Michael Young'sThe Rise of the Meritocracy: A Philosophical Critique

ABSTRACT This paper examines Michael Young's 1958 Young, M. 1958. The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870–2033: an Essay on Education and Society, London: Thames and Hudson. [Google Scholar] dystopia, The Rise of the Meritocracy. In this book, the word 'meritocracy' was coined and used in a pejorative sense. Today, however, meritocracy represents a positive ideal against which we measure the justice of our institutions. This paper argues that, when read in the twenty-first century, Young's dystopia does little to dislodge the implicit appeal of a meritocratic society. It examines the principles of education and administrative justice upon which meritocracy is based, suggesting that since 1958 those principles have changed. Young's warning no longer has any effect on us because the meritocratic system it warns us against has been transformed.