I respect Malcolm Gladwell as a thinker, but I’m disappointed by his Grand Unified Theory for fixing higher education that he espouses in an episode of the Revisionist History podcast titled The Tortoise and the Hare.

I won’t spoil the surprise for those who haven’t yet heard it, but suffice to say it’s born out of his experience in taking the hallowed Law School Admission Test (LSAT).

Malcolm argues the exam favours hares, not tortoises, even though tortoises make better lawyers. His animalian analogy reminds me of the cartoon Our Education System.

While the cartoon makes a valid point about the diversity of intelligence, we must bear in mind that an assessment of your ability to climb a tree is a perfectly reasonable way to measure your mastery of tree climbing.

While Malcolm goes on to propose a solution to redress the bias he sees in the LSAT, he ends up abandoning it in favour of a catchphrase that treats the symptom rather than the cause.

I wish he remained focused on the cure: authentic assessment.

If we need tree climbers, let’s test their ability to climb trees.