On the problems of social mobility as a concept in the current western political paradigm

At present there is much focus on social mobility, and rightly so given the current political paradigm in the western world. We see it discussed in contexts of exams cancelled due to covid-19 in England, in relation to equality in America and much of Western Europe, and as a near panacea to increasing inequality. However, I wonder if perhaps this paradigm should be deconstructed and social mobility critiqued as a highly flawed concept given the values of society at present.

Within the current paradigm, education and the knowledge economy is heralded as the peak of societal advances and of progress as measured in growth, whilst a highly educated individual is seen as the epitome of achievement. We value achievement in education above most else, and link it directly to conceptions of meritocracy and to salary and social capital. Central to such a paradigm is the concept of social mobility, of moving up in life through ones capacities as demonstrated on exams and tests in schools and universities. Much critique is levied against the practicability of the concept, and of failure to adhere to its base tenets of equality of opportunity. However, this blog focuses not on the failure to achieve true social mobility, but rather why we ought not to focus on social mobility in the current knowledge economy paradigm where success is increasingly measured in terms of educational achievement.

I fully understand the allure of the concept from a philosophical and ideological standpoint in a liberal paradigm. Each is free to reach in accordance with his ability once a level playing field is achieved. A very liberal, and capitalist, notion of how society should ideally work. It also recognises that we cannot have a equal outcome as that would diminish agency and fail to recognise capacity. Moreover, the concept "pushes" people to achieve, to produce, to always do their best in hopes of a just reward. That is all well and good.

However, it fails to recognise intellectually and ethically the rights of parents vis-a-vis their children, which would dictate that some inheritance of something is actually a moral right, and practically inevitable. For example, regardless of if we put much emphasis on genetics or on environment, family however one conceptualizes it remains by and large the core determinant. Social mobility as a concept, in our current paradigm, neglects this.

Furthermore, interest and desires can often be formed at a young age from what we learn and interact with not only at school but also at home and from our friends. In the same vein, it fails to recognise the increased capacity that may come from people learning at a young age at home in addition to at school. Be it how to build houses as me and my brother learnt from our father and paternal grandfather, or how to educate children as we learnt from our mother and maternal grandparents who worked in education. My brother is now a carpenter building houses, I research education. One could say we both inherited from our parents but he moved socially downwards in the current paradigm (our farther is an engineer) whilst I moved up (our mother is a pre-school head teacher, which again is arguably in the current western paradigm a step down from her father who was a primary school head teacher). I would argue we are both happy with our jobs and he stands to make more money than me as he works in Norway (so not socially downwards then in the right context?). I would argue he is more intelligent than me in many ways as well, he just does not like reading books and I do. The social mobility concept as constructed emphasises education (books) above interest and desires in life, and also contribution to society. I would argue that building houses contributes much more than my research ever can.

The largest practical flaw of social mobility as a core concept of a "just" society is that it inherently cannot reduce inequality only shift winners and losers (and does a poor job even at that given the importance of socio-economics in education achievement). If someone is to increase their standing in the hierarchy of life which social mobility suppositions as ever present (to socially move up) either someone has to move down or growth has to create more positions higher in the hierarchy. The former is perhaps why socio-economics is so important as parents do not want to see their children worse off than they were, and it is a natural reason as to why those who are institutionalized in a higher position are hard to dislodge from below under the existing paradigm. The latter is probably why the planet is overheating as we extract more and more finite resources in a quest for perpetual growth.

Instead of emphasising social mobility and equality of opportunity, I would argue we should focus on equality of outcome in the sense of hierarchy reduction and reducing inequality between professional/work groups. That is, we should value carpenters as much as researchers, plumbers as much as doctors, pre-school teachers as much as secondary teachers, and so on and so forth. The reason is as simple as contribution to society and interdependence. This is not to reduce the individual nor liberties it is to embrace them. However, whilst embracing individual achievement we must recognise how we are dependent on others and how achievement is much more than what we do on an exam. We need to recognise and value the importance of good manual labour, and of diversity of interests within education. I can do maths, but I never found it interesting so I did less well there than I did in history or social science studies, is that a bad thing? I would think not. At least not if my individuality and my freedoms are respected.

Thus, we should perhaps not focus on social mobility in the sense of equality of opportunity, but instead emphasise the importance of equality between people. That is we should not focus so much on achievements in education, which is only a fraction of our lives in more ways than years spent doing it. We need to move on from the knowledge economy and knowledge society as currently conceptualized and onwards to a society where we recognise people’s abilities and interests, and look at what is it society actually needs. That way we may perhaps end social dumping and exploitation of manual labourers (often in or from far away countries), and create a truly just society. One in which a pandemic cancelling exams will not matter so much, as we have moved on from education as a sorting machine and towards education as a place of learning and training. I dream of an education system where we learn our civic values, we train our skills, and educate ourselves to contribute to society and enrichen ourselves in accordance with our interests, within a societal paradigm that recognises all kinds of labour and contribution to society as we grow our individual selves.