their education: "The number of jobs has not been
growing as rapidly as the number of schooled people, so that the
increase in the average level of schooling has not been fully utilized
by the economy."27 In a telling footnote to his work, Carnoy cites
Zymelman and Berg's work and concludes:
The relationship between formal education and productivity is not as
important as between productivity and occupational structure; that is,
an industry which has a higher percentage of skilled workers has a
higher productivity even if its workers are not as highly schooled as in
another industry. Obviously, there is a trade-off between
on-the-job-training and schooling in the formation of certain types of
skills, i.e. those that are directly applicable to production. Therefore,
on the basis of acquiring these skills alone, alternative forms of training
may be much cheaper than formal schooling.28
S o those of us involved in contemporary schools and dedicated to
the value of schooling are hard pressed to believe in reform and in
 252 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES [VOI. 7

our ability to help build a better tommorrow. There is a growing body

of literature that seeks to prove the inability of schools, perceived as
they have been perceived for the past century, to do much of
anything at all for people. Illich believes they should be done away
with, Jencks suggests that they cannot help the poor overcome
disadvantage, and as an almost final insult to reform intelligence,
James Coleman has reversed himself on busing.29

The emerging model

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All may not be as bleak as it seems. Perhaps, if we look through

different "lenses," we will see schools differently and the problems
will come into focus in ways that can be handled. It may be that the
tasks assigned to schools in industrial-growth society will have to be
transformed to meet the demands of an altered society in ways more
basic than we have heretofore perceived. The changes may need to
be more fundamental than manipulation of curriculum and timing.
Industrial society is based upon the notion that natural resources
exist in limitless quantities and that growth is good and unlimited. It
has recently been perceived that such a notion is untrue. There are
undeniable limits to the quantities of certain natural resources
available to humankind. Projections by Forrester and Meadows may
be alarmist, but they cannot be dismissed a l t ~ g e t h e rBell,
. ~ ~ in noting
the existence of some limits, has posited the notion that our altered
society must be based upon cognition of the terms 'limit' and
'limited.'31 Unbounded growth as either a physical or social
phenomenon is no longer a firm basis for designing social structure or
social values.
Schooling in an industrial setting assumes that there is always
room at the top for those who work hard and think right. Schooling in
an altered society cannot promise room at the top, even for all of
those who can be taught to work hard and think right. What does this
do to the growth model, the industrial paradigm? It renders it
powerless to explain or predict. Social scientists will do a disservice
to school reformers if they continue to suggest reforms created from
this perspective. It is as though the Head Start programs and the
Coleman Reports all viewed the earth as flat when, in fact, it was not.
This in no way implies that Head Start and busing may not be good
ways to do schooling. If Clark was right, that segregation destroys
positive self image for minority children, then busing may need to be
continued.S2 To quit experimenting with cumculum and structure
because something has happened to our understanding about growth
and mobility would be like giving up exploration in sailing ships when
one discovered the earth had no edge. Work goes on, but
expectations about outcomes change.
As the alteration of society continues, we must do a great deal of
thinking about how the way can be made less rough and the arrival
 19761 SCHOOL REFORM 253
less brutal. A transformed society with a permanent underclass of
poor and unskilled raises a terrifying specter. The violence predicted
by Heilbroner and others in a world of limited resources must be
taken seriously by educators who are still involved in the
socialization of the young and the transmission of societal values.33
These are tough problems to address quickly and imaginatively.

Schooling within the emerging model

Fresh approaches are being suggested. Harold Shane in his fine
little volume, The Educational Significance of the Future, has made a
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number of meritorious suggestions. Relating his work to our own

thinking, we advance a few predictions about the tasks previously
outlined as the tasks schools performed successfully to build an
industrial-growth society.
Schools will lose control over educational input and output. The
death of the factory model and the return to more apprenticeship
programs coupled with the more pluralistic nature of knowledge will
mean that more education will go on through media, at the
workplace, and in diverse settings for a greater variety of age groups
than ever before. Rather than this expanding the role and authority of
the public school, we prophesy that it will diminish both. Just as the
authority of the church became diluted at the time of the reformation,
so will it be with the school. Pluralistic modes of learning will
diversify the authority and control of education. We say this without
value judgment. Loss of control may be bad for professional
educators and for those with schooled credentials, like doctors and
lawyers, who have enjoyed power by virtue of their credentials.
Whether this is good or bad for society at large may well depend
upon how imaginatively schooled people meet the transition to
another kind of control over learning. Despite Illich's assumption that
a credentialess society will function, we believe that the complexity
of an altered society will require some mode of ordering training and
task performance.34
Schools have monitored vertical mobility. Our fear is that in the
short run, given the loss of control over input and output, schooled
people may push hard to keep control over the monitoring of the
stratification system. If high status jobs become more and more
difficult to get and to keep, the control of competition from entry
level prospects can be most readily implemented by holding tight to
the credential system. In the long run, however, the loss of control
over learning will bring loss of control over mobility. It may well be
that the whole concept of vertical mobility will have to be rethought
in an altered world. Shane has suggested that the promotion of a
philosophy of success as "getting ahead" of one's parents may need
to be reconsidered. An indication that this change is occurring is
 254 15DUCA TIONA L .S TUDIE.5 Vol. 7

found in a new relationship developing between education and work.

exemplified by the taxi driver with a Ph.D. Most examples of
behaviors that break the traditional vertical upward mobility pattern
are elite educational examples, but usually innovation in a system
begins on this edge. Mobility is not an issue that will be dealt with
painlessly. As poor people catch on that schools cannot provide
mobility even if they are reformed, something basic happens to the
myth of a better tomorrow and to the hope for the future.
Maintaining cultural continuity through transmission of adult
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values is a task that will have to he redefined. Our thesis throughout

this piece has been that discontinuity rather than continuity describes
our moment in history. Certain adult experience and wisdom will
need to be a part of the nurturing process as it goes on in the school
a s well as in the family. But rather than a linear transmission from the
old to the young only, there may need to be experimentation with
structure that resembles feedback loops. Young and old will have to
work together to create values, work patterns, notions of stature and
self worth that are functional within an altered society where small is
beautiful and achievement does not mean acquisition of more.
Thoughts postulated here suggest a loss of prestige and control for
schools as their tasks are demythologized. Such thoughts can be
disappointing, even frightening, to those of us who live and d o our
w o r k within school a t m o s p h e r e . W e r e m e m b e r t h a t t h e
demythologizing of the church at the end of the Middle Ages was
agonizing for the clergy. The Enlightenment, however, did not mean
the end of religion or even the church. An altered society, moving
from limitless growth and industrialism to limited growth and altered
industrialism, will not mean the end of education or even the school.
In past times of cultural discontinuity there were tales of building
an ark and selecting those concepts that should live on in a new time.
In the Dark Ages, the intellectual elite cloistered and preserved
knowledge within the walls of monastaries. Whether it is to be arks or
monastaries or another form, w e know not. This much we do know.
Though schools may lose control over a variety of social functions,
may lose in prestige and popularity, educators must continue to
function and schools are their milieu.
There is the temptation t o cease to function, to shrug one's
shoulders and wander away from the times and places which press in
upon us all. But now is not the time for shrugging shoulders or
abandoning commitment. What is needed is a great deal of
imaginative energy directed toward one fabled world, the future. As
the poet Wallace Stevens once wrote:
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles,
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
 SCHOOL REFORM

Drunk and asleep in his boots,

Catches tigers
In red weather.
Perhaps the time has come that all concerned with schooling dream of
the baboons and periwinkles of a new and altered world. For there
are tigers to be caught in red weather.
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NOTES

1. Of particular interest to our discussion of an emerging model are the following: Daniel Bell, The
Coming of Post Industriul Society (New York: Basic Books, Inc.. 1973). pp. 112-21; Kenneth E.
Boulding, "After Civilization. What'?" Bullerb~of Atomic. Scientists, 18 (October 1952): 4; Harold
Shane. The Educutional Si,qniJic.uncr of the Future (Bloomington. Indiana: Phi Delta Kappa. 1973).
pp. 1-33.
2. The literature about changes in industr~alsociety is growing so rapidly that it is difficult to select
individuals or single works that have been most significant. The authors who have influenced us
most ;ire those cited in the text. Bell has used the phrase. "post-industrial society" in many places:
"Notes on the Post-Industrial Society," The P~thlic.Interest, 1-2 (Winter. Spring 1967): and the
summer 1967 issue of Daedulus. "Toward the Year 2000," which he edited are classics. Boulding
has used the phrase "post-civilization" to describe the emerging society. His The Meaning of the
Twentieth Century: The great Transistion (New York: Harper & Row. 1964) has had as much
impact upon us a s any. Robert Heilbroner's recent works. The Dec.line of Business Civili;rrtiorr and
An Inquify into the Human Prospect (New York: Norton. 1975 & 1976). filled us with a sense of
urgency about the changes which are taking place. Jacques Ellul has described The Tec~hnologicol
Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopt, 1964): Warren G. Bennis and Phillip E. Slater have discussed
The Temporury SocYery (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). All of these works and phrases are
contributions to the same analysis. We have chosen to refer simply to the "altered society." Our
reasoning has been that to adopt the phraseology of any past analysis would commit us to some
given perspective. We would rather focus on schools and their place in altered society than bog
down in commitment to a given descriptive phrase about the nature of coming society.
3. In his recent Saturduy Review article. "Murder in Academe: The Demise of Education." 20
March 1976. Fred M. Hechinger's subheading states this position forcefully: "Attacked from the
right and the left, and abandoned by political moderates. education is in a decline that threatens the
survival of American democracy" (p. I I).
4. Charles Silberman, Crisis in the Clmsroom (New York: Random House, 1970). describes the
reasons for failure of educational reforms. Much of the failure of "new methods of organization,
new technologies. and new concepts of the role of the teacher turn out, on examination, to be more
gimmickry and packaging than substantive change" (p. 160). Silberman also asserts that reformers
have neglected to ask what we are educating for. "Our most pressing educational problem. in short.
is not how to increase the efficiency of the schools: it is how to create and maintain a humane
society. A society whose schools are inhumane is not likely to be humane itself' (p. 203).
5. Ivan Illich, Desc.hooling S o c i e t y ( N e w York: Harper & Row. 1971 ).
6. Bell. p. 421.
7. FOI-a discussion of the implications of the Coleman Report and the dependency of a society
upon expert advice, see "A Pathbreaking Report." in On Equulity of Educ.ationoi Opportunity:
Papers Deriving from the Harvurd University Fucuiry Seminur on the Coiemun Rtvport (New York:
Random House, Vintage Books. 1972). edited by Frederis Mosteller and Daniel Patrick
Monynihan), p. 32.
8. Emile Durkheim, Educurion ond Society (New York: Free Press. 19561, p. 134.
 EDUCATIONAL STUDIES

9. Shane, p. 45.
10. C. Wright Mills, The Sociolo~icull m r i ~ i n u r i o n(New York: Grove Press. Inc., 1959). p. ?I 1.
11. For a complete discussion of the implications and process of paradigm transitions and structure
see. Thomas S. Kuhn. The Strucrure oJ ScientiJic Revoliifions (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, I%2).
12. The notion o f the growth and social characteristics of knowledge are described in many places.
One o f the best descriptions is offered by Karl Mannheim in Irleolo,~?.n ~ i i lUropiri (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1936).
13. For a discussion of various socio-historical epochs and the states and types of cognition which
accompanied them, see Georges Gurvitch. The Social Frameworks oJ Kr101t~Ier1,ye(New York:
Oxford Press, 1971). For Weber's theory of bureaucratization, see Max Weber. Elonom?. iinrl
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Society (New York: Free Press, 1%8) Vol. I, pp. 223-25.

14. Lewis Mumford has described the phenomenon with greatest clarity. His The Myrh oJ the
Machine: Technics and H u m a n Development (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Inc.. 1%7),
and Technics und Civi1i:arion (New York: Harcoun, Brace and World. Inc.. 1963) are two of the
best works.
15. Donald R. Thomas, The Schools Next Time (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973), p. 93.
16. The debate about whether institutions are reflective of society or change agents withm society
is probably no more productive than is the debate about whether heredity or environment plays a
more significant part in determining individual behavior. institutions like the school are
undoubtedly both reflections of the society at large and influencers of change within society. Our
purpose is to focus on the validity of Durkheim's contention (well stated in Chap. I, "Education:
Its Nature and Its Role"). Durkheim continually reminds us that "education is a social thing: that is
to say, it puts the child in contact with a given society, and not with society in general" (p. 31). Or
again. "It is idle to think that we can rear our children as we wish. There are customs to which we
are bound to conform: if we flout them too severely, they take their vengence on our children. The
children, when they are adults, are unable to live with their peers. . . . Whether they had been
raised in accordance with ideas that were either obsolete or premature does not matter: in the one
case as in the other, they are not of their time and therefore, they are outside the conditions of
normal life" (pp. 65-66). We are emphasizing the obsolesence of current education which is leaving
young people outside the condition of normal life.
17. Raymond W. Mack, TransJormin~America: Patterns oJ Social Chunge (New York: Random
House. 1967). pp. 56-58.
18. Thomas. pp. 37-38.
19. As early as 1932, Willard Waller foresaw the theoretical implications and complications of
sorting. See Chap. 3. "The School in the Social Process: Vertical Mobility." The S o c i o l o ~ ?oJ
teach in^ (New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1967.
20. Burton R. Clark, "The 'Cooling-Out' Function in Higher Education," The Americritr Joiirrrrtl oJ
Sociology. 65 (May 1 W ) : 569-76.
21. In Educufion us Ctiltrirctl Imperialism (New York: McKay. 1974). Martin Carnoy uses this
argument to criticize schools as instruments of capitalistic society: "Merit selection shifted the
responsibility for an individual's productive capacity to the individual himself and away from the
structure and organization of the economy. If a person is convinced that he is not able to do well,
he is less likely to rise up against the social system than if the person believes that the system is
unfair and based on class" (p. 253).
22. Margaret Mead has made this point in Culfural Palferns find Techniccil Chrqqe (New York:
Mentor, 1955) as well as in Confinuiries in Culfural Evolufion (New Haven: Yale. 1964).
23. Mack, pp. 56-58.
24. Carnoy, Chap. 5. "Educational Reform and Social Control in the United States, 183G1970,"
reminds us that everyone from Adam Smith and Horace Mann to the National Education
Association's 1910 Reporr oJ the Commifree on the Place OJ lndusrries in Public Ediicufion, and
right on through the reforms of the 1970s. has focused the goals of public education on the
production of useful workers who can participate in industrial society.
25. Oscar Lewis began developing his concept of the "culture of poveny" in the 1950s. See, The
Children oJ Sanchez (New York: Random House, 1%1), and Five Fumilies (New York: Basic
Books, 1959).
 19761 SCHOOL REFORM 257
26. Christopher Jencks et 01.. Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Fornil! onrl Schooling in
America (New York: Basic Books, 1972). p. 8.
27. Carnoy. p. 7.
28. Ihid., p. 8.
29. For a discussion of James Coleman's reversal o n the issue of busing see Biloine Whiting Young
and Grace Billings Bress, "Coleman's Retreat and The Politics of Good Intentions," Phi Delta
K a p p a n . 57 (November 1975): 159.
30. Dennis Meadows et a / . , The Limits t o Growth: A Report for the Club of R o m e k Prqject o n the
Predicament of Mankind (New York: Signet, 1972).
31. Bell, p. 463.
32. James Johnson et a / . , Foundations o f American Education, Second Edition (Boston: Allyn and
Bacon, 1972). pp. 191-95.
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33. Particularly in An Inquiry into the Human Prospect. Heilbroner expresses fear about the
inevitability of rising levels of conflict with a society that will continue to have shrinking resources.
34. Here we would raise the same objections to Illich's dismissal of the need to fuse power and
legitimate authority in schwls that many critics are now raising about Illich's dismissal of the need
for credentialed health practitioners. See J. Jack Geiger's review of Medical Nemesis (New York:
Panheon Books, 1976). N e w York Times Review of Books. 2 May 1976, p. I. Here a professor of
Community Medicine concludes that Illich's suggestion that we eliminate much organized health
care and return to our own devices will result in medicine becoming "the province of small-scale
entrepreneures in an ideal free market." That kind of uncontrolled competition will not make for
more enlightened and responsible functioning in either the health care or educational realms.