Meritocracy - maybe we need to be real about it?

I feel I need to first state the meaning of meritocracy as I understood it from the article. It appears to be the system by which individuals are judged and made to advance in a society or educational system based on what they know or by their performance rather than their social backgrounds.

Social backgrounds and "who you know"
I think it is only realistic to admit that there will be a certain aspect of "who you know" ivolved in the process of where your career goes and how you will advance or be judged in society or in education. This is very simply because there are human beings doing the judging and they will involve human factors such as demeanor, affiliation, disposition and values. People will tend to work with people they already know or share interests, backgrounds or values with. It is safer and more comfortable for them. Therefore poeple of partcular social circles tend to get rehired in those circles. It should be part of the educational system (or more precisely career planning system) that students be made aware of this and work strategically towards leaving whichever system they want to and joining whichever circles ther prefer. Just as they are leaving the ranks of the uneducated for the educated. Any other transitions must be analyzed and made with the same sytematic approach. it cannot be education's job to do everything and somehow teach each one of them exactly how to get precisely where they want to be.
I therefore believe that the "who you know" factor is only innocent and natural and we'll be fine (not feel slighted) as long as we keep the facts on that in mind.


No such thing as Pure Meritocracy
I do not believe there can ever be true meritocracy. The last line in the article was a quote from Laurie Taylor that said that meritocracy took away your ability to blame the class system when you didn't make it to the top. I think that you can still blame whatever you want since there will always be classes and there will always be those born more fortunate than others who can achieve the things that take the average person a lifetime in a a matter of weeks (for whatever reasons). And there will always be Luck, providence, God or whatever physical, spiritual, intellectual or emotional factors cause one to rise or fall, succeed or fail in different endeavors. The key would therefore be not to "blame" anyone but recognize cause and effect. Distill (to the extent humanly possible) the changeable from the unchangeable and effectively assess the true abilities of an educational system to influence the outcomes of these people's lives and careers. I believe that many of these argumants from H & S to this article are simply viewing a very large picture through a tiny lense and expecting equality (a word that keeps coming up over and over) in what is far from an equal world.