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The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

city-journal.org

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Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#111

Post by salad-fan »

kcplate wrote: post #80
salad-fan wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commenter went beyond curriculum with this part of their comment (which has since been edited to remove the word “woke”, I might add): > All of the politics and social justice, whatever you want to call is not part of the curriculum. I feel bad for people whose kids are forced into this nonsense.

I don’t read it thst way at all, and frankly with woke or not it seems to be a valid point in the discussion which centers around that very concept of the administrators and educators possibly placing their thumb on the scale. And I still don’t see how that is an entrance ramp to trying to shutdown the point they were making by laying some “invalid due to guilt by association”point. Just my opinion.

You not only misread what they wrote, you misread what I wrote.

I wasn’t saying the original commenter was “guilty by association”, I was pushing back on their “anti-wokenes” nonsense and pointing out that their choice of schooling isn’t without serious issues of its own.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#112

Post by fatjokes »

jcranmer wrote: post #69
fatjokes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um what. Last I checked Asians were definitely a racial minority in America. Saying they're not minorities because they're a majority of TJ is like saying Blacks aren't minorities because they're a majority in Harlem. It denies their lived experiences outside a very specific bubble.

I'm not saying that they're not a minority; I'm saying they're not a disadvantaged minority. And, in the larger context of TJ, there's an ongoing battle over the extremely low level of black and Hispanic population (which are largely disadvantaged) versus the extremely high level of Asian population.

Again, extremely narrow definition of advantage.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#113

Post by HDThoreaun »

rayiner wrote: post #3

As a TJ C/O 2002 graduate, this is pretty wild to hear. The national merit scholar announcements were a big deal when I was there. There was a school wide announcement and the list of what everyone got was distributed by the school. Actually, it looks like the Washington Post used to publish the lists at least as late as 2014. I don’t see anything from WaPo after that though.

I went to a school similar to TJ and we definitely didn't give a shit about national merit scholars. Like half the school got it so it would've just become another way to bully/exclude people if the school made a big deal about it.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#115

Post by HDThoreaun »

vjulian wrote: post #108
bruce511 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic is straight-forward. Whether it is necessary, correct, or advantageous, depends largely on your circumstances and personal put look. A) historically a number of groups have been disadvantaged. B) this has lead to those groups "falling behind" advantaged groups from a wealth perspective. [side bar - wealth begets wealth, while poverty begets poverty, and while it is possible to rise up it is hard] C) since i…

You skipped a critical step between G and H which seems to be overlaying skin color as an approximation for current social status. Edit: Though point taken that isn’t the case now with the high school policy. It does seem to be, however, a held sentiment.

Even lebron James has to deal with people calling him the n word. Diversity is about more than social status.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#116

Post by causality0 »

UncleMeat wrote: post #100
causality0 wrote: post #22

Rewarding bad behavior, regardless of its origin, does nothing but encourage more. My best friend growing up was Asian and worked his ass off every single day. I had a lot more fun than he did but he got into a better school and makes better money now because he fucking deserved to .

Bad behavior? The same kids still get the award. TJ isn’t deciding who gets the national merit scholarship. I personally think that my time hanging out with people watching classic rock concert footage during 8th period was rather valuable for my life and happiness and many of the personal skills I learned are valuable for my career. This isn’t about deprioritizing excellence.

This isn’t about deprioritizing excellence.

Agreed, it's about giving fifty percent reward for zero percent effort.

I think HN readers remember perhaps better than most how much the "peanut gallery" in the back of the class interfered with our ability to learn. I find the idea those assholes are going to get at least half credit for doing nothing absutely repugnant.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#117

Post by rayiner »

UncleMeat wrote: post #91
rayiner wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to TJ and grew up in northern VA. When I was there the announcement was made publicly and distributed to everyone. I’m not sure if we had a school district email account back then but that’s not how it was communicated, nor was it communicated by private letter. Yes this is part of the culture war, but that’s not a reason to dismiss it out of hand. Everyone in this story was a democrat until 2015. Around then…

[flagged]

There is a concrete policy proposal from the right and center: stick with the admissions process TJ has used for decades, based on grades and standardized tests. The same factors used all over the world for this sort of thing.

You can call it part of the “culture war,” but so what? Culture matters. Since the 1920s, we have relied on race-blind, objective metrics like standardized testing. It has worked really well, allowing numerous groups of outsiders (Jews, Italians, Asians) entry into the highest reaches of society. It’s working fine for Hispanics, who are assimilating economically at the same rate as previous generations of immigrants, including in states like California where affirmative action is still illegal. If you want to replace that with a system of racial gerrymandering, you don’t get to dismiss the opposition to that change as “culture war” “nonsense.”

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#118

Post by candiodari »

rayiner wrote: post #77
defrost wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That summary ignores all the relevant context. All that you added was not in the article and therefore not in the summary of the thrust of the article. > The story is thus about a deliberate decision by the administration to downplay a certain kind of educational metric It's about results arriving late and then filtering through what is pretty much a universal hand to hand to students that all school suffer through…

> All that you added was not in the article and therefore not in the summary of the thrust of the article. If I picked up an article in a newspaper in your country about some long running politically contentious issue, would it include years of backstory so I could understand the significance of it with zero background knowledge of the situation? > It's about results arriving late and then filtering through what is p…

> We’re talking about education. Simple question: In your country, do you have people trying to get rid of standardized testing on the theory that it’s “racist?”

Well, I'm from .be where teachers fight it. There are many excuses used, inequality coming to the foreground in the past 10 years or so, but the real reason is that it would allow comparison between teachers and schools (and thus expose bad teachers and schools). The whole sector rallies around this opposition, including the various levels of government (because selective parents are a cause of higher expenditures). Public education is objectively worse than the (less funded) alternatives. We have 7 different governments, 4 of which have their own education system. They're all worse than private education, and catholic education when test scores at universities get compared.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#120

Post by ipaddr »

salad-fan wrote: post #109
fjord788 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026962/ > It should be noted that while childhood sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has received extensive media coverage, childhood sexual abuse by teachers and others is also a serious problem. Charol Shakeshaft, who has done extensive research on the problem of sexual abuse of students by teachers, recognizes the difficulty of collecting solid data on sexual abuse; but u…

That proves nothing - Catholic schools are still schools, after all. The point is that the Catholic Church has a systemic child abuse problem that includes, but extends beyond, its schools.

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