In her powerful, accessible and slim The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America, civil rights attorney and Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier (The Miner's Canary) argues that United States society is not so much a "meritocracy" as a "testocracy" that defines merit in terms of grades and test scores. This redefinition has created an elite that feels entitled to power and immune from criticism. Institutions of higher education claim they exist to educate future leaders and creative critical thinkers, but in practice they mostly collect a type of student that Guinier calls "Adonis with a pimple"--high-scoring privileged students who need very little from a college education and tend to pursue personal wealth and status after graduation.
Guinier explains how we got to this point and proposes a new definition of merit founded on democratic values and service to the common good. She advocates uniformly high academic standards for all, supported by focused mentoring and educational approaches that promote collaboration, creative thinking and perseverance, giving students the tools to solve complex problems in their workplaces, communities and governments. Guinier has spent years refining her ideas on this subject, and she supports her notions with extensive research, case studies and interviews. She builds a strong case for the genuine practical value of diversity, and for increased opportunity across the spectrum of wealth and class. This is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about education, opportunity and democracy in the U.S. --Sara Catterall