The creator of one of the most powerful ideas of the last century died on 14 January. He was Michael Young, the main intellectual enemy of Thatcher, author of "The Rise of the Meritocracy" in 1958, and the founder of many organisations such the Consumer Association, the Open University and many more.
In his famous book he advanced the notion that we were entering a meritocratic society. He was greatly troubled by this possibility, as were others, and, in fact, a direct political result was the Labour Government's scrapping of the 11-plus examination in the 60s, the process by which most of the talented poor previously leapfrogged into a grammar education (a route I had taken myself some years earlier). Although meritocracy is certainly an id�e re�ue it seems to me that it is scarcely given any attention even though the steady decline in voting at elections by the underclass, old-working class, and the present-day young is now spreading into the lower middle class. In the next few years, it will soon be the case that the only people who will turn out to vote elections will be the people who already run society -- the top 25% of the population (that is, the top 25% in both brains and income) -- and who receive most of the available perks. They will naturally want to see the continuation of the system that looks after them so well. Even though the Labour Government of the 60s tried to prevent the rise of the meritocracy for egalitarian reasons (by the scrapping of the 11-plus already mentioned) they accidentally instituted even more efficient filtering systems at a multitude of educational levels, even though they weren't called exams. But they hadn't thought this through and, as Herrnstein later commented: "The more egalitarian the educational system, the more stratified the society becomes." Although politicians are deeply worried (or *say* they are, anyway) about the declining turnouts and are trying all sorts of alternative voting experiments (in England, but without success so far), they do not seem to want to draw attention to the reason behind the trend -- that is, the death of democracy, and the arrival of meritocracy. Apart from the fact that there has been a notional loss of political power by about half the electorate so far -- even though voluntarily yielded -- there doesn't seem to be a great deal wrong with meritocracy. It seems to serve us quite well. I can think of one reason why this is a very dangerous basis for society. Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
