Critiquing "the cult of smart" with Freddie DeBoer

Visit Freddie DeBoer’s Substack page and you’ll be greeted with a variety of political essays, novel chapters, digest posts — demonstrating the author’s broad range of projects, creative, political, and all of the above. He’s joining Krystal Kyle & Friends this week, where we’ll discuss the popularity of leftists’ political programs (and what we can do about it), the falsehood of supposed “meritocracy” in the American education system (and what we can do about that, too), and Freddie’s own journey as a writer and political thinker.

The Cult of Smart, which Freddie published in 2020, starts with the basic premise underlying the American education system — that education can level the playing field, creating the conditions for every child and young adult to succeed — and reveals how and why this premise is both false and pernicious, supporting class inequalities and insisting upon the value of intelligence and competitiveness above all other qualities. Freddie has his mind not only on the inherent injustice of this system, but also on the inequitable society that it produces. We’re looking forward to hearing from him about what a just education system would look like — and the fairer world that it would create.

This conversation will be released as a video to subscribers on Friday night. Everyone can listen to it as a podcast when it is released through Substack, Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts, and more this Saturday. Thanks for tuning in!