I read an article from the New York Times on whether standardized testing should be used as a factor in determining college admissions and I was struck by how narrowly focused it was within the prevailing paradigm of individualism. The context of the article is that several big universities have dropped standardized testing in recent years because it was perceived as biased against people of lower socioeconomic classes. However, the author argues that standardized testing allows admissions departments to make better decisions about who to admit because the tests can help predict students academic and post-academic success. I reckon he is right about that, but he doesn't at all address the deeper issues about why we have admission limits at all and why we are so hyper-focused on academic success in the first place.

(1) Why are there admission limits at all in education?

I grant that a university has limited space for people living there and attending classes in person, but it's total nonsense to say that you have to be in-person to learn. Anyone who has ever been to a reasonably large university knows this. Most of the first and second year classes are in lecture halls with hundreds of students — I guarantee I could have taken all those classes in an online format and have had the same level of engagement and learning. Plus, with a good setup (high quality video feed, clean audio, real-time interactivity and feedback, etc.) I imagine all my classes could have been held online, even the smaller ones (in fact, especially the smaller ones). The same people who are distracted while doing online learning are likely to be those same people in lecture halls who are on their phones or distracted by the people around them so I don't buy the argument that online learning is inherently less effective.

The bottom line is that the fact that there are limited admissions to university is itself an area that should be addressed. Universities ought to do everything possible to allow any number of people to attend classes by allowing them to be broadcast online as well as attended in-person. Why limit people's access to knowledge? There is literally no downside to making people smarter, wiser, more conscientious and well-rounded people, which is what universities typically aim to do. And when you take away the limits on class admissions, you instantly eliminate the need for fussing about admissions at all, let alone standardized testing.

(2) Why is students' academic success and post academic success a measure of whether someone should be admitted to a university or not?

The author takes the position that it's important for students to graduate and become successful after college, and that colleges should only admit students who are predicted to do so. But graduating college is only important because our global capitalist economic system places so much value on exchanging labor for a wage, and having a college degree can raise one's earning potential. The same is true with this notion of post-academic success — it's completely bound up in this notion that success is having a prestigious career and earning lots of money. Sure, you might also argue that it's about helping nurture great minds who will contribute to humanity's progress, but again why should that have any bearing on whether someone is admitted to university?

In my perspective it is the failure of the university to provide a student the support he or she needs if that person struggles. If a person doesn't graduate, yes it's easy to blame that person, but have some empathy, take a look at what's going on with them and I'm sure you'll find they are struggling with something. In my opinion, anyone can be successful, anyone can thrive if you understand them and support them in the ways that they need. The notion that "our university does things this way and anyone who fails to succeed here — that's their problem" feels so cold and heartless. It's yet another instance of our hyper-individualist cultural mind-virus rearing its ugly head.

Perhaps I'm in the minority with my perspective, but if I create any kind of organization, whether it be a community, a business, an education center, or whatever, you can be damn sure I'm going to do everything I possibly can to see everyone succeed within it. It's never going to be about "you must follow these rules and if you don't then that's your fault, good-bye". I will always put in the effort to try to understand a person and why they are struggling and see if I can help them, even if ultimately it is determined they aren't a good fit for the organization. Bringing someone into your organization is establishing a relationship with that person, and relationships are a mutual dance. We should aim to look at both what is happening with that person and also what the organization is doing (or not doing) to allow them to thrive.

I would understand it if it was in the early stages where often an organization doesn't have the capacity to take on the challenges of helping particularly troubled or problematic individuals. For example in early stage communities, there can sometimes be a person who brings a lot of drama and the effort to deal with that person can be exhausting, so I totally understand the decision to move more quickly towards parting ways in those cases so the rest of the project can move forward. But for large, well-funded, long-established organizations, that's no excuse.

Interdependence is our power

You might be wondering where my perspective comes from. Why should we help nourish each other, rather than continue with this hyper-individualist paradigm we live in? For sure it is related to the compassion that I have for people, but it is not merely based on that. I have this perspective because it is rational. When you examine flourishing systems, you will notice a great deal of diversity and interdependence. Take a close look at any natural biome and you will see all manner of animals and insects and plants and bacteria and fungi interacting with each other. A common, but misleading framing here is that all those things are in competition with each other. It is true, there is some competition, but there is far more mutual dependence.

The soil is created by a host of organisms: worms, fungi, bacteria, insects, pretty much everything contributes to it. Plants grow from the soil and provide sustenance to animals and other organisms, not to mention they provide the very oxygen we breathe. The decaying remains of animals provide nutrients back to the soil. There is an epic cycle of life and death and interconnectivity within ecosystems that I can't even begin to pierce. All my words will be woefully inadequate to describe it, but it's there — you can see it for yourself if you just pay attention. Sit in a forest, or a park, and stay present with what's going on around you. It's all connected, and when you see it, when you really grasp the profundity of it all — the entire system that is life on Earth — it's downright beautiful and awe-inspiring.

The same interconnectivity can be seen within human civilization itself. Think about how connected we are. There are people who build the roads you drive and walk on, people who build the street lamps, the traffic lights, who build the bridges, who landscape the parks. People who engineer the chip in the phone in your hands, the LCD screen, and all the apps. There are people who make the clothes you are wearing, or create the machines that make the clothes you are wearing, the shoes you are wearing, the jewelry that you are wearing. The food you consume was grown by someone, harvested by someone, transported by someone to the store you bought it from. Every product in your home was built by someone, or built by a machine that was built by someone.

If you had to make these things yourself, you would not be able to create the vast majority of them. I am quite confident that 99% of the people reading this wouldn't even be able to craft a single spoon to the same quality that they have in their kitchen, even if they had the metal ready to go. Now imagine if you had to also find the raw materials too… Go out and dig into the earth, find some rocks, extract some Chromium, some Nickel, some Carbon, purify it, smelt it together in the right ratios to make stainless steel. Right, good luck with that. 🤦‍♂️😂

It should be obvious after any reasonable amount of reflection that we all depend on so many other people for the things in our lives which bring us comfort and security and enjoyment and ease. In fact, the extent of this interconnectivity and interdependence is difficult to understate.

Now this notion that we are all individuals and that we should be concerned with / are responsible for only ourselves misses this interconnectivity and interdependence entirely. The idea is that we should focus only on our own lives, our career, our goals, and everyone else is just a side character in our story that doesn't deserve an ounce of our attention... How tragic that we've become this way, given how much we depend on each other and — just as importantly — how much better off we would be if we expanded our concerns beyond ourselves and our immediate friendships.

In other words, we should be concerned about the people who build our cars, who make sure the trash is picked up, who ensure our roads are paved, who ensure our food is safe, who make our phones. Most everyone has a part to play in our lives, big or small, and we should recognize that and empathize with those who have it harder than others because all the things they create affect us, for better or for worse. Even if it's purely from a selfish perspective, you should be concerned for example that the people who made your food at a restaurant are treated well, because you are going to eat what they serve you and I'm sure you can imagine all the things that could go wrong there. Think about the people who make your car — do you really want it to be constructed by a bunch of underpaid people who hate their jobs?

But it's more than just about the risk or benefit to you at the micro-level, it's about the potential of our entire species. Think about how different things could be if we all imagined ourselves to be part of one giant family. If we supported each other and made sure that work was distributed fairly and that people did the things they were actually interested in. This is actually possible today. Believe it or not, there are people excited about trash management. There are people who are excited about building bridges, and programming computer chips on smartphones. 

Imagine a world where every person worked on what they wanted to work on — what they were passionate about. Sure, some jobs might need a few volunteers, and some might be a bit oversaturated with too many volunteers, but we can figure those differences out with automation / robots / good systems design. Just think about the difference in quality of all the things in your life. Instead of being made cheaply to turn a quick profit, everything would be made by a passionate craftsman, a family member who genuinely wanted you to have a product that was awesome, that would endure, that would be made to be the best version of that thing in the world. Everyone would always have the highest quality version of every product. You wouldn't get the lowest model of a car — you'd get the highest with all the features (or more accurately, with all the features you want). You wouldn't get the phone limited by what you could afford, you'd get the one you actually want.

Now I grant that it's very difficult for a lot of people to imagine this kind of world and there's a lot of other things that would have to be considered for it to work, but I maintain: it absolutely could exist. I refer to individualism as a "mind virus" because that's exactly what it is: it's a cultural perspective that evolved as part of the conquest/scarcity mindset that swept the Earth in the early days of human civilization that suppresses human potential. By encouraging people to focus on their own lives, we fail to meaningfully unlock the power of synergy, all while we continue to exploit each other and our planet with reckless abandon.

To create a more flourishing world requires dismantling this mind virus and shifting back to our communitarian roots, back to a place of interconnectivity and mutual support, back to a place of love.