Chapter III: Equality of Educational Opportunity

The wealthy class, owing to inheritance, is always much more numerous than the great men actually engaged at any given time in production • 324

But though inheritance gives a certain permanence to the wealthy class, the families belonging to it are constantly, if slowly, changing, • 325

and new men are constantly forcing their way into it • 326

Indeed the wealth of the country depends on the men potentially great as producers actualising their talents and producing the wealth that raises them • 326

It is therefore obvious that the wealth will increase in proportion as these potentially great men have the opportunity of actualising their productive powers • 327

It is impossible, however, to make opportunities absolutely equal • 328

The question is how near we can approach to equality • 328

In a country where these opportunities have been made artificially unequal there will be room for a great deal of equalisation • 329

But removing artificial impediments is only a negative kind of equalisation • 329

It is probable, however, that for the development of genius of the highest order this is all that is needful, • 330

and will secure the development of all the genius of the highest kind that exists • 331

But genius of a lesser kind, which would else be lost, may, no doubt, be elicited by positive educational help from the State; • 332

though the amount of such genius is overestimated by reformers, because they confuse talents rare in themselves with accomplishments that are only rare accidentally • 332

The latter can be increased indefinitely, the former not • 333

For real productive genius there is always room, • 333

but the economic utility of mere accomplishments is limited by the conditions of production at the time • 333

Thus to produce more possible clerks than are wanted merely lowers the wages of those employed, without increasing the utility of those who are not employed • 334

Still, within limits, educational help from the State does much to increase the supply of exceptional, though not great, talent • 335

But the main difficulty involved in the equalising of educational opportunity is not the production of good results, but the avoidance of bad • 335

The bad results are the stimulating of discontent, not in average men, but in men who are really exceptional • 336

but those exceptional gifts are ill-balanced or have some flaw in them • 337

For if education sets free and stimulates sound intellectual powers • 337

it will similarly stimulate intellects that are not sound, • 338

or wills, with no intellect to match, and will generate a desire for wealth in men who are not capable of creating it, • 338

and thus will merely produce needless misery and mischief • 339

Education, again, stimulates faculties that can really produce exceptional results, but not results that are complete • 339

The progressive struggle requires that the intellects of some should be stimulated, whose efforts fail • 340

But those failures that promote progress are failures that partially succeed • 340

But there are abortive talents which produce failures that have no relation to success. Those talents are purely mischievous; • 341

for example, the failure of the would-be artist, • 341

or that of the man who popularises wrong medical treatment • 342

But the commonest example of this kind of man is the socialistic agitator, • 342

who demands the redistribution of wealth, whilst absolutely powerless to produce it, • 343

and who consequently invents false theories about its production, which do nothing but demoralise those who are duped by them • 343

(though even these theories can be discussed with profit under certain circumstances) • 344

Men like these embody the two chief dangers of the equalisation of educational opportunity, • 345

namely, the rousing in the average man wants he cannot satisfy, and the stimulating of talents that are constitutionally imperfect • 345

The latter of these dangers is the source of the former • 346

It cannot be completely avoided, but the present theories of education tend to heighten, not to minimise it • 346

The current theory that all talents should be developed is false, • 347

so is the theory that all tastes should be cultivated in all alike. The education proper for the rich is not a type but an exception • 347

These false theories rest on the false belief that equal education could ever produce equal social conditions • 348

The majority of each class will remain in the class in which they were born • 348

Only the efficiently exceptional can rise out of their own class, • 348

and it is the ambition of the efficiently exceptional only that it is really desirable to stimulate • 349

The average man should be taught to aim at embellishing his position, not at escaping from it • 349