The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World
By Adrian Wooldridge
New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2021. 482 pages.
In this smart book, British journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge makes a
compelling case that the turn to (limited) meritocracy was the key to most of the
significant advances and achievements of our modern world. He explains how meritocracy
came to challenge, and haphazardly replace, entrenched systems of nepotism and
patronage around the globe. For example, the civil service exams in classical China, and
Renaissance humanist education in Europe, played critical roles in boosting its growth
and proliferation. Other chapters explore topics such as the importance of providing
education to women—or “girly swots” to quote one of the writer’s delightful Britishisms
—starting mainly in the 19th century, and the development of supposedly objective IQ
(intelligence quotient) tests in the 20th, both of which allowed for much greater “equality
of opportunity” across socioeconomic strata.
The last section of the book delves into recent crises touching meritocracy. For
instance, Wooldridge reveals the ways that the rich successfully leverage their money,
connections, and other assets to obtain preferential admission to selective colleges as well
as myriad other privileged benefits for their precious offspring. The Aristocracy of Talent
also forthrightly addresses criticisms of both the philosophical rationale behind the idea
of distinction itself and the real-world practices of assortment by skill, such as the
seeming tension or contradiction between democratic egalitarianism and intellectual
aristocracy (a Greek word literally meaning “the rule of the best”). Also discussed are
legitimate concerns over high-stakes testing at a young age to determine one’s options or
life path, and what kinds of rewards and responsibilities a “cognitive elite” should have.
Regardless of pedagogical-political-parental position(s), a reader is likely to find
much that is eye-opening and thought-provoking within these pages; it might provide
some worthwhile distraction until new episodes of Hype House drop on Netflix, at any
rate.