Source: Excerpt from Max A. Eckstein and Harold J. Noah,
Metropolitanism and Education: Teachers and Schools in
Amsterdam, London, Paris and New York.New York, N.Y.: The
Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Education, Teachers
College, Columbia University, 1973: 1-3 [Occasional Paper
No.1].
METROPOLITANISM AND EDUCATION
This study grows out of two closely associated concerns. First, the growth of large
cities and the problems that vex them are important to the interested parent or citizen,
as well as to educational policy makers and planners. Second, the increasing
typicality and commonality of the urban environment and the pervasiveness of the
influence of large population centers in and beyond their own countries, makes this
theme a natural subject for the use of comparative analytical methods. The first is a
more pragmatic consideration, while the second may be more academic and theoretical.
They are complementary, however, in that policy and practice both draw on and test
theory.
The metropolis is a special form of the urban environment, an exceptionally large
population concentration within a given country, whose influence is great nationally and
extends beyond its national boundaries. In commerce, communications, and politics its
importance is clearly recognized. As a center which attracts talent in varied field.,
its significance is evident. It is characterized by social and economic heterogeneity,
high levels of population mobility, and a disproportionate concentration of skilled
manpower and economic activities of particular types. Of particular importance to the
social, political, and economic influence which the metropolis radiates is the fact
that it is here that the centers of communication and distribution of ideas are located.
However, as an educational force, the role of the metropolis has been neglected. It
trains and produces people of all ages, through many kinds of formal and informal
agencies. The importance of this process lies in the fact that there are special, even
unique circumstances that characterize the metropolis, a pattern of social, economic,
and political conditions which signify a special quality of existence. Inevitably,
this must be bound up with education and with schooling. The twin rationales for this
study are: 1. that the educational implications of metropolitan conditions deserve
further study; and 2. that these educational implications transcend national boundaries.
The Metropolitan Phenomenon
Like schooling, the experience of living in a metropolitan setting is relatively new so
far as most of the population of the world is concerned. True, schools and cities have
existed for thousands of years. But in the twentieth century the two experiences, of
formal education and of urban living, have become common to the majority of people in
the developed world.
Industrialization and the growth of technology are marked by the growth of cities, the
increase in formal schooling for all, and more specialized, advanced education for
many. Through his growing technological knowledge, Man has been able both to ignore
and to meddle with his natural environment. His artifact, the city, was a function of
new inventions: social, political and economic. The metropolis is its latest
manifestation, rapidly becoming the human settlement of the twentieth century. As
their conditions of existence, needs and beliefs converge, the inhabitants of Amsterdam,
London, Paris, New York, and other urban agglomerations come to form a global community
transcending their national boundaries. No citizen in modern society can escape the
influence of the metropolitan economy, communicational system or culture, even though
he may not reside in the metropolis.
Whether physically or socially, the metropolitan environment is identifiable: an
intricate transportation network, high concentration of residential, industrial, and
cultural facilities. Flux is the theme of the metropolis: people are in constant
movement, from home to work, in and out of buildings, vehicles, shops and places of
entertainment. Streets are filled with people and objects in rapid motion, window
displays and billboards are renewed constantly, and the physical environment is always
undergoing change, demolition, rebuilding and refurbishing. People, too, are in
transit, not only in the strictly physical sense. They change residence, employment,
they sample new tastes and styles. Metropolitan areas generate their own peculiar
forms of human interaction and their own political and economic systems.
Within the metropolis divergences between the various subgroups are striking: inner
city and suburban residents, the urban poor and the propertied, salaried middle class
are separated spatially and politically as well as by economic status. As the
contrasts sharpen, polarization becomes a danger to the organic life of the metropolis
and a refutation of its promise of a better life for the many.
The contrast between rich and poor, favored and disadvantaged, has long been
characteristic of the city. In the modern metropolis, however, its sharpened form
represents not merely a simple numerical increase but a difference in scale so great as
to be qualitatively different. For it is accompanied by a host of other civic problems
deriving directly from the rapid rate and size of growth of the metropolis. The mere
presence of so many people overloads facilities for public transportation, housing,
health, recreation and schooling, creating grave problems of pollution and congestion,
to such an extent that the modern metropolis has been described as ungovernable.
As former patterns of behavior and life change radically, the accretion of such large
human settlements presents social and educational problems of the first magnitude.
Understanding of the new environment does not keep pace with the growth of either the
metropolises, or their attendant problems. The field of metropolitan studies is in its
infancy. In particular, how the phenomena of metropolitanism are related to the form
and function of education remains especially obscure.
Much of the specifically educational writing about the metropolis is pragmatic. It
emanates from concern with a current issue, such as racial integration, curriculum
improvement, and administration and control of schools. It is concerned with coping
with pressing emergencies. Prescriptions and normative descriptions prevail while an
analytical, comprehensive view of the metropolis and metropolitan education is largely
lacking.
Education in the Metropolis
If, as Plutarch said, the City is the teacher of man, then the modern metropolis can be
regarded as the total learning environment. The child who grows up in the metropolis
is educated in ways and content that are unique in human history and, certainly, not by
virtue of his formal school experience alone. The metropolitan phenomenon constitutes
a set of unprecedented conditions, generating a process of socialization that
distinguishes metropolitan Man from all others.
There is a danger, of course, in asserting that metropolitan education is simply a
function of growing up in the large city. Like the philosopher who states that all of
life is education, we may be using a definition so comprehensive that it is useless.
Similarly, there Is danger In emphasizing the novel aspects of metropolitanism, for the
historically-based recurrent aspects of the human condition may thereby be obscured.
Nonetheless, the impact of this setting upon the people, young and old, who inhabit it,
is so strong and so evident, that we feel justified in speaking of a "total
metropolitan educational environment."
This environment contains, first, institutions entrusted with the formal task of daily
instruction, primarily schools, colleges, and universities. To these is added a
variety of school-system sponsored activities, both formal and informal. Next there
are the activities of myriad non-school agencies: churches, philanthropic societies,
youth organizations and interest groups concerned with conveying messages and skills of
many kinds to the young and adult populations.
The cultural facilities of the metropolis, libraries, museums, theaters, concert halls,
also fulfill educational functions. And there are other locales, too, which enrich the
metropolitan educational environment; the park, the playground, the apartment house or
street block, the corner candy store, all are educational settings, as is the very
physical environment which strikes the senses and shapes the sensibilities of the
city-dweller. And finally, there are the media through which information and ideas are
disseminated: words, visual and oral, and pictures, in books and periodicals, on radio
and television, in cinemas and posters -- all are part of the total educational
environment of the metropolis.
One important theme of recent research has been, what type of institution and operation
is most appropriate to the metropolitan situation? The modus operandi of our schooling,
it has been argued, is a function of a former social system (rural, stable,
characterized by little geographical or social mobility, for example); it still
operates as if former conditions persisted. Thus, it is argued, contemporary problems
arise from the persistence of the traditional model in a technological, mobile
metropolis.
How to remedy the disjunction between schooling and the metropolitan environment is an
urgent matter. In New York City, for example, innumerable proposals and experiments
have addressed themselves to the problems of the big city school system . They have
been directed at administrative reorganization in order to change the basis of policy
and decision making and the day-to-day direction of the schools, new ways of selecting
and preparing teachers and ancillary personnel, and a reappraisal of traditional
instructional methods and curriculum practices. All of these are the schools'
responses to characteristic conditions of New York: urban congestion, the flight to the
suburbs that produces inner city blight, ghettoization, civil disorder, rising costs,
wide-spread poverty and limited economic opportunity within the inner city aggravated
by racial hostility. All testify to the growing inability of the city's agencies to
cope with the maintenance, let alone the improvement, of basic services such as welfare
(including education), communications and police. The story is the same wherever there
is comparable growth: metropolitanization produces pressures to which the educational
system is forced to respond. If then the metropolitan setting and style of life are
increasingly characteristic, if the quality of education is at once a factor of this
trend and affected by it, then education must be seen as part of the web of
interrelationships linking the social, political and economic factors in the metropolis.
Not only have other metropolitan centers in the United States been faced with similar
pressures and issues, but so too have metropolitan centers in other parts of the world.
London, notably, has reorganized its administrative structure and is grappling with
problems raised by characteristic features of the metropolitan setting: population
density, growth in the size of the school system, and racial and socio-economic
heterogeneity, polarized into homogeneous neighborhoods. Clearly the experience of big
cities in general and their school systems may provide guidance for any particular city
to help clarify its problems, suggest alternatives and project possible outcomes of
specific measures. Thus, the comparative dimension offers great potential. Strangely
enough, any systematic comparisons which would make such help available do not yet
appear to exist. Planners, whether in education or in other area, who draw attention
to foreign examples may provoke interest, but are hard put to persuade their clients
that a foreign example has any relevance to their own situation. Yet the big cities of
the world do in fact provide a species of laboratory for the researcher. Systematic
comparison should reveal the common dimensions and problems of metropolitanization, the
alternative responses to these developments, and also some evidences as to their
outcomes.
The Present Study: Scope and Rationale
Comparative education has for a long time been characterized by descriptive, mainly
historical accounts and normative studies of education and other national institutions.
They have provided disappointingly little help either for the researcher in
understanding the dynamics of the system he wishes to explain, or for the educational
policy maker who wishes to improve on what exists. One reason for this, we submit, is
that the units for comparison have usually been entire nation states, thus obscuring
important differences within countries.
In an attempt to use some sub-national units, this study considers selected elements of
the educational systems of four large cities: Amsterdam, London, Paris, and New York.
London and Paris are the capital cities of their nations: Amsterdam and New York are not.
But all four are old-established centers of commerce, communications and political
power, and each contains its country's largest concentration of population. All are,
of course, examples of Western civilization and any conclusions we reach on the basis
of our investigation will be correspondingly limited.
Ideally, our working definition of metropolis would be a large population concentration,
comprising both city proper and its suburban extensions. Though we are interested in the
functional whole, a cultural rather than a geographical area, in fact we are limited by
existing definitions, largely administrative, for these are the categories in which the
data for this study have been collected. London has revised its traditional and
outdated administrative boundaries, and has moved to a regional framework; Paris is
moving in this direction; New York and Amsterdam have so far not done so. Consequently,
we have been forced to make do with what exists: the Inner London Educational Authority
and Greater London; the Académie de Paris and the Department of the Seine; Amsterdam;
and New York City.
We have elected to study two facets of metropolitan school systems located in four
metropolises: the characteristics of teachers and the patterns of perceived success of
the respective school systems. We hypothesize that in both respects, the four cities
not only differ from the norms of their respective national settings, but they differ
in the same direction from nation to nation. We predict that both metropolitan
teachers and what we have termed the perceived success of their school systems are
marked by features peculiar to the metropolitan setting: its heterogeneity, mobility,
concentration of expertise, and so on. In Chapters 3 and 4, these expectations, their
rationales, data and analyses are presented and discussed.
The purpose of this study is, however, not limited merely to identifying similarities
and differences within and across countries. We try to extend it to explanations of
what we find, by considering why certain differences between metropolitan and national
norms are less marked in some countries than In others, and why, the differences are
sometimes in unexpected directions, or inconsistent.