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The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

city-journal.org

121–130 of 162 posts

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#121
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that what caused you to ignore facts and logic while you increasingly get more emotional?

You were hurt when the original commenter said those school have less wokeness. You strongly believe in social justice and concern yourself woke.

You don't defend your social wokeness by putting someone else down. If social wokeness is all you think it is then let it standup on its own merits and present discussion around why it is better than less wokeness or no wokeness at all.

This is a conversation about one topic that you decided needed to be used a prop to push another idea. You are not living up to the wokeness ideals you seek to defend by doing this. Perhaps a tiktok video where you dance around a painting of the word wokeness would further your point more than putting down another group.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#122
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that what caused you to ignore facts and logic while you increasingly get more emotional? You were hurt when the original commenter said those school have less wokeness. You strongly believe in social justice and concern yourself woke. You don't defend your social wokeness by putting someone else down. If social wokeness is all you think it is then let it standup on its own merits and present discussion around why…

Oh I’m sorry I thought we were having a grown up conversation. Have a nice day.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#123
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

No you. You’re the ones defending child molesters, after all.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#124
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That summary ignores all the relevant context. Since the 1980s, TJ has been a highly selective public high school. The average test scores there are comparable to several Ivy League colleges. As is common all over the world, TJ’s admissions process was based on standardized testing and grades. This was completely uncontroversial for decades. The National Merit Scholarship is based on a standardized test called the PS…

You're definitely right, but this conversation gets utterly muddled by the approaches that the right uses. Just click into the home page of that site, and see how every single article is something shitting "wokeness" or diversity. This is the texture of the debate right now in the US. The far right have colonized all theae reasonable positions as sort of gateways into more extreme ideology. What you say is reasonable…

> but this conversation gets utterly muddled by the approaches that the right uses.

Sure, and a lot of conversations about racism or inequality are muddled by the approaches used by the far left. Should we stop taking reasonable positions just because far right (or far left) happens to agree and benefit from those?

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But is skin color an effective, useful, or correct overlay or proxy? What are the downsides? What are the alternatives? Skin color differences in a group = diversity is perplexing to many and offensive to others, nor does it seem to logically stand up to scrutiny.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet that there has literally never been a school that failed to notify the recipients before now. It is not just an honor for the student, but the school itself. Yes, now, the National Merit organization will probably come up with a direct notification procedure, but it was not a failure on their part to assume that schools would act in their own self-interest.

Except that the article says the school did notify the students. Overall I'm just confused by it.

You are probably confused because you didn't read the article carefully? It says the school notified "after the early-application deadlines had passed".

Also: "On Monday, December 12, after getting caught, Kosatka sent an email to the parents of Commended Students, notifying them of the “important recognition” and saying, “We are deeply sorry” for not sharing the news earlier. He claimed school officials would contact college admissions offices to correct the record."

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#127
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 graduated around the same time and never once cared about this crap. TJ didn’t have a valedictorian because it created unnecessary competition and pressure. If the decision to remove the valedictorian was made today you’d see breathless complaining from Asra in the Washington Times about how this was sending the school down the toilet. In what way is it critical to loudly publish awards handed out to students based…

> and never once cared about this crap

By any chance, are you privileged enough that you never have to care about such "crap"? Because believe me, what you call "crap" might be a big ladder for someone less privileged to climb out of their actual crappy situations. Such "crap" labels often help getting admission to a good college, or embellishing your resume if you want and need a good job.

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You think LeBron is more or less privileged than some poor white kid from Appalachia?

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#129
post #45

I thought when people talked about this kind of thing, they were being ridiculously hyperbolic.

They are. This article is literally hyperbolic about parents being slow to get emails that their kid is special

Those slow notifications actually affected college admissions process for the kids. Read the last paragraph:

"On Monday, December 12, after getting caught, Kosatka sent an email to the parents of Commended Students, notifying them of the “important recognition” and saying, “We are deeply sorry” for not sharing the news earlier. He claimed school officials would contact college admissions offices to correct the record."

Re: The war on merit takes a bizarre turn

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But is skin color an effective, useful, or correct overlay or proxy? What are the downsides? What are the alternatives? Skin color differences in a group = diversity is perplexing to many and offensive to others, nor does it seem to logically stand up to scrutiny.

There are a few ways to look at why schools value diversity. As the other child comment points out, Lebron clearly is more privileged than most white people, but that doesn't mean he hasn't experienced things that no white person has. Certainly some of the diversity push is about giving disadvantaged students an equalizing advantage, but a large part of the push is because schools legitimately believe having different perspectives is advantageous. And make no mistake, black people do have very different experiences, and therefore perspectives, than white people in this country. Not just because they're discriminated against either, they have a unique cultural perspective/identity that may be valuable for other students to interact with.

I do think it's unfortunate that cultural groups have largely coalesced around race in this country, but that's the reality, and it won't change if the groups don't interact with each other.

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