According to a US study, many of the people who left their jobs during the Great Resignation did not find what they were looking for.
There has been much controversy during these still extremely hot autumn days, and along with it, much rhetoric—especially surrounding a series of key messages the new government is conveying to us. One of these is certainly the one contained in the new name given to the Ministry of Education, which now also includes the concept of meritocracy, as it is now called the Ministry of Education and Merit.
Why is it called the Ministry of Education and Merit?
Recently, its newly appointed minister Giuseppe Valditara, professor of Roman law in Turin, dean at the European University of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome, and former head of department at the Ministry of Education under Bussetti, emphasized that the reason behind this choice lies in the fact that up to now we have had a classist school system rather than one of equality, one that helps young people realize themselves and build a fulfilling adult life: “Today, the dropout rate is 12.7 percent,” he stated, “and if we add the implicit one (i.e., those who hold a diploma but lack basic competencies), it rises to a worrying 20 percent. All of this within a learning gap between territories. As Ernesto Galli Della Loggia wrote in the Corriere, ‘it is not a school of equality because it is not a school of merit.’ The challenge of merit starts from this awareness, giving substance to the word Education.”
Thinking about the word merit brings to mind the well-known aphorism by Indira Gandhi, when her grandfather explained to her that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit: “he told me to try to be in the first group, as there will always be much less competition there.” Certainly a rather bitter, though exemplary remark, which nonetheless leads us to ask what merit means today and what meritocracy is.
What does meritocracy mean?
“Meritocracy,” reads Treccani, “is a term coined in the United States (derived from the English meritocracy, made up of the Latin meritum ‘merit’ and -cracy ‘-cracy’) that was introduced in Italy in the 1970s with reference to school evaluation systems based on merit (though considered by some as discriminating against those not coming from a suitable family background) and to the tendency to reward, in the world of work, those who stand out for their commitment and ability over others who would somehow be denied the right to work and to a decent income. Others have instead used the term with a positive connotation, understanding the meritocratic concept as a valid alternative both to the possible degenerations of egalitarianism and to the spread of clientelistic systems in assigning positions of responsibility.”
How was the word meritocracy born?
The origin of this neologism is very well depicted in the opening of an article by philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, published in 2018 in *The New York Review of Books*, and recently re-edited precisely for the occasion under the title “Against Meritocracy”: Michael Young – it reads – was a difficult child. His father was an Australian musician and music critic; his mother, raised in Ireland, was a bohemian painter. They were penniless, distracted, and often fought. Michael, born in 1915, soon discovered that neither parent had much time for him. One day, seeing that his parents seemed to have forgotten his birthday, he thought a surprise was waiting for him. Instead, his parents had really forgotten his birthday, which was not surprising at all. Once, he overheard them discussing the possibility of putting him up for adoption. As he would later recount, he never quite got over his fear of abandonment.
Everything changed when, at fourteen, Young was sent to a progressive boarding school in Dartington Hall, in the south of England. The institute, founded by the progressive philanthropists Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, aimed to change society by transforming people. For Young, it was like being adopted, because the Elmhirsts treated him like a son, encouraging and supporting him for as long as they lived. Young suddenly found himself part of an international elite that dined with U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and witnessed conversations between Leonard and Henry Ford.
Considered one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century, Young paved the way for the modern scientific exploration of the social relationships of the British working class. But his goal was not just to study social classes: he wanted to reduce the harm they could cause. The ideal promoted at Dartington Hall (to nurture personalities and abilities, whatever they may be) was hindered by the British class structure. What should replace the old social hierarchy, so similar to a caste system? For many today, the answer is meritocracy, a term coined sixty years ago by Young himself to describe a world where “power and privilege are assigned based on individual merit and not on social origins.”
