The Liberal Assault on Merit

[saveliberty]

How does a recommendation system benefit the poor? Seems like the rich would have better access to quality referals. If anything, it is a disavantage to the poor.

 

[saveliberty]

An observation on merit: Those who excel can overcome many disadvantages, including attending slightly inferior schools. Those without merit often squander the opportunity, as they do not fully appreciate or understand what they have been given.

 

[PoliticalChic]

PC, will you ever put forth an original thought of your own on this forum? This copy and paste crap may fly with the simpletons of this forum, but everyone else is just annoyed.

Why, BillyZeroIQ.....every single thing I post is based on my thoughts.

That is the content.

What you call "copy and paste crap" is method of presentation, and is based on supporting documentation and quotes from experts.


You may understand the difference when and if you ever get out of junior high.





"...everyone else is just annoyed..."

Really? Did you interview everyone?
Or is this "reporting" on the level of elementary-school gossip: "Everyone hates you"?


Trust me on this...I will give it all the consideration it, and you, deserve.

 

[PoliticalChic]

For those who believed in authorizing a new class in America, based on skin color, this post will .....what's that Liberal term....oh...."offend."




1. "The Plot Against Merit....Seeking racial balance, liberal advocates want to water down admissions standards at New York’s elite high schools.



2. In 2004, seven-year-old Ting Shi arrived in New York from China, speaking almost no English... he shared a bedroom in a Chinatown apartment with his grandparents—a cook and a factory worker—and a young cousin, while his parents put in 12-hour days at a small Laundromat they had purchased on the Upper East Side. Ting mastered English and eventually set his sights on getting into Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of New York City’s eight “specialized high schools.”

3. [Ting bought] prep books for its eighth-grade entrance exam....prepared for the test over the next two years, working through the prep books and taking classes at one of the city’s free tutoring programs. His acceptance into Stuyvesant prompted a day of celebration at the Laundromat—an immigrant family’s dream beginning to come true. Ting, now a 17-year-old senior starting at NYU in the fall, says of his parents, who never went to college: “They came here for the next generation.”





4. New York’s specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and the equally storied Bronx High School of Science, along with Brooklyn Technical High School and five smaller schools, have produced 14 Nobel Laureates—more than most countries. For more than 70 years, admission to these schools has been based upon a competitive examination of math, verbal, and logical reasoning skills.

5. ...troubled by declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, opponents of the exam have resurfaced. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed a civil rights complaint challenging the admissions process. A bill in Albany to eliminate the test requirement has garnered the support...[and] new New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, has called for changing the admissions criteria. The mayor argues that relying solely on the test creates a “rich-get-richer” dynamic that benefits the wealthy, who can afford expensive test preparation.

As Ting’s story illustrates, however, the reality is just the opposite.





6. In 1971, the board of Community School District 3, then a predominantly black and Puerto Rican district on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, charged that Bronx Science was, as characterized by the New York Times, “a privileged educational center for children of the white middle class because ‘culturally’ oriented examinations worked to ‘screen out’ black and Puerto Rican students.” .... the board criticized the exam for being “heavily loaded with ‘intelligence test’ approaches” and proposed that students should instead be admitted solely based on recommendations.

7. ....a 1997 report by the radical Acorn group assailing racial imbalance at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.
But strikingly, the Acorn report focused less on the entrance exam and merit selection than on improved preparation of minority students.... Acorn made this focus more explicit: “The question is not whether the entrance exam is unfair. The question is why students who attend public elementary and middle schools for eight or nine years are so unprepared to do well when they take it.”
The Plot Against Merit by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Summer 2014



The question will surely break down along the usual lines: Liberals, equality of numbers is the only consideration.

Normal folks: merit should be rewarded.

I graduated from Brooklyn tech in 96. The school was mostly Asian, but they also had a lot of blacks who went there.

This was in the link:
"Prominent black graduates include political scientist Thomas Sowell (Stuyvesant ’48), former Harvard Medical School dean Alvin Poussaint (Stuyvesant ’52), radical activist Stokely Carmichael (Bronx Science ’60), astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (Bronx Science ’76), and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (Stuyvesant ’69)."

Pretty impressive....except for the last one.

 

[saveliberty]

What annoys me are people who immediately attack the OP writer before even one intelligent post.

 

[Mac1958]

Hardly a "plot" drama queen.

I'd agree with this, there's no plot.

They're willing to lower quality in exchange for lowering standards, anywhere, any time.

We're seeing it manifest in our decay as the most dynamic nation on the planet: Confident Idiots: American Students Growing More Confident, Less Capable

It's just the way they think. It's worth it.

.

Perhaps the greatest blow to American education was by the Liberals...the 'self-esteem' movement.

The question to me is motive:

Do they really think that this is going to raise quality, or do they not care in exchange for perceived "feelings" and "self esteem" and "fairness"?

I think it's the latter.

.

 

[Billy000]

PC, will you ever put forth an original thought of your own on this forum? This copy and paste crap may fly with the simpletons of this forum, but everyone else is just annoyed.

Why, BillyZeroIQ.....every single thing I post is based on my thoughts.

That is the content.

What you call "copy and paste crap" is method of presentation, and is based on supporting documentation and quotes from experts.


You may understand the difference when and if you ever get out of junior high.





"...everyone else is just annoyed..."

Really? Did you interview everyone?
Or is this "reporting" on the level of elementary-school gossip: "Everyone hates you"?


Trust me on this...I will give it all the consideration it, and you, deserve.

Well your pure binary thinking about liberals is really just a nuisance to anyone with basic critical thinking skills. I don't even think you can define that term.

Your "presentation" involves stitching together random information together forming painfully obvious logical fallacy.

 

[saveliberty]

It may surprise some, but success by a parent can translate into a motivated child to also achieve.

 

[PoliticalChic]

3. [Ting bought] prep books for its eighth-grade entrance exam....prepared for the test over the next two years, working through the prep books and taking classes at one of the city’s free tutoring programs. His acceptance into Stuyvesant prompted a day of celebration at the Laundromat—an immigrant family’s dream beginning to come true. Ting, now a 17-year-old senior starting at NYU in the fall, says of his parents, who never went to college: “They came here for the next generation.”

In the Army, final test of one's occupational job training is done with open books or manuals.It is required...

This might interest you:

1. Progressives claimed that intelligence was so fixed, and so important, that it had to be the basis for keeping certain races from entering the country, and to suppress the reproduction of races already living here

a. The same political persuasion reversed itself in the 20th century, asserting that the innate equality of the races required government intervention whenever some statistical deviation in income, occupational advancement, or other social outcomes, since disparities are presumptive evidence of discrimination.




2. Almost synonymous with 'the Progressive Era' is the idea that science was the basis for the ideas behind it. The impetus for the scientific views was the huge European immigration, especially the shift from Northern and Western Europeans, to Southern and Eastern Europeans. Unhappiness with the way these new waves looked, or behaved, scientists leapt to explain how inferior they were! For same, came the efficient manner of dealing with these problems. The start was the accumulation of data on crime rates, disease rates, mental test scores, school performance.

a. 100,000 soldier were tested during WWI, and those of English, German, and Irish ancestry scored considerably higher than those of Russian, Italian, and Polish.
Brigham, "A Study of American Intelligence," (1923), p. xx.

b. Carl Brigham, authority on mental tests, and creator of the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test- claimed that the Army test 'disproved the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent.'
Brigham, Ibid, p. 190.


c. Black children in Youngstown, Ohio, scored higher than children of Polish, Greek, and other immigrants there.
Pinter and Keller, "Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children," Journal of Educational Psychology,(April 1922), p. 215.

d. What to do with these 'facts'? For progressives and liberals, "theirs was the vision of the anointed as surrogate decision- makers....[including] an expanded role for government and an expanded role for judges to re-interpret the Constitution so as to loosen the restrictions on the powers of government."
Sowell, "Intellectuals and Race," p. 26.

 

[PoliticalChic]

3. If you are a good boy, I may allow you to be one of the six carrying my palanquin.

I am disappointed......I always envisioned you transported on the shoulders of 8 servants not a mere 6. ..

You know how difficult it is to get good help (sigh...).

 

[saveliberty]

First its no original thought and now Billy accuses of random thoughts stitched together (which implies original thought to place them together). Not bad, you contradicted yourself in less than a page.

 

[saveliberty]

Eight? I'd do it solo, but I'm busy and I heard the pay was per diem.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Libs engage in the fallacy of personal experience. So someone up fpr Supreme Court justice ought to have started off poor and black because otherwise they can't have empathy for poor black plaintiffs.
It is total utter and complete bullshit and is ruining this country.

"So someone up fpr Supreme Court justice ought to have started off poor and black because otherwise they can't have empathy for poor black plaintiffs."

That's pretty much the Clarence Thomas story.....so, how come they hate him?

He watched too much Long Dong Silver...

So, you remain a devotee of high tech lynching......


...you probably don't know how brilliant Thomas is.


1. Writes Jeffrey Toobin:

"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years.

...it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work."

New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom - The American Interest

and

Partners - The New Yorker

 

[dilloduck]

I'd agree with this, there's no plot.

They're willing to lower quality in exchange for lowering standards, anywhere, any time.

We're seeing it manifest in our decay as the most dynamic nation on the planet: Confident Idiots: American Students Growing More Confident, Less Capable

It's just the way they think. It's worth it.

.

Perhaps the greatest blow to American education was by the Liberals...the 'self-esteem' movement.

The question to me is motive:

Do they really think that this is going to raise quality, or do they not care in exchange for perceived "feelings" and "self esteem" and "fairness"?

I think it's the latter.

.

Merit can't be defined without comparison and a competition of sorts. Liberals hate competition because sometimes you don't win. The would much prefer feeling good without having to risk finding out the truth. They now find solace in being part of a crowd that they are convinced is better than anything conservative. Just ask them. Every see them pity a conservative who is treated poorly ?

 

[M.D. Rawlings]

Hardly a "plot" drama queen.

1. plot
plät/Submit
noun
1.
a plan made in secret by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful.

Did you know about the NAACP lawsuit?
Is it harmful to America to eliminate merit?


2. As modest as I am, you may change that to 'drama princess.'

3. If you are a good boy, I may allow you to be one of the six carrying my palanquin.

 

[PoliticalChic]

It must have been fairly easy before this since the Bush family has gone into and graduated from Harvard or Yale..

I love how you'll jump into any thread...whether you know anything or not!
Good boy.

OK....education coming up: take notes.


1. For two of his four years at Harvard, Gore ranked in the bottom fifth of his class academically.
After squeaking through Harvard, Gore returned to Tennessee and, after flunking out of its Divinity School, entered but failed to earn a degree from Vanderbilt University Law School.
NewsMax Archives


2. Obama "...attended Occidental/Columbia undergrad and Harvard Law. Bush attended Yale undergrad and Harvard Business School. Bush released his grades and SAT scores (1206 on Verbal and Math--pre-1974--like 1300 today) as did his opponents, Kerry and Gore. Using the "Otis Gamma and Scholastic Aptitude" score, one can infer Bush's IQ to be 130. This places him in about the top 2-3% in the country.

This is higher than John Kerry and lower than Al Gore. The latter was a massive underachiever in college.

We do not know Obama's SAT, LSAT, or GPA scores because he won't release them. His Columbia GPA was estimated by the WSJ to be between 1.8 and 3.0 (C- to B) because he did not graduate with honors. He was at the bottom 15% in Occidental. He was in the top 10% at Harvard Law because he graduated "magna cum laude". So we assume he is smart, but how he got into Harvard with that record is peculiar. In any event, he will not release his records.
Law of the Bad Premise: Obama's Rocky Mountain High IQ



Now...aren't you glad you brought it up?

Yeah, rich folks have been bypassing the entrance exams and qualifications for many years, yet they believe they deserve merit in the work world just because they went to a certain college..
Why not equalize it and allow common folks to do the same?

Did you miss this in the OP?

'In 2004, seven-year-old Ting Shi arrived in New York from China, speaking almost no English... he shared a bedroom in a Chinatown apartment with his grandparents—a cook and a factory worker—and a young cousin, while his parents put in 12-hour days at a small Laundromat they had purchased on the Upper East Side. Ting mastered English and eventually set his sights on getting into Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of New York City’s eight “specialized high schools.”


Stay tuned....I have more to post on this topic.

 

[Moonglow]

"So someone up fpr Supreme Court justice ought to have started off poor and black because otherwise they can't have empathy for poor black plaintiffs."

That's pretty much the Clarence Thomas story.....so, how come they hate him?

He watched too much Long Dong Silver...

So, you remain a devotee of high tech lynching......


...you probably don't know how brilliant Thomas is.


1. Writes Jeffrey Toobin:

"In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.

This is one of the most startling reappraisals to appear in The New Yorker for many years.

...it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work."

New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom - The American Interest

and

Partners - The New Yorker

I don't care what color you are or which porn star is your fav, if you want to accomplish something just be good and have an inside parlay to get into positions of power and wealth.

 

[saveliberty]

How much worse can it get really? I mean they already promoted a person to president without merit. What is left?

 

[Moonglow]

I was a high school drop out at 17 1/2 years of age, at 18 i walked into a college and started going until I finished a degree with no family to support me financially.
If I can do it, anyone else can also..

 

[PoliticalChic]

An observation on merit: Those who excel can overcome many disadvantages, including attending slightly inferior schools. Those without merit often squander the opportunity, as they do not fully appreciate or understand what they have been given.

" Those who excel can overcome many disadvantages, including attending slightly inferior schools."


....unless they've been convinced that they are victims, and cannot excel sans big government....