## Equality and Excellence

In the years ahead those of you receiving degrees today are going to hear increasingly lively public discussion of higher education. As products of one of our greatest universities you will be presumed to have some views on the aims and consequences of higher education in America.

One of the most persistent questions you will encounter will be variously phrased "Who should go to college?", "How shall we resolve the conflict between quality and quantity?", "How shall we serve the ideals of both equality and excellence?"

As with so many other things, it will be far less important that you have pat answers than that you know how to think about the questions.

William James once said, "Democracy is on trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. . . . What its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny. . . ."

Many would agree that the point of William James' words has not diminished in the fifty years since he uttered them, and some would argue that they have particular relevance to the American educational system today.

Even those who are deeply impressed--as I am--by the great positive achievements of our schools and colleges over the

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past century must agree that we have worried all too little about
the individual of unusual talent or potentialities.

To make such an assertion, however, is not to deplore
the unprecedented time and money we have devoted to the average
youngster. Our kind of society demands the maximum development
of individual potentialities at every level of ability; and it
will serve no purpose to replace our neglect of the gifted by a
neglect of the generality. We are all too prone to such wild
swings of the pendulum in our national life. Martin Luther said
that humanity was like a drunken peasant who is always ready to
fall from his horse on one side or the other; and in that respect
we Americans are all too human. We must learn to see the achieve-
ments and shortcomings of our educational system in some sort of
embracing perspective which will permit us to repair one omission
without creating others.

In order to achieve this perspective, nothing is more
important than to understand the complex ways in which our higher
education deals with individual differences in ability. Let us
look at one or two concrete examples and then try to understand
what is behind them.

Even the most casual glance at our educational system
will reveal one important national characteristic: our great
reluctance to put labels on individual differences in general
capacity. An example of this is to be found in the broad inter-
pretation which we give to the phrase "college education." When

youngsters are graduated from high school we discuss those going
on to college as though they were a homogeneous lot, all headed
for a similar experience. Actually, a behind-the-scenes view of
the process will reveal that they are quietly but fairly effectively
"sorted out."

At the key point in the sorting process is the high school
dean. The students need not listen to his advice but usually do.
He sends his college-bound students out along a widely-diverging
pathways--to colleges of the highest possible standards, to
colleges of moderate difficulty, and so on down to colleges which
may actually be lower academically than the high school from which
the youngster is being graduated. But although the essence of his
job is to arrive at clear appraisals of the relative standings of
colleges and the relative capacities of students, the high school
dean will ordinarily take considerable care not to make these
appraisals explicit in his talks with students and parents.

One point of view to take toward this national reluctance
to label individual differences is that it is nonsensical and that
we have developed a ridiculous squeamishness about such matters.
Critics trace it to our desire to make young people "happy," to
our concern for psychological adjustment. But such critics are
barking up the wrong tree. The reason we are reluctant to label
individual differences in native capacity is that native capacity
holds a uniquely important place in our scheme of things.

It must never be forgotten that ours is one of the
relatively few societies in the history of the world in which

performance is a primary determinant of status. In a stratified society, performance is not an important factor in establishing the individual's status so he can afford to be less deeply concerned about his native capacity. For every step that a society takes away from a system of traditionally determined status and toward a system in which performance is the chief determinant of status, the individual will be increasingly concerned about his native capacity. In our society the individual's future depends to an unprecedented degree upon his native gifts.

Of course, we are oversimplifying matters greatly in using such general terms as "native capacity." There are all kinds of native capacity. That is a point to which we shall return later. But for complex reasons, Americans see appraisals of "intelligence," however defined, as total judgments on the individual and as central to his self-esteem. Some critics note that we discriminate nicely between excellence and mediocrity in athletics, but refuse to be similarly precise about differences in intelligence; and they attribute this to the fact that we are more seriously concerned with athletic ability than with intelligence. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can afford, emotionally speaking, to be candid and coldly objective in judgments of athletic ability precisely because we do not take these as total judgments on the individual and not necessarily central to his self-esteem.

Another feature of our educational system is what might be termed the principle of multiple chances. The European system

separates youngsters at ten or eleven years of age, on the basis
of ability, into two radically different school systems, one
college preparatory and the other not.

This is, in many respects, an efficient procedure. It
solves many problems which plague our comprehensive high schools.
But in the American view, it presents a host of difficulties, only
one of which need be noted here: early separation of the very
gifted and the less gifted violates our principle of multiple
chances.

We believe that the youngster should have many successive
opportunities to discover himself. We postpone as long as possible
any final closing of the door on the individual's chances. It is
a unique feature of our system that the "late bloomer" may dawdle
or occupy himself with other than educational objectives until as
late as 18 or 19 years of age (roughly, first or second year of
college) and still (provided that he is bright) not only obtain a
college education but go on to become a professional man.

I have given you two examples of the way our system deals
with individual differences in ability--our reluctance to label
differences in capacity, and our principle of multiple chances.
Any educational system is, among other things, a great sorting out
process. The examples I have given reflect a determination on the
part of the American people that this sorting out process be
carried out mercifully and generously rather than ruthlessly,
rigidly, or mechanically.

So far so good. But I have selected moderate examples.
Any one of us could produce more extreme examples in which

generosity and the quality of mercy has produced confusion in educational objectives and just about nullified the sorting-out process. Such examples, whether rare or frequent, are a legitimate cause for concern.

These considerations lead into the very core of our political philosophy and have the most profound implications for our future.

At the heart of the matter is a seeming paradox in democracy as we know it. On the one hand it is the form of society which says most convincingly, "Let the best man win," and rewards winners regardless of origin. On the other hand it is the form of society which gives losers the widest latitude in rewriting the rules of the contest. No one who has not thought long and hard about these paradoxical facts is in a position to understand the tug of war between equality and excellence in a democracy. When the rewriting of the rules is prompted by the standards of fair play, by elementary considerations of justice, by basic value judgments as to what sort of a "best man" the society wants, democracy can have no quarrel with it. Indeed, it is the core process of a democracy. But when the rewriting of the rules is designed to banish excellence, to rule out distinguished attainment, to inhibit spirited individuals, then all who pray for the continued vitality of democracy must protest.

Every democracy must encourage high individual performance. If it does not then it closes itself off from the mainsprings of its dynamism and talent and imagination; and the

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traditional democratic invitation to the individual to realize
his full potentialities becomes meaningless. Because of the
leveling influences which are inevitable in popular government,
a democracy must, more than any other form of government, maintain
what Ralph Barton Perry has called "an express insistence upon
quality and distinction." When it does not do so, the consequences
are all too familiar: the deterioration of standards, the debasement of taste, shoddy education, vulgar art, cheap politics, and
the tyranny of the lowest common denominator.

We have seen enough of these excesses to understand
what Kierkegaard meant when he warned us of the danger of an
equalitarianism so extreme as to be "unrelieved by even the
smallest eminence."

We have seen enough to know what Flexner meant when he
said, "We have to defend the country against mediocrity,
mediocrity of soul, mediocrity of ideas, mediocrity of action.
We must also fight against it in ourselves."

But those in a democracy who are most deeply concerned
with precisely these dangers, those who are most seriously concerned
to foster excellence and the full realization of individual
potentialities must be the first to comprehend the problem facing
society as a whole. A society which accepts performance as the
chief determinant of status--as ours does--has great charm for
those whose ability, drive, aggressiveness or luck enable them
to come out on top. It may have notably less charm for those who do
not come out on top. These latter may be individuals of lesser

ability or lower motivation. Or they may be individuals whose
excellences do not add up to the sort of performance that society
at any given moment chooses to reward. Or they may simply lack
a temperament that takes kindly to the knife edge of competition.
There are many individuals of great gifts in the latter group.

At any rate, for whatever reason, there are large
numbers of individuals who will not necessarily find unrelieved
exhilaration in a system that emphasizes high performance. If
these large numbers come to believe that the system exposes them
unnecessarily to frustration and defeat, and if they enjoy the
freedom of social action characteristic of a democracy they will
create elaborate institutional defenses to diminish the emphasis
upon performance as a determinant of status. We can observe such
institutional defenses not only in education but in every aspect
of our national life.

Trade union practices are a veritable coral reef of
accumulated defenses against extreme emphasis upon performance.
One can discover in any civil service manual innumerable rules
designed to blunt the edge of excessive emphasis on performance.
Rules governing seniority and tenure, although they serve other
important purposes, also serve this purpose. The academic lock-
step in which all youngsters are advanced a grade per year regard-
less of IQ and performance is among other things a device for
preventing invidious comparisons between individuals. The pro-
visions in many of our states that the state university must
accept every graduate of a high school within the state serves a

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similar purpose. Our society is full of such institutional
defenses against excessive emphasis upon individual performance.
Among these defenses are some of the most powerful and effective
restraints upon high performance ever devised.

Such defenses--in one form or another--will always be
with us. In their origin they are often healthy reactions to
excessive or exclusive emphasis upon performance. But carried
far enough these defenses too can constitute excesses and can
contribute a fatal rigidity to the society.

Anyone interested in the quality of higher education
over the years ahead might well ask, "What can be done to foster
excellence and to encourage high performance without stirring
these counter-movements?" Actually the question posed in that
way leaves us in an essentially unconstructive stance. We would
do better to ask, "How can we foster excellence and at the same
time provide at every level of ability constructive opportunities
and rewards so that every level realizes its full potentialities,
performs at its best, and harbors no resentment toward any other
level?"

There is no single answer.

A part of any final answer would certainly be some
revision of an altogether false emphasis which the American people
are coming to place on college education. This false emphasis is
the source of great difficulties for us and can only be regarded
as regrettable.

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Properly understood, the college or university is the instrument for one kind of further education of those whose capacities fit them for that kind of further education. It should not be regarded as the only passport to a meaningful life or the sole means of establishing one's human worth. And we have come perilously close to that. No wonder our colleges are crowded.

The crowding in our colleges is less regrettable than the confusion in our values. Human dignity and worth should only be assessed in terms of those qualities of mind and spirit that are within the reach of every human being.

This is not to say that we should not value achievement. We should value it exceedingly. It is simply to say that achievement should not be confused with human worth.

The more we allow the impression to get abroad that only the college man or woman is worthy of respect in our society, the more we contribute to a fatal confusion, which works to the injury of all concerned. If we permit the faulty assumption that college is the sole cradle of human dignity, need we be surprised that every citizen demands to be rocked in that cradle?

But a scaling down of our exaggerated emphasis on college education is only part of the answer. Another important part of the answer will surely be a greatly increased emphasis upon individual differences, upon the many kinds of human talent, and upon the immensely varied ways in which individual potentialities may be realized. If we are really serious about equality of

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opportunity, we should be infinitely serious about individual
differences; because what constitutes opportunity for one man is
a stone wall for the next man. Individuals differ vastly from
one another, and they differ in innumerable ways. If we are to
do justice to the individual, we must seek the kind of education
which will open his eyes, stimulate his mind, and unlock his
potentialities. There is no formula for this, and it may or may
not involve what we now think of as a college education.

If we did develop such an indomitable concern for
individual differences, then we would learn to laugh at the
assumption that a college education is the only avenue to human
dignity and social worth. We would educate some youngsters by
sending them on to college. We would educate others in other
ways. We would develop an enormous variety of patterns to fit
the enormous variety of individuals. And no pattern would be
regarded as socially superior or involving greater human dignity
than any other pattern.

As long as the present heterogeneity of the college
population exists--and it is most unlikely to diminish--then the
only path open to us is to achieve even greater diversity in our
higher educational system than now exists--to correspond to the
diversity of the clientele. There is no other way to handle
within one system the enormously disparate human capacities,
levels of preparedness, and motivations which flow into our
colleges and universities.

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And such diversity has more than raw necessity to commend it. The diversity within and among institutions which will permit individuals of differing gifts and differing bents to realize their varied potentialities can be a positively constructive attribute of our system. Specifically, it can aid us in the important business of stressing the many kinds of achievement of which the human is capable.

In seeking to promote such stress upon varied forms of achievement, we shall be abetted by a natural tendency in human beings to discriminate many kinds of abilities and to exploit many diverse sources of self-esteem. This should be encouraged. The sort of capacity measured by the conventional college aptitude test is very important, but instead of putting a more and more monolithic emphasis upon this sort of talent, we should encourage all kinds of individuals to run on all kinds of tracks. In this way we can distribute very widely the rewards of self-esteem and self-respect which are the healthiest preventives of leveling reactions and can encourage on the broadest scale the release of energy and positive motivation on the part of the individual which have been the great strength of our society.

Then, unhampered by popular attitudes disparaging excellence, we can dedicate ourselves to the cultivation of distinction and a sense of quality. We can demand the best of our most gifted, most talented, most spirited youngsters. And we can render appropriate honor to that striving for excellence which has produced so many of mankind's greatest achievements.

JWG:jc

6/3/57