IN MEMORIA PRISTINAE AMANTEM
"My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high
Is was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility."
A. Marvel
YOU MAY DENY YOUR PAST BUT IT WILL ALWAYS BE PART OF YOUR PRESENT
“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
Saturday 23 March 2019
Friday 22 March 2019
Monday 18 March 2019
ON ELITE EDUCATION AND THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY
I have seen this sense of frustration and disillusionment in the eyes of undergraduates I’ve worked with at Harvard, young people who over the course of four years endure the psychological toll of navigating a school environment that both implicitly and explicitly tells them that the only reason they were admitted was an undeserved handout, that their place was not earned but is instead an act of charity, that they were given someone else’s spot. But what this scandal demonstrates is that the very idea of our society—in the context of higher ed or otherwise—being a “meritocracy” was made up to justify and reify existing social hierarchies. It is not real. What is real is the advantages of wealth and race, which often combine to give people things that they have told themselves they deserve. What is real is that students who have done everything right are often the ones made to feel as if their place on campus is anything other than earned.
Clint Smith - The Atlantic
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