True grit

For a long time I've had the concern that the primacy of the standardized test in American education, while perhaps doing a good job of identifying the most analytically intelligent, might also have the perverse effect of admitting a certain unfavorable personality type into the nation's elite academic institutions. The personality type I have in mind is that of the sort of person who does well at standardized tests: intelligent and thoughtful, yes, but also obedient, seeking validation from authority figures, and conformist.

What is problematic about this for society is that since elite academic institutions feed our public institutions, there gets to become a culture of groupthink that can lead to disastrous institutional failures. If you have a newsroom culture that systematically defers to authority, then the government can get away with waging a baseless war. If you have an office culture in a financial firm in which dissent is punished or ignored, then the firm will go bankrupt investing in a housing bubble.

What is required to run the world is not just intelligence, but grit--the courage and the will to place one's own principles and dignity above money and status and the rebuke of authority figures. But a person who spends a lifetime dutifully completing school assignments and taking exam prep courses is not likely to have the history of failure, rejection, and hardship that builds character.

So I was not too surprised to see that the leaker of the NSA spying programs, Edward Snowden, is not a graduate of an elite university but has had something of an uneven history:

...he never completed his coursework at a community college in Maryland, only later obtaining his GED — an unusually light education for someone who would advance in the intelligence ranks.

Even if you disagree with Snowden's actions on the merits, I think everyone can acknowledge that risking his entire life and giving up everything for something he believed in was an act of courage, an act that requires true grit.