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Just Chat! / Aristocracy is meritocracy.
« on: 08/05/2011 21:11:15 »But being a Noble (I assume you mean some inherited title) does not confer power and, for many, does not confer wealth either.
All titles come from the King or Queen and are not necessarily inherited, the Queen can make anyone a knight or Baron, Earl etc, that some have land and wealth is true but often that has also been given by the monarch to them at some past time, as originally all land was owned by the monarch- called feudalism.
Inheritence tax tends to curb this, though some escapes to offshore accounts I expect. This is why many of the large estates of the past are now open to the public as a business to pay for their upkeep.
We do have a meritocracy and successive governments have tried to make it moreso because the mobility between sectors in society is not considered high enough.
Sorry it might be a stated claim, but if you look at the statistics social mobility has got worse, the gap between rich and poor worse, so the ideas you just stated are false, they might claim like Blair did that we live in a classless society, but it's bunkum, besides who wants live in a society with no class? [
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If there are ways to improve this further then there are plenty of people who would be interested. I regret the introduction of tuition fees but it was going to be an inevitable consequence of opening higher education to all; someone has to pay for it.
It should be open to all, but it is also true that not everyone is interested, some people might prefer to be plummers, or carpenters, or stone masons, or shop owners, also you should consider the reality as many a uni grad will tell you today as business dominate education "We learn more and more about less", besides the reality that just going to a uni does not guarantee anything- Richard Branson just has a a-level in Art. So do I [
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Or as Will Hunting might say "You just wasted 1000s of dollars on an education, you could get down the library for a few bucks"
It's the tragedy today it's not about education, but about getting a job, competition for paper, that's what they go for, not to learn and understand, but just to get ahead- the paper becomes more important that actually understanding the subject- rediculas.
My sociology teacher said "the best class I ever taught no one took the exam, as they all decided they were there to understand the subject, and enjoy learning" it is that reality that caused me also to not bother with the exam, I agreed with him.