Thoughts on the Tyranny of Merit: Rethinking Gifted Education

3/4/2026

Anne Glass, Head of School

At some point, our students receive a cultural message that is as intoxicating as it is dangerous: You are here because you earned it. The grades, the accolades, the college admissions, the test scores—these appear to certify not only achievement but worth. In a meritocratic society, success is taken as proof of virtue.

I had the privilege to join a webinar hosted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education last week. Michael Sandel, an American political philosopher and professor of Government at Harvard University, was the keynote speaker. In his book, The Tyranny of Merit, Sandel asks us to pause to consider a disarming question: What is merit? His answer unsettles the moral logic of modern schooling. Talent is not self-created. The family we are born into, the teachers who notice us, the stability of our communities, and the very structure of our minds are matters of luck and environment. Even the capacity to work hard is, in part, a gift.

For a school devoted to gifted learners, this insight is not a threat to excellence. It is a call to redefine it.

The Roeper School’s mission—respect for the child as a human being, education of the whole person, and the cultivation of ethical citizens committed to the common good—rests on a view of giftedness fundamentally at odds with the moral story meritocracy tells. Giftedness cannot in itself be evidence of superiority. It is an advantage that carries responsibility.

Sandel’s critique is not an argument against striving. It is an argument against the belief that success makes the successful more deserving as human beings. When achievement becomes a measure of moral worth, two pathologies follow: hubris among the winners and humiliation among those left behind. “I earned it. We each deserve what we get.” This attitude erodes solidarity and weakens democracy because it encourages the fortunate to forget what they owe to others.

The term meritocracy itself was coined as a warning. In The Rise of the Meritocracy, the British sociologist Michael Young imagined a future ruled by a credentialed elite convinced of its own virtue while a resentful majority felt dismissed and disdained. That future now feels familiar. For decades, young people were told that the path to dignity ran through a four-year college degree. “Go to college” became a national mantra. It carried an implicit insult: if you struggle, it must be your fault.

This belief ignores structural inequality and the role of chance. It also produces anxiety among the “winners.” The competition for selective colleges has turned childhood and adolescence into what Sandel calls an era of “strenuous striving,” where parenting becomes a strategic project and learning is subordinated to résumé building.

Even those who succeed often feel their place is precarious, as if a single misstep will reveal them as undeserving.

Roeper’s progressive philosophy offers a quiet but radical alternative. By centering intrinsic motivation, creativity, and authenticity, our school resists reducing education to a sorting mechanism. Yet our students live in a culture that prizes selectivity and credentials. They feel the pressure of the tournament.

Sandel argues that universities have increasingly become institutions that confer prestige rather than cultivate wisdom. When education is primarily about sorting, it reinforces hierarchy instead of preparing students for democratic life. A healthy democracy depends on shared civic spaces—libraries, parks, community centers, public institutions—where people from different backgrounds encounter one another as equals.

In Sandel's words, “The kind of moral and civic renewal we need depends on being more inventive in creating public spaces for moral and spiritual discourse.”

Encounters in such spaces teach negotiation, empathy, and mutual recognition in ways no transcript can measure.

This raises a pressing question for Roeper: How do we cultivate excellence without reinforcing hierarchy?

Annemarie Roeper’s vision of education as “self-actualization and interdependence” provides an answer. Giftedness is not a status but a form of stewardship. Students must be challenged intellectually, but they must also learn humility—the recognition that their abilities are contingent and that their flourishing is bound up with the flourishing of others. “There but for the mystery of fate, go I” becomes not a slogan but a civic virtue, along with what we do with our gifts.

Sandel extends this argument to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. Like globalization before it, AI is often presented as an unstoppable force to which individuals must adapt. But a democratic society requires public deliberation about the ends technology should serve. Who benefits? What forms of work will be dignified? What do we owe one another? Classrooms that invite students into these questions transform education from a private race for advantage into preparation for shared responsibility.

In this sense, Roeper’s commitment to student voice and ethical inquiry is profoundly countercultural and crucial. It insists that belonging must not be based on rank, that achievement must be grounded in mutual respect, and that learning is a public good rather than a private credential.

The path forward begins with humility. None of us is fully self-determining. Our accomplishments are woven from effort, opportunity, and luck—and from the care, labor, and sacrifice of others.

For a school dedicated to gifted education, this recognition sharpens rather than diminishes our mission. If our students are indeed fortunate, then their task is not simply to excel but to serve. In resisting the tyranny of merit, we do not abandon the American Dream; we deepen it, shifting its emphasis from individual ascent to democratic flourishing.

Giftedness, properly understood, is not a claim to higher value.

It is a call to the common good.

Back

Thoughts on the Tyranny of Merit: Rethinking Gifted Education

Bloomfield Campus

Birmingham Campus