Vice, a reliable Voice of the Crust, descends into self-parody.
But economic justice groups in the UK are campaigning hard to fix a broken system.
‘Broken system’? How is this a ‘broken system’? It appears that it works pretty well; all the efforts of ‘economic justice groups’ (and they weren’t just born yesterday) haven’t succeeded in eliminating it. That’s certainly my definition of a robust unbroken system.
The fact that the system doesn’t lead to the outcomes that Certain People would like is, of course, another question. But let’s not pretend that it’s a ‘ broken system’.
Sweeping education reforms have done very little to change the fact that in the UK, being born well is by far the surest route to prosperity.
The assumption here is that ‘education reforms’ are somehow supposed to make sure that those who are ‘born well’ don’t get a sure route to prosperity. Just how is that supposed to work, exactly? If Ringo has rich parents who never sent him to school for even a day but who gave him a potload of money, then Ringo’s prosperity is pretty much guaranteed even in the face of a total lack of education. It would seem, therefore, that ‘education reforms’, no matter how ‘sweeping’ their nature, aren’t going to do what they’re expected to. The obvious conclusion that suggests itself is that Certain People are leaning on the wrong tools, tools that will never achieve their Desired Outcome.
Since the 1980s, the degree of social fluidity in Britain has plummeted with more people experiencing descent than ascent.
Perhaps it’s the fault of ‘sweeping education reforms’. If you change a condition, and the outcome is worse than it was, I kinda think that it might be the change in the condition that caused it.
“Decades of educational policy have completely overlooked that younger generations of men and women now face less favorable mobility prospects than did their parents—or their grandparents despite having earned higher qualifications,” Dr. John Goldthorpe – a leading sociologist at the University of Oxford and author of the study Social Class Mobility in Modern Britain: Changing Structure, Constant Process – told VICE Impact. “That is, they are less likely to experience upward mobility and more likely to experience downward mobility,’
This again suggests that ‘decades of educational policy’ are the culprit, rather than a possible cure. I rather suspect that we’re going to be presented with a scheme to double down on what hasn’t worked before. ‘This time for sure!’ Uh, no.
His work shows that investments in education at the national level have very little impact on social mobility because rich families are using their economic, cultural and social capital to ensure that their children stay ahead.
I guess ‘investments in education’ didn’t screw rich people as effectively as they were supposed to. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the object of education policy was to increase social mobility rather than, say, make people educated. I know it came as a surprise to me.
I could continue this fisking exercise, but I’m sure you get the drift. It’s not enough that Certain People get educated, the Wrong People have to get screwed in the process.
