Bri Lee is an award-winning author and freelance writer. Her first book, Eggshell Skull, won six major awards including the ABIA for Biography of the Year, and was listed for several others, including The Stella Prize. Her essay-length book, Beauty, was published in late 2019 and her third book, Who Gets to be Smart comes out June 2021. Lee’s journalism, opinion writing, and short fiction has appeared in The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, Guardian Australia, and elsewhere. She is also a legal academic and advocate who was named a Fin Review ‘Woman of Influence’.
Today, Bri Lee is on the blog to answer a few of our questions about her new book, Who Gets to be Smart. Read on …
Bri Lee (Photo by Saskia Wilson)
Please tell us about your book, Who Gets to be Smart.
BL: It’s a book about privilege and power, and how those things affect the way we think about knowledge, intelligence, language, and brains. I don’t really care about genre distinctions, but if I had to be really specific, I’d describe it as a collection of chronological, cumulative essays. My only real goal with it is to get people thinking more critically about subjects which they might have perhaps previously not interrogated. A conversation-starter, I suppose.
Where did your interest in this topic come from?
BL: About five or so years ago my friend Damian was named a Rhodes Scholar, and I was so thrilled for him but I also felt as though I’d been punched in the gut. I remember absolutely clearly that at that time I felt this news meant he was a winner and I was a loser; everything I’d been taught at school and university about worth, achievement, and success, ranked him higher than me. What I discovered when I started researching the history of Oxford, and of Cecil Rhodes and his scholarships, and then also of Australia’s own institutions and histories, was that the whole game was – and is – rigged.
They say that ‘knowledge is power’. Do you still agree with this statement after writing Who Gets to be Smart?
BL: Sort of, but not quite. What I believe now is sort of a different perspective on this: that the people who currently hold the power and privilege in Australia have an extraordinary amount of control over what we are willing to see as “knowledge” and who gets the opportunity to “excel” or be “successful” in an intellectual sense. Our insidious class system perpetuates these ideas of winners and losers. Now, more than ever, I see the idea of “meritocracy” in Australia being a myth.
What do you think are the dangers of conflating intelligence with good character?
BL: It’s extraordinary how many of us do this without realising, in big and small ways. One of our society’s damaging habits is how we speak to children and teach children about “intelligence” and how we push them to succeed in specific ways. Labelling interpersonal skills and kindness, for example, as “ways to be smart” makes me so sad for what we’re communicating to young people.
Has writing this book changed your perception of your own educational experiences?
BL: Absolutely. As the product of an expensive education, I now see more clearly how predestined my life was. Statistically speaking I was always going to be this financially comfortable, go on to receive these undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications, and have a white-collar job. I wouldn’t go so far as to entirely dismiss free will, but what I do see now is that the narrative Australia tells itself about “self-made” people, about upward mobility, and about this being the place where anyone born anywhere can achieve anything, is mostly a farce. I am more grateful than ever before for my education, but I’d much rather live in a country with a more fair way of treating children from different areas and classes. We do not have equality of opportunity.
‘The people who currently hold the power and privilege in Australia have an extraordinary amount of control over what we are willing to see as “knowledge” and who gets the opportunity to “excel” or be “successful” in an intellectual sense.’
What kind of changes do you think are necessary (and achievable!) for the education sector to become more egalitarian?
BL: We already know the first step in the answer to this problem: stop giving rich schools quite so much money, and consider giving poor schools a bit more money. Allocate education funding based on the needs of the children rather than the financial interests of the parents. (Unfortunately for kids, they can’t vote.) The reason reform like this isn’t achievable is the same reason the situation has gotten so bad in the last two decades: the Independent and Catholic Schools bodies are extremely powerful lobbying organisations and overwhelmingly the rich and powerful in Australia like feeling as though their kids are getting a leg up at these fantastically funded institutions. It’s a tale as old as time: the people who could make change don’t want things to change. They love the status quo. Also we need to make early childhood education free and available and considered a right for young children the same way we consider free primary and secondary school being a right for children. In my opinion, much of the debate around these issues becomes clearer when the interests of children, rather than parents, comes first.
Who did you write this book for? Who do you wish would read it?
BL: I write all my books and long essays the same way: I picture who I was when I started the project, and write the book I think that earlier version of me would most want to read. By the end of a book I find my opinions and perspectives have usually radically altered, and sometimes it’s a challenge to allow the naivety or incorrectness of “Bri” appear the way it organically is in the earlier chapters. I want the reader to come on exactly the same journey as I went on. In this way, I am acknowledging the subjectivity of my own work. Who do I wish would read it? Everyone, of course! Ha. But seriously, I wish people who went to private schools would read it and really sit with how much of their life trajectory they take personal credit for. I wish every Australian would read it and think about why it makes people in this country feel good to press the national boot heel into refugees and asylum seekers. I wish people who celebrate Australia Day would read this book and understand how colonisation is ongoing; present-tense, and not something to be proud of.
What is the last book you read and loved?
BL: I have to choose one!? Amani Haydar’s book, The Mother Wound, was so full of pain but also so full of love. That book is a work of art and also important documentation.
What do you hope readers will discover in Who Gets to be Smart?
BL: Themselves, somehow, I suppose. I hope they will discover some uncomfortable truths about the values and priorities of Australian institutions and governments. I hope they will discover that each of us plays a part in making things worse or making things better – there is no sitting on the fence.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
BL: Fiction! I’ve been working on a novel for several years now. I’m not sure when it’ll be ready. Also I’ve started a PhD so am looking forward to doing more advocacy around improving this country’s absurdly plaintiff-friendly defamation laws. Busy busy busy. 😊
Thanks Bri!
—Who Gets to be Smart by Bri Lee (Allen & Unwin) is out on 1 June. Limited signed copies are available, but only while stocks last!
Listen to our podcast with Bri below:
Who Gets to be Smart
Limited Signed Copies Available!
In 2018 Bri Lee's brilliant young friend Damian is named a Rhodes Scholar, an apex of academic achievement. When she goes to visit him and takes a tour of Oxford and Rhodes House, she begins questioning her belief in a system she has previously revered, as she learns the truth behind what Virginia Woolf described almost a century earlier as the 'stream of gold and silver' that flows through elite institutions and dictates decisions about who deserves to be educated there. The question that forms in her mind drives the...
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