Kirsten Olson

In addition to labeling kids who learn differently as problematic, sometimes defective, most schools classify, track, and categorize students from very early ages. As an abundance of research studies confirm, these classifications tend to become self-perpetuating and self-confirming. My interviewees illuminate the ways in which grades, tests, and opportunities to learn are often arbitrary or related to class, race, and gender. In the supposed meritocracy of schooling, these markers and estimations have profound impact, not just structuring how we fit into the learning hierarchy of an individual classroom, but who we are who whom we believe we will become.

The middle class and upper middle class are highly attached to the institution of school explicitly as a sorting mechanism, as a way of justifying privileges of which middle-class members are already central beneficiaries. These critics suggest that the entire notion of schools as meritocracies actually reifies and reinforces class privilege--making those whom school rewards (those who already have a lot of benefits) feel they deserve the privileges they have.