Meritocracy, Exams, And The Knowledge That Matters

What does a failed 19th-century Chinese civil exam and one of the deadliest wars in history have to do with how we hire, educate, and test people today? In this EconTalk conversation, Russ Roberts and education expert Daisy Christodoulou trace a surprising thread from the Taiping Rebellion through Britain's Northcote-Trevelyan reforms, Samuel Pepys's naval exams, and Macaulay's belief that a hard exam on anything—even alchemy or the Cherokee language—reveals the best minds. Christodoulou dismantles that idea with evidence that skills are stubbornly domain-specific: chess masters, surgeons, even Steven Spielberg couldn't simply transfer their brilliance elsewhere. Along the way they wrestle with meritocracy, why bureaucracies fail without feedback, and whether great teachers must resist irony. A rich, wide-ranging discussion that will change how you think about testing and expertise.

Listen to the episode here.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Daisy Christodoulou is the director of education at No More Marking, a provider of online Comparative Judgement software for schools -- an innovative method to assess and judge written essays. Before joining No More Marking, Christodoulou was head of assessment at Ark Schools, a group of academy schools in the UK, and before that, a secondary English teacher in London.

She has written four books: Seven Myths about Education, Making Good Progress, Teachers vs Tech, and I Can’t Stop Thinking about VAR.

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