High-quality national surveys of high school seniors confirm that kids from less educated homes are less knowledgeable about and interested in politi… - Robert D. Putnam

The fierce and growing hostility to “plutocracy” at the opening of the twentieth century reflected moral outrage about inequality that had been absent during the Gilded Age with its emphasis on social Darwinism and the rights of ownership. This normative change was temporarily disrupted by the Red Scare of the 1920s, but the utter devastation of the Great Depression gave renewed force to the ideals of social solidarity instead of naked individualism, even among Republicans like Herbert Hoover.120 The widely shared sacrifices of World War II strongly reinforced egalitarian norms among the Greatest Generation, who would then dominate American society and politics for a quarter century after the war.

Slavery was, in fact, a social system designed to destroy social capital among slaves and between slaves and freemen.

teacher flight from the challenges in such schools — violence and disorder, truancy, lower school readiness and English-language proficiency, less supportive home environments — means that students in these schools get a generally inferior education. Many teachers in poor schools today are doing a heroic job, driven by idealism, but in a market economy the most obvious way to attract more and better teachers to such demanding work is to improve the conditions of their employment.