Better and Brighter

Judith Warner

Over the course of the past week or so, while I was interviewing child psychiatrists about the exciting new field of developmental neuroscience, the phrase “the best and the brightest” came up twice.

As in “I hope the brightest and the best kids will be doing this” — instead of going to work on Wall Street.

The first time I heard it, I didn’t say anything. I was laboring too intensely to keep up with phrases like “single nucleotide polymorphism.” But the second time, I was able to pause in note taking long enough to grouse, “I never had the impression that the best and brightest people went to Wall Street.”

“Maybe not in your day,” came the reply. “But in recent years they have.”

(More here.)