i ran into a random stanford alum in nyc yesterday. after going over our graduation years (she was '16, i white lied as a '21), she asked what i was reading. i responded with this book and she laughed: "yeah, that sounds right."
in the tyranny of merit, sandel poses that america spends all this energy trying to perfect our educational meritocracy (affirmative action, standardized testing, etc) without ever questioning its foundational assumptions — and their consequences for our civic and political fabric.
i loved the first half on the intellectual history of the meritocratic ideal and the evolution of higher ed as american symbol. this is where sandel's background as an undergrad philosophy professor shines: there are fascinating ties to protestantism and predestination, hayekian economics and rawlsian justice, eugenics and anti-semitism in college admissions.
the last half of the book discusses ways to define status outside of merit. sandel brings up the notion of "contributive justice," which for him, mostly translates into rewarding the act of work itself rather than the credential attached to it. yet in spanning policy areas from university admissions to progressive tax codes, i found the recommendations too shallow and scattered to be able to engage with the depth of the problems he identifies.
you might finish this book feeling pretty cynical: he suggests it's all but impossible to draw lines around 'merit' without creating a status hierarchy. it doesn't matter how fair the process is or how deserving the winners are — the communities you create are tainted by the fact of the gate itself, that the elite group is defined primarily by their superiority over those outside the lines.
meritocracy's ideals have been imprinted onto me familially and culturally; i've spent my whole life feeling disgusted by the endless hoop-jumping, yet continuing to participate again and again. statistically, i'm a relative "winner" in the meritocratic game, yet emotionally, i resonated with sandel's emphasis on the shame, humiliation, and indignity that meritocracy seeds.
but i don't know if i'll be able to do much different after reading this: sure, merit might be a social construct, but like all the other social constructs, it's all too real.
(jan 16, 2022)
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