Meritocracy In Today's Society

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Meritocracy is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a leadership role, “in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement” (Merriam-Webster). Meritocracy is basically saying that in order for a person to move up, they must show an amount of talent in a specific area regardless of wealth and what social class a person comes from (White). Meritocracy exists in some parts of society, however in other parts of society it is nonexistent. Meritocracy does exist today however; it is not always present in today’s society. Meritocracy can occur in groups that involve military personnel, where soldiers or officers can be promoted in training, testing, as well as performance (White). The higher up a soldier or …show more content…

An example where meritocracy does not exist is within the educational system (Petersen). Envision a child that comes from an unstable home, where one of the parents does not have a job, uses drugs, and abuses the child (Petersen). All of these problems would factor into this child’s education, study habits as well as performance in school (Petersen). All in all it would be unfair to grade a child that comes from an unstable home with parents who have little or no influential power on their child, to a child that comes from a stable home with encouraging parents that have jobs and are compassionate towards their child (Petersen). The child who comes from a poor household will not be as equally educated as the child that comes from a wealthy household (Petersen). “Students [are] being graded under an inequality of conditions with the results claimed to reflect a meritocracy” (Petersen). However, meritocracy is not evident in this case because students are not retaining information and are therefore at different levels (Petersen). There is poor performance assessing in the school systems and “the fact that conditions beyond the school environment highly influence a student’s performance destroys the illusion of meritocracy in the educational system”

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