The sobering evidence of social science
来自社会科学的证据发人深省
The report was so “seismic” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s word — that Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration released it on Fourth of July weekend, 1966, hoping it would not be noticed. But the Coleman Report did disturb various dogmatic slumbers and vested interests. And 50 years on, it is pertinent to today’s political debates about class and social mobility. So, let us now praise an insufficiently famous man, sociologist James Coleman, author of the study “Equality of Educational Opportunity.”
这份报告如此‘有震撼力’，用Daniel Patrick Moynihan的话来说，以至Lyndon B. Johnson政府选择在1966年独立日前的周末发布这份报告，冀望无人留意【编注：7月4日为美国独立日，乃公共假日，Fourth of July weekend就是恰好与独立日连上的那个周末，1966年7月4日为星期一，故此周末为独立日前之周末】。但“Coleman报告”确实惊扰了教条主义者的昏睡和既得利益团体的算盘。50年后，这份报告和眼下关于阶层和社会流动性的政治辩论仍息息相关。那么，让我们赞誉一位名气还不够大的男士，研究著作《教育机会的平等》的作者，社会学家James Coleman。
In 1966, postwar liberalism’s confidence reached its apogee. From 1938, when the electorate rebuked Franklin Roosevelt for his plan to “pack” the Supreme Court, through 1964, congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats prevented a liberal legislating majority. But Johnson’s 44-state victory that year gave Democrats 68 Senate seats and a majority of 155 in the House.
1966年，战后自由主义者的自信心膨胀到最高峰。1938年，选民严厉抨击了富兰克林·罗斯福“填充最高法院”的计划。自那时至1964年，多亏国会中的共和党议员和保守派民主党议员，自由主义者未能掌握立法机构多数议席。然而，1966年，约翰逊拿下来44个联邦州，民主党人在参议院占有68席，在众议院以155席拿下多数席位。
Effortless and uninterrupted prosperity seemed assured as the economy grew in 1965 and 1966 by 10.7 percent and 7.99 percent, respectively. So, a gusher of tax revenue coincided with liberalism’s pent-up demand for large projects. It hoped to meld two American traits — egalitarian aspirations and faith in education’s transformative power.
1965年和1966年的经济增长率分别为10.7%和7.99%，唾手可得且无间断的繁荣看似已不在话下。于是，井喷式的税入增长恰逢自由派对大项目压抑已久的热情，如同干柴烈火。自由派希望将两大美国特色融为一体——追求人人平等的志向和教育推动变革的信念。
The consensus then was that the best predictor of a school’s performance was the amount of money spent on it: Increase financial inputs, and cognitive outputs would increase proportionately. As the postwar baby boom moved through public schools like a pig through a python, almost everything improved — school buildings, teachers’ salaries, class sizes, per-pupil expenditures — except outcomes measured by standardized tests.
那时的共识是，学校经费数目是预测该校学生表现的最佳指标：增加经费投入，学生的认知水平会成比例地上升。二战后婴儿潮横扫公立学校，如同一头猪通过巨蟒体内，公立学校的任一方面几乎都比以往更上一层楼——校舍、教师薪资、班级规模、平均每个学生的经费投入——唯一的例外是由标准化考试衡量的学生表现。
Enter Coleman, and the colleagues he directed, to puncture complacency with the dagger of evidence — data from more than 3,000 schools and 600,000 primary and secondary school students. His report vindicated the axiom that social science cannot tell us what to do, it can tell us the results of what we are doing. He found that the best predictor of a school’s outcomes was the quality of the children’s families. And students’ achievements are influenced by the social capital (habits, mores, educational ambitions) their classmates bring to school:
让Coleman和受其指导的同僚上台，用证据之匕首——从3000所学校和60万名小学、初中生处收集的数据 —— 刺破自满的气球吧。Coleman的报告印证了一个公理：社会科学无法指导我们行事，它能告诉我们的是行动的后果。Coleman发现，预测某校学生表现的最佳指标是学生家庭的素质。学生的学业表现受其同学带到学校的社会资本（习惯、规矩、教育方面的进取心）的影响：
“One implication stands out above all: That schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context; and that this very lack of an independent effect means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school.”
“一个暗含推论尤为突出：将学生的家庭背景和社交圈子的影响排除后，学校教育对学生的学业成就影响极小；这意味着由家庭、社区和同侪环境带来的水平不均等，将一路伴随他们毕业，成为他们开启成人生活时面临的不均等。”
Coleman’s report came exactly one year after — and as an explosive coda to — what is known as the Moynihan Report, which was leaked in July 1965. Moynihan, then a 37-year-old social scientist in Johnson’s Labor Department, presented in “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” what then counted as shocking news: 23.6 percent of African American births were to unmarried women.
Coleman的报告恰好于“Moynihan报告” 发表一年后面世，为后者燃起之火添柴加薪。 Moynihan在1965年7月被人泄露于众。当年Moynihan 37岁，是约翰逊执政下劳工部的一名社会学者,他的研究《黑人家庭：国家行动的案例》，成为令时人震惊的新闻：23.6%的非裔美籍婴儿由未婚女性所生。
Today 71 percent are. Almost 47 percent of all first births are to unmarried women, and a majority of all mothers under 30 are not living with the fathers of their children.
如今这个数字为71%。将近47%的头胎新生儿由未婚女性所生，大多数30岁以下的母亲和孩子的父亲分居。
The causes of family disintegration remain unclear, but 51 years ago Moynihan and then Coleman foresaw the consequences. Moynihan said the “tangle” of pathologies associated with the absence of fathers produces a continually renewed cohort of inadequately socialized adolescent males. Socializing them is society’s urgent business if it is to avoid chaotic neighborhoods and schools where maintaining discipline displaces teaching. Coleman documented how schools are reflections of, rather than cures for, the failure of families to function as the primary transmitters of social capital.
家庭解体的原因尚未明朗，但51年前Moynihan和Coleman先后预见到家庭解体的后果。Moynihan称，父亲缺位造成的种种困扰，源源不断地产生了一代社会化不充足的青春期男性。使他们充分社会化是社会的当务之急，否则难以避免产生混乱的社区和学校，在那里维持纪律取代了正常教学。学校本应是首要的社会资本传递途径，现在却成了家庭溃败的倒影，而非家庭溃败的解药，这一切都被Coleman记在笔下。
The extraordinary synergy between Moynihan and Coleman was serendipitous. Today, their baton of brave and useful sociology has passed to Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute. His “Losing Ground” (1984) was an autopsy of 1960s aspirations. His “Coming Apart” (2012) explores the social consequences — we are wallowing in the political consequences — of a bifurcated society in which many do very well while many others are unable to reach even the lowest rungs on the ladder of upward mobility.
Moynihan和Coleman两项研究的协同增强效应，纯属意外。如今，他们勇敢、实用的社会学接力棒，传到了美国企业研究所的Charles Murray手上。Murray《站不住脚》（1984年出版）一书解剖了1960年代那场失败的壮举。他的《四分五裂》（2012年出版）一书探索了社会两极分化带来的社会后果。社会两极分化的表现是，许多人非常出色，而另外的很多人甚至连社会爬升阶梯的最低梯级都够不着，我们正在两极分化的政治后果中打滚。
Coleman’s evidence that cultural rather than financial variables matter most was not welcomed by education bureaucracies and unions. Similarly, we now have more than half a century of awkward, and often ignored, evidence about the mostly small and evanescent effects of early-childhood education. Today’s Democratic Party fancies itself “the party of science”; Barack Obama pledged, in his first inaugural address, to “restore science to its rightful place.” Social science, however, is respected by Democrats only when it validates policies congenial to the interests of favored factions.
比起经费投入，文化因素是最重要的影响变量，教育官僚机构和工会并不青睐Coleman提出的证据。与此情况相仿，早期儿童教育效果微弱，转瞬即逝，这方面令人尴尬、常被忽略的证据，我们已经积累了50多年了。如今民主党幻想自身为“科学之党”；贝拉克·奥巴马在他首个总统任期的就职演讲中，誓言“恢复科学理应占有的地位。”然而，仅在社会科学论证支持的政策有利于民主党所偏袒的利益团体时，民主党人才会尊重社会科学。
翻译：鳗鱼禅(@鳗鱼禅)
校对：龙泉(@L_Stellar)
编辑：辉格@whigzhou