Jon Shelton, "The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy" (Cornell UP, 2023)

May 17, 2025

Jon Shelton, a professor and chair of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, critiques the prevalent belief in the 'education myth'—the notion that education alone ensures economic success. He traces this idea's origins and its political embrace since the 1960s, culminating in systemic inequalities today. Shelton also explores the historical context of social democracy and how education has shifted from a tool for civic engagement to a means of individual success, impacting labor policies and community values.

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INSIGHT

Education Myth vs Social Democracy

The education myth claims education alone guarantees economic opportunity, sidelining broader social democracy.
This myth assumes skills translate directly to economic value, ignoring structural racial and economic power dynamics.

INSIGHT

Origins of American Public Education

Early American education focused on democratic citizenship, not economic gain.
Horace Mann and others built public education to prepare people for participation in democracy, not for job preparation.

INSIGHT

Wisconsin Idea's Purpose

The Wisconsin Idea promoted universities solving social problems and serving the public good.
Modern university administrations, focused on jobs, have strayed from this foundational public mission.

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The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the only, way for Americans to access economic opportunity. As Jon Shelton shows, linking education to economic well-being was not politically inevitable. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for instance, public education was championed as a way to help citizens learn how to participate in a democracy. By the 1930s, public education, along with union rights and social security, formed an important component of a broad-based fight for social democracy.

Shelton demonstrates that beginning in the 1960s, the political power of the education myth choked off powerful social democratic alternatives like A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin's Freedom Budget. The nation's political center was bereft of any realistic ideas to guarantee economic security and social dignity for the majority of Americans, particularly those without college degrees. Embraced first by Democrats like Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, Republicans like George W. Bush also pushed the education myth. The result, over the past four decades, has been the emergence of a deeply inequitable economy and a drastically divided political system.

Jon Shelton is professor and chair of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. In addition to The Education Myth he is the author of Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order, which was the winner of the International Standing Conference of the History of Education’s First Book Award in 2018. Shelton has also published work in the Washington Post, Dissent, Jacobin, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and other publications. He served as the Vice-Chair of the city of Green Bay’s first ever Equal Rights Commission and sits on the Board of Directors for the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Wisconsin Labor History Society. He also serves as President for Higher Education of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin.

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