‘To assign people their place in society’: School grades and the quantification of merit

Abstract The political ideal of meritocracy has increasingly come under attack, but continues to figure centrally in the national identity of many self-declared liberal democracies, including Germany. A question which remains underexplored is where and how meritocratic thinking becomes ingrained in individuals to account for its pervasive appeal. This paper argues that the school grade plays a pivotal role. Ethnographic fieldwork in a German comprehensive school revealed that students consistently defended grading even though they often received very low grades themselves. The pupils’ arguments evoked core meritocratic motifs of betterment, hierarchy and social ascent. In order to explain this finding, grades are situated in a wider theory of quantification, arguing that it is in their capacity as numbers that grades encourage meritocratic thinking.


Introduction
Meritocracy is one of the most widely endorsed and powerful political ideals of the current day (Littler, 2018).The term can be loosely translated as the 'rule of the best' and revolves around the idea that within a given society, individuals should all have the same starting chances in the pursuit of success, status, and wealth, rather than being unfairly (dis)advantaged by ascriptive factors such as their socio-economic background, ethnicity or gender.In its most wellknown form, meritocracy today entails that those who combine talent with effort should 'rise to the top' (Littler, 2018, p. 1).The meritocratic ideal is woven deeply into the way many of us think about fairness, justice and desert.In Germany, the corresponding calls for equality of chances, as well as the importance of Leistung (performance) echo from the statements of previous chancellor Angela Merkel and her successor Olaf Scholz (see for example Oltermann, 2021).In recent years, however, the meritocratic ideal has come under attack, notably from within the academy.Scholars have, for example, attested to the inequality which is licensed in the name of merit, and the false promises for upward social mobility it can promote (Dench, 2006;Karabel, 2005;Littler, 2018;Sandel, 2020).Whilst critical conceptual awareness is on the rise, robust empirical research on meritocracy is a fairly recent phenomenon (Castillo et al., n.d.).Particularly the question where and by which means meritocratic thinking is learned and corroborated to account for its pervasive appeal remains underexplored (Mijs, 2016, pp. 27-29).The school is a promising site to pursue this question for it is an institution which seeks to prepare young people for life in a given society and thus acts as a mediator for the latter's values.
Many scholars have argued that the education system is indeed essential to meritocracy (Bloodworth, 2016;Markovits, 2019), but studies addressing the underlying mechanisms in detail are scarce (Darnon et al., 2018, p. 530).This paper illustrates that a specific technology plays a central role in the perpetuation of meritocratic thinking: the school grade.The work is based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a disadvantaged German comprehensive school and offers two main contributions.Firstly, on an empirical and analytical level, this paper illustrates that the school grade is a powerful mediator of meritocratic values.The analysis takes its departure from the finding that the vast majority of my informants, students between the ages of 10 and 20 fiercely defended school grades, even when they had very low marks themselves.The students advanced a number of arguments in favour of being graded, notably that marks are needed for (i) personal feedback, (ii) to organize society, and (iii) to survive and get the good things in life.I show that in their defence of grades, my informants evoke the core meritocratic motifs of betterment, hierarchy and social ascent.
The second contribution of this paper is theoretical in nature.I situate the grade in a broader theory of social quantification, that is the numerical expression of human behaviour, characteristics or performance.I argue that quantification not only lends itself well to codifying the meritocratic ideal, but can also evoke it in its own right.In the final part of this paper, I discuss Noëlle Rohde: 'To assign people their place in society' 507 the implications of the findings for research on education and meritocracy, as well as for quantification studies.

Ethnographic context and educational injustice
The ethnographic fieldwork informing this paper was carried out in a German comprehensive school over a period of 12 months.I accompanied several selected classes of different ages through their daily school life to explore the effects of 'being quantified' through the school grade.Besides on-going participant observation in class and during numerous additional events, I made extensive use of qualitative interviews with students, but also with parents and teachers.
The German school system is an intriguing context for this research, as it heavily quantifies its attendants through gradesbeginning in primary school when pupils are aged around nine.In secondary school, students receive between 100 and 120 grades per year 1 and, because oral participation in class is marked too, essentially every day of school 'counts'.The grading scheme encompasses six numbers, each of which can be modified with a plus or minus.The grade 1+ constitutes the highest possible achievement, followed by a 1, 1-, 2+ and so on, down to a six.
Comprehensive schools are a type of secondary school, attended by students roughly between the ages of 10 and 20.While the comprehensive offers all high-school diplomas, including the A-level equivalent (Abitur), those students with the highest grades in primary school tend to go on to the more prestigious Gymnasium instead.Among my informants, the comprehensive was thus often considered 'second best' and had a distinctly lower status in their eyes than the Gymnasium.The fieldsite school was a sizeable institution, housing approximately 1,200 students and 120 teachers.It was located in a little reputable area of an otherwise economically strong, medium-sized city in the north-west of Germany.In terms of the student body, the school was characterized by a great deal of diversity.The majority of students came from families with what would be considered a low socioeconomic status (SES).Many of the pupils lived in flats in the area surrounding the school, locally associated with poverty, crime and 'migrants'.The parents of this group of students were often either without paid work or had lower status professions such as bus-or lorry driver, mail carrier, cleaner, factory worker or cashier.As a result, many of the students had experiences with precarity or economic deprivation and grew up in households with little formal education.However, not all of the students fell into this category.Perhaps because of its historic commitment to egalitarian ideals (Heeren, 2019;MSB NRW, 2019), the German comprehensive school also appeals to some higher SES families.A minority of students had parents who worked as nurses, freelancers and business owners, (head) teachers, architectural draftsmen or dentists.The level of education in these families was correspondingly higher.
Variety in terms of nationality was also large, the school being attended both by German students and those with a migration history.Pupils whose parents had been born in Germany learned alongside recently arrived refugees from Syria or Afghanistan, first-generation migrants from Iran or Lebanon, and second-or third-generation Turkish-Germans, Polish-Germans and Russian-Germans.Few of the students I encountered received consistently high grades; for the majority, low or very low grades were commonoften as a direct or indirect consequence of their socio-economic background.
The phenomenon that a child's degree of school success is influenced by their SES is referred to as educational injustice (Bildungsungerechtigkeit) and is wellresearched.Social injustice in general is on the rise in Germany.Poverty and stark differences in income have augmented more than in any other OECD country in recent decades (OECD, 2008), and within this group, Germany is one of the states with the highest correlation between an individual's SES and their academic success (Quenzel & Hurrelmann, 2010, p. 20, 28).A few statistics suffice to throw the issue into relief.Twice as many students with a migration background drop out of school without any diploma than their German peers, and three times as many of them do not conclude any vocational training (Beck et al., 2010).What is more, the chances of the child of a skilled worker to eventually complete a university degree are 1:12 in comparison to a child from the educated classes (Demmer, 2008).Even if individuals from the lower social classes complete higher education, they tend to be way behind their better-off peers in terms of careers after 20 years, as a longitudinal study has shown (Meidinger, 2018).A substantial body of work seeks to explain the mediating links between SES and educational achievement, of which only a very brief overview can be given here.Lack of material and social resources or the inability of parents to support their children in school-related mattersbe it because of time constraints or because of unfamiliarity with the contentare important determinants in students' educational development (Borchard et al., 2008).For migrant children, a lag in language competencies is often a substantial hurdle (Klemm, 2008;Ramseger & Wagener, 2008), and ethnic or social stereotypes can adversely affect attainment not only via teachers' discriminatory grading practices, but also via stereotype threat pathways (Désert et al., 2009;Maaz et al., 2011).Recent research has moreover demonstrated that low SES is linked to lowered self-esteem and a reduced sense of self-efficacy in students (Wiederkehr et al., 2015).As Wiederkehr et al. (2015) put it: 'Failures or difficulties [in school] are not always related to children's lack of knowledge or competence, but can be significantly influenced by the degree to which these children think they can succeed […]' (p.772).
Many of my informants systematically received low or very low grades.Despite the fact that these served as perennial reminders of 'failure', most of the students strongly defended the practice of grading.In doing so, they consistently evoked meritocratic narratives.Before I present the pupils' three central arguments, I briefly delineate the concept of meritocracy, discuss its connection to education, and introduce the field of quantification studies.

Meritocracy, grades and quantification
The term meritocracy denotes a social order in which life chances are determined by an individual's achievements, rather than by so-called ascriptive criteria such as wealth, background or ethnicity (Waldow, 2012, p. 171).The most common understanding of merit today, going back to Michael Young's (1961) satirical novel The rise of the meritocracy, is a combination of talent and effort.A key feature of the meritocratic ideal is that it emphasizes equality of chances, that is individuals' identical initial chances in the competition for social graces and success.The principle that is often cited as its main alternative, and is linked to egalitarian traditions of thought, is equality of outcomes or conditions, which posits that 'inequalities of wealth, power, and status should be kept to the minimum level possible' (Karabel, 2005, p. 4).The history of the term meritocracy, beginning with Alan Fox and Michael Young, has been retraced elsewhere at length (Dench, 2006;Littler, 2018).What it serves to note is that meritocracy was first introduced as a dystopian and pointedly negative concept, but has come to be used as a 'positive and valorised term' (Littler, 2018, p. 49).
The German scholar Florian Waldow (2011) has argued that 'on the level of a normative self-definition, meritocracy […] is the undisputed leading ideal of Western-democratic societies' (p.484, author's translation).Emotionally impactful references to this effect can be found in the speeches of Donald Trump, Theresa May and Barack Obama (Littler, 2018, p. 1), and yet, it seems that the promise of meritocracy also flourishes in quite different political circumstances and cultural contexts.Kipnis (2012), for instance, notes that in contemporary China, an 'exam-centric meritocracy' offers the opportunity for social mobility as a compromise for the lack of democracy (p.197), and Japan has been dubbed a country on the 'meritocratic frontier' (Kariya & Dore, 2006).Allusions to meritocracy can also be found in South African, South Korean and Singaporean discourse (Littler, 2018, p. 26).
The word 'Meritokratie' is rather rarely used in German public and political discourse, although this should not blind one to the presence of its spectre, notably under the terms 'Leistungsprinzip' (performance principle) and 'Leistungsgesellschaft' (performance society).Calls for more equality of chances, rather than outcomes, are to be found galore in the official utterances of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel and the former German Minister for Education, Anja Karliczek.Karliczek's current successor, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, labelled the ministry a 'ministry of chances' and stated that a guiding political question for her tenure was to be 'Have we given everyone the same starting positions?Does everyone have the chance to become the pilot of their life?' (Stark-Watzinger, 2022, author's translation).
Before moving on to a discussion of the role of education for meritocracy, it is helpful to draw attention to a distinction between two types of meritocratic imagination.'Prescriptive meritocracy' refers to the idea that society ought to be organized around merit, whereas 'descriptive meritocracy' is the belief that this is already the case (Darnon et al., 2018;Son Hing et al., 2011).In the context of this paper, I refer only to the latter concept, as my informants consistently assumed that the society they lived in was meritocratic in nature.

Meritocracy and education
Even if authors and commentators differ in their view on whether meritocracy is a reality (Markovits, 2019) or an 'unfulfilled promise' (Mijs, 2016), there is a large consensus that the education system is central for upholding the meritocratic ideal.Some of the earliest work in this tradition was conducted by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, as well as by Paul Willis.In both La reproduction and Learning to labour, it is argued that contemporary education reproduces and legitimizes class inequalities.Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) frame their study of the French education system in terms of habitus and cultural capital, and argue that the lower-class students possess less of what is desired in the school system and are thus bound to fall behind.Grades and examinations certify social differences and create a phenomenon which Young (1961) had already predicted: both the 'winners' and the 'losers' within the system feel as though they deserve their place.Peter Herdegen's ( 2008) and Heike Solga's (2005) work on Germany corroborates this finding.Paul Willis (1977), in his classic ethnographic study of working class boys ('lads') in England equally agrees with Bourdieu and Passeron, but adds the important insight that even the students' resistance ultimately cements their socio-economic disadvantage.By developing a counter-school culture which rejects the importance of education and qualifications and instead celebrates physical labour, working class boys prepare themselves for the working class jobs which inevitably wait for them after school.Despite the determinism inherent in the education system, some lower-class individuals will succeed to climb the social ladder, but rather than undermine the meritocratic appearance of the system, this further reinforces it (Sullivan, 2002, p. 146).Also among contemporary scholars, there is widespread support for the conclusion that the education system is an essential constituent of the 'meritocratic infrastructure' (Kariya & Dore, 2006).It has been shown that, through a variety of pathways, the school reinforces students' socio-economic status, rather than redress inequality (see Mijs, 2016 for a brief review).Moreover, it has been observed that 'intense and competitive' meritocratic education widens the gap between the most and least skilled, beginning early in life (Markovits, 2019, p. 64).As Darnon et al. (2018) summarize, the school transforms 'social inequalities into merit-based inequalities' and thus a 'group-based hierarchy into an individual-based hierarchy' (p.524).Even though schools and universities often act as perpetuators of inequality, the public nevertheless remains attached to the merit-for-educational-achievement narrative on an ideological level and largely believes in the promise of meritocratic education as a system for upward social mobility (Darnon et al., 2018, p. 524).In fact, some recent Noëlle Rohde: 'To assign people their place in society' 511 studies in psychology suggest that the school is one of the key loci in which meritocratic thinking is learned.Wiederkehr et al. (2015) show that meritocracy is a central norm in the school context, fostering the belief among students that 'failure' is exclusively the result of internal, rather than systemic factors (p.770).Generett and Olson (2020) describe meritocracy as a master-narrative of the school, which is 'normative, internalized and reproduced' (p.399), for example through teachers' story-telling.
Research on the meritocratic ideology in school is only beginning to emerge and, as a result, much remains to be investigated.In his 2016 review on the matter, Mijs calls not only for paying closer attention to the question where meritocratic beliefs come from, but also to the particular role of grades in the definition and incorporation of merit (pp.27-29).How marks figure in student's beliefs about meritocracy is little understood, primarily as a consequence of a lack of empirical and ethnographic research addressing the issue.

Quantification studies
Arguably, one of the reasons why the link between meritocracy and grades has received so little attention is the fact that marks are discussed primarily in their capacity as a tool for learning.This 'learnification' (Biesta, 2009) or reduction to the pedagogical dimension is lamentable, for it means that grades are not placed in a wider theoretical context.One crucial aspect which is systematically overlooked is that grades are an instantiation of a particular technology, namely quantification.Quantification is the act of transforming a quality into a measurable size, a quantity (Ritter & Gründer, 1989), often with a view to comparing two or more entities.The process of imposing a common metric onto disparate entities is referred to as commensuration.As Espeland and Stevens (2008) put it, '[commensuration] transforms all difference into a quantity […].Difference or similarity is expressed as magnitude, as an interval on a metric, a precise matter of more or less ' (p. 408).The majority of cases where quantification is applied to humansto their performance, behaviour or characteristicsare of this commensurative type, thus rendering different human beings comparable with regards to selected aspects.
Quantification studies, sometimes subsumed under the term 'sociology of quantification', have blossomed in the past two decades.Scholars have investigated the social dynamics of numbers in a wide range of contexts from global health, accounting and audits to personal analytics and sports (see Berman & Hirschman, 2018;Mennicken & Espeland, 2019, for reviews of the field).Rather surprisingly, however, the school grade is almost completely overlooked in this line of work, even though it arguably represents one of the earliest and most intense contacts of individuals with social quantification.Equally true of quantification studies is that it does not consider the connection between numbers and meritocracy.The debate has certainly moved on considerably since the days when numbers were considered neutral entities (Miller, 2001, p. 382;cf. Sax, 1986) and scholars have instead pointed to their close relation to concepts such as objectivity, rationality and transparency (Mennicken & Vollmer, 2007;Porter, 1995).However, how quantification can serve or evoke certain political or moral ideals is to date a neglected question.
In the following, I turn to my fieldsitea comprehensive school in the middle of Germany.I present my informants' arguments in support of grades and discuss how their reasoning aligns with the meritocratic ideology.By way of explanation, I offer an analysis of how the students' defence is not simply a reaction to being graded, but also to being quantified.

Grades for betterment
The first common reason why students explicitly wanted to be graded was that they sought to receive feedback.The pupils often argued that they needed grades in order to know 'how they did', in relation to written tests and examinations, or 'where they stood '. Robert Paul Wolff (1969), a philosopher of education, distinguishes between three functions of grade.The students' replies mirror what Wolff (1969) perceives of as the primary, and in his eyes, the only legitimate function of grading, namely criticism.'To learn to submit oneself to the discipline of a standard, even it if is self-imposed […]' (p.461), is for him the very purpose of education, and grades assist this exercise if they are used to 'correct mistakes and enforce excellence' (p.459).However, the way that students talked about grades often went beyond such feedback and evoked a narrative of bettering oneself more generally.When I asked 11-yearold Lena why she thought grades existed, she replied: 'So that you know you have to get better?When you for example have a 4, you have to get better.So that, I think … you know how you can change yourself'.This use of marks would, in Wolff's theory, go past criticism and enact a second function, namely evaluation.Evaluation is the measuring against a pre-defined standard and crucially involves labelling performance as 'good' or 'bad '. Wolff (1969) argues that, educationally, nothing is gained by these denominations and that evaluation rather has its place in the professional world where the qualification of a candidate seeking admission to a profession must be judged on the basis of some performance (p.462).Nevertheless, the narrative of betterment was strongly entrenched in my fieldsite, and affected how students thought about grades, as well as the repercussions that they instigate.A case in point was retentions.Many teachers told me that the consensus within their profession was that having a student repeat a year due to insufficient results often did more harm than good and that they were asked to avoid this where possible.Surprisingly, however, it was especially the lowest performing students, who were most at risk of losing their whole group of classmates, who defended this policy.When I asked Omar ( 11 The trope of students having to constantly better themselves was explicitly enforced by the school.At the end of half term, the year five students, for instance, had to attend a consultation session with their class teachers.They were asked beforehand to fill in an 'action plan' for the new quartile in their school planners, setting out how they were envisaging to improve themselves.The document closely resembled a target agreement which employees complete as part of contemporary human resource management (Vormbusch, 2012).Some of the headers were 'My aim(s)', 'Set deadline', 'What do I have to do?', 'How do I know if I have reached my goal?' and 'Set date of review'.The form was then to be signed by the student themselves, the parents and the 'mentor'in other words the class teacher.In some classrooms in the school, student avowals of betterment were displayed publicly.In a year eight class, each student (aged 14-15) had their resolutions laminated and pasted onto the right upper corner of their desk (see pictures below).In another room, a collage of all students' plans for betterment was attached to a cupboard (see picture below, translations in Appendix A).Most of the intentions in these pictures are either directly concerned with getting better grades or ultimately serve this purpose, such as through revising more or putting one's hand up more in class (see Figures 1-4).
Amongst the teachers, there circulated the idea that a significant proportion of their students did not care at all if they received a bad grade.My fieldwork encounters with pupils did not support this: high-and low-performing students alike continuously vowed to work harder and to become betterboth within and beyond the rituals of promised enhancement which the school demanded of them.
The emphasis which the school and its young attendants place on the constant work of betterment mirrors a quintessentially meritocratic motif.Littler (2018) argues that especially the recent form of neoliberal meritocracy stresses the importance of effort for success.Tropes such as 'anyone can do it' if only they work hard enough (Littler, 2018, p. 122) are popular reminders to never rest in the pursuit of one's instilled wish to 'make it' (Littler, 2018, p. 121).Karabel (2005) observes a similar dynamic in his critique of Ivy League admission policies which are driven by the meritocratic ideal.He states that, of the admitted students, arguably the performance elite, many 'seemed like dazed survivors of some bewildering life long boot camp' (Karabel, 2005, p. 547).My fieldwork showed that the imperative to exert oneself extended to low-performing students too.Especially for those who may have felt that they lacked intelligence, it was effort, the second half of Young's (1961) satirical merit formula (I + E = M), which often represented their only hope in the quest Noëlle Rohde: 'To assign people their place in society' 515 for accomplishment.In his discourse analysis of contemporary German success semantics, Bröckling (2014) notes a call for self-improvement which is directed at all members of society.He argues that there exists 'a dynamic of self-optimisation which finds no resting point in itself.May the chances be distributed ever so unequally, anyone can improve their position.Vice versa, everyone is threatened by descent, potentially into the abyss.Therefore, one will never complete the work on oneself' (Bröckling, 2014, p. 78, author's translation).
Grades, as a form of quantification, are a powerful vehicle for this 'effort for merit' narrative since numbers are effective in creating the responsible individual (Miller, 2001, p. 393;Vormbusch, 2012, p. 222).Especially Vormbusch's (2012) work on calculative tools in human resource management is instructive for understanding this dynamic and sheds light on how quantification operates.He writes: Calculative measurands and targets generate a space for development and movement, within which an entity (a university, a division, an employee) can ascend and descend with all the attached consequences for social status, gratification, reproduction and appointment of means, or for their chances of self-realization, power, and participation.(Vormbusch, 2012, p. 25, author's translation) The individual is called upon to maintain or improve their position in the at once quantified and competitive space in which each movement is made Figure 3 'I no longer want to talk to my fellow students, so that I get better grades and so that I catch everything' visible through numbers.For the individuals within a field which is ruled by numbers in such a waythe school being one of themit becomes increasingly difficult to legitimize and communicate their actions and status without drawing on quantification (Vormbusch, 2012, p. 222).As a result, taking responsibility for one's numbers becomes the imperative.Vormbusch (2012) concludes that 'sociocalculative practices do not aim at the transformation of the social in numbers but rather at the social self-transformation in the Noëlle Rohde: 'To assign people their place in society' 517 medium of the calculative' (Vormbusch, 2012, pp. 26-27, author's translation).By providing each student with a numerical figure of performance, the school thus not only relays feedback but also calls on the receivers to react to it.Acknowledging the students' need for feedback, I often asked my informants if they could also imagine receiving it through conversations with or texts by their teachers.The responses were mixed, but there was a significant proportion of students who believed that only grades could offer true insight.The 18-yearold Malte clearly favoured numbers over texts because he thought that the former were better suited to confront students with their inadequacies, as he worried that teachers might soften the blow in a written report: If someone gets a very negative feedback in the sense of a 5, then nobody would write it as hard as a 5 hits a student.[…] And then it might sound to the student a little bit like 'Ah well, then I can rest on this'.
Getting better marks or keeping good ones up are unquestioned virtues of school life, and in order to achieve these goals, pupils must constantly be driven by the will to become better.If students at least try but fail in improving their grades, this may be excused by teachers with reference to a lack of innate 'intelligence'.The students I met, however, in their attempt to maintain a positive self-image, would hardly admit to having tried and failed and would rather claim that they failed to try ('I didn't revise').This tactic, while mitigating the effects of low grades on the pupils' identities (see Rohde, 2023) on the one hand, violated the overarching imperative of effort on the other hand and was thus sure to reap the discontent of teachers.

Grades for organizing society
The second argument in favour of grades was voiced primarily by older students.When Abitur (A-level equivalent) students explained to me what they thought marks were good for, a common theme crystallized out of many of the responses.18-year-old Maria, for instance, mused as follows: [The purpose of grades is] to assign people their place in society, so that a person who has always revised well or whatever, would rather become a doctor.That is a very important job, lives depend on it.And someone who has different strengths would rather … I don't know … become a painter or decorator.
Leila, 20, who barely passed her Abitur later in the year, expressed the same idea in relation to university admissions: [Grades are there to] simply say something about performance for university … so that the bad one's don't end up there somehow.Yes, so definitely to cull the good ones from the bad ones.
The 18-year-old Luca differed noticeably from the other students in his class.He was from a relatively well-off family with a hunting hobby, athletic and always dressed in high-quality clothes.Luca had a set of respectable grades, even though they were being 'dragged down' by the fact that he never spoke up in class.Despite the socio-economic differences between Luca, and Maria and Leila, he voiced a similar opinion on the purpose of grading: Well … (he takes a deep breath) … that's difficult.I believe grades are just there to somehow make out the good ones in the overall picture of pupils so that they … then get the right jobs.
In the eyes of the older students, grades were essential for organizing society in a certain way.That the 'good ones' be sifted out and admitted to the higheststatus professions is the meritocratic ideal in a nutshell.The medical profession mentioned in Maria's quote was evidently the epitome of ultimate social accomplishment in many students' view and exerted an almost gravitational pull on pupils across age cohorts.A great many students told me that they wanted to become doctors, even where this aim was clearly out of reach given their current school performance.Even the 11-year-old Milad, who actually wanted to become a policeman, was carried away by the medicine-frenzy in his peer group.When I asked him what he thought grades were for, Milad answered: 'So that you can get the Abitur and … become a doctor and stuff'.
Both the students' narrative about spotting and rewarding the 'good ones', as well as the widespread burning wish to become a medic, throws into relief the most far-reaching critique of meritocracy.Alan Fox and Michael Young, but also contemporary commentators such as Jo Littler (2018), Michael Sandel (2020), Daniel Markovits (2019), Jerome Karabel (2005) and to some extent Nicolas Lemann (1999), argue that meritocracy results in a starkly unequal society.In other words, 'there is no top without a bottom' (Littler, 2018, p. 3).This is also reflected in Hannah Arendt's (1954) statement that 'meritocracy contradicts the principle of equality, of an egalitarian democracy, no less than any other oligarchy' (p.4).It does not matter so much how merit is defined for this purpose.Whether it be measured in grades as in Germany and many other nations, in the form of SAT-or IQ-scores, or even in terms of a 'well-rounded character' such as in Ivy League admissionsthe inexorable result is that a large group of people must fail to measure up in order to identify by contrast those that succeed.As Lemann (1999) puts it in his history of the SAT, meritocracy turns on the Cinderella schema: 'The educational system would fit glass slippers on the feet of a lucky few, who would be whisked away to college and trained to lead American society ' (p. 25).Public disputes tend not to concern this basic principle but rather limit themselves to the design of the slipper, that is to the question of how to best select the prospective elite.Nevertheless, the delineation of merit does follow a discernable pattern, as Karabel (2005) has stressed: 'The qualities that come to define "merit" tend to be attributes most abundantly possessed by dominant social groups' (p.549).
Noëlle Rohde: 'To assign people their place in society' 519 The hierarchical nature of grade-mediated meritocracy is deeply entrenched in the German school system, from the early tracking of students into 'better' or 'worse' school types (Letendre et al., 2003), to the high-school diplomas with differing degrees of social status.Even within comprehensive schools, there exists the differentiation between more basic and advanced courses for some subjects (G-and E-courses respectively).Empirical research suggests that ability grouping is harmful particularly for low-performing students in terms of learning (Mijs, 2016, p. 18).Moreover, the framing of the two course types fostered a strong sense of inferiority in those of my informants who were in the lower performing classes.14-year-old Daniel, himself only in Gcourses, made this aspect quite clear when he said that teachers in his classes should use simpler words, for it would otherwise not be appropriate to the 'league of humans' that they were talking to.
Grading lends itself well to representing the hierarchical meritocratic ideal.Quantification here entails commensuration, in the sense that students of different personalities, backgrounds, with different interests and aspirations can be grouped neatly on a single scale.This transformation of quality into quantity not only enables but imposes judgements of relative rank: higher or lower, better or worse.This is also what Wolff (1969) alludes to when he states that besides criticism and evaluation, the third function which grading performs is ranking.In fact, he argues, this is the only reason why grades are still in use despite their questionable pedagogical value (pp. 462-463).Criticism could arguably be given in a more helpful and nuanced way through other means, and evaluation, as was already discussed, serves no educational purpose at all in his eyes (Wolff, 1969, p. 462).The German education scholar Jörg Ziegenspeck (1973) also believes that the only activity which grades are truly effective at, is ranking (pp.59-60), and thereby the screening and distribution of students for positions of different social worth.As became apparent in my fieldwork, those ranked lowest in this number-mediated 'singular social hierarchy' (Kipnis, 2012, p. 189) were often its fiercest defenders.

Grades for (a good) life
Closely related to the older students' argument about organizing society was a third reason for wanting to be graded, expressed mainly by the younger children.They argued that they needed grades in order to achieve things in the future which were important to them.The single most salient of these 'things' was a job.In fact, it was an unanticipated finding thatwithout my promptingin but two cases, the interview conversations with the 10-to 11-year-olds always turned towards their future profession or employer.When these students stated that they wanted grades, I queried why this was and what they thought marks were for.As the quotes below detail, for many of my youngest informants, grades were decisive for finding employment: So that one is good, and gets on, and also gets good work.(Omar, 11) So I think when you do a job, they can look at your report and see how you are.And if you are good, then they will hire you, and if you are not so good then they don't want … to.(Nelly, 11) Because there you can judge how one is, in which subject.And one can judge in which job one will go, in which studies one will go.And then one can just make a work out of the grades.(Valentin,11) Jessica, also 11, provided an interesting metaphor.She too was in favour of grades and stated: 'You need a report to apply for a job … and grades for the report (she laughs).It all hangs together like a chain'.'And what would be the final link in that chain?'I asked.Jessica replied: 'The job, I would say.So, school-work, participation, grades, report, job'.For some of my informants, the connection between grades and employment was perceived as so strong that grades mattered for subsistence and survival.
Dennis (11) stated: In general you get grades so that you get a good job.And with a job you get money to buy yourself something.
[…] Yes so that you get a good job, then get money to buy food and stuff.
Antonia, the 14-year-old top student of year nine reasoned similarly when I asked her what she thought the effects of low grades were on students: It definitely does something to you (she laughs) because … you know that the teachers are disappointed.You are disappointed with yourself.In most cases the parents are also disappointed.You mess up your future, somehow with these bad grades because they are always drawn upon.If you don't get good grades, you won't get a good job, you'll get little money, you'll have no food and so on.That is always quite a lot of pressure.
In the eyes of the children, grades were not just vital to survive or get by, but also to get access to the finer things in life.The pupils often straightforwardly linked 'good' grades to 'good' jobs and high status, whereas 'bad' grades would lead to 'bad' jobs and low status.In the interviews, a picture association task was included.The images were taken from a set used in coaching and therapy, loosely organized around the theme 'biography' (Opitz & Ruhe, 2016).Students were asked to select as many images as they thought fit the topic 'school and grades' and to explain their choice.Omar selected the image of a lordly entrance gate and said that he had chosen it because 'If you get good grades 'n stuff, you also get a good house'.Antonia articulated the same argument but presented it the other way around.She selected the picture of a decrepit industrial building and explained it as follows: I chose this because it shows pretty run-down residential houses.I always imagine that if I have bad grades, I would someday live in such a house where there's screaming and gun fights every night.It makes you quite scared.
The pupils' parents often played no small role in encouraging this kind of thinking.Valentin compressed the phenomenon into a concise statement when he said rather bitterly: 'My mother always says that if I write bad grades and don't want to do anything, that um … I'll become a cleaner (Putzmann)'.
It has been rightly observed that the meritocratic ideal entails uncritical status judgements in the sense that some professions or classes, including their respective status symbols are considered superior to others (Littler, 2018, pp. 6-7).As was already discussed in the previous section, the use of quantification in social settings aligns well with this ranking of humans.However, a point which has received little attention in current writings is that meritocracy is fundamentally a transactional model.Unlike equality, which is by definition unconditional, meritocracy offers rewards only in exchange for something.Throughout my fieldwork, it became apparent that the children with whom I worked navigated a context which signalled to them that the important and good things in life (such as a livelihood or social security) are conditionalin this case upon school performance.Grades emerged as a 'merit metric' and were defended in their capacity as a currency.It was as if I had asked students 'What do you think about money?Do you think it should exist?' and they had replied with the argument 'Yes, because otherwise I couldn't buy anything'.Quantification has an important role to play in this regard.Ever since the days of Theodore Porter's (1995) seminal piece Trust in numbers, quantification studies have provided mounting evidence that numbers are closely associated with the notions of objectivity, rationality and ultimately truth (see for example Espeland & Stevens, 2008).In other words, quantification suggests the presence of measurement, rather than estimation or subjective evaluationeven where this conclusion is unwarranted.Grades signal to their recipients that performance is 'measured', thereby fostering the acceptance of the transactional model of meritocracy by making it appear fair.A further reason why grades enjoy such strong support from students is their legacy as a metric.As Sally Engle Merry (2016) has pointed out in her work on quantitative indicators, the most powerful of them are those which are thoroughly institutionalized and supported by 'a coherent and attractive narrative ' (p. 211).She adds that the longer a metric is around and accepted, the more 'it comes to provide a kind of unassailable truth' (Merry, 2016, p. 25).Grades can be traced back at least to the European Jesuit schools of the sixteenth century (Ziegenspeck, 1973), and have since then developed into a truly global technology.In school systems all around the world, grades are marketed not only as a means to identify the 'brightest and best', but also as a young person's ticket to a better life.Many of my informants found it difficult to envisage a world without gradesperhaps because it would have required imagining a different society altogether.

Discussion
At first glance, it appears puzzling that low-performing students defend gradesthe very technology which perpetually reminds them of their academic 'failure'.The question why a disadvantaged group would argue in favour of the status quo, rather can long for change in their own interest is the subject of system justification theory.Scholars in psychology have argued that it often 'captures social and psychological needs to imbue the status quo with legitimacy and see it as good, fair, natural, desirable, and even inevitable' (Jost et al., 2004, p. 887).Doing so may be what makes it possible for people to navigate their lives with trust and hopedespite living in an objectively unjust system (Jost & Hunyady, 2005, p. 261).
Against this backdrop, it may not come as a surprise that low-performing students argue for receiving grades in school, but how students do so reveals much about their ideological views.During ethnographic work in a German comprehensive school, it could be observed that students largely defended the grade on the basis of meritocratic notions.For the pupils, grades served as a vital indicator in a continuous quest for betterment, they allowed for the hierarchical organization of society based on performance, and represented the ticket for upward mobility within that hierarchy.These findings chime with psychological research which has identified meritocracy as one of the most pertinent system-justification ideologies of our time (Jost & Hunyady, 2005, p. 260).On an empirical and analytical level, this paper shows that the grade is a key vehicle for fostering meritocratic thinking in young individuals.On a theoretical and conceptual plane, I have argued for the need to consider grades as an instantiation of a much larger technologyquantificationto make sense of this finding.
Quantification lends itself well to representing the meritocratic ideal.Its 'aura' of objectivity (Strathern, 2000, p. 8) creates the convenient impression that merit can be singled out and measured, so as to assure seemingly fair allocation decisions on its basis.Numbers can moreover be mobilized effectively to achieve the kind of individual responsibility characteristic of the 'entrepreneurial self' (Bröckling, 2007) desired in the most recent form of neoliberal meritocracy (Littler, 2018;Vormbusch, 2012, p. 222).However, numbers not only serve the meritocratic ideal, they can also evoke it in their own right.Where quantification is brought to bear on humans, it usually entails commensuration -'transforming all difference into magnitude' (Espeland & Stevens, 2008, p. 408) and effectively creating a ranking.In many social contexts, such a ranking can be readily interpreted as a merit-based hierarchy.In other words, from 'higher' or 'lower' to 'better' or 'worse', it is often only a small step to 'deserving' or 'undeserving'.
The present research contributes to and has implications for three fields of (academic) inquiry.Firstly, the paper broadens our understanding of meritocracy by offering a rare ethnographic approach to the topic.Scholars have identified the education system as a site where meritocratic thinking is learned, but Noëlle Rohde: 'To assign people their place in society' 523 empirical work on this process, and especially on the role of grades therein is largely missing.The present work sheds light onto the specific ways in which grades figure in the meritocratic imagination.The ethnographic insights thereby highlight that the meritocratic ideal is not only transmitted via narrative (Generett & Olson, 2020), but also perpetuated through a certain technology.The role of quantification for meritocracy has hitherto not been addressed, and the results from this study motivate further research on the question.
The present research is also relevant to the areas of education and assessment.Bourdieu and Passeron, as well as Willis, astutely observed that inequality and injustice are systematically preserved through education.My ethnographic work shows that the school grade is a crucial constituent of this process.Marking not only cements (dis)advantage, but suggests to students that merit is measurable, and thus creates the impression that social status, whether high or low, is earned.An important implication for further research is that grades should not merely be investigated in their pedagogical capacity, as tends to be the case in educational research (Biesta, 2009).Assessment practices are far more than tools for learningthey are inherently political.Quantitative assessment is well-adapted to a selective education system with meritocracy as its guiding principle.In fact, Wolff (1969) goes as far as to say that the only reason why grades are employed is their power to rank.As he writes: 'It is really rather startling to reflect that the sole justification for all that frenzied, anxious test-taking and grade-grubbing which absorbs millions of American teenagers is the differential allocation of high school seniors to colleges in varying degrees of demand' (p.463; see also Ziegenspeck, 1973, who makes the same point for Germany).
A substantial body of work attests to the detrimental effects of marks on students, from inducing anxiety and decreasing motivation to impacting students' self-image and mental health (Högberg et al., 2021;Rohde, 2023;Schinske & Tanner, 2014).Nevertheless, grading enjoys an overwhelming support in society, also from students.Scholars and practitioners have put forward innovative proposals for 'de-grading and de-testing' education (see for example Bower & Thomas, 2013;Kohn, 2013), but they tend to be met with scepticism and deep-seated fears.The research at hand highlights that alternative approaches to assessment only make sense in tandem with political change.A move away from quantitative evaluation could benefit students in many ways, however, it cannot solve the problem of inequality in education in itself.As Wolff (1969) rightly observed, even text-based reports in lieu of grades would soon degenerate into 'discursive rankings' (p.464).He argues that 'so long as some colleges and professional schools really offer better educational opportunities and competitive edge in the scramble for wealth, power and status, there will be more applicants than places at every stage in the educational system from Kindergarten to grad school' (Wolff, 1969, p. 463).He concludes that 'only a social revolution of the most far-reaching sort could free education from the twin curses of evaluation and ranking' (Wolff, 1969, p. 464).It is indeed difficult to see how equalityas fixed in so many national constitutionscould be compatible with quantitative assessment that seeks to rank students for the purpose of allocation.However, merely de-grading school will not be effective if it is not accompanied by political change that has the pursuit of equality as its explicit aim.
Lastly, the present study deepens our understanding of quantification and its role in contemporary society.Numbers are not neutral, but imbued with values.This insight has become one of the defining axioms of quantification studies, and in fact explains their emergence in the first place (Miller, 2001).What is less investigated is that quantification can be laden with political values and serves some ideologies better than others.This work unearths a tight link between quantification and meritocracy, each reinforcing the other.An important practical upshot of this finding is that the presence of systematic quantification can be a useful indicator for detecting an underlying meritocratic ideology, for example in political proposals.
In a 2020 foresight study, the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, 2020) predicts that by 2030, societal values in Germany will have undergone substantial change.The authors of the study suggest that the school grade will lose in importance and instead a new technology will become significant: a bonus point system.Inspired by the infamous Chinese Social Credit Score (see Hvistendahl, 2017;Mau, 2019), the algorithmic system would allow citizens to collect points for pre-specified socially desirable actions.The points could then be traded in for rewards such as property ownership or privileged university admission.While some predictable criticism is addressed in the study, the bonus point system receives an alarmingly positive reading, even being hailed as a means for tackling climate change, hate speech and social tensions following a predicted extreme population growth (BMBF, 2020, p. 129).In times of public insecurity, media-fuelled outrage against egoism and attacks on 'rampant individualism', a system which rewards social conformity may appear reassuring.The study predicts that by 2030, the system will be largely applauded by German citizens, and questioned only by a small minority (BMBF, 2020, p. 124).A real-life pilot project for a bonus point system on European turf was introduced in Bologna in 2022 (Fess, 2022).The realization that social credit scores are at their heart quantificational can help to assess their true degree of novelty.Much like the 'old norms' such as school grades predicted to disappear (BMBF, 2020, p. 129), bonus point systems measure the conduct of citizens and offer rewards in return.Valuable and astute critiques of meritocracy have reached a great level of publicity in recent years.In the wake of this, it is important, however, not to turn to schemes which seem to move away from merit but end up merely redefining it.The presence of quantification can serve to identify the meritocratic ideal in proposals for social change.
Taken together, the results from this study encourage further inquiry into the relation between meritocracy and quantificationalso outside of schoolfor it seems that we cannot hope to understand one without the other.

Figure 1 A
Figure1A laminated note on a student's desk.The note reads: 'I would like to revise more and put my hand up more so that I get better grades'.(All photographs by author)

Figure 4 A
Figure 4 A public display of student resolutions in a year eight classroom.The translations are included in Appendix A ), who was known for his 'bad' grades in almost every subject, what he would think if retentions no longer existed, he replied after a deep breath: 'I don't find that normal.If you can't go back [a year] then I think that's kind of strange.Because if you get bad grades then I think you should go back'.Dennis (11) answered similarly: 'If you write bad grades then you have to repeat [a year], so that you always get better … and know more about things'.