Hello ladies and hello gentlemen, this is the Victor Davis Hanson show. Happy New Year to everyone.

Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and E. Leanderson senior fellow with the Hoover Institution

and the Wayne and Marsha Busky distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College.

We have a lot to talk about today and we're going to start off with meritocracy.

We're going to get to that right after these important messages.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show.

My friend, you know, normally Victor, we read comments at the end of the podcast

and they're normally comments that are auditory or have worthwhile things to say.

But there's a comment that came up last week that I think is important.

I'm going to read it and get your thoughts on it because it really is an important and almost a frightening issue.

I don't know the name of the person that wrote this. Read the subject. I don't blame him or her for using a different name.

It's titled meritocracy versus quota, quoteocracy.

Let me indulge me, indulge us listeners because it's important to hear this and hear Victor's reaction.

Hello, I will preface this with a heartfelt thank you to BDH and his host for creating such a wonderful podcast, et cetera, et cetera.

Now on to my comment. I feel it necessary to mention that our meritocracy is on life support if not already gone.

I'm a military dentist and I was a 2020 graduate of dental school, both the undergraduate university and dental school that I attended still gave grades and class ranks as a 2020.

But there was a push in undergraduate and postgraduate education to do away with grades as a measure of competence.

As a matter of fact, schools like Harvard School of Dental Medicine utilize a pass fail grading system.

In 2012, the National Board Dental Examination, a standardized exam that all dental students must take to qualify for state licensure, was changed to pass fail

with the ability to simply retake the exam if you fail.

This is also the case with individual state licensure examinations.

I know of no student during my tenure to fail out of school as you are given the chance to recycle classes if somehow you do receive a failing credit.

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