The Illusion of Meritocracy and the Audacity of Elitism: Expanding the Evaluative Space in Education
In the global context of increasing inequalities between advantaged and disadvantaged social groups, the role of education in achieving social justice has taken on new importance. In this chapter we consider two widely acclaimed books on social inequality
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The Illusion of Meritocracy and the Audacity of Elitism: Expanding the Evaluative Space in Education Trevor Gale, Tebeje Molla and Stephen Parker
Abstract In the global context of increasing inequalities between advantaged and disadvantaged social groups, the role of education in achieving social justice has taken on new importance. In this chapter we consider two widely acclaimed books on social inequality, namely: Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century (2014) and Daniel Dorling’s Injustice: Why Inequality Persists (2010). We specifically focus on how the authors relate problems of social inequality with educational disadvantage, naming the relation in terms of meritocracy and elitism. We suggest that in the main, Piketty and Dorling hold to distributive accounts of educational disadvantage and to an income/wealth-based evaluation of social inequality. We also argue that the informational basis of Piketty’s and Dorling’s evaluation excludes an appreciation of social justice as ‘recognition’ and thus excludes the importance of ‘epistemological equity’ and of ‘agency freedom’ in pursuing social justice in educational contexts, particularly in higher education. It is through these two foci on recognitive justice that we augment Piketty’s and Dorling’s distributive account.
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Introduction
Economic and social inequalities in western nations and across the globe are now the new reality. In 2014, the richest 85 people in the world were as wealthy as the combined wealth of the poorest half of the world’s total population (Oxfam 2014a, b). In the USA and Germany, 1% of the population owned 37% and 33%, respectively, T. Gale (&) S. Parker University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Parker e-mail: [email protected] T. Molla Deakin University, Geelong, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 S. Parker et al. (eds.), Policy and Inequality in Education, Education Policy & Social Inequality 1, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4039-9_2
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of their nation’s wealth (Vermeulen 2014). While in the UK, the poorest 20% of the population was as wealthy as the nation’s richest five families. These are growing disparities, even if at different paces in different nations. For example, in 2003– 2004 Australia’s wealthiest 20% of the population held 59% of the nation’s wealth; by 2011–2012 this had increased to 61% (ABS 2013). These large and growing disparities in wealth distribution have sparked renewed interest among scholars from a range of fields, and by some politicians and policymakers, in questions of economic, social and educational inequality. Indeed, relations of inequality are an enduring interest among researchers, including those with interests in education (e.g. Connell 1992; Macpherson et al. 2014; Thomson 2002). Since at least the 1970s critical sociologists of education have argued that education systems are responsible for the reproduction of social and economic disadvantage (e.g. see Apple 1979, now into its th
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