RE: My Disadvantages of Being Educated
I've recently read an essay by David Labaree, Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals (1997), which has shed some light on this phenomenon.
The rise of credentialism (where status is valued over learning; evidenced by questions like "will this be on the test?"), also known as surrogate learning, has been hypothesized to come from the dominance of a focus on social mobility over democratic equality and social efficiency. While those who believe education's goal is democratic equality see it as a public good to nurture citizens, and those who believe it to be social efficiency believe it is to create human capital to fill market roles, the dominance of the social mobility narrative aligned with capitalism and meritocracy stresses individual opportunity and treats education as a private good used to put oneself in a higher social position.
You can find more notes on his essay in my recent publication here: https://steemit.com/education/@jerald/competing-politics-behind-the-education-problem
I will check it out. I do disagree that that credentialism is always a function of capitalism. Market roles being filled also include professors, authors and artists.
I don't even believe it has to do with status. Just that the education system was build off the foundation of a factory and industrial based economy. The more skills you learned in a physical field, the more money you made, the higher the rank you had in that industry.
We now have industries based off rejecting this model entirely. I love Nock's views being so far ahead of his peers.