Ireland's 30,987 Traveller population was officially recognised as an ethnic minority on 1 March 2017. It was the culmination of a long campaign by Travellers to have their identity, culture and unique social position recognised by the Irish state as constituting a separate ethnic group. Public recognition was a mark of respect towards an ethnic minority that has long experienced discrimination and racism in Irish society. While it was symbolically a historic moment, it did not resolve the problems of poverty and social inequality that are at the core of the marginalised status of Travellers in Ireland. Nor did recognition as a minority ethnic group represent a qualitative change in the Traveller community's social status. Travellers and Roma continue to experience discrimination and racism in their everyday lives, as the comment by Maria Quinlan (following) clearly illustrates. There are no official statistics regarding the number of Roma in Ireland but the population is estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000 people.

The president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, in a message for Traveller and Roma Day, 8 April 2021, declared:

Maria Quinlan (2021: 60), in a report entitled Out of the Shadows, quotes ironically:

Parental attitudes and support for education in the home are often posited as key factors in educational outcomes and access to higher education (Kirk et al, 2011). Moreover, since the late 1980s, there has been an increased outsourcing of educational learning to the home (Buckingham and Scanlon, 2003) and an expectation that working-class parents will take on responsibility for reversing educational inequality (Reay, 2017). International research has explored parents’ orientations to further and higher education and how the nature of parental involvement can vary significantly depending on socio-economic background (Ball et al, 2002a; Irwin and Elley, 2011 and 2012). In their research on ethnicity, social class and participation in higher education, Ball et al (2002a) found that college-educated parents are able to mobilise various forms of support and information and are directly involved in choice-making, for instance in making visits to universities and commenting on university application forms. Similarly, Crozier et al (2008) argue that parental knowledge and social networks contribute to a sense of ‘university entitlement’ among middle-class young people, which is largely absent in the case of their working-class counterparts (see also Evans, 2009). A number of studies indicate that while working-class parents value higher education and often have high expectations for their children, their efforts to support them are hampered by unfamiliarity with college requirements, concerns about affordability and limited awareness of financialaid opportunities (Ball et al, 2002a; Kirk et al, 2011). On the other hand, Irwin and Elley (2011), while acknowledging the links between social class and familial orientations to higher education, caution against overstating the internal homogeneity of middle-class and working-class experience. Studies in the US and the UK have highlighted the fact that parental orientations to education can vary within, as well as across, classes, and can change over time, in response to a number of factors (see Goldenberg, 2001; Mistry et al, 2009; Irwin and Elley, 2011 and 2012).

Bourdieu's model has been an influence on the analysis of differences in parenting styles between social classes. As sociologist and educationist, Annette Lareau (2011: 361), puts it:

The paradox of education and freedom

Paulo Freire (1972), in Cultural Action for Freedom, addresses the relationship between the oppression of the poor and the domination of power elites in society. In Freire's mind, education is freedom. Cultural Action for Freedom raises fundamental questions about the meaning of freedom and the role of education in the cultural empowerment of the silent masses of oppressed people in a divided world. Education in Freirean theory and praxis is a narrative of personal, cultural and social liberation. But there the complexity begins, as we have noted already in relation to access inequality, affirmative action and widening participation. Non-financial forms of wealth, available to the privileged affluent citizens in a meritocratic society – through unequal access to the acquisition of cultural capital and education credentials – empower individuals, define personal identity, promote self-esteem and embed in the public mind the myths of equality of opportunity and social mobility as truths. In a democracy we call it freedom.

Freedom is not available to everybody, however, at least not equally in democratic societies. In authoritarian regimes, such as present-day Afghanistan, there is little or no freedom for women, which includes the denial of education. Afghanistan is a traditional society under religious hegemony that favours gender separation at great cost to women's rights. Access to education for Afghan women is highly constrained because it potentially liberates women to be free citizens with equal rights and opportunities to their male peers. We are reminded of Freire's dictum about the importance of critical literacy as a guarantor of freedom. At the core of this political struggle about women's access to education, labour-market participation and civic activism in Afghanistan is the right to think and express an opinion of one's own, which is as important as the right to breath and food security for all people as human beings.

This chapter explores a competitive education system, where class, culture and wealth largely control access and progression on the ladder of opportunity in a meritocratic society, and asks who gets up the ladder, who is left behind and why. What are the implications for democratic and personal freedom? Is the popular belief in social mobility valid? The chapter argues three points.

Hierarchy and privilege in education: an old story in new language?

Anya Kamenetz (2022) observed: ‘For the majority of human history, most people didn't go to school. Formal education was a privilege for the Alexander the Greats of the world who could hire Aristotles as private tutors.’ Aristotle (384–322 bce) is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers in human history. His thinking continues to shape our social and educational world views over two millennia later. In modern society what is called ‘the invention of childhood’ has made public education at primary and secondary levels compulsory up to the mid-teens (Aries, 1973). But at least half the Western population are left behind when it comes to participation in higher education, creating a new form of stratification in society that reflects the durability of hierarchical classical social and cultural attitudes towards access to the knowledge.

Meritocracy during modernity has replaced aristocracy in the perpetuation of an elite society, creating a conflict with the core republican values of liberty, equality and solidarity, which are the foundation principles of modern democracy. Access programmes help to redress educational inequality, but they do not fundamentally change the social structure and meritocratic culture that characterises higher education in an elitist world. As one former disadvantaged student, who achieved a PhD, has asserted (The Irish Times, 18 September 2021):

Widening participation in higher education is arguably the greatest challenge facing democracy in building a ‘knowledge society’ during the 21st century. The renowned Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire explains why: ‘Education … is the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world’ (CivicEducation.org, 2021). Professor Linda Doyle (Provost, Trinity College Dublin) has stated, ‘I think access and excellence are not opposing things’ (Doyle, 2021).

The slogan ‘Equality of Opportunity’ offers a starting point for a discussion of the asymmetrical relationship between education and social equality that has divided society and endangered democracy. It evokes a policy paradox that has created a ‘left-behind’ class; the members of which, to paraphrase Robert Putnam (2000), have been consigned to ‘bowl alone’ in the social wilderness of disadvantaged communities. The ‘left-behind’ live precarious lives located on the periphery of post-industrial society. These largely forgotten people are a universal social phenomenon across the cities of Europe and North America, as deindustrialisation hollows-out the traditional working-class in Western society. The ‘left-behind’ are problematised in the media as a marginalised group that has failed to engage constructively with economic change in a globalised world. They are in social reality victims of poverty, discrimination and social exclusion.

That is the sociological approach adopted in this book to an important and complex equality issue. It goes to the core of the cultural and economic context of social life in Western civilisation. The French public intellectual and internationally renowned sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) observed: ‘Sociologists are in a very rare position. They are unlike other intellectuals, since most of them know in general how to listen and to interpret what is said to them, to transcribe and transmit it’ (Bourdieu and Grass, 2002: 68).

The connection between democracy and education is a cornerstone of Western civilisation, as the philosopher and education reformer John Dewey (1859–1952) has pointed out, calling education ‘a necessity of life’. Dewey, in his 1916 book Democracy and Education, equated education with life itself, which is diminished by its absence. Each generation is challenged to build education anew, as if reinventing the world. It is, as Dewey (1916: 1) put it, ‘the renewal of life by transmission’. In the era of the ‘knowledge economy’, which seeks to instrumentalise higher education, Dewey's humanistic vision is challenged by neoliberalism representing a return to market values, social discredit and individual responsibility in a globalised world.

This book sets out to explore the relationship between the global and the local through the prism of educational disadvantage in territorially stigmatised communities.

Life and destiny are largely determined by birth and social class position, as Salman Rushdie (1981: 141) contends in his Booker Prize-winning magical realist novel Midnight's Children: ‘All games have morals, the game of Snakes and Ladders captures as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb a snake is waiting just around the corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate.’ The novel is a loose allegory based on events coinciding with Indian independence in 1947 and demonstrates the impact on children born at that moment in history.

Those who experience disadvantaged childhoods find themselves locked into a world dominated by poverty, discrimination and exclusion from which it is very difficult to escape. Education purportedly provides the ladder of opportunity to an autonomous and prosperous life, but participation is already constrained for young working-class people and marginalised ethnic minorities by a lack of what Pierre Bourdieu has called cultural, social and economic capital. Bourdieu (1973: 60) argued that the main function of education is the cultural and social reproduction of power relationships and the maintenance of privilege and social hierarchy across the generations:

DEIS schools seek to compensate for often invisible inequalities hidden in divergent expectations, cultural codes and popular vernacular shared meanings. Disadvantage is also visible in the material poverty of children's lives, where every day is a struggle for existence, including adequate nourishment and food security. At the core of educational inequality is the class system based on a binary between privilege and disadvantage that has both objective and subjective dimensions.

Pierre Bourdieu, at a conference in Grenoble in December 1997, delivered a paper entitled La Precarite est aujoud hui partout, in which he identified alienated youth as ‘the precariat’, recognising the vulnerability and support needs of this marginalised group.

The university in the knowledge economy

Pierre Bourdieu (in a televised conversation with the writer Gunter Grass) described the complexity of the times we live in and the challenges involved in unravelling their political meaning:

Later in their conversation, Bourdieu dismissed his critics as ‘dinosaurs’ (Bourdieu and Grass, 2002: 65). Where does public education and the role of the university in civil society fit in this changed neoliberal cultural landscape, called the ‘knowledge economy’? The Irish president, Michael D. Higgins, a distinguished public intellectual and social scientist, has pondered the future role of the university: ‘Are the great universities of the world, rather like the stones of monastic sites visited today, to become like them in time, merely tourist attractions of the future’ (The Irish Times, 8 June 2021). We are living through challenging times for higher education in the 21st century that will test the institutional sustainability of the university.

Public education encompasses education funded by the state, democratically accountable to the public and free and accessible to everybody. It is normally secular in ethos. As a cornerstone of an ethical civil society, public education is an embattled concept in a neoliberal society, where culture wars – between secular and traditional religious values – increasingly threaten the independence of schools to teach about diversity (for example Black history) and human rights. Books in school libraries are being banned – reminiscent of past cultural intolerances in Europe, such as book burnings in Nazi Germany. The American Library Association has stated that, in 2022, a record 1,269 demands were made to restrict or ban books and other materials in schools and libraries, up from 156 in 2020 (Los Angeles Times, 23 May 2023). Florida has passed the Stop Woke Act, seeking to curtail instruction in historic human-rights violations against minorities, such as slavery.

The ‘college doesn't matter’ meme

The meme that ‘It doesn't matter whether you go to college’ is commonplace among sceptics of the value of widening participation in higher education. It is predicted by historian Peter Turchin (2023) that ‘elite over-production’ of degrees may cause future social and political instability, because there are not enough high-status positions to satisfy graduate demand. The Wall Street Journal reported (Adamy, 2023): ‘An overwhelming share of Americans aren't confident their children's lives will be better than their own, according to a to a … poll that shows growing scepticism about the value of a college degree and record low levels of overall happiness.’ The abolition of free tuition in many jurisdictions, leading graduates to incur massive debt from student loans, has combined with spiralling mortgage costs, to create a bleak future for many graduates and a challenge to intergenerational justice. Jokes about BA graduates working in fast-food outlets abound and reinforce prejudice against studying the humanities, which, according to US data, is in sharp decline (Heller, 2023).

The financialisation of higher education and the resulting marketisation of degrees, as costly commodities out of the reach of many, has fed this cultural scepticism. It is a long way from the original high-minded humanist mission, advocated by philosopher and founder of the Humboldt University in Berlin, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), challenging the university to bring enlightenment to the world. Von Humboldt believed that higher education enabled students to become autonomous individuals and citizens, anticipating democratic society. Undoubtedly, no amount of education can be a substitute for good social skills and common sense. Yet, Socrates’ (470–399 bce) powerful statement ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ resonates down the millennia as part of his monumental intellectual legacy to Western humanism.

A primary degree offers a foundation for self-improvement, personal empowerment, intellectual awakening and human flourishing. Education is, as Nelson Mandela (1995: 194) asserted, ‘the great engine of human development’. It also brings enhanced self-esteem, career advancement and greater knowledge and social equity. These are the intangible benefits of higher education.

This book is based on a sociological analysis and policy discussion of educational stratification, meritocracy and widening participation. The theory of Pierre Bourdieu has been particularly helpful in illuminating our analysis, notably his concept of cultural capital. His intellectual legacy has transformed understanding of educational inequality and its complexities.

Our study is also informed by empirical research based on the experience and aspirations of students, parents, teachers and youth and community workers living and working in disadvantaged areas and communities in the European Union (Ireland). The participants’ voices contextualise the profound issues at stake, which are global in scope.

The analysis takes place at a time when major changes are occurring globally in post-industrial society, which have produced new forms of labour based on educational attainment, new identities – the appearance of a ‘left-behind’ class – and changed political allegiances – the emergence working-class conservatism. The precariousness of life for working-class and ethnic young people in the gig economy is the devastating social reality of our times. It is potentially returning social relations to the inequalities of Victorian society, as the safety net of the welfare state is gradually dismantled. In this closing chapter we address the future of education through the prism of transformative change and what it would look like in a world liberated from Aristotle's hierarchical prescription for society.

The symbolic and material treatment of young people in post-industrial society reflects broad social and cultural shifts placing education at the centre of youth policy. While these changes have transformed the lives of many young people for the better, others have been left behind. This has created a potentially dangerous aspirational-achievement gap in global society. For disadvantaged working-class young people, biographical choices, lifestyles and consumption are limited and identities destabilised by precarious lives. Poverty and marginalisation constrain their lives and generate a sense of powerlessness, social discredit and hopelessness, leaving them viewing themselves as ‘minor citizens’ (Powell et al, 2012). Higher education has emerged in this new social order as a pivotal societal influence in terms of the pursuit of social equality and human flourishing. It offers new grounds for hope for many young people, but does it pass the social justice test?