A Gripping Book About How People Are Sorted

Roland Paulsen’s new book begins with a child learning to believe that she is stupid. A failed mathematics test, delayed speech or a diagnosis can start a process in which a young person becomes labelled as less capable and begins to see that judgment as fixed.

In “Avbegåvad. En essäberättelse om arv och miljö,” Paulsen examines that process through his own family history. He grew up in Yttermalung during Sweden’s 1990s crisis, when his parents’ goat farm collapsed after interest rates rose. He was repeatedly told not to become like them, to work hard at school and to escape the poverty that had affected the family.

School did not go well for Paulsen. The book asks whether he lacked an inherited level of intelligence or whether pressure and anxiety over the family’s finances made it difficult to concentrate. Paulsen eventually became a researcher, author, cultural writer and prominent left-wing voice in public debate.

The reviewer, Kristian Ekenberg, says the book is ultimately about everyone who accepts the image of themselves as unintelligent and watches their opportunities wither while still young. Paulsen divides the process into stages: self-doubt, discouragement, aversion and identification. The book also examines the school system and the way highly arbitrary intelligence tests have come to be treated as definitive measures of individuals.

Ekenberg describes the result as a “terribly fascinating” and urgent social analysis. The review argues that privileged groups have routes out of these classifications, while weaker groups risk remaining trapped in subordination.