Opportunity Country (Loewen)
Provide instances of how American history textbooks reinforce the notion that America is the Land of Opportunity.
Assuming Loewen is true regarding the “mythical” nature of content in high school history textbooks, what role can these myths play in American society? What are the possible dysfunctions?
Based on your reading this week or your personal experiences, how else do schools promote social class systems? Pay close attention to how access to education may strengthen class structure throughout the epidemic.
Overview
The United States is renowned as “the country of opportunity.” However, whether it is deserving of its reputation has gotten much too little scrutiny. Instead, we appear to be entranced by income distribution figures that suggest that earnings are less equally divided than they were 20 or 30 years ago. In 1973, the richest 5% of all families earned 11 times as much as the lowest 5%. They had nearly 20 times as much by 1996. However, we should be concerned about more than just income distribution. That distribution is likewise produced by the system.
Indeed, I would argue that it is impossible to measure the fairness of any given distribution without first understanding the rules of the game that gave rise to it.
Consider a society in which salaries were as uneven as they are in the United States, but everyone had an equal chance of obtaining any given income—in other words, a perfectly impartial lottery. Although some, particularly risk-averse individuals, may recoil at the idea of losing and want for a more equal set of possibilities a priori (as most notably stated by John Rawls), others may relish the opportunity to excel. But—and this is crucial—no one could claim that they didn’t have an equal chance of succeeding. As a result, the perceived fairness of the process is vital, and the rules determining who wins and who loses are just as important.
When discussing this topic, we frequently use the phrase “equal opportunity,” but we rarely consider what we truly mean by “opportunity,” how much of it we have, and what we should do if it is scarce. Instead, we are witnessing an increasingly sterile debate over economic equality. One side advocates redistribution of current earnings by more taxes on the rich and increased income assistance for the poor. The opposing viewpoint contends that inequality represents disparities in individual aptitude and effort and, as such, is a driver of stronger economic growth as well as appropriate reward for uneven work and skill.
