The “cult of smart” is everywhere. The phrase, which is both the title of Fredrik deBoer’s new book and his term for our collective obsession with intelligence, is an apt descriptor for a societywide phenomenon. Geekdom and the celebration of academic credentials have become inescapable features of media and popular culture. Despite their ideological differences, both the Bush and Obama administrations made sending more children to college a central goal of their education policies. During a recent Lakers-Raptors broadcast, color commentator Doris Burke gravely intoned that “there’s no more powerful agent for change in society than education.”

DeBoer, a lefty blogger with a contrarian streak, wants to change all that. He calls his book a “prayer for the untalented” — the children who have been left behind by our educational arms race not because they are lazy or make bad choices but because they suffer from an innate lack of academic ability. The Cult of Smart forcefully argues that we’re too fixated on “smart kids” at the expense of those unequipped for classroom success. The book is less persuasive the farther it strays from the realm of education policy, but deBoer’s central point is compelling.