I recently listened to short presentation by Michael Sandel about his new book, The Tyranny of Merit. Though I have yet to read the book, the basic thrust of his ideas seem to coincide with what I have thought for quite a while. Here are some of my thoughts.
Theoretically, of course, meritocracy is to be distinguished from hereditary leadership, based on nothing but inheritance of status and position. The implication, of course, is that it is far more egalitarian. That is true to some extent, no doubt, but how much?
Most simply, the concept implies evaluating and promoting people on the basis of their demonstrated knowledge (and also, presumably, wisdom). If it were indeed the case the everyone had an equal access to learning and if knowledge and wisdom could be reliably demonstrated, then perhaps meritocracy would make sense and likely would further genuine equality more than a minimum amount. In practice, however, as Sandel has pointed out, access to learning, especially in the form of education, is quite unequally distributed in this country. Furthermore, “merit” mostly is so measured as to leave out selflessness, compassion, idealism and the like. To be sure, some emphasis on these might figure in elite-college admissions criteria, but not so often in the credentialing process beyond there, since typical employers don’t care about such matters.
In addition, really knowing who is knowledgeable and wise is most difficult, so shortcuts are exceedingly common. These include evaluating people on the basis of standardized exam results, presence or absence of a college or other degree, and other simplifications. For many a corporate Human Resources department, for instance, no one without a bachelor’s degree can be considered for any managerial job. What about the difference in education among different colleges, different degree programs, and different grade point averages? Most HR departments or individual employers can’t be bothered or simply are unequipped to understand such gradations in even rough detail.
A genuine meritocracy would have to place high value on someone without any diplomas who has mastered and understands the details of a certain craft or even profession very well. Yet the fraudulent meritocracy we have accepted as good enough will rank such a person below someone with a mediocre business degree from a third-rate college. That means it’s advisable for anyone who can manage it to obtain such a degree, rather than really learning how to do something of great social value with no degree.
WHAT IS MORE:
1. Promoting college education and also student loans helped lead to colleges that are run for the primary welfare of the administrators, not the good of students.
2. Add to that the weird American emphasis on college sports, which fundamentally distorts merit as theoretically conceived.
3. Students are told that they will receive a higher income if they get a college degree, regardless of whether they are interested in learning or not. With this focus on income and no other idea of what to study, a ridiculous number pursue business degrees or other degrees that superficially seem likely to help them obtain that high income and justify the outlandish student loans and often high tuition.
4. Meanwhile, many view college as mostly a place to party as long as they get minimal passing grades, but are rarely encouraged to think about the world in which they live or will live.
Merit also supposedly includes “native ability,” but ability of what kind, for what end?
5. And of course, as Sandel is well aware, “merit” is assumed by those who do obtain degrees to be an individual achievement, not a societal one. After all, you have to have passed some sort of exams and achieved some high school success just to get into college, where you also have to demonstrate some learning just to graduate—even though all that might not always amount to much. Still, it appears to be your personal doing that you got that far, with what society and others around you did to get you there often receding into the unacknowledged background.
6. Back 50 or 60 years ago or more, much education, especially in top institutions, was understood as basically a desirable ornament for “gentlemen,” who could learn the canon and know whom to quote, to meet fellow “gentlemen” whom one would later encounter in cozy clubs, etc.
7. The one good result of that for a while was that it did lead some of the better educated to understand the unfairness of the world, and to strive hard to improve it. When I went to college, in those distant days, the assumption was all the graduates would have “upper middle class” incomes whatever happened and basically didn’t need to worry about that or seek more, so they could focus on more learned inquiries, including how the world could be improved. (Of course, a considerable amount of that thought took for granted that the existing power structure was more or less both inevitable and right.)
8. But that’s gone, replaced for many with ambitions of unlimited wealth, power, and stardom—not necessarily in that order, of course.
9. Meanwhile acceptance at some college pulled the “best and brightest”—and most industrious and ambitious— right out of rural and working class communities, for the most part never to return. That help lead to today’s political and partisan polarization.
One clear result of the actual version of meritocracy is that those without college degrees often feel disdained, discredited, and ignored by anyone who does have a bachelor’s and as a result is in any kind of supervisory position. It is not uncommon for a fairly new graduate to be in charge of people who actually understand much more of the particular work that is supposed to be done, but nonetheless must bow to this newcomer’s instructions with little opportunity to correct even obvious mistakes. This naturally can lead to anger and resentment and a sense of not getting deserved attention.
How much of the support for Limbaugh, Trump, etc., comes from the situation?
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