Mastery and Privilege

I think our discussion of privilege and self-efficacy actually relates to our understanding of mastery-oriented education. The American education system prides itself on meritocratic ideals, using tools like testing as a seemingly unbiased measure of academic standard. People can assume that passing classes and acing tests means that a student has mastered the subject content, when it is entirely possible that they have instead mastered the classroom system. Privilege may be a factor in what allows this distinction to be overlooked.

For example, each class has a set of requirements, such as attendance, participation, assignment completion, and test-taking. At the most basic level, it is possible to pass a class by completing these objectives without truly mastering or fully understanding the topics and their implications, thus passing by way of performance goal orientation. This follows an efficiency model, as it can take less effort to simply regurgitate the information that the teacher expects rather than wrestling with the concepts and critically evaluating them. Therefore, this method is often rewarded not only in the academic realm, but also in real-world situations. Efficiency allows for conservation of time and resources that can thus promote productivity for other projects, a mindset and practice highly encouraged in capitalism.

In this case, the external rewards increase an individual’s self-efficacy in mastering the efficiency system, thus achieving success. However, these rewards are disproportionately given when privilege comes into play. Those who are underprivileged in some way and who follow the efficiency method may be deemed as “lazy” and “cutting corners” as opposed to “prolific” and “vigorous”. These people more often may have to prove true content mastery to receive the same perceived merit as their privileged counterparts and thus the same reward. They may also feel less efficacious in their mastery, as they are more often questioned and scrutinized in their fields of expertise.

Especially in light of the recent indictments surrounding money laundering and college admissions, this discussion of privilege, self-efficacy, and mastery needs to be taken further.