Human Equality and Status

[Niko]

Leading universities are a much sought-after status symbol

human equality and statusThroughout our society today, two powerful sentiments are in tension:

• one is a fundamental belief in human equality
• the other is an urge to distinguish ourselves from other people in some way.

My message to those heading abroad to teach or study is:

Be aware of the tension and decide what you ought to do about it.

Let me begin with the belief in equality. I used to think of equality in almost rhetorical terms. There was equality before the law, and you could see this in operation when some high-profile person was hauled before the courts and packed off to prison.

There was equality of opportunity, and that meant we all had some sort of right to a fair go or a fair start. It wasn't alll that clear what equality of opportunity meant in practice, but we all agreed that it was important.

Then there was equality of status: why should women be paid less than men for doing the same work?

And so on. A fuzzy sense that equality is important continues to run through our culture.

Status seeking is almost the opposite of equality. Does it matter? I think it does. There is a tendency for those who have acquired status in our society to think it comes from their own virtue and from their superiority over others. There is a tendency to shore up that high status by building privileged walls around it.

We see status seeking everywhere: in the flight of parents from public to private schools, in the notion that there are leading universities, in the notion that health and wellbeing are a matter for private choice (meaning for those that have money), that some suburbs are better than others (meaning those houses cost more on average), and so on.

All this is the foundation of privilege, and a good society has little time for privilege. Society has come a long way in the past half-century, and one powerful reason is that we have begun to recognise that every human being has great potential. If teachers and students can keep that realisation in the front of their minds, they may help produce an even better society by 2050. I'd love to be there to see it!

by Don Aitkin.