Writing Feedback / Why shouldn't we believe meritocracy? [3]

essay about meritocracy

Meritocracy is a social system in which advancement in society is based on an individual's capabilities and merits rather than based on family, wealth, or social background (Bellows, 2009; Castilla & Benard, 2010; Poocharoen & Brillantes, 2013; Imbroscio, 2016). It encourages people to strive and envision their future because everyone is vested with equal opportunities, and people can achieve equal outcomes through their efforts. The ruling class continually legitimizes these ideologies to convince the ordinary to accept the society is equal. Everyone is unequal, with different talents, luck, social capital, financial capital, and cultural capital leading to a different fate. For example, as for financial capital, working-class families can afford a low-tuition school, in which children deal with the same class peers. Their children can view something defined in their class.

On the contrary, those upper-class families provide their children with excellent school education, family education, great entertainment activities, and rich human resources, which enable their children to stand out among the competition. From the point of cultural capital, upper-middle-class parents believe that they should foster the growth and development of children's talents and skills, so they care about children's daily study, cultivate good social manners, and enrich children's extracurricular activities. While the working-class parents they provide and presume children spontaneously grow and thrive. Hence, they rarely discuss with their children professional or academic stuff; even though their children would like to discuss or ask for help from them, they show inadequate response.

One example can be utilized to demonstrate this point. After Zhongkao, one neighbor and I got a similar score, so we decided to register in the same senior school. While relying on her aunt(a chemistry teacher in our best high school) 's guanxi, she registered in that school with a 30,000 RMB admission fee, in which the top one student was generated, and 985 or 211 schools admitted many students. Experiencing three-year high school life, she was admitted by Yiben, while Erben admitted me. Removing the factor of efforts, our school was quite different---her school had the best teacher,well-equipped teaching resources, and a positive study environment. Everything in our high school was quite common, and graduates in 2016 admitted to Yiben was less than one fifth, and there was no classmate admitted by Yiben. At that time, my parents could afford that tuition but lack of guanxi(social capital), and they even did not realize that option and maybe did not realize the importance of good education.

There was the effect of cultural capital. The neighbor's mother and aunt were teachers. They paid much attention to her education, such as counseling her study, cultivating her excellent reading habits, and guiding her to find her interests. Her college was selected by some professionals and was the best one on her score. In contrast, my college was randomly chosen by my father so that my Erben college was in a low ranking. We did not realize its importance. Another difference between us was career planning. Influenced by her mother and aunt, she initially targeted being a chemistry teacher and had explicit career planning. While looking at myself, my parents were farmers and now are workers; I even do not know what job I can choose since there was no model around me. Therefore, social capital, cultural capital, and financial capital did play a spectacular role.

Locking eyes on Chinese education, most children struggle with Gaokao, which is considered the most difficult and important exam. The majority of working and lower-middle-class children spend no effort to succeed, while the upper-class children choose another track-go abroad. Their children even never participate in this competition. Nevertheless, how do working and lower-middle-class children? They cannot afford that, or even they are not aware of that option. So are the employment situation. Most people need a high diploma to deserve a well-paid job, while those with social capital can rely on guanxi to achieve that. Alternatively, some people were born with privileges, and what they need to do is inherit their heritage from their parents. Therefore, in essence, meritocracy is a false and not very salutary belief.