ABSTRACT
At the time of the French revolution when it first appeared as a structured libertarian and egalitarian idea in modern terms, meritocracy brought at the forefront new promises for mobility of all the ‘citoyen’. It promised the end of reproduction of unjust social inequalities. Education was then and it still is the very locus that should enable each talented citizen, willing to put an effort into his or her education, to be promoted to the deserved (merited) place in society. While it appeared as a promise of formal equality around 1800, it took more than a century and a half before the formal equality of chances to enter education irrespective of social origin came into being. Around that time, at the end of 1950s, Michael Young coined the formula summarising the idea of meritocracy (IQ + effort) and voiced his scepticism concerning the possible domination of a ‘merited class’ while opting for democracy as the way of government in modern societies. While his fear of hegemony of the most talented and the most willing to invest effort in their education was unjustified, another danger related to the idea of meritocracy arose: the idea that we as individuals have to take responsibility for our life trajectories, irrespective of the conditions we came from and live in. With neo-liberal rationality and neo-liberal meritocracy, warnings related to the fact that the socioeconomic status (SES) of a person is critically related to his or her chances to realise one’s potential, and even to develop dispositions in relation to learning and education in general, were put aside and replaced with competitiveness, creativity and excellence as the new discursive practices that signalled individual responsibility for educational attainment labelled as human capital and its use during his or her life trajectory.
