imposition of a degree of parental discipline sufficient to encourage self-discipline,
family networks and contacts, a good diet, and the provision of an adequate
workspace. This list could go on, and none of these items relate to formal
educational provision. Even parents who do not send their children to fee-paying
schools may pay for such things as ballet classes or piano lessons. In short, every
day of their lives for the previous 18 years these students have been given
opportunities. To equalise such opportunities would require a very high degree of
intervention in family life. (This is putting to one side the question of genetically
determined advantages, which we touch on below.)
This description of a privileged child may overstate the requirement for an
equalisation of opportunity. Perhaps it is not necessary that children have strictly
equal opportunities, but rather that each child has a sufficient degree of opportunity
to acquire advantageous positions. The idea is that there is a threshold level of
opportunity below which a child should not fall. (Although it is not a serious
objection to the threshold theory of equal opportunity, there would inevitably be
dispute over the correct threshold.)
Another point about equality of opportunity is that the principle presupposes
that inequality can be justified, so long as any inequalities are the result of desert.
We can distinguish social advantage, native ability (intelligence) and effort. It is a
commonly held view that ‘IQ + effort’ is an appropriate ground for discrimination,
and that equal opportunity policies should endeavour to eliminate social advantage
and not heritable IQ or effort as a cause of inequality. Rawls argues that people
no more deserve their native abilities, including their propensity to hard work, than
they do those advantages gained from their family and social background (Rawls,
1972: 104). Other theorists, such as Ronald Dworkin and David Miller, argue that
Rawls’s rejection of desert is inconsistent with other important aspects of his theory,
which stress the importance of choice and responsibility (Dworkin, 2000: 287–91;
Miller, 1999: 131–55). Nonetheless Dworkin (especially) seeks to eliminate natural
abilityas a justification for inequality, while retaining responsibility for choices
made. In this respect both Rawls’s and Dworkin’s arguments are significantly at
variance with popular attitudes. (This is an observation rather than a criticism – in
Chapter 4 we discuss Rawls’s argument in more detail.)
Not all liberal theorists defend equality of opportunity. Friedrich Hayek argues
that the free market is an example of a ‘spontaneous social order’ that cannot be
recreated by human minds, and that has no central direction. Some redistribution
of wealth is justified, but the attempt to overcome inequality of opportunity is
doomed to failure. Regardless of whether they deserve their wealth the rich are the
vanguard of socially useful change (Hayek, 1973: 88). Consider the high prices in
today’s values of cars in the 1920s, air travel in the 1930s, colour televisions in the
1960s, videotape machines in the 1970s, or personal computers in the 1980s.
Innovative companies had to make a profit in order to spur development and a
class had to exist capable of buying these things. What we call today the ‘Web’ was
not simply the product of one man’s leap of imagination – Tim Berners-Lee’s
hypertext idea – but of a series of discrete technological developments, each requiring
privileged consumers to make them commercially viable. Too much equality –
including the attempt to achieve an elusive equality of opportunity – undermines
the social conditions for innovation and progress.68 Part 1 Classical ideas