When social destinies are closely linked to diplomas, competition increases at the gates of the most popular sectors, academic pressure is reflected in families and inequalities between young people widen. Should we not then rethink our vision of merit, monopolized today by school?
Few policies are as consensual as the educational policies carried out in France in recent decades: even if their concrete modalities are debated, no voice is raised against the considerable expansion of schooling to which they lead. Since the 1950s, the rate of high school graduates has increased more than 15 times. In 1970, 44% of 17-year-olds were in school; almost all of them are today (96%).
A consensus seems to have been established that school education would be the best way to educate and educate a child, to train skilled workers and active citizens. Spreading education more widely would also tend towards greater equality of opportunity.
Asking whether these promises have been kept is not to question the value of education. But it is the explosion of schooling as well as the development of science and industry which have so enriched our societies but which, by their very dynamics, have damaged nature and produced new inequalities, to such an extent that we question their infinite expansion… Always more than one good is not necessarily beneficial.
Concerning education, we can wonder if we are not at the end of a cycle as diplomas today punctuate social life, from the daily lives of families to the organization of work, as shown by our investigation School Takeover – When too much school kills education (ed. Presses de Sciences Po, 2024).
A more learned society?
Certainly, opening access to education has made it possible to significantly raise the level of qualifications of the population, and that was indeed the desired objective. In Europe, France has been a good student, even today reaching a higher education graduate rate of more than 50%, higher than the OECD average.
To do this, we actively encouraged students, even those who had only limited attainment, to extend their studies. With paradoxical effects today. Of course, as there are more graduates, the level of knowledge has generally increased, but the level of graduates (bachelors in particular) is not increasing and, above all, it is diversifying considerably.
From the end of primary school, the Ministry of Education itself notes a decline in the achievement of the weakest in arithmetic and in French and an increase in inequalities between students. Likewise, INSEE surveys reveal that if the adult population, which has stayed longer in school, is undoubtedly more “learned”, at the same level of diploma, the older generations are more so.
It is therefore easier to extend the courses than to ensure the achievements of all, in particular to compensate for the difficulties that students encounter from the first years of school. This would require strictly educational investments, aimed at quality rather than quantity.
More qualified workers?
Very marked by the theory of human capital, we believe that more diplomas mean more “profitable” skills for the economy. But graduates still need to exercise their skills. However, contrary to a prevalent “adequacyism” in France, the correspondence between training and employment only exists for a minority of workers. Furthermore, the flow of young graduates far exceeds the flow of highly qualified jobs to which they aspire, so that many of them find themselves downgraded compared to their hopes and those of their parents.
Read more: Academic success, a job for parents…
Furthermore, the notion of qualification tends to be reduced to the diploma possessed, whereas the exercise of a profession obviously requires a much more open range of qualities.
Clearly, the promise of equal opportunities has not been kept. While the most selective diplomas continue to “pay”, young people with few or no qualifications are relegated, while the mass of average-level graduates, such as baccalaureates and graduates, are swept away by an inflationary process generating a continuous feeling of declassification.
The triumph of competition and utility
When everything comes down to school, utilitarianism is essential. We first study what is useful for continuing studies and for selection. And this trend is more and more pronounced when school massification mechanically accentuates competition. Thus the educational and cultural value of studies counts less than their selective value.
From then on, families choose, sometimes very early on, the training courses and establishments which are considered the most effective and the most selective. When they have sufficient resources, everyone, regardless of their convictions, chooses the best establishments and the best courses in the public and private sectors. Ultimately, educational separatism increases with ghettos of the rich and ghettos of the poor.
This logic affects students’ relationship with their studies when they choose what is perceived as profitable more than what interests them. Surveys show that students are increasingly stressed, as are their parents who put pressure on the school when they can and resort to academic support that could make a difference.
Finally, when all destinies seem to be decided at school, we observe a schooling of family education. Parents are increasingly focused on academic success. They become “coaches”, and as this mobilization is unevenly effective, it in turn increases educational inequalities, without children and young people seeming any more fulfilled.
Winners and losers
When school has a monopoly on sorting and defining merit, it transforms the nature and experience of inequalities. Educational paths, even if they remain socially determined, replace the destinies of classes which are undoubtedly unfair but for which individuals were not held responsible. The meritocratic discourse distinguishes the winners, who deserve their successes, from the losers who deserve their failures since they could have succeeded. In this case, either the latter internalize their indignity, or they oppose the school which would have humiliated them.
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Over the past thirty years, the nature of the electorates has been profoundly transformed and the diploma plays a determining role. In a large number of countries, starting with ours, the worker and popular vote, traditionally on the left, has shifted towards abstention and the extreme right because it has become the vote of non-graduates who feel despised. by arrogant and haughty elites who only owe their success to themselves. The electorates of Trump, Brexit and the National Rally are dominated by this rejection of educated elites.
The dystopia imagined more than sixty years ago by Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracycomes true. Because it monopolizes the definition of merit, mass education, which promotes democratic values, also generates hatred of oneself and others, distrust of culture and reason, and contempt becomes the most widely shared social emotion. .
Do differently
The exclusive promotion of meritocratic equality of opportunity legitimately leads to promoting access to the best schools for the most deserving students and to fighting against all the subtle discrimination that blocks the upward mobility of students from modest backgrounds. This policy is hardly contestable, but it is focused on access only to the elite and leaves aside the large mass of students. However, to be bearable and fair, equality of opportunity requires giving priority to the weakest and the losers in the competition. It is for this reason that common education, in France elementary school and middle school, should ensure the level and education expected of all citizens, and especially the weakest.
If we accept that meritocracy is the least unfair of systems, it is neither fair nor effective for a single institution, the school, to have a monopoly on the definition of merit. Academic skills should not overwhelm those of work itself and the whole of society should take charge of education: businesses of course, but also unions, associations, popular education movements, media… in order to lighten the burden that is crushing the school.
It is neither a question of going back in time with the return of early selection and traditional authority nor of limiting ourselves to putting more resources into education but of questioning the influence that the school gains over our Company.
