Merit Education Quotes

People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have 'come down in the world' are to be pitied above all others. The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start, and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind.

If you want to teach your children that they are the tools of God, you had better not teach them that they are God's rifles, or we will have to stand firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no glory, no special rights, no intrinsic and inalienable merit. If you insist on teaching your children false-hoods—that the Earth is flat, that "Man" is not a product of evolution by natural selection—then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being—the well-being of all of us on the planet—depends on the education of our descendants.

As a means of dispensing formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without it...

I also don't trust people who claim for a classic to be their favorite novel. I think they're lying just to sound educated, or they simply haven't read another book beyond high school English requirements.

No knowledge, however thorough and extensive, no brilliance and perspicuity, no dialectic sophistication, will preserve us from the commmonness of thought and will. It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish.

There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

I am thinking of the everyday ways that conscientious, well-to-do parents help their kids. Even the best, most inclusive educational system would be hard pressed to equip students from poor backgrounds to compete on equal terms with children from families that bestow copious amounts of attention, resources, and connections

The modulating principle of “salary according to merit” has not failed to tempt national education itself. Indeed, just as the corporation replaces the factory, perpetual training tends to replace the school, and continuous control to replace the examination. Which is the surest way of delivering the school over to the corporation.

If he or she really goes about it in earnest, anyone can cultivate ability in ten years, I believe. Even in one year, shortcomings can be changed into good points if only we set our aims high enough. Continuing for ten years, we can become outstanding indeed...There is no limit to our shortcomings. Until we die, we should spare no time or effort in changing our weaknesses to merits. To do so can be pleasant and interesting. We can become like the horse that starts last and yet outruns the field, reaching the wire first; it is the same fun.

I also very well remember that on another occasion the father dean said: ‘In order that at responsible age a man may be a real man and not a parasite, his education must without fail be based on the following ten principles. ‘From early childhood there should be instilled in the child: Belief in receiving punishment for disobedience. Hope of receiving reward only for merit. Love of God—but indiference to the saints. Remorse of conscience for the ill-treatment of animals. Fear of grieving parents and teachers. Fearlessness towards devils, snakes and mice. Joy in being content merely with what one has. Sorrow at the loss of the goodwill of others. Patient endurance of pain and hunger. The striving early to earn one’s bread.

You may not understand issues that do not pertain to the heart, but be a master in areas that do. Nobody knows everything, and nobody can be a master of everything. Nobody was created perfect, and nobody should be measured according to perfection. It is the weight of your heart that matters the most in the end. All else is irrelevant.

While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords? Why should the deposed prince or princess in every clichéd tale be chosen to lead the quest against the Dark Lord? Why not elect a new leader by merit, instead of clinging to the inbred scions of a failed royal line? Why not ask the pompous, patronizing, "good" wizard for something useful, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape.

things often work out randomly, according to dynamics that simply don’t reflect the merits of the individuals concerned.

Finally, it is also worth noting that nearly every institution of post-independence India has been spearheaded by Brahminical elites. Their dismal performance in delivering even basic social services to the majority of Indians—of education, health, water, sanitation, and electricity—says volumes about their ‘merit’ and argues against leaving them in control of these institutions.

Belief is like that, a circle, and often I find that the seemingly simplistic explanations from childhood for the unexplainable have merit, maybe more so than all the educated and contrived answers of adulthood.

The Academy's a perfect example of what he talks about: we're meant to be the brightest of the Republic, but almost all of us here are the children of senators and knights. We've been trained, educated, since we could walk. Of course we're going to be 'better' than som fifth son of an Octavus who's been ceding half his life, just so his family can get by. Especially at tests which are devised by the same people who trained us. Who decide what merit is.

The probable accumulation of the surpluses of revenue beyond what can be applied to the payment of the public debt... merits the consideration of Congress. Shall it lie unproductive in the public vaults?...Or shall it rather be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and other great foundations of prosperity and union

The hubris of imagining that one can judge merit, as distinguished from judging behavior and performance, can be seen in attempts of educators to grade students according to how well they used their own ability, rather than how well they performed relative to some fixed standard or to other students.

My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic -- every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization. These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free -- and how much more the spirit who has become free -- spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, who attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong -- otherwise one will never become strong. Those large hothouses for the strong -- for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known -- the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers

They have courage, but not your faith; patience, but not your long suffering; composure, but not your discipline; skill, but not your talent; ability, but not your mastery; ego, but not your confidence; facts, but not your truth; money, but not your wealth; possessions, but not your joy; intelligence, but not your wisdom; strength, but not your power; connections, but not your character; education, but not your experience; position, but not your authority; force, but not your command; awards, but not your merit; titles, but not your honor; recognition, but not your dignity; fame, but not your influence; resources, but not your blessing; and chance, but not your destiny.

Un habile homme dans les affaires est instruit, prudent et actif: si l'un de ces trois merites lui manque, il n'est point habile.

A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheerfully assisted by the alms of their more opulent brethren. Such an institution, which paid less regard to the merit than to the distress of the object, very materially conduced to the progress of Christianity. The Pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of future protection allured into its hospitable bosom many of those unhappy persons whom the neglect of the world would have abandonned to the miseries of want, of sickness, and of old age. There is some reason likewise to believe, that great numbers of infants, who, according to the inhuman practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure.

The emphasis—and money—placed on demonstrating “merit” on applications, rather than on nurturing a student’s potential during the college years, results in institutions that lack meaningful race and class diversity.

The merits and services of Christianity have been industriously extolled by its hired advocates. Every Sunday its praises are sounded from myriads of pulpits. It enjoys the prestige of an ancient establishment and the comprehensive support of the State. It has the ear of rulers and the control of education. Every generation is suborned in its favor. Those who dissent from it are losers, those who oppose it are ostracised; while in the past, for century after century, it has replied to criticism with imprisonment, and to scepticism with the dungeon and the stake. By such means it has induced a general tendency to allow its pretensions without inquiry and its beneficence without proof.

For instance, the education system, instead of going by textbook teaching, will promote creative and interactive self-learning—both formal and informal—with a focus on values, merit and quality. Workers, instead of being skilled or semi-skilled, will be knowledgeable, self-empowered and flexibly skilled. Types of work, instead of being structured and hardware driven, will be more flexible and software driven. Management styles will be delegative rather than directive.

If it is true that the ability to be puzzled is the beginning of wisdom, then this truth is a sad commentary on the wisdom of modern man. Whatever the merits of our high degree of literary and universal education, we have lost the gift for being puzzled. Everything is supposed to be known—if not to ourselves then to some specialist whose business it is to know what we do not know. In fact, to be puzzled is embarrassing, a sign of intellectual inferiority. Even children are rarely surprised, or at least they try not to show that they are; and as we grow older we gradually lose the ability to be surprised. To have the right answers seems all-important; to ask the right questions is considered insignificant by comparison.

One thing that has taught me to dislike politics is the observation that, as soon as any person or thing becomes the subject of political discussion, he or it at once assumes in the public mind an importance out of all proportion to his or its real merits.

The tyranny of merit arises from more than the rhetoric of rising. It consists in a cluster of attitudes and circumstances that, taken together, have made meritocracy toxic. First, under conditions of rampant inequality and stalled mobility, reiterating the message that we are responsible for our fate and deserve what we get erodes solidarity and demoralizes those left behind by globalization. Second, insisting that a college degree is the primary route to a respectable job and a decent life creates a credentialist prejudice that undermines the dignity of work and demeans those who have not been to college; and third, insisting that social and political problems are best solved by highly educated, value-neutral experts is a technocratic conceit that corrupts democracy and disempowers ordinary

Finally, the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in a single area - the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The local minister was judged either by his charismatic powers or by his ability to prepare his congregation for the preaching of some itinerant ministerial charmer who would really awaken its members. The 'star' system prevailed in religion before it reached the theater. As the evangelical impulse became more widespread and more dominant, the selection and training of ministers was increasingly shaped by the revivalist criterion of ministerial merit. The Puritan ideal of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened in the face of the evangelical ideal of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. Theological education itself became more instrumental. Simple dogmatic formulations were considered sufficient. In considerable measure the churches withdrew from intellectual encounters with the secular world, gave up the idea that religion is a part of the whole life of intellectual experience, and often abandoned the field of rational studies on the assumption that they were the natural province of science alone. By 1853 an outstanding clergyman complained that there was 'an impression, somewhat general, that an intellectual clergyman is deficient in piety, and that an eminently pious minister is deficient in intellect.

The lower middle class is petty bourgeois. These people seek their security in status; status in an organizational structure. They try to find a place for themselves in an organization which has a hierarchy in which they can count on moving up automatically simply by surviving. Some people still think that most Americans are active, assertive, aggressive, self-reliant people who need no help from anyone, especially the Government, and achieve success as individuals by competing freely with each other. That may have been true 100 years ago. It isn’t true today. Today more and more of us are petty bourgeois who snuggle down in a hierarchical bureaucracy where advancement is assured merely by keeping the body warm and not breaking the rules; it doesn’t matter whether it is education or the Armed Services or a big corporation or the Government. Notice that high school teachers are universally opposed to merit pay. They are paid on the basis of their degrees and years of teaching experience. Or consider the professor. He gets his Ph. D. by writing a large dissertation on a small subject, and he hopes to God he never meets anyone else who knows anything about that subject. If he does, they don’t talk about it; they talk about the weather or baseball. So our society is becoming more and more a society of white-collar clerks on many levels, including full professors. They live for retirement and find their security through status in structures.

There are, essentially, two compelling reasons why I believe the reading public should care about Fred and his work: First, he recognized the critical importance of learning during the earliest years. No one better understood how essential it is for proper social, emotional, cognitive, and language development to take place in the first few years of life. And no one did more to convince a mass audience in America of the value of early education. Second, he provided, and continues to provide, exemplary moral leadership. Fred Rogers advanced humanistic values because of his belief in Christianity, but his spirituality was completely eclectic; he found merit in all faiths and philosophies. His signature value was human kindness; he lived it and he preached it, to children, to their parents, to their teachers, to all of us everywhere who could take the time to listen.

My generation has a giddy delight in dissolution. [...] To inspire the unsophisticated young to demand "change" is an easy and a cheap trick— it was the tactic of the Communist Internationale in the thirties, another "movement.[...] We were self-taught in the sixties to award ourselves merit for membership in a superior group–irrespective of our group’s accomplishments. We continue to do so, irrespective of accomplishments, individual or communal, having told each other we were special. We learned that all one need do is refrain from trusting anybody over thirty; that all people are alike, and to judge their behavior was “judgmental”; that property is theft. As we did not investigate these assertions or their implications, we could not act upon them and felt no need to do so. For we were the culmination of history, superior to all those misguided who had come before, which is to say all humanity. Though we had never met a payroll, fought for an education, obsessed about the rent, raised a child, carried a weapon for our country, or searched for work. Though we had never been in sufficient distress to call upon God, we indicted those who had. And continue to do so.

I see before me a person who is sacrificial, honest, and courageous; a good friend and family member, not cynical, not egotistical, but empathetic and good-hearted, who feels responsibility, is attentive, and is capable of keeping secrets, who does not misuse their power, does not gossip, and can master their ambition, who is just, demands quality, an internationalist and not envious, who generally behaves in a friendly way and does not judge others easily, who is persistent, has initiative, conscious of duty, critical, self-critical and conscientious, who relates well to learning or ignorance, and who is capable of self-education (self-perfection), who has self-control, who is sincere and strives for freedom for themself and others, whose ethics are at a similarly high level, who is modest, able to love others, who has solidarity, tolerance and politeness, has a healthy competitiveness, is helpful, peaceful, and well-intentioned, who shows respect to those who merit it, etc. This kind of person is definitely an exemplary moral authority. Whoever has in themselves all of the qualities above to a high level is a moral genius, even if they never become a hero, and even if those around them never consider them to be one.

Watch movies. Read screenplays. Let them be your guide. […] Yes, McKee has been able to break down how the popular screenplay has worked. He has identified key qualities that many commercially successful screenplays share, he has codified a language that has been adopted by creative executives in both film and television. So there might be something of tangible value to be gained by interacting with his material, either in book form or at one of the seminars. But for someone who wants to be an artist, a creator, an architect of an original vision, the best book to read on screenwriting is no book on screenwriting. The best seminar is no seminar at all. To me, the writer wants to get as many outside voices OUT of his/her head as possible. Experts win by getting us to be dependent on their view of the world. They win when they get to frame the discussion, when they get to tell you there’s a right way and a wrong way to think about the game, whatever the game is. Because that makes you dependent on them. If they have the secret rules, then you need them if you want to get ahead. The truth is, you don’t. If you love and want to make movies about issues of social import, get your hands on Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay for Network. Read it. Then watch the movie. Then read it again. If you love and want to make big blockbusters that also have great artistic merit, do the same thing with Lawrence Kasdan’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark screenplay and the movie made from it. Think about how the screenplays made you feel. And how the movies built from these screenplays did or didn’t hit you the same way. […] This sounds basic, right? That’s because it is basic. And it’s true. All the information you need is the movies and screenplays you love. And in the books you’ve read and the relationships you’ve had and your ability to use those things.

This style of teaching reflects the business community,” one fifth-grade teacher in a Manhattan public school told me, “where people’s respect for others is based on their verbal abilities, not their originality or insight. You have to be someone who speaks well and calls attention to yourself. It’s an elitism based on something other than merit.” “Today the world of business works in groups, so now the kids do it in school,” a third-grade teacher in Decatur, Georgia, explained. “Cooperative learning enables skills in working as teams—skills that are in dire demand in the workplace,” writes the educational consultant Bruce Williams.

Schools could do the same thing. Elementary and middle schools could put the January through April–born students in one class, the May through August in another class, and those born in September through December in the third class. They could let students learn with and compete against other students of the same maturity level. It would be a little bit more complicated administratively. But it wouldn’t necessarily cost that much more money, and it would level the playing field for those who — through no fault of their own — have been dealt a big disadvantage by the educational system. We could easily take control of the machinery of achievement, in other words — not just in sports but, as we will see, in other more consequential areas as well. But we don’t. And why? Because we cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don’t matter at all.

You see that God deems it right to take from me any claim to merit for what you call my devotion to you. I have promised to remain forever with you, and now I could not break my promise if I would. The treasure will be no more mine than yours, and neither of us will quit this prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the somber rocks of Monte Cristo, it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is the rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with all of their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them – this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to them. To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your eloquent speech, -- which embellishes my mind, strengthens my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and terrible things, if I should ever be free, -- so fills my whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the point of yielding when I knew you, has no longer any hold over me; this – this is my fortune – not chimerical, but actual. I owe you my real good, my present happiness; and all the sovereigns of the earth, even Caesar Borgia himself, could not deprive me of this.

The state university is supported by grants from the people of the state, voted by the state legislature. In theory, the degree of support which the university receives is dependent upon the degree of acceptance accorded it by the voters. The state university prospers according to the extent to which it can sell itself to the people of the state. The state university is therefore in an unfortunate position unless its president happens to be a man of outstanding merit as a propagandist and a dramatizer of educational issues. Yet if this is the case--if the university shapes its whole policy toward gaining the support of the state legislature--its educational function may suffer. It may be tempted to base its whole appeal to the public on its public service, real or supposed, and permit the education of its individual students to take care of itself. It may attempt to educate the people of the state at the expense of its own pupils. This may generate a number of evils, to the extent of making the university a political instrument, a mere tool of the political group in power.

The problem started at home. It started with the parents who always pushed for more, more, more. Why were they never satisfied? The problem lay with this school, with all these institutions. Walls too high to climb, doors shut to all except the most privileged. Lies about not seeing color. Lies about merit-based education, about hard work translating into success.

Right now, there is something of a culture of entitlement among America’s upper middle class. Partly this is because of a natural tendency to compare ourselves to those even better off than us. This is the “we are the 99 percent” problem. But it is also because we feel entitled to our position since it results from our own merit: our education, brains, and hard work.

My conception of freedom. — The value of a thing sometimes does not lie in that which one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. I shall give an example. Liberal institutions cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: later on, there are no worse and no more thorough injurers of freedom than liberal institutions. Their effects are known well enough: they undermine the will to power; they level mountain and valley, and call that morality; they make men small, cowardly, and hedonistic — every time it is the herd animal that triumphs with them. Liberalism: in other words, herd-animalization. These same institutions produce quite different effects while they are still being fought for; then they really promote freedom in a powerful way. On closer inspection it is war that produces these effects, the war for liberal institutions, which, as a war, permits illiberal instincts to continue. And war educates for freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to assume responsibility for oneself. That one maintains the distance which separates us. That one becomes more indifferent to difficulties, hardships, privation, even to life itself. That one is prepared to sacrifice human beings for one's cause, not excluding oneself. Freedom means that the manly instincts which delight in war and victory dominate over other instincts, for example, over those of "pleasure." The human being who has become free — and how much more the spirit who has become free — spits on the contemptible type of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, females, Englishmen, and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. How is freedom measured in individuals and peoples? According to the resistance which must be overcome, according to the exertion required, to remain on top. The highest type of free men should be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically if by "tyrants" are meant inexorable and fearful instincts that provoke the maximum of authority and discipline against themselves; most beautiful type: Julius Caesar. This is true politically too; one need only go through history. The peoples who had some value, attained some value, never attained it under liberal institutions: it was great danger that made something of them that merits respect. Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong. First principle: one must need to be strong — otherwise one will never become strong. Those large hothouses for the strong — for the strongest kind of human being that has so far been known — the aristocratic commonwealths of the type of Rome or Venice, understood freedom exactly in the sense in which I understand it: as something one has or does not have, something one wants, something one conquers.

Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education, and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned.

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. All that is set forth in books, all that seems so terribly vital and significant, is but an iota of that from which it stems and which it is within everyone’s power to tap. Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge. Men are still being taught to create by studying other men’s works or by making plans and sketches never intended to materialize. The art of writing is taught in the classroom instead of in the thick of life. Students are still being handed models which are supposed to fit all temperaments, all kinds of intelligence. No wonder we produce better engineers than writers, better industrial experts than painters. My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books are as much a part of life as trees, stars or dung. I have no reverence for them per se. Nor do I put authors in any special, privileged category. They are like other men, no better, no worse. They exploit the powers given them, just as any other order of human being. If I defend them now and then — as a class — it is because I believe that, in our society at least, they have never achieved the status and the consideration they merit. The great ones, especially, have almost always been treated as scapegoats.

In the absence of alternatives the State Department had taken up Unocal’s agenda as its own. Whatever the merits of the project, the sheer prominence it received by 1996 distorted the message and meaning of American power. American tolerance of the Taliban was publicly and inextricably linked to the financial goals of an oil corporation. There were by now about 1.5 million Afghan war dead, dating back to the Soviet invasion. The land was desolate, laced with mines. The average life expectancy for an Afghan was about forty-six years. The country ranked 173 out of 175 countries on the United Nations human development index.42 Yet the few American officials who paid attention to Afghanistan at all talked as if it was a tax-free zone ripe for industrial revival, a place where vocational education in metallurgy could lead to a political breakthrough.

I have seen the fruits of adult education. It can be done. And anyone who has worked in adult education knows that he must appeal for self-help. There are no monitors to keep adults at the task. There are no examinations and grades, none of the machinery of external discipline. The person who learns something out of school is self-disciplined. He works for merit in his own eyes, not credit from the registrar. (1940 ed. page 104)

Today, partly because many “conservative” schools have borrowed discriminatingly from progressive innovations, we may easily forget how dismal and self-satisfied the older conservative pedagogy often was, how it accepted, or even exploited, the child’s classroom passivity, how much scope it afforded to excessively domineering teachers, how heavily it depended on rote learning. The main strength of progressivism came from its freshness in method. It tried to mobilize the interests of the child, to make good use of his need for activity, to concern the minds of teachers and educators with a more adequate sense of his nature, to set up pedagogical rules that would put the burden on the teacher not to be arbitrarily authoritative, and to develop the child’s capacity for expression as well as his ability to learn. It had the great merit of being experimental in a field in which too many people thought that all the truths had been established.

More fundamentally, meritocracy is impossible to achieve, because, as Young says, a meritocracy is always based on an imperfect definition of merit and often narrowly defined to favor training, connections, and education primarily available to the wealthy. Take Stanford. Because Stanford is filled with students with top high-school GPAs and SAT scores, administrators can pat themselves on the back and say, “We only admit the best students. We’re a meritocracy.” The students are encouraged to think similarly. But is it just a coincidence that the median annual family income of a Stanford student is $167,500 while the national median is roughly one-third that? Did those high-achieving students naturally get high SAT scores, or did they benefit from their parents’ paying for tutors and sending them to private schools? Privilege accumulates as you advance in life. If the college you attend is the basis of your future employment networks, then it is impossible to say that your employment success is solely based on merit.

Tell me this- if you could have a guarantee that your child would be a National Merit Scholar and get into a prestigious college, have good work habits and a successful career, but that your relationship with him would be destroyed in the process, would you do it? Why not? Because you are made to love, that's why. We care about our relationships more than about our accomplishments. That's the way God made us. Then why don't we live that way? Why, come a damp and gloomy day in March, do we yell over a  math lesson or lose our temper over a writing assignment? Why do we see the lessons left to finish and get lost in an anxiety-ridden haze? We forget that we are dealing with a soul, a precious child bearing the Image of God, and all we can see is that there are only a few months left to the school year and we are still only halfway through the math book. When you are performing mommy triage- that is, when you have a crisis moment and have to figure out which fire to put out first- always choose your child. It's just a math lesson. It's only a writing assignment. It's a Latin declension. Nothing more. But your child? He is God's. And the Almighty put him in your charge for relationship. Don't damage that relationship over something so trivial as an algebra problem. And when you do (because you will, and so will I), repent. We like to feed our egos. When our children perform well, we can puff up with satisfaction and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. But as important as it is to give our children a solid education (and it is important, don't misunderstand me), it is far more important that we love them well.  Our children need to know that the most important thing about them is not whether they finished their science curriculum or score well on the SAT. Their worth is not bound up in a booklist or a test score. Take a moment. Take ten. Look deep into your child's eyes. Listen, even when you're bored. Break out a board game or an old picture book you haven't read in ages. Resting in Him means relaxing into the knowledge that He has put these children in our care to nurture. And nurturing looks different than charging through the checklist all angst-like. Your children are not ordinary kids or ordinary people, because there are no ordinary kids or ordinary people. They are little reflections of the

Young man,” he went on, raising his head again, “in your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving, she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal … well, the medal of course was sold—long ago, hm … but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell some one or other of her past honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for it. I don’t blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That’s why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married her, with three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her father’s house. She was exceedingly fond of her husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble and with that he died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him back, of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with tears and she throws him up at me; and I am glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once been happy.… And she was left at his death with three children in a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups and downs of all sorts, I don’t feel equal to describing it even. Her relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively proud.… And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you don’t understand yet…

No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honor. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything ought to be open,—but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation.

But I can cite ten other reasons for not being a father." "First of all, I don't like motherhood," said Jakub, and he broke off pensively. "Our century has already unmasked all myths. Childhood has long ceased to be an age of innocence. Freud discovered infant sexuality and told us all about Oedipus. Only Jocasta remains untouchable; no one dares tear off her veil. Motherhood is the last and greatest taboo, the one that harbors the most grievous curse. There is no stronger bond than the one that shackles mother to child. This bond cripples the child's soul forever and prepares for the mother, when her son has grown up, the most cruel of all the griefs of love. I say that motherhood is a curse, and I refuse to contribute to it." "Another reason I don't want to add to the number of mothers," said Jakub with some embarrassment, "is that I love the female body, and I am disgusted by the thought of my beloved's breast becoming a milk-bag." "The doctor here will certainly confirm that physicians and nurses treat women hospitalized after an aborted pregnancy more harshly than those who have given birth, and show some contempt toward them even though they themselves will, at least once in their lives, need a similar operation. But for them it's a reflex stronger than any kind of thought, because the cult of procreation is an imperative of nature. That's why it's useless to look for the slightest rational argument in natalist propaganda. Do you perhaps think it's the voice of Jesus you're hearing in the natalist morality of the church? Do you think it's the voice of Marx you're hearing in the natalist propaganda of the Communist state? Impelled merely by the desire to perpetuate the species, mankind will end up smothering itself on its small planet. But the natalist propaganda mill grinds on, and the public is moved to tears by pictures of nursing mothers and infants making faces. It disgusts me. It chills me to think that, along with millions of other enthusiasts, I could be bending over a cradle with a silly smile." "And of course I also have to ask myself what sort of world I'd be sending my child into. School soon takes him away to stuff his head with the falsehoods I've fought in vain against all my life. Should I see my son become a conformist fool? Or should I instill my own ideas into him and see him suffer because he'll be dragged into the same conflicts I was?" "And of course I also have to think of myself. In this country children pay for their parents' disobedience, and parents for their children's disobedience. How many young people have been denied education because their parents fell into disgrace? And how many parents have chosen permanent cowardice for the sole purpose of preventing harm to their children? Anyone who wants to preserve at least some freedom here shouldn't have children," Jakub said, and fell into silence. "The last reason carries so much weight that it counts for five," said Jakub. "Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that it merits being duplicated." "And you have not found life to be good?" asked Bertlef. Jakub tried to be precise, and said cautiously: "All I know is that I could never say with complete conviction: Man is a wonderful being and I want to reproduce him.

It's an insidious twist of thought that leads one to demand women to give up their reproductive rights to force unwanted pregnancies but then, once birthed from the womb, to deny them access to basic necessities required for even a mediocre life like education, clean air, healthcare, and a fair wage. And these people have the audacity to call their position pro-life. These same people who bemoan the welfare state, yet refuse to require business to honor a fair wage, appear to want to create the very circumstances that they ceaselessly complain about. I dare say that by perpetuating this condition, by feeding the apparatus of poverty, they are satiating their narcissism. With poverty securely entrenched, these lucky few can sit back and smile with smug superiority. Because of course, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they worked harder, and they have earned what they have. It's a meritocracy, they say, if only by merit of their parent's color of flesh or social standing. So yes, let's churn out more children who will be unable to claw their way out of poverty, and if they just happen to defy the odds, let's brainwash them into believing this tripe called the American Dream so they will assist us as we throw their less fortunate fortunate siblings into the hungry machine of conservatism. Because we are really only interested in conserving the status quo.

religions merit our attention for their sheer conceptual ambition; for changing the world in a way that few secular institutions ever have. They have managed to combine theories about ethics and metaphysics with a practical involvement in education, fashion, politics, travel, hostelry, initiation ceremonies, publishing, art and architecture – a range of interests which puts to shame the scope of the achievements of even the greatest and most influential secular movements and individuals in history. For those interested in the spread and impact of ideas, it is hard not to be mesmerized by examples of the most successful educational and intellectual movements the planet has ever witnessed.

The time he spent could have been more usefully applied, it might seem, to finishing the Adoration of the Magi or Saint Jerome. But just as today we love halftime shows and Broadway extravaganzas, fireworks displays and choreographed performances, the events staged by the Sforza court were considered vital, and their producers, including Leonardo, were highly valued. The entertainments were even educational at times, like an ideas festival; there were demonstrations of science, debates over the relative merits of various art forms, and displays of ingenious devices, all of which were a precursor to the public science and edifying discourse that later became popular during the Enlightenment.

The cooperative approach has politically progressive roots—the theory is that students take ownership of their education when they learn from one another—but according to elementary school teachers I interviewed at public and private schools in New York, Michigan, and Georgia, it also trains kids to express themselves in the team culture of corporate America. “This style of teaching reflects the business community,” one fifth-grade teacher in a Manhattan public school told me, “where people’s respect for others is based on their verbal abilities, not their originality or insight. You have to be someone who speaks well and calls attention to yourself. It’s an elitism based on something other than merit.” “Today the world of business works in groups, so now the kids do it in school,” a third-grade teacher in Decatur, Georgia, explained.

A Spinoza in poetry becomes a Machiavelli in philosophy. Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings. So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves that these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear. If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men. The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life. If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature. The classical is health; and the romantic, disease. When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art. For all other Arts we must make some allowance; but to Greek Art alone we are always debtors. The dignity of Art appears perhaps most conspicuously in Music; for in Music there is no material to be deducted. It is wholly form and intrinsic value, and it raises and ennobles all that it expresses. Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion. Art is essentially noble; therefore the artist has nothing to fear from a low or common subject. Nay, by taking it up, he ennobles it; and so it is that we see the greatest artists boldly exercising their sovereign rights. Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago. To praise a man is to put oneself on his level. In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.

According to H.G. Wells, you either adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative. It is not necessary to change, after all survival is not mandatory This generation might seem arrogant to the older generation due to some reasons. The older generation believes an older person or someone of higher authority is always right and being sceptical is an insult, lol Our generation is full of people who are so skeptical, they wanna know why this is this and that is that, they don't just hear and believe, they hear, hear from other sides, look at it critically and express their opinions based on their conviction. This generation is full of people who are somewhat confident cos they study, they observe and due to these, they are equipped with better information and like you know, knowledge is power. You know right from wrong, you know truth from lies. When you are with those in authority and have this knowledge, an ignorant person of higher authority would be scared of you, feel threatened and might resort to maltreating and frustrating you, defaming your character etc The older generation and the younger generation are usually having misunderstanding because the older generation are being deceived by pride, the younger generation due to their advanced education do not wanna give merit to whom it isn't due. While the older generation postulates that respect is not earned but compulsory for them to be accorded, the younger generation believes respect must be earned. lol The older generation rules by fiction but the younger generation lives by facts. The older generation uses age to oppress, the younger generation uses their knowledge to defend. The older generation believes they can never be wrong, the younger generation wants fair hearing, demands for it, if denied, they take it by force due to the confidence they've built around themselves. The older generation is unfair to the younger generation, there was once a time they were listened to without doubts and opposition, this is the time for the younger generation to be listened to due to advancement in education and exposure. The younger generation, due to their quest for higher knowledge through research, etc, they have realized the consequences of being ignorant and with their power of conviction, they are not letting the older generation have their autocratic ways affect them. To the younger generation, one should be able to prove whatever he says, no more latent heresies and this is what the older generation don't wanna hear of. The older generation wants to continue enslaving the younger generation but the younger generation is more equipped than the older generation and as such, not letting that happen. Technology advances every day, the younger generation are ever ready to adapt to the changes but the older generation is not ready for that, they wanna remain stagnant and still have the say of the day. Like George Bernard Shaw once said, the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man

David Brooks, “Our Founding Yuppie,” Weekly Standard, Oct. 23, 2000, 31. The word “meritocracy” is an argument-starter, and I have employed it sparingly in this book. It is often used loosely to denote a vision of social mobility based on merit and diligence, like Franklin’s. The word was coined by British social thinker Michael Young (later to become, somewhat ironically, Lord Young of Darlington) in his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy (New York: Viking Press) as a dismissive term to satirize a society that misguidedly created a new elite class based on the “narrow band of values” of IQ and educational credentials. The Harvard philosopher John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 106, used it more broadly to mean a “social order [that] follows the principle of careers open to talents.” The best description of the idea is in Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), a history of educational aptitude tests and their effect on American society. In Franklin’s time, Enlightenment thinkers (such as Jefferson in his proposals for creating the University of Virginia) advocated replacing the hereditary aristocracy with a “natural aristocracy,” whose members would be plucked from the masses at an early age based on “virtues and talents” and groomed for leadership. Franklin’s idea was more expansive. He believed in encouraging and providing opportunities for all people to succeed as best they could based on their diligence, hard work, virtue, and talent. As we shall see, his proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men. Franklin was propounding a more egalitarian and democratic approach than Jefferson by proposing a system that would, as Rawls (p. 107) would later prescribe, assure that “resources for education are not to be allotted solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens.” (Translation: He cared not simply about making society as a whole more productive, but also about making each individual more enriched.)

Yet, could it be (we should press the question) that there are some circumstances in which being overly esteemed in one’s capacity as a knower would do one harm of a sort that merits the label ‘testimonial injustice’? Suppose we imagine someone growing up who, because of various social prejudices overwhelmingly in his favour, is constantly epistemically puffed up by the people around him. Let’s say that he is a member of a ruling elite, and that his education and entire upbringing are subtly geared to installing this message firmly in his psychology. Perhaps the pupils who attend his school even wind up with a distinctive accent and certainly a confident air that helps mark them out as epistemically authoritative. No doubt the credibility excess he tends to receive from most interlocutors in his class-ridden society will be advantageous: it is very likely to bring him lucrative employment and a certain automatic high status in many of his discursive exchanges, and so on. But what if all this also causes him to develop such an epistemic arrogance that a range of epistemic virtues are put out of his reach, rendering him closed-minded, dogmatic, blithely impervious to criticism, and so on? Is it not the case that such a person has in some degree quite literally been made a fool of?

Brainhacking works. By following a few simple instructions, you can, over time, change the nature of your brain to make it more resilient, more resistant to aging, and more capable of happiness, compassion, and clarity. The data is in, and it matters. It matters, in fact, in two distinct ways. First, as this hard data filters through the U.S. healthcare industry, the educational system, the military, and the corporate world, to name just a few examples, it will become clear that mindfulness is among the most cost-effective methods ever for reducing hospital stays, advancing educational opportunity, and improving the functioning of organizations. This will be a game-changer. Second, the science changes how the dharma is even to be understood. This hard data is the opposite of soft spirituality. Meditation and mindfulness are tools, not a set of spiritual exercises whose merit depends on faith or some unknown forces. This is why I’ve used the word “technology” in describing the work of meditation, why Kenneth Folk calls it a form of “contemplative fitness,” and why I like the term “brainhacking.” We’re not referring here to actual, physical technologies like electrodes or vibrating implants or special sounds that put you into an altered state (although all of these exist). Rather, when I say “technology,” I’m thinking of how meditation and mindfulness are tools—processes that lead to predictable results.

Thanks to the popular policies of our Party and the Government of our Republic, all our people are provided by the state and society with all the practical conditions they need for adequate food, clothing and housing and enjoy an equally happy life. They are supplied by the state with provisions virtually free of charge and receive the benefits of free education, free medical care and all the conditions they need for adequate food, clothing and housing. Moreover, as a result of the abolition of taxation, this word has disappeared from their vocabulary. In our country the state takes responsible care of the old and disabled people and children who have no means of support. In our country preferential, social treatment is accorded to merited people, including veterans who have been disabled in the fight for the noble cause of the fatherland and the people, and the Party and the state take warm care of them. Our people receive many benefits from the Party and the state. The popular policies of our Party and the Government of the Republic are eloquent proof of the advantages of our socialist system which is centred upon the popular masses. The “welfare policies” pursued in capitalist countries are fundamentally different from the popular policies of a socialist society. They are aimed at disguising the class contradictions in that society and at pacifying the resistance of the working masses. Even if the “welfare policies” are enforced, this is done only in name and cannot improve the life of the working people.

Just when the first collie came to Sunnybank is not known. But Terhune wrote and told many times how he acquired his own first collie when he was thirteen. He had painfully amassed a savings of $9 and took it to the New York dog pound. There he bought a tricolored collie, which he named Argus. “I devoted all my out-of-school hours to Argus’s education,” he wrote later. “He learned with bewildering ease, but I learned ten times as much from him as he ever learned from me.” It was Argus who made Terhune into a collie man – a strange, deep-rooted aberration afflicting collie owners by the score and, eventually, Terhune readers by the thousands. Its major symptom is the passionate, wholly illogical belief that one breed of dog rises regally far above the rest of the barking pack – and that the old Scottish sheep-herding breed whose very name, like its origins, is shrouded in mystery. Though every breed has its equally impassioned adherents, collie people had the clear advantage, in Terhune, of a trumplet-like spokesman. He was wont to write things like: “A dog is a dog, but a collie is – a collie. “Or: “…the Sunnybank collies aren’t merely dogs. There a super dogs!” But much more than such extravagant claims about collies, it was the attributes given to the collies in his stories that had such a powerful effect on his readers. They were wise beyond belief, everlastingly gentle with those where merited such treatment (and the collies always knew), terrifyingly vengeful with those who didn’t. And they were eternally loyal – so loyal that the word itself seems inadequate to describe their fealty.

Sometimes, for instance, there would be a matter the governor didn’t want to discuss in public, but we knew he’d be asked about it at his next public appearance, or in any case Aaron would be asked about it. Let’s say the head of a cabinet agency had been accused by a state senator of running a cockfighting ring. His behavior would fall within executive purview, but since he had not been indicted or even legally accused, he couldn’t be fired or forced to resign. Aaron knew the governor would be asked about it at a press conference, so our office would issue a statement to any member of the press who asked about it. “[The senator’s] remarks have raised some troubling questions,” the statement might say, “and we’re looking closely at the situation in an effort to determine whether it merits further investigation by state or local law enforcement. At the same time, we want to avoid rushing to judgment, and we hope all concerned will likewise avoid making accusations in the absence of evidence.” This is the kind of statement Aaron would need: one that said something without saying anything. It would get the governor on record without committing him to any course of action. Hence the rhetorical dead weight: “state or local law enforcement” instead of just “law enforcement”; all that about “rushing to judgment” and “making accusations in the absence of evidence,” as if anybody needed to be told that. If a reporter asked the governor about it, he could avoid talking about it without having to use that self-incriminating phrase “No comment.” “I’d go back to what we’ve already said on this,” he might say, and repeat the gaseous phrases of the statement.

What do you think, then, Mrs. Elton, my dear madam, that a clergyman ought to preach?" "I think, Mr. Arnold, that he ought to preach salvation by faith in the merits of the Saviour." "Oh! of course, of course. We shall not differ about that. Everybody believes that." "I doubt it very much.—He ought, in order that men may believe, to explain the divine plan, by which the demands of divine justice are satisfied, and the punishment due to sin averted from the guilty, and laid upon the innocent; that, by bearing our sins, he might make atonement to the wrath of a justly offended God; and so—" "Now, my dear madam, permit me to ask what right we, the subjects of a Supreme Authority, have to inquire into the reasons of his doings? It seems to me—I should be sorry to offend any one, but it seems to me quite as presumptuous as the present arrogance of the lower classes in interfering with government, and demanding a right to give their opinion, forsooth, as to the laws by which they shall be governed; as if they were capable of understanding the principles by which kings rule, and governors decree justice.—I believe I quote Scripture." "Are we, then, to remain in utter ignorance of the divine character?" "What business have we with the divine character? Or how could we understand it? It seems to me we have enough to do with our own. Do I inquire into the character of my sovereign? All we have to do is, to listen to what we are told by those who are educated for such studies, whom the Church approves, and who are appointed to take care of the souls committed to their charge; to teach them to respect their superiors, and to lead honest, hard-working lives.

The third serious problem the culture of customer service as we know it creates is turning every profession into a customer service tool to generate profits. In doing so, we risk the loss of creativity, quality, and critical thinking in many walks of life. Nowhere is this risk clearer and more damaging than viewing students at different educational institutions as customers, and nowhere this trend has been happening more rapidly than at schools, colleges, and universities, especially at private institutions. There is severe damage done to creativity and critical thinking when all students want is an A, and in fact feel entitled to get it since they (or their parents) are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend elite schools. Many educators are under enormous pressure to give students grades they do not deserve in order to avoid receiving bad student evaluations (or to ensure getting good ones). This pressure is intensifying as academic jobs become increasingly contingent and precarious, where teaching staff are hired under short contracts only renewed based on so-called ‘performance,’ which is often measured by student evaluations and enrollment. When this happens, academic and intellectual compromises and corruption increase. Colleagues at elite American universities have been pressured to give students grades no lower than a B, with the explanation that this is what is ‘expected.’ Rampant grade inflation is unethical and unacceptable. Unfortunately, when graduate instructors resist professors’ instructions to fix grades by grading according to independent criteria of intellectual merit, they may be verbally chastised or worse, fired. This humiliation not only reinforces the norm of inflating grades, it also bolsters the power of the tenured professors who instruct their teaching assistants to do it.

I now principally allude to Rousseau, for his character of Sophia is, undoubtedly, a captivating one, though it appears to me grossly unnatural; however, it is not the superstructure, but the foundation of her character, the principles on which her education was built, that I mean to attack; nay, warmly as I admire the genius of that able writer, whose opinions I shall often have occasion to cite, indignation always takes place of admiration, and the rigid frown of insulted virtue effaces the smile of complacency, which his eloquent periods are wont to raise, when I read his voluptuous reveries. Is this the man, who, in his ardour for virtue, would banish all the soft arts of peace, and almost carry us back to Spartan discipline? Is this the man who delights to paint the useful struggles of passion, the triumphs of good dispositions, and the heroic flights which carry the glowing soul out of itself? How are these mighty sentiments lowered when he describes the prettyfoot and enticing airs of his little favourite! But, for the present, I waive the subject, and, instead of severely reprehending the transient effusions of overweening sensibility, I shall only observe, that whoever has cast a benevolent eye on society, must often have been gratified by the sight of humble mutual love, not dignified by sentiment, nor strengthened by a union in intellectual pursuits. The domestic trifles of the day have afforded matter for cheerful converse, and innocent caresses have softened toils which did not require great exercise of mind, or stretch of thought: yet, has not the sight of this moderate felicity excited more tenderness than respect? An emotion similar to what we feel when children are playing, or animals sporting, whilst the contemplation of the noble struggles of suffering merit has raised admiration, and carried our thoughts to that world where sensation will give place to reason. Women are, therefore, to be considered either as moral beings, or so weak that they must be entirely subjected to the superior faculties of men.

My father's generation grew up with certain beliefs. One of those beliefs is that the amount of money one earns is a rough guide to one's contribution to the welfare and prosperity of our society. I grew up unusually close to my father. Each evening I would plop into a chair near him, sweaty from a game of baseball in the front yard, and listen to him explain why such and such was true and such and such was not. One thing that was almost always true was that people who made a lot of money were neat. Horatio Alger and all that. It took watching his son being paid 225 grand at the age of twenty-seven, after two years on the job, to shake his faith in money. He has only recently recovered from the shock. I haven't. When you sit, as I did, at the center of what has been possibly the most absurd money game ever and benefit out of all proportion to your value to society (as much as I'd like to think I got only what I deserved, I don't), when hundreds of equally undeserving people around you are all raking it in faster than they can count it, what happens to the money belief? Well, that depends. For some, good fortune simply reinforces the belief. They take the funny money seriously, as evidence that they are worthy citizens of the Republic. It becomes their guiding assumption-for it couldn't possibly be clearly thought out-that a talent for making money come out of a telephone is a reflection of merit on a grander scale. It is tempting to believe that people who think this way eventually suffer their comeuppance. They don't. They just get richer. I'm sure most of them die fat and happy. For me, however, the belief in the meaning of making dollars crumbled; the proposition that the more money you earn, the better the life you are leading was refuted by too much hard evidence to the contrary. And without that belief, I lost the need to make huge sums of money. The funny thing is that I was largely unaware how heavily influenced I was by the money belief until it had vanished. It is a small piece of education, but still the most useful thing I picked up at Salomon Brothers. Almost everything else I learned I left behind. I became fairly handy with a few hundred million dollars, but I'm still lost when I have to decide what to do with a few thousand. I learned humility briefly in the training program but forgot it as soon as I was given a chance. And I learned that people can be corrupted by organizations, but since I remain willing to join organizations and even to be corrupted by them (mildly, please), I'm not sure what practical benefit will come from this lesson.

Since Ivy League admissions data is a notoriously classified commodity, when when Harvard officials said in previous years that alumni kids were just better, you had to take their word. But then federal investigators came along and pried open those top-secret files. The Harvard guys were lying. This past fall, after two years of study, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that, far from being more qualified or equally qualified, the average admitted legacy at Harvard between 1981 and 1988 was significantly LESS qualified than the average admitted nonlegacy. Examining admissions office ratings on academics, extracurriculars, personal qualities, recommendations, and other categories, the OCR concluded that "with the exception of the athletic rating, [admitted] nonlegacies scored better than legacies in ALL areas of comparison." In his recent book, "Preferential Policies", Thomas Sowell argues that doling out special treatment encourages lackluster performance by the favored and resentment from the spurned. His far-ranging study flits from Malaysia to South Africa to American college campuses. Legacies don't merit a word.

Until the mid-1950s, universities such as Harvard and Yale often admitted students on the basis of family connections. By the mid-1960s, largely due to the rise of educational testing, more merit-based standards had taken hold, and students from a wider range of social backgrounds found themselves on campuses that had been off-limits to their parents.64

Also mostly lost in the turmoil over whether minority admissions violate traditional standards of merit is the impressive evidence that grades and test scores do not predict success in the practice of law or medicine.

There is no merit in being born in a country where there is a developed educational system or a favorable environment

We are educated out of common sense, curiosity, and any real merit. We are made to be decorative and worthy of display, with occasional forays into procreation and good works, but nothing more.

religions merit our attention for their sheer conceptual ambition; for changing the world in a way that few secular institutions ever have. They have managed to combine theories about ethics and metaphysics with a practical involvement in education, fashion, politics, travel, hostelry, initiation ceremonies, publishing, art and architecture

Swami Devi Dyal College Of Nursing Swami Devi Dyal College of Nursing was established in year 2006. The college is approved & recognized by Haryana Nursing Registration Council (HNRC), Indian Nursing Council (INC), New Delhi and is affiliated to Pt. B.D. Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak. SWATCH BHARAT B.Sc Nursing Students of Swami Devi Dyal college of nursing organized awareness programme on SWATCH BHARAT along with Nursing Staff of General Hospital Sector -6 Panchkula Haryana. They delivered health education to patients and their relatives about the importance of cleanliness and proper disposal of refuse .Posters were displayed. Courses Offered Bachelor of Science Nursing (Co-education) Program Mode Regular Duration 4 Years No. of Seats 60 Eligibility 1) The applicant must have passed 10+2 exam of board of school education Haryana or any examination recognized as equivalent there to with Science (Physics, Chemistry, & Biology) and English (PCBE) with minimum 45% in aggregate marks (40% marks for the reserved category SC/ST). 2) Minimum Age limit: 17 years before 31st December of the admission session 2012. 3) Candidate must be medically fit and medical fitness certificate shall have to be produced at the time of admission. Fee Structure 60000/- Admission Procedure The admission to B. Sc Nursing Program will be made on the basis of the CET test conducted by Pt. B.D. Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak. The management Quota seats (25% of the sanctioned intake including 15% seats for children/ward of NRI’s) for Nursing will be filled as per 1. CET-2012 merit ranking Conducted by Pt. B.D. Sharma University of Health Sciences, Rohtak. 2. Merit based on percentage of marks in 10+2 in Physics, Chemistry, Biology & English.

Invariably. We are educated out of common sense, curiosity, and any real merit. We are made to be decorative and worthy of display, with occasional forays into procreation and good works, but nothing more.

What is the sum of not recognizing the tremendous need for self reflection of all entities in our times. History repeats itself, easily predicted by the primitive parts of psychology. There's only one excuse for inaction, fear, or the lack of foresight. Furthermore, if democracy is the way - a thousand astronomers may be more effective in dealing with issues regarding the stars - and so on. Though perhaps there may be universal issues directly related to the human experience. There's also significant cause for concern with regards to larger variations or differences in lifestyle, preferences/ideologies, merits, psychology and various corruptions which may arise. Favouring the political directions who are able to produce, raise or educate the most babies and then gets to decide the fate of all the rest. There is difficulty in adressing issues when there is a great need for balance between short-term and long-term good. Whatever system of governance, with ways of bringing those carrying the merits, discipline and good hearts to surface like buoyancy, necessary to secure a good future for all. The paradox of calling for the good to rise up - is how those truly good may often fail to recognize their part of the intended audience, being too humble in accepting their own worth. And, to recognize those primitive tendencies of an elevated ego. Let's be thankful, for nature inspire many solutions.

What is the sum of not recognizing the tremendous need for self reflection of all entities of our time. History repeats itself, easily predicted by the primitive parts of psychology. There's only one excuse for inaction, fear, or the lack of foresight. Furthermore, if democracy is the way - a thousand astronomers may be more effective in dealing with issues regarding the stars - and so on. Though perhaps there may be universal issues directly related to the human experience. There's also significant cause for concern with regards to larger variations or differences in lifestyle, preferences/ideologies, merits, psychology and various corruptions which may arise. Favouring the political directions who are able to produce, raise or educate the most babies and then gets to decide the fate of all the rest. There is difficulty in adressing issues when there is a great need for balance between short-term and long-term good. Whatever system of governance, with ways of bringing those carrying the merits, discipline and good hearts to surface like buoyancy, necessary to secure a good future for all. The paradox of calling for the good to rise up - is how those truly good may often fail to recognize their part of the intended audience, being too humble in accepting their own worth. Let's be thankful, for nature lead us to solution. In this case, the birds.

The tyranny of merit arises from more than the rhetoric of rising. It consists in a cluster of attitudes and circumstances that, taken together, have made meritocracy toxic. First, under conditions of rampant inequality and stalled mobility, reiterating the message that we are responsible for our fate and deserve what we get erodes solidarity and demoralizes those left behind by globalization. Second, insisting that a college degree is the primary route to a respectable job and a decent life creates a credentialist prejudice that undermines the dignity of work and demeans those who have not been to college; and third, insisting that social and political problems are best solved by highly educated, value-neutral experts is a technocratic conceit that corrupts democracy and disempowers ordinary citizens.

This book challenges us to reinterpret “merit” as a culturally constructed set of knowledges, behaviors, and values that reflect historically specific personal preferences and prejudices, often used by elites to maintain their power.

The recklessness of the governments of two terrestrial countries has been obvious, when they have ordered their combat pilots to attack our space and scout ships, as soon as they are detected on their radar. This is highly dangerous for the crew members of your airplanes, because if they approach our gravitational field, their engines and controls become inoperative. In this way, several have lost their lives . . . They do not seem to understand that our orders are clear, not to harm their craft. Otherwise, at least 50 of their planes would have been destroyed. We are aware that many high-ranking military personnel and scientists have been silenced under the pretense of endangering the security of their countries, if public statements were to be made. This is another serious mistake of those governments. If we had any ambition or desire to conquer this planet, we would have done it 300 years ago, when the population could not have opposed any resistance. Even now, it would not be difficult to do. This phase is alternative: we shall continue making appearances, landings, contacts, all over the world, more and more frequently, as planned. You will be responsible for the education of the people in the different countries . . . using all means available. This is a difficult task, because you will be left to your own means [and] you will have against you those who do not take you seriously, and the dark machinations of the great established powers on your planet, hampering, creating doubts, and attacking you as promoters of this knowledge . . . After many years of observation and analysis of your world . . . the conclusion was that humankind, with few exceptions, were a barbarian horde . . . from the deepest levels of their spirit, and utterly incorrigible. Nevertheless, because of the merit of the few, [we are giving] direct help to many men, instructing them. It requires in many cases their evacuation from this planet, to a special place where they will be provided with a new conscience, to be transmitted afterwards to their fellow men . . . The disappearances of such people from Earth have already begun . . . This procedure holds the key to the future of your planet.

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

For Adams, the American Revolution was about independence from Great Britain and what he called the “Purification” of America—the eradication of “Vices” left over from British rule and “an Augmentation of our Virtues.” The foremost vice, which had provoked resentment in Adams throughout his adult life, and especially once he became a successful Boston lawyer, was that a handful of old, wealthy families monopolized important offices. Sometimes, one individual held numerous high offices. Adams thought that merit, not old money or ties to the powerful in London, should be the basis of holding office. Furthermore, it was bad enough to see his ambitions blocked by the scions of those “opulent, monopolizing” clans, but he was enraged by the “Scorn and Contempt and turning up of the Nose” that these people exhibited toward an accomplished and educated man like himself who descended from the “common People.” More than a decade before the Declaration of Independence, Adams said that those who rode the coattails of their “Ancestors’ Merit” had no right “to inherit the earth… . All men are created equal.

For example, in many developing countries, children, and in particular girls, do not spend enough time at school, even when school is free, to learn as they should. To change this, the following strategies have been suggested: •Unconditional cash transfers for girls; •Cash transfers for girls, conditional on attendance; •Merit scholarships for girls; •Free primary school uniforms; •Deworming through primary schools; •Providing information to parents about the increased wages of those who stay at school. All of these strategies look plausible. When resources for education are scarce, as they always are, especially in developing countries, which one should be tried? In the absence of randomized testing, it would be impossible to know. But the Jameel Poverty Action Lab has tested them and found that the last one on the list is by far the most cost-effective. Every $100 spent on providing information to parents about the increased wages of those who stay at school results in an amazing 20.7 additional years spent at school! Deworming through primary schools is also highly cost-effective, leading to 13.9 additional years spent at school per $100 spent. Of the remaining interventions, the first two are relatively ineffective, both gaining less than 1 additional year per $100, and the cash transfers, whether conditional or unconditional, gain less than one-tenth of an additional year per $100.8 The most effective method thus results in more than two hundred times the benefits of the two least effective methods, which means that for every $100 spent on one of the least effective methods, $99.50 is wasted. When resources are limited and education is so important to the future of children, that waste means that many human beings do not achieve their full potential.

If a parent is willing to call their adult child’s workplace to advocate for them, it is no surprise that they had harassed teachers and administration until they got what they felt their child deserved. It is a cycle of never-ending entitlement that leads to mediocrity. It starts with a parent pestering a teacher to get an undeserved grade for their child. Then they manipulate their kid’s way into college, or they get into college with grades they didn’t earn. Next, when the kid gets a job for skills and education that look good on paper but weren’t actually merited, they end up losing their job. And so far, parents cannot save a kid from being fired for poor work performance… at least not yet.

The children and young people upon whom came this outpouring of the Holy Spirit and through whom came these visions and revelations were members of the Adullam Rescue Mission in Yunnanfu, Yunnan Province, China. For the most part, these children had been beggars in the streets of the city. In some cases they were poor children with one or both parents dead and had been brought to the Home. There were also some prodigals who had run away from their homes in more distant parts of this or adjoining provinces. But from whatever source they came, these children, mostly boys ranging in ages from six to eighteen, had come to us without previous training in morals and without education. Begging is a sort of "gang" system in which stealing is a profitable part. The morals are what would be expected of a "gang" in a godless land. The Bible is carefully and daily taught in the Adullam Home, and the gospel is constantly preached. Since the children coming into the home have always been open to the teachings given, before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit recorded below, some of them were doubtless converted, while many had a very good knowledge of the main themes of the Bible. All who received the Holy Spirit knew enough to believe in one God and to trust in the blood of Christ for salvation. They also prayed for the fullness of the Holy Spirit. They sought Christ. We did not see any one seeking visions or any of the manifestations that were received day by day as all single heartedly prayed and praised the Lord Jesus. He alone was sought and magnified throughout all the weeks of the Spirit's outpouring. In this visitation from the Lord all were treated impartially. The oldest and the youngest, the first arrivals and the latest comers, the best and the worst, all sitting together around their common Father's table were alike treated to His heavenly bounties. This giving of the Promised Spirit was clearly a love gift of grace "apart from works" or personal merit. It was not something that was worked

Aristotle explains what a tyrant must do to retain power. He must prevent the rise of any person of exceptional merit, by execution or assassination if necessary. He must prohibit common meals, clubs, and any education likely to produce hostile sentiment. There must be no literary assemblies or discussions. He must prevent people from knowing each other well, and compel them to live in public at his gates. He should employ spies, like the female detectives at Syracuse. He must sow quarrels, and impoverish his subjects. He should keep them occupied in great works, as the king of Egypt did in getting the pyramids built. He should give power to women and slaves, to make them informers. He should make war, in order that his subjects may have something to do and be always in want of a leader

Such processes also take them beyond their own immediate family and friends and engage them in conversations with agency and civic leaders. These experiences show them that their ideas have merit and that they possess the capacity to voice their concerns in ways that are capable of gaining the ear of decision-makers. Alienation is commonly associated with the experience of political disenfranchisement.

Your memoirs captivated my attention to thinking of our current duplicitous educational system; the methods that schools are teaching young adults, to the growing number of suicidal and shooting cases in learning institutions. If I may, I’ll like to request your permission to administer a human behavioral study on your adolescent life. This is a simple study which entails me asking you questions through our regular correspondence so I can better understand what’s going through your mind when you were inducted into the Enlightened Royal Oracle Society and subsequently your services in the various Arab Households. Although I am familiar with the ancient Greco Roman pederasty ideology, I am beginning to excogitate if there are valuable merits, to this form of mentorship between an erastês and an erômenos. In your memoirs you mentioned that your secondary school education derived from this ancient practice. Obviously your positive experiences had made you a balanced and well-rounded man of the world. Let me know your thoughts if you are interested in this research? I’ll continue reading your weekly blogs and wish you the very best in the soon to be published Initiation, the 1st of your five books memoir. My spirits are uplifted when reading your correspondence. Keep them coming, my friend. All the best! Dr. A.S.

Intersectionality is a popular intellectual framework on campuses today; certain versions of it teach students to see multiple axes of privilege and oppression that intersect. While there are merits to the theory, the way it is interpreted and practiced on campus can sometimes amplify tribal thinking and encourage students to endorse the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. Common-enemy identity politics, when combined with microaggression theory, produces a call-out culture in which almost anything one says or does could result in a public shaming. This can engender a sense of “walking on eggshells,” and it teaches students habits of self-censorship. Call-out cultures are detrimental to students’ education and bad for their mental health. Call-out cultures and us-versus-them thinking are incompatible with the educational and research missions of universities, which require free inquiry, dissent, evidence-based argument, and intellectual honesty.

THE HORROR OF THE UNPROFESSIONAL I was surprised to learn that when Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter wanted to scold Russia for its campaign of airstrikes in Syria in the fall of 2015, the word he chose to apply was “unprofessional.” Given the magnitude of the provocation, it seemed a little strange—as though he thought there were an International Association of Smartbomb Deployment Executives that might, once alerted by American officials, hold an inquiry into Russia’s behavior and hand down a stern reprimand. On reflection, slighting foes for their lack of professionalism was something of a theme of the Obama years. An Iowa Democrat became notorious in 2014, for example, when he tried to insult an Iowa Republican by calling him “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” Similarly, it was “unprofessionalism” (in the description of Thomas Friedman) that embarrassed the insubordinate Afghan-war General Stanley McChrystal, who made ill-considered remarks about the president to Rolling Stone magazine. And in the summer of 2013, when National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed his employer’s mass surveillance of email and phone calls, the aspect of his past that his detractors chose to emphasize was … his failure to graduate from high school.14 How could such a no-account person challenge this intensely social-science-oriented administration? But it was public school teachers who made the most obvious target for professional reprimand by the administration. They are, after all, pointedly different from other highly educated professions: Teachers are represented by trade unions, not proper professional associations, and their values of seniority and solidarity conflict with the cult of merit embraced by other professions. For years, the school reform movement has worked to replace or weaken teachers’ unions with remedies like standardized testing, charter schools, and tactical deployment of the cadres of Teach for America, a corps of enthusiastic graduates from highly ranked colleges who take on teaching duties in classrooms across the country after only minimal training.

Similarly, a good-enough job will be very boring at points; it won’t perfectly utilize all our merits or pay a fortune. But we may make some real friends, have times of genuine excitement, and finish many days tired but with a sense of true accomplishment.

There is at least a whisper of doubt over my entire generation of educated blacks—a whisper, frankly, of inferiority. Are we where we are because of merit, or because of jerrybuilt, white guilt concepts like affirmative action and “diversity”? How different, really, is diversity’s stigmatization of us as “needy victims” from segregation’s stigmatization of us as inferiors? In either case, we are put in service to the white American imagination.… In both cases we were a means to a white end.

The “less educated are seen as responsible and blameworthy for their situation, even by the less-educated themselves.

Frank’s mention of a “moral judgment handed down by the successful” touched on something important. Encouraging more people to go to college is a good thing. Making college more accessible to those of modest means is even better. But as a solution to inequality and the plight of workers who lost out in the decades of globalization, the single-minded focus on education had a damaging side effect: eroding the social esteem accorded those who had not gone to college.

This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly. Maybe you spend three years in Massachusetts, studying constitutional law and discussing the relative merits of exclusionary vertical agreements in antitrust cases. For some, this might be truly interesting, but for you it is not. Maybe during those three years you make friends you’ll love and respect forever, people who seem genuinely called to the bloodless intricacies of the law, but you yourself are not called. Your passion stays low, yet under no circumstance will you underperform. You live, as you always have, by the code of effort/result, and with it you keep achieving until you think you know the answers to all the questions—including the most important one. Am I good enough? Yes, in fact I am. What happens next is that the rewards get real. You reach for the next rung of the ladder, and this time it’s a job with a salary in the Chicago offices of a high-end law firm called Sidley & Austin. You’re back where you started, in the city where you were born, only now you go to work on the forty-seventh floor in a downtown building with a wide plaza and a sculpture out front. You used to pass by it as a South Side kid riding the bus to high school, peering mutely out the window at the people who strode like titans to their jobs. Now you’re one of them. You’ve worked yourself out of that bus and across the plaza and onto an upward-moving elevator so silent it seems to glide. You’ve joined the tribe. At the age of twenty-five, you have an assistant. You make more money than your parents ever have. Your co-workers are polite, educated, and mostly white. You wear an Armani suit and sign up for a subscription wine service. You make monthly payments on your law school loans and go to step aerobics after work. Because you can, you buy yourself a Saab. Is there anything to question? It doesn’t seem that way. You’re a lawyer now. You’ve taken everything ever given to you—the love of your parents, the faith of your teachers, the music from Southside and Robbie, the meals from Aunt Sis, the vocabulary words drilled into you by Dandy—and converted it to this. You’ve climbed the mountain. And part of your job, aside from parsing abstract intellectual property issues for big corporations, is to help cultivate the next set of young lawyers being courted by the firm. A senior partner asks if you’ll mentor an incoming summer associate, and the answer is easy: Of course you will. You have yet to understand the altering force of a simple yes. You don’t know that when a memo arrives to confirm the assignment, some deep and unseen fault line in your life has begun to tremble, that some hold is already starting to slip. Next to your name is another name, that of some hotshot law student who’s busy climbing his own ladder. Like you, he’s black and from Harvard. Other than that, you know nothing—just the name, and it’s an odd one. Barack.

Making college more accessible to those of modest means is even better. But as a solution to inequality and the plight of workers who lost out in the decades of globalization, the single-minded focus on education had a damaging side effect: eroding the social esteem accorded those who had not gone to college.

In practice, most colleges and universities do less to expand opportunity than to consolidate privilege. For those who look to higher education as the primary vehicle of opportunity, this is sobering news.

The authors conclude that well-educated elites are no less biased than less-educated folk; “it is rather that [their] targets of prejudice are different.” Moreover, the elites are unembarrassed by their prejudice.They may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less-educated. Second, the reason for this lack of embarrassment relates to the meritocratic emphasis on individual responsibility. Elites dislike those with lesser educations more than they dislike poor people or members of the working class, because they consider poverty and class status to be, at least in part, due to factors beyond one’s control. By contrast, they consider low educational achievement to represent a failure of individual effort, and therefore the fault of those who do not make it to college. “Compared to the working class, the less-educated were perceived to be more responsible and more blameworthy, they elicited more anger, and they were liked less.”42Third, this adverse judgment of the less-educated is not unique to elites;it is shared by the less-educated respondents themselves. This shows how deeply the meritocratic view of achievement has penetrated social life and how demoralizing it can be for those who do not go to college. “There are no indications that less educated people resist the negative attributions made about them.” To the contrary, they “even seem to internalize” these adverse judgments. The “less educated are seen as responsible and blameworthy for their situation, even by the less-educated themselves.

Formerly, a few families had set the fashion. From time immemorial everything had, in Dublin, been submitted to their hereditary authority; and conversation, though it had been rendered polite by their example, was, at the same time, limited within narrow bounds. Young people, educated upon a more enlarged plan, in time grew up; and, no authority or fashion forbidding it, necessarily rose to their just place, and enjoyed their due influence in society. The want of manners, joined to the want of knowledge in the new set, created universal disgust: they were compelled, some by ridicule, some by bankruptcies, to fall back into their former places, from which they could never more emerge. In the meantime, some of the Irish nobility and gentry who had been living at an unusual expense in London—an expense beyond their incomes— were glad to return home to refit; and they brought with them a new stock of ideas, and some taste for science and literature, which, within these latter years, have become fashionable, indeed indispensable, in London. That part of the Irish aristocracy, who, immediately upon the first incursions of the vulgarians, had fled in despair to their fastnesses in the country, hearing of the improvements which had gradually taken place in society, and assured of the final expulsion of the barbarians, ventured from their retreats, and returned to their posts in town. So that now,' concluded Sir James, 'you find a society in Dublin composed of a most agreeable and salutary mixture of birth and education, gentility and knowledge, manner and matter; and you see pervading the whole new life and energy, new talent, new ambition, a desire and a determination to improve and be improved—a perception that higher distinction can now be obtained in almost all company, by genius and merit, than by airs and dress.

The classrooms were dotted with a few windows, as thin as arrow slits—so thin that a body couldn’t have slipped through. They were a beautiful metaphor for the institution’s educational system, a straitjacket that didn’t even try to give the illusion of freedom. I appreciated the irony of the thing, at least it had the merit of being consistent.