When reading this article, I was reminded how much I enjoyed the critical and perplexing questions of education and merit, much of which I addressed in my Meritocracy class last spring. Though I agree with certain parts of what Gatto discusses in his article, especially his mentioning Inglis’s “selective function” (37) of schooling, I feel that Gatto has mislabeled and underemphasized the largest outcome of the American education system: the perpetuation of socioeconomic status and the elimination of social mobility. Gatto highlights school as a vehicle which primarily “trains children to obey reflexively” (38). Though schooling does enforce obedience, especially through grading systems, it even more so keeps separated those with high economic capital from those who do not by creating an uneven starting point. Groups with little economic, social, or cultural capital must work much harder to reach the status of which those with a lot of capital began. The grading and process of schooling combine together to identify students with the most perceived “merit.” However, “merit” is socially constructed and defined by those who maintain power, which in turn creates a very real and concerning power dynamic. People who are recognized to not have merit are also made to believe that their lack of it is justified; they may say to themselves that school is not their thing and that it would be in their best interest to redirect their time and energy to something new. Society is then participating in aspects of what Gaventa calls “the Third Dimension” of power politics which is characterized as the “focus upon the means by which social legitimations are developed around the dominate, and instilled as beliefs or roles in the dominated” (Gaventa, 15). Social mobility is eradicated and power is legitimized and perpetuated.