Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AS AN ALIBI 291
system was known to exist. And the feeling of resentment may be more
rather than less acute just because the individual concerned realizes that
there is some validity in the selection process which has kept him out of
grammar school. In this respect, apparent justice may be more difficult to
bear than injustice. 19
At this point the reviewer takes fright. He regrets that in 1944, when
the Education Act was passed with the approval of all parties, there was
no sociological research to forecast possible developments. He looks
back nostalgically to the good old days when primitive man, regardless of
personal ability, invariably had his clearly defined place in society. (A
highly contestable hypothesis.) And the perplexity of the mid-twentiethcentury
egalitarian who has confused the stagnant equality of primitive
society with progress is seldom so patently revealed as in these words of
the reviewer:
He has emotional security, but no freedom. For us, however, the picture
is reversed. We have struggled out of the close-knit and restrictive pattern of
primitive life and have released our creative faculties from the embrace of
taboo. But by the same token that we have gained mobility we have lost
security. What is the purpose of life, what are we here for, how do we fit in,
what is right and what is wrong? We no longer know. 20
The reviewer speaks of an enormously dangerous transitional stage,
but then goes on, like all egalitarians, to pin his hopes on still more
education, to lead us into an age of mutual understanding and sympathy.
This affords scant consolation and is hardly original.
Equality of opportunity comes to grief because individuals do not all
have the same ability to make use of their opportunities with equal or
comparable success. And this is a more bitter experience than one for
which one can blame others rather than one's self.
To the disappointment of egalitarians, and hence to that of Labour
Party intellectuals in particular, the percentage of working-class children
in grammar schools remained low by comparison with the numerical
ratio ofthe working class to the whole population, even when there
19 D. V. Glass, op. cit., pp. 25 f.
20 A. Curle, op. cit., p. 26.