Source: Max A. Eckstein, "Toward a Strategy
of Urban-Educational Study,"in Joseph A. Lauwerys
and David Scanlon, eds.,World Year Book of
Education 1970 (London: Evans, 1970): 19-29.
Reprinted by permission of Evans Brothers, Ltd.
TOWARD A STRATEGY OF URBAN-EDUCATIONAL STUDY
Educational responses to the process of urbanization appear in many forms: literacy and
health campaigns in South American favelas, decentralization of school administration
in New York City, new curricula and instructional methods especially tailored for
racial or socioeconomic minority groups in London and Liverpool. The pressures are
varied and complex, including population mobility and congestion on an unprecedented
scale, changes in the modes of living and aspirations of hosts of people, upheaval in
their physical, economic, social and political environments. And the concomitants of
these developments are crises in city school systems. Educational thinkers and
practitioners all over the world are seeking to meet these new contingencies and to
plan and implement educational systems for burgeoning urban populations.
The Metropolitan Context
Despite the extensive studies which have been made on the subject, the concept of
urbanization remains a complex and confusing one. It overlaps considerably with the
processes of industrialization and modernization and is, in fact, sometimes used as a
synonym for them. On occasion, an index of urbanization may be used as a proxy for one
or the other concept.
The basic and most simple indicators of urbanism are demographic: population density, a
settlement in a given location of more than a certain number of people. Even here, a
problem arises which, though it may not be so serious for a national study, is
fundamental for cross-national research. Little consensus has existed on the degree of
density or the size of the population cluster which makes an urban centre.
Census-takers in one nation may define an urban centre as a population of over 250
people (Denmark), in another as a grouping of over 40,000 (Korea). The work of the
American team, International Urban Research, has gone far in developing a standard for
international comparisons and in collecting the data for such study on the basis of
Standard Metropolitan Areas (S.M.A.), a term and a ccncept employed in the U.S. Census.
1 This is defined as follows: a
population of at least 50,000 people, living in a territory comprising a central city
(or cities) and adjacent areas with an economic relationship to the centre, and
predominantly (over 65 per cent of the labour force) engaged in non-agricultural
employment.
The definition includes more than merely the numbers of people in an urban unit. It
comprises also compactness of territory (the city-centre and its periphery) and an
economic indicator, and thus supplies a functional definition of practical value for
identification, measurement, and comparison. Much useful work has been done to show
the extent to which a given nation is urbanized, the sizes and rates of growth of urban
centres within and among nations, all in a relatively clear quantified form.
In incorporating the territorial and economic indicators, the definition of
International Urban Research moves beyond a simple nose-counting concept. It is,
nonetheless, a limited definition. The urban unit is not merely a relatively large and
dense settlement of people working in non-rural occupations; it also characteristically
comprises a population which is extremely diverse economically, socially, ideologically,
and very often also racially and religiously. Social heterogeneity is a significant
feature of the urban setting; '....the heterogeneity of a city's people gives rise to
complex patterns... The total impression is a confusion of types, or different colours,
different creeds, the young, the old, the rich, the poor.'
2
It is this characteristic, heterogeneity, and the mutual dependence and interaction of
the several populations comprising an urban centre, which are most germane to the
educator. They point to the existence of an urban culture and to the peculiarity and
the educational importance of the experience of living in it. An urban location is not
merely a given large number of inhabitants, grouped in and around a city centre and
spilling over from its traditional physical or administrative boundaries. An urban
centre, and by extension an urbanized society, is characterized by a special life-style
and a set of relationships in which a large number of identifiable and differentiated
social groups are involved. The economy is organized around a complex division of
labour and the labour force incorporates a wide differentiation of economic roles and
skills. People are joined together into a community more by physical proximity,
spatial interaction and mutual dependence, than by sameness of tasks, commonality of
past experience, or family relationships. While the administrative boundaries may or
may not coincide with the settlement pattern, the urban population is in many respects
a separate unit of municipal government. It is further characterized not only by high
density of population (and therefore of housing and employment facilities), but also by
its wealth of recreational, educational, and general social service facilities (such as
health and government). Finally, complex transportation systems and extensive use of
communications media, whose headquarters are situated in the urban centre, bind the
inhabitants together in a network of mass communications.
3
The urban location is traditionally regarded as the place where opportunity lies.
Migrants from the country and from abroad have in the past accounted for much of the
rapid growth of cities. But economic opportunities or cultural riches are not the only
attractions. Any person can find others like him in the city. Elsewhere he may be a
lone individual; in the city, he can at least be a member of a minority group, and find
some security either by joining it or by losing himself in anonymity. The inhabitants
of the cities of the world form a kaleidoscope of sub-cultural minorities, that is,
groups who are in one way or another not in the national mainstream. The city may have
been so powerful a magnet for them that they make up a numerical majority of its
population. Yet the lure of opportunity and the frustration of unsatisfied ambitions
are a source of serious tension.
The 'new urbanization,' taking place with extraordinary rapidity in the less-developed
nations possesses its own outstanding features.
4 Here, the most striking characteristics are underemployment, or
redundant labour, poverty on an immense scale, division of the population into the very
rich and the mass of poor, with a relatively small and separate middle group of
government employees, merchants, and teachers. But the rate of growth of cities in
underdeveloped countries is a most dramatic fact. A high proportion of the inhabitants
of such cities are not urban in the sense described above, but are rather recent rural
transplants. When studying onrushing urbanism in those lands which have not undergone
the process of industrialization experienced by most of Europe during the nineteenth
century, it is essential to note its special characteristics. It is also important
consider how far (if at all) the processes and particular relationships of phenomena
are similar in the 'new' and older situations.
To the extent that a nation's population lives an urban way of life, to that extent is
the nation urbanized. But the size of an urban centre or the proportion of a nation's
population living in densely populated areas are inadequate indicators of the general
phenomenon. Numbers alone are not enough to describe it; style, quality and conditions
of life, social and economic population 'mix' are dimensions of a definition which will
permit discrimination among the different types of urban condition.
Several types of urban existence may be identified among the historical and
contemporary instances, and the process of 'urbanization' is not the same everywhere.
A developmental theory seeks to explain this: the several major urban types represent
different stages of development of population centres and the process of urbanization
has different features according to the overall level of development of the nation.
Thus, the preindustrial city grows into the urban centre, then to the modern metropolis,
then into megalopolis, for example, with major variations. according to the historical
period in which the process began, or to certain local features (vide such terms as the
European city, the mediaeval city, the cathedral or university city). Architects, city
planners and historians as well as social scientists have contributed generously to the
creation of such a theory, though its ethnocentric nature and apparent determinism
continue to be a source of considerable concern and debate among specialists.
One striking feature distinguishes the urban mode of life in less developed nations
from that of the more developed. The traditional distinction between rural and urban
applies less and less to the latter situations. In the United States, to take the
prime example of advanced development, geography and administrative boundaries no
longer adequately differentiate urban life style from the modes of existence in
adjacent rural areas. For one reason, as mobility, technology, and mass communications
have advanced in efficiency and complexity, many aspects of rural existence lose their
traditional uniqueness. Relatively few people in the United States live in a
completely non-urban cultural setting. But a second factor is even more compelling,
the growth of metropolitan areas to such an extent that they cover large regions and
incorporate several cities, towns, and urban areas. New York is the centre of the
largest urban agglomeration in the world, spilling over into adjacent counties and
states, extending beyond suburbia into 'exurbia' some thirty miles and more from Times
Square. Yet even this may be an inadequate unit for some considerations. The
geographer, Jean Gottmann, speaks of Megalopolis, 'an almost continuous stretch of
urban and suburban areas from southern New Hampshire to northern Virginia,' extending
along 450 miles of the Atlantic coastline. Other 'World Cities'
5 have not yet reached the scale of New York, and may
never do so. Yet they demonstrate metropolitan expansion far beyond the traditional
and familiar urban dimensions and present a scene and problems quite different from,
say, Bombay or Rio de Janeiro, though they may point the way to future developments
around the world. Especially in considering the
problems and the needs for education, as well as those of transportation, government,
health and the economy, the whole metropolitan area must be regarded as the unit for
investigation.
Schooling in the Metropolitan Setting
When school problems in the city become the topic of public concern, they are rarely
sui generis, but rather arise from more general conditions: population growth, change
in the age composition of communities, economic progress, manpower and finance
problems, and so on. Changes in the composition of populations, in social and
political ideology, in economic organization, create school problems. The size and
density of the urban community, its heterogeneity, its interdependence, the
interactions of its human components, and above all, its mobility and changeability --
in fact, those features discussed above -- are the sources of educational problems and
debates in large cities.
From both the local and the global perspectives, three major categories of problems
confront the educational observer. First, there are the political and economic issues:
who shall run the schools for urban populations? Who shall make which types of
decisions? How shall administrative power be distributed between local, regional and
national levels of authority? And how is the effort to be planned, financed, and
implemented? The second and third groups of problems are more directly pedagogical.
One has to do with personnel (students, teachers, and administrators) and calls for
responses to the changing populations in the schools of densely settled areas. The
pupil populations of urban schools pose new problems, not only because of numbers, but
also because of their backgrounds, aspiratioms, and competencies. As a concomitant and
as a consequence, ought there not be new criteria, new job descriptions and therefore
new training programmes for those seeking employment in the schools? And finally,
closely associated with the previous set of questions, what of the curriculum, the
pedagogical methods and tools, and the patterns of internal school organizations? Are
these changing as a response to new conditions? Are changes desirable? What is the
relation of such innovations to educational outcomes?
One example of a major current issue in two big cities confirms both the widespread
nature of some phenomena and the peculiarity of the local cases. The physical growth
of metropolitan centres all over the world, but especially in the more developed
countries, has created economic and administrative problems for city school systems
everywhere. The decentralization controversy in New York, and the administrative
reorganization which London underwent in 1965, are examples of responses to the same
kind of pressure. The New York situation is different, of course, in that its current
educational problems are as much a function of the United States' historical problem of
segregation of Negroes as of the sheer size of the city. The city has been
'ghettoized' into communities which are either black or white, either poor or
reasonably well-off, either inner-city or urban. Yet, the situation in London has
similar features. Growing residential congestion at the centre has, as a result of
considerable planning, been controlled, but the flight to the suburbs is evident. The
influx of migrants from Asia and the Caribbean has created sizeable culturally,
racially, and economically homogeneous enclaves different from the mainstream of the
society. The phrase, 'town of villages' takes on a new meaning in today's London,
where, as in New York, one moves from one cultural world to another as one moves around
the city. In some senses, London's educational problems are unique, for they are part
of the national effort to raise standards, adapt and modernize, and to implement a set
of social and political principles through reform of school organization and practices.
Yet in this, too, there are similarities with the basic considerations in the United
States and elsewhere. The precedents and recent developments may differ, but the
general process and contingencies are widespread.
When this discussion is extended to other aspects of schooling, the comparability of
the two cases becomes sharper. Even though there is a strong precedent in the United
States for public participation in educational decision-making and a strong tradition
of parental exclusion from this activity in England, neither of the two cities conforms
strictly to these principles. Through its appointed Board of Education and its
extensive and highly centralized supervisory and administrative machinery, New York has
effectively excluded parents and local citizen groups from the type of influence they
have enjoyed in other communities in the States. In London, as in New York, the power
of a local community to influence school decisions at large or in a district varies,
but the relatively high degree of school autonomy and progressiveness of the
Educational Committee and its administration have resulted in responsiveness to public
demand. As a consequence, despite the differences in national practices and local
provisions, London and New York recognize that parents, as well as local and regional
administration, must somehow participate in educational decisions in their own cities.
The trend toward homogeneity of local communities within the urban setting creates very
special problems for educational thinkers and practitioners. The most serious current
issue in the United States and, with local variations, in other parts of the world, is
the existence of gross differences in educational facilities, motivation and
achievement according to urban sub-culture and residential community within the
metropolis. The moral problem is not new; where there is national commitment to a set
of democratic principles, such self-perpetuating social injustice cannot be tolerated.
The economic and political aspects are generally realized too: when a given group of
people does not fully utilize a society's educational facilities, manpower is wasted
and 'social dynamite' is stored up. But the persistence and even the growth of such
divisions diminishes the potential made available by urban organization and life. It
also threatens the very existence of the city as a social, economic, and political unit
and as the nerve centre of the nation.
As a result of 'ghettoization', the student clientele of an urban school may be
categorized according to a single label: low income, or any of the recent euphemisms
(deprived, underprivileged), immigrant (meaning black, Puerto Rican, Asian, culturally
different and racially distinct), middle class. The labels are either socioeconomic,
racial or religious, and serve as simple indicators of the special nature of the
community. It is not yet clearly understood whether it is the empty pocket or the skin
colour which accounts for the special nature of a given community and, by extension, of
the children in a particular school. What is more generally conceded, however, is that
the school institution is often unsuccessful in making the majority of some groups of
youngsters productive or even minimally educated and responsible citizens, able to
compete on the educational ladder or as adults in the economic society. Where an urban
centre has succeeded in providing some measure of schooling for the whole range of its
population, an appreciable minority has not been able to profit. In some extreme
cases, a complete breakdown has resulted; in others, schools remain open but have
abandoned any pretence of operating as educational institutions. Teachers and pupils
engage in no productive communication, curriculum is abandoned, the formal school
organization has no function except, possibly, to enforce attendance. In addition, the
separate components of the school situation -- parents, administrators, teachers,
pupils -- work against, instead of with, one another. As a particular situation
deteriorates, the whole educational enterprise is effectively blocked by the actual
withdrawal of one or another of these groups (student dropouts, teacher strikes,
withholding of funds or other facilities, for example), or by its passivity.
Little agreement exists on the best means of solving the problems of metropolitan
schools. Judging from the nature of both the arguments and the proposals, there
appears to be little agreement on what the problems are. Exposés of the horrific
conditions in city slum schools are common in the United States. Radical and romantic
nostrums are almost as frequent, reminders of the noble muckraking and progressive
spirit of the turn of the century. More money and more devotion are the main
deficiencies, as many of these writers see it; but a new curriculum, new teaching means
and objectives and a new kind of concern for human relationships are some of the more
specific targets. Wide agreement does exist on the need for making curriculum more
relevant to students, and not only the poor and the urban; and for considering ways of
making teaching more effective through the use of new tools (books and educational
hardware) and new patterns of organization (grouping practices, student participation
in school government).6
In addition, attention is being given to the question of using adult manpower more
effectively, not only by use of teaching machines and other devices, but also by
employment of 'para-professionals.' These may be housewives who assist the classroom
teacher in several ways, depending upon their competence and desires, possibly marking
homework, more usually distributing and collecting materials, keeping records, more
rarely assisting in individual or small-group instruction. The significance of this
development is not purely as a school facility. It recognizes the growing trend toward
part-time employment of mothers; it also provides sorely-needed job opportunities in a
convenient location for poverty areas; and it draws into the schools, as active
participants, adults who may otherwise have remained passive outsiders.
If attention tends to be devoted to the school problems of cities in the more advanced
countries of the world rather than to the exploding urban communities of South America,
Africa, and Asia, it may be due to the ethnocentrism of writers, to which fault this
author is no exception. But it is also due to the dearth of systematic and reliable
data on the large cities of the undeveloped world and the rapidity with which
information becomes obsolete. The economic, social and political problems of 'new'
countries are replicated in the educational aspects of their cities. The overriding
considerations are to retain what progress has been made so far in developing
educational facilities and to extend at least some minima to the majority of the
inhabitants. All the more reason why attention should be given to describing the
dimensions of schooling and its urban settings (social, economic, political), to
investigating their relationships and identifying the special problems of the school
and its context in non-Western, underdeveloped nations. Where resources are scarce and
priorities are numerous, planning is paramount and an information base for such
planning needs to be created.
Need for Research
It is clear that the problems of metropolitan schools are too important and broad in
scope to be left to the educators alone. But they are also beyond any other single
group, be they politicians, economists, sociologists, teachers, or parents. Research
on the subject, as well as planning for the future, is the responsibility of and the
opportunity for the several social and behavioural science disciplines, collaborating
to share concepts, data, and techniques.
While there is wide agreement that something needs to be done, that more money and
facilities are required for schools to serve the urban poor more successfully, and
while there is no lack of proposals to solve the problems of big-city schools, little
consensus exists beyond this point. Solutions in a given location tend to be
piecemeal, ad hoc responses to immediate pressures, resting upon no more solid a basis
than faith, limited research, and a strong sense of what appears to be politically
expedient at that moment. Yet the big cities of the world provide a species of
laboratory for the researcher. Comparison could reveal not only the range of
educational alternatives offered to deal with the several dimensions and problems of
urbanization, but conceivably some evidence as to their outcomes. The experience of
large cities, studied systematically and comparatively, may help to clarify the
relationships between aspects of schooling and the urban environment in which they
occur and even project the possible outcomes of specific measures for the guidance of a
particular group of city educational planners.
But much work has to be done before useful investigation can be achieved. There is,
first of all, an extraordinary lack of basic information on the subject. Second, there
is a noticeable absence of empirical investigation and verifiable results. And third,
there is a dearth of useful validated theory on the subject.
Urban sociologists and political scientists have written extensively on urban and
metropolitan areas, producing many individual case studies, considerable information on
urban composition and organization, and a theory on urban growth and development. Yet
the information has been of little value for the educator, or at least it has not yet
been utilized. The demographic and spatial dimensions of urban development have been
quite fully explored, but little is known with much degree of certainty about those
aspects of urban life most relevant to the educator.
In order to achieve an information base for comparative study and understanding, a host
of new maps are needed of the cities of the world, maps which depart from the familiar
topographical style and offer more. than figures of population density and land
utilization. They must, in addition, reveal the location of groups of children
according to such educationally relevant criteria as parental occupation and
educational level, for example, and sub-cultural groupings other than socioeconomic.
Such maps should also present data on residential patterns over time. The most
up-to-date educational details, such as school efforts at innovation, and pupil
achievement, are needed to complete the map. With such information, planners may be
able to chart the educational needs and obstacles of the future.
But this is only the beginning. Planners also need to know if given administrative
devices do in fact have predictable outcomes, whether dispersal of the decision-making
process, for example, does in fact lead to amelioration of educational problems in any
identifiable respects. They need to know whether there is any relationship between
educational expenditure in general and improvement, between certain kinds of
expenditure and specific kinds of change. A lengthy list of questions is awaiting
investigation, concerning teachers, their selection, preparation and use in the system,
and about curriculum and methods. The answers will be insufficient if based merely
upon single innovations under specific and limited conditions. But on the basis of
systematic, comparative, controlled investigations, some generally valid conclusions
may be drawn about schooling and its social context.
One special area is the politics and economics of metropolitan school systems. The
political, institutional concomitants of educational innovation may be studied at
several levels, from case studies of schools attempting new programmes and policies
which cause social and political community repercussions,
7 to the comparative study of power and decision-making
in big-city schools.8
The economic dimensions, too, pose several types of unanswered questions: for example,
the relation of a city's overall educational level to that of the nation, and the
significance of comparative disparities; the relation of school production of trained
manpower at various levels of skill to the metropolitan and to the national economies;
the efficiency of the school system as an economic organization according to the
resources available. Here too, then, lies the opportunity to engage in studies which
delve beneath description, beyond mere amassing of information.
In short, basic information on the environmental conditions of metropolitan areas and
on their educational characteristics are sadly lacking, not only for those nations just
beginning to bring schooling to the mass of their populations, but even for the highly
developed countries of the world. Furthermore, descriptive and evaluative information
on specific educational problems in big cities and efforts to solve them needs to be
more widely disseminated. But far more important, such information must be gathered
and arranged in such a way as to permit investigation into the connexions between
educational and other phenomena. Only on such a basis, will it be possible to lay
bare the educational correlates of metropolitan environments.
Conclusion
Metropolitanism is the life-style of this century. It is already so characteristic of
technologically advanced countries that the residents of Paris, London, New York and
other urban agglomerations form a trans-national community of the like-minded, with
converging beliefs, lives, needs and conditions of existence. Growth of urban centres
in the undeveloped world is part of the same general phenomenon, radically altering
past forms of behaving and living. The divergencies within the metropolis are sharp,
between the various sub-groups such as inner-city and suburban residents, between the
urban poor and the propertied, salaried middle class. They are a danger to the organic
life of the metropolis and a refutation of its promise for a better life. Yet the
separation between schooling and its metropolitan setting appears sharper still:
schools 'short-change' the children of affluent suburbanites and of ghetto-dwellers
alike, though in different forms, as they serve their immediate communities with
greater or less efficiency. They often also seek deliberately to remain above and
apart from many aspects of their environment. In physical form as well as function,
schools and especially colleges and universities in the city are reminiscent of
mediaeval fortresses, turning their backs on the heterogeneous vibrant, complex
metropolis. Interdependence being the main feature of this modern form of living, the
interaction between education and its big-city settings is the priority for research
on a comparative basis.
In this essay, the author has attempted to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, and
theoretical rather than practical. Not that the intention was to be impractical; the
purpose has been to set metropolitan-educational problems in some tentative theoretical
framework. Only with such a framework is it possible to proceed to investigate some of
the specific relationships that link the schools and their educational problems to
their settings. And only through systematic testing of general propositions (parts of
theories) against the evidence of the real world is there any hope of using insight and
understanding to explain.9 For
reality tends to be obscured by the data and the immediacy of problems, and only
systematic, comparative, empirical investigation can expose the principles which
explain them.
The study of education and of efforts to ameliorate the lot of deprived city dwellers
and protected suburbanites is a highly subjective enterprise, prone to ideological
bias, political expediency and economic exigencies. By striving for objectivity and
clarification which systematic investigation promises, a useful, indeed, a practical
contribution is possible.
NOTES
-
International Urban Research, The World's Metropolitan Areas
(Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1959).
[BACK]
-
Emrys Jones, Towns and Cities (New York: Oxford University Press,
1966), p. 133.
[BACK]
-
Scott A. Greer, The Emerging City: Myth and Reality (New York: Free
Press, 1962), Chapter 2.
[BACK]
-
Scott Greer, Dennis L. McElrath, David W. Minar and Peter Orleans, The
New Urbanization (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968).
[BACK]
-
For example, London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, Randstad (the ring-city of
Holland), and the Rhine-Ruhr region of Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf and
their environs. See Peter Hall, The World Cities (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1966).
[BACK]
-
Much less attention has been directed at the suburban aspects of
metropolitan education (see, for example, Alice M. Miel, The
Shortchanged Children of Suburbia (New York: American Jewish Committee,
Institute of Human Relations Press, 1967), or at the role of the urban
wealthy in the schooling (public and private) of the metropolis.
[BACK]
-
Leila Berg, Risinghill: Death of a Comprehensive School
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books. 1968).
[BACK]
-
Marilyn Gittel and T. Edward Hollander, Six Urban School Districts: A
Comparative Study of Institutional Response (New York: Frederick A.
Praeger, 1968).
[BACK]
-
For exposition and examples of this view with special reference to the field
of comparative education, see: Harold J. Noah and Max A. Eckstein,
Toward A Science of Comparative Education (The Macmillan Co.,
1969), and Max A. Eckstein and Harold J. Noah (eds.), Scientific
Investigations in Comparative Education (The Macmillan Co., 1969).
[BACK]