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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 Runaway1956 on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:53AM
Went to the bar one night, with two buddies. One, a Mexican who grew up on the streets of Chicago. The other, a college professor. Yeah - some of you are asking how in hell I got THOSE two together in the same bar, far away from the United States. PACE program - we carry a real, live professor aboard ship to teach classes.
So, anyway, these two guys get a few beers in them, and they are talking philosophy, believe it or not. Except, they aren't really communicating. Among the comments that pass back and forth:
Prof: "Of course you could reach across the table and deck me, but you won't."
Carlos: "But, why won't I? What can they do to me? Back home, I would already have decked you just for telling me that I won't."
The conversation circles around and around and around this statement. And, of course, my street tough buddy continues to drink, as does the prof. Finally, the prof flies off of his chair, and lands on his ass. Yep. He's been decked. The big dummy actually thought that he would see it coming. But, he lives in Academia, where shit like this just doesn't happen, and he didn't have a clue when things simply went to far.
Me? I'm just laughing my ass off. I'm closer to Academia than I am to the back streets of Chicago, but I understood Carlos perfectly. I also understood the Prof. But trying to make THEM understand EACH OTHER was just hopeless. The two of them had almost nothing in common - the prof thought it would be a big deal to actually get physical, and getting physical meant nothing to Carlos.
There have been a number of other times when the educated people come off looking pretty stupid, when they meet real life working people. They just don't "get it" when it comes to real life.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @04:21AM
"Real life". You funny runaway! Academia is real life, and so are blue collar jobs. Just different realities. Dunno why I'm bothering to point this out since we all know you're a self-assured know it all... Still, its a good point you made that no one is a master of everything (cept you of course).
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:43AM
"Real life". You funny runaway! Academia is real life, and so are blue collar jobs. Just different realities.
No, the funny part is that Runaway1848 would actually have any friends! Almost as funny as the fake claim he is a veteran! ROTFLMAO!~
(Score: 3, Funny) by timbim on Thursday December 29 2016, @04:40AM
You should have stopped Carlos and the Prof from instigating each other before it happend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:13AM
Sometimes you just need to let dudes fight it out.
Hell he could have been sitting there and Carlos laid the dude out before he knew what was going on. People do not want to talk with each other. They want to talk at each other most of the time.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:46AM
What, and miss the funny? You need to give reason when you say something absurd like that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 29 2016, @09:19AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday December 29 2016, @11:48AM
Philosophy has always been arguing. If it's not how you do it, you're doing it wrong.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday December 29 2016, @12:12PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29 2016, @02:10PM
No they weren't.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 29 2016, @05:13PM
Conversations can be enlightening. Arguments can be both entertaining and educational. Both of these men were senior to me by several years, it wasn't my place to discipline them!
(Score: 2) by cellocgw on Friday December 30 2016, @01:29PM
They weren't having a conversation at that stage, they were having an argument.
No, they were having contradiction. Argument was down the hall.
Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume