FROM MARKERS TO MAGTISTRA: SOCIAL CLASS AND EDUCATION IN AUSTRIA AND AMERICA

By Todd Buell

The New York Times recently ran a series looking at the way in which social class impacts various elements of American life. The series, and Laurie Graves’s call for articles on the topic, has inspired me to think about social class in Europe, a part of the world where I spent the last two years, and more specifically, in a particular country, Austria. After two years there, I observed clear differences between it and the United States regarding class.

Broadly speaking, most people in Austria are middle class. There are few people whom one can look at and immediately assume either poverty or wealth. However, the system that keeps this societal happy medium together is not without flaws. Taxes are high across the board and, from my observations, it seems that the best way to get rich in Austria is to become a politician. (Austrian state TV reported last year that Austria’s politicians earn one of the highest salaries in the EU). Would these be the people you would want to hear talking about “belt tightening”?

One other flaw in the Austrian social welfare system is its implicit nationalism. If you are a poor citizen, you have little to worry about because the government will take care of you. You have a right to health care, cheap drugs, unemployment benefits, and, of course, if you get a job and then retire, you can get a generous pension, sometimes before age fifty-five. To my knowledge, no one is talking about privatizing Austria’s national pension.

Austria, like all of Europe, has recently been swarmed by a large number of immigrants and asylum seekers from Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and Turkey. The situation for these new arrivals, especially if they are not students or if they don’t have jobs, is woeful. They have few of the rights outlined above that citizens possess. Austria, again like many other European countries, sees social welfare as closely tied to the “nation-state.” Citizens get the privileges; noncitizens don’t. This fact explains why, at least in my former home in Austria, Villach (a city of approximately 60,000), the only beggars one ever saw on the street appeared Turkish or eastern European.

There are thus just two classes of people in Austria: citizens and noncitizens. However, within the “citizens” group, one finds that there is in fact another form of hierarchy that is based on education, authority, and, to some extent, on pedigree.

Austria, though having abandoned its aristocracy as a condition of the Treaty of Versailles, still proudly clings to a system of titles and formality that originated in the aristocratic era. For example, a person who graduates from university receives a “Magistra” or “Mag.” title, a person with a science degree could be a DI for “Diplom Ingenieur” (Diploma Engineer), and of course all types of doctors use the Dr. title. A person with a teaching degree might be a Dipl-Paed. (Diplom-Paedegog). There are also honorary
degrees that one can receive from a municipality for years of public service. This title, Hofrat (HR), originated in the aristocratic era and was used as a way of granting status to those whose words or deeds pleased the emperor, or, conversely, shunning a person by denying that title to one who contested the emperor.

Of course, we in the United States have all of these degrees and similar titles, too (if you count things like the Medal of Freedom or other town service awards), but we generally place them at the end of a name on a business card or placard. The Austrians place the titles at the front of the name. So a person who is a school director (headmaster) with a university degree, teaching degree, doctorate, and an
honorary degree could have a name that looks like this on official documents: Dir. HR Dr. Dipl.-Paed. Mag. Wolfgang Schmidt. You can’t help but feel as if you should kiss the man's ring when you greet him.

These titles are not taken lightly. Teachers almost always refer to themselves when speaking to students or parents as “Mag. Schmidt.” In official ceremonies titles are always used. An American friend of mine, who teaches in Austria, told me that she receives faster service from the dry cleaner if she calls herself “Frau Mag. Hutchings” instead of simply “Frau Hutchings.”

The titles system demonstrates how education plays a role in social class in Austria. More education equals more titles, which often equals more respect and status. The next question of course is how equitable is the educational system in Austria? Does the child of a blue-collar worker have the same chance of earning both an education, and a title, as the child of an attorney or with a parent in a more lucrative profession? My tentative answer to the question is yes, but it is, nevertheless, not a perfect educational system.

In Austria, schools are divided and specialize in certain areas. The results of exams, the desires of parents, teachers, and, one hopes, students, help place pupils, sometimes as early as age twelve, into a particular school. The schools vary in specialization: tourism, business, technology, and comprehensive education are all possible tracts. Students all learn basic skills such as writing, mathematics, history, science, (each school also has a state-funded Protestant and Catholic religion teacher, but students may opt out of this in secondary school), but they also learn the specialty skills of their particular school.

This division system means that in a town like Villach there are at least five public high schools. To put this in perspective, Villach’s population is about that of Lewiston/Auburn, which only has two public high schools—Lewiston and Edward Little.

Between teaching in both a tourism and technology school and speaking to other assistants who taught in the other types of school, I have come to the conclusion that Austrian students are generally well educated and well mannered. They are, on average, better behaved and more aware of the world around them than American students. (On this latter point it is important to point out that Austria has 1/32 of America’s population. They have to look outward.)

However, as we compare Austrian students to their American counterparts, we must not forget one important difference between the two countries and their educational systems. America’s schools are massively unequal. We fund our schools mostly from municipalities, usually via the property tax. The state and then the federal government are supposed to make up the difference. However they seldom, if ever, do. Though it is not always the case, schools with low per student expenditures tend to have low test scores and vice versa. There is no doubt that American schools reinforce existing social class divisions more than their Austrian counterparts.

In Austria, the federal government funds most, if not all, of the school’s budget. It ensures that a school in the west of the country is the same as one in the east. It also sees to it that teachers make the same in the north as they do, with equal experience, in the south. Through a system of committees and inspectors, it checks that the curricula are the same across the country. This system of ensured equality, along with a centuries-old culture of belief in public institutions and public schools (there are hardly any private schools in Austria), help provide equal access to education to those rich and poor, immigrant and native. I noticed no implicit nationalism among the schools and believe that they do serve as a narrower of differences between social classes.

The university system works in a similar way. If pupils pass their high school diploma exams, then they may attend any university in Austria. At one time, the universities were free of charge, but that is no longer the case, and students now must pay approximately $1,000 annually to attend university.
These fees, of course, sound meager to us, but they can be an obstacle to university education for poor families, who are not acculturated to the idea of saving money for college. (There are ways for Austrian families to borrow money for university). Notwithstanding the fees, in my opinion, the Austrian education system from kindergarten through university adequately allows people of all financial background to use education as a way of improving both their financial status and social class.

However, I doubt that  a similar system will come to the United States anytime soon. One reason is that Americans generally value local control. Town meetings, school board elections, and even the right to set, and protest against, property taxes are long held and cherished examples of democracy, which would likely be altered or endangered by an increased federal or state role in education. As soon as either the state or the federal government attempts to put more money into education, it will want to exert more
control over how the money is used.

One does not have to be a right-wing Republican to believe that when government agencies start to fund any project, not just a school, municipalities lose control. Right-wing groups often cite the teaching of evolution, hostility toward religion, or general “liberalism” in schools as reasons to remove their
students from public schools and often homeschool them or enter them into religious schools.

Yet progressives also have something to fear by an increased federal presence in education. The No Child
Left Behind Act, while mandating more funding for schools, also requires rigorous use of testing, of which some progressive educators (such as David Berliner of Arizona State University) doubt the validity. Also, it is possible that federal regulators could pour money, and control, into sex education programs in schools, imposing a proabstinence agenda onto progressive communities who would strongly oppose it.

My point is not that putting federal money into education is bad, but rather that many communities would object to the control over curriculum that exists in Austria and that would likely exist in this country if the Department of Education increased its budget exponentially. If there were a way of performing the former without the latter, such as block grants (i.e., money given to states or schools for any purpose to do
with education), then schools could likely be better funded, but municipalities could retain control.

As the New York Times points out in its series on social class in America, universities have traditionally served as a leveler of social class in this country. As I outlined earlier, the same is true in Austria but, again, not without problems. Due to underfunding from the government, and an almost
complete lack of private funding, universities in Austria are often understaffed and overcrowded. Students in some universities have to pay simply to remain on a waiting list to take courses or pursue degrees. This past autumn, students in Vienna staged a walkout to protest the lack of faculty and the “holding” fees.

Austria and the United States have different histories and disparate conditions regarding education and social class. In Austria, social class, among citizens, is based on merit but is represented and treated in a manner that is reminiscent of the aristocratic era. Its secondary and tertiary education prides itself on its equality across the country. In my experience, though universities are egregiously underfunded, they do provide equal chances for students to use education as a way of improving their lives personally
and financially.

Schools are the bearer of opportunity and enhancement in all students’ lives and provide the opportunity for lower income students to gain the education that they need to improve their social class. Tolerance of vast inequalities between schools is not acceptable in a country that is as wealthy as ours and that holds upward mobility as an imperative social value.

Spending two years in Austria has shown me that countries can have equal schools. The challenge for us as Americans is to have a nation of schools that are financially similar yet still different enough to allow for students, teachers, and parents to be able to shape the environment in which they work. That is, after all, the democratic way.

No country is entirely classless. But here in America we should strive to make it easier for lower economic classes to improve their incomes and opportunities. That is, after all, the American Dream. We cannot better our poorest children, thus enabling the American Dream, without improving our poorest schools.   

 

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