N+1: In 605 CE, a year after murdering his father and seizing the throne, the Chinese emperor Yang Guang established the world’s first meritocracy. Weary of making bureaucratic appointments solely on the basis of letters of recommendation, Yang set aside a number of posts for applicants who performed well on a new system of imperial examinations. In theory, any peasant who took the trouble to memorize 400,000 characters — which is to say, anyone who conducted six years of study with an expensive tutor — could join the country’s political elite.
3 comments:
At first glance, there was no indication about how this article was in any way related to any theater practice. I was confused and picked it through my confusion only to be pleasantly surprised at the content. I felt that the actual blog went all over the place but what it was trying to do was connect the upper class and the "privileged" practices with the elitists in history. There is plenty of favoritism in money and the way certain people have certain chances in life because of their name or because of what opportunities their money provide them. It is not very different right here and now. There is a bigger pool of students and people that have certain opportunities but money and education are still relevant. It is interesting that after all this time, we haven't altered the money or education aspects in our society. As far as testing goes, China and the Qing Dynasty really didn't change their system of difficulty/ severity or money.
These times they are a changing. I would like to compare this article to the one a few weeks ago about the price of college vs. the income outcome. A college degree used to be the pinnacle of western achievement and now it is just a debt industry. (This is a bit hypocritical from a guy in his 3rd year of an MFA.) Now it seems that either a college degree is too much or not enough. You either need a graduate degree OR you don’t actually need a degree at all. This is evident as more and more “smart” people are opting out of college. The bigger issue here is the myth of the single income. Since the 80’s a one income 40 hour work week family has become more and more rare. This is the dream that I am chasing. I hope college for me is the path there. Be truth be told, I am down $75k and if you ask my colleagues that is not a lot.
The sentiments of this article are frightening.
While I wholeheartedly agree that we, as a society and a culture, SHOULD value labor and restore the dignity it once had; the way to do that is NOT by somehow convincing every valedictorian of 2013 to simply NOT go to college. College is more than just a piece of paper at the end of four years and the mark the author(s) only known as "The Editors" COMPLETELY missed was the life-lessons one learns in a college setting and the value of, less a piece of shiny paper from a well-known school, but an EDUCATION of any kind.
In an era of largely powerless and growingly ineffectual public school system where students struggle to learn and master even basic mathematical skills & use of grammar standing on a soapbox and declaring more and more people NOT attend college seems to do a disservice to the future generations of this country rather than free them from any [mostly] imagined tyranny of meritocracy.
Oh, also, as a personal aside, don't you dare talk about politics by referencing AVRIL EFFING LAVIGNE; it's not only tasteless but it undermines whatever credibility you've managed to muster up until now. All of it.
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