Historian of education Christina Groeger writes that Americans have long believed that education is the key to equality, but she thinks that this faith is misplaced.
She writes:
“The best way to increase wages and reduce wage inequalities in the long run is to invest in education and skills,” wrote economist Thomas Piketty in his landmark Capital in the Twenty-First Century. For nearly 200 years, education has been seen as a central means of reducing the gap between rich and poor. Today, this idea has become something of a national faith, as politicians across the political spectrum tout the power of education to shape a more egalitarian society. However, faith in educational expansion as a means of achieving the American Dream has obscured the ways the same process has in fact deepened economic inequality at different historical moments. If we don’t explore its full consequences, education as a policy tool can become a dangerous trap.
In the U.S., the relationship between education and social inequality points to a paradox. On the one hand, the U.S. has long had among the highest rates of school enrollment and attainment in the world. In 2017, the United States ranked second-highest globally for the average years of schooling for individuals over the age of 25. On the other hand, the U.S. currently has one of the highest rates of social inequality and lowest rates of social mobility in the Global North. In sum, even though many Americans are getting educated at unusually high rates, the U.S. economy is extremely polarized between the 1% and the rest. If education were indeed the great equalizer, this could not be true.
This seeming paradox stems from the fact that the American educational system and the modern corporate economy grew up together and mutually shaped one another from the start.
After briefly reviewing the importance of education in opening up new opportunities for clerical and sales workers and for white collar workers, she maintains that education does not produce equality.
The uneasy truth is that educational solutions often were and are politically palatable to those with the most economic power precisely because they do not directly threaten that power. Educational solutions have tended to place the burden of reform onto individuals to improve their skill level, rather than the larger structure of a vastly unequal economy. The notion that we can “upskill” our way out of an unequal economy, however, misdirects our attention away from the role of employers and economic elites in maintaining their immense workplace authority.
Between the 1940s and 1970s, inequality fell. What role did education play? Many scholars have attributed the decline in social inequality to massive public investment in education. However, the mid-20th century decline had to do with much more than just education. Particularly important was the power of new industrial unions. Unlike exclusive craft unions, industrial unions organized workplaces across lines of skill, race, ethnicity, and gender, reaching a peak of 36% of all private sector workers by 1953. Organized workers became the mass base of support for public policies like a high progressive income tax and social welfare programs. The expansion of public education on its own would not have been able to account for the significant decline in inequality in this period; rather, the growth of worker power, economically and politically, was the primary driver of these changes.
Since the 1970s, workers’ rights have been stripped away, unionization rates have fallen to a mere 6% of private sector workers, budgets for public services have been slashed, and the wealthy pay less in taxes. The economy is increasingly polarized between low-wage service jobs performed disproportionately by women and people of color, on the one hand, and the professional beneficiaries of the “knowledge economy” on the other. The history of the early twentieth century teaches us that there is nothing inherent in educational expansion that means its economic benefits will be equally distributed. In fact, as we are seeing today in the highly-credentialed fields of financial services, corporate law, and specialized medicine, when worker power is at an all-time low, educational expansion without additional protections can simply concentrate the power of existing elites.
The meaning and significance of education is much greater than economic advancement. But until economic subsistence is addressed, education will be tied to these vocational ends, understandably for so many students for whom education is a means of securing a living. If we want to free education up for non-vocational ends, we need to ensure that all people can achieve a livelihood first.
School expansion must be coupled with efforts that build worker power, which historically has been the basis of a more egalitarian society. These include building strong and inclusive unions, raising the minimum wage, expanding social welfare programs, and implementing the progressive taxation necessary to fund them. The collective power of workers, not education level, is ultimately what will matter most for creating a more egalitarian society.
Thus, we can understand the ongoing barrage of attacks on teachers’ unions and the growth of nonunion charter schools as efforts by elites to prevent workers from having any power and from building the egalitarian society that is part of our national creed.
Bernie is right.
“These include building strong and inclusive unions, raising the minimum wage, expanding social welfare programs, and implementing the progressive taxation necessary to fund them.”
Feel the Bern!
Diane I have read this over a couple of times . . . Some good stuff here. However, just one of the questions raised while reading it:
The author writes, “If we want to free education up for non-vocational ends, we need to ensure that all people can achieve a livelihood first.”
The idea of non-vocational ends . . . .what does that mean to us/you?
The problem is what we assume by that phrase; and I think that, IN OUR TIME, and in a democracy as “egalitarian,” we had forgotten, and now MAY have learned that ALL of us need to understand non-vocational in the context of the relationship between the people as WORKERS and those same people as knowledgeable and responsible CITIZENS.
“Non-vocational” doesn’t mean to merely be able to enjoy good literature, attend lectures, read poetry, or regularly read the New York Review of Books. If the 50’s enjoyed a more equal spread of power and wealth, it wasn’t because we had unions per se, but because those unions understood their power and aimed it at making a more equal situation for all.
But if the unions aren’t made up of people who understand themselves as citizens of a democracy . . . through a pervasive education that goes beyond vocational ends . . . then the unions have set themselves up for internal decay and ultimately for the polity as being “peopled” by the politically ignorant . . . prone to let their petty selfishness rule, their union voices dissolve, and to end up politically shooting themselves in the foot. . . . “I hate socialism!!!! but don’t take my social security away.” If that’s not a demonstration of the politically ignorant, I don’t know what is.
So in a democracy, it’s not a job first, and then education–the article leans in that direction, as if workers were abstracted from their political environment.
Insofar as it’s possible, all who live here (we the people) need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time . . . to be educated as citizens who know themselves as part of a politically-educated collective voice . . . and, through that voice, be able to maintain its power in organizations and so the more equal wealth that can flow from it. Unions are not abstractions who “herd” the sheep-people who belong to them?
I think there is much more in that article that could be unpacked, but this IS a blog. CBK
Excellent comment, Catherine. Life is rather complicated, isn’t it?.
Daedalus Indeed . . . life is complicated. I am just now watching the Trump Trial . . . the defense is running clips of democrats using the term FIGHT in their speeches and talks.
Of course, people like Kamala Harris and Barrack Obama MEAN by FIGHT the same thing as Trump has meant by FIGHT over the last four years. Uh huh . . . NOW I guess our goose is REALLY cooked.
When will it stop? CBK
Fascinating history. I have long maintained that the idea of using education to “better yourself” was a part of the myth of educational advancement and standard of living. Some of the most successful people (money wise) are the least educated. Some of the best educated people languish in academia, where recent reliance on temporary positions has undermined the standard of living for college teaching. Respect for those who have an education has eroded even more than their salary in places.
There is an old coal miner’s song: “O if I had the money to do more than just feed them, I’d give them good learnin the best could be found. So that when they growed up theyd be checkers and weighers, and not spend their life digging in the dark underground.”
These words are evidence of a deep conviction in American Society of the saving grace of an education. It exists against the stark reality of life: we cannot all weigh the coal; someone has to dig it.
The invention of the American myth of learning leading to financial success parallels the movement from the agrarian way of life to the urban orientation in modern times. Our family success story was Uncle Bayard, who grew up on the banks of the Duck River and became a lawyer and State Senator. The family spoke his name enough for all that to sink in. Education became an ethic in itself, underpinned by the idea of anecdotal success that provided the fodder for stories in families. This mythology was so powerful in the rural areas that people who moved to cities to work in factories were often assumed by their kinfolk at home to be vastly wealthy.
To be sure, bootstraps have provided many the opportunity to rise from poverty, but hovering in the background of success is opportunity. If there are but a few who can be “checkers and weighers” , the skills needed to gain these enviable positions will languish.
Roy Turrentine I don’t think education is a “myth,” it’s a dynamic thing that moves along with another general term: culture. Like “culture,” education is a general-enough term to have massive meaning, but also to have been twisted and turned around so much, it means good-bad-different things to different people . . . and it actually occurs sometimes, but is easily used nefariously.
In the article, the writer seems to covertly relate education to the capitalist idea of “success,” which inevitably means the numbers in one’s bank account.
In my experience, I was brought up economically poor but with the implicit idea of that kind of “success.” however, the more I learned, the more I learned to question that idea, and the more I understood that having “stuff” (like George Carlin used to tell us) is the doorway to my personal shallowness, and ends up leaving us with problems that have nothing to do with living well. Just some thoughts. . . . CBK
Thanks, Catherine. The myth, as I see it, is the direct line from education to wealth. I think that is what you said
Roy Yes, I think the “line” from education to wealth is often a tacit assumption.
But then I had to laugh . . . because in my philosophical background, an excellent teacher of mine spend several days talking about the multiple meanings of the term myth. When I responded to your note, I had forgotten that . . . assuming your meaning was pejorative, as was my own trajectory in that note?
But in those several days in that classroom, the exploration of the term myth was in the context of historical meaning and it broke open some new and far-reaching insights for me.
I still think in common language, myth is generally meant pejoratively? and is opposed to “real science”? But then, common language often is where we pick up a bunch of tacit (assumed) meaning that often tends to end our thinking instead of encouraging our questions. “We must get on with it . . . ?” Sorry to go on . . . . CBK
Roy My response to your note went to moderation, but it’s “spent” instead of “spend, and “far reaching” instead of “far-reading.” CBK
Catherine: I was using myth to mean “larger than life story that is important to a culture”. Our beliefs often come from stories that are not true in a literal sense, but have an overarching truth that guides society.
Roy Well-said. CBK
Education cannot heal a economy rife with inherent inequality. America has been on the losing end of the global economy. We lost most of our manufacturing jobs and many of our union jobs. At the same time compensation for CEOs has increased by 908% since 1978 while workers’ salaries have only increased by about 12%. We have a huge wage gap and increasing inequality as a result. Students from top colleges and universities still find opportunities for white collar jobs, but other graduates from state and smaller colleges are having a harder time finding a job that is commensurate with their education. Overall, there is less opportunity for young people to find a stable good paying job.
Here in north Florida the headline in the local paper reported on a recent union vote in the county. County workers had the opportunity to vote whether or not to join a union. The vote was 83 to 99 AGAINST unionizing! You just cannot help those that will not help themselves. So many in the South are brainwashed against union membership. Even when given the opportunity to gain more agency, they fail to understand the benefit of collective power.https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/
retired teacher Two clips from your note, and a comment:
(1) Education cannot heal a economy rife with inherent inequality.
(2) County workers had the opportunity to vote whether or not to join a union. The vote was 83 to 99 AGAINST unionizing! You just cannot help those that will not help themselves. So many in the South are brainwashed against union membership.
What do you mean, then, by education? Can politically educated people be so easily “brainwashed”? I mean NOT to offend, but I think we have to give a new-think to what we mean by education? CBK
I certainly hope people can be educated against the influence of propaganda and “fake news.” In middle school I can remember I had to do a non-fiction book report. I chose a book on the dissemination of propaganda and how not to fall for it. The lessons have stayed with me. As a result, I have never fallen for a “Nigerian Prince.” A healthy bit of skepticism a good thing, particularly as we get older.
Curiously, the rulers opened education in the 1950’s and early 60’s to lucky people like me, only to find that this made educated people who were capable of questioning the social structure in which they were enmeshed. Since that time, there’s been a steady effort to keep the peasants ignorant, starting with ‘A Nation at Risk’.
In those days public education was considered a valuable public asset. States and cities invested in public schools. We were in a Sputnick space race. Ever since education has been considered a commodity, those with money and power consider public schools the schools of last resort, and they refuse to invest in them.
Do you really believe there’s a conspiracy to keep students ignorant? Who specifically runs this conspiracy, and how does it work?
Ponderosa Koch and Company, for one. Students can question everything EXCEPT their economic ideology. . . . It’s questioning that goes on the block . . .if you want to get hired or keep your job. Google “UnKoch my campus” at George Mason University, or you probably have read some of Paulo Freire’s work? There’s a huge field of Orwellian power-morphs to draw from. CBK
Ponderosa Addendum: You can also read Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” He talks about the helplessness of the individual in a democracy, but also about the power of organized-group voices against strains of (corporate) totalitarian-aimed power, e.g., unions. CBK
Yes, Ponderosa, I do actually believe that the oligarchy wants to keep the masses ignorant beyond a level which enhances their capacity to ‘make money’ for corporate owners.
When I was striving for my certification 50 years ago, I learned a bit about the history of public education in the US. Public education has always been approved grudgingly by the ruling class, who wanted (after all) to give only their own sons and daughters the capacity to manipulate the ‘workers’. Their own offspring, of course, had access to a superior private education.
In fact, the justification always given for the funding of public education in legislatures was that it would enhance worker productivity. Public education funding was NEVER pushed to make ‘a better informed citizenry to make better choices in a democracy’. To the rulers of any society, a free and equal liberal education for everyone is a threat to their superior position. ‘The Prince’ was not written for peasants.
How do they do it? Before your very eyes you see how they do it. First, they convince people that the ‘public good’ is bad (I already mentioned ‘A Nation at Risk’. Next, you withdraw funding, so things get worse. Then you install ‘reforms’ that drive out the more competent personnel, who quit in disgust. Finally, you kill the public institution and pass it directly to ‘corporate’ hands (or, rather, into the hands of those who own the corporations). Poof! Another part of the commons has been appropriated.
So the privatizers are fully aware their privatized schools are worse and are happy about that? Because that’s part of the grand plan?
No, Ponderosa. Once the public schools are totally privatized they will be in the hands of the ruling class. The schools will then serve not only as propaganda outlets but turn a profit as well. This is the end point. We spend a lot of money on public education, and they want their hands on this wealth.
Privatizers want you to think public schools stink and that their ‘reforms’ are needed. They did a great job at convincing a large segment of the American public (and a few teachers) that our schools ‘needed to become more competitive’ on the world stage, despite the fact that many in the world were trying to copy our system because it was creating a vibrant democratic society. So privatizers first had to invent a ‘metric’ that showed we needed ‘improvement’. They also needed to create a climate that denigrated and discouraged committed professional educators in order to minimize resistance.
Funny thing is, they failed to ‘improve’ even using their own bogus metric. But as long as they can keep people from noticing and the takeover continues, they don’t care. Remember, their goal is a compliant ‘workforce’ and, after all, their own kids seldom go to public schools.
After the 1970s, the U.S. had Ronald Reagan as president for eight years, and he introduced what’s called “trickle-down economics” that was really the wealthy pissing on the rest of us maybe once a year. The 1-percent kept most of the wealth and the rest of us, the 99-percent, got sprinkled with what the 1-percent was willing to urinate on everyone else.
The 99% also ended up with a massive national debt increase starting with Reagan’s tax cuts that continued through Trump. Since that national debt mostly impacts and threatens Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and other social-safety-net programs for the 99-percent, the wealthy are not concerned.
The 1st Bush continued Reagan’s economic policies.
The 2nd Bush doubled down on what Reagan and his father did.
Trump set fire to what was left for the 99%.
Reagan also doubled down on Nixon’s War on Recreational drugs (but not recreational alcohol, a liquid drug) making the U.S. prison population the largest in the world and that hasn’t changed to this day.
The best thing that could happen to the United States is if the Republican party splits into two or three parties that fight with each other over the conservative vote while the progressives take back the Democratic Party from the neo-liberal pukes.
Bravo! A really important article. Thanks for posting it, Diane!
Education Deformers: It’s the poverty, stupid.