Urbanization and Education in the United States Author(s): Robert J

Urbanization and Education in the United StatesAuthor(s): Robert J. HavighurstSource: International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift fürErziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education, Vol. 13, No. 4, The Effects ofUrbanization on Education / Die Auswirkungen der Verstädterung auf das Erziehungswesen /Les effets de l'urbanisation sur l'education (1967), pp. 393-409Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3442129Accessed: 25/10/2009 13:21

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URBANIZATION AND EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

by ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST, Chicago

An urbanized country is one with a relatively large urban population which is engaged in manufacturing and trade. The United States did not become urban in this sense until after the first World War. The urban population (those living in places of 2,500 population or over) constituted 15 percent of the total population in 1850, 40 percent in 1900, and 70 per cent in 1960.

The process of urbanization consisted of a growth of towns and cities with a wide variety of sizes, in contrast with some countries where the urban growth consisted mainly of the development of a few large cities, with a resultant polarization of the country between large cities and rural population. In the United States even the rural population became "urbanized" in the sense that farmers became more efficient, producing a surplus of materials for sale and buying manufactured goods and a variety of essentially urban services. The number of "subsistence farmers" decreased steadily after 1900. Such farmers try to produce the food and other material they need for a bare subsistence without selling much of their product or buying much from other parts of the economy. These "economic zeroes" in the United States have mainly given up their farms and moved into the towns and cities to work in industry since 1900.

Effects of Urbanization Upon the School System Since urbanization is a process of bringing people together in towns

and cities, this process has increased the average size of schools and decreased the number of school districts with small enrolments. These facts are shown in Table I. The one-room school attended by children from families living in the open country is disappearing. Rural schools have been consolidated into large schools, and the decline of rural population has decreased the numbers of pupils attending small consolidated schools. Table I shows that the average enrolment in a public school system rose from 202 in 1931-32 to 1,600 in 1965-66. In 1930 there were 12,007 public high schools with less than 100 pupils, and in 1960 this number had dropped to 3,177. During this same period the number of high schools with more than 1000 pupils increased from 1,095 to 3,285.

Metropolitan Development American cities have grown in two ways. Many of them have grown

in sheer physical size by annexing land around their edges. Sometimes the

ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST

TABLE I

Effects of Urbanization on Size of Schools Statistics of School Districts

No. of No. of No. of No. of Public Average Public Public Public 1-teacher School En- Enrolment School School Schools Schools rolment be- in

Dis- Sys- low College Systems tricts 1) tems 1) Level

1931-32 127,244 270,0002) 143,000 26,300,000 202 1937-38 118,892 121,000 1941-42 108,579 208,000 108,000 25,500,000 230 1949-50 83,614 86,0002) 153,000 60,000 25,111,000 292 1956-57 50,454 52,943 130,0002) 31,0002) 31,400,000 595 1961-62 35,555 37,019 107,000 13,333 38,253,000 1,030 1963-64 31,015 31,705 101,816 9,895 41,537,000 1,310 1964-65 28,814 29,500 42,784,000 1,450 1965-66 26,802 27,500 43,852,000 1,600

Sources: Biennial Surveys of Education - U.S. Office of Education. U.S. Office of Education: Digest of Educational Statistics, 1965.

1) The term "public school system" includes two types of governmental entity with responsibility for providing public schools:

(a) those which are fiscally independent of any other government unit and are listed as "school districts" in this table;

(b) those with less autonomy, which are treated in the census as a dependent agency of some other government unit. For example, the New York City school

system is one of these "dependent" systems. The number of public school districts includes a rather large number of "non-operating" districts, which are rural districts that do not operate schools but collect local taxes and pay the tuition cost of children in their districts who attend school in a neighboring district. There were 6,031 non-operating districts in 1962 and 2,421 in 1965.

2) Estimated on the basis of data from neighboring years.

land was open farmland which was laid out in city blocks with new streets and sidewalks. Other times the newly-annexed area was a town or village which had grown up separately and then was engulfed by the city as an amoeba spreads itself around a foreign object. Cities thus became larger in area as well as in population.

In another form of growth, cities extended their economic and social nets to take in people who did not live within the geographical city limits.

Many people living outside of the city bought their furniture and clothing and did their banking in the central city. People from a wide surrounding area came into the city for theater, concerts, and lectures. Thus the city

394


was the intellectual and economic capital of an area that extended out some distance from its physical boundaries.

By the middle of the current century it had become clear that a new type of community was in existence. The Bureau of the Census recognized this fact by defining a "standard metropolitan statistical area," as a city of 50,000 or more with its county and any contiguous county that is economically and socially integrated with the central county.

There were 216 metropolitan areas by 1966, with over 65 percent of the total population of the United States. The most populous SMSA (standard metropolitan statistical area) was New York, with 10,695,000 inhabitants and the smallest was Meriden, Connecticut, with 52,000. The median size was 250,000. The distribution by sizes in 1960 was:

More than 3,000,000 5 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 19 500,000 to 1,000,000 29 250,000 to 500,000 48 100,000 to 250,000 89 50,000 to 100,000 22

The term "metropolitanization" has been used to describe the urbanization process in the United States. Two-thirds of the school children and school teachers are located in metropolitan area schools.

Most of the urban population growth since 1940 has taken place in the suburbs rather than the central cities, as is shown in Table II. By 1963 the metropolitan population was evenly balanced between the central city and the surrounding area. There was actually a loss of population between 1950 and 1960 in 72 of the 225 central cities, while suburban areas gained 47 percent in population during this ten-year period.

Metropolitan development is a name for a vast redistribution of people and of jobs which has been going on during the present century and especially since 1920. From the open country and the small towns and cities people have moved toward the larger cities, where the jobs were, in a rapidly industrializing society. Then, from the cities, they streamed out into the suburbs, to live there, and often to work there in response to the decentralization of industry and business after World War II.

During the process of metropolitan growth, the central cities gained in their proportion of working-class residents and of Negroes, while the suburbs gained in their proportions of middle-class white residents. Thus the metropolitan area became stratified along economic and racial lines. The inner shells of the city are populated largely by people with low

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TABLE II

Division of Metropolitan Area Population Between Central Cities and Outside Central Cities: 900o-I960

Total SMSA Percent of SMSA Percent of SMSA

Population Population within Population outside Year (000) Central Cities Central Cities

1900 31,895 62.2 37.8 1910 42,094 64.6 35.4 1920 52,631 66.0 34.0 1930 66,915 64.6 35.4 1940 72,834 62.7 37.3 1950 89,317 58.7 41.3 1960 112,895 51.4 48.6 1963 118,761 50.0 50.0

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. U.S. Census of Population: I960. Selected Area Reports. Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Final Report (PC(3)-2D).

incomes; the outer shells of the city contain people with middle incomes; and the outer edges of the city and the suburbs have high incomes.

Since the total population of the metropolitan areas has increased, an area that had 500,000 people in 1940 might have 1,000,000 people in 1960. This means that the number of working-class people was doubled, approximately, and the number of middle-class people also doubled.

They tended to live in separate and segregated residential areas, which thus grew in size. As a result of this process, children grew up with less contact with children from other types of families than their parents had

experienced as children. In effect, schools became more homogeneous with respect to socio-

economic status. From 1920 to 1965, the segregation of children by social class (and by race in northern cities) was increasing. This means that the

percent of middle-class children attending schools in which 80 percent or more of the students are middle-class has increased since 1920; and the

percent of working-class children attending schools in which 80 percent or more of the students are working-class, has increased since 1920. In the northern cities, the percent of Negro children attending schools, in which 80 percent or more of the pupils are Negroes has also increased.

Stratification and Segregation in Metropolitan Areas

Thus metropolitan development in the United States since 1920 has

produced a socio-economic polarization between the central city and the

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TABLE III

Polarization in Metropolitan Areas Comparison of Central City and Outside Central City

on Percent of Adult Population who are at least High School Graduates

Percent at ages 25 and over who are at least high school graduates

SMSA 1960 1940

Outside Central Outside Central CC City CC City

High Cleveland 55 30 45 21 Polari- Chicago 52 35 31 25 zation New York 52 37 33 22

Washington 65 48 43 41 Philadelphia 46 31 27 19 St. Louis 41 26 23 18 Newark 50 27 33 17 Milwaukee 53 40 29 22 Buffalo 44 30 23 20

Medium Baltimore 41 28 21 19 Polari- Detroit 47 34 27 26 zation Boston 57 45 39 32

Minneapolis-St. Paul 60 47 27 34 San Francisco-Oakland 58 49 41 37 Cincinnati 41 34 21 25 Atlanta 48 41 26 31 Kansas City 52 47 27 40

Low Pittsburgh 43 35 22 24 Polari- Los Angeles 54 54 42 42 zation Houston 46 45 27 36

Seattle 56 56 31 43 Dallas 48 49 31 40 San Diego 54 55 38 41

Source: 1940 Census of Population, v.2; 1960 Census of Population, Tables 73, 74, 76 of State Reports in Series PC(1)C and PC(3)1D, Table 8.

suburban area outside the central city. This may be seen in Table III, which reports data on the percent of adults aged 25 and over who were graduates of secondary schools, comparing 1940 with 1960 and comparing the central city with the area outside the central city. This table shows that the area outside the central city gained in proportion of adults with at least a secondary school education when compared with the central city in almost every one of the 23 SMSAs represented. This table also shows that there were metropolitan areas of high polarization, such as Cleveland,

397


Chicago and New York, and others of little or no polarization, such as Los Angeles, Houston, and Seattle. The newer metropolitan areas of the West and Southwest show little or no difference between central city and suburbs, but they have a considerable amount of economic segregation within the central city and within the surburban area.

TABLE IV

Percentage of Elementary School Pupils in Non-Public Schools in SMSAs in I960

SMSA Population % of elementary (000) school pupils in

non-public schools

New York-Newark-Jersey City 14,759 27.6 Chicago-Gary 6,794 32.4 Los Angeles-Long Beach 6,093 13.2 Philadelphia 4,343 33.7 Detroit 3,762 21.1 San Francisco-Oakland 2,649 12.7 Boston 2,595 22.8 Pittsburgh 2,405 29.2 St. Louis 2,105 29.2 Cleveland 1,909 29.1

Total 47,366 25.6

Buffalo 1,307 29.9 Baltimore 1,727 20.1 New Orleans 907 32.5 Seattle 1,017 10.6 Portland 822 12.0 Houston 1,243 9.3 Minneapolis-St. Paul 1,482 27.0 Denver 929 13.4 San Diego 1,033 8.9 Washington, D.C. 2,002 18.4 Milwaukee 1,233 36.7 Kansas City 1,093 15.7 Atlanta 1,017 4.6 Columbus, Ohio 755 14.4 Miami, Fla. 935 11.2 Cincinnati 1,268 33.4 Syracuse 564 17.7 Rochester 733 32.0 Indianapolis 917 15.9 Dallas 1,083 7.4

Total 22,067 19.0 TOTAL, USA 180,000 15.0

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Attendance at Non-Public Schools

Another form of segregation in schools is produced by a variety of

non-public schools, which are operated by church authorities as a rule, though a small proportion of private schools are not affiliated with a church. Most non-public schools are maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, though a substantial number are operated by Lutheran Churches, and smaller numbers by the Dutch Reformed Church, by Jewish con-

gregations, and by certain fundamentalist Protestant denominations. There is a tendency for the larger metropolitan areas to have higher

proportions of children in non-public elementary schools, as is shown in Table IV. In 1960, when the data of Table IV were obtained, the national

percentage of elementary school children in non-public schools was 15, but the percentage was 25.6 for the ten largest metropolitan areas, which had a population of 47.4 million or 26 percent of the country's population. Table IV also shows that a group of 20 metropolitan areas next in size had about 19 percent of their elementary school children in non-public schools.

Metropolitanization and Size of School System The unit of government for public schools in the United States is the

school district, which has its own Board of Education (Board of Directors, elected by the people or appointed by the mayor of the city). Among the

TABLE V

Public School Systems Inside and Outside of SMSAs: 1961 Enrolment Size of School Systems

No. of Pupils Total No. of Number of School Systems per System Pupils in SMSAs

In SMSAs Outside of SMSAs

1200 or more 21,296,000 2,556 3,282 300-1,199 968,000 1,410 5,233 150-299 105,000 481 2,600 50-149 54,000 585 3,629 15-49 15,000 540 6,041 1-14 1,246 120 4,511 Non-operating 912 5,119

Total 22,439,246 6,604 30,415

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Governments: I962, Vol. V, Local Government in Metropolitan Areas. Tables 1, 2, pp. 22, 24.

399


29,391 public school districts that existed in 1964, 1,231 of them accounted for 22 million pupils, or 56 percent of the total number. These districts all had more than 6,000 pupils, and nearly all were in metropolitan areas. In addition, there were another four thousand smaller districts located in metropolitan areas. Table V shows how school districts are distributed according to enrolment size in metropolitan areas. In 1960, 95 percent of public school enrolment in metropolitan areas was in school systems with more than 1,200 pupils. Thus one of the consequences of metropolitanization is a consolidation of small school systems to the point where a negligible number of pupils are attending school systems with less than 1,200 pupils.

Metropolitan Planning and Urban Renewal

Taking cues from planners in other parts of the world, American planning legislation and American planning agencies are increasingly working with the metropolitan area as the unit for planning and development. This is obviously necessary for such enterprises as: the development of a network of highways and other transit facilities; a water supply system; a program for the control of air pollution; a sewage disposal system. The new federal government Department of Housing and Urban Develop- ment will be responsible for the administration of government funds aimed at an orderly development of entire metropolitan areas, with the placement of low-cost public housing, the clearance and redevelopment of slum areas, the planning and distribution of parks and recreation areas and the location of industrial districts and shopping areas.

The aim of metropolitan planning will be to make the central city and the suburbs equally attractive to people, so that all kinds of people can freely choose where to live and to raise their children. The aim will also be to eliminate slums and to distribute areas of middle-class and working- class residences so that there are no large concentrated areas of one-class residence.

Educational authorities are now beginning to think in terms of metropolitan-wide planning and cooperation. This is not an easy matter in the United States, due to the American tradition of local city and community autonomy and responsibility in educational matters. For example, there are about 6,000 independent school districts in the 216 SMSAs. The Chicago SMSA has 340 independent school districts. The Detroit SMSA has 96 such units.

However, school administrators and school boards are beginning to get together for exchange of information, for planning, and for a limited amount of cooperation on a metropolitan area level. Voluntary coopera-

400


tion among school districts has generally taken the form of a Study Council or Superintendents' Study Group, in which a local university works with the school superintendents of the area. This may lead to a more formal arrangement for voluntary cooperation, such as the Educa- tional Research and Development Council of the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area, Inc. The superintendents of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, together with members of the School of Education at the University of Minnesota, formed the Council in 1963. It consists of 35 public school districts in the seven-county metropolitan area, and these schools serve 44 percent of the pupils of the state of Minnesota.

During the first three years of the Council, a variety of research and demonstration projects were undertaken, including the following:

Basic research studies: organizational climate and structure, school out- put measures, program evaluation, staffing of schools. Surveys: finance and taxation, expenditures, staffing. Development activities: workshops for teachers and administrators; programs for the mentally retarded; computer utilization project; production of a film to supplement the teaching of American poetry. There is one good example of the union of previously separate local

governments into a single metropolitan form of government, and the parallel union of school districts into a single metropolitan school authority. This has taken place in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. Also, in Toronto, Canada, the 11 local school districts have joined together in a single metropolitan school authority which has the responsibility of taxing the entire area and distributes tax money equitably, as well as other area-wide responsibilities, such as the choice of sites for new school buildings. The separate school districts retain their autonomy for the administration of their local school systems.

The areas in which school systems cooperate in a voluntary fashion are generally the following:

1. Operation of a program of "special education" for mentally and physically handicapped children, the cost for maintenance of which is shared among a number of school systems which could not afford such programs separately.

2. Operation of a regional vocational school, serving all or a group of schools in a metropolitan area.

3. Operating a "community college," or a 2-year post-secondary school institution, for students in all or a part of the metropolitan area.

4. Operating an educational television program for the entire area. 5. Maintaining a system of recruiting teachers, of in-service training

401


of teachers, and of promotion of teachers to the administrative system that serves the entire area or a part of it.

The Urban-Community School The quality of the public schools is the greatest single factor in the

decision of middle-income people to live in the central city or to live in the suburbs, and to live in one section or another of the central city or the suburbs. Knowing this as a fact, educators tend to divide into two groups with respect to their views on the proper ways to operate a school system in the contemporary metropolitan area.

One school of thought may be called the "four-walls" school. The basic principle is to do the best possible job of educating every boy or girl who comes into the school, whoever he is, whatever his color, nationality, IQ or handicap. This means building good school buildings, equipping them well, and staffing them with well-trained teachers. At its best, it means being courteous and friendly to parents and to citizens who are interested in the schools, but making it quite clear to them that the schools are run by professionals who know their business and do not need advice from other people. It means making use of the cultural resources of the city - museums, theaters, orchestras, TV programs - under a system which guarantees the safety of the children and meets the convenience of the teachers.

It means keeping the schools "out of local politics." Staff appointments are to be made on the basis of merit alone, and promotion of staff on the basis of performance. It means a limited cooperation with other social institutions, public and private. The welfare and public aid and public health agencies are asked for help when the schools need it, but they cannot initiate school programs. Youth welfare and delinquency control agencies have their jobs to do, which meet and overlap the work of the schools. On this common ground the schools' administration must have full control of the use of school personnel and school facilities. In the area of training youth for employment, the school system will use the facilities of local business and industry for on-the-job training according to agreements worked out. Over-all policy for vocational education is the responsibility of the school administration under the Board of Education, and local business and industry are not closely related to policy deter- mination in this area.

The four-walls type of school system works for efficiency and economy, and attempts to free the creative teacher to do the best possible job of teaching under good conditions. The community outside of the school is regarded as a source of complexity and of tension-arousal if the boundary

402


between community and school is not clearly defined and respected. The other school of thought may be called the "urban-community"

school. The educators who advocate this believe that the big city is in a crisis which has been in force for some years and will last for at least 10 years and requires the active participation of schools in the making and practising of policy for social urban renewal. This big-city crisis is reflected in feelings of uncertainty and anxiety on the part of parents and citizens. There is danger of a collective failure of nerve which saps the vitality and flexibility of the city's efforts at urban renewal. Parents and citizens of middle income are tempted in this situation to escape to the suburbs, where life seems simpler and safer, especially for children.

The urban-community school attempts to act constructively in this crisis by involving the parents and citizens in the decisions about school policy and practice. The educator accepts the frustration of working with people who themselves are confused and uncertain about the schools, believing that the only way to solve the problems of the city is to work on a give-and-take basis with citizens and community organizations.

The urban-community school includes the intra-school program of the four-walls school, but differs at important points on the relation of the school to the community.

Those who take the urban-community school point of view believe there is no viable alternative. They believe that the four-walls school actually causes some of the problems of the community through its rigid rules about attendance districts and about keeping the public away from the classroom. They believe that the schools by their policies and practices either attract or repel people in the local community. Under present conditions, the typical school system repels people whom the central city cannot afford to lose as citizens. Proponents of the urban-community school believe that the present trend toward economic and racial segregation in the metropolitan area will continue, and the central city will lose quality, unless the schools take a more active part in social urban renewal.

An American Dilemma - The Comprehensive Secondary School The metropolitan areas after they reach a size of about one hundred

thousand tend to become stratified or polarized along socio-economic lines, with consequent segregation of school pupils along socio-economic and racial lines. This is seen by American educators as a serious problem, because they believe that democratic characteristics of a society depend in part upon a free association of children from all socio-economic groups in school.

A principal spokesman for this point of view is James B. Conant,

403


formerly President of Harvard University and United States Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Mr. Conant's influential book The American High School Today 1) has urged the further development of the comprehensive high school, which draws youth from all socio-economic

groups roughly in the same proportions as they appear in the adult

population. He defined the purposes of the comprehensive high school as:

"... first, to provide a general education for all the future citizens; second, to provide good elective programs for those who wish to use their acquired skills immediately on graduation; third, to provide satisfactory programs for those whose vocations will depend on their subsequent education in a college or university. If one could find a single comprehensive high school in the United States in which all three objectives were reached in a highly satisfactory manner, such a school might be taken as a model or pattern....

"Since state and regional differences do play some role in this vast country, I decided that I should attempt to locate satisfactory comprehensive high schools in different sections of the nation. To this end, I inquired through various sources as to the comprehensive high schools outside the metropolitan areas which had the reputation of doing a good job in providing education for students with a wide range of vocational interests and abilities. I specified that these schools should be of such a nature that less than half the boys and girls were going on to college and the distribution of academic ability roughly corresponded to the national norm (median I.Q. 100-105)."

There are approximately 2,000 high schools in communities of more than 50,000 population, and they enrol approximately 30 percent of the

high school students of the country. Very few of these schools are truly comprehensive in the sense indicated above. The high schools serve the residential areas in which they are located, and reflect the socio-economic differences among these areas. For example, the differences among high schools are shown in Table VI, which presents data on the 39 general public high schools in Chicago. Schools at the top of the Table are heavily middle-class in composition and university-preparatory in function. The SER, or socio-economic ratio, is a crude ratio of middle-class to working- class or of white-collar to manual workers among the adults in the school's attendance area. An SER of 200 means that the ratio of white-collar workers to manual workers in the area was 2 to 1. An SER of 20 means that this ratio was 1 to 5. The Table shows that about 50 percent of the

pupils in the high-status schools were in the top 23 percent of the entire

group in reading ability; at the same time, less than 10 percent of the

pupils in the low-status schools were in the top 23 percent in reading ability.

There is considerable evidence that the educational standards of a low- status school are reduced by the presence of large numbers of low-

404


TABLE VI

Socio-economic Area and Pupil Achievement in Chicago High Schools

School SER1) Achieve- Low Reading Percent Number ment 2) Level 3) Negro

1 290 52 0 0 2 229 49 0 0 3 199 54 0 0 4 180 54 0 2 5 123 40 12 26 6 109 47 0 0 7 97 36 0 0 8 83 32 0 0 9 82 29 22 21

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

66 61 54 54 53 53 53 52 50

23 22 22 20 20 19 17 14 11

28 32 11 43 21 26 25 17 23

11 10 4

10 14 8 4 4 6

4 8

16 0

15 0

12 15 0

16 41 56 46 29 36 37 42 41

0 3

28 3

88 11 19 98

0

9 100 94 80 44 99 91

100 100

1) Socio-economic ratio of adults in attendance area in 1960. Certain schools are not representative of adults in area because there is a selective factor in school attendance. This is true of School 20, for example, where the school represents a higher socio-economic group than the average for the attendance area.

2) Percent of ninth and eleventh graders in top three stanines on standard tests of reading. For city as a whole, 23 percent are in the top three stanines.

3) Percent of ninth-grade English classes in Basic English. Pupils are below sixth-grade level in such classes. In some high schools there are too few such pupils to form a class, though almost every high school has at least a handful of such pupils.

Source: Robert J. HAVIGHURST: The Public Schools of Chicago. Table 1. p. 208. Chicago: Board of Education, 1964.

405


achieving students. Thus, Alan Wilson 2) studied the educational achievement and the educational aspirations of boys in the eight high schools of Oakland, California. He found that a boy from a working-class family attending a school with a predominance of middle-class pupils was more likely to get high marks than a working-class boy of the same IQ, who attended a school with a predominance of working-class pupils. Also, a lower-status boy attending a school in which the majority of his classmates were from middle-class families was more likely to plan to enter a university than if he attended a school in which the majority of his classmates were from working-class families.

Possible Solutions. Thus the educator faces the dilemma created by his desire for democratic mixing in a comprehensive secondary school and by the socio-economic stratification of the metropolitan area which tends to produce secondary schools that reflect this form of economic and racial segregation.

The solutions proposed for this problem fall into two widely different categories. One would abandon the comprehensive school, and the other would restore it.

One solution lies in the establishment of a number of selective and spe- cialized secondary schools, which serve the entire city or large sections of it. There might be university-preparatory high schools which admit only pupils who give promise of success in university work. These schools would draw their students from large and heterogeneous areas of the city. At the same time, there might be other schools for training in commercial occupations, industrial occupations, and semi-skilled service and factory jobs. Since this would mean abandoning the comprehensive school concept, this solution is unpopular with many American educators.

Restoration of the comprehensive high school would be at least par- tially achieved by the development of very large and complex secondary schools serving large sections of the city. This scheme has been widely discussed in recent years, and is being tried in several of the larger cities. It is called the "educational park "or "educational plaza" plan.

In this plan, a large complex of school buildings would be placed in a location that is accessible to students from a large and heterogeneous area of the city. The enrolment might be from 5,000 to 10,000. There might be several different units for students with different educational goals - one for university preparation, one for commercial training, one for industrial training, etc. Thus there would be some differentiation within the school, but students would associate for athletic and social activities, and there would be a relatively free flow of students from one type of

406


course to another within the complex, as students changed their occu- pational goals and as they and their faculty advisors became aware of their abilities.

Another way by which the comprehensive high school may be restored is through the working of social urban renewal. As has been noted, the movement for metropolitan planning has for one of its goals the restoration of the central core as a place where people of all income levels and occupations will want to live and raise their children. At the same time, the suburbs will become more nearly cross-sections of occupation and income, as industry moves out from the central city.

The various designs made by city planners and architects for the metropolitan area of the future generally envisage the creation of units of 200,000 to 500,000 population with their own local business, cultural, and religious facilities. Each unit would be nearly a cross-section of the metropolitan population. Each unit would have its own schools, from kindergarten to community college or university. The high school or high schools in this unit would be comprehensive in nature, reflecting the heterogeneous character of the community.

The problem of the secondary school in the big city illustrates the close interaction between schools and the structure of the community in the contemporary metropolitan area. The schools do not simply reflect the structure of the community of today. They also influence the structure of the community of tomorrow.

REFERENCES *)

1. James B. CONANT: The American High School Today. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

2. Alan B. WILSON: "Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys." American Sociological Review. 24, 1959, pp. 836-845.

VERSTADTERUNG UND ERZIEHUNG IN DEN VEREINIGTEN STAATEN

von ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST, Chikago

Von 1900-1960 wuchs die Verstadterung der Bevolkerung in den Vereinigten Staaten von 40% auf 70% an. (Als verstadtert bezeichnet man die Bevolkerungs- schicht, die in Orten mit mehr als 2.500 Einwohnern lebt). Wichtiger noch ist, daB die amerikanische Bev6lkerung ,,vergrol3stadtert" ist. 65% der Bevolkerung leben in grol3stadtischen Siedlungsgebieten (metropolitan areas) mit 50.000 Einwohnern

*) For further literature on Urbanization and Education in the United States see the Bibliography, this number pp. 491-94.

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und mehr, deren Vororte wirtschaftlich eng mit der City verbunden sind. Verstad- terung und VergroBstadterung haben folgende Auswirkungen auf die Schule gehabt:

1. Anstieg der durchschnittlichen Schiilerzahlen pro Schule von 202 im Jahre 1931 auf 1.600 im Jahre 1965.

2. Riuck gang der Zahl der Schuldistrikte von 127.000 im Jahre 1931 auf 27.000 im Jahre 1965. (Ein Schuldistrikt ist der Verwaltungsbezirk der jeweiligen lokalen Schulbehbrde in den USA).

3. Riickgang der Zahl der landlichen einklassigen Schulen von 143.000 im Jahre 1931 auf 9.895 im Jahre 1965.

4. Zunehmende Segregation der Schiiler entsprechend ihrem sozio-6konomischen Herkommen. Dies ist die Folge der sich standig vergroBernden Wohngebiete des Mittelstandes und des Handwerks in den wachsenden Stidten, und der schwin- denden M6glichkeit der Schiiler, unter diesen Umstinden mit Kindern anderer Milieus zusammenzukommen. Es besteht die Tendenz, kleine Schuldistrikte in groBstidtischen Siedlungsgebieten zu gr6oBeren Distrikten zusammenzufassen. Die Schuldistrikte der GroBstadte arbei- ten dariiber hinaus in zunehmendem MaBe zusammen, um folgende Einrichtungen zu ermoglichen: Sonderschulen fur geschadigte Kinder, Schulfernsehen, regionale Be- rufsschulen, ein zweijahriges community college, dessen Ausbildung an die Sekundar- schule anschlief3t. Hauptprobleme, denen sich die Schulen gegentibersehen, sind die schon erwahnte sozio-6konomische Segregation als Folgeerscheinung der Verstadte- rung und die Rassentrennung, bedingt durch Abwanderung der Familien mit h6herem Einkommen in die Vororte und Randbezirke der GroBstadte sowie durch Ballung der armen Bevolkerungsschichten im Innern der Stadte. Da die Integration von Kindern verschiedener sozialer Milieus in 6ffentlichen Schulen den amerikanischen sozialen Prinzipien entspricht, bemiiht man sich, die Segregation - vor allem in den Sekundarschulen - zu iiberwinden. Eine Losung ware die Einrichtung einer Anzahl selektiver Sekundarschulen mit bestimmter fachlicher Ausrichtung, die Schiiler einer ganzen Stadt oder doch weiter Bereiche einer Stadt aufnehmen k6nnen. Dies wiirde jedoch ein Abweichen vom Konzept der comprehensive school bedeuten. Eine andere L6sung k6nnte umfassende Schulkomplexe fur 5.000 bis 10.000 Schiiler in sogenannten ,,Schulparks" schaffen, die Schiiler aus weiten heterogenen Gebieten einer Stadt aufnehmen konnen. M6glicherweise wird die Bewegung, die man als ,,soziale stadtische Erneuerung" bezeichnet, das Gesicht der GroBstadte revolu- tionieren, sodal3 diese nur noch aus relativ kleinen (200.000 bis 500.000 Einwohner) Wohnbezirken bestehen, die in sozio-6konomischer Hinsicht heterogen sein werden. Eine solche Entwicklung wiirde die comprehensive high school begiinstigen, die sozial-heterogenen Wohngebieten dient.

L'URBANISATION ET L'EDUCATION AUX ETATS-UNIS

par ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST, Chicago

La population des Etats-Unis est pass6e de 40 a 70% d'urbains entre 1900 et 1960. (La population urbaine comporte les agglomerations de plus de 2.500 personnes). Ce qui est encore plus important, c'est que la population am6ricaine s'est "m6tro- polis6e." Soixante cinq pour cent de la population vivent dans des agglom6rations m6tropolitaines d6finies par le recensement comme villes de 50.000 habitants ou

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plus et la banlieue ou les banlieues p6riph6riques qui sont 6conomiquement li6es a la ville centrale.

L'urbanisation et la m6tropolisation ont eu les effets suivants sur les 6coles: 1. Augmentation de la moyenne d'inscriptions aux systemes scolaires de 202 en

1931 a 1600 en 1965. 2. Diminution du nombre de districts scolaires de 127.000 en 1931 a 27.000 en 1965.

(Le district scolaire est l'unit6 du gouvernement scolaire local aux Etats-Unis). 3. Diminution du nombre d'6coles a instituteur-unique (rurales) de 143.000 en 1931

a 9.895 en 1963. 4. Augmentation de la s6gr6gation des enfants en age scolaire par le statut socio-

6conomique. Ceci est dufi l'extension des secteurs de classe moyenne et des cites ouvrieres due a l'agrandissement des villes, diminuant ainsi les occasions de fusion entre les enfants de niveaux socio-economiques diff6rents.

Il y a une tendance a grouper les petits districts scolaires en unit6s plus impor- tantes dans les regions m6tropolitaines. Aussi existe-t-il une tendance i la collabo- ration parmi les 6coles de district d'une r6gion m6tropolitaine pour dispenser les services suivants: Ecoles sp6ciales pour les enfants handicap6s, tel6vision 6ducative, 6coles professionnelles r6gionales, un "college communautaire" comportant deux ann6es post-secondaires.

Un conflit majeur auquel doivent faire face les 6coles est celui de la s6gr6gation socio-6conomique et raciale mentionn6e plus haut, due a la migration des families a revenus moyens vers les faubourgs et la banlieue des villes, et la concentration des familles a revenus inf6rieurs dans la ville elle-meme. Etant donn6 que les principes am6ricains sont en faveur de l'int6gration des enfants de diff6rentes classes sociales dans les 6coles publiques, des efforts sont faits pour supprimer la s6gr6gation, particulierement au niveau de l'enseignement secondaire. Une solution serait d'insti- tuer un certain nombre d'6coles secondaires sl6ectives etsp6cialis6esdesservant la ville entiere ou une grande partie de la ville. Mais ceci signifierait l'abandon du concept de la comprehensive school. Une autre solution serait d'am6nager de tres vastes complexes scolaires de 5.000 a 10.000 6tudiants en "parcs 6ducatifs" pouvant desservir une importante population h6t6rogene des m6tropoles. Il se pourrait que ce qu'on appelle la "r6novation sociale urbaine" r6volutionnera l'6cologie des centres m6tro- politains afin qu'ils ne comportent plus qu'une unite de population h6t6rogene du point de vue socio-6conomique relativement mince (200.000 a 500.000), et ceci r6tablirait la comprehensive high school qui dessert une agglom6ration r6sidentielle h6t6rogene.

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Documents

Urbanization and Education in the United States Author(s): Robert J