Democracy and the desire for more education

Greater social equality and civil rights lead to a greater demand for education, as individuals seek to leverage their improved standing in society.

Peter Mandler

Professor of Modern Cultural History

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Peter Mandler

Professor of Modern Cultural History

24 May 2025

Key Points

Democratic systems were developed in many countries throughout the 20th century. Their establishment ushered in a greater demand for education.
The Flynn effect describes the increase in measurable intelligence occurring in developed and developing countries likely to be the result of increased mobility.
Greater social equality and civil rights lead to a greater demand for education, as individuals seek to leverage their improved standing in society.

Our demand for education

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I think there are a few main factors that affect our demand for education. These are prominent circumstances that have affected a large part of the world over the last century. The most obvious is democracy. Democracy arrived in most places at the beginning of the 20th century, and since then it has typically expanded the demand for education.

Initially, this trend began, as the elite classes were forced to concede universal suffrage. At the time, elites needed a way to ensure a ruly and well-behaved electorate. In response to this concern, they implanted schools in every community. As democracy became embedded in societies, the education system began to work for democracy, rather than attempt to control it.

I believe newly and fully democratised populations understand that education is a necessary piece of equipment for citizenship. As such, individuals pursue it up to the age of citizenship, which is usually 18. Regardless, there’s a pretty good correlation between democratising societies and the provision of education.

The effect of increased mobility

In recent history, we live more mobile lives in several regards. We are more physically mobile, detached from the previous generation and the community in which we grew up. We are also detached from the occupations our parents pursued, which is an indication of greater social mobility.

Finally, we also experience what might be called psychic mobility. Psychic mobility relates to our ability to cope with a rapidly changing world that places us in more complicated and challenging environments. Indeed, psychic mobility is particular to modernity. All these types of mobility imply challenges in our everyday life that require a higher level of cognitive performance.

The Flynn effect

The social scientist James Flynn described what’s known as the Flynn effect. The Flynn effect recognises that, over the last century, measured intelligence has risen in developing and developed societies. It seems plausible to me that Flynn’s thesis reflects the demands of the very mobile world in which we live. Sure enough, this world requires a higher level of abstract thought and cognitive development.

Yet, rising to the occasion is no trivial matter. When we are young, we are not very mobile, so the necessary cognitive abilities are not something we can pick up on our own. We need to be prepared to face the real world. This is an essential function that schools fulfil.

Higher cognitive performance

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Furthermore, work is also getting more complicated and requiring higher levels of cognitive performance. This is especially true, as we move away from manual labour in an industrial economy to a post-industrial economy. This new paradigm is sometimes called the knowledge economy. I think this is a single aspect of the demand that modern life places upon us for higher cognitive performance. Indeed, greater trainability is also needed for us to meet changing workplace demands.

These capacities are more important than specific skills. Since our worklife lasts so long, employers need to be able to mould us to meet the demands of the moment. They don’t want us to be occupied with useless expertise, which might have been relevant in 2020 but is entirely useless in 2050.

Employers need us to be flexible and trainable. I believe education provides this ability. While there are ways in which modern work requires specialised education, I think it’s subsidiary to the generalised demands of modern life.

Education and equality

The elite origins of a mass education relied on the notion that the education system was training obedience, loyalty, good conduct and good performance. However, as the citizenry became more confident in wielding power, they realised they didn’t want to be told what to think. Instead, they wanted to be taught how to think for themselves.

In all truth, democracy requires this of every individual. All adults in a democracy must think for themselves. Independent thought requires a higher skill level and more education than, say, rote training.

I think there’s also a relationship between education and equality; that is, most, if not all, democracies are unequal to some extent. They have formal equality; everyone has the same civil rights and the same vote. However, other inequalities are perpetuated by capitalism, the culture or various forms of discrimination.

I believe citizens are highly aware of these inequalities in democratic systems. They can be mitigated, but they can’t be eliminated. I think citizens understand that inequality is a fact of life, and they look to education the same way they look at other welfare provisions; that is, they perceive it as a sort of minimum basic standard. As such, it can provide a functional level of equality by which individuals can exercise their civil rights and prevent de facto inequality from ultimately driving them apart.

Education and civil rights

There is a very famous study conducted by two American economists, described in the book The Race Between Education and Technology. The title sounds as though it’s about how the demands of the workplace drive the need for more education. It covers this to an extent, of course, because this is the conventional view of these economists.

Nevertheless, the evidence they present is very much demonstrative of how, in America, the establishment of equal civil rights led to the demand for more education. As such, the emphasis is not so much on the workplace but on the polity. In the polity, the need for equal rights leads to the demand for education to make those equal rights real.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence the authors present comes from the state of Iowa. In Iowa, social equality and equal rights are relatively well-established at the beginning of the 20th century. This development leads to what is known as the high school movement. Through this movement, communities come to understand that equipping young people with a high school education is the best way to prepare them for the real world.

Iowa is one of the first places where a large proportion of the population begins to receive a full secondary education. The same also occurs about 50 years later in England. This illustrates quite nicely how the establishment of democracy breeds the desire for more education.

Education across generations

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Let’s consider the previous century as a period of accelerating changes and mobility. This raises an interesting generational problem: how do older generations, who haven’t experienced much mobility and don’t have much education, come to understand the need to educate their children? After all, these parents have to invest in benefits they don’t fully understand for the sake of their children.

This issue of an intergenerational difference is an interesting phenomenon. Sure enough, there is likely some evidence that this divide constrains the growth of education in some places. However, I believe this is where democracy plays a role.

Once parents of an older generation get used to being treated as equal citizens, a shift occurs. Even if they have lived customary lives constrained in terms of mobility, the advent of democracy plants a seed in them. They realise that, if they want their children to be fully equal, their children need to be prepared for growth and change. This adaptability requires education and training.

Workplace productivity

There’s not a lot of evidence correlating education to productivity. It isn’t apparent that additional education, even higher education, is tied explicitly to workplace productivity. Most workplace productivity is the result of workplace training. This is true because most jobs are not geared towards specific educational backgrounds.

In Britain, I think 80% of all jobs aimed at university graduates are advertised without a specific specialty in mind. Employers offering these positions are merely looking for the highest performing graduate they can find. They’re not explicitly looking for a graduate in, say, cognitive science or creative arts. Of course, some jobs do require a specific background, but in the modern economy, this is a relatively small proportion.

Employers want someone who has the behavioural characteristics we associate with higher education. They want employees who are conscientious, hard-working, disciplined and so on. They must primarily be able to learn quickly because of the necessary on-the-job training they will receive.

This trend has not just occurred over the last 10 or 20 years. Rather, for generations, jobs have become less geared to specific educational qualifications and much more geared to high levels of general qualifications. After all, the economy is changing quickly and requiring more general knowledge as opposed to specific pieces of knowledge.