What Midnight’s Children has to say about meritocracy

Lydia Dye-Stonebridge | 4 November 2021

I finally finished our latest book club selection, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, as well as Peter Mandler’s The Crisis of the Meritocracy, a history of mass education in the UK. Both reads took longer than they should have, but the frenetic pace of post-lockdown life made getting through over 1,000 pages of character-rich, politically-complex, chronologically-detailed narrative a substantial challenge, like the ocular equivalent of climbing K2.  

For those not already familiar with Midnight’s Children, it is a fantastical autobiography of a fictional character called Saleem Sinai, who is loosely based on Rushdie himself. It is also (less fantastically) about the formation and partition of India, as well as the rise of Indira Ghandi. The Crisis of the Meritocracy is an academic work that charts shifts in popular demand for post-compulsory education in the UK over the last century, how this demand interfaced with various governments and their policies but as of yet has failed to truly ‘level-up’ society. On the surface, it appears these works have little to do with each other, except for bits on statecraft and the inexplicable fact that I felt obliged to read both in full.

Both books, however, deal with the complicated concept of potential – what someone is born with, what is inborn, how it is singled out and realised, how it is laid to waste. To recklessly oversimplify the plot of Midnight’s Children, Saleem gains then loses the advantages of wealth, formal education and supernatural power, largely for reasons outside of his control. Ancestral patterns prevail, but the future is brutally uncertain. A simplification of The Crisis of the Meritocracy would read much the same way: opportunities are created and stifled. Structural issues persist, new directions are unclear, world’s a mess.  

Potential is one of those things education is meant to surface and nurture. This is why the universality of education, as Peter Mandler highlights, is generally regarded as a good thing in modern democracies. Humans are curious and enjoy discovering our own strengths as well as the talents of others. The tension arises, however, when it comes time to translate potential – which is inherently a creative force – to a system that largely resists change, feels it has defined needs and likes hierarchy.

For instance, most in Government would mirror Saleem’s fascination with Picture Singh, the most skilled snake charmer in all of India. Would they value Picture’s potential, however, should he express interest in running for a constituency? As much as commanding crowds and dealing with snakes might be applicable capabilities, they might gravitate towards the safe selection choice that is an Oxbridge PPE graduate. Mystics in government might be dangerous. Perhaps they would also helpfully suggest the charmer seek out a T-level with a route into zoology.  

This is the conundrum in education – developing the aspirational potential to be but also the practical potential to do. Saleem, who starts life with wealth and status, embodies the notion of potential of being. The assumed natural order is for him to be a leader because he has the culture, empathy and formal education to do so, and while he does lead at various points in the novel, it’s never to great effect. He can be but not do. For the most part, he is a sustaining force. In contrast, Shiva, the antagonist of Midnight’s Children, embodies the potential of doing, the manifestation of hands-on knowledge, ambition and power, but he lacks humanity. He can do, but he can not be. He is a destructive force.

The ideal, as most educators know, is to be found somewhere between these two forms of potential. As messy as it can be, they see it as their professional duty to cultivate the creative force that involves both being and doing, which is reflected in the breadth of primary education. In theory, this breadth remains available throughout British compulsory education but is refined in a child-centric way, so that those with strong potential to be excellent actuaries get to be actuaries, those with strong potential to be excellent hairdressers go on to be hairdressers, and those wanting to be philosophers have at least two other A-levels to fall back on.

So, why all the grumbling about the state of meritocracy in the UK? Why so much attention on its perceived failure to develop potential, to level-up? And why does higher education seem to be bearing the brunt of reforms?

The first issue is a structural one: for centuries, the point of a university education was to understand the mysteries and powers of God, unfettered from undue State or religious control. Even though university is now primarily a secular experience, the feeling remains amongst some that university education really should be about nudging dark corners of knowledge - not, say, heightening proficiency in Excel. Over time, some universities became clubs for the nudging select; King Henry VIII’s playtime at Christ Church Oxford and Trinity College Cambridge certainly upped elite interest. It’s worth remembering, though, that for over 500 years, university was essentially a Star Trek convention and that mentality prevails, Bullingdon Club and all.

The notion that university should be for something other than cultivating a god-like state is reasonably new, and some might argue that emphasising employability is something akin to celebrating Jesus as a carpenter. When they were introduced in the 1830s, polytechnics were meant to help establish some parity of esteem between academically-oriented and vocationally-oriented higher education, but in the end, the drift by polytech students towards Psychology and Sociology, courses that specifically delve into the mystery that is the human, partly culminated in the conversion of these institutions into universities in 1992. Despite this, applicant interest in “old universities” like Oxford and Cambridge still remains strong against the average, because what god went to Shire Modern?

So if the mission of university is to become more god-like or ascend to some form of social pantheon, that leads to the second issue: the compatibility of this mission either with society at large or the world of work. If the purpose of creating 21-year old demi-gods, complete with their little demi-god networks, is to unleash a fresh torrent of creative energy on the world then that’s a good thing. Creating demi-gods, however, is not likely to be an effective way to close specific skills gaps – this requires access to training and strong employer partnerships. It is also not necessarily an effective way to promote equality, unless everyone has a shot at high-quality provision and good prospects upon completion.  

What, then, to be done with universities? In my opinion, let them do what they are best at, develop a broader range of quality options, encourage everyone to go at a point where they feel ready, and outside of Scotland, make at least the first year free. It should be an innate right for people to get to explore their humanity and their universe, to celebrate the creative potential inherent in both. Then, when the focus needs to shift from being to doing, tag on a vocational offer that can start at either 18 or 21 or 45, funded through reforms to the apprenticeship levy and developed in close partnership with employers. Make it far more normal to hold an academic and an unrelated professional degree. Let people capitalise on all forms of their potential.

One of the darkest moments in Midnight’s Children is when Parvati, a love interest both Saleem and Shiva share, gets crushed in a slum clearance. In the novel Parvati is a white witch and a healer, but her name also references the goddess of creation. Parvati, the creative force, is crushed in the name of economic progress and political stability, and without her, Saleem – the sustaining force in the novel – begins to crack.

In my opinion, our collective grumbles about meritocracy and untapped potential have to do with the persistent refusal to be creative, where being and doing intersect in a myriad of unruly forms. For instance, how fit is the grades-performance based tariff system for students who demonstrate genuine leadership and scholarship potential? How necessary are discipline or qualification-specific barriers? How can we use technology to expand the educational offer and quality of local higher educational institutions, or blend academic and professional learning? How can we further a symbiotic – rather than either-or or narrow - relationship between higher education and training?

Instead, we have a Government that seems transfixed on destructing what is good and distinct about university, which is the fleeting opportunity to contemplate the fundamental forces of our universe and human nature. Rather than nurturing a balance between the potential of being and the potential of doing, the Government is repeatedly tipping the scales towards doing, the effect of which is to redirect people into lives that tend to have less influence, unless they can afford another route. The perverse consequence will be that instead of driving innovation, the potential of being for so many will be laid to waste, much as it has been in totalitarian systems fixated with filling labs, factories and bureaucracies. Or, as I am finding, make it incredibly costly to retrain later in life if university is to be the only option, making it a deterrent for graduates who have already proven their academic capability – if anything, an impediment to a meritocratic, yet still hollow, promise that if you study hard, you’ll get a good job.

At the end of Midnight’s Children, Saleem does finally emerge as a creative force, but the question is whether it’s all too late. It certainly is too late for those he led into destruction, late for the child that has entered into his care. In a post-financial crisis, post-Brexit, post-Covid, post-industrial world, how late can the Government afford to leave creative approaches before, like Saleem, it begins to crack? A meritocracy is predicated by the notion that people get ahead through the realisation of their potential. Let us embrace a creative spirit to do so, rather than crush it for a false illusion of economic and political stability.

This post only reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the London Association of Phi Beta Kappa or Phi Beta Kappa.