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The Political Costs of Unequal Education
Jane Junn
Department of Political Science &
Eagleton Institute of Politics Rutgers University
Paper prepared for the symposium on The Social Costs of
Inadequate Education
Teachers College, Columbia University October 24-25, 2005
DRAFT – Do not cite without permission [email protected]
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Executive Summary
The Political Costs of Unequal Education Jane Junn
• Education is a cornerstone of U.S. democracy, a notion
supported by political philosophers and contemporary politicians
from both sides of the political spectrum.
• Education makes democracy possible because it aids in the
cognitive, ideological, and
strategic development of democratic citizens, allowing voters to
acquire political information, deliberate about issues, voice
perspectives, and engage in politics.
• The importance of education to democratic citizenship is
neither solely a normative
dream nor a tool of political rhetoric. There is a long and
well-documented empirical relationship between level of educational
attainment and citizen political engagement.
• Americans with more education are more likely to be wealthy,
and less likely to be
African American or Latino. Consequently, political activity in
American democracy is characterized by divisions in class and
race.
• Despite the egalitarian potential of education, the racial and
class stratification in
democractic participation in the United States is the result of
inequities in education.
• Education thus plays a dual role in driving democratic
citizenship, at once enabling individuals to be active and engaged
citizens, while simultaneously replicating structural hierarchies
that reinforce inequality.
• Recognizing both the equality-enhancing and
inequality-producing roles of formal
education is a reminder to carefully scrutinize educational
policies designed to attenuate inequality.
• Policy change must therefore be directed in a broad context,
focusing attention on both
education and the political system. American democratic
institutions and practices must work together with education to
enhance equality.
• The vigor and legitimacy of democracy in the United States
depend on adequate and
equal education for all children in America.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 1
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1 Unequal education and the cost to democracy Even during times
of war and economic recession, American voters consistently
rank
education among the most important political issues facing the
nation. While education has in
recent years slipped in prominence behind contemporary concerns
such as terrorism and health
care, it remains high on the agenda because voters recognize the
critical role education plays
both in individual social mobility, and in maintaining the
overall health of the nation. It is
therefore a near-universal phenomenon for politicians to
emphasize their support of education,
citing the good more education will bring to families,
communities, the economy, and
democracy. The nature of education policy, however, differs
dramatically among politicians
arrayed along the ideological spectrum, though it is difficult
to imagine a successful candidate
for national political office running on a platform advocating
less education. More is always
considered better. Yet the critical questions are how much more,
what kind of education, and for
whom?
These questions are not easily resolved, and despite billions of
dollars and decades of
policy intervention, children in the United States today remain
separated by vast disparities in
educational quality and attainment. These inequalities have
enormous social and economic
implications, opening opportunities for the well endowed, and
foreclosing life chances for
students who fall behind. No more evident is the manifest
significance of education than in the
political sphere, where it is those with higher levels of
education who participate in the civic and
political life of the nation. In the 2004 election, for example,
college graduates were nearly three
times as likely to vote as Americans without a high school
degree, replicating a longstanding
pattern of political participation directly proportional to
educational attainment. In this regard,
E.E. Schattschneider’s observation that the voice of the people
is a “chorus with an upper-crust
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 2
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accent,” remains as accurate today as it was nearly fifty years
ago.1 Education policy is not only
driven by partisan political forces, but education – its
quality, distribution, and content – has
enormous consequences for the conduct of politics and the
legitimacy of democracy in America.
It is in this vein that I expand our discussion of the social
costs of inadequate education to
include the political costs of unequal education.
I argue that the vigor and legitimacy of democracy in the United
States are threatened in
the absence of equal education. Simply put, democracy loses when
its citizens lack adequate
cognitive, economic and psychological resources and motivation
for meaningful political
participation. Inequities in education have the result of
creating systematic political disadvantage
for citizens who receive less schooling and education of poor
quality. Likewise, when political
engagement is stratified by class and race, the resulting “voice
of the people” is composed
disproportionately of the most advantaged citizens in American
society, further straining the
legitimacy of U.S. democracy as a polity representing all of its
people. The greater social and
economic advantage bestowed upon individuals through superior
educational attainment
translates into unequal political voice that serves to compound
discrepancies between Americans
separated by race and class. In what follows, I present data
documenting the relationship between
educational attainment and citizen political participation,
highlighting in particular the disparities
between Americans separated by race and class.
2 Education and the voice of the people
If there is a consistent refrain in the vast literature
concerning education in America, it is
that it is good – good for democracy, for employment, for social
mobility, for building strong
communities, and for democratic values. Indeed, education is
most often viewed as a necessary 1 Schattschneider, The
Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America,
1960.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 3
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resource for the development of democratic citizens, providing
the building materials of
knowledge about American government, political literacy,
critical thinking ability, and positive
affect for politics. That is a high bar indeed, but even the
least ambitious among us would find
merit in the argument that education should provide, among other
things, the basic cognitive
skills to participate in politics. Education, and more of it,
has clear value for increasing the
likelihood that citizens will make their voices heard. For all
forms of political participation for
which political scientists have standard measures, and since
systematic data on the subject have
been collected, level of educational attainment and political
behavior are positively and closely
linked. One scholar has given formal education the moniker of
the “universal solvent” to
describe the strength and the consistency with which education
predicts voting, campaign
activity, contributing money, writing letters, protesting, and
engaging with other citizens.2 Table
1 presents data on voting in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. election by
educational attainment. The data
clearly show a strong relationship between education and the
proportion of citizens who reported
voting.3
2 Philip E. Converse, “Change in the American Electorate,” in
The Human Meaning of Social Change, eds., Angus Campbell and Philip
E. Converse (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1972). 3 Estimating
voter turnout is an area of some controversy, and the data reported
in Table 1 represent self-reported turnout among respondents
interviewed by the U.S. Census Bureau in the Current Population
Survey in 2000 and 2004. Official government estimates of voter
turnout, calculated by tallying vote records from states, are
typically 5% or more lower than the self-reports from surveys.
People often mis-report and over-report their voting behavior in an
interview setting. An additional controversy within voting studies
is the use of the “voting age population,” versus the “voting
eligible population” as the denominator for turnout statistics. The
U.S. Electoral Assistance Commission, the official government
organization charged with distributing information about voting in
the United States, continues to utilize the former, which includes
disenfranchised convicted felons and non-citizens, for example. In
the last 10 years, the U.S. Census Bureau has estimated reported
voter turnout with the CPS data for both the total population and
among citizens only.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 4
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Table 1. Voting in 2000 & 2004 by Educational attainment %
Citizen
population reported
voting, 2000
% Citizen population reported
voting, 2004
Proportion of population,
2004
Less than 9th grade
39 39 6
9th to 12th grade, no diploma
38 40 10
High school graduate or GED
53 56 32
Some college or Associate’s degree
63 69 27
Bachelor’s degree
75 78 17
Advanced degree
81 84 9
Total
60
64
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, November
2000 & November 2004
Less than half of Americans (39%) without a high school degree
voted in the elections of
2000 and 2004. In contrast, just over half of high school
graduates, nearly two-thirds of
Americans with some formal education beyond high school, and
more than three-quarters of
those with a college degree or higher, report having voted in
the Presidential elections. While not
shown here, the data for previous election years shows a
remarkably consistent pattern of a
strong, positive and mostly linear relationship between
educational attainment and voting.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 5
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Table 2: Voting in 2004 by Racial Group % Citizen
population reported
voting, 2004
% Total population reported
voting, 2004
White
67 66
Black
60 56
Hispanic/Latino
47 28
Asian
44 30
Total
64
58
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, November
2004 In national elections, at least, the voice of the people is
disproportionately one that is well
educated. Table 2 documents voting participation in the 2004
election by race, and shows a
similar pattern of stratification, but along different
dimensions. Figures are given for both the
proportion of the citizen population that reported voting, as
well as the percent of the total
population of whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asians who said they
voted in 2004. I present the data
in this way in order to highlight important differences in
political activity between the citizen and
total Latino and Asian populations. Currently, the U.S. Census
Bureau estimates that 40% of
Latinos in the U.S. are immigrants, while 66% of Asian Americans
are foreign-born. The rate at
which Asians naturalize to U.S. citizenship, however, is
significantly higher than among Latino
immigrants. Table 2 shows that even holding constant U.S.
citizenship, Asians and Latinos are
far less likely than their white and African American fellow
citizens to vote. Two-thirds of
whites said they voted in 2004, while 60% of blacks voted. Less
than half of Latino citizens, and
only 44% of Asian American citizens voted in 2004. The data show
a clear pattern of louder
voice at the voting booth among white Americans as compared with
minority citizens.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 6
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While voting is certainly an important indicator of citizenship,
it is but one activity of
many that Americans can take part in to express their political
voice. Table 3 presents data on
political participation by racial groups across a wide range of
political activities. These data
come from a survey of the U.S. population conducted in October
2004, just before the
Presidential election. The main purpose of this study was to
gather data on the identities and
political activities of members of various racial groups, with a
special emphasis on the young
adult population. The method and scope of the resulting data
collection differs in important ways
from the U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey, and as a
result, the properties of the
Latino and Asian American respondents are distinctive. In
particular, the sample is younger, and
the Latino and Asian American populations are significantly more
likely to be born in the U.S. or
to be naturalized citizens. I present these data not as a
comparative frame to the earlier Census
data on voting shown in Table 2, but to facilitate comparisons
across the four racial groups
surveyed in this study across a range of political activities.
Acts of political participation beyond
voting were asked of all respondents, including electoral
activity such as persuading others how
to vote, attending campaign meetings or rallies, working for a
candidate, and contributing money
to a campaign. The first half of the table documents the
proportion of respondents in each of the
four racial groups who reporting participating in electoral
activities. The data clearly show that
white Americans are the most active, followed closely by Asian
Americans. Only in voting do
blacks Americans outpace Asian Americans, and for all other
electoral activities, African
American and Latino voices are heard with lower frequency than
the other two groups.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 7
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Table 3. Political Participation by Racial Group, 2004 % White %
Black % Latino % Asian
American Electoral activities Voted in 2000 Presidential
election
68 65 51 61
Persuade others how to vote
22 18 22 22
Attend campaign meeting or rally
9 4 7 7
Work for candidate
5 3 4 3
Contribute to a campaign
14 5 8 12
Average number of electoral activities
1.16 .95 .92 1.05
Other types of participation Contact government official
16 9 9 14
Sign petition
24 17 20 23
Protest
4 4 4 5
Boycott
11 6 11 11
Average number of other activities
.55 .36 .44 .53
N 421 416 416 354 Source: 2004 Ethnic Politics Pre-election
Study, Junn 2005 Questions about activities beyond electoral
politics were also asked in this study.
Americans reported whether they had contacted a government
official, signed a petition,
protested, or engaged in a boycott. The results are shown in the
second half of the table, and the
same pattern of white and Asian American advantage pertain here
as well. Contrary to the
conventional expectation that resource-poor citizens would
engage more frequently in the street
politics of the “weapons of the weak” – including protesting and
boycotting – there was little
difference between any of the groups on the former, and African
American are less likely to
boycott to express their political voice. Here again, the voices
of those with more modest
economic resources are overshadowed by the political
participation of the resource-rich.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 8
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While there are some surprises in these data, particularly the
findings regarding the Asian
American population in the 2004 Ethnic Politics Study, the data
provide strong evidence for the
finding that educational inequality drives disparities in
citizen political engagement. Indeed, and
as scholars in this symposium document more fully, there are
substantial differences between
Americans classified by race in terms of educational attainment.
To highlight the divergence, I
include data from a 2003 U.S. Census Current Population Survey
on educational attainment by
race in Table 4. The table shows vast differences in education
between whites and Asians on the
one hand, and African Americans and Latinos on the other.
Indeed, the inequality in educational
resources is staggering, particularly in comparing Latinos and
Asians, the latter of which is both
most highly educated and more heavily immigrant population than
the other three groups. Fully
half of Asian Americans are college-educated, and only 13% do
not have a high school degree.
Conversely, 41% of Latinos did not finish high school, and 25%
have less than a 9th grade
education. Only 12% of the Latino population in the U.S. has a
college degree. African
Americans are also heavily disadvantaged in terms of college
degrees, and 17% of blacks are
college-educated, compared with 32% of whites. Double the
proportion of African Americans
(19%) than whites (10%) have less than a high school
education.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 9
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Table 4: Educational Attainment by Race (population 25 years and
over), 2003 % White % Black
% Latino
% Asian
Less than 9th grade
3 5 25 8
9th to 12th grade, no diploma
7 14 16 5
High school graduate or GED
33 36 28 20
Some college or Associate degree
27 27 19 18
Bachelor’s degree
20 12 9 30
Advanced degree
11 5 3 20
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual
Social and Economic Supplement, 2003
The data on educational attainment by race speaks volumes about
why the patterns of
political engagement are as clear as they are. African Americans
and Latinos are less likely to
express their political voice through participation in part
because they possess significantly fewer
of the educational resources that facilitate political activity.
But education is not the only
resource influencing participation, and income also plays a
significant role. Table 5 details data
from the 1990 Citizen Participation Study by Sidney Verba, Kay
Schlozman, and Henry Brady.4
The table compares the proportion of people with low annual
income (less than $15,000) and
high income ($75,000 or more) who participate in a variety of
political activities. Across the
board, the wealthy clobber the poor in expressing their
political voice; the order of magnitude in
the difference across the two poles is substantial.
4 Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice
and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1995).
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 10
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Table 5: Political Participation by Income (%) Income less
than $ 15,000Income $ 75,000 or
more
Voting
52 86
Campaign work
4 17
Campaign contributions
6 56
Contact government official
25 50
Protest
3 7
Informal community activity
13 38
Board membership
1 6
Affiliated with political organization
29 73
N (weighted) 483 224 Source: 1990 Citizen Participation Study,
Verba Schlozman and Brady 1995 Education is again implicated in
this important resource for political participation,
because income and earnings are so strongly tied to formal
educational attainment. Table 6
presents U.S. Census Current Population Survey data from 2003 on
average earnings by
educational attainment for the four racial groups. The bottom
row in the table reiterates the story
of higher education contributing to stronger earnings for whites
and Asian Americans. There is
more to the story than this overall conclusion, however, as the
remaining cells in the table attest.
While Asian Americans have much higher levels of education
overall than whites, their average
earnings, while larger, are not as big as one would predict in a
population where half the
population has a college degree. Indeed, the only reason why the
total income for Asians is larger
than whites is because there are so many more Asian Americans
with high levels of education,
but who earn less than their white counterparts at every level
of education. For example, whites
with a Bachelor’s degree earn just over $53,185, while the
average earnings for Asian Americans
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 11
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in the same educational category is $46,628. This pattern is
repeated with even greater
magnitude for African Americans and Latinos. Again, at every
level of educational attainment,
blacks fare the worst in terms of earnings, with average wages
of $42,285 for those with a
Bachelor’s degree, twenty-five percent less than their white
counterparts. Similarly
disadvantaged in terms of returns to educational attainment are
Latinos, who also systematically
earn less than their white counterparts at every level of
education.
Table 6: Educational Attainment and Average Earnings by Race,
2003 White Black
Latino
Asian
Not a high school graduate
$ 19,423 $ 16,516 $ 18,981 $ 16,746
High school graduate
$ 28,756 $ 22,823 $ 24,163 $ 24,900
Some college or Associate’s degree
$ 32,318 $ 27,626 $ 27,757 $ 27,340
Bachelor’s degree
$ 53,185 $ 42,285 $ 40,949 $ 46,628
Advanced degree
$ 74,122 $ 59,944 $ 67,679 $ 72,852
Total
$ 39,220 $ 28,179 $ 25,824 $ 40,793
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual
Social and Economic Supplement, 2003
Taken together, these data demonstrate a clear pattern of
advantage in economy and
politics for those who achieve higher educational attainment.
But that is not the entire story.
Even these simple tables reflect the searing reality of
political and economic inequality at the
same levels of education for people of different racial groups.
Education is most often viewed as
a resource that, when fairly distributed, can provide equal
opportunities for individuals in society
to succeed. It is easy to drawn into the claim that more
education is better, not only for its
normative appeal, but also because of the sheer quantity of
evidence that supports the notion that
education contributes in a positive sense to many important
individual-level outcomes. However
it is clear that education buys neither the same amount of
political voice, nor an equal sum of
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 12
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dollars in exchange for labor in the United States for minority
Americans as it does for whites.
Something is clearly amiss with the notion that education is an
equal-opportunity promoter
wealth and political advantage, and the data lay the groundwork
for a story of the dual role of
education in American democracy.
3 The dual role of education
There is a longstanding belief in the critical role of education
in the maintenance of a
healthy democracy. Political philosophers as diverse as
Aristotle, John Locke, John Stuart Mill,
Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann and Martin Luther King identify
the enduring role of education
in the development of democratic citizens. Of particular
significance is the role education plays
in inculcating a set of values supporting democratic principles
and practice, training people to
prioritize norms of liberty and equality. In its first function,
then, education is a socializing
mechanism, imparting values and teaching citizens how we ought
to behave and what we need to
know about politics, tolerance and democratic principles of
equality and fairness. At the same
time, education serves as a powerful sorting mechanism,
conferring skills and signaling a higher
placement in the economic and social hierarchy for individuals
based on educational attainment.
Indeed, generations of labor economists and sociologists have
documented this second role of
education as one of the most powerful agents of stratification
in post-industrial society. In this
regard, the same data that validate the critical importance of
education to social, political and
economic outcomes and inform the position that more education is
better, also identify education
as the main mechanism perpetuating hierarchy and inequality.
A simple counterclaim to this somewhat gloomy conclusion would
be that despite its
equality-attenuating role, more education should still be better
for politics and democracy
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 13
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because it should engender more political participation, and
consequently, more political voice.
If education is so strongly, positively, and consistently
correlated with citizen engagement,
shouldn’t more education predict higher rates of political
participation in the aggregate? It does
not. Educational attainment has never been higher for Americans,
yet the rate of voting – the
most basic and widely-documented act of citizen participation –
has remained constant over the
exact time period in which the proportion of Americans with a
high school degree has nearly
doubled, and the college-educated population tripled. Table 7
presents trends in voter turnout and
educational attainment between 1964 and 2000. Scholars who view
this set of relationships as a
puzzle make the mistake of extrapolating longitudinally from the
cross-sectional evidence that
higher education predicts more participation. It is not only
empirically incorrect to predict there
is more citizen participation over time as a result of more
education, it also theoretically wrong
to expect the relationship to pertain.
Table 7: Trends in voter turnout* and educational attainment,**
1964-2004 Year National
voter turnout (VAP) %
High school graduate
%
College graduate
%
1964 62 48 9 1968 61 53 11 1972 55 58 12 1976 54 64 15 1980 53
69 17 1984 53 73 19 1988 50 76 20 1992 55 79 21 1996 49 82 24 2000
55 84 26 2004 NA 85 27 Source: Electoral Assistance Commission
(EAC); U.S. Census Bureau * The EAC calculates national voter
turnout as a function of the voting age population (VAP), including
all residents 18 years and older in the U.S. regardless of
disenfranchisement (e.g., felony conviction) or citizenship.
Official estimates of voter turnout in 2004 are not yet available.
** Percentages calculated for the population 25 years and
older.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 14
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Instead, uncovering the answer lies in the recognition of the
importance of the relative
distribution of education among politically relevant groups.
More education for all – increasing
the adequacy of education – implies a framework for returns to
education in real terms, serving
to “raise the floor” in terms of educational resources. This is
clearly important, but it is an
insufficient solution to the necessary imperative to “level the
playing field” among democratic
citizens separated by disparities in social and economic
resources, chief among them, their
degree of educational attainment. As the engine driving labor
market participation, occupational
certification, and income earnings, education is a prime
mechanism behind economic
stratification. To the extent that political influence follows
financial resources, in politics as in
economy, the rich get richer. Politicians disproportionately
hear messages and feel political
pressure from those with greater economic, and therefore,
political resources. If there were no
differences in terms of policy preferences and political
attitudes between groups of people
categorized by financial resources and education, the phenomenon
of preferences voiced
disproportionately from well-heeled citizens might be more
benign. But this is not the case; not
only do educationally- and economically-disadvantaged voters
participate in politics at a far
lower rate than middle-class and wealthy citizens, they have
distinctive political preferences.
Raising the floor by providing more adequate education for this
group of Americans certainly
aids their ability to advocate for their positions, but they
remain at a relative disadvantage to
those already ahead of them in the educational and political
game. Education is thus a force that
is both positive-sum and zero-sum, imparting skills to those who
take part, but also acting as a
powerful sorting device, by placing some at the top of the
hierarchy and leaving others at the
bottom. In this regard, and as a mechanism of social
stratification, education can be conceived as
exactly the opposite of an equalizing force. Education can at
once be both a purveyor of
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 15
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individual-level resources while at the macro-societal level,
act to reproduce and legitimate
structural inequalities that drive disparities and nurture
inequality.
These inconsistencies in expectation and outcome provide another
way to look at
education as an individual-level resource. While formal
education may indeed encourage the
development of cognitive ability and individual resources, it
may also be the case that these skills
are far less relevant to securing one’s place in the social
hierarchy of American life. Instead, the
important of education to stratification may be the role it
plays as a powerful socialization
device, teaching students who are successful and who progress
through educational institutions
to also become initiated into the hierarchical norms of
commerce, politics, and social life.5 In
short, education may be a particularly effective means of
reproducing cultural, political, and
economic practices. As one of the primary mechanisms behind
social stratification, education
can also be conceived as exactly the opposite from an equalizing
force. Instead, at the macro-
societal level, education may reproduce and legitimate
structural inequalities that in turn drive
vast disparities in wealth, and nurture the persistence of the
dominance of the in-group to the
systematic disadvantage of out-groups.6 How can education be
understood simultaneously as
both an equalizing force and a stratification mechanism?
Education both enables and restricts; it
is a location for the development of both individual agency and
structural constraint.
The value of the resources conveyed upon individuals by
educational attainment must be
considered in relation to what level of resources are held by
others in the society. The value of
education to social outcomes like income earnings and political
participation must be assessed in
5 See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu 1987, Reproduction in
Education, Society and Culture, 2nd ed., (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
Publications, 1990). 6 This “revisionist” perspective identifies
education as critical to the maintenance of capitalism. See Samuel
Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:
Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New
York: Basic Books, 1976). But also see Paul Willis, Learning to
Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977) for his analysis of the Hammertown
lads subjectively reproduce labor power through resistance to and
rebellion from middle-class educational imperatives.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 16
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relative terms to how much everyone else has. More education in
the aggregate does not
necessarily improve conditions at either the macro-societal
level or the individual level. Instead,
more education simply shifts the baseline upward. If the pace of
gains by disadvantaged groups
does not keep up with the growth in education by advantaged
groups, the former fall further
behind even as they are making progress in level of educational
attainment in an absolute sense.
Far from a simple theoretical exercise, this situation reflects
the current reality of more rapid
gains in education by the advantaged over African-Americans and
Latinos, who continue to
operate at a distinct educational disadvantage. The gap in
educational attainment between whites
and Asians on the one hand, and African-Americans and Latinos on
the other, has narrowed, but
not disappeared. These conclusions about the collective outcomes
of education are sobering for
minorities and the poor, who have more to lose from the
educational progress of advantaged
groups.
Disadvantaged groups stay that way not only by virtue of their
relatively low placement
in the educational hierarchy, but also because the legitimacy of
this unequal structure is
propagated in part by American educational institutions
themselves. Rather than sitting outside
of the political, economic, and social structures that reinforce
inequality and domination,
education is a part of it. Education plays two important roles
in the maintenance of an ideology
of meritocracy in the United States. In its sorting function,
formal education confers certification,
degrees and other scarce outcomes that places those with what
are defined as the best credentials
at the top of the hierarchy, and those with lesser near the
bottom. In its role as a powerful
socializer, education teaches the ideology of meritocracy, by
grading on normal curves and
assuring those who finish on the right tail that they will
succeed because they deserve to. The
second role is critical, for it is necessary to have some
mechanism which reliably reproduces the
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 17
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ideology that maintains the positions of power for those at the
top who benefit from the system
as it already exists.7 When outcomes are positional or scarce –
when not everyone can be rich,
and not everyone can be granted admission into a top school –
the liberal democratic ideology
must have an answer to its production of unequal outcomes. Merit
can be used as a justification
for inequality of outcomes in a system where the rules are
supposed to be fair.
This discussion of the dual role of education as both a location
for the development of
individual agency as well as and structural constraints is
intended as a gentle if unpleasant
reminder that policies that seek to redress the consequences of
political inequality cannot assume
that providing more resources for competition in an unequal
system will eliminate the inequality.
To the extent that education contributes to the maintenance of
social stratification, sorting those
with high attainment and credentials to the top and those with
less toward the bottom, while at
the same time reproducing an ideology of meritocracy, we cannot
expect that mechanism in its
same form to also dismantle the hierarchy.
4 Education for citizenship
The magnitude of the loss for democracy from inadequate and
unequal education is not
easily measurable. For it is difficult to quantify the cost to
the American democratic polity for
the loss of citizen political participation and social
engagement, and it is tricky to enumerate the
lost political capital that stems from the absence of a sense of
belonging and empowerment in the
community. Nor is it clear whether strengthening democracy
through expanded citizen
participation is a goal shared by all. Skeptical observers point
to the strategic calculations
manifest among political players with precisely the opposite
imperative – to keep people out of
7 Charles Tilly, in Durable Inequality (University of California
Press 1999) describes these processes of “emulation” and
“adaptation.”
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 18
-
the political sphere. The power elite, including political
incumbents occupying “safe” legislative
seats, are most comfortable when constituents are predictable
voters or abstainers; adding
newcomers to the mix only introduces uncertainty to elections.
The extremely high degree of
incumbent success in the United States Congress – less than 10%
of seats in the House of
Representatives are expected to be competitive elections in 2006
– provides strong testimony to
the creativity of those in power to control the political
system. In this regard, foes of expanding
the electorate and increasing citizen participation come in all
partisan stripes. In addition, a long
tradition of political thought deeply embedded in the American
political experience has defined
politics as the province of the elite. This is perhaps best
exemplified in founding elements of
American democratic institutions including the Electoral College
and a bicameral federal
legislature designed to insulate the Senate from the popular
will. While many of the vestiges of
this 18th Century elitism are no longer clearly visible (U.S.
Senators are now elected directly
elected by voters from the states), the legacies of elitist
democratic theory remain evident today.
Taking their cue from enlightenment philosophers, modern
political theorists in the elitist
tradition continue to make a strong normative case for
encouraging political participation only
among educated and informed citizens who are least susceptible
to political manipulation and
demagoguery.
From quite the opposite pole emanates a different critique of
the normative position that
more participation is good for democracy. More political
activity has been advocated as a
procedural and substantive solution for distributional
inequities in social and political goods.
Increasing political activity among those traditionally
disadvantaged and politically
underrepresented can help create public policies that take their
interests into account as well as
empower those previously disenfranchised to take political
stands in order to develop and
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 19
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forward their interests. Because minorities tend to participate
in politics at comparatively lower
rates, people in these groups have become the target for calls
for political activity through
naturalization and voter registration drives. Such
well-intentioned campaigns seek greater
equality in political outcomes by making the electorate more
descriptively representative of the
population at large. The inference is that policies beneficial
to those previously disenfranchised
are most likely to be adopted when the face of the electorate
mirrors the face of the polity.
Conversely, undesirable political outcomes are reasoned to be
the result of the lack of political
activity among those whose interests are at stake. Under
circumstances of relatively modest rates
of political activity among minorities, what falls under
scrutiny for change are the individuals
who supposedly influence the institutions and process of
democratic government, rather than the
institutions and practices themselves. In this regard, the
analytic emphasis on the individual-level
subject has trained the focus for change on the non-participant
citizen while at the expense of a
critical examination of the structure and institutions of
democracy in which agency is acted out.
But if we relax the assumption that the political process – the
democratic culture,
practice, and institutions of democracy – provides equality of
agency for all regardless of race or
some other politically-relevant category, then the comparatively
low rates of participatory
activity among minority Americans can be interpreted in another
way, as an indicator of the
structural inequalities present. The analytic strategy of
holding the assumption to greater scrutiny
does not necessarily imply a structurally functionalist
argument. Rather, it asks us to consider the
location of the significance of race for political participation
on the dichotomy between structure
and agency that make up the ends of the continuum from the
debilitating determinism of a
system continually reenacting domination, to the unwarranted
optimism of unencumbered
agency.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 20
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In developing strategies to enhance democracy by improving the
adequacy and equality
of education, we first need to ask “what good is more education
for democracy?” rather than take
it for granted. To fruitfully address the problems of democracy,
we must train the focus of our
policy recommendations not only on the education community at
large, but on the structures and
institutions of government itself. We must ask whether citizens
are being presented with
adequate resources to act, and question how we might re-envision
the incentives for political
engagement to be more inclusive of all citizens. John Dewey
observed that one of the most
important roles of education is to promote the social continuity
of life. If one of these
continuities in a democracy is based on principles of liberty
and equality, and in that regard
innovation, it should be the case that we should continually
strive to improve our democratic
system of institutions and structures. Ultimately, more
education and more democracy do hold
promise for a better America. But it must be a democracy that is
enacted in a way that provides
equal access and opportunities to participate. Education can
make democracy possible, but it
must also be the case that democracy enables education to find
its transformative potential.
Jane Junn, The Political Costs of Unequal Education, p. 21