“What if the valedictorians in America’s schools were the cool kids?” This is the question Nicholas Kristof posed in his recent column in The New York Times, imagining a culture in the U.S. where academic excellence carries the same social prestige as it does in some East Asian countries.
But in many of the environments I’ve inhabited—elite universities and professional circles in New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.—the valedictorians are already the cool kids. Whether they exhibit genuine academic prowess or have learned to “game the system,” their presumed competence is the ultimate social currency. It grants them not just admiration, but often a kind of anticipatory deference based on the influence they will presumably wield in the future.
Mr. Kristof is not necessarily wrong or alone in feeling envious of the high regard that some prosperous, rapidly developing democracies, particularly in Asia, have for education. Exploring the role cultural values play in shaping national outcomes has preoccupied educators and institutional leaders for decades. And at a time when gifted programs and test-entry schools are falling out of favor in much of the U.S., his point is especially well taken.
But I worry that we have come to conflate intelligence and success with moral authority.
In America’s high-achievement settings, excellence can function as a form of psychological and social insulation: Intelligence is taken as a proxy for virtue; success as evidence of character and wisdom. Over time, this dynamic can make it harder for the most credentialed and celebrated individuals to question their own judgment or remain open to new viewpoints. It can also make it harder for others to question the behavior of those whose accomplishments appear to place them beyond reproach.
The stakes have risen as elite educational institutions have become increasingly efficient at converting academic distinction into access to industries that concentrate economic and cultural power—including technology, finance, consulting, and corporate law. When the most academically accomplished students move, in large numbers, into industries that command extraordinary influence over systems that affect millions, the moral formation they did or did not receive ceases to be a private matter.
Recent corporate scandals illustrate how this concentration of credentialed talent can distort accountability. Theranos, the failed health-technology company, derived credibility from its elite associations, even as doubts circulated internally about its technology. More recently, the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX revealed how technical and quantitative sophistication can coexist with astonishing lapses in judgment.
The point is neither that high achievers are uniquely prone to misconduct, nor that fields like technology and finance are inherently corrosive. These sectors drive innovation, create jobs, and expand opportunity. Rather, my concern is that success, absent formation in judgment, can distort our perceptions and lead us to grant authority where scrutiny is warranted. Academic excellence is indispensable, but it is not, on its own, a safeguard against moral and ethical failure.
American educational and professional institutions are highly effective at identifying talent and accelerating it into status, influence, and financial return. They are less intentional about ensuring that those elevated most quickly are also prepared for the ethical responsibilities that accompany power. This shortfall has become more pronounced in an era of political polarization, when efforts to articulate shared moral commitments are quickly recast as partisan. In a society marked by deep moral pluralism—and, at times, a skepticism that moral truths matter or exist at all—schools retreat to what can be measured, leaving questions of character formation underdeveloped.
In A Nation at Thought: Restoring Wisdom in America’s Schools, David M. Steiner offers a philosophical antidote. He argues that American schools should return their focus not only to academic rigor and excellence, but also to teaching moral reasoning and aesthetic judgement. This tripartite standard, ordered toward human flourishing—what Aristotle called eudaimonia—aims to form not only clever students, but wise ones. It asks students to cultivate judgment: to reason about what is true, to deliberate about what is good, and to discern what is worthy of admiration. Such formation would not compete with excellence. Rather, it would discipline it, ensuring that achievement is exercised in service of a well-lived life rather than merely a successful one.
In practice, this would require more than the occasional advisory period or wallpaper of character-education slogans. It would mean sustained engagement with literature that confronts moral ambiguity and human frailty; history taught not only as a series of dates and figures, but as an inquiry into responsibility and consequence; and explicit instruction in ethical reasoning that invites students to grapple seriously with competing goods.
This is no small task in a society marked by deep moral disagreement. One avenue for counterbalance is increasing institutional diversity by expanding choice for mission-driven schools—whether public charter, secular private, or religious—that can integrate moral formation with academic rigor in ways that align with families’ values. If we are serious about preparing students not only to do well but to live well and to wield influence responsibly, we must create space for schools to pursue intellectual and moral formation with equal seriousness.
So, yes, let’s celebrate academic achievement, expand opportunities for excellence in education, and build a culture where more young people see intellectual work as worth pursuing. But let’s not pretend that making the valedictorians “cool” will solve our problems. In the places where we’ve already done that, we’ve discovered something uncomfortable: Excellence does not guarantee character, but it does enable power. And power, undisciplined, does what power always does. It protects itself.
