Can Soceital Ineqaulity Ever Be Legitimate?

As humans, we are inherently different to one and another. The being of my biology, mental states and behaviour is inherently reserve to myself and myself only. No other being can own or possess all of my properties. In other words, they can never be a case by which one can be identical to myself, both biologically and consciously. Surely, it is reasonable that it follows from this that societal inequality is a reflection of the abilities of the differences of our inherent properties.

  

 

The content of this discussion, raised by the question above, rests profoundly on two polarized theoretical spheres, who’s notions are entailed within the question itself.  This article will also incorporate this divide, and will try, on the one hand, to explain inequality in society as an inevitable outcome reflecting natural differences in human cognition, where the role of education is to successfully allocate individuals into their deserved position in society based on their intelligence, ability and hard-work. Overall, this view incorporates the classic corpus of biological determinism as a social philosophy. On the other hand, I will present a critical examination of why such a view cannot and does not suffice as a good explanatory account of inequality; for inequality in society is a result of many structural factors that do not hold any bearing on cognitive intelligence. But for the sake of efficiency, I will mainly focus on class culture as the primary factor, where in its analysis the disguised role of the education system is revealed. However, my approach in the interaction between these opposed views will hold a core theme of ‘legitimacy’, as implied by the essay question, whereby I will be seeking for the justification of empirical evidence where one can argue for inequality of income, wealth, power and status to be either legitimate or illegitimate. Finally, I will then, controversially, attempt to conclude the discussion by highlighting a fundamental question about the nature of these two polarized standpoints, by arguing for a more synchronized relationship between their epistemic origins. First, one must establish the grounds and reasons that distinguish these standpoints from each other. 

Very often, the education system is presented as both the means of achieving equality in society, and also as centrally implicated in the reproduction of inequality (Apple, 2010). This results in a conundrum, whereby the relationship between school and class becomes difficult to pinpoint; are we to understand it as a source of social mobility through which it emancipates the working class, or as a mean of controlling the lower orders and maintaining upper and middle class advantage?  

The first standpoint, proposed by Murray and Herrnstein in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and class in American life (1996), begins, like other scholars, by attributing the growth in inequality to the rise in the price of skilled labour, relative to unskilled labour. But unlike other scholars, they equate skill with IQ. For, in their view, the partitioning of society by skill is synonymous to the partitioning of society into high IQ and low IQ. Rather than holding a multidimensional account of inequality like most scholars, both Murray and Herrnstein hold a one dimensional account instead, whereby a single factor is to account for inequality in modern society, ‘Intelligence’. In a nutshell, the basic thesis of their account argues for the existence of something that we can all describe as ‘general intelligence’. Individuals with more of it tend to be more successful in their career than those with less of it. About 70% of this general intelligence is transmitted genetically from one generation to another. But over the course of the twentieth century, especially since the ‘information revolution’, intelligence has become more central to the performance of industrial societies’ top occupational positions (Plummer, 2008). Simultaneously, top universities changed their recruiting policies to recruit students who perform best on standardised tests. As a result of the changes in the labour market and higher education, society has now become dominated by ‘cognitive elites’, who are on average, not only better trained than most people, but also actually more intelligent. And because more intelligent people are socially segregated on university campus and in the workplace, it is not a surprise that they tend to pair up, marry and have intelligent children, preserving the ‘cognitive elites’(Murray and Herrnstein, 1996). Similarly, at the bottom of the social hierarchy, a parallel process is in work. Poor people, those with lower intelligence, will live segregated from others, and will pass on average abilities to their children (Plummer, 2008).

Figure 1: Key Stage test score at ages 11, 14 and 16(Goodman & Gregg, 2010)

 

As expressed in Figure 1, the over-familiar positive correlation that we tend to see between wealth and educational performance at every Key Stage of secondary education is to be interpreted, according to both Murray and Herrnstein’s account, as a reflection of the difference in ‘General Intelligence’. In other words, it is the commencement of the partitioning of society into high IQ and low IQ. 

However, It is obvious that the Bell Curve, by very nature of its account, can only suffice in explaining the phenomenon of inequality in society, only by presupposing the role of education as an impartial mechanic system, to which it streams and sorts society in respect to the abilities of individual.  This presupposition is often tied with the concept of ‘Meritocracy’; the idea that, as society makes the transition from traditionalism to industrialism, it is necessary for the criteria of achievement to supersede criteria of ascription in all forms of social selection (Erikson, 1996).   The most influential account of this sort derives from the work of Davis & Moore’s Some Principle of Stratification (1945), in which they link the role of the education system directly to the system of social stratification. For them, every social system shares certain functional prerequisites which must be met if the system is to survive and operate efficiently. One such functional prerequisite is effective ‘role allocation’, by which members of society are allocated to suitable occupational roles. Because some roles are functionally more important than others, they require specific skills for their effective performance. But in order to match individuals to these functionally more important positions, society attaches high rewards to them. These high rewards act as an incentive for individuals to compete for them through motivation, hard work and talent. Therefore, the essential role of the education system is to sift, sort and grade individuals in terms of their talents and abilities. Consequently, inequality of income, wealth, power and status in society is not only the result of functionally important roles, but also the reflection of skills that are limited in supply. In other words, in the language of The Bell Curve, role allocation, by the education system, is the partitioning of society into high IQ and low IQ into their highly or lowly rewarded roles. Therefore, if we were to align the concept of meritocracy through role allocation with the claims made by the Bell Curve, we should reach the intended conclusion of Murray and Herrnstein; that inequality of income, wealth, power and status in society is the result of effective and, more importantly, ‘legitimate’ allocation by the Education system.  The lower classes have lower genetic intellectual abilities. Thus lower-class people could be said to deserve their status because they lack the intellectual ability to compete with those of a higher class (Davis & Moore, 1945).

However, it is apparent that the conclusion of this biologically deterministic account completely rests in assumptions, unjustified assumptions, about the relationship between physiology and behaviour, mind and behaviour, and about the efficiency of the selection process in society. “What is the point, you might ask, of positively discriminating in favour of socially disadvantaged children if their intelligence potential is fixed at a low point at birth? Why try to compensate for social inequality if individual inherited inequalities determine ability, to take life-chances?” (Meighan, 1997, pg333)

The Bell Curve is misleading, it coerces readers into thinking that social elitism is both natural and inevitable, by claiming that 70% of intelligence is genetics, whereas the consensus in the study of intelligence is that no more than 25—40% is inherited (Plummer, 2008). It’s as though the more society seems like a jungle, the more people think of stratification as a matter of genetics rather than upbringing. Furthermore, just to highlight how unsound this account is, even if we were to accept the fallacious presupposition about the relationship between IQ and abilities, that IQ is a conclusive determining factor in ability, the account itself still does not suffice in justifying class inequality, because the notion of meritocracy still remains problematic, mainly because it provides the illusion of equal opportunity by further assuming that each individual has an equal chance of becoming unequal in a society where social origins have no influence on occupational destinations (Young, 1958). The study of Bowles and Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America (1976), vehemently attacks and denounces this notion. On an examined sample of individuals with average IQ, unlike the Bell Curve, Bowles and Gintis found that there was wide range of variation in educational attainment, to which they concluded that there is hardly any relationship between IQ and academic qualifications. Instead, what was consistent, as usual, was the direct relationship between class and educational attainment. The higher a person’s class of origin, the longer he or she stayed in education, resulting in higher qualifications. Therefore, the causal factor is not IQ, but the class position of the individual’s parents. A similar statistical relationship was also found between IQ and occupational reward. Above-average IQ individuals occupied highly rewarding roles. Thus, the relationship between IQ and occupational success ought to be rejected (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). The main determining factor in accounting for the occupations of highly rewarding roles, from low ones, is class of origin. So as concluded by Bowles and Gintis, “only a minor portion of the substantial statistical association between schooling and economic success can be accounted for by the school’s role in producing or screening cognitive skills” (1976, pg110). Instead, the essential role of education, they argue, is to reproduce inequality by justifying privilege and attributing poverty to personal failures, which it hides its illegitimacy, injustice and unfairness  through the myth of meritocracy. 

However, this conclusion then begs the question- what is it about class origin which determines the type of occupation that one acquires? To address this, we should now focus on Bourdieu’s analysis of class and the effect it has on occupational destination.

The closer the student’s style is to the dominant classes, the more likely the student is to succeed. And by not valuing the culture of the non-dominant class, the education system, simultaneously, performs a second role, which is elimination. Elimination of the working class from higher education through: self-elimination in exam failures, and lack of the dominant culture. The overall aim of higher-class parents is to ensure that their children are educational winners, but not all children can be winners. The provision of the system that caters for winners also helps reinforce the position of losers (Butler & Hamnett, 2007). We cannot all succeed academically. Therefore, class inequality, the privileged position of the dominant classes, is justified by educational success; the underprivileged position of the lower classes is legitimised by educational failure.  Furthermore, in line with Bourdieu’s claim, an interpretation of Figure 1, is that the positive correlation between attainment and wealth is nothing more than the reflection of the degree of the possession of social capital, and not IQ. Thus higher-class students have higher success rates than lower class students because higher-class subculture is closer to the dominant culture. As expressed by Sullivan:Without assuming or presenting a cultural hierarchy like other theories of class, Bourdieu (1973) argues that the educational system is systematically biased in favour of the culture of the dominant class, by devaluing the knowledge and skills of the working class. It’s an apparatus of cultural reproduction, by the dominant class, by which they have the power to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate. The dominant class is able to define its own culture as worthy of being sought and possessed by establishing it as the basis for knowledge in the education system.  Possession and familiarity of the dominant culture becomes like a ‘cultural capital’, which can then be translated into wealth and power. In effect, Bourdieu is advocating that the very nature of the education system, its structure and purpose, is heavily weighted against students that do not possess the cultural capital of the dominant class. The system, simply, does not value their knowledge, tastes and skills.  Teachers are significantly influenced by the intangible nuances of manners and style, when grading (Bourdieu, 1973).

“Success in the education system is facilitated by the possession of cultural capital and of higher class habitus. Lower class pupils do not in general possess these traits, so the failure of the majority of these pupils is inevitable. This explains class inequalities…” (2002, pg144)

In conclusion, as explained and suggested, any account that aims to justify the status quo of class inequality as reflecting a legitimate procedure of role allocation by the education system must entail in its notion the delusional assumption of meritocracy and of equal opportunity.  However as we have seen, none of the two are present in the system of allocation by the education system. The education system not only fails to measure ability and knowledge impartially, but also fails to partition society according to real ability. Instead, like many other social apparatus, it serves and achieves the preservation of the status quo, by presenting its inequalities and non-egalitarian status as legitimate to the masses. It does so, by creating in them a sense of failure; failure for not obtaining the appropriate cultural capital/and academic attainment, to which they can trade in return for wealth, income and power.

However, the polarization of these two opposed accounts ushers in a fundamental problem about the collaboration of their origin. Although The Bell Curve (1996) dumbs down the most painful dilemmas afflicting our society by cleansing them of their bewildering complexity, it does also raise, to me at least, a question of the kinds of knowledge that are deemed acceptable in the social-science sphere. To an extent, it is reasonable to argue that the social-science sphere is less receptive to ideologies that originate from the stance of nature rather than nurture. Sociologists tend reject socio-genetic accounts by simply categorizing them as misleading to readers in thinking that social elitism is both natural and inevitable (Londhe, 2011). Contrastingly, social-scientists are criticised for using postmodern thinking to critique natural-science and claim it to be a dogmatic belief system which is devoid of objectivity (Londhe 2011). Without trying to justify the accounts of The Bell Curve, it is more than reasonable to claim that they ought to be a more synchronised relationship between the origins of The Bell Curve, Nature, and Nurture accounts, like Bourdieu’s analysis of class culture.  The benefits of this synchronisation can be found in the ground-breaking research of Sandra Scarr (Sternberg, 1997), who was able to show that heredity appears to play an important, but, not a definitive role in explaining the determinants of what is measured in IQ tests.  It also revealed that GE (genotype-environment) correlation shifts during childhood from passive to active GE correlations as children experience environments outside the family and begin to play an active role in the selection and construction of their experiences (APS, 2010). Freud himself was asked, ‘how does one become a successful academic?’ he said, "exaggerate" (Heckman, 1995, pg1092), which is exactly what both Herrnstein and Murray achieve. By exaggerating they attract the attention of academics and others by opening the discussion of issues that were once off-limits.  And, by making bold statements that cry out for more qualification, “…they have created a market for scholars to clarify their argument” (Heckman, 1995, pg1092). Therefore, positions from this type of collaboration holds legitimate grounding, as they do not simply reject and oppose based on their own dogma and commitment to social-science as a nurture only science. And it is in this manner that social-science ought to be receiving all forms of account, regardless of their epistemic origin (Londhe, 2011).

 Ghislaino Kamdo - 31/01/2012

 

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