Societal values and the RAYMOND MURPHY /University ofOttawa

reaction of teachers to students’ backgrounds*

On a rassemble une serie d’hypothbes inspirees des resultats de l’enquite de Becker qui a trouve que les enseignants etaient insatisfaits de leurs Ctudiants de classe sociale inferieure a cause des problemes d’enseignement et de discipline, ce qui produisait le phenomene de la mobilite horizontale des enseignants d’une ecole a une autre. Les resultats d’une analyse des donnkes provenant d’une enquete nationale faite au Canada vont a l’encontre de ces hypotheses. Ceci, aussi bien que des conclusions differentes de I’etude Breton au Canada et de l’etude Coleman aux Etats-Unis, devien- nent comprehensibles une fois que I’on tient compte des differences de valeurs entre ces deux societes. Nos resultats laissent croire que la definition de I’egalite des chances aux Etats-Unis aurait pu creer, paradoxalement, une dimension supplementaire d’inegalite.

Hypotheses were assembled based on Becker’s findings that teachers are dissatisfied with lower- class students because of instruction and discipline problems and this results in their horizontal mobility. Data from a national Canadian study did not support these hypotheses. This, along with differences in the Breton Canadian and Coleman American national studies, become explicable once theories of societal value differences are considered. Our findings suggest that the way equality of opportunity has been defined in the United States may have paradoxically introduced an added ingredient of inequality.

There is often a tendency to assume that theories and findings generated in one industrial society can be borrowed and applied to other industrial societies. Thus there is the assump- tion that these theories and findings are general and hold for all such societies. As a result, the influence of the different histories and cultures of these societies is neglected and thought to be merely an irrelevant vestige in their evolution- ary convergence rather than a continuing and important force to be examined. This is particu- larly true of societies as ‘obviously’ similar as Canada and the United States.

In this study a theory based on American literature and confirmed by American data was applied to a Canadian institution and found to be in disagreement with the Canadian results.

An existing theory based on societal differences was capable of explaining not only these diver- gent findings, but also logically related differ- ences between the two societies found in other studies but never juxtaposed.

The purpose of the investigation is to examine the effect of the background, ability, and behaviour of secondary school students on their teachers.

Becker (1970: 139-41) presents the following model to understand the reaction of teachers to their students. A basic problem in any occupa- tion is that of performing one’s given task suc- cessfully. Where this involves working with human beings their qualities are a major vari- able affecting the ease with which the work can be done. The teacher considers that he has done

* 1 should like to thank Raymond Breton, Jos Lennards, Oswald Hall, Norbert Hartmann, and the assessors of the ~ ~ 5 4 for their valuable comments; and also the Canadian Department of Manpower and Immigration and the pioviricial Departments of Education for the initial study.

R e \ . canad. Soc. &Anth./Canad. Rev. Soc. &Anth. 14(1)1977

Societal values and the reaction of teachers to students’ backgrounds 49

his job adequately when he has brought about an observable change in the students’ skills and knowledge which he can attribute to his own efforts. Thus he feels that he has a better chance of success when his pupils are interested in attending and working hard in school, and are trained at home in such a way that they are bright and quick at school work. He evaluates students with reference to an image he has of the ‘ideal client.’ His techniques are tailored to the perfect student and are inadequate for those groups not meeting the above criteria. With them he is left with a feeling of having failed in performing his basic task.

Thus hypothesis I is postulated: the greater the students’ readiness to learn, the more satisjied the teacher will be with his profes- sional status.

Becker them empirically examined this hypothesis along the dimension of the SES background of the pupils. He found that teachers characterize children of the lowest status group as the most difficult to teach suc- cessfully - lacking interest in school, learning ability, and outside training. The middle group arouses ambivalent feelings; they are motivated to work hard, are not hard to handle, but are not bright. The teacher feels most sense of ac- complishment and success at his job with the upper status group. With the other two, in greater or lesser measure, he feels that he has failed. He expects that the amount of work and effort required of him will vary inversely with the social status of his pupils.

Becker also claims that the problem becomes more aggravated in each grade, as the gap be- tween what the pupils should know and what they actually do know becomes wider.

Thus hypothesis 2 follows: the higher the socioeconomic status background of the pupils in a school, the greater their readiness to learn.

Compliance of lower participants is always problematic in organizations, but more so in institutions such as secondary schools, where the lower participants (pupils) are not affiliated on a voluntary basis. Their mode of affiliation falls into Etzioni’s (1961:5) category of coer- cion; that is, the application or threat of applica- tion of physical sanctions, including restriction of movement, etc. It is in this sense that teachers have a great deal in common with jail- ers. Thus Waller (1gjz:197) spoke of the ‘conflict of desires’ between teacher and pupil and Becker (1970:142) sees conflict as ever- present in the teacher-pupil relationship, with the teacher attempting to maintain his control

against the pupils’ efforts to break it. Hence hypothesis 3 is proposed: the greuter

the ease of establishing compliance, !he greater the satisfaction of teachers with their profes- sional status.

What conditions make for ease of establish- ing compliance? Becker (1970: 142-6) found the SES background of the pupils to be one impor- tant condition. Teachers considered children in slum schools the most difficult to control. Their disciplinary powers were limited by fear of re- taliation by the students. The emphasis on dis- cipline detracted from the school’s primary function of teaching.

Children of the middle group were thought of as docile, and with them the teacher had the least difficulties with discipline.

Children of the upper group do not play the role of the child in the submissive manner teachers consider appropriate. They are thought to be hard to handle in some respects and are often termed spoiled. But their mis- behaviour does not represent a conscious threat to the teacher’s authority. Many teachers disre- gard it by interpreting it as a concomitant cf brightness. However, the teacher’s power in upper-class schools is further limited because the children can mobilize their influential pa- rents to exert a certain degree of control over the actions of school personnel.

Hence hypothesis 4 is postulated: the dq- jiculty of establishing compliance will be re- lated to the SES background of the pupils in the school in a curvilinear fashion, with the lower, upper, and middle stratum being the decreasing order of difJiculty. However, Herriott and St. John (1966:zoq) found a linear relationship: namely, according to principals and teachers, the lower the school SES, the greater the percen- tage of pupils who present discipline problems.

Becker (1970) demonstrated that instruc- tional and compliance problems due to the clientele of certain schools led to a horizontal plane of mobility in the Chicago public school system that had serious consequences for the educational opportunities of certain classes. Hypothesis 5: there is horizontal mobility re- sulting from teacher dissatisfaction. with teachers leaving schools with lower status clientele to work in schools with higher Statl4S clientele.

My study involved the secondary analysis of data from a national stratified probability sam- ple of public secondary schools in Canada col- lected in 19654. It included 360 schools (8 per cent of those in Canada) and 8006 teachers. The

50 1 RaymondMurphy

reader is referred to Breton and McDonald ( 1967) and Breton (1972) for further information on the sample and data-collecting procedures used in the survey.

T H E I N D I C A T O R S

Teachers’ professional status satisfaction: Weighted standardized scale constructed from the factor analytic dimension that included the following items: ( I ) ‘Are you satisfied that YOU

have been given enough authority to do yourjob well?’ (2) ‘Are you satisfied that the people of your community give proper recognition to your work?’ (3) ‘Are you satisfied that the school authorities give proper recognition to your work?’ (4) ‘Are you satisfied that the pa- rents of your students give proper recognition to your work?’ ( 5 ) ‘How satisfied are you with the amount of time which you have to spend on teaching, counselling and other school work?’ The categories for each item were ‘very well satisfied,’ ‘fairly well satisfied,’ ‘fairly dis- satisfied,’ and ‘very dissatisfied.’ Since author- ity and recognition are central attributes of pro- fessionalism, the dimension that includes both was interpreted as satisfaction with profes- sional status. Other items that were entered in the factor analysis referred to the teachers’ satisfaction with the subjects they teach, school facilities, and support from other positions in the school. Note that professional status dis- satisfaction as measured by this scale was re- lated both to teachers’ desire to leave the field of education and to their desire to leave secondary school teaching even though remaining in edu- cation (Murphy, 1973). What we have called professional status satisfaction should be a use- ful indicator of the teacher’s reaction when re- lated to students’ background.

Students’ readiness to learn I / Percentage of students in school with low mental ability: Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test, Advanced Form Ac. Derived scores based on grade group. See Breton (1972:44-5, Item 30). Index = percentage of students in school in thirtieth percentile or lower of mental ability. Results similar in magnitude but oppo- site in direction were obtained when percentage of bright students was used as the index. 21 Percentage of students in school who failed a year: Using the student response to the ques- tion: ‘Did you fail any subject last year?’ the

percentage of students having failed was calcu- lated for each school. 31 Proportion of studious students: Students’ response to the questions: ‘On the average weekday, about how much time do you spend on home work or studying?’ ‘None, or almost none; less than one-half hour; about one-half hour; about an hour; about one and a half hours; about two hours; three or more hours.’ And, ‘During the whole weekend, how much time do you spend on home work or studying?’ ‘None, or almost none; about one hour; about two hours; about three hours; about four to five hours; six hours or more.’ Weekday studying was multiplied by five and added to weekend studying to get weekly studying pattern. Cut- ting point used in dichotomous classification was twelve hours per week. Since 32 percent of boys and 51 per cent ofgirls in the sample study more than this amount (Breton, 1972: 153), this cutting point results in a reasonable balance between the frequencies in the two categories.

As is true with most secondary analyses, this study is handicapped by not having the data in exactly the form that one would wish. Becker’s theory essentially refers to teachers’ percep- tions of students’ readiness to learn. We must postulate, therefore, that the higher a student scores on an intelligence test and the more studying and fewer failures he reports (our indi- cators of readiness to learn), the more his teacher will perceive him to be intelligent and studious, that is, ready to learn. It is doubtful that deviations from this assumption would be strong enough to change the direction of our conclusions.

Ease of establishing compliance I / Teachers’ priority of discipline in discussions with students: Rank given to discipline in the teachers’ response to the question: ‘What sort of problems do you discuss with students when you call students in to see you or, if you do counselling, when they are referred to you by the principal or teacher? Indicate only the three most frequently discussed, in order of fre- quency: school marks or grades; job plans when student’s education is finished; attending uni- versity; attending postsecondary technical in- stitute; attending business college; planning high school programs; leaving high school be- fore finishing; discipline; some other topic; I do not call students in, nor are they referred to me.”

I I t has been argued that this indicator may be biased towards showing higher priority of discipline in lower grades because the answer alternatives are of lower salience in those grades. However, many of the alternatives

Societal values and the reaction of teachers to students’ backgrounds / 51

TABLE I

CORRELATIONS OF TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL STATUS SATISFACTION AND

STUDENTS’ READINESS TO LEARN OCCUPATIONAL ORIGINS OF STUDENTS IN THE SCHOOL WITH INDICATORS OF

Indicators of Teachers’ Proportion of students

to learn sat is faction white-collar families students’ readiness professional status in school from

Percentage of students in 30th percentile or lower of mental ability

Percentage who failed a year in high school

0.114*

-0.084* Percentage

studying 12 or more hours per week 0.046*

-0.571*

0.053*

0.194*

* Correlation significant at 0.001 level.

21 Frequency of problems in school: school score is the number of problems identified by the principal in his response to the question: ‘In each school there are certain problems which will vary according to the area in which the school is located. Indicate the extent to which each of the following constitutes a problem for your school to deal with: inattentiveness during class; tension between ethnic groups; truancy; fighting and violence among students; cheating; impertinence and discourtesy to teachers; vio- lation of school regulations; drinking intoxi- cants or taking narcotics; not doing assigned work; stealing; destruction of school property; other; describe.

Occupational origins of students Students’ response to the question: ‘What is your father’s occupation?’ (Indicate it as accu- rately as you can.) The responses were first coded into ninety-six categories using the Oc- cupational Classification Manual (1961) of the Canadian Dominion Bureau of Statistics and were then classified as white-collar (manage- rial, professional and technical, clerical and sales) or other. The percentage of students of white-collar origin in each school was then cal- culated.

R E S U L T S

Hypothesis I : The greater the students’ readi- ness to learn, the more satisjied the teacher will be with his professional status. The first column ofTable I shows that there is no simple relation- ship between students’ readiness to learn and the satisfaction of teachers. The latter are more satisfied when they teach in schools that have many students who score lower on intelligence tests, a result opposite to that predicted from hypothesis I . * Teachers are less satisfied in schools with high failure rates and more satisfied in schools with studious students; however, these relationships are quite weak. If these results apply on an individual basis, then teachers apparently are as satisfied when a slow student learns a little as when a bright one learns a great deal, probably because they can not attribute the latter to their own efforts. Thus hypothesis I is not supported because the rela- tionships are either very weak or in a direction opposite to that predicted by the hypothesis.

Hypothesis 2 : The higher the socioeconomic status background of the pupils in a school, the greater their readiness t o Ieurn. The second column of Table I shows that the occupational origins of students in the school is related to the

are applicable in lowergrades and, more importantly, the unit ofanalysis is not the student but the teacher, who usually teaches different grades, hence any bias due to grade level not being controlled will likely be neutralized. 2 What concerns us here is that the direction of effect predicted by the hypothesis is not borne out by the data. An explanation of the observed direction of effect, which is an interesting question in itself, would require a rather lengthy discussion that is tangential to the theme in this paper. I t can be found in Murphy (1973).

52 / RaymondMurphy

TABLE I1

TEACHERS’ PRIORITY GIVEN TO DISCIPLINE AND NUMBER OF PROBLEMS IN SCHOOL BY OCCUPATIONAL ORIGINS OF STUDENTS

Percentage of students in school from white-collar origins

~~ ~

Oto l . 6 t o 22.4to Missing doto 1.6* 22.4 31.2 37.2 + (in percentages)

Teachers’ priority of

Mean number of problems discipline score 0.829 1.185 1.395 1.396 33 .O

faced by school 5.613 6.509 6.086 6.040 5 . 3

* The two middle categories represent a standard deviation on either side of the mean; the two outer categories represent cases that deviate further than this from the mean.

students’ performance on mental ability tests and to the proportion who study hard. Thus, support has been found for hypothesis 2 .

Hypothesis 3 : The greater the ease of estab- lishing compliance, the greater the satisfaction of teachers with their professional status. Teachers’ professional status satisfaction cor- related -.& and -.084 with the priority they gave to discipline and the number of problems faced by the school respectively, both sig- nificant at the .OOI level. Thus, hypothesis 3 is supported by the data but not strongly.

Hypothesis 4 : The difJiculty of establishing compliance will be related t o the SES background of the pupils in a curvilinear fash- ion, with the lower, upper, and middle stratum being the decreasing order of d$$culty. The first row of Table I I shows that the higher the status of the school clientele, the greater the priority the teacher attaches to discipline. The second row of Table I I shows a curvilinear rela- tionship, with the fewest problems occurring in schools with pupils of the lowest origins and the most occurring in middle class schools. Thus, hypothesis 4 is contradicted by our evidence.

Hypothesis 5 : There is horizontal mobility resulting from teacher dissatisfaction, with teachers leaving schools with lower status clientele to work in schools with higher status clientele. The correlation between teacher satisfaction and percentage of students from white-collar families (-. 121, 4.7 per cent mis- sing data) is opposite to the predicted direction. There are only low correlations of the holding power (.097) and attractive power (.008) of schools with the occupational origins of their students, where holding power was measured by the number of years of experience teachers

had in that school and attractive power by the number of years of experience teachers had in other schools before coming to that school. Hence there is little evidence to support hypothesis 5 .

S U M M A R Y

An important theory of the effect of students on teachers is that of Becker, who found that teachers are more dissatisfied when they must teach students who they perceive are less ready to learn, who present more discipline problems, and therefore who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Hence he found horizontal mobility among teachers away from lower class schools.

We found that ‘readiness to learn’ of the school clientele was related to their occupa- tional origins, as did Becker. Otherwise our findings, listed below, are in striking contrast to his. ( I ) Students’ readiness to learn did not lead to greater satisfaction with professional status among teachers. ( 2 ) Ease of establishing com- pliance was only weakly related to such satis- faction. (3) Establishing compliance was somewhat more easily attained by teachers in schools with lower proportions of students of white-collar origins. (4) Schools with a clientele of lower occupational origins were found to have more satisfied teachers (opposite to Beck- er’s finding). ( 5 ) There was no evidence of hori- zontal mobility among teachers due to the stu- dents’ origins. Thus the main result of the study is that Canadian teachers’ reactions to their students are not what the American theory and findings would suggest. The question now be- comes one of why the nature of the clientele of

Societal values and the reaction of teachers to students’ backgrounds 1 53

the school has a more important effect on teachers in the United States than in Canada. The following discussion suggests a theoretical explanation of these and other differences that up to now have gone unnoticed.

D I S C U S S I O N

Why are there such pronounced differences in the findings of Becker’s study and this one?One reason has to do with the sample. Becker studied schools in a metropolitan area, Chi- cago, where new teachers were assigned to inner-city schools. Ours is a national sample dealing with both urban and rural schools. However Coleman et al. (1966b:352), Herriott and St John (1966), and Anderson (1968) also found support for Becker’s theory in the United States, the first based on a national sample. Hence it is doubtful that sampling differences are primarily reponsible for the divergent re- sults.

Other possible reasons refer to the different demographic, particularly racial, composition of the two societies and to the different intensity of instructional and discipline problems in slum areas in the two countries.

The most interesting explanation involves the claimed basic value differences among in- dustrial societies as a result of their different histories, in particular those between the United States and England, with Canada oc- cupying a middle position (see Lipset, 1963). Lipset himself has argued that these value dif- ferences apply to the educational systems in the United States and Canada: ‘Perhaps no other value emphases are as paramount in American life as the twin values of equalitarianism and achievement. Both have been strongest in the school system where the principles of the “common school” and “equal opportunity for success” remain viable educational ideals. By contrast, in Canada education has had a more elitist and ascriptive import,’ (Lipset, 1964:175). Trow (1966:446) argues that ‘it is in the schools that the American value of equality

is most deeply rooted.’ Coleman (1966a) claims that equality in the United States has been taken to mean equal treatment of all students and ‘equal schools,’ that is, equal striving rights.

A related difference is that of mobility, with sponsored mobility being more prominent in England, contest mobility in the United States, and elements of both occurring in Canada. Turner (1966:454) explicitly contends that the English educational system emphasizes spon- sored mobility whereas that of the United States stresses contest mobility.

Examples of these differences are common in the educational systems, one being the history of formal streaming of students at early ages in England, little if any in the United States, and some in Canada. Another is the large number of optional subjects in the United States as op- posed to compulsory subjects in England and a mixture in Canada.3

Under a system of contest mobility, not only the student’s success but also the teaGher’s grat- ification is dependent on the outcome of the contest, and if school structures are made equal for all students then this outcome depends on the aptitudes and backgrounds the students bring to the school. The fewer the number of constraints placed on the student by the school, the higher the relative importance of the background he brings to the school both for his own success and for the teacher’s gratification.

Under a system of sponsored mobility, school constraints are more likely to be applied, inequalities are overtly recognized and ac- cepted, and since the end result of the teaching process is not a contest among students and hence among teachers, differences in back- ground and abilities students bring to the class are not as pertinent to the teacher’s gratifica- tion.

Thus the paradoxical situation4 may have arisen where a society with strongly egalitarian values has fostered the development of an edu- cational system which has had as an unintended consequence the importance for the gratifica- tion of teachers of the ascriptive trait of the

3 To my knowledge there has unfortunately not yet been a study using true comparative data to investigate structural differences in the educational systems of the United States and Canada as they relate to different societal values. 4 A similar paradox has been claimed in the field of social mobility. Lipset and Zetterberg (1966,566) write: ‘Motivation arising from norms pressuring for mobility might supplement the motivations to rise derived from ego-needs. It is precisely in societies where these ego-needs are weakest due to cultural themes of equality that mobility norms are most necessary. Thus, the intriguing paradox arises that the United States because of the emphasis on equality must emphasize also mobility norms in order to furnish the motivation necessary to fill higher positions.’

54 I RaymondMurphy

social background of their students which has in turn created an additional dimension of inequal- ity of opportunity in that s o ~ i e t y . ~

The added dimension of inequality has two aspects. In both societies students from higher social backgrounds tend to be taught by teachers with higher professional expectations. In the United States, teachers of lower class students are dissatisfied with their professional status because of their students’ backgrounds, which is not true in Canada. This dissatisfaction itself will likely affect the quality of teaching such students receive. In addition in the United States, these teachers ‘flee’ such students, giv- ing rise to Becker’s horizontal mobility, which renders the phenomenon of students from higher backgrounds being taught by teachers with higher professional expectations more pronounced.

Since Becker’s and my study differed in many ways, and since true comparative data were not available, the different results and the above argument to explain them, however suggestive they may be, must remain tentative.

If there are different societal values in the United States and Canada that affect the educa- tional systems, it is likely that they influence not only patterns of teacher gratification but also student achievement and aspirations .6

Thus if the American value system more strongly emphasizes achievement, contest mo- bility, and equality, and if, as Coleman (1966a) claims, equality has been taken to mean equal treatment of all students and ‘equal schools,’ then the lack of school constraints means that the schools merely transmit society’s in- equalities. The absence of school constraints is equivalent to school constraints identical with social background (the only functioning con-

straints are those of social background, for example, an unsupportive social background will be a disadvantage in the school contest) and therefore the problem of inequality will be ag- gravated as a result of the passive role of the school.

Hence we would expect that in the United States the characteristics the students bring to the school (extra-school constraints) will be more closely associated with their achievement and aspirations than will school characteristics (school constraints).

If elitist and ascriptive values and sponsored mobility patterns are more prevalent in Canada then it is likely that the school places more constraints on the students, for example, com- pulsory subjects and placing students in sepa- rate programs. As a result of the high value on ascriptive factors, these constraints are prob- ably related to the pupil’s background. How- ever they are not identical to it and the elitist values would also call for a sponsorship of stu- dents based on qualities that are not completely dependent on social background, for example, intelligence. Thus the additional inputs, the school constraints, to the extent that they are not identical with existing societal inequalities, will refract or bend the inequalities, rather than merely transmit them. Therefore we would ex- pect that in Canada school variables (since school constraints are more likely to be applied) would be more important in the students’ achievement and aspirations than in the United States and may even be more important than social background variables .’

A national study of Canadian secondary edu- cation was conducted by Breton and McDonald at about the same time as the Coleman et al. study in the United States and in many respects

5 The emphasis on equality, achievement, and contest mobility in the United States may have pushed universal education to higher levels and therefore increased equality of educational opportunity (Boudon, 1973). However these values, in particular because of the way equality has been defined, may in addition have the adverse effect outlined above. Hence we are not arguing that Europe and Canada have greater equality of educational opportunity than the United States as a net result. The purpose here has been to discuss another possible consequence of these value differences among societies that fits the available data but has gone unnoticed. 6 I t is possible, though, that these values differentially affect different aspects of the educational system. For example, values stressing elitism and ascriptive elements and patterns of sponsored mobility may mean that teachers do not expect students from different backgrounds to achieve equally and that teachers’ sense of success does not depend on the outcome of a contest. Thus although students’ achievement and aspirations may be highly dependent on their background, teachers’ gratification may not be. However it is more likely that different societal values result in differences in both teachers’ gratification and students’ aspirations and achievement, as argued in the text. 7 We repeat that certain school variables, for example students’ program of study, likely contain a component related to students’ social background and a component independent of it. It is the latter that will bend inequalities. We suggest that taken together in school variables these components may be more strongly related to students’ success than pure social background variables in Canada.

Societal values and the reaction of teachers to students’ backgrounds / 55

was similar in design. A comparison of their results justifies the above interpretation. Breton (1970) found that the program of study in the school had the strongest impact on students’ educational plans and that the rate of failure in the school was also important. The student’s program of study was found to be more strongly related to his education intentions than the position of his father in the occupational struc- ture. On the other hand Coleman (1966a) found that: ‘family background differences account for much more variation in achievement than do school differences.’*

These two authors measured the social background factors of the students and the school factors that they felt were most salient in their respective societies and came to opposite conclusions as to their relative importance. Al- though these contradictory findings remain an anomaly when seen with a sense of societal similarities, they are in line with what one would expect from the theory of societal differ- ences advanced above.

We also suggested that the absence of school constraints (American definition of equality) is equivalent to school constraints identical with social background and therefore the problem of inequality will be aggravated during the school years. Coleman (1966a, 73) writes: ‘At the end of school, the conditional probabilities of high achievement are even more conditional upon racial or ethnic background than they are at the beginning of school.’

In the United States the picture is one of poorly prepared students led to compete and to continue to compete in a contest with others who are better prepared. Their unfavourable position continues and worsens because equal- ity has been defined in a way that renders the school impotent to compensate for the fact that their extra school hours are spent in an unsup- portive milieu, for example, few study facilities, little motivation, etc. In Canada there is less of a contest and more school constraints, some of which are not identical to social background cons train ts .9

This analysis leads us to reflect on the prac- tice of equality of educational opportunity in the

two societies. Coleman (1966a, 72) advocates a new definition of such equality which ‘implies, not merely “equal” schools, but equally effec- tive schools, whose influences will ’overcome the differences in starting point of children from different social groups.’

R E F E R E N C E S

Anderson, James G. 1968 Bureaucracy in Education. Baltimore:

Becker, Howard S. 1970 Sociological Work: Method and Sub-

Boudon, Raymond 1973 L’inegalite des chances: la mobilite

The Johns Hopkins Press

stance. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton

sociale dans les societes industrielles. Paris: Armand Colin

Breton, Raymond, and John C. McDonald 1967 Career Decisions of Canadian Youth:

A Compilation of Basic Data, Volume I . Ottawa: Department of Manpower and Immigration

Breton, Raymond 1970 ‘Academic stratification in secondary

schools and the educational plans of stu- dents.’ The Canadian Review of Sociol- ogy and Anthropology 7( I ): 17-34

Breton, Raymond 1972 Social and Academic Factors in the

Career Decisions of Canadian Youth. Ottawa: Manpower and Immigration

Coleman, James S. 1966a ‘Equal Schools or Equal Students?’ The

Coleman, James S., Ernest Q . Cambell, Carol Public Interest (Summer): 70-5

J. Hobson, James McPartland,Alexander M. Mood, Frederic D. Wejnfeld, and Robert L. York.

Washington: National Center for Educa- tional Statistics

1966b Equality of Educational Opportunity.

Etzioni, Amitai 1961 A Comparative Analysis of Complex Or-

ganizations. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe

Herriott, Robert E., and Nancy Hoyt St John

8 Note that the dependent variable in these two studies is not identical. However we know of noconvincing theoretical argument nor empirical evidence why the relative importance of school and family should be opposite for aspirations than for achievement. I t is more plausible that the difference is a societal one. 9 I am trying to understand both systems and am not claiming the superiority ofone or the other. The American definition of equality of opportunity has resulted in more years of schooling given to greater numbers. The Canadian approach has promoted the maintenance of school structures which diminish the negative feedback effects of the passive role of the school as outlined above.

56 1 Raymond Murphy

1966 Social Class and the Urban School: The Impact of Pupil Background on Teachers and Principals. New York: John Wiley and Sons

Lipset, Seymour Martin 1963 The FirstNewNation.New York: Basic

Lipset, Seymour Martin I 964 'Canada and the United States: a com-

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Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Hans L. Zetter- berg

1966 'A theory of social mobility.' Pp. 561-73 in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.) Class, Status, and Power. 2nd edition. New York, The Free Press

Murphy, Raymond I 973 The lnterpenetration of Professionalism

and Bureaucracy: The Case ofsecondary School Teachers in Canada. University of Toronto. PH D thesis

Trow, Martin 1966 'The second transformation of American

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Turner, Ralph H . 1966 'Modes of social ascent through educa-

tion: sponsored and contest mobility.' Pp. 449-58 in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.) Class, Status, and Power. 2nd edition. New York: The Free Press

Waller, Willard 1932 Sociology of Teaching. New York: John

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