>> So what? Why do you believe that merit is not correlated with income and class?
I went to inner city schools. You have no idea how poor they are. Even the smartest kids who really wanted to learn had no chance.
Examples:
-> My Calculus teacher taught use that you can use advanced polynomials to beat craps.
-> My economics teacher didn't teach us anything all year. I'm not exaggerating here. We literally never opened our books in class and I don't think we had more than 4 quizzes the entire time.
-> My Spanish teacher was about the same, except he did give one lesson per month, but we mostly chatted in class. If you were already Hispanic, you got an A. If you weren't, you got a C. No point trying beyond that.
-> Physics was my first class of the day and I slept through it every time and it was generally the same zoo as all the other classes. I had the highest score in the class.
-> The people with the highest grades in our biology class were the people who didn't show up but once a month and refused to touch a knife. Those of us who sat in class, dissected the pigs, and really tried to learn the material generally got D's.
-> "Computer class" was 4 years of learning how to type.
-> Homework was virtually non-existent.
-> I can assure you that merit had nothing at all to do with the grades I received.
I can't possibly enumerate how bad the education was in one post. You had two options: go to a community college or go to the state college. Anything else would have caused the guidance counselors look at you in shame and they would tell you things like "No one in this district went to that kind of college, so it's no point applying."
As you can gather, I was in all of the so-called advanced classes. I can only imagine what the "normal" classes were like.
I went to inner city schools. You have no idea how poor they are. Even the smartest kids who really wanted to learn had no chance.
Some odd summers ago I went across Chicago Public Schools to document building lighting for upgrades to more efficient lamps, since the current lamps the building "engineers" were using stopped being manufactured and supply was starting to run out.
Some of the shit I've seen there puts third world countries to shame. One day my photography partner couldn't make it so I brought my mother along to fill her spot. After we finished a particularly bad school she began crying because it reminded her of her own primary schooling in communist Ukraine some ~50 years ago. It was incomprehensible and heartbreaking to her that such a great country like America could have such terrible education standards. The difference between rich and poor schools is night and day. When you don't have central heating, when half of the bathroom facilities don't work, and when you don't even have enough money to buy chalk, there's absolutely no way you could even possibly comprehend to compete with the likes of Walter Payton.
I'm well aware of how bad many US schools are. But that is besides the point.
If the people coming out of that high school don't know math, economics, spanish or physics, then they have less academic merit than students from a better school who do. It might be unfair that some people get a sucky school/parents/genes, but that doesn't contradict meritocracy.
I went to inner city schools. You have no idea how poor they are. Even the smartest kids who really wanted to learn had no chance.
Examples:
-> My Calculus teacher taught use that you can use advanced polynomials to beat craps.
-> My economics teacher didn't teach us anything all year. I'm not exaggerating here. We literally never opened our books in class and I don't think we had more than 4 quizzes the entire time.
-> My Spanish teacher was about the same, except he did give one lesson per month, but we mostly chatted in class. If you were already Hispanic, you got an A. If you weren't, you got a C. No point trying beyond that.
-> Physics was my first class of the day and I slept through it every time and it was generally the same zoo as all the other classes. I had the highest score in the class.
-> The people with the highest grades in our biology class were the people who didn't show up but once a month and refused to touch a knife. Those of us who sat in class, dissected the pigs, and really tried to learn the material generally got D's.
-> "Computer class" was 4 years of learning how to type.
-> Homework was virtually non-existent.
-> I can assure you that merit had nothing at all to do with the grades I received.
I can't possibly enumerate how bad the education was in one post. You had two options: go to a community college or go to the state college. Anything else would have caused the guidance counselors look at you in shame and they would tell you things like "No one in this district went to that kind of college, so it's no point applying."
As you can gather, I was in all of the so-called advanced classes. I can only imagine what the "normal" classes were like.