Schools and the Tyranny of Merit
One of the books I read last year that has most stayed with me is Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? In it, Sandel argues that meritocracy is inherently harmful to society and has brought about the huge divides in politics across the western world we've witnessed in recent years. The divide between 'winner's and 'losers' gets ever deeper and, while Sandel acknowledges that this is, in large part, due to inequality, he identifies the attitudes to 'winning' and 'losing' engendered by meritocracy as the unacknowledged catalyst that has prompted the breakdown of civic life. [...]