Class Formation, Politics, and Institutions: Schooling in the United States

Recent studies of education in the United States have explained schooling as a consequence of either capitalist class domination or class conflict. What is distinctive about the structure of U.S. schooling is its limited degree of stratification. The ways in whih class analyses have explained this pattern are reviewed critically. Class anlayses have failed because (1) they neglect the role of the political process in transforming class interests into institutional patterns, and (2) they neglect the process by which political structures themselves become important determinants of class formation. The role of class forces on U.S. schooling has been very limited when compared with Europe. This minimal effect of class has been a function of the political system, which has operated to limit the extent to which class interests and conflicts could be politically transformed into those political decisions that shaped schooling. The American "exceptionalism" in Schooling is traced to the "exceptionalism" of its class formation, and then back to the character of the political process in the United States.