Sublime

Just as Young predicted, we have created an academic sorting machine: selecting talent on a narrow set of metrics which have questionable real-world relevance for many students.

Education economist Greg Duncan,

Charles Davenport.

“Professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement,” the economists wrote, “on average, harm the subsequent performance of their students in more advanced classes.”

I thought I was a subpar student and was bombarded by messages—from Black people, White people, the media—that told me that the reason was rooted in my race…which made me more discouraged and less motivated as a student…which only further reinforced for me the racist idea that Black people just weren’t very studious…which made me feel even more des

In his 1958 book The Rise of the Meritocracy Michael Young predicted that a detached ruling class would be the ultimate consequence of the new grammar school tests developed in the 1950s. Young feared the new tripartite school system (grammars, secondary moderns and technical schools) would give superior status to academic skills over creative or t