Less School

"With every decade, the length of schooling has increased, until a thoughtful person must ask whether society can conceive of no other way for youth to come into adulthood." So writes Sociologist James Coleman, chairman of the Panel on Youth of the President's Science Advisory Committee. Best known for his controversial 1966 study of minority schooling, Coleman, 47, is a longtime student of American youth. In a new report, he and his team of nine social scientists and educators recommend more work and less school for young Americans aged 14 to 24.

The trouble with school, argues Coleman, is that its focus is too narrow. At their best, schools equip the young with basic skills, some knowledge of their heritage, and a taste for learning. But schools are not designed to provide such adult necessities as the ability to manage one's own affairs or to engage in "intense, concentrated involvement in an activity." Nor are they the place for learning how to take responsibility for and work with others.

Schools not only fail to develop these capabilities, says the Coleman panel, but by monopolizing young people's time, they also prevent them from acquiring skills elsewhere. Until about 50 years ago, a child learned how to be an adult in his life outside school, especially within his family. But the family no longer serves this function, and "school has expanded to fill the time that other activities once occupied without substituting for them." Segregated by age, today's young are saturated with information but starved for experience.

Although changing the schools themselves (for instance, by creating specialized schools and using students as tutors) could broaden their role, says the panel, the best remedy is to limit schooling and provide opportunities for the young to alternate study with work.

Participation in serious and responsible work with people of different backgrounds and ages would promote adult capabilities and counteract the isolation and passivity of school.

The panel's most provocative proposal is to get the young out of schools earlier and into other organizations.

Hospitals, symphony orchestras, department stores and factories all are urged to experiment with such a plan, taking on youngsters from age 16, using them for whatever labor they can perform, while teaching them further skills and overseeing their formal schooling. This approach would represent a fundamental shift away from the traditional American view of education as a means of secular salvation. It might also be a move toward an even older pattern--apprenticeship.

Coleman himself goes beyond the panel's proposal to urge the development of working communities that encompass all ages. An organization of 1,000 persons would include 90 infants four and under, 180 aged five to 13 and 100 oldsters over 65. While producing goods and services, such Utopian units could also "bring down to humane size" the care of the young and elderly. As a model Coleman cites the residential community of the Society of Brothers, in upstate New York, which manufactures commercial toys. Unlike theirs, however, his groups would function only during the normal workday.

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