Small Scale and School Culture: The Experience of Private Schools

It is a widely held public perception that the private schools in this country are superior to public schools. The National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) completed by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics in 1988 describes the public's opinion of private schools. According to NELS, students in nonpublic schools do more homework, watch less TV, and have higher educational goals than their public school counterparts. Other statistical reports document that 44.6 percent of parents with children in public schools say they would enroll their children in a private school if there were no financial obstacle. Also, public school parents are four times more likely to be dissatisfied with their child's school (Benson & McMillen, 1991).

With this level of public respect for private schooling, investigators have for some time tried to identify characteristics of private schools that public schools could develop in order to increase public satisfaction. This digest will examine only two of several possible factors: school size and school culture.

The Smalleness Factor

Although private school classes are generally smaller than those in most public schools, studies on the effects of reducing class size have yielded mixed results (Slavin, 1990). In the absence of clear evidence supporting the benefits of small class size, investigators have looked for other factors to explain the enduring image of success private schools enjoy.

This search has led some researchers to consider the effect of school size on the quality of life within the schools. The average public school is about twice as large as the average private school. Large school size compounds the difficulties that confront children and youth--from poor attitudes about school, to substance abuse, to achievement levels (Fowler, 1992; Page, 1990; 1991). What is less well understood is how the comparatively small size of most private schools might assist in creating a positive culture.

The School Culture Factors - Gesellschaft Versus Gemeinschaft

In 1887, Ferdinand Tonnies, a German sociologist and philosopher, drew a distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of institutions. His distinction may be relevant to the experience of private schools:

• gesellschaft--an association of people that is based primarily on the members' rational pursuit of their own self-interests.
• gemeinschaft--an association of people that is based primarily on shared purposes, personal loyalties, and common sentiments (Johnson, 1990).

While Tonnies' concepts were developed to describe the momentous social transformations leading to the modern era, the notions of shared purposes, personal loyalties, and common sentiments speak to the distinctive school cultures that emerge in small private schools.

Shared Purposes

Large public schools often serve a widely diverse group of families residing within a single enrollment district. Rarely do these groups come together as a single community to discuss the purposes or goals of the school to which they all send their children. In the absence of clearly defined and shared intentions, teachers and administrators feel the greatest pressures for accountability to goals set by their local school districts or state departments of education. These goals tend to be expressed in concrete, quantitative terms: academic achievement scores, attendance rates, and dropout statistics. Technical solutions are sought to raise achievement scores, compel children to come to school, and keep them coming until they graduate.

An example of how such "gesellschaft" solutions can fall short can be seen in the way early elementary educators often have attempted to promote students' self-esteem. Most schools recognize the role of self-esteem in the educational success or failure of children, especially in the elementary schools. However, too often, efforts to nurture self-esteem--undertaken without clearly expressed community purposes--end up simply directing children's attention to their own inner gratification, thus encouraging narcissism. Katz (1993) suggests that efforts to increase self-esteem be sensitive to cultural differences of families, and be grounded in developing children's competence and their contributions to the group rather than in self-preoccupation and consumerism.