Page 192 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 192
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numerous other studies, so I do not wish to sound completely negative in
my judgement. But what I find extremely and sometimes even annoyingly
problematic is the traditionalist (or should I say: conservative) methodo-
logical and conceptual framework.3 Perhaps it is merely “conventional” (as
in “conventional indicators of social mobility”). Nevertheless, I think it is
time to change our vocabularies or, at least, rethink them. I will – hope-
fully – elucidate this in the course of this review.
As the author himself has put it: the subject of the book is the transfor-
mation of America as a place that used to offer decent opportunities for
all the kids to a place, half a century later, where the kids living on the
“wrong” side of the street cannot imagine the future that awaits kids from
the “right” side of the tracks. They are “being denied the promise of Amer-
ican Dream” – in contrast to the postwar prosperity (the author’s case
study city is his native Port Clinton, Michigan, where, he claims, socio-
economic class was not so strong a barrier for kids of any race as it would
become later, in the twenty-first century). Whereas his numerical proofs
are not to be doubted as this is a book well-grounded in hard data, I do
see problems on a “soft” side. It may be true that “the escalator that had
carried most of the class of 1959 [Putnam’s own high school class] upward
suddenly halted when our own children stepped on”, but what about the
stories of those who are not the majority represented in these data? Fur-
thermore – and I do apologize for my dogmatism here – I find it hard to
accept that the native talent and fortitude were all it took, back then, to
climb the social ladder.
Putnam explains his starting point:
The same 1950s boom that sustained Port Clinton’s egalitarian culture
led the historian David Potter in his 1954 bestseller People of Plenty to
claim that American affluence had allowed more equality of opportu-
nity “than any previous society or previous era of history had ever wit-
nessed.” Even if the popular belief in equality of opportunity was exag-
gerated, he added, it had led Americans to believe that if we can’t make
it on our own, it’s our own fault. Equality in America, Potter wrote, had
come to mean not equality of outcome, as in Europe, but “in a major
sense, parity in competition”.
One barrier looms larger than it did, claims Putnam, and that are class or-
igins which means that class-based opportunity gap among young people
has widened in recent decades. He does acknowledge that gender and ra-
3 E. g.: “Marriage” is used throughout as a sort of state to be desired; it apparently does not
stand for “stable relationships” of other kinds. (I am not referring here to analyses of di-
vorce, cohabitation and multi-partner fertility that are present in the book.)
190
numerous other studies, so I do not wish to sound completely negative in
my judgement. But what I find extremely and sometimes even annoyingly
problematic is the traditionalist (or should I say: conservative) methodo-
logical and conceptual framework.3 Perhaps it is merely “conventional” (as
in “conventional indicators of social mobility”). Nevertheless, I think it is
time to change our vocabularies or, at least, rethink them. I will – hope-
fully – elucidate this in the course of this review.
As the author himself has put it: the subject of the book is the transfor-
mation of America as a place that used to offer decent opportunities for
all the kids to a place, half a century later, where the kids living on the
“wrong” side of the street cannot imagine the future that awaits kids from
the “right” side of the tracks. They are “being denied the promise of Amer-
ican Dream” – in contrast to the postwar prosperity (the author’s case
study city is his native Port Clinton, Michigan, where, he claims, socio-
economic class was not so strong a barrier for kids of any race as it would
become later, in the twenty-first century). Whereas his numerical proofs
are not to be doubted as this is a book well-grounded in hard data, I do
see problems on a “soft” side. It may be true that “the escalator that had
carried most of the class of 1959 [Putnam’s own high school class] upward
suddenly halted when our own children stepped on”, but what about the
stories of those who are not the majority represented in these data? Fur-
thermore – and I do apologize for my dogmatism here – I find it hard to
accept that the native talent and fortitude were all it took, back then, to
climb the social ladder.
Putnam explains his starting point:
The same 1950s boom that sustained Port Clinton’s egalitarian culture
led the historian David Potter in his 1954 bestseller People of Plenty to
claim that American affluence had allowed more equality of opportu-
nity “than any previous society or previous era of history had ever wit-
nessed.” Even if the popular belief in equality of opportunity was exag-
gerated, he added, it had led Americans to believe that if we can’t make
it on our own, it’s our own fault. Equality in America, Potter wrote, had
come to mean not equality of outcome, as in Europe, but “in a major
sense, parity in competition”.
One barrier looms larger than it did, claims Putnam, and that are class or-
igins which means that class-based opportunity gap among young people
has widened in recent decades. He does acknowledge that gender and ra-
3 E. g.: “Marriage” is used throughout as a sort of state to be desired; it apparently does not
stand for “stable relationships” of other kinds. (I am not referring here to analyses of di-
vorce, cohabitation and multi-partner fertility that are present in the book.)
190
