Word: utopia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...With roundabout humor, Young reminds his readers of the events, starting in the 1940s, that led to a blossoming Utopia. By mid-20th century, he assumes, Britain's best minds had realized that their country's economy could no longer compete with those of the U.S., Russia and China under a haphazard system that prevented some bright children of the poor from reaching responsible jobs rightfully theirs, and fortified doltish sons of the rich and well-born in positions of power. The answer: meritocracy, which is rule by the most talented, determined according to the formula...
...most part, meritocracy works; the upper class knows for the first time in history that it is superior in all ways to the lower; and the intellectual proletariat is encouraged to accept a "just inferiority" and develop a liking for sports. Modern wonders abound in Young's Utopia; the morning rocket leaves regularly for the moon, and England's southwestern counties have been covered with concrete for the convenience of motorists. But even as the author writes, the end is in sight. A general strike is called by a fusion party of disgruntled old men, trade unionists dimly...
...National Planning Committee of Independence opened its contest for the design of a national flag (first prize: $300), many Nigerians had grave reservations about what lay ahead. For all its jubilation, Nigeria's West African Pilot felt obliged to warn: "Independence without difficulties is a dream of Utopia...
...primitive man conceived in images, that his images were ideas; that he ascribed words to these ideas. And now, in this technological century, the word has grown further from the idea, until they have separated, and the word is all. The shattered images lie in a pile, along with utopia and dreams...
...stated and much-trumpeted hope of the Enlightenment and three centuries of liberal thought that education was the key to Utopia. As one by one the other panaceas have proved to be illusions--from Marxian economics to social engineering, our high school system should not midwife despair of ever reaching such a goal.Fred Safier '60 received nation-wide publicity when he entered Harvard at the age of twelve. His method of escaping the usual secondary school curriculum is not open to most of the nation's gifted...