The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy

The Education Myth argues that education is not the only way for Americans to access economic opportunity and that it has been used to choke off social democratic alternatives by political power. This has led to an inequitable economy and a divided political system.

Format: Hardback
Length: 270 pages
Publication date: 03 April 2023
Publisher: Cornell University Press

The notion that education is the sole or best path for Americans to achieve economic opportunity is called into question by The Education Myth. Jon Shelton makes clear that the relationship between education and economic prosperity was not politically inevitable. For instance, public education was promoted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a means of educating citizens in order to participate in democracy. By the 1930s, public education, along with union rights and social security, had become an important part of a comprehensive campaign for social democracy.
Shelton shows that the political influence of the education myth began to stifle powerful social democratic alternatives in the 1960s, such as A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin's Freedom Budget. The nation's political center lacked any realistic proposals to ensure economic security and social dignity for the majority of Americans, particularly those without college degrees. Democrats like Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton initially embraced the education myth, as did Republicans like George W. Bush. As a result, over the past four decades, a profoundly unequal economy and a severely divided political system have emerged.

Weight: 57g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501768149