If you want to get caught up, check out my posts on the Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
In this chapter, deBoer fixes his attention on one of the central virtues of American society: the idea that everyone deserves, if not equality of outcome, equality of opportunity.
DeBoer quotes Teddy Roosevelt in a speech that summarizes the idea quite nicely:
Every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and umhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and for his family substantially what he has earned.
This is an enduring and bipartisan value in modern America. Conservatives will praise the grit and determination of self-made millionaires, while progressives like Elizabeth Warren will talk about our civic expectation that if you work hard and play by the rules you ought to get a fair shot at success.
DeBoer spends a great deal of this chapter looking at the philosophical history of this idea, from the classical liberalism of John Locke and John Stuart Mill on through the more modern vision of John Dewey (there are, I believe also a couple of guys not named John in this chapter).
I’ll skip over some of that here; I think it would be interesting to do a more thorough examination of the history of this idea, but I’m more interested in its modern formulation. Suffice it to say that the classical liberal idea of all people’s fundamental equality has led many Americans to believe that anyone can succeed if given a fair shake.
There are two interesting effects of this focus on equality of opportunity. First, education is seen as the path by which people can actually achieve this equal footing. As John Dewey states:
Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy
Then, once education is seen as the conduit for less fortunate children to get their fair chance at success, where do we place the blame for the persistent poverty and inequality of our society? On the educators, of course!
This is a sore point for me, naturally. I am a teacher, and I have felt the pressure of society’s expectations to end poverty in America through the power of percent-decrease word problems. I agree with deBoer that “problems that seem intractable — our racial inequalities, the persistence of gender wage gaps, the proper place for religious observation in public spaces, the status of adolescent sexuality — are viewed through the lens of education.” That’s a lot of societal controversies for me to solve, all at less than $55,000 a year.
I want to pause here and discuss something that deBoer doesn’t bring up until much later: the idea of equality of opportunity is actually a radical vision of America. Go back and read that Roosevelt quotation: What would our society look like if people were truly unassisted by their own special privileges?
I think about my kids, growing up in a fancy suburb, attending great schools, getting chess and piano lessons in the evenings, secure in the knowledge that they will never go to bed hungry or face eviction from their homes. And I think of a kid who is my son’s age but growing up in a poor household in Flint, Michigan where the entire job base has evaporated and the water can literally poison you. No matter how precocious a kid, they’re being buffeted by years and years of chronic stress the effects of which we are only recently beginning to appreciate.
What would it mean for my son and that child from Flint to have an equal opportunity to succeed in life? We’d have to do more than pull that child out of poverty. That gets you part of the way there, but we’re kidding yourself if you think a kid from an average household has the same opportunity as a kid from a wealthy one. To create true equality of opportunity, you’d need to fundamentally reshape society! So is it any less radical than equality of outcome?
From the Comments
Dan said:
I certainly agree with your point on the possibility and importance of educating everyone in your class, and in our society, to some reasonable point (I.e., basic literacy, numeracy, civic understanding)
I have encountered this idea of DeBoer’s as well, that a well-functioning meritocracy is still deeply problematic unless the people in the bottom half get to live a decent life somehow. I find it compelling. I feel like it demands a solution, and it’s not clear to me yet what a good, let alone the best, solution might be.
I agree that this demands a solution, and deBoer definitely has one in mind. We’ll get to that in the later chapters of the book.
JW said:
How broadly does he speak about education? Is it just high school degree/college degree/professional degree or does he talk about more direct to workforce programs?
It turns out that deBoer wrote a short blog post about this very topic! To summarize his point, he can’t find any robust evidence that we should be increasing trade programs.
There are certainly industry groups that claim that they can’t find qualified candidates for trade-oriented positions, but I think it’s important to remember that they are actually saying they can’t find qualified candidates at the wages they want to pay, and also they are not interested in training candidates themselves. So I think the lack of underlying research is pretty telling.