Deconstructing Meritocracy in the College Classroom

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to discuss meritocracy as it impacts our undergraduate college teaching. As college educators, we have come to realize how little students have been challenged to critically examine the notion of meritocracy. Seeking to understand why this is so and what we can do to engender a more nuanced understanding of how social class is structured and perpetuated across generations, we present an assessment of why the majority of students believe we live in a meritocratic society and how college educators can use specific activities to complicate this view. As we do this we include evidence of how social class and social mobility are structured and why an adherence to meritocracy is, we believe, an anathema to teaching for social justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical reflection
• scholarship of teaching and learning
• social class

Note

Notes

1. For more on the connection between language, ideology and common sense see Lakoff, 2002, 2008.