Meritocracy, Exams, and the Knowledge That Matters (with Daisy Christodoulou)

This EconTalk episode traces a surprising historical thread from a failed 19th-century Chinese civil exam and 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. Education expert Daisy Christodoulou argues that skills are stubbornly domain-specific: chess masters, surgeons, and Steven Spielberg could not simply transfer their brilliance elsewhere. Russ Roberts and Christodoulou explore meritocracy, why bureaucracies fail without feedback, and whether great teachers must resist irony. The conversation challenges assumptions behind modern hiring, education, and testing.