The Education Trap: Schools and the Remaking of Inequality in Boston

Groeger, a professor of history at Lake Forest College, debuts with an incisive reconsideration of the relationship between education and socioeconomic inequality. Complicating the popular notion that education is the best means to improve social mobility and increase wages, Groeger takes Progressive-era Boston as a case study in how “educational achievement (or lack thereof) became a new way of explaining and justifying the wealth of some and the poverty of others.” Increased access to education was intended to mitigate class divisions reinforced by the informal social and family networks most people relied on to find employment, Groeger explains, but the underdevelopment of vocational training programs meant that recent immigrants and African Americans got stuck in low-wage service and manual labor jobs. Groeger also looks at how an influx of educated women and second-generation immigrants into sales and clerical jobs sparked a backlash among upper-class Bostonians, who used “advanced education credentials” (i.e., diplomas from elite universities) to limit access to the highest-paying white-collar jobs. Combining fine-grained census data with testimony from workers across a wide range of fields, Groeger makes a persuasive case that education is not necessarily the “great equalizer” it’s often touted to be. Policymakers, economists, and education reformers will want to take note. (Mar.)