Meritocratic (In)equalities

Meritocracy, at its core, is said to be based on the principle of equal opportunity for all, but at the same time it generates and promotes differences among individuals. Meritocracy is therefore referred to by many as the ideology of inequality, because it justifies and produces social inequalities. It promotes the ideology of winners and losers (Sandel MJ, The tyranny of merit: what’s become of the common good? Penguin, London, 2020), as it promises success to the hardworking and talented and failure to the lazy and stupid. Modern societies promote and demand selection and differentiation in the name of meritocracy, because in a meritocratic society each individual is supposed to be responsible for where they end up and what they make of themselves. The responsibility for personal success is thus completely transferred to the individual. This brings with it the problems inherent in what at first glance appears to be an attractive story of high performance and talent being rewarded. Although the idea of meritocracy was successfully established and gained prominence precisely because of education, the school field is also one of the first places where meritocratic inequalities come to light. Empirical analyses have shown that meritocracy is in fact a myth (Goldthorpe JH, Problems of “meritocracy.” In: Halsey AH, Lauder H, Brown P, Wells AS (eds) Education: culture, economy, and society. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 663–682, 2003), under which social inequalities are reproduced more or less without change. This chapter therefore highlights selected criticisms of meritocracy by Bourdieu, Bernstein, and Goldthorpe, to name a few. Indeed, many meritocracy scholars believe (Littler J, Against meritocracy: culture, power and myths of mobility. Routledge, London, 2018; Sandel MJ, The tyranny of merit: what’s become of the common good? Penguin, London, 2020; Tašner V, Gaber S, Is it time for new meritocracy? Theory Res Educ 20(2):182–192, 2022) that the idea, clearly reaching its limits, needs to be expanded, pushed back, and changed. Societies thus face the serious question of how to proceed in this regard, because the regulative idea of our time – meritocracy – has long since ceased to fulfill its promise of greater equality.