Secular liberals (“Here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”) believe in meritocracy. What gives some of us, acting through government, the right to rule over the rest? Answer: the leaders have succeeded by doing well at the best schools, then landing through their school networks the best jobs. In the “free market” of ideas, the best and the brightest—whether the products of law school, consulting firms, academia, foundations, or the media—usually prevail. The point is, the power elite, the meritocracy, begins with academic competition that sorts out the best from the rest.And where is this meritocracy born? Well, in the private schools or exceptional public schools that feed the better universities. Much less often, the best come from the average or poor public middle and high schools that seem to be “dumping grounds" for those whose parents can’t or won’t pay for private school. Public schools, often poorly led, almost always employ teachers that in the most anti-meritocracy way possible, make no distinction between good and bad in how they pay or retain staff. Unions dedicated to employee security fight every effort mounted to reward good teachers and fire bad ones. In the better schools, it’s about the students. In most public schools, it’s about protecting teachers’ jobs.
Teaching used to be an honored profession, dominated by women with few alternative employment prospects, women who made public education work. But as good teachers left for greener pastures in the 1970s, as bussing and forced integration made schools more about social engineering than education, the replacement teachers put their energy into protecting themselves from termination based upon any lack of student performance. They formed and joined unions that became so dominant in the Democratic Party that by 2008, 10% of the Democratic convention delegates were teachers. So today, security-before-ability teachers unions dominate education, when if Democrats were true to their core beliefs, schools would instead honor meritocracy; rewarding its best teachers and terminating the worst, in the cause of properly educating tomorrow’s workforce.
1 comment:
Highly competitive systems often favor those who are the most ruthless rather than those who are the most good (best).
That is the problem of places like Hawaii -- where now, the only way people think they can win, is to lie, cheat and steal
Eventually though, you have nothing but a culture and society that rewards and promotes that -- and all the good people leave.
And so everybody remaining preys on everybody else in a final vicious cycle -- and so people become desensitized to the brutalities of people getting battered in the streets and every court decision is an outrage and violation of all one's sensibilities.
Generally the best and the brightest see these things and refuse to cooperate and play these games. It is the very mediocre types who think they are the best and the brightest and think they will win at these games not worth winning -- because they don't know any better but to conform to the established pattern.
That's what the great heroes of cultural lore do -- transcend the present rotten establishment and create something better -- and not like the countless technocrats, think that it is just enough to rise to the top of a rotten system.
That kind of striving is worthless -- but seems to be the problem of life in Hawaii anymore. It's sad and hopeless.
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