CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY SAN MARCOS

THESIS SIGNATURE PAGE

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

MASTER OF ARTS IN SOCIOLOGICAL PRACTICE

THESIS TITLE Holding "Accountability" Accountable: How The American

Myth of Meritocracy Legitimizes Social Inequality and

Containment Practices in Education

AUTHOR: Mary Molly Lockwood

DATE OF SUCCESSFUL DEFENSE: April 25th, 2003

THE THESIS HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE THESIS COMMITTEE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN SOCIOLOGICAL PRACTICE

Dr. Richard Serpe THESIS COMMITTEE CHAIR

Dr. Alicia Gonzales THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER

Dr. Sharon Elise THESIS COMMITTEE MEMBER

MASP THESIS

Holding "Accountability" Accountable: How the American Myth of Meritocracy Legitimizes Social Inequality and Containment Practices in Education

Submitted By: Mary Molly Barrett Lockwood May 8th,_3003 ~

MASP Thesis Committee: Chair: Dr. Richard Serpe Dr. Alicia Gonzales Dr. Sharon Elise Table of Contents

Introduction 1 The Myth of Meritocracy: Social justice Neutrality and Public Education 3 Meritocratic Individualism: Dominant American Identities, Ideology and Institutions 4 Social and Historic Constructs Shape the Ambiguities of Meritocracy 5 Theoretical Paradigms That Lend Perspective to Meritocratic Individualism 6

The Social Legitimacy of Meritocracy and Myth Creating 7 Historical and Social Constructions of Meritocratic Individualism 13 The Protestant Reformation: Divinity and Materialism Sustain the "Morality of Meritocratic Individualism" 17 Social-psychological Process of Attribution and Meritocratic Individualism 19 Social Determinism: Scientism, Objectivity and Socially Constructed Destinies 26 Eugenics, Social Control and Educational Testing 28 Historical Pragmatism and Meritocratic Individualism 33

Theoretical Perspectives 38 Critical Race Theory 39 Critical Race Theory and Social Constructivism in Education 45 Social Control theory and "Segregation" in Education 47

Meritocracy and Our Educational System: Raising the Bar Or Raising Barriers? Is It Time to Hold "Accountability" Accountable? 48 America's "Testing Culture" and Meritocratic Assumptions 49 The Social Construction of Accountability: Education Shaped by "The Political" 52 High-Stakes Testing & Accountability: The New Euphemism for Containment Practices and Policies of Discrimination 54 High-Stakes Testing Authenticity: Testing Accountability Validity 57 High-Stakes Testing: Consequences 60 Table of Contents

Discussion 63 Liberal Concepts and Ideologies of Individual Freedoms 63 Significance of Meritocracy to Social Arrangements and Inequality 66 Meritocracy as a Disunifying Mechanism of Equality 70 The Crooked Path of Merit/ Accountability/ Ability 73

Conclusion 76 In Education and Beyond: Pedagogies of Freedom 79

References 82 Acknowledgements

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R.DcR. Oil\.! Abstract

Meritocracy is often mentioned in discussions of social inequality, stratification, oppression and "White Privilege," but it is seldom investigated as to its ubiquitous role as a dominant inaugurator of social inequality in America today. Emanating from the central liberal concept that opportunities to compete for resources and goods are fair and equal for everyone, the American social justice ideal of "meritocratic equality" masks the realities of group determinants in relation to the anatomies of "hegemonies of power" in American culture. Disingenuously deflecting inequality issues from institutional inefficacy onto individual inadequacies and obfuscating fundamental issues of injustice, America's "meritocratic myth" camouflages meritocratic individualism's role as a catalytic agent behind group differential practices in America's social, political and economic architecture. This discursive analysis critiques the puissant connections between meritocratic individualism (meritocracy) and the conceptions and practices of dominant "Americanized" identities, ideology and institutions. It particularly brings into focus the ways meritocracy legitimizes practices of social inequality, especially within the institution of public education. Meritocracy is examined through the lens of myth, as an abstracted ideology whose "universal" tenets have become habituated through uncontested religious, social, psychological and historical processes, which this paper explores. Critical Race Theory provides the analytical framework to examine supposedly "neutral" principles of the "fair" and "good" society in relationship to widely accepted principles of merit, ability, performance and "deservedness." In particular, education's "accountability-consciousness" is deconstructed to expose this politically motivated, euphemistic ploy in perpetuating surveillance/containment practices that recreate racial, social and cultural stratifications, while deftly casting pathology onto the individual, rather than institutional policy and practice. 1

Introduction

The United States is more unequal than at any other time since the dawn of the New Deal- indeed ifs the most unequal society in the advanced democratic World (Boshara, 2003).

The concept of social mobility and status, based upon individual character, self-reliance and hard work, is so imbued in the "American Way" of life that one might think this merit-based philosophy is directly written into our Constitution. It certainly is abundantly written into our dominant colloquialisms, our sentimental rags to riches stories, and the American script for success. In America, it is broadly accepted that one "gets what one deserves", and "deserves what one earns."

Such "deservedness" is accredited to one's personal ability and achievements - not the presence, or lack of- structural or institutional expediencies. As an unexamined construct of "Americanism," and systemic feature of the prevailing geopolitical landscape, the folk model/ideology of "meritocratic individualism" is deeply embedded in the "psychic-identity" of the individual American, and entrenched within the conceptual creation and subsequent practices of our foundational institutions of health, education and welfare (Sacks, 1999; Newman,

1993; Kinder & Sears 1999; Schuman, Steeh & Bobo 1999; Sniderman & Hagen,

1999).

Principles and practices of meritocracy are fiercely tied to the dominant discourse regarding concepts of social justice, individual rights, "right action" and

"the good society" (Lemann, 2000; Sen, 2000). While the "dominant discourse" may not be universally embraced, it shapes the methodologies and pedagogies by 2 which individuals and institutions within the principal culture organize the stories they tell about themselves. Wrthin this primary culture, meritocracy has become synonymous with democracy, and is viewed as modernity's "fair" alternative to the restrictive social ranking system of "statused lineage," practiced in our not so recent past (Leman, 2001 ;Sacks, 1999;Arrow, Bowels & Dur1auf, 2000; Sen, 2000;

Schumann, Steeh & Bobo, 1985; Chang, 1996; Peterson, 1994; Kinder & Sears,

1999).

It is widely accepted that meritocracy is the "great social equalizer"; a system of practices that allows for social rewards based on individual ability and merit, within an "equal opportunity democracy" - but does it really work that way?

Americans often neglect to understand how the realities of our daily practices of social inequality and processes of intergroup domination-relations are perpetuated through wonted cultural categories that inform our explanations and behaviors

(Collins, 1998; Delgado & Stefancic, 2000; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Pellar & Thomas,

1995; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Mills, 1956; Bell Jr., 2000; Roithmayr, 1999;

Solorzano & Yosso, 2001; Tayor,1998; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Davis, 2000; Dyson,

1998; Smith, 1999; hooks, 1999). In this analysis, I contend that these realities assert themselves as a dominant "Americanized" culture with a privileged center that benefrts from belonging to, and appearing as, the norm, while simultaneously marginalizing non-norm groups, and creating "border" spaces for those we contrast as "Others" (Brantlinger, 2001; Durrengerberger, 2001, Goldschmidt, 1999; Collins,

1998; Smith, 1999; hooks, 1999).

America prides itself on its ethnically diverse population and the notion that in this pluralistic land, power, privilege and reward are explained by a mix of 3 determination, effort, intellect and ability (a combination of attributes we interpret as "merit"), rather than by associations with caste or class. Emanating from the central liberal concept that opportunities to compete for resources and goods are fair and equal for everyone, the American social justice ideal of "meritocratic equality" masks the realities of group determinants in relation to the anatomies of

"hegemonies of power" in American culture. Disingenuously deflecting inequality issues from institutional inefficacy onto individual inadequacies and obfuscating fundamental issues of injustice, America's "meritocracy myth" camouflages meritocratic individualism's ubiquitous role as a catalytic agent behind group differential practices in America's social, political and economic architecture.

The Mvth of Meritocracy: Social Justice Neutrality and Public Education

In a society that exhorts social justice neutrality- a philosophical ideal of equality and opportunity for all - as a basis for its purportedly democratic institutions, it is necessary to understand how the concept of meritocratic individualism has become the "mythic" vehicle for the legitimization of domination and discriminatory realities for non-dominant groups. These realities perpetuate social, political and economic stratifications that pretext "equality," while in actuality structuring difference, power and privilege into our American institutions; public education being our quintessential institution. How does the ideology of meritocratic individualism, and its related concepts of individual "deservedness," reproduce "myths of merit" that foster a manipulated consciousness of equality, reproducing educational practices and policies that propel the "achievement gap" between dominant and non-dominant students wider and wider? 4

Meritocratic Individualism: Dominant American Identities. Ideology and Institutions

Through critical discursive narrative and meta-analysis, I examine how

America's "Ideology of Meritocracy" or folk model of "Meritocratic Individualism" contrives its legitimacy in the dominant American consciousness, including its interrelationships with American identities, ideology and institutions as they intersect and reproduce social inequality. In particular, I explore educational assessment practices, policies and related funding, studying the ways in which

"ideals of merit" contribute to an "accountability" mentality that compels school funding and allocations of resources to be increasingly predicated on merit­ based, high-stakes standardized testing reform. A "reform mentality" which has become the accepted "meritocratic norm" in the early 21st century, despite mounting evidence that indicates not only high-stake testing ineffectiveness, but its destructive relationship to real learning (Jacob, 2001; Apple, 2001; Heubert &

Hauser, 1999; Orfield & Kornhaber, 2001; Sacks, 1999; Johnson & Johnson,

2002).

In this paper, I additionally explore how the highly politicized and rhetorical

"language of accountability" is utilized to camouflage and maintain increasingly criticized practices of discrimination/segregation seen in education's common practices of ability grouping, tracking and special education. Crucial to this discussion is an examination of society's growing fixation with "high-stakes" testing practices and policies that encourage public receptivity to "policy's of containment"- culturally and socially nuanced surveillance practices that maintain disproportionate numbers of children of color and poverty in low tracks and 5 special needs programs (Ford, 2001; Campbell-Whately & Gardener, 2002;

Connor, 2001; Obiakor, Algozzine, Thurlow, Gwsalla-Ogisi, Enwefa, Enwefa &

Mcintosh, 2002; Lucas, 1999; Gordon, Libero, Piana & Keleher, 2002). The "new politics of containment" rely heavily on familiar, but ambiguous terms and concepts, as tactics to incite public reaction, while blurring real evidentiary relationships between "merit", accountability," and "performance" and their requisite rewards or sanctions.

Social and Historic Constructs Shape the Ambiguities of Meritocracy

Public policy has been influenced by multiple social constructs that have contrived themselves into a "hybridized" ideology of meritocracy so surreptitiously and effectively that "individual merit" has become modernity's reigning measure of human worth in most American institutions, particularly in education, even though most Americans, can not articulate what meritocracy actually means, or how it influences their lives. In this paper, I examine how cultural practices of the

Enlightenment forged the ideology of meritocratic individualism, with its symbiotic social partner, dominant-group privilege, allowing our 21st century educational system to become increasingly truncated.

As we progress into the 21st century, American society and its public schools encounter an ever-widening chasm between the "haves" and "have­ nots", exacerbating social/cultural and economic/political difference, while perpetuating the containment practices and policies of "Othering." I specifically track how the Protestant Reformation, Historical Pragmatism, Social Determinism and the social-psychological processes of Dispositional Attribution have 6 contributed historically and presently to the pervasiveness of a culturally inherited

"merit/deservedness/accountability" consciousness that I believe to be inextricably linked to inequality and justice issues endemic to our society and flagrant in our educational system.

Meritocracy, and its related practices of reward or punishment based on merit, remains an unexamined, but popularly accepted premise of American values, behavior, policy making and institutional practices. The American institution of education and its historical pedagogical practices, affect millions of Americans, not just during the course of their public education school years, but throughout their life experiences. The well recognized achievement gap in education is one of the greatest challenges facing education today (Bainbridge and Lasley, 2002; Gordon, et al, 2002). It is a challenge that demands a broader and more socially/culturally/politically integrated lens, if we are to honestly evaluate the educational, socio-political and economic implications of the "meritocratic precept" in our educational and social processes. It is important we remain mindful that educational constructs are irrefutably linked to broader social constructs, because education is known to strongly impact lifelong social status and economic conditions

(Day, 2001; Shiner & Modood, 2002; Dyhouse, 2001 ).

Theoretical Paradigms that Lend Perspective to Meritocratic Individualism

As both a formal and informal agent of socialization, I ground this analysis of meritocratic individualism within the macro framework of myth as I believe merit to be contingent upon principles, concepts and norms of fairness and societal "good" that remain operationally dependent on their ambiguous nature and uncontested 7 social habituation. I also draw heavily upon interrelationships existing between

Critical Race Theory, new Politics of Containment, Standpoint Theory, and C.

Wright Mills' conception of the "The Power Elite," as these multiple, critical, deconstructionist paradigms help frame, identify and define false essentialisms/universalisms encoded within the ways meritocratic individualism is socially and psychically legitimized by dominant power structures (Delgado and

Stefancic, 2001; Delgado and Stefancic, 2000; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Pellar and

Thomas, 1995; Weigman, 1996; Collins, 1998; Mills, 1959; Smith, 1999).

Critical social theory examines how bodies of knowledge and intuitional practices interface with differently placed groups of people within social, political and historic contexts (Collins, 1998). This allows me to better illuminate the many ways that meritocracy has come to reside morally, staunchly and mythically, within dominant "Americanized" concepts of fairness, equality and merit. These concepts penetrate the individual psyche, as well as prevailing group, institutional and structural ideologies, particularly influencing pedagogy and practices within the institution of public education, where testing and "accountability" have come to be associated with practices of a "good and fair society."

The Social Legitimacy of Meritocracy and Myth Creating

"Myth is a fixed, satisfying and stable story used again and again to normalize our account of social life. By means of myth, novelty is tamed by being seen as the repetition of, or at most, the variation of a known and valued pattern. Even where actual historical situations are found to fall short of myth or to lie in its aftermath, the myth tames the variety of historical experience, giving it familiarity, while using it to reaffirm the cultures longstanding interpretations of itself" (Wiegman, 1995, p.160). 8

Concepts of meritocracy, fairness, equality and equity visibly influence the ways in which we receive, interpret and disseminate our prized American principles of knowledge, truth and justice. Chang notes (1996), that for most

Americans, at the core of concepts of meritocracy and equity, there is a sense of perceived fairness, therefore, in many American minds, meritocracy equates to fairness (Sen, 2000; Arrow, Bowles & Durlauf, 2000). Many Americans passionately believe in an inherent democratic "fairness" of society that they believe affords equal opportunity for all people to compete for success and to realize social, political and economic potential, while there remains sharply divided thought regarding how social processes of equality of opportunity should be implemented (Arrow, Bowles & Durtauf, 2000).

Individual "merit" is the criteria these Americans use to explain why members of society are "rewarded" differently, and this explanation seems to provide the primary defense for increasing social stratification and inequality.

Because of these widely accepted and unexamined "notions" of social justice, citizens remain largely unaware that popular conceptions of merit have allowed structural inequalities to weave themselves inextricably into our American institutions, which in turn, sustain racism, classism, sexism, and other non­ dominant group discriminatory practices in the United States today. As post Civil

Rights era Americans increasingly believe that issues of racism and inequality have been resolved, they move away from placing blame for social inequality on structural impediments, to an increased emphasis on individual attribution (merit).

This continual shift from "public" blame (social problems) to "private" blame 9

(individual problems) is contingent upon the perpetuation of confusing understandings of merit, reinforced by the rhetoric and policies of the dominant hegemony.

"Meritocratic individualism," directs responsibility for life's successes or failures onto individual attribution, emphasizing a folklore of individualism that emboldens our strongly embedded perception that people are unaffected by intervening influences such as unequal and biased environment, circumstance and opportunity. I suggest that meritocracy be examined through the lens of myth to deconstruct how its social primacy and unconscious embeddedness has influenced the thoughts, behaviors and institutions of American culture, while remaining largely unnamed and unrecognized, especially as an inaugurator of the "canonical architecture" of America's social inequality (Weigman, 1995, p.149).

Because America has neglected to analyze the prescient foundations of meritocratic ideology, particular individuals and societal groups are routinely subjected to practices of institutional discrimination that remain largely invisible to society's collective justice consciousness. Whether called ideology or concept,

America's contemporary associations with meritocratic individualism encourage our culture to embrace as "truth" the idea that we are individually responsible for being either "achievers" or "losers" in life, and that these "categories" are unaffected by the systemic hegemonies of our social structures. Meritocratic individualism underscores the belief that achievers are successful in the game of life, due to personal characteristics of worth, while losers are defined as "lesser­ beings." Loser is one of the most derogatory stigmas one can endure in our 10 highly competitive, success focused society. Interpreted as deviant, deficient or dysfunctional, loser denotes failure, but particularly insidious, is the belief that failure is due to a pathological lack of intelligence, ability, talent, and determination - untouched by the restrictions and barriers of entrenched social arrangements.

Deficit stereotyping starts early in America's competitive culture. It is especially prevalent in the education system, where young students, still developing psychologically, cognitively and socially, are segregated from the main of students, labeled and categorized as lacking the "abilities" of other students through the "sorting practices" we call testing, ability grouping {tracking) and special needs placements. These practices ultimately determine which students get commendations, rewards and opportunities - or educational ostracism, impoverished environments, ineffective instruction and stigmatization resulting in life long negative social and economic impacts {Campbell-Whately,

2002; Trent, Artiles & Englert, 1998; Gordon, 2002; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001;

Ladson-Billings, 1999; Roithmayr, 1999; Ford, 2001; Gifford, 1986). The concept of meritocracy becomes particularly egregious when one individual among the many manages to gain social and financial success - against all odds - because everyone is then measured by that yardstick, without unbiased scrutiny of all the interconnecting variables that culminate in a particular success. We focus on singular results, not the many intersections of reality that create it.

It is part of the "American Dream Psyche" to embrace the concept of an open society with social and economic parity, recognizing few roadblocks to the opportunities that provide success, other than lack of individual ambition and 11 hard work - i.e. - "deservedness" based on a fair merit system. The ideal of meritocratic individualism is both inspirational and patriotic, as exemplified in our hugely sentimental Horatio Alger success stories. It encourages reactive

American emotionalism and a tenacious pioneer spirit of freedom, exhibited in a patriotic/civic duty to "serveD and "succeed." It simultaneously minimizes historical and structural disparities that preserve and reproduce barriers to social, economic and personal success stories for vast groups of Americans, while uplifting dominant, elitist group practices.

America believes itself to be democratically based on universally neutral objectives of equal opportunity, while contradictorily practicing subjectivistic capitalistic principles of oligarchical privilege, not so far from the "rights of aristocracy" that we profess to despise. Unnamed and unexamined concepts and practices of meritocracy encourage society to scrutinize individuals (and groups of similar individuals) for deficits and pathology, rather than the power structures and institutions of privileged practices and policies that ubiquitously impact lives and the ways that people are allowed to live them (Mills, 1956).

We support the acting institutions which have "merited" social and economic privilege through their historic culpability with colonialism, subjugation and suppression, while simultaneously scrutinizing, politicizing and demonizing the social actor/group, who actually has very little structural or political control.

These "acting" institutions design the contours of ordinary lives. The social mechanisms of meritocracy allow our dominant "locations of structural advantage"- i.e.- our established institutions of power and authority, to remain privileged and uncontested; protecting and insulating those who already possess 12 social status and mobility, while sanctioning those whose social mobility is strategically engineered to remain subordinate (Rodriguez, 2000). In this manner, the norms of the patriarchal, capitalistic, Euro-white, bourgeoisie and owning classes create the "proper" boundaries of "Westernized" culture, while everything else becomes marginalized and "Othered" (Gates, 1986; Collins, 1998; Smith,

1999).

Within the meritocratic mechanism of"American Success," white

European middle and upper classes (the "civilized") appear to "merit" their social power, privilege and benefits as meritocracy deftly manipulates the consciousness that these individuals/groups have earned their "statuses" without contribution from family, wealth, history, networking and institutional attributions.

This uncontested "reality" erects a perceived sense of personal deservedness and entitlement, which allows for non-dominate groups being branded and bordered to the margins of "undeserving" society due to supposedly non­ meritorious characteristics.

When we pretend that opportunities for social mobility exist on an "equal playing field", where individuals in American society who are buoyed by historic or nouveau family legacies, begin at the same starting gate as the descendants of racism, classism and sexism, we pervert the very principles of meritocratic individualism. This, however, is exactly how meritocracy has come to be practiced in America, both historically and presently. The "myth of meritocratic individualism" projects the concept that the "playing field of life" - i.e. - access to jobs, wealth, health, education, leisure and welfare- is opportunistically equal to 13 all participants in American society, yet this is not the reality that exists in our

American social, political and economic spheres.

Meritocracy is an inherently ethnocentric ideology that has historically favored particular social groups over others. It is not the universal, neutral, equalitarian concept that it is purported to be, and as such, meritocratic individualism needs to be examined within the framework of myth, as a major contributor the perpetuation of unequal social processes and injustice. As such, the concept of meritocratic individualism must be brought into open dialogue, to analyze the multiple ways that this widely accepted social criterion

"unconsciously'' reproduces individual and structural mechanisms of social inequality.

Historical and Social Constructions of Meritocratic Individualism

Prior to the Enlightenment, Western civilization was governed by the concept of rule by Divine Right. From a Greco- Roman heritage that combined religion and government as a unified institution, church and state were united under the rule of Kings, and governed by Divine Law enacted by the Aristocracy and high-clergy. The common person was not allowed to pursue individualistic freedoms. Life was a hierarchy of obligations, with each status group existing to serve the needs of the more highly statused group. Kings constituted Gods thoughts and actions in the earthly realm, therefore, their demands on society were uncontestable and irrefutable.

In brief synopsis, The Enlightenment is considered to be the "roots of modern social thought" (Seidman, 1998, p.vii). Bridging the late fifteenth, 14 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fueled by the invention of the printing press and the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment gave birth to the beginnings of "secular thought." The existence of the printing press allowed knowledge to be disseminated more freely to the public as ideas/thought/knowledge were no longer controlled and contained by the aristocracy and clergy. SimuHaneously,

"scientific method" blossomed forth with its focus on functionalistic

"rationaVempirical" processes - the basis for scientism's much trumpeted objectivity, modem truth and fact.

Particularly stimulating was the perception that this new technology would promote social progress and deliver humanity from stifling social and economic oppression (Seidman, 1998). Mankind, with socially relevant emphasis on the male gender (males who possessed some measure of elevated status, whether through patronage, academia or monetary investment), reveled in the concept that modem upward social mobility would be based on individual performance, not the restrictions of lineage or divinity. One could "get ahead" based on one's personal achievements or merit, so to speak. Individuals were no longer

"formally" restricted by the feudal system of social ordering, yet ironically, new social hierarchies were simply exchanging themselves for the older forms, and the established hegemony of weaHh and divinity was never truly usurped.

A "second tier" hegemony was established through the combined interests of science's "intelligence/brains" and the needs of the emerging industrial kings of commerce. A patriarchal, capitalistic, mechanistic, technological hierarchy of "facts" and "truths" began assembling themselves as essential elements in a new "objective/rational" social schema that focused on 15 social "sorting," practices, as opposed to "ranking," with very little actual difference in social arrangement and effects for the lower classes. Through the advent of banking and international commerce, the industrial mercantile entrepreneurial class (known as the bourgeoisie), created a powerful, political and economic elite that would dominate social structures and economic/political systems to the present.

These "modern" ways of social stratification were inextricably interwoven into coalescing principles of meritocracy. The orchestration of meritocratic individualism as an oppressive social mechanism maintaining the marginalization of particular social, cultural and ethnic groups gained legitimacy, as those whose connections to historic family wealth, new industrial wealth, or "intelligentsia," increasingly gained the power to shape public policies that would further divide the "deserving" from the "undeserving." Meritocracy arose as a systemic response by those whose social "ranking" was a bit beneath the uppermost elite, as a way to market their "brains and ability" to gain entree into higher positions of social power and leadership.

The "average" person was never intentioned to gain social hierarchy from the meritocratic equation, until, as so often happens, these ideas become more loosely interpreted as they generationally morph into pseudo-social versions of the original; versions maintained by those who benefit most from their perpetuation, blind habituation and moral mythic legacies. For example, as meritocracy increasingly became a viable political tool for the perpetuation of social containment policies directed towards the labor class who remained abjectly poor amid arduous working conditions, it did little to afford these 16 individuals opportunities for a better life, despite Herculean work ethics.

Simultaneously, it did little to better the opportunities available to people of color, exploited as slaves, servants and brute laborers. Instead, the precepts of meritocracy contributed ideological social control mechanisms (through pathological labeling and containment) for those who manifested "unworthiness· by their persistent poverty and social subordination. Meritocracy- the supposedly great democratic equalizer- became a trap for those at the bottom of society's rungs, because in the organization of a meritocratic society, you have no one and nothing to blame for social and personal duress, excepting self.

From a historical and social perspective, meritocratic individualism has embedded itself in the psyche and institutions of Western civilization through convergent social constructs. I have chosen to explore four epistemological constructs that serve to schematize meritocratic individualism in the dominant

American psyche, as well as in its formal structures and canon of fairness. To gain insight into the potency of meritocracy as "American" identity, institution and structure, it is helpful to examine how these forces have intersected and coalesced to create a ubiquitous ideology/concept that is one of the most powerful influences in social, economic and political arrangements today.

First, I describe the Protestant Reformation, which shaped current systems of church and state, emphasizing moral and material ideologies based on principles of divinity and social efficiency. I then discuss how social psychological processes of dispositional attribution contribute to the social propensity to attribute outcomes to personal characteristics versus environment or circumstance. Next, social determinism, evolved from scientism, explains the production of "information 17 systems" that summon power from their methodological status as scientific, objective rationale - a look at how "empiricism" has embedded particularized

"knowledge'sn into society and culture. Finally, historical pragmatism is a name I give to spontaneous "events" in our historic milieu which have allowed habituated and biased practices into the daily organization of our societal systems, which we continue to reproduce without criticism.

The Protestant Reformation: Divinity and Materialism Sustain the "Moralitx of Meritocratic

Individualism"

Political scientist Donald Kinder and social psychologist David Sears research the link between traditional American values, individualism and racial discrimination. They suggest that dominant majority Americans believe

"individuals should be rewarded on their merits, which in tum, should be based on hard work and diligent service" (Pincus & Erlich, 1999, p. 83). This philosophy, embedded in Protestant (historically Calvinist) principles of work, conservation, thrift and individualism, became culturally influential with the advent of the Reformation.

In his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,

German theorist, Max Weber examines the relationship between capitalism and meritocratic individualism, and their social/cultural intersection with the Protestant

Reformation and everyday practices of the tenets of Calvinism. Early Calvinists believed in a "this- worldly asceticism" which opposed the Catholic concept of

"other- worldly asceticism." Catholics practiced an ascetic life removed from the everyday world, creating isolated monasteries for religious examination and self 18 discipline. Calvinists maintained their independence from Catholicism through the converse assertion that to glory and honor God (according to His manifestations), ascetic struggle must take place within the world, through the fulfillment of obligations imposed on an individual by his position in the world. This "duty"

(position) in worldly affairs was the highest form of "moral activity" individuals could achieve. Activity, or what we have come to call work, was vastly glorified as it produced prosperity in the material world. The wasting of time (lack of productivity) was accorded the gravest sin. Frugal living was morally second only to hard work, as it insured the longevity of the material prosperity gained by that work. Brotherly love, the third principle of Calvinism, became an "objective service" that reinforced the organization of the environment (the collective Protestant group). In short, like­ minded individuals supported each other, and strengthened the "collective" cause.

In accordance with the principles of ability, hard work, thrift and frugality,

Calvinism spawned a moral system of fruitful capitalism, where "worldly success and prosperity" became synonymous with God's benediction. Calvinists were fierce individualists who believed in the direct relationship between ability, responsibility, deservedness, moral superiority and God's grace. Adherence to these principles rewarded the individual materially in this world - one need not wait for the afterlife. If you were materially successful, you obviously "merited"

Gods graces. These individual's who materially prospered, did so, in segregated religious groups whose prosperity was undeniably impacted by collective practices, ethos, resources and circumstances. But Calvinists viewed their circumstances to be the result of individual ability, not what we would call today,

"collective/social movement," "coalitions" or "networking." Calvinists focused an 19 objective lens on their very subjective capital enterprises, which were realistically enmeshed within collective group practices that socially and economically reinforced their effectiveness. However, as the concept of individual ability and merit shaped ethos (and messaged egos) it ratified the concept of individual merit, rather than concepts of coalitions. "Meritocratic individualism" based on God rewarding individuals due to individual merit- i.e., ability, frugality, industry- carved itself into the American psyche and pursuant institutions of capitalism as a dominant principle of "moral rightness within the good society," (Sen, 2000). The

Protestant Reformation may certainly be considered a piece of the ontological basis for today's conceptions of meritocracy:

The derivative character of merit leads us to the central question as to what the "valued consequences" are and how the success and failure of a society are to be judged. Once an instrumental view of merit is accepted, there is no escape from the contingent nature of its content, related to the characterization of a good - or acceptable - society and the criteria in terms of which assessments are to be made (Sen, 2000, p.9).

Social Psvcho!ooical Processes of Attribution and Meritocratic Individualism

The theory of attribution and the "fundamental attribution error" refer to the common act of individuals to cognitively overemphasize internal dispositional characteristics, while underestimating external environmental or circumstantial effects, when judging other people. People naturally understand the impact of the environment and/or circumstances on their own behavior and therefore believe external events and circumstances have significant impact on their performances, abilities and opportunities - yet seldom utilize this same cognitive framework when examining other people. 20

Research has shown that when we judge other people, we generally believe they are directly and characteristically responsible for their performances, abilities and opportunities, and we do not consider their intervening circumstances or environment (Ross, 1978). Simply stated we could say that most people readily accept the imposition of intervening external factors when analyzing the outcomes of their own lives- but equally strongly believe that other people are internally, or dispositionally responsible for their particular life outcomes. We might say, we judge ourselves on our intentions, but we judge others on the actions we can observe, and we conclude those actions are based on personal characteristics of the individual (or group) we are judging. This emphasis on internal dispositional characteristics and disregard for external circumstance when judging others, extrapolates to "victim blaming," especially when the individualls doing the judging, believe in a meritocratic "fair and just world." In the fair and just world belief system, all individuals "earn" the good things that happen to them in life and

"deserve" the bad things that occur (Lerner, 1980).

When processes of attribution come together with principles of Just World

Theory - we have a cognitive situation that encourages people to think good things are accreted to self, while bad things happen to bad "others". Unless, of course, bad things happen to us personally- then we are very aware of the many intersecting, conditional circumstances that affect us. However, the reverse does not hold true - social "others" do not receive the benefrt of such conditional understandings. These cognitive processes easily combine with the ambiguity surrounding meritocratic principles, creating misconceptions about the ways in 21 which our biased social, economic and political systems affect differently situated individuals and groups in the United States.

Social scientists and authors of Race and Inequality, Paul Sniderman of

Stanford and Micheal Hagen of Berkley, contend that our historically and morally embedded ethic of self-reliance has encouraged individuals to focus on the pathology of individual ability, rather than an examination of environmental influences and availability of opportunity. It also, unfortunately, encourages a self­ righteous refusal "to acknowledge that some are handicapped and must overcome obstacles that are not of their making that others do not face, allowing for a lack of empathy for those disadvantaged by race, poverty or gender" ( 1986, p.97). Sniderman and Hagen further suggest that the ideology of meritocratic individualism allows for a pervasive and superficial, yet highly potent mentality, that American individuals must patriotically "do· for themselves and that references to "victim of circumstance" are contentious acts against our highest moral principles of individualism (1986, p.97).

The many Americans lured by concepts of merit-based individualism believe this philosophy to be inherently democratic, based on a social equality that offers everyone in society fair chances to succeed and equal access to opportunities for success, yet ironically, this philosophy also permits Americans to staunchly justify their opposition to policies and actions that truly promote social and economic parity. Supporting an abstracted ideology of equality and opportunity, many Americans conversely practice rigorous political opposition to government interventions meant to balance social and structural injustices. This contradiction in beliefs and action may explain why the trend in American 22 attitudes suggests that dominant white American culture believes both personal and institutional discrimination is wrong, yet this same culture is becoming increasingly non-supportive of governmental interventions to insure social equality (Schumann, Steeh and Bobo, 1985; Chang, 1996). Recent reversals of affirmative action policies reveal that a contradiction between thinking and practice exists. Most Americans say they support equality, yet dominant

Americans increasingly believe that individuals are responsible for their social position and are increasingly unlikely to believe that historic "injustices" still impact social arrangements, requiring social or political interventions.

Peterson ( 1994) uncovered a statistical relationship that bears strong consideration in the discussion of meritocracy and its relationship to social inequality. When statistically examined, "merit" and "equality'' exhibit a negatively correlated relationship. Negative correlations show us that variables move in opposite directions when examined for their relationship to one another. In

Peterson's research on the statistical correlation between merit and equality, he discovered that when the independent variable "merit" is higher or stronger, the dependent variable "equality" is actually weakened or lower (and vice versa).

This suggests that most Americans are not aware that merit and equality are not mutually compatible, and in reality, operate in opposite directions. Statistics confirm that strong ideals of merit align with weaker ideals of equality.

Kinder and Sears (1999) note that faith in meritocratic individualism promotes dominant group resistance to changing the status quo based on the dominant group's deeply held meritocratic attributions. These attributions sustain the belief that non-dominant racial and socioeconomic groups violate sacrosanct 23 ethics of self-reliance and discipline when calling for analysis of unequal and disadvantaged social systems (Pincus and Er1ich, 1999). Attributional cognition continues to contribute to our social perception of "racism by perpetrator," where racism and discrimination practices are seen as aberrant acts perpetrated by one individual onto another. This perception stifles awareness and recognition of more nuanced institutionalized practices of racism and non-dominant group oppression that continually interface with everyday practices and conditions of unequal opportunity. While we concentrate on "particulars" of individuals, we miss the larger picture of systemic social abuses.

Heuristics and Meritocratic Individualism

Many studies have also shown that Americans tend to practice quick, categorical, superficial thinking practices called heuristics. We tend to exercise mental "short-cuts;" thinking based on categorization, labeling and stereotyping, which aids in quick recognitions, understandings and retrieval of information as we mentally process our complex, busy wor1ds (Woolfolk, 2001). Meritocracy is viewed by many Americans as a system of equality through "fair competition" practices. This "perception of fairness" norm is maintained superficially through heuristic practices - maintenance of easily accessible mental "files" which represent cognitive categories and their relationships (in this case fairness, merit and equality), which allow people to utilize shallow, subjective, evaluation processes that seldom contradict previously formed (and mentally stored) opinions. 24

Heuristic practices allow for easy access to cognitive information in our stressful, complicated worlds, but they also promote the perpetuation of non­ critical, stereotypical ideas which become the basis for individual and systemic discrimination. Ideological concepts which inform collective behaviors and social norms can be heavily influenced by shallow, but widely accepted ideas based in myth and mere habituation, as opposed to thoughtful consideration. These ideas and norms can then become so embedded in our social processes that disagreement or oppositional attitudes is often viewed as un-American, immoral, and deviant.

It is interesting to note that many Americans believe they share like ideas, more than they actually do. It is, after all, the business of propaganda and dogma to encourage people to think in a particular way, and believe that they are the dominant "truth-knowing" group. That conformity of thought becomes a powerful tool of social control (repression and oppression) that is wielded effectively by the dominant group. In today's modem busy world, our thinking processes are greatly influenced by the media market place. For example, whenever America goes to war, it quickly becomes unpatriotic and immoral to express public dissention with the ruling, military point of view, even though America is based on principles of free speech. In the Vietnam conflict and the recent Iraq invasion

(2003), peace demonstrators and pacifists have been called "traitors" to America for believing in peace and opposing the violence of war. Political parties have come to increasingly rely on daily media "polling" results, a tactic that should show us how easily we are influenced by what we think others think. Almost any poll will show quick increases in the dominant opinion once it has been publicly 25 revealed. In these ways, the so-called "news" (which many Americans believe to be their daily dose of "critical" information and knowledge) is manipulated into a political and marketing tool.

Understanding how and why society is disposed to making quick, superficial dispositional attributions exposes one of the social mechanisms that greases the social legitimacy wheels of meritocracy. It allows for easy dismissal of the deeper, more complex characteristics of social structures. This encourages perpetuation of the status quo as we shy away from the time consuming task of educating ourselves about confusing social policies and practices. Because our cognitive pathways interface with multiple cognitive relationships, trying to change an "idea" can cause great psychological

"disequilibrium." One idea influences another, therefore changing minds or attitudes can be very uncomfortable and unwelcome, even when people sense that they might want to think differently about something. It generally takes much longer than one might think to "rearrange" these mental files (Woolfolk, 2001 ).

Attribution and superficial, categorical thinking supports the ambiguities that frame meritocracy, as these cognitive practices allow us to not feel comfortable with clarification or challenge to meritocracy's intentions, prejudices or consequences. This creates behaviors that reinforce socially discriminatory patterns that we do not easily recognize. In the language of C. Wright Mills, the social psychological processes of dispositional attribution and heuristics lend themselves to superficial and segmented understandings of social discourse, while contributing to "non-coherent ideologies" that disallow attention to the

"whole of experience" that drives the "cultural apparatus" of meritocracy's 26 insistence that it is a democratic and fair concept/process (Summers, 2000,

Lemert, 1999; Kelleher, 2002).

Social Determinism: Scientism. Objectivitv and Socially Constructed Destinies

Because scientism is mechanistic, linear and reductionistic, the Western organization of scientific processes, with its concept of empirical methodologies and inalterable rationality, has created "objective" social categories whose

"destinies" are proscribed through the dynamic interrelationships of self­ promotion and elitist social engineering. I use the phrase social determinism to define a process of "objectifying social situations/conditions/environments" in an attempt to tender legitimacy and social primacy (empiricism) to particular social groups and practices.

These processes have gained social preeminence through modernity's acceptations of "universalisms," based upon the dominant norms and practices of remarkably small groups of influential, white, European males whose thoughts and practices have impacted the social destinies of millions of American citizens.

For example, Terman, an influential educational psychologist at Stanford

University and pioneer of intelligence and achievement tests, developed scoring scales for school testing based on a tiny sample of 982 white, middleclass,

Protestant, native-born children of European descent, living in affluent Palo Alto,

California. This small, extremely homogeneous group provided the American

"normed" design basis for the widely administered Stanford /Binet Intelligence test. Beginning from the early 1900's, Terman, an advocate of eugenics, used his tests to assess "Indians, Mexicans and Negroes" as feebleminded creatures, 27 unable to care for themselves. He then segregated these racial/ethnic groups by requiring special, "remedial" social and educational placement away from

"normal" people.

Terman focused his version of "scientific experimental methodology" on racial differences, and consequently, thousands of schools utilized his tests and assessment premises to classify intelligence and subsequent social ordering

(Stoskopf, 2002). In these ways, prominent/statused groups have come to define themselves - their ideas and practices - as the inclusive, material and psychic ideal, including objective authority over social space, which inevitably contributes to the protraction of dominant "white privilege" systems (Collins, 1998; Wiegman,

1998). Social determinism is perpetuated when assumptions are accepted as

"truths" because they evolve in the context of scientific justification, embedded within the larger framework of order, function, academia, science, capitalism and patriarchy.

Historical context plays a significant role in social determinism, blatantly visible in America's not so recent past. Blacks, indigenous Americans and

Mexicans were demonized and dehumanized, while simultaneously, the white male citizen of Enlightened thought elaborated ideologies that supported his situated rights and privileges, creating a social category of national identity- i.e., white, statused, male - replacing historically located people, which included everybody else {Freire and Macedo, 1996; Weigman, 1998). The practices of

Jim Crow are an example of science imposing socially deterministic sanctions on

African Americans, based on pseudo-scientific presuppositions (eugenics).

Social restrictions placed on Blacks were based on the eugenics model of 28 inherited African inferiority, which promoted the idea that Blacks could not team to the complex, superior degree whites could, and therefore needed to be separated from white society. These ideas allowed white society to place Blacks into remedial situations that would sustain some sort of life subsistence for them, which conveniently placed Blacks into the service of the dominant white society.

Eugenics, Social Control and Educational Testing

Social determinism, under the auspices of "objectively neutral" science, claims to provide material evidence of "natural inequalities" (racial inferiority), a perception which African Americans have struggled with for over four centuries as they have socially moved from the (legal) state of slave/ chattel, to free, but segregated and overtly oppressed social participant, to free, but socially/politically contained, and covertly oppressed, social participant.

Throughout the Black struggle for social and economic equality and social parity, Blacks have constantly dealt with dominant, white pseudoscientific eugenic conceptions that claim African Americans to be biologically inferior to whites. This idea was most recently reintroduced to broad public circulation in

1994, in The Bell Curve, by Hermstein and Murray, who claim their research substantiates the controversial assertion that an alleged 15 percent IQ deficit of

African Americans (as compared to whites), is at least partly due to heredity.

Hermstein and Murray also suggest they present evidence that social class and disability is concretely associated with lower intelligence and "ability" - therefore they argue for meritocracies efficacy as a natural, expected and inevitable social stratification tool. 29

This book has resparked argument as scientists and sociologists engage the nature v. environment or culture debate, which nestles within the larger social debate regarding meritocracy, equal opportunities and racial/social disadvantage. Advocates of the Bell Curve insist that "nature" determines the level of social inequality, privilege and advantage/disadvantage in America, based on historic theories of difference (Fischer, Hout, Jankowski, Lucas, Swidler

& Voss, 1996; Jacobs, 1999).

With the increasing immigration and job uncertainty of early 20th century creating an insecure and fearful audience, eugenics was introduced into a society already fraught with class and race tensions. As a serious devotee of the

Theory of Human Differences, English mathematician, Sir Francis Galton, contrived his field of "scientific inquiry" to be an interdisciplinary endeavor of civic purpose to "study the agencies under social control that seek to improve or impair racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally"

(Stoskopf, 2002, p.143). In short- Galton viewed science as the objective arbitrator in the ranking of human worth. He based his "science" on interpretations of Gregor Mendel's heredity laws to promote the myth that certain social groups such as Southern Europeans, Jews, Africans and Latinos carried defective traits that predisposed them to lower intelligence, crime and poverty

(Cravens, 1988; Selden, 1999). Eugenics and the "scientific" theory of human differences strongly influenced the early practices of biology and psychology.

Educational psychologists Henry Goddard, Edward Thorndike and

Terman, contributed to the early "scholarly/authoritarian/pseudo-scientific" acceptance of theories of biological worth. These three "scientists" helped design 30 and administer the first standardized tests that so influenced early school reform and the emerging concepts of accountability and merit tied to human potential as measurable and quantifiable "products." These same men created "legacies of social metaphor" - new language that erected categories of human social pathology and stratification- used for segregation, containment and ranking purposes that guided early 20th century educational reform, and still influence the social "sorting" practices with us today. Goddard (1866 -1967), in particular, was driven to infuse eugenic ideas into the theories and practices of education in broad and extensive applications (Stoskopf, 2002).

As director of a school for "feebleminded" children in New Jersey between

1906 and 1918, Goddard believed the feebleminded to be hereditarily prone to crime, immorality and poverty. He became interested in discovering a way to measure and identify deficient populations before they could act out in negative societal ways (Kevles, 1995). Concurrently, in France, psychologist Alfred Binet was developing measures to assist teachers in determining student grade levels.

It is essential to note that Binet himself did not believe in fiXed, deterministic measures of intelligence. He considered "intelligence" to be ambiguous, indefinable, and changing; nor did Binet embrace eugenics. Binet's "assessment" testing was to be used as an adjunct tool to help teachers, not as an "end" or outcome measure in of itself. Goddard, however, seized upon Binet's "measures" as a way to assess fixed, deterministic "standardized" measurements of human potential and worth. Goddard translated Binet's test into English, applying it first to his "feebleminded" schoolchildren. Feeling the necessity for a larger test group, Goddard, with the help of Public Health Services, used the immigrant 31 detainees of Ellis Island to pioneer the first standardized intelligence test administered to a large public sample of human beings in the United States, with intent to determine their social merit (Stoskopf, 2002):

The results of his study on immigrants produced headlines in academic journals and the popular press. According to Goddard's (1917;252) findings, "83% of the Jews, 80% of the Hungarians, 87% of the Russians, and 79% of the Italians tested below the twelve year old limit and were therefore feebleminded. Goddard (1917; 266) then went on to say, "Not only are these figures representative of these ethnic groups as a whole, but they are probably too small," (Stoskopf, 2002, p128).

At his own facility, Goddard himself trained over 1,000 teachers to administer these tests, designed and based on his principles of eugenics and social difference, combined with Binet's testing format. These zealous

"educators" then went forth into educational settings across the United States, touted as reliable authorities and experts, to test for, and to educate about, human categories of "moron" and "defective learner." Goddard himself was hired by New York public schools as a consultant on the testing and placement of

(feebleminded) students into some of the first official "specialized" learning classes, tracks and schools (Travers, 1983; Wallin, 1953).

This social-Darwinian "deterministic" belief in objective, measurable, empirical associations between IQ, standardized testing, and merit has become so ingrained in the public mind and structures, especially in education, it engraves inevitable social bias' into our institutional policy-making. Terman, as mentioned ear1ier, residing for over thirty years within the ivory towers of Stanford

(1911-1942), was the first to use standardized intelligence tests for longitudinal research. In 1917, Terman administered intelligence tests to over one million 32 military recruits. Even though the testing has been criticized for blatant class, cultural and ethnic biases, the results were used to direct US public policy, in this particular case, influencing the passage of the Immigration Restriction Act of

1924 (Gould, 1996; Chase, 1976; Stoskopf, 2002).

Even as early as 1910, "accountability" was included in educational vocabulary. Stanford University was publicly criticized in the media for inefficiency and "unaccountability." Terman was hired to ameliorate Stanford's public image problems and he worked tirelessly, creating his own authoritative niche. He strategically combined educational psychology with "efficiency-expert and scientific-manager," devising ways to eliminate waste while training students to become "academically expedient." In this manner Terman became an early 20th century multi-tasking "scientist/academic," "educational reformer," "eugenics promoter," "public-relations mediator," and zealous promoter of "standardized" testing (Stoskopf, 2002).

The third educational psychologist to socially determine educations early

"accountability reform" based on "ability/merit," was long-term Colombia

University Professor of educational psychology, Edward Thorndike. Thorndike, another endorser of eugenics, joined with Terman in some of his research and intelligence-test designing. Prodigious in his efforts to have "tests tell the truth" in

US Schools, Thorndike wrote over fifty books and 450 articles, establishing among other ideas, "norm-based" assessment tests that would place the lower classes and races into the service sectors of society, while enabling the "able" to fulfill their social leadership destinies. Thorndike's intellectual authority (he aggressively promoted himself as an "expert") influenced many educators to 33 support his "norm-based" testing, and soon inferior schools and learning" tracks" within schools flourished; warehouses for students whose tests scores "ranked" them as mentally or socially inferior (Stoskopf, 2002). Ultimate argument for meritocracy's focus on individual ability, negating regard for environmental disadvantage or social/cultural barriers, was articulated by Davis Corson, superintendent of Newark, New Jersey schools as early as 1920:

All children are not born with the same endowment of possibilities: they cannot be made equal in gifts or development or efficiency. The ultimate barriers are set by a power inexorable. The radical and absolutely necessary action is to accept a classification of children according to ability and attainment (Stoskopf, 2002, p130).

This type of abstracted empiricism . . . "possessed by method at the expense of clear-eyed content ... does not convince us of anything worth having convictions about" (C. Wright Mills, 1956). It does, however, gravely determine social destinies.

Historical Pragmatism and Meritocratlc Individualism

In 1797, prize-winning essayist, Samuel Harrison Smith (University of

Pennsylvania graduate and Jeffersonian newspaper editor), wrote for the

American Philosophical Society, that higher education would benefit both society

(meaning government) and the individual, through teaching {men} of social and individual rights and liberties. The colonial college was a location of elitism, expounding patriarchy's narrow ideals. Though originally very ideally conceived, higher education became a bit more practical in application when it became economically necessary to attract the average man, not just the young adult 34 male children of the aristocracy. It needs to be understood, however, that this

"average" student still came from the monied classes, not the working, lower, or even middle classes (Hessinger, 1999).

In the early republic, universities were elitist social boarding schools for young males whose family wealth allowed them a choice as to whether they wanted to work or not. Students at these private schools were members of the social owning class, and these young men went to university as much to socialize as to receive training for professional or governmental placement.

However, the colleges had difficulty attracting enough of these students to keep their doors open (Hessinger, 1999). College enrollments necessitated transition from small numbers of children of the super-elite, to larger admissions of children from the growing wealthy merchant and industrial class. In doing so, the tight social constraints and order of the elite were "invaded" by the boisterous, chaotic and unruly practices of the nouveu riche.

College authorities were dismayed and unnerved by the increasing disorder wrought by students of "different" backgrounds. These authorities also believed behavioral disruptions and lack of discipline were reinforced by student bonding, loyalty and cohesion, which in tum, diminished their authoritarian ability to control the college environment. The solution was the innovation of a system of "meritocratic" reward and retribution, created by college officials to maintain their authority while simultaneously weakening student's collective power. It was believed that forcing students to compete for class position, through performance, would diminish student cohesion. Intent to fracture student bonds, thus destroying their disruptive power, was the rationale behind the 35 institutionalization of university class ranking and grading. The college "ranking" system, based on merit and performance, still in prominent use in the 21st century, evolved, not from extensive educational research and careful consideration of student benefit, but indirectly from desperate social and behavioral correctional measures (Hessinger, 1999).

All positions of power in America, from the universities to the White

House, to the captains of industry -were occupied by "High-Protestants of the

Eastern seaboard" who knew each other, or of one another; elitist members who believed the thoughts and desires of this membership to reign supreme

(lemann, 2000, p.4; Steinberg, 1994). As WWII ended, America basked in her glory of prominent social, economic and political power. Henry Chauncey

(graduate of the most prestigious Episcopalian boarding school, son of an

Episcopalian minister, and descendent of Puritan clerics), assistant dean at

Harvard, became the first president of the Educational Testing Service (ETS).

Chauncey imagined himself a visionary. He envisioned the United States, gloriously marching forward, growing in world renown, with himself as master social director. He meticulously developed an enormous project called the

Census of Abilities- a vast, scientific project- categorizing, sorting and routing the entire U.S. population through multiple choice testing results. The test results would be utilized to determine what each person's role in society should be.

Utterly enamored with his vision for social re-engineering, Chauncey believed this plan to be "a technical means of engendering systematic moral grace in the place of wrong and disordet' (lemann, 2000, p. 33). 36

Chauncey happened to be "connected" to the President of Harvard,

James Bryant Conant. Conant entertained a mutually compatible desire to unseat the current American elite, where he ranked in membership, but not in the upper echelons. Conant supported the concept, to create from scientifically inspired testing results, what he thought to be a superior social system based on the enlightenment of science, opposed to aristocratic ascendancy. Conant was very receptive to the idea of a system that appeared to him to be more democratic in regard to social arrangements; a new"American leadership" would arise from the practices of "merit" - not the "rights" of lineage. Those who tested brilliantly would "deserve" the positions they received, and Conant thought this new system of merit to be the ideal way to combat the current system of

"inherited" status. This "scientific" meritocratic system, however, was also hierarchical, it simply created a social stratification system with which Conant was more compatible. He felt this system would provide America the brightest male leadership possible to sustain her prominent world status. Conant and Chauncey envisioned changing the social structure of America, and conveniently, in this new system, they would both would both gamer more power and prestige than in the "old social order."

Intrigued with the notion of "deservedness" as opposed to inheritance,

America soon engaged in the world's most expansive intelligence test-taking measures, and the U.S. population increasingly became divided into social categories of merit; the "haves" (have intelligence/status/rewards/benefits), and

"have-nots" (have minimal intelligence/status/reward/benefit). Meritocracy or merit-based individualism, emerged as the bright new system of stratification, 37 and simultaneously, education became a primary indicator of social income, status, prestige and privilege. Since higher education did, and still does, require certain social status' associated with the ability to provide monetary tuition, as well as the luxury of time to attend, social "prestige/privilege" continues to play an important role in who does, and who does not, receive higher education's social rewards. Nevertheless, the new "sorting and testing" of Americans was widely embraced as the democratic, scientific and "fair" method of judging who deserves what. In reality it was not so socially distant from the widely despised ranking system practiced by the "inherited" elite.

These historical "footnotes" reveal how social practices often arise not from careful, critical social research, but rather, from spontaneous events/circumstances/situations that arise from conflict with existing social circumstance. Meritocracy's ontology may be eclectic, but its multiple "births" make it no less a profound social influence. However, the multiple productions, constructions and practices, which have transformed over time, do make precise definitions and crisp clarifications of today's practices of meritocracy difficult to encapsulate. These multiple productions increase the likelihood that meritocracy remains misunderstood, and that its practices be manipulated by those who benefit the most from a social consciousness that maintains critical emphasis on individual responsibility, rather than systemic social influences. 38

Theoretical Perspectives

Social theory is a body of knowledge and set of institutional practices that actively grapple with the central questions facing a group of people in a specific political, social and historic context. Instead of circulating exclusively as a body of decontextualized ideas among privileged intellectuals, social theory emerges from, is legitimated by, and reflects the concerns of actual groups of people in particular institutional settings (Patricia Hill Collins, 1998, p.281).

Throughout this discussion of meritocratic individualism, also referred to as meritocracy, I utilize aspects of Critical Race Theory as a lens through which late nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century "negotiations of cultural power" can be examined. Critical Race Theory helps me critically frame and illuminate an analysis of socially accepted ideologies and norms that facilitate elitist discourse and oppressive practices of privileged, ruling social groups in the dominant American social and political landscape.

Critical Race Theory analyzes and articulates, among other ideas, processes whereby individuals, groups, races and classes of people come to believe they are personally responsible for their "inadequacies and disadvantages," rather than the social, political and economic environments that dictate unjust and biased practices and policies, creating barriers to success for certain groups of people. In particular, Critical Race Theory helps me describe and disrobe the costuming of meritocracy and its oppressive role as inaugurator of social consequences arising from the multiple "false universalisms" that contrive to support the unarticulated

"invisible scaffolding" of systems of power that orchestrate dominant social arrangements. 39

Critical Race Theory

Established through the early works of Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and

Richard Delgado, and subsequent theorists who have followed in their vein, contributing critical voice and intellect to this organized "movement," Critical Race

Theory (CRT) emerged as a form of critical scholarship birthed from the Civil

Rights Movement of the 1960's and Critical Legal Studies of the 1970's.

Extrapolating from radical feminism, the American radical tradition, Black Power and Chicano movements of the sixties, and critical legal studies which critique the "legitimacy and authority of pedagogical strategies" - using race as the lens -

CRT examines American institutional structures to critique and challenge orthodox concepts of "equal opportunity," "merit" and "equal protection" (Ladson­

Billings, 1999, p.12; Roithmayr, 1999, p.1 ).

Such concepts profoundly inform liberal ideals of "neutral universalism" and objectivity which form the context for traditional American policy making and institution creating, privileging unexamined and widely accepted, dominant

Eurocentric ideals and norms of "color-blind" equality and "fair merit" (Roithmayr,

1999; Solorzano & Yosso, 2001: Taylor, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 1999). These foundational ideals and norms endow American policies and institutions with

"race -neutral" or "race-blind" premises that subordinate racial minorities by casting racism as "deviant" from our democratic ideals, rather than viewing racism as an accepted and pervasive agent in the structuring of American government and institutions (Delgado and Stefancic 2001: Delgado, 2000). 40

Delgado and Stefancic (2001) suggest that Critical Race Theory benefits

American society by moving us beyond examinations of formal principles of equality, into analysis of the ordinary, daily, "business as usual " manifestations of racism. These manifestations of "invisible racism" gain social legitimacy through their "ordinariness"; everyday experiences and interactions which CRT theorists have labeled "invisible systems of White Privilege." This refers to an overarching nexus of social realities that automatically confer status and advantage to

Whiteness because "The Culture of Whiteness" acts as the established norm, preference and visible agency. Additionally, Davis (2000) has coined the term

"micro-aggressions" to refer to the unnoticed, but persistent everyday practices of this Culture of Whiteness, producing repetitive behaviors and institutional practices that are interpreted by non-white groups as "covert violence and/or hostility." These micro-aggressions induce internalized feelings of inferiority and negativity in non-white groups, while they subliminally support an internalized

White supremacy among dominant groups.

Bell Jr. (1995) additionally utilizes Critical Race Theory to dissect what he calls "interest convergence," the practice of advocating social advances for

Blacks only when it simultaneously creates social/economic advantage for the dominant White elite. An example of this is Bell's suggestion that the well known civil rights education case, Brown v. Board of Education, arose as much from the self-interests of dominant Whites, as the historically recorded democratic/liberal moral interest in civil rights (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Dudziak, 2000; Bell Jr.

1995) Bell ventures the idea that Brown occurred because elite Whites realized the advantages of desegregation in relation to foreign policy concerns and the 41 political effort to suppress the expanding and increasingly effective Black Radical

Movement in the U.S. (Dudziak, 2000).

CRT links with, and adds, a critical race and oppression prism to diffuse meritocracy's socially potent "neutral and objective premises" of deservedness and earned merit often practiced as subverted social "micro-aggressions" against particular social groups who are invisibly, yet systematically, segregated from access to social mobility opportunities. Simultaneously, meritocracy is easily utilized to service and uphold socially statused/elite groups. For example, in the

United States today, we are seeing a vehement "backlash" trend against

Affirmative Action policies that were constructed to equalize long-standing socio­ economic and political abuses practiced against particular groups of color.

As we progress into the 21st century, the "conservative righr vociferously raises the red flag of "reverse discrimination," protesting that in a "race­ neutral/colorblind" democracy, nobody should receive "preferential treatment."

They contend, with stringent moral conviction, that a color-blind society should

"advantage" no one, advocating "symmetrical" (even, fair, balanced) social policies for everyone. Yet, for decades, the "legacy-action" of the elite- special private university admissions considerations for children of statused familial linage (which admit, according to the Wall Street Journal, 40% of "legacy" students as opposed to 11% of general admissions students), continues to flourish, protected and uncontested by the same people who lament Affirmative

Action when it is used to remediate decades of racial abuse and oppression.

Very recently, on Or. Martin Luther King's birthday (2003), President

George W. Bush very publicly condemned Affirmative Action as "a quota 42 system," supporting the Michigan Supreme Court decision in the widely publicized case against University of Michigan for their Affirmative Action policies

(vanden Huevel, 2003). What Americans did not hear on the nightly news or read in the daily newspaper, was President Bush's admission that he was himself, the recipient of "legacy - affirmative action" practices whereby the affluent "advantage" themselves and their kin through linage; not our cherished practices of ability or merit:

This past fall, after two years of study, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Right's (OCR) found that, far from being more qualified or even equally qualified, the average admitted legacy student at Harvard, between 1981 and 1988 was significantly less qualified than the average admitted nonlegacy student. Examining admissions office ratings on academics, extracurricular, personal qualities, recommendations, and other categories, the OCR conduded that with the exception of the athletic rating (admitted) nonlegacies scored better than legacies in all areas of competition. Exceptionally high admittance rates, lowered academic standards, preferential treatment ... These sound like the cries heard in the growing fury over affirmative action for racial minorities in America's elite universities. Yet, no one is outraged about legacies ...At most elite universities during the 1980's, the legacy was by far the biggest piece of the preferential pie. At Harvard, a legacy is about twice as likely to be admitted as a Black or Hispanic student (Larew, 2000, p.419).

Meritocracy's perpetuation of inequalities, depends, as does racism, on the perpetuation of everyday, accepted explanations of inequality and conjoined practices of inequality that are so "normalized" and repetitive in society, they remain largely invisible - at least rhetorically invisible - which advantages the dominant social structures who gain social and economic status/power/privilege/benefit from their constant and unquestioned reproduction.

Aspects of Critical Race Theory examine how deeply entrenched dominant 43

American beliefs in "individualism," "race neutrality" and "race deviance" sustain hierarchal social systems where issues of racism continue to be to be understood, by dominant white status groups, as individual, or group, pathologies rather than extraordinarily complex and pervasive injustices. Strikingly similar in practice, philosophies of meritocratic individualism focus attention on the successes/ability of a few, to mask systemic social inequality. "To make the taken for granted known," Critical Race Theory can be utilized as a deconstructive framework, from which "abstracted empirical" research can be dissected. Equally, Critical Race Theory forms a standpoint from which to examine oppositional accounts of policy making, assessment and funding practices, especially in the context of "meritocratic" and "objective" ideologies which camouflage the "self-interest, power and privilege of dominant groups in

US society" (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001, p.2).

By relying on merit criteria, the dominant group can justify its exdusion of blacks to positions of power, believing in its own neutrality. CRT asserts that such standards are chosen, they are not inevitable and they should be openly debated and reformed in ways that no longer benefit whites alone. . . CRT asserts that color blindness allows us to ignore the racial construction of 'whiteness' and reinforces its privileged and oppressive position (Taylor, 1998, p.123).

Contrast the above critical analysis with meritocracy's accepted and promoted "neutrality'' as articulated in an advertisement in the Dartmouth

Review:

There must be no goals or quotas for any special group or category of applicants. Equal opportunity must be the guiding policy. Males, females, blacks, whites, Native Americans, Hispanics, ... can all be given equal chance to 44

matriculate, survive and prosper, based solely on individual performance, (Larew, 2000, p. 420).

Yet, meritocracy's supposed neutrality, so succinctly stated by the

Dartmouth Review, stealthily reproduces the same privileged "legacy preference conditions" - socially practiced micro-aggressions far from neutral, fair or meritocratic - that allowed for the following revealing remarks to be discovered on

Harvard "legacy applicants" files (scribbled in the margins, 1988) who indeed, were admitted to the University:

• "Double linage who chose the right parents."

• "Dad's connections signify linage of more than usual weight. That

counted into the equation makes this a case which .. is well worth

doing."

• "Linage is main thing."

• "Classical case that would be hard to explain to dad."

• "Double linage, but lots of problems."

• "Not a great profile, but just enough #'s and grades to get the tip

from linage."

• "Wrthout linage, there would be little case. With it, we'll keep

looking" (Larew, 2000, p.420).

Critical Race Theory utilizes "experiential knowledge" and "counter-story telling" (as in the above) to challenge the social presuppositions, myths of

"received wisdom," socially disguised "race metaphors of inferiority," and ambiguous cultural "micro-aggressions" that pervade Eurocentric concepts of 45 socio/cultural "neutrality'' while it re-describes experience or culture from the

"outsider-within" or socially disenfranchised perspective (Delgado, 2000; Davis,

2000;Collins, 1998; Smith, 1999).

For example, anyone who reads a newspaper or listens to the news has repeatedly heard the continual political screech that education is failing our children and we need tougher standards. Since, and including President

Reagan, all of our recent United States President's have run their candidacies on education platforms decrying the generational weakening of educational abilities.

Yet, in actuality:

The data also show a consistent trend towards higher average lQ test scores. Berliner and Biddle remark that "the number of students expected to have lQ's of 130 or higher ... .is now about seven times greater than it was for the generation now retiring from leadership positions in the country and (those same high profile individuals who are found to be) often complaining about the poor performance of today's youth" (Komhaber & Orfield, 2001)

Critical Race Theory and Social Constructivism in Education

Critical Race Theory also provides vital critical foundation to challenge educations widely accepted standards of "good and fair education" for all children, including our institutionalized explanations of testing, accountability and merit (Collins, 1998; Taylor, 1998; Ladson-Billings, 1999; Roithmayr, 1999).

Schools operate in contradictory ways, given their potential to simultaneously oppress and marginalize, and/or emancipate and empower (Solorzano & Yosso,

2001). Through applications of critical dominance and oppression discourse,

Critical Race Theory lends perspective to help move education from popular discriminatory/deficit pathologies that subordinate particular non-dominant 46 groups, to a social constructivism based on concerns for democratic equality and justice enlightened by critical examinations of "pedagogies of whiteness", "race" and "culture" (Kincheloe and Steinberg, 2000}.

The American educational environment is a potent cultural influence, through the processes, whereby, knowledge is constructed and disseminated. In this way, schools dominate in the organization and distribution of concepts of individual, social and racial power (Taylor, 1998}. Critical Race Theory can be used to deconstruct the normative meanings of educational achievement which are historically evaluated against "neutral" social and cultural assumptions regarding intelligence, capabilities, human potential, performance and differences. It demands that examination be conducted to better comprehend how the deployment of supposedly race neutral measurements in education, such as knowledge, merit, objectivity and achievement, maintain and contain racial and class boundaries, in our stratified, statused society. This analytic framework challenges dominant ideologies, such as meritocracy, that support deficit notions regarding students of non-dominate cultures as they are historically, politically and authoritatively viewed from the stand point of, and in contrast to, dominant "white, middleclass" social/educational constructs (Ladson-

Billings, 1999; Roithmayr, 1999; Solorzano and Yosso, 2001):

Its foundational claims (re: the construction of good schooling) about neutral knowledge are simply wrong ... it is unfortunate, but true that most existing models of education tend to ratify, or at least not actively interrupt, many of the inequalities that so deeply characterize this SOciety. Much of this has to do with the relations between schooling and the economy, with gender, class and race divisions in the larger society, and with the intricate politics 47

of the popular culture, and with ways we finance and support (or don't) education (Apple, 2001).

Social Control Theory and "Segregation" in Education

Social Control Theorists raise the criticism that segregated programs for the large numbers of students diagnosed as "special needs" (disproportionately children of poverty and color) were actually created to contain and separate poor and immigrant children, and children of color, from middle and upper- class, dominate White children. Social control theorists similar1y maintain that "deficit theories" conform educational policies, promoting testing and assessment practices that identify children to "sort out" for special education based upon claims that these children do not possess the "abilities" of their classmates to function in regular classes (Trent, et al, 1998).

These "contained" and separated students (of lesser merit) must daily deal not only with stigmas of difference and deficit, but also with patently unequal social and educational resources and opportunities. They are continually forced to contrast their lesser worth (deficit social value) with the attributes (merit) of the dominant group whose worth and privilege is sustained through the perpetuation of these deficit contrasts. In these ways, race, ethnicity, class and gender have historically been inextricably linked to difference and deficit. In education's lexicon, these discriminatory practices have been euphemistically labeled

"accountability," "dis-abiltiy" and "special needs" (Trent, et at, 1998 Ford, 2001;

Campbell-Whately, 2002; Obiakor, et al, 2002; Lucas, 1999; Connor, 2001). 48

Meritocracy and Our Educational System: Raising the Bar or Raising Barriers? Is It Time to Hold "Accountability" Accountable?

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of the sixties, institutional discrimination of groups and individuals is often sustained through manipulated social metaphor and policies of containment, in contrast to overt segregationist policies and practices (Collins, 1998). For example, instead of saying that children of color or poverty are unclean, slow and unruly, educators may use terms such as "having special needs" (Solorzano & Yosso, 2001). Regardless, these observations cannot be removed from a consciousness of merit - whether individual or group oriented. One cannot hear such "authoritarian" critiques without concluding that the student or groups represented by these descriptors are inferior; whether based on older pathological interpretations of biological or mental inferiority/need, or dominate status group concepts of "cultural disadvantage" and "social maladjustment."

These students are then segregated from the mainstream into appropriate groups/tracts, supposedly chosen by careful evaluation processes which I will examine momentarily. These labels or categories are especially malevolent and revealing when we ask why students of poverty and color remain marginalized and contained in educational settings in disproportionate numbers.

These "labeled" students are then segregated into "special needs" and disability programs, or placed into low-performance ability grouping or "tracks", left to contend daily with stigmatizing labels, poor educational conditions, scant resources and dismal opportunities (lucas, 1999; Connor, 2001 ;McGiii-Frazen,

1991; Greenwood, 1993; Ford, 2001; Campbell-Whately and Gardener, 2002). 49

Eagelton (2001) and Bratlinger (1990) view these "policies of segregation," as

"practices of domination" by the privileged, equating them to practices of oppression, as the dominant and privileged decide what is normal (and therefore what is not normal) and choose the means to collectively classify and institutionalize the "abnormal."

These institutionalized, merit-based perceptions of "individual and group deficit" concretize mainstream school expectations and practices, that result in the disenfranchisement of predictable groups of non-dominant students from the allocation of educational and life opportunities that are afforded dominant majority groups (Ford, 2001; Obiakor, 2001; Rotarori and Obi, 1999; Stainback and Stainback, 1996; Lucas, 1999; Campbell-Whately, 2002). Such institutionalized notions of deficit, based on unexamined constructs of ability and merit, rationalize and guide policy recommendations, assessments and funding that inform and perpetuate educational inequalities that crucially impact life opportunities (Stainback & Stainback, 1996).

America's "Testlna Culture" and Meritocratic Assumptions

Test scores have told the gatekeepers of America's meritocracy- educators, academic institutions and employers - that one student is bright, the other is not bright, that one is worthy, the other less so .. .Meritocracy's gatekeepers brand those who score poorly on standardized tests as somehow deficient, incapable (Sacks, 1997, p.25).

Sacks goes on to describe America as a nation of "standardized- testing junkies" who have a long history with this quantitative paradigm - defining merit in terms of testing and potential, despite rigorous arguments 50 against the validity of such measurements. Kornhaber and Orfield concur, saying, "decision-making on the basis of test results is strongly appealing given Americans' deep faith in education and individual effort ...American's generally think that tests are a fair and neutral means of evaluating whether individual students merit promotion to the next grade or merit a high school diploma - despite weak evidence to support such claims" (2001, p.1 ).

High-stakes testing has weathered two decades of growing educational scrutiny and criticism that challenge it's validity in raising educational standards or as motivation to American students and teachers, nevertheless, most Americans believe, as have our past eight administrations, that educational"stakes" (rewards and sanctions) motivate students to achieve, much in the way that profrts and losses propel marketplace efficacy (Kornhaber and Orfield, 2001 ).

The decade between the early seventies and early eighties marked a critical reform movement demanding that the validity of standardized testing be evaluated. Increasing evidence challenging testing effectiveness led to a vigorous anti-testing movement, as scholars compiled evidence indicating that "such tests played a key role in a rigged game, one that favored society's well-positioned elites under the guise of merit" (Sacks, 1999, p.26).

In 1980 Ralph Nader produced a report called the Reign of ETS, in which he attacked the political power of the tax-exempt Educational Testing

Service. ETS produces, among others, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which is required of all high school students and is used for entree into US colleges and universities. The private nature of educational testing, the 51 business of testing, makes it difficult to assess, but estimates suggest

Americans spend as much as 500 million dollars a year on quantifying the mind - almost 130 million tests are given annually to primary and secondary school students (Sacks, 1999).

Concurrent, however, with increasing scholarly criticism of

"standardized testing," faith in "high stakes testing," and its inherent

"accountability," has blossomed in the American "education consciousness."

Assumptions, fueled largely by political rhetoric, drive the uninformed

American public to believe that testing increases student and teacher motivation, affecting behavior in positive ways and ultimately producing superior learning and achievement. Test scores are increasingly equated with actual learning achievements, despite growing research that states otherwise (Flynn, 2000; Heubert & Hauser, 1999; Kornhaber & Orfield, 2001;

Levin, 2001; Natriello& Pallas, 2001; Popham, 2001; Sacks, 1999).

The average education-minded American is equally not aware that for twenty years, our "accountability policies" have been based on business policies and practices that exhort rewards and sanctions to motivate profit and loss - without evidence that education and learning can be considered applicable to marketplace efficacy strategies (Kornhaber and Orfield, 2001 ). 52

The Social Construction of Accountability: Education Shaped by "The Political"

How has "accountability" become educations litmus test for achievement and learning, creating major controversies within states and districts over its enforcement, without concrete evidence showing significant relationship between testing and increased student performance?

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced to his American public that their "education system, once the finest in the wond, was now in sorry disrepair" (Kornhaber and Orfield, 2001, p. 2), and he called on all

Americans to join in the crusade for tougher standards, reiterating that

American education was failing an entire generation whose educational performance was no where near the equal of their parents. His administration simultaneously released a report called A Nation at Risk­ purporting that America's educational crisis was severe enough to undermine American economic stability and national security (Kornhaber and Orfield, 2001; Leman, 2000). Political leaders and the media went into a feeding frenzy - and America is still tumbling with the momentum of a political avalanche of educational assumptions and federal "reform" based on those assumptions.

Within a year of, and in response to A Nation at Risk, fifty-four state level commissions were quickly formed to investigate the "condition of education." Twenty-six states raced to institute tougher graduation standards, without waiting to research the validity of the report's so-called evidence of educational decline (Walton, 1983). Within three years, thirty­ three states enacted "reforms" increasing course taking and "testing for 53 accountably" as a way of imposing higher standards on schools, with increasing educational sanctions connected to "performance and achievement" (Walton, 1983; Natriello and Pallas, 2001; Kornhaber and

Offield, 2001).

Following in Reagan's successful "educational fervor" footsteps, Vice

President George Bush (senior) manipulated his political campaign for presidency ( 1987) around the increasing national rhetoric that American education was a wasteland, rendering the United States increasingly vulnerable in economic and military competition with other countries.

Improvements in education became his presidential mantra, winning him the

Presidency. President Bush (Republican, neo-conservative and avidly pro free-market systems) determined to set "world class" testing standards that would produce citizens who could compete in the increasingly competitive world marketplace. He forged a major education proposal to do just that- America 2000- which evolved from his highly visible and political

"Summit on Education," which, interestingly, brought together, not educational leaders, as one might surmise, but political leaders (mostly state governors) (Hoffman, 1989,1991).

After Bush lost the Presidency of the United States to Bill Clinton in

1992, President Clinton's Democratic administration reiterated the previous administrations successful educational rhetoric- promising to continue to carry out America 2000's "tougher education standards" with more and tougher "high-stakes testing" as the backbone of education's continual reform. The Clinton administration supported a "national examination 54 system" based on educational standards that were increasingly politically efficacious - but which continued to be controversial and increasingly contentious with educational leaders, scholars and researchers.

"High Stakes Testing: Accountability": The New Euphemism for Containment Practices and

Policies of Discrimination

More and more, schools are coerced by policies based on the results of

"high stakes testing" that are used to classify comparative pupil and school performance, direct educational placement, including tracking, ability grouping, special needs, and to suspend commencement or grade promotion, while mandating policy, thus creating furious competition for highly coveted funding

(Sacks, 1999; Kornhaber & Orfield, 2001; Heubert & Hauser, 1999). These

"performance results" then determine how resources are allocated, based on the liberal concept of meritocracy; those who do well deserve to be rewarded, based on merit. These performance results have been highly politicized and publicly saturated within the context of "accountability" by politicians, rather than educators, so much so, the broad "concernedll public has become panicked that

US students (including the entire remiss educational system) must learn the

"hard" lessons of accountability, if we are to continue to maintain international preeminence.

Inseparable from "accountability'' is the concept of meritocracy, based on accepted principles of individual responsibility for individual performance - i.e. - a merit based reward system in education that remarkably reflects principles of free-market economics and concomitant hierarchal corporate/capitalist structures 55

(Apple, 2001 ). "Accountability"- the politically euphemistic language of merit­ has become political short-hand for ages old, segregationisUcontainment practices in education, such as ability grouping/tracking/special needs, that have come under broad criticism in the past two decades. When a social construct, erected to perpetuate social stratifications, comes under serious critical gaze, the construct is often then "massaged" to maintain the original task, while appearing to the world as new, different and better (supposedly correcting the mistakes of the old). The "new" social construct comes with metaphoric double-entrendre definitions buried under intentionally ambiguous language and labels. This ambiguity, combined with intentional bait and switch linguistics, insures that it will become an increasingly difficult and complex task, to identify, examine and deconstruct the social conditions that arise from its utilization, if and when, the new construct becomes critically assessed.

The more the "new language" can be associated with a name or label that already carries socially accepted and entrenched ideology and morality, the more unanimously and passionately it becomes championed and "normed" - complicating critical "post-effort" to assess and unravel the many intersecting social, economic and political repercussions of its applications. The "politically contrived" language of accountability has been substituted for criticized tracking practices in education which have been likened to historic discriminatory segregationist/containment practices by many recent educational researchers

(Lucas, 1999; Connor, 2001; Obiakor, et al, 2002; Ford, 2001; Campbell­

Whately & Gardener, 2002) 56

This "newer" language of accountability more "invisibly" attaches itself to the same goal, by strategic maneuvering of language and associated concepts.

Within the new language of accountability, more emphasis on individual responsibility and merit is "naturally" embedded within the very word itself, especially if one does not further explore how it is applied. Contained within the explicit definition of accountability, is its encoded implicit "opposite" definition.

Wrthin the confines of this two way binary, individuals can only be accountable­ for their merit or their lack of merit - the only flexibility in such a narrow definition is to the degree (assessment measure) that one either merits reward or sanction.

Thus are erected, educational categories of merit and deservedness, and their subjugated opposites, lack of merit and un-deservedness, which are acted upon in educational settings through policies and practices that circumscribe students academic performance, status and participation in school culture, as well as, their opportunities and experiences well beyond the school environment (Gordon, et al, 2002).

In this merit-based system of accountability, those who already have, get more, and those who exhibit "testable" lackings, are purposefully denied, due to perceptions of dispositional characteristics of "lesser merit," whether we are talking about individual students, teachers or entire schools. "Accountability­ consciousness" conscripts absolute definitions of learning that encourage stigmatization, marginalization and the containment of students who we know we are deliberately sacrificing to downward social mobility, predicated on our notion that lesser performance (merit) deserves lesser considerations - i.e. - the perpetuation of inadequate funding, resources and opportunities that translate 57 into inferior education for those who need it the most. America's obsession with quantifiable merit and accountability is instrumental in allowing systematic, organized, discriminatory practices to flourish in our foundational institutions of education, and to reproduce themselves generation after generation (Solorzano

& Yosso, 2001; Stainback & Stainback, 1996; Gifford, 1986).

High-Stakes Testing Authenticity: Testing "Accountability" & Validity

More and more, state mandated "accountability'' is the mechanism inducing school districts to "compare and compete" for funding, based on standardized testing results. Accountability practices compel schools to become less program oriented and more policy driven (Bainbridge and

Lasley II, 2002). State legislators promise schools with better "report cards·

(best testing results) coveted financial support. The increasing reliance on testing results has contradictory precedence. In 1961, the Title I Elementary and Secondary Education Act was designed to comprehensively address the special needs of children who experienced socio-cultural "disadvantage" and to aid in the "War on Poverty." "Testing" was considered (by education and poverty advocate Senator Bobby Kennedy) the key "neutral" practice in promoting education reform and addressing unequal educational practices affecting America's many still segregated students of color and poverty, while simultaneously exposing discriminatory resource allocation policies.

Based on "well-intended" notions of parity in education, it was thought such testing would expose racial and cultural discriminatory education practices. 58

The comprehensive Coleman report of 1965, sponsored by the

United States department of Education (pursuant to Section 402 of the civil

Rights Act), failed to show concrete evidence between testing and increased student performance, yet "testing mentality" prevailed and testing practices have only increased. The 1970's marked the erstwhile minimum competency (standardized) testing movement to hold students (and schools) accountable for performance. For over three decades, large scale testing of performance has been utilized in Title I program evaluation, to determine federal support for the education of low-achieving children

(Airasian, 1988; Heubert & Hauser, 1999). Unfortunately, "standardized- testing" varies in its uses and is far too often misused, confusing the public with meaningless results:

Test results, like those from NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), are based on large, scientifically chosen national samples, and they are repeated periodically. They are designed to provide an overview -a measure of the aggregate performance of a very large number of students. They do not measure the performance of individual students . .. Large scale standardized tests -such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT) for college admissions and the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) for military selection and placement ...were not designed to provide information about overall levels of academic achievement for groups of students, or changes in them over time. The number of students taking these tests may be very large, but the sample of test-takers is far from representative. Public reports based these tests are therefore often misleading ... The annual newspaper reports of average SAT scores, for example, comparing students across time or among states, are a prime example of inappropriate test use. Test-taking populations vary widely from year to year and from state to state in ways that render such comparisons almost meaningless . . . however large the scale of such tests, their main purpose is make decisions about individuals, not to inform the public. They have never provided accurate 59

assessments of scholastic achievement or aptitude in the general population (Hauser, 1998).

Standardized tests raise issues of:

• Legitimacy of their ability to accurately assess one's academic past

performance or predict future success, particularly for certain

subgroups.

• Results disproportionately associated with socioeconomic class and

race.

• Results based more on circumstance of school economy (available

resources) and teacher efficacy than on authentic student merit.

• Hindrance to real meaningful educational reform; driving superficial

learning, narrowing the curriculum, undermining excellence; not

promoting it.

• Misleading tests results based on inappropriate applications of the

test.

• Maintaining and promoting systemic racial and socio-economic

inequalities - increasing the divide between the haves and have

not's.

• Undo political influence within the educational system.

• Disconnect between academic and public understanding of the role

of testing and its relationship to practices of meritocracy.

• Confusing and unreliable measures of testing and applications

between and among schools, districts and states. 60

• Lack of usefulness for increasing student motivation, and evidence

of their complicity in higher drop out rates. (Sacks, 1999; Johnson &

Johnson, 1999; Heubert & Hauser, 1999; Popham, 2001; Apple,

2001; Orfield & Komhaber, 2001; Sacks, 1999; Nevi, 2002; Madaus

& Clarke, 2001).

High Stakes Testing: Consequences

"The nation's strength is rooted in its ability to compete economically, and its ability to perform economically is rooted in its education system" (National Education Goals Panel, cited, Levin, 2001, p.

39). The educational reform of the past two decades, with its increasing focus on high-stakes testing, and emphasis on results based consequences, is inextricably tied to notions of economic productivity and national economic competition. This testing, in short, is expected to improve the United States labor force, so says Levin (2001 ). It is called high-stakes because of the high-consequences associated with its results. These tests determine the direction of student's education, and their strong consequences shape the outcomes of lives, yet many questions and criticisms surround their growing popularity.

These tests are used to determine graduation, grade promotion, and ability-grouping practices, with narrow and rigid "either/or" results: you do pass/you don't pass; you ascend in grade, you don't ascend; you go into high-ability/achievement grouping; you go into low-ability/achievement grouping. This limited focus ignores important educational strategies that 61 make use of multiple assessments to make such important decisions impacting children's lives. Decisions about tracking, grade promotion and graduation require a variety of assessment criteria; they differ between effectiveness of mastery of past material and potential for future mastery

(Heubert & Hauser, 1999). "Tracking, which can determine the outcome of a student's entire academic career - can begin as early second or third grade"

(Gordon, 2002, p. 16). With such high consequences attached to high­ stakes testing ... while we obsessively record merit as a "fixed destiny" for students ... high-stakes testing should at the very least be able to prove its inarguable effectiveness - but that has yet to occur.

Test scores are hardly infallible measures, but high-stakes testing is a very black and white area; there is no wiggle-room and tests do not admit, as most long-term educators do, that we often pretend to know more about the ways learning is accomplished than we really do (Kozol, 2000).

America tests more and younger (children) than any other nation (Meier,

1999). Student test results have dire consequences not just for the students who take them -funding losses, loss of accreditation and/or autonomy, as well as external school takeovers - are bureaucratic outcomes of low school performance, as well as teacher and administrative personnel job loses.

High performance results can indicate nothing more than concentrated efforts to "to teach to the test," an impediment to real learning.

Additionally, with such high "stakes" involved for the schools themselves, high scores have been known to be the result of actual cheating (Heubert &

Hauser, 1999). Not to be diminished in this discussion: many political 62 careers are launched or heightened when "agendas" are aligned with educational reform. Local, state, and national officials ride the wave of public anxiety over educations supposed demise (Natriello & Pallas, 2001;

Kornhaber & Orfield, 2001 ). The remedy for every seeming problem in education today?: more testing, more stringent testing, testing younger children with increasingly higher stakes, higher, stronger consequences, more rigid applications of black and white "standards," with black and white consequences that have life-long consequences.

More and more, in education, we tie conceptions of "merit" to objective black and white measures of "ability" and "deservedness," while the whole testing process becomes increasingly surrounded by questions, whose answers are anything but black and white. The validity of these tests has never really been clearly established, and is widely criticized by large numbers of educational leaders and researchers, despite great political effort to make testing appear trusted and valid (Sacks, 1999; Nevi, 2002;

Madaus & Clarke, 2001; Orfield & Komhaber, 2001; Apple, 2001; Haubert &

Hauser, 1999; Johnson & Johnson, 2002).

The testing "business· is big business -there is no denying it generates profits and motivation to maintain those profits. Testing reform is a political "lightening rod," sparking the reactions of a passionate public that is kept purposefully uninformed regarding testing methods, outcomes, purposes and validity - and their political connections (Sacks, 2000, Haubert

& Hauser, 2001). Engel (2000) goes so far as to say, "The fifteen thousand 63 school boards, and their one hundred thousand people who serve on them, are the neglected stepchildren of the political system."

Discussion

One of the key concepts that is at stake in the discussion over who we are and how our institutions should respond to us is the idea of freedom .. Answers are not determined by words, but by the power relations that impose their interpretations of these concepts ... (Apple, 2000, p. 12).

Liberal Concepts and Ideologies of Individual Freedoms

Any examination of the principles and practices of meritocracy is incomplete without including a discussion of modernist egalitarian liberal ideology. I want to draw particular attention to Liberal Theory's relationship between a moral rhetoric of "neutral" universal political justice expressed though individual rights and ideals of private ownership - i.e. - freedom of individual consciousness and goals, including a perceived equality of opportunities - and the realities of social conflict caused by the exploitations of the ruling power structure. Rawlsian liberal political philosophy moves beyond synthesized theoretical concerns of nature, to a doctrine of modern constitutional citizenship, erected upon neutral values of individualistic liberal justice, for the purpose of building social justice consensus. This theory combines guaranteed protections and rights for individuals articulated in law, with democratic processes governed by ''fair competition practices" within a "free market system" founded upon agreements of individuals pursuing their individual goals. 64

The public good is an ideal that allows free individuals' to pursue their

myriad private ambitions, while the possession of property is equated to the

"possession of the quality of virtue" (Apple, 2001, p.13). Opposition to these concepts see this philosophy encouraging an emphasis on a mythical neutrality of rights of the individual, while obscuring the collective action required to comprehend (and change) socially encrusted, cultural, economic and political repercussions of generations of social oppression for particular social, cultural and ethnic groups. Focus on a (European Enlightenment) metaphysical interpretation of society as a collective of individuals pursuing neutral (yet paradoxically, highly personal and merit-based) goats within a democratic civic culture, creates a psychic receptivity for unquestioned acceptance of unequal

"social destinies" for differently situated social groups.

The notion of a public/collective good is distorted by the concept of neutral appearing laws and policies (based on liberal philosophy) that in effect, do not redress the unequal contextual, historical and cultural basis of American social structures, which have created, and continue to recreate, practices of exploitation for non-dominant groups, while upholding dominant group privilege.

Without dwelling in the complexities of Liberal Theory's foundations for capitalism, one can see how meritocracy's philosophies and practices sit safely insulated by the thick "neutrality" that is fanatically attached to liberal "theories of the good" (Bridges, 2001).

In April of 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States heard appeal regarding the University of Michigan Affirmative Action admissions policy that was determined unfair by Michigan's Supreme Court (as referenced earlier in this 65 discussion). The lawyer arguing against U of M's present admissions policy used the liberal premise of the necessity of constitutional neutrality of individual rights, defined in, and protected by law; in this case, the14ttt Amendment to the

Constitution's "Equal Protection Clause." The lawyer argued that the

Constitutional mandate of "race neutrality" demanded that race could not legally be used as a basis to treat individuals differently. The 14th Amendment was originally adopted to guarantee rights and protections, under the law, to former slaves. In 2003, these same "protections" are co-opted and re-interpreted, manipulating Constitutional neutrality to maintain white privilege, by arguing against an Affirmative Action policy designed to remedially address structural race inequalities.

During court proceedings, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor countered the neutrality of the above argument, by inquiring about university "legacy" policies that favor students who are children of alumni, with a 40% admittance rate over an 11% admittance rate for the "general" population (Wall Street Journal). In response, the lawyer quipped that constitutional protections did not specifically address children of alumni, and therefore could not be included in constitutional arguments. He used constitutional action taken to protect persons of color from racial discrimination, to manipulate protections of white privilege through the abstracted argument of merit, based in a supposed liberal "neutrality of individual rights" (live radio broadcast of court hearing, Democracy Now, April 2, 2003). 66

Significance of Meritocracy to Social Arrangements and lneaualitv

In her essay on Justica and Justitium (merit and justice), Sen quotes the

1988 Fontanna Dictionary of Modem Thought's definition of meritocracy to emphasize its immediacy with direct social consequence (2000, p.7):

A word coined by Micheal Young (The Rise of Meritocracy, 1958) for government by those regarded as possessing merit; merit is equated with intelligence-plus effort, its possessors are identified at an early age and selected for an appropriate intensive education, and there is an obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications. Egalitarians often apply the word to any elitist system of education or government, without necessity attributing to the particularly grisly features or ultimately self-destroying character of Young's apocalyptic vision.

Sen points out that the rewarding of merit cannot be viewed or practiced independent of its distributive consequences, or its dependence on demanding social criteria of success, which negates its supposed neutrality (2000). Viewed as "given" characteristics (meritorious) that deserve reward, meritocracy denotes an incentive-based system of "desert" and entitlements based on said characteristics, which can be argued as to their "intrinsic" or "instrumental" value.

However, Sen adds, "in a meritocratic system, this distinction gets blurred, while the established and fixed nature of the system of rewards may generate the implicit -sometimes even explicit- belief that rewards are "owed" by society to the meritorious persons" (2000, p.13).

America has become more unequal than at any other time since the New

Deal (Boshara, 2003). Meritocracy basks in its universal neutrality, fostering a sense of entitlement to vastly unequal resources and wealth. It stresses individuality at the expense of understanding that societies and cultures must 67 think and operate at a collective level to sustain equality and cherished democracy. This is becoming increasingly evident in American (micro and macro), social and political isolationism, in our continued practices of global colonialism, and in increasing socio-political entrenchment in the mythical/mystical belief of lone entrepreneurship; privatization of ''the public," and obsession with materialism and success characterized only by social status and affluence.

Webster's New World Dictionary(1991, p.670) defines ideology as, "the doctrines, opinions, or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc.; specifically, the body of ideas on which a particular political, economic or social system is based."

American citizens accept and promote an ideology of meritocracy and its resultant social, economic and political practices with little to no understanding of its "systematic" implications and outcomes in their personal lives. Social myths perpetuate social practices that define and circumscribe people's lives without their understandings, and therefore, without their conscious permission. The

"permission and participation of the people" is intrinsic to our "American· concept of democracy. But to participate in "the sociar and "the political," citizens require the knowledge (choices) to make decisions based on truths, not fabrications based on social practices that exist because they have flourished unimpeded and uncontested, due merely to social habituation, or the manipulation of the hegemony.

Meritocratic ideals promote the belief that social equality (status) is available to all - and that wealth (including rights and resources) is fairly distributed by merit - i.e. - earning it in a fair, competitive environment through 68 dispositional attributions. As Kinder and Sears (2001} note, the average

American believes s/he supports a democracy of equal opportunity and social mobility. However, because of an embedded belief in a meritocratic system,

American's vote practices into place that foster inequality, because most people do not understand the complex historical and social contexts that have erected an "unlevel" playing field for dominate/non-dominate intergroup arrangements.

Nor do most American citizens understand how our structures and institutions perpetuate these myths through evolved soci<>-political "methods" of containment that substitute for outright segregationist policies which have become illegal since the civil rights legislation of the 1960's.

Inequality is often examined through the critical lens of race, dass and gender analyses' and their social intersections with the invisibility of white privileged practices of social oppression. Meritocracy is often alluded to, but not analyzed as a macro social catalyst in the perpetration of social, political and economic inequalities. Meritocracy shelters racism, sexism, classism, and all American social inequality "isms." People with little to no understanding of meritocracy's precedents, and people who desire to perpetuate their privileges, use supposedly neutral, Constitutionally murky, definitions of "deserved merit" as the most accessible and acceptable argument for opposing social interventions that remediate practices of inequality.

American citizens deserve to understand how and why meritocratic individualism does not equate to democracy, social justice and equality. It is well documented that average Americans do not think they are prejudiced or 69 biased, but they do not vote for legislation that will remediate social inequalities (Kinder & Sears, 2001 ). Meritocracy needs to be named and identified to expose its many related practices and policies; especially in education, which is a major institution for the legitimization of social knowledge's and practices. Meritocracy needs to be understood as a myth that has been perpetuated through its accustomed social habituation

(Bourdieu, 1999).

This analysis defines meritocracy as an inaugurator of social inequality - to call its practices, policies and related social consequences into potent visibility, as means to deconstruct its mythic social embeddedness and neutrality. I identify the practices and problems associated with meritocracy to call them into articulated existence - only then can it be brought into critical social examination to begin the process of raising awareness of meritocracy's systematic contributions to social inequality. It can then be revealed to American citizens the ways in which clever-languaged euphemisms such as "accountability" and "merit" maintain dominant social stratifications in society today- i.e. -the practices of

"Othering" and "border spaces" readily seen in our categorical public spaces.

It is perhaps more than a bit ironic that a concept of pure rights and freedoms based on a supposedly neutral, homogeneous individualism becomes the criteria for a collective, democratic, civic ideology that claims to reflect the plurality and diversity of America's historical contexts. It is also important to critically note that our social system honors this "neutrality" when it upholds social privileges, but stands mute when the same argument is used to question rampant social inequality. 70

Meritocracy as a Disunifving Mechanism of Equality

This paper has discussed the puissant connections between meritocratic individualism and the conceptions and practices of dominant American identities, ideologies and institutions, particularly bringing focus to meritocracy's relationship with practices of inequality within the institution of education. I believe the few discussions of meritocratic individualism generally available until now have been compartmentalized and narrow in regard to meritocracy's complex participation in the maintenance of social privilege and group differential practices. It is essential to analyze the larger picture of meritocracy to contextually understand its pervasive interface with federal and state policies and institution creating. I suggest that the American ideology of meritocracy is central to U.S. politics as a major disunifying mechanism of equality and social injustice.

In his1998 interview with Ronald Chennault, for the book White Reign,

Eric Dyson discusses "whiteness" within the categorical constructs of American identity, ideology and institutions. Dyson defines identity, ideology and institutions as units of analysis that help us to understand the complexities and interrelationships among these three categories and their overarching relationships to the social, economic and political conditions of "Whiteness" in

America today. I have taken the liberty to expand upon his sensitive clarifications of identity, ideology and institutions in my discussion of meritocracy. Meritocracy,

I believe, shares similar symbiotic and unconscious relationships in the American terrain of psychic identity, systemic ideology, and institutional policy making - 71 with regard to essential structural inequalities -as does Dyson's articulated concept of "Whiteness."

When Dyson speaks of identity, he refers to beliefs, understandings, customs and norms, that individuals and groups come to practice, share and identify with, in recognition of the condition of their sameness or alikeness. Dyson further describes ideology as the "systematic reproduction of conceptions," congruent with the practices of institutions which, "from home to the school, from the government to the church - compose the intellectual and ideological tablets upon which have been described the meanings of American destiny" (p.302).

Similarly, meritocracy is conceived, dreamed, and acted upon individually and systemically, in all the ways and practices we call American.

Dyson states that Whites don't understand themselves in abstraction from the cultural institutions and the critical mythologies that accrete around whiteness (1998, p303). I borrow Dyson's explanation, and hope that he will allow me the liberty to extrapolate that Americans don't understand themselves in abstraction from the cultural institutions and critical mythologies that accrete around Meritocratic Individualism, which are inclusive of, and inseparable from, ideologies of Whiteness and Cultures of Privilege. The "invisibility" of meritocracy and its inherent relationships to accountability and deservedness, incumbent upon social status, power, rewards and mobility, is becoming increasingly visible, not as it should, in understandings of social inequality, but in the harshest realities of daily social injustice statistics:

• Under half of eighth-graders from the poorest quarter of families

are geared towards college prep tracks; eight out of ten students 72

from the wealthiest quarter of families are routed into "academic"

tracks (Sacks, 1999).

• Nine out of ten high school seniors from high-income families with

earnings of at least $75, 000 a year meet the qualifications for

acceptance to four year colleges or universities. Only about half of

low-income seniors (earning less than $25, 000) can say the

same (Sacks, 1999).

• "Special needs" educational classifications appear to conjoin

"diversity" with "disability," indicating potentially inappropriate

placements with ineffective instruction and support efforts (Lucas,

1999; Connor, 2001; Ford, 2001; Campbell-Whately & Gardener,

2002).

• Educators still rely on deficit modalities and learning styles that

emphasize and promote "differenr and "separate" education for

lower achieving students that does not integrate the learning

process with content - practices considered outmoded by

researchers, but reinforced by regulatory requirements (MeGill­

Franzen & Allington, 1991).

• Increasingly, more than one third of the students in the U.S. public

schools are from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

African- American youth are the most consistently over­

represented group in special needs education, with twice the

levels of enrollment, especially in the educable mentally-retarded

category, while Hispanics are over-represented in remedial 73

programs for the learning disabled Ford, 2001; Campbell-Whately

& Gardener, 2002).

• Students may be identified as "disadvantaged," "at risk," or

"disabled," because their background does not match the

dominant "one size frts all" school culture. These labels and

regulatory classifications often come from professionals unaware,

uneducated and insensitive to cultural differences (Obiakor, et al,

2002).

Through explicit and implicit articulations of meritocracy - those instutionalized through practice and policy, and those passionately and nebulously embedded in dominant American consciousness and identity - successful Americans attribute their achievements to themselves and their

"natural" gifts of superiority, and while this superiority does reproduce itself, almost effortlessly and most exclusively, it certainly is far from "natural" or

"neutral."

The Crooked Path of MeriV Accountability/ Ability

With regard to high-stakes testing, it is deplorable that this "accountability system" has become the means for determination of student intelligence and ability, despite this caveat: "although tests have become important instruments of public accountability, there are few mechanisms to audit or appraise the quality of publicly sponsored tests, to monitor their use as instruments of public policy, and to assess their impact on individuals, groups and institutions" (National 74

Commission on Testing and Public Policy; Gatekeeper to Gateway: Transforming

Testing in America, 1990).

Testing is known to have unintended and even negative consequences, unreasonably limiting opportunities for certain classes and races of people.

Testing often punishes the wrong individuals or institutions; undermining the very performances it is intended to strengthen (Madaus & Clarke, 2001 ). Madaus and

Clarke assert that the public would never accept policy decisions that would introduce new, untried medical technology to millions of children, without proof of efficacy, quality, safety, and subsequent social and economic effects, yet that is exactly what has happened with accepted, but unproven "accountability" practices in education.

"Accountability" offers two paths in life; one path for those who show promise to accountability, and another path for those who fail to show adequate accountability. The first, for those people who conform to an appropriate measure of accountability, allows for entree into the upward social mobility struggle. The other path, erects social barriers, marginalization, and stigmatized border spaces of service and/or poverty for those whose "accountability measure" - doesn't measure up to standards - standards whose validity is questioned by educational leaders and researchers. In short, accountability is rigorously promoted, not by educational experts, but by politicians, social elites, and the ignorant public. Those who most vigorously support tougher standards and accountability are often those individuals who share the upper social and economic statuses that need never prove their accountability, because they get accepted into the most prestigious schools and social positions by virtue of their 75 social status. Or they are individuals who can afford expensive "test-coaching" - institutionally related consultants who guarantee high test results in exchange for high fees (Sacks, 1999).

At the turn of the 20th century, eugenics rooted itself in the social tensions and economic scarcities of an expanding multi-cultural American society that was grappling with the diverse ideas, new cultural norms, and job competitions experienced with each new wave of European immigration into the United States. An unsettled society fraught with the frictions of group differences, became the intolerant backdrop for eugenic ideas to spread and lend "authority" to the expanding practice of "human potential testing" (standardized tests) as an "enlightened" methodology to

"scientifically" determine human merit (Stoskopf, 2001 ).

At the turn of the 21st century, startling parallels can be drawn to what

I have just outlined above. Nationality, traditionalism and triumphalism (one dominant religion equals one dominant custom) is at intolerant odds with globalism, pluralism, multiculturalism and the practices of sharing societies wealth, resources and opportunities with people who have non-dominant

(compared to White, middle/upper class) norms. A desire to return to traditionalism in education is consistent with deliberate efforts to delegitimize critical pedagogies, rehabilitating stratification and tracking practices in education that gear educational resources towards those with already high achievement.

These "traditionalistic" (conservative modernists) desires express themselves in education, through increasingly organized practices of 76 external supervision (surveillance), regulation (containment), and external judgments of performance (merit/ability/accountability), which are viewed as a retum to high standards (thought by some to be lost in multicultural education), discipline, "real" knowledge, efficiency and authority- applicable, of course -to those parents and students who embrace narrow, Eurocentric, masculinist, claims to essential truths (Apple, 2001 ).

Apple argues:

... both class and race intersect and interact in complex ways, and because marketized systems in education often expressly have their conscious and unconscious raison d'etre in fear of "the Other," and these often are hidden expressions of a racialization of educational policy, the differential results will "naturally" be raced as well as classed ..."White flight" then enhances the relative status of those schools already advantaged by larger economic forces; schooling for the "Other'' becomes even more polarized and continues a downward spiral (Apple, 2001, p. 73;79).

Conclusion

Critical theory focuses on "disconnects" within the infrastructure, with resultant questioning of the practices and policies that emanate from structures that do not do what they say they do. Meritocracy or more specifically, meritocratic individualism, remains a largely uncontested, mythical construct through which dominant "American" identity, ideology and structures are articulated, identified, interpreted and created through false conceptions and applications of neutrally accepted definitions and practices of merit and its accordant rewards or punishments. Although it can be a motivating factor for individual choice and social mobility, because it intersects with very complex 77 issues of social, economic and political hegemonies, it is too often utilized as a pathologizing agent of social control.

As a collective ideology (as it is essentially practiced), it falls quickly upon its own sword, because meritocracy denies conceptions of communitarianism, as well as the fact that it is always mediated by race, class, gender, ethnicity, ability and sexuality- thus negating its claim to neutrality. It rather blithely and smugly ignores circumstance, environment, region, history and social relationships. In other words, it reduces the vast richness, complexity and interdependences of diversity, community and social/global relationship, to an "accountability" infrastructure, based on an absurdly narrow and often deceptive, merit criteria.

Possibly it's worst effect?: Meritocracy metastasizes social problems into individual problems that paralyze the victim/s (learned helplessness), benefiting and enabling those who orchestrate this accountability mentality to their extreme advantage - advantages whose extremities are in counterbalance with the extremities of 21st century social inequality; practiced in the worlds most wealthy nation.

I believe the American ideology of meritocratic individualism lies at the heart of an inability for many Americans to reconcile their attitudes towards the nature of egalitarian justice, with the way they act in accordance to personal and structural perpetuations of social injustice. Meritocratic individualism's potency is derived from its status as a Westernized, Americanized, patriotic, misunderstood myth. It attracts our fierce, rugged, pioneer, competitive natures, while it refuses to acknowledge a concomitant self-centeredness that rejects collective understandings of larger community and societal arrangements that have lead to 78 the social exploitation of non-dominant individuals and groups of people, who historically and currently, live abject lives of poverty and abuse, even while working longer and harder than those to whom the "spoils of meritocracy" go.

The belief in "natural" inequalities upon which meritocracy's competitive individualism is reliant, is illuminated brilliantly by the authors of Inequality by

Design:

Why do some individuals get ahead and some fall behind? Certainly genetic endowment helps. Being tall, slender, good-looking, healthy, male, and white helps in the race for success and these traits are totally or partly determined genetically. But these traits matter to the degree that society makes them matter- determining how much, for example, good looks or white skin are rewarded. More important yet than these traits are the social milieus in which people grow up and live (Fischer et al, 1996, p. 9).

Meritocracy's potent image of neutrality relies on the continuation of practices of "universal objective assumptions" that deny the lived experiences of vast numbers of American citizens. Meritocracy is so deeply embedded, through moral psychic and social penetrations, it has become intertwined with a dominant

"Americanized" identity of citizenship, passed on generationally and collectively, through conformance to and interactions with, everyday, lived experiences that have transformed "the private" into the providence of public authorities and institutions - simultaneously diminishing expected benefits of "the public", due to increased privatization of ''the public."

Meritocratic individualism advantages privilege and reward to dominant social groups, while it ignores disproportionately unequal burdens, restrictions and barriers imposed upon non-dominant social groups. Meritocracy presumes the reality of a neutral, fair and equal playing field of life, upon which members of society compete 79 for just rewards, based on their abilities. Even a superficial glimpse into the functioning of our American institutions will reveal historic, economic, political and social contexts that render the idea of a fair and neutral playing field to be contentiously false.

How much longer can we conceive that the playing field of life is level, when we know that American children, through the contested practices of politically motivated "accountability" are "tracked and fixed" into inferior education, and its resultant downward social mobility, by the third grade? (Gordon, et al,

2002). How do we continue to "pretend" a moral, systemic, meritocratic neutrality, when "accountability" can be historically linked both to immoral eugenic conceptions, and modem hegemonic practices of surveillance and containment, not far from practices of overt segregation and dehumanization?

I reiterate: this analysis defines meritocracy as an inaugurator of social inequality - to call its practices, policies and related social consequences into potent visibility as means to deconstruct its mythic social embeddedness and neutrality. Through increased awareness, I hope to bring meritocracy's concepts and practices into critical dialogue, to begin the process of raising awareness of meritocracy's systematic obsession with quantifying and assessing human potential, with its possible regard to "intentional" social inclusion or exclusion.

In education and Beyond: Pedagooies of Freedom

What is needed is the courage to transcend the deficit orientation supported by a suspect and racist scholarship hidden under the guise of scienticism, so we can move beyond the pipe dream of a democratic education and create the reality. However, in order to make education democratic, we must simultaneously make the society it exits within democratic as well (Freire, 1996, p. 429). 80

Deriving from multiple vocabularies and diverse cultural traditions,

Critical Multicultural Theory's are based on the premise that theory does not operate in universal abstractions; rather it is conceptualized from the situated perceptions and experiences of our lives. It acknowledges and challenges hegemonic social structures and their affects on non-dominate group social consequences. Multicultural theories, including Critical Race Theory, challenge cultural biases that perpetuate oppression, through the demystification of

"neutrality-centered" power, knowledge, respectability, normality and authority

(Rogers, 1996).

Additionally, Resistance Theory is a strain of critical sociological research that explores the politics of oppositional and non-norm behavior long ignored by educators who favor psychological theories of pathology and

"functional limitations," which are applied to individuals and cultural groups who do not meet dominant, conformed educational/cultural/behavioral standards and expectations. Resistance Theory provides a framework to go beyond common authoritative-positivistic or familial-cultural deficiency etiologies, to the underpinnings that gird the social construction of prevailing socio-educational definitions and norms. It examines concepts such as merit, ability and accountability within the context of social contradictions surrounding power and inequality, inextricable from hierarchical social and political arrangements.

Agreeing with Apple (2001), I suggest that in the real wor1d, close connections must be maintained between critical discourse and actual practices that transform educational practices, to ground critical pedagogy in the concrete struggles of multiple and identifiable groups (CRT), particular1y when different 81 groups have competing visions of "legitimate" knowledge and the "just society."

In conclusion, I will allow Jacobs to coalesce my thoughts regarding meritocratic individualism and its increasingly high-stakes associations with merit, ability and accountability:

Although there is incredible diversity and differences in nature between individuals, it is through the institutions of society that comparisons between people are made and benefits and burdens are attached to those differences ... What the ideal of equality of opportunity seeks in political institutions and civil society is a widespread distribution of the benefits and burdens of social life among diverse individuals as opposed to their concentration among a particular group of individuals, regardless of whether their grouping is based on sex, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or class .... what it reflects is the recognition that because all inequalities are social and that those inequalities are principally the function of social mechanisms for valuing, everyone affected by those mechanisms should have a role in their operation .. (199, p. 143). 82

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