THE PROB LEMS OF EDUCATION ARE NOT GE NE TIC 321Politicians laud the system as vital to the nation’s economy and also
welcome its role in the ideology of social in equality, as “an engine of social
justice.”^1 Children have every chance to prove their inherent potential, it
is claimed; if they do not succeed in climbing the social class ladder and
obtaining just rewards, it is their own fault.
Research shows quite clearly, though, that schooling has little to do
with learning ability, cognitive potential, or intelligence as such. It really
consists of a pro cess of psuedo- assessment and attribution of potential
based on social class background.
Perhaps Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have put this most clearly.
Th ey argue that schools do not supply employers with skills, but with
suitably socialized workers. Schools reproduce the values, expectations,
and attitudes that prepare people to put up with in equality, accept their
lot, and support the system, unequal as it is.^2 Th is task explains much of
what goes on in schools. Behind the nurturant and scholarly façade, that
is, something else is going on in education systems— something that en-
sures that equal opportunities cannot be equally taken and learning
ability for most is underestimated or even suppressed.
Mountains of critiques already exist about this aspect of schooling.
David Berliner and Gene Glass, in their 50 Myths... in Education, say
that “we keep assessing our students and their teachers with methods best
suited for a 19th- century model of education, one based on the simple
transmission of knowledge.”^3 In this chapter, I simply want to illustrate how
typical state education systems, trying to hold together a social class system,
fabricate individual diff erences in potential and intelligence. Th ey do this by
demanding pro cesses of pseudo- learning, through what has been called
a “hidden curriculum,” with outcomes presented as diversity of potential
and so reproducing the class structure of society across generations.
SELF- FULFILLING LABELINGCovert se lection starts almost immediately. From the fi ndings described
in the previous chapter, it is obvious that children do not enter school as
equals. Many are already advantaged or handicapped by the social inheri-
tance of preconceptions of their own likely abilities, as well as aspects of
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