Abstract
This article examines American education in comparative perspective, suggesting that the distinctive structure of the school system is both an embodiment and a source of the felt fluidity of class boundaries in the United States. Several characteristic features of the American educational system are identified: the avoidance of early selection, the lack of sharp segmentation between different types of institutions, relative freedom of movement both among and within institutions, openness to new fields of study, high levels of enrollment, and the provision of opportunities for educational mobility well into adulthood. The two-year public community college, it argues, is an essential expression of these patterns which, through its very accessibility, reinforces the American ideology that it is never too late for individual talent to reveal itself - and to be rewarded. The article concludes with a discussion of the effects of the nation's distinctive school system on American culture and politics, suggesting that the perceived “classlessness” of American society may in part be a product of its seemingly open and democratic structure of education.
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The research reported here has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Education (NIE-O-77-0037), the National Science Foundation (SOC77-06658, SES-80-25542 and SES-83-19986) and the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley. This article is a fully collaborative effort by the two authors and is part of a larger study of American public two-year colleges, The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900–1985, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
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Brint, S., Karabel, J. American education, meritocratic ideology, and the legitimation of inequality: the community college and the problem of American exceptionalism. High Educ 18, 725–735 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00155663
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00155663