<p>The issue of socioeconomic background does seems important to me. The kids I know resembling the 1974 JHS come from very enriched backgrounds, usually upper middle class, though occasionally from barely middle class academic families. I thought Lucie’s question about who has access to this type education in HS was excellent and had hoped someone would follow up. I am not convinced there will be a fall off of correlation between academic ability and income. I could believe there is a ceiling. I don’t understand anything about statistics or this research, though. I assume intellectual potential is evenly distributed through the population regardless of income. Then we have nurture. Regardless of published reports, I am probably always going to believe this just based on personal experience.</p>
<p>adding: Not every student with access to educational enrichment takes advantage of that access. I admire those who do and am not downplaying their accomplishments. I’m very impressed.</p>
<p>“Frankly, I think the casual genius is a pleasant myth. No one makes it to the top of their field and stays there without a whole lot of hard work”</p>
<p>YES. Also they probably enjoy the work. imho</p>
<p>" The “The Way We Were” story is a classic example of the hard-working student appearing rather foolish, when the truly brilliant kid does his stuff in little time and with no sweat."</p>
<p>The way I interpret it, Redford already had the opportunity to learn how to do this. He may have worked hard earlier on in prep school, so that now it’s an easy task. He isn’t necessarily more brilliant, just better educated at this particular point in time. I’ll have to watch the movie again.</p>
<p>adding: Jewish woman, WASP man at an elite university decades ago - who is grading those stories and how and why? – maybe another way to think about it.</p>
I am saying that in the big picture of the individual’s overall development and future life, the experience with the choral group is likely to be much, much more important than any individual elective course. This appears to me to also be true of athletics, although I don’t personally “get” athletics.</p>
<p>As far as workloads, I will just note that anybody who had to work very hard to get As in my high school could not have performed well at Yale.</p>
<p>By this the students who really loves learning and does everything by their own effort will get a chance. Not those who wins science fairs with the help of outside help when they have their mom and dad as professors or hires anybody just for the sake of winning and showing college something extraordinary!!!</p>
<p>I responded to Lucie privately, and fully agree that her question was excellent. As for me . . . guilty as charged. Very enriched background, professional father and mother who was a teacher and department head at the school where I went, and knew how to make the system work. (Also, to its credit, the school was enormously flexible in letting me get educated with a custom program rather than forcing me to stay in lockstep with my classmates.) Many relatives with Harvard degrees, or near equivalents.</p>
<p>I will note, however, that at my kids’ schools (a famous, high-quality urban Quaker school, and a large urban public academic magnet high school) there were definitely very high-performing, intellectual kids who did not come from a comfortable economic background. It would be fair to say, though, that they had less esoteric, more science-oriented interests than I did at their age. They tended to want to be doctors or engineers.</p>
<p>"As far as workloads, I will just note that anybody who had to work very hard to get As in my high school could not have performed well at Yale. "</p>
<p>This gets back to what kind of HS. My kids’ HS wasn’t intellectually challenging at all. They “had to work very hard to get As” because there was an inordinate amount of required busy work. It was an endurance test. College was easy in comparison, because the work became meaningful.</p>
<p>“I am saying that in the big picture of the individual’s overall development and future life, the experience with the choral group is likely to be much, much more important than any individual elective course. This appears to me to also be true of athletics, although I don’t personally “get” athletics.”</p>
<p>Yes! And I doubt Hanna, on her deathbed, is going to regret that she skipped a class or two in favor of perfecting her choral performance in front of the president. Life is not defined solely by academics. I want my kids to do well, and learn, of course – but when I talk to them, I want to know - what excites you? What clubs have you joined? What experiences have you had (that are easier to have when you’re 21 yo and no constraints versus when you get tied down with a job and family)? I spent way too much of my own life buried in books (my equivalent of a science lab) and now I know more than I used to about what’s important in life. </p>
<p>“Being a hard-working striver is uncool and now equates with being a boring grind with no life and probably poor social skills.”</p>
<p>I don’t think the above is being said. After all, these students are hard-working strivers in the classroom - AND at crew, and newspaper, and musical theatre, and so forth – that’s the whole charge against them, that they’re busy whirling around with all of these extracurriculars.</p>
<p>This is a subtle difference, but I think what’s being said is - being the * kind of person * who sees no (or very little) value in pursuits outside the classroom / lab – whether or not he personally participates in such pursuits – is equated with being a boring grind with no life and probably poor social skills. </p>
<p>I suspect that you don’t get to be a professor at Harvard without thinking that your specific discipline and your specific research interest is the most fascinating and crucial of all academic pursuits. So naturally it miffs you when students cut your class in order to blow a horn or row a boat.</p>
<p>Quote from Freshman convocation this year at S. I suspect most top schools view their students this way rather than empty vessels needing to be filled up with those elite professors’ knowledge.</p>
<p>No, it’s not a novel idea, alh. It’s just counterpoint to the “wisdom comes from the faculty, not other students” (which is why the True Intellectuals dream of Harvard solely for the faculty, not for the other students who are being admitted “incorrectly”) and “the only learning of any importance comes in the classroom / lab, not in extracurricular activities,” all of which are concepts that are being addressed in this discussion.</p>
<p>Hey, couldn’t we link this up to a discussion of how bad Harvard and the other Ivies are because so many of the students are being taught by TAs, and that research is valued over teaching ability, etc.?</p>
<p>JHS #345
"I will note, however, that at my kids’ schools (a famous, high-quality urban Quaker school, and a large urban public academic magnet high school) there were definitely very high-performing, intellectual kids who did not come from a comfortable economic background. It would be fair to say, though, that they had less esoteric, more science-oriented interests than I did at their age. They tended to want to be doctors or engineers. "</p>
<p>Since it seems Harvard/Yale do have some interest in social engineering, what do you think about the utterly brilliant students, like Lucie describes who didn’t have access to schools like your kids, or those from disadvantaged backgrounds who won’t necessarily have the background to easily keep up with Harvard/Yale classes, at least in the beginning? I think Hunt makes a pretty good point there. Should these kids be sought out by the top schools?</p>
<p>adding:</p>
<h1>352- sorry to be a jerk. This just sounded like a pretty standard orientation speech to me and wondered if others disagreed with that. apologies.</h1>
<h1>354 I guess an argument could be made that those who think it matters and care “only” about academics will take classes mostly from professors and that those who think academics are just one part of the overall experience (and not necessarily the most important part of the education on offer) won’t mind. If they don’t have time to do the reading, does it matter who is teaching them? I honestly don’t know. What are they getting out of the class if they can’t fully participate in the discussions?</h1>
<p>I don’t know about Pinker specifically, but big name professors usually teach either big lectures in which they don’t discuss things with students all that much, or small, upper-level seminars in which most students will be majors and are likely to be pretty well prepared. There are exceptions to this, of course, but that’s usually how it goes.</p>
<p>the elite school now looks for the high-GPA kid who can also be president of 3 clubs, win the science fair, and do varsity crew, Now that student must be truly deserving, since clearly academics come easy to him because he has time for so much else.
We really need to pry ourselves away from this flat CC formula.</p>
<p>Also, please remember that what we experienced- or some younger folks and their cousins- is all in the past. For lower SES kids with college promise, mentoring programs, their quality and accessibility, are on the rise. It’s underway. Try to stand back from pre-conceived notions.</p>
<p>JHS, we had the same thing in our kids’ Quaker school, in an area with a few very good charter lower schools that feed into the private hs and the magnet. These kids tended to rise very high in the privates. They are exposed early to hard work and the early critical thinking and broader opportunities. But even in lesser areas, in under-performing hs, there are more ways to enrich key kids than I think many know. Not all. But you see the impact.</p>
<p>ps. if you don’t like crew as an example, plug in something else. At D2’s college, a capella practiced at 9-11pm. She’s a highly talented singer who chose not to join because she preferred to study at that hour. But she was deeply involved, 3-5pm, with another demanding role. Kids can decide.</p>
<p>Btw, don’t we all remember the fuss and muss back in our day about how sports and the teamwork/resilience, etc, enhanced skills and prep for future opps for young men? And fewer competitive opps for young women left them a step behind? It strikes me that, here we are, fretting about practice hours and missing some larger contribution ECs can make. </p>