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Yes, this is a common strawman. Noone (sensible) is claiming that any system is a meritocracy. "Meritocracy" is just an ideal, like "equality", "fairness", or

• UncleMeat 5y ago
  > So, while obviously objective exams aren't "meritocracy", they are without doubt more meritocratic than not having objective exams. This is where we disagree dramatically. And this is why it is so frustrating to have people tell me that I "hate excellence" for supporting policy changes. By holding this assumption it enables you to both 1. Hold that meritocracy is an ideal 2. Conclude that people pushing for changes must oppose meritocracy But I simply do not agree. To me, admissions exams are like the Leetcode interviews that people decry here. The test something, but that thing is largely disconnected from actual work and instead just becomes an obstacle course. > If "these people" really wanted to move towards greater meritocracy (as opposed to abandoning meritocracy), they'd support things like, abolishment of "extracurricular activities" in college admissions, or legacy admissions, or maybe even things China's limit on the amount of tutoring kids can do (I personally thing this is both too extreme and ultimately counterproductive, but at least we can all agree that it's with the right goal in mind - increasing meritocracy). I am involved in local politics to change the admissions program for a public magnet school. "Woke" activists proposed a merit lottery, a system where all students who met a minimum GPA and math-level requirement could be entered into a random lottery for admissions. This was criticized by opponents for being "anti-meritocratic" and even "racist against asians". The eventually enacted policy maintains a "holistic" application, which does not consider race but does include these other topics. This received precisely the same criticism from opponents. Activists on the "woke" side preferred the merit lottery to this outcome. So what I see here is that activists, at least in the situations that I am personally involved in, do support things like the abolishment of extracurricular activities in admissions systems.
  • civilized 5y ago
    Ideas like merit lottery are very interesting and worthy of consideration on rational, liberal, universalist grounds, some of which you've hinted at here. Sadly, when they are promoted on the grounds of obtuse academic wokeness or identity politics, people instinctively infer that the real goal of such policies is to hand out undeserved benefits to minorities at the expense of a legitimate meritocracy.
    • UncleMeat 5y ago
      If it were merely instinct then I’d expect op eds calling supporters racists and “enemies of excellence” to stop after some time, but they haven’t.
      • civilized 5y ago
        We've heard, and continue to hear, vastly, vastly more about the identity politics grounds than the more worthy ones, and in my observation, that's not entirely or even mostly the fault of the critics of merit lottery. It took me years to find any sustained, serious public promotion of the good reasons to do these things. Instead, what made headlines was garbage like "I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group [Asians] owns admission to these [selective] schools" from the NYC school chancellor. A clear attitude that all racial groups are entitled to proportional representation in selective schools regardless of performance.
        • UncleMeat 5y ago
          I suspect that this is because op eds are deliberately drumming up rage. Have you spent time with activist groups?
          • civilized 5y ago
            Carranza got lots of support for his attitude, including from a majority of the NYC city council. So I question the idea that the identity politics angle is all being drummed up from the ether by the media, and I'm frankly suspicious when people are so eager to downplay this obvious and very influential phenomenon. If people want to tolerate it for coalitional reasons, sure whatever, but let's not pretend it isn't happening.