Making Meritocrats: Curated Inclusion in a California Utopia (Poster 22)

• In Event: Excellence in Education Research: Early Career Scholars and Their Work

Abstract

Notions of merit are at the ideological center of the United States high school. Students ostensibly earn grades, gain access to advanced classes, and achieve admission to college, all on the basis of smarts and hard work. Amid recent explosions in wealth inequality, however, many Americans have grown skeptical about the meritocratic promise of the United States. Between ostensibly meritocratic schools and growing economic inequality, how are students understanding fairness and merit in society? In one idyllic California beach town, high school students believed strongly in the fairness of their high school despite being deeply critical about fairness more broadly in the US society. Through an ethnography of Bonita High School, this study explores how students and educators challenge and reinforce meritocratic ideals in ways that belie simple understandings of meritocratic ideology development in the United States.

Author

• Suneal H. Kolluri, University of California - Riverside