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It didn't dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I'd just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn't have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn't succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. "Ivy retardation," a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
It's not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society's most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday December 29 2016, @04:35AM
I know what the submitter is talking about. I've experienced those kind of snotty, elitist schools. They aren't about education, no matter how much they claim otherwise. They're about privilege. Making sure Ritchie Rich only meets people worth meeting, only makes connections with other privileged kids. They're about brainwashing the kids into believing they really are superior to their fellows in the public schools, feeding the parents' expectations. The community of such a school indoctrinates the kids with an Ayn Rand mindset. It's very clubby. The "education" they provide can be decidedly mediocre. Their educational philosophies can be awfully dated, stuff straight out of Victorian England.
Whatever reputation they build up is built on them being so picky about who they let in, not the excellence of their teaching. They cherry pick the students. Make the minimum required SAT score 50 or 100 points higher than average, and of course the school is going to look good.
A pretty good depiction of an elitist private school at the high school level is a Robin Williams movie, Dead Poets Society.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:19AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:08AM
Idiot discovers head stuck up arse* , finds it hard to talk.
Nothing to do with education, everything to so with being able to live in a bubble.
(*An ass is a donkey)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:43PM
Idiot discovers head stuck up arse* , finds it hard to talk.
That's THE best summary of this story. I don't know what the hell this writer is talking about other than his own pretentious self-absorbed elitism, which he apparently was unaware of.
Don't get me wrong -- as someone who went to some elite schools but whose entire family is blue collar, I know firsthand that there are plenty of elitist jerks at top colleges. But it's NOT the top colleges that make them elitist jerks. The author is the one who chose to value himself ONLY in terms of his scores on standardized tests, the author is the one who never sought out conversation with the "common folk" that are all around him, the author is the one making assumptions about the "worth" of people in society based only on elitist BS. Yes, there are plenty of upper-class folks who are basically raised to believe these things, too.
But it's perfectly possible to go to an elite school and ALSO learn to socialize without being a pretentious idiot. This guy apparently never realized that smart people could lurk among "uneducated" folks -- what kind of moron is he?? Has he never in his life had a conversation with a blue collar person who seemed intelligent? Or did he simply dismiss them out of hand because he was simply a jerk? Either way, it's not the fault of an educational institution that he didn't realize how far his head was stuck up his ass/arse until now.
One of the most interesting people I encountered as a child was my neighbor, who was a forklift mechanic, but who spent his spare time devoted to reading and learning. Fascinating guy. No college education. (I think he eventually completed a GED in his late 20s or something, since he dropped out of high school and went to serve in Vietnam.) One of the smartest people I knew was a friend's dad who had a bachelor's degree (from an okay but certainly not top school) but never went to grad school or anything. Maybe I was just lucky to encounter these people as a kid, but I learned very early that there are intelligent, interesting people anywhere, and thus I never make assumptions about a person's intellect or whatever based on what they do or how they look or whatever. One of the coolest people I met in the past few years was a guy I hired to do my roof. He had a fascinating outlook on life.
The author of TFA, on the other hand, was just so self-absorbed that he never realized the irrationality of his own elitism. And now he's trying to blame it on where he went to college!? Sounds to me like it was more likely something started at home while he grew up and perhaps reinforced by the type of folks he CHOSE to hang out with in college. I know the type.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:05PM
Actually, the author IS right about one thing -- which is that many Ivy League kids today are basically taught (through experience) that they will never fail. And that is a problem. My prescription would be to introduce the MIT freshman grading system [mitadmissions.org] to more elite schools. Basically, first semester is "pass/no record." If you get an A/B/C, you pass. If you get a D or F, there's no record on your external transcript that you even took the course.
This sounds weird when you first hear it, but it's essential when you bring together a group of really smart kids who mostly were straight A students and likely have never been challenged to maintain that A average their entire lives. If you just shove them into the first semester at Yale or Harvard or wherever, they'll think they deserve an A. If they get an A-minus, they'll go crying to the professor's office. (Seriously. I know for a fact this happens.) What ultimately happens is that professors (who are largely rewarded for their research, not their teaching) don't want to deal with student complaints, so they just give out huge numbers of As.
MIT long ago realized that they needed to remove some of that pressure as students adjust to new demands. Which means during the freshman year that professors can set a REAL standard that's significantly higher than what high school demanded of most of those kids. And if any student comes crying to a prof, they can just say, "Look -- it's no big deal. Just do better next time. Even if you get a C in the class, it'll just go on your permanent record as a 'pass.' Now you know what the standard is... figure out how to work, and maybe next term you can get better grades." And some kids won't, because they just aren't that good -- but now they've had a while to adjust to the fact that they may just be a C student at MIT, even if they were a valedictorian at their high school.
Frankly, I think this one change could revolutionize the Ivy League standards. Kids might actually be challenged when they go to such schools again. They might learn some of the lessons about how their intellect isn't infallible (as the author apparently didn't realize until later in life).
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday December 30 2016, @04:37PM
Some families have this attitude that education is only a tool. Superior education is another way of putting yourself above others. They are not interested in education for the sake of education, for the pleasure of knowledge and discovery, or for satisfying curiosity, or even keeping the nation strong. They are willing only to learn that which they can see how to apply to their ultimate goals of amassing more wealth, power, social standing, and influence. The goal is to be a winner. They do not want to take a chance on learning stuff that might not be useful. They'll grudgingly learn things they don't see as useful if they must, can sometimes be convinced to take teachers' word that something will prove to be useful. As in, what's the use of higher math, why do they need to learn algebra, trig, and calculus?
With that kind of attitude, they can't see why they shouldn't cheat. Isn't the appearance of an education just as good? Learn just enough to fake the rest? They also can't see why they shouldn't be given an A. If education is mostly bull anyway, what's the point of not giving out an A? They get suspicious that it's something personal. That teacher has it in for them. That's how they can feel so aggrieved about not getting an A. Why don't you like me, professor? Did my parents not donate enough money to the school this year? To them, that maybe they didn't earn an A because they didn't learn the material is just the standard excuse that the teacher and school uses, it can't be the real reason.
They don't say it, but they don't like the idea of educating everyone. It's hard enough to compete as is. One way to be a winner is to hinder others so that they lose. If all these poor kids have bad or no educations, then the elites don't have to work as hard to have a better education than the masses. That such unfairness weakens our democracy and trust in one another is too abstract a notion for them to appreciate. They don't see or care about that. It's all about winners and losers.
Another problem is indeed "head up their arses". These families think they know better than the schools how to educate students, can't see how narrow they are, and that a broad education has value. They may have the power to bully the schools into doing things their way.
If an elite school has a lot of children from families like that, they get a lot of pressure to water down their standards, make exceptions for this special snowflake and that special snowflake. They are also constantly pressured to teach "useful" material. If the school stands its ground, the parents may make good on threats to leave and pull their funding. The teachers who stand their ground risk being fired, risk that the school won't have their backs and will sell them out. Dead Poets Society. It's easier to do the expedient thing, and sometimes the school and/or teachers do. Worse, the elite school may share those narrow attitudes, may be run by people who think the same as these families. It does the quality of their education great harm when people like that are in charge. It can take a few years before the decline gets so bad that it becomes painfully obvious and the school has to make changes.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Thursday December 29 2016, @10:05AM
They're about brainwashing the kids into believing they really are superior to their fellows in the public schools
Of course, here in the UK, "public schools" means the elete of the private schools.
However, an substantially bigger problem is that the entire leftist movement is engaged in convincing its supporters that they
are inferior to pretty much everyone, so that they must be rescued by their fellow leftists - through a process of attacking
those who, by definition are more powerful and control the world. The track record of lambs attacking wolves and leopards
is not very good. However, "reality is an eletist conspiracy", so this does not apply to you! (I am not implying Trump will save
anyone - except himself).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:39AM
You do know rand was the exact opposite of what you just tried to pin on her, yes? She pushed merit over everything, especially pull and privilege.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @06:03PM
They aren't about education, no matter how much they claim otherwise. They're about privilege.
Citation needed.
Which school are you talking about, and what anecdote are you referring to?
My anecdote is that I've worked with people from different schools (Ivy league through and no-name community colleges). There are definite exceptions, but in general people from more prestigious schools tend to know more about the field they are in and tend to do better. This could be self-selection bias (only more ambitious or capable people are able to enter those schools), but as a general rule I have found that to be true.
If I were hiring to fill a software development, I'd be much more confident that somebody from M.I.T. would succeed than from Springfield Community College, and I suspect you would be as well.
(Score: 1) by Sumtingwong on Friday December 30 2016, @04:27AM
Whoa, an Ayn Rand mindset? Really? I have spent the last decade or so doing dinner parties and VTCs with these peeps and they are quite far from Ayn Rand. In fact, Ayn Rand is on the widely circulated but never written list of names that will not be uttered and is met with unbridled derision if spoken.
Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.