Principal Ann Bonitatibus’ War On Merit
8th January 2023
Aspiring doctors and lawyers should be admitted to training schools for those professions on the basis of knowledge and intelligence, as measured by competitive examinations, not because they fill out race and sex quotas. Those quotas are bad enough in college humanities departments; in practical professions like medicine, law, and engineering they might be lethal.
This dismantling of the meritocracy, I’m learning, starts much earlier than medical and law school admissions, at any rate in Fairfax County, Virginia. That’s the location of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, “TJ” for short, a selective school currently ranked Number One in U.S. News & World Report’s list of “Best U.S. High Schools.”
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Of course a student has to know he’s won this award in time to include the fact in his college application. It’s turned out that TJ administrators—the Principal, Ann Bonitatibus [Email her] and the Director of Student Services, Brandon Kosatka[Email him]—have for five years been withholding notification to the students until after their college applications have been filed.