コールマンレポート以降のアメリカの不平等研究

階層再生産における教育の役割

抄録

The Coleman Report (1966) was published in an atmosphere in which ideas and policies were based on the belief that education and public schooling could be one of the main means by which social inequality could be reduced. But this assumption came to be discredited with the findings of the Coleman Report.
Since then, several empirical and statistical studies on the ineffectiveness or insignificance of education or educational policies were carried out and challenged the liberal ideology of social reform by education. One example is the papers presented at The Seminar for Re-examination of the Coleman Report in which D. P. Moynihan, M. S. Smith, D. J. Armor, C. S. Jencks, and others participated, and another example is Jencks' INEQUALITY.
Against these “school-incompetence” theories, this paper sets forth a hyposesis that education or schooling plays an important part in the reproduction of social class stratification, and that it is the close relationship between education and social class that minimizes the net effect of schooling independent from social class.
From this viewpoint % this paper deals with, in turn, the relationship between scholastic achievement and social class, the relationship between educational attainment and social class, the role of educational attainment in the reproduction of social class stratification, and finally the role or substance of education or educational process in the reproduction or hereditary continuation of social class stratification.
In conclusion, this paper agrees with and supports the classical and orthodox proposition in the field of the sociology of education, that social classes influence education and that education contributes to the hereditary reproduction of social class stratification.