What definition would that be? A nation where people were not allowed to learn outside of standardized government training might achieve equality, but only by grinding everyone down to zero.
Haha. No, it's more like this for me: if the provided education system were good and appropriately diverse, few people would feel the need to pay to leave it.
Then you might be able to say that everyone had access to a decent standard of education.
That doesn't make the difference you think it does. There are European countries where barely anyone pays for education (and private schools/universities are less reputable than state ones). You still find the children of wealthy people are disproportionately likely to be wealthy themselves. Parental involvement, cultural attitudes to education - and, probably, as politically unacceptable as it is to say it, genetics as well - seem like bigger effects than expensive private education.
Sure, before I was derailed by education, my point was that society is not meritocratic. So we're now agreeing.
We don't know if genetics is an effect here because we can't eliminate background wealth - even twin studies are broken because twins get adopted into similar environments.
I suggest that it's fashionable to say social inequality is down to genetics - it certainly happens a lot in these forums and it comes up especially when people would rather pass the buck for difficult social problems.
Genetics aren't the only thing we inherit, and aren't the only possible source of differences in merit. It could equally be cultural differences - e.g. attitudes towards education, work, society and so on - that would be passed on even to adopted children, and would make people genuinely better at their jobs. Even if the advantages of the rich are purely environmental, that in no way proves that they're not meritocratic.
