Can education save our democracy?
Our democracy might be crumbling, but education can save it.
I grew up in Rio de Janeiro, famous for its favelas and as a home for both those that have nothing and those that have everything, living side by side. This juxtaposition and the growing socioeconomic gap have led to increased violence and unrest. How, more and more, this dislocation is happening here in the United States makes me lose sleep.
Acute inequality can start to unravel any democratic society. Federal Reserve data indicates that as of Q4 2021, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held less than 3%. Chancel & Piketty, 2021 are considered the main scholars in this area and it is informative to look into their work as well as data from the Economic Policy Institute. We can approach this issue from several different angles, each loaded with political choices and preferences. Increasing the size of the pie, redistributing wealth through progressive taxation, increasing social welfare initiatives, and decreasing taxes to foster growth are some of the options in front of us. We also need to decide what type of society we want to live in: one in which we strive to eradicate poverty and do not care about how far the top of the pyramid is or a more uniform one with a thriving middle class… and the multiple shades in between.
Regardless of the economic and political choices we make, education is at the core of how we are preparing our future generations. In his classic article “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals”, David Labaree (1997) does a good job exploring the trade-offs and conflicts among the three main goals that govern American education:
Democratic equality – in which schools focus on preparing citizens.
Social efficiency – schools focus on training workers.
Social mobility – schools prepare individuals to compete for social positions.
The first two goals treat education as a public good and the third positions education as a private good. He goes on to argue that the problems we confront reflect the political tension on how to negotiate these three goals, instead of being intrinsically pedagogical, organizational, social, or cultural per se. It is hard to abstract ourselves from today’s extremely polarized environment and the ongoing culture wars as we imagine how those political choices are going to be made.
Building from Labaree’s point to view, I posit that we need to address the three goals.
There is a need for social efficiency to address the market labor force requirements, especially in an environment of accelerating technological change and increased global competitiveness. Education is still one of the main vehicles to allow one to move ahead in society and realize the American Dream. Finally, we need well-educated citizens, a society that is open to debate, embraces temperance, and strives towards the common good.
In an environment of increasing inequality and bitter dissent, it will be hard to keep the edifice of our democracy erect without these three solid pillars.