The Crisis of Confidence

One way to interpret all the foregoing is to conclude that American education in 1972 is a failure because it has lost its momentum, lost the confidence of its several constituencies, and demonstrated its incapacity to succeed with some of the major tasks it took on in the 1960s. In my view such a conclusion is unwarranted. The fact is, America's schools and colleges have assumed all at once a series of burdens each of which is task enough for a generation of students, educators, school board members, and trustees. A brief listing of a few of the interrelated issues and problems, including some already mentioned, highlights the enormity of these multiple demands:

• Extremely rapid expansion in numbers of students served.

• New emphasis on higher educational opportunities for young people from minority groups.

• Working with the problem of racial isolation in the schools.

• Adapting education to the advance of communications technology.

• Adapting curricula and teaching methods to the demands of a society that is changing its values and its requirements of schools and colleges.

• Turning educational institutions to work on national problems, ranging from the urban crisis, to the threat of world overpopulation, to the deterioration of the environment.

Although none of this is offered as an apology for the glacial pace of educational change, it is worth remarking upon the grandeur—or call it naivete—of Americans' expectations of their educational system. For too long we have tended to believe that if anything is wrong in our society, we can fix it overnight, or at least by next week, or at the most next year. Such optimism is our worst enemy. When problems as deep and complex as those relating to race and to poverty are involved, there are, as the title of one of John Gardner's books says, "no easy victories." Education alone will never solve these problems. Yet it has an important job to do, a role that requires, first of all, changes in educational institutions.

To reform our schools and colleges, which have been by-passed by awesome technological and social revolutions, is a long, tough job. Yet, we are on the way, partly because of what we did in the 1960s. Now we are in a period of disillusionment and even despair. No prophet has appeared to guide us, although an army of critics and pamphleteers has grown, offering everything from insightful analysis to patent-medicine nostrums, and including the ultimate solution to the crisis of education—closing the schools and colleges. Some educators and students have been quick to grasp the more simplistic notions of reform and to find in them educational salvation. I hope they do, but I'll bet they won't.

Scattered through our educational institutions, and sometimes entirely outside them, are individuals and groups who have thought hard about the problems of our schools and colleges. They are working on them quietly and persistently. They are not shouting about the millennium, nor are they always sure of themselves. They have to offer us some clear analysis of what is wrong, some hopeful experiments with solutions, and an open-minded willingness to learn from others. This Foundation believes it can best serve education by trying to find and to back such people and institutions. In addition, it believes that the most pressing problem in the United States is to bring minority groups and poor people to the enjoyment of full citizenship so long promised and so long denied. Therefore, the Foundation's work in education focuses first of all on that concern. How we go about that task and others is illustrated in the following account of our work in 1971.