January 22, 2007

• Ah, what awful bullshit. Excellent.
• I loved Charles Murray's magnum opus on the female body, « la belle courbe ». His other similarly titled book... not so much.
• Ah, what's his name, Leo Strauss?
• To clarify — I'm just jealous because I am dim.
• I'd like to note that my love for neoplatonism is purely platonic.
• Too many Americans are going to college? Shit, man. It should be legally required.
• The minute he listed "extramarital births" as a "problem" in and of itself, without distinction of whether or not these births are planned, occurring within committed relationships, or to people who are financially and emotionally secure, he lost a chunk of credibility with me.
• Oh nose, half the people in the world are below average, and I still can't do statistics!!!!
• Okay, Murray's a hack, but I do agree that college is just something that's done, whether or not it's right for the person, and many liberal arts colleges do a crap job of preparing you for the real world. I got a graduate degree in anthropology - haha. My brother bucked my father's insistence on 'proper' college and just got into BMW's mechanics training school. He'll be the successful one. Since watching that family fight I've agreed there needs to be a lot more vo-tech and the stigma against it needs to go down. Oh, and I taught at a state college for two years. Do that and then tell me there aren't people who don't belong near a college campus.
• HOW CAN YA HAVE ANY PUDDING WHEN YE DON'T EAT YER MEAT?!?!
• For the moment, I'll set aside the fact that Murray is a reprehensible racist fuck... His argument, like many of the arguments proferred by the so-called "conservatives" in the U.S., is not without merit or justifcation. A lot of the things these people gripe about are gripe-worthy, but their attribution of causality is generally so frickin' wrong that nobody is willing to even acknowledge that the problems are valid. It did get to be too easy for people to go to college, relatively speaking, and there are undoubtedly people who go who aren't genuinely academically qualified to be there. Our need to sustain the pretense of equal opportunity to everyone in our society manifested itself in "democratizing" an institution that was previously only really available to elites and very accomplished students. College isn't necessarily supposed to be about preparing you for the real world. It never was.
• College isn't necessarily supposed to be about preparing you for the real world. It never was. Now you tell us.
• We live in an age when it is unfashionable to talk about the special responsibility of being gifted, because to do so acknowledges inequality of ability, which is elitist, and inequality of responsibilities, which is also elitist. And so children who know they are smarter than the other kids tend, in a most human reaction, to think of themselves as superior to them. Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. Now, I can speak to the other side of this. In my school system, it was emphasized that some of us were gifted -- and it had lousy results. Some of the kids in there did end up thinking that they were better than everybody else, and got themselves alienated and beaten up. Other kids, like me, sensed that these labels were nothing but bullshit (for a whole whack of reasons), but despite their non-acceptance of those labels -- the fact that we were singled out as such meant that we were alienated and beaten up regardless. Labelling kids as gifted is elitist. Despite language to the contrary, implicit behind calling a kid 'gifted' is calling the kid 'more valuable'. It increases segregation at the very time we're supposed to be learning from each other and experiencing others' viewpoints in ways which we will never be able to again. Every kid is gifted, in some way or another. Intellectually gifted, athletically gifted, gifted in empathy, whatever. We should keep those different talents together, not separate them. That will happen soon enough. I have no doubt that kids with certain talents will do what they have always done -- feed them in settings outside of the classroom, opportunity permitting. Besides -- to the kids involved, it's pefectly obvious who has what talent. Leave the grownups out of it.
• Obviously, I have no talint fer speling.
• Monkeyfilter: to the kids involved, it's perfectly obvious who has what talent. Leave the grownups out of it.
• Without taking a postion for or against what is said in the post itself, please note how many of these commenbts do not show where the article ils dead wrong but instead attack thge guy writring the article, the place the article appears, and the previous work by the author. Now show where what is said is dead wrong because you have the facts, stats, studies to show his errors.
• College isn't necessarily supposed to be about preparing you for the real world. It never was. So what's it about then -- defining (and preserving) class structure? Seriously.. I got a master's in mechanical engineering, but none of that is useful in my daily job. I mean, it's not useful because it's so far beyond what is "normal work" here that it's meaningless to my co-workers. Might as well be voodoo. Hell, if I use basic freekin algebra it blows people away -- "Wow, you can calculate how long it takes to download a file?" ::insert sound clip of head going thud on desk:: I imagine that if I used multivariable partial differential equations to solve some problem, my co-workers would have to revert back to their social skills to evaluate whether or not I was full of shit ("Well, he seems confident enough...") because they have no technical basis. And, to be honest, so would I, because I've forgotten all that stuff... (because, well, I never use it!)
• The Wallpaper's a great paper, but its editorial pages are full of idiots. It's much like every other newspaper in that regard. As for Murray, he's proven himself already. No need to waste any more wattage on him.
• I certainly agree that more time in elementary school needs to be spent covering basic skills. At least here in New York, grade school teachers have to include so much varied content that sometimes they end up not being able to give basic skills the time and attention they really need, especially when a lot of kids aren't having them reinforced at home. A large number of college freshmen have to take two or more remedial classes to make up for things they didn't learn in high school. A friend of mine teaches remedial English at a junior college, and she tells me that her students, while certainly bright, don't have mastery of skills that she and her peers (even the lower-achiebing ones) had by junior high school and that my mother remembers nobody being able to get into middle school without. My third-grade class spent a week learning to write friendly and business letters, and to a man we all could draft a decent one. The college freshmen I work with now are nowhere near there. And content area teachers need to get over the whole "not grading on writing skills" thing. You give a written assignment, there's no point in not grading on writing skill. My guess is that if public schools were able to turn out 17-year-olds more grounded in the three R's, employers would be less focused on hiring only the college-educated. (Oh, and what cobaltnine said about Vo-Tech.)
• The huge glaring omission in the article about below-average kids is the fact that you CAN do things to increase their intellectual potential -- if you get to them when they're still infants. Which takes lots of money and intervention and effort -- well-educated, affluent parents find out for themselves all the magic smarty-dances they can do to turn Junior into a genius, but less-educated, lower-income parents tend not to, or can't afford to. Few books in the house, less stimulation, etc. etc. It's another part of the cycle of poverty. But if the parents are willing and able and someone helps them find the resources and the know-how, it is possible to do something about it. Or at least that's what my average brain has concluded.
• Without taking a postion for or against what is said in the post itself, please note how many of these commenbts do not show where the article ils dead wrong but instead attack thge guy writring the article, the place the article appears, and the previous work by the author. Now show where what is said is dead wrong because you have the facts, stats, studies to show his errors. The implication that the smart poor kids will find their way to college is stupid. The assumption that one's career preparedness is the measure of the quality of one's education is stupid. Implying that IQ doesn't measure one's worth or chance for success in life, then flatly stating that those with high IQ should basically rule over the less-than-average is stupid AND hypocritical AND dangerous. There's value in pointing out that college isn't for everyone, and that some people may not have the specific intelligence necessary to complete certain tasks, but this guy is so far beyond that and into the moronic that it's laughable. Stats and facts can be used stupidly to support stupid assertions. Also note before responding just how much of what the author says is his opinion more than the obviously logical response to the stats and facts.
• The Wallpaper's a great paper, but its editorial pages are full of idiots. It's much like every other newspaper in that regard. Ahem. It'd be fun to do some comparisons. Me, I can never get over how deluded some of the WSJ op-ed types are despite all their smarts and success. More proof that IQ is practically meaningless.
• My vocabulary is, like, whatever.
• In a handbasket, you mark my words, IN A HANDBASKET, PEOPLE!
• All I got's a tisket.
• Didn't Andy Griffith use to advertise those?
• Wall Street Journal - Small Penis Urinal New York Times - Nude Pork Slime
• Any ability or talent that any human being has isn't universal to all humans. Why is that such a scary fact?
• Do you mean this, TUM?
• Do VoTech schools/courses give courses for people with those special interests to advance in specific crafts beyond a basic knowledge? The few craftsmen I know of were either self taught, or learned their skills from their parents. I'd love to be able to find handymen who actually knew how to repair my mother's rentals, or furniture refinishers who could fix my cherry-wood sleigh bed frame, which has been sitting in storage for the last 8 years, or expertly reglue the Victorian slipper chair which is about to come apart. They don't seem to exist, at least in my neck of the woods. Maybe we've concentrated so much on higher education that we've lost the craftsmen who were a major contributors to the US economy in years gone by? I love wood, but don't have the hand flexibilty to make or repair beautiful furniture. Someone who did have the love, for example, and was tought expertise could have a life at least as satisfying from an emotional basis as those of us who bitch about the jobs we got after spending years in universities have. Someone who didn't have extensive training, however, would probably live a marginal existence. If this sounds somehow elitist, I'm really thinking of training people to do something they love. I've known people who were entranced by having the opportunity to get into word processing, but had spaced out on generalized English courses to the point that they would not be able to edit the input they were given, or to correct their own mistakes. If there were specialized training in that area, might they not be more successful? Secondary education in general seems pretty lacking now, but I think that the folks who have no interest in traditional higher education get a short shrift.
• Do VoTech schools/courses give courses for people with those special interests to advance in specific crafts beyond a basic knowledge? The few craftsmen I know of were either self taught, or learned their skills from their parents. The nature of the apprentice's practicum is 1-5 years of primarily on-the-job training. About a fifth of the overall time is spent in the classroom. BCIT, our local polytech, has a wide variety of trades apprenticeships. But I don't know if this is what you mean, path.
• What frustrates me is how much I don't disagree with the first two articles (I haven't read the Aztec vs Greek one yet), but I recognize some of the holes that have been poked into them here. I thought it was worth mentioning that, in my financial-need-driven experience, many people tend to go to 2-year public colleges solely because it affects their employability. More and more colleges of every variety seem to function as degree mills and social-professional connectors for anyone who doesn't want to go into academia or one of a handful of technical fields. The students don't want to be there, but they can't get a promotion without it; in some cases, they can't keep their menial day jobs without showing proof that they're in school. If you're actually in college - especially a two-year public college - because you like to learn, some of your classmates will depress you. Many of the required courses will be taught indifferently or badly. All the same things may be true if you go to a major public university, or a private university of the type that attracts a lot of legacy students. The thing is, a lot of two-year schools offer AS degrees, which are specific certificate programs in various fields. These run the gamut from graphic design to fingernail tech, with lots of medical and criminal justice stuff inbetween. BUT! People don't want these degrees, for the most part, because they aren't transferable to four-year schools, and many "better" employers won't look at their resumes if they don't have a four-year degree. They could be working in the field with their AS, going to a 4-year college at night with the hopes of getting a better position in that field, and would still have to start as if they were freshmen unless the college was nice enough to give them experiential credit. So, people studying things that have alternate four-year programs often don't want the two year vocational degree: they take a transferable general program with all their electives geared towards their specific concentration. Another problem is that when people posit an elite of one variety or another, as having a right to special privileges, they always imagine themselves as part of it. They probably ought to imagine the opposite. (This is how I respond to people who say that "some people should be sterilized." I'm like, really? who gets to decide who should be? It won't be you. You'll be on the sterilization end, because you don't fit in with mainstream culture.) At the same time, I think that anti-intellectualism has been a very negative force in American culture in the last decade or two, that it's not 100% bad for the smarter end of society to expect their opinion to bear more weight. It's just that it's something with a lot of potential for abuse. (continued!)
• I also agree that early childhood education, particularly of disadvantaged people, is paramount and neglected. I was a sort of local trailblazer in G&T programs, on Welfare, so it wasn't that my yuppie parents were pushing me and providing all these opportunities, as in the classic stereotype of the gifted kids. I started in kindergarten being sent to the gifted programs for older kids, and watched the programs trickle down in age group, until by the time I left elementary school in fifth grade, it was available to all grade levels. I was first able to take a class for my age group in third grade. The program was focused on enrichment; we still went to, and had to keep up with, our regular classes, but we didn't have to deal with the wars between the teachers and the disruptive kids, among other things. Of course, I don't think the educational needs of the "disruptive kids," most of whom were sweet and hyper, probably ADHD, were being met; they were too mainstreamed, and had to suffer the effects of constantly being "the bad kid" in any class they took. Most weren't "bad kids" - they were talkative or they had nightmare parents. I think that G&T programs have a place and can be very helpful to smart kids, *particularly* disadvantaged ones. I had so many opportunities that I wouldn't have had otherwise. (Did non-"gifted" kids deserve these opportunities too? Maybe, but few were in any way truly exclusionary, and usually only because it was thought they would be bored or confused by them. IE, there are certain museums that G&T kids were taken to a year before other kids were, but the other kids were eventually taken. Mostly we just had more homework.) It also helps to put gifted kids in an atmosphere that isn't anti-intellectual and where they won't be mocked for raising a hand to answer a question. That may be more of an issue in later childhood. I don't think it's true that every kid has their special gift - some people are just profoundly ordinary and self-centered, and that's FINE. Even being "gifted" is not all that "special" - lots of kids are gifted in the specific academic way we're discussing here. (I'm kind of of the opinion that, rather than everyone being "special and unique," nobody is. There is little problem with special G&T classes once you stop tying self-worth to educational needs. I got a lot out of them because they suited my educational needs, but they were also a lot of work and not glamorous, just less formal and more puzzle-mad than regular classroom work.) Although I always tested as above-average in math, I struggled with it. So in high school, sick of struggling and of being taught in the "you're smart enough to figure this out for yourself" style, I dropped from advanced math classes to average ones. It was the right decision for me; my self-worth was WAY improved by understanding the concepts and getting decent grades. That was more important to me than having "gifted" next to the name of the class on my transcript. It wouldn't hurt for the style of teaching in "ordinary" classes to be more like the style of teaching in gifted classes, where creativity (rather than the rote) seems to be emphasized. This is the most true outside of science and math; English class really is more fun with posters and skits than questionnaires. Finally... I think the issue is not so much that people have to stop going to college, as that A) high school educations need to be better, so school districts stop working with the assumption that they don't need to teach something, because the kids will just get it again in college, and B) employers hiring for relatively menial white-collar jobs need to stop requiring college for applicants; you don't need a BA in Psych to answer phones or type data into Excel.
• I think you're on to something, verbminx. Academia attaches way too much prestige to academia in what seems a vain (or at least transparent) effort to validate both the pursuit of learning and earnings post-graduation minus cost of education until that point compared to the same from trades and vocational pre- and post-apprenticeship and non-educated employees in high status/money jobs (which does happen in my neck of the woods - if you're clever enough to get into the interview). I think that sort of "prestige" trickles down to the elementary school system via the black box of education (i.e. the teacher's academic baggage from their education) and looms ominously over kids like MJ. I see people taking honors undergrad programs without any need to pull their current grades up for grad school (so long as that is their desire), and I think that's just a symptom of this academic validation that's only taking more of their money away without any real returns. Save, perhaps, a reference letter in the absence of having networked any relationships with the faculty. Or maybe I just don't get it.