This is no celebration of working-class culture
Educators who say they want children to embrace their backgrounds are against social mobility
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Narrated by Melanie Phillips
A new book says that meritocracy amounts to “smoke and mirrors” and that schools should celebrate working-class culture to raise standards among disadvantaged children, The Times reported.
In The Working Classroom, the authors Matt Bromley and Andy Griffith denounce social mobility for “lifting students out of the working classes and leaving behind all that they are and identify with”. Instead, they write, every school’s curriculum should celebrate working-class culture alongside the culture of “dominant” classes.
Their argument is confused, flawed and self-defeating. It’s also nothing new. In 1958, Michael Young argued in his seminal book The Rise of the Meritocracy that achievement through merit created unequal opportunity because it formed an elite of those who had made the grade, leaving behind those who had
