Education: The great equalizer?

Education and Environment - Out of the borders

How class standing, gender, race and neighborhood influences academic success

by Carolin Kretzer

Education is supposed to be the great Equalizer, right? We are all told that if you work hard and do well in school, you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up. In this under standing of school, a meritocracy is created, or a system in which hard work and talent is recognised and rewarded. In a pure meritocracy, two children who work equally hard and have the same talents do equally well, regardless of the neighborhood they grew up in, no matter their race or gender or class standing. On the surface it might seem like school does a good job in compensating the existing inequalities in our society, but unfortunately data shows different. In fact having access to a decent education is a privilege not everyone has.

Let’s take a look at the data first. While the standard of education varies globally, educational inequality happens at the local level in all countries. For example, if you look at the higher education attendance rate, you can see great differences among the continents. While only 4 out of every 100 kids in Africa are expected to enter graduate and postgraduate institutions, 14 out of 100 kids in South and West Asia do so and 36 out of 100 in Latin America. But even in developed countries inequality can differ greatly and a high GDP does not automatically equals lower educational inequality. The Innocenti Report Card 2018, a report conducted by UNICEF, which focuses on educational inequality in 41 of the world richest countries, has shown that for example countries like Germany, the US and the UK, that have a very high GDP, are still ranked poorly in the League Table that shows the inequality (rank 23, 24 and 16).

So what causes these severe inequalities that affect the children's future? To answer this question, we have to start even before the beginning of a children’s school career: their parental occupation. According to the afore mentioned report by UNICEF, large inequalities are linked to family background. Depending on the educational background of the parents as well as the social-economic status children get more or less supported. This support can for example look like reading stories to their children, investing in learning games or simply by showing interest so that the kid does not lose motivation for its classes. As stated in the report: “Differences in parental occupation explain up to one third of the variation in childrens reading scores at the ages of 10 and 15“. In addition to that, children with parents in high-status jobs are much more likely to pursue higher education than those with parents in low-status jobs. So already at the moment when the children enter primary school, they all start with different conditions. From there on many factors out of the children’s control will determine their way.

One of them is the school itself. Especially in countries like Hungary and Luxembourg children from richer and poorer families go to different schools and thereby get different qualities of education. But not only the school plays a role, unfortunately all kinds of discrimination that exist in society do not stop at the doors of institutions like school. Classism for example plays a major role in education. The Innocenti Report has shown that children aged 3 and lower are less likely to attend preschool if they live in the lowest-income households. In addition to that, even though primary and secondary school is free in most of the examined countries, materials like books or tablet computers are still expensive and especially in times of economic hardship like right now, the costs of education are easily underestimated. If you made it through high school as a working class student and got your diploma, one might think now everything becomes easier. But the contrary is the case. Colleges and universities have become a manifestation of classism. Just imagine working between 40 and 50 hours a week, attending full-time college and balancing a social life. Then, imagine coming home to a roommate that has their college paid for and gets lots of extra time to study.

Besides classism, schools also have a major problem with racism. Since racism is something deeply integrated in our society and the individual minds, teachers may mistake Black preschoolers chattiness for hyperactivity or bad behavior, instead of recognising the child’s storytelling abilities. Compared to their white classmates, black students are disproportionately viewed as troublemakers and are two times more likely to be suspended. In addition to that they have to deal with all kinds of microaggressions on a daily basis and are approached with a lot of stereotypes. Of course having to face these injustices everyday is not without consequences. Black students may react with exhaustion and self-censorship.

Now imagine being affected by both, classism and racism. The novel “Girl, Woman, Other”, written by Bernardine Evaristo, depicts this issue of intersectionality very well with the character of Carole. Alongside the other eleven characters, who are all black women living in the UK and dealing with how race, sexuality, gender, history and economic stratification intersect and define their experience, Carole is a young financial executive trying to succeed in a male-dominated workspace. When she gets into the prestigious Oxford University she feels like a misfit due to her race and working-class background. She is one of only very few black students on the campus and through her eyes the readers can sincerely relate to her experiences on a humanistic level rather than discussing these topics in an abstract way. Even things like being asked for drugs because of her skin color or listening to her classmates talking about the activities they have done during holiday and all the places they have visited can make one feel excluded and like not belonging there. The feeling of not belonging goes so far that she even wants to drop out of college. With the encouragement of her mum, she manages to continue and she becomes friends with some wealthy students who expose her to a new side of life. Later on she marries a wealthy white British man who admits to her that he mastered his way through college and his career mainly because of his parents` connections, which shows once again how deeply inequality is integrated into educational systems and how unfair the conditions of people from different backgrounds are.

So as shown by the data and the personal experience of Carole, education is not the promised equalizer. It is a great tool if used properly but unfortunately the existing forms of oppres sion and discrimination in our society are also part of the institution that should erase them. Of course there are some wonderful and hopeful success stories of people using education and knowledge to get out of their situations but the overall experience of disadvantaged people is still shaped by discrimination in school. These barriers often inhibit people from getting a good paid job and decrease their chances of living a decent life.

Sources: https://www.unicef-irc.org/unfairstart

https://cete.osu.edu/initiatives/racial-equity-diversity-and-in clusion-redi-initiative/race-in-education/

https://youtu.be/T-JVpKku5SI

Novel “Girl, Woman, Other” written by Bernardine Evaristo. Pub lished in 2019 by Hamish Hamilton