Diodati does a round up / a tangent on Heavenly Sword on the talented

Elia Diodati does a superlative roundup of discussions about meritocracy and the scholarship system on both sides of the causeway. I must say that the style (of exposition) is reminiscent of another blogger who used to do such things... Anyway, there's a lot there and the reader is encouraged to read it for himself or herself, and do follow the multitude of links. Fascinating stuff--and comprehensive too.

The only important one I know of that he missed (because it is only just posted), is Sze Meng's posting of the unabridged version of the paper prepared for the ERC Committee as part of the ERC (Overseas) initiative in June 2002. Sze Meng is also looking for space to host a .pdf version of the file, so watch for that.

But back to Elia Diodati because there is one bit that I will briefly comment on:

I cannot help but comment, in addition, that there is perhaps a misleading tendency in the preceding articles to equate meritocracy with the concept of scholarship awards. This is far too narrow a point of view: the meritocracy does not concern itself merely with its best products, though surely they will receive disproportionate attention per capita: the whole system of meritocracy is all about separating the wheat from the chaff, but also to grade the various qualities of wheat and chaff. No doubt scholars form the apex of the meritocratic system and are in every way the star performers, but they form at most two percent of the entire school year’s cohort; one should not forget the lower echelons of non-scholar graduates, diploma holders, and everyone in between and around that contribute to the machinery nonetheless. So comprehensive as the discussions may be, they are still fundamentally incomplete by focusing very much on the issue of scholars and scholarships.

That's right--a meritocracy would, presumably, be bigger than a scholarship system. In fact, on my earlier analysis of the components of any meritocratic system, a scholarship system would be something under item #6 "The methods by which the potentially meritorious are cultivated (if any)"--though with implications for a few of the other parameters as well.

For the Singapore case, however, it is perfectly understandable that the discussion will so quickly focus on the scholarship system. It is the most obvious place where the "merit" meets the "-cracy", considering that PSC scholarship holders are not just graded academically, but selected and groomed for a position in the civil service.

So while the other elements mentioned by Elia are important in a more comprehensive consideration, the scholarship system--especially the PSC (and analogous) scholarship system--is the ultimate lynchpin to the meritocratic nature of our society. Though it is true that, as a whole, our society does accord some sort of superior status to the academically accomplished, MPs are still democratically elected (don't laugh, I'm am talking about the official version) rather than simply meritocratically determined (cf. Brave New World).

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Heavenly Sword's piece Singapore's system of talent production makes an interesting read on its own, apart from the implications for larger discussion about meritocracy. He argues that, paradoxically, the 'system' in Singapore is plagued by its own success in turning out 'talent':

Everywhere we go, we hear about Singaporeans with a string of A's under their belts or high scores for standardized tests. The paradoxical effect of our success is that individual 'young and uniquely' talented persons are often not considered to be unique, for they are now hidden within the talent-crowd comprising talent of varying degrees of excellence, passion, and dispensibility. As a result, a prodigy-in-the-making with great passion in his chosen field may very well be treated as any 'ordinarily talented' person.

Read the whole thing for yourself. But now, I'm going to go on a tangent, as I often do, to consider the notion of "a talented person".

(note: The following is somewhat "off the top of my head"--so I can't guarantee that I won't change my mind about it, perhaps even soon.)

Why do we--or societies--value talented people in the first place? By the talented, I mean nothing mysterious, just people with "a marked innate ability, as for artistic accomplishment", as the dictionary.com definition goes. And just as in the case of "elite", we can talk about the issue at the level of the word definition, or at the level of what a community counts as talent, accomplishment, etc. This means that there is no such thing as a "talented-in-itself, in the abstract"; the notion is always indexed to specific communities, times and places, etc., and even when not explicitly not, it is still by default indexed to "most people, today, in most places round the world, say".

To cut a long story short, a person is considered talented for having ability X in society Y only if society Y prizes X-ing and by implication, an ability to X. If society Y doesn't prize X-ing or the ability to X, then the person is usually only called "talented" in jest, as we might say that "John is so talented, he has this unique ability to make a lot of noise by digging his nose..."

So, a question about just who are the talented in society Y quickly involves us with the next question: what sorts of abilities does Y prize? What sorts of things counts as accomplishments according to Y? Since different historical societies have often prized very different sorts of abilities, even contrary ones, does it mean that talent is relative to specific societies? That there is no such thing as a trans-historically objective concept of a talented person? Well, not necessarily. Though there are many differences, societies across time and place have tended to prize some things in common. And societies are not always isolated from each other--upon contact, they may change their mind, learn new things, convince others of the superiority of their ways, conquer or get conquered, etc. Secondly, it is at least conceivable that there are things that would be prized as accomplishments by all sane human beings (given a non question begging definition of sane), if given the chance. And it could even be that this concurrance is to be explained by something deep in what it is to be a human being.

But most importantly, the notion that "we prize X as an accomplishment" likely contains within it an implicit critical dimension. In other words, the thought is (usually) not just "we just happened to prize X as an accomplishment", but rather "we find X worthy of its being prized". This means that in prizing X as an accomplishment, there is an implication that should there be a convincing proof that X is not worthy of its being prized by us, then we have a reason to stop prizing X X's being an accomplishment is meant to be backed by reasons, and therefore, if those reasons are found wanting, X will no longer be counted as an accomplishment. (edited; to tell the truth, I am still not totally happy with this--that it actually says what I want to say. See the discussions in the comments.)

The stage is thus set for asking the next set of questions: what sorts of stuff should a society prize as accomplishments, and why?