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The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice
Leftist firebrand Fredrik deBoer exposes the lie at the heart of our educational system and demands top to bottom reform.
Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Preposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability.
Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that heirarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place.
This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.
A Macmillan Audio production from All Points Books
Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Preposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability.
Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that heirarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place.
This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.
A Macmillan Audio production from All Points Books
Audio CD
First published August 4, 2020
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About the author
Fredrik deBoer
4 books781 followersFredrik deBoer is a writer. He lives in Connecticut.
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June 5, 2021
Central to the core idea behind this book is that people are fundamentally different from one another. That those differences are, at base, genetic. That genetics is a kind of lottery. And so that means we shouldn’t reward or punish people on the basis of their luck (or otherwise) in that draw. That is, that the cult of smart is wrong because it rewards luck and punishes people who have no means to otherwise respond than by internalising the idea they are second-class citizens within our society.
The author is concerned that the left have abandoned the field of genetics to the crazies on the right – racists and fellow travellers. He is a Marxist. His vision is for a future world where people are asked to contribute according to their ability, and be rewarded according to their needs. People who have never meet a Marxist naturally assume they all share the same beliefs. But it is important to remember that perhaps the second most well-known quote by Marx is “I am not a Marxist.” That someone declares themselves to be a Marxist tells you much less than you might think it would.
The book I might have expected from a Marxist on this topic would have stressed the material conditions of life and how these play a determining role in what a society thinks of itself. That the book instead focuses upon the fixed and virtually unalterable gene - the ‘you are born with it, so you’d better learn to live with it’ characteristics of people - seemed a bit surprising to me.
The argument here relies more on Rawls than on Marx. The argument is very similar to that discussed in The Tyranny of Merit – if you had no idea of the benefits that you would have in society given your allocated gender, race, social class, sexuality – would you design a society that rewards those attributes in the same way as the society we currently live under? The author, and Rawls, argue that the society we would propose if we had no idea which of those attributes were going to be rewarded, would likely be much more socially equal than the one we currently live under. You didn’t get to choose your gender, the social class you were born into, your race and so on. Well, the author also puts IQ into that mix too. And not just IQ, but also cognitive ability more generally. These are things you are ‘just born with’ – but while ‘the left’ are happy enough to say gradations in skin colour are genetically predetermined, they are less happy to say gradations in intelligence are. But if both are natural and beyond the ability of the individual to do anything about, it is morally reprehensible to punish someone on the basis of an attribute they have no ability to change. This is an interesting moral argument - but it is certainly not a Marxist one, even if:
From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
I’m in the odd situation here of agreeing with nearly everything this book says, other than its central idea, and that makes the book very hard for me to recommend. My problem is that I can’t agree with the author that genetic determinism is the only way to explain human diversity. And I feel that rather than what he shrugs off as a misinterpretation of modern genetic understanding (the modern Eugenic theories of Pinker and Chomsky) is actually a much better at arguing against his hope for a more equal world. In fact, his genetic determinism is the main means capitalism uses to justify the gross and growing inequalities the system delivers.
Still, if your ideas are in conflict with science, you should probably change your ideas. So, more power to him, I guess. My point, however, would be that there are many on the left who are much more trained than him in biology who do not share his genetic determinism. Lewontin’s work in both “Not in Our Genes” and in his lectures in “Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA” ought to have been two books he considered here - in fact, he presents genetic determinism as settled science, which it certainly is not. But, as he says, he is no biologist. My concern is more around his Marxism.
As I said before, Marxism sees lived experience as the major factor determining social consciousness. And this is the bit that I found a bit strange about the author’s ‘all the way with DNA’ approach, there has been lots of work by people on the left, and much of that directly related to educational sociology, that has tackled the issues he raises in this book and that fit more with traditional interpretations of Marx’s idea of lived experience as determinate, work that finds no need to discuss genes at all. Since he so stridently claims to be a Marxist, I might have thought that if he was to propose that it was genes all along, then he might have to at least mention some of that other work and then show why it was wrong.
For instance, you could read my reviews of Bourdieu – particularly his books 'Reproduction' or 'The Inheritors' – or you could read my reviews of the first three books of Bernstein’s 'Class, Codes and Control'. Now, neither Bourdieu nor Bernstein were Marxists. But both focused upon the lived experience of social classes to explain the grossly inequitable outcomes that children received. Being from the US, you might have thought he would have referred to what is perhaps the most famous application of Bourdieu’s ideas in that country, Annette Lareau’s 'Unequal Childhoods'. A book that shows the impact of the habits and dispositions of different social classes upon the life outcomes of the children from these social classes. To ignore the social conditions of social classes and the impact these have in the life outcomes of members of those social classes is hardly the work of a Marxist.
I’m saying all this because the author makes much of his Marxism in this book – something I found almost amusing at times. But having been brought up around Marxists all my life, I know that at best Marxists are like Protestants – if put two in a room, you’ll get three churches. All the same, I hadn’t been expecting to read about a Marxist school of genetic determinism. That came straight out of ‘right’ field.
That said, I agreed with just about everything else that this guy said. I think Charter Schools are a means to bleed the US public school system dry. That our obsession with only one form of intelligence, one that is then highly rewarded, continues to justify the growing inequalities in our societies, and that we are using education for purposes it was never intended for and that this is killing what education is intended for.
My problem is that in framing his arguments around the genetics of cognitive diversity he is doing much less to promote his ideas than I think he believes he is. You see, his logic runs like this – you might think that you can ensure your children will be successful by breeding with people who are as smart as you are – but as George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have said to an actress who suggested they should have children together saying something like ‘with my looks and your brains, how could our child not succeed’, to which Shaw is supposed to have replied, ‘what if it has my looks and your brains?’ Genes are a lottery, and if it is all basically luck, we should design a world where that luck won’t potentially smash our children’s lives to atoms when the shuffle of the genetic deck goes badly against them.
As logical as this all might seem, and as comfortingly moral, too, of course – it is all a bit of a confusion. Firstly, we are moving more and more towards a caste system in the most advanced capitalist countries. Merit is one mechanism that is used to justify that caste system, and genetic just-so stories are another. If genes are so important, how is it that intergenerational social mobility is decreasing at an accelerating rate?
Other parts of his argument seem to help defeat his argument too. He says that IQ has raised throughout the 20th century. This is one of those things people assume is the opposite of what is the case, but it has been confirmed repeatedly. IQ is, as he says, norm-referenced – that is, 100 is always the average. But to ensure that is true, 100 has had to be reassigned to ensure it is the average person – because people keep getting smarter. But if that is the case, we should probably pause before accepting the decisive role of genes in intelligence - because that time frame is far too short to have been impacted by 'changes in genes'.
The author and I both agree that too much weight is placed on STEM subjects as a panacea for all social ills. But we come at this from very different perspectives. He thinks it is cruel to force people who are genetically not good at STEM to do STEM subjects, because we shouldn't force people who are naturally less capable at these subjects to do them and therefore these people shouldn’t be judged on a test that they are not naturally predisposed to achieve in. The old story of the 'fair' exam involving a monkey, fish, elephant and snail being asked to climb a tree... But this couldn’t get the matter more arse-about-face. The reason why STEM subjects are used in the great sorting machine of academic ability has very little to do with the need to differentiate according to natural genetic ability in mathematics. It has everything to do with the fact STEM subjects are hard.
Most of the people who study STEM subjects in high school in Australia, for example, will never work in STEM or study STEM at university. So, why do they study it? Because it guarantees they will get high marks in their university entrance scores. Why does it guarantee that? Because the students most likely to do well in those subjects have the resources (familial, school, economic, cultural, social) that will mean they will inevitably dominate the highest scores in these subjects in their final exams. This isn’t my ‘best guess’ – this is the depressingly repeated result EVERY year. There is never a year when elite schools do not massively out perform all others in the final year results in these subjects. Why? Is it because those schools are somehow endowed with children with the best genes? What a load of nonsense. Is it because being able to pay $40,000 for a year to attend a sandstone school gives you maths genes? It is almost too absurd to bother arguing about. The author here jeers at the author of 'Twilight of the Elites' at one point – but that author is a much smaller target than who this author really needs to overcome – he needs to overcome the arguments of Bernstein and Bourdieu and Lareau and Diane Reay, and others who have long argued along with Marx that a child’s lived experience plays a determining influence upon their social outcomes. The difficulty of STEM subjects is the point and it plays a dual role – The difficulty of the subjects make it incredibly hard for children without social advantages to be able to compete in these subjects with those who do have those advantages, and the sheer hard work that is required to learn calculus, theoretical physics and advanced chemistry convince those who succeed that their success is all down to hard work and natural ability. It is pernicious and it is cruel – and it has much less to do with genes than the author believes.
As I said – I agreed with many things said here, but the central premise is so far from being helpful in the debate about success and failure at school it actively undermines the things that are worth reading about this book.
The author is concerned that the left have abandoned the field of genetics to the crazies on the right – racists and fellow travellers. He is a Marxist. His vision is for a future world where people are asked to contribute according to their ability, and be rewarded according to their needs. People who have never meet a Marxist naturally assume they all share the same beliefs. But it is important to remember that perhaps the second most well-known quote by Marx is “I am not a Marxist.” That someone declares themselves to be a Marxist tells you much less than you might think it would.
The book I might have expected from a Marxist on this topic would have stressed the material conditions of life and how these play a determining role in what a society thinks of itself. That the book instead focuses upon the fixed and virtually unalterable gene - the ‘you are born with it, so you’d better learn to live with it’ characteristics of people - seemed a bit surprising to me.
The argument here relies more on Rawls than on Marx. The argument is very similar to that discussed in The Tyranny of Merit – if you had no idea of the benefits that you would have in society given your allocated gender, race, social class, sexuality – would you design a society that rewards those attributes in the same way as the society we currently live under? The author, and Rawls, argue that the society we would propose if we had no idea which of those attributes were going to be rewarded, would likely be much more socially equal than the one we currently live under. You didn’t get to choose your gender, the social class you were born into, your race and so on. Well, the author also puts IQ into that mix too. And not just IQ, but also cognitive ability more generally. These are things you are ‘just born with’ – but while ‘the left’ are happy enough to say gradations in skin colour are genetically predetermined, they are less happy to say gradations in intelligence are. But if both are natural and beyond the ability of the individual to do anything about, it is morally reprehensible to punish someone on the basis of an attribute they have no ability to change. This is an interesting moral argument - but it is certainly not a Marxist one, even if:
From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
I’m in the odd situation here of agreeing with nearly everything this book says, other than its central idea, and that makes the book very hard for me to recommend. My problem is that I can’t agree with the author that genetic determinism is the only way to explain human diversity. And I feel that rather than what he shrugs off as a misinterpretation of modern genetic understanding (the modern Eugenic theories of Pinker and Chomsky) is actually a much better at arguing against his hope for a more equal world. In fact, his genetic determinism is the main means capitalism uses to justify the gross and growing inequalities the system delivers.
Still, if your ideas are in conflict with science, you should probably change your ideas. So, more power to him, I guess. My point, however, would be that there are many on the left who are much more trained than him in biology who do not share his genetic determinism. Lewontin’s work in both “Not in Our Genes” and in his lectures in “Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA” ought to have been two books he considered here - in fact, he presents genetic determinism as settled science, which it certainly is not. But, as he says, he is no biologist. My concern is more around his Marxism.
As I said before, Marxism sees lived experience as the major factor determining social consciousness. And this is the bit that I found a bit strange about the author’s ‘all the way with DNA’ approach, there has been lots of work by people on the left, and much of that directly related to educational sociology, that has tackled the issues he raises in this book and that fit more with traditional interpretations of Marx’s idea of lived experience as determinate, work that finds no need to discuss genes at all. Since he so stridently claims to be a Marxist, I might have thought that if he was to propose that it was genes all along, then he might have to at least mention some of that other work and then show why it was wrong.
For instance, you could read my reviews of Bourdieu – particularly his books 'Reproduction' or 'The Inheritors' – or you could read my reviews of the first three books of Bernstein’s 'Class, Codes and Control'. Now, neither Bourdieu nor Bernstein were Marxists. But both focused upon the lived experience of social classes to explain the grossly inequitable outcomes that children received. Being from the US, you might have thought he would have referred to what is perhaps the most famous application of Bourdieu’s ideas in that country, Annette Lareau’s 'Unequal Childhoods'. A book that shows the impact of the habits and dispositions of different social classes upon the life outcomes of the children from these social classes. To ignore the social conditions of social classes and the impact these have in the life outcomes of members of those social classes is hardly the work of a Marxist.
I’m saying all this because the author makes much of his Marxism in this book – something I found almost amusing at times. But having been brought up around Marxists all my life, I know that at best Marxists are like Protestants – if put two in a room, you’ll get three churches. All the same, I hadn’t been expecting to read about a Marxist school of genetic determinism. That came straight out of ‘right’ field.
That said, I agreed with just about everything else that this guy said. I think Charter Schools are a means to bleed the US public school system dry. That our obsession with only one form of intelligence, one that is then highly rewarded, continues to justify the growing inequalities in our societies, and that we are using education for purposes it was never intended for and that this is killing what education is intended for.
My problem is that in framing his arguments around the genetics of cognitive diversity he is doing much less to promote his ideas than I think he believes he is. You see, his logic runs like this – you might think that you can ensure your children will be successful by breeding with people who are as smart as you are – but as George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have said to an actress who suggested they should have children together saying something like ‘with my looks and your brains, how could our child not succeed’, to which Shaw is supposed to have replied, ‘what if it has my looks and your brains?’ Genes are a lottery, and if it is all basically luck, we should design a world where that luck won’t potentially smash our children’s lives to atoms when the shuffle of the genetic deck goes badly against them.
As logical as this all might seem, and as comfortingly moral, too, of course – it is all a bit of a confusion. Firstly, we are moving more and more towards a caste system in the most advanced capitalist countries. Merit is one mechanism that is used to justify that caste system, and genetic just-so stories are another. If genes are so important, how is it that intergenerational social mobility is decreasing at an accelerating rate?
Other parts of his argument seem to help defeat his argument too. He says that IQ has raised throughout the 20th century. This is one of those things people assume is the opposite of what is the case, but it has been confirmed repeatedly. IQ is, as he says, norm-referenced – that is, 100 is always the average. But to ensure that is true, 100 has had to be reassigned to ensure it is the average person – because people keep getting smarter. But if that is the case, we should probably pause before accepting the decisive role of genes in intelligence - because that time frame is far too short to have been impacted by 'changes in genes'.
The author and I both agree that too much weight is placed on STEM subjects as a panacea for all social ills. But we come at this from very different perspectives. He thinks it is cruel to force people who are genetically not good at STEM to do STEM subjects, because we shouldn't force people who are naturally less capable at these subjects to do them and therefore these people shouldn’t be judged on a test that they are not naturally predisposed to achieve in. The old story of the 'fair' exam involving a monkey, fish, elephant and snail being asked to climb a tree... But this couldn’t get the matter more arse-about-face. The reason why STEM subjects are used in the great sorting machine of academic ability has very little to do with the need to differentiate according to natural genetic ability in mathematics. It has everything to do with the fact STEM subjects are hard.
Most of the people who study STEM subjects in high school in Australia, for example, will never work in STEM or study STEM at university. So, why do they study it? Because it guarantees they will get high marks in their university entrance scores. Why does it guarantee that? Because the students most likely to do well in those subjects have the resources (familial, school, economic, cultural, social) that will mean they will inevitably dominate the highest scores in these subjects in their final exams. This isn’t my ‘best guess’ – this is the depressingly repeated result EVERY year. There is never a year when elite schools do not massively out perform all others in the final year results in these subjects. Why? Is it because those schools are somehow endowed with children with the best genes? What a load of nonsense. Is it because being able to pay $40,000 for a year to attend a sandstone school gives you maths genes? It is almost too absurd to bother arguing about. The author here jeers at the author of 'Twilight of the Elites' at one point – but that author is a much smaller target than who this author really needs to overcome – he needs to overcome the arguments of Bernstein and Bourdieu and Lareau and Diane Reay, and others who have long argued along with Marx that a child’s lived experience plays a determining influence upon their social outcomes. The difficulty of STEM subjects is the point and it plays a dual role – The difficulty of the subjects make it incredibly hard for children without social advantages to be able to compete in these subjects with those who do have those advantages, and the sheer hard work that is required to learn calculus, theoretical physics and advanced chemistry convince those who succeed that their success is all down to hard work and natural ability. It is pernicious and it is cruel – and it has much less to do with genes than the author believes.
As I said – I agreed with many things said here, but the central premise is so far from being helpful in the debate about success and failure at school it actively undermines the things that are worth reading about this book.
April 27, 2023
A book about our broken educational system is basically a book of science fiction to me. I'm not a teacher (although I wanted to be one, once), grade school & high school & college are way way in my past, and certainly no kids - that I'm aware of - have broken this committed bachelor's stride. Fortunately, I love science fiction because science fiction is also speculative fiction. This is speculative nonfiction.
The Cult of Smart isn't just about the educational system, it's about how to look at life and how to live a life and how to support other people living their lives. I loved every page (even the exactly two times I disagreed*). This book's outlook on humanity really resonated with me.
📖
Some notes:
- the book is about individual genetics, not racial groupings
- differences in intelligence is the great unmentionable. why is this? parents appear fine with noting that one child may have greater athletic gifts than another child. why is it taboo to note that one person may be more intelligent than another? intelligence or cognitive ability is a talent like any other, and differs per individual. intelligence is not all-defining or something essential. no talent is. intelligence is just as laudable as creativity, patience, gentleness, adventurousness, empathy, grit, etc.
- meritocracy = there will always be an underclass. it's baked into the very concept. meritocracy is actually a tool for reducing equality.
- "If we make the meritocratic race entirely fair in terms of race, gender, economics, class... the stakes of that race would remain as high as they are now, and the competition our young people face would stay just as brutal."
- the "aspirational class" i.e. upper-middle class self-sorts and replicates itself via marriage and children
- the most social inequality and wealth segregation occurs in those cities where there is the most progressivism e.g. New York City, Austin and my very own San Francisco
- parents can control very little of the behavioral traits of their children
- we have the example of women's suffrage/ empowerment/ enfranchisement to use as a model for addressing racial gaps i.e. socioeconomic and cultural changes can engender changes in educational outcomes
- the Blank Slate Myth (every child is a tabula rasa, able to accomplish anything given the appropriate training by the right teachers with the right curriculum) is at the root of blaming teachers first. thanks, neoliberals!
- re. how behavioral traits and intelligence are formed, there is an established hierarchy of impact:
Heritability > Environment > "Unshared environment" (peers, choices, chance, medical factors)
- student-side factors influence outcomes more than teacher quality
- teaching is a low-pay, low-prestige job which young strivers from elite colleges don't want to do permanently. and yet they strive to critique and change the teaching profession.
- test prep courses don't actually lead to overall marked improvements on test results
- individual tutoring is one of the only interventions that truly offers gap reduction and tangible results
- elite, "high-performing" schools are such because they prune low-performers
- students of different academic ability have different academic needs; we'll never have educational equality
- "No Child Left Behind" is the best example of how pure testing/universal benchmarks and lack of differentiation between student ability will inevitably lead to failure. thanks, neoliberals!
- "Nor does equality of human rules lead to genuine equality of opportunity in a world where different individuals have different kinds of potential."
- re. college: higher standards and higher graduation rates are in competition with each other
- most students at Ivy League colleges would excel and be successful wherever they went to school
- Reactions to the existence of racial gaps
> Progressive: gaps are the product of environment and socioeconomic differences, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, etc.
> Conservative: gaps are due to the "Culture of Poverty" and dependence on government handouts
> Neoliberal: gaps are due to failing public schools, inept teachers, outmoded teaching styles. fucking neoliberals!
> "Race Realists": gaps come from innate genetic differences between races
- Negative liberty = the right to be left alone, to be "free from" (classical liberalism and conservatism)
- Positive liberty = the right to do and have things, i.e. "free to" (my right to pursue my will must be balanced against my neighbor's right to pursue his)
- worth should not be defined through the Capitalist lens
- "We should broaden our conception of what success means to include the humanistic values of care and compassion"
amen brother!
- Freddie's Realistic Reforms
> Provide universal childcare and afterschool care (despite neither leading to improved outcomes)
> Lower age of legal dropout
> Eliminate charter schools - school systems should not be a competitive enterprise
> Lower standards (e.g. keep students in the system despite lack of ability in, say, Algebra)
> Understand that college is unnecessary for living a satisfying life
- "Acknowledging that not everyone has the same academic gifts is the first step in ending the Cult of Smart."
📖
I have to admit that I'm not a dispassionate reader when it comes to Freddie deBoer. He's my favorite living sociopolitical writer. I've learned so much from this guy. His ethics have helped me evaluate my own ethics and have helped me stay on track with what I'm doing in my life, in my own work. Which is also vaguely humiliating because he's like a decade younger than me? Ah who cares, age just a number etc. Anyway, would definitely gay marry him. You should really read his substack. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/?u...
Out of a lot of favorite parts, I particularly appreciated his incredible overview of what it actually takes to succeed as "upper middle-class" within the American culture of success. Yikes, hard pass.
The last chapter finds Freddie in an uncharacteristically and rather defiantly sunny mood, insisting that true educational reform can actually happen. And then there's the epilogue, which basically says Well probably not - at least not in this fucked up world. I got some whiplash there, which was an agreeable way to end this eye-opening trip.
📖
* the two times I disagreed:
- he kinda handwaves aside the value of vocational training
- if we lower the age of legal dropout to 12 (his recommendation)... what are those kids supposed to do with their time? Seriously Freddie, what? Get jobs? I think that also rather conflicts with his recommendation that we lower standards in order to keep students in school
The Cult of Smart isn't just about the educational system, it's about how to look at life and how to live a life and how to support other people living their lives. I loved every page (even the exactly two times I disagreed*). This book's outlook on humanity really resonated with me.
📖
Some notes:
- the book is about individual genetics, not racial groupings
- differences in intelligence is the great unmentionable. why is this? parents appear fine with noting that one child may have greater athletic gifts than another child. why is it taboo to note that one person may be more intelligent than another? intelligence or cognitive ability is a talent like any other, and differs per individual. intelligence is not all-defining or something essential. no talent is. intelligence is just as laudable as creativity, patience, gentleness, adventurousness, empathy, grit, etc.
- meritocracy = there will always be an underclass. it's baked into the very concept. meritocracy is actually a tool for reducing equality.
- "If we make the meritocratic race entirely fair in terms of race, gender, economics, class... the stakes of that race would remain as high as they are now, and the competition our young people face would stay just as brutal."
- the "aspirational class" i.e. upper-middle class self-sorts and replicates itself via marriage and children
- the most social inequality and wealth segregation occurs in those cities where there is the most progressivism e.g. New York City, Austin and my very own San Francisco
- parents can control very little of the behavioral traits of their children
- we have the example of women's suffrage/ empowerment/ enfranchisement to use as a model for addressing racial gaps i.e. socioeconomic and cultural changes can engender changes in educational outcomes
- the Blank Slate Myth (every child is a tabula rasa, able to accomplish anything given the appropriate training by the right teachers with the right curriculum) is at the root of blaming teachers first. thanks, neoliberals!
- re. how behavioral traits and intelligence are formed, there is an established hierarchy of impact:
Heritability > Environment > "Unshared environment" (peers, choices, chance, medical factors)
- student-side factors influence outcomes more than teacher quality
- teaching is a low-pay, low-prestige job which young strivers from elite colleges don't want to do permanently. and yet they strive to critique and change the teaching profession.
- test prep courses don't actually lead to overall marked improvements on test results
- individual tutoring is one of the only interventions that truly offers gap reduction and tangible results
- elite, "high-performing" schools are such because they prune low-performers
- students of different academic ability have different academic needs; we'll never have educational equality
- "No Child Left Behind" is the best example of how pure testing/universal benchmarks and lack of differentiation between student ability will inevitably lead to failure. thanks, neoliberals!
- "Nor does equality of human rules lead to genuine equality of opportunity in a world where different individuals have different kinds of potential."
- re. college: higher standards and higher graduation rates are in competition with each other
- most students at Ivy League colleges would excel and be successful wherever they went to school
- Reactions to the existence of racial gaps
> Progressive: gaps are the product of environment and socioeconomic differences, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, etc.
> Conservative: gaps are due to the "Culture of Poverty" and dependence on government handouts
> Neoliberal: gaps are due to failing public schools, inept teachers, outmoded teaching styles. fucking neoliberals!
> "Race Realists": gaps come from innate genetic differences between races
- Negative liberty = the right to be left alone, to be "free from" (classical liberalism and conservatism)
- Positive liberty = the right to do and have things, i.e. "free to" (my right to pursue my will must be balanced against my neighbor's right to pursue his)
- worth should not be defined through the Capitalist lens
- "We should broaden our conception of what success means to include the humanistic values of care and compassion"
amen brother!
- Freddie's Realistic Reforms
> Provide universal childcare and afterschool care (despite neither leading to improved outcomes)
> Lower age of legal dropout
> Eliminate charter schools - school systems should not be a competitive enterprise
> Lower standards (e.g. keep students in the system despite lack of ability in, say, Algebra)
> Understand that college is unnecessary for living a satisfying life
- "Acknowledging that not everyone has the same academic gifts is the first step in ending the Cult of Smart."
📖
I have to admit that I'm not a dispassionate reader when it comes to Freddie deBoer. He's my favorite living sociopolitical writer. I've learned so much from this guy. His ethics have helped me evaluate my own ethics and have helped me stay on track with what I'm doing in my life, in my own work. Which is also vaguely humiliating because he's like a decade younger than me? Ah who cares, age just a number etc. Anyway, would definitely gay marry him. You should really read his substack. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/?u...
Out of a lot of favorite parts, I particularly appreciated his incredible overview of what it actually takes to succeed as "upper middle-class" within the American culture of success. Yikes, hard pass.
The last chapter finds Freddie in an uncharacteristically and rather defiantly sunny mood, insisting that true educational reform can actually happen. And then there's the epilogue, which basically says Well probably not - at least not in this fucked up world. I got some whiplash there, which was an agreeable way to end this eye-opening trip.
📖
* the two times I disagreed:
- he kinda handwaves aside the value of vocational training
- if we lower the age of legal dropout to 12 (his recommendation)... what are those kids supposed to do with their time? Seriously Freddie, what? Get jobs? I think that also rather conflicts with his recommendation that we lower standards in order to keep students in school
June 7, 2020
I received an advance copy of THE CULT OF SMART by Fredrik deBoer from St. Martin’s Press and agreed to provide a review.
I did not care for THE CULT OF SMART. The first eight chapters make the case that humans are individuals with different abilities (some of them inherited from their parents) followed by one chapter calling for the Marxist revolution. None of this is groundbreaking nor enlightening.
When I agreed to review this work, I knew the author was a self proclaimed “far-leftist,” which I am not, although I have found many interesting and novel concepts in books written by far-left authors, and the question of intelligence distribution, especially with respect to reforming the US education system, is a long-held interest of mine, so I was hoping to find a new way of looking at the subject from a different perspective.
Unfortunately, this book delivered nothing new. Yes, intelligence is heritable (this is not a new revelation) but my strong belief is we are neither captives nor assured beneficiaries of an inherited high intelligence. (Attend a few Mensa meetings to prove that last part if there’s doubt.) That some people have abilities others don’t should be a surprise to no one.
Yes, the US education system is broken, possibly beyond repair. For one thing, and this is something on which the author and I agree, standardized achievement tests and the resulting “teach to the test” mentality these tests engender, are more than a waste of resources; they negatively affect the students they purport to help. Again, though, nothing new or revealing here.
I also agree with the author that luck plays a much larger role in everyone’s life than they are likely to realize or admit. I disagree, however, that it is society’s responsibility or role to compensate the unlucky. We have to play the hand we’re dealt.
The final chapter does nothing to suggest ways to fix the education system and address differences in intelligence. Instead it repeats Bernie Sanders’ campaign talking points and calls for a revolution and a complete destruction of the society and culture of the United States in favor of a society right out of Star Trek. I won’t go into a critique of the Marxist thinking that drives this call to arms for the simple reason that I try not to attack others’ religions, and Marxist socialism is indeed a religion, replacing belief in a wise, benevolent, all-powerful Deity with a wise, benevolent, all-powerful State. While the nature and existence of a Deity can be debated endlessly, humankind has repeatedly proved itself to be less than wise, benevolent or all-powerful.
Finally, some detailed problems with the actual book:
First, the build up is much too long, with a denouement that left me wishing I’d paid for the book so I could demand my money back.
Second, the author displays a high degree of ineptitude with statistics and their use.
Third, occasional grammar errors occur, as in chapter nine where the author writes, “I am viscerally opposed to means testing, in general; means-tested programs are less politically defensible, as they necessarily help less people....” I believe the author meant to write “fewer people” since he spent the preceding eight chapters arguing against the existence of lesser people.
Fourth, throughout the book, the author simplifies and makes blanket statements about what others believe or want, especially conservatives and centrist liberals. This is a common tactic, but not very useful if true understanding of others’ perspectives is the desired goal.
To conclude, I would only recommend this book to someone curious about the thought processes of the current generation of Marxists who seem to be driving the political debate in the US. For someone seeking a deeper understanding of the problems facing those trying to educate students with highly varied levels of intelligence, this book accomplishes nothing.
I did not care for THE CULT OF SMART. The first eight chapters make the case that humans are individuals with different abilities (some of them inherited from their parents) followed by one chapter calling for the Marxist revolution. None of this is groundbreaking nor enlightening.
When I agreed to review this work, I knew the author was a self proclaimed “far-leftist,” which I am not, although I have found many interesting and novel concepts in books written by far-left authors, and the question of intelligence distribution, especially with respect to reforming the US education system, is a long-held interest of mine, so I was hoping to find a new way of looking at the subject from a different perspective.
Unfortunately, this book delivered nothing new. Yes, intelligence is heritable (this is not a new revelation) but my strong belief is we are neither captives nor assured beneficiaries of an inherited high intelligence. (Attend a few Mensa meetings to prove that last part if there’s doubt.) That some people have abilities others don’t should be a surprise to no one.
Yes, the US education system is broken, possibly beyond repair. For one thing, and this is something on which the author and I agree, standardized achievement tests and the resulting “teach to the test” mentality these tests engender, are more than a waste of resources; they negatively affect the students they purport to help. Again, though, nothing new or revealing here.
I also agree with the author that luck plays a much larger role in everyone’s life than they are likely to realize or admit. I disagree, however, that it is society’s responsibility or role to compensate the unlucky. We have to play the hand we’re dealt.
The final chapter does nothing to suggest ways to fix the education system and address differences in intelligence. Instead it repeats Bernie Sanders’ campaign talking points and calls for a revolution and a complete destruction of the society and culture of the United States in favor of a society right out of Star Trek. I won’t go into a critique of the Marxist thinking that drives this call to arms for the simple reason that I try not to attack others’ religions, and Marxist socialism is indeed a religion, replacing belief in a wise, benevolent, all-powerful Deity with a wise, benevolent, all-powerful State. While the nature and existence of a Deity can be debated endlessly, humankind has repeatedly proved itself to be less than wise, benevolent or all-powerful.
Finally, some detailed problems with the actual book:
First, the build up is much too long, with a denouement that left me wishing I’d paid for the book so I could demand my money back.
Second, the author displays a high degree of ineptitude with statistics and their use.
Third, occasional grammar errors occur, as in chapter nine where the author writes, “I am viscerally opposed to means testing, in general; means-tested programs are less politically defensible, as they necessarily help less people....” I believe the author meant to write “fewer people” since he spent the preceding eight chapters arguing against the existence of lesser people.
Fourth, throughout the book, the author simplifies and makes blanket statements about what others believe or want, especially conservatives and centrist liberals. This is a common tactic, but not very useful if true understanding of others’ perspectives is the desired goal.
To conclude, I would only recommend this book to someone curious about the thought processes of the current generation of Marxists who seem to be driving the political debate in the US. For someone seeking a deeper understanding of the problems facing those trying to educate students with highly varied levels of intelligence, this book accomplishes nothing.
February 26, 2020
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC.
The basic thrust of The Cult of Smart is that we are, as a society, unwilling to admit that people cannot reach the same echelons of intelligence through good education and sheer grit. People are just different, and we already acknowledge this in other spaces, such as athletic ability. The author repeatedly emphasizes that this is not based on race.
As a consequence of this, we put most of our blame on already beleaguered public school systems and teachers, which doesn't help anyone but wastes billions of dollars and causes endless frustration through additional testing, etc. Furthermore, we internalize that intelligence trumps all and that our current hierarchy is natural. But "no educational miracle is coming," and there's "no technology that will save our schools, no neoliberal reform that will raise of children out of the grips of poverty, no new model that will suddenly turn struggling students into flourishing ones."
I think there are some really powerful ideas here. Here are some of my favorites:
-We focus our educational reform efforts like someone looking for keys under a street light-- because our political levers most easily impact teachers and public schools, that's where we tend to fiddle instead of serious attempts to address root causes.
-"There is no conflict in calling for political and social equality while denying that everyone is equal in ability."
-We tend to think of diplomas of having value in and of themselves rather than as a symbol of learning. As deBoer puts it so well, "Diplomas have themselves been confused with the educational benefits that they are supposed to signal."
-Degrees are a relative advantage rather than an absolute one-- the more people who have them, the less valuable they are.
-We should consider loosening standards. While abstract mathematics are critical for human development, not everyone has to know them for a productive and happy life.
The author makes no secret of his Marxism, and I think this outlook uniquely equips him to make some astute points about our current society. For example, in the ninth chapter, he remarks that "in contemporary society, we have more ways to be a loser than to be a winner" and he's certainly right. However, I think the last quarter of the book, and particularly the concluding vision of a Marxist utopia, is going to alienate a fair number of otherwise sympathetic readers. I say this as someone who is also pretty far left.
My other big objection is that I didn't see mention of the benefit of this white lie about everyone being equal in intellectual potential: there are so many socioeconomic and other barriers to success that could be addressed first, and acknowledging that people just aren't equal in this space could make it really easy to justify not taking action at all.
I'm rating this book 4 stars because, while I didn't agree with everything in it, I really enjoyed engaging with the ideas, and I left with a long list of other books and other resources to read. I hope that that others don't write the book off simply because of its Marxist leanings and it becomes an integral part of discussions surrounding educational reform.
If you like this book, or like the idea of it, you may also enjoy Paul Tough's The Years that Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us.
The basic thrust of The Cult of Smart is that we are, as a society, unwilling to admit that people cannot reach the same echelons of intelligence through good education and sheer grit. People are just different, and we already acknowledge this in other spaces, such as athletic ability. The author repeatedly emphasizes that this is not based on race.
As a consequence of this, we put most of our blame on already beleaguered public school systems and teachers, which doesn't help anyone but wastes billions of dollars and causes endless frustration through additional testing, etc. Furthermore, we internalize that intelligence trumps all and that our current hierarchy is natural. But "no educational miracle is coming," and there's "no technology that will save our schools, no neoliberal reform that will raise of children out of the grips of poverty, no new model that will suddenly turn struggling students into flourishing ones."
I think there are some really powerful ideas here. Here are some of my favorites:
-We focus our educational reform efforts like someone looking for keys under a street light-- because our political levers most easily impact teachers and public schools, that's where we tend to fiddle instead of serious attempts to address root causes.
-"There is no conflict in calling for political and social equality while denying that everyone is equal in ability."
-We tend to think of diplomas of having value in and of themselves rather than as a symbol of learning. As deBoer puts it so well, "Diplomas have themselves been confused with the educational benefits that they are supposed to signal."
-Degrees are a relative advantage rather than an absolute one-- the more people who have them, the less valuable they are.
-We should consider loosening standards. While abstract mathematics are critical for human development, not everyone has to know them for a productive and happy life.
The author makes no secret of his Marxism, and I think this outlook uniquely equips him to make some astute points about our current society. For example, in the ninth chapter, he remarks that "in contemporary society, we have more ways to be a loser than to be a winner" and he's certainly right. However, I think the last quarter of the book, and particularly the concluding vision of a Marxist utopia, is going to alienate a fair number of otherwise sympathetic readers. I say this as someone who is also pretty far left.
My other big objection is that I didn't see mention of the benefit of this white lie about everyone being equal in intellectual potential: there are so many socioeconomic and other barriers to success that could be addressed first, and acknowledging that people just aren't equal in this space could make it really easy to justify not taking action at all.
I'm rating this book 4 stars because, while I didn't agree with everything in it, I really enjoyed engaging with the ideas, and I left with a long list of other books and other resources to read. I hope that that others don't write the book off simply because of its Marxist leanings and it becomes an integral part of discussions surrounding educational reform.
If you like this book, or like the idea of it, you may also enjoy Paul Tough's The Years that Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us.
March 30, 2021
I have no athletic talent. I absolutely suck at sports—and no matter how many times I’ve tried, i just cannot serve a tennis ball or hit a baseball. Fortunately, I live in a society that doesn’t place a premium on athletic skill, so I can still live a good life even if I’m an atrocious athlete.
The same cannot be said, however, for intelligence. How smart you are is a big, huge deal in our society, and it will play a huge role in the kind of life you can expect to lead. By and large, if you’re smart, you’ll have a much easier time getting by in the world than if you aren’t. We don’t much like to talk about the fact that some people are smarter than other people, but this book wrestles with that issue head on.
I loved reading this book. It was a bit weird as a smart kid to explore and unravel all my biases around how important it is to be smart and how central education is to a good life. I realized that while I certainly value education for its own sake (and I’m so damned tired of college students picking a major based on what they think will land them a job when they graduate), I also value education because life in the US is often miserable for those without education. But rather than forcing everyone to get an education that they may not want or be suited for, we should instead eliminate the misery that currently surrounds people who lack education.
Some central points from this book (roughly paraphrased):
* Intelligence is largely determined by genetic luck. Research has shown the tremendous influence of genes on everything from height to athletic ability to musical talent, so it’s not surprising that intelligence also has a huge heritable component.
* Differences in intelligence exist within gender/racial groups, but not really between groups. That is, there are intelligent women and there are stupid women, but there aren’t really intellectual differences between ALL women as a group and ALL men as group.
* Non-genetic factors have very little influence on overall intelligence. This makes intuitive sense when you think about those Baby Einstein CDs, but more controversially, it also applies to teachers. Teachers can encourage students to develop their natural intellectual gifts but cannot turn academically struggling students into geniuses—or even average students.
* Rather than being a strike against teachers, their lack of influence on student intellect actually liberates them from being held to impossible standards. Rather than being held accountable for every student passing some standardized test, teachers can instead help every student develop to their full academic potential—while crucially recognizing that that potential is different for every student.
* Given that intelligence is primarily genetic, it is therefore not true that everyone can be equally smart and successful if they just try hard. Our intelligence—and by extension our job security and quality of life—is largely determined by factors outside our control.
* But if smartness is not within our control and just comes down to luck, how can we justify upholding a society that rewards smart people with great jobs, big salaries, and excellent lives while the people who aren’t so smart get left behind? If intelligence is just a roll of the genetic dice, then it is wrong to tie economic security and stability to academic success.
* Rather than building a meritocratic society where some people get amazing rewards because they’re super smart and some people scrape by for their whole lives because they struggle to hold a job, we should instead strive to build a society that doesn’t consider intelligence as a measure of human worth. Intelligence is just one attribute among many in the complex tapestry that makes a human being. It shouldn’t be the defining characteristic that determines the kind of life they can lead.
* Pretending that everyone could be equally intelligent if they tried is dishonest and does a disservice particularly to those who just aren’t interested in the academic life. Recognizing the natural variation in human intelligence can help us stop using it as a defining characteristic for someone’s moral worth.
Overall, I really liked this book, and I found myself talking endlessly about it to my boyfriend. While I disagree with the author that students should be able to drop out of school at age 12, I agreed with pretty much everything else. I loved how this book pushed me to reconsider my assumptions about intelligence and education.
Ultimately, I want to live in a world where someone can be dumb as a bucket of rocks and still be loved and valued for being witty and kind, strong and patient, really good at cooking or sewing or singing. Intelligence should never be a measure of human worth, nor should it be a requirement to attain a meaningful, dignified life.
The same cannot be said, however, for intelligence. How smart you are is a big, huge deal in our society, and it will play a huge role in the kind of life you can expect to lead. By and large, if you’re smart, you’ll have a much easier time getting by in the world than if you aren’t. We don’t much like to talk about the fact that some people are smarter than other people, but this book wrestles with that issue head on.
I loved reading this book. It was a bit weird as a smart kid to explore and unravel all my biases around how important it is to be smart and how central education is to a good life. I realized that while I certainly value education for its own sake (and I’m so damned tired of college students picking a major based on what they think will land them a job when they graduate), I also value education because life in the US is often miserable for those without education. But rather than forcing everyone to get an education that they may not want or be suited for, we should instead eliminate the misery that currently surrounds people who lack education.
Some central points from this book (roughly paraphrased):
* Intelligence is largely determined by genetic luck. Research has shown the tremendous influence of genes on everything from height to athletic ability to musical talent, so it’s not surprising that intelligence also has a huge heritable component.
* Differences in intelligence exist within gender/racial groups, but not really between groups. That is, there are intelligent women and there are stupid women, but there aren’t really intellectual differences between ALL women as a group and ALL men as group.
* Non-genetic factors have very little influence on overall intelligence. This makes intuitive sense when you think about those Baby Einstein CDs, but more controversially, it also applies to teachers. Teachers can encourage students to develop their natural intellectual gifts but cannot turn academically struggling students into geniuses—or even average students.
* Rather than being a strike against teachers, their lack of influence on student intellect actually liberates them from being held to impossible standards. Rather than being held accountable for every student passing some standardized test, teachers can instead help every student develop to their full academic potential—while crucially recognizing that that potential is different for every student.
* Given that intelligence is primarily genetic, it is therefore not true that everyone can be equally smart and successful if they just try hard. Our intelligence—and by extension our job security and quality of life—is largely determined by factors outside our control.
* But if smartness is not within our control and just comes down to luck, how can we justify upholding a society that rewards smart people with great jobs, big salaries, and excellent lives while the people who aren’t so smart get left behind? If intelligence is just a roll of the genetic dice, then it is wrong to tie economic security and stability to academic success.
* Rather than building a meritocratic society where some people get amazing rewards because they’re super smart and some people scrape by for their whole lives because they struggle to hold a job, we should instead strive to build a society that doesn’t consider intelligence as a measure of human worth. Intelligence is just one attribute among many in the complex tapestry that makes a human being. It shouldn’t be the defining characteristic that determines the kind of life they can lead.
* Pretending that everyone could be equally intelligent if they tried is dishonest and does a disservice particularly to those who just aren’t interested in the academic life. Recognizing the natural variation in human intelligence can help us stop using it as a defining characteristic for someone’s moral worth.
Overall, I really liked this book, and I found myself talking endlessly about it to my boyfriend. While I disagree with the author that students should be able to drop out of school at age 12, I agreed with pretty much everything else. I loved how this book pushed me to reconsider my assumptions about intelligence and education.
Ultimately, I want to live in a world where someone can be dumb as a bucket of rocks and still be loved and valued for being witty and kind, strong and patient, really good at cooking or sewing or singing. Intelligence should never be a measure of human worth, nor should it be a requirement to attain a meaningful, dignified life.
Read
August 14, 2020I won't be assigning this book a star review, partially because of (para?)social proximity to the author - we're not close or anything, but have hung out in the same circles, and he's open enough about human vulnerabilities that if the book did deserve a bad rating, I'd feel bad about giving it - and partially because I may not be the target audience for this book. Finally, I'm transitioning between two careers the book expresses opinions on (rich kid SAT tutor to public school teacher) and so may be fairly regarded as interested. Instead I'll just begin with the good and move onto the less good.
The good of this book is the absolute core of it, which is just the following syllogism:
1) Not everyone has the same amount of academic ability; in particular, a lot of this differing academic ability is difficult to predict or control, either by teachers, policymakers, or the individuals themselves.
2) Our society rewards those with academic ability and punishes those without, often to absurd degrees.
3) If we must hold ourselves to basic standards of justice (not absurdly punishing and rewarding people for factors outside of their control) and equalizing academic ability itself is not within teachers or policymakers' ability, we must lower the stakes of academic perforance generally, from the college wage premium to the elite-recruitment functions of selective universities to the (admittedly also difficult to change with policy) cultural valorization of intelligence above all other traits.
I think it would be difficult to object to any of these at least in a weak form (and all are at least defensible in a strong one), and, moreover, hardly anyone really emphasizes all three simultaneously. (DeBoer lays a lot of emphasis on genetics as the prime driver of (1), which is more contestable; but one can remain skeptical about some of the genetics claims while also admitting that a lot of this differentiation is random and uncontrollable, which is all that's really needed.) These are ideas that are worth discussing more widely, and more closely; though as I'll explain later, I think there are limits to how big a part of the ideological landscape they could ever be, at least in a beneficial way.
As for the bad, I have one major superficial complaint and one major substantive objection.
The superficial complaint is a bit snobbish, but, given all the emphasis on being frank and honest about comparative levels of intelligence, perhaps apropos: the whole thing is written at about the level of sophistication of an Atlantic article. This isn't to say its nice-liberalism-but-IQ-realism is written with intellectual honesty of an Andrew Sullivan - as noted, I'm not close with Freddie, but I've seen enough of him in more casual online environments to know he's more sincere than that. I also know that he can write with more nuance and verve than this format allows. As it is, and demanded by editors or not, it limits the persuasiveness and interestingness of any given section. On subjects I know something about, such as history of philosophy (one of those materially useless things deBoer argues we should value more; thanks!), I also noticed a few assertions that seem more grounded in received stereotypes than the relevant literature, such as a supposed link between early modern empiricism and a universalist/plastic sense of human nature (one has better luck finding early antiracism amongst the rationalists), or Marx's predictions on where socialism could arrive (which evolved over time and became more expansive in later writings.) Neither of these means much for his arguments, but they leave me skeptical of other assertions that do.
The substantive objection is that for all he rhetorically hedges certain of his policy prescriptions - "perhaps these seem idealistic or impossible to you..." about Medicare for all, UBI, and eventually decommodifying the economy - he appears shockingly naive about something else:
Throughout the book, he remarks that it is surprising that realism and hereditarianism about IQ and their impact of life success are rejected by progressives and associated with the right, since it is the left, after all, that normally emphasizes the import of uncontrollable circumstances and generational advantage on our success. Throughout the book he also repeatedly cautions that he, and mainstream behavioral geneticists, believe that while intraracial intelligence differences are about halfway genetic, interracial intelligence differences are probably entirely environmental (due to systematic lead exposure differences, racialized test anxiety, what have you.)
By why put so much effort into that note of caution? Well, those mainstream behavioral geneticists likely have good grounds for believing it's true. And certainly the racial aspect of IQ realism/hereditarianism is a position deeply stigmatized in polite liberal society, something that must surely motivate emphasizing this technical caveat over any number of other, less politically salient, ones. But accepting his other premises: hey, why not? Why worry if there are significant, essential interracial intelligence differences: if it happened that there were and we frankly acknowledged them, that would just heighten our sense of solidarity and basic fairness for those so disadvantaged, right?
Well, no, of course not. Because the stigmatization of that position in polite liberal society has good reason behind it, not just the reasoned evaluation of the evidence that behavioral geneticists might offer (which hardly anyone is familiar with) but the fact (which everyone is very well familiar with) that doctrines of racial intellectual superiority and inferiority serve as justifying myths for social superiority and inferiority.
Thus for race; mutatis mutandis, for class as well. You think that Harvard graduates would be less smug, college dropouts less ashamed, if both believed that their position was innate? (Asides in the book indicate that deBoer is well aware of the insufferable online hereditarian as a sort of social type one meets on the internet; so surely he should know this, or already does.) Not just interracial but intraracial strong hereditarianism was less stigmatized in the past, and is indeed less stigmatized outside of certain sectors of the professional class (since he works in a university, he may overestimate the role of wokeness for the present ruling class more generally,) and the results are not comforting for how much this acknowledgement of unearned advantage buttresses support for equality in material outcomes. Across an extremely wide variety of contexts there is a consensus that inborn differences in ability justify a strong social hierarchy, contra his vision.
The utopia sketched out in the final chapters, then, is not just the "preexisting vision of a better world" which the "Marxist tradition articulates, across hundreds of texts," as he asserts, but one in which it is simultaneously regarded that (1) people act altruistically if socially encouraged (something endorsed by some, but not all, of that tradition) and that (2) there is a hierarchy of intellectual talent (and he is right to say that the Marxist tradition has never insisted on absolute equality in this sense) which is is fixed from at least early childhood and reasonably objectively measured. This is a society with a ready-made ruling class (roughly the same people as he says are in charge now, the busy beaver A students) and justifying ideology (their benevolent administration of society in the interests of their lessers.) This society might be limited in its viciousness by a certain degree of noblesse oblige, and the children of its elite would probably have to suffer through fewer violin classes, &c., but it is not one that we should suspect would be restrained in its application of bureaucratic, psychiatric, and ultimately physical control, especially not if the attitudes of the former B-F students was that they could not hope to run things as competently as their pedigreed "benefactors."
Does acknowledging uncontrollable differentials, whatever their origins, preclude democracy (either the formal kind or a more robust kind?) No; deBoer emphasizes that learning in an absolute sense is happening and progressing (just not changing the fact that some students do better than others), and one can perfectly well assert that (1) virtually everyone is at the level required for participation in public deliberation and (2) governance is about settling differences of interest as much or more than differences in truth, and so just empowering the best truth-finders (if we are charitable to the A students in granting that that is ) will give us a leadership with lopsided interests. So I am onboard with the idea that a certain degree of "natural" (or at least uncontrollable) inequality is both silly to deny and compatible with democracy, including a much more democratic society than our own (one where most firms are cooperatives and/or run by the democratic state, where politicians are randomly selected or at any rate not bought, and so on.) But this would have to be constantly alleviated with equal or greater ideological emphasis on the facts that absolute differences are slight, and that people follow, even if they do not only follow, selfish material incentives (a point which itself is easy to state in an accidentally misleading way, &c.).
The good of this book is the absolute core of it, which is just the following syllogism:
1) Not everyone has the same amount of academic ability; in particular, a lot of this differing academic ability is difficult to predict or control, either by teachers, policymakers, or the individuals themselves.
2) Our society rewards those with academic ability and punishes those without, often to absurd degrees.
3) If we must hold ourselves to basic standards of justice (not absurdly punishing and rewarding people for factors outside of their control) and equalizing academic ability itself is not within teachers or policymakers' ability, we must lower the stakes of academic perforance generally, from the college wage premium to the elite-recruitment functions of selective universities to the (admittedly also difficult to change with policy) cultural valorization of intelligence above all other traits.
I think it would be difficult to object to any of these at least in a weak form (and all are at least defensible in a strong one), and, moreover, hardly anyone really emphasizes all three simultaneously. (DeBoer lays a lot of emphasis on genetics as the prime driver of (1), which is more contestable; but one can remain skeptical about some of the genetics claims while also admitting that a lot of this differentiation is random and uncontrollable, which is all that's really needed.) These are ideas that are worth discussing more widely, and more closely; though as I'll explain later, I think there are limits to how big a part of the ideological landscape they could ever be, at least in a beneficial way.
As for the bad, I have one major superficial complaint and one major substantive objection.
The superficial complaint is a bit snobbish, but, given all the emphasis on being frank and honest about comparative levels of intelligence, perhaps apropos: the whole thing is written at about the level of sophistication of an Atlantic article. This isn't to say its nice-liberalism-but-IQ-realism is written with intellectual honesty of an Andrew Sullivan - as noted, I'm not close with Freddie, but I've seen enough of him in more casual online environments to know he's more sincere than that. I also know that he can write with more nuance and verve than this format allows. As it is, and demanded by editors or not, it limits the persuasiveness and interestingness of any given section. On subjects I know something about, such as history of philosophy (one of those materially useless things deBoer argues we should value more; thanks!), I also noticed a few assertions that seem more grounded in received stereotypes than the relevant literature, such as a supposed link between early modern empiricism and a universalist/plastic sense of human nature (one has better luck finding early antiracism amongst the rationalists), or Marx's predictions on where socialism could arrive (which evolved over time and became more expansive in later writings.) Neither of these means much for his arguments, but they leave me skeptical of other assertions that do.
The substantive objection is that for all he rhetorically hedges certain of his policy prescriptions - "perhaps these seem idealistic or impossible to you..." about Medicare for all, UBI, and eventually decommodifying the economy - he appears shockingly naive about something else:
Acknowledging the inevitability of inequality in individual talent, as a society, would lead to the most profound change in consciousness imaginable: we would leave behind forever the myth of just deserts. The notion that we more or less receive what we deserve, that our station is determined by our work ethic and talent, is the lifeblood of capitalism, the stuff of the American dream. And that notion is a lie, one promulgated by those deluded by religion into believing in cosmic justice, by those who benefit from our exploitative economic system, and by those who suffer underneath that belief themselves, convinced by centuries of propaganda that they are to blame for their own misfortune.
To recognize that our abilities lie outside of our control would be to strike the hardest possible blow against meritocracy. For it is that belief in the universal availability of success that underpins our entire system; it is the logic that convinces us that our suffering is fair. Tell the truth to people and show them that the deck was stacked against them the whole time, and support for the whole enterprise will collapse.
Throughout the book, he remarks that it is surprising that realism and hereditarianism about IQ and their impact of life success are rejected by progressives and associated with the right, since it is the left, after all, that normally emphasizes the import of uncontrollable circumstances and generational advantage on our success. Throughout the book he also repeatedly cautions that he, and mainstream behavioral geneticists, believe that while intraracial intelligence differences are about halfway genetic, interracial intelligence differences are probably entirely environmental (due to systematic lead exposure differences, racialized test anxiety, what have you.)
By why put so much effort into that note of caution? Well, those mainstream behavioral geneticists likely have good grounds for believing it's true. And certainly the racial aspect of IQ realism/hereditarianism is a position deeply stigmatized in polite liberal society, something that must surely motivate emphasizing this technical caveat over any number of other, less politically salient, ones. But accepting his other premises: hey, why not? Why worry if there are significant, essential interracial intelligence differences: if it happened that there were and we frankly acknowledged them, that would just heighten our sense of solidarity and basic fairness for those so disadvantaged, right?
Well, no, of course not. Because the stigmatization of that position in polite liberal society has good reason behind it, not just the reasoned evaluation of the evidence that behavioral geneticists might offer (which hardly anyone is familiar with) but the fact (which everyone is very well familiar with) that doctrines of racial intellectual superiority and inferiority serve as justifying myths for social superiority and inferiority.
Thus for race; mutatis mutandis, for class as well. You think that Harvard graduates would be less smug, college dropouts less ashamed, if both believed that their position was innate? (Asides in the book indicate that deBoer is well aware of the insufferable online hereditarian as a sort of social type one meets on the internet; so surely he should know this, or already does.) Not just interracial but intraracial strong hereditarianism was less stigmatized in the past, and is indeed less stigmatized outside of certain sectors of the professional class (since he works in a university, he may overestimate the role of wokeness for the present ruling class more generally,) and the results are not comforting for how much this acknowledgement of unearned advantage buttresses support for equality in material outcomes. Across an extremely wide variety of contexts there is a consensus that inborn differences in ability justify a strong social hierarchy, contra his vision.
The utopia sketched out in the final chapters, then, is not just the "preexisting vision of a better world" which the "Marxist tradition articulates, across hundreds of texts," as he asserts, but one in which it is simultaneously regarded that (1) people act altruistically if socially encouraged (something endorsed by some, but not all, of that tradition) and that (2) there is a hierarchy of intellectual talent (and he is right to say that the Marxist tradition has never insisted on absolute equality in this sense) which is is fixed from at least early childhood and reasonably objectively measured. This is a society with a ready-made ruling class (roughly the same people as he says are in charge now, the busy beaver A students) and justifying ideology (their benevolent administration of society in the interests of their lessers.) This society might be limited in its viciousness by a certain degree of noblesse oblige, and the children of its elite would probably have to suffer through fewer violin classes, &c., but it is not one that we should suspect would be restrained in its application of bureaucratic, psychiatric, and ultimately physical control, especially not if the attitudes of the former B-F students was that they could not hope to run things as competently as their pedigreed "benefactors."
Does acknowledging uncontrollable differentials, whatever their origins, preclude democracy (either the formal kind or a more robust kind?) No; deBoer emphasizes that learning in an absolute sense is happening and progressing (just not changing the fact that some students do better than others), and one can perfectly well assert that (1) virtually everyone is at the level required for participation in public deliberation and (2) governance is about settling differences of interest as much or more than differences in truth, and so just empowering the best truth-finders (if we are charitable to the A students in granting that that is ) will give us a leadership with lopsided interests. So I am onboard with the idea that a certain degree of "natural" (or at least uncontrollable) inequality is both silly to deny and compatible with democracy, including a much more democratic society than our own (one where most firms are cooperatives and/or run by the democratic state, where politicians are randomly selected or at any rate not bought, and so on.) But this would have to be constantly alleviated with equal or greater ideological emphasis on the facts that absolute differences are slight, and that people follow, even if they do not only follow, selfish material incentives (a point which itself is easy to state in an accidentally misleading way, &c.).
March 29, 2021
The basic argument of the book is as follows: just like we acknowledge that e.g. being good at sports is somewhat inherent and we don't punish people for not being good at sports, we should acknowledge that academic talent and differences in intelligence are heritable (and not punish people for lacking the brains). Therefore, if people get paid more money after graduating from college and so on and so forth, this is actually a far cry from just and we-all-are-equal-y. Also, meritocracy (in academia or anywhere else) is wrong, because if academic ability is heritable, by taking part in the academic meritocracy we are not really practising the everyone-is-equal policy that we preach. (Similarly, according to the author, if you marry someone who is from the same social class like you, again, you are not really practising the everyone-is-equal-and-should-have-a-shot-at-social-mobility mantra, because by marrying someone from your own class you are taking away from someone lower class the opportunity to marry you and climb the social ladder! Boom! In your face, woke millenials!)
Similarly, the author asks why our policies should be made by educated people, and why our newspapers should be written by educated people – and some other questions like that. Simply put, the point is, the primacy of smarts should not be the great criterion of human worth.
Then, in the final chapters the author sort of goes berserk and instead of talking about what REALISTIC changes should be made in the field of education, for instance, he spends pages talking about Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All, jobs guarantee programs, and universal basic income, which sort of has nothing to do with the previous points. Instead, the author should focus on some questions that an average reader like me might grapple with.
For instance, what I cannot quite swallow is why, from all the "cults" we should talk about, the author wants to kill the Cult of Smart, and not the others. I should get no benefits from being "naturally" smart? Then why should other people get benefits based on the Cult of Pretty (oh yes, the pretty privilege is a thing) or the Cult of Extroverted (yes, the extrovert privilege is a thing), or the Cult of Athletic or the Cult of Heterosexual or the Cult of Young or the Cult of Non-Disabled or the Cult of You Fucking Name It? It seems that by ignoring all these Cults and just making the Cult of Smart and academic meritocracy seem as the worst evils imaginable and by proposing to kill the Cult of Smart, the author is, unawares, proposing to actually add one huge-ass inequality to the bunch of the existing ones, unbothered about the simple question of why smart people should not benefit from the Cult of Smart while pretty people benefit from the Cult of Pretty, the athletic people benefit from the Cult of Athletic, and so on. I didn't get an aswer to this question – just like I didn't get the answer to the question of why it is wrong that intelligence is something that people benefit from in their lives. Sure, treating someone poorly because they might not be the next Einstein is wrong. But why is it wrong that people can benefit from their intelligence, and, possibly, contribute to the society? Why is it wrong that our policies are created by educated people, who are, incidentally, typically (in our context) chosen by a vote, in which every single person, no matter their intelligence, may participate?
And, finally, from a very self-centered perspective, as someone who was born to a poor family of people with no extra education and no or low-paid jobs, where even going to a high school was sort of out of question, what would I have in the dream world of deBoer, where people are not allowed to benefit from the Cult of Smart? Not sure about the answer, but it sure would not be two grad degrees, a position at the university, and another at the Academy of Sciences.
One final note: on the last pages, the author muses about an idyllic future where "No longer will 'smart' be the sole criterion of human worth." That sounds lovely, but once again, it quite misses the simple point that not even today, 'smart' is the sole criterion of human worth.
In sum, while the book is an interesting and stimulating read, the author seems to quite frappantly ignore some obvious questions, and prefers to go on a rant about how communism is cool at the end, instead of addressing these questions, which is the main problem of the book for me.
Update: Just got my hands on this (from this book) – I wonder what the Fredrik deBoer would have to say about that, since it is of major importance for his arguments that studies have shown how intelligence is heritable?
Similarly, the author asks why our policies should be made by educated people, and why our newspapers should be written by educated people – and some other questions like that. Simply put, the point is, the primacy of smarts should not be the great criterion of human worth.
Then, in the final chapters the author sort of goes berserk and instead of talking about what REALISTIC changes should be made in the field of education, for instance, he spends pages talking about Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All, jobs guarantee programs, and universal basic income, which sort of has nothing to do with the previous points. Instead, the author should focus on some questions that an average reader like me might grapple with.
For instance, what I cannot quite swallow is why, from all the "cults" we should talk about, the author wants to kill the Cult of Smart, and not the others. I should get no benefits from being "naturally" smart? Then why should other people get benefits based on the Cult of Pretty (oh yes, the pretty privilege is a thing) or the Cult of Extroverted (yes, the extrovert privilege is a thing), or the Cult of Athletic or the Cult of Heterosexual or the Cult of Young or the Cult of Non-Disabled or the Cult of You Fucking Name It? It seems that by ignoring all these Cults and just making the Cult of Smart and academic meritocracy seem as the worst evils imaginable and by proposing to kill the Cult of Smart, the author is, unawares, proposing to actually add one huge-ass inequality to the bunch of the existing ones, unbothered about the simple question of why smart people should not benefit from the Cult of Smart while pretty people benefit from the Cult of Pretty, the athletic people benefit from the Cult of Athletic, and so on. I didn't get an aswer to this question – just like I didn't get the answer to the question of why it is wrong that intelligence is something that people benefit from in their lives. Sure, treating someone poorly because they might not be the next Einstein is wrong. But why is it wrong that people can benefit from their intelligence, and, possibly, contribute to the society? Why is it wrong that our policies are created by educated people, who are, incidentally, typically (in our context) chosen by a vote, in which every single person, no matter their intelligence, may participate?
And, finally, from a very self-centered perspective, as someone who was born to a poor family of people with no extra education and no or low-paid jobs, where even going to a high school was sort of out of question, what would I have in the dream world of deBoer, where people are not allowed to benefit from the Cult of Smart? Not sure about the answer, but it sure would not be two grad degrees, a position at the university, and another at the Academy of Sciences.
One final note: on the last pages, the author muses about an idyllic future where "No longer will 'smart' be the sole criterion of human worth." That sounds lovely, but once again, it quite misses the simple point that not even today, 'smart' is the sole criterion of human worth.
In sum, while the book is an interesting and stimulating read, the author seems to quite frappantly ignore some obvious questions, and prefers to go on a rant about how communism is cool at the end, instead of addressing these questions, which is the main problem of the book for me.
Update: Just got my hands on this (from this book) – I wonder what the Fredrik deBoer would have to say about that, since it is of major importance for his arguments that studies have shown how intelligence is heritable?
To a lesser extent, a problem with heritability study samples is that they tend to consist of more middle- and upper-class individuals than a representative sample would have. This is especially true of adoption studies because the poorest families in industrialized nations are usually not allowed to adopt children, nor are parents who have a history of violence, drug problems, or other dysfunctional behaviors. Therefore, the range of environments in these studies is reduced (Mackintosh, 2011), which makes the influence of genetics appear inflated (Nisbett et al., 2012). Adoption studies also cannot investigate the impact of abuse, neglect, and threats to physical safety because governments and adoption agencies try to prevent children from being placed into these extremely negative environments. Therefore, when behavioral geneticists produce a study that genes are a powerful influence on intelligence, it is important to consider the population and the environment that the study was conducted on. Often, the results of behavioral genetics studies will indicate that genes are important – if a person already lives in an industrialized nation in a home where basic needs are met. It is not clear how well these results apply to individuals in severe poverty or in highly unfavorable environments.
April 26, 2023
For those not acquainted with Fredrik deBoer, he is a popular Substack writer who started to earn his chops at the tail end of the golden age of blogging (2003-09). His academic background is in educational pedagogy, specifically assessment and testing, but his writing sprawls across all sorts of topics: politics, literary criticism, cultural commentary, mental health issues, entertainment and sports, etc. I feel like deBoer is best known for his idiosyncratic politics, especially his anti-woke Marxism and left-wing hereditarianism; his conversational tone that veers between bitingly acerbic and desperately earnest; and his public mental health struggles. He also has this unofficial status as the very online/dissident/new Right's favorite communist, which is how I first came across his writing. It seems that his public profile has grown significantly over the last couple of years and that he'll continue to be an interesting or at least prolific writer at Substack.
So now on to the main event: The Cult of Smart:
Freddie deComrade has trained his sharp wit on our system of public education, meritocracy, and of course "neoliberalism" in his book The Cult of Smart. This part-polemic, part-social science tract argues that Western cultures, especially America, equate intelligence with overall human value, i.e. the cult of smart. In other words, society is structured so that its spoils, both material and social, are reaped by the academically gifted. This claim in it of itself probably isn't that surprising to educated readers. We have social and economic sorting mechanisms that help identify who possesses certain productive capacities. We tend to call this meritocracy. It appears to function well despite having some imperfections and inefficiencies. However, deBoer thinks meritocracy and its joint partner in crime, neoliberalism or reified free market capitalism yoked to a complementary political apparatus, are inherently inegalitarian and immiserating. Plus, deBoer thinks this system is maintained by a noble lie, blank slate ideology. This is where the work will likely start to make some left-of-center readers uncomfortable.
Blank slate ideology, otherwise known as extreme social constructivism or anti-hereditarianism, holds that every human is born with similar cognitive capabilities. This model of human behavior asserts that it is primarily our parental, social, environmental, cultural, and personal experiences that shape our talents, skills, and life outcomes. On this basis, it is reasonable to expect educational and subsequently material and social success to be a function of motivation and dedication. And when we believe that our system is failing to recognize hard work because of barriers to equal opportunity, such as historical injustice or system-wide biases, we can be correct this with thoughtful and generous liberal governance.
Freddie is disgusted by this false consciousness because of how inconsistent it is with our best available evidence about human variation and the subsequent stress cycle it traps educators and students in. Even when blank slate arguments are tendered to rebut eugenics, social darwinism, race realism, or racial hereditarianism, deBoer thinks these well-meaning efforts are doing more harm than good. He thinks the public is generally mature enough to handle both the truth about human nature and is able to reject inaccurate and motivated claims. He then illustrates the inherent falsity of blank slate assumptions by recapping some of the basic findings of behavioral genetics. Twin and adoption studies and genome-wide association studies have persuasively and consistently shown that a substantial portion of variation in cognitive traits is explained by genetic variation between individuals in a given population. On top of that, there is little to no evidence that can be found to suggest the family environment or other social variable explain much variation in cognitive traits. deBoer also makes some effort to share the literature on the poor track record of educational reforms and the important yet often Sisyphean vocation that is teaching. He links these failures to both the structure of the educational system and the unequal distribution of natural talent with the latter being especially critical.
Given that individual accomplishment is largely a function of inherited talents and that there is no immediate or acceptable option to remediate these differences, deBoer claims that society should be structured differently. It should be unacceptable to continue to allow material and social spoils to so disproportionately accrue to the winners of a genetic and developmental lottery. Equal opportunity and social mobility shouldn't be end goals of a fair society. A good society should meet the material needs of its members. deBoer proposes several reforms in this vein, which more or less align with many of the goals of social democrats: universal childcare, universal healthcare, universal basic income or work guarantee, a charter school ban, relaxed academic standards, and less emphasis on higher learning. He then ends his short book with a memoir-like reflection on the trans-generational left-wing activism of his family and his vision for a world without markets and currency exchange.
In many ways, I find deBoer's arguments appealing. It is important to understand and recognize that educational and socioeconomic outcomes are often, if not largely, a product of genetic and neurodevelopmental variation (provided that society is a free one with abundance and markets). Subsequently, it will be difficult to meliorate disparities in academic and economic performance as long as intellectual skills and technological products are in demand and rewarded by the market. I think it is also important for a healthy society to work to prevent its members from suffering in misery and destitution. However, deBoer's goals and social vision is utopian and thus unworkable. It is a model that's more unrealistic than that of meritocracy and neoliberalism. Plus, he fails to reckon in detail with how variation shapes not only intelligence but all psychological and physical traits and the effects this has on social organization. Marxist or socialist attempts to transcend markets will always stumble and fail because markets evolved with humans and human culture (for more on this read The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich).
Our normative visions differ substantially, but I don't hold that against this Freddie's argument. I found the work accessible and compelling. The tone is earnestly humane. However, the book was too repetitive and lacked requisite depth. I was somewhat let down by the chapter on behavioral genetics. Readers deserved a deeper dive. Freddie's Substack does provide a bit more on this research than his book, but there are also just better options to get these breakdowns too.
Nontheless, I do hope readers of all political persuasions, especially progressives and liberals, pick up The Cult of Smart. There are many contradictions between professed beliefs and actual behavior that are often unchallenged in public discourse. It would likely improve the quality of political discourse and maybe political reform down the line if we were able to have more honest conversations informed by the best science. This is probably an unrealistic dream though. However, I'd also generally caution readers about the impact of ideas and the malleability of social outcomes. I think we over-exaggerate the real world effects of ideas and believe we exercise more control over outcomes than we do. I think this reality should support a more Chestertonian or Burkean approach to politics, but that's just me.
full review and commentary at Holodoxa on Substackt
So now on to the main event: The Cult of Smart:
Freddie deComrade has trained his sharp wit on our system of public education, meritocracy, and of course "neoliberalism" in his book The Cult of Smart. This part-polemic, part-social science tract argues that Western cultures, especially America, equate intelligence with overall human value, i.e. the cult of smart. In other words, society is structured so that its spoils, both material and social, are reaped by the academically gifted. This claim in it of itself probably isn't that surprising to educated readers. We have social and economic sorting mechanisms that help identify who possesses certain productive capacities. We tend to call this meritocracy. It appears to function well despite having some imperfections and inefficiencies. However, deBoer thinks meritocracy and its joint partner in crime, neoliberalism or reified free market capitalism yoked to a complementary political apparatus, are inherently inegalitarian and immiserating. Plus, deBoer thinks this system is maintained by a noble lie, blank slate ideology. This is where the work will likely start to make some left-of-center readers uncomfortable.
Blank slate ideology, otherwise known as extreme social constructivism or anti-hereditarianism, holds that every human is born with similar cognitive capabilities. This model of human behavior asserts that it is primarily our parental, social, environmental, cultural, and personal experiences that shape our talents, skills, and life outcomes. On this basis, it is reasonable to expect educational and subsequently material and social success to be a function of motivation and dedication. And when we believe that our system is failing to recognize hard work because of barriers to equal opportunity, such as historical injustice or system-wide biases, we can be correct this with thoughtful and generous liberal governance.
Freddie is disgusted by this false consciousness because of how inconsistent it is with our best available evidence about human variation and the subsequent stress cycle it traps educators and students in. Even when blank slate arguments are tendered to rebut eugenics, social darwinism, race realism, or racial hereditarianism, deBoer thinks these well-meaning efforts are doing more harm than good. He thinks the public is generally mature enough to handle both the truth about human nature and is able to reject inaccurate and motivated claims. He then illustrates the inherent falsity of blank slate assumptions by recapping some of the basic findings of behavioral genetics. Twin and adoption studies and genome-wide association studies have persuasively and consistently shown that a substantial portion of variation in cognitive traits is explained by genetic variation between individuals in a given population. On top of that, there is little to no evidence that can be found to suggest the family environment or other social variable explain much variation in cognitive traits. deBoer also makes some effort to share the literature on the poor track record of educational reforms and the important yet often Sisyphean vocation that is teaching. He links these failures to both the structure of the educational system and the unequal distribution of natural talent with the latter being especially critical.
Given that individual accomplishment is largely a function of inherited talents and that there is no immediate or acceptable option to remediate these differences, deBoer claims that society should be structured differently. It should be unacceptable to continue to allow material and social spoils to so disproportionately accrue to the winners of a genetic and developmental lottery. Equal opportunity and social mobility shouldn't be end goals of a fair society. A good society should meet the material needs of its members. deBoer proposes several reforms in this vein, which more or less align with many of the goals of social democrats: universal childcare, universal healthcare, universal basic income or work guarantee, a charter school ban, relaxed academic standards, and less emphasis on higher learning. He then ends his short book with a memoir-like reflection on the trans-generational left-wing activism of his family and his vision for a world without markets and currency exchange.
In many ways, I find deBoer's arguments appealing. It is important to understand and recognize that educational and socioeconomic outcomes are often, if not largely, a product of genetic and neurodevelopmental variation (provided that society is a free one with abundance and markets). Subsequently, it will be difficult to meliorate disparities in academic and economic performance as long as intellectual skills and technological products are in demand and rewarded by the market. I think it is also important for a healthy society to work to prevent its members from suffering in misery and destitution. However, deBoer's goals and social vision is utopian and thus unworkable. It is a model that's more unrealistic than that of meritocracy and neoliberalism. Plus, he fails to reckon in detail with how variation shapes not only intelligence but all psychological and physical traits and the effects this has on social organization. Marxist or socialist attempts to transcend markets will always stumble and fail because markets evolved with humans and human culture (for more on this read The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich).
Our normative visions differ substantially, but I don't hold that against this Freddie's argument. I found the work accessible and compelling. The tone is earnestly humane. However, the book was too repetitive and lacked requisite depth. I was somewhat let down by the chapter on behavioral genetics. Readers deserved a deeper dive. Freddie's Substack does provide a bit more on this research than his book, but there are also just better options to get these breakdowns too.
Nontheless, I do hope readers of all political persuasions, especially progressives and liberals, pick up The Cult of Smart. There are many contradictions between professed beliefs and actual behavior that are often unchallenged in public discourse. It would likely improve the quality of political discourse and maybe political reform down the line if we were able to have more honest conversations informed by the best science. This is probably an unrealistic dream though. However, I'd also generally caution readers about the impact of ideas and the malleability of social outcomes. I think we over-exaggerate the real world effects of ideas and believe we exercise more control over outcomes than we do. I think this reality should support a more Chestertonian or Burkean approach to politics, but that's just me.
full review and commentary at Holodoxa on Substackt
September 26, 2020
Fredrik deBoer is a socialist and thus by definition a Marxist. If you read this book and think in any way whatsoever to the tiniest or most infinitesimal level deBoer is arguing that some groups of people are more intelligent than others then you need to stop, go back, and read the book again because you've utterly failed to comprehend what he is saying. He goes to great pains, repeating over and over, that he 100% in no way believes any ascriptive group is inherently more intelligent than another, e.g. white smarter than black, black smarter than white, men smarter than women, women smarter than men. He has no truck with any argument that purports to come to those conclusions.
What deBoer is arguing, built on years in the classroom as a teacher and out of the classroom in various administrative capacities, is that individuals do not all share the same intellectual capabilities. Individuals qua individuals--not as members of an ascriptive group--are not all genetically predisposed to excel at the intellectual rigors of school. Beyond just the intellectual and computational power that individuals possess to varying degrees, deBoer also argues (this is one part of the book I would have liked him to delve deeper into) that dispositionally, emotionally, psychologically and whatever other metric one can think of to denote how we exist in the world we are also genetically different and because of these genetic differences are more or less prone to succeed or fail in an educational situation.
To me this is all very intuitive. These are conclusions I've come to myself as a community college professor for the last 11 years, and also the conclusions I would have come to if I had never set foot in a classroom as an instructor. To me this is common sense. Perhaps it's just socialist common sense. Regardless, the conclusions deBoer comes to about behavioral genetics (via extensive research that is accessibly conveyed to the reader) seem unarguable. So what is the book about beyond the consequences for us in the classroom as a result of the findings of behavioral geneticists? The book is about the ways in which we are told as a society that if we just got rid of all forms of discrimination, poverty, over-worked parents, underfunded schools, poor teachers, over-zelaous and short-sighted nefarious teachers' unions--in other words if we as a society got rid of all the things that create inequality of opportunity for students in America then we'd have a situation in which we'd have a perfectly meritocratic playing field. Or rather, we'd have set the stage where everyone would no longer have any encumbrances to potentiating all of their latent ability.
So what's the problem? Wouldn't it be great is we could create this cleansed and pristine egalitarianism of opportunity? Sure, that would be great (keeping in mind we're about as close to creating that as we are fully-automated space communism). But deBoer's major point is that even if we did create that perfectly egalitarian basis for opportunity some students would still rise to the top and some students wouldn't be able to keep up for all the reasons deBoer has already stated. Why? Because now success is perfectly hemmed to the actualization of one’s given talent and as deBoer has correctly argued, talent is not apportioned equally. Do we want to live in a society like that? One that "punishes" those that are aren't smart enough or capable enough in the classroom and as a result of this lack of talent are consigned to lives without the ability to earn a living wage; where the ascertainment of medical care is difficult and the maintenance of it precarious at best. If all the "just deserts" of society are apportioned by talent, what of the untalented? And this is the radical part of deBoer’s project. This is exactly the type of the world conservatives want to live in. Where the strong, talented, innovative, charming, driven, and intelligent get everything they can possibly get and those who don’t possess the talent, intelligence and other attributes one needs to succeed get the scraps. The problem however when examining our current political landscape is that liberals, if they don't conceptually apprise things the same way, materially set things up so that the results are the same. The quest for total equity of opportunity was Obamaism in a nutshell. I highly recommend Thomas Frank's "Listen Liberal" as a great accompaniment to deBoer. In about 250 pages Frank gives a thorough and devastating critique of how millions of American have been left behind and failed by the meritocratic creed. Frank aims his critique at the Democratic Party, the party that in i's quest for an identarian framing of society has abandoned any robust critique of political economy. And why wouldn't they? They are now the party of the elite. The economy is working great for them. They're the best and the brightest.
The meritocratic dream described above (to the most talented --brightest, most driven, most ambitious, most focused, most articulate, most organized, most humorous, best looking, most athletic, etc--go the riches) is part and parcel with the neoliberal era in which we're living. With the deterioration of the social safety net that started in the mid-70s and accelerated through the 80s and has been covered with dirt by Clintonism, the vast majority of Americans live in a hellscape created by the instantiations of austerity (deregulation, privatization, atomization).
deBoer states very eloquently and very simply what needs to be stated and what is almost never stated in public discourse. Every single human being is of equal worth regardless or whatever talent or intellectual ability he or she possess. This is the stance of the socialist and one that I agree with completely. The last part of the book feels like a self-contained essay that offers policy suggestions (UBI, JG, M4A, free college, college debt forgiveness, universal childcare and after-school care). In other words, with a few differences the social-democratic project of the Sanders campaign. These are all wonderful tings and things I support completely, but unfortunately we’re a long way from them.
This is a great book, especially if you’re an educator. I don’t like being a sorter for capital. This books gives you a lot to think about whether you’re in the classroom as a teacher or not. deBoer is a talented writer. He asks all the right questions; he comes to all the right conclusions; his prescriptions for a sane, humane, and sustainable world are the right ones. Will they happen tomorrow? No. Will they happen in a hundred years? Who knows. But he is right.
What deBoer is arguing, built on years in the classroom as a teacher and out of the classroom in various administrative capacities, is that individuals do not all share the same intellectual capabilities. Individuals qua individuals--not as members of an ascriptive group--are not all genetically predisposed to excel at the intellectual rigors of school. Beyond just the intellectual and computational power that individuals possess to varying degrees, deBoer also argues (this is one part of the book I would have liked him to delve deeper into) that dispositionally, emotionally, psychologically and whatever other metric one can think of to denote how we exist in the world we are also genetically different and because of these genetic differences are more or less prone to succeed or fail in an educational situation.
To me this is all very intuitive. These are conclusions I've come to myself as a community college professor for the last 11 years, and also the conclusions I would have come to if I had never set foot in a classroom as an instructor. To me this is common sense. Perhaps it's just socialist common sense. Regardless, the conclusions deBoer comes to about behavioral genetics (via extensive research that is accessibly conveyed to the reader) seem unarguable. So what is the book about beyond the consequences for us in the classroom as a result of the findings of behavioral geneticists? The book is about the ways in which we are told as a society that if we just got rid of all forms of discrimination, poverty, over-worked parents, underfunded schools, poor teachers, over-zelaous and short-sighted nefarious teachers' unions--in other words if we as a society got rid of all the things that create inequality of opportunity for students in America then we'd have a situation in which we'd have a perfectly meritocratic playing field. Or rather, we'd have set the stage where everyone would no longer have any encumbrances to potentiating all of their latent ability.
So what's the problem? Wouldn't it be great is we could create this cleansed and pristine egalitarianism of opportunity? Sure, that would be great (keeping in mind we're about as close to creating that as we are fully-automated space communism). But deBoer's major point is that even if we did create that perfectly egalitarian basis for opportunity some students would still rise to the top and some students wouldn't be able to keep up for all the reasons deBoer has already stated. Why? Because now success is perfectly hemmed to the actualization of one’s given talent and as deBoer has correctly argued, talent is not apportioned equally. Do we want to live in a society like that? One that "punishes" those that are aren't smart enough or capable enough in the classroom and as a result of this lack of talent are consigned to lives without the ability to earn a living wage; where the ascertainment of medical care is difficult and the maintenance of it precarious at best. If all the "just deserts" of society are apportioned by talent, what of the untalented? And this is the radical part of deBoer’s project. This is exactly the type of the world conservatives want to live in. Where the strong, talented, innovative, charming, driven, and intelligent get everything they can possibly get and those who don’t possess the talent, intelligence and other attributes one needs to succeed get the scraps. The problem however when examining our current political landscape is that liberals, if they don't conceptually apprise things the same way, materially set things up so that the results are the same. The quest for total equity of opportunity was Obamaism in a nutshell. I highly recommend Thomas Frank's "Listen Liberal" as a great accompaniment to deBoer. In about 250 pages Frank gives a thorough and devastating critique of how millions of American have been left behind and failed by the meritocratic creed. Frank aims his critique at the Democratic Party, the party that in i's quest for an identarian framing of society has abandoned any robust critique of political economy. And why wouldn't they? They are now the party of the elite. The economy is working great for them. They're the best and the brightest.
The meritocratic dream described above (to the most talented --brightest, most driven, most ambitious, most focused, most articulate, most organized, most humorous, best looking, most athletic, etc--go the riches) is part and parcel with the neoliberal era in which we're living. With the deterioration of the social safety net that started in the mid-70s and accelerated through the 80s and has been covered with dirt by Clintonism, the vast majority of Americans live in a hellscape created by the instantiations of austerity (deregulation, privatization, atomization).
deBoer states very eloquently and very simply what needs to be stated and what is almost never stated in public discourse. Every single human being is of equal worth regardless or whatever talent or intellectual ability he or she possess. This is the stance of the socialist and one that I agree with completely. The last part of the book feels like a self-contained essay that offers policy suggestions (UBI, JG, M4A, free college, college debt forgiveness, universal childcare and after-school care). In other words, with a few differences the social-democratic project of the Sanders campaign. These are all wonderful tings and things I support completely, but unfortunately we’re a long way from them.
This is a great book, especially if you’re an educator. I don’t like being a sorter for capital. This books gives you a lot to think about whether you’re in the classroom as a teacher or not. deBoer is a talented writer. He asks all the right questions; he comes to all the right conclusions; his prescriptions for a sane, humane, and sustainable world are the right ones. Will they happen tomorrow? No. Will they happen in a hundred years? Who knows. But he is right.
April 16, 2021
Welp...I both completely disagreed with and really liked this book. It's extremely rare in its audacity and honesty, taking on both the shibboleths of American education and the rank hypocrisy in how white liberals talk about (and act on) education and equality. In particular, he lays out compelling evidence that genes largely determine our educational success (or lack thereof), indeed that genes probably also largely determine our capacity for hard work, and therefore that meritocracy as a value system is morally repugnant.
I thought the first half of the book--identifying the problems (indeed, dishonesty) in how we talk about American education and the unacknowledged tensions inherent in our system--was stronger than the second, which is light on evidence of how abandoning the rat-race meritocracy will necessarily be better for the people whose genes don't set them up for success in today's world, who deBoer (and I) care so much about.
Most compelling, I thought, were his challenges as to whether we want our educational system to produce better outcomes on average or more equal outcomes. We decry achievement gaps across groups, although children are learning much more than they did in the past. As he writes: "Even students who struggle today would handily outperform the average students from several decades ago; the problem is that the top performing students keep learning, too, and performance gaps persist. Raising the bar of excellence necessarily means leaving some students behind. Few people in the world of education policy ever seem to recognize these contradictions. ... The progressive among us want our society to be equal, and yet many of the selfsame people uncritically accept the notion of meritocracy...a machine for creating inequality."
He sees this as meaning that only a socialist (and of course he has opinions about how social democracy does not qualify) system can address. He acknowledges that we won't all have Maseratis but fails to grapple with what the actual material living standards might be in such a society. I, on the other hand, take seriously all the problems he's identified, including that "the notion that there is a strong connection between education and economic growth has recently been convincingly argued to be largely a statistical mirage. The data shows that what really matters is the academic performance of the top 5 percent of students." For me, this militates in favor of going out of our way to identify those students, to ensure that being born into difficult circumstances doesn't prevent them from realizing their potential...precisely because the more of that potential is realized, the more tax revenue we'll be able to generate to provide better material living standards for everyone.
As well, while he acknowledges racism and sexism in today's world (and rightly points out that even if we could redress inequality of opportunity, we would be left with an immoral meritocracy), I don't think he appropriately grapples with how reductions in racism and sexism have changed the world. He acknowledges that the postwar strong economy (particularly for lower-IQ workers) with strong unions wasn't accessible to women or minorities, but he doesn't address whether the lower levels of inequality were indeed *predicated* on not giving equal labor-market access. Similarly he highlights the rise in assortative mating in terms of educational attainment but doesn't address whether this is true in IQ terms--i.e. are the same sorts of men and women (in the genetic terms he lays out) getting married, but today's women have more formal education and labor-market earnings.
A less overarching quibble is that he's clearly writing from a very left-wing bubble, e.g. "I’d like it if parents thought about the ways, subtle or explicit, that they teach children that being smart is the most important thing in the world." That surely doesn't describe the world I grew up in, which was absolutely oriented around teaching children that being good at sports was the most important thing in the world. And I would suggest this still describes most of America today, albeit not the highly educated circles deBoer (or I) travel in.
Ok, that seems negative for a five-star book, but that's because it's thought-provoking, and as noted, I disagree with his conclusions. But it goes farther in trying to grapple with modern American educational life than much of anything else I've read.
I thought the first half of the book--identifying the problems (indeed, dishonesty) in how we talk about American education and the unacknowledged tensions inherent in our system--was stronger than the second, which is light on evidence of how abandoning the rat-race meritocracy will necessarily be better for the people whose genes don't set them up for success in today's world, who deBoer (and I) care so much about.
Most compelling, I thought, were his challenges as to whether we want our educational system to produce better outcomes on average or more equal outcomes. We decry achievement gaps across groups, although children are learning much more than they did in the past. As he writes: "Even students who struggle today would handily outperform the average students from several decades ago; the problem is that the top performing students keep learning, too, and performance gaps persist. Raising the bar of excellence necessarily means leaving some students behind. Few people in the world of education policy ever seem to recognize these contradictions. ... The progressive among us want our society to be equal, and yet many of the selfsame people uncritically accept the notion of meritocracy...a machine for creating inequality."
He sees this as meaning that only a socialist (and of course he has opinions about how social democracy does not qualify) system can address. He acknowledges that we won't all have Maseratis but fails to grapple with what the actual material living standards might be in such a society. I, on the other hand, take seriously all the problems he's identified, including that "the notion that there is a strong connection between education and economic growth has recently been convincingly argued to be largely a statistical mirage. The data shows that what really matters is the academic performance of the top 5 percent of students." For me, this militates in favor of going out of our way to identify those students, to ensure that being born into difficult circumstances doesn't prevent them from realizing their potential...precisely because the more of that potential is realized, the more tax revenue we'll be able to generate to provide better material living standards for everyone.
As well, while he acknowledges racism and sexism in today's world (and rightly points out that even if we could redress inequality of opportunity, we would be left with an immoral meritocracy), I don't think he appropriately grapples with how reductions in racism and sexism have changed the world. He acknowledges that the postwar strong economy (particularly for lower-IQ workers) with strong unions wasn't accessible to women or minorities, but he doesn't address whether the lower levels of inequality were indeed *predicated* on not giving equal labor-market access. Similarly he highlights the rise in assortative mating in terms of educational attainment but doesn't address whether this is true in IQ terms--i.e. are the same sorts of men and women (in the genetic terms he lays out) getting married, but today's women have more formal education and labor-market earnings.
A less overarching quibble is that he's clearly writing from a very left-wing bubble, e.g. "I’d like it if parents thought about the ways, subtle or explicit, that they teach children that being smart is the most important thing in the world." That surely doesn't describe the world I grew up in, which was absolutely oriented around teaching children that being good at sports was the most important thing in the world. And I would suggest this still describes most of America today, albeit not the highly educated circles deBoer (or I) travel in.
Ok, that seems negative for a five-star book, but that's because it's thought-provoking, and as noted, I disagree with his conclusions. But it goes farther in trying to grapple with modern American educational life than much of anything else I've read.
July 29, 2020
The heart of this very good book is an excellent--and vitally important, or so I think--academic article or other long-form essay; everything else added to bring it to book length is good, and sometimes quite insightful, but it doesn't all gel to make the strong book-length argument which the central thesis deserves. That thesis, and the article-length set of scientific arguments and sociological observations which buttress it, is pretty straightforward: there is consistent, reputable, and clearly demonstrated data which shows that individual variation in basic intelligence, as revealed through one's childhood and into the school-age years, is almost entirely ineliminable from any and all future academic success, so why have we built a whole educational system premised upon the equal possibility for everyone to achieve excellence when we know it's not true? That's his question, and in answering it, deBoer covers a lot of important territory.
Much of that territory could be sneeringly described as cover-your-ass-type of stuff, but I understand why he does it: the ugly history of intelligence tests and their use to stigmatize different racial groups as mentally deficient or women as incapable of critical thinking is real, and deBoer rightly spends a great deal of time explaining why insisting upon paying attention to individual variation in basic cognitive aptitude is not the same as claiming to have discovered some fundamental group variations in intelligence. Some of that territory involves a deep dive into Western philosophy, as he attempts to build an argument for divorcing education from such meritocratic ideas as "equal opportunity" (even if it were possible to eliminate all of the socio-economic and cultural obstacles to truly providing everyone with the same "fair chance" at success or failure in any given task, wouldn't the resulting meritocracy be an ever greater horror show, with the "merit"--or lack thereof--of every person being demonstrated by their grades and college admissions?) and "just deserts" (the whole idea of justice in a liberal society is contractual, with you being considered of deserving of something because of your performance in regards to some moral scheme which you consented to, but how can someone consent to a scheme when their performance is so fundamentally beyond their control?). And some of that territory is pretty wonky (as a long-time educator and education data-cruncher, deBoer has very significant opinions about standardized tests, charter schools, and much more). Not all of it holds together as well as it might, but it was more than convincing to me (if only because deBoer's project is really a matter of getting people to think critically about something plainly obvious to everyone: some people are smarter than others).
In the end, deBoer doesn't have a really good solution for how to move beyond the "Cult of Smart" in our conception of education. Or rather, he has a very good solution, but it's a solution that involves a deconstruction of the capitalist system, and it's replacement a fully socialized socio-economic environment where being smart, in an academic sense, is just one of thousands of possible specialties and skills, none of which guarantee any kind of dominance over any other. As a socialist myself, I'm on board with that solution, but it's one he falls to because he doesn't have anywhere else to do in his argument, rather than one he builds to organically, showing, for example, how "smarts" can be redefined into something more amenable to our actual physical and cognitive conditions. Still, overall, a strongly argued book, which I will share at least parts of with many others.
Much of that territory could be sneeringly described as cover-your-ass-type of stuff, but I understand why he does it: the ugly history of intelligence tests and their use to stigmatize different racial groups as mentally deficient or women as incapable of critical thinking is real, and deBoer rightly spends a great deal of time explaining why insisting upon paying attention to individual variation in basic cognitive aptitude is not the same as claiming to have discovered some fundamental group variations in intelligence. Some of that territory involves a deep dive into Western philosophy, as he attempts to build an argument for divorcing education from such meritocratic ideas as "equal opportunity" (even if it were possible to eliminate all of the socio-economic and cultural obstacles to truly providing everyone with the same "fair chance" at success or failure in any given task, wouldn't the resulting meritocracy be an ever greater horror show, with the "merit"--or lack thereof--of every person being demonstrated by their grades and college admissions?) and "just deserts" (the whole idea of justice in a liberal society is contractual, with you being considered of deserving of something because of your performance in regards to some moral scheme which you consented to, but how can someone consent to a scheme when their performance is so fundamentally beyond their control?). And some of that territory is pretty wonky (as a long-time educator and education data-cruncher, deBoer has very significant opinions about standardized tests, charter schools, and much more). Not all of it holds together as well as it might, but it was more than convincing to me (if only because deBoer's project is really a matter of getting people to think critically about something plainly obvious to everyone: some people are smarter than others).
In the end, deBoer doesn't have a really good solution for how to move beyond the "Cult of Smart" in our conception of education. Or rather, he has a very good solution, but it's a solution that involves a deconstruction of the capitalist system, and it's replacement a fully socialized socio-economic environment where being smart, in an academic sense, is just one of thousands of possible specialties and skills, none of which guarantee any kind of dominance over any other. As a socialist myself, I'm on board with that solution, but it's one he falls to because he doesn't have anywhere else to do in his argument, rather than one he builds to organically, showing, for example, how "smarts" can be redefined into something more amenable to our actual physical and cognitive conditions. Still, overall, a strongly argued book, which I will share at least parts of with many others.
August 13, 2020
On the Appeal to Science
Science will not save you. Our culture doesn't like to believe that. Ask someone why they believe in the things they believe in and they will probably give you a list of "scientific facts". Studies show. Science proves. This goes for everybody on the political spectrum. Darwinian science proved to the ultranationalists of a hundred years ago that the nations of the world were locked in a merciless war to prove the fittest and dominate the world's resources. To Marxists history is a science showing that a predictable dialectic process of class struggle is leading towards a new synthesis. Some conservatives may point to the Bible for justification, but only very rarely anymore, and they generally would rather, if anything, justify scripture with science. Science is our Bible now. Science says there are two genders, they say; facts don't care about your feelings. Liberals retort that science shows that people are "born this way". New Agey people have endless, bewildering reams of "scientific proof" of the power of crystals or herbs or whatever it might be. Fat activists say science proves their metabolisms work differently; fat hate groups (these exist, somehow) insist that science shows that "calories in equal calories out". On and on and on and on.
Some of these are purely ignorant category errors. Science cannot say anything about "how many" genders there are, because the question is not a scientific one but a social one. Some are pseudoscience using sciencey words but no real "science" (though which ones probably depends on your point of view.) And in some situations, like "is human activity causing climate change?" the question is indeed a scientific one, and science can indeed answer it. But for so many moral and political questions, I would argue, regardless of what you think "science says", science is a very, very slender reed on which to build your castle. It has to be. It always will be. Because the entire point of science is to continually re-examine and re-interpret, and its conclusions are always liable to be changed.
It was actually Freddie deBoer, author of this book, who first really brought this home to me in a blog post years ago. He was pushing back on the idea that gay rights should be based and defended on the "born this way" genetic argument. If there is a "gay gene", he asked, what does that mean? Are only people with the "gay gene" allowed to be gay? Should people have to have their DNA sequenced for it before they could get gay-married? Obviously not. Everyone should be able to marry the partner they want to, and live the life they want, whether they "made a choice" or were "born this way". The same goes, for example, for the Fat Activists. Their metabolisms are entirely irrelevant to the fact that they should and must be treated with equal dignity, get quality health care, not be discriminated against. Because they are human. Leaving it up to this "scientific fact" only makes them more vulnerable to the fat-haters, because what if a new study reveals some new fact?
What deBoer does in this book is, essentially, present an analogous set of new facts which argue against one of the tenets that almost all of us profess to: that if you dream it, you can be it; that you can achieve anything, if you work hard, particularly when it comes to academics. If you fail to achieve academically, the problem is either with your character or your school or your environment -- not any inborn talent. (Yes, there are a few racists who believe race determines intelligence; but this is about individuals, not groups. Indeed, the idea that intelligence is "genetic" is totally ancillary to the point, just a consequence of our more general knowledge of biology as a whole. Being "heritable" is not important, being inborn is. After all, even people who believe they're "born this way" don't think you must have gay parents to be gay.) And, as deBoer argues, the idea that we are born with an innate level of intelligence and talent that we can do little to change is disturbing because of what he calls the Cult of Smart: the idea that intelligence and human worth are the same thing. This is ubiquitous in our culture. But if intelligence is entirely out of our control, and we believe morality is based on choice and control (that is, we think it's worse to intentionally harm someone than to accidentally do so), how can we justify this?
What I like about the book is that, in presenting this "new scientific fact", deBoer does not make his argument dependent on it. It's not so much "this is true, therefore I am right!", but more like "what if this is true?" DeBoer evokes Rawls's "veil of ignorance", saying we should not only judge our society with the assumption that we don't know where we might be placed in it, but even if we don't know who we might be as people. But in a sense he goes further and casts that veil over "scientific fact" as well. If we don't know if some people are innately more intelligent than others, shouldn't we set up our society to benefit everyone?
I think again of the Fat Activists and the hate groups against them. One side insists that genetics determine their weight, the other that it is entirely character and willpower. It is notable, in this case, that the people who make it all choice are the reactionaries. Personally I expect that neither side has it entirely right here. Neither human genetics nor human willpower seem capable of changing with the extreme speed we've seen obesity rates change in the past few decades. I expect it is systemic change of some kind, though what it might be I don't know. The fact is that it doesn't matter. The Fat Activists are right that their worth and dignity can and should have nothing to do with their weight. Their struggle to decouple human worth from appearance is righteous. The same is true of deBoer's struggle to decouple it from intelligence. Everyone deserves a life of safety, dignity, and respect, and nobody needs "science" to prove it. "Science" can only make this more precarious, in its ceaseless churn of experiment and paradigm shifts.
I think I know why people appeal to science. Despite the fact that its theories are constantly changing, and have undergone many revolutions, it gives the appearance of something eternal and universal. As Julian Jaynes says in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, the reaching for the "certainty" of science is essentially a kind of religious longing for a certainty outside of the self. "Science often shaes with the celestial maps of astrology, or a hundred other irrationalisms, the same nostalgia for the Final Answer, the One Truth, the Single Cause." But the final answer will never come, and we need to argue, not from the "facts", but from ourselves.
Science will not save you. Our culture doesn't like to believe that. Ask someone why they believe in the things they believe in and they will probably give you a list of "scientific facts". Studies show. Science proves. This goes for everybody on the political spectrum. Darwinian science proved to the ultranationalists of a hundred years ago that the nations of the world were locked in a merciless war to prove the fittest and dominate the world's resources. To Marxists history is a science showing that a predictable dialectic process of class struggle is leading towards a new synthesis. Some conservatives may point to the Bible for justification, but only very rarely anymore, and they generally would rather, if anything, justify scripture with science. Science is our Bible now. Science says there are two genders, they say; facts don't care about your feelings. Liberals retort that science shows that people are "born this way". New Agey people have endless, bewildering reams of "scientific proof" of the power of crystals or herbs or whatever it might be. Fat activists say science proves their metabolisms work differently; fat hate groups (these exist, somehow) insist that science shows that "calories in equal calories out". On and on and on and on.
Some of these are purely ignorant category errors. Science cannot say anything about "how many" genders there are, because the question is not a scientific one but a social one. Some are pseudoscience using sciencey words but no real "science" (though which ones probably depends on your point of view.) And in some situations, like "is human activity causing climate change?" the question is indeed a scientific one, and science can indeed answer it. But for so many moral and political questions, I would argue, regardless of what you think "science says", science is a very, very slender reed on which to build your castle. It has to be. It always will be. Because the entire point of science is to continually re-examine and re-interpret, and its conclusions are always liable to be changed.
It was actually Freddie deBoer, author of this book, who first really brought this home to me in a blog post years ago. He was pushing back on the idea that gay rights should be based and defended on the "born this way" genetic argument. If there is a "gay gene", he asked, what does that mean? Are only people with the "gay gene" allowed to be gay? Should people have to have their DNA sequenced for it before they could get gay-married? Obviously not. Everyone should be able to marry the partner they want to, and live the life they want, whether they "made a choice" or were "born this way". The same goes, for example, for the Fat Activists. Their metabolisms are entirely irrelevant to the fact that they should and must be treated with equal dignity, get quality health care, not be discriminated against. Because they are human. Leaving it up to this "scientific fact" only makes them more vulnerable to the fat-haters, because what if a new study reveals some new fact?
What deBoer does in this book is, essentially, present an analogous set of new facts which argue against one of the tenets that almost all of us profess to: that if you dream it, you can be it; that you can achieve anything, if you work hard, particularly when it comes to academics. If you fail to achieve academically, the problem is either with your character or your school or your environment -- not any inborn talent. (Yes, there are a few racists who believe race determines intelligence; but this is about individuals, not groups. Indeed, the idea that intelligence is "genetic" is totally ancillary to the point, just a consequence of our more general knowledge of biology as a whole. Being "heritable" is not important, being inborn is. After all, even people who believe they're "born this way" don't think you must have gay parents to be gay.) And, as deBoer argues, the idea that we are born with an innate level of intelligence and talent that we can do little to change is disturbing because of what he calls the Cult of Smart: the idea that intelligence and human worth are the same thing. This is ubiquitous in our culture. But if intelligence is entirely out of our control, and we believe morality is based on choice and control (that is, we think it's worse to intentionally harm someone than to accidentally do so), how can we justify this?
What I like about the book is that, in presenting this "new scientific fact", deBoer does not make his argument dependent on it. It's not so much "this is true, therefore I am right!", but more like "what if this is true?" DeBoer evokes Rawls's "veil of ignorance", saying we should not only judge our society with the assumption that we don't know where we might be placed in it, but even if we don't know who we might be as people. But in a sense he goes further and casts that veil over "scientific fact" as well. If we don't know if some people are innately more intelligent than others, shouldn't we set up our society to benefit everyone?
I think again of the Fat Activists and the hate groups against them. One side insists that genetics determine their weight, the other that it is entirely character and willpower. It is notable, in this case, that the people who make it all choice are the reactionaries. Personally I expect that neither side has it entirely right here. Neither human genetics nor human willpower seem capable of changing with the extreme speed we've seen obesity rates change in the past few decades. I expect it is systemic change of some kind, though what it might be I don't know. The fact is that it doesn't matter. The Fat Activists are right that their worth and dignity can and should have nothing to do with their weight. Their struggle to decouple human worth from appearance is righteous. The same is true of deBoer's struggle to decouple it from intelligence. Everyone deserves a life of safety, dignity, and respect, and nobody needs "science" to prove it. "Science" can only make this more precarious, in its ceaseless churn of experiment and paradigm shifts.
I think I know why people appeal to science. Despite the fact that its theories are constantly changing, and have undergone many revolutions, it gives the appearance of something eternal and universal. As Julian Jaynes says in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, the reaching for the "certainty" of science is essentially a kind of religious longing for a certainty outside of the self. "Science often shaes with the celestial maps of astrology, or a hundred other irrationalisms, the same nostalgia for the Final Answer, the One Truth, the Single Cause." But the final answer will never come, and we need to argue, not from the "facts", but from ourselves.
March 22, 2020
This thought provoking book asks deep, transformational questions about the American educational system and whether it truly serves all students. The thesis of the book is that not everyone is "smart," and that's okay. Intelligence is inherited, and no matter how much particular students try to make good grades, they will still come up short. The book includes an excellent history of recent American educational initiatives - useful to those of us too young to remember them or who didn't have children in public schools in the late twentieth century.
As a mother of a dyslexic child who struggles with school (but who is nonetheless quite "smart" when it comes to non-academic endeavors), this book resonated with me. I agreed with most of his criticisms of the current system. I really wished the author had spent more time on possible solutions to the problems, however. There's a huge need for more vocational education and job training, along with services for children and teens with learning disabilities. I would have liked more content on these needs.
Instead, the author bent over backwards to assure us of his liberal credentials and spent the last part of the book on Marxism. I think if he had stuck to reforms of the educational system, he would have been more likely to get consensus - not to mention readers - from those of more moderate and even conservative leanings.
As a mother of a dyslexic child who struggles with school (but who is nonetheless quite "smart" when it comes to non-academic endeavors), this book resonated with me. I agreed with most of his criticisms of the current system. I really wished the author had spent more time on possible solutions to the problems, however. There's a huge need for more vocational education and job training, along with services for children and teens with learning disabilities. I would have liked more content on these needs.
Instead, the author bent over backwards to assure us of his liberal credentials and spent the last part of the book on Marxism. I think if he had stuck to reforms of the educational system, he would have been more likely to get consensus - not to mention readers - from those of more moderate and even conservative leanings.
February 21, 2023
Freddie deBoer is one of the very best culture/politics writers alive right now, and certainly the most intelligent Marxist. (To be fair, there isn't too much competition beyond the boutique radicals at Jacobin, but still.)
Cult of Smart is, accordingly, very well-written and mostly convincing, until it gets to his (inevitably, Marxist) solution to the issues under discussion, but you can't really hold that against him. I was surprised that Freddie didn't mention any of the conservative writers who have written on this topic (mainly Sowell and Murray) but it's great to see someone attacking educational orthodoxy from the Left, so I'll take what I can get.
edit: man, this is just the best review ever, and hits all of the points that had vaguely occurred to me -- how brilliant is Scott Alexander, seriously?
Cult of Smart is, accordingly, very well-written and mostly convincing, until it gets to his (inevitably, Marxist) solution to the issues under discussion, but you can't really hold that against him. I was surprised that Freddie didn't mention any of the conservative writers who have written on this topic (mainly Sowell and Murray) but it's great to see someone attacking educational orthodoxy from the Left, so I'll take what I can get.
edit: man, this is just the best review ever, and hits all of the points that had vaguely occurred to me -- how brilliant is Scott Alexander, seriously?
January 3, 2021
I was wanting to read this book because I was seeking a deeper understanding of the problems facing those of us trying to educate students with varying levels of intelligence. This book, however did none of that. Rather it’s a Marxist manifesto. While at times it was interesting to read a viewpoint drastically different from my own, I was frustrated by the lack of content for which I sought the book out to begin with.
April 10, 2022
Education as Systematic Oppression: Solid Assessment of the Problem, Recycled Thoughts on a Leftist Solution
This is two books in one. The first part addresses the title: deBoer shows how the education system has turned into an arms race where those with the best starting positions and society-wide support are able to get ahead and profit, while the rest are left behind. Regardless of individual winners and losers, society as a whole loses from this race to the top. We have credentialed what may most of all simply be a signal of innate ability and societal support. The arms race draws on enormous resources that could be better spent elsewhere in society. Thus, we've constructed an elaborate system we can call meritocratic while perpetuating social injustice.
There's more nuance to deBoer's assessment, but that's the gist. Much of this argument echoes more conservative critics of education, like Caplan's The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. So the novelty in deBoer's assessment is his leftist framing and value for social justice. This part of the book is invaluable because so rare in the academic debate, let alone the public debate, over education's role in society.
The second part of the book turns from describing the education system to how to fix it. This part of the book did not strike me as particularly valuable for many audiences. DeBoer rehashes the basics of Marxism and applies it to various aspects of the education system. He also touches on how a socialist reimagining would also affect what success, meaning, and happiness means for all of society. I've heard these arguments before. They never rise much above the level of a good public debate. There's the standard exploration of what justice requires and universal basic minimum income and other topics that are floating around the left's cultural conversation. This section neither delves deep into the arguments, nor advances any new ideas about leftism. I think it could be skipped.
Read the first part for a unique perspective and challenge, skip the second part to avoid the challenge of boredom.
This is two books in one. The first part addresses the title: deBoer shows how the education system has turned into an arms race where those with the best starting positions and society-wide support are able to get ahead and profit, while the rest are left behind. Regardless of individual winners and losers, society as a whole loses from this race to the top. We have credentialed what may most of all simply be a signal of innate ability and societal support. The arms race draws on enormous resources that could be better spent elsewhere in society. Thus, we've constructed an elaborate system we can call meritocratic while perpetuating social injustice.
There's more nuance to deBoer's assessment, but that's the gist. Much of this argument echoes more conservative critics of education, like Caplan's The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. So the novelty in deBoer's assessment is his leftist framing and value for social justice. This part of the book is invaluable because so rare in the academic debate, let alone the public debate, over education's role in society.
The second part of the book turns from describing the education system to how to fix it. This part of the book did not strike me as particularly valuable for many audiences. DeBoer rehashes the basics of Marxism and applies it to various aspects of the education system. He also touches on how a socialist reimagining would also affect what success, meaning, and happiness means for all of society. I've heard these arguments before. They never rise much above the level of a good public debate. There's the standard exploration of what justice requires and universal basic minimum income and other topics that are floating around the left's cultural conversation. This section neither delves deep into the arguments, nor advances any new ideas about leftism. I think it could be skipped.
Read the first part for a unique perspective and challenge, skip the second part to avoid the challenge of boredom.
August 15, 2020
While I found the book to be well-written and thoughtful, what kept frustrating me is the author's insistence that since intellectual/academic talent varies genetically, we cannot expect equivalent performance from less gifted individuals, and, though he doesn't outright say it, basically give up on them. He offered an interesting discussion of "cultivating" students as one might cultivate a plant, noting that some students arrive at an educational facility having been nurtured and carefully tended, while others arrive in poor condition, having been neglected. He also notes that even with excellent care, some plants will grow taller than others no matter what kind of care has been provided. So what is the solution? To cultivate only the students we expect to thrive? Do we withhold sunlight, nutrients, and water from the plants (students) we have deemed, within the first few years of their lives, to be academic failures? Do I need to mention what happens to the plants we choose not to cultivate? They die.
Although the premise, "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" seems sensible on the surface, who makes the decision about what each individual's ability is, and what his or her need is? Particularly at the ages where students are taught in public schools, it seems foolhardy to make such determinations, but it sure seems like he will go for some Marxist central agency charged with making those decisions. I find this frightening. It does not take long for such agencies to be corrupted to serve the wealthy or privileged. Having grown up poor and smart, the classroom was the only place where I could compete. In spite of my shabby clothing and untrimmed hair, I aced all of my classes without much trouble. I can think of few places where money and connections are not half the battle, but public school still provides the opportunity for a person to succeed on the basis of his or her own talents. Establishing a sorting program to choose the academically inclined ironically fosters the exact situation he decries at the beginning of the book, where wealthy parents purchased their children's entry into privileged positions in Ivy League schools. I say this as a confirmed Democratic Socialist: this is always the problem with Marxist communism: centralized decision-making bodies inherent in communism are extremely vulnerable to exertions of power, and are almost guaranteed to devolve into an authoritarian in-groups system rife with corruption.
The author compares athletic ability to scholastic ability, which is an excellent point. Yes, LeBron James's son would wipe up the court with my daughter. What deBoer forgets is that sports is not limited to basketball, and school is not limited to long division. My daughter may not be able to compete with LeBron James's son on the basketball court, but I'll bet she can probably keep up with him on the gymnastics mat. In the same way, a good education is not unilaterally academic. Students may not master the chemistry or grammar lessons offered to them, or master any of the academic disciplines, but they will learn some of it, and they will also learn how to do their best, that working toward a goal is not always fun, but pays off, that learning something new is uncomfortable, and that they can be confused and uncomfortable for a while and figure it out or not, but will survive. They will also learn how to get help, how to provide help to others, how to maximize the skills they do have, and how to participate in a society where certain things are expected, and where other people may have an edge on you, but you still have to try. These skills pay off whether you end up as a professor or as a plumber.
Individuals may vary in their intellectual abilities, but that does not mean that we should deem some people to be too incompetent to bother with, and just carry them. This is a disservice to that individual and to society at large. Like it or not, the students we teach are going to have to make their way in the world, and smart plumbers do better than dumb ones, or ones that don't care enough to try, or ones that expect someone else to do their jobs for them. Though the less talented students we cultivate may not grow as much as the talented ones, they should not be deprived of the sunlight of learning.
Although the premise, "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" seems sensible on the surface, who makes the decision about what each individual's ability is, and what his or her need is? Particularly at the ages where students are taught in public schools, it seems foolhardy to make such determinations, but it sure seems like he will go for some Marxist central agency charged with making those decisions. I find this frightening. It does not take long for such agencies to be corrupted to serve the wealthy or privileged. Having grown up poor and smart, the classroom was the only place where I could compete. In spite of my shabby clothing and untrimmed hair, I aced all of my classes without much trouble. I can think of few places where money and connections are not half the battle, but public school still provides the opportunity for a person to succeed on the basis of his or her own talents. Establishing a sorting program to choose the academically inclined ironically fosters the exact situation he decries at the beginning of the book, where wealthy parents purchased their children's entry into privileged positions in Ivy League schools. I say this as a confirmed Democratic Socialist: this is always the problem with Marxist communism: centralized decision-making bodies inherent in communism are extremely vulnerable to exertions of power, and are almost guaranteed to devolve into an authoritarian in-groups system rife with corruption.
The author compares athletic ability to scholastic ability, which is an excellent point. Yes, LeBron James's son would wipe up the court with my daughter. What deBoer forgets is that sports is not limited to basketball, and school is not limited to long division. My daughter may not be able to compete with LeBron James's son on the basketball court, but I'll bet she can probably keep up with him on the gymnastics mat. In the same way, a good education is not unilaterally academic. Students may not master the chemistry or grammar lessons offered to them, or master any of the academic disciplines, but they will learn some of it, and they will also learn how to do their best, that working toward a goal is not always fun, but pays off, that learning something new is uncomfortable, and that they can be confused and uncomfortable for a while and figure it out or not, but will survive. They will also learn how to get help, how to provide help to others, how to maximize the skills they do have, and how to participate in a society where certain things are expected, and where other people may have an edge on you, but you still have to try. These skills pay off whether you end up as a professor or as a plumber.
Individuals may vary in their intellectual abilities, but that does not mean that we should deem some people to be too incompetent to bother with, and just carry them. This is a disservice to that individual and to society at large. Like it or not, the students we teach are going to have to make their way in the world, and smart plumbers do better than dumb ones, or ones that don't care enough to try, or ones that expect someone else to do their jobs for them. Though the less talented students we cultivate may not grow as much as the talented ones, they should not be deprived of the sunlight of learning.
February 15, 2021
There's a lot about this book I enjoyed, but what really struck me was deBoer's level of compassion and genuine care for children/teens, who are absolutely harmed by society's obsession with the "cult of smart."
"The impulse to buy Baby Einstein toys for toddlers and to force seven-year-olds into gifted student programs, the fixation on grades in middle school, the general drive to make your child competitive from the moment they’re born … each defines intelligence in narrow and reductive terms and then implicitly places it above creativity, compassion, adventurousness, patience, gentleness, and a host of other human virtues."
For me, reading this was validating - like my own fuzzy observations of the school system + American culture being spoken aloud and parsed through, made sense of. The argument is methodically laid out, lively, engaging. I have a few quibbles, nothing material. (Are two leftists even legally allowed to completely agree with each other? Hah.)
"The impulse to buy Baby Einstein toys for toddlers and to force seven-year-olds into gifted student programs, the fixation on grades in middle school, the general drive to make your child competitive from the moment they’re born … each defines intelligence in narrow and reductive terms and then implicitly places it above creativity, compassion, adventurousness, patience, gentleness, and a host of other human virtues."
For me, reading this was validating - like my own fuzzy observations of the school system + American culture being spoken aloud and parsed through, made sense of. The argument is methodically laid out, lively, engaging. I have a few quibbles, nothing material. (Are two leftists even legally allowed to completely agree with each other? Hah.)
January 2, 2022
I was really intrigued by the questions he was asking, but found his writing tedious. I'd love this in a TED talk form, perhaps, but the soapbox monologues wore me out.
I think he's right that we underestimate how much of our ability (or lack of it) is inherent, and truly believe there is some system out there that can ensure all kids reach the same level of confidence with algebra and grammar. There's definitely something at the heart of our education system that isn't working, but I'm not sure he's exactly got his finger on it. There is something in our way of teaching that makes the wrong assumptions about what a person is and what education ought to do to shape a person's mind and choices. I'd love to hear this guy's ideas in dialogue with other voices. He presents his socialist solutions with great confidence, but I found myself picking fights with him while listening to this audiobook.
I think he's right that we underestimate how much of our ability (or lack of it) is inherent, and truly believe there is some system out there that can ensure all kids reach the same level of confidence with algebra and grammar. There's definitely something at the heart of our education system that isn't working, but I'm not sure he's exactly got his finger on it. There is something in our way of teaching that makes the wrong assumptions about what a person is and what education ought to do to shape a person's mind and choices. I'd love to hear this guy's ideas in dialogue with other voices. He presents his socialist solutions with great confidence, but I found myself picking fights with him while listening to this audiobook.
December 18, 2020
In a nutshell, this book makes two assertions:
First, "Education, we are relentlessly told, is the key...to social mobility, to reducing inequality, to ending poverty, to the American dream. It seems education is a key that can open any lock" (84), but it is not and cannot be that.
Second, "Acknowledging that not everyone has the same academic gifts is the first step in ending the Cult of Smart...The assumption is that intelligence is something all-defining, something existential. This heightened sensitivity inevitably reinforces the notion that only intelligence matters." Instead we need "a more expansive...a more mature vision of what it means to be a worthwhile person" (202) and "make a sweeping set of changes to our basic social contract" (202).
Before going any further, understand this point that deBoer repeats incessantly to ensure we take it in: "An individual's academic talent is influenced by their genetic endowment" and "a race's collective academic talent is the product of their genes" are two vastly different and incompatible claims (81). He's not talking about race. Got it? Let's move on.
It is likely that most readers will agree with or be convinced by parts of this book and utterly hostile to others, particularly deBoer's proposed reforms. DeBoer writes well and his notions about education are rooted in teaching experience. Nevertheless, I have to wonder about writers and professors who claim to be Marxists. In Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, he wrote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Anyone who is just writing or teaching or analyzing society isn't out there changing it; they just think they are.
DeBoer writes what we all know but most of us won't say. Children are not a blank slate; "intelligence, like all cognitive traits, is significantly influenced by genetic parentage" (141), an assertion he repeats often. Six of the nine chapters reference extensive research proving beyond any doubt that cognitive talent is inheritable and that, regardless of how many trillions of dollars any entity spends, there will be students who simply do not and will not meet the standards. They lack the volition. They lack the ability.
There. Doesn't it feel better to admit it at long last?
"...[W]hat we are left with is a simple reality: thanks to the heritability of academic ability, the range of the possible in the classroom is dramatically smaller than conventionally assumed. A large portion of the variation in academic outcomes will remain permanently out of the hands of schools and teachers" (121).
He counters with ample research whatever argument you may intend as rebuttal: charter schools, after school programs, voluntary Pre-K, merit pay, flipping the classroom, gamifying, all comes to naught in large scale studies over time; the results don't persist, etc. Small group and individual tutoring works, but it's not new, so it runs against the real addiction to innovation in education and "it doesn't lend itself to hype" (121). There are "millions upon millions of children before they have stepped foot in a classroom" were "exposed to drugs or lead in utero...born severely premature," did not "have the benefits of a stable home" and perhaps were abused (196). School quality is merely a by-product of who attends. The student body will be limited to talented students if there's an admission test or if it is located near highly educated elites or if it charges exorbitant fees. Having worked in one of the top three most expensive boarding schools in the country, I can attest to this.
Moreover, "[T]he idea that all children enjoy more or less the same academic potential and can excel if only they enjoy stable parenting, a healthy environment, and good teaching cannot withstand scientific scrutiny. It's precisely this conceit that dominates education politics and policy, and the consequences hurt students, teachers, parents, and taxpayers" (86). It leads to blaming teachers and school systems; "education becomes a proxy for our society's greatest ills." Why? Because schools are something we can control with public funding, legislation, and school boards, which need to believe they are making a difference. But let's get real. It's all a waste, throwing trillions upon trillions of dollars into a black hole. DeBoer urges us to be realistic about what we can control and who is responsible for outcomes.
That leads to deBoer's second major point:
"Whatever the value of schooling, we must consider soberly and rationally, what it means for society that all students are not and will never be equal in the academic talents. Given the realities of meritocracy and its relationship to our economic outcomes and the job market, the consequences are profound. Indeed, if we truly understand those consequences, we can see that they demand a radical restructuring of the basic social contract of contemporary American life" (121).
A crucial part of his argument: "...if talent tracks with income or wealth...then increasing the rewards of talent only solidifies the position of the already awarded" (155). DeBoer is fed up with Raj Chetty and his ilk and their talk of social mobility. "The point is that in a society of perfectly achieved formal equality of opportunity, there is no mobility" (emphasis in original)(156). (He defines equal opportunity as "matching talent to reward"). This results in "an aristocracy of the talented," which he despises. Grasp that, as it is the orthodox Leftist position.
To quote John Cleese's Tweet of 10/2/16, "Seriously, I'd rather have educated, cultured and intelligent people in charge. Sorry for the elitism." I fully agree, Mr. Cleese.
We must be thankful for deBoer's explicit presentation of the Leftist position: "As a leftist, I understand the appeal of tearing down those at the top, on an emotional and symbolic level. But if we're simply replacing them with a new set of winners lording it over the rest of us, we're running in place" (157). He insists that social mobility necessarily means that some must descend into poverty for others to rise, which is not at all the case, as demonstrated by the most superficial understanding of history. A rising economic tide lifts all boats, some more than others according to their ability to recognize opportunity and seize it.
DeBoer is on board with San Francisco Unified School District's decision to eliminate the possibility of ANYONE taking algebra in 8th grade because too few Blacks were enrolled, or NYC Public Schools' decision to eliminate the entrance exam for the elite high schools of science for the same reason. He advocates for permitting 12 year-olds to drop out of school to do something else. "I argue that you should accept lower standards in order to keep more students in the system and to spare those who will never meet the more rigorous standards from the frustrations and humiliation of failure" (182). So lower the bar and let's do the limbo as a collective society. However, if you haven't read Andrew Hacker's book, The Math Myth, I recommend it. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1672414116: The idea is that there is absolutely no logical rationale for demanding algebra (and calculus in university), etc., the [not one of many] primary obstacle to graduation from high school and college. It really is indefensible to ascribe such significance to math. I agree with that one.
It is simply a truism that "we can have higher standards or higher graduation rates, but not both" (191). University degrees, he tells us, are a "relative advantage rather than an absolute one. It's a mechanism to signal a certain perseverance, a certain wherewithal, perhaps talent and skills and time management. As more people earned degrees, more jobs that didn't require them in the past began to require them. The place from which the degree was earned became more important." College for all is idiotic, entirely nonsensical. Many do not have the desire or the aptitude. Instead, we must create broader models of what a well-lived life means.
Chapter 9 is an abrupt change of course: DeBoer's vision for American socialism and it is horrific to those of us who oppose equality of outcomes, the repression of striving, and elimination of rewards for taking initiative. "If we make the meritocratic race entirely fair in terms of race, gender, economic class and similar, the stakes of that race would remain as high as they are now, and the competition of our young people would stay just as brutal. And free of social and economic inequality, those who support the system would only be emboldened, and those who fail to develop academic skills that are valuable under capitalism would endure the added indignity of having lost in a system that was 'fair'" (203).
At this point, let's inject Turchin’s theory that the overproduction of elites gives rise to competition and social chaos and my favorite explanation, relative deprivation theory. In the 1960s, Davies posited that civil unrest results not from absolute poverty but from the increased expectations following a period of progress, a theory subsequently applied to the radicalization of youth in Arab Spring, Hong Kong, and Black Lives Matter. This is a cautionary tale about urging “College for All” and inflating assumptions of socioeconomic advancement upon degree completion. The mass protests of 2010 through the present are the results of student debt, underemployment, resentment and the rage of adherents of the false gospel of education (and stirred by the clerisy preaching Critical Race Theory…).
People want more. We don't want to all be the same. We strive. We want to be individuals, not a collective. That's why deBoer's vision cannot work in the USA.
Nevertheless there is authentic wisdom here: "For too long the left has obsessed over the vague idea that is 'equality." "Rather we should simply pursue what's good for everyone, what fulfills their basic human needs and allows them to flourish. Human beings are complicated creatures, and we can be ranked and measured and divided on a thousand metrics. To suggest that we will ever achieve equality of any meaningful kind is to deny our nature. Recognizing that we have fundamentally different abilities and talents does not curse people to a harsh existence. It is the first step in their liberation. Acknowledging the inevitability of inequality in individual talent, as a society, would lead to the most profound change in consciousness imaginable....The notion that we more or less receive what we deserve, that our station is determined by our work ethic and talent, is the lifeblood of capitalism, the stuff of the American dream." OK so far. I'm right there with him.
But then deBoer goes off the rails when he continues, "And that notion is a lie, one promulgated by those deluded by religion into believing in cosmic justice, by those who benefit from our exploitative economic system, and by those...convinced by centuries of propaganda that they are to blame for their own misfortune" (239). Nope, Freddie, it's not a lie. That's why people are knocking at the door trying to come to the USA. As the saying goes, how do you know if it's a good country or not? See whether more people leaving or trying to get in.
He wants Medicare for all, but socialized medicine, unfortunately does not work well, as we have seen exposed in innumerable contexts around the world. DeBoer knows that forgiving student loan debt is regressive; it benefits the wealthiest most, but he wants to do it anyway. Naturally, he wants to see universal basic income and jobs guarantee, and above all, "the destruction of markets"
This book is worth reading. It's controversial and thought-provoking. It affirms some of the ideas you already have and challenges you to consider others and makes you imagine where it all should lead in the future.
First, "Education, we are relentlessly told, is the key...to social mobility, to reducing inequality, to ending poverty, to the American dream. It seems education is a key that can open any lock" (84), but it is not and cannot be that.
Second, "Acknowledging that not everyone has the same academic gifts is the first step in ending the Cult of Smart...The assumption is that intelligence is something all-defining, something existential. This heightened sensitivity inevitably reinforces the notion that only intelligence matters." Instead we need "a more expansive...a more mature vision of what it means to be a worthwhile person" (202) and "make a sweeping set of changes to our basic social contract" (202).
Before going any further, understand this point that deBoer repeats incessantly to ensure we take it in: "An individual's academic talent is influenced by their genetic endowment" and "a race's collective academic talent is the product of their genes" are two vastly different and incompatible claims (81). He's not talking about race. Got it? Let's move on.
It is likely that most readers will agree with or be convinced by parts of this book and utterly hostile to others, particularly deBoer's proposed reforms. DeBoer writes well and his notions about education are rooted in teaching experience. Nevertheless, I have to wonder about writers and professors who claim to be Marxists. In Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, he wrote, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Anyone who is just writing or teaching or analyzing society isn't out there changing it; they just think they are.
DeBoer writes what we all know but most of us won't say. Children are not a blank slate; "intelligence, like all cognitive traits, is significantly influenced by genetic parentage" (141), an assertion he repeats often. Six of the nine chapters reference extensive research proving beyond any doubt that cognitive talent is inheritable and that, regardless of how many trillions of dollars any entity spends, there will be students who simply do not and will not meet the standards. They lack the volition. They lack the ability.
There. Doesn't it feel better to admit it at long last?
"...[W]hat we are left with is a simple reality: thanks to the heritability of academic ability, the range of the possible in the classroom is dramatically smaller than conventionally assumed. A large portion of the variation in academic outcomes will remain permanently out of the hands of schools and teachers" (121).
He counters with ample research whatever argument you may intend as rebuttal: charter schools, after school programs, voluntary Pre-K, merit pay, flipping the classroom, gamifying, all comes to naught in large scale studies over time; the results don't persist, etc. Small group and individual tutoring works, but it's not new, so it runs against the real addiction to innovation in education and "it doesn't lend itself to hype" (121). There are "millions upon millions of children before they have stepped foot in a classroom" were "exposed to drugs or lead in utero...born severely premature," did not "have the benefits of a stable home" and perhaps were abused (196). School quality is merely a by-product of who attends. The student body will be limited to talented students if there's an admission test or if it is located near highly educated elites or if it charges exorbitant fees. Having worked in one of the top three most expensive boarding schools in the country, I can attest to this.
Moreover, "[T]he idea that all children enjoy more or less the same academic potential and can excel if only they enjoy stable parenting, a healthy environment, and good teaching cannot withstand scientific scrutiny. It's precisely this conceit that dominates education politics and policy, and the consequences hurt students, teachers, parents, and taxpayers" (86). It leads to blaming teachers and school systems; "education becomes a proxy for our society's greatest ills." Why? Because schools are something we can control with public funding, legislation, and school boards, which need to believe they are making a difference. But let's get real. It's all a waste, throwing trillions upon trillions of dollars into a black hole. DeBoer urges us to be realistic about what we can control and who is responsible for outcomes.
That leads to deBoer's second major point:
"Whatever the value of schooling, we must consider soberly and rationally, what it means for society that all students are not and will never be equal in the academic talents. Given the realities of meritocracy and its relationship to our economic outcomes and the job market, the consequences are profound. Indeed, if we truly understand those consequences, we can see that they demand a radical restructuring of the basic social contract of contemporary American life" (121).
A crucial part of his argument: "...if talent tracks with income or wealth...then increasing the rewards of talent only solidifies the position of the already awarded" (155). DeBoer is fed up with Raj Chetty and his ilk and their talk of social mobility. "The point is that in a society of perfectly achieved formal equality of opportunity, there is no mobility" (emphasis in original)(156). (He defines equal opportunity as "matching talent to reward"). This results in "an aristocracy of the talented," which he despises. Grasp that, as it is the orthodox Leftist position.
To quote John Cleese's Tweet of 10/2/16, "Seriously, I'd rather have educated, cultured and intelligent people in charge. Sorry for the elitism." I fully agree, Mr. Cleese.
We must be thankful for deBoer's explicit presentation of the Leftist position: "As a leftist, I understand the appeal of tearing down those at the top, on an emotional and symbolic level. But if we're simply replacing them with a new set of winners lording it over the rest of us, we're running in place" (157). He insists that social mobility necessarily means that some must descend into poverty for others to rise, which is not at all the case, as demonstrated by the most superficial understanding of history. A rising economic tide lifts all boats, some more than others according to their ability to recognize opportunity and seize it.
DeBoer is on board with San Francisco Unified School District's decision to eliminate the possibility of ANYONE taking algebra in 8th grade because too few Blacks were enrolled, or NYC Public Schools' decision to eliminate the entrance exam for the elite high schools of science for the same reason. He advocates for permitting 12 year-olds to drop out of school to do something else. "I argue that you should accept lower standards in order to keep more students in the system and to spare those who will never meet the more rigorous standards from the frustrations and humiliation of failure" (182). So lower the bar and let's do the limbo as a collective society. However, if you haven't read Andrew Hacker's book, The Math Myth, I recommend it. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1672414116: The idea is that there is absolutely no logical rationale for demanding algebra (and calculus in university), etc., the [not one of many] primary obstacle to graduation from high school and college. It really is indefensible to ascribe such significance to math. I agree with that one.
It is simply a truism that "we can have higher standards or higher graduation rates, but not both" (191). University degrees, he tells us, are a "relative advantage rather than an absolute one. It's a mechanism to signal a certain perseverance, a certain wherewithal, perhaps talent and skills and time management. As more people earned degrees, more jobs that didn't require them in the past began to require them. The place from which the degree was earned became more important." College for all is idiotic, entirely nonsensical. Many do not have the desire or the aptitude. Instead, we must create broader models of what a well-lived life means.
Chapter 9 is an abrupt change of course: DeBoer's vision for American socialism and it is horrific to those of us who oppose equality of outcomes, the repression of striving, and elimination of rewards for taking initiative. "If we make the meritocratic race entirely fair in terms of race, gender, economic class and similar, the stakes of that race would remain as high as they are now, and the competition of our young people would stay just as brutal. And free of social and economic inequality, those who support the system would only be emboldened, and those who fail to develop academic skills that are valuable under capitalism would endure the added indignity of having lost in a system that was 'fair'" (203).
At this point, let's inject Turchin’s theory that the overproduction of elites gives rise to competition and social chaos and my favorite explanation, relative deprivation theory. In the 1960s, Davies posited that civil unrest results not from absolute poverty but from the increased expectations following a period of progress, a theory subsequently applied to the radicalization of youth in Arab Spring, Hong Kong, and Black Lives Matter. This is a cautionary tale about urging “College for All” and inflating assumptions of socioeconomic advancement upon degree completion. The mass protests of 2010 through the present are the results of student debt, underemployment, resentment and the rage of adherents of the false gospel of education (and stirred by the clerisy preaching Critical Race Theory…).
People want more. We don't want to all be the same. We strive. We want to be individuals, not a collective. That's why deBoer's vision cannot work in the USA.
Nevertheless there is authentic wisdom here: "For too long the left has obsessed over the vague idea that is 'equality." "Rather we should simply pursue what's good for everyone, what fulfills their basic human needs and allows them to flourish. Human beings are complicated creatures, and we can be ranked and measured and divided on a thousand metrics. To suggest that we will ever achieve equality of any meaningful kind is to deny our nature. Recognizing that we have fundamentally different abilities and talents does not curse people to a harsh existence. It is the first step in their liberation. Acknowledging the inevitability of inequality in individual talent, as a society, would lead to the most profound change in consciousness imaginable....The notion that we more or less receive what we deserve, that our station is determined by our work ethic and talent, is the lifeblood of capitalism, the stuff of the American dream." OK so far. I'm right there with him.
But then deBoer goes off the rails when he continues, "And that notion is a lie, one promulgated by those deluded by religion into believing in cosmic justice, by those who benefit from our exploitative economic system, and by those...convinced by centuries of propaganda that they are to blame for their own misfortune" (239). Nope, Freddie, it's not a lie. That's why people are knocking at the door trying to come to the USA. As the saying goes, how do you know if it's a good country or not? See whether more people leaving or trying to get in.
He wants Medicare for all, but socialized medicine, unfortunately does not work well, as we have seen exposed in innumerable contexts around the world. DeBoer knows that forgiving student loan debt is regressive; it benefits the wealthiest most, but he wants to do it anyway. Naturally, he wants to see universal basic income and jobs guarantee, and above all, "the destruction of markets"
This book is worth reading. It's controversial and thought-provoking. It affirms some of the ideas you already have and challenges you to consider others and makes you imagine where it all should lead in the future.
October 10, 2020
Basically, I liked the book a lot. Schools will be a mess until this kind of thinking is taken seriously. The author is a Marxist, I’m not, but there are great ideas here that everyone who cares about education should read and ponder.
(If you’re prejudiced about marxists, rest assured that this one is smart, humane, and well educated about the genetics of intelligence - maybe not what you expected?)
This is a better review than I could write, by Andrew Sullivan who is certainly no marxist:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p...
(If you’re prejudiced about marxists, rest assured that this one is smart, humane, and well educated about the genetics of intelligence - maybe not what you expected?)
This is a better review than I could write, by Andrew Sullivan who is certainly no marxist:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p...
June 8, 2020
This book most definitely made me think. While I don’t agree with everything he says, he certainly makes some valid points. Somebody read it so we can talk about it! 😊
September 6, 2022
The Cult of Smart argues how America, on aggregate, firmly believes in the notion that we can measure everyone’s worth by their academic ability, and that many seem to dangerously and grossly underestimate the effect of heritable and genetic differences on academic and ultimately social outcomes. Fredrik DeBoer argues that this obsession with our false God of “meritocracy” contributes to our inequality problem. While at certain points I found this book (and this author) insufferable, I’m overall very pleased with my experience now that I have read it.
I’ll start off by saying that I generally disagree with the entire premise of the book: I don’t think people (I realize this is a very general statement but this book was chock-full of broad strokes so I’ll play along) downplay the heritability of intelligence. In fact, I think people overestimate the impact it has on one’s ability to learn new skills, concepts, and ideas. Taking this one step further, I think that many people use the excuse of “I’m just not smart” as an excuse to not try. Failure is a part of the learning process for the vast majority (if not all people), and many are unwilling to undergo or experience something that induces so much discomfort. Perhaps I’m overly optimistic just enough to compensate for DeBoer’s excessive pessimism (which is ironic given his self-proclaimed status of “communist”— I’m not sure if there is a religion more overtly ideological and optimistic about human nature than communism), but I think there is plenty of fascinating evidence that contradicts a lot of what DeBoer argues. Much of the research on mindset and brain plasticity (for example, by Carol Dweck at Stanford) comes to mind.
I think the main gist of the book is that 50-70% of our intelligence is inherited. In other words, 50-70% of our intelligence is more or less completely out of our control and is determined by the random* genetic shuffle of birth (*assortative mating lol). DeBoer then jumps to the conclusion that it’s ridiculous that we fuss about trying to improve education. As I see it, for all intensive purposes, we as a society can’t really control that aspect, but (one) of the levers we can utilize to improve outcomes is education. I don’t really see the issue with wanting to improve access and affordability of education, but the way this author writes makes it seem like they think it’s farcical. This sort of deterministic and pessimistic dialogue does not help any of the students who could improve their lives with more education but then hear this pessimistic crap and justify giving up on education and learning by blaming genetics. Having a Growth Mindset can have profound effects on student’s performance and academic outcomes by tempering the effects of socioeconomic disadvantages, and this book completely glosses over that fact, perhaps due to some sort of political vendetta. I don’t doubt that some students just can’t succeed within our educational framework, and there should be better resources and options for those students, but in general I think the author grossly underestimates how many students can succeed (especially with improved systems, affordability, and learning frameworks).
I think my biggest gripe with this book was his implicit acceptance of this idea that everything about our educational system is as good as it’s going to get. There is no room for improvement. Reforms? No thank you, just revolution please. Take for example when DeBoer at one point acknowledges how poorly we do on the PISA every year, but then essentially tries to argue “why does it matter,” since we put people on the moon, won world wars, and “won many Nobel prizes” (47). From my perspective, arguing that it shouldn’t matter that we do poorly compared to other countries now because this is consistent with our relative performance 60 years ago is a weak argument. That’s not the point of the comparison. To me, it highlights that there is obviously room for improvement in our educational system. After all, this author is the one that is vehemently opposed to “race science” (He stresses literally multiple times every chapter that just because he is pointing out that there are significant “in-group” differences with regards to intelligence that it does not mean he is arguing that there are significant “between group” differences between races). So, unless the Chinese (or like, citizens of any other country) are just better than American students because their skin is generally a different color, they’re doing something effectively that we are not. Why be so opposed to exploring ways to improve our systems from other countries? (This is the type of author that is also very infatuated by the “Nordic” model. The irony continues).
At one point, DeBoer also tries to argue that increasing rates of college completion will not reduce poverty or inequality, and cites the socialist think tank founder Matt Broenig, who “lays out the case” for why: rates of college completion have increased between 1991 and 2014, while the number of Americans in the “less than high school bin” has decreased significantly (by almost 50%), yet “the poverty rate for each educational bin went up over this time and overall poverty didn’t decline at all” (48).
I cringed when I read this. I like how the author described all the statistical methods and research classes they took during their PhD, and yet makes the biggest statistical blunder of all time. Stats 101. Correlation is not causation. There’s a massive confounder (omitted variable bias/violation of strict exogeneity anyone?) that DeBoer is either a) acutely and completely unaware of, or b) so overcome with belief perseverance that they are happy to overlook the painfully obvious fact that the cost of higher education (and student loan debt) has skyrocketed over that time frame as well (not to mention a variety of other types of debt).
This was not the only specific example that irked me. When discussing academic standards and how some students perform better than others, he says “I’ve semiseriously made an argument for this in the past; if you want to close performance gaps, the easiest way to do it is to try to retard the progress of the highest performing” (58). In statistics there is sometimes an emphasis placed on discerning between good metrics and “vanity” metrics. Vanity metrics are essentially measures that may seem or sound important on the surface, but in actuality provide little to no value; they aren’t actually indicative of anything useful or meaningful. Based on this hot take that we could close the performance gap by hindering the forward progress of top performers…. Like no shit? But that defeats the entire purpose of measuring the performance gap in the first place. We aren’t just measuring it to hit parity regardless of the outcome, the intention is to track and identify differences in performance outcomes to help under-performers achieve their true potential. The fact that he was willing to confess that he “semi-seriously” argued for this is a little concerning. This guy works in academia? Overall, my gut tells me to feel bad for this person. Clearly their life experience has made them lose confidence in the ability of many students to make forward progress in their academic and educational lives, and that makes me really sad.
With that said, there was plenty of this book that resonated with me more positively. DeBoer does make some decent points about the public’s frequent inability to grasp selection bias. For example, in the context of comparing immigrant student’s better performance to that of American’s and chalking it up to “immigrant willingness to strive and preserve,” in reality, it’s the wealthy and well-off students in those counties that are able to come and study in America. They selectively sort into the “immigrant” bin.
I was also surprised to learn how little of an impact test prep has on student outcomes. Credit where credit is due, and I felt the author did a good job of substantiating the claim that once you control for ability, where you go to school essentially makes no difference. I’ve heard this before, and I think I’ve personally expressed this to some people, but I hadn’t seen all the studies that had demonstrated that empirical fact until reading this.
In the chapter on realistic solutions, I appreciated the author’s willingness to address weaknesses with some of the solutions proposed, such as universal pre-k and after school programs. I also found it interesting that despite willingly acknowledging the evidence that suggests these programs have a poor track record of improving test scores and academic performance, the author maintains that they still are a proponent of the programs. I like the authenticity of their argument: they aren’t in favor of it to optimize for student performance, but rather because it is a solution worth supporting on “humanitarian” grounds. It’s much more difficult to dispute universal pre-k if that’s your argument. I thought it was strange when he suggested that we allow kids to drop out of school at the age of 12, yet provided no explanation of what they would do or would be expected to do if they did not attend school.
The rest of that chapter though was essentially a regurgitation of Bernie Sander’s 2020 presidential campaign platform, and I was underwhelmed by it. I held out hope for this book as I looked forward to reading about some interesting or perhaps nuanced approaches or solutions to solving some of these problems, but I was left disappointed.
I’ll start off by saying that I generally disagree with the entire premise of the book: I don’t think people (I realize this is a very general statement but this book was chock-full of broad strokes so I’ll play along) downplay the heritability of intelligence. In fact, I think people overestimate the impact it has on one’s ability to learn new skills, concepts, and ideas. Taking this one step further, I think that many people use the excuse of “I’m just not smart” as an excuse to not try. Failure is a part of the learning process for the vast majority (if not all people), and many are unwilling to undergo or experience something that induces so much discomfort. Perhaps I’m overly optimistic just enough to compensate for DeBoer’s excessive pessimism (which is ironic given his self-proclaimed status of “communist”— I’m not sure if there is a religion more overtly ideological and optimistic about human nature than communism), but I think there is plenty of fascinating evidence that contradicts a lot of what DeBoer argues. Much of the research on mindset and brain plasticity (for example, by Carol Dweck at Stanford) comes to mind.
I think the main gist of the book is that 50-70% of our intelligence is inherited. In other words, 50-70% of our intelligence is more or less completely out of our control and is determined by the random* genetic shuffle of birth (*assortative mating lol). DeBoer then jumps to the conclusion that it’s ridiculous that we fuss about trying to improve education. As I see it, for all intensive purposes, we as a society can’t really control that aspect, but (one) of the levers we can utilize to improve outcomes is education. I don’t really see the issue with wanting to improve access and affordability of education, but the way this author writes makes it seem like they think it’s farcical. This sort of deterministic and pessimistic dialogue does not help any of the students who could improve their lives with more education but then hear this pessimistic crap and justify giving up on education and learning by blaming genetics. Having a Growth Mindset can have profound effects on student’s performance and academic outcomes by tempering the effects of socioeconomic disadvantages, and this book completely glosses over that fact, perhaps due to some sort of political vendetta. I don’t doubt that some students just can’t succeed within our educational framework, and there should be better resources and options for those students, but in general I think the author grossly underestimates how many students can succeed (especially with improved systems, affordability, and learning frameworks).
I think my biggest gripe with this book was his implicit acceptance of this idea that everything about our educational system is as good as it’s going to get. There is no room for improvement. Reforms? No thank you, just revolution please. Take for example when DeBoer at one point acknowledges how poorly we do on the PISA every year, but then essentially tries to argue “why does it matter,” since we put people on the moon, won world wars, and “won many Nobel prizes” (47). From my perspective, arguing that it shouldn’t matter that we do poorly compared to other countries now because this is consistent with our relative performance 60 years ago is a weak argument. That’s not the point of the comparison. To me, it highlights that there is obviously room for improvement in our educational system. After all, this author is the one that is vehemently opposed to “race science” (He stresses literally multiple times every chapter that just because he is pointing out that there are significant “in-group” differences with regards to intelligence that it does not mean he is arguing that there are significant “between group” differences between races). So, unless the Chinese (or like, citizens of any other country) are just better than American students because their skin is generally a different color, they’re doing something effectively that we are not. Why be so opposed to exploring ways to improve our systems from other countries? (This is the type of author that is also very infatuated by the “Nordic” model. The irony continues).
At one point, DeBoer also tries to argue that increasing rates of college completion will not reduce poverty or inequality, and cites the socialist think tank founder Matt Broenig, who “lays out the case” for why: rates of college completion have increased between 1991 and 2014, while the number of Americans in the “less than high school bin” has decreased significantly (by almost 50%), yet “the poverty rate for each educational bin went up over this time and overall poverty didn’t decline at all” (48).
I cringed when I read this. I like how the author described all the statistical methods and research classes they took during their PhD, and yet makes the biggest statistical blunder of all time. Stats 101. Correlation is not causation. There’s a massive confounder (omitted variable bias/violation of strict exogeneity anyone?) that DeBoer is either a) acutely and completely unaware of, or b) so overcome with belief perseverance that they are happy to overlook the painfully obvious fact that the cost of higher education (and student loan debt) has skyrocketed over that time frame as well (not to mention a variety of other types of debt).
This was not the only specific example that irked me. When discussing academic standards and how some students perform better than others, he says “I’ve semiseriously made an argument for this in the past; if you want to close performance gaps, the easiest way to do it is to try to retard the progress of the highest performing” (58). In statistics there is sometimes an emphasis placed on discerning between good metrics and “vanity” metrics. Vanity metrics are essentially measures that may seem or sound important on the surface, but in actuality provide little to no value; they aren’t actually indicative of anything useful or meaningful. Based on this hot take that we could close the performance gap by hindering the forward progress of top performers…. Like no shit? But that defeats the entire purpose of measuring the performance gap in the first place. We aren’t just measuring it to hit parity regardless of the outcome, the intention is to track and identify differences in performance outcomes to help under-performers achieve their true potential. The fact that he was willing to confess that he “semi-seriously” argued for this is a little concerning. This guy works in academia? Overall, my gut tells me to feel bad for this person. Clearly their life experience has made them lose confidence in the ability of many students to make forward progress in their academic and educational lives, and that makes me really sad.
With that said, there was plenty of this book that resonated with me more positively. DeBoer does make some decent points about the public’s frequent inability to grasp selection bias. For example, in the context of comparing immigrant student’s better performance to that of American’s and chalking it up to “immigrant willingness to strive and preserve,” in reality, it’s the wealthy and well-off students in those counties that are able to come and study in America. They selectively sort into the “immigrant” bin.
I was also surprised to learn how little of an impact test prep has on student outcomes. Credit where credit is due, and I felt the author did a good job of substantiating the claim that once you control for ability, where you go to school essentially makes no difference. I’ve heard this before, and I think I’ve personally expressed this to some people, but I hadn’t seen all the studies that had demonstrated that empirical fact until reading this.
In the chapter on realistic solutions, I appreciated the author’s willingness to address weaknesses with some of the solutions proposed, such as universal pre-k and after school programs. I also found it interesting that despite willingly acknowledging the evidence that suggests these programs have a poor track record of improving test scores and academic performance, the author maintains that they still are a proponent of the programs. I like the authenticity of their argument: they aren’t in favor of it to optimize for student performance, but rather because it is a solution worth supporting on “humanitarian” grounds. It’s much more difficult to dispute universal pre-k if that’s your argument. I thought it was strange when he suggested that we allow kids to drop out of school at the age of 12, yet provided no explanation of what they would do or would be expected to do if they did not attend school.
The rest of that chapter though was essentially a regurgitation of Bernie Sander’s 2020 presidential campaign platform, and I was underwhelmed by it. I held out hope for this book as I looked forward to reading about some interesting or perhaps nuanced approaches or solutions to solving some of these problems, but I was left disappointed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 26, 2021
My girlfriend and I are both teachers, masters graduates of a program developed to fill the need for science teachers in high-needs schools. She was away on a retreat with other teachers of this program in a group funded to investigate and promote CRT: Culturally Responsive Teaching. While on this retreat she texted me that a fellow teacher had been reading this book, Cult of Smart, and was feeling strange about it. She found herself agreeing with this guy’s thesis… but was nervous that she was “not supposed to.” Knowing that I’m a vocal Marxist, she asked my girlfriend to consult with me about the book to, essentially, find out if it was “okay.” I was unfamiliar with de Boer but searched a summary of the book and was immediately interested. I devoured this in under a week - fast for me.
It was more than “okay.” I should be required reading but I doubt it ever could be. This book runs directly against the dogma hegemonic in progressive educational programs like ours. Instituting this book and the research referenced as worthy of investigation would no less than flip these Masters of Arts in Teaching programs on their heads.
De Boer’s thesis is that intelligence is fairly rigid and genetically heritable, yet treated by the mainstream as effectively if not virtually entirely plastic. Furthermore, research has repeatedly shown that the main conditions that affect academic success lie outside of school yet the vast majority of policy implemented to affect such success focuses exclusively on school. The reasons are two-fold. First it is purely out of structural necessity since it is easy to implement legislation to affect formal education but it is difficult or impossible to implement any that affects the home lives, parenting, early childhood conditions, and vast majority of environmental factors that affect children. Second, in the age of neoliberalism there are massive campaigns waged by the ruling class and wealthy and their corporations to pillage public education for largely ineffective charter schools because there is money to be made and under capitalism, as the profit motive drives development.
De Boer breaks down the philosophical underpinnings and histories of conservative and liberal thought and shows how in spite of their differences, each end up at “equal opportunity” as the holy grail of education reform (albeit through different interpretations of freedom and what equal opportunity means). He reveals how meritocracy and a cult-like worship of intelligence as the predominant definition of human worth has caused the left to lose sight of what should actually be its goal: a world in which even those of lower intelligence can flourish. In fact, we should reject meritocracy as a goal at all.
I think de Boer unfortunately repeats himself needlessly and could show us more details of the studies that make his argument more robust (hence why I give 4 stars instead of 5 for whatever it’s worth). He provides citations but I prefer to read more data or at least have supporting footnotes. I was not surprised to discover that he’s a popular blogger as the fairly casual style of writing resembles. But I think the book succeeds to such a degree because the theoretical argument he advances is strong enough on its own.
I was particularly moved and felt my mind buzzing with newness as he stressed one anecdote: many claim that Pre-K and after school programs show academic benefits later in life, yet the data for these claims is lacking and some studies actually show statistically significant results that attest to the opposite. But de Boer supports these programs all the same as ENDS in themselves instead of as MEANS towards improved intelligence or academic success. If we subscribe to the notion that academic success and intelligence are more crucial than other things in our students, then socially beneficial programs will always be left open to attacks from the opposition showing that such programs have ‘no positive effects.’ But rather than getting caught in that trap we should support these programs as good for the child as a whole (even if not for intellectual benefit!), as enjoyable, as good for the parents as it can socialize the responsibility of childcare, etc.
While I felt that some of his suggestions for reform would require more explanation (for example, I don’t fully understand why he thinks a dropout age of 12 would be better than 16) I found his more “revolutionary” connections more exciting (and don’t get me wrong, I agreed with most of his reform suggestions). I was particularly happy to see him connect this larger vision to Medicare for All, debates about UBI vs Jobs Guarantee, and finally for socialism as a mode of production to replace capitalism. His fantasizing a socialist future and what education would look like within it was an inspiring capstone.
I would be genuinely curious to hear a response to this book because I can’t imagine how people would disagree with the thesis. But to the teacher who asked me about it I’d say: you naturally feel strange reading it because this book opposes the onslaught of equal opportunity dogma of our program, which should be questioned, and the book’s thesis, on the surface seems at first glance to be antithetical to the vision of a fair world. But there is nothing more fair than acknowledging the varied abilities of all people and demanding that all, regardless of intellectual ability as one of many abilities and gifts or lack thereof (to say nothing of race, gender, sexuality etc) deserve dignified lives free from the fear of not making enough money to live well. If every Culturally Responsive Education working group member (and any left-leaning educators in general for that matter) read this in good faith, I genuinely think we could begin to articulate goals and demystify education’s purpose and perhaps even the grander critiques of capitalism and society. If I were to direct an MAT program I would 100% make this required reading.
It was more than “okay.” I should be required reading but I doubt it ever could be. This book runs directly against the dogma hegemonic in progressive educational programs like ours. Instituting this book and the research referenced as worthy of investigation would no less than flip these Masters of Arts in Teaching programs on their heads.
De Boer’s thesis is that intelligence is fairly rigid and genetically heritable, yet treated by the mainstream as effectively if not virtually entirely plastic. Furthermore, research has repeatedly shown that the main conditions that affect academic success lie outside of school yet the vast majority of policy implemented to affect such success focuses exclusively on school. The reasons are two-fold. First it is purely out of structural necessity since it is easy to implement legislation to affect formal education but it is difficult or impossible to implement any that affects the home lives, parenting, early childhood conditions, and vast majority of environmental factors that affect children. Second, in the age of neoliberalism there are massive campaigns waged by the ruling class and wealthy and their corporations to pillage public education for largely ineffective charter schools because there is money to be made and under capitalism, as the profit motive drives development.
De Boer breaks down the philosophical underpinnings and histories of conservative and liberal thought and shows how in spite of their differences, each end up at “equal opportunity” as the holy grail of education reform (albeit through different interpretations of freedom and what equal opportunity means). He reveals how meritocracy and a cult-like worship of intelligence as the predominant definition of human worth has caused the left to lose sight of what should actually be its goal: a world in which even those of lower intelligence can flourish. In fact, we should reject meritocracy as a goal at all.
I think de Boer unfortunately repeats himself needlessly and could show us more details of the studies that make his argument more robust (hence why I give 4 stars instead of 5 for whatever it’s worth). He provides citations but I prefer to read more data or at least have supporting footnotes. I was not surprised to discover that he’s a popular blogger as the fairly casual style of writing resembles. But I think the book succeeds to such a degree because the theoretical argument he advances is strong enough on its own.
I was particularly moved and felt my mind buzzing with newness as he stressed one anecdote: many claim that Pre-K and after school programs show academic benefits later in life, yet the data for these claims is lacking and some studies actually show statistically significant results that attest to the opposite. But de Boer supports these programs all the same as ENDS in themselves instead of as MEANS towards improved intelligence or academic success. If we subscribe to the notion that academic success and intelligence are more crucial than other things in our students, then socially beneficial programs will always be left open to attacks from the opposition showing that such programs have ‘no positive effects.’ But rather than getting caught in that trap we should support these programs as good for the child as a whole (even if not for intellectual benefit!), as enjoyable, as good for the parents as it can socialize the responsibility of childcare, etc.
While I felt that some of his suggestions for reform would require more explanation (for example, I don’t fully understand why he thinks a dropout age of 12 would be better than 16) I found his more “revolutionary” connections more exciting (and don’t get me wrong, I agreed with most of his reform suggestions). I was particularly happy to see him connect this larger vision to Medicare for All, debates about UBI vs Jobs Guarantee, and finally for socialism as a mode of production to replace capitalism. His fantasizing a socialist future and what education would look like within it was an inspiring capstone.
I would be genuinely curious to hear a response to this book because I can’t imagine how people would disagree with the thesis. But to the teacher who asked me about it I’d say: you naturally feel strange reading it because this book opposes the onslaught of equal opportunity dogma of our program, which should be questioned, and the book’s thesis, on the surface seems at first glance to be antithetical to the vision of a fair world. But there is nothing more fair than acknowledging the varied abilities of all people and demanding that all, regardless of intellectual ability as one of many abilities and gifts or lack thereof (to say nothing of race, gender, sexuality etc) deserve dignified lives free from the fear of not making enough money to live well. If every Culturally Responsive Education working group member (and any left-leaning educators in general for that matter) read this in good faith, I genuinely think we could begin to articulate goals and demystify education’s purpose and perhaps even the grander critiques of capitalism and society. If I were to direct an MAT program I would 100% make this required reading.
November 28, 2023
deBoer is really good and I'm not just saying that because he and I agree on so much politically. He has a great way at looking at long standing institutions (in this case, all levels of education or even just the value and importance we place on "intelligence") and presenting ways they could be revolutionized.
This is the second book of his I've read and both were really good, but even just any article or blog post by him will definitely provide at least an idea or two that will have you cock your head and think: "That's a really good point."
This is the second book of his I've read and both were really good, but even just any article or blog post by him will definitely provide at least an idea or two that will have you cock your head and think: "That's a really good point."
July 18, 2020
I was given an Advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. The author is a Marxist.
The first part of the book is an attack of meritocracy. So people who can score in exams because of a single kind of intelligence go to college, have good jobs, marry each other and have children whom they coach to continue the same lifestyle. So they engage tutors, coaches, and sometimes even bribe school administrators to let their child deem enter Ivy League schools. We tell ourselves that it is fair because everyone takes the same exam. However, the author posits that everything is based on luck: who our parents are, what genes we inhabit are all not fairly determined. But we are told that if only the kids are taught by good teachers in good schools, they will improve. However, meritocracy is a zero-sum game so if everyone improves by the same amount, the order must remain the same. Some kids just do not like and will not do well in schools.
So public schools and Teachers become punching bags and are blamed for everything. But the reality is students’ abilities are all not the same. Intelligence is highly heritable and grades are mostly dependent on students’ inherent ability. Schools and Teachers just don’t matter. Research quoted by the author shows that 50% of academic success is based on genes and a healthy prenatal and childhood, stable family which is not poor. Schools and Teachers: almost 0%. The other 50% is random.
Since genes and family environment is based on luck, only equality of outcome is fair. So communism is the other answer. He also proposes to let students fail and reduce compulsory education to 12 years.
I must disagree with a lot of the premise and the solution. Communism just does not work. As we take away the reward of hard work and accumulation of capital, people stop working.
The first part of the book is an attack of meritocracy. So people who can score in exams because of a single kind of intelligence go to college, have good jobs, marry each other and have children whom they coach to continue the same lifestyle. So they engage tutors, coaches, and sometimes even bribe school administrators to let their child deem enter Ivy League schools. We tell ourselves that it is fair because everyone takes the same exam. However, the author posits that everything is based on luck: who our parents are, what genes we inhabit are all not fairly determined. But we are told that if only the kids are taught by good teachers in good schools, they will improve. However, meritocracy is a zero-sum game so if everyone improves by the same amount, the order must remain the same. Some kids just do not like and will not do well in schools.
So public schools and Teachers become punching bags and are blamed for everything. But the reality is students’ abilities are all not the same. Intelligence is highly heritable and grades are mostly dependent on students’ inherent ability. Schools and Teachers just don’t matter. Research quoted by the author shows that 50% of academic success is based on genes and a healthy prenatal and childhood, stable family which is not poor. Schools and Teachers: almost 0%. The other 50% is random.
Since genes and family environment is based on luck, only equality of outcome is fair. So communism is the other answer. He also proposes to let students fail and reduce compulsory education to 12 years.
I must disagree with a lot of the premise and the solution. Communism just does not work. As we take away the reward of hard work and accumulation of capital, people stop working.
August 9, 2020
Freddie’s book is a grossly inferior rehash of Real Education (2008), by Charles Murray:
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-conten...
Murray argued that America’s education system does not accommodate that cognitive variability of our students. That’s Freddie’s main point as well, but Freddie does not mention that Murray pointed this out long ago.
Freddie’s diagnosis of the problem is pretty much the same as Murray’s diagnosis. Murray has sensible ideas for what to do about it. One of those ideas is to get rid of the “B.A.” template, which Murray says is a terrible fit for many people. You can hear him explain here:
The B.A. is the work of the Devil!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkIY...
Freddie has lots of stupid ideas for what to do about it, like just making college easier for people who shouldn’t be there.
Freddie argues at length against the existence of genetic group differences, especially racial differences. That’s just stupid. Like Jim Watson said:
“A priori, there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our desire to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”
And here’s an article about a recent paper on this:
No Skin in the Game
Do genes account for 50—70% of racial differences in intelligence?
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/no-skin...
“ This is a very important study. I have had to summarize, and the detail about dealing with precise methods and possible confounding is in the text of the paper. Does this paper wrap up the issue of genetic factors in racial differences in intelligence? It is hard to see what else the authors could have done to carefully test the genetic hypothesis. It appears to be a solid result. Testing it in other samples should happen quickly, so that if it does not replicate, we can discard it. Meanwhile, it stands as a clear indicator that at least half of the black-white difference is probably of genetic origin.”
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-conten...
Murray argued that America’s education system does not accommodate that cognitive variability of our students. That’s Freddie’s main point as well, but Freddie does not mention that Murray pointed this out long ago.
Freddie’s diagnosis of the problem is pretty much the same as Murray’s diagnosis. Murray has sensible ideas for what to do about it. One of those ideas is to get rid of the “B.A.” template, which Murray says is a terrible fit for many people. You can hear him explain here:
The B.A. is the work of the Devil!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkIY...
Freddie has lots of stupid ideas for what to do about it, like just making college easier for people who shouldn’t be there.
Freddie argues at length against the existence of genetic group differences, especially racial differences. That’s just stupid. Like Jim Watson said:
“A priori, there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our desire to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”
And here’s an article about a recent paper on this:
No Skin in the Game
Do genes account for 50—70% of racial differences in intelligence?
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/no-skin...
“ This is a very important study. I have had to summarize, and the detail about dealing with precise methods and possible confounding is in the text of the paper. Does this paper wrap up the issue of genetic factors in racial differences in intelligence? It is hard to see what else the authors could have done to carefully test the genetic hypothesis. It appears to be a solid result. Testing it in other samples should happen quickly, so that if it does not replicate, we can discard it. Meanwhile, it stands as a clear indicator that at least half of the black-white difference is probably of genetic origin.”
November 14, 2020
This is a leftist/Marxist who in spite of that presents an unrelated true argument -- intelligence isn't evenly distributed, is key to success in current society, and that educational intervention doesn't do much to affect that. This is basically the same argument as Charles Murray but focusing on different aspects, and then trying to bring in his Marxism to destroy society as usual in response.
The irony that he's a university administrator making the zero-sum education argument/lack of utility, of course (most education being a filtering/sorting game, not adding value...)...
He makes the argument of "intelligence is individual, and doesn't vary across groups" for political reasons, predictably.
I'd probably skip this and just read the better form of the same argument in Real Education by Charles Murray, or his other books. However, if someone is a leftist and more responsive to a leftist making an inferior form of the same argument, this might be the book for them.
The irony that he's a university administrator making the zero-sum education argument/lack of utility, of course (most education being a filtering/sorting game, not adding value...)...
He makes the argument of "intelligence is individual, and doesn't vary across groups" for political reasons, predictably.
I'd probably skip this and just read the better form of the same argument in Real Education by Charles Murray, or his other books. However, if someone is a leftist and more responsive to a leftist making an inferior form of the same argument, this might be the book for them.
January 11, 2021
deBoer's politics are not my politics, but this is a worthwhile read. The one-sentence summary of the argument: we do not take (individual!) heritable differences seriously enough when devising education policy, with the result that we totally screw over the part of society that is less-gifted for knowledge work.
deBoer's solutions strike me as wrong: he's a socialist/Marxist, essentially, and I am not. But this is an important read and should be a wakeup call for people involved in this area: your natural intelligence does not make you better than other people, and if you're not thinking about what school should be for people less inclined to it--and what we should do for people who are not likely to succeed in a knowledge economy--you're missing a lot of texture.
deBoer's solutions strike me as wrong: he's a socialist/Marxist, essentially, and I am not. But this is an important read and should be a wakeup call for people involved in this area: your natural intelligence does not make you better than other people, and if you're not thinking about what school should be for people less inclined to it--and what we should do for people who are not likely to succeed in a knowledge economy--you're missing a lot of texture.
February 10, 2021
The central premise of the book is that scholastic ability is not evenly distributed among individuals, and because of natural inequality we need to destroy what deBoer calls ‘The Cult of Smart’. His argument is based on the observation that; some degree of scholastic ability is genetically determined and because of genetic variation there will be an uneven distribution of scholastic ability. Now if alarms are going off and you think this is starting to sound a little like Charles Murray, then you’d be right. But deBoer differs in two key details.
Murray argues that there is a racial difference; deBoer argues that there’s no evidence for genetic differences on scholastic ability between races.
Murray wants us to end welfare and assistance to the poor because they are ultimately unhelpable; deBoer says that this unequal distribution of scholastic ability we need a Communist revolution.
deBoer is a radical Marxist and uses the inequality of scholastic ability to argue for why we need the communist revolution.
His argument is that we currently live in a society that puts too much value on scholastic ability and this creates a ‘cult of smart’ (hopefully at this point you’ve picked up on me using ‘scholastic ability’ as a replacement for intelligence or smarts) and that this leads to an unjust inequality that the communist revolution can solve.
One of the better observations deBoer makes is that liberals often tend to be better about understanding that we’re not all born on equal footing, that the luck of one's birth has a huge impact on the access to success. But when it comes to educational attainment, liberals then take a turn, arguing that everyone has the same aptitude for schooling if just given a chance. deBoer says that this isn’t the case. Some people have natural scholastic abilities, no more different than how some people have natural athletic ability. While training and coaching can definitely make me a more skilled runner, no one would argue that if I just work hard enough I can become a gold medal sprinter. deBoer makes the same argument for educational attainment. While a good environment and proper teaching can help, we will run into a biological barrier for some, and continuing to force children to try and make academic achievements helps no one.
A side point that deBoer makes that I think is important to highlight is that because lefties are so averse to talking about genetics and scholastic ability, it leaves the conversation open to people like Murray to dominate the discussion on the subject. I, like most lefty people, had a negative gut reaction on reading the core idea of the book. We know that any relation to genetics and scholastic ability will be used by the far right to justify eugenics and geniside. But this refusal to engage with this subject leaves no counter narrative to the harmful ideas put forth by people like Murray. If the evidence points to a genetic component of scholastic ability then liberals need to accept this and use it to better inform our policies.
Now obviously the science of this is not settled, the effect that genetics plays on scholastic ability is an active area of research. I would recommend reading “Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments” from American Psychologist, if you want a quick summary on the field.
deBoer also appears to fall into the common problem of misunderstanding what heritability means in the context of genetics. From my understanding heritability is a population statistic and cannot be meaningfully used to talk about an individual. This is something I’m not completely familiar with so if anyone knows more about genetics please correct me but heritability is the measure of how much the variation in a trait is from genetics, not how much of a trait is due to genetics, deBoer never goes into a lot of detail but from the context used he appears to think of heritability being the latter. He will say something to the effect of ‘intelligence has a heritability of 0.5’ in a context implying that scholastic ability is 50% determined by genetics when that’s not how genetics and heritability work. This tends to be a common problem that a lot of lay people fall into when talking on the subject of genes and scholastic ability.
The larger point that deBoer wants to argue through all of this is that the root problem stems from the over importance that society places on scholastic ability. If someone is not able to succeed in school that should carry the same importance as someone's inability to write a ballet, or someone's inability to paint. It’s understandable why scholastic ability is emphasized, scholastic ability is often the only skill that guarantees success in our current society. The income gap between those with college degrees and those without is still large, and many (rightfully so) feel like they will not be able to financially support themselves or a family without the financial security that comes from higher education.
The solutions proposed are a bit...radical. deBoer is a hardcore Marxist and his solution is to just overthrow capitalism and all the problems will be solved. He does propose some more realistic solutions that are still a little out there; lowering education standards and making the dropout age 12 to name a few.
Overall I would highly recommend reading. I would call it necessary to read for anyone who leans left. This subject is one that I think lefties are generally not prepared to talk about and we need to be better equipped to discuss these issues. The issue of scholastic ability is almost never present in our discussions on education reform and they need to be if we truly want to create a more equitable world.
Murray argues that there is a racial difference; deBoer argues that there’s no evidence for genetic differences on scholastic ability between races.
Murray wants us to end welfare and assistance to the poor because they are ultimately unhelpable; deBoer says that this unequal distribution of scholastic ability we need a Communist revolution.
deBoer is a radical Marxist and uses the inequality of scholastic ability to argue for why we need the communist revolution.
His argument is that we currently live in a society that puts too much value on scholastic ability and this creates a ‘cult of smart’ (hopefully at this point you’ve picked up on me using ‘scholastic ability’ as a replacement for intelligence or smarts) and that this leads to an unjust inequality that the communist revolution can solve.
One of the better observations deBoer makes is that liberals often tend to be better about understanding that we’re not all born on equal footing, that the luck of one's birth has a huge impact on the access to success. But when it comes to educational attainment, liberals then take a turn, arguing that everyone has the same aptitude for schooling if just given a chance. deBoer says that this isn’t the case. Some people have natural scholastic abilities, no more different than how some people have natural athletic ability. While training and coaching can definitely make me a more skilled runner, no one would argue that if I just work hard enough I can become a gold medal sprinter. deBoer makes the same argument for educational attainment. While a good environment and proper teaching can help, we will run into a biological barrier for some, and continuing to force children to try and make academic achievements helps no one.
A side point that deBoer makes that I think is important to highlight is that because lefties are so averse to talking about genetics and scholastic ability, it leaves the conversation open to people like Murray to dominate the discussion on the subject. I, like most lefty people, had a negative gut reaction on reading the core idea of the book. We know that any relation to genetics and scholastic ability will be used by the far right to justify eugenics and geniside. But this refusal to engage with this subject leaves no counter narrative to the harmful ideas put forth by people like Murray. If the evidence points to a genetic component of scholastic ability then liberals need to accept this and use it to better inform our policies.
Now obviously the science of this is not settled, the effect that genetics plays on scholastic ability is an active area of research. I would recommend reading “Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments” from American Psychologist, if you want a quick summary on the field.
deBoer also appears to fall into the common problem of misunderstanding what heritability means in the context of genetics. From my understanding heritability is a population statistic and cannot be meaningfully used to talk about an individual. This is something I’m not completely familiar with so if anyone knows more about genetics please correct me but heritability is the measure of how much the variation in a trait is from genetics, not how much of a trait is due to genetics, deBoer never goes into a lot of detail but from the context used he appears to think of heritability being the latter. He will say something to the effect of ‘intelligence has a heritability of 0.5’ in a context implying that scholastic ability is 50% determined by genetics when that’s not how genetics and heritability work. This tends to be a common problem that a lot of lay people fall into when talking on the subject of genes and scholastic ability.
The larger point that deBoer wants to argue through all of this is that the root problem stems from the over importance that society places on scholastic ability. If someone is not able to succeed in school that should carry the same importance as someone's inability to write a ballet, or someone's inability to paint. It’s understandable why scholastic ability is emphasized, scholastic ability is often the only skill that guarantees success in our current society. The income gap between those with college degrees and those without is still large, and many (rightfully so) feel like they will not be able to financially support themselves or a family without the financial security that comes from higher education.
The solutions proposed are a bit...radical. deBoer is a hardcore Marxist and his solution is to just overthrow capitalism and all the problems will be solved. He does propose some more realistic solutions that are still a little out there; lowering education standards and making the dropout age 12 to name a few.
Overall I would highly recommend reading. I would call it necessary to read for anyone who leans left. This subject is one that I think lefties are generally not prepared to talk about and we need to be better equipped to discuss these issues. The issue of scholastic ability is almost never present in our discussions on education reform and they need to be if we truly want to create a more equitable world.
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