The Tyranny of Merit PDF Download

Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720991
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A Times Literary Supplement’s Book of the Year 2020 A New Statesman's Best Book of 2020 A Bloomberg's Best Book of 2020 A Guardian Best Book About Ideas of 2020 The world-renowned philosopher and author of the bestselling Justice explores the central question of our time: What has become of the common good? These are dangerous times for democracy. We live in an age of winners and losers, where the odds are stacked in favor of the already fortunate. Stalled social mobility and entrenched inequality give the lie to the American credo that "you can make it if you try". The consequence is a brew of anger and frustration that has fueled populist protest and extreme polarization, and led to deep distrust of both government and our fellow citizens--leaving us morally unprepared to face the profound challenges of our time. World-renowned philosopher Michael J. Sandel argues that to overcome the crises that are upending our world, we must rethink the attitudes toward success and failure that have accompanied globalization and rising inequality. Sandel shows the hubris a meritocracy generates among the winners and the harsh judgement it imposes on those left behind, and traces the dire consequences across a wide swath of American life. He offers an alternative way of thinking about success--more attentive to the role of luck in human affairs, more conducive to an ethic of humility and solidarity, and more affirming of the dignity of work. The Tyranny of Merit points us toward a hopeful vision of a new politics of the common good.

Author: Anthony P. Carnevale
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620974878
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
An eye-opening and timely look at how colleges drive the very inequalities they are meant to remedy, complete with a call—and a vision—for change Colleges fiercely defend America's deeply stratified higher education system, arguing that the most exclusive schools reward the brightest kids who have worked hard to get there. But it doesn't actually work this way. As the recent college-admissions bribery scandal demonstrates, social inequalities and colleges' pursuit of wealth and prestige stack the deck in favor of the children of privilege. For education scholar and critic Anthony P. Carnevale, it's clear that colleges are not the places of aspiration and equal opportunity they claim to be. The Merit Myth calls out our elite colleges for what they are: institutions that pay lip service to social mobility and meritocracy, while offering little of either. Through policies that exacerbate inequality, including generously funding so-called merit-based aid for already-wealthy students rather than expanding opportunity for those who need it most, U.S. universities—the presumed pathway to a better financial future—are woefully complicit in reproducing the racial and class privilege across generations that they pretend to abhor. This timely and incisive book argues for unrigging the game by dramatically reducing the weight of the SAT/ACT; measuring colleges by their outcomes, not their inputs; designing affirmative action plans that take into consideration both race and class; and making 14 the new 12—guaranteeing every American a public K–14 education. The Merit Myth shows the way for higher education to become the beacon of opportunity it was intended to be.

Author: George Vosselman
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9783540557982
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This is an introduction to recursive functions intended for graduate students. It presupposes some mathematical maturity and a slight aquaintancewith some important topics, such as group theory and topology. Some acquaintance with logic is desirable but not essential. It introduces the main topics of recusion theory, such as hierarchy theory, RE sets, and undecidable theories, without going very deeply into any of them.

Author: Riel Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351047981
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
People are using the future to search for better ways to achieve sustainability, inclusiveness, prosperity, well-being and peace. In addition, the way the future is understood and used is changing in almost all domains, from social science to daily life. This book presents the results of significant research undertaken by UNESCO with a number of partners to detect and define the theory and practice of anticipation around the world today. It uses the concept of ‘Futures Literacy’ as a tool to define the understanding of anticipatory systems and processes – also known as the Discipline of Anticipation. This innovative title explores: • new topics such as Futures Literacy and the Discipline of Anticipation; • the evidence collected from over 30 Futures Literacy Laboratories and presented in 14 full case studies; • the need and opportunity for significant innovation in human decision-making systems. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, policy-makers and students, as well as activists working on sustainability issues and innovation, future studies and anticipation studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351047999, has been made available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license.

Author: James S. Bowman
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 0849305411
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Understanding the effects of radical change on public personnel systems is critically important both now and in the future to all those interested in the quality of American democracy. Civil service reform is occurring at all levels of government both in the United States and abroad. American Public Service: Radical Reform and the Merit System is a collection of papers that examine the innovations, strategies, and issues found in the contemporary civil service reform debate. Offering diverse perspectives from expert contributors, this book presents matters concerning radical reform and the merit system at the federal, state, and local levels of government. This volume offers fresh insight into the effects of merit system changes on employees. Divided into four sections, this book... · Examines a portrait of contemporary reforms from across the country and concepts to interpret those data · Addresses whether the relaxation of civil service protections against partisan intrusion will result in corruption · Provides examples of ongoing changes and analyzes survey data from state managers · Discusses a variety of key issues, such as the impact on racial inequality of moving from a protected class employment status to an unprotected at-will relationship The book provides a baseline of data on reforms as well as an account of their current promises and pitfalls. Covering topics ripped from the headlines, this text also identifies pressing issues and makes suggestions for the future. Offering a variety of methodological approaches, it is ideal for all those interested in effective governance.

Author: Paul H. De Neui
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 153263871X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Is the Christian concept of grace anathema to the social structure of merit-making found in Buddhist karmic communities? Are all Buddhist forms of merit-making purely for religious purposes to assuage cosmic consequences or are there other reasons? Are there not Christian churches who operate under a legalistic view of God's divine wrath and are in essence living as karmic communities of the Christian type? The result of discussions about these and other questions is the volume you now hold in your hand. SEANET proudly presents what is number 14 in its series of missiological reference texts, Gift and Duty: Where Grace and Merit Meet. Each of the ten authors presented here represent a particular perspective, both Christian and Buddhist, that can inform the other. The goal of this volume is to lead to a deeper understanding of the significance of diverse religious and cultural perspectives.

Author: George Forss
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1462843816
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 731

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Book Description
Enos is a biblical character. Enos is the grandson of Adam. In different bibles this name is spelled Enos, Enoch, and Enosh. It is said that Enos was the first human being to reach up to the heavens to pray to God for guidance. Enos, as far as science is concerned, would be the first early-on human being that paused one day suddenly to speak to God in the sky. This is so because somewhere in our past there would have to be a first person to do something like this. My book ENOS is my own prayerful quest to know the whole truth about humanity at long last. I do have it here. I believe I do because I asked for some guidance from God as did Enos. I started writing my book in 1983 and it is based on a stark experience I had when I encountered some amazing wisdom in 1969. This experience made me want to know more about God in life. My quest is based on a book I read that a young woman named Buffy put together in 1969, which had the wisest words I have ever encountered. Buffy had what she called a report. She had a report that claimed to contain the real truth about humanity in the universe. My book Enos is a similar phenomenal report about humanity and much more. My book is much the same as Buffys report because it is a recreation of what I saw in her report ... that, indeed, some Aliens did come to the earth in 1969 to create a new bible for our world ! There is a conversation that goes on for about 400 pages of my writing. In this way a new body of wisdom is born. My writing is about 700 pages in total. My book is not about my view of the universe revealing Gods might to us. My book is more like a prayerful quest because I am asking God in the universe for answers. I know that I have the same basic wisdom contained in Buffys book. My writing contains hundreds of new finding sentences. We know these as long standing wise sayings ... like ... He Who Lives by the Sword Will Die by the Sword. A few years after I met Buffy, from the day when she told me that some wise Aliens had abducted her and her friends, I ran into Buffy again. When I questioned her she said her report from those days was junk. She said ... You know how we were in those days, George. Her report wasnt junk to me and I had to have it back. Buffy didnt even know where her original report book was ! On this very occasion I made a vow to God and I started getting finding sentences immediately. These are transcribed all throughout my writing. God always wins. In ENOS we learn that humanity is a part of God and part of some advanced Alien life form intelligence that came to the earth about 200,000 years ago. I am talking about the giants we read about in our basic Christian Bible in Genesis. This situation of a foreign intelligence cannot last long and when it is over only a Godly being will remain that suits this earth perfectly for a very long time. This foreign intelligence is humanity. Enos is about God in the universe. Enos teaches us how to live freely for a million years. Enos is a new American style mindset [American lingo] about the wisdom that all natural creatures have known through the eons. The Aliens themselves in Enos are an amazing perfectly natural life form that has survived a long time in evolution to become who they are now ... who they want to be. My book has to be known as a religion. This bold statement goes along with the process by which I have been able to write this book out at all. Enos is also an overly long diatribe of rhetorical writing that many will not like ... and some will be completely enthralled by. It can also be looked upon as being a book of poetry. Enos has about 50 poems in it, a few long poems and many short ones ... and many passages that are poetic like. The Aliens in my report say that this entire writing is a prolonged po

Author: Joseph F. Kett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801467675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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The idea that citizens' advancement should depend exclusively on merit, on qualities that deserve reward rather than on bloodlines or wire-pulling, was among the Founding ideals of the American republic, Joseph F. Kett argues in this provocative and engaging book. Merit's history, he contends, is best understood within the context of its often conflicting interaction with the other ideals of the Founding, equal rights and government by consent. Merit implies difference; equality suggests sameness. By sanctioning selection of those lower down by those higher up, merit potentially conflicts with the republican ideal that citizens consent to the decisions that affect their lives. In Merit, which traces the history of its subject over three centuries, Kett asserts that Americans have reconciled merit with other principles of the Founding in ways that have shaped their distinctive approach to the grading of public schools, report cards, the forging of workplace hierarchies, employee rating forms, merit systems in government, the selection of officers for the armed forces, and standardized testing for intelligence, character, and vocational interests. Today, the concept of merit is most commonly associated with measures by which it is quantified. Viewing their merit as an element of their selfhood-essential merit-members of the Founding generation showed no interest in quantitative measurements. Rather, they equated merit with an inner quality that accounted for their achievements and that was best measured by their reputations among their peers. In a republic based on equal rights and consent of the people, however, it became important to establish that merit-based rewards were within the grasp of ordinary Americans. In response, Americans embraced institutional merit in the form of procedures focused on drawing small distinctions among average people. They also developed a penchant for increasing the number of winners in competitions-what Kett calls "selection in" rather than "selection out"-in order to satisfy popular aspirations. Kett argues that values rooted in the Founding of the republic continue to influence Americans' approach to controversies, including those surrounding affirmative action, which involve the ideal of merit.

Author: John Carson
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691187673
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
How have modern democracies squared their commitment to equality with their fear that disparities in talent and intelligence might be natural, persistent, and consequential? In this wide-ranging account of American and French understandings of merit, talent, and intelligence over the past two centuries, John Carson tells the fascinating story of how two nations wrestled scientifically with human inequalities and their social and political implications. Surveying a broad array of political tracts, philosophical treatises, scientific works, and journalistic writings, Carson chronicles the gradual embrace of the IQ version of intelligence in the United States, while in France, the birthplace of the modern intelligence test, expert judgment was consistently prized above such quantitative measures. He also reveals the crucial role that determinations of, and contests over, merit have played in both societies--they have helped to organize educational systems, justify racial hierarchies, classify army recruits, and direct individuals onto particular educational and career paths. A contribution to both the history of science and intellectual history, The Measure of Merit illuminates the shadow languages of inequality that have haunted the American and French republics since their inceptions.

Author: Adrian Wooldridge
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1510768629
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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Book Description
The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left? In The Aristocracy of Talent, esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system. Wooldridge also shows how meritocracy has now become corrupted and argues that the recent stalling of social mobility is the result of failure to complete the meritocratic revolution. Rather than abandoning meritocracy, he says, we should call for its renewal.