AN EXCESS OF EXCELLENCE

The Army announced last week that the beret, which for decades has been the mark of elite units, will now become standard issue. Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army's chief of staff, said that the change, which will take effect on June 14, the Army's birthday, is intended to show that American troops are "soldiers of the world's best army." It should be noted that "soldiers of the best army" are not at all the same as the "best soldiers of the Army." The change in fashion seems to be a pointless devaluation of the beret and those who now wear it.

On a related note, Al Gore recently declared that "most schools are excellent but we've got to make sure that all of them are." But if all or even most schools are excellent, what exactly would it be that they were excelling? Even if by "excellent school" Mr. Gore meant "one doing an adequate job," it's not clear that most schools are excellent, and calling them so devalues those schools that are. (In a spirit of nonpartisanship, I must add that George Bush's pledge to leave no child behind is comparably hyperbolic.)

And American students often do poorly on international tests but seldom score poorly on measures of self-confidence. They sometimes seem to be saying, "We are the most bestest." Parents heaping encomiums on their preschool youngsters for coloring more or less within the lines, and teachers handing out ever-higher grades in high schools and colleges, are related evidence of this mania to declare us all extraordinary in every way.

Average Isn't Good Enough

These are only the most recent manifestations of the infamous Lake Wobegon syndrome, whereby everybody, or almost everybody, is deemed to be above average. Studies repeatedly show, for example, that the vast majority of us think we have a better-than-average sense of humor and possess a better-than-average empathy for others. (Technically, of course, almost everybody can be above average; in fact, almost everybody has two arms, which is slightly more than the average number of arms.)

The Wobegon syndrome extends to the supposedly hard-headed world of business. If one frequents online business sites, one will discover that almost all the stocks they are writing about are "buys" or "strong buys," with occasional "holds." Where are the "sells" and "strong sells"? Maybe only companies that manufacture solar-powered flashlights qualify.

Pick any social dimension along which people can differ and their attitude toward it often demonstrates some trace of Wobegonism. In most communities, for example, if one asks about crime, one will hear something like: "It's awful in general, but we don't really have any problems around here." This might be literally true in a few places, but not, by definition, in most.

Stars Everywhere

The case can be made that reviews of movies, books and restaurants are similarly skewed upward, with only real dogs receiving the dreaded one star, or none. William Grimes, of the New York Times, got in trouble with local chefs last year when he took over the restaurant-reviewing position at the paper: He was seen to be stingy, compared with his generous predecessor, Ruth Reichl, about handing out two- and three-star ratings. He explained, to anyone who would listen, that he was merely trying to restore some standards. Naturally, the restaurateurs around town still preferred a starrier atmosphere in the Times's food columns.

Of course, I intend no offense to the underachievers of this world, most of whom seem to possess the same need for compliments as everyone else. Sharing this natural desire, I don't think that praise for others should always be stinting or that the social niceties of harmless exaggeration should be discouraged. What does make inflationary commendation worrisome is that by diminishing real achievements it can weaken our ability to discern quality and make distinctions. A recent study suggests that most incompetent (in various senses of the word) people do not know that they are incompetent. Dr. David Dunning, a psychology professor at Cornell, found that people who do badly at different tasks are unaware of their incompetence because the skills needed to evaluate how well they're doing are often the same as those needed to do the job in the first place.

Thus people who insist on telling one lame joke after another are not only unable to make us laugh, they're unlikely to recognize that we're not laughing. And when the subjects in the study were asked to evaluate the logic of an argument or the grammar of an article, those who scored the lowest often rated themselves the highest at the very skill they could not judge.

In short, some minimal skill and judgment are needed to recognize that we have little skill or judgment and that we may be, horrors, average or even below average. If most of us see ourselves as extraordinary, excellent, well above average and forever donning our stylish berets to buy strong stocks that only move up, the meaning of superlatives will begin to fade behind clouds of self-esteem, and critical evaluation will gradually become empty congratulation.

I could be wrong, but I think that would be a below-average development.

Mr. Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, writes the "Who's Counting" column for ABCNews.com. He is the author of "Innumeracy" and "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper."

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