meanwhile im here like "we should physically seize anything of value from the buildings, we should put the alumni and their families on a education and work blacklist since they are all unredeemable rich assholes, and we should build a new school somewhere else that isnt founded by people who profited from slavery"

like seriously everybody, good leftists are not meritocrats, we dont believe that skill or ability should determine someones societal status. talk to any highschool student trying to get into a good college from us to china and they will all be stressed out and the majority that dont succeed are going to be irreconcilably damaged from the experience because of all the cramming they did and the existential dread that a fucking test can determines ones own life trajectory is not something we should be forcing on children, teenagers, young adults, or anybody really.

literally one of the deadliest civil wars in chinese history was caused by a guy failing the civil service examination and that led to him to black out and wake up thinking he was jesus' brother, and there was the austrian who famously was rejected from art school, maybe we should make education more equitable and not have elite universities and that necessitates tearing down the old prestigious ones funded by blood money.

  • janny [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I mean yeah in its current form it's bad but it is a democratizing reform that in theory is better than having some feudal lord be your judge, jury and executioner.

    Personally I think under socialism (or a more civilized bourgeois society) there ought to be a system of semi-professional juries. Like if you want to make extra cash (it'd have to pay pretty well tbh), want to get out of work frequently, maybe want to become a lawyer and are a nerd you can go through a 1 year education to get educated in not just the law but also the social contexts of the law including law and race, gender, queerness, ect.

    I guess I'd rather see trial by jury reformed significantly than done away with entirely. But yes I do agree in it's current form it often sucks. In part though thats because alot of anti-social middle class people know what to say/do to get our of jury duty so it indirectly selects for people who are very gullible and can be manipulated easier. Sure there's a structural element to fixing that but alot of it is also a cultural view of needed to value civic service.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Personally I think under socialism (or a more civilized bourgeois society) there ought to be a system of semi-professional juries.

      Cuba uses a "lay juror" system, where one professional judge and two ordinary people doing one-year shifts decide cases. I'm far from an expert on it, but it sounds interesting.