"meritocracy" refers to a society that appoints talents according to individual abilities, regardless of their origins. A person's success depends on his own talent, efforts and achievements, not on the wealth, class or race of his family.
"involution" describes a kind of continuous evolution and perfection at the micro level, which seems to be progressing, but it is at a standstill at the macro level. All micro-evolution and improvement are similar to zero-sum game in macro-scale.
But in the United States, when the elite system encounters involution, it becomes a toxic combination, which has been highlighted in education.
Both The Tyranny of Virtue and The Trap of Virtue reflect that elite politics seems to make everyone a talent as long as they work hard, but this is actually an illusion of splitting society. With the widening income distribution gap and social differentiation in the United States in the past 40 years, elite politics seems fair, but it has become a tool to solidify class and advantage. The anxiety of American parents is not that their children can't get a good education, but that they are afraid of social stratification.
The prescriptions prescribed in the two books are highly coincident-reforming education and reshaping work. However, in Guo Kai's view, the disadvantages of the elite system revealed by the two books go far beyond this prescription, because the root of the problem seems to lie in the division of American society, which is far more complicated than the education and work that the two authors mainly pay attention to.
Anxiety about children's education seems to be the state of many parents in China. Guo Kai stressed that if China wants to avoid the "talent tyranny" or "talent trap" encountered by the United States, it needs to always maintain a fair, just, mobile and safe society.
The Inner Volume of American Education —— Two Books Reflecting on Meritorious Service System
Text | Guo Kai
Map/photo network
Meritocracy, also known as merit system, refers to a society that appoints people according to their personal merits, regardless of their origins. A person's success depends on his own talent, efforts and achievements, not on the wealth, class or race of his family.
In a great sense, the college entrance examination in China can be regarded as meritocracy, and everyone is equal before the examination paper. The success of the college entrance examination depends on the candidates' own talents, efforts and achievements, not on family wealth, class or race.
Involution describes a kind of continuous evolution and improvement that seems to be progressing on the micro scale, but is at a standstill on the macro scale. All micro-evolution and improvement are similar to zero-sum game in macro-scale.
Some people think that the college entrance examination model of some students in China is involuted, students are getting better and better at preparing for exams, getting higher and higher scores in the college entrance examination, and getting ahead of the competition in the college entrance examination, but there are still so many students who can finally be admitted to "985", "double-class" and "2 1 1" universities.
So, what is the relationship between elitism and involution? The relationship lies in education. When the elite system encounters involution, it becomes a toxic combination, which is emphasized in education. This is the impression I got after reading two books recently: The Tyranny of Virtue and The Trap of Virtue.
The author of the previous book is Michael Sandel, a "network celebrity professor" at Harvard University. His "Justice" course for undergraduates at Harvard University was once very popular in China. The author of the latter book is Professor Daniel Markowitz of Yale Law School. Both professors are professors from top universities in the United States. They and their students are typical winners of elite politics, but they always use negative words such as "tyranny" and "trap" to describe elite politics.
Of course, they are talking about education in the United States, not China, but the problems they pointed out deserve attention.
Phenomenon: American society's anxiety about education
Sandel's The Tyranny of Virtue begins with the college entrance examination fraud case that shocked the whole country in 20 19. The thing is roughly like this:
A man named William Singer charged some wealthy families (ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars), including celebrities and Hollywood stars, such as Emmy winner felicity huffman who played Desperate Housewives and Lori Loughlin who played Room Full Joy. Then Singh bribed the invigilator (to help students get high marks in the SAT) or bribed the sports coach (to help students obtain the qualification of sports specialty students) and other illegal ways. William Singer has been in business for more than 8 years, and his business income is 25 million dollars.
The significance of Sandel's example is multiple. It reflects the fierce admission to prestigious schools in the United States. Money makes the mare go, and reflects the anxiety of American parents about their children's education, so that children can do whatever it takes to get into prestigious schools.
Marcovitz's "talent trap" gives an example. There is a kindergarten in Manhattan. The tuition fee of this kindergarten is as high as $50,000 per year, but parents still flock to it, making the admission rate of this kindergarten less than 5%, which is lower than that of Harvard University and Yale University. Therefore, in order to improve the probability of admission, most families have to hire "educational consultants", whose price may be as high as $6,000 to help design the scheme. Usually, these consultants will advise a family to apply for 10 kindergarten, and write "love letters" to the first three kindergartens on the basis of providing normal application materials, and carefully analyze the characteristics of these three kindergartens, so that the application materials and "love letters" will leave a deep impression on the kindergartens. After reading this, American parents' anxiety about their children losing at the starting line immediately jumped to the page.
Why are American parents so anxious? So that from kindergarten, it began to compete fiercely, even breaking the law to help children get into good universities. It seems difficult to explain if it is only for children to receive a good education. After all, the United States is rich in educational resources, there are many good schools, and the intensity of competition seems to be not so high.
The reason: elitism under social differentiation leads to the solidification of American classes and the involution of education.
Ivy League universities in the United States are inherently hierarchical places. For a long time before World War II, famous schools like Harvard and Yale basically admitted students according to their family background. There are few poor people, few Jews, and even fewer colored people. Men and women must be separated.
At that time, students on Harvard and Yale campuses, their parents probably graduated from Harvard and Yale. Most of them graduated from several high schools that can be called "pit schools". Many of them may not have outstanding achievements, but almost all of them have good backgrounds.
In other words, before World War II, the enrollment of these Ivy League universities had strong traces of nobility and hereditary system (in fact, there are still some traces until today).
Judging from the accounts of the two books, the great changes in college enrollment in the United States later also originated from these two universities.
Sandel introduced in the book that the outbreak of World War II made the competition among countries in the field of science and technology extremely fierce. James Conant, the legendary president of Harvard (1933- 1953), thinks that universities should change the practice of enrolling students according to their origins, and should select the best students for training regardless of their origins. He gradually opened Harvard from 1939. At present, the "College Entrance Examination" SAT in the United States is the first reference test for Harvard enrollment, and it has gradually become a reference test for various universities in the United States. Tobin, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, is the first group of children of civilians who benefited from this reform and had the opportunity to be admitted to Harvard University.
Yale University also welcomed its legendary president Jin Man Brewster (1963- 1977). Brewster also changed the enrollment model of Yale aristocratic system to elite system.
The transformation of Harvard and Yale has driven the whole American higher education to the elite system. At present, the vast majority of students admitted to top universities are the best among high school students.
It is undoubtedly a great progress to admit students on the basis of ability rather than origin. It also gives ordinary people the opportunity to change their destiny through hard work, and many people have indeed changed their destiny. Tobin mentioned above is one of them, as are former American presidents Clinton, Obama and so on. There are countless examples of this.
However, both Sandel and Marcovitz pointed out that with the widening income distribution gap and social differentiation in the United States in the past 40 years, the elite system seems fair and gives the bottom people the opportunity to change their destiny, but in fact it only solidified the class and caused the involution of education in another way different from the aristocratic system or hereditary system.
Both books mention the fact that in top universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, there are more students from former 1% families than all students from families with incomes below 50% combined. Two-thirds of the students in Ivy League schools come from families with income in the top 20%. As a result, the elite system did not give too many people at the bottom a chance to turn over.
Markowitz's writing is more intense. He said that this inequality began with the choice of marriage, and the starting line of competition was not kindergarten at all. The gap began when children didn't even have fertilized eggs.
In 20 10, 25% of couples in the United States have college degrees, while the proportion of American adults with college degrees is 30%. What does this mean? Basically, those who have gone to college keep up with the marriage of the university, and those who have not gone to college and those who have not, there will be a huge gap between the income and education level of the family before the birth of the child.
This gap will grow bigger and bigger in the child's subsequent growth. On average, parents who went to college spend an hour more on their children every day than parents who only went to high school. They will read more books to their children and take them to visit exhibitions, galleries and art classes.
By the age of three, if children's parents are professionals, they will hear 20 million more words and know 49% more words than children of the same age whose parents are not professionals.
Parents with higher education beat their children less. Parents with graduate education are only half as likely to beat their children as parents with college education and one-third as parents with high school education, which will make their children more cheerful, confident and self-disciplined.
Families with high income and good education will send their children to better kindergartens and receive more preschool education. By the age of five, there will be more children in the top 65,438+00% families in the United States than in the bottom 65,438+00% families, which is equivalent to studying math for 37 months, reading for 25 months and science for 29 months. These are just the gaps before primary school.
After entering primary school, the education gap will be even greater. The children of the rich can choose private schools or live in good public schools in good school districts, and the choices of the poor are much less.
Marcovitz lists such a set of data in his book: a poor child living in a poor school district in a poor state can get an education of about $8,000 per year on average. A middle-class child living in a middle-class school district in a middle-class state can get an average education of $65,438+02,000 a year. A middle-class child in Fuzhou can get an average annual education of $65,438+8,000. A rich child in Fuzhou can get an average of $27,000 in education funds every year. If the children of a very wealthy family attend a good private school, the average annual education cost can be converted into 75 thousand dollars. These are just the gaps in school education.
All kinds of art and science training outside the school, all kinds of expensive sports that Ivy League universities will consider when enrolling students, and expensive one-on-one tutoring will widen the gap between rich families and poor families. Just look at the children who practice ice hockey, fencing, equestrian, studying abroad and doing charity. Every resume on an Ivy League application may be piled up with money.
Therefore, both Sandel and markowitz believe that the elite system seems to enable everyone to make the best use of their talents as long as they work hard, but in a divided society, this is actually an illusion, and the elite system has become a tool to solidify classes and advantages.
One of the basic assumptions of the so-called "American Dream" is that anything is possible and the poor can start from scratch. But in fact, the social mobility of the United States is not only far less than that of China, a rapidly developing country, but also not high in developed countries. On the contrary, a country with income distribution in relatively equal, such as Denmark, has better social mobility, that is, a person's achievements are less affected by his birth.
Sandel's book lists such a set of numbers. If a person is born in the lowest income 20% in the United States, then he/she has only a 4% chance to enter the highest income 20% in the United States as an adult, but a 43% chance to stay in the lowest income 20% as an adult. It is not impossible to start from scratch, but the chances of success are higher in China or Denmark than in the United States.
Social differentiation and meritocracy make education not only a teaching and educating people, but also a tool of social stratification. Teaching and educating people can make everyone better, and social stratification education will become a zero-sum game, so there will be involution of education.
The anxiety of American parents is that their children can't get a good education, but they are afraid of social stratification. Only those parents who are anxious about education are probably the best in society, and more people are the silent majority. Their despair is manifested as "desperate death" (that is, death from suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse), and their anger has caused Trump and Britain to leave the European Union. Trump shouted to his supporters in a campaign speech: I love people who are not well educated! This is not only catering to his voters, but also a direct mockery of elite politics.
Results: America's conceited and anxious elite and the bottom of anger and despair.
The difference between virtue tyranny and virtue trap is actually quite big. Personally, I think that virtue tyranny is higher than virtue trap. Sandel is a philosophy professor. People who tell students about Kant, Bentham and Rawls every day write more thoughtful and normal books.
Sandel has a very counterintuitive but powerful view in the book "The Tyranny of the Sage": the elite system tears the society more seriously than the hereditary or aristocratic system. The logic goes like this:
Under the hereditary or aristocratic system, upper-class people take advantage of everything, but they know in their hearts that they can enjoy it because they are from a good family, not because they work harder or are smarter. Although people in the lower classes have been exploited repeatedly and can't change their fate, they also know in their hearts that they have suffered so much only because of their poor background, not because they don't work hard and are not smart. Under such an institutional arrangement, although it is unfair, people in the upper class will not feel that they deserve everything, and people in the lower class will not feel that they are worthless.
Elite rule is different. Although the essence of elitism is still social stratification and stratum solidification, the narrative of elitism is a story of striving for strength and knowledge to change fate. Under the elite system, winners feel that they deserve everything. They can succeed only because they are smart and hard-working. You can't be as successful as me, because you are not smart enough and don't work hard enough. Losers should not only accept the result of failure, but also accept the ruthless fact that their failure has nothing to do with others, but because they are not smart enough and do not work hard enough, and they deserve it.
Therefore, under the narrative of the sage system, the winner will become conceited and know nothing about the society, environment, system and luck that can make him successful, while the loser can only be angry and desperate, because the sage system makes heroes regardless of their origins, and he can't succeed because he can't, so there is no excuse to comfort himself.
Sandel further pointed out that under the background of social division, the government cannot expect to draw an elitist cake on the wall to solve the problem. He thinks that those politicians who take the third way (Clinton, Blair, Obama and Hillary) are deeply immersed in the narrative of elite politics, and that providing more and fairer educational opportunities can solve the unfair distribution of the whole society, pin their hopes on excellent Ivy League graduates and find technical solutions to complex political and social problems. He thinks this is misleading.
However, their party gave up its traditional role of speaking for ordinary workers, because it embraced elite politics, which encouraged rather than weakened the further division of society, so that after losing to Trump, Hillary still said: I won two-thirds of the GDP in the United States, so the place I won was optimistic, diverse, dynamic and moving forward. Sandel's words hit the nail on the head: That's why you lost the presidential election, because you only have the conceit of the elite, and you don't see ordinary people who are angry and desperate. Trump knows those people better than you do.
Markowitz's "saint trap" holds that both winners and losers are victims of the saint system.
Markowitz made such an interesting observation. Before the elite rule, the rich class was also a leisure class. Their lives were carefree, and their identity and property could be passed down from generation to generation. People who work hard are poor, because only by working hard can they make ends meet.
After the elite rule, things were completely reversed. The elites have been studying and working in an extremely tense and highly competitive environment since childhood. The assets of elites are no longer the land or capital of the past, but their own labor force. Long-term, high-intensity work is not only a way for elites to prove themselves, but also the fate of those who earn money by selling their labor. Moreover, because the labor force can't be passed on to future generations, and the efforts can't be passed on to future generations, elite politics is not allowed to be "hereditary" morally, and elites must make great efforts to cultivate future generations in order to maintain their elite status, which has caused great anxiety.
Non-elites become idle under the rule of elites, but their idleness is not voluntary and dignified, but their work is no longer needed and respected, and they can't stand up again because nothing seems to change. It doesn't matter who took their jobs. What is important is that they have lost the dignity of their lives, leaving only anger and despair.
Both The Tyranny of Virtue and The Trap of Virtue quoted the book Death of Despair by Princeton economists angus deaton and Anne Case, because people who died of suicide, alcoholism and drugs were highly concentrated in white people who had never attended college, and the death rate caused by the death of despair increased, which led to the continuous decline of life expectancy in the United States in the three years from 20 14 to 20 17. In 20 16, more people died of drug overdose in the United States than in the whole Vietnam war. Every two weeks, the number of people who died of "desperate death" exceeded the number of people who died in the war in Afghanistan in the United States 18. In 20 17, there were158,000 people in the United States who died of "desperate death", which was equivalent to three Boeing 737 planes crashing every day.
"Desperate death" is an extreme form of expression, and it is precisely because of extremes that it shows that it is not those white people who have never been to college who choose to give up on themselves because they don't work hard enough.
Way out: Reform education and reshape work.
The prescriptions in The Tyranny of Virtue and The Trap of Virtue are highly coincident, that is, reform education and reform work, although the specific drugs used in the two books are quite different.
For education, Sandel put forward a method to break the educational stratification and elitism under the elite system: drawing lots for top universities on the basis of reaching certain standards.
Sandel's reason is simple: first, the differences between students are not that great. He thinks that among the high school students who apply to Harvard and Yale, if they are randomly enrolled among the top 30% students, the selected students will not make much difference.
Second, it can reduce the "arms race" in applying for universities, because the current situation is that a high school student must create a very perfect and distinctive resume to have a chance to go to the best university, and his grades will be transmitted layer by layer, and finally the starting line of competition will be moved forward to kindergarten or even earlier. According to his plan, as long as high school students meet certain standards, they have the hope of being admitted, and it is random, so many excessive "arms races" are unnecessary.
Third, he believes that this can break the illusion that elites believe that success depends on their own efforts rather than luck. In fact, the admission process of top universities is full of randomness, and whether you can be admitted to top universities has great luck. In fact, all kinds of success in life depend on a little luck. If the success of the elite has luck, it should not be so conceited, and there is no reason to look down on those who are not so successful.
Marcovitz's plan focuses on abolishing the tax-free status of schools. Marcovitz believes that because American schools themselves and donations to schools are tax-free, this is actually a huge tax preference and subsidy for education. However, this tax preference goes disproportionately to good schools, especially good universities, and ultimately subsidizes the rich rather than the poor. As a result, the polarization between class and education has intensified. Good schools are getting richer and richer, and the students recruited are mainly rich children. These people have high incomes after graduation and will continue to donate money to good schools. However, poor schools cannot improve the quality of education because of insufficient funds. The students in these schools are mainly children of civilians.
Regarding work, Sandel thinks that we should rebuild the dignity of work, especially the dignity of ordinary work. Sandel pointed out that there was a big problem in supporting globalization in the past, mainly from the perspective of consumption. Globalization makes production more efficient and goods cheaper. From the perspective of consumption, the same money can buy more and better things, so the conclusion is that most people benefit. Even for those who have lost their jobs because of globalization, the general view is that these losers can be compensated.
Sandel said, first of all, there has never been any real compensation for the losers of globalization. More importantly, from the perspective of consumption, globalization ignores the importance of work to people and the significance of people as producers. People who lose their jobs lose more than their income, but their dignity, which is why there are so many "desperate deaths".
Therefore, to rebuild the dignity of work, even if you do an ordinary job, you are very proud. Sandel quoted Martin Luther King before his assassination: If this society is to survive, our society will eventually respect sanitation workers, because in the final analysis, garbage collectors are as important as doctors. When sanitation workers don't work, diseases will spread wildly. All labor has dignity.
Marcovitz's plan is to create more jobs with medium skills. He believes that there are mainly two kinds of jobs in the current labor market in the United States: glamorous jobs for people with good education and hopeless jobs for people without good education. He believes that the government should find ways to create more middle-class jobs, especially by using tax leverage.
His main suggestion is to cancel the salary tax ceiling (the book says that the annual salary income exceeds 65,438+032,900 US dollars, and there is no need to pay 65,438+03.4% salary tax). The reason is that this tax system is highly regressive, and people who are engaged in glamorous jobs have high incomes, and a large part of their income does not have to pay payroll tax. The middle class has a heavy tax burden. This is not conducive to creating employment opportunities for the middle class. At the same time, the extra tax after lifting the cap can be used to create more middle-class jobs. With more middle-class jobs, if we can't find glamorous jobs, we don't have to face hopeless jobs.
Personally, I feel that the disadvantages of elite politics revealed in The Tyranny of Virtue and The Trap of Virtue far exceed the prescriptions prescribed by the two authors, because the root of the problem seems to lie in social differentiation, which is far more complicated than the education and work that the two authors mainly pay attention to. But in any case, reform education and reform work are all due meanings.
Anxiety about children's education seems to be the state of many parents in China. A simple explanation is that China people have a tradition of attaching importance to education, and now China people who are rich can increase their investment in education, but there is still a bottleneck in the supply of quality education in China. In other words, the growing demand for quality education in China does not match the supply of quality education, so many capable families and students compete for limited quality degrees, which leads to anxiety.
Judging from these two books, the above explanation simply regards education as teaching and educating people, and social stratification can be achieved without considering education. The anxiety caused by worrying about social stratification cannot be eliminated simply by increasing the supply of quality education. If education is involuted, it is only a reflection of social stratification in a greater sense.
All families are "chicken babies", which finally deprives children of their childhood and destroys the normal learning rules. The result is still a "zero-sum game", which is definitely a great waste and harm to the next generation from the social point of view.
Therefore, if China wants to avoid the "talent tyranny" or "talent trap" encountered by the United States, it needs to always maintain a fair, just, mobile and safe society.