Meritocracy!?!?

In the NY Times.com Podcasts published on May 22, Walter Kirn talks about his new book "Lost in Meritocracy".
Do yo know what is Meritocracy!??!?!
Before we talk about meritocracy let's talk about what Walter Kirn says about his life, his journey to become more educated. From someone who was a student in a small public high school to a renowned ivy league university, he developed his reading habit by himself. As he said his first books were not a reference but as time went by he started to read books that made him more educated.
Walter Kirn says Meritocracy is this " Meritocracy writes on defining intelligence in a measurable way ...that can be scored". In his opinion the human mind can not be define this way (can not be measure as percentile, score...).
This podcast got my interest, because this author is talking about education, what is an education and how to get educated. Is it by going to ivy league school or is it by looking to our own passion, our own culture, intelligence, interest and dig into it to achieve the level of education that we are looking for. Like Walter Kirn says about getting an education, is to go "to the primary source upon which our culture is based".
But is is only our culture which is going to get us an education. Our culture was made of so many other culture, isn't it better to learn about everything that interest us either from our culture or not? And with this globalization, mondialization isn't it better to look even further than were we are from, which is our culture.
About meritocracy, does it measure my level of intelligence based on what "society" think is relevant or what is relevant to me? the GMAT, the SAT.....are they really relevent to test what I can and what I cannot achieve. Isn't ist about perseverence, beliefs, passion, determiniation?????