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EQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
James S. Coleman
Published online: 09 Jul 2006.
To cite this article: James S. Coleman (1968) EQUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY, Equity & Excellence in Education,
6:5, 19-28, DOI: 10.1080/0020486680060504
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of Poverty or Inheritance of Race?"
Manuscript prepared for a symposium
of the Poyerty Seminar sponsored by
the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, November 1967.
5 Paul M. Siegel, "On the Cost of
Being a Negro," Sociological Inquiry,
35, 1, Winter 1965. p. 53.
0 National Urban League, Education
and Race, op. cit, p. 17.
7 Otis Dudley Duncan, "Discrimina-
tion Against Negroes," The Annals,
Vol. 371, May 1967, p. 102
8 S. M. Miller, "Breaking the Cre-
dentials Barrier," Ford Foundation,
1968.
9 Patricia Cayo Sexton, op. cit., p. 1.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1968
EQUALITY OF
EDUCATIONAL
OPPORTUNITY
James S. Coleman
The writer is Professor, Department
of Social Relations, The Johns-Hop-
kins University, and was co-director
of the U. S. Office of Education
Equal Educational Opportunity Study
of 1966. His article is based on an
address to an in-service training pro-
gram attended by teachers in School
District 65, Evanston, Illinois, July 8,
1968.
Evanston is one of the few cities
to attain an objective important
to attain throughout the United
States—consciously integrated schools.
When Mexican-American children
are taught about the Alamo in
their classrooms, it should be stan-
dard procedure to mention that the
Alamo was followed by over 100
years of rigid segregation and se-
vere exploitation of Chicanos [i.e.,
Mexican-Americans] in Texas. In
absolutely no sense of the word,
therefore, does the word "Alamo"
symbolize freedom for Mexican-
Americans.
—Octavio I. Roman-V,
El Grito, Spring, 1968
One of the problems that arises in
such a step is the ability of a school
to cope with a much wider range of
family background than it does in
homogeneous areas. As a conse-
quence, I would like to examine the
importance of children's background
for activities in school through dis-
cussing some of the results of the
survey, Equality of Educational Op-
portunity, that I directed for the
Office of Education.
19
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/ believe in the brotherhood of
all men, but I don't believe in
wasting brotherhood on anyone
who doesn't want to practice it
with me.
—Malcolm X, December 16, 1964
It was designed to assess the amount
and. sources of inequality of educa-
tional opportunity by race in the
schools of America. Thus, it was not
concerned with the effect of a child's
background upon his performance in
school, upon his chances in school
and life. Yet, as it turned out, in or-
der to successfully answer the pri-
mary question about differential op-
portunity in schools, it became neces-
sary to investigate in some detail
the question of the effect of the
child's home.
The first way in which the home in-
truded itself into the examination of
schools came in our search for those
aspects of schools which made the
most difference in a child's achieve-
ment. As we examined the perform-
ance of children in different kinds of
schools, we found a fact which oc-
cas'oned some surprise on our part
and some reassessment. The varia-
tion in performance in different chil-
dren within the same school is far
larger than, in fact several times as
qreat as, the variation in perform-
20
ance between schools. This held true
in the North, in the South, in rural
and urban settings and for each of
the six racial groups examined in
the survey. (This means, along with
Negroes and whites, four other
groups, Mexican Americans, Oriental
Americans, American Indians, and
Puerto Ricans. For each of the groups
separately, the school factors having
most influence on achievement, that
is, achievement on standardized tests,
were examined, as a preliminary
step to examining how these factors
which affected achievement were
distributed differently among the
different groups.) The importance of
the result, the much greater varia-
tion in performance within schools
than between, lies in what it begins
to tell about the relative influence
of the school and home on achieve-
ment. It shows that children subject
to the same school influences but
convng from different homes are
more different in achievement than
the average child in d'fferent schools.
Thus, the effect of different schools
could not be as powerful as we had
tf I were white, I would consider
it absurd that anyone could tell
me that my color disaualifies me
from asserting and working' for
justice and human dignity.
—Kenneth B. Clark,
December 4, 1967
anticipated in the survey, when most
of the difference in achievement lay
within the very school itself.
INTERACTION IN SCHOOL
I should point out, however, what
every good teacher knows, that the
variation in achievement of differ-
ent children within a school is not
a result wholly of what the children
bring to the school. There is often
a subtle interaction, and sometimes
not so subtle, between the child's
characteristics and the opportunities
he finds in school. If he is eager
but well-disciplined, neither too pas-
sive nor too unruly, the teacher often
establishes a different kind of inter-
action with the child, stimulating,
building him up, often unconsciously
using such a child as a model for
the other children in the class. But
"uite apart from this the first result
of the study of inequality of educa-
tional opportunity among schools was
that the effective opportunity pro-
vided by different schools was far
overshadowed by other sources of
variation in opportunity, which had
nothing to do with the school. These
are not achievement differences be-
tween Negroes and whites in the
same school, but between different
Neqroes in schools attendedby Ne-
qroes and between different whites
in schools attended by whites.
In a situation like that which has
INTEGRATED EDUCATION
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which a school attempts to impart,
and it provides another evidence of
the challenge to the schools, the
challenge to have some effect in re-
versing the inequality with which
children begin school. It is not, I
suggest, that schools cannot have
a powerful effect in reducing in-
equality. It is rather that they have
not yet learned how to do so. Schools
are still learning how to teach chil-
dren who traditionally, fifty years
ago, left school at an early age,
children for whom the school must
be both preparatory and motivation-
al, the latter a task which the schools
have traditionally left to family.
Beyond the primary fact that the
home has an important effect on
achievement, several points stand out
in the survey. First, it was clear that
of three separate aspects of family
background, each played an impor-
tant part in the child's achievement.
These aspects were the economic
level of the home, the educational
/ get the feeling that this drive
by business [to employ hard core
unemployed ghetto residents] is
orchestrated for a symphony but
is being played on tin horns. If
the country raises a lot of false
hopes and then doesn't follow
through in a lasting fashion, the
ghetto letdown could be very
bad. .
-Richard Clark, June 29, 1968-
Why Run in Mexico and Crawl at
Home?
—Sign appealing to Negro
American athletes to boycott
the 1968 Olympic Games
in Mexico City
background and educational influ-
ence in the home (such things as
the amount of reading matter that
was there, together with educational
level of the mother and father), and
finally the interest taken by the par-
ents in the child's performance in
school and any further education. As
one might expect, these three fac-
tors, the economic background, the
educational background, and the
parents' interest, are interrelated.
Many children have very high levels
of all three and many have low lev-
els of all three. However, some chil-
dren have one, but not the others,
and it is thus possible to note the
separate importance of each. Al-
though the survey does not go into
the details of how each has its ef-
fect, I commend to your attention a
study in Britain which shows these
mechanisms by Brian Jackson and
Dennis Marsden, entitled Education
and the Working Class. In this study,
Jackson and Marsden took 88 work-
ing class children who had passed
the several hurdles infrequently
Overcome by working class children
•in Britain: first, they passed the 11-
plus examination and had gone to
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1968
ning in which the child could study,
grammar school, that is, instead of
secondary modern school, which
provides no academic credentials for
further education. Secondly, they
stayed until the sixth form of gram-
mar school, a step which is a pre-
requisite for university entrance,
which even most grammar school
students do not do; and finally, they
passed A-level examinations, that is,
entrance examinations to the Univer-
sity. Jackson and Marsden were in-
terested in just what it was about
these working class families that led
their children to take these unusually
difficult paths. They found several
things.
First of all, a large number of the
families had been in the working
class for only one generation. The
family history, tradition and interests
were toward higher education and
economic level than they currently
held The higher economic and edu-
cational background was most often
on the mother's side of the family, a
level that she had lost by the mar-
riage she made. Secondly, the study
showed the enormous efforts made
by the family In overcoming both
oconoTiic and social difficulties to
bring their child over the educa-
tional hurdles. Often the physical
arrangements of the home made
studying, difficult, and the families
already crarh'ped for space set aside
a room for several hours of the eve-
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just been created in Evanston, where
the racial and socio-economic varia-
tiins between student bodies in dif-
ferent schools have been consciously
and purposefully reduced, the
achievement differences w i t h i n
schools are even greater. In one re-
spect, the results I've just described
provide some reassurance for teach-
ers faced with a new and greater
heterogeneity in their classrooms.
Know it or not, they've already been
confronting wider ranges of per-
formance within their classroom than
exist on the average between. dif-
ferent schools. Those teachers have
learned various techniques, some
good and some bad, of dealing with
diversity in the classroom. But the
increased diversity that now exists
should lead to i some reassessment of
just what tfibse techniques are and
how they may have been reinforcinq
the initial diverstiy of skill with which
children enter the classroom.
This first result of the survey, the
diversity within the schools, pointed
directly to the relatively great im-
portance of the child's home for his
level of achievement than of the
school itself.-The result obviously pre-
sents ;a challenge to schools and it
is one which has.not gone'unrebutted
by some persons who feel, as I also
feel, that schools should play a far
•.more.'.impprtqnt- role;.iri, providing
.equality of* opportunity than- these
results suggest.
22
We firmly believe in the posi-
tive value of i/iferculfural and
interracial educational experiences
for all children. Integrated schools
expand the knowledge and un-
derstanding of the child, increase
his awareness of othcs, and pro-
vide lessons of tolerance and
fairness that are important assets
to the individual and to society.
—Republican Coordinating Com-
mittee, Urban Education: Prob-
lems and Priorities, March 18,
1968
(The Republican Coordinating Com-
mittee includes the following per-
sons, among others: Dwight D.
Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Rich-
ard M. Nixon, Thomas E. Dewey,
Alf M. London, Senators Everett
M. Dirksen, Thomas H. Kuchel,
Bourke B. Hickenlooper, Margaret
Chase Smith, George Murphy,
Milton R. Young, and Hugh Scott;
and Reps. Gerald R. Ford, Leslie
C. Arends, Melvin R. Laird, Wil-
liam C. Cramer, Robert Taft, Jr.
and Albert H. Quie.)
WHAT CAN SCHOOLS DO?
This first result then led to a modi-
fication of the initial design of the
survey, to examine in somewhat
more detail the effects of family
•bqfckground differences on achieve-
ment-levels.-For if.the major varia-
tions in educational opportunity are
due to processes lying outside the
school, then it becomes important
for the school itself to know more
about them if the schools will sig-
nificantly affect the inequalities of
opportunity they have now largely
perpetuated. In this examination the
survey found that not only did fam-
ily background differences show
large relation to achievement dif-
ferences in the same school, they
counted for a considerable part for
the differences in achievement be-
tween schools. Even the differences
between achievement levels in dif-
ferent schools which one might first
put down to the effect of the dif-
ferent schools themselves, can be
partly explained by differences in
the average family background of
students within them. And these var-
iations in achievement by different
family background were not some-
thing which showed up only in the
early years of school, to be dimin-
ished by the impact of school over
the twelve years. The survey cov-
ered five grade levels, grades 1, 3,
6, 9, and 12. And it found that the
relation between family background
and achievement both within schools
and between schools with students
with different family background was
approximately constant over the
twelve school years. Again, "this., is
true among Negroes arid it is "true
among whites. This provides still an-other indication of the "importance
that a child's family, background has
for his achievement of those skills
INTEGRATED EDUCATION
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In numerous ways, the families de-
prived themselves, often including de-
privations for the other children, to
make possible physical conditions
which would lead the child to con-
tinue. The family also exerted spe-
cial effort in another way, to pro-
tect the child from the influences of
the neighborhood, from the children
of the neighborhood, all of whose
activities led in a direction away
from those they had planned for
their child.
HARLEM AND BRITAIN
A circumstance similar to this was
described to me some years ago
when I lived on the edge of Har-
lem in New York. I had a friend
who taught the fifth grade in a
school in Harlem. She described one
set of children in her class, a mi-
nority of children, who were subject
to what appeared a peculiar and
harsh restriction. These children were
under strict rules to be in the house
15 minutes after the close of school
and were not allowed to leave the
house until school time the next
morning, except with the parent. My
friend described the parents of these
children as absolutely determined
that their child would not be pulled
down by the neighborhood, that they
be subject only to the influences of
the home and school. They were ab-
solutely determined that the child go
up and out of the neighborhood to
further education and a good job.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1968
/ had, as a child, almost no ex-
perience of segregation or color
discrimination. My schoolmates
were invariably white.
—The Autobiography of
W. E.B. DuBois(1968)
These parents were aspiring to eco-
nomic and educational levels very
different from those of the neigh-
borhood, and in order to do so had
to institute controls that many mid-
dle-class parents would regard as un-
duly restrictive. Both of these exam-
ples, one from Britain and the other
from Harlem, show one major point.
" That for families at lower economic
levels in a neighborhood where in-
fluences outside the home, pull away
from education, it requires much
more effort,, much stronger disci-
pline, much stricter constraint and a
much higher level of motivation on
the part of parents to provide the
same level of conditions for educa-
tional achievement as in a middle
class family in a middle class neigh-
borhood.
In the usual simple way we see
these things we see them separately:
the same level of interest and mo-
tivation on the part of parents, we
assume, will produce children with
equal levels of motivation and in-
terest. But they are not separate. In
the middle class family a Jower level
of motivation and effort on the part
of the parents can be compensated
by the external neighborhood in-
fluences which support educational
achievement. And there is the great-
er ease of providing appropriate
conditions for achievement in the
home itself. In effect, the rest of
the child's environment more often
reinforces educational ' goals in a
middle class setting, while in a lower
class setting parents interested in
their child's education must fight the
environment to achieve their goals.
This interaction between the family
and the other aspects of the child's
environment is important information
for the school and the teacher. It
means, if the teacher is to work
through the home in any way, she
must provide more aid to the lower
class family to have the same effect.
Thus, I did not seek white ac-
quaintances. I let them make the
advances, and they therefore
thought me arrogant. In a sense
I was, but after all I was in fact
rather desperately hanging on to
my self-respect. I was not fight-
ing to dominate others; I was
fighting against my own degrada-
tion. I wanted to meet my fellows
as ' an equal; they offered or
seemed to offer only a status of
inferiority and submission.
—The Autobiography of
' W;E. B. DuBois 0968)
23
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and the lower class family must work
harder to have the same effect. A
laissez faire orientation of parents,
which produces average achievement
for children subject to middle class
economic and social environment, will
produce disastrous results when these
other environmental influences push
in a direction away from school.
This knowledge should also lead the
teacher in the school to recognize
the more difficult task that the lower
class parent has, and to recognize
that many parents will not be up to
this task, just as many middle class
parents, facing the same difficulty,
would not be up to the task.
SCHOOL IS IMPORTANT
I turn now to another result from
the study of Equality of Educational
Opportunity, a result which may ap-
pear ' contradictory to the experi-
ence of teachers. This is that chil-
dren from poor family background
are more affected by the differential
quality of schools than are those
from family backgrounds that contain
more educational resources within
them. And children from poor fam-
ily backgrounds are more affected
by the aspirations and achievements
of the other students in their "class
than are those from famijy back-
grounds in Which they had more, ed-
ucational resources. This does not
mean that children from poor back-
grounds get more out of school. It
means instead that a gopd school or
2 4 •''•• ' .. • ' ' • •
a good teacher, and particularly the
latter, makes more difference for a
child who has few educational re-
sources in the home than for one
who has many; The child with many
educational resources in the home
gets a lot out of school, whether
or not the teacher is good, whether
or not his classmates are also achiev-
ing highly.' A child without these
resources in the home is one for
There is in America today a gen-
eration of white youth that is truly
worthy of a black man's respect,
and this is a rare event in the
foul annals of American history.
. . . The sins of the fathers are
visited upon the heads of the chil-
dren—but only if the children con-
tinue in the evil deeds of the
fathers.
—Eldridge Cleaver,
Soul on Ice (1968)
whom the extra efforts of the teach-
er and for whom the climate pro-
vided by the other students in the
classroom make most difference in
his achievement.
This result may be viewed in an-
other way. There are three major
places in which a child can find
educational resources necessary to
his achievement, the home, the en-
vironment provided* by his peers in
school and^riefghborhood, . and the
resources provided by the school it-
self. If the resources are provided
by the first, the additional impor-
tance of the second and third is
less. If the resources are provided
by the first or the second, the addi-
tional resources provided by the
third, that is the school, are less
important to his ultimate level of
achievement. Indeed, there are stud-
ies of middle class children who for
one reason or another have been
prevented from attending secondary
school, and these studies show that
they achieve about as high as their
counterparts who have attended
school.
This leads to another result of the
study, which is particularly relevant
to the policy of school integration
as implemented in Evanston. This is
the fact that children's achievement
is very much related to the social
composition of their classroom. The
survey showed that Negro students,
for example, performed at a higher
level according to standardized tests,
even though their school grades
were lower, when they were with
children who were from higher socio-
economic levels, most often white
students, than when they were in
schools with children of lower socio-
economic levels.
CLASSROOM INTEGRATION
A further examination of the data
by James McPartland showed that
this effect was principally the re-
INTEGRATED EDUCATION
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suit of integration of the classroom
rather than merely integration of
the school. He showed also that
there is a beneficial effect due to
the socio-economic level of students
in the classroom, and a beneficial
effect due to the proportion of white
students in the classroom. Both these
sources provided for children who
had few educational resources at
home, an alternative set of resources
that had an impact on achievement.
The most important way in which this
occurs is not so evident but there
are several ways in which it can
occur.
One is the interaction of the child
with other children having larger
vocabularies. An English-speaking
child, for example, will learn French
much more quickly in a classroom
of French children than from the
best French teacher. Or an adoles-
cent girl in interaction with other
adolescent girls must learn certain
things about popular culture whether
she wants to or not if she's to be
part of the crowd. She must learn
the top tunes, the latest fashions,
and so on. In much the same way,
children come to learn the things
which are necessary to get along
with their peers, and if these things
are part of school learning it re-
inforces what they learn at the
hand of the teacher. A second way
this cause and effect occurs is by
the level of teaching, the level of
demands by the teacher herself.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1968
Every teacher must adjust to the
level of teaching that she can carry
out in the particular classroom. And
in some classrooms, as graphically
portrayed by recent essays, such as
Jonathan Kozol's, the adjustment
involves very low levels of challenge
indeed. Major attention is given to
discipline rather than learning. Thus,
the effect is important because of
its effect on the teacher, and what
What the hell is a white teacher
going to do when students say:
"Tomorrow we want to start learn-
ing some black history"? He
wouldn't know what to do. He
might come in and do something
about Black Sambo or something
like that. Or, talk about Booker
T. Washington or George Wash-
ington Carver.
-Bi l l Cosby, May, 1968
the teacher does. At one extreme
is maintaining discipline, and at the
other extreme is challenging and
demanding high levels of achieve-
ment.
This is not to suggest that the in-
tegration of students with low level
past performance in the classroom
with much higher levels is not a
psychological trauma. Anyone who
has learned a foreign language by
being alone in a foreign country
has experienced that same sort of
trauma. And the eagerness with
which one, in such a situation, seeks
out English-speaking persons indi-
cates the efforts which new and dif-
ferent environments entail. But the
evidence indicates that such psycho-
logical discomforts are not lasting,
even though the child may be re-
ceiving lower grades than in a more
comfortable environment in the past.
In fact, another result from the sur-
vey indicates that Negro children
in an integrated school come to
gain a greater sense of their effi-
cacy to control their destiny. It is
very likely due to the fact they see
that they can do some things better
than whites and can perform in
school better than some whites, a
knowledge which they never had so
long as they were isolated in an
all-black school.
By the very fact of bringing the
classroom environment toward equal-
ity through racial integration, Evans-
ton has taken an important step in
the direction of equality of educa-
tional opportunity. But the chal-
lenges lie in the use of integration
to increase the educational resources
available to lower class children of
whatever race. In part, this involves
things other than direct teaching. It
implies achieving a high level of
social integration in out-of-class ac-
tivities, an achievement which is
greatly affected by collective proi-
ects, extra-curricular activities, and
other things which make for high
morale in the school and bring the
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' It appears thai no matter what
the child hears at home, if he
gets into an integrated school
soon enough, he may still be able
to develop relatively free of
prejudice.
—Professor Louis Diamant,
University of North Carolina,
May 31, 1968
student body closer together. In part/
it implies modifying classroom activi-
ties to create more interaction among
students and less reliance upon di-
rect communication from teacher to
student. One way this can be
achieved is academic games, a mode
of teaching that I and others at
Johns Hopkins have been working
on for several years. But most of all
it is recognizing that social integra-
tion creates an opportunity to use
special and conscious means to bring
about equality of opportunity.
STRATEGY OF EQUALITY
Having examined some of the di-
rect and indirect ways a child's
family background and the back-
grounds of other children in his class
affects his achievement, I turn to
the question of which strategy teach-
ers in schools might use to bring
about equality of educational op-
portunity in view of these effects.
Two opposite strategies naturally oc-
cur. First, to modify the home en-
26
vironment, bring the parent in as
an aid and resource toward learn-
ing. Second is its opposite, attempt-
I ing to wean the child as much as
possible away from harmful family
and . neighborhood influence. The
extreme of the first strategy is to
incorporate community into the
school, modifying the community in
those ways that make its effect edu-
cationally beneficial. The extreme of
the second would be integrated pub-
lic boarding schools in which the
total environment of the child is
shaped by the school. Both strate-
gies are based on the recognition
that the school at preesnt modifies
only a small portion of the child's
environment and that strong educa-
tional impact can only occur when
a much larger portion of his social
environment than is now provided
by the school points in the direction
of learning. But these two strategies
differ greatly. Neither extreme, of
course, is available to the classroom
teacher. Nevertheless, the alterna-
tive strategies in a less extreme form
do confront the teacher; to work
through gaining the help of the
parent, or to provide the support
that insulates the child from nega-
tive influences of home and back-
ground.
No simple answer can be given to
the question of which strategy is
most effective. If the support of the
home can be obtained, it will be a
powerful support, as evidenced by
the general importance of the home
for learning as shown by numerous
studies such as I have described
above. But the research has shown
also that it takes a remarkable
amount of determination, a remark-
able amount of strength for a
mother in a lower class environment
to provide those educational re-
sources to support the school. And
the consequence, the effort a teach-
er or school expends in this direc-
tion, that is working with the par-
ent, may be far greater than the
benefit gained, except with a few
parents. For the greatest number of
children, the opposite strategy may
prove more valuable.
In the very process of education,
the fact that achieving in school
means gaining a better occupation
has always to some degree alienat-
The principal beneficiaries of
Black Power have been the black
middle-class. Jobs have opened
up to professional blacks.... Those
who have benefited least from
Black Power . . . are those whose
needs are the most acute — the
black poor. They have gained
pride and self respect, but unlike
the black intelligentsia, there has
been no opportunity for them to
parlay this new pride and self-
respect into something more con-
crete.
—Julius Lester, May 25, 1968
INTEGRATED EDUCATION
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ed lower class children from their
parents. This has been shown in the
.'British study I mentioned, andin
Various studies 'of immigrant, groups-;
in America.; Such, an alienation oc-,
curs through education, as every,
parent knows who has seen his chil-.
dren come to move in; different cir-
cles and enjoy ; different; activities;
from,-,his own. No attempt to bring
the ;parent into.the school can ,ever,
fully avoid it, nor does the aspiring
parent, even wish that.; What, the
school', can., do.-.is-provide a more in - .
tense social environment for the-child
that ' leads him, to : invest a larger
portion of himself in the school and
in .school activities. Most important,
I .think, as part of the strategy in
substituting ;for : the home is,,to make
the child aware that: he; himself is
in the .end responsible - for his .own
. . . The white middle class has
"turned" the public colleges into;
bastions of racial' reaction. 'Blacks
and Puerto Ricans must realize this
and push for a lowering of the
artificial standards which deny
them entrance to these schools.
Public colleges must go back to
being truly public and musi go
back to serving those that cannot
afford a private education.
—Fred Beauford, Black Allied
Student Association at New
York University,
May 24, 1968
development. For the child to become
consciously aware.; that he has op-
tions in shaping his activities, and
.that it is : his.^choice among options
that, largely.jdetermine ,his future, is
•an important;step in his education.-
U S E O F > G A M E S ^ • i . ' V . X - ' . r ^ . / ' . '••'• I
It is in developing such awareness
.that I suggest the, use of academic
games . that I mentioned before. In
general, the use of such games
opens and. stimulates .discussion;
around areas that are of great im-
portance to children, but areas that
we seldom discuss seriously and non-
'threateningly iii .school. For example,
in" a , life-career game that has been
developed for high school, students/
a player takes" the profile of a child
aged 14"o r ,15 , in a given family
' background and . a given level in
'school. \ri a" sequence' of ' steps he
plan's the hypothetical" person's life,-
first making decisions about courses
to .1 take next year in school, then
how long to continue in education/
"perhaps "in™ the "face~of "poor'"grades,'
and how much time to devote to it,
together with various decisions along
the way about the use of one's free
time, what kind of an education to
pursue, and choices that may range
all the way from leaving high school
for a trade school to continuing high
school and then a four-year college.
The details of this game situation
are not important. What is impor-
tant is the fact that it confronts the
It was almost impossible up until
very recently to get research sup-
port for ; work, on any aspect of
racial integration. With the pas-
sage of' the , Civil Rights Act of
1964, federal agencies suddenly
awoke Jo 'responsibilities' < which
they did mot feel previously. • '•-:•
; —Peter H. Rossi, June 2, 1967
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1968
child, sometimes for the first time,
with the,,fact that the decisions, he
makes today -affect the possibilities
open to, him'•; tomorrow. He learns
that he does••; have a choice, that
these are decisions whether he re-
alizes, he makes them: consciously or
merely accepts the: obvious and
easiest activities. ,!.'., . ,i • .-....
In another game, a parent-child
game, the children in a higher ele-
mentary-grade, gain a recognition
that; the /child in choosing the action
that affects him operates within the
context of his interaction with par-
ents. In i using/this;!game "with chil-
dren "of poorer background,?:-we
found Ja remarkable product in the
form of. free, open discussions and
the Analysis of the; relations betweeri
parents and children, rincluding the
various:• strategies their parents use
to; cope with them and. their strate-
gies for coping with their parents.
The value of: the game appears to
lie i as much in .freeing children to
discuss openly the; relationships be-
27
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tween parents and children as in
any other effect.
More generally, 1 suggest that one
valuable strategy in coping with di-
verse family background with which
children come to school is to bring
it into the open—not through direct
and threatening discussion of the
child's own family, but through other
means such as games, discussions of
stories involving children from di-
verse backgrounds, and other de-
vices that a teacher can evolve.
Once in the open, the relation of
home environmnet to the various ac-
tivities of the child becomes some-
thing he can begin to cope with,
something that he himself can rec-
ognize some responsibility for and
and above all, something over
which he himself can exercise some
control.
These, then, are the matters to
which I direct your attention. First,
the fact that a child's home environ-
ment, as well as the environment of
other children in which he finds
himself, is a very crucial influence
on his performance in school. Sec-
ondly, the kind of influence the
family has and the ways in which
it has such influence have been de-
scribed. Finally, I have made some
suggestions about possible strategies
for teachers and for schools to bring
about equality of educational op-
portunity for children of whatever
family background.
28
James Skelly Wright, Washington, D. C.
A federal judge in the Nation's capital has struck a judicial blow against
school segregation with a decision that orders sweeping reforms in the
District of Columbia Public School System. If it is upheld by the Supreme
Court, the decision could be as imporfant in the North as the 1954 deseg-
regation opinion was in the South. In his opinion, U. S. Circuit Court of
Appeals Judge James Skelly Wright, sitting, as a District Court judge, set
major precedents in the heretofore gray area of de facto segregation —
segregation reflecting housing patterns rather than that established by
law. His opinion found: "racially and socially homogeneous schools damage
the minds and spirit of all children who attend them — the Negro, the
white, the poor, and the affluent — and block the attainment of the
broader goals of democratic education whether the segregation occurs by
law or by fact. . . ." The decision tells school officials, in effect, that ihey
cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for overcoming segregated
schooling simply because it reflects discriminatory housing patterns. Judge
Wright therefore ordered Washington to integrate all its faculties, pointing
out that the racial composition of school staffs there has generally tended
to coincide with the racial composition of the schools. His decree orders
the school system to bus Negro pupils from overcrowded slum schools to
undercapacity white schools in affluent sections of the city. Judge Skelly
' b h was born and educated in New Orleans.
—Editors, Who's Who in America, 1968 edition, text of award for field
of Law, Citation for Significant Contribution to Society
INTEGRATED EDUCATION
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