For the past 13 years, I have had the pleasure of joining groups of 16 and 17 year old students in climbing some of the highest and most scenic mountains in Britain. We call it the 3 Peak Challenge. In the early years, this meant scaling the highest mountain in Wales, England and Scotland in a 24 hour period. This is a gruelling, environmentally questionable, and not entirely enjoyable trek in which only the fittest completed the challenge. It is immensely satisfying once completed (Type 2 fun, as they say), but not ‘enjoyable’ in the way most people use the word.
A few years in to running these expeditions, we paused to question our goals. What those running these trips really wanted was to instill a lifelong love of the outdoors and build the confidence to venture out into the British mountains. The training expeditions were certainly doing this, but the final challenge was perhaps having the opposite effect for some. Therefore, we dropped the official 3 Peak Challenge and invented our own version in which we climb the three highest peaks in the Lake District over three consecutive days. It is still tough, but this challenge affords us the time to stop and admire the stunning mountain environment as we pass through some of the most breathtaking scenery imaginable.
Each year, about 1 in 4 of our year 12 cohort sign up for the three weekend expeditions we run. This year, it has been even more popular, attracting a third of our cohort – too many for us to take. We had a dilemma. How should we decide which students to turn down?
Initially, we planned to pull names from the metaphorical hat. However, once again we reflected on our goals and decided that we wanted to give as many students as possible an experience of the outdoors. Therefore, we agreed that each student could come on two of the three trips, with the second they attended being a 3 Peak Challenge, one in the Lakes and one in the Yorkshire Dales. In doing so, we could maintain a sense of adventure and a risk of failure – our secondary goal – whilst ensuring our primary goal is met.
Of course, we could have selected on merit, choosing only the fittest and ‘most deserving’ to access the challenge. It would have increased our chances of success. It might have enabled us to beat our record time.
Those of us working in schools understand this dilemma well. Opportunities are scarce and we must find ways of rationing access. Sometimes we solve this through the application of randomness – pulling names from a hat. At other times, we allocate these opportunities on merit; after all, not every student deserves to go on the reward trip. What we try to avoid is allocation by privilege; allowing those with a financial or social advantage to gain an unfair advantage in accessing educational opportunities. Each time we encounter this access dilemma we revisit our goals and values.
Where else do we encounter this dilemma? The answer is pretty much everywhere, from decisions about who should play on the football team, to who sits in the front row of the class, to who we allow into Sixth Form, to who gets the highest marks in a test, to who is chosen to be a prefect, to whose art is displayed on the wall, to who is rewarded for their attendance, to who gets to answer the most questions in class. Every minute of every day in schools, chance, merit and privilege fight over who gets access to what.
The question of how opportunities and rewards are distributed is one we must have a handle on. It is central to what kind of school we are, to what values we promote, and to what it is like to be part of our community.
How is the deck stacked?
Perhaps we should start by understanding the wider economic and social context. After all, are schools not a reflection of wider society, or even a mechanism for sustaining it?
How are resources, opportunities, and rewards allocated in the real world?
We might imagine a deck of cards as representing our society. Those at the top of the deck have access to status and reward. Those at the bottom do not.
How can we arrange and rearrange the deck? Firstly, we may keep the deck as it is, with each card maintaining its present place. Secondly, we may shuffle the deck to randomly allocate place. Thirdly, we may stack the deck by moving cards deliberately up and down the pack according to some measure of desert, perhaps moving the trump cards to the top of the pile. The first two methods mean cards are allocated their place by luck, the third method by design.
In his book The Tyranny of Merit, Michael J Sandel describes how our sorting of the social deck has changed in the Western World, and the difficulties that result. In past times, our place in society was determined almost entirely by our parents; the social order fixed and inherited. This hierarchy was either morally justified by the Church, as each person’s lot in life reflected the Will of God (therefore implying a moral deservedness), or was explained by chance. With little opportunity to move up the social hierarchy, those at the bottom were resigned to their fate, whether bestowed by luck or deity. Luck ruled.
Fast forward a few hundred years and a belief in meritocracy has taken hold. This is the belief that the rewards in society go to those whose talents and effort make them most deserving.
Meritocracy is intuitively a better system, and who would argue for a return hereditary privilege? The meritocratic ideal promotes human ingenuity and endeavour, as exemplified through the ‘American Dream’. A better life awaits those who strive for it. Poverty has an escape route, and there is an imperative use it. Adam Smith’s proper selfishness is brought to life: by working to meet our own needs, we contribute towards a fairer and wealthier society. Meritocracy, Sandel notes, “promises to align worldly success with moral deservingness”. What’s not to like?
But Sandel illustrates the dark side of unbridled meritocracy too. If those at the top of society come to believe that their success is entirely due to merit, they must logically conclude that those who languish at the bottom are without moral desert. Where does this leave those with cognitive disabilities? What about those who fail to break free of generational poverty? And what of those who choose service to their community over status and reward; the healthcare workers, nurses, volunteers, and stay-at-home parents?
Sandel also takes on ‘credentialism’: the achievement of educational certification which enables access to high status further education and careers. He draws on evidence of widespread corruption in the American higher education system with parents paying to get their offspring in by the back door to elite institutions. The high stakes of credentialism inevitably invites the privileged to use their power to the advantage of their children. And before we scoff at those corrupt elites across the pond, we should reflect on our own behaviour when we move into the catchment area of a ‘good school’, or pay for private tuition to secure that Russell group university place, or have our children coached for grammar school entrance exams.
How do we rescue meritocracy? We want a system of allocation which is efficient and just. We want those that will make the best doctors to be doctors, the most entrepreneurial to drive innovation and wealth creation, and so on. We want to signal that hard work pays. But we also want to avoid equating worldly success with moral desert, leaving those who cannot rise to the privileged echelons of society to feel devalued, unworthy and dispossessed.
And what of our schools, caught up in a credentialist rat-race, desperately trying to balance the task of closing disadvantage gaps with the moral imperative of valuing every child and nurturing their talents?
The philosopher John Rawls might point the way. Rawls argues that societal systems should not be set up to expose moral worth but rather to further rights. He gives the example of property laws. The purpose of these laws is to protect the right of each member of society over their property. Protecting this right is both efficient (we can’t run a society in which anyone is free to take someone else’s property) and just. These laws are not created to sort the good from the bad, the latter being the thieves. In other words, society is not set up in order to reward or punish moral desert as a first principle but rather to ensure society functions well and justly. It is right and efficient to ensure that we have the right people in the right roles in society, but the point of the meritocratic system is not to reward and punish.
Similarly, to set up a school system with the aim of rewarding moral desert as a first principle would be like having the institution of education in order to place the least able in their proper place. The right is to an education and this right should be primary. It is efficient to have an educated populace and it is just to allocate opportunities according to merit. We must accept also that how education accrues to individuals may accord them certain privileges in society, but this is not the reason we have an education system.
If the right is to an education then the goal is to access a good life. When it comes to a good life, the 1970s sitcom of the same name got it wrong. It is not about escaping the system by being self-sufficient and avoiding the meritocratic rat-race. Rather it is about living well whilst contributing to a society in which others can also live well. Creating wealth counts, but then so does caring for the sick and elderly. Moral worth is a concept we should attach to a life well lived and not to how far up the deck we rise.
The merit of school
Some children will do better at school than others in terms of the credentials they achieve. This is inevitable and fine; at least it is fine as long as we avoid equating this achievement with moral worth. The right to an education is paramount and the pursuit of a good life should not be limited to those who achieve the most credentials. That doesn’t mean we should stop encouraging hard work and achievement, just that we should not equate academic success purely with goodness and deservedness. Luck plays a role. We are lucky to be born in a time and place that allows us free access to education, no matter our gender, aptitude or background. Some of us are lucky in terms of the family we are born into. A few are born with unique talents and develop exceptional abilities, but mostly these talents are normally distributed. Accepting the role luck plays doesn’t mean we put up with our lot in life. It means we should play to win and hope we get dealt a good hand. If we don’t, play the odds and put on your best poker face.
If we work in schools, we have a responsibility to control rampant meritocracy (meritoxicity!) and mitigate its most negative effects. How should we do this?
Firstly, we can introduce more luck. Children should be taught that success is part merit, part chance. Shuffle the deck occasionally. The privileged will scream loudest at this perceived unfairness but that is only because they have come to expect that luck will always be on their side. It won’t always be and school is the time to learn that.
Secondly, put the right to an education and the pursuit of a good life front and centre of your school aims and culture. Define this good life broadly and place service to others above service to oneself. Avoid narrating achievement as a good in and of itself. Achievement may be a proxy for learning, which is a good, or a way to access a fulfilling career, but without these goals achievement is morally empty. Consumption is not a fulfilling goal: production is the common good. Emphasise the dignity of work and its value to society.
Thirdly, avoid placing sole responsibility for rising up the social hierarchy on the individual. This is a cruel optimism. It is not true that your own effort and talent alone will lift you out of poverty. Luck and the helping hand of others must also play its part. Even then, you may not escape what it is you wish to escape. So we need to foster ambition whilst also engendering a respect and appreciation of what we have been given. Family, friendship, kindness and community are not dependent on status. In fact, we need to be careful we do not sacrifice these in the pursuit of our ambition.
Fourth, avoid excessive ranking as a means to control access to scarce opportunities. Merit may be a threshold qualification to get you into the pool of possible recruits, but after this point let luck play its part. The fine tuning of our judgements about ability hides the truth that we cannot really measure merit that accurately anyway, and we certainly cannot predict potential well. Keep the threshold for potential selection fairly low. Give people a lucky break. For example, rather than choose the ‘best’ players for the team, create a larger pool of players and randomise their selection for each game. You may not win as many matches in the short term, but over time you will discover hidden talent and create a culture where those mid-ranking players keep striving to be the best.
Schools don’t have to accept the brutality of unfettered meritocracy, but nor should they eschew competition, hard work, and the rationing of opportunity. There are compromises which can be made. Rawls concept of the Veil of Ignorance comes in handy. If we were to wake up tomorrow as one of our students – and it could be any one of our students – would we be willing to give up our ability to choose which one? How satisfied would we be with that risk? This thought experiment helps expose the effects of meritocracy on some members of our community – it is a measure of meritoxicity.
We can’t all reach the top of every mountain but we should have the opportunity to achieve something of moral worth; to feel school and wider society values us for what we can offer. We should also just enjoy life for what it is. This is what I meant when I used the term human flourishing. Others are using this term too. If there is a renaissance to be had in education, it might best start with this debate.
Matthew Evans 