Att ordna tillgång till en bra utbildning är enligt min uppfattning samhällets viktigaste jämlikhetsåtgärd. Därför tycker jag att det är upplyftande att utbildning och skola spelar en så central roll på Moderaternas partistämma. För egen del bidrar jag till debatten med nedanstående konferensbidrag som jag presenterade vid en konferens vid OECD i Paris.
Importance of Education in Enhancing Social Mobility: The
Need for Continuing to Improve Access to Education and Adopting Good Pedagogy
Social Mobility
as Key Driving Force for Inclusive Growth
Social mobility based on
meritocracy increases competiveness and promotes long-term growth. The prime
engine for social mobility is education.
Focus on education and trust the
market forces, and you will achieve both growth and inclusiveness. Searching
for equality through redistribution of wealth tends to hamper growth and fails
to create long-term inclusiveness. In this contribution to the workshop on
inclusive growth, I discuss a number of factors in the field of education that
are important to promoting social mobility and long-term growth.
In this paper for OECD workshop
on inclusive growth, I would like to share my thoughts on social mobility and argue
that education is the prime engine for enhancing upward mobility. Social
mobility, the individuals’ ability to move from one socioeconomic class to
another, reflects the society’s justice, fairness and openness, and is the key
to inclusive and balanced growth. In modern societies, education has become an
increasingly crucial factor in determining which jobs people enter and in deciding
their socioeconomic position. Therefore, quality education can serve as a
springboard for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds to leap into an
upper social stratum and contribute to greater social mobility. Expanding and
improving public education system has been vital to promoting social mobility thus far. In the second half of the 20th century, most
OECD nations witnessed high absolute rates of social mobility primarily due to
relocation of jobs from manual labor to professional sectors. Such mobility was
greatly facilitated by comprehensive educational reforms that expanded public
school systems and endorsed the kind of education that would prepare
individuals for professional careers. Although we do not expect a comparable
shift in the occupational structure in terms of scale in the near future and a
consequent radical increase in social mobility, I believe that we can continue to
promote mobility through expansion of and improvement in the education systems,
given that recruitment in the job market remains overall meritocratic.
Although providing
educational opportunities for underprivileged youths through expansion of
public education system has been instrumental in promoting social mobility, we
must recognize that it is not a panacea to social inequalities. In the past,
efforts to reduce the achievement gaps among students of different economic
backgrounds have focused on building sound school systems, but not necessarily
on improving the quality of education itself. Governments in many countries
especially in Europe and North America have
taken quite drastic interventionist approaches in reforming the school systems,
but they have been usually hands-off when it came to pedagogy, leaving it to
the teachers’ discretion. We must continue improving and expanding public
school systems, but now it is also time for a different type of educational
reform, one targeted at the quality of teaching. We should encourage teachers
to adopt good methods of instruction that are most effective in helping low-achieving
students from disadvantaged backgrounds. We must make more resources available to
teachers that can be utilized in classroom initiatives directed at
low-achieving students. We should also train teachers to help students
understand the importance of education in breaking the cycle of
intergenerational poverty and motivate them to pursue higher education.
Furthermore, in my
opinion, a good pedagogy must also emphasize developing students’ emotional
strength. Teachers should help students from disadvantaged backgrounds become more
resilient in the face of failures and challenges. Many researches have reported
that underprivileged students’ inability to deal with setbacks can be
detrimental to social mobility. They find that youths from disadvantaged
backgrounds tend to consider a minor failure, such as performing poorly on a
test, as reflective of a bigger failure, and are more likely to give up on
overcoming their failures than are those who are more economically privileged. Training
teachers to help students develop emotional strength through experiences beyond
the classroom, such as volunteering and sports, would be crucial in teaching them
not to fear challenges and move forward in their lives.
Lastly, I want to
emphasize that we must also examine and attempt to solve inequalities within
the educational system itself. It is true that in some aspects, educational
systems ironically end up reinforcing social inequalities rather than reducing them.
Education qualifications often times serve as means through which many
upper-middle class families pass on their socioeconomic advantages. In many
countries with developed public school system, it is not uncommon for wealthy
families to deliberately relocate to areas that are reputed for having good
schools, drive up house prices, and consequently exclude poorer families from
access to quality schools. Furthermore, even in higher education, competitive
universities are dominated by children of those in the highest economic
quintile, who themselves had received elite education. Some critics condemn
this paradox of formation of a hereditary meritocratic class, and even take the
pessimistic view that all education hinders social mobility. These inequalities
within the education system itself are indeed pressing problems that must be
tackled, yet they should not discredit the value of education in increasing
social fluidity. They are problems to be solved, not excuses for hampering the efforts
to increase underprivileged youths’ access to educational opportunities and improve
their school experience. We should recognize the importance of education in aiding
disadvantaged youths realize their potential and catapult themselves up the
socioeconomic spectrum, and continue investing in the future of our society
through education.