MERITOCRACY VS.

STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY Most children of elite parents become elite adults and most children of working-class parents become working-class adults. One explanation for this is that our schools constitute a meritocracy. Students are believed to start kindergarten or first grade on a nearly equal footing and as they progress through the grades those who are smart and work hard earn good grades, are placed in high-status school programs, enter high-status, high-paying professions, and end up with a lot of money, status, and political power regardless of the social status of their parents. Students who are not smart and/or do not work hard earn poor grades, are placed in low status school programs, enter low-status, low-paying occupations, and end up with little money, status, and political power regardless of the social status of their parents. However, one cannot accept the concept of meritocracy without believing that most children of elite parents are intelligent and hard working (and so they become elite adults), while most children of working-class parents are not intelligent or they are lazy (and so they become workingclass adults). This is the logic of deficit. The concept of meritocracy does not work without it. There is a different explanation: School success is facilitated for the children of the elite and limited for working-class students by structural inequalitysystematic, durable class-related inequalities that are transferred from generation to generation. For example: 1. Poor and working class children are not as well prepared for elementary school elite children, and school success and failure are related to the socio-economic status of students parents from the start. 2. Poor and working class children attend different schools from middle class, affluent professional, and executive elite children, and poor and working class schools are inferior. [Refer to Working Class and Affluent professional School exercise.] 3. Poor and working class children who earn high SAT scores against all odds do not have the same access to higher education, especially high-status higher education, as more affluent students with identical SAT scores. 4. More affluent students who are not very bright or lazy or both still find their way into higher education (often high-status higher education). To which explanation do you subscribe? Meritocracy is essentially a conservative (right-wing) idea: Inequality is blamed on individual malfeasance that punishment will correct. Structural Inequality is a liberal (leftist) idea: Inequality is blamed on an unjust system that requires collective measures to correct (Unions, Community Organizations, and Critical literacy in working-class schools). Do you agree? Do you see other areas where conservatives Blame the victim and liberals Blame the system? Which explanation for class-related unequal outcomes of schooling do you believe are favored in affluent professional schools and working-class schools?