The principle of meritocracy in education and its current status in the age of neoliberalism: a theoretical and empirical study

本研究的任务是：(1)从社会理论的角度，从根本上重新思考什么是教育中的“贤能主义”；(2)根据社会研究的方法，把握贤能主义原则是如何在教育现状中出现的。在本研究的报告中，通过问卷调查的研究结果，这是关于任务（一）关注的精英教育的现状。本研究于2007年6月至9月，以全国随机抽取的34所学校的全日制高中二年级学生（2475名有有效回复的学生）为研究对象，从实证角度探讨精英教育对儿童和青少年的意识和行为是如何受到教育内外精英教育的调节的。并同意与研究合作。研究提供的结果是广泛的；例如，i)“肯定精英”意识在“等级”较高班级的学生中更为强烈；ii)但与此同时，这种意识在高中生的研究样本中普遍存在，而与班级“等级”的差异无关；iii)另一方面，“肯定平等”意识与“肯定任人唯贤”意识在高中生中普遍存在，且两者之间不存在正相关或负相关关系，而存在去相关关系。

The task of this study is (I) to consider anew what is "meritocracy" in the education fundamentally in the light of social theory, and (II) to grasp how the principle of the meritocracy appears in the current status of education according to the method of the social research.In the report of this study, the result of the research by questionnaires, which is on the task (I) concerned with current status of meritocracy in education, is showed. The research was conducted from June to September in 2007 for the purpose of clarifying empirically how the consciousness and the action of children and the youth was regulated by the meritocracy within education as well as outside of it, targeted at the second grade full-time senior high school students (2,475 with valid responses) of 34 schools, which were extracted at random from the whole country, and were consent of cooperating to the researchThe findings provided from the research are wide-ranging; for example, i) a consciousness with "affirmation of meritocracy" is found more strongly among students belonging to classes higher in "rank", ii) but at the same time, such a consciousness is found generally among research samples of high school students regardless of the difference of "rank" of their classes, iii) on the other side, the consciousness with "affirmation of the principle of equality" is seen widely among high school students none less than that consciousness with "affirmation of meritocracy", iv) in addition, between these two consciousnesses is there not a positive or negative correlation but a decorrelation.