James S. Coleman School Quotations

The educational resources provided by a child's fellow students are more important for his achievement than are the resources provided by the school board.

Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.

Schools are successful only insofar as they reduce the dependence of a child's opportunities upon his social origins.

As an example, one of the schools I have been studying is too small to compete effectively in most sports, but participates with vigor each year in the state music contests.

In every school, more boys wanted to be remembered as a star athlete than as a brilliant student.

The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education.

Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels.

I'd propose that each central-city child should have an entitlement from the state to attend any school in the metropolitan area outside his own district - with per pupil funds going with him.

There are many examples in high schools which show something about the effects such competition might have.

In a high school, the norms act to hold down the achievements of those who are above average, so that the school's demands will be at a level easily maintained by the majority.

Particular individuals who might never consider dropping out if they were in a different high school might decide to drop out if they attended a school where many boys and girls did so.

It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.