Tony Judt, the distinguish British liberal historian, died last week from Lou Gehrig disease, but, even during the latter stage of his illness, his reminiscences appeared in a series of articles in The New York Review of Books. They weren’t his best work, but we were grateful to be able to be present at the conversation.
But apparently he earlier wrote an article on a highly controversial subject and had it held until the end of his life. (This is conjecture based upon the extraordinary quality which seems unlikely to have been produced so close to the end.) The title and subject are contained in a single word: “Meritocrats.”
Due probably to recognition by others of his brilliance, Judt had the opportunity to attend Kings College at Cambridge at a time – the 1960s – when its centuries of traditions were undergoing transition to the contemporary world that was de-emphasizing class and espousing opportunity for all.
Judt’s thesis is that all should be given opportunities, but some are naturally talented and have benefited from family circumstances – often attended by relative wealth – that has accelerated and broadened their education and competence. We harm ourselves when we do not fully nurture such an elite, because they must be the ones to excel in various fields and to lead us. (Presumably, Judt would approve of the International Baccalaureate program offered at J. P. McCaskey High School even though it directs resources from the many to the few.)
Of the current Kings College, Judt says: “The earnest self-interrogatory concern with egalitarianism that we encountered in 1966 appears to have descended into an unhealthy obsession with maintaining appearances as the sort of place that would never engage in elitist selection criteria or socially distinctive practices of any kind.”
He laments the elimination of selected public schools for the best students – such as Central and Girls High in Philadelphia (at least in the Watchdog’s day): “…politicians have foisted upon the state sector a system of enforced downward uniformity. The result , predicted from the outset, was that the selective private schools have flourished.” (Think in terms of Linden Hall in Lititz.)
Judt concludes: “Universities are elitist: they are about selecting the most able cohort of a generation and educating them to their ability—breaking open the elite and making it consistently anew. Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are not the same thing. A society divided by wealth and inheritance cannot redress this injustice by camouflaging it in educational institutions—by denying distinctions of ability or by restricting selective opportunity—while favoring a steadily widening income gap in the name of the free market. This is mere cant and hypocrisy.
“In my generation we thought of ourselves as both radical and members of an elite. If this sounds incoherent, it is the incoherence of a certain liberal descent that we intuitively imbibed over the course of our college years. It is the incoherence of the patrician Keynes establishing the Royal Ballet and the Arts Council for the greater good of everyone, but ensuring that they were run by the cognoscenti. It is the incoherence of meritocracy: giving everyone a chance and then privileging the talented. It was the incoherence of my King’s and I was fortunate to have experienced it.”
