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| Andrew Mellon, who thought the poor deserved to be poor |
If it is true that Jefferson and John Adams died within 5 hours of each other, both after 80 years of life, on precisely the same day, hundreds of miles apart, on the Fourth of July, then one might be forgiven for seeing the hand of God in that, and, perhaps, a message.
Jefferson was a nasty man in some respects: Not only did he own slaves, but he was so fearful of anything which might foment slave rebellion he agitated to forbid anyone from freeing their slaves after he died (amanuensis) and he freed only two of his own slaves, brothers of the mother of his own children, Sally Hemmings.
It is difficult to "know" historical figures, no matter how much you read about them. Think about what might be said of you by a biographer living even 50 years after you died. Mersault, in The Stranger, remarks with own fascination at his own trial as a portrait of a man he did not recognize springs up before his jury--and it was a portrait of himself.
Jefferson did write a document which enunciated the proposition that kings enjoyed their wealth and power not because they were chosen by God, but because they were born lucky, and other men, like Jefferson and his plantation monarchs were every bit the equal of King George III. This was a truly revolutionary idea, that the randomness of birth did not have to determine ones fate, because it was not the expression of God's will, but was actually, quite random.
Out of this idea that it is a man's opinion of himself which ought to determine his own fate grew the idea that in the ideal society, "merit" rather than an accident of birth should determine who gets the prizes society can offer.
But what is "merit" and how do you determine, test for merit?
In 21st century America there are two well known pathways to the glittering prizes along the road of "merit." There is the road less traveled, that road of Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, Bob Dylan, nameless nerd tech entrepreneurs, but it is a risky road, strewn with the corpses of a thousand failures for each trumpeted success. Then there is the more reliable road, through good schools, examinations and salaried jobs. The boy or girl who grows up in Winnetka, Illinois, Shaker Heights, Ohio, Chevy Chase, Maryland, Scarsdale, New York, the upper West Side of Manhattan and progresses from Phillips Exeter Academy to Princeton to Chase Manhattan Bank has done so, not by accident of birth, from having been born into royalty and wealth but because he/she has "merit."
It is this more orderly, predictable, safe and monitored pathway which is the numerically significant path to the glittering prizes and to the creation of a stable upper class in America. In one sense, it is this pathway which is the socially and psychologically significant pathway because it offers that workable dream: Work hard, get ahead. The Bill Gates pathway is too fraught with failures to create anything like stability in a society. Few would argue Gates did not earn his success with merit, but you need the more reliable pathway, based on persistence and planning rather than extraordinary brilliance to make a nation work.
But, as it has played out over the centuries, the meritocracy has been perverted, and is now based on a lie. The "tests" are "rigged" in ways which are hidden, but real.
Thinking Fast and Slow elucidated one way in which the tests (like the SAT and the ACT) which select those who will go to Princeton etc seem fair. Take the question: Two balls together sell for $1.10. The larger ball costs $1 more than the smaller. What is the price of each ball? Most students leap at the obvious answer: the large ball costs $1 and the small ball costs 10 cents, go on to the next question. The test is timed. You are in a hurry. Tick, tick, tick. But, if you stop to think, that would mean the large ball is only 90cents more than the small ball. The answer is $1.05 and 5 cents. So, fair enough, the 75% of kids who got into Harvard saw the trick and got the question right.
But why did those kids succeed? Well, maybe because they were more intelligent, or because they were more thoughtful and didn't leap to a tempting conclusion but asked themselves: Is there more to this question? Or maybe, more likely, because their parents paid for the Kaplan course, which prepared them for this sort of question. Were these kids actually smarter, more thoughtful, more meritorious, or just richer? Were these kids taught a habit of thinking and the tricks of the test, taught how to game the system?
Consider the question: "Does England have a Fourth of July?" Well, of course the English look at their calendars and see July and there is Thursday, July 4, 2013 right there. But one student may see to the meaning of that phrase "Fourth of July," and think, well, the English likely do not celebrate the loss of the American colonies, so, yes, they also have a Fifth of July, but they do not celebrate either in England. So the answer is "No." There is an implied meaning in that question and a literal one. The kids who answer the literal question go to Harvard. But are they better?
Or, how about the question: Pick the word which is closest in meaning to the word "Want": A/ Hunger B/ Need C/Advertise D/Job E/Appetite.
If you picked "Need" you go to Yale. But if you think about that word, "want," you might say, a "want" is something desired , which you may not need at all, where a need is something required. So everyone from the Rolling Stones to Noah Webster might say, that is a major distinction here and melding those two words shows a lack of respect for that difference. You might pick "hunger" figuring that is closer to the idea of desire, even though hunger implies a stronger compulsion than simply wanting something and some people hunger for something (or someone) they know they should not want. Advertise is an intriguing choice, in that Want Ads are advertisements for people who need help. And a person who has an appetite for something definitely wants something or has want, but appetite can be subtly different from want, because some people have an appetite for cigarettes but they do not want to smoke. "Need" is pretty close, but it does have that problem with necessity versus preference or desire.
So when we pick our star players, if we want to separate out the truly smart from the dull, we had better have meaningful, well thought out tests.
The Phantom knows a man who at age 12 applied to the Sidwell Friends School in Wasington, D.C. He applied because a friend on the Sidwell wrestling team wanted him to join that team, and the friend's parents urged the parents this promising wrestler to apply because admission to Sidwell could be "life changing." The wrestler took the standard private school admission test, and while he scored high in some areas (reading comprehension) his scores in math and grammar were abysmal. Discussion in the admission committee came down to: "We have 130 students with better grades and higher test scores than this kid. Why should he get one of only 15 slots in the 9th grade over these other 130 kids? Really, it comes down to the wrestling coach wants a star to build his team around. Is this what this school is really about? Aren't we supposed to admit kids based on merit?"
Someone on the committee argued the non merit angle: "Those other 130 kids are super bright and will do well in Montgomery County Schools, which are after all, excellent public schools, especially at the magnet programs, where those 130 will wind up. But as a school, we might just make a significant difference in this kid's life. He will be a challenge for us. He is a white kid. If he were a black kid, we would not even be having this discussion. We'd be admitting him in a flash for "diversity." Why not admit a kid whose diversity is in his academic talent?"
This wrestler's first year was a struggle. His grammar and syntax required a lot of attention. He made progress in math, but slow progress. In fact, he was pinned in his first match, to the chagrin and embarrassment of the parent who had sold this kid to the wrestling coach as the messiah. But by his senior year, this student was indistinguishable from his classmates in grammar, writing skills, classroom performance; even his math was passable. And he did, in fact, turn out to be the best wrestler in the school's history and as team captain, he brought along his teammates and the school placed #10 out of 145 schools at the National Prep tournament.
He went on to Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and is now a vascular surgeon, a specialty which has fewer spots than any other in surgery. In other words, he was successful and talented. He exceeded even his parents' expectations, especially his parents' expectations. (They had thought he was bright, but did not foresee much academic success because he was disorganized and messy. What they had not seen was his tenacity, persistence and discipline.) Did Sidwell set him on a track to success? Likely not. He got into a college he likely would have gone to from a public high school. He struggled there but eventually followed the same pattern of marked improvement with each year, graduating at the top of his class. What explained his success was not his academic pedigree but his persistence and his ability to compensate around his academic weaknesses with reliance on his academic strengths.
At the level of selection for high schools and colleges, a deranged testing process is merely misguided and ill considered, and even if it is perverted, there may be time to recover from it. The child who is turned down for Yale College may, through persistence wind up at Harvard Law, where the Yale College kid winds up at Suffolk Law.
And what of the meritocracy beyond schools? Doctors are trained first in medical schools, then selected for "residencies" at university hospitals based on their medical school performance and then for "fellowships" based on performance in residency, but also based on standardized examinations.
And after they have finished their training they take "Board" exams to be "certified" in different specialties. After 4 years of medical school and another 2 to 8 years of training whether or not they get certified in their specialty depends on an examination. If a doctor goes to St. George's medical school in the Caribbean and trains at a community hospital in South Dakota and he passes his Board exam, he can claim superiority to the doctor who went to Harvard medical school, trained at Mass General but failed the certifying exam.
In some specialties, like Internal Medicine, this examination process is, to say the least, tainted. The American College of Physicians, which prepares the exam also sells a "review" program for close to $1,000, and puts on "review courses" for another $1,000. And woe to the doctor who thinks, "Hey, I'm well trained. I don't need to spend that kind of money to pass another exam." The kid from South Dakota scrapes that money together and he sees all the exam questions and their answers before he sits for the test and he finds he is superior to the guy who spent 8 years toiling away at the high powered programs.
In other words, the exam is a commercial enterprise and can be bought, and the idea of "merit" becomes, once again, the reality of shrewdness, money and gaming.
What is real merit in a doctor? The Phantom thinks he knows. But the Phantom would be hard put to dream up a written exam to discern merit in a doctor. He surely sees the lack of merit in doctors who have passed all their Board exams and he sees great merit in some doctors who have gone to very humble medical schools. But quality in good doctors is unmistakable, over time, when you see what they do for their patients, and you see it in discussions at medical journal clubs, where doctors meet to analyze the medical literature and you see it in the notes doctors write referring physicians in which they analyze what is wrong with patients.
Somehow, the ideal of real merit in American medicine, and likely in academia in general has been replaced by the will to make a dollar. Merit has been monetized, and gamed.
Someday someone will write an Animal Farm allegory about the dissolution of that great, animating ideal of "meritocracy." In the beginning all the creatures feel so liberated from the yoke of your-birth-is-your-fate. A new day dawns with individuals who work hard, who strive, who improve themselves through tenacious effort, rising to the top. But then, the well born figure out how to game the merit system and at the final dinner scene, you look from face to face and you cannot distinguish the people from the pigs.
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