This is the Obama Administration's name for its program to reform American education. Really. The Democrats' program suggests a Social Darwinian competition in which there will be winners and losers, and you better be a winner. At least the Republican program, entitled No Child Left Behind, suggested ithat we need to stretch out a hand to those who are losing.
But I think the name can be given to a Democratic program because so many Democrats who make up its policy elite have become so unselfconsciously Neoliberal. 'Race to the Top' just sounds right to them. Don't we all love sports? Doesn't every poor kid want to be a star in the NBA or NFL? Race to the Top--it's supposed to inspire a desire for excellence. But there's a problem in that there's only so much room at the top, and very few of us have the talent to make it there. The top by definition exists because it sits on what lies below it. There is no getting to the top unless you climb over and leave behind those who remain on the bottom and the middle. And who cares about the losers anyway? They had their chance. They deserve what they get, just as I deserve what I got because I'm more talented and work hard at it.
Anyway, I was thinking of this when I read Tom Frank's piece this norming in which he talks about Democrats and Inequality reflecting on Obama's SOTU in which he deflected attention from inequality by focusing instead on "opportunity":
If you’re in the right mood, you might well agree with him. In the distant past, “opportunity” used to be something of a liberal buzzword, a way of selling welfare-state inventions of every description. The reason was simple: true equality of opportunity is not possible without achieving, well, greater equality, period. If we’re really serious about opportunity—if we’re going to ensure that every poor kid has a chance in life that is the equal of every rich kid—it’s going to require a gigantic investment in public schools, in housing, in food stamps, in infrastructure, in public projects of every description. It will necessarily mean taking on the broader problem of the One Percent along the way.
But that was what the word meant long ago. It’s different today. When people talk about opportunity nowadays, they’re often not trying to refine the debate over inequality, they’re trying to negate it. The social function of mobility-talk is usually to excuse inequality, not to change it; to persuade us that the system we have now is fair and even natural—or that it can be made so with a few more charter schools or student loans or something. Because everyone has a chance at making it into the One Percent, this version of “opportunity” tells us, there’s nothing wrong with letting the One Percent hog every dish at the banquet.
The well-known libertarian economist Tyler Cowen, for example, writes in his new book “Average is Over” that we increasingly inhabit a “hyper-meritocracy” in which “top earners” take home more than ever before because, duh, they’ve got the right skills and hence they deserve to take home more than top earners ever have before. The future might look bleak for less-than-top people like you, but if you fall off the ladder of opportunity there’s only one answer: Get used to it.
We're all in a race to the top'. It starts in preschool now. That's our new/old reality. Get used to it.