Education not only promotes social progress, but also social advancement - this is a basic conviction of our social system.

Sociologists call this the "status distribution function" of education.

Of course, people do not miss the fact that there is also great and growing social inequality in German medium-sized society.

But it should be regarded as legitimate because it is the result of equal educational opportunities, which were used differently depending on the individual's talent and willingness to perform.

Germany is a meritocracy and education is the key to success.

In order to believe that, one would not only have to ignore the educational sociological research of the past fifty years.

So when Rolf Becker, Sandra Gilgen and Elmar Anhalt ask in a current study about the actual educational ideas of Germans, this is also a question about the effectiveness of sociological research on the everyday awareness of lay people.

Do people still share the normative self-image of the meritocracy?

As early as 1982, the educational sociologist Heiner Meulemann determined that the expansion of education in the 1970s, of all things, ensured that the population was increasingly critical of the equal opportunities of the education system and thus of the social order itself.

The skepticism about actual equality in the education system came from those cohorts that were themselves shaped by the expansion of higher education.

Becker, Gilgen and Anhalt want to replicate Meulemann's study and use new data from the ALLBUS population survey to find out how West Germans' ideas about education have evolved.

Is the meritocratic performance idea still accepted?

First of all, going beyond Meulemann's analysis, they find that women, in contrast to men, take the view that educational opportunities are socially open to a significantly lesser extent.

But what is decisive is her finding that the younger the cohorts are, the lower the proportion of respondents who still believe in this openness and thus in the inequality-legitimizing function of education to offer equal starting opportunities.

And the larger the proportion of younger birth cohorts that was able to participate in the educational expansion, the more critically the educational opportunities in the cohort sequence are judged.

Despite objectively increased educational opportunities, these are subjectively viewed more and more critically.

The younger cohorts believe less and less that education is the way to success.

Runous realism

Actually, the authors do not want to speculate, but a possible interpretation of their findings would mean that the assessments of future cohorts and birth cohorts born and socialized in Germany would become more and more realistic.

Education is also the ability to reflect on education itself and its value.

Conversely, that would mean that only the uneducated still believe that education enables social advancement.

Finally, according to the authors, the results of international comparative school performance studies such as PISA should have made the public aware of the actual inequality of opportunity in the German education system.

The realism of the younger generation contrasts with the assertions of educational policy that education is the best way to social advancement.

The politically initiated educational expansion should always be understood in the public consciousness as a success of enforced equal opportunities.

Objections to this, such as the very different development of relative educational opportunities in the individual population groups, were not denied, but they were not taken as an opportunity to fundamentally question the effectiveness of the educational system as a ladder of advancement.

Has educational research ruined education in this regard?

Has the constant media criticism of schools and academic education created a realism that whispers to the members of these youngest cohorts that effort is no longer worth it when you come from below?