Reading meritocracy: School Inflation: Disappointments of the Merit System (Marie Duru-Bellat)

Abstract

Dourough Platt’s book School Inflation: Disappointments of the Merit System brings to light a set of important conclusions adopting a critical analysis of the educational meritocratic system as related to the labour world. The book delves into the theoretical background of the meritocratic approach questioning its sources of legitimacy. One of the central insights of Platt’s analysis focusses on the school practices and their influence on the individuals’ final outcomes and destiny. On that account merit presents itself in the book to be the unique ideology in modern societies while all the expected social benefits seem delayed . Facing all these disappointments and feelings of regression which school inflation is increasingly reinforces, now and and in the future,Maybe, it is high time to do away with the idea of “merit” as such, which has turned to be a dogma , hoping to reconsider life in a different way