The primary school teacher and blogger Classroom Truths has attacked the idea that education can by itself 'elevate the working class...[as]...a passport to opportunity.' He notes that the idea of social mobility 'presupposes the persistence of inequalities' and points out that schools like Mossbourne Academy are celebrated as if their success justifies the poverty of the areas they serve. He's right that the school system in its current form won't end poverty, but wrong to suggest this is due to the government's failure to solve problems of housing, homelessness and gangs. Schools are not fighting poverty against these obstacles, they are creating it.
Poverty exists because people tolerate it and they tolerate it because they were taught as children that they are worth less than the children of richer people, who were more successful in the classroom.
Schools teach children the way the world works; they engineer society. The features they construct are hierarchy, from high to low ability, passivity, having no say over what work is done, and atomisation, working individually towards individual goals.
This is terrible but it's also brilliant. It means that we can engineer an equal society and we can start right away. All we need is a Curriculum for Equality.
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