In his new (first!) book – The Cult of Smart – Freddie deBoer argues that neoliberalism created around itself a myth of meritocratic success. He calls it…well…the cult of smart.
Let’s take a look at what Freddie has to say. The Cult of Smart gives us plenty to chew on.
Fredrik deBoer
So, who’s Fredrik deBoer, anyway? He’s a leftist, known mostly in online spaces. Much like, say, Ben Burgis, he styles himself something of a gadfly to the left. He specializes in challenging conventional wisdom among leftists.
As one might expect, he generates controversy.
I’ve discussed some of Freddie’s work in this blog before. In particular, his views on standardized testing. We both work in the assessment industry, and Freddie argued that standardized testing is progressive. Or at least more so than many other parts of the education system. I agreed with some aspects of this and took issue with others.
The Cult of Smart
DeBoer continues his work on education in The Cult of Smart. And he does so in a direction both leftist and provocative. But his basic idea is plain enough. He thinks the U.S. puts far too much emphasis on intellectual prowess. We expect our kids to make good grades, pass a battery of tests, go to college, earn a degree, and so on. Some kids show skill in different ways, but society shuns them for it. Americans look down on the trades, on care work, social work, and so on. Instead, we emphasize STEM and college diplomas above all. These days, we even require graduate degrees for a modicum of respect and decent treatment.
Furthermore, this isn’t just an issue of social attitudes. It’s also about livelihood. Employers now require college degrees for many jobs, even when people don’t really need them to do the job. Do people really need a college degree for entry-level office work? Employers say “yes.” Freddie questions this and says “no.” And he’s correct to do so.
But then he goes off the rails. Way off, depending on how we read him. He argues not merely that society unfairly privileges ‘intelligence.’ He argues that people differ in intellectual prowess due in significant part to genetics.
Is It Genetic?
So, that’s the point where many leftists jump off the train. Myself included. And it’s where Freddie the Gadfly appears.
What’s he getting at? Here’s his general reasoning. He cites scientific evidence showing that intellectual differences – as measured through, e.g., grades, tests, et al. – persist across many environments. He claims they persist even when we account for gender, race, socioeconomic status, et al. Particularly key to his case is the claim that even when we hold environmental factors constant, differences still persist.
And so, he concludes from all this that the differences are real, i.e., that they’re a basic fact about people they can’t change. And he attributes this in large part to genetics. But rather than argue – as many right-wingers do – that people with greater intellectual prowess are superior, deBoer argues that the ‘cult of smart’ is deeply unfair. Since we get our intellectual prowess from our genes – so the reasoning goes – we shouldn’t use it as our barometer for social, political, cultural, and economic success.
DeBoer’s conclusion is that intellectual prowess is real, genetic, and a reason to build a more egalitarian society.
But Is It Race Science?
There’s a key problem here, which many readers have probably already identified. This looks and sounds a lot like racism, specifically ‘race science.’ At least, it looks like it all the way up to the egalitarian turn at the end. Proponents of race science argue for the inferiority of certain races on the basis of things like IQ, tests, and so on.
We might imagine Ibram X. Kendi being rather unhappy with The Cult of Smart at this point.
In response, deBoer argues that these ‘natural differences’ operate only at the level of the individual, not the group. You get it from your parents, not your race. And so, Freddie argues there are no intellectual differences between black and white races. Only among individual members of races.
Individuals and Groups
For my part, I’m convinced of Freddie’s sincerity. I don’t think he’s peddling explicit racism or race science. But his distinction doesn’t work, and that damages his overall argument.
Why?
He points to evidence like grades, tests, et al. that show racial differences. We’ve known this for a long time – educational researchers (deBoer is one) call it the ‘racial achievement gap.’ But Freddie takes these group-level differences to be environmental rather than genetic.
For one, there are already problems with Freddie’s framing here. The evidence doesn’t say much of anything about intelligence or ability, natural or otherwise. It refers only to achievement, i.e., what one learns rather than what one has the capacity to learn.
But framing aside, Freddie’s commitment to natural differences at the individual level probably commits him to differences at the group level. A race here is nothing above and beyond the sum of its members. If individuals differ by genetics – and we add them to find group differences – then the groups likely differ by genetics as well. The best way to deny group differences is the route I prefer: to deny individual differences. At least, differences large enough to matter for this discussion.
And so, while Freddie (sincerely) denies race science, it seems his work leads to it. That’s no good.
A Fallacy?
I think deBoer would likely respond in a couple of ways. First, he’d say that the group differences are smaller than the individual ones. Indeed, he says that in his book (see pp. 8-9). But that seems to be rather beside the point. Any differences count as an issue here.
Second, and perhaps more interesting, I think he’d say I committed a composition fallacy. The claim is that I’m trying to apply properties of individuals to groups.
To be clear, I’m not saying deBoer’s reasoning logically entails that group differences are real and genetic. It’s not that strong a relationship. Rather, I think Freddie’s reasoning makes it highly probable that such is the case. Freddie would need to have a good story for why test scores, grades, et al., establish individual genetic differences but not group ones.
It’s not enough to just deny that it applies to groups. We need a reason why. The trouble is that any good reason here – subtle environmental differences, social forces of racism, et al. – should also apply to individuals. They should also lead us to conclude that individual intellectual differences might not be genetic, either.
Nathan J. Robinson Didn’t Like The Book
Finally, it’s worth noting Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson reviewed The Cult of Smart. And in something of a tradition for Robinson, he ripped the book a new one. Robinson usually reserves this move for right-wing bad takes. In this one, he goes after a leftist he usually admires.
Robinson’s review started a bit of a feud, with deBoer next quoting praise for his book from none other than…Robinson himself.
What’s going on here?
Much like I do, Robinson focuses his criticism on heritability. Unlike me, he goes into great depth using scientific examples. But the gist of it is that Robinson thinks we haven’t explored environmental factors in sufficient depth. And I think he’s largely right. We haven’t really tried raising people in egalitarian environments – at least not on a large scale – and so we can’t really eliminate the material and social environment as the factor causing these (individual and group) differences.
Lessons from The Cult of Smart
I think we can learn some things from Freddie’s book. First, he’s right to say that we should expand the ways we value people. We shouldn’t just value people based on intellectual prowess or wit. We shouldn’t reward college graduates and punish everyone else. Companies should stop requiring degrees – and, for that matter, even experience – for jobs that don’t need them.
When we build our movements on the left, we need to look to a wide range of contributions people can make. And we need to value people of all types.
Second, many of the other policy solutions he proposes are good (except for the one about 12 year olds being allowed to drop out of school). Tutoring is, in fact, an effective intervention, as he argues. We should fund it. And he’s quite right to point out that test prep usually doesn’t work.
But it’s unfortunate that he wrapped all this up in a point about the ‘reality’ of intellectual differences between people. Aside from certain specific kinds of cases, we don’t have the evidence to draw that conclusion. We certainly don’t need that conclusion to support good policy or to expand the ways we value people. And we don’t need that conclusion as a part of our leftist movement building.
