Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

For the second time in a week David Brooks has written an op ed piece that reflects my thinking. Thursday’s essay, “This is How Wokeness Ends“, describes two broad elements of what pundits call “wokeness”:

The thing we call wokeness contains many elements. At its core is an honest and good-faith effort to grapple with the legacies of racism. In 2021, this element of wokeness has produced more understanding, inclusion and racial progress than we’ve seen in over 50 years. This part of wokeness is great.

But wokeness gets weirder when it’s entangled in the perversities of our meritocracy, when it involves demonstrating one’s enlightenment by using language — “problematize,” “heteronormativity,” “cisgender,” “intersectionality” — inculcated in elite schools or with difficult texts.

He then describes the tortuous language that privileged students insist on using to demonstrate their enlightened status despite their evident place at the top of the “meritocracy”:

Performing the discourse by canceling and shaming becomes a way of establishing your status and power as an enlightened person. It becomes a way of showing — despite your secret self-doubts — that you really belong. It also becomes a way of showing the world that you are anti-elite, even though you work, study and live in circles that are extremely elite.

After identifying the purpose of the “meritocracy” at this point in the essay as funneling young people into leadership positions in society, Mr. Brooks makes a statement about our national ideology that I find irrefutable:

The primary ideology in America is success; that ideology has a tendency to absorb all rivals.

This prevailing ideology is, according to Mr. Brooks’ thinking, has a moderating effect. It tends to soften extreme positions because climbing the ladder to the top requires it. He writes:

In the 1960s, left-wing radicals wanted to overthrow capitalism. We ended up with Whole Foods.

A nice turn of phrase… but… when Amazon gobbled up Whole Foods I have a sense that MAYBE the left-wing radicals had a reawakening. MAYBE everyone is awakening to the fact that if the definition of “success” is the complete domination of the marketplace MAYBE success shouldn’t be the primary ideology in our country. Maybe our country needs to take a step back and replace the Whole Foods ethos with a Farmer’s Market ethos. And MAYBE instead of our “meritocracy” being based on zero-sum notions like acceptance into a top tier college based on test scores and resume building isn’t healthy or good for democracy. MAYBE going to school to accomplish the accumulation of wealth is the wrong building to lean our ladder against.