4 Responses to “Some thoughts on Meritocracy from David Brooks”

1. 1 jim willis
   1/25/2005 at 12:31 pm

   As I’ve said before. Brooks should stick to writing. He’s much better at it than he is at looking all goofy on News Hour. Anyway, it’s a good piece. I wish it were a bit longer since the Economist piece has some great material that he should/could have vamped on, namely:

   Yet the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a concerted attempt to prevent America from degenerating into a class-based society. Progressive politicians improved state education. Philanthropists—many of them the robber barons reborn in new guise—tried to provide ladders to help the lads-o’-parts (Andrew Carnegie poured millions into free libraries). Such reforms were motivated partly out of a desire to do good works and partly out of a real fear of the implications of class-based society. Teddy Roosevelt advocated an inheritance tax because he thought that huge inherited fortunes would ruin the character of the republic. James Conant, the president of Harvard in 1933-53, advocated radical educational reform—particularly the transformation of his own university into a meritocracy—in order to prevent America from producing an aristocracy.

   I don’t think that anyone today has a fear of the implications of a class-based society. I suspect there are many people who silently wish for it. There’s no one in a position of power willing to say entitlement is evil at either end of the economic continuum . Mostly because no one could get elected to a position of power if they acted on that belief.

   Hopefully we can get the WB’s token sociologist to comment on this piece. Bob?

2. 2 Ken Clark
   1/25/2005 at 2:49 pm

   The part about how family influences education really makes sense to me. I grew up in Mississippi, arguably the worst schools in the nation, but I’m an educated person because my parents took an interest in what I learned, helped me in school, and taught me that school wasn’t the only place to learn stuff. I don’t know how you teach people to do something as simple as take an interest in their own children. It’s like when Lori brings home all these papers from Oliver’s pediatrician visits that actually say things like “you should play with/read to/hug your child.” If there really are there people who need to be told that, how much hope is there for them (or us)?

   ky

3. 3 jj
   1/25/2005 at 3:43 pm

   Excellent piece Kent!

4. 4 the crossfader
   1/25/2005 at 4:13 pm

   according to Brooks, apparently the U.S. a meritocracy. Was this before or after the Civil Rights Movement?