Named one of Vulture's Top 10 Best Books of 2020!
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. Proposed
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or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven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 hierarchy 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.
