dunwithtrump wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 5:02 pmA meritocracy is fine and dandy, but given full latitude, capitalism will run amuck and arrogate all the "merit" until society crumbles. There need to be regulations as the bank failures clearly demonstrate. To blame "wokeness" for the failures is just f-ing stupid. They overleveraged, didn't follow best practices risk mangement to make an extra helping of "merit" (i.e. greed), and got burned by the VCs who fed them.RiverguyVT wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:14 pm
That said, meritocracy is the key to a functioning society.
You brought up the meritocracy, within which we no longer live. For it to be a meritocracy, everyone has to have a chance to rise. But in America, precious few of the poor, people of color, and others who have been systematically discriminated against actually achieve the "merit" you hold so dear. And now, even the white kids are being subjugated. This country will have a reckoning in fairly short order, remember Czar Russia, the french revolution, and the plot of Tommy. Pretty soon, they're not gonna take it.RiverguyVT wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:14 pm You’re changing the discussion and arguing against things no one has said.
A teacher! You must be a groomer, I knew itRiverguyVT wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:14 pm Yeah, I’m a second career teacher now making 1/4th what I could be making. That doesn’t mean any of my co-workers are equipped to make the $50,000,000 decisions I used to make routinely. They’re not equipped.
On a serious note, here's a great example of your backward thinking I brought up above. You say that none of your teacher peers are equipped to make $50,000,000 decisions.
First I would say you are selling many of them short and you have no idea of peoples' capabilities or merit. But let's grant this is true for the sake of the argument. Are teachers not paid well because they aren't as capable? Or are less capable individuals becoming teachers because teachers are not paid well?
Here in America, we have devalued education in so many ways that we simply get what we pay for. Pay teachers 6 figures and see how capable the teacher candidates become.
My Dad taught for over 30 years and was paid well enough to buy a home with land in northern New Jersey (40 miles from Manhattan, NYC), 2 cars, and take a 2-week vacation each year. He had a Master's degree in science and a certified teacher's certificate. My sister is a Master's-level teacher for the past 20 years and couldn't survive in her Greenwich home without her husband's corporate salary. My wife is a Soviet-trained musician and opera singer (2 master's degrees) who has been a teacher now for 7 years and without my salary couldn't afford to rent the home we live in let alone buy anything despite her side gig as a piano and voice teacher.
My point is, my family represents 3 generations of teachers who are HIGHLY competent but have been systematically being starved of "merit" (i.e. salary) all for the benefit of the very wealthy you seem to believe are the REAL victims of some faceless, nameless, antimeritocratic left wing movement that no one else but you see.
The meritocracy isn't being attacked by the left, it's being attacked by the right.
I'm fine with paying well qualified teachers six figure salaries, BUT with no additional spending on education. That means gutting budgets for middle/upper 'management' in schools and at state departments of education. Too much overhead.
They're worthless and make education worse. I'd also gut the NEA. If you compensate good teachers well, their is no need for a politically corrupted union.
So yeah, fire the idiot teachers, hire good teachers and pay them very well. Get rid of ALL bullsh!t curricula that isn't focused on reading, writing, arithmetic and hard science. All those vice principal's...Bye.
