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February 21, 2010
The failed promise of America's modern meritocracy?
David Brooks, the New York Times' in-house "conservative" columnist (scare quotes because he strikes me as more of an old-school Democrat than an actual conservative) recently penned an interesting piece examining the seeming failure of America's modern meritocracy to equal -- much less improve upon -- the stellar work done by previous generations of much-less diverse and perhaps less-intensively schooled members of the ruling class, from boardrooms to newsrooms.
Yet here’s the funny thing. As we’ve made our institutions more meritocratic, their public standing has plummeted. We’ve increased the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society, yet trust in elites has never been lower.
It’s not even clear that society is better led. Fifty years ago, the financial world was dominated by well-connected blue bloods who drank at lunch and played golf in the afternoons. Now financial firms recruit from the cream of the Ivy League. In 2007, 47 percent of Harvard grads went into finance or consulting. Yet would we say that banks are performing more ably than they were a half-century ago?
Government used to be staffed by party hacks. Today, it is staffed by people from public policy schools. But does government work better than it did before?
Journalism used to be the preserve of working-class stiffs who filed stories and hit the bars. Now it is the preserve of cultured analysts who file stories and hit the water bottles. Is the media overall more reputable now than it was then?
The promise of the meritocracy has not been fulfilled. The talent level is higher, but the reputation is lower.
I've long said that education -- formal education -- is vastly overrated as an indication of knowledge or ability. Years ago, when I was in the journalism biz, I had two reporters who worked the day beat. One had earned a Masters at the Columbia School of Journalism, the Mecca, Medina and Burning Man of the Change-The-World Journalism Types. The other was a guy who'd graduated high school, having learned the merits of "Who, What, Where, When, Why and How."
Want to guess which one was a tenacious, ace reporter, and which one had a hard time reporting on a cat stuck in a tree?
That high school grad was a great reporter; the Columbia grad, not so much.
Brooks offers some theories for what's gone wrong:
First, the meritocracy is based on an overly narrow definition of talent. Our system rewards those who can amass technical knowledge. But this skill is only marginally related to the skill of being sensitive to context. It is not related at all to skills like empathy. Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating.
Second, this new system has created new social chasms. In the old days, there were obviously big differences between people whose lives were defined by “The Philadelphia Story” and those who were defined by “The Grapes of Wrath.” But if you ran the largest bank in Murfreesboro, Tenn., you probably lived in Murfreesboro. Now you live in Charlotte or New York City. You might have married a secretary. Now you marry another banker. You would have had similar lifestyle habits as other people in town. Now the lifestyle patterns of the college-educated are very different from the patterns in other classes. Social attitudes are very different, too.
[...]
Fourth, time horizons have shrunk. If you were an old blue blood, you traced your lineage back centuries, and there was a decent chance that you’d hand your company down to members of your clan. That subtly encouraged long-term thinking.
I think Brooks is absolutely correct. He calls it context -- or an inability to grasp the proper context -- but I think his first point is more about the contrast between living in the real world, versus theorizing about it in an academic environment.
I can't find much fault in his next two points, either.
When you look at the amazing progress this nation made in the late 19th century and early 20th, and the generations of scientists, engineers, bricklayers and construction workers who created the industrial colossus that emerged from World War II as the mightiest ever, what they shared was an educational background that concentrated on rote memorization of the works of Dead White Men, strict classroom discipline, competition, and a complete disregard for the feelings and self-esteem (the what?!) of children.
Brooks, who hit the bestseller lists a few years back with his book, Bobos in Paradise , has stumbled upon the truth of our current perilous and parlous state of affairs: Our ruling class has learned much, but knows how to do very little.
Posted by Mike Lief at February 21, 2010 09:26 PM
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Comments
I think, based on his writtings about her, that he completely misses how Sarah Palin is an example of the old-school approach he holds up.
Posted by: andrewdb at February 22, 2010 08:37 AM