The myth of meritocracy
The myth of meritocracy
Religious traditions can work together to find a better path forward for education than maintaining a myth of meritocracy.
This article was written in preparation for our round table on Politics of Education
There is a popular notion that the educational systems found typically in European nations are or at least ought to be meritocratic,[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] similar notions surround the global education system as a whole.[6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Education, then, is structured theoretically to select for merit, or at the very least it is advertised as such. Many societies stress that getting a good education will yield good jobs. But also that the best students will do the best in education and then get the best jobs. Let’s assume the education system really does work this way. That leaves a major question: what actually counts as merit? What property in the student is the system selecting for?
From various perspectives of the system the priority is the same: finding and/or producing this merit in students through education. For this reason, many parents sacrifice to ensure their kids are well-educated. Many students work hard to pass their exams, graduate, and procure a good job. Teachers meanwhile focus their energies on getting students through their courses. But while this is a description of what happens, it fails to reveal either what merit actually is or whether the system that seems obsessed with merit succeeds at being meritocratic, or at least meritocratic in the way that the popular notion would entail. In fact, the only thing these perspectives demonstrate is that the popular belief that education is meritocratic fuels the pursuit of merit.[14]
Unfortunately, the sociological research on the correlation between socioeconomic background, education, and social mobility by students is more tenuous than the culture surrounding educational attainment would have people believe.[15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] The evidence is even mounting against education rewarding academic talent, to the extent that even popular journalists as well as sociologists have called educational meritocracy a myth.[28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] But if this is true, then the merit that the educational system rewards is less academic merit than some other social value. The question is: what is that other value?
What merits in meritocracy?
Meritocracy assumes a kind of structured selectivity, one based on ‘deservedness’. Theoretically, one has earned it and therefore meritocracy promotes society equity. However, what makes a particular person or group deserving can vary. The traditional myth of meritocracy holds that the person who proves themself as a ‘good student’ regardless of background gets rewarded not just with good grades but with a better socioeconomic position. The myth of academic meritocracy promises social mobility if one sits somewhere below the top of the socioeconomic strata or social immobility if one already sits at or near the top. It is the offer of social mobility that people seek in education, not the acquisition of talents or skills in themselves, but talents, skills, and credentials that translate to social mobility, including (but not limited to) economic stability and cultural approval.
However, in other ages merit was not defined as academic capability but membership within a ruling, hereditary, elite class, one which one could only be born, married, or entitled into, namely the monarchy or nobility. In that system, it was believed the nobility deserved their position, not by virtue of academic talent but of good lineage or title. Alternatively, athletic competitions are widely held to be meritocratic. Players earn their socio-cultural position by being good at playing their sport. During the apartheid of South Africa, merit was often allocated on the basis of ethnicity, coming from a ‘good’ ethnic background made one deserving of society’s opportunities. The options then for what counts as merit in ‘meritocratic’ systems can be very diverse. Just because something calls itself a meritocracy, does not mean what it says counts as merit is what actually counts as merit in the system.
Even if we constrained the varieties of merit in education to those subjects and skills immediately related to learning, what counts as merit can still differ drastically. For example, the skills necessary to learn how to repair cars are very different from the skills necessary to learn how to cook or paint, and just as different from learning how to solve problems in theoretical physics which are still distinct from the skills needed to learn how to speak German as native Maltese speaker.
Meritocracies: sliding scales and mobility fails
Moreover, merit is not just a question related to the individual students, but even to the structure and sub-divisions of education itself, when it comes to funding, social networking, and cultural prestige. For example, the investment and push for STEM education, which refers to the cluster of academic and employment fields involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and educating students with the skills to succeed in those fields.[43] [44] [45] This push for STEM education frequently comes at the expense of social sciences and humanities. As such, it suggests the educational structure is not only being optimised for the merit of particular kinds of students but particular kinds of academic fields. The question is: why do these fields merit extra investment? How can a field merit rewards and how can a student merit rewards?
Sociological assessments of the relations between student socioeconomic backgrounds, academic merit, and socioeconomic outcomes suggest that education rewards not so much the students who are academically the most talented, but those who already have a privileged background. Thus, normally education does not reward academic merit but class background. It predisposes the have’s to have more and the have-not’s to have less, or at the very least maintain their station in social stratification.[46] [47] [48] [49]
How fields and students acquire merit may intersect. For it is often those demographics that historically have done poorly in STEM that also tend to face poor conversion of education into social mobility. In which case, prioritising STEM in universities and even in primary and secondary education could be an example of class stratification pressures, that is, rewarding those segments of the society that already occupy positions of dominance by making it even harder for those in lower socioeconomic to be socially mobile. This is because by making STEM fields more culturally prominent and intensifying the structure in its selection for STEM candidates, those from the upper classes with greater access to the education, resources, social connections, and family will have an advantage, especially since current occupants of STEM positions do not come from a working-class or lower background.[50] For what makes a student to appear to merit the best opportunities in STEM is strongly correlated to class, not simply celebrating the fields. Likewise, the educational attainments and socioeconomic status of parents seem to influence students’ choice of STEM subjects. One study suggests students who have a parent with a STEM degree are more likely to choose to study STEM while for others the perception that STEM subjects are more easily convertible into economic capital may incentivise them to study STEM subjects instead of social sciences and humanities.[51]
Moreover, as Bourdieu and Passeron noted per exemplum of the French educational system, the scale of class stratification is relative to the range of possibilities as a whole. On paper it can look as though education will enable social mobility, but movement upwards in a system that is scaling upwards itself can mean a net failure of social mobility.[52] In fact, when explaining why STEM deserves investment, the legitimation is that a large proportion of available jobs in the future will be found in STEM-related fields.[53] [54] [55] Initially, this may seem to be a push to ensure people from deprived socioeconomic backgrounds can secure jobs that are relevant in the increasingly digitalising global economy, and thus offer a chance at social mobility. However, what this means in practice is that what lower- and middle-class jobs will look like are changing for developed economies. According to an EU report, there will be 60 million new jobs in STEM-related fields worldwide in the next 5 years. The EU is pushing to have as many of their citizens have the skills to acquire these jobs.[56] Globally speaking, the EU is trying to reduce social mobility of other nations relative to their own by ensuring that as many of their own people as possible acquire these STEM jobs which are expected to be more economically rewarded relative to other kinds of professions in the global economy.[57] For a developing nation these jobs may mean social mobility from their local perspective, but the EU retaining a strong share of these jobs would mean social immobility from a global perspective.[58] [59] This is because Europe would remain economically and socially ‘competitive’ – i.e. dominant – by retaining a higher share of the economically better-rewarded jobs available in the world economy.[60] [61] [62] [63] However, inside Europe, these jobs might not mean social mobility for all those people who acquire them, because their economic value is relative to the distribution of economic rewards at a global scale.[64] [65]
Thus, it is very possible, rather, that we are seeing a transformation in what it means to be working class in developed economies, from the manufacturing and service sector to the digital technology sector. Simultaneously, we are also probably seeing places like the USA, UK, and the EU using their present global dominance to secure not social mobility for their own people but social immobility for their own populations relative to developing or maturing economies. The push for STEM is merely part of the means to this end. Yet, this could mean both the social mobility of lower classes in developed economies and the humanities and social sciences in the cultural hierarchy of education become collateral damage as developed economies attempt to maintain dominance over both developing economies and each other during the world’s fourth industrial revolution.[66] [67]
So, education may involve some talents or skills being cultivated, but at the same time education today is not so much a meritocracy based on talent as a form of social structuration heavily correlated to class and global economic dominance. Despite this, much of the initial push for education among the lower classes came out of religion in the hope of offering them better chances at social mobility. Religion wanted people to have access to greater societal equity of opportunity and reward based on talents and achievements rather than class, title, or ethnicity. So, how do Europe’s Abrahamic religions view meritocracy today?
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on meritocracy
No religion is a monolith, of course, so making categorical judgements on what a particular religion as a whole might think about meritocracy as the operative concept in education is difficult at best and far beyond the scope of a short article like this. Thus, all that we can say here is both provisional and anecdotal.
Judaism seems to offer both examples of celebrating merit as the organising principle of society and problematising meritocracy. On the one hand, meritocracy is celebrated as a morally superior system, one which presents itself in the Torah. Thus, one would want to uphold it on some level as even a cultural value for the Jewish community.[68] On the other hand, others question how meritocratic even the best meritocracy could be, recognising that merits even if assigned by virtue of genetic talents or features would operate on the basis of grace, not merit.[69] Another perspective notes Jews’ own history and tradition wrestled with meritocracy, concluding the problem of evil forced them to recognise the world does not operate by this principle of merit.[70]
Christianity at its theological core problematises merit as much as it recognises its necessity. On the one hand, Christ’s sinless life and innocent death reveals both the need for humanity to have merit before God through lived righteousness and justice as well as paradoxically how human society can refuse to acknowledge that kind of merit as positive merit, opting instead to consider Jesus’s meriting of capital punishment. Yet, like some of the Jewish awareness of meritocracy depending more on grace than merit, a diverse range of Christians have pointed out that modern ‘meritocratic’ societies subvert both merit and grace. Pope Francis has argued the myth of meritocracy only serves to legitimise inequality.[71] American Evangelical Chris Colquitt suggests meritocracy highlights the human need for grace as it promotes a society full of hubris and humiliation.[72] Similarly, Ethiopian theologian Theodros Assefa Teklu contends meritocracy implies scarcity and competition, suggesting society should rather be structured around collaboration and mercy.[73]
Islam tends to support meritocracy as a method for allocating positions and resources, though potentially detracting positions exist. One Islamic perspective argues that taqwa is an essential principle found in the Quran, which implies the notion of meritocracy, such that not only did Pakistan intentionally seek to build its modern state on meritocratic ideals, but that early Islamic nation states Mecca and Medina were built on meritocratic ideals.[74] Many medieval Islamic philosophers and scholars held meritocracy as a societal ideal, based in part on passages in the Quran, even if in the history of Persia/Iran meritocratic outcomes were often compromised.[75] Likewise, in 2020, Indonesia’s Abdul Mu’ti has said that meritocracy (with other democratic values) is aligned with Islamic ideals.[76] Meanwhile, an education researcher notes that for 20th-century Iraq, notions of merit were always held, but what counted as merit was at times changed or renegotiated in relation to notions of moral formation.[77] Thus, whether or not it is actually possible, many adherents of Islam would likely support a meritocratic education system. However, with the embedded traditions of both giving alms[78] and non-usurious banking,[79] [80] it is also probably wise not to assume Islam would adopt a meritocracy that rewarded class rather than academic merit uncritically.
Meritocracy meritless?
Thus, despite religion’s early push towards a meritocratic structure for society through education, the growing consensus of sociological research that education does not lead to truly meritocratic outcomes would likely trouble many members of the Abrahamic religions. In particular, it must be remembered that the reason to push for meritocracy through education was precisely to free the lower classes from oppression and intergenerational social immobility. It was not because they thought education made a person deserving of wealth. Rather it was pragmatic. They thought they could use the educational system to make the powerful see the value that the poor and downtrodden already possessed without an education. So, the historical motivation for Christians’ push for education in Europe was precisely to make life not just better but more fair for the average person. Thus, as religious people look around and see the failure of meritocracy to be both meritocratic and promote social mobility, it should surprise no one that they are agreeing with the sociologists and arguing it is time again for a change.
A better way forward than meritocracy based on early Christian community
But what unique resources can religions bring to this issue of meritless meritocracy? Or even what could religions do themselves about this issue? Religions have both unique perspectives and support to offer in addressing these issues in education, outlined briefly for the Abrahamic religions’ perspectives above. It would be presumptuous to speak for all of them. Jewish and Islamic scholars and leaders can speak for themselves, and do so both more effectively and authentically than this present author could. The present author can theologise authentically from a Christian perspective, however, and sketch out briefly what Christians might offer in terms of solutions or support.
First, historically, Christianity has been very interested in expanding and investing in education, as well as enfranchising people through it. The modern university as a place for learning arose out of Christian, often monastic, communities, e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca. Moreover, literacy and education for the poor has long been a focus of Christian activity wherever it has gone. If the poor are being overlooked or disadvantaged by the current system of education, Christianity can do what it has done in the past and start new schools and universities especially for the poor, at which they provide scholarships for education and/or tutoring or even larger denominations could pay for them outright. Likewise, Christians could simply refuse to value educational qualifications in their own companies, organisations, and churches.
Alternatively, if the meritocratic system does not mainly reward students for academic performance but for the overall relationship they maintain with all the types of capital, including the economic, social connections, and educational and cultural capital,[81] then even if Christians sought to provide education to the disenfranchised the goal to use education to make life better for those people will not be achieved. The issue is both social immobility and the adverse effects of poverty, rather than access to quality education. To face this kind of problem, churches would have to do something far more radical, if they wanted to generate the kind of situation where someone’s gifts, talents, and hard work would be noticed and rewarded in society and not merely their socioeconomic, ethnic, or educational background.
Let me suggest that if Christians were willing to undertake the radical steps described in Acts 4.34, that is if they were willing to hold their goods, incomes, homes, wealth, reputations, talents, social connections, etc. as shared among the community, distributing to everyone in need in (or even adjacent to) their communities, then there might be a chance for the disadvantages that many in society face to be overcome. Perhaps it is possible for modern people to say about Christian communities “There was not even a poor person among them, because all who were owners of fields or houses were selling them and bringing the amount of money they were sold for and putting it before the feet of the apostles. And they were distributing it to each person as much as anyone had a need.”
Of course this is radical, some might even suggest idealistic, but importantly something like this sidesteps the question of meritocracy to the extent that it removes the greatest threat to each person’s wellbeing. That is, whether or not someone succeeds in a ‘meritocratic’ system they would not have to starve. It fights merit with grace. Likewise, it means that such a community would rise as a group. It challenges the operative assumption of hyper-individualism present in the myth of meritocracy. It is this perpetuated myth of individual merit and success that hides the fact that the meritocracy in practice deems one’s socioeconomic affiliation the meritorious value not solely one’s individual talents or efforts. But if a community could grow as a community, then – even if the social mobility was slower – it might over the years prove more successful. Regardless, it provides a context where the theological values of collaboration and grace are honoured above merit. Moreover, it provides a place where each person’s individual gifts and skills can flourish and be discovered and recognised, but not simply for that individual’s isolated benefit but for their community’s. Reframing of the issue towards cooperation and mercy follows what Teklu advocated above. The community can work together consciously for social mobility for everyone within it – rich and poor alike as brothers and sisters.
Is the myth of meritocracy too strong to dispel?
All these solutions, however, still operate on the assumption that giving people more education, more tools to educate themselves, and more tools and opportunities to play the game of meritocracy will lead to better outcomes. That is, it ultimately believes that with the right help someone could beat the system designed less to grant social mobility than ensure social immobility for the vast portion of society, so the poor stay poor and the rich stay rich, regardless of their individual talents or efforts. Some may think Christianity too marginalised or too underfunded in modern European societies to make a difference either in lobbying for a change or leading a change. But every societal revolution towards justice needs a bold marginalised figure like Rosa Parks willing to suffer to bring it about. Perhaps churches will be ignored or hated more, but it is also possible that taking a stand on behalf of the oppressed against the myth of meritocracy will be just the push society needs to move towards doing the right thing.
If education is at least partially a rigged game (as the numerous sociological citations above show), then merely giving people education will not solve the problem. Even those with great education cannot translate it into social mobility, because the mythic meritocracy in education selects not for academic talent or effort but for that plus other elements that it labels academic talent. It is a nexus of factors involving several types of capital, including economic status, social connections, cultural and ethnic values, parental educational attainment, structure of the academic environment, access to education, among others.
Despite these challenges, religious traditions can work together to find a better path forward for education than maintaining a myth of meritocracy. They generally want people in society to be rewarded for what they actually do. But they also see the limits of doing only this. As sketched out above the Christian tradition does suggest the possibility of a radical path of cooperation and grace. Churches could collaborate to give every one of their people not only the economic or educational capital to improve their lot in life, but the social connections and spiritual support as well. If it was modelled well, this communitarian approach to education and society could catch on, or at the very least stand in marked contrast to a system that uses the promise of merit to maintain a law of class, a kind of sociological legalism which Christian theology has long argued offers more death than life.
Perhaps communities of radical grace and collaboration could dispel the myth of meritocracy, of competition, with all the burdens it brings on all involved. Perhaps the rat race can give way to collaborative grace. Or perhaps the myth will live on, unaffected by any religion’s noble attempts to either expose, refute, or reform it. But one thing is clear: if no one does anything, education will never be a force for social mobility or rewarding talent, only the self-perpetuating system towards the myth of meritocracy.
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[2] Macron unveils scheme to help less affluent students go to grandes écoles
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[6] Meritocracy Harms Everyone
[7] How Meritocracy Worsens Inequality—and Makes Even the Rich Miserable
[8] What’s Wrong With the Meritocracy
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[15] Duru-Bellat, Marie, and Elise Tenret. “Who’s for Meritocracy? Individual and Contextual Variations in the Faith.” Comparative Education Review 56, no. 2 (2012): 223-47. doi:10.1086/661290.
[16] Macron unveils scheme to help less affluent students go to grandes écoles
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[22] Crawford, Keith. “Schooling, Citizenship and the Myth of the Meritocracy.” Citizenship, Social and Economics Education 9, no. 1 (March 2010): 3–13. https://doi.org/10.2304/csee.2010.9.1.3.
[23] Liu, Ye. Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China. Higher Education in Asia, Quality, Excellence and Governance. Singapore: Springer, 2016.
[24] Liu, Ye. “Meritocracy and the Gaokao: A Survey Study of Higher Education Selection and Socio-Economic Participation in East China.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 34, no. 5-6 (2013): 868-87. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2013.816237.
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[27] We Can’t Debate ‘Meritocracy’ When Our Education System Stifles So Much Merit
[28] The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?
[29] So much for education, education, education
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[35] Meritocracy Harms Everyone
[36] How Meritocracy Worsens Inequality—and Makes Even the Rich Miserable
[37] What’s Wrong With the Meritocracy
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[44] The future for STEM in Europe – EURACTIV.com
[45] Commission presents European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience
[46] Iannelli, Cristina. “Educational Expansion and Social Mobility: The Scottish Case.” Social Policy & Society 10, no. 2 (2011): 251-64. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S147474641000059X.
[47] Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean Claude. Passeron. La Reproduction : éléments Pour Une Théorie Du Système D’enseignement. Sens Commun. Paris: Minuit, 1970.
[48] Themelis, Spyros. “Meritocracy through Education and Social Mobility in Post-War Britain: A Critical Examination.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 29, no. 5 (2008): 427-38. Accessed 2021/04/12/. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40375367.
[49] Boliver, Vikki. “How Fair Is Access to More Prestigious UK Universities?”, The British Journal of Sociology 64, no. 2 (2013): 344-64. https://dx.doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12021.
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[52] Bourdieu and Passeron, La Reproduction, 256-67.
[53] Questions and answers: European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience
[55] STEM SKILLS FOR A FUTURE- PROOF EUROPE
[56] Commission presents European Skills Agenda for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience
[57] As typified in the US economy: The Hidden STEM Economy
[58] The countries preparing students for a global future: PISA
[60] Document II/4 – The Impact of Globalisation on Employment
[61] Will AI kill developing world growth?
[62] The Supply of and Demand for High-Level STEM Skills
[63] Infographic: How the STEM Crisis is Threatening the Future of Work
[64] Note already there are distinctions between ‘white-collar’ professional STEM jobs, blue-collar STEM jobs, and technical STEM jobs. The ‘hidden’ part is specifically the non-professional class of STEM workers. Thus, a STEM job does not automatically mean social mobility, just the type of training/skills/qualifications needed to do the job. Cf. The Hidden STEM Economy
[65] STEM jobs eventually led to stagnating wages for many earners, cf. STEM Careers and Technological Change
[66] The Fourth Industrial Revolution and digitization will transform Africa into a global powerhouse
[67] Home Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
[68] Sephardic Temple – Joseph: The Birth of Meritocracy
[69] Mayanot Parshat Bamidbar: Jewish Meritocracy
[71] Pope in Genoa: condemns meritocracy; attitudes to migrants and challenges priests over vocations crisis
[72] Review: ‘The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?’ by Michael Sandel
[73] Teklu, T. “Meritocracy and inequality: moral considerations”. Palgrave Communications 4.4 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-017-0059-3.
[74] Meritocracy: The Secret Ingredient of Successful States | by Malik Ahmad Jalal | Medium
[75] CLASS SYSTEM iv. In Medieval Islamic Persia – Encyclopaedia Iranica
[76] Democratic, Islamic values aligned in Indonesia, webinar hears
[77] Huda Al‐Khaizaran, “Traditions of moral education in Iraq”, Journal of Moral Education 36.3 (2007): 321-332. DOI: 10.1080/03057240701552836
[78] Islam: Empire of Faith – Faith – Almsgiving.
[79] Between God and money: The morality of interest
[80] Ian Harper and Lachlan Smirl, “Usury”, The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics, ed. Paul Oslington (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 565-79 (DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199729715.013.030).
[81] Cf. Rethinking capital and interest for a discussion on the various types of capital operative in modern societies.
