Running Head: ZERO SUM GAME 1

Zero Sum Game

Eric Galdamez

CSUDH

LBS 301
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There Will Never Be Balance

Critical Reading Response

Can you imagine a school system in which every student, no matter their social class or

ethnicity, can have an equal opportunity for higher education and successful lives? The

American school system has been working for decades now on ways in which to balance the

educational opportunity for all students. They have created many educational reforms to help

stabilize education but nothing ever changes. Due to the fact of a Zero Sum Game nothing will

ever change. A Zero Sum Game in education is where the distance between the privileged

student and non-privileged student remains the same. As one student advances in education so

does the other. Although the school system tries to bridge the gap they are only maintaining it.

No matter what educational reform gets implemented, the school system will still benefit the

privileged because of the Zero Sum Game.

The American school system was built to benefit the privileged or white since it

was first created. Although some may argue that educational inequality is due to social class and

family background. Others can argue that the schools hold most of the responsibility. Labaree

(2010) states, ever since we created the school system in the nineteenth century, we also created

a school system to distinguish the middle class students from the rest. For as long as we have had

school in the United States it has been set up to make the lower class fail, and middle class

succeed. Knowing the school system was built this way makes it more difficult to grasp the

thought of it changing. When we expanded access to college in the mid-twentieth century, we

funneled new students into the lower tiers of the system and encouraged middle-class students to

pursue graduate study Labaree (2010). This explains where the gap in education began and

since then it has maintained. Yes, they included new students in their educational system, but
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with the idea that they will never catch up to the middle class already concretized.

Although over the past few centuries we have witnessed many students who grew

up in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas graduate from school and become important and

successful people in society, bridging the educational gap still seems impossible because access

to higher education affects those students who are ahead just as much as those students who are

behind. According to Labaree (2010), students of the lower class began to increase their

education to better prepare themselves and get better jobs. But when that happened, the greedy

parents of the privileged students pushed their kids to even-higher levels of education to keep

their position in the social scale just as much as the educational scale. Some will then argue that

it is no longer the schools fault. This isnt necessarily true because if the school system would set

a cap on the educational opportunities in general, all students would be able reach the top and it

will be in a sense fair game for all. Of course this will never happen in the American

educational system and therefore the advantages of one over the other will never decline.

The progressive movement was an educational reform that was implemented in

the American school system. The main purpose of this reform was to convert high schools into

vocational schools. In other words, a school designed to teach you the technical skills needed to

perform a particular job. Although this looked and sounded good, it quickly failed. According to

Labaree (2010), working class consumers demanded access, middle class consumers demanded

advantage, and progressive reformers adapted their vocational high school to accommodate these

market pressures. Even when a good idea comes about that can possibly balance the educational

system, there must always be a reason it remains intact. Teaching every student the trade they

wanted to learn can make landing a job competitive. The white people did not want to have any

part in that, and therefore, made their demands. Their demands were granted and nothing
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changed. In the end, the progressive movement did not have a positive affect on students because

it could not accommodate the thousands of jobs that are out there (Labaree, 2010). So the reform

did not have a positive affect on helping students succeed and it definitely did not help bridge the

gap in education.

In the mid 1950s the American school system began the desegregation

movement. This movement was to bring together students of different backgrounds into the same

school setting. Making education equal for all. It was a big step in the right direction and

integration soon became normal. There were minority students attending the same school and

class as the privileged students. But problems quickly arose when the white students had to

attend schools with the majority of its students being minorities or black. Labaree (2010) says,

any effort to increase opportunity for one group is experienced as a loss of opportunity for

another. White people felt they were losing what had been an advantaged form of education for

their children. This then led on to debates between white and black people where blacks didnt

feel their children needed to be in classrooms with white students to be more successful. This

goes back to being part of the Zero Sum Game where whites feel the need to keep that separation

gap between them and everyone else.

In the end, school reforms have not helped bridge the gap of education among the

privileged and working class but instead have widened it. Some ideas have been good but the

need for separation between whites and minorities has never been greater. This correlates with

the fact that 1% of the population own 99% of the wealth of this country. With 1% being

privileged, and the 99% being part of the working class. What we should have in school is equal

education for all. Where students no matter their skin color of social class have the same

opportunity to land the good jobs out there. The lower class citizens can get all the schooling
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possible but they will never meet the privileged. The only way this can change is if we change

the people that are in charge of the school systems and that is merely impossible, because they

are white.
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References

Labaree, D. (2010). Someone has to fail: The zero-sum game of public schooling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press