General and Applied Tolerance: Does Education Increase Commitment to Racial Integration?

This paper challenges the long-standing proposition that higher education produces stronger commitment to the democratic norm of tolerance. Replicated, national survey data that measure both abstract and applied commitment to racial integration are used to examine three important contributions to that perspective made by Prothro and Grigg (1960), Converse (1964), and Greeley and Sheatsley (1974). Results indicate first, that while well-educated whites appear more tolerant than others on the more abstract index, they do not appear more tolerant on the applied index. Second, the well educated show no tighter belief-system constraint than the poorly educated in translating their abstract position into an applied position on racial integration. Finally, while higher education produced more rapid adoption of abstract support for racial integration from 1964 to 1972, there was no clear tendency for education to be associated with more rapid adoption of support for integration in an applied context. The paper concludes with a reevaluation of the efficacy of formal education in producing democratic citizens.