My own profession once allowed entry with ‘O’ levels as well as ‘A’ levels and degrees, and I know very capable practitioners who started that way. No longer; it’s now degrees only, and they tend to be in the subject, whereas in the past, they were overwhelmingly unrelated. I don’t see any improvement in quality, perhaps even a reduction in the emphasis on professional ethics, but on the other hand, I see a requirement to load up with student debt, or a door closed unnecessarily.
Robin P
3 years ago
Some good thoughts here from David Goodhart, but as is the nature of these things, I will identify a major shortcoming of the picture presented.
The thing is that the meritocracy is not even functioning as a rewarder and recogniser of merit. On the contrary, more and more the scum rise to the top. This is most conspicuous in the current presence of Johnson and Cummings in Downing Street, but is very much more extensive. The current systems strongly favour mindless parrotting, avoidance of important questioning, heavy conformity and self-conformity, and various very superficial indicators of supposed superiority, such as exam results, number of publish-or-perish articles published, and citation rate. And mere popularity, fame, and wealth are widely assumed to be indicators of merit. And mere activity is commonly falsely assumed to be a measure of success.
Meanwhile there are key genuine indicators of merit which are just about completely ignored by the “superiors” in control. These include the ability to make correct predictions, confirmed by others. And the ability to devise new systems which actually work in practice.
These criteria should properly be applied in reverse too. Francis Fukuyama’s End of History was already a patently stupid book the day it was published as far as I was concerned. And yet he is still widely treated as if he is some sort of solid intellectual thinker.
The whole situation is not helped by the profession of journalism, which appears to be a triumph of superficial quick judgements in the face of too many incoming “news releases”. The journalists’ practical “solution” is to mindlessly assume that expertise is found from “professors” and “universities” and only from “professors” and “universties”. Yet there is much evidence to the exact contrary. Meanwhile all other sources are simply ignored, and consistently so to the extent of invisibility (except when being derided as “conspiracy theories” or “misinformation” or even evil lying).
There is a much more extensive discussion and documentation of the disaster of our current pseudo-meritocracy systems in the book Experts Catastrophe (which was written before the current ongoing expert catastrophe).
This recalibration of status to raise up Hand and Heart is sorely needed, not only for the economy. Another social dynamic that can benefit is gender relations. The rise of high status women seeking ‘higher’ status men has led to a crisis of scarcity. Too many decent men left behind and not enough ‘good’ men to go around. If will take a sea change to restore the balance. Perception is all.
A shame that your comment gets published but mine of two hourrs earlier does not, simply because it exposes serious fault in the author’s assumptions. An emperor who cannot admit there’s a problem with his clothes
Was it put into Pending? In my experience lately, posts are put there quite arbitrarily. I’ve had a few and I cannot figure why. Then after a few days, it appears.
My own profession once allowed entry with ‘O’ levels as well as ‘A’ levels and degrees, and I know very capable practitioners who started that way. No longer; it’s now degrees only, and they tend to be in the subject, whereas in the past, they were overwhelmingly unrelated. I don’t see any improvement in quality, perhaps even a reduction in the emphasis on professional ethics, but on the other hand, I see a requirement to load up with student debt, or a door closed unnecessarily.
Some good thoughts here from David Goodhart, but as is the nature of these things, I will identify a major shortcoming of the picture presented.
The thing is that the meritocracy is not even functioning as a rewarder and recogniser of merit. On the contrary, more and more the scum rise to the top. This is most conspicuous in the current presence of Johnson and Cummings in Downing Street, but is very much more extensive. The current systems strongly favour mindless parrotting, avoidance of important questioning, heavy conformity and self-conformity, and various very superficial indicators of supposed superiority, such as exam results, number of publish-or-perish articles published, and citation rate. And mere popularity, fame, and wealth are widely assumed to be indicators of merit. And mere activity is commonly falsely assumed to be a measure of success.
Meanwhile there are key genuine indicators of merit which are just about completely ignored by the “superiors” in control. These include the ability to make correct predictions, confirmed by others. And the ability to devise new systems which actually work in practice.
These criteria should properly be applied in reverse too. Francis Fukuyama’s End of History was already a patently stupid book the day it was published as far as I was concerned. And yet he is still widely treated as if he is some sort of solid intellectual thinker.
The whole situation is not helped by the profession of journalism, which appears to be a triumph of superficial quick judgements in the face of too many incoming “news releases”. The journalists’ practical “solution” is to mindlessly assume that expertise is found from “professors” and “universities” and only from “professors” and “universties”. Yet there is much evidence to the exact contrary. Meanwhile all other sources are simply ignored, and consistently so to the extent of invisibility (except when being derided as “conspiracy theories” or “misinformation” or even evil lying).
There is a much more extensive discussion and documentation of the disaster of our current pseudo-meritocracy systems in the book Experts Catastrophe (which was written before the current ongoing expert catastrophe).
Here is a
link to the Amazon.com page of Experts Catastrophe.
To get to the UK page just put co.uk in place of com. (I.e.delete m and type in .uk)
This recalibration of status to raise up Hand and Heart is sorely needed, not only for the economy. Another social dynamic that can benefit is gender relations. The rise of high status women seeking ‘higher’ status men has led to a crisis of scarcity. Too many decent men left behind and not enough ‘good’ men to go around. If will take a sea change to restore the balance. Perception is all.
A shame that your comment gets published but mine of two hourrs earlier does not, simply because it exposes serious fault in the author’s assumptions. An emperor who cannot admit there’s a problem with his clothes
Was it put into Pending? In my experience lately, posts are put there quite arbitrarily. I’ve had a few and I cannot figure why. Then after a few days, it appears.