Is meritocracy really an unsurpassable horizon? ? By conducting an investigation into students’ representation of it, sociologist Elise Tenret notes a general skepticism concerning academic meritocracy.
Merit is one of those notions that is both vague and consensual. Without always being able to give a clear and definitive definition, or, rather, by perpetually reformulating it according to moods and occasions, social actors generally agree to find virtues in it. How can we indeed question this common sense idea according to which efforts and talents must be fairly rewarded? ? It would therefore be necessary to admit the existence of a sort of enthusiastic adherence of individuals to this principle of justice. In any case, this is the bet made by a certain sociological tradition. From the end of the 1960s, Bourdieu and Passeron made the perfect belief of agents in the ideology of merit (or the gift) the cornerstone of social reproduction: merit, precisely because it comes to no one idea of criticizing its merits, makes it possible to transform initial social differences into legitimate inequalities. Here, therefore, the attachment to merit is a real working hypothesis, moreover than an object of study ; it is more presupposed than questioned.
It is a resolutely opposite theoretical attitude which is at the foundation of Élise Tenret’s work. The merit – so to speak – of this book, resulting from his thesis defended in 2009, is in fact to consult the actors themselves, without presuming anything about the intensity of their confidence in meritocracy. The author reasons based on hybrid empirical material: quantitative data (766 questionnaires collected from first-year higher education students, distributed across ten sectors) and complementary qualitative data (semi-structured interviews with young people of preparatory classes for the grandes écoles) which form a coherent and effective methodological set for examining the ambiguities of students’ adherence to merit.
The success of merit
If merit is acclaimed, at least in appearance, it is above all because it presents itself as a miracle solution to the contradictory equation of democratic societies. The latter admit, by nature, equality in right of all. Yet, by necessity, a hierarchy of do is inevitable. The fundamental problem of political philosophy in democratic societies, early mentioned by Tocqueville, is therefore to reconcile a de jure initial equality with a de facto inequality of arrival (inequality of social positions). In this sense, merit may have appeared as an appropriate principle of justice since it allows, at least officially, to align the chances of success and to allow fair competition for the most prestigious places to take place. Aside from chance, no other principle of justice allows this feat to be achieved.
To this kind of “ social function » of merit, a function “ cognitive ” Or “ psychological » (in the words used by the author, p. 26). Élise Tenret, through a very clear review of social and cognitive psychology work on the issue, shows the reasons for a strong internalization of meritocracy by individuals. Individuals would intuitively reason more from internal explanations (that is to say explanations attached to individuals) of behaviors than from external explanations (explanations attached to contexts). This is what we call “ the fundamental attribution error ”, according to which it appears, for example, more natural and “ comfortable » to locate the origin of academic failure or success in the qualities of individuals (work, effort, innate abilities) than in the social conditions of education (role of the social environment of origin, cultural arbitrariness of the school etc.). The meritocratic system therefore resonates with the spontaneous ways of thinking of individuals, an additional reason for its non-contestation.
Finally, the merit owes much of its recognition to its double polysemous and abstract character. Because he is “ master key », individuals always adhere, in one way or another, to one of its facets. Merit also has the advantage of being a concept before being a reality, its concretization is vague and difficult to evaluate, and we therefore rather remember its intellectual purity, always heroic. It is thus, according to the author, “ a virtuality never found wanting » (p. 34).
An imperfect adherence to meritocracy
Merit therefore appears to be an unsurpassable horizon that would not suffer from any discussion. By giving students a voice, the first lesson of this book is to nuance this vision. It is possible to distinguish two main types of questions asked to students in the survey. The first are positive: it involves understanding the students’ conception of what merit is (for example “ Do you think that at school, students are rewarded for their efforts? ? “). The second are normative and make it possible to identify students’ preferences for certain models of social justice (for example “ Is it normal for a more qualified secretary to be better paid than another? ? “).
If it had to be said in a few words, the main observation made by Élise Tenret is that of a skepticism shared by students with regard to meritocracy. They generally agree to deplore the inability of the diploma to validate the academic skills of individuals. Certain non-academic qualities (moral, social, intellectual or practical qualities) are also very randomly translated by academic results. School verdicts, although at the heart of French meritocracy, should therefore not, according to students, play such a powerful role in determining social destinies. This analysis then echoes recent work which shows the strong influence of the diploma on professional careers in France: students seem very aware of the social justice problems that this poses.
The proponents of this criticism of the diploma are first and foremost students in short, professional courses (BTS And IUT), who regret a meritocracy that is too imbued with academicism and ineffective in promoting the professional skills of individuals. Converselywe observe a more pronounced support for academic meritocracy among students in preparatory classes. Although forced to an incessant “ rhetorical gymnastics » (p. 103) embarrassed to find an acceptable compromise between these two things a priori contradictory that are family cultural heritage and merit, young people in preparatory classes unsurprisingly demand a meritocracy through school. The diploma, what it validates, the signals it gives about the value of individuals are less contested in prep than in other higher education sectors.
As we see, the differences in adherence to academic merit can be explained well by the courses followed by the students (although it is, as the author points out, impossible to know if there is a specific effect of the sector or if the differences observed are more simply attributable to the public themselves). This is due, at least in part, to the teaching content provided in the different sectors. We can indeed distinguish the contents at “ socializing effect » contents to « liberating effect “. By default, school socializes with meritocratic ideology. Certain sectors, marked by selectivity (and in particular the preparatory classes for the grandes écoles) forcefully spread the meritocratic message. But conversely, Élise Tenret underlines the fact that students in human and social sciences fields, because they receive teaching “ liberator », tend to be more critical of the effectiveness or benefits of academic meritocracy. The relationship between level of study and belief in meritocracy is therefore not trivial. The school obviously transmits a belief in its selection model, but at the same time, generates through certain teachings a criticism of this model.
Ultimately, students embrace the idea of merit in its most abstract contours, but are also aware of the obvious limitations of this model of social justice. The diploma only very imperfectly reflects the academic qualities that it claims to represent (work and will in particular). It also says nothing, according to the students, about the qualities required in the professional world. It is therefore an insufficient measure of merit. The criticism of merit sometimes receives the complicity of the educational institution itself which, through its contents “ liberators » thwarts the students’ perfect internalization of the logic of merit. In short, “ the acceptance of educational hierarchies as a foreshadowing of social hierarchies is therefore not as massive and unconditional as Bourdieu and Passeron’s theory suggested. » (p. 134).
Discussion and extensions
Fruitful work has the ability to spark discussion. In this regard, it seems interesting to us to raise two questions which should be read more as avenues for extension than as challenges. Firstly, after reading the book, it probably seems appropriate to consider studying the representations of merit elsewhere than at school. In fact, since merit is this operator of correspondence between academic efforts and talents on the one hand, socio-professional positions on the other, why fix the sociologist’s gaze on school alone ? Why not take an interest in this more natural place for the expression of merit which is professional integration, a real interstice between school and work ? In fact, forbidding yourself from leaving school means taking the risk of some practical problems (which the author does not fail to point out): how to question students about the experience of downgrading when they themselves do not have not yet been classified » ? The real test of social classification, the one where the proper functioning of meritocracy is revealed, is entry into employment. However, students, by definition, are still kept away from it and the reasoning they adopt about it can then be victims of prenotions which often structure discourse. Questioning the representations of merit among job-seeking graduates could add to what is missing from student discourse and in this sense prove beneficial.
Secondly, once the multiple cracks in the students’ belief in meritocracy were highlighted (since this is the main result of the survey), we would have liked to understand what the social consequences could be. Why is it that a growing number of students are now legitimately asking themselves this question: “ what’s the point of being a graduate ? » The author briefly mentions “ a potentially pathogenic situation » in conclusion. But what pathologies are we talking about? ? How does this malaise really manifest itself, of which the crumbling of support for meritocracy is a symptom? ? Since Tocqueville, we have known how the feeling of frustration is growing in a society which no longer rewards what it had announced. Recently, Camille Peugny showed that the consequences of downgrading were reflected, among other things, in the rise of political extremism. In the same way, it seems legitimate to ask what the effects of widespread distrust of the meritocratic system could be.