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85
recently, Lawrence (1976) found
that the highly educated were more likely to apply general norms of
tolerance to groups they disliked.
8
In general, it is widely accepted that education increases levels of information. Hyman, Wright, and
90
Reed (1978) examined the effects of education on measures of knowledge and receptivity to new
information using measures contained in 54 national sample surveys conducted between the years 1949
and 1971. They found large and consistent effects of education on knowledge and openness to new
95
information.Furthermore, in an equally copious secondary analysis, Hyman and Wright (1979) extended
their examination of education effects to indicators of values and attitudes. Their major conclusion was that
education produced «large, lasting and diverse good effects on values» (Hyman and Wright, 1979:61).
THE CASE AGAINST EDUCATION
100
9 Several criticisms of the education-tolerance hypothesis have been advanced. First, Jackman (1973)
suggested that methodological problems, such as acquiescent response bias, resulted in artifactual evidence
of an education-tolerance relationship. She found that poorly educated respondents were more likely than
105 the highly educated to agree with simple, strongly worded questions that posed only one side of an issue.
Questions presenting both sides of an issue and eschewing agree-disagree response formats were less likely
to show education effects.
110
10 Second, effects of education that vary as questions move from abstract principle to concrete issues
have been read as showing that education imparts only a superficial degree of commitment to democratic
115 values. Jackman's (1978) analysis of National Election Study data found that education influenced support
for the general principle of racial integration but had no impact on support for specific policies aimed at
integration or equal treatment of blacks. And contrary to Prothro and Grigg, Jackman found that because
120 education had no effect at all on the concrete policy questions, the highly educated were no more likely to
apply the general principle than those with less education.
11 Jackman and Muha (1984) investigated the influence of education on the intergroup attitudes of three
125 dominant groups — whites, men, and the nonpoor — toward their respective subordinate groups — blacks,
women, and the poor. Education had significant effects on only 3 of 43 items pertaining variously to
beliefs, feelings, and general and concrete policy orientations in the race, gender, and class contexts. The
130 items most responsive to education were general policy orientation items that invoked a sense of equal
treatment of individuals (i.e., individual rights) rather than equality among groups. Jackman's interpretation
of these patterns stressed that education does not increase tolerance so much as it enhances the ability of
members of privileged groups to develop sophisticated defenses of their advantaged social status. From
135 this perspective, the greater support for democratic values observed among the highly educated is a
superficial advocacy of individual rights that provides a principled basis for rejecting group-based claims
on society.
12 Third, Sullivan, Piereson, and Marcus (1979) maintained that the relationship between education and
tolerance is largely artifactual. According to this critique, Srouffer (1955) and later analysts relying upon
the questions he formulated (Nunn, Crockett, and Williams, 1978; Davis, 1975) were effectively measuring
145 tolerance of leftist groups such as communists. The highly educated were more favorably disposed toward
left-leaning groups than the poorly educated. Rather than measuring a general commitment to democratic
norms, the Srouffer items tapped approval of particular groups. This criticism also called into question
evidence of increases over time in the level of tolerance. Accordingly, as the salience of these left-wing
150 groups declined, researchers observed an artifactual increase in levels of tolerance (Sullivan, Piereson, and
Marcus, 1982).
13 Fourth, according to some, the schools and the educational process, at least to the point of high
155 school completion, are ineffective at passing on democratic values (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). Zeilman and
Sears (1971) concluded that political socialization of attitudes toward the specific civil liberty of free
speech does occur during late childhood but that school children are taught the abstract principle only in
slogan form. An even stronger criticism was offered by Merelman (1980). He concluded that schools do
160
little to teach or encourage the learning of democratic values and cannot teach democratic
values
because the school itself is not a democratic place. According to Merelman, the need for order in the
schools leads to the creation of an environment that fosters the learning of constraint, hierarchy, and