Study: belief in the meritocracy leads to worse outcomes

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@BigT

You can’t make someone like you. You can just try to be likable. People will hate you even though it isn’t your fault at all. Many people will hate you for doing “the right thing.”

Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t, and sometimes you can partially succeed.

The question is which approach has the best risk-reward and payoff-effort ratios in such scenarios. The two options are complaining to people about how you’re being treated unfairly, or trying to figure out why you’re being treated unfairly and changing those factors. In general, the second approach will be the better approach, in life. Kids are temporarily in a unique situation where parents can sometimes bail them out to a small degree by harassing the teachers, but that won’t last, and it’s bad for the kids to get into the habit of relying on that approach.

@BigT

And, given that F-P says he did sometimes talk to teachers, I assume he did believe his kids sometimes. I would hope he’d believe his kids if they were in the situation RT was in. Though I do think it would be better if F-P would make this clear, as it otherwise leads you to talk cross purposes.

It doesn’t work like that. It’s not an either-or where you either “believe” them or you don’t. There are degrees of likelihood.

Even if I thought it was more likely that the kid is leaving out crucial details that change the story significantly - as will generally be the case - I would speak to the teacher if my kid thought it would be helpful. No harm in that. Where I would be less likely to speak to the teacher is if the kid’s own version involved guilt, and it was solely a matter of “other kids were even worse”.

[msmith537]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

Kids are temporarily in a unique situation where parents can sometimes bail them out to a small degree by harassing the teachers, but that won’t last, and it’s bad for the kids to get into the habit of relying on that approach.

This is a phenomenon that is relatively recent that started with Millennials. In my day, parents met with the teacher so they can figure out if their child was having a problem and how to address it. Not to browbeat them into padding their grades so their transcript looked better.

[k9bfriender]

@msmith537

This is a phenomenon that is relatively recent that started with Millennials. In my day, parents met with the teacher so they can figure out if their child was having a problem and how to address it. Not to browbeat them into padding their grades so their transcript looked better.

That’s because now, if anything is wrong with the kid’s performance in the classroom, is is the fault of the teacher, the school, the administration, the neighborhood, the people the kid hangs out with, but never the parents, and it is never due to the kid’s capabilities.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, many of the kids that I grew up with had parents that would place the entirety of the blame upon the school. They’d yell at teachers, at principals, they’d go to PTA and school board meetings and raise a fuss. Ultimately, they’d end up pulling their kids out for either homeschooling or private schools.

What does seem to be a new phenomenon is the school going along with the accusations, and taking the parent’s side in harassing teachers for failing students.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

You can’t isolate any one component and compare it to any one other. They need to be looked at in total. The teacher picking on an innocent kid can happen but is less likely than the sum of “kid misbehaved” + “thought he didn’t”.

But you’re still picking the chance of the teacher’s story being self-serving out of that comparison.

I did. In my first post in this thread, I described it as “the times my kids have gotten in trouble at school”, where the question was the extent to which they were guilty of what they were being accused of. You’re describing a situation where the kid did not get into trouble at school and there’s no question of guilt, and the question is whether the kid is being punished at all (or the teacher does it to everyone etc.)

No, I’m describing at situation in which the “getting into trouble” was not always getting high marks. Which was true, I didn’t, I cop to being guilty of that.

In that situation it seems like everyone - including the teacher - agrees that no punishment at all is appropriate.

Uh, no. In my situation, I was punished by the teacher, so presumably they thought it was appropriate (or knew it wasn’t and didn’t care). Likewise, my parents thought punishment was appropriate.

[Scumpup]

@Revenant_Threshold

But you’re still picking the chance of the teacher’s story being self-serving out of that comparison. No, I’m describing at situation in which the “getting into trouble” was not always getting high marks. Which was true, I didn’t, I cop to being guilty of that. Uh, no. In my situation, I was punished by the teacher, so presumably they thought it was appropriate (or knew it wasn’t and didn’t care). Likewise, my parents thought punishment was appropriate.

It is, of course, out of the question that your teacher and parents were right?

[The_Understander]

@monstro

I find it interesting the study focused on middle-school students. That’s when kids start getting sorted into “ability” tracks. Presumably the smarter kids get placed on tracks geared towards college prep (all honor and advanced classes), while the weaker students get set up for voc ed and general courses. But what often happens in racially and socioeconomically integrated schools is that race and socioeconomics are used as markers for who belongs where. Poor black kid gets put in the remedial track regardless of whether he should be there, since there are only so many seats in the “good” tracks and the white kids of means (and angry parentage) are prioritized for those seats and the remedial teachers need SOMEONE to teach, and the poor black kids’ parents aren’t likely to raise a fuss, especially if he’s being bussed into the school in the first place.

This situation happened to me, even though I wasn’t a poor kid. But I was black and my zip code was “black”. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that on the top of each student’s schedule, beside their name, was their race and home address. Such information makes it real damn easy for an unscrupulous registrar to play 3D chess with the student body. In my seventh grade year, I was placed in the remedial track. The home room number was a dead giveaway, but I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t really know…and besides, why would I be placed in “dumb” classes when I was smart? But I eventually told my mother what was up when the shame got to be too much to bear (I couldn’t tell my friends what homeroom I was in without being embarrassed). She immediately came down to the school and got me switched to a “good” track. She didn’t accuse anyone of being racist. She didn’t scream or holler. But she did let the school know that they had made a horrible mistake and she didn’t want to see it happen again.

Well. Fast forward to the eighth grade. I look down at my schedule and lo and behold, I’m in a “bad” homeroom again. This time, my mother did flip out a little. Because at that point, it was hard to see how they weren’t intentionally jerking me around. How does a kid who tests well and makes As and Bs get labeled “remedial” two years in a row?

I was fortunate, iiandyiiii. My mother is political conscious and not the type of parent you want to fool around me. As a professional social activist, she wasn’t afraid to make a fuss. Most parents aren’t like my mother. Most minority parents are especially not like my mother. I think about the kids who were stuck in those remedial classes, and I suspect most had parents who were just glad they were in a good school, not a “ghetto” one. My mother didn’t have that mentality.

So as you can guess, I did not grow up thinking this is a meritocratic society. But I was also raised with a strong work ethic and to always pair whining/complaining with action. Throughout my life, I have heard variations of this theme: “Yes, often people will downgrade their expectations of you because of who you are and what you look like, but that just means you have to work harder than everyone else. It also means you need to cultivate a thick exterior and an attitude that lets people know you ain’t the one to be messed with.”

So it does not surprise me at all that belief in meritocracy leads to disappointment in life. The belief in meritocracy is likely why so many “economically anxious” white people right now are mired in depression. You spend your whole life hearing that only lazy losers do menial work and of course you’re going to take it hard when that ends up being what you have to do.

Besides the whole racial/class thing, I think kids need to learn that success doesn’t come down to any one thing. You can have mad skillz, but if people don’t like you for whatever reason, then you’re going to have a difficult time. It doesn’t make sense not to teach kids that they can’t just “be themselves”, as nice as that sounds. They actually do have to put some work on developing the intangible qualities that are frequently more valued than objective “merit”.

You are awesome. And so is your mom.

[doreen]

@Revenant_Threshold

But you’re still picking the chance of the teacher’s story being self-serving out of that comparison. No, I’m describing at situation in which the “getting into trouble” was not always getting high marks. Which was true, I didn’t, I cop to being guilty of that. Uh, no. In my situation, I was punished by the teacher, so presumably they thought it was appropriate (or knew it wasn’t and didn’t care). Likewise, my parents thought punishment was appropriate.

I am a little confused about what the punishment was - being sent on errands? When I was in school and also when my kids were in school that was a reward, not a punishment.
Extra homework? Unless it was writing " I will get an A on every assignment" 500 times or something like that, extra homework more likely to be assigned because you need the practice than as punishment. Or , perhaps as is common in my experience, you weren’t given extra but others were exempted form the normal homework. It was not uncommon in my elementary school day and my children’s for a teacher to have a policy that anyone who got a 90 on the Friday spelling test was exempt from the next weeks spelling homework.

I think you fundamentally don’t understand whatFotheringay-Phipps is talking about because you are viewing it through your own filter.

Most people would not consider extra homework punishment in and of itself without checking to see whether there was a reason for it- such as low grades. Most people would not consider “low grades” something to be punished for. Now maybe your parents and teacher thought low grades deserved punishment and that extra homework was a punishment, but it’s way more likely that the child-you saw it as punishment and they did not.

**Fotheringay-Phipps** is talking about the childhood version of  "But everyone else was speeding and they didn't get tickets". Where the child admits he did something wrong and is only complaining that others did not get punished or were punished less severely. And which doesn't necessarily even imply that the child feels the punishment itself was unfair or that he was being picked on- only that someone else got away with it, perhaps because 5 people were involved in passing notes, but number 5 evaded detection

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@monstro

The belief in meritocracy is likely why so many “economically anxious” white people right now are mired in depression. You spend your whole life hearing that only lazy losers do menial work and of course you’re going to take it hard when that ends up being what you have to do.

I think a lot of the white working class anxiety comes from the realization that they wouldn’t do well in a meritocracy.

[Corry_El]

@msmith537

Maybe it’s the combination of belief in the meritocracy and the realization that they don’t have adequate skills? A true meritocracy means only the best and brightest and hardest working will achieve success. And that’s fine, but what about the people who are just mediocre?

Yes I think it’s obvious that a lot of dislike of the concept of meritocracy comes from the fact that everybody can’t win, and also the trend toward winners taking more. That’s not limited to the ‘white working class’ or either side of the political spectrum. IMO a lot of trends in US socio-politics on both sides are influenced by winners taking more, just differing reactions. Whether the winners are ‘fairly’ chosen or not is somewhat secondary. Losers naturally tend to see that outcome as ‘unfair’. That’s human nature.

Also though if the context is parenting specifically, a lot of the reason any given kid falls short of getting what they want/expect from ‘the system’ is individual. It’s often the kid (and parents often) simply being unrealistic about how their academic skills and achievements really stand up against the best, often a best (of other groups in other areas or even other countries) they don’t directly come in contact with. There might be systemic reasons for that, but when it comes to say middle school/HS, kids have gotten that far, that much water under the bridge, there’s IMO/IME as substantial resistance to admit how far in very real objective terms some kids are behind. A big issue is simply facing the kid’s real place on the totem pole of academic achievement, and that’s more of a problem in a society where it’s close to taboo to say some kids should aim lower (trades, etc).

Plus obviously ‘life isn’t fair’ in all kinds of idiosyncratic ways, by which I mean stuff like a key teacher just doesn’t like you, you have a bad day on a key test (think of how badly that can screw your life in certain Far East systems before lamenting about in the US system) or whatever.

Then there’s the systemic stuff based on background. But a lot of people in US society now have a ‘every problem is a nail’ type of view for their ‘hammer’ of social justice. In a society where high achievement (real achievement) brings greater reward because of technology, globalization, not any increase in bias about people’s backgrounds (probably the opposite trend in fact) there’s going to be more pain for find oneself outside the elite when it is a true meritocracy. ‘It’s not really a meritocracy’ is a dodge to a significant degree IMO.

[Weedy]

@study

Studies find that marginalized youth who are more
critically conscious—who understand the economic,
political, historical, and social forces that contribute
to inequity, feel empowered to change these conditions, and take part in social action—have better
occupational outcomes (Diemer, 2009; Diemer et al.,
2010).

So maybe that is the way to go to help your prospective child(ren).

[Revenant_Threshold]

@Scumpup

It is, of course, out of the question that your teacher and parents were right?

To, respectively, single me out for extra punishment and not believe me that it was happening? Yes, I would say so. I experienced the difference in degree of punishment; I was also (and I’d like to think I still am) a pretty truthful person. For them to be right would need me to either be lying, or be mistaken about what was happening; I wasn’t lying, and what was going on was pretty clear.

@doreen

I am a little confused about what the punishment was - being sent on errands? When I was in school and also when my kids were in school that was a reward, not a punishment.

I can certainly understand that to the extent of “I get to not be in the classroom for a short while”, but we’re talking about having to haul things from one place to another; go grab these stacks of books, go grab the overhead projector from another room. Worse for me, though perhaps not for others, was being sent to deliver messages to other teachers; I was shy, and obviously uncomfortable speaking in front of a class, so having to pass on a message in front of another class was not greatly fun for me.

Extra homework? Unless it was writing " I will get an A on every assignment" 500 times or something like that, extra homework more likely to be assigned because you need the practice than as punishment. Or , perhaps as is common in my experience, you weren’t given extra but others were exempted form the normal homework. It was not uncommon in my elementary school day and my children’s for a teacher to have a policy that anyone who got a 90 on the Friday spelling test was exempt from the next weeks spelling homework.

As I’ve said already, there were other people in my class who did worse than me, and who did not get extra homework; if it was about needing more practice, then why was I singled out? To my knowledge, no-one got exempted from the normal homework. I don’t think any of the schools I went to exempted you from homework for doing well on a test, but that might just be a difference of culture.

I think you fundamentally don’t understand whatFotheringay-Phipps is talking about because you are viewing it through your own filter.

I think I could say the same about you. Up until this point in your post, you’ve made five references to your own or your children’s experiences to supply context.

Most people would not consider extra homework punishment in and of itself without checking to see whether there was a reason for it- such as low grades. Most people would not consider “low grades” something to be punished for. Now maybe your parents and teacher thought low grades deserved punishment and that extra homework was a punishment, but it’s way more likely that the child-you saw it as punishment and they did not.

Well, adult-me sees it as an unjust punishment, too. And it’s entirely possible that the teacher didn’t think that low grades was something to be punished for, given that they didn’t give others the same extra homework when they did badly, or worse.

Fotheringay-Phipps is talking about the childhood version of “But everyone else was speeding and they didn’t get tickets”. Where the child admits he did something wrong and is only complaining that others did not get punished or were punished less severely. And which doesn’t necessarily even imply that the child feels the punishment itself was unfair or that he was being picked on- only that someone else got away with it, perhaps because 5 people were involved in passing notes, but number 5 evaded detection

I would say your analogy is flawed, given that the “bad behaviour” was low grades, which did not evade detection. So a better one would be, say, five cars blasting past a police car at 100mph in a 50 zone, then a few more doing 70, and then me coming past at 55 and getting stopped and fined on the spot. And then the next day the same thing happens, only I go 45, and I still get stopped and fined again. I would think, in such a situation, a reasonable person would start thinking “You know, I think the cops there might have something against that guy.”

[doreen]

@Revenant_Threshold

To, respectively, single me out for extra punishment and not believe me that it was happening? Yes, I would say so. I experienced the difference in degree of punishment; I was also (and I’d like to think I still am) a pretty truthful person. For them to be right would need me to either be lying, or be mistaken about what was happening; I wasn’t lying, and what was going on was pretty clear.

You don’t need to be either lying or mistaken about the facts. It is entirely possible that you are correct about what is happening ( being sent on errands, etc) and incorrect about the *motivation * (that it is punishment for low grades)

I can certainly understand that to the extent of “I get to not be in the classroom for a short while”, but we’re talking about having to haul things from one place to another; go grab these stacks of books, go grab the overhead projector from another room. Worse for me, though perhaps not for others, was being sent to deliver messages to other teachers; I was shy, and obviously uncomfortable speaking in front of a class, so having to pass on a message in front of another class was not greatly fun for me.

I was talking about being sent to get the overhead projector and hauling stacks of books and delivering messages. I will certainly not dispute that you didn’t like to do these things or that you were uncomfortable - but the mere fact that you don’t like to do something or are uncomfortable doing something doesn’t make it a punishment. Otherwise my employer would be punishing me once or twice a month when I must speak to a group of people . ( and I mean really speak to a group of people,not deliver a message to someone who is speaking to a group of people)

[DSeid]

Returning to the op and a critical look at the study -

Hard to do so well as the actual study is behind a paywall but here is the abstract.

Here’s how I read it.

They identified a group of 6th graders who are very classroom obedient, value teacher attaboys highly, who have at that point higher self-esteem, and who accept without question that hard work is always rewarded and that life is always fair, and compared them to a group that is less obedient in the classroom, who don’t have as high of self-esteem, and, critically, who already question whether or not the world is always a completely fair place.

What course would you predict to see for each group over the next two years?

Well first off it is reasonable to expect minimally some regression to the mean. The higher self-esteem obedient less questioning group will likely drop some to the middle (have a declining trajectory) on self-esteem items and the lower one will likely move up to the middle (have a rising trajectory).

I’d also hypothesize that the kids who at eleven question and doubt more, including have some self-doubt, do so as a reflection of already possessing greater levels of critical thinking skills and greater interest in thinking for themselves rather than accepting teacher proclamations as revealed truth. I would expect that to be a marker of better performance as kids enter middle school and for that matter beyond where the work begins to require more abstract level thinking and greater critical thinking skills.

It also seems pretty self-evident that someone who believes that outcomes are always fair is going to be a bit less likely to advocate for themselves while the student who understands that sometimes things are not fair will be a bit more prepared to identify and point out when unfairness occurs and fight against it.

My WAG is that the same results would be found in a White upper SES High School with long term outcomes. Identify the group who have higher self-esteem and who believe that life is always fair, think of your High School, you can think of who they were, and compare them with a group that is full of doubt, but about themselves and about how fair the world is. Who do expect is more represented as the more successful at the High School reunion many years later?
The world is fairly obviously not always fair. Eleven year olds and older who do not yet see that are likely lacking in the cognitive skills they will need to continue to succeed and will be ill-prepared to metaphorically get back up from the canvas when knocked down.

[Bone]

Full study linked in post #35.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@doreen

You don’t need to be either lying or mistaken about the facts. It is entirely possible that you are correct about what is happening ( being sent on errands, etc) and incorrect about the *motivation * (that it is punishment for low grades)

That would seem to fall under “mistaken”. And I was told that it was about grades (well, marks, as we’d call it here.)

I was talking about being sent to get the overhead projector and hauling stacks of books and delivering messages. I will certainly not dispute that you didn’t like to do these things or that you were uncomfortable - but the mere fact that you don’t like to do something or are uncomfortable doing something doesn’t make it a punishment. Otherwise my employer would be punishing me once or twice a month when I must speak to a group of people . ( and I mean really speak to a group of people,not deliver a message to someone who is speaking to a group of people)

I think that’s possible, but I don’t believe so in my case. For starters - I don’t know the extent to which you’ll take my word on this - I got the very distinct impression that it was maliciously intended. Now, that aside; I’d point to the facts that I was chosen for these things very regularly, far more often than the other kids in my class, and that I was very obviously not comfortable or happy about doing these things. Too, these weren’t necessary tasks; these were easily things that the teacher could have done themselves, and, in many cases, were things that were to no purpose; textbooks going unused, messages being non-urgent or redundant.

To go back to your example, your employer asking you to speak to groups of people once or twice a month would make for a better analogy if it was your employer knowing you hated talking to a group of people, making you do it on a much more regular basis, picking you out for specious reasons from your coworkers to do it, and having the talk end up pointless anyway. I think, in that situation, it would be reasonable to think that your boss had some issue with you. And that’s with you as an adult.

And delivering a message to a class is speaking to a group of people, even if the message is only for one person. Stopping a class in progress results in attention.

[Filbert]

The head teacher at my primary school harassed one student to the extent that a group of parents (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) tried to have her removed from the school.

The poor kid got the blame (as in, got full on, spittle flying, screamed at) for everything that went wrong or broke, even if another child admitted it was actually their fault. She was a really nice, bright, well behaved kid; she just often looked a mess, because she was being brought up by a totally clueless and uninvolved single Dad who’d been a teenager when she was born, and never expected (or really wanted) a child. Her Dad pretty much just left her to look after herself from the age of 4. She used to wash her own clothes by wearing them and having a bath. The kid only avoided being taken into care because the neighbour, whose daughter was a classmate, made sure she was properly fed and at least owned appropriate clothing. It was the neighbour who tried to get the teacher removed, not the girl’s Dad, after her daughter brought home stories…

I mean, I suppose it’s possible that everyone else was mistaken, and the teacher was the only person who could see the horrible chaos this little girl was causing, or, just maybe, teaching is not actually the only profession immune to bullies who pick on the vulnerable.

Regarding the study, it’s not a massive surprise to me; I went to a selective, high pressure, and rather old fashioned girls’ secondary school, where exam results were everything. We were constantly told how important all that was; girls who didn’t get the exam results were quietly ‘encouraged’ to move to other schools, and those of us who made the grade were constantly told how we were the cream of the crop, that we were pretty much going to be running the country after we left. It was one of those schools where crying in the toilets because you only got 95% on a test was totally normal, because stuff like getting an A, not an A+ really mattered, and failing a test was punished worse than fighting.

Spoiler alert: we aren’t running the country.

A lot of my old classmates had serious issues adjusting to life after we left, because it suddenly became very obvious that the narrowly defined success we’d been told was all that mattered was actually pretty much irrelevant in the real world. We were not at all well equipped for the real world. We weren’t able to just breeze into a great job, like we’d been led to expect; all that effort amounted to nothing more than a different letter on one line of an application form that was irrelevant anyway, because they really needed someone with experience.

If it feels like everyone in authority has been lying to you so much and for so long, why should you still care about all the other stuff they said was bad?

I mean, most of us got our act together eventually, but there were a few years there… and one or two suicides.

[DSeid]

@Bone

Full study linked in post #35.

Missed that. Thank you.

So some context.

Largely relatively poorer Hispanic school population in a predominately White area and “significant social/political unrest at the time of data collection concerning policies targeting immigrant families.”

Items included things like agreeing with: “In the U.S., you have an equal chance no matter where you came from or who you are”

Right off, an eleven year old in that sociopolitical context who is accepting that the country is a completely fair place is, who is willing to endorse that specific statement (for example) compared to more skeptical peers, is at best, not paying attention or still very immature and naive.

I cannot find anything in there that compares the absolute scores on self-esteem and behavior at 8th grade between the group with initial higher self-esteem/higher initial system justification and the group with lower of each. It is notable to me that they instead seem to focus exclusively on the trajectory - those initially higher in self-esteem (associated with higher system justification in 6th grade) dropped down and those initially lower went up. Which was higher in 8th grade? I can’t tell and the fact I cannot tell makes one suspect that those who had higher system justification were (surprisingly to me) not lower in 8th grade but instead both had merely regressed to the mean.
The author’s claim that this study provides

… evidence that beliefs about the social system at the start of early adolescence shape trajectories for a range of developmental outcomes among marginalized youth …

seems overstated.

As to how we teach our own children - of color or not, of low or high SES - I think we teach to think critically, including recognizing that this country and the world is a work in progress, not perfect, that unfairness abounds and that we need to alway both question, and work towards redressing what is unfair, whether it is regarding us, ours, or others.

Teachers won’t always grade you fairly. You still work to learn.

[Stringbean]

If the tenets of the study are accurate, couldn’t it just be a correlation, rather than causation? Especially since you are dealing with young children who are undergoing a plethora of physical, emotional, and intellectual changes.

For example, let’s say you compared a group of 11-year-olds who believe in Santa Claus versus a group who don’t. If the relative success of the two groups changes over the course of a few years should we then attribute a belief in Santa Claus as the primary cause?

[DSeid]

@Stringbean

… For example, let’s say you compared a group of 11-year-olds who believe in Santa Claus versus a group who don’t. If the relative success of the two groups changes over the course of a few years should we then attribute a belief in Santa Claus as the primary cause?

A very good analogy as the poorer Hispanic 11 year old who is believing that in “the U.S., you have an equal chance no matter where you came from or who you are” is very likely the same one who also still believes in Santa Clause.

The belief in Santa may not be what is shaping their future trajectory so much as being the eleven year old who is so credulous as to have that belief is a marker for how they will do (or conversely that doubting the Santa story you’ve been told earlier than your peers is good indicator even if at the moment those same characteristics have gotten you in trouble some).

[Urbanredneck]

I would want to look at the school the kids in the study came from and the general attitudes of the teachers.

From my experience many black teachers will reinforce the idea that every white person is out to get them (backed up with plenty of stories). I used to work with several teachers like this.

Also when the kids gave their responses to questions, were those teachers present? Did the kids say things just to please their teachers?