Books in Brief

The Rise of the Meritocracy, by Michael Young (Random House, $3.50). This mildly amusing satire purports to be a sociological “study” made in England in 2034. The Socialists of 1945-1970, eager to destroy all superiority but too stupid to see that “equality of opportunity meant equality of opportunity to be unequal,” supported a vastly augmented school system in which all children (who were, of course, paid a salary by the State) received an education directly proportional to their IQ and their willingness to use their brains. Soon every individual was assigned to a place in agriculture, industry, or government corresponding to the rating of his intelligence as determined by comparison with a computing machine built to have an IQ of exactly 100. The new aristocracy inevitably rediscovered some of the facts of life, including the basic one that no decent society is possible without a servant class, and eventually it proposed to make its status hereditary. But as the book ends, the regime of merit is threatened by riots to which the stolid workers are incited by excited ladies. The point (if I have not mistaken the dubious flavor of Mr. Young’s weak tea) is that even in a “meritocracy” the upper classes will include neurotic females who suffer from a kind of psychic impetigo, an itch for Social Reform.

R. P. OLIVER

Featured Tags

The Rise of the Meritocracy, by Michael Young (Random House, $3.50). This mildly amusing satire purports to be a sociological “study” made in England in 2034. The Socialists of 1945-1970, eager to destroy all superiority but too stupid to see that “equality of opportunity meant equality of opportunity to be unequal,” supported a vastly augmented school system in which all children (who were, of course, paid a salary by the State) received an education directly proportional to their IQ and their willingness to use their brains. Soon every individual was assigned to a place in agriculture, industry, or government corresponding to the rating of his intelligence as determined by comparison with a computing machine built to have an IQ of exactly 100. The new aristocracy inevitably rediscovered some of the facts of life, including the basic one that no decent society is possible without a servant class, and eventually it proposed to make its status hereditary. But as the book ends, the regime of merit is threatened by riots to which the stolid workers are incited by excited ladies. The point (if I have not mistaken the dubious flavor of Mr. Young’s weak tea) is that even in a “meritocracy” the upper classes will include neurotic females who suffer from a kind of psychic impetigo, an itch for Social Reform.

R. P. OLIVER