Meritocracy and Its Critics

My mother was born in a tiny, forgotten village in Galicia, in northwestern Spain. She spent her childhood in this almost completely cutoff place, helping to tend the cattle, harvesting the crops, and attending to other farm chores. In the middle of the last century, her village had none of the facilities most cities enjoy: showers, agricultural technology, teachers or doctors, and opportunities to prosper. No doubt the villagers were happy, but there was more to the world beyond that beautiful isolated valley. No one there received any education until my grandfather, a military man who came to the village from the big city of Seville, decided to set up a school there and teach everyone to read and write and to learn the basics of primary education. When my mother was born, the village had already begun to change forever. My grandfather’s initiative changed everything.