"We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based," President Trump pledged in his inaugural address.
Once a skeptic of American meritocracy -- a "a system of frantic adolescent hoop-jumping and résumé-building" to create a college-educated elite -- Ross Douthat thinks left-wing elites have gone too far to replace merit with race-and-gender equity, he writes in the New York Times.
"Better standardized tests than constant political litmus tests," he writes. "Better an atmosphere of amoral competition than an atmosphere of moral conformism."
That brings him to Vivek Ramaswamy's call for Americans to stop celebrating "the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian," and return to prizing excellence, "nerdiness" and hard work.
Upper-class students are working very hard to get into elite colleges, writes Douthat. He's not sure extending the "academic pressure cooker" to every young American would be a good idea.
Not everyone wants to be an "uber-nerd," he writes. Americans believe that "hard work and competence and adult seriousness" -- not necessary "excellence" -- should result in a secure, reasonably prosperous life.
The future of America depends on high school quarterbacks as well as engineers, he argues. We're "a society of outsider geniuses, people who don’t fit into meritocratic systems, tricksters and dreamers and religious fanatics and utopians and cranks who sometimes get one thing very right."
Many of the pioneers of Silicon Valley were "dropouts and experimenters," not GPA-maximizing achievers, Douthat writes. Meritocracy 2.0 needs "standardized tests and academic standards and managerial competence," he argues. But it needs more.
"Tiger Mother" Amy Chua, the Yale Law professor who praised high-pressure parenting to raise high-achieving children, has survived her critics, write Peter Savodnik on The Free Press. After years of calumny, she is "stronger, more famous, more infamous."
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother made Chua a symbol of "initiative, excellence, discipline, perseverance — meritocracy," he writes. And a target. She was seen as "not just wrong but offensive, even 'dangerous'.”
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On Inauguration Day, Chua and her husband were in Washington as special guests of the new vice president, her former student, J.D. Vance. She encouraged him to publish his story, Hillbilly Elegy, and helped him find an agent.
There is quite a lot of irony in Amy Chua's book, which was missed by the many that commented on it, without reading it.
How does one have merit in a world of tiger moms, helicopter parents, and massive differences in resources. Those who demand merit are the one's who are the best maze runners.