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A comment on Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams. Parent comment

Re:Cal State will no longer require math and English placeme... by Mvandenbergh on Wednesday August 09, 2017 @09:39AM (#14968623)
Nonsense. The Chinese have had a meritocratic civil service for ~1500 years. They spent the early 19th century being thrashed by the British who only established an exam based civil service in 1850s.

The Napoleonic French were a lot more meritocratic in their military and civilian career structure than the British who beat them on the seas.

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Re:Cal State will no longer require math and English placeme... by danieltillett on Wednesday August 09, 2017 @04:40PM (#14973368)
The Chinese were not thrashed by the British in the early 19th C. - they were thrashed by the East India Company who had embraced meritocracy long before then (they actually copied the Chinese system).

Napoleon is a classic example of the success of meritocracy - it took the combined effort of the whole European nobility to defeat France and even then it was a close run thing.

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