pogoism

Rachel Maddow vs. Pat Buchanan

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1. I know nothing about politics or indeed these 2 people, but having just watched this, I am slightly bemused! Surely people should be judged purely on merit and how capable they are of doing the job they are picked for! I am sick of positive discrimination. Take for instance, if I was to apply for a job in KCC and met all the criteria required, I still might not get an interview. However if I had some kind of disability I would definitley get an interview. How is that fair? Surely that is discrimination against me! The best candidate should be picked, everytime.

   

   Crystal Riley

   July 19, 2009 at 6:25 AM

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   • OMG I spelt definitely wrong, please correct it!

     

     Crystal Riley

     July 19, 2009 at 6:28 AM

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   • Because it’s not that simple. Sonia Sotomayor is clearly an intelligent woman. But she’s latina, and she’s a woman. If there was no affirmative action, she probably wouldn’t have got in to Princeton and Yale. She grew up in the Bronx.

     Yes, sure, it seems unfair. And yes, in an ideal world, we’d judge people solely on their merits, but not everyone has the same start in life.

     It happens in the UK too. Universities (especially Med Schools) are encouraged to accept more and more “Britneys and Dwaynes” (as I was at that conference in Nottingham). That doesn’t seem fair, but they probably went to awful schools, which they had no choice in. So they didn’t have a great education, but it doesn’t mean they’re not capable, and it doesn’t mean they’re stupid. And remember, if they were stupid, they wouldn’t last very long at Uni anyway, which was true for Sotomayor, who clearly demonstrated she’s a highly intelligent woman.

     

     pogoism

     July 19, 2009 at 10:46 AM

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     • Oh, look what’s in the UK news today!

       “Milburn is also expected to back an extension of university schemes offering students from poor backgrounds places on lower grades than more privileged children, and to attack poor careers advice in state schools.”

       http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/19/private-schools-share-facilities

       

       pogoism

       July 19, 2009 at 11:11 AM
2. Contrary to Buchanan’s argument, SAT scores alone are an insufficient index of intellectual power. Though his comments made me wonder how he’d have done taking a standardized test in Spanish.

   Any educator will tell you that there are many ways to detect ability — and that standardized tests are pretty good at measuring one thing: how the candidate takes tests. Were that the only criterion for selection and advancement, our country would suffer from the results of institutional myopia.

   People like Buchanan demand a clear, easy way to detect ability; unfortunately, no such easy way offers itself in a complex situation. Nor does Buchanan need to attack grade inflation — even were one to adopt his premise, that means only that grades are another poor index of ability. Despite this slur, summa cum laude grades are still very hard to come by, even if the middle has moved from “C” to “B”.

   At the end of the day, as Buchanan does not mention, Sotomayor became editor of the Yale Law Journal as the result of blind screening. Given what I heard from him tonight, I rather doubt he could have done the same.

   

   Ziggy

   July 20, 2009 at 6:43 PM

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