Muller Capitalism (7)
Jerry Z Muller suggests that education is not the solution to equality.
In today’s globalised, financialised, post-industrial environment, human capital is more important than ever in determining life chances. This makes families more important, too, because as each generation of social sciences researchers discovers anew (and much to their chagrin), the resources transmitted by the family tend to be highly determinative of success in school, and in the work place.
The unrecognised and unleashed power of Christian discipleship is that it can created the middle class attitudes necessary to build human capital.
As the political scientist Edward Banfield noted a generation ago in The Unheavenly City Revisited, “All education favours the middle and upper-classes child, because to be middle- or upper-class is to have qualities that make one particular educable.” Improvements in the quality of schools may improve overall education outcomes, but they tend to increase, rather than diminish, the gap in achievement between children from families with different levels of human capital.
2 comments:
"The unrecognised and unleashed power of Christian discipleship is that it can created the middle class attitudes necessary to build human capital."
Wow. That's a powerful statement. I couldn't agree more, and disciples making disciples the way Jesus did, teaching them what He did, through the power of the Spirit like He did, has the potential to create so much more than just the middle class attitudes of the Protestant Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. I know you believe it too - such discipleship can literally change the world. It has before.
So often I keep coming back to how if we just believed in the simple things that Jesus taught and did, we would see such powerful, history-changing results. Simple things like preach the gospel, love one another, and make disciples who make disciples. I am reminded of the statement I read somewhere that it is not radical new ideas that are needed, but just radical faith in old ideas.
Thank you for persevering with your simple yet powerful message.
No King But God
Alternatively, if education increases the gap between the poor and the advantaged then, and if the goal is to reduce the gap between the poor and advantaged, then education should be abolished and society should be returned to a more primitive model. Perhaps the Khmer Rouge were not as clueless as some think.
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