Other considerations also pressed the Ed School toward urban involvement. "There was a growing sense," says Thomas, "that we simply cannot evade our local responsibility." Increasing numbers of faculty and students also found the city's turmoil fascinating. The ghetto brought the deficiencies to light, forcing the school systems to spill the long-guarded achievement tests. But as the list of problems lengthened, Cambridge academics found, in Thomas's words, "a growing resonance with city problems--a fascination with the ungainly monster."
Harvard's contacts with Boston prospered. In 1966, the Ed School subcontracted with the Boston Public Facilities Department to design 14 new ghetto schools. The project, forced on Boston by the Racial Imbalance Law, was directed at Harvard's end by Robert H. Anderson, professor of Education, who dubbed the effort Operation Schoolhouse. Other programs took Harvard faculty as far as Wilmington and St. Paul's.
But by and large, the Ed School commitment to urban problems remained small. The School was a long way from the torn textbooks, classroom spitballs, and ghetto ferment. Graduating students still fought for jobs in Newton, which (with neighboring surburban towns) had long commanded most of the Ed School's time and talent.
More important, when Ed School workers took the urban plunge, most entered the ghetto as research tourists, handling out questionnaires, looking at school sights, then dissolving into the city's green hub. "People are always asking," says Edna Pezzolesi, head of the Hawthorne House, a Roxbury educational center, "'I wonder how many books Harvard's going to write about this.'"
THERE WERE exceptions. Some Ed School groups formed on-going alliances with community organizations--both Exodus and the New School had Ed School help. But successes like these only whetted Roxbury's appetite, taunting it with missed opportunities. As the Boston ghetto turned to the Ed School it found Harvard visible but aloof.
The Ed School was not conspiring to stifle the ghetto. Few dispute the value of detached research, and for all its present prominence, large-scale ghetto activity is a very recent phenomenon. If the Ed School had jumped into the cities to take Roxbury's hand,it would have joined the vanguard of reforming institutions in the U.S.
No revolutionary community commitment appeared. Instead, predictably but disastrously, the Ed School tried working in Roxbury the same way it had functioned so successfully in Newton. The School marched into Boston, and from there, onto Blue Hill Avenue, carrying a suburban banner.
Three principles underlie this traditional approach to school problems. Abstracted, the attitudes come close to defining Harvard's traditional idea of itself.
The first principle, a definition of competence, postulates that the academic, by virtue of long study, has superior insight into the problems falling within his field, and consequently, deserves a large say in their solution. Well accepted in suburbia, the precept has protected urban school professionals from mayors and and communities for generations.
The second Ed School guideline outlines a proper style of intervention in education. This principle is a mesh of assumptions, more than any specific attitude, and involves ideas about research, neutrality and effectiveness.
To begin with, the argument goes, the academic's unique contribution to reform lies in his knowledge--accumulated through research. As Sizer puts it, "There has got to be recognition of the peculiar contribution a university can make in a time of social relocation. And one of our peculiar purposes is research." The Ed School has no service responsibility, and correspondingly, concrete activity in the ghetto or elsewhere is only a means to the end of securing generalized knowledge.
Since research requires objectivity, the academic has no place in politics (at least while on the job) and conversely, should not be judged by political standards. A campus should be a neutral haven where political gladiators can meet with their guards down, and one gladiator should not take alarm when he sees the university conferring with the other.
Finally, academics should use their expertise effectively--so as to generate the best, most sweeping kinds of reform. Thus school systems are natural allies, since their cooperation promises comprehensive change.
The last Ed School postulate deals with overall commitment. It warns, briefly, that over-commitment inhibits perspective. There are lots of educational problems which will reach crisis proportions if not tackled now. The academic should keep his options open and take the long view.
These guidelines are not posted on Ed School bulletin boards. They are working principles shaped during successful interventions in suburban educational crises, like the one following the first Sputnik in 1957. They might have worked in the cities, except for one thing: as the Ed School poked tentatively at urban problems over the last few years, the ghetto challenged everything it stood for in the past