Review of 'Troubled' by Rob Henderson

Standardized tests don’t care about your family wealth, if you behave poorly, or whether you do your homework. They are the ultimate tool of meritocracy.

Written by Emil O. W. Kirkegaard.

Troubled is Rob Henderson’s autobiography. People usually write autobiographies near the end of their lives, but at 33 Henderson hopefully isn’t close to that. The reason he decided to write the book now is that most of it revolves around his childhood and memories fade with time, so better to write it sooner than later. Unlike many authors who complain about their childhood (citing overbearing parents, endless school or a bad teacher), Henderson’s was genuinely difficult.

The book covers his life from his first memories of his mother being arrested for drug abuse until roughly the present day. The most interesting aspect from a sociological perspective is that Henderson was a foster care child. Foster care is something we hear about occasionally, but almost never from those who experienced it themselves. A moment’s reflection tells us why: foster care children have troubled family backgrounds and most of them don’t end up writing books. It is rare that a bright person makes it through this experience. Henderson’s Korean mother was a drug addict, while his Hispanic father simply wasn’t there. His mother was eventually deported from the USA back to South Korea, leaving him entirely alone.

The book’s 12 chapters take the reader through his life in chronological order and are written from a first-person perspective, with his emotions and thinking described at the time as best as memory allows. The later chapters have more intellectual themes, mirroring his development as a thinker over time.

One thing that stood out to me as a scientist working in behavioral genetics (the study of genetic and familial effects on various traits and outcomes), is the benefit of standardized testing to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. At some point, Henderson realized that he needed more structure – which the never-ending cycles of foster care families and adoptive parents simply could not provide. He therefore thought of the places a young man could go to find some structure, and he settled on the military. So he signed up to take their entry test (ASVAB, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). He didn’t practice for this, or even get a good night’s sleep beforehand. Yet in the meeting with the recruiter, he was told:

“This is a great score, you qualify for every job.” (Chapter 7)

Despite his disadvantages in life, the test could see something others could not: there was intellectual talent within. The reader actually has some foreknowledge of this, with Henderson relating in earlier chapters that he’d had a penchant for reading since childhood, and not just the easy books. Dull children don’t generally like reading, and they certainly don’t read textbooks out of curiosity (Chapter 5).

To me this shows the value of standardized tests, which don’t care about your family wealth, if you behave poorly, or whether you do your homework; they just care about how well you can perform. Standardized tests are the ultimate tool of meritocracy. Fortunately for the US, their military was one of the early adopters, and despite the strong anti-testing sentiment among American elites, tests have never been abolished there (unlike in the education system, from time to time). Of course, standardized testing isn’t perfect and has some degree of trainability, but the alternatives – letters of recommendation, teacher reports, extracurricular activities – are all much worse, as they are much more influenced by non-talent factors and predict future outcomes less well.

Given all this, one might wonder if we should have universal testing – to find all the talent that’s out there, whether it resides in foster care homes or not. One might speculate that talented children in such circumstances would be the least likely to be discovered by alternative channels. Fortunately, we don’t have to speculate because there have been a few natural experiments along these lines. One US study from 2015 exploited a policy change where universal testing was introduced for second grade students. This resulted in “large increases in the fractions of economically disadvantaged students and minorities placed in gifted programs”. And this wasn’t because they changed the standards; they were simply better at finding the talent.

The importance of discovering and nurturing talent bears repetition in a time where group grievances are routinely given precedence to talent. Western countries have for decades been neglecting their talented young people. We can see this clearly when examining public funding for gifted programs. As far as my searches go, there isn’t any such funding for gifted programs in my home country of Denmark. The US has some gifted programs, but these have been systematically dismantled because they reveal the inequalities of talent among racial groups – or rather, that they reveal the paucity of talent among Blacks and Hispanics, as compared to Whites. At the same time, research has documented the importance of the so-called smart fraction – the performance of the top 5th of the population relative to the average – for a country’s level of development. Arthur Jensen put it this way in 1980:

Throughout most of history, genius and creativity have tended to be concentrated in the hands of a few nations and peoples.

When reading Henderson’s book, I was wondering whether he might have gotten on a better path earlier in life if there had been some talent program where he could have met other bright children, instead of hanging around with troublemakers and proto-criminals. It’s not that some academics haven’t drawn attention to this issue. Official or semi-official reports were published in 1972, 1983, 1993, and 2004. As far as I know, these had little impact compared to the egalitarian ethics of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE).

The later chapters concern Henderson’s observations made while attending university. He writes:

A while back, I listened to an interview of a professor who said many academics study the lower classes because for them it is an unfamiliar and interesting group. But this particular professor came from humble roots and studied the upper class, because for her that was an unfamiliar and interesting group. But perhaps another reason academics seldom study the upper class is because they don’t like the scrutiny.

Indeed, with some artistic freedom, one could describe political science as the study of the outgroup. Since most professors are White, left-wing and came from good backgrounds, their outgroups are primarily conservatives, non-Whites, and people from poor backgrounds. Because of this focus, much research in the field takes the professors’ own positions for granted. Meanwhile, conservatives thus have to be explained in psychological terms.

Studies have asked: Why are conservatives happier than liberals? Yet one might as well ask: Why are liberals so sad? This outgroup framing has given us papers with patronizing titles such as “Political conservatism as motivated social cognition” fittingly written by 4 left-wing scholars.

Even worse, for many decades it was denied there was such a thing as left-wing authoritarianism, despite on-going communist terrors in multiple countries. In fact, prominent left-wing journalists and academics often acted as cheerleaders and apologists for communist regimes. Left-wing authoritarianism was compared to the Loch Ness monster, although few people actually studied the topic. After all, why make your own allies look bad? And as Henderson points out, no one likes to have their own behavior explained in psychological terms. Thankfully, this state of affairs has somewhat improved in recent years.

Central to Henderson’s intellectual contributions is the concept of luxury beliefs. Henderson provides an example concerning marriage:

A former classmate at Yale told me “monogamy is kind of outdated” and not good for society. I asked her what her background is and if she planned to marry. She said she came from an affluent family, was raised by both of her parents, and that, yes, she personally intended to have a monogamous marriage—but quickly added that marriage shouldn’t have to be for everyone. She was raised in a stable two-parent family, just like the vast majority of our classmates. And she planned on getting married herself. But she insisted that traditional families are old-fashioned and that society should “evolve” beyond them.

My classmate’s promotion of one ideal (“monogamy is outdated”) while living by another (“I plan to get married”) was echoed by other students in different ways. Some would, for instance, tell me about the admiration they had for the military, or how trade schools were just as respectable as college, or how college was not necessary to be successful. But when I asked them if they would encourage their own children to enlist or become a plumber or an electrician rather than apply to college, they would demur or change the subject.

A luxury belief, then, is when people with social advantages advocate policies and behaviors that might not affect themselves (e.g. free love, drug use, leniency on crime), but which are harmful to communities of people unlike them. We might think of western academics’ preference for soft on crime policies, which were copied by non-western countries to their own detriment. There seems to be some positive change here, with leaders like Nayib Bukele having realized that putting gang members in prison works. This “innovative” approach may be copied in neighboring countries such as Argentina and Honduras, and we will see how well it can be replicated.

It should be said, however, that while the luxury belief idea is attractive conceptually, the empirical tests of it using survey data have been few. The best study was done by Zach Goldberg. He examined Americans’ beliefs concerning depolicing or soft-on-crime policies to see if the luxury belief model could be substantiated. In general, the results were mixed – so more research needs to be done.

At the end of the book, Henderson returns to the topic of parenting:

Mom’s friends were worried that their son isn’t talking as much as other six-year-olds. They, like many parents, were concerned with how “smart” their kid is.

“Should we be reading to him more?” they asked me.

I thought of how lonely I felt trying to teach myself how to read as a foster kid.

“Yeah,” I replied. “But not because it will expand his vocabulary. Read to him because it will remind him that you love him.”

Henderson accepts the basic facts of behavioral genetics, which can be dismaying or liberating for parents – depending on their perspective. The bad news is you can’t really do that much as a parent. Reading to your children is unlikely to have major long-term effects on their social status. The good news is that you can relax and have more children. Henderson thus repeats the advice of libertarian economist Bryan Caplan. You should play with your kids because it’s fun, they will like you for it, and they will have positive childhood memories – not because it may increase their chance of getting into a top 5 university.

Troubled is available for purchase now. If you want to understand the book better but don't have time to read it in full, then do check out Liegent. They provide book summaries in both text and audio format. Use promocode APORIA to get 10% off your sign-up.

Emil O. W. Kirkegaard is a social geneticist. You can follow his work on Twitter/X and Substack.

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