> You're equivocating on the word discrimination. When activists or people in the media talk about discrimination as a societal problem, they're referring to di

> You're equivocating on the word discrimination. When activists or people in the media talk about discrimination as a societal problem, they're referring to discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics. Kind of. I was highlighting the fact that the word "discrimination" is inherently ambivalent (you could also say equivocal I suppose) - it simply means to distinguish between. It’s no different to the words "categorisation" and "selection" in this sense. As you recognised, there are forms of discrimination that are absolutely necessary and even desirable - such as discriminating against someone without a medical degree to practise medicine. The point I was making is that it's not always so easy to distinguish between positive and negative forms of discrimination. Is it wrong to be biased against less-educated people? Well, it depends on the situation. Are you hiring for an important position that requires higher education? In this case, it would be unethical of you not to be biased against less-educated candidates. The problem I have with this kind of article is it paints a one-sided picture where discrimination-as-such is bad. You can make a compelling case for this. When you discriminate against people without a law degree for performing legal work, you deprive those people of a well-paying, high-status position in society. You could say that's not fair, and there’s truth in that. But what's the alternative? If your view is that all forms of discrimination are wrong, the logical answer is to do away with all forms of discrimination, even the positive ones. You can see this in the article by its promotion of non-quantitative assessments in education: > So, what could help overcome the education divide? One view is that different ways of scoring tests could help even the playing field. In several studies, Butera’s team showed that giving children graded tests or exam scores actually reduces motivation and performance in reasoning and decision making. If there are no graded scores it also reduces social comparison, which we know can often negatively affect performance, as Sheehy-Skeffington’s work revealed. If detailed feedback on how to improve is given instead of simple graded scores, it helps “focus on assessment as a tool for education” rather than assessment for selection, Butera argues. Of course removing graded scores “evens the playing field" and reduce social comparison. It also makes selection based on competence impossible - it’s “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. And don’t think for a minute that proponents of this think it should be strictly limited to primary education and not also apply to secondary or tertiary education, where grades and certifications supposedly have some value as selection criteria for employers. > Nobody is arguing that we should allow blind people to drive cars. Don’t be so sure. Arguing that we shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate by level of education is no different to this in principle - it’s only a matter of degree.