346 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
deduced from them. It explained that these have been less than success-
ful because they assume a linear causal model, as in a “horticultural”
view of the child. A dynamical model, however, places the prob lem not
in a par tic u lar social class (and all its supposed defi ciencies) but in the
class system as a whole. Th is view is supported by increasing numbers of
studies that show the inhibiting and distorting eff ects of class structure
on the development of individuals’ potential.
Education is oft en described as the cultivator of potential and the “en-
gine of social justice”: an institution in which equal opportunities allow
natu ral potentials to be expressed and fi nd their own innate limits.
Chapter 11 showed that such descriptions are misleading. Schooling largely
functions by simply reproducing the class structure of society across
generations. And it does that by false attributions of learning ability.
First, children are labeled as soon as they enter school, and a self- fulfi lling
pro cess swings in to encourage some, but discourage others, largely on
the basis of their class backgrounds. Second, a largely boring, irrelevant
curriculum is imposed on young people, making pro gress dependent on
motivation and self- confi dence, which is in turn dependent on home
background and parental push.
Th e chapter argues that this hidden agenda of schooling is evident in
swathes of fi ndings contradicting the institutional claims. First, achieve-
ment mea sures are poor predictors of later achievement either in subse-
quent education or the world of work (or for anything other than passing
exams). Second, most young people leave the institution with a poor
understanding of the world in which they live and will inherit— and even
of their own academic discipline. Th e chapter duly ended with pos si ble
solutions, based on princi ples of cognition and learning described in the
previous chapters.
Th e positive messages from these chapters will hopefully help dispel
the fatalism, pessimism, and sheer “bad science” engendered by ge ne tic
and brain reductionist approaches. Th ese have done more to perpetuate
an ideology of in equality than to challenge it. Th e positive alternative is
to recognize that the dynamical biological constitutions of the vast ma-
jority of humans will be “good enough” for participation at all levels of
social existence. Th e challenge is to recognize and dispel the ideologies
and other forces that prevent the realization of the positive alternative.
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