Recently, the governor of Louisiana signed a bill requiring all public school classrooms in the state to display a poster-sized copy of the Ten Commandments. In the “Beforetimes” (before the current partisan Supreme Court took shape), this would have been struck down immediately as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This bill is a clear violation of that clause. I imagine that the justices will dance around the cultural and historical significance of the document without stopping to consider the state’s motives in passing this law.
Meritocracy has been on everyone’s minds lately, it seems. Reading Daniel Markovits' “The Meritocracy Trap,” I was fully ready to condemn the concept completely. I may be still; but I need to take a moment to think about it more fully.
Here’s the problem with condemning meritocracy outright: if we look at ability on a case-by-case basis, would you rather a well-trained, accomplished pilot or a mediocre one? Would you rather go to a concert performed by a scratchy third-rate violinist or someone whose pedigree includes Juilliard, Curtis, or the like?
Nietzsche at the piano I have always been troubled in some ill-defined way by articles that assert the benefits of music in some tangible way. For example, kids with music training do better at math. (I don’t if that’s true or not; but you get the style of what I’m talking about.) The unwritten inference is something like this: “No one but a fool or the spectacularly talented would regard music as an economically-valid life path; but math might be.