There is evidence that students today, perhaps sensing the alternative narrative of cooperative excellence, are looking for something different than the elite-making system. Their aspirations could fire a movement for democratizing reform.

There is evidence that students today, perhaps sensing the alternative narrative of cooperative excellence, are looking for something different than the elite-making system. Their aspirations could fire a movement for democratizing reform.

In the forthcoming collection, Democracy's Education: Public Work, Citizenship, and the Future of Colleges and Universities (Vanderbilt University Press) soon available for advance order on Amazon.com and other sites, David Mathews, president of the Kettering Foundation, uses the evocative phrase "the struggle for the soul of higher education" to describe democratic trends in higher education contending with goals like cost cutting, preparation for today's jobs, and on-line education. The book collection also shows how the future of higher education is linked to the fate of the nation.

One way to look at the linkage is through examining the role which higher education plays in increasing inequality.

In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty demonstrates rapidly rising inequality, especially in the United States. He shows that "this spectacular increase in inequality largely reflects an unprecedented explosion of very elevated incomes... a veritable separation of the top managers of large firms from the rest of the population."

Piketty argues that it "may be possible to explain [this separation] in terms of the history of social and fiscal norms." This argument was made at length by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, writing in his essay, "For Richer," more than a decade ago in the Times magazine. Krugman contrasted current norms with the democratic norms of the 1930s. "Much more than economists and free-market advocates like to imagine, wages -- particularly at the top -- are determined by social norms," Krugman said. "What happened during the 1930s and 1940s was that new norms of equality were established, largely through the political process. What happened in the 1980s and 1990s was that these norms unraveled, replaced by an ethos of 'anything goes.' And a result was an explosion of income at the top of the scale."

Neither Piketty nor Krugman draws connections between education and norms which legitimize exploding executive salaries but they are not hard to find. Higher education today embodies individualistic, hypercompetitive achievement norms which contribute to inequality in a number of ways. And it has enormous, if often unacknowledged, power shaping career plans of its students, disseminating conceptual frameworks throughout society, and helping to authorize "what counts" in the intellectual life of the nation.

As I noted in my recent blog on "We Need to Change the Narrative," a research report by Nicole Stephens and others, Unseen Disadvantage, shows that individualistic achievement norms common in American colleges and universities generate greater inequality among undergraduates. "Doing your own thing," "paving your own path," and "realizing your individual potential" are familiar values to middle and upper class students.

But such norms are experienced differently by students from poor and working class families. These students' "expectations for college center around interdependent motives such as working together, connecting to others, and giving back," Stephens reports. As first-generation college students from poor and working class backgrounds are exposed to the message of individual success and independence, a strong social class performance gap emerges.

The story of individual achievement as the goal of education is also communicated to the larger society through college recruitment. For years colleges and universities have highlighted higher education as mainly a ticket to individual advance. Today they sometimes advertise simply "return on investment," how much money students will make if they attend. John Dedrick of the Kettering Foundation, who has worked with hundreds of colleges and universities, observes that even Jesuit schools are putting "Return on Investment" calculators on their websites.

This story of education's aim as almost entirely individual success was once contested by a powerful counter-narrative which found expression in land grant colleges, state colleges and universities, religious schools, historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges, community colleges and others. The democratic narrative also had many community expressions, from settlement houses to the citizenship schools of the civil rights movement.

This narrative, rooted in a diverse ecology of sites, was the democratic genius of American education. It is based on "cooperative excellence," not "meritocratic excellence." Cooperative excellence is the principle that a mix of people from highly varied backgrounds can achieve remarkable intellectual, social, political, and spiritual growth if they have encouragement, resources, challenges, and calls to public purpose.

The narrative once impacted colleges of all kinds. In 1908 Harvard president Charles Eliot argued, "At bottom, most of the American institutions of higher education are filled with the democratic spirit. Teachers and students alike are profoundly moved by the desire to serve the democratic community."

In today's world, the individualist, hyper-achievement narrative has been gaining ground, while the democratic narrative has been submerged. The movie Admission, directed by Paul Weitz, starring Tina Fey as Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton, shows the relentlessly competitive pressures which shape education today. When Nathan says to high school students, "I know your question is how to get into Princeton," the audience sees panic on their faces.

Yet the movie also has a counter-narrative, an alternative high school which is a working farm. Its students vigorously challenge the idea that going to Princeton should be the ultimate goal. The message of Admission can also be contrasted with The Great Debaters, a recent movie set in 1936, based on a true story. Directed by and starring Denzel Washington who plays the community organizer and English professor, Melvin Tolson, The Great Debaters tells the tale of Wiley, a small black college in East Texas, and its debate team. The team ends up beating Harvard in the national championship on national radio in a debate about the very meaning of America.

Amnesia about democratic narratives is a global pattern. In South Africa, Xolela Mangcu, a leading Black Consciousness intellectual at the University of Cape Town and another contributor to Democracy's Education observes that profound and rich democratic histories of intellectuals and educators, most if not all of them black, have been largely eclipsed in the official government version of the aims of schooling at every level -- individual success and job preparation.

If enormous forces erode the democratic story of higher education around the world, less visibly there are also signs of its revival. The contributors to Democracy's Education bring these to life. In the process they show how educators can shape their own story, not let it be defined by others with more narrow aims. They suggest how the revival of the democratic narrative of education holds profound implications for our future.

Indeed, it is a story crucial for addressing today's public challenges, whether rising inequality or anything else.

--

Harry Boyte, director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College and a Senior Fellow at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs, is editor of Democracy's Education.

Higher education today embodies individualistic, hypercompetitive achievement norms which contribute to inequality in a number of ways. And it has enormous, if often unacknowledged, power shaping career plans of its students and helping to authorize "what counts" in the intellectual life of the nation.

Higher education today embodies individualistic, hypercompetitive achievement norms which contribute to inequality in a number of ways. And it has enormous, if often unacknowledged, power shaping career plans of its students and helping to authorize "what counts" in the intellectual life of the nation.

To take on the empowerment gap we need to change the narrative of education
Harry C. Boyte

You know the drill. In the United States, political campaigns of every stripe put forward a plan, devised by experts, for what to do about poverty. Debates about these plans seem to be increasing in intensity as the elections of 2014 and 2016 approach.

After all these years and all those plans, the number of Americans at or near poverty is higher than in 1964, according to Paul Thiessen, writing in the Washington Post.

In 2011, forty three million Americans, 14 percent of the population, lived below the poverty level of $11,500. For Native Americans, the poverty figures were 27 percent, for African Americans, 26 percent, and for Latinos/Hispanics, 23 percent. And behind these grim figures are too many lives haunted by misery and powerlessness.

As Gary Cunningham and his co-authors observe in "The Urgency of Now" in Foundation Review, there are close links between poverty and race. A recent Gallup survey found that 76 percent of Americans worry a great deal or a fair amount about those who do not have enough to eat or a place to sleep - more than worry about the size of the federal government, the possibility of a terrorist attack, or illegal immigration.

But the problem is misdiagnosed. The issue is not, as conventional wisdom would have it, the achievement gap. The achievement gap assumes the point is upward mobility -- how to give poor people, especially racial minorities, resources and remediation so that they can make it in a hypercompetitive, individualist, meritocratic educational system and society.

Poor people who resist this system experience an "empowerment gap" -- education is done to them. It's not something they do. They are labeled as failures.

What if the problem is the hyper-competitive, individualist education system itself, now largely a screening mechanism for personal advancement?

In Unequal Childhoods, anthropologist Annett Lareau explores "the cultural logic" of poor and working class families compared to K-12 schools and educators. Educators, whether in suburbs or inner cities, are trained in what Lareau calls a "dominant set of cultural repertoires about how children should be raised," including highly individualist, competitive and achievement-oriented norms. In contrast, for working-class and poor families, there is an emphasis on sustaining relationships with family and friends.

Similarly , recent research by Nicole Stephens and others sponsored by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, "Unseen Disadvantage," shows that individualist achievement norms generate inequality through effects on undergraduates. "Doing your own thing," "paving your own path," and "realizing your individual potential" are familiar to middle and upper class students. But such norms are experienced far differently by students from poor and working class families, whose "expectations for college center around interdependent motives such as working together, connecting to others, and giving back," Stephens reports.

As first-generation college, poor and working class students are exposed to the message of individual success and independence, a strong social class performance gap emerges. They feel forced to make a choice between who they are, their cultural identities, support networks and the communities they come from, and the demands of individual achievement and success

This story-line has been long in the making. "Forget your past, your customs, and your ideals. Run, work, do, and keep your own good in mind," counselled an advice manual to immigrants coming into the country in the late 19th century, quoted by Herbert Gutman in Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America.

It has been getting worse. The College Board, sponsor of the SAT tests, has launched an initiative to make sure gifted children go to Ivy League schools. The media fixates on "ranking wars," in which colleges ratings depend on the number of students they exclude. Colleges compete for "the best students." The message is "up and out." Success means leaving behind your poor, immigrant, or cultural community.

But there are deep resources for raising questions about today's dominant story. A different narrative found expression in land grant colleges, religious schools, community colleges, historically black colleges and universities and tribal colleges. The City College of New York, once seen as the nation's intellectual powerhouse, admitted all students from New York high schools -- and graduated 11 future Nobel Prize winners. The different narrative also found expression in community settings, from Chautauqua movements, religious education, and settlement houses to the citizenship schools of the civil rights movement.

This alternative narrative is the democratic genius of American education, based on "cooperative excellence," not "meritocratic excellence." Cooperative excellence is the principle that a mix of people from highly varied backgrounds can achieve remarkable intellectual, social, political, and spiritual growth if they have the right encouragements, resources, challenges, and calls to public purpose.

Today, there is growing evidence that middle and upper middle students and many others are looking for a different narrative.

The National Issues Forums and the American Commonwealth Partnership, launched at the White House in January, 2012, to revitalize the public narrative of higher education on the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act creating land grants, organized a dialogue, "Shaping Our Future," on the purposes of higher education in more than 100 communities. We found that most people have far richer views of education than do most policy makers and administrators.

Soundings of public opinion for a follow-up dialogue to be launched next January, "Higher Education and the Changing World of Work," also surface wide discontent with an overly narrow focus on "education for jobs" and making a lot of money as the highest goals of education.

In-depth research by David Hoffman of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, based on conversations with students who have been change agents, also shows that middle class students are highly skeptical about individualist achievement norms and conventional definitions of success. Students describe "an everyday world that often seems fundamentally synthetic, structured around falsehoods, hidden agendas, or scripts."

We may be ready to take on the empowerment gap. To do so we need to change the narrative of education in America.

Harry Boyte, director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg College, coordinated the American Commonwealth Partnership. This blog is adapted from The Empowerment Gap, a study for Northwest Area Foundation.

As first-generation college, poor and working class students are exposed to the message of individual success and independence, a strong social class performance gap emerges.

As first-generation college, poor and working class students are exposed to the message of individual success and independence, a strong social class performance gap emerges.