6 The Sorting Machine

So, what do about it?  Sandel speaks to the SAT and the notion of higher education being the sorting machine for who will be acknowledged at the top, and the subject of disdain. That idea that education will solve the problem, especially an educational system based on talent and effort, well, so far it has failed, exacerbating the reliance on merit.  

INTIMATIONS OF THE TYRANNY OF MERIT

Sandel points to what happened at Harvard, under Conant, who was the president for several decades.  The frame was that: “The nation did not need more students going to college, Conant thought; it needed better ones (p. 160),” as in being against the GI Bill after WWII.”  The SAT and other means were to be used to find said “better” students.  It failed, as people already at the top found ways to increase SAT scores.

CONANT’S MERITOCRATIC LEGACY

Sandel sums it up: “Rhetorically and philosophically, Conant’s meritocratic ideology has won the day. But it has not played out the way he expected (p. 163).”  Conant had hoped for mobility, going both up and down, such as the top at times also becoming the bottom. It did not work. The top is entrenched, an few at the bottom can ever hope to reach the top.

SAT SCORES TRACK WEALTH

As noted, the people at the top found ways to win the SAT score battle.  The people down the stream still did not have a chance. 

MERITOCRACY ENTRENCHES INEQUALITY

As Sandel makes clear, meritocracy breeds meritocracy, as in “Notwithstanding the American dream of rising from rags to riches, upward mobility is less common in the United States than in many European countries, and there is no evidence of improvement in recent decades (p. 163).”  And, again, higher education is not helping, but rather is exacerbating the problem.

WHY ELITE COLLEGES ARE NOT ENGINES OF MOBILITY

Elite colleges pretend to be helping, but most students are from families of meritocratic elite.  Meritocratic hubris reins in the elite universities.  Sandel claims it reins at the upper crust public universities, as well, as in also making the problem worse.

MAKING MERITOCRACY MORE FAIR

Sandel lays it all out:  “… focusing only on the unfairness of the current system begs a bigger question at the heart of Conant’s meritocratic revolution: Should colleges and universities take on the role of sorting people based on talent to determine who gets ahead in life? There are at least two reasons to doubt that they should. The first concerns the invidious judgments such sorting implies for those who get sorted out, and the damaging consequences for a shared civic life. The second concerns the injury the meritocratic struggle inflicts on those who get sorted in and the risk that the sorting mission becomes so all-consuming that it diverts colleges and universities from their educational mission. In short, turning higher education into a hyper-competitive sorting contest is unhealthy for democracy and education alike … (p. 171).”  Well, yes, the focus is completely on path 0G without regard for the shared other-interest among all students on path 0M.  DIT makes clear it is bound to fail.

SORTING AND THE ALLOCATION OF SOCIAL ESTEEM

Here is the predictable first failure.  Sorting people with a SAT test is to point with disdain at people who score lower on it, and encourages hubris among the high scoring students. A test designed to find the most talented presumes that is the only criterion for life. Quoting Gardner, author of a 1961 book titled Excellence:  “If a society sorts people out efficiently and fairly according to their gifts, the loser knows that the true reason for his lowly status is that he is not capable of better. That is a bitter pill for any man.” Bitter pill indeed, and as the British Sociologist Young had pointed out, is it at the heart of the case against meritocracy.

WOUNDED WINNERS

Even the winners are not winning. As Sandel points out, the win is often “… forged in pain—in the soul-destroying demands that meritocratic striving inflicts upon the young … often at the cost of transforming their high school years into a high-stress, anxiety-ridden, sleep-deprived gauntlet of Advanced Placement courses, test-prep tutoring, sports training, dance and music lessons, and a myriad of extracurricular and public service activities, often under the advice and tutelage of private admissions consultants whose fees can cost more than four years at Yale … (also leading to) helicopter parenting (p. 176).”  And the costs often grow, in said winners having some of the “highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of any group of children in this country. When researchers look at kids across the socioeconomic spectrum, they find that the most troubled adolescents often come from affluent homes (p. 179).”  Sandel highlights one Harvard admissions officer who pointed to said winners as  “dazed survivors of some bewildering life-long boot-camp (p. 179).”

STILL HOOP-JUMPING

And, it never stops.  All manner of clubs, organizations, teams are provided at the universities. Grade obsession also plagues the winners.  

HUBRIS AND HUMILIATION

Sandel continues:  “Among those who land on top, it induces anxiety, a debilitating perfectionism, and a meritocratic hubris that struggles to conceal a fragile self-esteem. Among those it leaves behind, it imposes a demoralizing, even humiliating sense of failure. These two tyrannies share a common moral source—the abiding meritocratic faith that we are, as individuals, wholly responsible for our fate …”  As DIT clarifies, said state of mind, keeping one on path 0G, can lead to all manner of problems, as the person is out of homeostatic balance with the shared other-interest on path 0M.  Humiliation on path 0G can also be tempered, made to be less damaging,  by a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself on path 0M.

A LOTTERY OF THE QUALIFIED

Sandel speaks to using a lottery for admissions.  People would take the tests and qualify. Then only a few would be admitted in a lottery. It would take away the hubris of the few who were admitted, now only being able to claim the luck of winning the lottery.

DISMANTLING THE SORTING MACHINE

The problem is access, access to what. Sandel points to the need for more public funding to keep costs down.  Also, need “… to devote greater support to community colleges, technical and vocational education, and job training. These are, after all, the educational settings in which the majority of Americans learn the skills they need to make a decent living.”  The emphasis would shift from meritocratic sorting to everyone finding a path to making a decent living.

Sandel also wants to put more attention --- and not only in higher education in elite universities --- but across the board “… to prepare (students) to be morally reflective human beings and effective democratic citizens, capable of deliberating about the common good (p. 190).”  DIT suggests the key role of talk, talk, talk about the content of the shared other-interest undergirding the common good.  Such capability is essential to tamping down the negative side of meritocracy, while still keeping the essential parts about people developing own talents and putting effort to bring same into play.

So, rather than only the merit based training,  which “ undermines the dignity of labor and corrupts the common good … (more attention needs to be put to a civic education which) can flourish in community colleges, job training sites, and union halls as well as on ivy-strewn campuses. There is no reason to suppose that aspiring nurses and plumbers are less suited to the art of democratic argument than aspiring management consultants (p. 192).”

CHASTENING MERIT’S HUBRIS

Sandel makes clear that the complete focus on “…merit tends to drive out grace; sooner or later, the successful assert, and come to believe, that their success is their own doing, and that those who lose out are less worthy than they (p. 192).”  The meritocratic hubris on path 0G closes out consideration of grace --- potentially shared among everyone --- on path 0M. DIT clarifies the need for homeostatic balance in merit&grace on path 0Z.