Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute gauges public support for educating students about the success sequence.
Young people who graduate from high school, get a job, and get married before having children, in that order, are far less likely to be in poverty and far more likely to have a solid footing in the middle class later in life. This path to adulthood has been dubbed the “success sequence.” …
… The success sequence may seem like common, mainstream advice to some. However, among academics and even more so among scholars in think tanks, its appropriateness as both an idea and a topic to be taught to students is hotly contested. Some critics of the success sequence claim that it leaves out structural inequities and inordinately focuses on individual agency. Others have objected to the success sequence because it objectifies particular cultural views. …
… Overall, I found strong majorities of the public and parents support teaching the success sequence in public schools. While differences in the strength of that support align with some critiques of the success sequence, support is at least double opposition for nearly every subgroup examined. …
… Seventy-seven percent of Americans either somewhat favored or strongly favored teaching the success sequence, while roughly 14 percent of Americans were somewhat opposed and 8 percent of Americans were strongly opposed. This margin of support is uncommonly strong and comparable to what respondents answered for whether they support teaching that “slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War” or displaying a Christmas tree on school property during school days. Looking across most subgroups of respondents, support remained high. For instance, parents’ opinions of the success sequence almost exactly mirrored the general public’s. …
… Although favored by majorities across these groups, teaching the success sequence has more support (strongly or somewhat favor) among Republicans (85 percent) than among independents (78 percent) or Democrats (72 percent).
