Policymakers framed 1960s poverty as unequal access to skills

Evidence

The popularity of the technocratic-meritocratic perspective can be gleaned from the policy-maker’s reaction to the “rediscovery” of poverty and inequality in America during the decade of the 1960s. Unequal oppor­ tunity in acquiring skills was quickly isolated as the source of the prob­ lem. Moreover, in assessing the efficacy of the educational system, both of preschool enrichment and of other school programs, measures of cognitive outcomes— scholastic achievement, for example— have provided the unique criteria of success. Finally, the recent failure of educational poli­ cies significantly to improve the position of the poor and minority groups has, among a host of possible reappraisals of liberal theory, raised but one to preeminence: the nature-nurture controversy as to the determination of “intelligence.” — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 318

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Jensen/hereditarian IQ controversy of 1969, and to the already-extracted claim that education’s economic function operates through personality formation, not skills. — connects to: Meritocratic theory attributes income inequality to unequal skill distribution. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 316; Financial deregulation reframed poverty as a deficit of individual human capital investment. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 200

Broader Connections

• Financial deregulation reframed poverty as a deficit of individual human capital investment. #complicates (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 200