The schools and prejudice (Part 1 of 2); Patterns of American prejudice

In recording this fourth session of patterns of American prejudice we encountered several irritating audio problems that were caused by equipment failure. They made it necessary for us to cut three short sections of three of the speakers talks out entirely. Although we were able to record two of them in my voice here in the studio the third at the end of Dr. Silberman stock was lost completely. The first problem came at the beginning of moderator Marie fielder's introduction a portion of which we recorded. Our apologies for these problems to you the audience and to the speakers. Moderator fielder opened the symposium as follows. I've been asked to chair this particular session on the schools and prejudice. I think I've earned this invitation because I'm so time conscious and since it's just a few minutes after 2:30 we will get underway because I want to be just as time conscious when it comes to 5:00 o'clock. I think also that my friends recognize that I'm very aware of time because this is the second program during the centennial year in which I

participated and it's a second program that concerns itself with change. Today we're looking at change in terms of how we behave change in the whole area of prejudice and how it relates to the public schools. At the last Centennial program I told the group that on any Centennial program I am uncomfortable when we start thinking of change in modules of 100 years. I get worried. But I wasn't nearly as concerned in working with this particular group because many of you in the audience are youth oriented and school people. You and I recognize those of us who work in the public schools and work with agencies cooperating with public schools and youth that their time sequence is every five years. My friend Ahmed Nasser makes the statement that we really have to think in terms of every five years we have another generation of young people rather than the old fashion the nomination of generation. At this point in moderator

fielder's talk the audio level increased to normal and we will now turn to our tape. So as. A school people we turn our attention today to school and prejudice. I think also that I may have earned this spot on the program because the Civil Rights Act mentioned me twice. So I guess I'm the product of a double whammy. As he mentioned the discrimination against it against women. This afternoon I wish we could try something just a little bit different recognizing that you had a very heavy diet of content of provocative ideas. I wish that we could present our two major speakers and then I'll stop for a stretch and stop for your questions.

Now all this means that we will be asking questions before we ask our respondents to respond. And the design of this is to give them some cues to give them some direction. Dr. Glock when he opened the conference last night said to us that he was concerned. That you were practitioners and that this be a leverage conference this that this conference lead to institutional strategies and the identification of institutional strategies. Now as we gear that way I wish if you have no objections that we can jump the question session rather than waiting and having five speakers and then a question session to have the two major speakers and then have your questions and I'm asking the respondents then to

act in terms of your questions as well as what they have read into and see as significant in the two major presentations. It is my pleasure at this time to introduce our first speaker to you. I know Dr. Brewster Smith. As a concerned citizen in Berkeley. A person who is concerned about the. Quality of education for all children of Berkeley. And has been very active in the public school picture I hear Dr. Ro. This man is a professor of psychology and director of the Human Development Institute here at the university. He has taught at Harvard at Vassar and New York University. He's been the editor of a number of professional journals including the Journal of social issues in the Journal of abnormal

and Social Psychology. He's past president. Of the Society for the psychological study. Of social issues. He will be sharing with us today is. The findings of a research study that he did that relates prejudice to the adolescent group. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Brewster Smith. Thanks. Following the ovation for Dr. Brewster Smith our audio level dropped to almost nothing. For the first three minutes of his talk. We were able to transcribe it however and I shall now read that transcription. Thank you very much Marie. How shall we after all approach this large an intricate topic of the schools and prejudice the family the church as we were hearing this morning

and the school. These are the major institutions of society for the socialization of the young for inducting them into their roles as participants in a social order that is at the same time a moral order. In our secular times of accelerating social change both family and church have suffered attrition in their traditional functions. Families moreover are hardly more accessible to concerted influence than the individual citizens of which they are composed. The churches on their part no longer reach all children and they speak to their participants with less assurance and authority than in times past. The school thus has become the preeminent institution through which the perspectives and social orientations of new generations are accessible to our influence. Even if we reject the romantic conception of the school as some kind of our comedian fulcrum through which you can exert leverage to change or to reform or reconstitute society. And I think that America

that the American school system with its traditions of local autonomy is too deeply into complexity embedded in society afford to provide that kind of magic leverage all the same we must still turn to the school if we wish to rear children who are better fitted for participation in a proper pluralistic democracy. We must still look to it if we want to understand and to change the processes that keep producing new generations of American citizens that are only partly equipped for democratic participation and in some ways maybe badly disqualified for it. How then I repeat. Are we to approach the central and difficult topic. A number of options are open to us. Very recently the ghetto school with its mare's nest of acute and chronic problems has attracted belated public attention. We've heard from Kenneth Carr Herbert Cole Jonathan Kozol most recently James Herndon how the school in the poor city ghetto is all too likely to represent an

educational system that is itself prejudiced as and as a system against the slum child especially the negro slum child. And now we will rejoin our tape of Dr Smith's speech. The system create judges the child's life chances as it arranges matters so as to confirm its pessimistic prophecies about about them. This is sometimes to disparage the child. And by undermanned mining the basis on which he could develop self-respect and a sense of efficacy. It cripples his inborn human potentialities for taking advantage of the meager opportunities that remain open to him. It subjects the child to all manner of indignities. The system is manned by teachers and administrators who themselves will have more or less prejudiced attitudes given their difficult and thankless task. And there are scant resources for coping with it. Prejudiced on their part against their educationally. Unsuccessful pupils

is quite understandable. As a last bitter line of self-defense. But I think their personal prejudices are not really the important thing. Discrimination against slum children prejudgment of the child's fate is built into the very system itself. It is a system and the individual attitudes of teachers and administrative staff are only components of the system not prime causes or probably even strategic ones. If you're looking for the glaringly acute problems of prejudice in the schools matters of national shame that cry out for drastic remedy. Surely we should start here. Or. On the other hand we might consider how prejudice is built into the materials of the school curriculum to which virtually all children are exposed exposed innocently by the purveyors of pretty fied textbooks designed to appeal to middle class selection committees.

Or perhaps not so innocently on publishers as their offerings to appeal to a national market that includes the south self-conscious attention to this problem has doubtless led the writers of recent school texts to pay more attention to America's ethnic diversity and to give more attention to Negro history and to Negro contributions to American history but not very much or not very honestly. It's so hard to be honest with children about the embarrassing facts. For the most part though the new textbooks make only feeble gestures in this direction. Color A few of the smiling faces black. The persistently bland middle class orientation of most school materials subtly Pervaiz a very basic kind of prejudice both to the middle class child who is given a censored and misleading picture of the social world in which he is going to have to play a constructive part as citizen and to the slum child who can't find his own experience validly

represented. You can only conclude from the censored picture that is presented. That is experience is a matter for suppression and shame. Or that school is something your role of and to be endured and resisted an agency of their world not of his own or for another starting point. We might start with the young child as he enters the school system who has already acquired some crude social categories for sorting people out into good guys and bad guys who already has his own notions of group identity who already has absorbed from his parents and from the ever intrusive TV. Some of the adult culture are prejudiced but who are still. Relatively innocent open and fluid inconsistent. Ready in short to be educated and follow his school experience is to see how they work upon his initial beliefs and attitudes. We badly need such a longitudinal perspective on the development of

prejudice and democratic orientations in which the role of the school could be seen in interplay without the family peer groups and of the mass media in the lives of individual children. I regret that I can't present this sort of state to you today for the simple reason that nobody has yet done it. Or you might start at the other end with the adult products of schooling. We might take her in the secular trend toward greater acceptance of minority groups toward less agreement without her negro I doubt I submitted statements as reported by the national polls over the last generation. While the educational level of the population has been steadily rising we might note with Samuel stuffer that younger and better educated people are more tolerant generally than their alleged less educated elders. You might know with Herbst ember that higher levels of education go with less prejudice. Surely just now we need all the sources of optimism that we can glean. And the secular trend toward less prejudice is

surely one of these. But I think we'd only delude ourselves if we were to clear the schools with this trend. The decrease in anti-Semitism has accompanied not only the worldwide shock of Nazi horrors but also the disappearance of the ghetto Jew. As an American social type and the replacement of second generation by third generation Americans who are increasingly you know appropriate targets for prejudice the decline we've seen and I negro prejudice one which I'm afraid we can't count on in our present troubled times has paralleled the emergence of a negro middle class and the articulation of civil rights goals that have the blessing of the established majority elite as well as of Negro leadership. The inverse relationship has been found between educational level and prejudice may only mean that the better educated are more sophisticated more in tune with the spirit of the times more closely in touch with liberal values. Those who go

on to higher levels of education are of course a select group whose qualities including qualities of lower prejudice can hardly be credited with any assurance to this to their experience in the schools. The study that I made drawn today ambitious as it was tried to come to grips with only a small part of the problem of prejudice in the schools. Dr. Jane Hart I can I decided at the outset that we would focus on the development of patterns of prejudice among teenagers in junior and senior high schools and age as it seemed to us by the attitudes that young people will carry into adulthood become stabilized and also in our American culture. A period of potential youthful idealism when young people should be particularly responsive to Democratic influences. If such influences are to be had in order to secure data that were relevant to the things we are most concerned about we have to make some strategic decisions of study design that unfortunately limit what we can

say about other equally important aspects of the problem. And I'm going to have to tell you a little bit about the details of study design so that you'll be able to understand the meaning of the data that I want to select from. A little later so forgive me for going into a little bit of professional shop talk. Through the Survey Research Center here at Berkeley we have the facilities and skills available for a survey style study of intergroup relations and attitudes in adolescents. This style of research as its practitioners well know lends itself to subtle analyses of interrelationships but it runs the risk of overweighting what people say as compared with the more consequential things that they do. We could hardly expect to catch very a lot essences of hostile and discriminatory behavior in our net our net being primarily suited for getting at the beliefs and attitudes that young people are able to report under conditions of

confidentiality. So we set particularly high priority on getting valid data in one area close to actual behavior. There are survey methods can go beyond mere expression of belief and feeling. That of friendship choice. We wanted to know the extent to which students choices of friends across ethnic and religious lines on the one hand or are rather confined to their own particular groups we could find this out by the simple expedient of asking students to name their best friends and calling these names with the responses of students named so as to find the self-identified ethnic and religious membership of each. You're able to trace out from this naming of names of Franz the patterns of friendships that existed in the schools that we studied. We could collect the data on friendship before the topic of prejudice and intergroup relations

had ever been raised so as to avoid possible distortion on the part of students who knew the democratic right answer and might want to make a favorable impression upon the investigators. But to map out these friendship patterns requires that all of the friends named by the students question will be included in the study and that each student's ethnic and religious membership be self-identified independently. To secure such data we decided to include all the students and entire grades of entire school systems in our study thus deliberately giving up the advantages of scope and representativeness the national sample would have offered as it was the data that we wanted stretch the tolerance of school administrators and of school boards. Of necessity we had to invade regions of considerable privacy and I might say that I invade these reasons regions with a good deal of trepidation because wearing another hat I've been much concerned about the ethics of behavioral research. I think I present you

here today some data where I think there was a real ethical question of whether we should have done it and yet I thought the. I think perhaps you may think that the values gained were contra veiling values which make the ethical decision to do it justifiable students had to name names. They had to shed their anonymity temporarily so that their own ethnic identity could be entered into our. And now a shipper from now says the friendships they were also asked quite personal questions about themselves their beliefs and feelings their family backgrounds considerable school time was required for the undertaking. Three steps three separate class hours a week a permanent. This is a lot to ask for and many school administrators thought understandably that it was too much or else they preferred letting sleeping dogs lie. In our initial attempt we got thrown out of the Berkeley school system. That was before it's present. That was before its present administration for which I have the greatest admiration.

We headed for. We ended Fortunately with a full cut cooperation of three school systems in the east one near metropolitan New York which we call commuter town another in the urban east but further from New York that we call ocean ville. And a third Eastern industrial city in the middle of a rural area outside any metropolitan Arbet to the central city. By good fortune rather than by design. All three systems turned out to have about the same proportions of Negro students 14 or 15 percent and they vary dramatically in the proportion of Jewish students. Forty three percent in commuter town 27 percent in ocean bill less than 1 percent in Central City. Of course all three communities were far from comparable in other respects we kept with a straight face claim a neat experimental design commuter town was deliver the most sophisticated community that is Negro students included a good many

children of middle class professionals central city had large numbers of blue collar industrial workers and relatively few Catholics in each of the three communities we studied. We questioned the entire camp and 12th grades in the Central High School and the eighth grades in the elementary schools or junior highs that fed into the Central High School. This was back in 1963. We're dealing here with substantial numbers of students. Twenty three hundred commuter town called hundred notion bill. Eight hundred central city are slated not included I have to underline this so you don't know what the basis of my facts are. You did not include the segregated ghetto high school such as is found in major northern cities. Nor did it extend to the south or to rural or this vanishing small town America that is still popular as our imagery our focus on attack grades and different school systems are three very different communities obviously doesn't let us generalize safely about

levels of prejudice among teenage students in the nation at large. But our strategy does have other advantages besides the one that decided us to use it without being able to get out real friendship patterns as well as our attitudes and beliefs. It has the advantage. Of fitting the fact that the causal processes that engender support or modify prejudiced attitudes are processes that are embedded in school and community and processes that may differ from one school system to another. Our approach gives us the chance to detect such differences where they exist and not to wash them out in national averages. Where relationships hold up across all three communities as diverse of them as those which we have studied we can have a lot of confidence in their general applicability where the relationships differ. We have the opportunity to track the differences down to special features of particular situations and hopefully to move from these particulars to a higher level of generalized

understanding of the underlying processes. Here I can only draw on some of the main findings using a broad brush in anticipation of our detailed report. A good starting point is the picture of M group and intergroup friendships that emerge from our analysis of the friendship choice data. Now you remember we'd asked each student to name his five closest friends of the same sex and grade as himself. Of course girls were included too and there were responses of boys and girls were analyzed separately for each category of student in terms jointly of race. Negro vs. white religion Catholic Protestant Jewish Sachs great in school. We first examined the extent to which the student's choices of Fran's were concentrated within their own racial religious group. This analysis made use of an index that takes into account the proportions of students

of each race and religion who were available as possible friends in each sex grade school. A first by act one that is hardly surprising because it reflects one of the more dependable pasterns of social human nature is that in all three communities students tend to choose their friends from their own racial religious group. This is particularly true of Jewish students and even more so of Negroes. Guess why and I don't think it is clannishness as it was part of the old stereotype in the case of Jews. Among the Protestant and Catholic boys and girls the white majority this tendency toward in group Choice is by no means extreme. There is some trend from the eighth to the twelfth grade through the high school experience for an increasing proportion of choices to go to the student's own in-group the same friendship data can be looked at to answer the further question.

Do students belonging to the two minority groups that were the focus of our study Jewish and Negro receive friendship choices from members of other ethnic religious categories in proportion to their representation in each sex and grade. Of course they do not. The indices across group choice to Jews and to Negroes are overwhelmingly negative with the exception of white Protestant boys and girls and while the ocean below eighth grades. And if I present girls a lot of the commuter town eighth grades where among these students the choice of Jewish friends was at a level just slightly above chance. But the story is clearly different for Jews and for Negroes as objects of friendship choice. C'mere Tao an ocean builder two communities where there are enough Jewish students to make this analysis possible. White Catholic and Protestant high school seniors under choose Jewish students as friends at moderate

levels. Our index went from minus 1 meaning no friends chosen in the group through zero choice Chast level through up to a concealable plus one all to all friends chosen from this other group and the indices range from minus 15 to minus twenty seven for the various groups in regard to choice of Jewish students as friends with a central Tennessee around minus point five Asper choices to negroes. There are so few. In any of our three communities that we can hardly analyze data with respect to friendship choice to Negroes at the individual level at the 12th grade. Our indices for the various choosing groups at around minus point 9 5 where minus 1 point 0 0 would be no choice at all very very few friendships crossing the race line.

Thus far then we've learned that students in each ethnic religious group tend to find friends among themselves Gentile students somewhat under Jews Jews as friends and white students. Currently she has black ones at all. Incidentally Negro students name whites as France substantially more often than they are named by whites an indication of where the problem lies. I would not want to ascribe these findings entirely to prejudice. Although it's become customary in the social sciences to use the term ethnocentrism as a fancy name for prejudice one can I think prefer one's own and preferentially see one's friends from one from among them without Derek gating or even being prejudiced against the other. You know a pluralistic society that finds value in diversity. We should expect and even welcome some persisting bias toward choice of friends from within one's own ethnic and

religious group. But the virtually UN penetrated barrier against even same sex friendships between Negro and white students clearly reflects prejudice. At the same time it is itself a major obstacle to the reduction of prejudice. The segregation that fails to lower this barrier remains an essential respects a token gesture. I think one of the handholds I'd like to leave Dr. Silberman hoping that he will give us some suggestions is how given this barrier against negro white friendship even when the students of the two races are in the same the segregated school how does one penetrate the barrier. So far we have been examining the parent of friendship choice that prevail has the prevail among broad ethnic religious categories of students. The next step is to inquire about the social characteristics that go with naming a friend from a religious and ethnic group other than one's own.

But we've already seen that so few of our white students name negro friends that we can't pursue the question in regard to your group choices of Negroes. So we're left with the question of echoing the old jingle and who chooses Jews. Our analyses of the social characteristics of non-Jewish white students they go with are naming a Jewish friend emerged with two indices which when you take them together go far toward accounting for whether a student in commuter town or ocean bill where the possibility exists will indeed have a Jewish friend. The first combines several aspects of family background where the student espoused in her Catholic whether his father does white collar or blue collar worker whether his educational level of his father is relatively high or relatively low in each case the first term mentioned goes with the

probability of intergroup friendship. These are student characteristics that the school can't do anything about. They are part of its input so to speak. The second index on the other hand combines three features of the student's school experience. Whether or not his eighth grade school was attended by a substantial proportion of Jewish students so there would be the chance for friendships to develop because of people being there whether or not he participates in extracurricular school activities and whether or not he's enrolled in the college preparatory program. OK we have the first slide at this point. Think the slide shows the degree to which these two indices taken jointly. Can predict whether a majority student in commuter town or ocean bill will name a friend who is Jewish. Up and on the chart are differences in our index and

family background from left to right. Is our school indexed. Note that only 8 or 15 percent of the students are low in both indices turned out to have maimed a Jewish friend while 72 or 86 percent of those who are high in both indices name at least one. We began this analysis with the thought that the two indices represent the familiar factors in friendship of similarity and propinquity nearness availability Gentile students who are higher on the index of family background should be more like the Jewish students in their schools who are mainly. Upper middle class highly educated backgrounds and those who are higher on the school index on the school index should be thrown in a more frequent interaction with them and friendship. Friendship should thrive. The only trouble with this interpretation is that the two that too closely similar indices that are usable in all three communities.

Correlate not only with friendly attitudes toward Jews as well as with friendships but also with friendly attitudes toward negroes as well. Where the argument from similarity and propinquity cannot hold. Because predominately as everywhere the Negro students were from lower class backgrounds the undereducated parents of those students who were in the college prep program would be less likely to have contact with them. Those students who came from there who do educated families of the last like them and yet it was still the students who had you have the more friendly attitudes. The revised school index based only participation activities and in the college prep program is a particularly strong and consistent predictor of unprejudiced attitudes in all three of our schools. School systems it looks as though this index reflects the influence of liberal values and

lifestyle as much as it does opportunity for friendly contact. Note in the figure that in both communities the school index is related to friendship with Jews but the index of family background which is quite substantially a matter of social class shows a clear relationship only in commuter town and emphasizing these inconsistencies in our data because in a way they are part of the news that we have to give the relationship of social class to prejudiced as well as to friendship choice which was marked in commuter town and also failed to appear consistently in the other two communities. This is why the community specific findings that our study highlights now say a little something about it to later on or off slide now please lights. Opportunity for a friendly contact between groups reflected on ambiguously and the ethnic balance of the students. Eighth grade school as a component of our school

index clearly influences the development of friendships and unprejudiced attitudes and its own right. And this one is a factor. Fortunately that is acceptable. Excess of all deliberate modification as school systems begin to attack the fact of the segregation. I like to have the second slide now. The influence of this opportunity coming from the ethnic balance of the school is shown in the second slide and I think accounts for part but not all of the difference between Catholic and Protestant students in friendships with Jews that you can see there. Catholic students who entered the public high school from parochial school were of course barred from school contacts with Jews during their parochial years. Their friendships with Jewish students if they were to develop at all began after they entered the public

high school where we encountered them. This account of the difference they show from Catholics who attended public school seems the most plausible one though the specific influences a parochial school teaching or differences in family background of course cannot be excluded as factors. Lights please. Even though the subjects of our study were adolescents the role of their parents should not be totally ignored. The students reported substantial pressures from their parents against Jewish gentile friendships. These pressures as the students report them increase from the eighth to the twelfth grades are stronger for girls and increased most among the students who are dating these being quite reasonable findings but they come through quite strikingly in the data for Gentile. Our data suggest that parental pressures may actually restrict the friendships of our Jewish students in the schools. For Gentile students the picture seems rather inconclusive. Parental pressure is maybe

effective in ocean bill but there is some indication they made that they may even be backfiring in commuter town where the whole life of the school had such prominent representation of the Jewish students. So far than friendship. Now let's turn to the underlying attitudes and beliefs we use to print principle measures of prejudiced attitudes. One was an index of social distance. That is a willingness to accept minority persons in social relationships of varying intimacy. The other was an index of agreement or disagreement with unbearable beliefs or stereotypes with half the students. We inquired about their attitudes toward minority adults with the other half we asked about their attitudes toward minority teenagers thinking that perhaps this would be a rather different picture as indeed it was. But let us sample some of the concrete data. Whether one views them with

complaisance or with alarm is of course a matter of choice. Survey findings are always open to ask for me. I'm inclined to view even moderate levels of prejudice with a good deal of dismay. A measure of social distance presented the students in our samples with four imaginary people in turn either adults or fellow teenagers of the same sex as themselves. Two Jews and two negroes and we going to catered on a questionnaire the relative social status of these four hypothetical people by information about their educational level and job for the adults. Or by information about their school program. Academic or vocational and their average grades high or low for the teenagers I bought each of the used stimulus persons as we call them these hypothetical Jews and negroes presented for

reaction. The student was asked ten items representing different degrees of intimacy that they might be willing to accept in relation to each of these four people. Results for Representative item include in the more intimate half of the scale. Willingness to have is a close personal friend are shown in the next slide we have that please. About three quarters of the students say they would be willing to have a high status jus as a close personal friend perhaps a high figure. But remember that one quarter said they would not. Note also that while a third to a half of the students say that they would similarly example high status negro we've already seen that very few students actually named any new grow among their five best friends.

Now lights and lights are the measure of prejudice beliefs was based on the student's degree of agreement or disagreement with 20 items suggested by previous research out of Semitic and anti negro prejudice. The next slide and the last that I'll be showing you shows comparative results for seven representative items including one favorable item concerning intelligence. We have adjusted our net here to catch even the mild prejudice of agreeing a little to each item. See the way this is presented they could agree strongly agree moderately agree a little disagree a little disagree moderately disagree strongly and this catches all those who agreed at least a little to each item the crosshatch bars show responses to items concerning negroes.

The open bars show responses to items concerning Jews. I don't know that you can read the figures. I am less concerned if you do however than to get the general drift of the kind of responses that we were getting in our major analyses in our study or based on summary of schools scores based on all 10 social distance items and all 20 belief items. The salient facts for our present purposes are these and I'm going to march right now through some quite major conclusions from our study. First children come into the eighth grade already furnished with prejudices. They don't change greatly unprejudiced for better or for worse. Over the high school years. Think that's a fact that is important and we should hold onto it. Secondly over the grades there is a trend toward some decrease in expressed social distance toward Jews. The

trend by the way runs in the opposite direction for the trans and actuated group friendships. In regard to Negroes what changes appear on the direction of increased social distance decreased willingness in other words to accept intimacy community differences between these three communities appear in regard to social distancing regard to negroes with the greatest social distance being found in Central City the least in commuter town. But there are no such community differences in social distance. There are Jews going at the lights on by now. Third in relation to acceptance of unfavorable Leif's about Jews. The two communities that had some Jews in appreciable numbers show an increase in stereotyping from grade 8 to grade 12. In general. The larger the proportion of Jews in the community the more the stereotyping by the non-Jewish whites among the students.

Fourth. Our data taken as a whole certainly indicate that prejudice is not all over piece. While in all communities and samples there are positive relationships between the various indices of prejudice and between prejudice toward Jews and toward negroes. These relationships are really very modest. Prejudiced toward minority teenagers. We found appears to be somewhat less Bramley structured somewhat less tightly organized than prejudiced toward the adult members of minority groups. Most likely because it depends rather more upon the student's own varied experience with the objects of prejudice rather less upon the transmission of prejudiced culture. As for the content of prejudice we found that the content the structure of anti-Semitism in the most closely resembles the structure of anti negro attitudes in that one community central city

where there virtually weren't any Jews. Whereas the structure of anti-Semitism is most different from the structure of an eager prejudice in commuter town where there is the maximum representation of Jewish students and adults in the absence of Jews that is Agis toward Jews. They reflect some kind of generalized ethnic prejudice. This is especially true for the attitudes toward minority adults. First point as we would expect. Prejudiced toward Negroes is very substantially stronger than prejudice toward Jews. All measures and all three communities all grade levels. Sixth in the two school systems that have appreciable numbers of Jewish Students Jews are much less prejudiced than white can't house toward negroes and slightly less prejudiced toward White Gentiles than the latter are toward Jews. The problem of prejudice is not

located among the Jewish students in our samples. We found little indication on some of the so-called Jewish self-hatred that has been written about seven. Our data produced no evidence for specifically negro out of Samut ism among the young people of these three communities. On the whole the Negro students were of I think somewhat less out I Semitic in their beliefs and feelings than the non-Jewish white students in the same schools. There are slightly greater social distance toward Jews into the communities and seems an evitable reaction to the social realities that in fact of course we do exclude them from real friendship with virtually all white students. So to sum up this part of the analysis I would say flatly that prejudice is a white Gentile problem period. We were interested in identifying. Factors related to prejudice that might give leverage for remedial action in the school. One such appeared

dramatically in the results of a re study by Dr. David Stein of the commuter town eighth graders when they reached the ninth grade the following year in a very complex research design the start that range of a Ph.D. and he got a nice one from it. He got the ninth graders to indicate their feelings and preferred social distance toward several fictitious students. And the device he used was to give to each student in the new study what was purported to be a copy of a part of the questionnaire that the these four fictitious students had filled out in a study of the previous year. Background information about the race and the social status of the fictitious students was varied in a systematic way. As also was this the fictitious student's supposed responses to a whole set of questions asking about basic personal values. And the way in which this information about the four fictitious students was fed back presented a fictitious response pattern either very much like the

students own as we had discovered the previous year or else very much contrasting with his own. Each student got a separate packet of materials and the material was designed in terms of his own responses to our questionnaire. The year before. Now with this kind of an artificial and in some ways life like set up White Gentiles Jews and negroes alike among our students in commuter town showed that similarity or dissimilarity of personal values is a far more important determinant of liking and of social distance than is social status or race or religious affiliation. Here we're very much in line with the theories of Vester Milton Roky each for those who go to the milieu with them. But there's a catch. That depends upon there being information provided about the values and beliefs as

well as the race and status of the minority student. When information is not available about similarity of beliefs and values and in real life this information remains hidden except in intimate relationships. The student's preferences by default are much more strongly influenced by the race and religion of the stimulus groups. And to a far and to a lesser extent by a statist. Moreover. When majority of students. White Protestants Catholics are asked to give their feelings about an otherwise unspecified negro teenager. Embedded in a long list of other kinds of people that are main study was inquiring about. Students react to this unspecified teenager in much the same way they do to the particular negro teenager in Stein's study who is presented as having lower status and values unlike the students own. In other words when no information is given about

similarity of values if you're dealing with people's reactions to a negro teenager otherwise unspecified the assumption is by and large that he is different from yourself and he is of lower class background. Prejudice here reveals itself in the assumption of the similarity. Clearly there are implications here for the kind of educational experience that might penetrate and dislodge prejudiced attitudes. If young people can get to know one another well enough to discover essential similarities where they had previously assumed differences. Prejudice can crumble but they must encounter one another for that to happen across racial encounters at this level of intimacy were rare events indeed in our three school systems. So far we've been talking about parents of friendship and prejudice. We've said very little about the schools and the teachers. We've almost created the schools as catchment areas mirrored your geographical locations where you can catch 8th 10th and 12th graders when you're looking for. So far as deliberate teaching our

programming for any group education is concerned. This figure of speech really is not far missed. Not much was going on. Or do to be sure contain some hints of things that were going on among the students themselves that affected their attitudes toward other groups in commuter town for example where school life is dominated by a mainly Jewish leading crowd. The distinctive relationship that appears between social class and prejudice and that community but back in the others appears to be related to some polarization both class and religious lines of the end for most didn't leadership. Why must some white Catholic students who belong to the in group. Where are they who belong to the in-group of the Jewish dominated system tend to set their followers apparent very favorable attitudes toward Jews. But there is a second floor class leading crowd of outsiders. The white John Hopper dissidents of which tend to be considerably more out of Semitic than their followers and maybe setting a

pattern there that creates this last link to relationship to prejudiced. But one of the teachers in each of the schools we asked teachers of the classes that were included in the study to fill out a questionnaire focused mainly on their own experiences with intergroup incidents and on their their educational approaches to promote better intergroup relations. Not all the teachers cooperated but most did. Presumably including the ones who were most constructively involved in the topic. A majority of them indicated that matters concerning minority groups or intergroup relations should be discussed in a matter of fact way when they come up in or out of class. The striking finding however is the microscopic extent to which they said that they had actually discussed these matters. Only a third claimed to have ever discussed Negro history and culture and class only a fourth of any issue of Negro white relations for the corresponding Jewish topics the

portions were about a fourth attempt. Very few claim to discuss that a group topics with individual students outside of class and we may be sure that these very rough figures are substantially inflated. Now I wouldn't claim that talk by teachers and classroom discussions are the only way is or the best way is that schools can contribute to the education of their students for democratic living in a pluralistic society. Probably there are not decisions in regard to classroom an activity grouping for example are surely more important but the picture we gain from the teacher questionnaires is one of passive A-T and unconcern. The results are depressing to inspect and my colleague and I keep forgetting that they exist. As I close let me reach back to remind us of a few of the key points that I have tried to share with you. First the complete barrier that he's ludes real friendship between black students and white. You know all three of our school systems is shocking and cannot be accepted for the

future and the next. The big problem for the schools. Most schools is not I semitism but I need grow attitudes and behavior. Next the fact that cross group friendships are most likely to develop in high school on the part of students who spent the eighth grade an ethically well-balanced schools is important. Desegregation is a minimal condition for the development of good at a group relations and attitudes. Next it's also important that some similarity of beliefs and values overrides considerations of race and religion. When students know one another well enough to become aware of the similarities that exist but unless schools take steps to encourage communication and human encounter students will go their blithe way ignoring members of other groups on the assumption that they are different. After that our story is one of the schools missed opportunities while what does not happen educationally to these teenagers

not of what happened the change in prejudice was minor but nobody was trying very much to do anything about it. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Smith. It's a very sensitive. Reporting of a problem Voc. study. I can tell by. The way several of you are communicating. That it indeed raises questions with them right after our next speaker I would like to to take your concerns. One of the issues that this study has floated up that we should discuss. What we will be asking will be not. An attack on the research design that that kind of thing but rather. What issues should we discuss as. As a group are using this particular study as our springboard at this

time I would like to have. Our next speaker presented a viewpoint as a way of expanding our concerns yet again. Dr. Charles Silverman. Is a well known. As an economist but known to us most dramatically probably as the author of Crisis in Black and White one of the signal books it came out in 64 in the midst of the civil rights revolution. Dr. Silberman is an instructor of economics. Has taught at Columbia University. And. We also know of his work as associate editor of Fortune magazine. At this time he is there with the Carnegie study for the education of educators. Dr.

Silberman will give us a viewpoint. Thank you. The builder. A little disappointed. That. The airline's rooms were changed a bit from this morning. Everybody had to book on one of those microphones because. They had an opening drug prepared. I'll tell it to you anyway. It was just to express my regret that my children. Weren't here to see that I could be turned on all sides. Of. Take me a minute or two to get started it's a bit overwhelming to stand here in the pit. Particularly

worrying about whether that turntable stage is going to start revolving behind my back. I understand I think a little better than I did before why the student Power movement began at Berkeley. You know John L. Lewis who was a great showman always used to stage his press conferences very carefully. He sat on a little platform raised above the reporters and behind a massive desk and a great big chair. Because. Psychologically if the person who is listening is down below has to look up to the one speaking the listener is that something out of a disadvantage. I see that at Berkeley it's the other way around. The students in the audience have the advantage of.

The topic which Chancellor Hines Dr Gloc assigned to me is the schools and the fight against prejudice. After having read and heard Professor Smith's brilliant paper a rare combination of wit and scholarship I assume that you are tempted to ask what fight against prejudice. My starting point is Professor Smith's concluding point that. Change and Prejudice was a minor as he put it but that nobody was trying very much to do anything about it. My task is to talk about what ought to be done. I quote from my instructions from Professor Glock to give primary attention to ways in which the schools might contribute more effectively to the reduction of prejudice ways in which they might combat

prejudice through innovations and classroom organization composition and curriculum or ways in which they might more generally use their leverage to produce a more humane society. And in just 40 minutes. To avoid a letdown later on let me let you down now at the beginning. I do not have any easy answers. I do. I think I have some difficult questions. A fundamental question it seems to me is whether the schools can make the pursuit of justice and the reduction of prejudice. Major goals. If the society as a whole does not. Our instinctive answer I think is why yes of course in the United States reformers have always in the public schools as a principal instrument. Frequently the principal instrument of social reform as a critical means of producing a more

humane society. To an extent characteristic of no other institution save that of the state itself. John Dewey wrote The school has the power to modify the social order. But this view of the school as a reviewer for changing the society runs counter to another equally powerful and pervasive you're with its function. And that is to transmit the society's existing values in Deweys own words again wrote The school is fundamentally an institution erected by society to do a certain specific work directs or size a certain specific function in maintaining the life and advancing the welfare of society. Does the school on the one hand isn't visited as a critical instrument for producing change. But on the other hand is viewed as a principal instrument in preserving and passing on the status quo. This defines a fairly narrow sphere for action

and certainly one cannot discuss the role of the school in contributing to the reduction of prejudice without recognizing its inherently schizo from it position and help us to change. But help is to remain the same is the inconsistent charge presented to the public schools to talk about ways in which the schools might generally use their leverage to produce a more humane society therefore we have to ask how much leverage do the schools really possess. That is to say how much freedom of maneuver how much independence do they have to change a society whose values they are also bound to transmit. The answer I suspect is that they have a good deal less leverage than most of us outside the schools generally think they have. But a good deal more than they are currently using. A good deal more than most teachers and administrators generally think they have. Teachers and administrators

sense of impotence is understandable. People are usually more aware of the limitations on their power than they are of the power itself. This is why executives of large corporations are generally so puzzled by radical attacks on their power. The executive sees him self as hemmed in on all sides by the power of employees customers stockholders competitors and so on. But more important I think. As David Rees Mihm has argued the basic vulnerability of the teacher is not to the pressures from the parents and other veto groups in the community. Damaging as these can be to his feelings of security and with the maneuver. But rather to the need to be liked by the children. They need to have evident and immediate response. The weakness of the teachers and the administrators that is to say is as much self-imposed

as it is imposed from outside. At the same time we need to recognize I think that we may be asking the schools to do more than they are presently capable of doing. Not let me emphasize lest my meaning be misconstrued. Not more than they should be capable of doing just more than they are capable of doing. The schools are not the balance wheel of the social machinery that Horace Mann and visit. They never have been. We have greatly exaggerated and romanticized the role the schools have played in the past a century or so in promoting equality and justice in point of fact. The schools have always been essentially middle class institutions. They never have done much of the job of educating children from the lower class. And have not done much of a job of promoting a wider

democracy. My own study is my friend and colleague Lawrence Kremen writes. And I quote have led me to the hypothesis that the Commons school in its classic form was essentially a northern and western phenomenon and that it reached its up with the ISS in rural and small town America west of the Alleghenies. It thrived best where there was already a reasonable homogeneity of race class and religion and where communities were not so large as to permit the development of substantially dissimilar got us wherever social or physical distance did become great from and continues as in the south or in the large cities. The public schools tended to be less common. End of quote. It is not only the commonness of the public school that we have exaggerated. Moreover we have also exaggerated and romanticize the role the schools have played in stimulating social mobility and economic

mobility for immigrant groups. For a few groups the Japanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans the Greeks the Eastern European Jews the schools have been the critical means of mobility. Which is a way of saying that they have been the critical means of enlarging the Democratic base of our society. But these groups were the exceptions not the norm because they were groups whose cultures were in many ways compatible with the essentially small town Protestant Ethic culture of the school with its emphasis on achievement. The further gratification individual ism and so on the larger immigrant groups the Irish the Italians the Polish generally made it through politics or business or crime or a combination of the three. They did not begin not to see education and certainly did not begin

to use it as a means of mobility until after they had achieved middle class status. The failure continues. Sixty years ago so do we and the other giants of the Progressive Era urged the schools to take over the educating and the culture writing functions that had always been performed by family and church not out of educational imperialism but because he saw with considerable pressure that urbanization and industrialization would greatly weaken and certainly over the role of these traditional educated institutions. But the school simply has not been able to fill that vacuum successfully. We now have a documentation in the Coleman Report the Plowden report in England and a number of other studies that the family the community and in particular the adolescent peer group can exert influences as great

as or greater than the influence of the school. Certainly the schools have not yet learned how to deal successfully with youngsters from cultures alien to or simply different from the culture of the school itself. To put it bluntly and simply we simply do not know how to educate youngsters from the lower class. And you will forgive my using that perhaps and that is term but it is perhaps the most. Descriptive single term that we have we tend to follow one of two patterns the pattern of the school is in effect to ignore or in effect to destroy the different culture. To assume that the child must totally adjust himself to the culture of the school.

This solution is highly and satisfactory. A new solution being proposed in part by some negro separatists in part by a number of intellectual radicals who espouse a new kind of intellectual anti-intellectual ism. Suggests really that all of the adjustment be on the part of the school that the school accept the culture of the child as given and simply enable the youngster to develop those own cultural traits. This I regard as. I kind of thought Oh if unconscious racism because it what it serves to do is to condemn negro youngsters to Rican youngsters Mexican-American youngsters to

remain perpetually outside the mainstream of the society. At this point near the end of Dr. Simmons talk audio signal failed for the final time. This time the material was irretrievable. Once again our apologies. We return to the symposium as Dr. Silberman stalk is being applauded. With no further sound problems during the final hour.