The Perils and Penalties of Meritocracy
Sanctioning Inequalities and Legitimating Prejudice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10360948 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Diane Reay (0000-0003-0259-1935, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 91 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 405-412 |
| Publication date | 2020-03-09 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Political Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0032-3179 • E-ISSN: 1467-923X |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-923x.12829 |
| OpenAlex | W3011947515 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
This article deploys insights from Michael Young’s 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy to challenge the dominant ideology of meritocracy in contemporary British society. It draws on ethnographic research in schools over a twenty‐five year period to illustrate the damage the illusion of meritocracy inflicts on children and young people, but particularly those from working class backgrounds. It argues that the consequences of the pretence of meritocracy are to be found in everyday practices of testing, hyper‐competition and setting, and beyond the classroom in the designation of predominantly working class schools as ‘rubbish schools for rubbish learners’. It concludes that, beyond the negative consequences for working class learners, there are wider consequences for British society, exacerbating social divisions and encouraging the growth of distrust, prejudice, envy, resentment, and contempt between different social groups
Contempt · Criminology · Distrust · Ideology · Inequality · Meritocracy · Political science · Politics · Prejudice (legal term · Resentment · Sociology · Working class · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Gender Studies · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology
‘Our students do not get that equal chance’
Reconceptualising fair access to highly academically selective universities
Reimagining the illusio of meritocracy
Ability as legitimation of tracking
The Status Relationship Between Academic and Vocational Education in Urban Norway
Vocational narratives
Merit as an Attitude
Meritocracy seen through the eyes of its champions
Life‐history research with children
Young People’s Views of and Responses to Socioeconomic Inequality
Internalised Individualism
The role of schooling in times of global pandemic
Learnings of policy enactment
An ethic of care in two community focused schools in Wales
The American Dream, (Cruel) Meritocracy and DREAMers in Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans
Privilege talking? Norwegian elite students’ justifications of grade competition and segregation
Symbolic haunting
Agonistic pluralism for enhancing the co-design of agri-environmental policy
Persevering for a Cruel and Cynical Fiction? The Experiences of the ‘Low Achievers’ in Primary Schooling
Fearing the ‘Clipboard Police’
Disentangling the Role of Migration Background and SES in Student‐Expected Interpersonal Teacher Behavior
Roles of socioeconomic status, ethnicity and teacher beliefs in academic grading
| Citations per year | 4.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |