Education Isn't the Problem—Inequality Is

The American school system today is an offshoot of an increasingly class-driven society.

Matt Phillips

The Atlantic - Dec 3 2014

Since its birth, the United States has always defined itself as an egalitarian meritocracy, fundamentally distinct from the class-ridden societies of Europe.

And at times, this has been true. On the eve of the country's Revolution, the income distribution of American colonists was far more equal than it was of those of Great Britain. “Indeed, New England and the Middle Colonies appear to have been more egalitarian than anywhere else in the measurable world,” wrote economic historians in a 2012 paper. (To be clear, it’s difficult to consider a slave-holding society egalitarian at all. It was brutally unequal. But from an income-distribution perspective, American colonists—meaning white men—were better off than their counterparts in Europe.)

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