The Struggle to Survive
A new article about the myth of meritocracy really hit home for me this week. The article cites a newly published study in the journal of Child Development that suggests that young people of color who grow up believing in the American dream, show a decline in self esteem during middle school. This is one of those reports that I find validates things we already knew. The myth of pulling yourself up by your booth straps to recognized success completely crumbled for me in grad school. In fact, I was surprised how hard this reality hit me since I assumed I had known the truth about meritocracy (and I even taught about meritocracy!). I was an older graduate student. Coming out of the corporate world, I was different from my peers…