(King, 1968)

I wanted to call this blog post blessed are the binmen – but it sounded disingenuous and, unsurprisingly, Dr King had put it much more eloquently than I ever could.

Two things have been written into my parking lot this week (see previous LinkedIn post Playing in the Parking Lot | LinkedIn). I’ve had to take them out and test drive them for a while as parking them is not keeping them quiet.

Meritocracy

I have talked before about the enduring idea that permeates our society and therefore our education system, that everyone can succeed if they try hard enough. That ““What you earn depends on what you learn” (Clinton, 1998) and “You can make it if you try” (Obama, 2013). The myth of meritocracy fails to address the fact that whether we succeed or fail is much more to do with privilege, luck and inequality than how much effort we put in. What I have not yet been able to articulate is this: a true state of meritocracy shouldn’t just be about trying harder means getting further. It should be about recognising the merit in all work and roles in society.

In The Tyranny of Merit, Sandel (2021) walks us through the pitfalls and perils of acceptance of meritocracy as being either real or indeed, desirable. Few people would argue against the ideal of a society which had removed barriers to success based on race, class, gender, religion, sexuality etc. Sandel (2021) encourages us to interrogate the ideas that sit behind the notions of meritocracy.  The value judgements we make which hold firm that some work is inherently more valuable than other work.

Traditionally the work seen as most valuable related to those professions which required an investment of time and money into higher level qualifications, like bachelors and postgraduate degrees. Medical, legal, engineering industries cannot be accessed without formal qualifications and as such are (were?) held in high esteem – in some countries even teaching falls into this category.

In a free market it would naturally mean that these roles garnered a higher salary because not everyone has access to the necessary educational routes to gain the qualifications required to enter the professions. Doctors are in short supply therefore can demand higher wages. Simple economics.

Then you also have to consider talent and what society holds aloft as desirable at any one time. Sandel (2021) gives the example of LeBron James and basketball. To add an English and slightly modern twist to this, let us consider Morgan Burtwistle or Angry Ginge as he is better known. On a very basic level this young man holds none of the credentials that we would expect to see of someone who has an estimated net worth of £1.6m and a take-home of between £30,000 and £60,000 a month. He holds no privilege, having grown up on a council estate in Greater Manchester, he appears to hold no qualifications though specific details about his education are not widely available. However, western society currently values influencers and as such, personal branding with a substantial online presence can bring great wealth. Therefore, a guy who gets quite cross while playing video games can bring home more in a month than a practicing doctor and more than your average binman can dream of.

This slight diversion is to illustrate Sandel’s point that:

“The contingencies of talent and the moral arbitrariness of market demand for this or that talent—led thinkers … to reject meritocracy (and) the idea that market rewards reflect what people merit or deserve.” (Sandel, 2021)

But it is Sandel’s idea of “meritocratic hubris” (2021) which draws my attention and which I would like to expand on. This is the concept that taking the position that success is based solely on a person’s effort creates a moral divide built on factually baseless foundations. I.e. those who have, deserve it… and those who have not, do not.

This attitude creates a dangerous rhetoric. It allows people to talk about scroungers and an underclass, it enables society to other huge numbers of people and feel morally justified in doing so.

Ability

My well-thumbed 1990 Collins Gem pocket English dictionary defines ability as “Noun: competence, power; talent”. Twelve years after Stobart published The Expert Learner: Challenging The Myth Of Ability, it is still a term we use consistently when discussing students, their suitability for programmes, their progress on courses, their likely destination. It is still how we talk about people in general.

In spite of the evidence against the idea, when talking about ability we are often talking about it as something innate and fixed.

Stobart warns us that the idea that ability is genetic and something that “doesn’t change much over time” (Stobart, 2014) is in fact a myth. He takes us by the hand and walks us through a number of examples that are often cited as evidence that these longstanding myths are true, twin studies, prodigies, savants. He shows us how these ideas are flawed or disproven and then gives us a whole book by way of a guide to support us in developing the abilities of the students we work with day by day.

If Stobart shows us that ability is not fixed, Bernstein (2003) shows us that what we call ability is often just familiarity with the kinds of knowledge and communication that schools value. His work on classification and framing helps us see that some learners arrive already fluent in the school code, while others arrive fluent in equally rich but differently valued ways of knowing and speaking. One is treated as evidence of ability; the other is treated as a deficit.

Bourdieu takes this one step further. His concept of cultural capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) helps us see that the knowledge, language, behaviours and dispositions that schools reward are not neutral. Learners who grow up with the cultural capital that aligns with school expectations appear “able”. Those who grow up with different but equally meaningful forms of capital are often said to be lacking ability. In Bourdieu’s terms, the field of education rewards a particular habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990)— one that not all learners have had the chance to develop.

Bernstein and Bourdieu’s points are illustrated perfectly by  Ana Lorena Fábrega’s reflection on her experience of school and becoming an “expert learner” (Stobart, 2014) “in the game of school… you win if you follow the rules of order, obedience and compliance… but the game of school didn’t help me learn.” (Fábrega et al., 2023)

What if all people are capable of high-level thinking and learning. I certainly see evidence of this every day in FE. What some people have never been given are the rules to the game and the key to the gate. Bernstein, Fábrega and Bourdieu all help us see that the rules and the key are not neutral — they are socially patterned, classed, and unequally distributed.

So what?

Let us take this to its natural conclusion. Imagine that all barriers to social mobility are removed. Assume also that in this situation the myth of ability, eloquently dissolved by Stobart (2014) has been wrestled from our vice-like grip. Everyone has access to the same opportunities and standards of education.

We still need people to work in service roles, in sanitation jobs, in care, in groundworks, in highways maintenance, in retail, in warehouses and on assembly lines.

The work done here should not be classed as low skill or low status. This is essential work. The pandemic taught us that it is foundational not inferior. Then, apparently as soon as it was convenient, we forgot this lesson and went back to calling the work low value.

The system demands navigation skills to escape undervalued work, but those skills are not taught explicitly. This means the people most likely to be in undervalued work are least likely to be given the tools to leave it.

We then blame individuals for what are actually systemic barriers: if you want a better life, you’d work harder.

We have essentially created a situation where society devalues essential labour, punishes people for doing it and blames them for not aspiring to more. This is both an injustice and a moral failing.

A Post Mobility Society?

What if mobility wasn’t necessary? I am not saying let’s not aspire or try. I am saying that dignity should be a universal given. If we created a society and an economy where all work was valued and paid fairly, what then?

I don’t think I am advocating for all jobs to be paid the same wage. I don’t know enough about the psychology of motivation or economics to make such a recommendation. But I am arguing that we should stop treating working‑class life as something to escape and instead recognise it as something to be honoured.

Understanding that capability may be universal, but opportunity is not and dignity should be … doesn’t seem like a radical idea to me.

So yeah, blessed are the binmen and all the essential workers who keep society functioning.

---

References

Bernstein, Basil. (2003). Class, codes, and control. Routledge.

Bourdieu, P. ., & Passeron, J.-C. . (1990). Reproduction in education, society and culture. Revised edition. Sage Publications.

Clinton, W. J. (1998). STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT: Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Office of the Press Secretary.

Fábrega, A. Lorena., Perell, David., & Frank, Chrisman. (2023). The learning game : teaching kids to think for themselves, embrace challenge, and love learning. Harriman House.

King, M. L. Jr. (1968). All Labor Has Dignity. In speech delivered to Memphis sanitation workers.

Obama, Barack. (2013). Presidential Address.

Sandel, M. J. (2021). HOW MERITOCRACY FUELS INEQUALITY—PART I The Tyranny of Merit : An Overview. American Journal of Law and Equality, 1, 4–14. https://doi.org/10.1162/ajle_a_00024

Stobart, Gordon. (2014). The expert learner : challenging the myth of ability. Open University Press.