Cho Yong-hoon et al.: The Trap of Meritocracy

Korean society is now trapped in a “poweryism” trap. Not only society but even the church is in a trap of empowerment, and is painfully vain and not properly aware of it, and its damage is not easy. The term "powerism" was first used in the 1958 Michael Young satirical novel, but there was a feeling that we should be rewarded according to our ability, regardless of where we came from before modern times. The modern liberal ideology in particular has reinforced the idea that a person can be secure in social status if he works diligently, according to his ability and efforts, not by standing or by rank. The idea of empowerment, which has been developed in modern times, is the distribution principle, "Post and reward must be distributed according to capacity," and has developed into the fundamental principles of equality and social mobility of opportunity, based on the historical background of social inequality. But in Western society, there has been a long debate over this powerism. In particular, empowerment is criticized as being ideology, which makes moral justifications for economic inequality and social discrimination. If you look at this as three key points: fiction, control and equality, there is no concept of the ability to measure objectively, to be personal, controlled and objective by the empowered. Because unless the luck of the home and society is completely eliminated, it's not only the achievement of the individual, and it'll be hard to determine objectively the ability of the person to learn from his education or training. In the next step, empowerment justifys the domination and monopoly of capable elites.

Korean title: 능력주의의 함정

Korean author: 조용훈 외

Korean publisher: 새물결플러스

ISBN-13: 9791161292649