James Samuel Coleman

James Samuel Coleman studied at Purdue University, Columbia University and duPont Manual High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is philosophy and sociology. Employment is recorded with University of Chicago, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University. Positions recorded include President of the American Sociological Association. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and honorary doctorate of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

• Name — James Samuel Coleman • Born — 12 May 1926 • Birthplace — Bedford, Indiana, United States • Died — 25 March 1995 • Place of death — Chicago, Illinois, United States • Spouse — Lucille Richey, Zdzislawa Walaszek • Children — Thomas, John, Stephen, and Daniel • Field — Sociological theory, Mathematical sociology • Education — Purdue University Columbia University • Doctoral Advisor — Paul Lazarsfeld • Doctoral Students — Ronald S. Burt, Peter Marsden

As the son of James and Maurine Coleman, he spent his early childhood in Bedford, Indiana, he then moved to Louisville, Kentucky. After graduating in 1944, he enrolled in a small school in Virginia, but left to enlist in the US Navy during World War II. After he was discharged from the US Navy in 1946, he enrolled in Indiana University. Eventually he transferred schools, and Coleman received his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University in 1949. He initially intended on studying Chemistry but quickly became fascinated with sociology as he navigated his way through University life. He began working at Eastman Kodak until 1952.[6] He pursued a degree in sociology at Columbia University. During his time there, he spent two years as a research assistant with the Bureau of Applied Social Research, and published a chapter in Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences, which was edited by Paul Lazarsfeld. He went on to receive his doctorate from Columbia University in 1955. • Illustration — 1944 yearbook entry of Coleman He is best known today for his work on the massive study that produced "Equality of Educational Opportunity" (EEO), or the Coleman Report. Coleman's intellectual appetite was prodigious.[7] In 1949 he married Lucille Richey with whom he had 3 children, Thomas, John, and Stephen. Lucille and James divorced in 1973 and he later went on to marry his second wife, Zdzislawa Walaszek, with whom he had one son, Daniel Coleman. He died on March 25, 1995, at University Hospital in Chicago Illinois and was outlived by his wife Zdzislawa Walaszek and sons.

Coleman achieved success with two studies on problem solving: Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964) and Mathematics of Collective Action (1973). He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and taught at the University of Chicago. In 1959, he moved to Johns Hopkins University, where he served as an associate professor and founded the Sociology department. In 1965 he became involved in Project Camelot, an academic research project funded by the United States military through the Special Operations Research Office to train in counter-insurgency techniques. He eventually became a professor in social relations until 1973, when he returned to Chicago to teach as a University Professor of Sociology and Education at the University of Chicago again. During the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Coleman was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the United States National Academy of Sciences.[8][9] Proceeding on the assumption that the study of human society can become a true science, the author examines the contribution that various mathematical techniques might make to systematic conceptual elaboration of social behavior. He notes that it is only when the logical structure of mathematics is possible, and claims that in this way mathematics will ultimately become useful in sociology.[11] Upon his return, he became the professor and senior study director at the National Opinion Research Center. In 1991, Coleman was elected as the eighty-third President of the American Sociological Association. In 2001, Coleman was named among the top 100 American intellectuals, as measured by academic citations, in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.[13] Over his lifetime he published nearly 30 books, and more than 300 articles and book chapters, which contributed to the understanding of education in the United States. He was influenced by Ernest Nagel and Paul Lazarsfeld, both who interested Coleman in mathematical sociology, and Robert Merton, who introduced Coleman to Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. Coleman is associated with adolescence, corporate action and rational choice. He shares common ground with sociologists Peter Blau, Daniel Bell, and Seymour Martin Lipset, with whom Coleman first did research after obtaining his PhD.[15]

Coleman is widely cited in the field of sociology of education. In the 1960s, during his time teaching at Johns Hopkins University, Coleman and several other scholars were commissioned by the National Center for Education Statistics to write a report on educational equality in the US. It was one of the largest studies in history, with more than 650,000 students in the sample. The result was a massive report of over 700 pages. The 1966 report, titled Equality of Educational Opportunity (otherwise known as the "Coleman Report"), fueled debates about "school effects" that are still relevant today.[16] The report is commonly presented as evidence that school funding has little effect on student achievement, a key finding of the report and subsequent research.[17] It was found as for physical facilities, formal curricula, and other measurable criteria, there was little difference between black and white schools. Also, a significant gap in the achievement scores between black and white children already existed in the first grade. Despite the similar conditions of black and white schools, the gap became even wider by the end of elementary school. The only consistent variable explaining the differences in score within each racial group or ethnic group was the educational and economic attainment of the parents.[19] Therefore, student background and socioeconomic status were found to be more important in determining educational outcomes of a student. Specifically, the key factors were the attitudes toward education of parents and caregivers at home and peers at school. Differences in the quality of schools and teachers did have a small impact on student outcomes. The study cost approximately 1.5 million dollars and to date is one of the largest studies in history, involving 600,000 students and 60,000 teachers in the research sample. The participants were black, Native, and Mexican American, poor white, Puerto Rican and Asian students. This study was a driving factor in the debate for “school effects”, a debate that continues to date. A few major findings and controversies from the study were that black student drop rates were twice as high that of white students, and that poor home environments were a major influence to poor academic performance for minorities. Eric Hanushek criticized the focus on the statistical methodology and the estimation of the impacts of various factors on achievement which took attention away from the achievement comparisons in the Coleman Report. The study tested students around United States, and the differences in achievement by race and region were enormous. The average black twelfth grade student in the rural South was achieving at the level of a seventh grade white student in the urban Northeast. At the fiftieth anniversary of the report's publication, Eric Hanushek assessed the closure in the black-white achievement gap. He found that achievement differences had narrowed, largely from improvements in the South, but that at the pace of the previous half-century, it would take two-and-a-half centuries to close the mathematics achievement gap.[20][21]

In Foundations of Social Theory (1990), Coleman discusses his theory of social capital, the set of resources found in family relations and in a community's social organization.[22] Coleman believed that social capital is important for the development of a child or young person, and that functional communities are important as sources of social capital that can support families in terms of youth development. He discusses three main types of capital: human, physical, and social.[23] Human capital is an individual's skills, knowledge, and experience, which determine their value in society.[24] Physical capital, being completely tangible and generally a private good, originates from the creation of tools to facilitate production. In addition to social capital, the three types of investments create the three main aspects of society's exchange of capital.[25] According to Coleman, social capital and human capital are often go hand in hand with one another. By having certain skill sets, experiences, and knowledge, an individual can gain social status and so receive more social capital. “The interrogation by his colleague was likely very difficult to navigate as Coleman was a man who was opposed to segregation. It is known that when Coleman and his wife Lucille Richey brought their three children John, Tom, and Steve to a white only amusement park, outside of Baltimore. They attempted to enter the park with a black family and as anticipated were arrested along with approximately 300 other demonstrators”.

• Community Conflict (1955) • Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (1956, with Seymour Martin Lipset and Martin Trow) • The Adolescent Society: The Social Life on the Teenager and its Impact on Education (1961) • Introduction to Mathematical Sociology (1964) • Models of Change and Response Uncertainty (1964) • Adolescents and the Schools (1965) • Equality of Educational Opportunity (1966) • Macrosociology: Research and Theory (1970) • Resources for Social Change: Race in the United States (1971) • Youth: Transition to Adulthood (1974) • High School Achievement (1982) • The Asymmetrical Society (1982) • Individual Interests and Collective Action (1986) • "Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action", article in American Journal of Sociology 91: 1309–35 (1986). • 'Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital", article in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, pp. S95–120 (1988) • The Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard University Press. • Equality and Achievement in Education (1990) • Redesigning American Education (1997, with Barbara Schneider, Stephen Plank, Kathryn S. Schiller, Roger Shouse, & Huayin Wang)

James Samuel Coleman worked in philosophy and sociology. He was employed by University of Chicago, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University. Recorded position is President of the American Sociological Association. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society and National Academy of Sciences.