Thinking about comprehensive schools and democratic spirit

Democratic Spirit and Moral Learning in Comprehensive High Schools

Roger Shouse

Draft Version

June 1, 2000

Introduction

For James Conant, "comprehensiveness" represented a critical organizational characteristic of American high schools, one which linked our nation's belief in democratic principles with its increasing need for well trained citizen workers (Conant, 1964, p. 2). Through comprehensiveness, schools could break down artificial forms of social stratification, promote social mobility and equity, and produce the scientific and scholarly talent necessary for the nation's social, economic, and military security. In short, comprehensive high schools could generate an amalgam of democracy and human capital. Accomplishing this, however, would require attracting a student body large enough to permit regular offerings of high status academic curricula and diverse enough to permit formal and informal interaction between students from a range of backgrounds, abilities, and future career paths.

Conant used the term "democratic spirit" to describe both the organizational quality that would emerge from such a setting, as well as the enduring characteristics that schools could convey to students by training and shaping their intellect and attitudes. His argument of a linkage between school comprehensiveness and democratic spirit appears to chafe, however, against some popular current thinking about schools. It is frequently argued, for example, that large "bureaucratic" high schools are responsible for lower student achievement, academic and social disengagement, and lower levels of educational equality across lines of race and ethnicity. In addition, large size is said to impede a school's ability to foster personalistic relationships, collegial spirit, and the extended teacher role necessary for influencing student intellect and attitude (Bryk and Driscoll, 1988; Lee and Smith, 1995). For many supporters of the move toward smaller, more communal schools, Conant's argument must seem at best naïve, at worst elitist.

The purpose of this paper, however, is to explore whether Conant's critics, and critics of larger schools generally, have overlooked some intriguing and compelling theoretical connections between comprehensive schooling and the emergence of a sense of democratic spirit among high school youth. Specifically, I'll examine how large size and comprehensiveness may actually help schools offer a wider range of informal, semi-formal, and formal experiences from which students can acquire such spirit. In fact, many of the links to be discussed here seem to have been largely overlooked by Conant, who focused largely on the formal structures of high schools. At the same time, the paper also highlights how size and comprehensiveness can threaten certain pathways to students' acquisition of democratic spirit and suggest ways in which schools can respond to these threats.

At the outset, however, three provisos are necessary. The first is that comprehensiveness is not necessarily incompatible with the goal of having students attend smaller, more communal schools. Indeed, Conant (1959) speculated that the potential for comprehensiveness was threatened only as the size of a school's graduating class dropped toward 100 students. The second proviso is that whatever benefits larger, more comprehensive schools can deliver in terms of shaping students' sense of democratic spirit, these probably decrease and disappear entirely when schools become extremely large. For example, urban high schools with populations in the three to five thousand range may for all practical purposes become socially unmanageable, at least from any democratic or humanistic point of view. Finally, to highlight how democratic spirit is imparted in larger high schools is not tantamount to criticizing the capabilities of smaller, more communal schools to accomplish the same task. Rather, I would suggest that small and large schools accomplish the task in different ways, thus generating different "flavors" of democratic spirit and moral learning.

The Meaning of "Democratic Spirit"

Conant's conception of democratic spirit ties school organizational qualities to students' moral and intellectual character, and these to larger national sociopolitical and socioeconomic characteristics. At this larger social level, Conant highlights America's sense of social equality and mutual respect; its ability to produce the world's best minds, ideas, and products; and its citizens' ability, desire, and opportunity to contribute toward all of these ends. But to generate this kind of social ethos the school must accomplish two contrasting tasks. It must create and expand pathways for advanced academic talent while also conveying the message that for many students, less rigorous alternative paths are also worthy of pursuit. From Conant's perspective, comprehensive high schools manage these tasks in three ways:

By offering a program of challenging academic courses and by removing structural barriers to the development of academic talent, the school creates and expands a social current of intellectual activity.

Through curricular diversity and by allowing vertical and horizontal mobility across curricular categories, schools create flexible alternative paths for students to develop intellectual, vocational, and aesthetic skill, and to attain social status based on their own personal talents and interests.

By creating opportunities for interaction between students of different backgrounds, interests, and abilities, (i.e., the use of homerooms and heterogeneous civics classes) schools reduce artificial social barriers and antagonisms, thereby promoting mutual understanding and respect.

Conant thus viewed democratic spirit as primarily an organizational characteristic, one expected to have long term effects on students and the society they would eventually join. This is fine, as far as it goes, but some problems seem apparent. The first is Conant's relative silence regarding what democratic spirit actually looks like in students and young adults. What distinguishes this special civic attitude from other related qualities such as being academically talented, having a good job, being effective in one's job, or generally becoming integrated into adult society? In addition, Conant's vision seem to leave us with another "black box" -- it offers organizational parameters and describes some social outcomes, but largely implicit about the mechanisms by which schools imbue students with a sense of democratic spirit. Related to this, with its emphasis on formal organizational structures, Conant is largely silent regarding how democratic understandings are transmitted (or impeded) through less formal, less structured social interactions outside the formal curriculum.

How is Democratic Spirit Revealed in Students?

The overarching question here, of course, is that of how schools actually influence students' understandings about democratic life. Tackling this question requires us to forge some working student-level definition of democratic spirit. Taking a rudimentary stab at this, I'll suggest that democratic spirit is revealed as students maintain, attach appropriate meanings to, and act based on a "classically liberal" moral and ethical code. This means that to acquire a sense of democratic spirit, one must first develop a conceptual framework of meaning connecting the key ideas of American democracy -- "justice," "equality," "freedom," "fairness," "tolerance," "respect for others," etc. Gradually, over the duration of one's schooling, this framework must come to fit within the range of belief that Americans are willing to accept under their democratic tent. In general, this range is anchored by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. It runs between Allen Bloom's (1987) notions of "democratic man" and "democratic personality"; from an emphasis on natural rights to one of maximized freedom for individuals. Finally, of course, belief must be manifest in some action -- as subtle as voting or donating money to a civic cause, or as obvious as speaking at a town meeting or joining into a political demonstration.

Needless to say, some ambiguity remains here. People on opposing sides of the abortion issue, for example, may attach very different meaning to the concept of "individual freedom" and act in very different ways accordingly. But as long as they refrain from violent or repressive acts against each other, members of both camps fall within the range of meaning described above (even, ironically, as they try to portray each other as "outside the democratic tent"). We may view peaceful demonstration or even civil disobedience as acts of democratic spirit. But no matter how peaceful, few would apply that designation to activities of totalitarian or fascist groups.

Based on his own words and those he cites from the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education (Conant, 1959; 1964), Conant recognized that schools must influence young people in the ways suggested above; that they must prepare students to advance and reshape society, not merely find a useful place in it. For the greater part of this century American public schooling has accepted this challenge mostly through curricular reforms such as those advanced by the Cardinal Principals, by Conant, and numerous others.

But structured academic activity represents only part of the mechanism by which schools transmit key moral and ethical concepts and meanings. For example, extracurricular activities, though part of the formal organization of schools, offer students wide opportunity for informal and semi-structured interaction and engagement. Moral learning is also shaped by the varied social interactions and events of school life unfolding at or beyond the margins of teacher control and organizational structure. Though Conant was largely silent on such informal sources of democratic spirit, they seem rather important to his case. Specifically, to what extent might comprehensiveness (or other schools characteristics such as communality or small size) enhance or constrain the informal transmission of democratic spirit?

Sources of Democratic Learning

First of all, it is important to note that the school is just one of many influences on student's moral and ethical learning. Other formal institutions (family, church, Boy Scouts, etc.) and educative channels (television, film, music, etc.) often shape these to an even greater degree. Second, students acquire democratic meaning formally (that is, via explicit lessons constructed for them by others; parents, teachers, various print and electronic media, etc.) as well as informally (via life experience, social interaction, implicit media messages, etc.). Third, to the extent schools do contribute to the development of democratic understanding, they do so in both formal and informal ways. This occurs formally via explicit instruction, rules and sanctions, and class projects, for example. Informally, it occurs by virtue of the fact that having gathering large numbers of young people together for a substantial portion of their lives, schools create a setting for authentic moral and ethical drama to unfold. Between these two extremes, schools offer the opportunity for a great deal of semi-structured interaction through clubs, teams, and other kinds of extra-curricular activities.

These points are highlighted by briefly sketching out some of the ways young children begin to develop key moral, ethical, and democratic concepts through formal and informal means both in and out of school. Formal avenues include parents' explicit lessons and messages, as well as explicit messages from television ("Mr. Rogers," "Barney," or in my time "Romper Room"). Informally, a very young child may conceive the possibility of fairness or justice by experiencing an authentic "moral event." A parent punishes him "unfairly." A neighbor shouts "please stop running through my yard!" The man at the drug store won't give him a nickel (two cents in my time) for a dirty pop bottle he found. Sometimes the lessons are more serious. In his neighborhood he encounters devious bully one day, an honest friend the next. Gradually, he learns something about trust--when to give it, when to withhold it, and the risks of making a mistake.

Later on, students experience similar kinds of formal and informal social lessons in school. Formally, teachers stress the importance of honesty and fair play and explain why it's wrong to steal or cheat. Each observance of a teacher enforcing or failing to enforce a classroom rule adds another plank to a student's moral and ethical understanding. Understanding is also reinforced through instructional content. Fables, myths, legends, and true stories convey what can happen when people struggle to live up to (or fail to live up to) noble personal and social ideals. Other formal, structured avenues for social understanding include directed projects that extend beyond the classroom, which lead the child to "realize the social scene of action" (Dewey, [1909] 1975).

Although much attention is focused on the formal ways schools contribute to students' moral development, their informal contributions tend to be underestimated or overlooked in schools literature (they receive much more attention in popular television and film). School hallways, lunchrooms, and play fields have always served as real-life laboratories for students to observe moral events, make choices, and learn from the choices they and others make. Someone finds a wallet full of money and must decide what to do. In turn, this may set off ripples of further moral activity. Other students begin talking about what should be done. At least one child will say "finder's keepers, loser's weepers," at least one other will challenge the slogan, and further argument will ensue. If the finder decides to keep the money, other students may wrestle with their own consciences. Some will bring the story home thus allowing parents to offer guidance. A student may report losing a wallet, another may tell a teacher that someone found one. Such patterns of activity represent a miniature, if you will, "embryonic" version of the kinds of moral activity that occurs on a more complex and sophisticated basis in larger society. Moreover, like the explicit instructional dimension of schooling, these patterns themselves become more complex and sophisticated as students pass from childhood through adolescence.

Of course, I use the term "embryonic" to draw a connection between informal moral dimension of schooling and Dewey's view of how schools could best transmit critical intellectual content and moral understandings. In Dewey's vision, this occurs to the extent schools are able to reproduce "typical conditions of social life" (Dewey, [1909] 1975). In other words, through experience with authentic socially situated problems, students not only gain knowledge of science, math, history, mechanics, or art, but also learn how to live in a democratic community. But while Dewey's vision relies heavily on formal structured activity, an important share of school social life is shaped largely by students' informal organization. That is to say that a great deal of student social activity and learning unfolds at the margins of formal control, much in the same fashion as such activity and learning occur in our larger society.

Some theorists implicitly recognize this idea, that school life is rich with moral events and dilemmas. Lawrence Kohlberg's concept of the school as "just community," for example, holds that this richness can be marshaled by and integrated into formal school structure so as to develop student moral thinking and democratic decision making. Teachers may use a rule making exercise to engage students in a discussion of why particular rules are needed and to help decentralize the responsibility for upholding the rules they make (Power, 1997). On a larger scale, schools have implemented "town hall" decision-making bodies where students and teachers consider problems and enact rules (Lightfoot, 1983; Sommers, 1984). Ostensibly, such activities provide not only a link between the informal and formal aspects of student life in school, but also authentic experience in democratic life.

But it's far from clear that schools must involve students in formal decision making in order to provide an authentic democratic social setting. A student of mine, a local high school teacher, recently related a story that illustrates this point. A large group of ninth graders at his school became upset at being excluded from various upper-class activities and staged a sit-in in the school cafeteria. Teachers and administrators responded by creating a "teachable moment" -- they talked to the students about civil disobedience and how it had been used historically. They reminded them that to engage in the practice was to assume the risk of lawful consequences (in this case, suspension from school) and that other avenues could be used to settle their complaint. After about an hour, most of the students had returned to class and those who didn't were suspended for one day. What is fascinating about this entire process was how it represented a complex exchange of information, messages, and symbols critical to the growth of democratic meaning. While the school conveyed its authority and the price of resistance, students conveyed a message that resistance was possible, even noble, and that authorities might pay a price for not taking their concerns seriously.

What I describe here constitutes a valuable authentic tension in school. It is a tension that is probably threatened not just when schools severely restrict student freedom and decision making authority, but also when they allow students a very large share of these. Offering an example of the latter problem, Christina Hoff Sommers (1984) described one high school's experiment with a Kohlberg inspired "town hall" decision making body. Over time, she reports, students voted to allow Walkman style radios, to prohibit surprise quizzes and homework during vacation periods, and to institute a procedure by which teachers who assigned work deemed "too demanding" could be brought before a school "Fairness Board," an arrangement which according to Sommers caused teachers to feel "harassed and manipulated." Rather than devote their limited time and energy to reshaping student attitudes, teachers gradually withdrew from the process altogether. While some may view this as a case of students receiving experience in true democratic action, I would argue that they received a highly misleading and in many ways counterproductive impression about American democratic life.

By highlighting the less formal, less structured ways in which students develop democratic spirit, my intent is not to de-emphasize the importance of more formal mechanisms such as rules, course content, or curricular organization. Instead, my purpose is to call attention to a question that cuts against some of the "small is beautiful" thinking in schools literature. Specifically, to what extent might students' development of democratic spirit be enhanced by the social looseness of larger, more comprehensive high schools? The next section focuses on how informal organizational elements can promote or inhibit the growth of democratic spirit, drawing particular contrasts between "small communal" and "large comprehensive" high schools.

Organizational Differences and the Transmission of Democratic Spirit.

For two decades, much research has focused on the question of what impact school size and bureaucratic organization have on student achievement and attitude toward school. Although some key studies examine the separate impact of these two variables, they often get lumped together, so as to contrast the "large bureaucratic" with the "small communal" model of schooling. The argument is often made that smaller size provides the conditions necessary for schools to have a more pervasive and enduring impact on students. These conditions include a set of common values, a shared agenda of activity, and an expanded caring role for teachers (Bryk and Driscoll, 1988). Larger high schools, it is argued, are much more prone to value uncertainty, diffuse activity, and impersonalistic relationships between adults and students. Along these lines, the comprehensive high school has received harsh criticism from school reform advocates as being socially disengaging and anti-democratic (see Wraga, 1999, for a summary of and response to a range of criticisms).

A good deal of this criticism, however, often seems driven by a set of particular beliefs as to the nature of effective schooling and as to the nature of democracy itself. For example, for critics who find many "traditional" school and classroom practices as ineffective or undemocratic, comprehensiveness and large school size are viewed as barriers to systematic structural reform. In other words, I suspect that some critics might overlook the size and curricular expansiveness of a "shopping mall" high school were it to incorporate such characteristics as team teaching, heterogeneously grouping, cooperative learning, and "alternative" forms of student assessment. The point here is not to debate the merits of such practices, but simply to suggest that another more traditional yet equally legitimate vision of schooling exists; one that is in many ways highly congruent with life in American capitalist democracy and that can be enhanced by school size and comprehensiveness.

The remaining paragraphs thus focus on how size and comprehensiveness work to both expand and impede student social engagement and sense of democratic spirit. In particular, the discussion will highlight how three school organizational elements influence the informal semistructured dimension of student social and moral learning. These elements are (1) social complexity, (2) boundary permeability, and (3) the trend toward bureaucratic and legalistic policies. The first of these, social complexity, lends support for much of Conant's view as to the democratizing influence of comprehensive high schools. The latter two elements, largely unanticipated by Conant, pose serious threats to democratic spirit by upsetting the balance between key informal and formal aspects of the school organization: boundary permeability by increasing the power of external norms and values to reshape school goals; bureaucracy and legalism by increasing the school's power over its members, thereby damaging its ability to distribute justice and moral authority.

Organizational Complexity

The following contrasts, though a bit stereotypical, illustrate the different normative mechanisms at play in small and large high schools. On one hand, a small private religious high school, through its rules, curriculum, and pervasive set of organizational norms, can have a very strong formal influence over students' moral and ethical learning and behavior. And yet, to the degree that such schools tend to attract families with congruent pre-existing beliefs and behaviors, control or maintenance may be better words than influence. While the school's small size may facilitate formal control, small size and formal control structures may also lead to fewer opportunities for the less structured more authentic kinds of social interaction and eventfulness described earlier. A large comprehensive public high school, on the other hand, may have a weaker formal influence because of its more diffuse curriculum and less rigid rules. But the potential for shaping student democratic spirit may be quite high due to the diversity of students' backgrounds and the greater opportunity for informal and authentic moral activity.

In the case of the small religious school, moral education and civic spirit emerge from the school performing in communitarian fashion. Norms and boundaries are well defined and there is a strong sense of mutual obligation and responsibility. In the case of the larger comprehensive high school, moral and civic learning unfolds in a more libertarian fashion. The school operates not so much as a single community, but more like a small city with multiple communities and institutions. Boundaries are permeable, norms compete and evolve, there is an air of social uncertainty and often one of tolerance.

The social complexity and social looseness described above represents a critical, though implicit, element of Conant's vision of democratic ethos in comprehensive high schools. The connection becomes even more evident if we consider student social status within schools. In smaller, less complex school settings students must often grapple with a social structure that tends to be simple, visible, and fairly rigid, often defined largely in terms of one's academic standing, general popularity, or athletic ability in one of the few sports the school may offer. Larger schools, however, will tend to offer a greater number of opportunities for students to gain social status; a wider array of courses, athletic activities, clubs, and a multiplicity of social groups or "cliques" with which students may identify. Though not specifically applied to schools, Conant's (1945) concept of "visibility" describes how social complexity enhances democratic life and social equality. To the extent an individual acts across an array of social settings, and to the extent his talent or status varies across these settings in which they act, an overall higher level of uncertainty exists regarding his social status. Collectively, such a condition results in a low visibility social structure. To illustrate how this can work in schools, imagine for a moment a ninth grade student with mediocre athletic and academic ability attending a small junior high school where athletics and academics constitute the primary avenues of social status. For this student, the transition to a large high school with many more students and opportunities may hold a powerful liberating appeal.1

Part of this appeal may stem from the number of available extracurricular activities, another key feature of comprehensive high schools linked to size, complexity, and social looseness. The availability of a wide range of extracurricular activities contributes to the blurring of status hierarchies and increases opportunity for attaining status. Conversely, a narrow range of activities will tend to highlight such hierarchies, particularly in small schools. It is sometimes argued, for example, that in a small school, a higher percentage of the boys can make the football team. But it is also true that a boy's failure to make (or even try out for) the team will be more visible in a small school. "Failure" may result in some social stigma, and there may be few alternative ways to acquire distinction or status.

Besides their contribution to reducing status visibility, extracurricular activities contribute to democratic ethos in other ways. First, as Waller (1967) and Bidwell (1965) both note, they help rechannel the crosscurrents and counter currents of student culture toward greater attachment to and identification with the school and its values. But they can also have the effect of pulling the school closer to the interests of students. Given the wider range of student interests and the larger number of students who potentially share these interests, a larger school's extracurriculum is likely to also be more fluid and spontaneous, shaped and driven as much by student norms, values, and informal organization as by formal design. A math teacher may decide to start a math club, but a chess club may evolve from a handful of students playing the game during or after school. Similar fashion, other political, vocational, arts-oriented clubs may emerge. In short, there are multiple opportunities for students to affiliate with, participate in, and to create "civic" activity; processes which are essential to adult democratic life.

The wide availability of activities for all types of students contribute to the town-like civic atmosphere of the school. New opportunities for semi-structured moral and ethical interaction are created, along with a set of institutions that enhance its embryonic social quality.2 For example, certain clubs such as Students Against Driving Drunk or Youth Ending Hunger help create a current of moral activity and awareness among the general school population. Sometimes, these kinds of clubs emerge spontaneously. A good example of this is found at Edsel Ford High School in Dearborn, Michigan, one of the schools originally included in Conant's (1959) study of American high schools. While maintaining its comprehensive quality, Edsel Ford has experienced a dramatic demographic change over the past forty years. Having once served a virtually all white community, it's students now represent a range of different races and ethnic backgrounds, including a large population of Arabic Muslims.3 In response to the tensions that have accompanied this change, "Edsel" students recently organized a "Diversity Club" aimed at promoting "understanding and communication beyond a student's small peer group" (Cohn, 2000).

Boundary Permeability

Schools are both dependent on and influenced by local community norms and values. In fact, schools maintain their legitimacy as institutions by replicating and reinforcing the cultures of the adults and students they serve (Gordon, 1957; Coleman, 1961; Dreeben, 1968; Fuller and Izu, 1986; Hallinger and Murphy, 1986). But as Coleman and Hoffer (1987) point out, local public schools once maintained a higher degree of value consistency with their surrounding communities than is the case today. School leaders could be reasonably certain of community values and concerns and, if they acted accordingly, could be reasonably certain that parents would support their decisions. Rooted in this earlier era, Conant's vision assumed a higher level of school-community trust than may be warranted today, when parents are more likely to question disciplinary or curricular decisions they feel may adversely affect their children.

This cultural tension between the school and its environment is a long-noted problem in American school literature. Tied to this problem is the issue of student culture, which can often exert a strong, distinct, and counterproductive influence on organizational goals, even when schools and parents share a reasonable level of normative congruency. With battle-like imagery, for example, Waller ([1932] 1967) describes the ongoing struggle of teachers and students to establish their norms in the face of "[y]oung artisans making culture for themselves and old artisans making culture for the young" (p. 107). The power of the young artisans stems from their number, their youthful energy, and by the fact that they "participate in schools as a way of life, with near-total personal involvement" (Bidwell, 1965). Later studies, however, reveal the problems that can occur when students are allowed to make culture for the old. Gordon (1957) and Coleman (1961) observed how teachers often played favorites or lowered their academic standards in response to student norms and student ascribed social status. Years later, Sedlak and his colleagues (1986) noted a similar teacher response to indifferent, disengaged, or defiant students.

Essentially, what is being described above is the tremendous potential for informal organizational elements, if left unchecked, to reshape formal goals and threaten institutional integrity. Concrete examples of the problem are not hard to find. Recalling the case of the "lost wallet" mentioned earlier, if a substantial portion of students in a school have been raised on a "finders keepers" principle, teachers striving to convey a sense of respect for the property of others will find themselves swimming upstream. In communities with intense support for competitive sports it can become very difficult to hold athletes to the same code of conduct as other students. A student of mine, a principal at a nearby high school, faced six months of legal entanglements and social intimidation after he suspended the starting quarterback for throwing a punch during a game. As a former high school teacher, I noticed that over time, many of my colleagues "stopped hearing" students' hallway use of vulgar or abusive language. Others stopped noticing cheating (one colleague told me that my students' test scores would improve if I took a little walk out in the hall during the test).

While all schools face problems like these to some degree, they are more easily addressed in certain organizational settings. Small schools, magnet schools, and private schools are probably better equipped to maintain stronger boundaries, forge agreement on core beliefs and goals, and create "value communities" that attract like-minded families. For several reasons, large comprehensive high schools are restricted in all of these areas. Community complexity and diversity create conflicting incentives for teachers and administrators and a higher level of uncertainty regarding which of these need to be most closely followed. The internal complexity and diversity of the school's curriculum and teaching staff magnifies this uncertainty, and it often becomes difficult to forge a set of core beliefs beyond mere peaceful coexistence.

For larger schools, this problem of protecting the integrity of core goals and values places critical importance on teachers' ability to maintain an "extended role" (Bryk and Driscoll, 1988). Such a role calls upon teachers to engage students outside the classroom and beyond academic content so as to become viewed as caring adults. Some large high schools have moved in this direction by lengthening their morning homeroom period so as to transform it into a semi-structured social period with coffee, doughnuts, and an opportunity for students and teachers to talk to each other outside the constraints of classrooms, coursework, and five-minute passing time. Other schools have incorporated regular mentoring arrangements into the regular school day (Shouse and Schneider, 1993).

At the same time, teacher engagement and caring must have a bit of a tough edge, that is, be strong enough to maintain moral and intellectual order within the school despite the erosive pressures of student culture. As the studies cited above (and others) suggest, assuming this kind of role is perhaps one of the most challenging and peculiar tasks of the teaching profession. The task is significantly impeded, however, when teachers "leave their values at the school door" (Grant, 1988) or, as we are about to consider, when they attempt to "automate" the task via bureaucratic or legalistic procedures.

Bureaucratic Legalism

A theme of this paper has been how size, diversity, and complexity enable comprehensive high schools to offer a rich and authentic version of American democratic life. But size, diversity, and complexity can also lead to greater reliance on bureaucratic relationships, thus threatening those qualities of schooling associated with the growth of democratic spirit. Particularly troubling is the increasing trend for adults in schools to shy from or even abandon their role as moral agents. Gerald Grant (1988) points out, for example, how beginning in the 1960's schools attempted to deal with increased social uncertainty and complexity through the use of centralized authority and legal codes of behavior. Such changes, however, have led to the erosion of teachers' authority and to the school's ability to exercise discretion in matters of organizational justice. Today, we see this in the form of "zero tolerance policies" that require students to be suspended or expelled for innocent or marginal violations of the school's formal code of conduct. Such policies permit little or no room for particularistic approaches to student discipline and moral learning, and severely constrain the school's ability to grow any sort of meaningful moral ethos beyond mere obedience to rules and authority. Teachers and principals end up acting less like caring adults, less like educational professionals, and much more like bureaucratic middlemen.4

Rules have always been important in schools, of course, but traditionally teachers and administrators tended to be granted a high degree of discretion in their application. But bureaucratic rigidity has led our schools to a place where the student caught fighting back against a bully receives the same punishment as the bully; where a creative writing student submitting a story with violent content may be referred for psychological counseling; and where students are barred from mentioning religious topics or reading religious materials in class. Though such occurrences may seem "rational" within a school setting, they cut against the grain of public democratic life where self defense is considered legitimate, where violence is a common feature of popular culture, and where political leaders frequently invoke prayer in public settings.

At the risk of coming down too heavily on this point, I'll offer another example to illustrate the use of such discretion. Years ago, at the public urban high school where I once taught, the violent death of a student was not an unusual event. When a death occurred, especially if word of it began spreading in the morning, it became impossible for teachers to carry on with normal class activity. Students would be deeply affected, some would be crying, and many would look to their teacher for some comforting words. It was not uncommon for teachers to offer a moment of silence, words of religious sentiment, or even an outright prayer. On one occasion, a teacher sang a brief spiritual over the school public address system. No doubt, such actions were constitutionally questionable. Many schools would have refrained from any sort of spiritual response, opting instead for a more legalistic one, perhaps the use of outside "crisis counselors." I would argue, however, that my school's reaction was highly representative of American democratic life -- much more similar to what would occur in a comparable situation at a local community or even national level.

Some Final Points

This paper has attempted to flesh out and extend Conant's concept of democratic spirit, to examine the ability of the comprehensive high school to promote it, and to point to potential structural and organizational impediments to its development in schools. Also emphasized here have been the less formal components of school organization, largely overlooked by Conant, that can contribute to as well as detract from student moral learning. Essentially, I am suggesting that larger more comprehensive high schools hold the potential to deliver students an experience that is socially rich, morally eventful, relatively authentic, and (when supplemented by strong curriculum) highly suited to prepare them for American civic life. To say these things is not to say that life in such schools is trouble free for students. There will always be some social strife, apathy, or disengagement. Conflict will arise over rules and authority relationships. Students may witness amoral or unethical conduct on the part of their peers or even their teachers. As in our larger society, however, these contribute to the robustness of social life and provide opportunities for interaction and judgement, for justice and wisdom.

This picture depends, of course, on the willingness and ability of teachers and administrators to take an active authoritative moral role that extends beyond their classroom and subject matter. The word "authoritative" is key here, intended to convey the longstanding idea that authority rests with the subordinate and that adults in schools will need to work diligently to increase students' willingness to follow and trust them. The use and expansion of authority is a crucial professional task of teaching, one that becomes exceedingly difficult when antithetical values seep in to organizational culture, when teachers begin to abandon their values, or when schools turn to legalistic solutions for complex moral and ethical problems, thereby compelling teachers feel to act more like "officers of the bureaucracy" (Bidwell, 1965) than educational professionals.

It is important to reiterate that no claim is made here that smaller schools cannot deliver a rich moral and ethical experience. They are limited to some degree, however, in their ability to provide the kind of social complexity, status uncertainty, and moral robustness that are so important to American democratic life. But it is also important to repeat here that "smallness" is not well defined. A high school with 600 to 1000 students may seem small, but is probably large enough to maintain the positive social attributes described here.

The flip side of this proposition is a bit more intriguing; is a school of two to three thousand "small enough" to allow the preservation of normative boundaries and to allow teachers to maintain an extended moral role? The discussion offered here suggests that the answer is probably "yes." Also intriguing is whether teachers' willingness or ability to do so commensurately increases with substantial reductions in the size of the student population. If we're talking about a school with upwards of 5000 students or one serving high numbers of disaffected young people, again the answer is probably "yes." But for most average sized high schools, creating strong moral and democratic ethos is probably much more a function of the will of caring adults to begin the task today.

Endnotes

Conant's view on curricular differentiation and ability grouping as democratizing agents within the school appear to be rooted in this idea of social visibility. Requiring all students to attend the same rigorous courses risks increasing the visibility (or stigma) of academic social status. Creating rigid "tracks" for college bound, general, and vocational students does much the same thing. Offering a more diffuse set of curricular alternatives (e.g., electives and flexible ability groupings) should promote greater uncertainty with respect to any individual's social ranking.

My argument here assumes a high degree of fluidity and "eased entry" to extracurricular clubs and organizations. For an alternative view see Quiroz, Flores, Gonzales, and Frank (1996).

Dearborn is home to one of the world's largest Arabic Muslim communities outside the Middle East. Once centered in a somewhat isolated neighborhood near Ford Motor Company's "Rouge Plant," this community now extends throughout the city.

Another recent example of how high complexity and large size has harmed moral agency in schools involves the contractual transfer in many larger districts of key supervisory "duties" (e.g., hall, cafeteria, or after school duty) from teachers to uniformed security officers. One administrator, for example, recently commented to me that teachers in some large schools in his district have essentially withdrawn from any substantial non-classroom interaction with students, leaving much of that responsibility to school security personnel.

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