Oh Please! We have never had a meritocracy in our nation! What we have had is preferential treatment for wealthy ,well connected White people (and a few non-Whites) at best.
18
Hello Thomas,
“Generation Wealth” should be Mandatory Watching !
Thanks for Your participation in that Documentary !!
The 1929 Great Depression was also the Great Equalizer of the Majority in this country as you know.
Great Greed has Disastrous Consequences and as Noted in the Film, Many Don't even See it Coming !?!
It is a Blindness of Soul and a lack of Humanity, ...Exactly what We see in Our nation Today !
We are on a Knife's Edge politically, socially and economically... a Trifecta of Evil about to Befall US !
We are going to Fall upon Our Own Swords... a form of Seppuku lies before US !!
Even for those who See, ...It will be Impossible to Brace for this Inevitable Calamity !!!
My folks were just kids during the Great One but they made it through, without money because their Families lived on farms in Iowa and were able to scrape by, ...Most weren't so Fortunate !
Fascism's Greed will become Violently Unsustainable where personal firearms reign, Our Forefathers foresaw.
Take Care Sir.
4
Tests should no longer be based on Eysenck/Burt et al. IQ measurements - they are far too limited and measure only one of many kinds of human ability - the kind these people happened to have. Society depends on the various abilities of all the people.
The "liberal" media journalists who select the news they like and who preach to the rest of society either have or think they have "high IQs". That is why they don`t like "social media" which with all its faults is more "democratic"
1
To paraphrase Churchill: this report is a mess inside a confusion, inside a muddle.
It is, in essence, yet another tedious New York Times exposition of "equality"--nice, warm, comfy, word--but one freighted with failed social experiments and human misery.
It's easy to spot INequality--it lurks behind every tree in the progressive forest--but what equality will actually look like in the sweet beyond is somehow never quite defined. Equality is, essentially, a mathematical construct--it is an absolute. But you will never be offered a metric for knowing when it is achieved. Or how it will be measured. And--most important--who will do the measuring. Hmm--that seems like a job for philosopher-kings residing in tenured comfort at the top of (shriek!) a hierarchy. Dilemma, anyone?
Nor will those devoted to equality offer anything beyond vague nostrums for actually achieving this utopian state. Nor how to maintain it against the human/animal urge to explore, conquer, innovate, excel, and--yes--rise in the inevitable hierarchies.
And there is the bloody little secret of our campaign for "equality." We will be mediocre--or else! It's the "or else" that has the sound of a rifle cocking.
Odd that this should be coming from the very pinnacle of the journalistic hierarchy..but then the world is fulla weird contradictions.
10
University of Chicago looks at test scores. My kid blasted the PSAT and gets mail from U of Chicago every other week.
Why else would they send him the solicitations? His disorderly and somewhat funky-smelling bedroom? His talent for charming young ladies, a talent he inherited from his dear old dad? His ability to make that farting noise with his armpit at the dinner table?
Not bloody likely.
7
Standardized testing is flawed, at least for those who don't perform well on standardized tests that are relied on for not only admission to college, but for scholarships, fellowships, etc.
I'm a case in point. I had average SAT scores, but graduated from college with a 3.7 GPA. I worked hard overall, but could coast in certain courses. Then I earned a 4.0 in a middling master's program, & a 3.8 in my Ph.D. program.
My point is, I was intelligent & worked hard, & succeeded. But my SAT scores didn't predict that outcome.
& though I'm a straight white male, that privilege was countered by coming from an uneducated blue collar family (neither of my parents finished high school). My high grades & poverty brought me enough financial aid to go to college (tho, admittedly, this was when college tuition was comparatively lower, even adjusted for inflation, & the federal government offered financial aid to anyone who was poor). For grad school I had to work as a teaching assistant & take out student loans. Again, I didn't do that well on the GRE exams, so no fellowships.
But if you look at my publication record, teaching evaluations, & service record at a state college where the teaching load was 4-4 the first 10 years & 3-3 thereafter, you'd have to agree that I've done quite well in my profession, SATs & GREs be damned.
So until a standardized test can measure intelligence, motivation, work ethic, etc., students of great potential will not get the opportunity to live up to it.
8
No matter what we do, we should make sure that the smartest and the most talented receive higher education; otherwise, the science and the entire humanity will suffer.
8
I evaluate meritocracy collective efficiency with sales of lottery tickets, people on SNAP benefits (food stamps) and number of addicts of any substance. Screens, booze, drugs. They all dream getting out of it.
Meritocracy is probably the most violent variation of Western capitalism. It discards way too many people. But it is victory for the less than 0,01% in a winner take all America.
4
I am actually dumbfounded by the arguments in this editorial. Meritocracy is desirable in every system. Rule by persons capable to meet the challenge is the target and desire of any society. I think that the author confuses meritocracy with Social Justice. Because meritocracy exists, it does not mean that those with fewer qualifications should not make a decent living and afford the niceties of our technological civilization. Of course, they should. The system should pay adequate wages to all workers, so that they can afford a meaningful and rich lives. The problem with inequality is not meritocracy. It has never been. The problem lays with the system that allows a predatory few (who may not even be members of the meritocracy) to exploit the many. When legal loopholes like "Chapter 11" are devised to rob the working poor pensions, well, those who devise them are not the best and the brightest, but the vultures of our society. Thus, concentrating one's "fire" on meritocracy as a method of decreasing inequality would only achieve idiot-cracy and have absolutely no effect on inequality.
5
If you have anything to do with technology in terms of understanding it, you must be aware of the long, rolling traffic pile-up occurring at the boundary between tech and its users. On the one hand, the tech isn't always best designed for the average person to use. On the other, you have a population of some of the most stupid, most dishonest, most mercenary individuals imaginable. Office politics has promoted people who lack everything except that unique human ability to trick others into doing the heavy lifting while they reap the rewards.
So find, I'm on board with testing people to the max. Maybe (although I don't hold out hope) the phony ones will sink to the level of their incompetence.
1
Once again, a piece whose very title is meant to reinforce the indoctrination: "The Meritocracy is Under Siege"
Assuming The New York Times reserves the right to title an opinion piece in whichever way it pleases—it's a private corporation, after all—this "Newspaper of Record" is certainly aware of its immense power to indoctrinate.
And if we agree with Noam Chomsky that the educated classes "are typically the most profoundly indoctrinated and in a deep sense the most ignorant group, the victims as well as the purveyors of the doctrines of faith," then we can clearly understand the function of this title and what's written beneath it.
This title and opinion piece serve to reinforce a particularly powerful doctrine of faith here in the U.S.: "Meritocracy."
"Meritocracy" is indeed a doctrine of faith, and it's the work of The New York Times and our universities to be among the most powerful purveyors of this doctrine of faith. And should the NYT and our universities fail to adequately purvey this central doctrine of faith in order to "educate" the educated classes, these institutions will be restructured by immense private power to rebuild and restore this faith.
Because if the educated classes ever start to question their deeply held faith in this doctrine of meritocracy, those with immense private power the world over surely know that their high gates will no longer be guarded.
7
As a woman, I already know that meritocracy does not exist.
8
OK -- so you define "meritocracy" as:
"A political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort and achievement."
Here's the Wikipedia definition:
"A political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than factors such as heredity or wealth."
The current piece attributes this (acknowledged) quotation to Michael Dunlop Young's 1994 book "The Rise of Meritocracy." OK then -- which page or pages?
Noting that Young's words were published 25 years ago, and that Mr. Edsall and Wikipedia present his words differently, what exactly is your message to your readers?
This is bad writing and bad editing.
2
Suggested reading . Range by David Epstein. Defines what merit should be.
2
The problem is the definition of merit. Who has more merit: the first in their family to go to university with a good state school diploma, or the child of a 0.1% family with a diploma from Yale?
Guess who gets the better job based on 'merit'......
2
The photo caption reads, "A test prep class at Holton Arms School in Bethesda, Md."
Lordy. Isn't this the school that Mr. Kavanaugh was attending when he, more likely than not, attempted to rape an underage girl? Talk about reproducing privilege. He was a legacy admit to Yale. That means, for instance, that his probability of acceptance was approximately ten times higher than the probability of acceptance for an Asian-American student--all other things the same. Except that the Asian-American student almost certainly had not attempted to rape an underage girl. Our more selective private and public universities are reproducing privilege at a frightening rate. Roughly 60% of the students at Yale, Michigan, etc. now come from the richest 1% of families. Once upon a time those schools were great American middle class institutions. Now however the middle class has lost almost all of their seats at those schools. To the children of the rich some of whom feel entitled to--"boys will be boys"--attempt to rape underage girls. The rich believe their children are innately smarter than the rest of us. That belief is so common that sociologists use it to decide whether or not people are rich. Do you think the children of the rich are smarter than our children?
2
I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but one thing I do know, and many have pointed out to me in the last 2 years is that I am a lot smarter than Donald Trump.
Until you can explain how someone so stupid, has no talent for the job he holds, lacks emotional maturity or even an ability to control his temper, and utterly lacks basic interpersonal skills required by any job I have had, the discussion here is moot.
5
In the final analysis, for liberals, the only fair way to totally level the playing field for those not born smart or rich or to smart, rich parents, is to have a Universal Basic Income where everyone, no matter how smart or stupid, gets paid the same. Surgeons get paid the same as janitors the same as professional athletes, the same as the indolent. What a utopia it is the progressive liberals are taking us to. Can't you feel the sunshine on your face yet!
2
Most of the economic victors--the top 10% or so-- claim that we're largely a meritocracy, while acknowledging that racism & sexism hold some back. They prefer to credit their own (actual) hard work than to acknowledge the opportunities they had that are denied to most others: better healthcare, education, stability, food, housing, recreation, & in most cases, parenting (at least one parent not working multiple jobs, who spent some time with them).
Growing up without constant stress about money and safety (and having to move because of these) has become an experience that few have.
This is the "elite" that the Trump voters voted against. This is the "swamp" in their minds. (Not the actual ruling elite--the mega-corporations, and the 1/10 of 1% that includes many hereditary "winners." )
Trump tapped the resentment of those who felt that no one else was giving voice to this. The fact that Trump is an unqualified clown SUPPORTS their view that he's taking on the meritocracy. Hillary promised to maintain the meritocracy and to open it up further to women and people of color. Even now, some Democratic candidates hope to win by advocating a fairer meritocracy.
We can afford all of these things for EVERYONE: healthcare, decent housing, education, decent paying and stable jobs, etc. If we don't join together to fight for these things, we can expect that a majority of Americans will again vote for an authoritarian who taps their resentment and dashed dreams.
3
"No one has come up with a perfect solution yet..."
From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs.
3
We are not living in anything close to a meritocracy. Exhibit A: Look who currently occupies the Oval Office.
4
Look- this is nonsense. Most people that work hard are doing fine (incredible if you look at most of the rest of the world) - what’s the problem? That a few undeserving people are doing better? Honestly, who cares? Money isn’t everything - find out what makes you happy and make sure you have a wonderful life (newsflash - find people you love and stick with them - the rest is noise)
2
Do you agree that in 2019 our society has evolved into one that needs educated workers more than ever? Do you agree that these individuals who can make a contribution in any specific area must be identified? I, for one who took the SAT in 1946 didn’t feel slighted because I wouldn’t be accepted at MIT. We understood different abilities and didn’t feel threatened by top brains. Our society needs them to function.
The problem isn’t testing. The problem is lack of support for education .Who wants to help educate someone outside his/her own community? Local funding pays a high percentage of each community’s school bill. Poor communities can’t afford the high taxes to support superior academics. And then we observe that many resent that some of their peers are deemed qualified for opportunities they aren’t.
Free market capitalists in our midst are the ones who must change their ways.
There’s enough money to go around.
7
The meritocracy is largely responsible, according to Thomas Frank's "Listen Liberal - What Ever Happened to the Party of the People", for the Democratic Party turning itself quite deliberately into a sort of "Republican Lite".
The meritocracy in the 1960s gave us the "best and the brightest", who made such a hash of the Vietnam War. It's also responsible for nine justices on the Supreme Court who all graduated from either Ivy League colleges or Ivy League law schools or both.
The meritocracy has weakened labor unions, contributed to income inequality, and arguably turned us into a predator society.
2
Many proposals combat inequities of meritocracy - but require a remaking of the economy.
A universal basic (living) wage - to those who 1. vote compulsorily 2. work one day p/w community service - reassigns value to humans, rather than units of labour. Voters will not give up a basic living wage once they have it, no matter their political persuasion, creating stability.
AI software is fed job ads with higher value assigned to critical, dangerous and cognitively challenging employment. Positions for engineers, scientists, professors, surgeons and CEOs at the top of fields attract significant bonuses capped to percentage of median wage (e.g. 1000%).
Government invests heavily in the knowledge economy. Subsidies are highly competitive, adjudicated by an equal thirds decision making principle utilizing rotating professional committees, vote within professional bodies, and AI software.
Grossly inefficient industries are nationalized. Others still run on a market-led basis.
Manufacturing and repetitive service jobs disappear. Robots and software services powered by the wind, sun and sea.
A flood of “surplus” labour is reassigned to massive growth in subsidized and/or nationalized positions such as teachers, nurses, community conflict resolution specialists, childcare specialists, aides, aged care and childcare workers. Dignity for all is restored.
Otherwise - surplus workers of the future will be left to rot (or revolt) outside the city walls of the metropolitan elite.
2
Meritocracy is a myth in America because all of the power rests with a few and the few are destroying freedom bit by bit. It only works when people are equal. Since the Supreme courts most unwise decision that money is speech, it automatically makes some speech more powerful. It wrests the value of freedom of speech away from being an equal proposition among all. And conservatives are playing the long game of total domination. The only way their winning is by taking away your freedoms (and I’m not just talking about the wall that will keep you in as much as it might keep people out, nor am I talking about guns-which is the best foil for what they are doing!).
2
As a student, I prepared for SAT and admissions tests by getting plenty of sleep, and consuming a fair bit of chocolate shortly before test time. I was jumping like a jackrabbit. I dare say, the results were spectacular--Archmere Academy, and Cornell U.
4
I agree relax, calm down and test well.
Knowing how a test scores is very helpful.
Took GRE age 51, paid $60.
It was a test of the switch from pencil to computer.
Wore me out but I did well.
Amazing how many calories a brain can burn when working hard.
No doubt those with more resources can get help and do better on testing. But I dropped out of high school, went back to get a diploma for tech education in order to get a better job outside of a cotton mill. Korea intervened, military use of testing got me lot of technical education and jobs competing with college graduates; testing got me into a great university and several graduate degrees later professorships. So don't even think of trashing the one route where poor kids with marginal education can get a boost and the recognition of potential. It remains a life line, don't cut it because some abuse it.
5
We need to ensure that meritocracy works for everyone. It means paid parental leaves, free pre-kindergarten, affordable healthcare, free college education, and much more in terms of significantly expanding social safety net and services.
3
For some reason you are confusing meritocracy with socialism.
2
A compliment to the author (that might, ironically, strike the wrong tone in a critique of merit based on cognitive ability) but I just want to say that this is truly a first class essay on a very complex & heated topic. Thank you for introducing so many competing strands of thought with such clarity and rigor.
2
“To this end, Rawls wrote that a social system that ‘permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents’ appears ‘defective,’ adding that if ‘distributive shares are decided by the outcome of a natural lottery,’ then ‘there is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune.’”
If not a natural lottery, then what about an artificial one?
Consider the case of college admissions. The usual method of determining who to admit is to combine various metrics (test scores, extracurricular activities, intrinsic motivation/drive, etc.) into a single score and admit the N highest scorers, or something similar. Colleges have tried this, and the result is often the continued hoarding of privilege among those who already have it. (In a nutshell, this is the Matthew effect.)
An alternative approach is to admit N randomly-selected applicants from the pool of all applicants, perhaps stratifying by more cosmetic metric(s) such as race. Not only would this be more representative of the applicant pool, but it would help spread privilege to those with less. If quality control is required, a much lower threshold could be instated before the main lottery, in order to remove those who would (most likely) end up leaving anyway.
Just sayin'.
I have spent my entire career as a professor at Anglo-American elite universities. While almost all of my students are smart and hard working, no more than a quarter are truly talented. The rest got in, because their wealthy parents made it their lives' project to have their children succeed in the "meritocracy," which is, in reality, based on a classed higher education system.
Interestingly, my colleagues, who are all brilliant minds, often didn't go to an elite undergraduate institution, but, through grit and intelligence, managed to get admitted to a leading PhD program. Many of them were not educated in the English-speaking world at all.
The US "meritocracy" dramatically over-values Ivy-league colleges as credentialing institutions. Sure, "college" has come to mean so many different things that a BA can connote anything between an excellent liberal arts education and basic literacy. But an elite education, primarily, leads to success, because it gives students from elite institutions privileged access to internships and starter jobs that feed into high-flying careers.
Maybe, the US should try to create a public education system that aims for excellence across the board, and not force industry to hire employees based on the prestige of their undergraduate colleges. And yes, the US (and Britain) would be well advised to create a non-college tertiary education system, which has worked wonders in places such as Switzerland and Germany.
8
America is ideally a meritocracy. Lately, though, we have delved into a not very American aristocracy. The candidacies of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton were advanced by their connections to famous past presidents.
The current crush of asylum seekers at the border is a good example of what happens when merit is ignored. All one needs is a halfway believable story. Then, once someone is admitted to the US, where is the incentive to tell the truth?
Though a meritocracy isn't perfect, it is better than any of the alternatives.
5
By all accounts, Hillary Rodham had a brilliant mind, was a policy wonk, and had a bright future in politics before she hitched her wagon to her kryptonite, Bill.
5
As with so many things, Peter Singer is quite right. Meritocracy, intended to be a reformation of a system of gross unfairness in which those very virtues that should be benefiting a society are ignored or cast aside, is a fine thing. But as a reform of an originally unjust state of affairs, it is not sufficient in itself. There must be a commitment throughout society to value everyone, to make sure everyone has a chance of fulfilment -- and not just a chance, but real encouragement to that end -- , and to refuse to be satisfied so long as anyone feels excluded.
1
Has any work been done on the predictive value or alleged “bias” of the graduate and professional school exams (GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc.) since those would be administered to students who have already successfully completed years of university-level studies, likely concentrating on courses to prepare them for their chosen careers?
Testing has become the scourge of education. School administrators are so scared of test obsessed groups like the Leadership Council on Civil Rights that they push schools with a lot of minority students to drop almost everything else and focus on the tests - lest they be labeled bigots. Then they wonder why the wealthier, whiter schools always seem to have more extracurricular activities, and their kids more opportunities.
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The tests don’t provide a good snapshot of students’ real abilities. Kids who aren’t good test takers or whose skills lie outside the narrow focus of the tests are likely to struggle - even if they are very bright. And it’s no secret that white kids who are bad test takers have the luxury of being assessed without tests: with dance routines, portfolios, or other projects; a luxury often not afforded poor minorities.
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There are too many different tests for the basics; every State writes its own. But there aren’t very many tests to assess a broader curriculum. There are the AP exams, but those are optional and more often given in the affluent, whiter schools.
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And besides, the tests are a lazy way to assess schools. Instead of visiting schools and communities to study them, the test-obsessed rely on our kids to take the tests, and schools to wrap it all up for them.
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So I wish groups like the Leadership Council on Civil Rights would get over their obsession with tests. Assessment is good. High standards and equity is good. Tests are not.
1
It's a good article and contains a lot of food for thought, but I think Thomas tries to cover too much ground and ends up being all over the place. I'd rather see a series of several articles, each focused on one aspect of merit and/or standardized testing, with a synopsis in the final article.
It's a world of individuals and not everyone is the same. And not all tests are the same. Obviously, a test for raw aptitude or cognitive ability differs from a test for strong control of a specific area of knowledge or that of a specific skill set. But of course, there's more to it than how an individual performs on a standardized test. Test scores are just one component, albeit an important one, when it comes to evaluating the entire person.
The criteria used to define merit and tests used in various applications aren't perfect. If anything, the article shows that there's much room for improvement.
1
Meritocracy was originally coined as a negative term to mock the fact that those with merit were identified early, given education, and then good jobs/positions. This seems to have continued and may even be worse now. Can a CEO really have so much merit that he or she makes tens of millions a year? I don't think so. Does a fast food employee have so little merit as to not even be paid a living wage? Again, I don't think so. Our system is increasingly rigged to concentrate "merit" to a few, while discounting everyone else. And those tests? Yes, they are useful, but very myopic. They don't test attitudes, vision, artistry, wisdom, and so on--attributes that in many cases are more important than the three R's.
5
the only answer is strict meritocracy, People have different abilities. People from different groups have different abilities, different skills. It is a mistake to expect equal numbers of people from different groups and classes to all have the same numbers of skills and talented people.
again, the only answer can be competition and meritocracy
4
As a practical and moral matter, Peter Singer's response was also the closest to Rawls' powerful notion of justice. Singer suggests all work should be valued and rewarded well. I would go further in how he framed the issue. He mentions the "talents required for the most highly paid jobs". What are those talents?
For CEO's and politicians one characteristic is a high degree of sociopathy. Is this a talent? Same was true of pre-med students and law students. Same with general contractors. Virtually all of those people have above average IQs. But so do many many people who aren't sociopaths. Many have enormous talent expressed in the performance of their jobs but aren't rewarded for their actual performance because their jobs aren't valued appropriately.
But let's flip it around. Singer says others without those "talents" "work hard at other, often even more essential jobs — from teachers, nurses, and police to cleaners and waste collectors". What are their "talents"? To value their work properly, examine how the people in the first high paying group would perform in these jobs. Let's say they are required to do that type of work but have an influence on how much they should be compensated. For example, let's have Jamie Dimond do road repair or industrial factory work or cleaning service. How long will he last? What wage would he set for others so he didn't have to do that kind of work? What reduction would he take for his old job? I suspect wealth equality would even out.
2
Transcribing my comment earlier, about Singer's insight:
"This was expressed verbatim by Michael Walzer in "Spheres of Justice", including specifically suggesting garbage collectors should be very highly paid. Michael Walzer suggested that pay and intrinsic job satisfaction combined should ideally be equally distributed. so a rewarding academic career should be paid less, and sewer workers more, so it all balances out. Whether or not that could be achieved in practice, Walzer rightly suggests that's what actual fairness looks like, and we should take are bearings from that. As it stands now, intrinsic and financial rewards tend to clump together, while miserable drudgery and low pay coincide. We could be called just to the extent we overcome this "winner take all" dynamic promoted in our so-called "meritocracy."
"Ronald Dworkin, by the way, perhaps academic liberalism's foremost voice of the last half century (so said none other than Cass Sunstein), brutally panned Walzer's scheme. I don't recall exactly if that was based on the difficulty of implementation, ot's "unrealistic" aspirations, but that reasoning was implied by Dworkin, who said no such society (realizing that concept of fairness) has ever existed. I didn't see how this faults the theory, which as I said should give us our bearings, not necessarily a direct or exact blueprint. I thought Walzer's scheme satisfies the Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" principle."
2
@Andrew Maltz I've not read Walzer but based on your description I would agree with you. Robert Nozick tried a take down of Rawls based on a nonsensical and convoluted excuse for "freedom" and "the market". In essence arguing for the status quo with a libertarian twist. Sounds similar to Dworkin's critique...can't beat the status quo.
That is the Oligarchic air we breath. The status quo, misnamed the "free Market", is the best "we" can get. Similarly the notion that Libertarian unrestrained capitalism is the only true capitalist system we should aspire to, and all socialism is USSR and Venezuela. This pollution in our air serves to (try to) choke the increasing understanding in the Zeitgeist that Justice, economic and otherwise, can actually be had through the judicious pulling of the levers of democracy. (IE Warren or Sanders).
An appreciation of the interconnectedness of our society and the dependence of everyone on everyone else, especially regarding the value of all work, is a hybrid of traditional conservative views and socialist views. The upcoming revolution in production with AI and robotics and the likely displacements due to climate change will require a fundamental reckoning about ownership of the means of production. Having a framework in place, as you suggest, will be essential to avoid regression to a high tech NeoFeudalist nightmare.
2
In just the 21st century, our American meritocracy has brought us:
- The Iraq War
- The real estate bubble and financial crash of 2008
- Third world-level inequality that has resulted in almost half of Americans (!) finding it hard to make ends meet.
- a dystopian internet/social media environment
- a dysfunctional healthcare system
- the economic conditions that gave rise to a demagogue like Trump
And lest we forget, wholesale inaction in the face of encroaching climate catastrophe.
Sounds to me like our American meritocracy needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
7
@Vin
and.....
- $1.7 trillion in academic debt, a figure just this year surpassing credit card debt in this country
- A prioritization of achievement tokens (grades) over learning itself such that the Duke/Rutgers educational ethics researcher Donald McCabe has shown more than half of American students have cheated substantially in school to procure their career-advancing grades. (Proud day for B.F. Skinner and his acolytes!)
-Not only skyrocketing inequality, an increasingly "winner take all" society in which a select few are taking home 12 figure incomes with the meritocracy-brainwashed, meritocracy/addled barely raising an eyebrow: "Hey, it's like market forces, dude"--- but skyrocketing ACCELERATION of wealth disparity since the social darwinism religion of "meritocracy" became exactly that: a RELIGION.
- Yes, an educational system that has its graduates and students think and say:
HEY, IT'S LIKE MARKET FORCES, DUDE, YOU KNOW, IT'S LIKE THE INVISIBLE HAND, NATURAL YOU KNOW. WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KINDA COMMUNIST-- YOU WANT EVERYBODY TO HAVE THE SAME???
1
I’m old enough to remember the arguments used against affirmative action. It was said in the last 50 years that people should be given equal opportunity to succeed on their own effort. It was an inherently meritocratic argument.
Now, we have a lot of hand wringing about how “unfair” equal opportunity is. I have to ask, what has changed? Is it now unfair to measure merit? Are the measures not accurate? Is there no equal opportunity to achieve ones potential? Possibly all of these things.
I suspect that something else is at work. These success problems were previously viewed as “minority” problems, not shared visibly by the larger white community. Now that working class whites are exhibiting these success problems, we are seeing a questioning of the fairness of the system by the same people who didn’t see it that way before.
This is part of a pattern that includes opioid addiction. When drug addiction and overdose was an urban, minority problem, it was a failure of character. Now, it must be someone else’s fault.
If you are non-white, you have to wonder why the rules of the game change when it is white people who are having trouble winning. When they were having trouble, the answer was personal responsibility and self-reliance. Why the change?
2
"{Insofar as testing reduces the number of bad hires,} businesses in competitive marketplaces are motivated to support the use of ability assessments."
The above statement is hyperbole without any validating proof. It assumes that those not hired would be bad hires based on 'ability' assessments. Did none hires by one employer become successful hires by another? Einstein was assessed as an average math student in secondary school! Could he have tested better? Probably, if he was motivated or interested in achieving math excellence as a measure of academic (testing) achievement.
Meritocracy is an 'individual attribute' but never a group one. Take competitive 'team' sports where not all players are outstanding. In the famous 30 year Stanford Study, students followed after graduation with similar academic scores and IQ's; later in life showed high and low professional and business successes. Oddly the study concluded that 'personal motivation' not an inherent or educational ability made the critical difference in success. Applying critical thinking effectively is not merely acquiring and memorizing knowledge. But imagination, drive and emotional stability are also key elements in one's effort to succeed!
This is why racism and ethnocentrism are so destructive in improving human society. Competence is disguised by someone else's coat tails. While most of us are not tailors and can't sew a stitch. Thus we borrow and get opportunities in life from 'our' in-crowd.
2
@Samuel Owen
Racism is a terrible and destructive force, but it doesnt mean all testing is bad. Testing grew in use after WW2 because it was very useful in assigning personnel to roles.
And yes, testing is not perfect, but waht is in this world.
And while motivation is key to achievement, it is not sufficient in many instances. Knowledge and intelligence also play key roles.
How would you like your surgeon to be highly motivated but of low intelligence and with little medical knowledge?
1
In government, politics and the media you see what I call "legacies". The legacies have a prominent family member somewhere. Often it is not evident until you do some research-but it is often there. Too often to be a statistical anomaly. So, if you believe we live in a meritocracy do a little research. You will be amazed.
6
@bikegeezer Truth!
My grandparents came to this country with nothing.
My wife and I are professionals and our children graduated college debt free (our saving, investment and prioritizing them over things). They are now working and making good livings.
I ran a manufacturing organization for years and we hired may immigrants whose stories were similar to my grandparents. I saw them get married, have families, buy homes and live the American Dream.
There's a lot of corrupt meritocracy; but there's a lot of bona fide as well. The American Dream is NOT dead, but it's not guaranteed.
11
I’m surprised that so little consideration in Edsall’s piece was given to the need for improving the educational opportunities for poor children. I grew up in a lower middle-class family and went to public school in NYC in the 1950s. When I look back on my years at PS 86, I am amazed at the sophistication of the subjects we were taught and the cultural variety in those classes. (Science, math, art, and music included.) I suspect today’s students don’t get fraction of that learning. A country still as rich as the US ought to do a better job of educating its citizenry.
7
It is ironic that man born with silver spoon in his and a million dollars in pocket should become the proponent of populism.
The debate over SAT and admission in an elite college is really not a big issue, though we know any test will have some faults and any system can be breached. People will always game the system just as our leader in Washington has unabashedly acknowledged.
The issues are:
(A) Why do we have only a few elite colleges?
(B) Why can’t we have colleges of comparable excellence like Germany? Then there won’t be such a fierce fight to get into one.
( C) As Singer has noted, people are different in terms of their abilities. I could never excel basketball with my short height. I don’t have musical talents either, But I did alright as an academic.
(D) Many of the folks from poor neighborhoods don’t fare well in tests, because the schools in these areas are not well. Progressive leaders focus on money, but money alone can’t make them better.
(E) Patents must imbibe the value of education in their children and make sure they follow their advice.
(F) Equality is not same as equity. Justice is not in equality; it may be under a communist regime. But history shows that it didn’t work anywhere. So people like Gates, Zuckerberg will earn more than me. But on the other hand the people working for Gates or Bezos must get a living wage, and have access to decent housing, health care and education for their children.
4
We have great colleges. In this area, America is the preeminent leader in college and university education and research.
Americans have OVERVALUED these so-called elite schools.
The main issue is that the Hedge Funds, Investment Banking Firms, Elite Corporate Mgt. Programs, Elite Law and Consulting Firms and certain NGOs, non-profits and government agencies over recruit at these places.
If these organizations would also recruit at North Dakota State and Northern Iowa, we wouldn’t have this pressure to get into these schools. The education for the most part is not that much better.
2
The truly great public universities are arguably better than the elite ivies due to the diversity of experience a student's fellow students offer each other. I am thinking abou most UC, Us of Oregon and colorado, U of M, UT, etc.
The meritocracy morphed into a plutocracy when the quality of education began to correlate with the wealth of the neighborhood. Now we have the adversity index to compensate for this, given a boost to those in poorer districts with worse schools.
We should not pervert the concept of meritocracy because we have poor schools in poor districts. We should fix quality of education so all can excel. Poor students can excel in NYC because the general quality of education is high.
5
At any given historical moment different skills, abilities and talents reap different rewards. And at any given moment the rewards distribution may not be consistent with the long term interests of society. So hedge fund managers currently reap great rewards based supposedly on their talents, but is rewarding hedge fund manager talents best preparing the world, for instance, for climate change. The issue is not really meritocracy. The issue is an unregulated market system that delivers disproportionately great rewards to a few whose short term self interest dominates the market. The system reinforces and justifies itself. It leaves as socially and politically limited as hereditary aristocracy. It's not that the aristocracy didn't have extraordinary talents. They knew how to game and maintain their system. But those talents ultimately did not meet the needs of a changing world. So, now are we trapped in a system that cannot see or meet our future needs? Even if those who get to the top do so on "merit."
1
Interesting I was just having a conversation about this over census. Essentially the ability to opt-out renders the statistical reliability of the test, or survey, completely useless. What does being in the 99th percentile mean if 50 percent of students aren't taking the test? You're in the top 1 percent of students who chose to take a test where they expect to do well. That figure is about as useful as spit when determining outcomes.
The ASVAB is an even more clear example. If you score high in more than one or two of the specialized segments straight out of high school, you've only proven you know how to study for a test or you shouldn't be joining the military as enlisted. Seriously, look at a sample test.
The conversation can go in a different direction as well. Heard immunity fails when around 10 percent of the population decides not immunize their children. An anti-test movement can achieve the same critical mass relatively easy. This was my point about the census. Statistical befuddlement is a political weapon.
So far, only anti-vaxxers are actually endangering lives. Although, you could level the same argument at climate change deniers. If you really don't like the SATs though, the easiest way to invalidate standardized tests is for students to stop taking standardized tests. The only way to ensure population accuracy is to require the population to submit to the test. That's how math works.
2
For me, this part of the article says it all:
"If we think about cognitive ability testing as a form of lottery, in which the winners are those who possess a certain inherent capacity for processing and analyzing information, without reference to morally salient criteria like goodness, mercy, kindness or courage, we are embarking on a new kind of impoverishment."
The only thing I would add is that we have already arrived at that new kind of impoverishment. In the microcosm of medical care, for example, bright people manage how many minutes you should be in the emergency department, how many days you should be in the hospital and at what time of the day you should go home. Goodness, mercy, kindness and courage are foreign concepts in that world.
Is that the kind of brightness we want in our young people?
Yes, it seems so.
1
and twenty years ago we will look back at the notion of a meritocracy in a work world dominated by quantum computers and machine learning that never sleeps, calls off sick or takes parental leave with the same nostalgia we have for the days of three networks, stay at home mom's and three martini lunches.
I graduated in the top third of my high school class of 675 seniors. Because I graduated in the top 50% of my class, I was accepted at our state's flagship University. I never took the ACT nor SAT tests. I must admit, I clearly was not the smartest person in any of my classes. But, I worked hard and graduated with a Bachelors degree.
21 years later, my daughter applied and got into the same University school but had a much more difficult path. She needed a very high GPA. Score very high on her SAT's and show that she could do more than just study and get good grades by the many activities she participated in (choir, tennis, band, etc.). She was the smartest in many of the courses she took, but still had to work hard in order to get her degree (and eventually her masters).
The point is, no matter how you got in, you still need to participate and do the work to get a degree. Competition for grades was much more the point than pass/fail a course when I went to college. It weeded out those pretenders who got in who really didn't belong. Today, I feel colleges no longer want to weed out students or are afraid to do so. Making the value of the degree so much less.
1
"effect of coaching on a 1600 point scale was about 20 points.”
You think? The College Board itself claims improvements of over 200 points, using their own Khan Academy -- this, after years of denying, fatuously, that coaching had no significant effect.
2
Objective and uniform tests of scholastic performance are the most important tools to reduce the influence of privilege. The claim they disadvantage minorities is a myth - the lower scores of socio-economic minorities reflect inadequate preparation by the inferior public schools they attend - this is the real reason. The only solution is to improve the pay and social status of teachers at such schools. Ultimately, the most important criterion for advancement in the current and future economy is intelligence. There is no way around this reality. Neither Trump nor blue collar anger will change it. There is, however, a major injustice that favors the entrance of the privileged to the top colleges: legacy. This criterion must be stricken at once. A society that tolerates this is unjust.
1
We need the meritocracy--nobody really wants a nation run by cronies of the Big Men. (Except Trump and his ilk.)
But it's not acceptable to have most people completely shut out of success at birth. This seems to be where we're heading.
And it's not right for the best teachers to be living in poverty because they did not major in finance. We need champions at all levels of society.
And the dignity of work--all work--must be respected, and compensated adequately. The best house painter deserves as much respect as Ivy Leaguers get.
This article focuses so much on testing, and how our fates are set by tests. This is a big part of the problem. A test grade is just a number and mostly it tells you who is good at tests and puzzles. We need to come up with better ways to measure success.
2
Meritocracy is a topic in many aspects of life: business, corporations, academia, sports, music, etc. The one area getting most attention is politics.
Fudan University professor Zhang Weiwei explains China's unique Democracy vs. American-Western Democracy.
American-Western Democracy is based on voting alone, under the ideology of universal suffrage. It's basically a popularity contest presuming the voters are sane and rational. Money plays a big role in USA to buy popularity.
China's Democracy is mainly based on meritocracy. Leaders are selected from members by voting inside the party. Candidates must establish track record in a series of more demanding assignments. The successful technocrats with demonstrable success get promoted.
Results from the last forty years clearly show the difference of the two approaches.
1
It never was a meritocracy, what has happened is those born on third base (or their parents) are increasingly revealed to be manipulating the system so their offspring remain on top.
And most success stories these days seem to involve some way to further exploit workers (Scheduling software, Uber and Amazon distribution centers anyone?), limiting workers ability to have a comfortable life.
Bring me one story of a parolee (or anyone) who started in Fast Food or at Amazon and was fast tracked to genuine, white collar, six figure management. "They" have pulled up the ladder their grandparents climbed, and with Red State cuts to education budgets, are using the ladders for firewood.
The favored fraction zoom up, the rest of us scramble for crumbs and hope they don't cancel our healthcare.
6
Great article, but some gaps. For one, Robert Frank's broader critique should have been included. Frank's main attack on what we call "meritocracy" (part of why he calls it "the myth of meritocracy") is that outcomes always grossly distort disparities of talent, ability & effort (even if we grant that these are significant factors), by artificially amplifying & rewarding (disproportionately) small gradations of performance & ability in "winner take all" dynamics. In extreme cases like pro sports or the arts, one 98% as skilled as the top earner will earn less than 1% of the latter's income, as markets only make careers for the very top 1% in these fields. While these represent the extreme case, the principle, albeit in milder form. runs across society. A 1590 SAT (often boosted by expensive coaching BTW) may result in a Harvard admission, with all the potential rewards, financial & otherwise, that may bring; just a few points lower (few enough that coaching/its lack, or a good night sleep could make all the difference) could result in in a far less privileged trajectory.
Indeed, Frank vociferously shows how luck & other non-merit factors often play a tremendous role in determining how talent, skill and effort are developed, allowed to manifest & rewarded, in nearly all situations, even cases of extraordinary achievement. For each Einstein, Picasso or Rubinstein who "makes it", there may be countless others who, could have done the same with better luck ($ security etc.).
1
Fighting against the SAT and the ACT is not a fight against merit; it's a fight for better measures of merit. I studied thousands of student records to see what predicts success. Both high school GPA (despite rampant grade inflation) and class rank did that better than any standardized test. And what performed best of all was first-year college grades--at any kind of college. What you need for real merit screening would be tests that can't be skewed by family wealth--as the SAT and ACT can be.
4
More birth control (very much more) will solve a lot of the meritocracy problem, and as a by product, help the Earth to recover.
3
A great article, but some gaps. For one, Robert Frank's broader critique should have been included. Frank's main attack on what we call "meritocracy" (part of why he calls it "the myth of meritocracy") is that outcomes always grossly distort disparities of talent, ability & effort (even if we grant that these are significant factors), by artificially amplifying & rewarding (disproportionately) small gradations of performance & ability in "winner take all" dynamics. In extreme cases like pro sports or the arts, one 98% as skilled as the top earner will earn less than 1% of the latter's income, as markets only make careers for the very top 1% in these fields. While these represent the extreme case, the principle, albeit in milder form. runs across society. A 1590 SAT (often boosted by expensive coaching BTW) may result in a Harvard admission, with all the potential rewards, financial & otherwise, that may bring; just a few points lower (few enough that coaching/its lack, or a good night sleep could make all the difference) could result in in a far less privileged trajectory.
Indeed, Frank vociferously shows how luck & other non-merit factors often play a tremdous role in determining how talent, skill and effort are developed, allowed to manifest & rewarded, in nearly all situations, even cases of extraordinary achievement. For each Einstein, Picasso or Rubinstein who "makes it", there may be countless others who, could have done the same with better luck ($ security etc.).
3
Meritocracy is a myth that the powerful and connected sold to the less powerful. Jobs in "white shoe" law firms were always about connections. It has always been possible to study to the test. For years the SAT told people it was not true, but my mother knew better and made me study. Now the rabble are figuring out that they tests are designed for those who can afford to prep for them.
If you want a meritocracy, then have huge inheritance taxes so that one generation cannot give their children in the next generation a huge advantage over everyone else. Don't let some people start on third base and then judge everyone by how many runs are scored.
2
We didn't have perfection, but we had a lot of helpful things that we have dismantled in the last 40 years.
A good start would be to put modernized versions of these things back in place:
1) stronger unions
2) progressive taxation - that needs to be paid
3) minimum wage and wage standards
Don't make perfection the enemy of improvement.
453
@WJL
I strongly agree. My own observations have been that making sure women have a good salary and benefits to support their children makes a big difference. Fathers too -- but I say women because 1) they often are raising children without the fathers, and 2) even when not, they usuallty have the major role in raising the children.
52
@WJL — I’d add 4) eliminate tuition for students obtaining undergraduate degrees (as was the case in California until Governor Ronald Reagan pushed successfully for its reinstitution).
32
@WJL I agree. Many of "the millions of non-college whites infuriated by what they perceived as their relegation to second class status" are where they are because they voted republican. It's far easier to blame the Mexicans and Muslims than it is to take responsibility for your own actions and change, hence we have Trump.
34
When did we ever have a meritocracy? I have not seen much change in my 40+ year career.
The most talented people I've met have been hard-working, scrappy, public-school educated people who succeeded by refusing to take no for an answer.
But pretty much all of them had to report to a long parade of second-tier Ivy-League bosses who got hired first, promoted first, and continue to replace themselves with their own clones.
346
@UH
As a member of the first group you mention, I'd like to add that the conflation of achievement, academic or otherwise with wealth creates this problem. Wealth, or the illusion we are entitle to gain it, taking priority over things we actually claim to understand (Mostly liberal values) e.g:
Don't be racist, pick any "ist",
Don't kill things,
Don't waste things,
Don't destroy the planet,
We are obliged to the future, we learn from the past,
and on and on...
So to answer Mr. Edsall's question. The inevitable outcome is the preservation of privilege, at the expense of any perceived concordance to the "meritocracy", it is built in to our chosen system, and accepted without conscience on by oh so many.
Good luck changing that in a world driven by "Lottery Winner Delusion"
As long as we compete for position this way, we will become better and better at the competition and likely worse and worse at the actual practical application of our knowledge, and our ethics will vanish into a rule set for compliance to maintain social position.
I am pretty sure Mr. Orwell was tying to warn us about this.
10
@UH
My father started as a bench engineer and became a VP of RD at once famous EE company. Toward the end of his career, he used to to say that he could sell his bosses, who were MBAs, on developing eternal motion machines, and they'd be none the wiser.
17
@UH IMO it's better over here in the West, in that there are fewer Ivy Leaguers.
6
I believe that the problems come when one relies on just standardized assessments, resumes, or whatever. If you've been in the workplace you know how difficult it can be to fairly and objectively measure merit. The best resume may not be the best person for the job. I think managers are always looking for that "magic bullet" that will give then the answer. No one wants to be the person who hired the dud. It's more difficult not to use standardized assessment in the educational process so SAT, ACT's become the measure when there is not a lot else to go on. But then again, spending your entire academic life studying at the library and acing all the tests does not always create the ability to apply those skills in life.
2
All these words boil down to one simple principle: no one should go hungry or unsheltered because they are not smart. Everyone should be entitled to a safe place to live, good food, access to medical care and a reasonable quality of life even if they are not intelligent. No one should be homeless or forced into factory work for ten hours a day or dressed in rags.
This is the problem. The top percentiles seem to believe that anyone who doesn't meet their academic standards should be treated like slaves. Put in a strong safety net and let everything else be details.
To whom much is given much is expected. Part of that expectation should be to make sure that others are not treated with contempt.
4
Once every two to three weeks, I travel with a very small and committed church group to take goods, clothes, food, you-name-it to several of the most poverty-stricken communities in South Carolina---they are all in the lower part of the state along the I-95 corridor, otherwise known as the Corridor of Shame.
Gridlock poverty best describes what this part of America's permanent underclass faces. They are invisible---most people don't even know they exist. They have no voice---who, after all, hears a tree fall deep in the forest? They haven't been "forgotten" because they were never remembered in the first place. They haven't been "left behind" because they never had a "place" from which they could be "left behind." They can't "bootstrap" their way out because they lack not only bootstraps, but boots.
Say what you want, differ as much as you like, but they are as nearly helpless to change their situation as a people could be. And equally hopeless. You name it---they don't have it or have access to it. Living in Appalachia's coal country, as beaten down as it is, would be, for them, a middle-class life-style.
These little communities exist across the country. We can discuss the merits and/or demerits of The Meritocracy 'til the cows come home. That discussion needs to be had. But it means nothing to those who face a life-sentence of living with nothing. And are resigned to the fact that no one will be writing a NYT column about them.
Just sayin'...
81
@Rusty Inman
"I travel with a very small and committed church group to take goods, clothes, food, you-name-it to several of the most poverty-stricken communities in South Carolina"
Thank you for doing this. I mean this from the bottom of my heart.
In addition to providing for their basic needs, I hope you try to inspire them as human beings -- especially the children. There is hope, and there is opportunity.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime.
I write this as a liberal, who believes in opportunity for all.
Again, thank you.
11
@Rusty Inman
You and your group totally rock!
I keep explaining to people wanting to go do good in Africa or Haiti, that it is all well and nice, but we have people here, Americans in Appalachia and elsewhere who need all those things the other countries need. Charity begins at home.
11
That's a terrible idea. A meritocracy is akin to saying that only the guy that wins the race gets a prize, but the rich white kid gets a 50m headstart, the poor white kid gets a 25m headstart, the Latino kid gets a 10m headstart, and the black kid runs with his legs tied together.
It sounds like natural justice in theory, but applied to an unjust world it would only widen the gap.
4
Different objections to different things seem to be mixed up here. (Opposition to the testing mania in schools isn’t necessarily driven by opposition to the use of tests to sort students, for example.)
But let’s talk about two core issues. One, the use of supposed “merit” in school and college admissions; and two, whether any notion of merit can justify the economic inequalities we observe in society.
On the first, what justification is there to select students for special high schools or colleges by ranking applicants (in whatever way) instead of via a lottery of all qualified applicants? (Some preparation is necessary for these, so set a line - then implement a lottery of everyone meeting it.) Given the huge leg up these admissions can give a person, why should everyone qualified not be in with an equal chance?
For the second issue, to ask the question is to answer it. You don’t have to be a communist or a Rawlsian to acknowledge that our economic rewards system is completely out of whack.
2
Because then people who score lower than the “line” have no chance of admission, even if they have plenty of other admirable attributes. The American systemic gives preference to those who score the highest, but also rewards those who have other redeeming qualities. This is what the term holistic review refers to.
By definition, everyone admitted - holistically or otherwise - is considered sufficiently prepared. A school wouldn’t admit students they don’t believe can complete their program. So these applicants wouldn’t be below the line considered at all, they’d be in with the same shot as anyone else. I should add that I’m a strong supporter of affirmative action through quotas. If the lottery I suggest has to be tweaked to achieve representation that’s no problem. But I see no justification for the current system that relies on the fiction that someone can identify the couple hundred or thousand applicants that are most “meritorious” out of a pool of thousands or tens of thousands. It cannot be done. There is no real difference in “merit” howsoever defined between that last applicant in and the first applicant out, or even the median applicant in and the median applicant in the next group as large as that admitted. And yet we accept as natural systems that rely on the fiction that this distinction reflects an actual difference.
Donald Trump. Ivanka Trump. Donald Trump Jr and brother Eric. Son-in-law Jarod Kushner. Other family dynasties lend themselves to similar lists of underwhelming notables but rarely in such plain sight. Does anyone truly believe that individuals of such meager intelligence and talents owe their success to their abilities? It's not so much that meritocracy is under siege, as Mr. Edsall suggests. It’s that the system itself has been transformed into one of privilege and inheritance in ways that often pale by comparison with past eras. Mr. Edsall’s article suggests that it has always been such and, to a certain extent, that’s true. But rarely, if ever, to this extreme. How can a meritorious system that self-perpetuates family fame and fortune, despite painfully obvious shortfalls in intelligence and ability, still be called meritorious? How can a land paralyzed by inequality still claim to be a land of opportunity? What can – or should – be salvaged from a system that operates so at variance with its lofty principles? The challenge that the US faces is not one of salvaging a system that no longer exists, but in engaging in a process of rebirth and renewal in ways that bring the nation’s practices and outcomes more closely in line with its professed aspirations and values. It begins not with testing but with high-quality education and life-long learning for all.
3
The inequality that is threatening our democracy is not so much in the areas of testing and education. It is in preparing our citizens for jobs that are needed that they are suited to do,and THEN paying them a living wage so they can afford to have a roof over their heads, food to eat, healthcare that does not bankrupt them, and children. Children who are not considered a hobby, but our most precious resource and the future of our country. I saw Tom Wolfe speak at a professional meeting around the turn of the century, who predicted that we were about to enter a second guilded age.
My spell check just changed guilded, which is what he actually said (and was quite prescient), to guilted. A Freudian slip??
3
It should have been corrected to gilded.
2
keep the exams. women have been outscoring men on them for years. this is just another way to hide that fact. I'm all for the standardized tests (although I don't believe meritocracy exists). without it, our schools would be filled with white men. as a black person I already know where this is headed. white men underperform. that is actually the honest truth.
3
'Equality' has become a false god itself. You have to ask yourself, for example, what is a college education supposed to achieve? Mastery of a base of knowledge? Or just a piece of paper that allegedly makes you 'employable'? How far are we from the world of Harrison Bergeron?
There was something to be said for the medieval Great Chain of Being and the class system. The talented commoner could rise ('turn again, Dick Whittington, thrice lord mayor of London') and titles placed a floor under those who,for whatever reason, lost status ('Yet I am Duchess of Malfi still', 'My rags and my tatters I try to conceal, I'm one of the shabby genteel'). You were expected to fill your niche well and had a place ('Kings need carpenters, carpenters need kings').
By contrast, our 'classless' society is class-ridden, and the ground is forever shifting under one's feet ('It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place'). 'Equality' is not necessarily the solution, not only because it's unachievable but because it isn't necessarily desirable in itself.
3
Who is kidding whom? Meritocracy is long gone. It's been replaced by (1) who you know, (2) your family wealth, and (3) your school. So many people have just given up and you really can't fault them for that either. Want to go to a good college? Get in line behind the legacy kids, big donors and cheaters.
I detest Trump, but he was right about one thing: the system is rigged and 99.99% of us are not in the club.
Also, he did stop the TPP. Thankfully.
3
The only true meritocracy is sports. And even that is starting to be undermined.
2
Standardized tests measure the ability to take standardized tests. What else they measure is up for discussion. I don't think we have the ideal predictive instruments yet.
Disclaimer. I'm 72. My childhood and adolescence are littered with the smoking ruins of tests I defeated. My success level in real life wasn't quite the same. I have no complaints. I'm living indoors and have medical care. I do not have a summer home in the Caymans or a bank account there. :-)
6
The lede?
"We are embarking on a new kind of impoverishment" devaluing "goodness, mercy, kindness or courage" "in which the winners are those who possess a certain inherent capacity for processing and analyzing information."
...or is it just a continuation of the actual status quo, and the continuation of devaluing "goodness, mercy, kindness or courage" and our greatest wealth, cooperation, instead of the supreme value of success at competition?
Meritocracy, as practiced in the US, is a distorted process that selects those who have benefited from biases in access to education and opportunity during their life up to the point of selection. This meritocracy spits out George W. Bushes and Donald Trumps who have benefited from advantage throughout their lives, but who have little actual merit if measured by actual ability rather than privilege. The "elite" spewed by our meritocratic system don't look so elite when it comes to governing, and the concept deserves its current bad reputation. Obama, on the other hand, was meritorious in ability, but he barely squeaked through the gate of access to quality education and opportunity, and one wonders how many other Obamas never made it far enough to be selected. A rational society would provide a quality education to all children in the hope of bringing forward the most truly meritocratic in each generation, to everyone's benefit. Only in a degraded society like ours would we think that the feckless, foolish, and intellectually challenged offspring of the wealthy have any claim on leadership.
3
As current society worldwide becomes increasingly divided along educational, political and religious lines, finding common values and goals becomes both more necessary and more difficult.
Here I find an enlightening discussion of the divisive effects of what is defined as “meritocracy”. The most helpful and hopeful analysis for me is the suggestion by Peter Singer that only if those in currently less merited positions are sufficiently rewarded.
I would add that it would take a corresponding action by those in positions of greater merit to curb their seeming entitlement to unreasonable reward.
The biggest challenge before all of us may be the effort to work toward an equable and just commonality. This must be addressed in the field of education, in the field of politics and in the field of religion. The realm of business has not been mentioned because it would hopefully reflect the efforts stated.
1
This was expressed verbatim by Michael Walzer in "Spheres of Justice", including specifically suggesting garbage collectors should be very highly paid. Michael Walzer suggested that pay and intrinsic job satisfaction combined should ideally be equally distributed. so a rewarding academic career should be paid less, and sewer workers more, so it all balances out. Whether or not that could be achieved in practice, Walzer rightly suggests that's what actual fairness looks like, and we should take are bearings from that. As it stands now, intrinsic and financial rewards tend to clump together, while miserable drudgery and low pay coincide. We could be called just to the extent we overcome this "winner take all" dynamic promoted in our so-called "meritocracy."
Ronald Dworkin, by the way, perhaps academic liberalism's foremost voice of the last half century (so said none other than Cass Sunstein), brutally panned Walzer's scheme. I don't recall exactly if that was based on the difficulty of implementation, ot's "unrealistic" aspirations, but that reasoning was implied by Dworkin, who said no such society (realizing that concept of fairness) has ever existed. I didn't see how this faults the theory, which as I said should give us our bearings, not necessarily a direct or exact blueprint. I thought Walzer'scheme satisfies the Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" principle.
1
Giving real economic and political powere to people with the kind of talent that is measured by the SAT was not very common in the United States until quite recently. Smart people who wanted to get elected were well advised to develop the 'common touch' . Able kids were known as geeks and nerds and were often bullied in the public schools. In the 1980's a popular bumper sticker stated 'My kid beat up your A student'. People like Bill Gates broke
the mold, but the resentment toward able people, which is part of our tradition, became more virulent with their success
and is part of the reason for the Trump phenomenon. There are very good reasons for putting able people in charge of critical functions like government, medicine, science,
engineering and law which are in the general public interest
but to persuade Americans of that requires a certain amount of tact and humility on the part of the able.
9
Meritocracy has always been about where you were born in life. Yea, some folks work their way up the ladder, but mostly not. Some might even fall down the ladder, but mostly it is where you are born in life.
36
@Joe
good comment
1
Is there such a thing as a color blind meritocracy? It seems you can't screen out for cultural limitations, freedom of choice and personal desire- is there another way? Not and have meritocracy retain integrity of meaning.
A closely related issue to the question of testing is whether universities should hand out degrees at all. After all, what does it mean that you got a BA in history or math or anthropology from say Cornell? What does it actually certify in terms of your abilities, as opposed to a license to be a CPA? And with today's trend where undergrads believe that you have failed if you don't triple major in all three subjects, isn't the degree even more meaningless? Wouldn't it be better to just get a transcript at the end showing what courses you took, and let prospective employers make whatever sense they want to out of that?
An old Stephen Leacock story tells of how when you read English at Cambridge or Oxford, you went to your tutors chambers where he "smoked at you." Today's degree is also not saying much else than that you have been smoked at by faculty. That may have been OK when the old boys' network was the be all and end all, but it is not OK now.
@whaddoino
"A closely related issue to the question of testing is whether universities should hand out degrees at all."
What is a good alternative?
Should we just give every university student a trophy for participation?
I teach at a university. Our students earn their degrees. These degrees are worth something. The degree represents core competence in each of a carefully chosen list of courses, which individually and collectively allow the students to learn, and to demonstrate their motivation and work ethic.
6
Merit doesn't have to be controversial. Of course taste and subjectivity exist, but nonetheless it is often possible to identify excellent performance--whether it is musical, mathematical, athletic, artistic, or economic--without much ambiguity.
The rancor comes from the -cracy part, not the merit itself. By equating merit with the ability to rule over others, the idea of meritocracy conflates two unlike ideas. Can excellent musicians really "rule" over other people? Even other musicians? Not really, except maybe by playing better music.
Performance is different from leadership, and even leadership is another step removed from "rule."
Worse than just creating confusion, meritocracy opens up the various forms of merit to an attack by people who don't really care about merit, but very conspicuously DO care about ruling, and are willing to claim any merit necessary to acquire the -cracy.
2
The most insidious thing about the way meritocracy has infiltrated our culture is the way it is now buried in our algorithms. Very few of us get to meet a potential employer or associate, apply to a school, or get a loan before we've been vetted by some little black box. Does anyone know what its criteria are? Are it's routines ever re-evaluated or updated? Is there any court of last appeal? No, no and, no. We used to call this kind of blind intervention in our lives "Fate", now it's just a moldering program on a server somewhere.
1
@stan continople
"The most insidious thing about the way meritocracy has infiltrated our culture is the way it is now buried in our algorithms."
The alternative used to be who you knew and who you "are."
A related objective metric is FICO credit scores. They can be criticized in the same way as standardized tests. But what they replaced is the "Welcome Wagon", from which Equifax (a credit bureau) is descended. In the old days, people judged you based on who you were (race, religion, etc.), rather than your ability and merit.
The current system may not be perfect, but it strives for some level of objectivity. Do we really want to to go back to how we used to do it?
1
It's much ado about nothing. There simply will not be remunerative employment for the vast majority as very few jobs will be filled by humans. And they will be the uber-special and the connected. The rest will be domestic servants, babysitters, dogwalkers -- though AI will accomplish much of this as well. A new, enormous underclass is being formed, which will be "humanely" maintained with a subsistence allotment which can only be redeemed at the subsidized food pantry, two transfers on a slow, electric-powered trolley, free, that runs twice a day between the homeless shelters dotting the low-lying landscape. Welcome to tomorrow, kiddies.
5
"...Rawls proposes that in considering how to order a just society, one must assume a “veil of ignorance” — a lack of information about one’s own future personal advantages and standing."
Even if these words did help define a "just society", they do not minimize the great value of rewarding merit -- so that more people are encouraged to increase their capabilities -- and of allocating greater power to those with greater capabilities -- so that important decisions can be made by people with greater ability to understand the decisions they are making.
We live in an extremely competitive world. Our nation needs to have highly intelligent, well informed, people in scientific, economic, cultural, and political positions of power if we are to have any chance to maintain our freedom against the increasingly artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance state of Communist China -- a state with an economy already 10% more productive than ours, a state growing at about twice our rate, a state with four times our population, a five point higher average IQ, five times the number of graduates in science, technology, engineering, and math, and a much more globally competitive wage rate than that of Americas with equally productive labor.
China understand the value of rewarding merit. Without considerably more merit, America will almost certainly become a slave state to China.
6
The literal elephant in the room is Republican and evangelical decades-long efforts to defund, destroy, or otherwise pervert science-based public schools.
While the issues this article addresses are real and complex, it doesn’t mention that there’s been a zealous drive to remove the very mechanism, solid publicly-financed public schools, that gives all children, rich or poor, a chance at a good foundational education that will increase anyone’s ability to move through society and thrive in their chosen path. The fact that, as commenter Expat mentions, Siemens couldn’t find more than 15% of job applicants with the skills of a ninth grade education in North Carolina, a famously religious, conservative red state, says it all. Betsy DeVos is only one of many Christian Dominionists who believe the only education the public should receive is a religious education and if they don’t like it, then they must pay for a private secular education. If they can’t afford it, then all the better for Dominionists to exert social control over an illiterate populace and capitalism to exploit desperate workers.
Before we begin dismantling meritocracy, we as a society must reverse the last 40 years of Republican and evangelical public school destruction. We must ensure that all children everywhere receive an equivalent, well-financed, science-based education. I think we would find that meritocracy isn’t so bad when every single child receives the very best preparation for it.
4
Great column, Thomas. While this is a challenging issue, delving into these topics that do not divide neatly between right and left, Republican and Democrat, is a worthwhile and valuable undertaking. Please do continue probing such issues.
Shouldn't we start by asking what the goal is, for the individual and the society? What is all the learning, measuring, assessing, competing and striving for? For the individual, is it just to make a lot of money? For the society, is it just to produce a lot of GDP? A baby is born and has to be fed and protected until he or she is independent. That infant has no "merit" based on talents, social skills, education or work ethic. The helpless infant has human worth. That is all. People don't lose their human worth when they turn 21. Everybody alive deserves the essentials of life and in a rich country, a dignified standard of living. Humans have a wide range of mental and physical abilities, talents and personalities, not of their choosing. If our economic and social system cannot provide the means to a decent standard of living for all, it has failed, no matter what great works of science and technology those with the most "merit" produce.
72
@abigail49 Among the many excellent comments your comment is very well said and on target. White, black, tan, short, tall we all should have the dignity of a decent job, healthcare and look forward to a serene retirement.
8
@abigail49 If intelligence doesn't merit consideration then what does...stupidity? The most important question implied but not answered in this column is: how did we get to this point? What's driving this anti merit madness? It's crazy to demand that all of our schools & universities reflect the diversity of our population when this isn't always practical. The main driver of this insanity is the admission policies of our top colleges. You'll frequently hear admissions folks talk about how their process is "holistic," but what does this mean for an applicant? Turns out it's pretty arbitrary. Good grades & a perfect SAT score are no longer a guarantee. Under a holistic admissions policy, a student with a 3.9 GPA gets turned down while an award-winning tuba player with a 3.2 GPA gets accepted. The student who was the Chess Club President might get preference over the student who had higher ACT scores. No wonder our kids are stressed out. Holistic admissions- which is where anti merit leftist fanatics would take us- add irrational subjectivity to admissions decisions. The practice makes it impossible to explain who gets in, who doesn't, & why. Holistic admissions become a guise for allowing cultural and even racial biases to dictate the admissions process. This nonsense has to stop. Admission to top schools should be based on grades and test scores. Period. End of story.
5
@abigail49: How is this done organically without the engineered IQ matching of workers to job levels envisioned by Aldous Huxley in "Brave New World"?
This discussion seems to ignore one basic fact: some fields, for example engineering, do require a rather high level of cognitive processing. It's OK with me if the left wing of the Democratic Party wants to hand out tickets to Harvard Law and Harvard Business by lottery. But for everyone's sake, please leave the engineering schools out of it. I know it's highly unpopular to say so, but facts still do exist, and the real world is highly unforgiving.
9
Meritocracy? Seems we live in a Zipcodeocracy.
2
@mplsguy: 10583 was a safe zone during Vietnam. 01930 not so much.
2
The Spartans and other tribes perhaps had the purest form of a meritocracy when they tested the survival capacity of infants at birth, to see which ones survived a day in the wild alone. The survivors were the winners, who became eligible for further tests of survival as members of the adult elites. And there soon were no Spartans.
1
@Bayou Houma: Who would want to be that Spartan?
@Bayou Houma Not sure where you got that story. But the Spartans were around for some time, and won the Peloponnesian War. Perhaps more to the point, though, the Spartans left no enduring culture behind, whereas -- I know in this era 'diversity', like 'equality', has become a sacred cow of sorts, so the following will raise a few screams -- the culture of Sparta's defeated foe, Athens, is an essential, perhaps *the* essential, foundation of our culture -- including the first military history, Athenian Thucydides' history of that same war. It's said history is written by the victors, but the opposite was the case.
3
@Bayou Houma
Actually, Sparta was a singularly successful, egalitarian as well as a meritocratic, society. There was no way for you to gain any social status as a man if you didn;t show your mettle in batttle.
When you have to show accountability in the way the Spartans did it surely concentrates the mind. Today, this is what happens in corporate warfare. Not everyone in class gets a prize.
What does meritocracy mean today? Is it really about hard work, dedication, sacrifice? Or is it about gaming the system? The current admissions scandal suggests the latter. When did it change? Edward Blum’s “Students for ForFair Admissions” suit against Ivy League schools’ purported quotas against Asian students is as fraudulent as Stephen Miller’s case against immigrant refugees. Edward Blum’s Intent is not to defend Asian students, but to advance his community’s interests while preventing “minorities”, other than his own from reaching the privilege of power. He says nothing about improving the school system
The state-of-the nation under the new meritocrats is in shreds; morally and financially. Our political system has been taken over the likes of Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers who dictate who should run the nation. The new meritocrats have also caused huge income inequality, gender inequality, broken public school & infrastructure systems and more.
The new meritocrats are responsible for: 1) elimination of Glass-Steagall Act that caused the 2008 Great Recession - thank you Bob Rubin 2) catastrophic Iraqi invasion & destruction of the Middle East 3) new call to invade Iran - wars where only children of working families perish. Thank you Neocons.
Why are meritocrats silent over Purdue Pharma’s murder of 800k Americans from OxyContin.
Jared kushner got into Harvard along with a multimillion donation. His brilliance is blinding.
1
Many of the people who run France graduated from the same small bunch of Parisian lycees with very high admissions and graduation standards. Their meritocracy also regularly comes under siege.
Which would you want to build a bridge you will drive over, someone that excels in "goodness, mercy, kindness or courage"
, or someone that is a wiz at engineering? Just sayin
9
For those who believe that merit should play as a factor in education, business, arts and sciences, be sure you also apply merit at the basic level of immigration policy as well.
3
Good article - a nice broad strokes overview of the various perspectives. There is one differentiation I'd make that isn't mentioned however.
Human society lives in both a subjective and objective world. Our inner lives are composed of our beliefs, our philosophies, our politics, our family dynamics, etc., etc. It is a very malleable world with often no clear right or wrong.
Our outer world, however, is governed by relatively immutable laws - physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. How we feel about these laws is irrelevant.
Education splits into similar categories. There are the "soft" subjects. Interpersonal communications, PoliSci, literature, philosophy, etc. And then there is what we now call STEM - the hard sciences.
IMO, STEM qualifications and training absolutely require rigorous merit-based testing. The soft subjects - not really. Not to say I am dismissive here - without literature, art, music, sport & etc., life would be far less rich.
But ... if the academics at a conference discussing the real effects William Blake had on English literature got there because of good SAT/GED scores or not is going to make little difference (to anyone other than those who did not get to attend.)
However, if I drive across a bridge, or take an elevator 50 floors up, I really really want to know that the designers aced purely merit-based tests in applied physics, engineering, and math. Regardless of their race, creed, caste, or color. A bridge falls down or it doesn't.
4
Meritocracy. If you are not giving reasonable equal opportunity to schooling your getting uneven outcomes.
I would suggest the USA turn over all federal, state and local K-12 education administration to the nations of Finland, Germany and Japan. Pay them whatever it takes and let them run it without interference, including American History. Because we can’t even teach that.
It’s ridiculous how low American incompetence goes. The only things we seem to be good at is defense and internet commerce.
3
Testing can be helpful in supporting a person's sense of confidence in their skills.
However, testing also be used to promote great harm or evil.
Testing Aryan fitness in the Third Reich, for example...
What is being tested? There is no common, scientific agreement about intelligence, so what is being tested?
A "test" can be designed to evaluate many factors. However, until tests are designed and shown to be used primarily for the benefit and development of the person being tested, tests will almost certainly continue to be used to assess how a person fits into an established, dominant culture.
Meritocracy only matters if the starting point for everyone is the same. It's not a "meritocracy" when a significant portion of the population have been enslaved for hundreds of years, only to achieve equality-in-name-only within the last 60 years. Who have have been subject to intergenerational trauma and lack of accrued wealth. Who to this day suffer police brutality. Whose schools are underfunded...Until all those factors have been alleviated, "meritocracy" is just an excuse to protect unearned advantages by pretending you've earned them yourself.
77
Meritocracy allows one to earn the education that their children receive, giving the offspring of the successful an advanced start. That’s only natural, or else what benefits are there to success if the score is zeroed out with each generation. My grandfather grew up in a coal company town and was pulled out of school in the sixth grade to work full time. My own father had a ninth grade education because he had to help support his five sisters. As a result, my parents couldn’t afford college when I was growing up in Queens so I didn’t belong there. I was taught that no one owes you anything and that everything you have should be earned by the sweat of your brow.
13
@Nima These excuses don't explain why poor immigrants of color (Asians, Africans) do very well in this country. It's the family.
19
Nima
By an equal "starting point", does that mean selective universities should now NOT give African-American applicants an extra 250-300 point SAT mulligan over Caucasian and Asian students? Doesn't a slanted meritocracy actually harm African-American college graduates, since it perpetuates the idea that someone only "got in" because of skin color and not on academic prowess? With the current system, skin color certainly has some advantages in selective university admissions and Fortune 500 company employment recruiting.
9
A problem with the idea of meritocracy is the notion that intelligence is fixed, if you passed a test once then you are in, if not then you are doomed.
When I taught school, at the start of each school year all students and parents were notified that any exam was not the final word and a student could retake any exam (questions were rephrased or scrambled or new questions added to produce an equivalent test of knowledge or skill) as often as they wanted up until the day I was forced to produce grades by my school. Having read Carol Dweck, I hoped to emphasize development rather than smarts. Detractors will scorn “test to success” but great pains were taken to make sure students could demonstrate competence. I think my students appreciated it though some never took advantage.
So why not the same for adults? Unlimited chances until you can demonstrate what needs demonstrating with time between to develop?
We could even extend the idea to higher education. Instead of “free college” how about a money back guarantee? Fail a course and you can take it over again at no cost (advancement pending success of course). We can move beyond our fixed mindset when it comes to merit. Thanks Carol Dweck!
I was hoping Edsall would comment on addressing the blind spots of standardized tests. The data would be less easy to measure - but exams like the SAT focus on verbal and math abilities, but underemphasize other intelligences like spacial, musical, and kinetic. Creativity is probably one of the most underestimated talents in the knowledge economy. While we all like to yuk it up about dummies with art degrees, we do so at our own peril. Creatives tend to be great at synthesis, problem solving, and divergent thinking, which are crucial assets in short supply in the modern workplace.
3
It is a foolish idea to eliminate assessment in schools. There must be some method of measuring both the current and future states of individuals as well as aggregations of individuals.
That said, the issue seems to me to be not so much privilege as it is the vastly divergent rewards that accrue to privilege. Too few share a disproportionate amount of society’s rewards. The size of that difference can and should be lessened, but not necessarily eliminated.
Clearly, though, merit should be rewarded and every effort should be made to equalize as much as possible the access to acquiring the skills that encompass that merit. It is a pipe dream to believe that everything can be equal, not least because so many of the talents and abilities that make people successful defy simple assessment.
Also, it is naive to think that privilege can be eliminated. It is a better idea to “sand down” its most egregious effects where possible while working to improve access everywhere we can.
1
The idea that we should be anything other than a meritocracy is of course absurd. That said... our current meritocracy is far from a pure meritocracy. From ageism, racism, and sexism in the posting of digital job ads to affirmative action and the preference for legacies at elite universities we undercut merit at every turn. To destratify our society and break up the increasing formation of castes we need more merit combined with stronger protections for those who don't excel at traditional measures of merit.
We need a higher minimum wage that keeps pace with inflation. We need stronger unions. We need to be truly race blind in admissions and hiring. We need universal (read not single payer) healthcare access. And yes, we need strong borders and a legal immigration that emphasizes skills and education (as every other Western nation's system does) so that we can prioritize caring for own, rather than having our resources drained by those who were found to lack merit by their own countries.
3
@JP: My father was a Princeton grad. I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, so he arranged an interview with professor in the department. I brought a drawing to discuss of an airplane with forward-swept wings that were tipped with winglets much like those that are common now, with the top ones canted outward to produce a low-pressure wake over the full upper surface of the wing, and the bottom ones canted inward to produce a higher-pressure wake under the wing, at cruising speed, to boost lift as well as suppress the wingtip vortexes. He pronounced me uncreative. Maybe he thought I should get some harder knocks than I had experienced so far, or should just draw comic books.
1
@JP Unions? That ship has sailed. Unions were viable only when management could not easily pick up and relocate. Now the jobs can just be moved to Bangladesh or China or India. Especially in technical fields, the Third World can eat our lunch: ruthless emphasis on top test scores and skills, combined with a work force that can be paid lower wages (and in some countries, intimidated or beaten into accepting them), little or no regulation of safety or environment. For jobs that can't be offshored, management may rely on a steady flow of H1-B visa, or for lower-skilled work, illegal immigrants to 'do the jobs Americans won't do' (that is, Americans have legal rights and may exercise them, whereas illegals will put up with anything').
2
Edsall mentions that John Rawls did not believe in meritocracy, except to the extent it benefited the worst off. That's because he saw natural talent as a matter of luck, not something one earned. Less well known is that right-wing libertarians don't believe in meritocracy either. That's because they see it as requiring a patterned outcome that to implement would require constant state intervention. For them it's irrelevant if someone "deserves" their wealth. If people freely paid for a pet rock, and the inventor didn't steal the idea from anyone, then he has a right to his mansion in Palm Beach based on his idea. And his kids, however dumb, still have a right to their inheritance.
2
It is very simple. I, we, consumers, employers, want to always select the best people in a field.
We want the absolute best teacher available for our children, the absolute best doctor available for our parents, the absolute best lawyer to represent us, the best possible mechanic to fix our brakes.
When push comes to shove no one care if those teachers, lawyers, doctors, mechanics got to be the best because innate intelligence, or extra hard work, or because their parents gave them extra coaching early one. All we care is that they are the best available.
So meritrocracy will be required and demanded, regardless of any inequality of opportunity that may have contributed to results.
No one will ever accept less competence/excellence because of the way competence/excellence was achieved. Not when it counts anyway.
As for equality of opportunity, it will never happen. How do I know that? Because it has never ever happened in the whole history of the human race. Humans since before we were human (when we were primates even) always very quickly, in any group setting, sorted ourselves into the leaders and the followers. It is part of being human.
4
@Baron95 Correct. People intuitively seek out and recognize competence. Pretending otherwise doesn’t work.
2
Meritocracy in the U.S.?
People when they typically imagine meritocracy, talent, exceptional ability, great political and economic leadership not to mention leadership in the arts and sciences, rightly envision inspiring humanity, humanity which opens vistas, which provides answers rather than retains secrets,--in short, an illuminating humanity.
But what appears to be occurring in America, not to mention in less free parts of the world, is that a meritocracy is being built which yes, will help you realize your dreams (ok, the dreams part is not necessarily so in less free parts of the world) but at the price of first you giving up everything about yourself, especially your weaknesses, so you "can be helped in realizing your dreams".
When we realize how much the American dream is based on elites first knowing everything about the dreaming public we can understand why conspiracy thinking is so rife in America, why people fear AI knowing everything about us and entrapping us, catching us in checkmate, why people wonder if aliens are on earth and performing experiments on us, making us run mazes as if rats in a cage.
Meritocracy in the U.S. typically means a quite secretive, wealthy and connected bunch with immense technological power behind it, "responsible for providing for our needs", but assuredly it's predicated on knowing everything about us, and we do not so much receive answers in life but receive what we believe but it decides is to be our dream.
Standardized testing is the great equalizer. It's the only objective way to compare the intellectual and academic aptitudes of students from different schools and socioeconomic backgrounds. Especially since nationwide grade inflation has eroded the significance of GPA as a measure of achievement.
Take standardized testing like the ACT and SAT away, and pedigree becomes more important, which hurts kids from poor socioeconomic backgrounds rather than helping them.
If we really want to preserve meritocracy, standardized
testing scores are the best way to achieve that.
3
@Eric
I agree. And we should also try as best we can to apply consistent standards for test performance across the population. If we tell certain populations that less is expected of them, many will stop putting in the effort required to excel. Look at minority performance on the SAT, where very few minority students will work to improve a 650 or 700 score, because that's more than enough to secure a spot at an Ivy League school.
Meanwhile, it turns out that more Asian American students score between 750 and 800 than between 700 and 750. That's because those students have no guarantees, and thus keep working to improve performance in the 750 range.
It's not a perfect story, but that's how a lot of merit gets manufactured.
2
It still comes down to how much someone is prepared to spend in time and money to educate a child. We need a dedicated Education Tax that covers everything including training for jobs that don't require college prep courses. The computers are taking all those office jobs anyway.
2
@Jamie Lynne Keenan
yes, and those same computers are providing world class educational resources for free to virtually anyone who cares to take a few minutes to access them.
and if you're willing to spend anything at all ($10-$50), then a host of occupational materials are added to the mix.
at some point, it's not unreasonable to expect members of society to do something for themselves. i'm not saying that there aren't obstacles, but for those with a little ambition, the opportunities are nearly limitless.
but if someone won't access library books, or spend the equivalent of a quarter pounder meal on a blockchain or cybersecurity class, then i don't see why the government needs to send a bill to my house to fund similar pursuits.
3
The people at the top have to be competent at getting to the top and staying there. This is the ultimate meritocracy, and it has very little to do with things like SAT scores. If we look at long-term leaders, their competency often consists in setting things up so that they cannot be challenged even when they are in their dotage. This means that their competency consists in preventing challengers from arising or buying them off by offering a piece of the action.
Some areas demand technical expertise, but those at the top of these areas are those who excel at getting to the top (which may involve choosing experts but will also involve choosing loyalists or keeping people loyal).
Those who can provide their children with greater access to acquiring technical expertise or a liberal education will want such expertise or liberal background used when allocating opportunity, just as those who provide their children with a certain ethnicity will want ethnicity used in allocating opportunity.
The questions of who should be at the top, and how the resources of an organization should be distributed among all the members, have little to do with who is on top and how resources are distributed. Those on top will employ people to create justifications for their position and the distribution that takes place, and see to it that their justifications rise to the top. The job of these people is to pervert and muddy any discussion of what should be, so it gets to the right answer.
@sdavidc9
True enough. So now what do we do?
Paying ordinary workers more is half of it. Taxing the people who do unusually well is the other half.
But I worked for it, the latter will complain. Of course they did. But they still lucked into the extra IQ points, to the town where they grew up, or even into being behind the one version of something that caught on when the competition didn't. We don't need to take everything from them, but we need to expect more of the people who are unusually fortunate.
2
This is quite simple: as long as inequality of both opportunity and outcome exist, so shall the issue of how to properly define merit.
1
Sigh ... The ideological squabble about testing is a mostly a symptomatic distraction from what's really at stake.
If meritocracy is under siege in this country it largely stems from and uneven K-12 education system which reflects our uneven socioeconomic society as a whole.
The Finland, arguably the nation with the most effective education system, levels the learning field by paying attention to social deficits.
Finnish teachers are very highly trained and trusted, needing no second guessing by a meddlesome test industrial complex. Finland only has one single time national assessment test at the end of high school.
Teacher training in the U.S. is a hodgepodge of quality varying from very poor to excellent. And the worst teachers end up in the most disadvantaged districts. You won't find ad-hoc 'Teach for America' or similarly alternative track type teachers in the Finnish system.
Finland doesn't track then sort pupils into smart, average and dumb categories has we do here. There quality education is right for all. At best, we give lip service to this concept with little walking the talk.
@Rick Evans: In the US, curricula and staff are managed by local school boards that were the first political elements to be targeted by the post WW II religious restoration movement.
2
"At the same time, meritocracy privileges an arrogant, complacent and entrenched elite — largely white, increasingly Asian — with the money, resources and connections to jump to the head of the line."
Asians got to the front of the line through hard work, sacrifice and a value system that prizes education. Is that not the classic definition of meritocracy? Leapfrogging students to the front of the line using non-meritocratic metrics is not meritocracy, it's call perverting the system for political ends.
72
@Donna Meyer
Meritocracy is a subset of normative culture which values behaviors which maintain and support norms, rather than people.
Normative culture fundamentally maintains it supremacy by the perpetuation of conflicts between social classes whose needs are devalued, maintaining the internal social conflicts of "us vs. them."
It's like three-card monte, never ending, distracting the focus from any real discourse of common "human" needs; instead, the continuation of cultural conflict disguised as Republicans vs. Democrats, a conflict which always assures that real discourse about human needs never takes place.
4
@Barry McKenna
Normative cultural expectations include access to doctors who know what they're doing, electricians who wire your house in ways that won't burn it down, engineers who design and build structures that won't collapse. As someone from a working poor family background (single mother, public housing, domestic violence, substance abuse, etc.) I respectfully suggest that you not "throw out the baby with the bathwater." For people from family backgrounds like mine, the last thing we need is making it any harder to access reliable goods and services by obfuscating meritocratic standards. That's the focus of our "real discourse about human needs."
16
Donna,
African Americans were and are legally segregated or outright denied access to a “real” education. In the South, after National Guard and the Military were called in, some brave children could attend school. Afterwards, the Southern Towns created Citizen Council, Segregation and Religious Schools to keep the fraud going for another generation.
We had state governors standing at the entrances saying segregation forever. They weren’t talking about Irish students.
African Americans have issues that hold themselves back, I think most of them would admit to that. But to deny the impact of recent history and de facto policies and to suggest that they could just tie their bootstraps together comes from either total ignorance or disregard for our “recent” past.
10
No mention of the most contentious social policies tthat try to counter class, race and gender inequities in "meritocracy": affirmative action/diversity quotas in higher education and the workplace. Interesting.
4
Basic income, as proposed by Andrew Yang, would almost certainly have an effect on separating "meritocracy" from existing privilege accrued be generational meritocracy and it's economic rewards and towards a broader base of citizens and their "merits".
From a Jan. 30, 2017 NYT article: “When the German engineering company Siemens Energy opened a gas turbine production plant in Charlotte, N.C., some 10,000 people showed up at a job fair for 800 positions. But fewer than 15 percent of the applicants were able to pass a reading, writing and math screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education.”
Is it elitist to expect high school graduates to have a 9th grade literacy level?
126
Nope. But it’s sheer stupidity that America refuses to fix its school systems and hold parents to strict account. Then we complain when our citizens become economically useless.
26
@Practical Thoughts: My thoughts exactly.
7
It is elitist if you are unwilling to help those kids get good education.
7
Less focus on haves and have-nots and more focus on achieving personal bests. We should be encouraging higher personal goals whatever they are. And, please, stop trying to dumb things down in the interest of "fairness".
2
The meritocracy system has in a century provided us with 2 Roosevelts, a Hoover, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama.
Riches, wealth, rags, dirt poor, city, small town, country, north, south, east, west and middle. Ivy League, State college, no college, Military academy, minority....seems like the merit system is finding merit.
4
Owell would have loved this discussion.
1
@TDurk
But Uxley would have loved it even more.
@TDurk So would Kurt Vonnegut
There is no meritocracy, only privilege matters. Imaging a person like Donald Trump but poor and black or Latino, would he have ever had a shoot at the presidency? Clearly not.
3
On reflection, I think “merit” is a too freighted, unhelpfully judgmental, and vague, term.
What is merit? At what point in life should merit come into play?
Who merits what and why? Is merit always earned or can it be inherited?
Should the failings or short-sightedness of parents or a lack or surfeit of a child’s psychological and intellectual opportunities ever be accounted for under a rubric of “merit?”
Aren’t estimations of “merit” far more dubious and subjective (i.e., prone to abuse) than simple and inevitably necessary evaluations of talent, ability, ethics, or attitude?
Again, given the extreme disparities (relative to those available in various other advanced nations) in experiences and education available to children in the U.S., it seems that a long period of focus on how we might develop more human potential across a greater cross section of our populace would be wise. Prior to that, arguing over “merit” or the pros and cons of "meritocracy" seems premature and wasteful of everyone’s time.
My family immigrated to USA 50 years ago. There were three children living in the same economic status,attending the same school system in the same neighborhood. We all turned out very different. One dropped out of school, two finished Public High School. Of the two, one finished a graduate degree, and the other joined the military.
We all are gainfully employed or retired. The influence on our drives were multi-faceted: our interests, talents, peer group, but most importantly - mentors.
Kids do not have a drive without seeing a goal and guidance on how to achieve it. Testing is a lifetime routine they need to acclimate to. The sooner they are disciplined to learning and testing, the better for everyone’s well-being. Mentors begin in the family and from there, teachers, social groups, and employers.
2
I'm all for the meritocracy. Let's start at the top though.
All politicians should have to pass a standardized test appropriately leveled to the office they seek, live and on tv, with a portion of it done aurally before a panel of experts.
Any federally elected folks should have to pass a content-mastery test for any committee they sit on. Maybe we'll finally get intelligent legislation. Maybe they'll finally be fit to oversee our federal civil servants who already have to pass a civil service exam before they're admitted to a hiring pool.
People in charge of curriculum and testing at every state and federal education office should be next. Indeed, here in Virginia, they (and all school board members) should have to pass every Standards of Learning test that our students do. Make it an annual event. Watching it would be more fun than the Kentucky Derby.
4
A meritocracy might be a good thing in America, if we had it or ever had it.
2
As someone who grew up in the absence of wealth and privilege and without any understanding of how to make my way in the world, I can tell you that without standardized testing I would still be poor. Instead, I have an Ivy League graduate degree and a really good job. The only real advantage I had was that I understood that I needed to do well in school.
If meritocracy as practiced today is currently a "mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations" the solution is to tax the bejeezus out of inherited wealth and extremely high incomes. The concentration of wealth and its corrosive social effects are the problems to be addressed.
If poor children suffer in this competition, the solution is to properly fund the schools they attend, including, where necessary, providing adequate security. Dealing with the student loan crisis would help as well. Lack of access to a quality education is the problem that needs to be addressed, not how "merit" is determined.
As one comment bluntly asked, "do we want stupid people running things?" We are currently going through an experiment where government policy is being set by the emotions of someone who is rather lacking in "merit" as opposed to setting policy on the basis of objective reality and rationality, and it is not going too well, is it? Maybe we should mandate that politicians have to take the SAT and release their scores.
136
@Bob23
Your comments reflect my experience as well. I'm the only person in my family to graduate from college (my parents were dust-bowl Okies who didn't have the privilege of even graduating from high school). Even though my public school education wasn't particularly strong, along with my mother's emphasis on education and my passion for reading. I am where I am today, a soon to retire school psychologist and mother of a doctor and a lawyer (both graduates from public K-12 and universities). I do quite a lot of cognitive testing, and I do worry about implicit bias in cognitive assessments, but I worry more that de-emphasizing standardized assessments in favor or more subjective selection tools will reduce equity rather than increasing it. The solutions you suggest seem much more likely to address existing barriers.
13
I teach a design studio at Massachusetts College of Art and Design that is specifically designed to teach design thinking and leadership in the convergence era. It incorporates critical thinking, problem solving, hands on engineering, creativity, marketing and business skills. In short, we are striving to simulate the skills our students will need to survive in an age when AI, robotics and machine learning is going to take over many of the tasks we now think of as work, including making skills in design and the arts.
Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern University, outlines the contours of the coming economy in his book “Robotproof”. His thesis is in the not to distant future, cognitive creativity, empathy, and emotional intelligence will outpace rote skills because we won’t need people to do rote tasks, but we will need to give people purpose and finding alternate ways of compensating economic contribution.
Taken against this backdrop, I would say that testing has its place in assessing knowledge learned or retained, but it does not indicate success or indicate proficiency at skill (unless it is a demonstrative test like a driving test). What does indicate proficiency is a body of work, evidence of critical thinking, creativity, skill and focus. In other words, whatever you set out in life to accomplish, if you can demonstrate it, your merit speaks for itself. Earn your merit.
That is true genius.
@Jeffrey Schantz
I like your idea that productivity is best proved by producing actual products. But surely as an academic you have noticed that credit on research papers is often based on who has won the funding for the research, not who did the actual research. Outside academia the credit for, and certainly the profits for, productivity go more towards those who control the money flow, not those who have provided the inventive creative work of the kind you describe. Therefore, some form of meritocratic testing is necessary if we are to see who really has the creative genius for invention, and not just for snagging (or inheriting) capital. As for "robotproofing" your future, I have spent five years in Japan where it's trending towards a future where only those who own the robots, AI, etc. will really profit and everyone else will, at best, be hirelings who massage the ownership class, literally or spiritually.
I don't think anyone, or rather any substantial faction, is against the idea of meritocracy. But how do you determine merit? I'm not talking about how you define it, let's assume that our common (undefined) definition is good enough. The problem at hand is that the current standardized tests are lacking something. For one thing they are basically unfair. I remember they always said, "You can't study for these. There is no need to study. Just take them." That is not the case. All of these tests can be prepared for, and you can improve your score dramatically with preparation and good test taking strategies. So, it is not an even playing field. Then you add the fact that the education system is not equally distributed in the first place, and you have a whole new dimension of problems. Tell you what, just put more money, more resources into education. As one famous physicist said, "You can't fix the education system by just throwing money at it. You also can't fix it without throwing money at it." But it is not a priority. Bombs are the priority. So there you go.
@James Smith
I agree that standardized tests like the SAT and the ACT can be prepared for, having done well on them and also tutored others for them. But, to me, making the effort of preparing is way more meritorious than the advertised logic of those tests, which would be more along the lines of fluking a high IQ. That does raise the question, though, of who gets support for test prep and who has money to afford it the way the world currently works. I do agree with your remarks in general, btw.
1
Putin certainly thought Trump - a coddled "privileged" know-nothing - had merit...
... merit as his useful idiot.
The idea of a "meritocracy" would work if people could learn what they are good at and work to excel at those things. The problem is that in our society, increasingly you cannot thrive if you have merit at things like nursing, social work, teaching, firefighting, carpentry, raising children or making art but you will become rich beyond your wildest dreams if you have merit at things like finance, computer science, inherited wealth, winning the lottery or professional sports. If we had a more egalitarian society then everyone would be encouraged to find his or her niche and celebrated when they did so. Instead our system rewards a narrow slice of the population who are either lucky or freakishly good at certain specialties while discounting the talents and abilities of 99.9 percent of the population.
2
@Dave
Sadly there's a global drift away from rewarding even those who are freakishly good and/or hard-working at most skill-based jobs. The whole drift is towards rewarding owners, not workers. With AI and machine-learning this is increasingly the case not just for manual workers, but for intellectual workers too.
5
@V.B. Zarr You are right. I often fantasize about the day when someone invents a computer that can buy a private equity firm, fire all the big shot investors and then sell it and split a few billion dollars with some school teachers, firefighters, Walmart associates or starving artists.
The total national wealth if distributed equally among all residents of the United States would result in $413,000 per person. That is over $2 million for a typical family of four. That is just how equal our wealth distribution is in this country.
2
Socialism and communism doesn’t work.
Norway, Sweden and Germany do not have to manage military obligations as extensive as ours, nor do they integrate as many poor, unskilled migrants as we do on a year over year basis. Not to include the one surge of Syrian refugees a couple of years ago.
3
These tests do not measure creativity or adaptability. You can't use a box standardized test to rate the skill of thinking outside the box. If companies want to succeed and compete, they will look for intangibles in an interview, not scores on a test.
Moreover, we will not solve the existential threat of climate change if businesses hire hyper-vetted, safe pencil pushers who get "A's" playing the game.
Also, you can't measure creativity, courage, honesty, civility, sense of humor and empathy in a test.
@PE
I hate to disillusion you, but most employers are still looking for a very specific and often narrow range of job-relevant tangibles when they hire. We don't serve job seekers, young or old, very well by telling them otherwise.
And, as both a teacher and student, I've always found that it takes a great deal of those moral virtues you list to plow through the prep process most people need to do well on tests.
I do value thinking outside the box, so I'm happy you too value that. But exactly because I do enjoy thinking, and taking action, outside the box, I've observed that the world is not generally disposed to reward people for that (which is not why I do it anyway).
2
All the talk about eliminating SAT scores misses the point...for the "elite" schools which use SAT/ACT scores, the concern is (as Harvard found out--how is that case going these days) that the objectivity (and, yes, they can be gamed, somewhat) of those numbers make achieving diversity goals more difficult to defend--the problem is not that they are biased, if they are, but that they make it harder to achieve the desired bias.
The university I work at is considering eliminating the requirement--at the request of the lawyers. Don't pretend that this is because of any academic considerations.
7
@DrD
Well put. There are many, many individual districts where the number of Asian students with perfect SAT scores exceeds the number of African Americans in the US with those scores. Maybe even individual high schools.
At some point, you have to toss in the towel and just dump the test. And, whether you agree or disagree with that policy, a lot of merit goes out with that bathwater.
3
"that kids from lower-income families who scored in the top quartile on math tests in the eighth grade were less likely to graduate from college than students who scored in the bottom quartile in math but happened to be born into homes in which their parents were in the top third of income distribution. This is a very troubling statistic, and it says quite a lot about why and how people succeed in this country."
To be sure, parents' ability to pay for college has a lot to do with this. But more than that, well-educated parents make education a priority for their kids. They read to their kids, promote school activities, push their kids, make sure they do their homework, etc. And that is something ALL parents should do.
How many dirt poor immigrants come over here and raise kids who are extremely successful because they made education a focus.
The emphasis in politics today is too much on giving handouts to people who are "disadvantaged." Things worked a lot better when our politics and our culture emphasized personal accountability and responsibility. But we're too timid today to tell parents there is a right way and a wrong way to raise your kids. We're so timid, many parents whose parents didn't emphasize education don't even know what the right way is!
We have recently -- and far belatedly -- stood up to all the sexual abusers and harassers and set some societal standards for acceptable behavior toward women. Why not set a some standards for parenting?
13
Individual grit plays a role in success in life. But this is not always discernible at an early age. As a donor to my alma mater and a nonprofit scholarship funds, I see personal statements from student applicants churned out by the private and public secondary schools. The former are competent to a large degree in the basic skills of the 3Rs. As for the latter, it is a mixed bag. There are super achievers but they have family support in some form, while the rest range from disinterested to graduating with inflated grades. Popular American culture of not valuing education plays some role too in coddling those that don't want to put in the effort that somehow they will be okay - and they were until the rest fo the world changed.
7
The meritocracy that will never be "fixed" is the meritocracy of genes, and I don't mean financial wealth but intellectual wealth. The social engineers want to punish the intellectually wealthy. Eventually, their goals will affect the very people they claim to want to promote.
9
Here's the antidote in my life to the article's conclusion that a solution is still lacking: the content of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In it we learn these and other relevant guidelines for the ordering of our lives and societies: all our talents are but a gift of God and reflect no glory on ourselves; social justice is paramount due to the fundamental principle of the universal destination of goods (i.e., mankind is to share alike, just as at the family dinner table, so if you give something to someone with less you are not giving them a gift you are simply returning to them what is already theirs); use of our talents to impose on another with less ability is wrong. All that being said, I still want my family doctor to be the most gifted available, for example, and testing does help assure that - as does an educational system that stresses those aspiring to the role to an extreme long before they face helping me in a medical emergency. The consequence should not, however, be a system of outsize, predatory compensation for essential medical services (just to cite one of many professional/business examples that will come to readers' minds).
I've often asked myself: how smart does my doctor really need to be? Does s/he need to be in the top .00001 academically? Not really. Top 5% or even 10% would be enough.
In short, I think arguments about the pros and cons of meritocracy are misplaced. The concept of practice of meritocracy will never and should never fall from favor in any reasonably free society.
"Human potential" is a better term with which to begin arguments about public and educational policies. What we want as a nation is for a maximum number of young citizens, regardless of race, socio-economic status, or other unchosen circumstances, to develop the greatest possible degree of their innate potential.
In America we are terrible at this project. Many European and one or two East Asian countries do far better, but of course we don't want to learn anything from anybody else on the planet, do we?
Separately, I would point out that by any reasonable and sane definition of merit, the fact that Donald J. Trump is our national leader is proof that our "meritocracy" has some really spectacular failings.
1
My father grew up poor during the depression. Dropped out of high school to support his family. Got a G.E.D.and went on to college at night. Worked during the day. Did well enough to get accepted to medical school but did not have the funds for tuition. Luckily for him a wealthy individual he met on his day job offered financial assistance and would never accept my fathers offer of repayment. For all my fathers hard work, he would not have achieved his goal with out a helping hand. There are many others who worked hard towards a dream but only achieved it with a helping hand. Today the occasional helping hand is not enough. We are going to have to develop a political.social,economic and educational system that works for all. We do it as a society or it doesn’t get done.
1
"Testing for “merit” is certain to remain a crucial element in education and training in such professions as medicine, the law, accounting and engineering. Patients and clients will insist on qualified surgeons, lawyers, CPAs and architects."
This begs the question why we don't insist upon "qualified" members of other professions. Long term, for example, how many professions are more crucial than educator? With all the concern today about bias dictating the actions of the police, why isn't there more testing of candidates that would help exclude those would-be police officers?
It seems to me that many in the anti-testing movement are hoping to hide precisely what testing can show. Is it a coincidence that anti-testing mania arose so quickly when and where testing of students would suddenly impact teachers' careers? In my own town, the sudden explosive growth of the anti-testing movement was in response to release of more complete data regarding the achievement gap (AGAP) amongst our students. Hiding the AGAP was preferable to making educators accountable and to having more district money spent to help those students on the wrong side of the AGAP.
This is similar to the complaint, cited in the article, from the NAACP and many other civil-rights organizations.
This desire to hide (from) truth can be seen as parallel to similarly anti-fact based efforts ongoing today, such as amongst those trying to discredit the idea of climate change or oppose vaccines.
...Andrew
2
@A. Gideon
When I earned my teaching credential it was definitely merit-based and merit-tested. In fact, the program I was accepted into was actually what we would call today an "elite" program -- based on the baccalaureate already received. But I get your point, and I have to agree with you that it is no longer true for education, which is why I am no longer working in the public schools in my state.
The smartest, most hard-working, most talented, most driven people usually get ahead in our society. That is something to be applauded, not lamented or "fixed", and it is a relatively new development brought about largely in and from the influence of the United States. Before then (and still in many parts of the world), money and power really did afford the only opportunities for success.
America was founded on the ideal that "All men are created equal." That's not an aspiration, by the way, nor is it a goal for the government to try to achieve by forcing equal outcomes. It is a statement of principle which recognizes the inherent value and dignity of every person.
Recognizing this principle means that the role of government should be to provide equal opportunity UNDER THE LAW to all people and giving everyone the freedom and opportunity to chart one's own path.
Our country's history, by the way, is rich with examples of rags to riches stories. How many of today's wealthiest entrepreneurs were born with silver spoons? Not many.
Quit trying to make things "fair" and quit patronizing people.
13
so keep the merit system, do the test, work everyone with dignity; cut top salaries by 10% and raise the bottom by 20%, let all enjoy life a bit more doing the best they can with what they have.
2
It's true that some people start with an advantage due to the economic class they are born in. But the vast majority of success stories involve folks from average to low economic birth classes. Those folks are born with a drive, those gifted at birth, not as much.
6
One of the strengths of Thomas Edsall's essays (when the essays are strong) is that they provide nice surveys of the research and academic landscape. Meritocracy has been the subject of work by several noted researchers (ones who have unambiguously achieved a great deal through talent and hard work). Only one gets any mention in Edsall's essay — John Rawls. Robert Nozick, Rawls's longtime colleague and critic, was another and one taking a very different view.
Kwame Anthony Appiah is another in the philosophical realm who has addressed the issue, differing from both Rawls and Nozick. Kenneth Arrow and Amartya Sen (both Nobel laureates in economics) and Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, and John Roemer have also studied questions of meritocracy, taking positions that are decidedly left-leaning.
That Edsall passes over all of them cannot be because their work is outdated. Michael Young's book on meritocracy was published in 1958, before any of theirs.
One criticism from the left is that there are causal connections between "ascribed" and "achieved" identity. Consider all the handwaving about the native intellectual capacity of different ethnic groups. Consider Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw's assertions about heritability of moneymaking talent. (Yes, really.)
Why did Thomas Edsall skip all of this work?
5
@Hugh Sansom
I'd like to see a digestible summary of this. It's been a while since I had to read Rawls but his theory of justice is obviously not the way our capitalist society is set up. I'd imagine those who would disagree with Rawls' theory would include basically all libertarians, anyone who is more of a traditional Christian, Jew or Muslim in worldview and a lot of others who wouldn't agree that we have a duty to equalized the outcomes of those born with lower capabilities.
Your reference to Mankiw's led me to this, which is one of those non-PC subjects that will get swept under the rug (a crazy graph which hints that rich kids are only more successful if actually related to their parents):
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/08/the-inheritance-of-education.html
"The income of biological children increases strongly with parental income but the income of adoptive children is flat in parent income."
2
Wouldn't society as a whole progress and advance more if ALL of its constituents where taught to potential and challenged to their potential?
Are standards of living for each income quintile today better or worse than 20, 40, 60 years ago? In the U.S., China, Brazil, Russia, sub-saharan Africa? any differences - WHY?
2
One thing this article failed to mention was that merit clearly has a price that can be paid by those who are already wealthy. Just look at the recent arrests of Hollywood celebrities and others who bought merit for their already highly privileged children so they could enter desirable universities that would further guarantee their already exalted status. This alone makes a mockery of any discussion about merit based achievements.
4
Our focus should be on growing rich, and healthy gardens instead of obsessing on which individual flower best fulfills a singular purpose or measures up to some abstracted ideal.
I believe in meritocracy. But the question is, as always, what counts? Make push-ups, Shakespeare and knowledge of US History count as much brown-nosing the educational system. Maybe then we can talk about a meritocracy. People who organize their lives around school for the purposes of getting ahead are not meritorious. They have clogged our system and distorted our standards of excellence. People who love to learn, and do it well, are meritorious.
5
There is no question that there are individuals in America who were born on third base and thought they hit a triple, however, those are the exceptions and not the rule. Most often those who work very hard and have an above average intelligence still do very well in America. It is also unfortunate that we have certain groups in America that have it inculcated into them when they are very young that they are disadvantaged and the economic system is rigged against them. There was an individual who was adopted by blue collar parents and he started a business in his father's garage, he never obtained a decree from the rather pedestrian college that he attended, all he did was change the world, his last name Jobs. We make no progress towards meritocracy when the College Board/SAT adds an adversity score. Nearly all colleges already have set aside slots for certain groups that have been labeled as disadvantaged, unfortunately, it has been empirically shown that these groups tend to score more than one quartile below the mean. In professional football and basketball there are almost no Asians and everyone is fine with that perhaps that is because African Americans are disproportionately represented. Contrast this with the representation of Asians at Ivy League schools they do so well that an artificial limitation has been placed on their numbers clearly antithetical to meritocracy but that is okay evidently.
9
"Grade inflation has resulted in a huge increase in the number of applicants with perfect, 4.0, averages. More important, grade inflation is most prevalent at predominately white middle and upper-middle-class schools." I am angry when I read this. My son works so hard to earn his 4.0 and it's extremely hard to keep all the subjects 4.0 throughout 4 years of his high school. Only very few students can achieve this.
To me Using race, sex, ethnicity in admission and hiring process is like forcing a chef to throw all spices in a meal so that they are properly represented. But in reality, a chef selects which spice may fit best for the result he/she is looking for.
The best way to give everyone an equal chance is to ensure every child get equal access to the resources, quality primary and high school education, and motivational parental support. We can achieve these without having to pass a law that use reverse discrimination to cure a different kind of discrimination.
Simply put it this way, we wouldn't feel safe to see a doctor who is super kind but not qualified. It's not about the doctor's skin color, or gender, or race, it's about his qualification and ability. Merit based test system is not perfect, but at least it guarantees that we get qualified professionals to do their jobs. We can't lower the bar or cancel the tests to achieve this and it takes strenuous work.
8
We should seek out and reward merit. We should not over-reward it. CEOs should always make more money than the average line-employee, but not 500 times more.
7
America clings to much to the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative. That’s hard to do in the 21st Century.
1. You can’t fund K-12 education based on local property taxes and expect equal resources.
2. You have to find the schools to work despite the social and environmental challenges. If a community has weak family structures, poverty and violence, you need to increase spending in social workers, psychological support, food programs and more academic support. We need to acknowledge that many parents just are not up to the task of keeping after their kids school work, or need help.
3. Acknowledge that extra curricular activities are a necessity and no longer optional. If kids are spending 10 and 20 hours a week on test prep and poor kids get none, I am not interested in hearing about the “validity” of these tests. Give everyone test prep time. If we see this as a waste, then get rid of the tests.
4. Since kids can’t choose their parents or their schools, we should reward kids who come out on top in their schools. If a kid gets an A and their school is accredited, they should get a slot in the flagship University. Don’t like it, then get involved in raising standards. The kids shouldn’t pay for adult incompetence.
5. Teaching profession needs to elevated in pay and professionalism. Standards should be increased and pay increased to attract the best and brightest. It should be a competitive field like banking or medical school.
4
@Practical Thoughts
"Teaching profession needs to elevated in pay and professionalism. Standards should be increased and pay increased to attract the best and brightest. It should be a competitive field like banking or medical school."
As a credentialed teacher who has always considered myself a professional and not a "laborer" (and thus refuses to join unions), I completely agree.
2
A good idea would be to consider measures of merit that are not easily coachable to privileged sections of the society. If one looks at the some of the grueling examinations of India and China, the rich kids routinely fail them as their privileged life makes it very difficult for them to make the effort needed. Many of these rich kids land up as undergraduates in US Colleges as SAT and ACT are much easier to crack with a little coaching and US undergraduate admissions consider many other subjective measures of merit. Graduate school is different story though.
1
Great, free education for everybody and then meritocracy will work best.
5
“He was born on 3rd base and thinks he hit a triple”
You missed the most obvious assault on Meritocracy: the rapid increase in the Estate Tax Exemption. This allows many to simply exist on the merit of their ancestors regardless one’s talent or effort.
Not so long ago while granting stepped up basis for all inherited property, there was roughly a 50% tax on inherited property above $600,000. Now that exemption is over $11,000,000 ! This is an area where a majority of Americans have very little interest or understanding. This is the real disparity in the new tax cuts. One may argue the policy but cannot argue the negative affect on sustaining a merit based society.
6
Basically business is going to reward people with talents that are both scarce and productive. You could be a super creative person, but if it isn't productive, why would it be valued? You could be a very friendly person who takes direction well, but there are an awful lot of those out there.
I don't know how you force businesses to change their model of what they value- they'd all have to do it at once or they'd lose their most valuable assets.
It's a shame we can't just move to a system that just gives everyone a baseline wage that is livable, then if you want to work, you can add onto it from there. It seems like the best solution, especially as so many basic jobs are being automated. Then all of those people who aren't particularly valuable to the business world, but have something to offer society could go do their thing instead of working menial jobs while their talents go to waste.
I'd rather see a creative guy spend his time painting murals than doing a job a robot can do for the sake of feeding his family. It seems like the more we automate work, the more efficient we become, we've created a society where only a small percent benefit. The least skilled work very hard (or can't find work) for jobs that will never support them. And more skilled are pushed for as much work as possible by their employers- while you are well payed, your time is no longer yours. Sure you get a nice paycheck, but you better hope you love your job because you don't have time to live.
4
There is too much emphasis on standardized testing and other dubious metrics of our educational system. When, under the NCLB, these scores became sticks with which to beat "failing schools", the predictable response was to put more emphasis on the tests than what they are supposed to measure.
Campbell's Law: "The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
Anyone who takes a psych class knows about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If basic needs like nutrition, safety, security, love, and acceptance are not there, higher needs such as learning will not be met.
Plot standardized test scores against % of students in free/reduced lunch programs (or any other indicator of poverty) and you will see the unmistakable trend.
If you want to improve educational performance, improve the communities in which students live.
7
It has become much more difficult these days to find a well-paying job working with your hands. The notion of "meritocracy" in today's society tends to funnel most of the rewards to those who are academically strong. Those who are not are quickly being left behind. The real question is whether this society will ever again be able to create jobs in sufficient numbers for people without college degrees that will allow them to attain and maintain a middle-class lifestyle. Simply telling everyone to go to college will never be the answer.
5
An important factor that should be taken into account is whether there is an emphasis on the child's performance in school taking place in the home. Do the parents offer encouragement. Do they care.
One of the factors in Japanese Students doing better is the almost universal participation of parents. Attendance at PTA meetings is better than 90%. Teachers visit the home and discuss the child's performance in school.
I come from a working class back ground. My mother was a waitress and my father was a Taxi Driver. Our home was filled with books. We received the "Children's Classics" book set at Christmas when we were 6 years old. My parents stressed the importance of getting a good education. They cared.
Parents
5
This rancor and class resentment would disappear if we still had decent blue collar employment in this country. It is all connected but this is the cause. Professor Singer is right.
I still believe we can reinvigorate our employment base if we put our minds to it. Rebuilding infrastructure and growing green industry is the key.
11
There are plenty of examples of ‘blue-collar’ jobs that earn a higher than minimum wage. Welders, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics come to mind.
And an unrelated point: Are the trades not a purer example of a meritocracy as is should be? Where one excels purely on skill and motivation?
1
There are definitely problems but the relative success of Asian-Americans in our system is proof that meritocracy is better than the purely race-based system that preceded it. Indian Americans weren’t even eligible for citizenship 55 years ago and now represent a highly successful group in American society - this occurred because the system allowed them to be judged by talent and effort, not the color of their skin.
I don’t understand how people can be opposed to a system like this. The issues are that too many people around the world are so disadvantaged at the outset that they are never given the appropriate opportunities to demonstrate their abilities and efforts, not that people are judged by objective standards.
5
@Shoe
Asians blow the doors over any argument against meritocracy. Placed in the worst neighborhoods at a bottom economic ladder rung, Asian families can still produce kids with the work ethic to EARN admission to America's top universities - even in one generation! It makes everyone else look like they are fumbling for excuses over decades in the same neighborhoods and schools. Bravo to them for living the American Dream.
4
Social Darwinism and meritocracy are thick as thieves in Capitalism.
What we call meritocracy is rigged by the moneyed class. They call the tunes.
Dance or Die.
4
@Slipping Glimpser
I'll do you one better; neoliberalism=social Darwinism=meritocracy.
It used to be understood that the market economy needs to be governed to ensure societal interests aka social welfare.
Now we've stood this on its head, the "market" is supposed to decide societal interests and individual worth.
Our Dystopian new world
2
The question here boils down to: do we want stupid people running things or do we want smart people running things? We need to stop kidding ourselves about the ability of everyone to rise to a certain level of educational and economic achievement. Some people just don't have what it takes. Cognitive testing is not a lottery, it's a way of sorting people by ability. Intelligence and persistence are not evenly distributed we should stop telling ourselves that we can mitigate that disparity with touchy-feely programs that make people feel good about themselves. There's a lot to be said for merit. And while we don't have a true meritocracy the idea that meritocracy is an pernicious plot to keep good people down based on some misconception of class privilege is ludicrous.
183
@Linda The point of all this is that if the "smart people" are getting shoehorned into the top of the pyramid due to {class, wealth, connections} and they jury-rig a credential-based system to define success on the basis of {class, wealth, connections}, we are ending up with a "merit-based" system that is anything but.
25
How do you figure which kids are smart before they've been to school?
It is true that the children of people who went to college are more likely to also attend college. But does that really mean that more money should go to educating the children of wealthier families?
That seems counterintuitive. They are in a better position to pay for themselves. It's like saying we should pay for medical insurance for millionaires but nobody else is worth keeping alive because they are easily replaced. And if you extend that theory do you end up with a eugenics programme to "relieve burdens" on the state purse?
9
@Linda
We are all on the same ship. So the problem is what part of the society's wealth is needed to assure that those with less ability can live a decent life.
23
The fact that Mr. Edsall describes the "entrenched elite" as "increasingly Asian" would seem to undermine the notion itself.
8
So the alternative is to use much more subjective measures of qualification, like does the teacher like you? Doesn’t sound particularly fair to me.
7
This article concentrates on testing for college admissions and hiring. By the time someone gets to the point where a test will decide who gets admitted to the elite college or hired for the high-paying job it is too late.
Slowly but surely the health care system is learning that diet, nutrition, exercise, and good primary care starting early in life will help too prevent many of the illnesses that expensive surgery and medications are trying to cure.
The results of tests for college admission and employment are measures of outcomes. In effect they are predicting that the person who "merits" admission to Harvard or a lucrative profession had a better childhood with a supportive family who made sure they attended better schools. This will never change. The best that can be done is to put much more, a lot more, into early education and social supports for parents of young children.
4
It's the question of what happens to the "others" because if you fund the schools of the wealthy kids then you're just washing your hands of the poorer kids who will likely end up further deprived.
That means you'll get millions of people who had few options in life and found more doors being closed in their faces.
Poverty and crime rise and society gets more xenophobic as each group of new arrivals is seen as further competition for ever more scarce resources.
Sounds like a terrible idea to me. In relation to schools, it is more often not the schools that fail the students before the students fail exams. So all we're doing is flushing away more talent, more creativity and more economic productivity and consigning millions of people to lives scraping a living on the margin. It's like the opposite of no child left behind and it would be a travesty.
1
Let's make it simpler.
A meritocracy is Darwinian.
A more equitable distribution of rewards on the basis of need is Leninism.
Both have their advocates and both have their track records.
Americans choose to live in a more Darwinian socio-economic system because that system has created more wealth for more people in a shorter time than any other. That said, Chinese communism has proven economically successful and has transformed an impoverished and humiliated people into a world power.
Westerners and most of the democracies have chosen more of the meritocratic method underpinned by a capitalist market economy. Interestingly, China's rise did not occur until it too adopted a more capitalist oriented economic structure.
What's the point?
The vast majority of people in the most economically advanced and laws-based countries in the world opt for systems based on meritocracy ... for the simple reason they work.
5
Wrong. The "new meritocratic elites occupying the upper echelons of the socioeconomic order" are living and breeding in the deep swamp, which is about the Mandarin class--self-serving "meritocratic elite" bureaucrats--protecting, i.e., Mueller, its own--e.g., Brennan, McCabe, Clapper, Comey, Lynch, Rice, Strzok, and Page, criminals all by any measure.
We are doomed as a nation if this deep swamp "meritocratic elite" ooze that may accuse, condemn, and punish at will continues to seep into the ethos of the polis.
2
The current situation is the direct result of W’s “No child left behind” policy and Betsy DeVos is making it worse. Need to fix that problem first, then address the inadiquacies of the SAT.
2
Without meritocracy, Gomer Pile is President. Maybe that lesson is learned.
3
What is often called the "meritocracy" is arbitrary credentialism. The education system is used as a training ground for business, but a small fraction of what one learns in college is applicable to the real world.
This creates an environment in which education credentials are used as an entry to the good life, even though the vast majority of jobs do not remotely require such credentials.
Such credentials do tend to provide a vague sense that the candidate can navigate a bureaucratic system and emerge unscathed (in the case of state colleges, about 60% of the time). It also reflects a vague sense of the candidate's ability to focus.
But beyond that, it's a very expensive experiment, with uncertain results. As a hiring manager, I've dealt with Ivy League graduates who are literal idiots with 4.0 GPAs who end up in sinecures, and college dropouts who end up changing the company.
There are positions with unambiguous requirements. Technicians, such as surgeons or lawyers, need training (almost always acquired in a postgraduate environment). You don't want an untrained plumber or electrician. But this is the minority of positions.
I think a lot of feathers would be soothed if job reqs replaced the MUST HAVE requirements with SHOULD HAVE and allow hiring managers to evaluate the total person. That is certainly not the direction we're headed, where hiring managers usually aim way too high for the job they're trying to fill.
2
We have all this testing to determine who can or cannot succeed in life, but yet, no testing at all for our political leaders. We do not ask what education should one have to be on a city council, to be a state or federal elected official, or even to be president.
If one is alive, and of a certain age, that’s all we demand.
No wonder that it sometimes feels that we are led by a bunch of morons.
How do we correct that?
1
Take a long, hard look around you at those in line at the grocery store, the cars ahead, aside and behind you in traffic, at the office water colder and so on. Most people should not be permitted to enter a polling place. Self-selection is a start. Peer pressure can take it further. When I was 19, a senior noncom explained why most of us in my unit were unquote vote. He refused to assist us in absentee registration. Forty years later I am now wealthier not more educated today than I was then. Thus I am still unqualified to vote.
2
waiting until they're taking the SAT is too late to change the outcomes of poor youths. it starts in utero, but that's hard and expensive and largely outside the control of liberal institutions, hence this 1000 word hand-wringing
4
@adam By hand-wringing do you mean caring about other people? Admittedly it would be hard and expensive. There is no perfect solution, but we need a long term and deep commitment to everyone's health, education, and social needs to bring more equity. The results would not be seen for at least a half generation. I have no pony in this race as I have no grandchildren and my 43 year old child has a very good, stable career. But a thing called empathy compels me to want what's best for people I don't know and would never see, and I'm willing to pay money in the form of taxes and charity to help. Do you consider our government a liberal institution? I wish it were so.
3
@adam Good parents who are committed to one another and the child and spend time reading, playing and teaching are the biggest advantage any child can have. And the government doesn't need to do a thing!
26
@Sue: Wordplay is a feature of many intellectual homes.
1
Take a look at a report from the NY Times to see why so few blacks were able to achieve entrance scores for Bronx Science.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/01/education/01schoools-graphic2.html?ref=education
2
no, seriously...eat the elite!
1
A good column. Of course we all like people who embody "goodness, mercy, kindness or courage" and we aspire to be one of them. Still, when hiring, I will look for "competence, work ethic, and emotional intelligence” and will do my best to weed out those who got ahead through achievements that do not reflect actual abilities or talents.
Well-meaning educators may be doing their best to even the natural and socioeconomic disparities but let's be clear: no one can compensate for a warm, educated, integrated, ambitious, two-parent family.
7
If not meritocracy, then what? What other system would fairly put the most competent people in the most important positions? Or are we just supposed to settle for incompetence, in the name of fairness? I think it's obvious why that's not a good idea.
The piece finishes with a puzzling critique of meritocracy: "the winners are those who possess a certain inherent capacity for processing and analyzing information, without reference to morally salient criteria like goodness, mercy, kindness or courage." But when you have a job to get done, you need people who can do it, not people who are kind and merciful but unable to complete the task. Do you want the doctor operating on you to be a good, noble person who came from a tough background and was allowed to become a doctor, despite not being very good at medicine? We do no favors to anyone by watering down meritocracy and entrusting the most important roles in society to those who are not the best qualified.
11
I think the author might have made some good points, but I could not get through reading this article. The author might make more headway in convincing people of his side if he had help writing to a more general audience.
1
Yeah meritocracy's bad except for the alternatives...
Hard work and talent must be rewarded, and well.
No need for the asymptotic pay scale taking the extreme into the stratosphere.
The big issue is the gutted safety net provided by Labor.
Republicans succeeded in dismantling it, Democrats allowed them to.
3
To borrow from Churchill: standardized testing is the worst possible system, except for all the others.
Be careful what you wish for: removing standardized testing helps two groups: wealthy families sick of faking rowing memberships; and teachers unions favoring job protection over students.
5
One need look no further than the perpetual smirk on Jared Kushner’s face to understand where we are today.
A man-child in a job he is totally unqualified for, financially grifting and grafting his way to millions because of family connections.
The Trump Crime Family illustrates our transition from meritocracy to nepotistic cronyism.
4
If we served everybody in line, maybe people wouldn't fight so much about who gets to be at the head of the line.
4
@Rob Bravo!
We do not have a reliable standardized test for someone’s “Ethical Quotient” (an E.Q.) and a reliance on what military boot camp instructors often called “30-day wonders,” who scored high on the written Army proficiency test (but whose instincts, eyesight, communications skills, and hearing were poor) could well lead to disaster for leading military battalions. And that outcome in peacetime for industry has had parallels in studies of company bankruptcies, such as Trump’s record, and who bankrupted the companies while ruining the workers there.
And the evidence of “whizes” in chess, game show winners (“Jeopardy”), poker, and spelling bees show us how perilous it would be to always bet on their performance outcomes based only on a single kind of mental ability such as standardized tests. To repeat the inimitable wisdom of Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion 1919-1926, on how he won one fight, “He was a great opponent. All the time he’s boxing, he’s (“Battling” Lewinsky) thinking, and all the time he was thinking, I was hitting.”
I think I'll choose my thoracic surgeon on the basis of "inclusion" without consideration of ability-said no one ever.
10
It's that we base "merit" on very narrow, strategically defined parameters. We don't give "merit" to those who know how to cook well. We don't give "merit" to those who know how to grow organically. We don't give "merit" to those who know how to nurture. "Merit" in America means tools the capitalistic culture can use to further profit. It has nothing to do with health, home, or happiness.
4
It isn't a meritocracy. Its manning of the monopolistic finance capital nightmare that is leading the country and the world to some sad possibly sinister place.
2
"Insofar as testing reduces the number of bad hires, businesses in competitive marketplaces are motivated to support the use of ability assessments."
Given all businessman Trump's "bad hires" and disastrous decisions, there is no better place to begin our "ability assessments" than with Trump, his cabinet & agency heads, his Supreme Court, his Attorney General, and his head of the Senate.
No large business or corporation would tolerate such an incompetent, inexperienced, damaging CEO as Trump, who is wrecking the U.S. brand in 2 essential areas: (1) financial (deficit likely to reach a record-breaking $1 trillion in 2019 or 2020 thanks to his tax cut for the rich); and (2) the image of this once great country on a worldwide scale.
So why are we tolerating such a terrible leader and president who has no respect for the Constitution, laws, ethics, and human decency?
Workplaces have mandatory drug testing. President Trump has clearly demonstrated we need mandatory "ability assessments" and full disclosure of tax returns before being allowed to be POTUS.
Ironic really that the Republicans are so fond of meritocracy--but not when it comes to managing our government and taking care of a society of 327.2 million American people and the earth for future generations.
1
This article might better have been titled, "The Plutocracy Is Under Siege." The idea there has ever been a true meritocracy in this country is laughable a best. Our meritocracy is mostly smoke and mirrors.
Mr Edsall is old enough to remember and value The Best and the Brightest. But I guess, now, it's The Rest and the Rightest. Like the commercial says "Just okay is not okay."
2
@Teller 'The Best and the Brightest' was the title of a book about the Ivy League sages and solons who got us mired in the Vietnam War -- arguably, a case study in the perils of trusting the products of meritocracy. (In their defense, it should perhaps be noted that the now-scorned 'domino theory' worked all too effectively for both Hitler and Stalin; they applied the lessons of that experience, while ignoring the debacle of the French experience in Vietnam; Vietnam's thousand-year history of independence and of repelling invaders; and the difficulties of fighting a long-distance war against an indigenous population, which they might have learned from the American Revolution.)
You know what the alternative to meritocracy is? Racism, and tacit violations of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. If we're going to ensure that black and Latino students are represented by their demographic proportions at the elite high schools when they haven't performed as well, you WILL be discriminating against white and Asian students to make that happen. This is the essence of the lawsuit against Harvard University by Asian students. They have to achieve higher test scores (they allege) to gain admission. How fair is that? So then, the answer that you'd propose is to do away with the tests so that we don't know about racial disparities? Ignorance is bliss, I guess. But we might do better to ask why black and Latino students have low expectations set for them, long before high school admissions. This is a problem that requires more information to solve, not less. Eliminating tests that are (in fact) reasonably diagnostic of school performance is no kind of responsible answer. It's cowardice masquerading as egalitarianism.
4
Whenever I didn’t study,
I’d blame the test.
7
You sit in prison, or a homeless shelter, and look about you.
Most of those around you have had terrible lives, certainly untreated family trauma and school experiences that told them they were stupid, defective, and not worth the effort to help. Maybe the teachers, or family, didn't actually say that, but that was what was in the air. They are as Kafka's monster was, awakening to their true place in society, rejects.
So the rejects, quite brilliantly, created their own culture, their own gang, just as the rich and those of the top 10% have formed.
For the college gang is just as dangerous, just as heartless, as the worst of the street gangs. They run the show so the non-college have no housing, no health care, no fair paying jobs, and certainly no pride, as the "college" run everything from their heights.
The college guilds run it all for themselves, from the lawyers' guild to the doctors' guild, to the "genius" tech guilds. We all know it, but if we don't belong we have no voice, and if we belong, we fight to keep the poor in their place.
A. S. Neill, and Summerhill, have a lot to say on the matter, but the truth is, no one is listening. Still, it is good to ask if blaming the victims of educational discrimination works.
No, meritocracy is not good, it is just as bad as racism or male supremacy. It creates a family that feeds the talented, and starves those without schools skills.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
Some tell my me why a student with 1570 SAT score, 8 APs, straight A student, active in non-academic activity, is unworthy of Ivy League? Did i mention, the student is Asian?
4
Say you work in college admissions and you're getting applications from students from all over the world. You're told to admit the best and the brightest.
How do you compare student grades from an unfamiliar school to student grades from schools that you know well? The only way that exists now are ACT, SAT, and similar tests for undergrads and GRE for graduate students.
5
Indeed, Mr. Edsall, let's scrutinize whether we are merely reproducing privilege. This article cites--and, where applicable, plugs the work of--a half-dozen academics: Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. Daniel Markovits. Eric Kaufmann. Peter Singer. Robert H. Frank. John Rawls.
Hmmm, let's see: Which half of the population is missing from this pantheon of intellectuals?
Until writers like Edsall and publications like the Times figure out that women's contributions to such conversations might too have merit, such groping about for solutions to toxic inequalities will be laughably incomplete.
Three points:
1) The best type of "aptitude" test is the one that determines how happy a person is. We must abandon all other meritocratic attempts at determining someone's aptitude and focus on seeing if we've managed to help them be happy.
2) All colleges and schools should stop using SAT or other scores to determine admissions and should start using lotteries instead. At the very least a lottery is equal and fair.
3) Finally, let me retell the story of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi who had dinner one night with a party of US Generals. To remind the reader, Enrico was working on the Manhattan Project. "What makes a General great?" asked Enrico. "A great General is one who has won 5 consecutive battles." replied the party. "And how many American Generals are considered great?" asked Enrico. "We estimate that around 3% of American Generals are great." was the reply. "Interesting." said Enrico. "Consider for the moment that winning a battle has nothing to do with the General at all, and that winning has a probability of 50%. That means that winning 2 consecutive battles will happen 25% of the time, 3 battles is 12%, 4 battles is 6%, and 5 consecutive battles will occur 3% of the time. You have yet to refute the null hypothesis, and what you think of as skill and merit is just confused with luck."
1
@Dylan Hunt
How does a lottery make sense? A well rounded college or university has students in the sciences and in the arts. They have musicians, engineers, mathematicians, poets, painters, anthropologists and physicists. If you have a university wide lottery, some departments could be starved of students while others would overfill only to have the opposite happen the following year. As if being an adjunct isn’t already uncertain enough. Would you create an orchestra with a lottery?
Unfortunately, over the years, the billions of dollars given to the very powerful teachers’ unions have done little to enhance the quality of education in our public schools. Hence, the sad decline of education across the board, and the dumbing down of America.
5
@Pvbeachbum Who is giving the unions billions of dollars? My wife is a school teacher, is unquestionably one of the best, and is a member of the union. She spends a lot of money out of her own pocket for basic class room essentials because school funding has been cut to the bone. Any public school teacher will tell you this is common. Anybody who believes that good education doesn't cost money lives in a fantasy world. I have issues with unions too. I wish they weren't necessary and they wouldn't be if the government stepped in to assure workers of equal rights, safety, and equitable pay.
2
"kids from lower-income families who scored in the top quartile on math tests in the eighth grade were less likely to graduate from college than students who scored in the bottom quartile in math but happened to be born into homes in which their parents were in the top third of income distribution. This is a very troubling statistic, and it says quite a lot about why and how people succeed in this country."
DUH!!! News flash: children with involved, supportive parents who set high expectations for them do well. This is not "troubling", it is common sense! But it's not income that is determinate, it is parental support.
Just look at the overwhelming success achieved in America by second generation immigrants whose immigrant parents never rose above lower middle class (if that high) but who worked to give their children opportunities they did not have, who focused on education in the home, and who set high expectations for them.
A brutal fact is that many low-income parents do not value education and rely on the state to provide all the education their children need. But that is not enough, and it will NEVER be enough.
And yet high-minded ivory tower liberals who want to make everything about race and "privilege" (whatever that means) want to ignore the actual causes of education disparities and simply put their thumb on the scale in favor of the underprivileged in the blind (willfully so) hope that such favoritism will do anyone any good.
25
@Econ101
So you don't believe that parental support is largely dictated by income? Sadly, many low-income parents would like to be more supportive, but lack the time (since they are working low paying jobs utilizing a skill that America's meritocracy does not value).
Privilege, so you are aware, means: "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group." When the poor lack the ability to access education (or in your mind the support to engage in education), their children are at a disadvantage. This privilege is then granted to those children whose parents can afford to work reasonable hours.
5
@Econ101. Economics would tell you that the ability to PAY for college has something to do with "kids from lower-income families who scored in the top quartile on math tests in the eighth grade were less likely to graduate from college than students who scored in the bottom quartile in math but happened to be born into homes in which their parents were in the top third of income distribution."
4
@Ivory Tower Liberal
"many low-income parents would like to be more supportive, but lack the time.."
This is hand waving. How many? Everyone lacks the time, including high-income parents. This positivist ignores the fact that this is not about money or time but rather fundamental values and the quality of parent-child relationships that optimize what we were handed by evolution. You may do all the social engineering you want and will achieve nothing - look at the lottery winners.
9
It seems to me that the millions of non-college whites who voted for Trump are those who have created a society where education that involves critical thinking or questioning dogmatic religious and social beliefs is spurned and viewed as "elitist".
At the same time they are exhibiting the very human trait of being unable to accept the diminishing of a long-established and unearned advantage that they have become accustomed to – white privilege.
By accepting and even promoting a culture of intellectual laziness they have disadvantaged themselves. By choosing to remain unwilling to change or re-think entrenched attitudes regarding race and conservative values they are understandably frustrated as the world around them inexorably changes.
These are problems entirely of their own making.
3
I think what you really mean is “American” privilege. Americans are brain washed from an early age to think we are superior and that things should be given to us. We have shown recently that we aren’t really leaders , we are just the ones with more money , bigger military and more guns. I’m not anti American , I’m just disappointed we haven’t fulfilled our potential to our own citizens and to help other countries find prosperity, peace and equal rights.
2
Standardized tests may be critical gatekeepers for meritocracy, but they aren't its cause. By the time a student or adult takes one of those tests, the die has already been cast in many cases. Zip code, access to adequate health care, access to adequate housing, good schools, and residence in a stable community with sufficient resources will influence mobility far more than the tests themselves. In many cases, the school-to-prison pipeline exacerbates exclusion from meaningful inclusion in social and economic life, as does the absence of social supports such as child care and food and medical assistance. When you're unsure of where your next meal will come from, where you'll be sleeping, or if you can get medication for your asthmatic condition, taking the SAT (for example) pales.
4
You're right, but you forgot the first thing a child needs: two parents who are entirely committed to each other, who put off having a baby until they had completed their education and got comfortably situated in jobs and a home, and who planned to have this baby with the understanding that they would be speaking, singing, and reading to him, teaching him manners, patience, and a love of learning, and disciplining him gently but firmly for various little missteps.
After that, proceed with your list.
9
@B.
And, instill into the child the notions of accountability, virtue and cause-and-effect. If you are not accountable for your actions then you have no chance.
5
Another opinion that miss diagnosis the problem.
Meritocracy is not under attack, go try to get a job with out a resume and experience. Its equality that is under siege. As our society ALLOWS a few to acquire the majority of the assets everyone else feels left behind and they act out and Mr Edsall writes a misguided analysis of Meritocracy.
PS Trump won because of gerrymandering and his willingness to lie.
5
Pleased to see this issue appear in the Times as something worthy of skepticism and questioning, although when you quoted egregious hack DeBoer you lost me for a while.
Too, this piece assumes much too generously that meritocracy isn’t a fig leaf the oligarchs use to keep us distracted. For one example, look at the US Supreme Court, where everyone went to one of the same two law schools, and Amy China’s daughter’s clerkship with Justice Boofing Embarrasment after she wrote an op-Ed vigorously defending his nomination. These are honors and benefits borne of connection, class, and status. Yale is no doubt a fine law school, but does it produce better lawyers and judges than UC Berkeley or the University of Michigan or even Cleveland State University or University of Florida? True meritocracy would see people’s abilities and ambition lead to their professional achievement. In fact, though, the old cronies’ network is always in operation as a counter-meritocratic force, and it certainly sometimes elevates able, well-meaning people. But hardly always, and never when the decision comes down to connection versus ability. Connection always wins.
10
Yes Yale Law Students are a different group than graduates of University of Florida.
4
@GDK
The issue Gregoire7 is raising, I think, is not whether the average law school student at UF is as capable as the average at Yale. It's whether these "elite" institutions should serve as exclusive gateways to opportunity and influence. I find it hard to believe that there is no law professor or judge with an education from anywhere but Harvard or Yale who is qualified for the Supreme Court, or who wouldn't be able to provide a different perspective from those channeled through the same narrow system.
2
It's no surprise that Mr. Edsall focuses on cleavages in the Democratic party. He is a political hit man first, so he must serve his purpose of making Democrats look bad and propping up Republicans in every column.
Of course he also leaves out legacy admissions as a problem with our meritocracy, even though it is a huge part of the reason why college admissions (and subsequent employment) are not as meritocratic as they could be. To do so would not support his political aims, even though it offers a far clearer path towards his stated goal.
Mr. Edsall is a Republican. He sees the world through that lens, and he writes his columns in support of his party. It's impossible to advocate for decent and intelligent policies under those constraints.
4
Why do we assume there ever WAS a "meritocracy" to begin with when the laws of the land historically passed in this country and others were about suppressing swathes of people, like Black people and Native American people? If merit was a true national ethos, why did they have to pass laws that limited the freedom and enfranchisement of people? (https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1662.html and https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/native-american-timeline).
Science already has confirmed that poverty robs children of intellectual development and that many laws in this country helped to perpetuate this for generations (e.g. segregation, redlining, property taxes and under valuation of properties in communities of color, etc.)
It's always been about GAMING the system to HOARD advantages. See the article's interesting point: "grade inflation is most prevalent at predominately white middle and upper-middle-class schools. DeBoer cites research showing that: Whiter schools, more affluent schools, and private schools are all seeing far more grade inflation than higher minority, poorer, and public schools. In fact, public schools have seen little grade inflation; the problem is rampant in private schools, where grades are inflating at three times the rate of public."
Doesn't sound like a meritocracy to me.
3
A true meritocracy would require the we ‘start over’ with each new generation, that the ‘gains’ made by one generation don’t serve to protect their own and hold back the ‘outsiders’. As the first one in my family to graduate high school, attend college, get a law degree....I believed education was the great leveler....until I saw how internships and job opportunities were handed out. Family and business connections had more to say than graduating law school with honors. You might be allowed ‘in’ initially to schools because of your assets and hard work, but the older, established club members will be less welcoming post-graduation. Wealth and privilege trump education. Consider our current President.
4
The term meritocracy here is a strawman with highly selective usage. We expect school bus drivers to have appropriate licenses and one cannot drive a bus without one. Mechanics, electricians, contractors, doctors and lawyers all must pass their respective merit exams and the population expects as much.
The US college system that maintains an idealistic general education for everyone is part of the fault. That shining goal of completing a 4-year degree is flawed. One can get 4.0 grades in Philosophy or Ethnic Studies and find oneself unemployable in real-world jobs. Why shouldn't it be common for there to be colleges for trades just as there is in Germany. And a superb mechanic should be paid as much as a physician.
The real topic here is that the rich get richer and the poor stay where they are. They are not discriminated against by lack of merit, it is by lack of money.
Donald Trump is an example if there ever was one. He was "successful" only because his father kept bailing him out. His history of buying airlines, football teams, glittering casinos, and setting up Trump University all ended in utter failure that would have destroyed any ordinary entrepreneur.
The big question is not whether everyone should be qualified to be a heart surgeon or a microchip designer but why the food service worker who brings them their dinners can't also earn a living wage. There is no reason for the surgeon or the designer to earn 50 - 100 times as much as the low end workers.
14
@dpaqcluck when that surgeon has to spend 4 years in college , 4 years in med school, residency, fellowship ... Yes she should be paid significantly more than a food service worker . Supply /demand based on specialized skills .
5
“Meritocracy” damn well should be under siege; it should be obliterated. It’s simply a fancy word for suppression by wealth. Of course we want our buildings designed by the competent, just ask the poor residents of London, and we want a competent bus driver to navigate our roads. But that doesn’t give either of them a more important or louder voice in the ordering of our society. We are a democracy. Our poor voices, literally the voices of the poor, shouting against the death of our earth should have greater weight than the greed of meritocracy that rapes the world, plans 18 year wars or poisons the children of Flint. Meritocracy, indeed!
4
Nations with yawning inequalities, such as the US, inevitably fall victim to the tensions such deep inequality inevitably creates. (See Tsarist Russia and Imperial China). The US has been headed in this direction for a few decades now, ever since Reagon declared war on the New Deal. Trickle down never trickled down to us poor and lower-middle-class folks, and the gap between rich and poor is now an unfathomable abyss -- so pronounced it now functions like a kind of entrenched caste system. Elite parents pay bribes to get their kids into the Ivy League - I assume that the 33 families involved were just the mere tip of the icepoint. That's just one tiny example of how the cards are stacked in favour of the privileged. We moved to Europe and to be honest it is an unspeakable tremendous relief to live in a country where you don't have to be one of the 1% to get excellent healthcare, transport, etc. And to know that others have access to the same amenities, funded by taxes, and not by private wealth earned on the backs of the working poor. It feels like a kind of equity and equality - and yes, freedom - one I always thought the US would or should have, and yet doesn't. The founding tenet of US society - only the wealthy deserve the good things, the poor can rot in hell - is inherently destructive, and creates bad outcomes.
Before all this talk of meritocracy, I would try making the US a more genuinely egalitarian society. I won't be holding my breath though.
7
@Person Well said. Thank you.
As heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey put it, “Nobody owes anybody a living, but everybody is entitled to a chance.”
Under slavery and racial segregation, the idea of meritocracy was different than today. It was against the law in slave society to teach a slave to read or write, so the meritocracy prevented intellectual merit as a standard of performance in a critical area of “achieved” identity. Any technological inventions or copyrighted innovations of slaves had to be credited or patented to the slave’s owners. And racially segregated schools funded by the tax base of both races took most of the taxes to enrich the education of white school education to the neglect of black school education for generations.
How the absence of merit in education for generations affected the social development of black education is still the subject of research. But we know one thing for sure: the idea of group standardized test merit in generational surveys, which racially factor comparisons, reflect data of the result of generational racial inequality that was never based on merit but on legal psychological, social, and economic lack of opportunity —-by design.
How do we know this? Wherever black communities developed wealth amidst white poverty (Harlem’s numbers racket, Tulsa’s Depression era black “Wall Street,” and “Florida’s “Gold Coast”) whites engaged in extra-legal means (terrorism) to destroy them.
4
I am 33 years old. In my lifetime the idea that America is a meritocracy has been nothing but a myth. I am a social scientist and I have taught at the college and elementary levels. Nothing predicts an American child's lifetime success better than their parents' level of wealth. Perhaps America was close to being a meritocracy for straight white men during the mid-20th century, but the rest of us have never been able to say that our material worth accurately reflects how hard we have worked. The most successful tier of Boomers has sold my generation the myth of meritocracy. As a result, wealthy folks believe they deserve it and any amount of work they contribute is God's gift to humankind, and poor folks think the system is rigged against them so why bother. And the worst part is, in the system we have, neither of those ways of thinking is misguided.
20
@Mindy
I'm a 35 y.o. remote sensing scientist/engineer M.Sc and I completely I agree with you. Nice to know others of me generation feel this way. No matter how hard I work and struggle to make ends meet, it always seems like the boomers are just living it up.
5
@Mindy
I'm in the generation just in front of yours and I can truly say - the whole meritocracy thing has been a myth for us to.
3
Mobility is still really very much alive and well in America.
Lots of mediocre high school students have opportunities in community colleges and State supported colleges, where they can graduate and move ahead in their careers accordance with their native ability, their personal goals, and work ethic.
And from my personal experience and the experience of my grandchildren, financial aid to the needy mediocre high school graduate is very much available. But it does require some ability and willingness to work.
I never took the SAT and it is generally not required to move ahead in life. It does require hard work and some ability.
1
As computer technology becomes increasingly important to our economy it will be increasingly important that the most intelligent people rise to the most demanding positions.
We do not need to let them be as rich as they are. A meritocracy is consistent with steeply progressive taxation.
1
Americans believe in meritocracy, but different groups define the construct to their benefit and from their world-view. From my experience growing up in a working class family, many of my high school friends state that they can perform just as we'll as a college graduate and that they should be given the job so they can prove their abilities. Conversely, more affluent citizens view meritocracy as meeting the hurdles of education and experience. Perhaps these polarizing beliefs are attributed to family experience. If you grow up in a working class family, with little knowledge or experience in higher education, you may believe that you are as smart as anyone else and only need to work hard to succeed. Families who earned higher education degrees have a more nuanced understanding of looking at life from different perspectives and understanding certain hoops must be jumped through in order to be a successful professional. IMHO too many Trump supporters believe in meritocracy as long as they can define the process. They are reluctant to take the time to complete college, gain expertise, and compete for the better jobs. I do agree that many Trump supporters view "Liberal" attempts to help Blacks, Hispanics, and Perpetual Poor as illegitimate attempts to push these groups to the head of the line.
We should also note the role of expectations. Asians are expected to do well by their families. Academic expectations are much lower for most US students!
2
The key problem is the lack of a frontier. Way back, if poor, you could go west, gain free land, later go west, go to a growing city where opportunities abound. We need a real progressive agenda, paid for with wealth and inheritance taxes, allowing for reinvestment and tons of jobs, inexpensive state colleges, and green initiatives. Our society rests on an assumption of working most of one’s adult life, and excusing the wealthy from this requirement (even if the rich work, they are not reliant on it, and can step away if mistreated) allows the wealthy to push for an anti-worker agenda. It’s time to make wealth fleeting, ditch winner takes all, look out for our fellow citizens, do good work, innovate, end inter generational extreme wealth. The children of wealthy families get enough advantages to succeed in our culture without the inheritance.
I had my IQ tested at 8 years old. My IQ is the same now as it was then and I'm in my 60's. My children both have the same IQ as me, one did very well in school, the other very well in sports, but it is remarkable to see their IQ scores were identical in all categories, even though their interests were not. They grew up in a decent middle class home and are successful adults. I grew up poor and got tossed around foster care after the death of my mother. When I was 15 and transferring to another school, they had me pick up my sealed records (because they sent me to the small town my father lived in to have him sign my emancipation papers). Naturally, I steamed open the envelope and read all about myself. It was a remarkable file of notes and observations from teachers, guidance counselors etc. On the front page was a number and it was circled, my IQ was high. I had a rough childhood, I lived in a lot of places, but that number was on the front page of my record in all the schools I attended. I had to work hard, I had no test prep but I can name a number of teachers and social workers who encouraged me. I always had at least one, sometimes three jobs through college, one summer I think I slept an hour a day. I've had a good career and taken lots of tests since then, I'm always amazed how precise the results are. Of course we could trade these tools in and just look at people's horoscope and the rubbish they write about themselves. It's about had work and study.
4
It is worth noting that most other countries do not have as much social mobility as the USA. Having lived in Germany, I would note that your fate (trades vs. higher professions) is determined before your mid teens. Most of the rest of Europe also lacks our social mobility. Finally, consider Africa, Asia, and Central & South America, the worst of all. Humans are and always will be imperfect, and there is no perfect society anywhere.
3
@Bill Actually, Germany has higher social mobility than the U.S. So do most European countries. Take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gatsby_curve#/media/File:The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.png
1
A point concerning Edsall's comment on the 2016 election and the rage and depression of non-college whites who believe that they have been left behind: Edsall and nearly everyone else who comments about Trump's lesser-educated white base omits the fact that a formidable bulwark of white working class power and pride was the labor union. But the GOP is close to realizing its dream of busting every union possible. Unless this is reversed--and the non-college whites finally figure out that they have no power without organization--their fate is sealed.
3
How about better valuing the work and skills necessary to keep the world running---and to test for this we can have a thought experiment--
Pay should be connected to how critical the job is, not just educ. levels, training etc.
--How well would hospitals function if nurses, aids, social workers, custodians, support staff simultaneously took a whole week off?
--How would schools function if support staff, security, custodians did the same?
--And most of us can remember what it was like when the garbage men when on strike.
Yes, brains and talent are necessary, but they certainly are not sufficient for any well-run organization or society.
2
Objectives of education should be driven by the objectives of the society as a whole.
If we want a stable but static country, we don’t have to much worry about meritocracy. Maintaining status quo doesn’t need extraordinary abilities.
If we want a better society depending on innovation and bold exploration, we need to reward those who can contribute these goals. Especially under the current environment of harsh competitions with many of foreign countries including China, I think we might have to weigh more on meritocracy. It’s not just for fairness of society. It’s for survival of our system, more and more.
3
The thought seems to be "because testing can be rigged, don't test at all." How about fixing the tests instead? Most-MOST- people who graduate high school and college have a credential that they don't deserve. We hired a fellow with a finance degree from a big public southern university, with a 3.5 GPA, who cannot read a financial statement, and who in Excel divides two numbers using "=sum(X/Y)." I thought maybe he falsified his resume, but HR has his transcript on file. This fellow is out of a job; I'm guessing he cheated his way through college (and probably high school too).
If we don't reward achievement we're doomed. We need to find a way to measure achievement fairly.
1
Why not distinguish between actual measurable merit, and professions which overwhelming reward rent-seeking?
Is it "merit" or mendacity, a willingness to cheat and exploit, which determines who's richest among private equity executives?
What about investment banker CEOs -- the ones who drove their companies into bankruptcy in 2008?
Is Bill Gates fabulously wealthy because he's a meritorious genius coder, or because he exploited patent laws and engaged in years of predatory and anti-competitive behavior?
Or are we going to define success as merit?
This is a good discussion, and clearly a complicated subject however I would add that, strictly in the education sector, the "grading and sorting" complex that the education industry relies on, serves the education industry. That is, by scoring, ranking, filtering and classifying students (from elementary school through graduate education and beyond) the business of education arranges and manages their "customers" like a business. And it allows universities and private secondary schools for example, to create the "admissions game" with an almost "Hunger Games" culture of competition, and most of all, an effective tuition extortion passed on to parents (how else did the student loan debt market explode to $1.5 Trillion, and nearly half that amount now in some kind of deferment, re-structuring or outright default, according to the US Federal Reserve, available on line). Education systems thrive on creating a class system and hierarchy as it serves their particular needs, not yours. Even if "meritocracy" systems are embraced, that merely is another category and supports tuition programs, revenue and quota goals, and of course, government funding.
1
"Kaufmann suggested that this element of contemporary liberalism does not provoke resentment among minorities because their 'identities are encouraged. Hence they are not revolting against the elite.'"
How has no one made this point before?? As long as liberals are selective about who gets to express their culture (zero sum game), the coalition will always be strained for support.
5
Why do you think we have free education, free health care, free paid 5 weeks vacation per year in Europe ?
Less money ? May be . But still there are billionaires.
Money does not make people intelligent or happy.
But since education is free in Europe, to become a doctor, or engineer or lawyer, students have to be better to survive the competition. 1/3 is ejected every year at every level.
There is no challenge in the USA. Students just pay. Everybody finishes and graduates.
The system is completely complicite to money.
6
Isn't this a bogus argument? Where is the meritocracy if, by "meritocracy," one means to imply persons who achieve success by dint of their own talent and effort? The system is so rigged now in favor of those with the money to prop up their kids with test prep and individual tutors that meritocracy is not the operative word. If anything these kids, who are faux scholars, should not be in the positions that they hold because they don't have the native talent or ability to do the work.
1
At this point, the language of meritocracy is essentially a coping mechanism. What really goes on is that people look for any and every way to protect their network - personal and professional - whether that is Ivy League or a zillion other things. This is especially true when it comes to educating children - we barely even pay lip service to the idea of transformative education for all children (read: other people's children).
Talking about merit is almost like performing your role in a cult - one face for the outside world, quite another for the inside world.
I say this as a relatively successful individual in his late 30s with an advanced degree, married to another such individual with an advanced degree. Our professional and educational culture border on farce.
3
We can't guaranty outcomes. We should be able to do much more to insure opportunity.
4
Merit? Right. First, how could the SAT/ACT properly gage merit when poor students and students of color often tend to attend schools with fewer resources, and by the third grade, those lack of resources are evident academically, so already, any idea of merit is false. This also doesn't take into account discrimination and lack of opportunities that qualified people face while in the workforce. I can be the most qualified woman in my office, but if my workplace is toxic, what does the rest of that really mean?
The writer should look at what's happening in Korea. Workplace tests are the norm in Korea, and it drives people crazy.
Meritocracy never existed in this or any other country. All of these people with the "my son worked so hard" story can save them. Everyone works hard, but not everyone has connections and opportunities. Not everything is quantifiable as pro-testers would have you believe.
1
Meritocracy is not some natural Enlightenment phenomenon that we are predisposed to live with, but is an ethical as well as practical challenge that needs to be tempered with the reality of our circumstances.
Meritocracy is understandable in the sense that not everyone will have equal outcomes. But the question is: how much in unequal outcomes can society tolerate and still function effectively? Meritocracy is fine in theory, but must be tempered with a recognition that one person’s success often comes at the cost (or exploitation) of another.
Do we want to reduce society to a Darwinian jungle of competition, or do we want to artificially level the playing field a little because we know that more outcome equality will produce a better functioning society?
And there is something else we also know: that vast meritocratic inequality produces Donald Trumps.
1
It seems that most comments and support a society where merit - in some sense - can be rewarded. The issue it seems is that there are those who because of background or circumstance of birth cannot make the most of the education system. Why not then make it easier for them to have this access? E.g., public colleges, very low tuition city colleges, scholarships aplenty, etc. This may not be Ivy league, but it gets folks way up the ladder, maybe even running large corporations (lots of current examples). Or - even better - in our capitalist system, they can start and rune their own companies and achieve all kinds of results. What we don't need to do is to punish or impede merit. We need to let it come to the surface wherever it may be.
1
This subject is presented in a simplistic manner in order to elicit a reaction from readers. Meritocracy is not bad, I am sure we all want our Surgeons selected on meritocracy. But there were two opposing political views which limit the effectiveness of meritocracy. One the selection method. Do the tests contain some bias which delegitimizes the result? This is the continual complaint of the left.
The second is, can we accept the results without trying to delegitimize all of the results? Essentially if we don’t get the results we want then can we be adults and face the facts that not all groups may perform equally? This is the continual complaint of the right.
If we can agree on the tests and criteria with input from both sides and agree that we will not challenge the results then we are well on our way to a meritocratic Society.
Work hard, study hard, make education a priority. That's how it was in my family. My dad picked fruit, my mom cleaned houses. My family faced tremendous socio-economic barriers. I got into the best schools based on grades and test scores. Trust me, I did not get tutoring or test prepping. A lot of people like me, an Asian American, are filling up slots in the best schools and folks don't like it. I worry about these discussions about meritocracy. Sounds like anti-Asian sentiment and sour grapes.
5
Just make the testing fairer for advancement out of high school, into college, and into the professions. Learn from how the bar exam and licensing boards do it. It is not unfair to ask a graduated series of mathematics questions, give students paragraphs to read and have them pull out pertinent facts and themes, and ask them to write a 1000 word essay in response to a long piece of fairly sophisticated writing. Drop the college entrance essay entirely. Give everyone all the time they need to complete the exam -- whatever the ADHD accommodation would be. Fingerprint, photograph and DNA swab all test takers so colleges and universities could compare them on a random basis, on offer of admission. Make everyone take the standardized tests under American supervision, even if done overseas. Do everything by exam number, including high school grading. That's a start. It won't fix everything, but it sure will make a lot of progress toward fairness.
1
This article fails to mention that the reason standardized tests were initially deemphasized at elite universities in the 1920s was to limit the number of Jewish students admitted.
In 2019 one of the top-ranked public high schools in the United States is Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, where admissions are exam based. The student population is 68% Asian, many of whom are the children of working class immigrants.
Is this admissions test (and that in New York City, where results are similar) perpetuating an entrenched white power structure in American society?
4
Most people think that the seeming entrenchment of the socioeconomic upper tier (why rich kids do better in life) is due to "connections" or "legacy admissions" or maybe even "unequal school funding".
All of those are all inadequate explanations.
First, school funding isn't unequal--it's largely, if not modestly, progressive (more funding goes to students in poorer schools on a per student basis).
Second, the differences arise very early in life. The achievement gap for African-American children starts in Kindergarten and widens over time.
Moreover, the gap shrinks but does not disappear when controlling for socioeconomic status. In other words, a poor White or Asian kid outpaces a poor black kid by Kindergarten.
Any discussion of inequality is going to have to wrestle with these complexities. It might be that extensive intervention is required at a very young age to stem these disparities.
6
Often heard: Everyone should stop depending on handouts and just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. A good first step would be taking the estate inheritance tax rates back up to 70% or more. Children from wealthy families should stop depending on handouts too, just grab their bootstraps and pull.
3
There is diversity in all living entities, including humans and crabgrass. Bottom line: meritocracy starts and is pretty much determined at conception. If one is lucky and inherits talents that are in demand by society, great! If not, tough stuff; life will be hard.
2
Please read THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION by Gordon Wood. He is logical, well researched and writes beautifully. He will convince you of the merits of meritocracy as well as of the miraculous transformation enabled by the AR.
1
@Just Justice
Journalists should be required to read it.
It is very telling that, for the most part, the Right’s solution for the inequities in our meritocratic system is to throw out the baby with bathwater, whereas the Left seeks to identify and correct them. You need only look at the last three Republican Presidents to see that the Right enshrines the privileged elite and abhors the upward social mobility of both the native born and immigrants through intelligence and hard work that used to be openly admired in this country. Bush I, Bush II and Trump were all born to wealth, privilege and the sure and certain knowledge that failure in academics and business were no bar to remaining in the elite class. All three got into elite colleges not through academic excellence, but because their fathers made substantial “donations” to those colleges. All three got their jobs not because of merit, but because of who their fathers or grandfathers were. Look at the last three Democratic Presidents and you see people who rose to elite status from humble beginnings through intelligence and a strong work ethic. Yet, he Trump electorate of red state last, least and left behind, have been trained to hate their fellows who got up and out to blue states to work for a better education, better jobs and better lives.
Yes, the current meritocratic system has its flaws, as will any future system, but it should be kept and improved upon, not discarded because an entrenched right-wing elite fears it. The promise of the American Dream depends on it.
1
Both.
It has been twisted with money, like everything else in this country.
There is much worth salvaging, like so much else in this country.
It is our current state of affairs, this example exactly like so much more.
In the past, the establishment would just start a periodic war to temporarily resolve differences between the rich and the poor. It had the benefit of creating an excuse to pass laws cracking down on all but the most innocuous dissent, and being a boon for business interests through the use of "open door policies". Someone once said that "Social progress is ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession, and the bombs of their wars explode at home."
The American people have witnessed over a century of war profiteers being the main beneficiaries of war, and those who criticize America's wars being called unpatriotic, assistants of autocracy and "a raft of sexless creatures."
The American people have witnessed over a century of their nation's Rockefellers and Halliburtons taking oil refineries without a vote.
The American people have heard repeatedly that America is a country if you work hard enough you will become rich.
But so many Americans are beginning to awaken and see that:
-The United States is a country with democracy for the few
-The leaders of the United States start wars for private enterprise's profit which don't gain a single thing for humanity that would be worth one human life
-The United States is a country where the working classes work harder than the financiers and politicians telling them that America is a meritocracy.
Trump is a symptom of American's growing awareness that the United States is not the meritocracy they've been told it is.
I think that people don't mind a true meritocracy. What they're objecting to is a perceived corruption of the meritocratic system. I don't see how the writer could fail to mention the college admissions scandal, in which students by passed all of the rungs of the admissions process by way of huge payments from their parents. That's not a meritocracy, it's an offshoot of a kleptocracy. People want authentic merit, not some made up, paid for designation of worth. Do we want our airplanes to be designed, or our surgeries to be performed by people who bought their qualifications, but didn't really earn them? I don't think so.
4
Tom Edsell's column is full of misinformation and questionable "logic," More than 1,030 accredited bachelor-degree granting institutions are now test optional (including Marquette's announcement this week) -- the list of "335" schools is a subset, which only includes those ranked in the top tiers of their respective categories by U.S. News (http://www.fairtest.org/.../Optional-Schools-in-U.S.News...). A rapidly growing number of graduate school programs are dropping GRE requirements (http://www.fairtest.org/%E2%80%9Cbeyond-gre%E2%80%9D...) and the American Bar Association is considering eliminating testing requirements for law school admissions. Results from standardized exams do not measure "merit." They assess how well an individual can fill in multiple-choice bubbles in a time-pressured, artificial setting. Even the College Board, now admits that intensive test prep can increase scores by 150 points or more on the SAT, which it sponsors. Just as the skills needed to sink a high percentage of foul shots do not define basketball "ability" accurately or comprehensively, so does test-taking fail to assess academic "merit."
2
“At the same time, meritocracy privileges an arrogant, complacent and entrenched elite — largely white, increasingly Asian — with the money, resources and connections to jump to the head of the line.”
Wow, so we reward talent and hard work? What is better? Wealth apportioned by race? It appears that is the author’s preference. Racism.
No, thank you. Winners win. Losers lose. Embrace the competition it is what made us the richest nation on earth. And the most powerful.
3
In closing, Edsall cites philosopher John Rawls, “To this end, Rawls wrote that a social system that “permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents” appears “defective,” adding that if “distributive shares are decided by the outcome of a natural lottery,” then “there is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune.”
I have no idea what this tortured language means. However, I do know our Founding Fathers believed in Natural Law and used it as the rationale for creating the strongly anti-democratic United States Constitution to maintain and protect their class interests as rich white men. If you want to read a scholarly examination of this question, see Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and Other Illusions by Jerry Fresia.
3
@Arthur T. Himmelman
It means that nature does not distribute aptitude evenly and that those toward whom nature is stingy are not at fault for having less talent. In short, people's talents are not simply due to their own hard work. Their talent is in part due to winning the nature lottery. And if we think goods should not be distributed based on a lottery, then we should not be so quick to distribute goods based on natural talent. It's not actually that hard to understand the quote.
And regarding the founders, were they class protective or just wary of letting people clamoring for the burning of witches have too much say? Would I have been among them, I know I would not have done.
If you’d like to read a history of the American Revolution not already debunked since Charles Beard’s originally wrote the economic/class interpretation of the AR,, please read THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION by Gordon Wood. He is logical, well researched and a beautiful writer. He will convince you of the miraculous transformation enables by the AR.
@The Lorax I agree, it’s not that hard to understand what Locke meant. But Marx said it far more simply: “From each according to his ability to each according to his need”.
That sentiment utterly fails to understand the human condition and led to unimaginable horror. But they’re being trotted out again.
This time is not different
This is an interesting article that covers a lot of ground.
Are standardized tests an effective tool for meritocratic outcomes? Too a certain degree yes, although being able to afford better schools and test prep undermines the tests abilitity to measure "aptitude". Measuring aptitude would occur most effectively in a testing system that had huge methodological changes every year, to prevent test prep from gaming the system.
The argument here against meritocracy seems misguided, and ought to follow the article's subject more to address whether tools effort to measure merit actually just reinforce privilege. The article fails in addressing this issue.
Its seems a stretch too far to also try to address in the same short article how large the salary differences should be between high-skilled and low-skilled jobs. This is more of a question of leverage that organized labor lost a part of the globalization process-- as capital can shift between sovereigns far more easily than labor (which used to be one of the biggest things labor was able to exploit to expand the size of the middle class in developed countries).
it is most disconcerting see so many comments framed with a view on the rear view mirror.
the human intangibles of justice, merit, equality—need for sleep, food and family—will be irrelevant in the "professions" and the wider economy by the time this fall's first graders graduate college and are competing with quantum computers who can out learn mere mortals while we sleep, eat and amuse ourselves in recreation.
Luckily, standardized tests are on the way out, and admissions committees are seeing through the grade inflation, volunteerism meant only to check an application box, and an overloading of unrelated extracurricular activities with no depth or passion. They will increasingly move to a more holistic portfolio process to create a diverse, equitable and vibrant student community. An orchestra cannnot have only violins and no brass or percussion, and a student body cannot only have the children of the privileged who bring a very narrow perspective and largely homogenous experience to these institutions.
2
Am I the only one that noticed that there is no support for the idea of eliminating "Merit" selection for college and pro sports teams? or How about music videos?
2
Meritocracy exists in a bubble. It is only used within delineated groups. The reality is that the big companies use their money and political connections to squash competition. Look at Amazon or google or Walmart or Monsanto. They simply buy out potential competitors or sue them into oblivion to gain control of it all. In education, the rich buy their way into the best schools and then take precious space in universities to only spend a life trying to retain their family wealth and advantages while rarely innovating or producing anything for societal benefit. The U.S. would never be what it is today without the incredibly high taxes of yesteryear. The successful were driven to innovate and work hard. Now, it is to hide their wealth through tax shelters and buying politicians to give them huge tax breaks and unfair advantages. Most of them have little value to the masses.
3
In our nation merit is measured by the amount of wealth a person has. It doesn't matter whether the wealth was earned or inherited. Those at the top tend to stay there often without ever achieving anything of great note. On the other hand, it is very difficult to rise from the lower ranks. This is where education is important as a track toward high-paying jobs or professions. This article spends most of its time discussing how to separate the sheep from the goats, i.e. how to identify those who will most likely succeed and give them the best schooling. The real issue, I believe, is our education system itself. There should be high quality education available to every child from preschool to post college. There should be no need to get into the best schools because all schools should be excellent. This would take very large amounts of funding, unlikely to happen when so much wealth is in the hands of so few.
1
Excellent and critically important discussion. It’s a question of law of the jungle vs. civilization. Most traditional cultures recognized that people have different abilities and hence roles in society, but those who were blessed with greater abilities had a moral responsibility not to exploit but to maintain a culture that respected and provided for all. There is no question that America generates the wealth needed to ensure all have a place in society where they can live with dignity and contribute according to their abilities - but we all know about the obscene distribution of wealth and resources and the greed condemned by every religion and moral system. This is a deep problem that is eating away at the health of American culture, and worse yet is being exported around the world and enforced through economic and military wars - the American Jihad. Thanks to the author for engaging in this critical discussion.-
In order to succeed in society, people need emotional support from conscious, kind-hearted parents. They are their life coaches/mentors. We should be providing financial support via the government to parents to pay for therapists for their children to produce happy achievers, rather than mental train wrecks like Donald Trump and his supporters.
So you want my money to pay for your goals and ideas which the free market rejects entirely. Maybe those of us who earn money are right? Follow our lead, do not try to extort our wealth to support ideas that the market place has shown have no value.
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I don't see an "accelerated use of standardized testing", in fact I see the opposite, as universities all over the US are dropping the GRE as an admissions metric.
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One key aspect to success is the role of the family as an unwavering support factor. Reading about Michelle Obama's "Becoming" , this is made very apparent, particularly the nuclear family and a string large extended family. If either one or two parents who must struggle to make ends meet and risk loss of a job if absent with no help from the extended family, the child never gets the security needed to grow their interests and confidence. The country needs to address the critical issues of adequate wages and elimination of health care insecurity first. This will help foster the reduction of inequality in the education system. Btw, have are any of the "intellectuals" including the author "walked the talk" without a strong family to achieve their successes? I would sure like to know.
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“As a country we have moved past the idea that the basics of a decent life should be hoarded by an aristocracy, a hereditary class with a monopoly on wealth, power and property.” Have we really? If that were true, we wouldn’t have an oligarchy and the vast inequality we have today.
Meritocracy is hardwired into the American psyche via the mythic American Creed as a function of liberty, equality, and individualism – abstract ideals that are vastly misleading when compared to reality.
Imbedded in this abstract triumvirate is the idea of “self-reliance” – individualism is supreme, and individuals determine their own fate. But, in fact there are many factors that determine one’s fate like genetics, wealth, ethnicity, connections, health, geography, ideology, luck, education etc.
Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic further reinforced the notion of self-reliance by taking it to a transcendent level: earthly success was an indication of divine selection. And simultaneously, the American Creed’s notion of “equality” reinforced the idea of meritocracy when it referred to equal opportunity, not social outcomes.
The American Creed is very much about meritocracy, but it is a MYTH created by an elite group of white males high on the Enlightenment that served to secure their privileged position into the future. It became a quasi-religion that American’s have been indoctrinated with.
Meritocracy reduces life to a simplistic patriotic formula, that defies reality.
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How frustrating that the author continues to promote the idea that teachers lack the ability to succeed in careers that demand intelligence. I hold a Master's degree in Physics, operated a nuclear accelerator facility, then chose to go into teaching. Am I 'less able'?
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It will make sense to talk about meritocracy when we understand why our society rewards some occupations very much more than others.
Why is a first rate lawyer paid much more than a first rate high school teacher or nurse? Is the work that much harder to do? That much more important to society? Or are the distinctions artificial and created by the people who benefit from them?
Americans could benefit from learning what is done in other countries, something that the vast majority of them know nothing about. In some countries professions like law and medicine don't require nearly the same number of years of formal schooling as in the US, which means that training people for those professions is much faster and cheaper than it is here. In some countries most physicians don't earn a great deal of money because health care is paid for either by government or by nonprofit insurers that seek to control costs rather than to profit from higher costs. There are ways of doing things different from the US way - it's just that most Americans know nothing about them.
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The problem is that you can not hold on to this column and ‘The Downward Ramp’ (June 2014). A meritocracy would not have PhD baristas. Wealthy elite control both sides of the political spectrum and pit their underclass allies against each other.
@G
That demand for individuals trained in different fields varies greatly.
Having a high degree of advanced training may be less valuable than measuring what subjects earn any degree in (even if its "only" a bachelors.
@G I’ll wager that few of those overeducated PhD baristas have degrees in STEM fields
Who cares--the SAT is a predictor, nothing more. Given the fact that everyone gets a trophy these days, doesn't much matter, save for all the student-debt.
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Just yesterday, Marquette University, notably a private Jesuit university, announced here that it will no longer consider SAT or ACT test scores in its admissions process.
CORRECTION I need to correct my error. I should have written that MU will no longer require the SAT or ACT, not that they will no longer "consider" them. In other words, MU is becoming "test-optional" starting in 2020. My sincere apologies.
The meritocracy is not under siege. It has been absent for decades. It is an illusion that Americans have left unchallenged due to anxieties about talking about class and privilege.
The prevailing driver of social advancement in this country is nepotism, and very visible at universities. When a wealthy kid goes to college, they are never hungry. Rent is no problem. They don't have to worry about submitting 500 internship applications; mom or dad's friends have already secured them a spot at a good company. And who needs good grades? A job is waiting for them at graduation.
The poor student either starves, works part-time, or begins a life of student loan indentured servitude. Often lacking a network, they send out 500 internship applications, many of which are thrown in the trash due to "poor fit", a lack of recommendation letters, or GPA gatekeeping.
Guess which student is better rewarded by the labor market? The wealthy students, even the dumb ones, glide through the system. Poor students, intelligent or not, face massive culls. That is not meritocracy.
You have heard all of this before. To older generations, perhaps it sounds like hyperbole, the pathetic mewlings of "coddled" millennials raging against society. Fine, but don't be surprised when we become politically active and begin settling scores!
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You need to look at the history of the SAT to really understand how standardized testing has been twisted.
It was originally designed to identify the "diamond in the rough"-- a poor, lower middle class or even middle class kid who was hiding in plain site in our actually outstanding public schools of the 1960s (outstanding yet also unfair to minorities.)
Then once again it was something that became an opportunity to make money as education corporatists pushing SAT's, AP's and all the rest on local public school systems.
The well meaning education agendas of many progressives in the 1960s and 1970s --- busing, integration, learning disabled rights --has been warped by the RIGHT as they defund public education and the "meritocracy" has flooded to private K-12 schools--- for the most part. Oh occasionally a kid from an inner city public school will gain advantage in elite admissions, but again its a family who will know how to work that angle.
Standardized "bubble testing"- just another way to game the system.
And paradoxically enough, all the admissions scandals of late in the so called "elite" schools reveal AGAIN what most well-read Americans know---the ugly under belly of our college admissions. The admissions system is shallow. These private institutions really have just become business clubs for the children of the wealthy to socialize with those of the same class. The administrators/professors/admissions all "work for" the donors and parents.
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The writer obviously has not experienced the overwhelming affirmative action policies in almost every workplace. At the agency where I work, nearly all new hires are minorities. The quota system is not fair to average white people whose descendants moved to America after slavery ended. The quota system harms the meritocracy and puts public safety at risk because less qualified individuals are in important positions.
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American Meritocracy is like American Democracy - in the eyes of naive Americans only. Any objective and well-informed observer can see through the narcissistic mythology Americans have created to convince themselves of their innate goodness. If they could only step outside their bubble they would appreciate the enormity of their self-deception.
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Those tests are very bad. No conceptual analysis and no capability to redact.
That is how the average well educated American thinks : with automatisms and appropriations . The others don't even think.
The depth of acculturation in this country is scary. No knowledge of anything. Just habitus.
A European is much better educated .
Education is free and public.
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What is a better alternative to a meritocracy?
To the critics, I would paraphrase Churchill:
"Meritocracy is the worst system, except for all the others."
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A great part of this article, especially the comments by Singer and the incoherent theorizing by Rawls, is simply the argument in favor of a living minimum wage or guaranteed annual income. Paying teachers and nurses more is the tip of the iceberg.
These tests do not measure "merit," as Dr. Edsall often mistakenly states, but performance: performance in reasoning, in recall of factual knowledge, in literacy, in verbal ability, in numeracy -- in identifying the problem to be solved. In other words, performance on the abilities supposedly transferred to the "savages of the crib" by the educational system.
That landscape is purely economic. At admissions, performance predicts positive impact of the future education; at hiring, performance predicts positive contribution to productivity. Meritocracy isn't about the bottom, it's about optimal selection for everything above the bottom.
The lie here, the inner hypocrisy, is inequality in the quality of K12 education and in the advantages of parental status. If we really were concerned only with economics, society would create universal, standardized mass education in order to maximize the rents from individual lives.
DeBoer has it right: tests are not the culprits. We are a society that tolerates poverty, illiteracy, racism, superstition and antiscience idiocies. We are free to be stupid, bigoted, ignorant. Our enduring problem is that we won't separate those who prefer such a life from those who can't escape it.
That rage found expression in 2016 when Trump’s electoral success depended heavily on the millions of non-college whites infuriated by what they perceived as their relegation to second class status.
I STOPPED READING AT THIS POINT.
Had nothing to do with second class citizenship and that is evident by their white man superiority complex, it is a continuation of a problem as old as our nation: slavery and the "lost cause" mentality. This tunnel vision of how best to organize society is at the core of the issue.
Reconstruction was a failure and many of us hoped that Lincoln had some of the answers if not the humanity to deal with the problem, although I doubt then and I doubt now that anything could or can be done with the racism that exists in places like Alabama.
Civil rights movements in the 40s and 50s lit a fire under the eternal flame of racism and turned it into a blaze culminating in the creation of the Dixiecrats and the eventual shift in the party with the exit of many southern Democrats to the Republican party.
That is where all the racist went the Republican party, that is where you found STROM THURMOND in the 70s along with his fellow racists (Lindsey Graham).
Since Goldwater, the GOP main focus had been undoing and blocking in progress in the accomplishments of the "GREAT SOCIETY."
Meritocracy is only a word and opinion there are many ways to build a just society.
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What is at the heart of the debate is equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome. People like deBlasio decry the absence of blacks in Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Others decry the income inequalities. People who are successful strive to offer their children the fruits of their success, to give them a leg up. Nothing wrong with that. People who scream about caste and privilege favor steely progressive income taxation and confiscatory estate and gift taxation. That all gets very tiresome. People,who decry the inherent ra ism in our society have a difficult time explaining why Asian Americans do so well. Why were there no black Rembrandts, Galileos, Mozarts, Shakespeares? Answers that touch on racial inequalities touch on a political third rail.
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I think it is funny that the left chides the right for creationism, and yet the left hates meritocracy.
Not very logical is it.
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@Emily
You didn't do a very good job at explaining that statement. Apples and oranges.
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States where Trump thrived spend little on education, relegating high schoolers to the military and dead end jobs that cause them to live paycheck to paycheck and seek scapegoats for their hopelessness. Florida has the fourth largest school age population and yet spending on education is sixth from the bottom. Outside Dade county, which is two thirds native Spanish speakers, Floridians love Trump and the Republicans who have crushed the futures of their children. States that abhor abortion apparently don’t abhor their children having no futures because one after another spends less on education than most northern states. Southerners fill the military, mining, untutored and day labor, and yet they are persuaded that God is on their side and that Trump is the messiah. The average Trump voter reads at a fourth grade level, which means they can’t read anything worth reading, and so they mistrust people who can read, and there again Trump is their champion, the man who doesn’t have to read because he had an uncle who taught at MIT. Intellect is dangerous since it leads to complexity and simplicity is always the goal of simpletons, and once again Trump is the messiah of knuckle draggers everywhere.
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It all comes down to intelligence, a word people are hesitant to use so they say talent. Obviously a person with an IQ of 130 will accomplish more than one with an IQ of 90 when given equal opportunities. People with high IQs usually mate with other high IQ people and they produce high IQ children. The opposite is true for those who are not so smart. We generally like to marry those whom we can communicate with easily. This leads to a separation in societies that passes down through the generations and can not be remedied by well meaning social engineering.
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@Aaron Adams
The Bell Curve by Charles Murray says it all. Unfortunately liberals simply can't abide the truth. IQ is the determining factor in much of life. Unfair, no doubt but still true.
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I have factoid from a different publication that would have added to this op-ed.
"Only 2.2 percent of the nation’s students graduate from nonsectarian private high schools, and yet these graduates account for 26 percent of students at Harvard and 28 percent of the students at Princeton."
I'm okay with the Ivies selecting students based on who has the most potential for adding to the common good. I'm wondering about the odd fact that such people are 15 times more likely to be found at nonsectarian (I assume, expensive) private schools.
(The quote is from an Atlantic piece, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ )
"At the same time, meritocracy privileges an arrogant, complacent and entrenched elite — largely white, increasingly Asian — with the money, resources and connections to jump to the head of the line" does not sound like a meritocracy. Or perhaps it is a moving target, so we have a "late stage meritocracy" going hand in hand with "late stage capitalism"....
The "brutal caste system" is wholly by design.
Roger Freeman--a key educational adviser to Nixon then working for the reelection of California Governor Ronald Reagan-- "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow to go through higher education.”
The “meritocracy” has never really existed anywhere, at any time.
Faith in its existence is, for the most part circular thinking - merely a rationalization of greed and privilege:
“I am rich/powerful/privileged because I deserve to be; and I deserve to be rich/powerful/privileged because I am.”
It’s the same delusion that has characterized kings, emperors, and aristocrats, and most recently, by the intellectual and moral dwarf in the Oval Office
We've never had a meritocracy. We've had an old boys club who told themselves that they were the smartest guys in the room. If they were really as good as they believed themselves to be we wouldn't have had the Banking collapse in 2007 or the poster boy for rich white men failing upward: Donald Trump.
When my older son, taking 4 AP and 3 honors courses, began to have five hours of homework. I objected. Between the homework and sports time (he was on the tennis team), there was no time for household chores or family time. Family dinners didn't exist except on week-ends. My objections were not understood by my husband. He had attended a private boarding school from age 12-- His view was that is what teenagers did. They got ready to get into a top college; they studied, they studied more. -- I came from a middle class background. My mother's family owned a farm. My father had had jobs before and after school to support the family. I felt teenagers should be taking on more home and family responsibilities.--- I began to see that this was a class difference. Should my son clean the bathroom, or study an extra hour? (Answer: study.) But then I, his mom, took on all of the housework, and that resulted in my getting angry and resentful, and finally, hiring house help. -- Now, I have a son who is in an ivy league school, applying himself, studying like crazy so he can get into the grad school he wants (elite) with a scholarship. He also expects someone else to clean up after him.
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@kkm
I really like this one. All studies and a lack of character.
It is time for at least one year of national service in the worst job possible, with the most annoying, bullying boss. Like going in the army and cleaning latrines.
We have just celebrated the “Greatest Generation” with the 75th anniversary of D-Day. What they had that we did not have was a shared experience that taught them resilience and how to work together. Now to get that taught, or developed in coming generations without a horrible war is a real challenge.
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@kkm
Great comment because it nails something that just cannot be ignored in the whole debate about 'merit' and 'success' and 'wealth'. What are they worth when judged against the whole vast landscape of life
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@kkm
The main problem that I see in this story is that of the person who cleans up after him. Your son is spending his time and energy where it pays off the most, and imho should be encouraged. But our society needs to have decent pay and a better social safety net for the presumably less talented and/or less lucky clean-upper.
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Meritocracy seemed to work better when the American CEO was only 10 or 20 times the average salary of his employees instead of 100 times. That and throwing the American middle and working class to the hungry wolves of globalized labor arbitrage hasn't worked out so well.
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@Adrienne And, turning merit on its head, this disparity prompts enough disaffected voters to people like Trump and so many of his grossly under-qualified administrators in power.
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@Adrienne
Exactly correct.
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@Adrienne CEO pay is actually 361 times that of the average worker (36,100% higher).
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In almost all communities there are the insiders - and the outsiders. My experience has been that cohorts on the "inside" take steps to bring in those with whom they have a connection (whether family, friends, ideological or otherwise). I saw this even when I was a peer counselor with a student group at Harvard College: because the spots (highly competitive - with 10 or so of a hundred Harvard undergrad applicants being offered a spot) would significantly boost an application to medical school. Those on the staff who wanted to advantage their undergrad friends would give them tips on how to come off with the skill set and personality we were looking for ....I realized this was happening, and I wrote up a list of tips to be distributed to all undergrads "comping" for a position (at Room 13, the peer counseling group), so as to diminish the advantage of knowing insiders.
Having gone to en elite prepatory school, Harvard College, and having worked at an elite part of the DOJ (Public Integrity Section), my observation in that any elite organization in which it is statistically difficult to gain entry, that there will always be insiders playing a game (so to speak) of connection, influence, and mutual advantage. It is often those individuals - rather than the more moral individuals who possess pure talent but not are not strategic regarding their position and actions - who gain entrance, power, rewards, etc.
Thus, the meritocracy is to an extent in name only ....
2
I interview new engineers by giving them a technical test. Either they know the topic or they don't. I don't care about their race or age or gender or weight, or looks. If they understand the technology in great detail they are hired. We need people like this right now.
So what's wrong with that?
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@billd Part of the problem is that to be a good engineer requires much more than technical proficiency. Good judgment and good character - absolute requirements for a profession that holds a monopoly on areas of technical judgment to which lay people entrust their lives and fortunes - cannot be captured in a test score.
(I say this as someone who teaches engineering ethics.)
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@Bob K In addition, a "good" engineer must be able to communicate the proposed solution(s) and risks associated so that a decision-maker can evaluated the best course of action based in the information provided.
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@Bob K
True, but the problem is that we don't know how to reliably and quickly assess judgment and character in an applicant but we do know how to assess knowledge and skills. It's a practical issue for employers. How would you solve it for them?
28
It seems that our society is looking for equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity. We have to find a way to give underprivileged children access to equal opportunities and then let those who APPLY themselves and work towards success enjoy the fruit of their labors. As it is, it seems people are supposed to feel guilty about being successful. In the sort term, raising taxes on high income earners and applying those funds to overcoming structural barriers for the underprivileged is, I believe the answer.
3
A little admission in this op-ed blows the rest of it apart:
"Testing for “merit” is certain to remain a crucial element in education and training in such professions as medicine, the law, accounting and engineering. Patients and clients will insist on qualified surgeons, lawyers, CPAs and architects."
In other words, (1) testing for merit of course works and (2) in key areas -- like whether you're illness can be cured -- the population at large of course supports the unequal outcomes that flow from testing for merit (excellent doctors vs. rejected med school applicants).
If testing for merit works and is desirable for doctors, then one would surmise it works and is desirable across the economy.
I'd like my auto mechanic to be expert at what she does. I'd like the barista to move quickly, make a good cup of coffee and have a friendly attitude. Even if these consumer expectations mean that some don't win these jobs (inequality of outcomes).
That's life. Full of variation and full of unequal outcomes. Merit testing just lays them bare.
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@Stuck on a mountain
Of course life is full of unequal outcomes, but it is also full of unequal opportunity. In fact it is a significant confounding factor in the disparity in outcomes. You make it seem as if everyone who gets hired for a certain job does so mainly based on superior merit vs the competition (earns it), or because they were better then the competition. The reality is that a good number earn their positions (or get a foot in the door) because of who they know, or who their parents know. Children who have highly educated parents tend to be better prepared for academic success. This too is "a part of life" but it can be hardly viewed as an example of meritocracy, which I would define as a system of people in competition who: 1) All start the race from the around same point, 2) Each enjoy the benefit of comparable resources.
Of course people want to see a doctor that's qualified, or go through the lane of a checker that knows what they're doing. But lets not pretend that every doctor, lawyer, professional who attains such a position is supremely qualified. There are quite a few unremarkable, or even incompetent people who attain and keep their positions because they knew the right person.
Are Donald Trump's children supremely qualified for the positions they hold? Did they earn their positions because they were far better than their competition? Or were they granted their positions based primarily on privilege (the family they were born into).
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@Stuck on a mountain- it's hard to mention a profession where we all don't want the most qualified person getting the position and doing the job. But if you think a multiple choice exam is the best way to determine that, you'll find a large percentage of the time you will be wrong.
Merit testing, excellent. What exactly that test should look and what it actually measures is a lot more complicated. A lot of tests today are most accurate at measuring how rich the testing company is going to get.
54
For the record, I do really well on standardized tests..... and look at what I'm doing at 5:30 in the morning before going to work.
40
I write this during a period when I live in a shelter on Mount Philo (Vermont State Park) and go on the internet at Speeder & Earl's Coffee in Burlington VT, so I cannot do full justice to Edsall's fine column by citing specifics, nor to the BBC World Program I heard in the middle of the night in that shelter. But I want to bring that program into the picture.
I believe there must be a knowledge meritocracy and even a skills meritocracy but not for the primary purpose of making an x % so much richer than everyone else.
In the BBC program I heard a woman from Lagos, I believe, who explained how critical it is for the future Africa to make it possible for there to be a knowledge and skills meritocracy since the African population by year x (was not taking notes) will become world dominant.
Without a livable climate, agricultural advances, new ways to house people this Africa cannot not exist as we hope it may. Only with a vast supply of individuals with the necessary mental and physical skills can this possible.
If I can find that BBC program I will add in reply or in my blog.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.cpm,
Citizen US SE
This is crazy.
China is eating our lunch in terms of new technologies that will decrease poverty, cure diseases, and increase the world's standard of living.
They do it by putting the smartest people in the positions where they can do the most good.
And they determine who is smartest with Test Scores: equivalent of the SAT and IQ tests.
Political correctness is dooming the US to failure.
4
Mr. Edsall makes a convincing argument to augment the thinking of CEOs and CFOs across the globe who are already making decisions about what the economy will look like twenty years from now.
About the time today's first graders are graduating college "..such professions as medicine, the law, accounting and engineering..." won't require humans at all—meritocracy, parental leave, vacation time, healthcare, petty jealousies, what elite college you graduated from don't matter to quantum computers who will out learn the smartest of us into redundancy.
Every society has elites, including hunter-gatherer tribes and communist countries. If you must have elites, merit is the best way to pick them. It’s certainly much better than going by “ascribed identities,” which seems to be a euphemism for white supremacy (I suspect minorities don’t like ascribed identity because their ascribed identities are highly disadvantageous). Tellingly, many of the critiques of meritocracy here (elites are complacent, tests are coachable and favor the rich) are actually critiques that meritocracy has not gone far enough. The solution is to perfect meritocracy, not abandon it.
1
My friends who are hardcore Trump supporters do not notice the irony when they say they love that the U.S. is a meritocracy but hate our elites.
3
Ask most women, off-white people, people with foreign accents, disabled people, those from the wrong side of the tracks, or who are perceived to be too old or too fat, too this or too that, how meritocracy worked out for them all their lives, in school, in careers, in treatment by "normal" others in day-to-day life.
No matter what handicaps a person overcomes, coming from poverty or a home where education was secondary to survival, the privileged will prevail over that person. Gender, class, education from infancy, and social networks trump any merit.
Viz the recent college admissions scandal. That was nothing new and not an aberration.
If you have money, you have one leg up. If you are white and male, another. If you go to the best schools and if you have social networks and speak the "right" way, don't look too bad, well, it doesn't matter whether you are a C or D or F minus student or whether you have any merit at all.
You can still be president.
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@George Dietz
The point isn't whether it "works" or not, in an absolute sense. We're well aware of the fact that there are many biases that we have to face as nonwhites.
The point made by this essay is that it works better than many of the proposed alternatives, which measure the kind of "intangibles" that people with wealth have access to and the poor do not.
The author makes the case that: If we abolish the "meritocracy", many people who are not white and male will end up even worse off, because the rules will be tilted even more against us.
3
back in the day i used to claim i had double 800s on the sats -- it's an uncheckable lie, as our president knows. (i did well, but was no prodigy.) funny thing: absolutely everyone believed me. people are fools for numbers.
this illustrates a fatal flaw in our attempts at meritocracy... we attend to surfaces at the expense of seeing individuals for who they are. isn't this the same dynamic as racism?
2
Anyone who wants to end meritocracy is a fool. So, too, is anyone a fool who does not wish to ensure that barriers to attaining excellence are as minimized as possible for everyone. Ditto for ensuring that standards for excellence are actually appropriate standards relative to the function or task. Elitism is good. Injustice is bad.
5
I have to laugh at how these kinds of articles always make a brief passing reference to Asians, apparently hoping no one will notice the obvious inconsistency.
Asians, as a general demographic, come from low income immigrant families often with low English skills. They attend the same public middle schools with the same limited access to test prep and tutoring. And while many on the Left would like to deny it, they are “of color”.
So how to explain their success? I guess someone forgot to tell them that meritocracy is a myth.
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@Max
Asians are not a general demographic. There are huge differences in background, experiences, education, poverty, etc between a Hmong or other Laotians for example and Koreans or between Vietnamese and Chinese.
1
@Anon
And Hispanics from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico aren't different? You can be sure Asians would be considered a "general demographic" if they weren't succeeding.
1
"The Meritocracy Is Under Siege"
Yes, Mr deBlasio wants to kill the merit based SHSAT testing and replace it with back room deals.
5
This article doesn’t address that Manpower is a company which has done a lot for the “gig” economy. What has the gig economy done for the us Mr Chamorro-Premuzic? What has it done for executives such as yourself?
We need to question the assumption that important qualities, like "intelligence," "ability," or "skill" can be measured on a one-dimensional numerical scale that gives us an unambiguous ranking of people. They can't even be adequately measured on a set of numerical scales. They have to be appreciated by prolonged observation of and interaction with individual persons. As our lives have become dominated by giant institutions (corporations governments, educational systems, etc.), employing and processing, in various ways, thousands of people, we have substituted numerical ratings as a quick proxy for this time-consuming process of assessment. These important qualities can't be coached or prepped, but performance on numerical scales can and will be, and the privileged sectors of society will always have an advantage in that.
1
The article ignores the gorilla in the room, assortative mating. If the gifted mate with the gifted, offspring are highly likely to also be gifted as well as enjoy the privileges and benefits of an affluent, educated family. The problem is intractable. As Jesus said, "the poor will always be with you."
The only solution appears, to me at least, to raise social awareness of the dignity of labor in general. We have designed a system in which the working class is both under-compensated and unrespected.
1
In response to Stuck on Mountain who writes
""Testing for “merit” is certain to remain a crucial element in education and training in such professions as medicine, the law, accounting and engineering."
The question is NOT if testing for merit is justified - it is - but if those tested are an elite subset of the population.
Every one of the professions you cite requires University.
"In the United States, the chances of acceding to higher education are almost entirely determined by the income of one’s parents; barely 20% for the poorest 10%, and over 90% for the richest 10%. " [1]
So you are testing a subset of the population - those with high income parents,
THIS IS NOT MERITOCRACY - it his is reproducing PRIVILEGE
The US would have BETTER doctors, lawyers, engineers if the base of those to be tested would be wider - as in professional sports.
[1] http://piketty.blog.lemonde.fr/2018/02/13/parcoursup-could-do-better/
1
This article is generally a well-constructed and balanced look at meritocracy--its goals, positive and negative aspects, how it has been employed (or not actually employed) in our society, and different views for its role going forward.
But I think it fundamentally mis-identifies the far-right view of meritocracy. Trump voters aren't anti-meritocracy--they tend to be vehemently pro-meritocracy. Rightly or wrongly, they see a broken system where identity preferences--race gender, sexuality, religion, national origin--trump actual merit. A system rigged to discount hard work and labor in calculating merit, and instead reward a coastal elitist ethos that they don't agree with.
When the left sees a system rigged in favor of wealth and entrenched privilege, the response is to re-balance the metrics to raise up disadvantaged groups. But then the right sees this as systemic interference to disfavor their own merit in favor of identity politics.
Going further and saying that "inherent capacity for processing and analyzing information" should have no role in how "economic goods and/or political power are vested" seems insane to the right, and only furthers the view that the left has some radical-Marxist agenda to separate success from ability or hard work. Or eliminate individuality altogether and drag everyone down to the same level.
If the issue is flawed metrics, those can be improved. But to reject the idea of meritocracy flies in the face of individuality and liberalism.
7
The premise that meritocracy is "for" building a society has never been true.
Meritocracy is a selection mechanism so that people in power have the best people working for them (and on down the chain).
No academic or social "realization" about meritocracy will change the brutality of competition for work. Even our highest elected representatives overrun the values of their constituents to serve the benefactors who get them elected. Never has a well-paying job gone empty, even if it is evil.
How can you tell? Meritocracy itself gives way to compliance as a virtue. In every field and every way, it doesn't matter how smart or effective you are: if you don't comply with orders, you're out.
The only way out of that is to be an owner, not an employee.
Even the most liberal owners will never temper their ability to use competition to control their employees unless they are forced to -- by competition.
5
Here in Southern California (and I suspect in New York as well) we have an iconic figure of this "meritocracy": The trophy wife. She spends her days getting massaged and manicured, having her wrinkles filled and her hair low-lighted, and working out by the pool with her Pilates instructor -- all while complaining about having to pay taxes to support health and welfare benefits for the poor and underpaid who, as she sees it, just don't "want to work" hard enough.
11
@Frank F
In a way she is working hard too. Having to obsess over her appearance day in day out as it is the only reason she has any of the resources she has. The sad fact is deep down the second she ages at all she knows she will be replaced with a younger version of herself. The contempt that she holds for the lower social order is insane. Funny how their entire lives are dependent on the labor of everyone they consider beneath them and yet never once are they grateful.
1
Like it or not, some people are more qualified for certain fields. While almost anyone can flip a burger, it takes a person with extraordinary drive, focus, and sheer intellectual ability to become a doctor or a lawyer. By all means, open up as many opportunities as possible, but let's not diminish the quality of the most important professions.
6
@Casey Penk that is acknowledged and addressed in the article...it quotes Singer who agrees that the
"extraordinary" person (as you say) may deserve their reward, but the system only works "if combined with a pay scale that adequately rewards people who lack the talents required for the most highly paid jobs."...something which, I would argue does not exist now (hence the extreme inequality now, and which was far less 50-60 years ago)...part of the solution would be to 1) increase the minimum wage, and 2) devote much more money to public education, especially in those areas of the country and states that are most in need...
Meritocracy is supposed to recognize and reward natural and developed abilities with rationed opportunities to develop those abilities into skills that benefit society, there should be no debate about this being a good system. The author while raising good points starts off with the classic anti-intellectual stereotype that those who rise through merit are arrogant and privileged. This pillarizing of academic ability is unjust, being “elite” academically does not transform one into a jerk. Just as being rich doesn’t make one a jerk. Most recipients of merit put that merit into being good people and giving back to society. However using privilege (money, connections) to trump true merit is scamming society. It is one thing to use money to develop abilities to compete for merit recognition, it is another to buy or use a connection to secure a spot at Wharton or Harvard when you come up short, this is cheating the merit system, these types of people are the arrogant privileged. True merit uses the public front door to success, cheating the merit system is stolen “success”.
6
I am confused. What are we talking about here? We need people who can do various things. It is as simple as that. You don't want to be operated on by someone who doesn't have any hand skills, and no knowledge of anatomy. You don't want your favorite app to be written by someone who cannot design an app. You don't want to watch a baseball game played by people who don't know what to do with the ball. Should I go on? We need people skilled to do what needs to be done in the various fields of human endeavor. For that purpose we need people skilled for those endeavors.
6
@Eduard C Hanganu there is no argument in the article that says otherwise...
No, throw the whole system out.
Oh come on Thomas Edsall. The "meritocracy" only existed for a very brief moment for to my good fortune people like me a female with a gay male married dad who knew he had to shake it up a bit to get clear thinkers in place. My father born 1924 served in the Pacific and Korea and sent me to Stanford in 1972 - meritocracy my bum. He knew how to play the cards correctly to lie and cheat his daughters into Stanford, from a lifetime of pretending straight. Oh yeah, I have the mental cards but also the cards he dealt me.
It's not a meritocracy. It's a money-tocracy.
2
You had me reading until I was expected to pay attention to Peter Singer.
1
A forthcoming book, “The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite,” written by Daniel Markovits, a law professor at Yale, is certain to add fuel to the debate among liberals.
Hmmm. . sounds like a page turner . . and yes . . let's add fuel to the debate about _____________. What a waste of time and energy.
Excuse me have you looked closely at the CEOs, think tank experts, and medical professionals? Many are non- white and yes Asian. Why? Because their families value education as a means of advancement. Hey thrive in schools wheee white Americans fail. They accept that learning is difficult and that working will be harder. Si yes - there is merit in education - we have a golfing third ratecreal estate developer who devalues education as President and whatvhas that dine for the country.?
3
@Barbara
Steve Jobs (Apple): College dropout.
Bill Gates (Microsoft): College dropout.
Michael Dell (Dell): College dropout.
Richard Branson (Virgin): College dropout.
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook): College dropout.
Larry Ellison (Oracle): College dropout.
John Mackey (Whole Foods): College dropout.
What you ascribe to education I ascribe to an old boy's network, a system of privilege that creates a pyramid of opportunity that eventually becomes self-perpetuating. "I am awesome and have a degree in medieval psychodynamics, so I will require degrees in medieval psychodynamics in my company!"
The people who change the world always come from outside that system.
Fascinating as usual, Mr. Edsall.
4
Yes, meritocracy is under siege. Just look at DeBlasio's affirmative action plan for NYC's best high schools. Don't water down the standards, to make things "fair."
3
Meritocracy? What meritocracy? You chance of getting into college, or being hired, depends on your race. It's much harder if your ancestors come from South or East Asia (they don't like your appearance, or the sound of your name), much easier if they come from certain other places...we all know how that works. It's called "diversity", a euphemism for discrimination and an excuse for patronage.
Of course, if your parents give a few million, or bribe the coach, the rules bend a bit.
4
I am so deeply conflicted, Mr. Edsall, about testing.
I am, by the way, a retired teacher. I taught Latin in Philadelphia.
And I am thinking of my daughter. Now twenty nine. With two master's degrees--one from Pittsburgh, one from the U of Pennsylvania.
Did she take the SAT? Of course.
Did she PREPARE for the SAT? Of course.
She took (at great expense) a course at the local community college to PREPARE her for the SAT. That is, she was taught how to "game the system." How to "take the test." How to "spot the answers they were looking for."
I was struck, Mr. Edsall, how cursory--even inaccurate--her preparation was for the verbal part. Synonyms that weren't quite synonyms--but who cares? The people that administer the SAT's won't care about that. So why should you?
All this reminds me--and don't laugh--of the rigorous British classical education of the Victorian age. You were crammed with Latin and Greek. You were taught to compose--prose and verse--in Latin and Greek. So what did all this accomplish?
In any kind of crisis--at home or abroad--
--you could express yourself in Latin or Greek. Prose or verse.
I don't mean to be frivolous or unfair, Mr. Edsall.
But sakes! It's a problem
Naturally one thinks of Lincoln. Almost certainly our most uneducated President.
But for eloquence. For sheer mastery of the English language.
He has no rivals. And taken just as a President--
--maybe he wasn't half bad.
You think?
I don’t think we can know what merit is in a meaningful way until we do more to equalize the playing field for those who are economically disadvantaged. My childhood has been somewhat unique in that I lived for a while in an urban minority neighborhood and I’ve also lived in a rural poor white area. The people in both areas struggle in all sorts of ways but a beautiful mind is a beautiful mind and I’ve seen plenty of them trampled under the foot of our economy. When I myself got to college, I found it shocking to be surrounded almost uniformly by suburban, middle class white students—the one demographic I’d encountered the least growing up. Of course, there were some great minds there too, but I can remember feeling such a lament for many of my friends and acquaintances who through no fault of their own would never get to experience higher ed.
3
Biologists say that the apparent driving force of life is promotion of one's genetic heritage. It should be no surprise that caste and nepotism arise as forces in sustaining society. The moral and practical challenge is finding a path that bridles those forces in a fashion that makes the polity attractively livable.
2
Most of these skils, test scores, test design, etc. -- listed helpfully here -- have been discussed and contended for 65 years?
Thus far, have any emerged enjoying a consensus?
Organizations that rank students and school systems by standardized test numbers are defending themselves against judgment by adding their own social engineering algorithms to the formulas. For example, our town of Acton, MA ranks 2nd on SAT's for the state, yet only 30th in the US News and World Report ranking. Now the SAT is adding an "adversity score" to contract their quantitative approach toward ranking students. At one time the college essay was seen as a way for schools to distinguish quality among applicants, but now the ranking agencies are adding social engineering confusion the process. The layers add confusion to the process. In the end, you don't know who is most deserving of support and recognition. It is a terrible idea to downgrade quantitative assessments, the unintended consequences will be significant to all.
1
Meritocracy is one of those things that only makes sense when thought about passively. Any deeper look into it reveals how obviously it's never been true. It's funny because it reveals an anxiety the elites have about how they're perceived. The admissions scam revealed this all too clearly. Why would people with half a billion dollars laying around need to cheat to send their kids to college? They're just gonna inherent a make work job 'consulting' for someone connected to their parents or they'll just be an 'influencer' and neither of these things require any sort of higher education.
So why risk all this jail time and public humiliation to send your kids to a university for an education they do not need? (or really value let's be honest)
It's due to an anxiety that the rest of the populace is catching on to the rigged game. To openly flaunt how little you had to do to get your position in life rubs people the wrong way. We prefer you at least lie to us and pretend you worked to get where you were. Funny how they would all be better off just letting their kids be Paris Hilton. Sure they'd be hated but they wouldn't be made a scapegoat for the entire caste system.
1
The Chinese meritocracy system is kicking US butt! Whereas Trump was elected president despite the fact that he had no gov experience and a series of business failures leading to bankruptcy, Premier Xi was selected based on his excellent past performance in smaller Chinese provinces.
Unlike America, you don't "lie" your way to the top in China which is evidenced by how well China is adapting to Trump's erratic system of tariffs.
The contrast between Chinese meritocracy and US capitalism should send chills down American spines. If we're losing ground to China in tech, medicine, hi speed rail, solar, etc., we have only to blame the lesser educated in America who fell for the Trump lie.
The greatest threat facing mankind isn't Climate Change, it's the idiot in the WH who refuses to address Climate Change and the easily impressionable Trump supporters who keep him there. China could have been a partner in addressing the unfolding Climate catastrophe, but Trump needed a scapegoat to keep his supporters in line.
Meritocracy wins every time. If the Ds take the WH & senate, they promise to retrain and educate those who will be harmed the most by Climate Change, but true to form, these people will select Trump and, for the second time, vote against their best interests.
2
I lost my job this last weekend. I will do what I usually do at the end of a contract, go out and bust my rear to get a new one.
3
Meritocracy is "under siege" precisely because of an assumption that the author himself erroneously commits. Namely, that there's a 'natural' relationship between measurable merit and material reward.
But there's not. Rather, all you can say is that in many cases, those who have power by whatever means seize privilege and wealth-- which is then mentally morphed into natural entitlement.
Rewards based upon merit offers up nothing but a redistribution of inequality. So in this sense, no, it's not necessarily less unfair than an aristocracy that spreads the butter evenly across the bread.
Rawls, too, is somewhat in error. Different societies, ostensibly driven by varying cultural norms of fairness, will assess "Veil of Ignorance" outcomes differently. In other words, what's 'fair' by American and Brazilian standards is grossly unfair in Sweden and France.
To be Civilized, then, means understanding that basic human needs are incommensurate with institutions rigged for gaining comparative advantage. A failure to understand this makes one a barbarian.
1
If only we used some kind of merit test based on strict parameters which sorts the wheat from the chaff in terms of presidential candidates.
Certain civil service employees, CIA operatives, and FBI personnel are all obliged to take exams assessing their intelligence, moral fiber, and psychological make up, and yet, the highest office in the land with the most responsibility, is allowed in the hands of an amoral buffoon.
I understand the perils of meritocracy, not the least of which is who gets to do the deciding as to who has merit and who does not. And yet, our current situation, which renders the credibility of the United States ludicrous all over the world, would beg for some sort of meritocracy for the highest office in the land.
If nothing else good comes out of this administration, perhaps the standards required for the office of the president will finally come into question.
2
"The debate over meritocracy has been intensifying. Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Do we want it or don’t we?"
The debate over meritocracy — along with every other issue related to humans in the workforce — will be made irrelevant by quantum computers and machine learning.
Humans in the workforce: Is it a good thing? A bad thing? Do we want it or don’t we?
Bezos has 100 billion. Gates 53. Whom is our system more likely to favor? The wealthy have a corner on opportunity and the means to progress.
Thanks to Thomas Edsall for another thought-provoking article.
Why are people so desperate to have their children admitted to prestigious colleges? It's because the stakes are so excessively high. First, our economy has been consciously designed to heavily reward the "winners" (and punish the "losers"). If the range of outcomes (measured in terms of income, access to healthcare, and prestige) was more compressed, there would be a lot less pressure to "win". Second, your chances of marrying one of the other "winners" go way up if you go to school with them, improving your odds even more.
The other factor that is neglected is the contacts that the "winners" enjoy. People at the commanding heights of business and government can get other powerful people to pick up the phone when they call. They can get favors done for their children regarding internships and entry level jobs, getting their foot in the door of powerful institutions. Regular people can't even get their state legislator or city councilor to call them back.
There is no one solution for this situation, but health insurance for all, full-employment fiscal and monetary policy, and a confiscatory inheritance tax would all improve the situation.
4
"It doesn’t help that for the most part this new professional and creative class is allied, politically at least, with the interests of minorities and immigrants."
I don't think that is true, generally. In my city, these elite achievers don't show much sympathy for the homeless and immigrants here. They are all, "me, me , me".
2
One issue not addressed is the geographic stratification of the society. Poor kids do not interact with suburban kids unless their schools jointly participate in an after school event. The deep poverty in which many inner city and rural kids are stuck includes this rigid isolation.
The social capital accumulated by understanding how others live and think involves many of the social skills that corporations et al look for in hiring. Implicit in their decisions is that quantitative merit measures need to be supplemented by skills that are harder to detect statistically.
An enlightened human resources department would realize this, but often may be incapable of dong anything other than using limited intuitions from their own experiences to affect hiring decisions.
In this way, what passes for meritocratic criteria often just
reinforces a social stratification based upon class and geography.
In other words, life is difficult and good judgment is even harder.
It is even harder to justify accepting data driven analytics
to define what good education is, both from a moral perspective and a practical one.
Testing alone to sort out winners and losers, and as a default, to measure learning in K-12 is a moral abomination that has morphed into a corporate driven, political machine which now has enough power to insist upon its definition of a good education.
This has established a meritocracy by test score with little general legitimacy.
1
Observing the ever-expanding reach of the internet in Western countries, the following question has been on my mind - and possibly on many others - for the last 30 years: what happens when everyone becomes well-educated to the point that knowledge and expertise can no longer differentiate the "ordinary men" from the "elites."
Mr. Edsall's article may be hinting at an answer to that question. It seems one possible outcome would be the elites start to degrade the importance of education, hence "meritocracy," to the point that the smart black kid, or the East Asian youngster, who has managed to graduate from Harvard, does not think he/she has achieved anything special or has become entitled to a different treatment.
If we listen to Mr. Trump carefully, it is not to difficult to hear that very idea being soft-pedaled by him when he talks about the "elites" (which, no doubt, he means the "nouveau-elites" not the hereditary ones like himself).
1
How are personality tests legal for businesses that claim not to disciminate against those with disabilities? Personality disorders and cognitive disorders that impact one's emotional intelligence are clearly being screened against. Further, low-income children experience stress at vastly higher levels than higher-income children; again, this stress impacts personality and cognitive ability. To screen personality at the hiring stage just seems like a discrimination case waiting to happen.
3
I like this as a review of the different views and proposals out there and do not see it as a position paper. It is indeed a complex subject and invites reflection on what is desirable and achievable in society. We know full on Marxism, unfettered Capitalism, Aristocracy, Plutocracy, Theocracy and Anarchy all DON'T work. Smaller scale socialist democracies with a mix of principals sort of do. Russia, China, America, India have huge challenges in size, diversity and aspirations. Whether we are up to it in this country is an important point of this editorial and an important one. Polarization makes it less likely. So thanks.
1
While reading this what came to mind was the conflict between efficiency and fairness. Testing on the input of some process , say SAT for collage entrance, is about managing access to a limited resources. Inaccuracies in this pre-filtering results in exclusion of deserving candidates. In a more perfect world all would be allowed assess and the opportunity to succeed. But, resources are limited and likely will remain so. The practical way to increase fairness is to increase testing accuracy. One good faith effort in the works is to weigh test results using social and economic factors -- a bit better than ethnic based affirmative action. Even if the pre-filters were honed to perfection, the rejects still need access to opportunity that must preserve dignity and should be supported by the general population where needed to avoid the positive feedback of poverty. Another barrier to opportunity especially in education is $$$, this should not exist, all education should be free.
meritocracy: “a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort and achievement."
Achievement at what?
a. making lots of money, holding a prestigious job, beating the competition?
b. doing the work that society most needs, such as teaching, professor and researcher, nursing, policing, emergency responders, public health, social work, librarian?
c. making the world a more beautiful and healthier place, such as as artists, musicians, environmental experts, architects, nature writers and photographers?
e. all of the above
What strikes me as I age well into my 7th decade is how narrowly "merit" is being defined--largely by the business sector.
This entire column looks at merit from a strictly business perspective--no better expressed than in this business-speak statement from Career Builder:“at the forefront of innovation when it comes to using data and technology to evolve the human capital management space,” Oh gag; "human capital management space" Spare us, please!
Ever since Reagan was president and the corporatist, right-wing GOP became ascendant, we have been fed a bunch of malarkey that "achievement" is all about business and the economy, while society is (1) only so much noise and a nuisance factor that eats up tax dollars; and (2) the public sector works best when privatized & run by businessmen
How about valuing emotional intelligence, society, people & nature as "achievement"
12
For me, meritocracy seems to be a result of the growth of the wealth gap. Children now born into families with few resources are not likely to move out of poverty themselves. The wealth gap doesn't just happen---it is how our economic system is rigged now.
3
This article asks a lot of questions about merit, and responding to it can't be limited to "is merit testing good or bad?"
If society cared about those who live in it, and wanted them to do the "best they can", it would design testing and outcomes so that people from every background can realistically anticipate effort will produce something for them.This is all human beings need--to believe in a better outcome if they make effort. When this is not done, if a person or his culture repeatedly anticipates failure, our beautiful meritocracy has created a social and personal problem which costs them and us. Tell people they can improve and create the conditions for it to happen. This is the formula for a sane society.
But starting from this end is to assume that society exists for the good of its members, and that achievement is its own reward. Society exists for the good (right now) of international competition and business, robotizing jobs, serving company needs, and pursuing the worst kind of meritocracy as described by Edsall. Achievement is only suited to capital's needs.
This is why we need, as Bernie Sanders has said, a "revolution". Government and business exist for our good, the people's good, and only Sanders and Harris have made this explicit.
1
@jim guerin
'This is all human beings need--to believe in a better outcome if they make effort. [..] This is why we need, as Bernie Sanders has said, a "revolution". Government and business exist for our good'
In Soviet Russia, they did in fact have full employment, which was very socially stabilizing. They also had health care and equal education, including reserving spots for students from around the country. But no one felt they could improve their lot except by participating in the fakery of the Communist Party. So the division between have's and have-not's was about compliance.
The difference today in the U.S. is that if you choose not to comply, instead of having no better prospects, you have no job, no health care, and possibly no home.
There is no rational way to say business and government is for the people without also realizing that we hold the majority of wealth, while billions languish in poverty. Which people?
The logic of scarcity and competition cannot be escaped except by people coming together, regardless of business and government.
Thank you for this elegant discussion, which you could very usefully expand into an entire book. Your explanation of our current angst is the most convincing that I have read. Your nuanced analysis reveals fertile ground for further discussion about how we might remake our social compact and move forward.
1
Our public school system is grotesquely uneven---makes it really challenging to compete when you're not even invited to the competition.
3
Mr. Edsall's astute analysis of yet another aspect of human frailty argues strongly for the replacing "professional workers" with quantum computers with the ability to 'learn' humans into redundancy from the bottom to the very top of the human workforce.
Another good piece. As with the previous about abortion. We all want to believe in the American dream that anyone can make it to the top. Yet we want to deny the impact of social conditions upon individuals. We want to ignore the statics.
When one looks at poverty whether in West Virginia or some American city and the chance that most will rise to the top, your dreaming. The discussion of meritocracy and testing obscures the social reality of our class society. It was no different after World War 2 when America became the top industrial power in the world after the destruction of the war. Inequality and opportunity was the same.
Social class has always been the major variable in student achievement, the second has been intact family or not.
If children with the genetic traits to achieve in the world of standardized testing are raised in chaos and not nurtured those innate gifts have a nigh impossible chance to flower.
Western Europe has a somewhat rigid meritocracy where young people are tested as young teen agers and either put into the gymnasium, university track or to technical schools.
But labor unions are still strong there, benefits such a health care etc are provided by the state to all citizens so there is far less anger at the system then exists here with our Darwinian approach to life.
Standardized testing and the importance of grades as indices of future schooling and employment are not going away but we can make life for the "left behind" far less traumatic and meaningful than it is today.
5
So, I guess the point of this article is that we need to find a solution to the problem of inherited genetic advantages? Let's see, perhaps people should be issued an achievement handicap at, say, 15 years of age. The more brains, beauty, athletic or artistic talent possessed, the more that person will be penalized in educational opportunity, career choice, salary, etc. And maybe we throw in a few penalty points as well for being born to parents (or a society) that value education and possess a strong work ethic. Now, would such a system produce better results for society as a whole than one of meritocracy? Would we still have the best brain surgeons, super-models, baseball players or pop stars? No, we'd simply trade meritocracy for mediocrity.
3
@Southern Man
no need for your suggested solution...quantum computers will sort things soon enough.
I would suggest that testing for superior qualities require this: an ability to face another person, look them in the eye and say, "you are less than I, and therefore deserve less".
2
Well-designed testing can allow us to figure out where we might invest our efforts most effectively, (quite apart from how society may reward us for those efforts). Testing also allows us to see how well we have mastered a given subject or skill, which we might like to know before we go “live”. One thing testing can never do is assign a value to anyone’s human worth. That judgment will always be above our pay grade, whatever it might be.
@gary
But your proposed test would also select for sociopathy. Because sociopaths KNOW they're better than everybody else -- and they revel in saying so.
With all of the scandals that we have recently watch unfold, it reinforces the belief that no matter how ignorant the elite white class is, the better they live.
We have a president who can not even read a sentence yet we have minorities with terminal degrees who can not secure a career because of the racism that is accepted in this country.
No matter how smart an individual is, without the right skin color, their careers are very limited. Not every minority can own their own business because the banks wont provide start up credit. However Urber is making millionaires out of white men who were at the right place at the right time.
The "Metoo" movement exposed all of these high paying positions that most minority women didn't even know existed because there talents are not appreciated due to our everyday racism.
Testing companies are loved by Wall Street because they just keep getting richer over the forced constant test taking that is being forced on citizens.
We live in a world where there has to be the haves and the have nots. Capitalism has taken this to the extreme and society is paying an extremely high price for our racism and cruelty to others.
3
@Tony
You'll be amused to know that when the first IQ tests were tested, secretaries as a group scored higher than their bosses -- because the secretaries efficiently zipped right thru the tests, while their bosses dithered. (The three-martini lunches that were then popular among the upper classes also didn't help.)
The cure? Rewrite the tests -- to make sure the bosses came out on top. Because -- in this society -- the right answer is the desired answer -- the answer desired by those in power.
3
As a grandparent, I’m more than a little disappointed in what the meritocracy is producing. Like, I’m sitting on the bleachers at last night’s ballgame, in pedal pushers and a polo, exhausted, from the role of childcare provider for my grandkids, (because no one else is home!) and in waltzes another working mother, whom they all aspire to be, bedecked and bejeweled in the finest, nails and hair all professionally done, complete with little black lingerie peeking out of her polka dot spaghetti straps. I looked at my husband and said, “Jesus Christ”. How quaint!
2
I would hypothesize that those who test high on cognitive ability tests will predominantly use cognitive empathy. "Morally salient criteria like goodness, mercy, kindness" will use predominately compassionate empathy. You cannot blame a sociopath or psychopath for rising to the top of a system that rewards feeling no shame or empathy.
2
Back in the day when authority figures had some authority, I was ordered at freshman enrollment — on the basis of test scores — to take two classes that I felt no qualification for. I even insisted that my test scores must be a mistake. No matter, into those classes I went —- and came out at semester’s end with the highest grades in the class, starting me out in life as I never imagined, instead of the small life I expected to live.
So test scores also reveal undiscovered merit and today I am thankfully able to give some small support to Quest Bridge, a non-profit that seeks out real, measurable talent, specifically out there in the great middle, based on shown ability.
On the other side, setting up young people for likely failure is surely harmful, and I have seen that far too many are unfortunately pushed into paths of little future given their test scores.
5
Meritocracy, which ideally creates hierarchies based upon performance, experience, ability, and educational attainment, appeals to the American creed of equality of opportunity--the equal chance to become unequal regardless of race, gender, nationality, religion, and so forth. But the concept of merit, which originated in protestantism, is ultimately empty of specific meaning. What qualities have merit? It used to be faith in God and living according to the golden rule. It's now become a pseudo-objective quality measured by IQ and SAT tests, measures of athletic performance, income, and so forth. Other qualities of human excellence that are more difficult to monetize, such as living a moral life, don't really matter. So we need to consider what qualities are measured according to the standard of merit. A second problem with meritocracy is the relationship between the degree of merit and the size of the reward. Superstars reap monumental rewards, those with a slightly lower degree of merit might do OK, while those without the right talents but who still share our fundamental humanity must fend for themselves. This is consistent with an ideal meritocracy.
1
Testing may not be perfect, but it is a good way of determining knowledge and intelligence. Just because some people are disadvantaged in early life with bad parents or schools doesn't mean the test results are wrong.
3
Singer makes the most sense because he addresses the real issues behind meritocracy and economic disparities.
Neither one's cognitive ability, parents' wealth, nor perfect SAT scores should relegate one to affluence or poverty.
Further, once we accept our successes and failures as endemic to the unfair institutions of wealth distribution, we can serve every American--billionaire and beggar alike--far better than we serve them now.
Peter Singer (as quoted in this excellent piece) has got it just right: persons who, for whatever reasons, have ended up in lower socio-economic strata should get a much bigger share of the national income than they are getting now. They should have more money and much easier access to health services and other goods taken for granted by the upper middle classes.
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There would be nothing wrong with standardized testing, if it was, in fact, standardized. The point is to measure ability or "cognitive horsepower" which is absolutely material to future academic success. However, the system is gamed intensely by the rich and affluent, making the tests' predictive value dubious. One way is test prep classes. There is no way to ban such classes, but there is a way to make the tests less subjective—simply make them a pure IQ test, more akin to the famed Wonderlic test of football fame. These tests are much harder to game and train for. Another way the rich and affluent game the tests is claiming that their children need "accommodations" for "learning disabilities." This is utter hogwash. If a kid has trouble concentrating, they shouldn't get an untimed test. I'm pretty sure Law Schools don't let kids with "learning disabilities" take an untimed LSAT, for the simple reason that lawyers need to process information quickly.
3
Opinions are not facts -- many football players have done well despite low scores on the Wonderlic, which is easily games by memorizing frequently repeated questions. Students with genuine learning disabilities do get extended time on the LSAT, as required by lawsuit settlements under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Meritocracy, to the extant we have one, is being replaced by oligarchy, and then ultimately, kleptocracy. It doesn’t take special glasses to see the pattern, set by Putin, and spreading like an infection of governance, around the world. If Europe converts to right wing autocratic governments, it’ll be game over, winners Putin, China and the Mid East oil oligarchies.
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I was surprised there was no mention of selective breeding in this article. Just based on observation it seems to me that when smart people partner up, they tend to have smart kids regardless of their dual incomes and ability to purchase tutors. Truly gifted children are not coached, and they need to be nurtured because they will ultimately give us the innovations that make our lives better. Keep the cognitive tests. Get rid of the achievement tests.
Hard work is also valuable and deserving of a living wage, but in a capitalist society the government will have to make that happen. Which of course means that all those uneducated, rural white people will need to vote for democrats.
2
@southern mom In my observation the brains come from the woman. It's vitally important that smart women have children, preferably with smart men but I believe average men will do.
@southern mom Anecdotal observation is not science. Haven't you ever heard of regression to the mean? That's what happens if smart people partner up. Were the parents of Jesus incredibly smart? Many innovative people like William Shockley, or Richard Feynman, had quite average IQ scores.
What country are you living in?
I can only comment on what I've observed directly in creative circles. All of our cities are polluted with trust fund babies. Our creative class is in shambles . It's overrun with people who can't look beyond their own noses for inspiration since doing so would call into question the very system which elevates them and their families.
The economic structure of this country is robbing it of our ability to imagine.
There is no Meritocracy in Entertainment only nepotism .
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@James Perez. Excellent point. Back in not-so-distant 1990s NYC, the West Village touted jazz and other live music venues that were plentiful and affordable; Soho and Tribeca had a plethora of galleries; and the East Village was a center of experimental art in all forms. These neighborhoods also accommodated creatives with enough decent (relatively) inexpensive housing to maintain vibrant artistic communities. Now all those neighborhoods predominantly house hedgies, bankers, techies and, yes, trust fund offspring. Tragic.
1
My two cents on NYC high school tests for Stuy/Science/Bklyn Tech, etc.: keep the tests and spend much more money on pre-K and K-8 education. FIx the school buildings, get the parents and caregivers involved, push for excellence.
Without that approach, the "special" NYC high schools won't be special for long. Oh, and btw? I came up through the city schools (Bronx) and did not make the cut for Science. Mediocre grades and so-so test scores; no special test prep for me. You know what? Somehow, me and my friends (who went to Clinton) survived and made a nice life.
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No matter the system, no matter the opportunities we are presented, meritocracy will by definition create winners and losers.
We as a country have done a great job in rewarding winners, but we often punish those that are losers by not providing them health care, child care a living wage and by telling them every day how terrible they are.
I think we can do better in both ensuring everyone has access to cultivate there own talents and by providing grace to those who are unable to "Win".
We are certainly wealthy enough to do both, if only we could see it.
2
Political activist want to make the racial and ethnic make up of select high schools ,colleges and even medical schools represent their percentage of US population,That is wrong My recent experience as a patient reflects this .I had three amazing Korean doctors taking of me .Do we need doctors who get into medical school with average of 28 on MCATs and B- GPA.
3
"The Meritocracy Is Under Siege"
Yes, Mayor deBlasio wants to get rid of the SHSAT and replace it with a system based on favoritism.
7
The competitive job search for “talent” and “rock star” employees instead of companies training employees to be has led to idea that you must have pedigree to get a job. There is no idea that all Americans have merit and are skilled people that can do any job given the proper tools and training. Companies do not want to train you to do a job , they want you to hit the ground running! They are happy to steal you from another company and see your stay at their company as short term anyway since they are probably going to go out of business or be bought out in a few years and you will be fired anyway. They are counting on it, the management wants to cash out of their stock options and become billionaires and the best way is to sell the company. What a rat race , no meritocracy here.
2
Griggs vs Duke Power case in the Supreme Court disallowed IQ test results in hiring and positioning decisions.Now we have derivatives of IQ testing ( SAT, ACT) which are also influenced by socioeconomic status . Merit can be bought. Talk about IQ ( a trait) differences is a “ third rail” risk.Horse running speed is less controversial : no Clydesdales at the Kentucky Derby. All horses are not created equal. School funding is also an important issue. Northern European countries give equal school funding to each student. In the US, individual student funding varies from $20 K/year (NY, Conn, NJ) to $8 K/year in the South and California. Furthermore, real estate values and property taxes determine the sources and the level of funding. The lucky are born and raised in top zip codes.
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@Philip J klemmer MD Speaking as a NJ taxpayer, you are incorrect. MORE funding goes to schools in urban areas than the suburbs. And every year there's screaming for more and more money; meanwhile middle class residents are moving out in droves because they can't afford the taxes anymore.
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Meritocracy? Don’t patronize us.
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In France, we have a fairly good school system and miserable universities. This is the exact opposite of the USA.
The difference is meritocracy.
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@Jean Roudier I have seen recrutement for French university professor at 1500 euro a month.
But still the level of thinking in French universities is superior. Education is not just a result of the material conditions of the moment but of the history of epistemology. In US colleges students think they know because they are sustained in a mystique but if you actually look at what they read and are able to produce as symbolic thinking, they are very poor. Even in Ivy League.
The top tenth will try to read French philosophy or history or
psychology and they will only get the cliches of it.IF not with counter sense.
Well, given how many unqualified people are in the cabinet, I guess meritocracy has more to do with who you know than whether you have merit.
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I taught a number of years ago in the NYC Public School system for a some time. It was before the days when big money completely ran education in America, even though the big money players always had plenty of influence. Back then, the concern in schools was the betterment of the student-- authentic assessment was the buzz. Students were assessed based upon who they were and what their personal needs were and not what a test told them they should be. The big money found a way to break through the dam of states rights. When they started with the "race to the top" program, the states competed to see who could give up their rights more thoroughly for the Common Core. so that a "national standard" could be set. Governors knew that if they didn't support this, their opponents during elections would get to ask why the incumbent "wouldn't want money to improve schools for children?" It was a brilliant piece of political extortion. And what this started really was a national bidding war for products and charters, effectively turning the educational system into one single nation-wide marketplace where children were used as the currency. This really was the end of any pie in the sky notions of merit in education. Now the plutocracy could use their lobbyists in Washington to control education just like everything else. See Betsy Devos.
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Normally I like Edsall’s analyses. He is even-handed and often insightful in how he deploys the information he acquires. Not so this time, though his statement at the end is reasonable enough. As usual with anyone who writes about testing, he relies on the wrong kind of research. There is not and cannot in the nature of things be a valid test of the sort he is discussing here, at least in the area of language/literary analysis and verbal ability, unless we precisely define and codify the essence and contours of knowledge itself. That will always be the tests’ flaw. No one talks about that, not even most professional educators, because they don’t really have the right academic vocabulary for it. There is, for example, no such thing as a Lexile score, though we have ostensible measurements called "Lexile scores": they are at best a clumsy metaphor for the extremely narrow type of verbal sophistication we like to call "tasteful," which we further elide to call "academic."
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It is troubling that there are people who want to take away ability testing, just because it will be a chance for their children to get a leg up on more talented children.
There is nothing wrong with testing, the problems are all socioeconomic, and essentially boil down to economic inequality. I'm not sure that race even factors into it, because the instructors and administrators at the schools listed in this article (in New York for example) are mostly progressive people.
If high-achieving children of poor parents do worse than low-achieving children of rich parents, the solution cannot be to remove the tests, but to address the economic inequality that is the root of the problem.
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lets worry about something consequential like the implications quantum computers and AI [machine learning] have for future of human workers.
today's first graders won't have to worry about a meritocracy when they enter college a little more than a decade from now.
and there won't be any truck driving gigs for them to fall back to either.
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In the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the ‘60’s and the desegregation of the public schools in the South, many southern white children were withdrawn from those previously decently funded public schools and sent to Christian schools where they learned the earth was 4,421 years old, Adam & Eve were real people, and Jesus was a white man with a brownish beard. And not much else. Those folks got left way behind in the tech world. This converged with Trump’s desire to be president. And here we are!
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The major flaw in this argument is the excessive focus on college admissions. What happens at the graduate/professional school level where testing is front, center and fierce? To what extent should those schools "diversify"? Is society willing to accept what may be less capable physicians? What about the trades schools where scions of trade professionals are given a leg up? Should auditions for music schools, and later jobs in related fields, have to deliver diversity in lieu of the best musician? Admission to college is an easy target. The broader, deeper issues are not.
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I thank Mr. Edsall for this thoughtful article. There are 3 aspects of this article with which I disagree. The first is that the SAT is somehow a meritocratic test. It is not. The SAT is essentially an IQ test. That is why people can't study for it. IQ is a result of both environmental and genetic factors, and is a good predictor of school performance and, indeed success in life. But the SAT is as meritocratic as height as a predictor of basketball abilities. It probably is a great predictor, but surely not meritocratic. We could come up with tests that might be more meritocratic, like achievement tests, but these might favor to an even greater degree, kids who come from privileged backgrounds.
The second issue, that the system enforces an entrenched caste system is simply wrong. One need only look at admission to NYC's elite high schools which have gone from 10% Asian to over 60% Asian in the last 40 years, to realize that there are huge demographic changes afoot.
Finally, Mr. Edsall feels that somehow that we are able to adjust for true merit. There is really no substitute for talent and hard work. We can for instance, keep the most talented and hard working kids out of the best schools in favor racial or demographic criteria, but, generally, people who are smarter and work harder are going to do better in the long run, regardless of where they go to school. I think the real challenge, is to give everyone an equal chance at achieving success...not easy.
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I've always been split on the matter of standardized testing. On the one hand, it greatly favors whose who have the resources to prepare for them. On the other hand, I benefitted greatly from these tests: I'm a good test-taker, but I was not always a good high school student. The SAT, achievement and AP tests secured my place at a good college, despite no test prep.
That said, I've never administered any kind of cognitive testing to prospective hires. Nor do I put them on the spot in interviews by asking demanding questions. Some people do well with these, others are too nervous to muster the focused required to produce answers.
But unfortunately for many, we live in an economic system that greatly favors the smart and the educated classes. We can argue how best to select and promote talent, but there is no argument that people without college degrees will continue to struggle. And in my observation at least, many groups this country do not really value education. In Appalachia, where I've spent a lot of time, educated people are often viewed with suspicion and resentment, especially in the poorer regions. Many kids do not grow up with the expectation that they will go to college or learn a valuable trade. It's hard to see a path forward for these groups until there is a cultural change in the attitudes towards school.
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@hammond
Indeed. Poor Appalachia, losing industry from the 1960s onward along with essential services. No bus to anywhere anymore. No jobs in town. (Even fast food restos have automated cashiers.)
Met two women from NC in NYC, living in a homeless shelter where they said they did not get food. How is this possible?
As others have pointed out we're no where near discussing merit but should we not assume that people most of us can make some contribution -- teaching a child to read, to catch a ball... and why is teaching kindergarten considered less worthy/noble/important than teaching a university level course?? (Having done both, Kg is much more demanding -- and meretricious in terms of what I taught the group to do!) And sadly it's true that conditions outside the classroom, how a family/person lives has much to do with his happiness and achievement.
In my former archaeology program in the Department of Anthropology at UC, Berkeley, we discontinued use of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) because we found that many of our grad student candidates receiving high GRE scores did not finish the program. After shifting to relying on recommendations from their undergrad programs, GPAs, work experience in the field, and their submitted letters of intent, we began to see a much higher completion rate. Many of those students, including many of mine, are now teaching in universities around the globe, and some are students of color. Granted, archaeology, as a social science, is not technically a STEM discipline, but it is part of the world's cultural milieu, and there are many jobs in government, the private sector, as well as academia. Many of us are from disadvantaged backgrounds (I grew up in a trailer park), but many archaeologists today are members of the National Academies, endowed chairs, and a large portion of which came from backgrounds like mine.
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In a world in which the average IQ is 100 and half of the people fall on either side there are going to be significant cognitive advantages among the smarter ones. Nothing is going to change that. Are we going to reserve spots in medical school for people less intelligent people, who wants one of them as their surgeon? The world is not fair, taller people, better looking people are both more likely to succeed. You can't legislate these things away. I think the real problem with our "meritocracy" is how much of it isn't, so-called people born on third base thinking they hit a triple. But an actual meritocracy, even acknowledging that being smarter is a lottery that you didn't earn is the worst system except for all the rest. A world that tries to ignore or worse average out these differences is the dystopia of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.
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360 comments in, and not one that mentions the value having parents that are involved in helping their children become better students. You don't need to be rich to help with homework at night.
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@Midwest Josh
And READ, read books to your children from practically the moment they are born.
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@Midwest Josh
The culture issue is always avoided.
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@Midwest Josh Tell that to the parents who are working more than one job. Wealth = time.
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“Merit” will take one only so far. Who one knows and one’s socioeconomic background are—and always will be—the most important elements for predicting future career and economic success and relative political power.
1
“If we think about cognitive ability testing as a form of lottery, in which the winners are those who possess a certain inherent capacity for processing and analyzing information, without reference to morally salient criteria like goodness, mercy, kindness or courage, we are embarking on a new kind of impoverishment.”
Hopefully, there will never be a time when hospitals, for example, pick their surgeons based on “morally salient criteria”.
5
Terrific again from Edsall to reveal more of what lies under the wide umbrella of our much vaunted ideal of "meritocracy." In fact, from the beginnings of our country, our Constitution, the "all men are created equal" meant a few educated and well positioned white men, slave owners, or others like Tom Paine or perhaps Patrick Henry, so today's top percent of leaders or wealthy have often had a "silver spoon" in their mouths, or strived mightily as did Ben Franklin. there is that, indeed. Hoover did the same. However, I take away from this article that we need to pay those who work hard including teachers, waste men, nurses, domestics, those in kitchens so that their value is indeed recognized for what it is. Higher taxes, not more tax cuts for the top 1%. Re-evaluate income taxes, including the inheritance tax. Veterans are being helped for their sacrifice, but in doing this, we prioritize that service above others and aid in building up the alrighty mighty military machine.
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@Katalina
Quite correct
Reinstate the luxury tax -- how about an editorial on this topic...
Meritocracy is a fuzzy concept, a system we all see through the biased lens of our own experience, and at best a partial method for social order. And money is only a rough proxy for the good life.
At the end of the day, the goal is to have a society where all live up to their potential, are rewarded with a life that is emotionally rewarding to live, and misery envy and hate are the anomalies. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So, the problem isn't that the 1% are happy, but that the 99% are sad. We should act to have our social institutions, public and private, to move people from the miserable/envious/angry/sad column to the happy column. Our 'meritocracy' has plainly failed to singlehandedly achieve that goal, but that doesn't mean it isn't a part of the solution.
3
I don't believe in a true meritocracy. In my view, a true meritocracy would require that each generation start off equally, with equal resources and education, and that nothing can be passed or built up from one generation to the next. That to me, runs contrary to human nature and one of the primary meanings of life, which is to help one's own kids. I go to work every day so that my kids can attend elite private schools, get top training in music and sports from early age, etc, and ultimately to leave them a substantial estate all in the hope that their lives, and their kids lives, will be that much easier and better than mine. That to me is being a good parent.
I think we obviously need to make it possible for the poor to advance and achieve wealth, and make an education available, etc, but not get carried away in eliminating all "privilege" as the left would say, or creating a true meritocracy. As JFK said, "Life isn't fair."
6
Yes, life isn't fair but it's definately skewed towards the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.
This rambling op-ed raises some interesting points. However I would like to add another perspective. Anti-intellectualism- often the refuge of the banal and mediocre- though in no way tied to IQ- will hurt a nation in the 21st century that must place a premium on developing intellectual capital. In fact- it will cause the very best scientists, engineers and artists to flee to countries where they have less fear that their inventions will be used for destructive purposes or where their basic human rights will be threatened. This is all part of a spiraling downward that we see in the US and elsewhere. In the end societies pay for their brutish suppression of minorities- for anyone that stands out and can be ostracized.
8
It was interesting to see the same sentence use the phrase "complacent, entrenched elite" and the phrase "increasingly Asian." After all, if the race and ethnicity stats of an elite can change fairly rapidly over the span of a single lifetime, then the elite can't be THAT "entrenched" right?
15
Our kids knew how to work within the system, largely due to us, i.e. multiple graduate-degreed parents in the middle class, lots of books and travel, high expectations, excellent schools. They enjoyed every advantage, but also wanted to dance the dance: they were 100% with the plan and it paid off for us. While I do not want to diminish their achievements, there is no doubt that the playing field was theirs for the taking.
The trouble is, public policy remedies to these types inequalities are by their nature divisive and their results ambiguous. The alienation of non-college educated will only serve to tear down what works in the system. It is a great conundrum.
3
The fact is that we could easily educate many more people than we actually do. "Meritocracy" is a system designed to ration a social good in a situation where we could just as easily increase the supply. As such its purpose is to foster artificial inequality and buttress systems of elite rule.
6
As usual, the most thought provoking article of my morning is written by Mr. Edsall. Thank you in particular for introducing me to Professor Peter Singer with this brilliant quotation:
"...meritocracy on its own does not produce a society that gives equal consideration to everyone’s interests. Hence it’s an acceptable ideal only if combined with a pay scale that adequately rewards people who lack the talents required for the most highly paid jobs, but work hard at other, often even more essential jobs — from teachers, nurses, and police to cleaners and waste collectors... meritocracy is not an ideal, because it leaves those who, for no fault of their own, cannot do the work that is well-rewarded, in undeserved hardship."
I will definitely be looking for more of his writings.
4
I grew up in Alabama in the 50s and 60s, the child of high-school-educated parents, and attended public school, the only option in our small town, not that my folks could have afforded anything else. Almost to a one, my teachers—virtually all women—were exceptionally bright and talented, and they challenged me and pushed me forward. With their pushing, I made good grades, and in no little part due to the vocabulary, concepts and critical thinking skills they taught me, I scored well on the SATs. Those grades and scores got me into a good college, and that got me into a good law school, and that formed the basis for success that enabled me to send my own child (now an ivy league academic) to some of the best schools in the country.
These days women as smart and talented as my public school teachers would probably set their sights on jobs and professions other than teaching. And those who did become teachers would probably be snapped up by higher-paying private schools—just as the good teachers at my own public school were siphoned off by the private academy that opened in my home town coincident with the enforcement of school integration.
I shudder to think where I might be if I had grown up and attended public school in that small town in Alabama in more recent years. I cannot believe I would have ended up where I am now, or that my daughter would have either. And nothing about my innate “merit” would have been different.
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@Steel Magnolia
YUP -- but my takeaway --more and more frequently these days is -- we need to have a free online law school so that we underlings can at least understand some of what the stars (and I don't mean the celestial ones) have in store for us.
Coursera, Udacity, EdX are all doing their best in a very anti - knowledge for the masses climate -- why are kids told to disbelieve Wikipedia?? and not told about the FREE online courses offered thru the MOOC (look it up) platforms?
Lots of people out there to "blame"-- not just Trump supporters. And PS being obtuse does not make one a great academic!!
Maybe England does need to banish its "royal" family and America to get out of the habit of creating such. (We do try to tax mostly the little people... Call for a 1950's tax plan!!)
I never saw meritocracy in action. I suffered through carefully selected spouses and relatives with no real skills. The one time I got a real promotion, my salary made future raises impossible. As I am now retired, mostly, I am thrilled to be out of "the game."
3
People tend to simply correlate outcomes with characteristics - having any kind of a diploma is a characteristic which has a positive correlation with income. The correlation is larger if one controls for the name of the institution granting this diploma. People then confuse the meritocracy with a possession of a diploma while forgetting about all the necessary ingredients like intelligence, drive, and hard work. Thus the outrage is about acquiring these diplomas by paying for them rather than working hard to obtain them. All of these is magnified by the inability to explain the educational outcomes for different socioeconomic groups - like why poor Asians do better than poor Hispanics and such.
Shoot the messenger. Maybe yes, maybe no. Standardized tests are messengers, good and bad.
Their expected virtue is that they everyone takes the same test and everyone is measured fairly. Faulting these tests for the poor performance of some over others and all the resulting loss of opportunity sidesteps the problems that led to the poor performance; inequitable and poor schooling. Standardized tests shine a light on this. Getting rid of these tests won't fix these problems. So don't shoot the messenger.
Standardized tests work as shallow facsimiles of ability and achievement. What kinds of worthwhile endeavor can be adequately captured in a couple hours of clicking and typing (or old-school filling in bubbles)? Because of the limits of the testing scheme, the expected fairness of such tests can be broken. Privileged kids want more time - sure thing no problem. There is a whole industry devoted to beating the tests by taking advantage of the limits of that scheme. Standardized tests fail to do what is expected - set out fair measures of achievement or ability. So shoot the messenger- we're being told falsehoods.
The challenge is to come up with worthwhile accounting of someone's potential to do well - either in schooling or in occupation. Standardized tests are an Industrial Age solution for something that needs rich data collected over time and organized to give fuller dimension to someone's ability and potential. We can do better.
My wife and I have 3 kids at home. Our grown Ph.D. with the 168 I.Q. home-schools our younger kids. The 12 y/o just finished 9th grade with straight As, and the 11 y/o 7th with the same. I hold 5 degrees including a Ph.D., JD, and MBA, and my wife, 4. Weekly, we're at a museum, ballet, opera or classical concert. (We like them!) The kids are achieving in ballet and aquatics. Did I mention piano? Nonetheless, I'm deeply cynical about our society's ability to reward such merit. They could achieve as their parents and siblings have done and still not find mates or jobs. Gifted or not, it's all random. Woody Allen got it right, asking a happy couple their secret. He said "I haven't had an original thought in my life." She added, "And I'm exactly the same way." All smiles.
4
Coming from the bottom income quartile in a rural area, my reliable 99th percentile scores on standardized tests (without benefit of knowing that test prep existed) made college possible for me. I hope that path will remain open for talented kids bored stiff in mediocre public schools.
9
"Meritocracy" might be what the privileged classes of the 70's and 80's thought they created, but it is in name only, not practice. Currently the best predictors for a persons future income is zip code and the wealth of the parents. That is the opposite of meritocracy.
Success however, can, and should be measured in more ways than just $$ and material wealth. Easy to say, but when people struggle to make ends meet, even when working hard, finding happiness and staying positive can be difficult
6
Meritocracy maximizes competition. It is the most Darwinian, (survival of the fittest), of all economic systems. And it promotes cheating as the best alternative when actual competence is lacking.
It is therefore the least humane. It is more similar to Aristocracy than Democracy. In Aristocracy there is selective breeding, as it were, in attempt to produce the best. In Meritocracy an different form of selection is used, supposedly based on actual test trials. In contrast, Democracy dismisses selection and competition in favor of cooperation. The difference between heaven and hell.
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@Ron Bartlett
Depriving children of the ability to compete is not helping them; rather it is crippling them. Our kids have to live in the world as it exists, not in some utopian fantasy.
2
sure the meritocracy has always existed, its in part how we got here. and it will continue as businesses will always look for the "best and brightest" so they can make more money. and to me, as it should be. the old joke about half the Dr's graduating in the bottom half of their class is absolutely true.
is that who you want standing over you in the hospital's surgery suite? not me.
this has taken on far greater interest as the differences are expanding and those with lesser abilities are getting left further behind. their solution is to penalize the front of the horse not apply the whip to the back of the horse. but the horse is getting longer and skinnier thats for sure
at the root, isnt this about income inequality? sure it is. and rather than penalize the best, then make the case for leveling it. it should be a societal value that the "best" should pay their fair share of taxes to help the rest.
and one of the most disgusting, shameful and disrupting parts of the right is their laughable claim that they are taxed too highly and are "victims" of a "taker" government.
rather than argue return the tax system to the 1970 rates with a top rate of 50% AND, this is absolutely critical, that wages are taxed at a LESSER rate than passive income.
but if you really want America to be fair and not a hypocrite about rewarding work, than tax it as such ie W-2 income at a rate thats say 2/3 of income generated by sitting on your butt. that'll make the wall st types go insane
5
All I can say about this nonsense is that there were brilliant Nazis, and brilliant scientists who worked for the brilliant Nazis. Having the cognitive ability to analyze information says very little about other abilities society needs to function legitimately. As long as corporations call the "abilities" tune, we will have only a very narrow conception of meaningful "ability." Folks who do not possess this magical "ability" are always smart enough to know that their life chances will suffer as a result, and they're smart enough to begin the hard work of scamming such societies whenever they can. How can this understanding of social stratification produce any kind of society other than one made up of smart arses and scammers? Jeez, that's what we have now!
4
I'm not sure that the metrics alluded to in this note are validly cited, but the mores described are certainly part of our crisis.
There is not much debate about privilege and merit in the real world of meeting or not meeting enterprise software sales quotas, bringing in M&A deals or Broadway box office numbers or performance in NBA. The debate is always reserved for fuzzy subjects. Special consideration may get you into an Ivy and if you stay away from STEM you will probably graduate, that degree will get you interviews and a good job. Unless you wind up in a non profit or government good luck not delivering the numbers or projects on time while looking for safe spaces.
5
Point taken, but worth noting that the top law firms now routinely have affirmative action hiring practices, diversity initiatives to recruit and hire PoC and lgbtq. From what I can tell, the result is that these places now house some of the same unremarkable people who have always plodded along in government and nonprofit jobs. Different story whether those diversity hires will make it to partner, however.
1
As far as I know (please correct me), there is no generally accepted operational definition of merit.
So what I found meaningful in the Op-Ed piece was the comment by Peter Singer - which (please correct me) called for adequate provision of (essential?) resources for all members of a society.
3
I got an exceptionally high score on a general doctoral exam at Columbia. I felt it was a fluke. There was no way that I was that smart. I attributed it to the fact that I perhaps read more carefully than most, but slowly, which is normally a great handicap for a test taker. Another thing that might have contributed to my success is there was an extensive section that tested one's knowledge of grammar. In any case, I felt not any where near as smart as the test results suggested.
Afterwards at a welcoming cocktail party, the head of my department made a point of congratulating me on my test scores. Then he said, "August, when I was young I worked for Dr. Miller, of the Miller Analogy Test. As the use of the test spread, there were more and more cases of individuals who "broke the bank," that is, who got perfect scores. This was supposed to be impossible. Dr Miller became obsessed with the phenomenon and traveled all over the country to interview those who had got perfects scores on his test. In the end he concluded that every one of them was crazy."
I burst out laughing, my drink splashed about. Head of Department suddenly realizing what his story might have suggested about my own achievement, blushed, put his hand up towards his mouth in dismay and said: "Oh I'm so sorry!" I feel even now that that exchange was at the bottom of the deference I was paid throughout my three years of doctoral studies--a debt paid for a faux pas.
5
Meritocracy is an illusion: it has never existed as such, because, at best, it has co-existed along with oligarchy and other social structures that have always favored those already possessing wealth, power and land. It is therefore not a system, but a description that applies, at best, to one part of a system, while the other parts of that system have always, and continue to concentrate true power in the hands of the privileged few.
3
The same people in the same states that cut the school week to four days a week rather than pay for a decent education for their offspring are now pissed about the results? Shocking.
2
Interesting article, but I am tired of talking about nature v. nuture and the obvious effect that of money and access on success.
Just damn fund schools, provide childhood nutrition where necessary, fund after-school enrichment programs so parents can work, and don't be so hung up on whether someone who is bilingual or is growing up in a poor area speaks with the King's English. Give me 50 years of this and I'll show you a merit based society.
3
@Doug - we've had 50 years of that. There isn't a whole lot of evidence that throwing additional money at schools dramatically increases achievement. These schools have cultural problems that start at home and aren't so easy to fix.
13
@DRS --
And teachers who are woefully ignorant in many cases. (and under nourished children -- now even the vegans from the upper middle class!)
Furthermore, people do not all have the same abilities-- intellectually, physically, psychologically -- we are not all beautiful. We do not have same the same characters.. and even obvious problems (defiance disorder, e.g., ADHD) can be very difficult to treat.)
Be not too hard, for life is short and nothing is given to man.... (OK go argue with that... but)
1
@Doug
Too many believe in the "missing piece fallacy", mistakenly believing that if only one simple thing (usually funding) were provided, all would improve. Rarely is this claim supported by data.
"New York surpassed all states with per-pupil elementary and secondary school spending of $22,366 per pupil as of 2016, according to the latest U.S. Census data."*
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York**:
"Total spending per pupil increased steadily in New York City during the 2000s, with some modest decline in recent years. Total spending grew by 23% between 2004 and 2012.
The largest increase (approximately 63% between 2004 and 2012) is seen in the instructional support services category (which includes counseling and attendance staff, physical, occupational and speech therapy and after-school activities).
There are differences in school spending both across and within boroughs."
*********
* https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/ny-school-avg-tops-22k-per-pupil/
** https://www.newyorkfed.org/data-and-statistics/data-visualization/nyc-school-spending/index.html
1
It's not a useful way to spend our time projecting envy, anger and jealousy on other people. We are rewarded for using our minds in positive ways. We create more positive results. We suffer when we use our thoughts in negative ways and create more of what we don't want. It's just the way it is. Other people really aren't any of our business. We are all here to learn more about who we are and who we can become. Seems like a lot of whining to me. And, if you don't want your children ranked and tested (and I certainly didn't!) then look at Waldorf education. It's a beautiful way to educate children.
2
The comedian George Carlin joked that getting out of jury duty was easy: when they questioned you, just say you "can spot guilty people just by looking at 'em." With colleges rejecting the use of standardized tests, maybe they'll use that same technique: they can tell which are the best applicants "just by looking at them."
6
The ongoing debate regarding the validity and reliability of standardized tests to measure cognitive ability or predict academic performance may never be resolved, but one thing is certain: the enormous difference in outcomes (wealth and access to prestige careers, etc.) in our winner-take-all society make the problems of meritocracy much worse. To alleviate these problems, it is essential for individuals and institutions to provide decent wages and to afford dignity (respect) to the large majority of people who will never make it into the elite positions, or who have other goals in life besides self-advancement.
5
Is there even a shred of evidence that "people skills" make better doctors? If there is I haven't seen it. I couldn't care less and neither should you about people skills in any technical profession. I want a doctor who's smart and trained well. If they are not pleasant to deal with I'll take the trade off between that and a bad diagnosis any day of the week.
5
@Ross Salinger
'People skills' are of marginal importance to a surgeon, but are vitally important to GPs and similar groups. The success of their efforts relies on the ability to provide and receive information. To get a patient to tell them what really is the problem.
'People skills' do not replace medical (technical) competence but they can definitely enhance it.
2
Talent and excellence is a commodity. Those of us who do not raise to the level of a top surgeon or baseball pitcher or hero of the Sullenberger sort, are gradated from those who are very valuable to the valuable to the competent but replaceable to those who should avoid that line of activity. Since we all have talents and add to the commons, we all have an equal right to participate in our civic life. We should be willing to accept those who are exceptional as leaders in their fields, but we should all have equal say in how the whole collective is run. When there are political entities that try to reduce the participation in our civic life based on their notion of meritocracy no matter how exceptional they fee they are, they are committing civic mortal sin.
2
People will always be judged on the consequences of their actions, no matter what we decide to call it. We discriminate and differentiate based upon skills and hard work. We assess value based upon objective criteria. What kind of maniacs would want it any other way?
1
I am a college lecturer. Many students enter college without the talent and predisposition to finish a degree. I have to flunk those people. I train chemical engineers; you don't want me graduating engineers who are not capable of ensuring the public's safety. Flunking students is a terrible waste of time and money; standardized testing allows us to predict (very well) who will succeed, and who will fail. Pretending that everyone is well suited for a university education is a cruel lie. Testing works; preferences for alumni, athletics, essays, and extra-curriculars are the problem.
.
We need a public education system that isn't so focused on putting people into universities. If 25% of people get a 4 year college degree, that's plenty for what society needs. Everyone else needs vocational training, including part time apprenticeships at 15-16, like Germany or Switzerland. Apprenticeships pay and teach real skills; they don't put students in debt for 4 years of training in the liberal arts that few will put to good use.
.
We tax labor to pay for social security, medicare, and too much else. We should be paying for those benefits with taxes on consumption (VAT) and wealth and property (Pickety/Warren ideas) instead. Work builds pride and families; we should be subsidizing (lower paid) work, not taxing it 7 different ways. Make hiring cheaper for employers, and make it pay more through wage subsidies from the suggested replacement taxes.
.
We can fix the meritocracy.
52
@Tom Meadowcroft If you haven't heard of Andrew Yang please look him up he really is a remarkable individual,with remarkable ideas to move our country forward. No one else is even speaking on the issues he is bringing light to.
2
@Tom Meadowcroft
Hi Tom, Well said. When we had a flood here in Waterbury in 2010 it was not the sociologists, religious studies degreed or talking heads that knew how to rebuild our broken infrastructure, but the trained and skilled electricians, plumbers, architects, etc. who accomplished this. I have met many stupid intellectuals and many brilliant rednecks, and I really believe that there is an inverse relationship between the accolades and awards that Hollywood, the entertainment industry, journalists and many "elites" laud themselves with and the growing working class backlash against them. Call it populism if you will. I remember when Hillary Clinton held a rally in New Jersey on elections eve. Hollywood stars, music superstars, etc., in other words, American Royalty. It was then that I thought Trump might have a chance. It was something you would think Marie Antionette would have hosted prior to the French Revolution, where she put on display all her gilded royalty for her supporters to gush at. When we give medals and gold statues to the working class like teachers, mechanics, and service workers the way we do Hollywood stars, journalists, entertainers, etc., it might prove we are waking up and respecting the dignity of labor the way we should. Reinforcing and respecting the vocational fields where so much of the work that sustains this society is accomplished is one important step.
7
@Tom Meadowcroft great comment. I'm always amazed at the high attrition rates of many universities, or those where the majority graduated with less-serious degrees. I just met a young man majoring in geography as SF State. Geography?
However, there are plenty of opportunities for practical education if you know where to look, from IT "boot camps" to two-year nursing degrees to skilled trade apprenticeships, to skills you can build in the military.
As you note though, other countries are far ahead of us. I know a 22-year-old graphic designer in Singapore who already has five years’ working experience. If you’re not in the top 5-10% scholastically there, you pick a career based on your strengths as a teen, and receive practical training in it.
3
For those interested in structural weaknesses inherent in the modern meritocracy, I direct you to Peter Turchin's thought provoking 'Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History.' Turchin is a professor of evolutionary biology at Univ. of CT, and a founder of the new science of cliodynamics, a practice focusing on the mathematical analysis of historical trends. Within the overall book, I believe the discussion of elite overproduction in Chapter 13 sheds a tremendous amount of factual, scientific light on the advent (and potential destruction) of our modern meritocracy, such as it is. For what it's worth, I found Edsall's sociopolitical view herein a tad overheated and polemic.
It's striking that the term "meritocracy" was a pejorative and has been transformed into a word that is supposed to signify something American, reflective of guts and glory and hard work along with "natural ability." Please do some research into the original British use of the term.
2
Thank you for a thoughtful discussion of this thorny issue.
To me, one way out of the tautologous cycle is for societies to reinstate "value" (e.g. economic merit and social appreciation) for skills that are increasingly being devalued by The System.
Many of these skills have been devalued because they have been displaced by two factors: 1) automation; and 2) cheaper labor available in other countries (which don't disvalue blue-collar work as much as we do).
For example: When train travel was important to our country, someone who worked building tracks, or shoveling coal, or loading mail into trains, etc., provided services that were valued by our country. They made enough to support a family, and weren't social outcastes; they were average people who had average jobs.
The same could be said of merchants, butchers, farmers, factory workers, etc.
Yes, there was a meritocracy back then (and an aristocracy), but that impacted a much smaller proportion of society. The rest could lead a reasonable life; not an easy life, but doable. And because most people lived this way, it was "normal" and socially acceptable.
But with the rise of technology and world "power" in the US after WWII, the drive for American "Exceptionalism" undid that balance. Living a life that was "good enough" was no longer good enough. Our country had to be "great," which meant that each individual also had to be "great."
Hubris overtook us.
3
Such a great essay-- it lays bare the problems with our meritocracy but still underscores the reasons why improving on this system rather than discarding is still the best way for our society to move forward. If we eliminated standardized testing what would we be left with? Colleges and graduate schools would be comparing resumes and grades that are furnished in completely different contexts. Family background and wealth would only worsen inequalities. Life would still be stressful for our students but only more unfair in its outcomes.
1
The big question is, how can society fix the fact that some kids are born to highly educated people who knock themselves out making sure they get plenty of mental stimulation, experiences that broaden their horizons, a chance to try a variety of sports, musical instruments, arts, etc. to find which might appeal to them, , while others are born to poor, uneducated parents who do nothing of the kind, so the kids grow up with a very restricted experience of the world and little intellectual stimulation?
Some exceptional kids will rise above the second situation, while some in the first will "fail to live up to expectations".
Unless you can fix this basic problem, all a society can do is use the mechanisms of the welfare state to make sure the unlucky ones at least get a decent income, health care, etc.
10
I think its the opportunity that is missing.
1
"... Trump’s electoral success depended heavily on the millions of non-college whites infuriated by what they perceived as their relegation to second class status."
And nothing has changed for them. All of Donald Trump's policies have tended to augment the meritocracy of the über-elite, a class from which they have been historically and systematically been barred.
The president channeled their hate and resentment to his and his class's benefit. The tax cuts should have revealed to his non-college educated supporters who he really is. But, intoxicated with the fear that he engenders, they continue to see him as their salvation as he continues to use them as a bridge to further entrench the one percent as the oligarchy that it truly is.
Trump's supporters aren't even being given an opportunity to compete. The funding for education has been transferred to the military industrial complex. The president, right under their noses, is discounting the real advantages of education: a depth and breadth of intellectual inquisitiveness for its own sake.
And the president wears down intellectual resistance. "Merit itself has become a counterfeit virtue, a false idol. And meritocracy — formerly benevolent and just — has become what it was invented to combat. A mechanism for the concentration and dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. A caste order that breeds rancor and division."
In Trump's case, his wealth was not merit; it was luck. Nothing more.
4
To improve the meritocracy improve the correlation between the standardized test used for admissions and the skills required to do the job. If I can throw a baseball with pin point accuracy at 96 miles per hour my coach will not require me to score 1400 on the SAT. If emotional intelligence is the most required skill for General Practitioners why isn't that the basis of the MCAT? Does society want doctors who are brilliant at higher math but who actually dislike people? One can think of a hundred more examples like these, but my point is that today those correlations are too low.
4
@Mr. Jones So true. I had a doctor who was wonderful and left for another state. His replacement has absolutely no bedside manner, strange for a family physician.
I think there is a difference between education and job skills. That is the thorny issue and where “education” has been supplanted by “job skills” and “job training” is no longer a company’s responsibility. Companies expectations and educations limitations are not aligned. Companies need to invest more in people, not in technology that eliminates people. Raising wages, improving hours, job training, internal promotion, company/employee loyalty and retention, benefits, retirement, healthcare are these all things of past meritocracy that does not exist anymore?
2
What I take away from the article is that the SATs are the worst form of metric, except for every other form.
If all the coaching in the world will only result in a twenty point gain on the SAT, the issue with meritocracy is not really the SAT itself, by which talented individuals are identified and educational resources are accordingly either purchased or, in few lucky cases in this country, bestowed.
The issue is what happens afterwards -- when the rewards for success are channeled disproportionately to the very top performers. But that's not really meritocracy's problem. That's really a problem arising out of a capitalism that has been increasingly untempered by communal obligation.
13
Every individual and every job has value. Merit is as merit does, but respect, consideration, and good manners are essential in every facet of life, whether you're the clerk at the corner bodega, or the president of the United States (who seems not to have gotten his job through merit OR respect and consideration, which is why we hate him so.) Mutual respect and consideration are what we're missing, throughout this country. This is the basis for the old saw: "Were you born in a barn?" People are so self-absorbed, so self-driven that they don't stop to think about the harm they cause, as they crash through life, with blinders on.
5
"Hence it’s an acceptable ideal only if combined with a pay scale that adequately rewards people who lack the talents required for the most highly paid jobs, but work hard at other, often even more essential jobs — from teachers, nurses, and police to cleaners and waste collectors".
What an arrogant statement to state that teachers lack talent. Teachers are talented, skilled and educated. We are regularly degraded by society. Why?
4
@Peggy Steinway My husband is a teacher. His first two careers were much better compensated: naval officer and business executive. He scored in the top 1 or 2 percent on both his GMAT and GRE exams. Yet, as a teacher his compensation and benefits are the worst of these 3 professions (yes, he's in a union in a blue state). He takes on extra work (3 extra part-time gigs) to make ends meet.
3
I'll believe talk of "meritocracy" when elite schools do away with things like sports, legacy, race, sexual orientation, demographics, immigrant status, parent background, income, etc. and use it as a factor for admissions and move to a totally blind admissions policy. Once a student meets a standard academic measure, their name goes in bingo bin and you simply pull names.
81
@HistoryRhymes
Private schools are not a public trust. If you wish to set admissions policy at a private school, you should open one.
8
@HistoryRhymes
"Standard Academic Measure?" What's that? Who decides? Is my kid's 4.00 GPA at a grade inflated school better than your kid's 3.25 at a school that makes a student work for the grade? In the same school, is one's high gpa or rank based on a weak set of courses better than a lower measure earned on a rigorous college prep curriculum? Do my kids deserve admission if they choose to rest on past laurels and take a weak senior year set of courses while their friend continues to prepare well by enrolling in challenging course work? There is no such thing as a fair Standard Academic Measure that applies across the board from kid to kid, from secondary school to secondary school.
11
@HistoryRhymes - That sure would cut down on Admissions personnel. Brilliant.
3
I moved here 19 years ago from the UK, seduced by the idea that America rewards talent and/or effort and does so without favoring people from any particular class or ethnic background. The Obama years gave me (and a lot of other people) hope but what I have witnessed since leads me to believe that America is rapidly becoming what many Americans of European origin came here to get away from.
10
The trend in media preoccupation now rests with promoting self indulgence & identity, factors that once were taken for granted as either risky undertakings in a potentially hostile environment or entirely rational in congenial, accepting surroundings.
As to meritocracy, should a young person aspire toward becoming a highly accredited surgeon or a clever manipulator in the financial sector? Most would prefer that a doctor passed comprehensive exams demonstrating intellect & competence regardless of familial background, while large numbers prefer to ignore the private sector parasite exhausting their household resources in an administrative role.
4
I am disturbed by the recent outcries of racism and unfairness from De Blasio and other education advocates like the one quoted in this article who want to to remove the meritocratic SHSAT testing for admission to competitive high schools in NYC. Compared to the racial makeup of NYC, there aren't many Black or Latinx students at Stuyvesant. Therefore, the illogic goes, the test is racist and must be removed. How do we explain the fact that Stuyvesant is now around 74% Asian and 20% white? Could it be that some students simply study harder than others? No, no, it must be an insidious racist plot to keep certain minorities out and first-generation Asian immigrants in.
Honestly, I can't see a meaningful difference between lowering the standard for underperforming minority students in NYC public schools and reserving spots at elite institutions for the mostly-white children of Hollywood celebrities. Both scenarios should make us deeply uncomfortable if we truly care about building a society that values excellence and rewards hard work and diligence. And both scenarios prevent the best and the brightest from rising to the top – i.e., the very opposite of what meritocracy is supposed to achieve.
6
Why aren’t black and brown kids doing better on the SHSAT tests?
The first places to look are the poor quality of the lower feeder schools and the limited SHSAT test prep available to these students.
Improving just these two factors would definitely increase the number of black and brown students who pass the entrance tests, and would be cheaper and much more feasible than trying to change the values and culture of these students’ parents, who in general do not place as much emphasis and value on education as do, say, Asian parents.
Eliminating the SHSAT tests and dumbing down the curricula of the Specialized High Schools is ridiculous and counter-productive, and will only serve to reduce even further the proportion of white students (now at 15% of NYC public school enrollment).
The answer is not to lower standards in the Specialized High Schools but to improve education in ALL schools.
7
@Mon Ray
poor quality of students leads to poor quality of schools
2
How do you explain that the Asian students, who aced the SHSAT and now comprise the majority at Stuyvesant, also went to the same “feeder” schools, i.e., nyc public schools—many in low-income communities in the outer boroughs? Why are they able to do it?
I find it beyond insulting to the hardworking, underpaid teachers in NYC’s public schools that they are so often blamed by willfully obtuse liberals, who look to just about anyone and anything as an explanation for why black students don’t succeed at the same rates as other minorities — but refuse to consider that the students themselves and their mindset/home environment might be an important factor.
160
@RJR
A number of years ago a Chinese family lived close by. They like us had a four room house and three children. Unlike us one of the bedrooms was set aside as a study room where the PhD father supervised his childerns study each evening. The result was two doctors and one dentist.
9
I cannot help but wonder if the old fashioned interview wouldn’t have outed the vapid students who presented inflated and fraudulent records to get into competitive schools. But... could we ever expect any process to uncover the content of an applicant’s character? I wish! I’ve seen cheating everywhere at every level with no consequences. However outraged momentarily, we nonetheless turn a blind eye and shrug.
4
@Prudence
Good idea, except that almost all the applicants with thick portfolios of "activities" and "service" are vapid. They are not quite fraudulent, but have no content and only exist to pad resumes. I have interviewed many, and almost none of them have ever read a book unless it was assigned reading.
Saying the meritocracy is under siege implies that it truly exists. The assumption by elites that their success comes from effort and that they 'out-competed' the rest of the world is based upon dubious evidence. Anyone who has gotten near a job search or an application for higher education knows they're competing in a rigged game; the only question is whether one pretends to ignore that it is rigged in his favor.
5
The entire premise of this article is putting the cart before the horse. The meritocracy is NOT under siege. There is no meritocracy.
There is no coherent notion of meritocracy in a society which has not first established equality of educational opportunity.
You cannot talk meaningfully about black suffrage if large-scale black slavery still exists.
A "meritocratic" race where some 80% of the competitors have been misdirected to the wrong venue, given wrong instructions, or told to come at the wrong time, on top of being given disadvantageous starting positions is nothing but a mockery of the term.
4
The entire premise of this article is putting the cart before the horse. The meritocracy is NOT under siege. There is no meritocracy.
There is no coherent notion of meritocracy in a society which has not first established equality of educational opportunity.
You cannot talk meaningfully about black suffrage if large-scale black slavery still exists.
A "meritocratic" race where some 80% of the competitors have been misdirected to the wrong venue, given wrong instructions, or told to come at the wrong time, on top of being given disadvantageous starting positions is nothing but a mockery of the term.
1
“Viewed negatively, such a system discriminates against the less highly educated and those who perform less well on ability tests. At the same time, meritocracy privileges an arrogant, complacent and entrenched elite — largely white, increasingly Asian — with the money, resources and connections to jump to the head of the line.”
Viewed positively, it takes advantage of people with intellect and initiative and uses them to advance society generally. There will always be cans and cannots.
1
Meritocracy is an expression of reciprocity based cooperation; we reward those whose merit benefits the rest of us. Doing away with meritocracy and weakening reciprocity based cooperation moves us towards a genetic, family based mode of cooperation.
This is the form of cooperation that likely dominated pre-history all the way up to the early modern era - do you look like me? Do your skin color and features match mine? Chances are we’re more related than those other people over there, who don’t resemble me. So I’ll take care of you, but not them. In fact, I may even take steps to proactively hurt the other, or shut them out. Even if they have merit, family and tribe comes first.
Genetic and familial cooperation go deep, and are powerful forces. If the left wants to dismantle the gentler, fairer, and more rational approach to cooperation - the reciprocity and merit based option - and put us all on a footing where “spoils” are based not on merit but on race, family, and genetics, I think they’re going to be in for a rude awakening.
What’s going to happen is that on the left the various tribes are going to fight amongst each other for their spoils, while having to also fight a united white majority (although only slightly a majority), who then acts similarly, as a racial block.
Right now a minority of influential, big hearted white liberals are playing nice, and offering to give away the store and meritocracy too. What’s going to happen when they overstep and disappear?
1
I have long been baffled at the lack of discussion of the Achievement Tests.
When I was in high school (a half century ago) they seemed to measure, with some meaningfulness, how well people had mastered a specific domain of knowledge. I thought they provided, in toto, a broader estimate of our effort and our competence.
Even that long ago, the SATs were controversial as to their accuracy and relevance.
2
Focusing specifically on the college admissions test issue: A reasonable compromise would be to identify a threshold score indicative of ability for success, then admit by lottery among those who meet the the threshold.
1
Global elites don't gamble. They create rigged games.
Although no column can address every related issue, unaddressed here is the fact that the wealthy actually suffer from a kind of pathological need to get more - of everything and without limit. Studies show that when there is no lag time between formulated desire and receipt of the desired thing, there is no sense of satisfaction. Thus, once someone is rich enough to instantly fulfill most desires, they become like a runaway train, inventing new and more expensive desires and requiring more money to fulfill - money that can only be taken from the people producing the wealth. This is why avarice and greed were long considered deadly sins and should today be classified as a mental illness. The fascinating book, "A Natural History of the Rich," is an instructive read.
6
Viewed from 10,000 feet-- the bigger picture involves fomenting discontent between social 'classes,' that are struggling under similar GOP-social engineering. Policies that privilege inherited wealth-- allow unfair protections for rentier income offshore and via tax policies --will hurt most below the proverbial 1% underneath this rarified air. While testing may be a tool for focused purposes-- ultimately scabbling over micro-specifics ignores larger, structural issues that beg for solution.
3
Meritocracy, however reasonable it sounds, shall not be accepted as the result of talent and hard work alone, for as long as we do not have equality of opportunity. For now, at least, meritocracy must be equated to aristocracy, a deeply unjust system where the wealthy always wins, the poor always lose for the inequities involved. Have we forgotten that the country's most valuable asset consists in developing people's talents...via a universal education...independent of the factor 'money'? For now at least, we are living a losing proposition of educational injustice, to our shame, and the inability to develop our potential...by not choosing well our parents' station in life (sounds like a joke but is far from it, as our reality attests).
4
A prosperous, strong, and just nation can best be built by empowering those with the greatest drive and intellectual ability. The free market is not perfect, and will necessarily introduce inequality.
But attempts to engineer alternate methods of wealth distribution in favor of characteristics like goodness and mercy will lead to diminished standards of living for all.
2
"It's the [inequality], stupid". From a social perspective, the reason we want to identify our best and brightest is so we can best leverage those advantages and not allow them to be squandered due to lack of opportunity. This does not mean that those who don't make it through the merit filter should lead lives of squalor or even lives with no opportunity. Pretty much everyone has something of value to contribute. If the consequences of low achievement in a meritocracy are dire, then the system breaks down completely. And we forget that simply being able to be productive at something you are good at is rewarding in and of itself; an obscene paycheck is not needed to motivate people to do what they are good at. I do not believe that we should all be rewarded equally, but the rewards system these days is completely out of whack with what a healthy society should provide.
5
"No one has come up with a perfect solution yet — and no one will — but that doesn’t mean we should give up trying."
Yes, in the proud tradition of Karl Marx, by all means keep trying.
1
The meritocracy has always been a myth. At least on a large scale. Sure, enough people are allowed to advance so that elites can point to them as examples that "the system works", and that "hard work" and "intelligence" matter more than family connections and other entrenched social advantages. But most people will be born, live and die in the same socio-economic stratum that they were born into. The privileged will remain so, and same for the disadvantaged.
3
It's beyond the scope of the article, but it doesn't help that popular religion is more and more pushing the idea that those who have wealth have been 'blessed' and those who are poor are being 'judged', a supposed meritocracy that well serves faux Christians like trump and televangelists, who are wealthy because they please God, and rationalizes the poor treatment of the poor and minorities, who are merely living God's judgment. You'll find no greater Satan on foxnews than those who seek to overcome this divine decree.
4
@T Chance
You seem to be conflating Christianity with evangelical Christianity, only a small subset of even Protestant Christianity, let alone all of it.
Catholicism certainly does not hold that view.
There are many untalented, unmerited people, even abject failures that start life on third base and are children of the team's coaches (owners); many are grateful at their luck of birth; many are not; some become president.
6
@David Izzo Two of those third-basers became president in just the last twenty years. What are the odds, huh?
Based on the metrics and vehicles (grades, standardized test scores, academics, college degrees ) used to determine “merit” mapped out in this article, the statement that the “entrenched elite” is “largely White” only reflects the ABSENCE of a Meritocracy in American society . Even based on these metrics and vehicles of so called “merit”, a majority of the “entrenched largely White elite” attained their positions through money, connections, politics and AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
The whole
Set up is far from a meritocracy
2
Meritocracy is akin to what Churchill said of Democracy, it is “perhaps the worst system except for every other that has been tried from time to time”.
4
Republicans have put merit under assault for decades. They as a party are trying to restore the aristocracy of wealth that ruled the country from the 1880s through the 1930s. That is their goal. A new "Gilded Age" with the rich owning everything, and the rest of us as subservient serfs. Wage slaves.
3
"The Rise of the Meritocracy" was always a satire.
1
This has to be the most difficult subject to deal with in the education and job selection processing. Expert opinion is in conflict. How we deal with it might determine the difference between a flower revolution or a fire revolution. Your guess is as good as mine. The one place I find revolting is the recent spate of high income individuals using their wealth to game the system for their less than capable offspring. Why cheat. Just find the Wizard of Oz and buy them a degree.
1
But if you don't select on merit, what will you select on?
Every so often a study comes out here that says for example that boys are doing better in school than girls at science. Shock! Horror! Resources devoted to address the problem. A few years later, Shock! Horror! Girls are doing better in school at science than boys. Rush to devote resources (and repeat...)
The point is that as soon as you categorise things, you automatically have winners and losers. Personally I would prefer a (genuine) meritocracy than the people in charge being there because they are rich, or strings were pulled or all the other reasons that the incompetent get to the top.
2
Marx is useful here...
Meritocracy simply selected a new aristocracy, one that transmits it's power through test prep, elite schools, and connections rather than formal hereditary titles. Perhaps that was what was intended by Americas founders, as they mimicked the Oxbridge system with Harvard and Yale, replacing a formal class system with a hidden one that we can pretend doesn't exist.
There are exceptions who come from poverty and are ennobled, but they are now few and far between and simply serve as a convenient Horatio Alger myth to shame and placate the masses.
Republicans want this aristocracy to be white and male, "Centrist" Democrats want it to be multicultural with representation from all genders. But both want it to continue, and perhaps it is necessary, however without solving income inequality it means nothing to millions who live in poverty in both Appalachia and places like Baltimore if a few more of their children are admitted into that aristocracy, because most of their children won't be, and they still deserve a life of dignity and respect.
3
If we did not have the appalling inequality that we have today in the US, much of this would not matter. When people dont have secure careers and gonna die early because they will lose insurance at 50+, when then they are gonna be angry about the perceived winners.
It's another matter that most of these folks dont understand the situation and believe their problems are because of "those people".
1
Competition is destructive but collectivism is nurturing. The terminology found in Edsall's piece, e.g.; win; on top; talent; achievement; all ignore the humanness of people, which should be celebrated for all to live together in peace.
2
The problem is not meritocracy – it is extreme inequality. If you are unable to live a life with dignity and all that includes – a single job that pays enough to provide for you and your family and health care to ensure that you and your family are able to seek medical care for annual check-ups and health issues – then you are going to be rightly angry with the system. The fact that over the last 30 years the dignity has been taken out of work and that people have to add multiple jobs (and "gigs") just to pay for the basic needs of life is the problem. We keep looking for the problem. Is it meritocracy? Identity politics? Immigration? Affirmative action? Unfair advantages or privilege? This are not the core problems. The core problem is that people are not being paid what they are worth by the corporations who pay no taxes and cut jobs and wages to boost stock value. It is right there in front of us. We need to become laser focused on that problem and the rest of it won't matter because there will be enough for everyone who works hard regardless of privilege, meritocracy, immigration, affirmative action, etc.
18
Meritocracy is a system that could be relevant if we all have strictly the same means. It is not and it never will be. This system, in theory interesting, is just used by the privileged classes to give the illusion that they value the equality of individuals (the famous "merit" that is supposed to separate us), while it is only used for social reproduction. Meritocracy seems to have been dubbed by everyone, we cannot touch it, it is the fairest system.... It seems obvious, whereas its very meaning is not: what is merit? Who is legitimate enough to decide whether one individual is more deserving than another? To my knowledge, an omniscient and totally objective person does not yet exist (except Chuck Norris). Instead of invoking this term at all costs, as if it would solve all the problems of the education system, jobs and discrimination, our leaders would do better to fight in depth the inequalities that our society suffers from. The education system must be revised, we must put an end to this unhealthy permanent competition.
Furthermore, not all talents are equally rewarded in a system such as meritocracy. Meritocracy on it's own does not produce a society that gives equal importance to everyone’s interests. Not all types of work are equally rewarded even if you work hard. Special qualities and special skills are more valuable and other qualities : and this process tends to favor the rich who are more likely to have developed those skills.
2
While this article recognizes the role of upbringing in meritocracy, it doesn't mention the recent uncovering of wealthy families cheating the system through bribery to get unmerited children into elite schools.
2
Simple question: Which world would you rather live in, one with no lawyers or one with no janitors?
There is no control here as we have never witnessed a real meritocracy. How do make an argument or draw any conclusion? How do you design a test that demonstrates merit? These sound more like aptitude tests; aptitude and merit don't necessarily intersect.
All that can be said is that what we have now is hypocrisy, over-ripe, smelly hypocrisy. As far as I'm concerned, the way to solve this is to cap people's income either with a hard ceiling or by taxation. A 90% inheritance tax would also be helpful; put the money back where it came from.
2
Meritocracy is inherent in our natures. You do not go to a bar looking for the 8th best partner for you to have a drink and a dance with, you do not go looking for the 12th best model car on a dealer's lot, or search for the 9th best pair of jeans on Amazon do you? People, businesses and society put a lot of effort into standing out, trying to be the best, trying to be worthy of attention, business, trust, affection. It is the equality in the trying that is critical, not the compensation for or overlooking of differences in innate gifts that makes things 'fair'. Society should do all it can to make sure that everyone has a good chance, but not everyone will make it to the same degree. Should we stop reading the NYT and instead give some of our patronage dollars to a local paper that is not as good as the Times, but did not start with the privileges and advantages the Times has had? Should we take resources, reporters, budget from the Times to ensure that other papers have a good chance too? What does this 'privilege' system idea apply to and what does it not?
7
What is impairing the attainment of a real meritocracy is not the imperfection of testing which is supposed to identify superior ability at the level of higher education, it is the great disparity in environments which condition children before they take such tests, and the disparity in parental income and influence which apply at all stages of education. An equal public education needs to be available to all in early years, probably to pre-elementary children. The movement toward privatizing schools is in the wrong direction and will inevitably increase non-meritocratic inequality.
2
Sigh. Was waiting for Rawls for the entire article. Comes at the end and you missed the punchline! Rawls said---brains and hard work are just as random as the height of a basketball player or the good looks of a supermodel. It is just to reward these arbitrary "talents" only if the beneficiaries of these talents disproportionately help society. So the scientist who invents a new cure should be rewarded. Ditto the blockbuster movie star. And presumably Jeff Bezos given the amount of Amazon boxes I see all over the city. Someone is happy shopping at Amazon.
This article munges many things. Income inequality is different than meritocracy. For some strange reason Americans have a really hard time acknowledging that some folks have more intellectual horsepower than others. Yet they have no trouble acknowledging the difference between an NFL star quarterback and a wimpy, flabby, weak nerd. Hmm.
We should all be alarmed by the severe income inequality around us. We should be agitating for better technical training so that Trump supporters are better positioned to thrive in the digital economy. However, that doesn't mean that someone who can't master the math section of the SAT belongs at MIT. These are two different things.
Kudos to DeBoer for acknowledging that the SAT is the ultimate equalizer. In fact that is why Harvard commissioned it last century---so they could recruit boys from regular high schools and not anointed children from NE boarding schools.
6
There are MANY good points for discussion in this Edsall column, but space here is limited, so I'll just comment on a few.
1. The philosophical arguments over which set of skills will be rewarded preferentially in a meritocracy must have as their starting point a commitment on the part of the society to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their individual talents, have a certain minimum adequate standard of living--food, shelter, clothing, health care, access to education--in all probability at the expense of the state. If this is not the case, as it is not in hypercapitalist societies, we can't really have the argument.
2. The types of talents/abilities rewarded in a meritocratic model do change over time and between cultures. Most societies reward athletic prowess, but think of how much soccer players, or track and field stars, can make in Europe compared to the United States, and how much "American" football players make here compared to elsewhere. And think of how the rewards that accrue to musicians reached a peak in the latter half of the 20th century and have since been much reduced.
3. As a test prep professional, I do need to take issue with the claim that the “effect of coaching on a 1600 point scale was about 20 points.” Obviously DeBoer doesn't know any good test prep professionals (on SAT's my students average 200-300 point improvements, depending on starting scores--because they learn specific techniques, not just subject content).
3
@Glenn Ribotsky: If your services raise test scores by 200-300 points, this proves how coachable this supposed test of a student's "scholastic aptitude" actually is. Unless your services are offered free to all comers, it games the system in favor of those who can afford them. And unless the "specific techniques" you teach improve students' academic abilities correspondingly, their test scores are bogus.
@Mark
To answer the points, in turn:
Yes, these tests are eminently coachable and gameable, once their patterns are discerned.
My services are compensated on a sliding scale, depending on income. The really rich clients subsidize the others.
Some of the specific techniques have broader academic applicability, but it is certainly true that scores on these tests mean little beyond the tests.
1
I read the comments and find it interesting that this paragraph was not noted:
"If we think about cognitive ability testing as a form of lottery, in which the winners are those who possess a certain inherent capacity for processing and analyzing information, without reference to morally salient criteria like goodness, mercy, kindness or courage, we are embarking on a new kind of impoverishment."
"We value others as we are valued" has always been true and unless we model this in schools and society we breed the kind of discontent obvious today. Education is more than factual learning, and unless it involves knowledge that leads to wisdom, understanding of self and others, reflection, willingness to take risks, assimilation, moral values, ethical behavior and evidence of achievement in all these areas, we cannot be an "educated" society.
It seems to me that the "morally salient criteria" are the critical missing pieces in society especially in politics and business.
3
As I understand it, historically, "meritocracy" was an alternative to official nepotism and corruption. At one time, you could get a job in the fire department based on your political loyalty and family connections. When standardized tests were introduced, it didn't mean that the people who did better on the tests were going to be significantly better at the job -- the differences weren't all that great -- but it was an objective measure, a number that could be recorded and appealed to, rather than a personal recommendation. And it seemed theoretically defensible, although arguably the test scores were never that meaningful.
Supposedly, under the new system any outsider would have a fair chance of getting ahead. As it happened, the old personal networks never went away entirely, and the new "meritocracy" turned out to lead to just as much of a closed elite as the previous system. What a mess!
4
Great nations and empires always rot from within. They get complacent and their elites become more and more corrupt, greedy, and self-serving.
We have had two recent Presidents [and you know who I am talking about : )] who got elected because of their wealth and connections and/or their families wealth and connections. Neither succeeded in their prior careers because of native intelligence or hard work. Both got admitted to elite schools on the strength of their family's influence. Both were tools of shady, sinister forces from within the US and from foreign countries.
Going forward, the US will find its influence abroad much diminished, its alliances weakened, and its rivals emboldened. Domestically, we are as polarized and divided as never before.
A large portion of the population no longer believes in science and the "Red" parts of the country (where this trend is most pronounced) are becoming less competitive. And this simply makes them more resentful of the wealthier and better educated "Blue" parts.
This article was about meritocracy... In the US today we cannot even agree on the definition of "merit"... Who do you admire more.... A TV evangelist or an astronaut?
5
Was it Churchill who said, "Democracy is the worst kind of government, but there's nothing better." Similarly, our testing system is the worst way of opening the portals of opportunity, but what else is there?
What we might focus on is making tests fairer (if that's possible?) so that test preparation would not make much of a difference . We should be able to reward those who have spent almost all their time reading, getting educated---and pick out those with the most innate talents and intelligence (two different types of tests). And we might do all we can to improve the education of all youngsters so that they become passionate about reading, etc.
At present, too often the more dishonest, the more deceitful and corrupt the individual, the more economic rewards he/she reaps. How many of the politicians who have achieved prominence and power deserve the millions many of them have accrued---was it always a matter of their great insight and ability? (Of course, this does not apply to all of them.)
We should work on improving our testing and education system, because there probably is nothing better. Otherwise, we might have a simple lottery or firmly entrenched families who rule and keep the wealth.
3
When I taught college-level economics, I would have my students play the "Distributive Justice Game." I told them there would be a quiz at the end of the period, but each group of eight students would have limited resources with which to take it: eighty minutes, one book, four chairs, and six pencils.
I then proposed that we let race, family fortune, and medical conditions determine how to allocate these resources, with a catch--I'd randomly assign each student a new identity just before the quiz.
I then invited my students to change, if they wished, the way in which the quiz-taking resources would be allocated. Almost without exception, my students over the years would choose to distribute them as evenly as practicable.
John Rawls theorized that we'd opt for a fairer social contract if we were forced to design it from behind a "veil of ignorance" in which we didn't know where on the social ladder we'd be born. I'm convinced he was right.
3
Wow, an amazing article. Thank you for providing such a well researched piece, insightful and thought provoking!
1
Trump, Ivanka, Jared, Donnie Jr. are all obvious proof that the meritocracy, if it ever existed, is dead. All bearers of degrees from elite institutions. All proof that you can in fact have a degree from an elite institution while failing to be educated.
When merit stops being measured by actual merit and becomes measured only by wealth, it loses all of its meaning.
9
The same people that prize pop culture and sports also want to demonize the folks that study and work hard as being socially undesirable nerds. They’re free to do so, but we shouldn’t be surprised when they fail to achieve academically. The parents and kids know what they’re being tested on and choose not to prepare accordingly. They made their bed, let them lie in it.
8
@Kirby This is so true. Where I live, sports are valued above almost all else. Hard work and dedication to academics are secondary.
Merit and Privilege are related, but with a lag.
Merit (however you define it) earns privilege.
Privilege requires merit to be sustained.
A person without privilege who has merit can slowly earn privilege.
A family works to preserve privilege with varying degrees of success.
Someone who has privilege and no merit slowly loses privilege and has far less privilege to hand off to the next generation. The less merit they have, the faster they lose privilege.
We're just talking about the lag factor.
1
“at the forefront of innovation when it comes to using data and technology to evolve the human capital management space,”
What a collection of business jargon.
3
Meritocracy, in my opinion, is an aspirational goal. However, protectionism is the reality on the ground.
We have things like "Citizens United", paper cutting our safety net to death, under funding schools and a student debt crisis. We have an epidemic of people dying from hopelessness.
We have legislators beholden only to their highest donors. Those donors are not interested in a poor kid from Detroit or Appalachia, but rather on collecting more corporate welfare.
It's not a model of meritocracy that is the problem. It's that we've given "meritocracy" such short shrift. We're talking about it in the context of protectionism, wage stagnation, housing cost explosion, student debt tsunami, etc.
We need to restore hope and a pathway to success for all Americans. This is important. Without meritocracy there is no democracy, there is only plutocracy.
4
This concern seems to reflect yet another example of the classic if not always recognizable
antimony: liberty or equality. Complete equality in our culture- schools, the work place, society in general- by necessity would hinder the freedom/liberty of those we see as overachievers in academia, business, sciences, the arts. Meritocracy indeed has its flaws, but most persons, regardless of their racial, financial or social status, would in a medical emergency prefer to be treated by a physician of the highest skills and one recognized by the various specialty boards, and would want on a more prosaic level to have their less pressing concerns addressed by those whose ‘merits’ and competence have positive peer review, as evidenced by the plethora of web sites to which one has access in deciding where to shop or seek assistance in a myriad of circumstances.
3
Take a look at law firm partners and their offspring. We are merely reproducing privilege. And they’ll buy the privilege if their offspring is not that smart. Look at the Willkie chair.
4
Sorry but these arguments against meritocracy always smell to me like a "dumbing down" in the interest of "fairness". The world is competitive. There is no hiding or protecting from that fact. We should focus on helping everyone achieve. These arguments undermine achievement, in my view.
8
@AACNY I don't think anyone is questioning whether or not there should be a meritocracy.
The debate is around whether our present system does in fact function as such.
I grew up amongst the children of those who teach and run MIT and Harvard but I have chosen to work and live amongst those who could not economically afford to compete in the educational arms race that my youthful peers and I engaged in. Having personally lived amongst both the "chosen few" and the "unwashed masses," I can assure you - those getting into Harvard are not particularly brighter nor hard working than anyone else. And this begs the question that Edsal poses: Do we actually have a meritocracy.
4
These articles give me a headache.
Perhaps when elite schools stop recruiting for sports, legacy, etc., we can honestly broach the topic of meritocracy.
5
@FirstThingsFirst
I agree with you on the selection of folks on the basis of non academic attributes. However, apart from that small, undeserving minority, for the rest the top schools are quite competitive among the merely academically deserving.
Wealth and power is becoming more like caste and religion (hereditary) in US led western civilization, mainly since 1980s- start of Reagan (USA) and Thatcher (UK) initiated era of crony capitalism.
Now the companies make $ billions profit but deny to share that prosperity even to its own employees, leave along general public, besides aggressively denying pay even their due tax. They successfully convinced our "Democratic" Governments to protect and promote their interest in the country and abroad in the name of nationalism.
Now Asian, African, & Latin American poverty is imported in the USA in the name of globalization while only a tiny fraction and increasingly shrinking fraction of population is getting insanely rich around the world. Now the growing number of poor in USA are becoming more comparable to growing number (as % of population) of poor in 3rd world countries. At the same time the gap between American and Chinese or Indian billionaires are narrowing down. Those developing countries are mainly exploiting thier natural and human resources only to export poverty to the developed world, in the name of globalization.
Now $3 of every $4 profit goes to the top 0.1 percent people and whatever global prosperity we are seeing is done by that remaining $1. Our level of exploitation of nature & people exploded and as a result that $1 faction also grew exponentially.
It must stop if we need to save this one world we have.
3
Yup, building the roads and bridges, teaching, policing, and collecting our waste is not called socialism until those same people performing those jobs demand a piece of the pie. Otherwise, it’s reality and business as usual.
2
How to reward people, especially with material rewards?
I have a crazy idea: how about letting other people decide? If I offer a product or service that others perceive as good value, whether as a retailer or employee, we can decide what is fair compensation. If I deliver or exceed that promise of value, I might expect continued or increased compensation. If not, then I might get less or nothing. We would all be free to exchange material wealth based on our own perceptions of value.
And the role of community and government? We can help prepare people with both skills and attitude, and provide some safety net for those that fail. We should not determine value of and for others--that is the right of people to determine for themselves.
2
A poorly thought through column which is a pastiche of more and/or less relevant references about an extremely important topic for our democracy and our polity. As Einstein said “Things should be made as simple as possible, but not more so.”
2
What the market values is very different from what our culture/society values - and what the market values is constantly changing.
40 years ago the market valued low skilled production jobs. These workers had a house, two cars and paid for their kid’s college. If you were a computer scientist at that time - you were a nerd in a garage or a low paid academic. Oh have the tables turned. A 22 year competent software engineering and data analyst can pull in 125K right out of college. That job did not exist 10 years ago. At this cultural moment these folks are reviled for their digital magic - largely by these low skilled post-industrial workers.
So now that the low skill jobs are not valued by the market - the solution is to elect Trump, destroy and market and destroy meritocracy? Sounds like the once-winners are now losing and just want to flip the board, scatter the pieces and stomp out the room.
6
For decades, the concept of meritocracy in the United States is used either as a carrot or a cudgel by the ruling classes against the middle class and the poor. A carrot in the unicorn exemplars promoted in popular culture who, against stacked odds, performed and achieved beyond expectation. A cudgel as a way to foster an undeserved sense of self-recrimination for bearing the brunt of the mistakes of the 1% within a rigged system.
If you want to reduce the legitimate sense of frustration within the middle class and poor a few things could be done: end the ludicrous amount of income and wealth inequality in our nation both through wage increases and progressive taxation, seriously invest in our educational system and stop tying funding to zip codes, get the influence of private and corporate money out of our politics which corrupts and distorts our democracy and sense of legitimate representation, invest in infrastructure and the healing of our environment, expand and strengthen collective bargaining, shift news media away from propaganda and back to facts, and expand the social and cultural representation of exemplar individuals away from just neo-oligarchs and celebrities to include scientists, artists, authors, historians, and caregivers, as examples.
4
Most Asians you're talking about are middle class and some are poor, not "elites". They just emphasize on education and their kids study harder than others because that's the only ticket for American dream. Don't punish them for their hard work. Tests are the equalizer because tests see no color, race, religion or gender. Don't take it away.
20
@Asian man
I don't understand why we're not encouraging better behavior instead of lowering standards.
1
The self-flagellation over meritocracy is silly. Of course meritocracy is a really good means for allocating resources. But if most of the resources are then hoarded by those in power, it's not really a meritocracy anymore is it? Everyone in the US deserves a shot which means providing equality of opportunity. When that happens, the US will be an actual meritocracy.
1
The population of the United States is approximately 327 million. Our of all these folks to choose from, TWO of our Supreme Court Justices (Gorsuch & Kavanaugh) come from the very same high school. If this doesn't show the lack of a meritocracy in this country, I don't know what does.
3
I pity the poor teachers, nurses, and those who work in the police force--all those who "lack the talents required for the most highly paid jobs," and are therefore relegated to perform jobs "more essential" (admitted grudgingly and off-hand) to society. These poor middling souls who, "for no fault of their own, cannot do the work that is well-rewarded."
If essential work is not well rewarded, it seems to me that this bespeaks a lack of talent in the social imagination that ascribes value to things, rather than any deficiency or failure on the part of these poor, misbegotten workers.
5
There is a gaping hole in this essay--the "network" and the advantages that being part of one through wealthy family or an "elite" school confers. I'm nearing the end of my PhD, so through finishing undergrad and my master's, and all my years in higher ed, I have seen a lot of people at the budding stages of their careers. And the people that end up with the most promising starting jobs all got them because of their network. This is an extreme injustice in our system, and unless your test scores or achievements are extremely above even the higher end, your merit pales in comparison to the "good old boys" network.
11
We don’t have a “meritocracy” in the United States in the most significant sense. Millions of our most qualified sons and daughters can’t afford college. Millions can’t afford childcare, millions, regardless of “merit” have no access to the best our country has to offer. Power in America concentrates where wealth is, and this power determines the opportunities for almost all. Many who have this wealth and opportunity have been able to convince themselves that “merit” is the quality they possess, and that it’s the reason they deserve to be “elite.” Meritocracy? How can a runner who wins the race against a man with a broken leg claim a victory because he “merits” it more? And the mention of Asians in the opening lines horrified me; it was a reference that came from a strange and ugly place and that invalidated all that followed.
1
How can one write a piece like this without a short discussion of the etymology of meritocracy? Michael Young created the term to describe an elitist dystopia. Also, why does Edsall emphasize opposition from the right and support from the left? Young was a leftist. Most on the left have objected to such a system embodied in the term from day a leftist created the term. Please do not conflate the left with liberals. What's truly egregious and misrepresentative is Edsall's intentional choice of an outlier leftist position (the SAT is good) while ignoring the corresponding negative Jacobin piece (against the SAT).
1
What isn't mentioned in the article is that the whole education system is now tuned to create the winners of the meritocracy. When he quotes Dr. Singer as saying the system doesn't reward those who work hard at essential jobs, he doesn't mention that our schools fail to train them for these jobs. In fact, our education system doesn't even present most of these essential careers as options.
Speaking as someone who has worked in the construction industry for thirty years, I can say we are failing miserably at training the next generation necessary to build and maintain our complex civilization. When the meritocracy is only about creating the next generation of investment bankers or tech workers who function at a high enough level where jobs can't be automated, we're in trouble. I spoke to a plumber the other day that told me he could hire seven plumbers helpers (helpers need little or no experience, just a willingness to work hard and learn) today if he could find people willing to do the work.
I often hear people in the business bemoan the fact that young people don't want to work hard these days, but reading this article has reinforced a notion I have had for awhile: that the lack of young people going into the trades has much to do with them realizing that the hard work now comes with diminishing reward and a society that doesn't value what they do. Just think what it's like to live in a society that tells you that your job is for those who couldn't make it.
2
@TG - You won't think the trades come with 'diminishing rewards' if you need a plumber to fix something, and get a giant bill. Good plumbers and electricians can make plenty of money.
1
I graduated from Stuyvesant and the disparities were obvious, but that said the mayor's approach is a poor way to achieve justice.
In my graduating class nearly 2/3 of the students were male and more than 2/3 were South or East Asian by origin. These Asian-Americans, largely the sons and daughters of the poorest immigrant groups in NYC were among the hardest-working people I have ever known.
If the mayor wants to increase black and latino acceptance to Stuy and the other specialized schools he should propose the city pay for free or very low-cost quality test-prep services at all schools with standardized test scores at or below the city average. Many middle class kids like myself attended some kind of test prep service so why not even the playing field?
May I also state the obvious? That the rich disproportionately warp the meritocracy far more than misguided leftist politicians like DeBlasio. When rich parents pay to get their children into programs they didn't earn and legacy students get into elite schools despite having a poor work ethic the end result is detrimental to us all.
12
Schools are social institutions masquerading as intellectual ones. They always have been. Industrial society has never known what to do with its children since putting them to work was banned. Hence, schools. We act like the outcomes of school are a result of experts judging the intellectual differences among young people, but whether in testing or the classroom this is an almost purely social, and hence deeply prejudicial, process. Even the poor kids who are helped by school are helped by middle-class role models in the form of teachers, not the actual knowledge imparted in school. (Much of that, even, is in a gray area, like correcting dialect.) People who want to learn go to libraries. People who want to fit in go to school. Of course school perpetuates privilege, don't you remember going and how it was?
1
There is a lot of cheating on tests. How do they get away with it? The answer is yoga pants and basketball shorts. Students hide a cell phone under their yoga pants and use it to cheat. They can see the phone through the yoga pants material. Test day is yoga pants day, the excuse being that students need to be comfortable during the test.
So much for test scores and grades. All of these student scores need an asterisk next to them that says that the student may have used a cell phone to cheat during the test.
I like to hold on to the belief that schools are a place where students can learn, and that a school is not just a machine that sorts out and ranks people.
If only there were a magical hat that could sort out the students without all of this trouble of testing.
@Andrew
Upon entering the test site, students should be required to "drop trou."
2
No one seems to remember that the term "meritocracy" was originally pejorative--and for a reason. (It was coined by the British author Michael Young in, "The Rise of the Meritocracy"(1958), a brilliant satire on the perverse, unintended consequences of trying to base a society strictly on merit.)
The paradox of meritocracy is that while basing rewards on merit is a good idea in principle, trying to codify this principle inexorably leads to its eventual demise. Why? Because those who "make it" based on merit will always and forever find devious ways to pass on the rewards they've "earned" to their family, friends and members of the "group" with which they identify.
An additional insurmountable roblem with merit-based systems is that "the best and the brightest," as we've learned over and over again, and in multiple examples (ranging from the Vietnam War to the recent Boeing crashes) can so easily get things wrong.
Still, we will always want our airline pilots, surgeons and bridge engineers to have done super well on their respective tests.
3
Merit can mean many things.
If it means ensuring students who are admitted to university actually have acquired the background knowledge necessary to make sense of a university education and succeed, without having to water down that education to fit unprepared students, I'm all for it.
The time to act is well before a kid gets to apply.
If it means restricting a university education to those who have the "right" kind of background, i.e. upper class parents with money, to pay for expensive extracurriculars, sports, etc., wear the right kind of clothes, know which fork to use at a seven-course dinner, etc., no.
The U.S. is bizarre with its obsession with sports and extracurriculars and personality evaluations for a top university education.
1
Having recently gone through a elite college application process I have some thoughts.
My son is Hispanic and we moved to a top New York school district to give him every opportunity. He did well and excelled. He had a 100+ average, 1580 on 1 time SAT test, 3 800's on SAT Subject tests, was a National Merit finalist, had 15 science Olympiad medals, played varsity golf for 4 years, was President of his science club, and volunteered teaching golf skills at the local park.
He was denied admissions at many top universities like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Many white rich, privileged, and legacy students with lower grades and test scores were accepted. It is frankly hard to not consider it discrimination. The schools would call it holistic admissions.
They accept underrepresented students but in bundles and with limits. They like sad stories that make the elite universities look like they are lending a hand to poor underprivileged students.
We are coming to a time when Asian students are doing better then white students and the elite have pushed back. We will see more and more underrepresented minority students doing better and will see elite universities push back again. The world is changing and we are not doing such a good job adapting to it.
The elite colleges have stopped accepting the best and brightest.
4
After it is all said and done, the most capable will rise to the top in a free enterprise system. That is why all academic disciplines and bureaucracies need to have an understanding of how evolution works. Our social systems are an extension of that. One aspect of our education system that seems out of balance is the overemphasis on a "college degree"; when in fact as we must morph to a more sustainable economy based on services rather than production, unique skills will be what sustains success. In other words the ability to be creative, innovative and resourceful. No matter how parents try, those attributes cannot be bought no matter how much money is squandered trying.
In political terms, we have two camps, two partisan extremes that have hijacked the political process, and are using it for their own private religious war. But they reflect neither the needs nor the wishes of the vast, moderate Center. The Right has manned the barricades against the loss of white male hegemony. The Left rails against that fading hegemony but then substitutes its own merit-based exclusion zone. Meanwhile, the millions caught in-between often don’t know where to turn. The extremes may worry about the end of the world, but the Center worries about the end of the month.
If liberal Democrats were smart, they would forgo self-flattering schemes like impeachment and the Green New Deal, at least for now, and focus on defeating Trump at the polls in 2020. That means adopting a more sober, humble and respectful attitude toward the Center, an implicit acknowledgment that they don’t have all the answers, after-all. If they could but manage that miraculous transformation, millions of moderate and swing voters would fall gratefully into their arms in 2020. But of course, they won’t; by virtue of their knowledge, competence and intelligence, the meritocrats know best. As Paul Krugman wrote in The Times shortly after Trump’s 2016 victory, "We may have lost, but we know the truth."
3
Wealth and power is becoming more like caste and religion in US led western civilization, mainly since 1980s- start of Reagan (USA) and Thatcher (UK) initiated era of crony capitalism.
Now the companies make $ billions profit but deny to share that prosperity even to its own employees, leave along general public. And they successfully convinced our "Democratic" Governments to protect and promote their interest in the country and abroad in the name of nationalism.
Now Asian, African, Latin American poverty is imported in the USA in the name of globalization while only a tiny fraction and increasingly shrinking fraction of population is getting insanely rich around the world. Now the growing number of poor in USA are becoming more comparable to growing number (as % of population) of poor in 3rd world countries. At the same time the gap between American and Chinese or Indian billionaires are narrowing down. Those developing countries are mainly exploiting thier natural and human resources only to export poverty to the developed world, in the name of globalization.
Now $3 of every $4 profit goes to the top 0.1 percent people and whatever global prosperity we are seeing is done by that remaining $1. Our level of exploitation of nature & people exploded and as a result that $1 faction also grew exponentially.
It must stop if we need to save this one world we have.
5
Since when has politics ever had anything to do with merit or vice versa--in any system?
If we really cared about merit in education, there would be no legacy admissions and no athletic scholarships. As was pointed out in the comments, competency is absolutely necessary for function. So, whether or not you test somebody before admission to university or high school or whatever, you should test, and rigorously, before they graduate.
1
While I agree that there are many things wrong with standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, and GRE, they still represent skills that I would want a person to have. Perseverance--studying for the exams is always highly criticized but I think it shows students who are willing to put in the work to get something that takes long term commitment. Being able to come up with the correct answer under a stressful situation--there's also a lot of complaining about testing under a certain amount of time but this is realistic of what we can expect. We're all working under timelines and I want people who can come up with the right answers fast when it comes to push and shove. I don't want people who takes three or four times as long to come up with a correct answer, that's simply inefficient.
There are so many other drivers contributing to inequality that standardized testing should really be the last thing on our long list of to-dos.
3
The ever-increasing income and wealth divide is a huge factor - it is harder and harder to rise to the top (you know, the Great American Dream).
1
@lee4713: Yes, but the Great American Dream didn't always involve rising to the top: it used to be that you could aspire to a decent job in the middle, using your skills and native ingenuity, being well liked, and being able to afford the famous house and car and send the kids to college, expecting to work till retirement... it was always a dream -- see "Death of a Salesman", "Walter Mitty" and countless other critiques -- but that was the content, until maybe in the Reagan era the ideal of a decent middle class life was pretty much officially abandoned, in favor of the current version, where your hope is to be one of the fabulously wealthy, or else to be miserable.