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  • Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality
  • Rebecca Priegert Coulter
John Marsh, Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality (New York: Monthly Review Press 2011)

The nexus of education, (un)employment, poverty and inequality is well-explored in studies emanating from many fields. Activists and scholars alike have argued for at least a century that the best cure for unemployment is employment, not more education. Unions commonly demand good, well-paying, stable jobs with benefits precisely because they are a bulwark against poverty and mitigate social inequality. In this regard, John Marsh is simply reiterating what is already known, namely that poverty and unemployment are a policy and jobs problem and not issues of education or training. But he does it well and with welcome wit. In the process he demonstrates how politically helpful academic labour can be when it produces an empirically grounded and accessibly written study that addresses the flaws of dominant discourses and offers credible alternatives. Indeed, Class Dismissed models good argumentation both by giving fair coverage to a range of perspectives and by demonstrating how to adequately critique positions that are not supported by the evidence. For this reason, among others, it would make an excellent text for students in sociology of work, sociology of education, labour studies and related courses. [End Page 361]

After beginning with the story of his own personal disillusionment around a community-based university education program for low-income earners and the questions his work in that project raised for him about employment and education, Marsh launches into an examination of the costs of poverty and social inequality in the United States. In narrative and graph formats, he explores the statistical and quantitative data on poverty and unpacks most of the usual, mainstream explanations offered for the existence of social inequality. Because he often references the Gini coefficient in this discussion, a short explanatory appendix on that topic is included. In this first chapter, Marsh also addresses the costs of poverty and draws on research from health, neuroscience and social science to explain why social inequality is damaging to any society.

Marsh then turns to exploring why and how education came to be seen as the way to alleviate poverty and hence social inequality. He is frank in his discussion of the personal benefits that can be found in the education solution, noting that increased education does offer some people a route out of poverty and that increased levels of schooling do tend to pay a dividend to individuals taking that route. Ultimately, however, he illustrates how education is a supply-side solution that does little to attack poverty or social inequality. He argues that the real issue is the failure of political will and suggests that “redistributive tax rates, massive public works projects, a living wage law, or a renaissance of labor unions” (91) would do more to alleviate poverty and hence inequality than any scheme to provide even more educational opportunities.

How then did education come to assume the prominent place it has as the prime answer to questions of economic inequality and unemployment? In two substantive chapters, Marsh traces the development of the education and employment discourse in the United States, showing how key documents shaped political consciousness and policy over time. Noting that educational purpose shifted from the religious to citizenship preparation and then quickly to job readiness and employment, Marsh adopts the position that powerful interests encouraged and supported the educational solution because it did not challenge existing social and economic structures. Indeed, the emphasis on education shifted the blame for poverty and social problems onto individual failings, and reinforced the view that the United States was a meritocratic nation that offered equality of opportunity, primarily through schooling. Through this line of reasoning, unemployment, low wages, and poverty all became attributable to a lack of the right kind of education or to insufficient education.

In his final chapter, Marsh argues that policy levers and approaches other than education should be used to combat poverty. His recommendations include one for a more progressive taxation regime and another for a legislative and regulatory...

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