The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice

· Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Sean Patrick Hopkins
Audiobook
8 hr 1 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Want a free 14 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

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 Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot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.

A Macmillan Audio production from All Points Books

About the author

FREDRIK DEBOER is a writer and academic. He works at Brooklyn College, and has a PhD from Purdue. His writing has appeared in such places as The New York Times, Harper’s, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Playboy, New Republic, Foreign Policy, n+1, and Jacobin. He is one of the most original and prolific voices in essays today, and his anti-tribal style has earned him admiration from political thinkers from all quadrants.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.

More by Fredrik deBoer

Similar audiobooks

Narrated by Sean Patrick Hopkins