tion, the loan to be repaid by a surcharge on his income tax for the rest of his life. This scheme is particularly valuable perhaps for college and beyond, as in this case education is very clearly an investment to the individual whose income does not happen to be increased by his why an appropriate financial system should not be devised to take care of what is essentially a private investment. We cannot, of course, use the chattel mortgage system, as this would put too great a burden on the individual whose income does not happen to be increased by his education. If an individual's income is increased by his education, how. ever, there seems to be no reason why he should not use part of this increase to pay for the education itself. In a rough way, of course, this is what already happens insofar as the progressive income tax is used to finance education.

Actually, however, at present the finance of education comes far too much out of regressive local taxes, especially property taxes, so that all too often it is the poor who are really subsidizing the education of the rich and the middle classes. The Killingsworth proposals are not so appropriate at the high school level or below, mainly because we have the ideal at any rate of educating everybody up to this level, in which case education is no longer a privilege which provides a higher income, but a kind of standard base which is, as it were, a ticket of admission to the system in general. For some time to come, however, higher education is likely to be an investment for the individual, and under these circumstances something like the Killingsworth proposal seems to me sensible and may be almost the only way of averting a major economic crisis in colleges and universities in the next generation.

In any consideration of the economics of the schooling industry it must never be forgotten that it always is embedded in the larger educational enterprise, much of which is conducted in the family. One of the most striking of all educational statistics is the relationship between the number of years schooling which is obtained by any individual, and the number of his siblings on the one hand, and the educational level of his parents on the other. The larger the family, the poorer the educational achievements of its members, and the poorer the educational achievement of the parents, the poorer the educational achievement of the children. This effect is probably more significant in determining the distribution of education and even its total quantity than all the reforms we might make in the schooling industry. These relationships relate to the demand for education perhaps rather than to its supply or to its productivity, but they do suggest that the self-perpetuating character of poverty subcultures and large family subeultures may be the greatest source of what might be called "educational wastage," that is, unused capacities for knowledge and skill. We cer tainly cannot rest content with the present situation in seeking for a solution of the very difficult problems which lie ahead however; we must look at the educational industry or even the knowledge industry as a whole, as well as that part of it which is comprised by schooling. Otherwise, we may find ourselves trying to provide a supply for which

See Beverly Duncan, "Trends in Output and Distribution of Schooling.” Indicators e Social Change, edited by Eleanor B. Sheldon and Wilbur D. Moore, Russell Sage Founda tion, 1968, especially pages 645-653.

there is quite inadequate demand and we may find ourselves destroying the subcultures within our society which actually keep the schooling industry alive and prospering.

It now looks as if we are at the beginning of a great outburst of research in educational matters, something which is long overdue. Oureducational statistics, and the whole information system in this regard, is woefully inadequate, as we all know. The theoretical basis in human learning, as I have suggested, is even more inadequate. Nevertheless, it does seem to be an area where a substantial intellectual effort would have very substantial results and I would put it myself as virtually the highest priority of our society in the next generation.

NOTES ON EDUCATIONAL REFORM *

By DAVID RIESMAN

Keeping in touch with efforts at educational reform in American. universities has become increasingly difficult. Several years ago only a few pacesetter institutions were experimenting with interdisciplinary courses, field study programs, student-initiated courses, and independ ent study in their undergraduate programs. But today these innovations have spread throughout academia in response to changed faculty attitudes and the newer youth subcultures. Exceptional places like St. John's Colleges at Annapolis and Santa Fe fight a continuing engagement in defense of traditional curricula resting on a program of Great Books which must be accepted in their entirety. Elsewhere, however, students as well as faculty, who have been in constant communication with each other, have helped to spread experiments begun in one locale all over the academic map-generally with the consequence of minimizing the traditional curricular requirements or eliminating them altogether.

Understandably, educational reform also reflects the attack on science as stultifying, "irrelevant," or dangerous to mankind. It reflects the aim of doing something about white racism or ghetto poverty, perhaps by giving a high priority to black studies or urban studies on a campus. Furthermore, student and faculty proponents of participatory educational democracy, who bring to voluntary associations both on and off the campus the principle of "one man, one vote," contend that participation per se is a more important reform than any substantive changes in styles of teaching and learning. The consequence has been drastically to reduce the legitimacy of authority, whether this be the authority of scholars and professionals, of curricular programs. or of the core traditions of learning. In the place of the older authority there has arisen what Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom and Man for Himself described as anonymous authority: in this case the authority of whatever is described as relevant, participative, guilt-reducing-in short, whatever extra-curricular preoccupations students and faculty now press upon their institutions.

Though I do not agree with Erich Fromm in some of his specific judgments on education, in particular his reflections on Summerhill School in England, I believe that the implications of his general philos

* Revision of my contribution to a festschrift in honor of Erich Fromm: In the Name of Life edited by Dr. Bernard Landis and Dr. Edward Tauber (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971). I am indebted for helpful suggestions to Edwin Harwood, Harold Hodgkinson, Michael Maccoby, Robert Gorham Davis, Robert Bellah, and Judith Hemming. My re search on higher education is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

1 Both the sheer magnitude of change and the degree to which it may promote homogeneity are suggested by Harold L. Hodgkinson, Institutions in Transition: A Study of Change in Higher Education, a publication of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1970 for discussion of change in some pioneering liberal arts colleges, see Morris Keeton and Canrad Hillberry, Struggle and Promise: A Future for Colleges (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1969).

ophy of education are important. Indeed, my own thinking about education and my work over many years as an educational reformer have benefited from his work and personal example from the time of our first meeting in 1939. His distinction between rational and irrational authority, analogous to the one he draws between rational and irrational affects or emotions, has been useful to me in understanding current conflicts over authority in higher education. When he first drew the latter distinction-he argued that hate as well as love could be rationally based-most academic intellectuals tended to regard rationality as completely affect-free, therefore, as generally good and trustworthy and somehow not simply a screen for passion. Now as we move unevenly into an era which regards irrationality as life-giving and rationality as merely a hang-up (to put it in an extreme way), the distinction has taken on a new meaning: that irrational anger has as much legitimacy as rational hate.3 Fromm's thought is syncretic, not only with respect to this ancient dualism of thought and feeling, but also with respect to the differences among the great world religions and such civic (or nonreligious) religions as patriotism, socialism, or humanism. It is characteristic of him to insist that the past should not be junked (an impossible attempt in any event), while one is making every effort to move toward a more hopeful future; thus he has recently written: "For many of the young generation who belittle the value of traditional thought, I should like to stress my conviction that even the most radical development must have its continuity with the past; that we cannot progress by throwing away the best achievements of the human mind—and that to be young is not enough!" +

Beyond this, he has led me to a greater appreciation of the importance of moral qualities in the scholar and teacher. Just as he asks scientific investigators to be open to impressions and hunches, as well as careful observations, so too he argues for openness that lessens defensiveness and the need to impress others both in teaching and in psychoanalysis. Contrary to the ideology of many Americans, especially males, he stresses the importance of vulnerability as one of the qualities of humaneness. While I know that in dealing with sullen or actively hostile students my own resiliency leaves much to be desired and my good humor often deserts me, Fromm's model of unsentimental openness is something I try to attain. I believe that this attitude does not imply seeking a false humility with students on the ground that the teacher possesses no special expertness or experience, but rather a willingness to admit error, confusion, and self-doubt-although in all such ventures there is the danger of a kind of moral one-upmanship disguised as fallibility. In Fromm's view, creative intellectual work

2 Many social critics, when they encounter what they regard as excesses of reason, are tempted to turn against reason itself and to defend irrationality as somehow more deeply human. Fromm's distinction preserves reason as essentially human, undercutting the despair that leads to praising irrationality per se. Cf. the candid, troubled discussion in George P. Elliott. "Revolution Instead-Notes on Passions and Politics," an essay principally concerning education. The Public Interest, 20 (1970), 65-89, especially pp. 85ff. 3 These distinctions are not simple ones. Fromm considers rational those affects which are conducive to the optimal functioning of human beings, to the growth and unfolding of life irrational affects are those which diminish or weaken the capacity for the art of life. Love might then be rational if not based on masochism or possessiveness. Hatred would generally be irrational, markedly so when it is of an idling kind, as in an idling motor, waiting for targets of opportunity-but arguably rational when reactive to a specific threat to life. Whether an affect is rational or not says nothing about is comprehensibility through reason: both alike can be in principle understood.

See Erich Fromm. The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). Foreward, p. xxvii. See ibid., p. 85 and elsewhere.

demands moral qualities such as courage and faith; intelligence unanchored in the effective life is in my own view as limited as the extreme of those proud proclamations of subjectivity that one hears today from some social scientists who boast of their commitment.

CURRENT THEMES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM

During the academic year 1968-1969, while on leave from Harvard, I discussed educational reform with students and faculty at various places of widely differing styles: Stanford University (then engaged in a large self-study); the University of California at Davis and at San Diego; the University of North Carolina (where the first two undergraduate years were being examined by a student-faculty committee); the new College of the State University of New York at Old Westbury which had just opened that year; Oakland University in Michigan; and, briefly, Pitzer College in the Claremont group of colleges. In addition, I perused the student press at a number of colleges and followed the discussions of reform in the educational journals. I have already indicated the similarity of concerns that one meets from coast to coast. Everywhere one encounters the desire for a more egalitarian university. Meritocratic distinctions are under attack and so is the apparatus of grades, course prerequisites, and selective admissions. One often finds encounter groups or sensitivity training sessions praised as the optimal situations for learning, on the ground that if faculty authority and expertness can be reduced, true mutuality will result. Some encounter groups do succeed in opening people to themselves and to others, at times intrusively and at other times creatively when done with care and tact; more often, however, they are likely to be what a friend terms counter- or anti-groups.

There is a parallel effort to get students and faculty out into field situations, such as community organizing.6, 7

The rural and small-town poor tend to be neglected in comparison with inner-city ghettos and other pockets of poverty. This reflects a search for what is regarded as authentic experience and an effort to overcome the specifically American forms that the guilt of the privileged tends to take. These moral, often polemical convictions and searchings lead students to ignore suggestions that they involve themselves, for instance, in the life of a suburban church, a business corporation, or a small non-exotic town.

In any event, the trend is away from what is regarded as alienated learning and toward first-hand experience. An amateur spirit prevails, which has its benign sides but also certain dangers. The frequently

Of course, I am not implying that learning could not occur in field settings: I do my best to encourage my own students to do manageable pieces of empirical work, for instance some enterprise of participant-observation or a small-scale interview study. How ever, many newly developed programs that boast of putting students out into the field do not provide the kind of preparation that a good anthropology department would. Moreover, as implied in the text, students may not be willing to dress or behave in the manner required by the field setting, justifying the refusal in terms of their own need for authenticity. Even in the best case, the educational consequences of a field work project, like those of classroom work, cannot easily be predicted; and feedback is often lacking as to what actually occurred as against what was planned. (For a further note on encounter groups see footnote 20.)

The term "community" comes up constantly in these discussions: there is the academie community, the black community, the student community, the Third World community, etc. The term carries none of the tentativeness with which Erich Fromm speaks of the formation of Groups in the last chapter of The Revolution of Hope (pp. 158-162). There is instead in these discussions a naiveté in assuming that people who share contiguous turt will have something in common, and that they already form a community rather than a series of competing barrios or fractionated sects.