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<p>An intellectual is somebody who is interested in everything; a pseudo-intellectual is somebody who is only interested in hearing himself talk about everything.>></p>
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<p>But isn't it what happens when a student spends most of his or her time yakking away instead of in the library actually reading? And really, how many really want to hold a sustained conversation about dynamical systems or dark matter? Or even truly want to know about these topics? Or for that matter, Sima Qian's philosophy of history or Song lyric poetry?</p>
<p>I can't find DNA yet but this will do as an illustration. Natural selection by C. Clavin
[quote=cheers, the TV show]
The Buffalo Theory :</p>
<p>"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and Weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. "In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks The slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the Brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
<p>"I still wonder about whether there are some fundamental differences between students who get into Harvard (and similar schools) today, and those who did so decades ago. ..."</p>
<p>I think it matters how far back you go.
I know that the Harvard students of my era (attended in the 1970s) had taken very rigorous courseloads, done intensive ECs, etc.</p>
<p>They didn't have courseloads in general as rigorous as what students have now simply because those type of courseloads in which one could take, for instance, 6 AP courses at a time, were virtually nonexistent even at top public schools.</p>
<p>Also, many of the EC opportunities now didn't exist back then. In addition, kids didn't in general have their own cars, so lacked the flexibility to do things that kids now can do. In fact, back in my day, many solidly middle class families had 3-4 kids and 1 car (a stationwagon) for the whole family to share.</p>
<p>Lots of times, alum interviewers like me say that we couldn't get into Harvard if we had to apply now because the kids now have done so much. However, truth is that we may have had similar resumes as they do if we had the opportunities that they have and if the Internet had existed so we could find out about opportunities.</p>
<p>One doesn't need to have straight As to get into an Ivy. That was true in the old days, and still is true. One also can be lopsided -- excellent, for instance in languages, but good, but not at the very top-- in math -- and get in. Of course, it's easier to be lopsided and get in if one's strengths lie in areas that Harvard has difficulty attracting majors to.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Chicago does not have any kind of monopoly on intellectual kids. What it does do, exceptionally well, is produce a student body where intellectualism, for better or worse, is absolutely the norm, and the ground on which community is formed. On my last visit, I had one dinner with my son (pre-med, at least for now) and an absolutely stunning/charming first-year woman (math/physics jock). What they talked about was, in large part, different approaches to The Iliad, and the experience of watching Bollywood movies as a non-South Asian.</p></li>
<li><p>Sorry, mythmom. The Polan lecture sounds OK, but "Ski lift[ing] to the top of Mt. Jiminy . . . to look at the wind turbines"? Not intellectual. (I'm not saying it's bad, either. Which is not to say that something physical can't be intellectual. I imagine that castrating cattle at Deep Springs is probably highly intellectual. But not packaged hot-idea-of-the-week field trips.)</p></li>
<li><p>One of my litmus tests for intellectuality is that, when someone says "cohomology", and he seems like a smart guy, and he's interested in it, you want to know what it is and why it's exciting. AND you like to listen to the Shakespeare jocks talk about Twelfth Night. That's not the same as cocktail party chatter: maybe you don't say anything. Maybe you ask questions. Maybe your questions include "What should I read?", and then maybe you read some of it.</p></li>
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<p>Fundamental to my college experience was learning from the enthusiasms of others. I would not have been happy someplace where people didn't talk about their classes and what they were reading at lunch. (I am a big fan of Harvard, of course, but I always suspected it was a little deficient in that regard: too much networking, too little sharing ideas for their own sakes.)</p>
<p>I guess I find it intellectual because they were trying to come to terms with what they heard in the lecture and applying it to their own environment to test the ideas and then do further research. I don't think the intellect needs a book to be engaged, and I value a seamless meeting of world and ideas. Keeping one segregated from the other -- a recipe for disaster IMO.</p>
<p>I teach the Iliad. Did this semester. I was more excited when a student drew parallels between Agamemnon's posturing and W's than when the debate remained purely abstract.</p>
<p>I also taught Marx this semester to a different class. Had them watch Marie Antoinette for background to the French Revolution. Kids brought up the new monstrous American embassy in Iraq as being as conspicuous as Versailles. Funniest comment: "Are they asking to be guillotined?" Or perhaps unfunniest comment. </p>
<p>I consider making these connections, and yes, even climbing to top of Mt. Jiminy to test them, intellectual in the best sense, that the intellect is being put to the service of humanity (I know, let's get out the violins) and not just amusing itself as in a chess match.</p>
<p>Not saying that's what's going on at Chicago. Heck! I'd like to go to Chicago myself.</p>
<p>BTW: These comments are coming from kids at community college. I am sure they are not talking about these things at the cafeteria because they are too busy running off to work and taking care of their kids. But they sure can talk about them in the classroom, and judging by their papers, think about them at home.</p>
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<p>I am sure they are not talking about these things at the cafeteria because they are too busy running off to work and taking care of their kids. But they sure can talk about them in the classroom, and judging by their papers, think about them at home.>></p>
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<p>That is far more important than holding forth over lunch or dinner!</p>
<p>JHS: It's when the someone explains what cohomology is that your eyes begin to glaze over and you think you should not have made that conversational gambit (oops... gave myself away here).</p>
<p>Just feeling crusty and argumentative, so I'd like to point out that I defined "intellectual" as I was using it, in post #20, part a). My definition doesn't exclude math, science, engineering, economics . . . Also, I would not attach the highest value to intellectualism per se; I agree to a certain extent with mythmom's point of view. Still, I do view extending knowledge in any direction as a service to humanity. </p>
<p>My definition doesn't quite accord with midmo's better offering, from dictionary.com, though--which reminds me of the U of Chicago T-shirt that says, "That's all very well in practice, but how does it work out in theory?"</p>
<p>When the surgeon hovers over me, scalpel in hand, I say, "Hang the theory, I want the practice." Your D may want to keep folks like me in mind, Curm.</p>
<p>It's funny you should say that, marite. The book I'm reading this week (a history of breast cancer called Unnatural History) suggests that when the surgeon is hovering over you, scalpel in hand, you darn well better hope that there's some sound theory behind what he or she is planning to do. Because there isn't always.</p>
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<p>I still wonder about whether there are some fundamental differences between students who get into Harvard (and similar schools) today, and those who did so decades ago. ...<<</p>
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<p>This sounds very much like the lament that each generation sings about their youngsters - that kids these days just aren't as smart, tough, good-mannered, etc. as they themselves were back in the day. Quotes to that effect extend at least as far back as ancient Rome.</p>
<p>Along those same lines, I remember an interview with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (Harvard '38), perhaps the very embodiment of mid-20th century intellectualism in the US, in which he said he felt guilty much of the time he was an undergrad at Harvard because he thought he should be constantly reading a book or writing an essay or otherwise perpetually partaking of the intellectual feast around him. But instead he sometime spent time doing college kid things. He worried that he didn't live up to the past generations' reputation, and I guess probably not to Lucy Calwell's notions of how Harvard students should behave either.</p>
<p>I hope you do Curm should you ever need one.</p>
<p>And now we're sort of coming full circle because my son is not reading or talking about Kant because he is spending at least an hour and a half a day playing the violin. (Bach is his Kant.) And all that violin playing is beginning to suggest to him that he wants to be a .....surgeon! Since he has elected to take a course called "The History of Medicine" this semester I'm sure his ideas will be theory laden enough.</p>
<p>I can't remember which movie this is said in, but a character points out that it was theorists from Harvard, McNamara among them, who designed the US Vietnam foreign policy. Not castigating Harvard here; could have been Yale, Princeton, any of the real elites. These men were true intellectuals.</p>
<p>I myself am the wooliest intellectual, so I really live in a glass house. I just get itchy when people devise hierarchies about which uses of the intellect are more noble. I want someone to design the Brooklyn Bridge, someone to build it, someone to figure out how to pay for it, someone who'se already worked out the physics behind it, someone to photograph it, and finally Hart Crane to write a poem about it. Then I want someone else to win a race by bicycling across it, and I want all of them to be equally respected.</p>
<p>I could only write the poem. Maybe I could take the picture. I could bicycle across the bridge, but I doubt I could win a race.</p>
<p>I know how to drive in theory. I even have a license. I'm just a menace on wheels and have not driven for the last 30 years, much to everyone's relief.</p>
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[quote]
I just get itchy when people devise hierarchies about which uses of the intellect are more noble. I want someone to design the Brooklyn Bridge, someone to build it, someone to figure out how to pay for it, someone who'se already worked out the physics behind it, someone to photograph it, and finally Hart Crane to write a poem about it. Then I want someone else to win a race by bicycling across it, and I want all of them to be equally respected.</p>
<p>I could only write the poem. Maybe I could take the picture. I could bicycle across the bridge, but I doubt I could win a race.
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mythmom, way to go. That was really nice. I mean really nice work.</p>
<p>Since I am interested in the topic, I googled intellectual + atmosphere and in the first 3 pages found articles lamenting the lack of intellectual life at Princeton, Yale, and Harvard by current or former students. I also found a link to a study that suggested, or at least appeared to suggest in the page I could read without paying ;), that intellectual atmosphere and career orientation was NOT mutually exclusive.</p>