Practice question · Numerical answer
In which year did Michael Young publish The Rise of the Meritocracy, the satire that coined the word?
Hints
- It appeared in the same decade as the expansion of British secondary education.
- Nineteen fifty-eight.
Show the answer
1958
Why
1958. The date matters for reading it: Young was writing during the debate over selective secondary schooling in Britain, and the eleven-plus examination is the machinery his imagined society perfects. The satire was aimed at a policy in progress, not at a distant possibility.
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