Maybe you didn’t realize that your comment was dismissive, but it certainly reads that way to me. The last sentence above suggests to me that you just don’t really “get” the arts, just as I don’t really “get” sports. This may come as a surprise to you, but there are some people who just don’t think that math is all that important in the grand scheme of things. It’s nice that it excites you, but to me, it’s not nearly as important as philosophy, law, politics, and a number of other things. Math, in my book, is not a higher order activity. It’s just another activity, among many that interest people, and that make some contribution to the overall fund of knowledge of mankind. So, in my book, if a math student–even a brilliant one–wants to spend part of his time playing in a jazz combo, I think it is very unlikely that much of use to humanity will be lost. Indeed, it’s more likely (in my book) that the world will be an overall better place if he’s happier because he gets to play some jazz.</p>
<p>I have to say, I’m finding the discussion entertaining. Not that I particularly care about Harvard’s admissions policies, but rather the adults’ attitudes on this thread are intriguing.</p>
<p>First, I agree with JHS. In my opinion, there aren’t oodles of “purely brilliant” students to tap. Charles Murray, in Coming Apart, cited research from Roger Geiger demonstrating how stratified the national university system has become.
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<p>So the thought that the test scores in Harvard’s entering class could be raised is…not feasible. Harvard’s already
removed any financial barrier to agreeing to attend.</p>
<p>Second, there’s the old saying, “youth is wasted on the young.” It might be interesting to return to 18 with the wisdom of a 50 year old, but that doesn’t mean it’s possible. Please stop arguing for the Model Students, who do all the reading all the time, never look at the opposite sex, but sit in their rooms thrilling over formulae. There may be a handful in any year, but there aren’t thousands upon thousands. And strangely enough, prospective students, yea even very bright prospective students, want to be able to participate in ECs. Thus, a campus with too many Model Students will have a hard time persuading anyone else to enroll.</p>
<p>Third, youth is a time for play. Learning is play for the very bright. The impulse to play and create is a fount of joy and progress. “Entertainment” is a wimpy term for the release some students find in creative teamwork. </p>
<p>I don’t even know if the Harvard admissions office selects for musical interests. They might not. The Ephblog (search for it, as I can’t link to it) speculates that the only way for the Ivies and Williams, etc. to maintain such high SAT scores is to make test scores the core criteria. Full stop. Musical ability and intelligence are frequently found in the same people. If you select for intelligence, you’re often selecting for musicality.</p>
<p>Fourth, notwithstanding all the above, Pinker is a long-term professor at MIT and Harvard. He may have noticed a change in the balance between ECs and academics at Harvard today, in comparison to the past. That’s a different point. There may be some policy changes Harvard could undertake to encourage students to attend lectures. Unlike some here, I am not willing to excuse wholesale class-cutting. One possibility may be that the students do not feel engaged by their Harvard professors. The ball would then be in Pinker’s court, to improve the classroom mechanics in some way.</p>
<h1>380 The music comments were a bit disconcerting to me and I assumed I was probably misreading. Mainly because I see music, math, philosophy as part of a whole, which is probably due to my education at Truly Tailgate U, which included a class on ancient philosophers, but nothing very modern in this area of study. Also, and I don’t know how to phrase this gracefully, it seems to me that music serves the same spiritual need in some that religious ritual does for others. I think it goes beyond entertainment for some who don’t pursue it professionally. I am not going to try to argue that sports serve a spiritual need, but there may be ancient models there as well. ; )</h1>
<p>I’m reading (listening to) a fun book right now (Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore) which includes stuff on how technology has made things easy which used to be hard, and we have to change our thinking to adapt. It included two things, “Hadoop” and “Mechanical Turk,” which I was amazed to find are real.</p>
<p>I see many schools employing the clicker system to answer professor’s questions with a weight of about 2-4 points. This could technically make or break a student’s A in the class. If Pinker felt attendance was so important, he should use this mechanism and add a 10% weight for participation.</p>
<p>Interesting and thanks, Periwinkle.
But these admissions arguments are mostly perpetuated on these threads by folks who do want to promote the concepts of Model Student, Snowflake, bruised egos, what will save the world (and now, Harvard, as if it really needs to be saved,) what’s needed versus what’s too much, and/or some personal theoretical views of a perfect academic world, whether or not they really get what does go on. (A world where posters’ own views, interests, what rocks them, what they think is ideal- and on and on- gets chatted up.) Lots of zigs and zags and protests. In this particular case, all with a willingness to yield authority to Pinker- who, I suspect, really doesn’t know more of the whole story. (But he’s a professor!! At Harvard!!) I suspect he wanted to rebut Deresiewicz and just kept on going. </p>
<p>These kids are not chosen solely or predominantly based on ECs in hs or interest in college ECs. They are chosen for evidence of sum-total strengths, interests, energies and follow-through, the ability to pursue both depth and breadth. It is what works for Harvard, as an ongoing institution. Despite Pinker’s protests. Or something someone, somewhere, some time ago, said to some poster here- or that the poster thinks they said or thinks they meant. </p>
<p>Given the amount of apparently complicated social engineering which goes into “crafting” a class, it’s interesting that questioning the outcomes of such engineering is such a misguided exercise. </p>
<p>As has been discussed on plenty of threads, there is a bit of a transparency problem with elite college admissions. We may know with some accuracy why a particular student was not admitted, but we can’t know for sure why one highly qualified student was chosen over another. So if the high-stat kid who’s also engaged in many meaningful EC’s to which he is making a significant contribution is a tired CC formula for elite admissions that’s no longer accurate (as lookingforward seems to say), then I suppose we are to assume that just because the student has a wonderful resume of EC’s it does not mean he was necessarily admitted because of any of them, and that there is no formula. Hmm, but the professors themselves are complaining that too many admits have strong EC involvements which result in them dedicating less time to their coursework once on campus. Do any of you know a kid who got into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton who did nothing besides academic pursuits? I don’t. I don’t know a single one who didn’t do a boatload of other things, which is why it seems like they do have a formula.</p>
<p>I think the universities which practice holistic admissions end up with a better student experience. I do think young people learn from each other. </p>
<p>Very, very few people will be able to support themselves as Professors of English. Many more people support themselves by writing essays for publication, or for work. So writing for the Crimson might be a better use of one’s time than polishing any particular paper. </p>
<p>I love learning for it’s own sake. I don’t think the Ivies and like universities have been so uniquely successful due to the student scholarly output. The experience of spending four years with intelligent, energetic peers, with the freedom to explore areas of interest does pay off for the graduate, and eventually, for the institution. </p>
<p>“Social engineering” is one of those phrases that seems so loaded and can have an emotional response. How do you know it’s so darned complicated? It’s the assumptions and preconceptions that can be misguided, especially on CC.</p>
<p>GFG, I can’t put significant and tired into the same sentence. *meaningful EC’s to which he is making a significant contribution is a tired CC formula * You had mentioned some CC-formula-type activities (high-GPA kid who can also be president of 3 clubs, win the science fair, and do varsity crew,) and the assumption that’s what’s desirable. Yes there’s a lack of transparency. </p>
<h1>383 I am really interested in big data and especially under what circumstances it is an “intellectual activity”. QM was kind and patient enough to try and answer this question for me on another thread. I am still confused and musing.</h1>
<p>I don’t think that it is dismissive for me to say that attending a symphony counts as entertainment <strong>for me.</strong> I certainly view it that way. From the first post where I mentioned the idea, I said that attending a symphony would not be entertainment for a serious musician. The musician would hear it differently from me. . . let alone the difference if the musician is performing and I am listening.</p>
<p>I am happy for people to work mathematical puzzles, and to consider mathematics to be “entertainment” for them, though mathematics is not entertainment (at least not totally entertainment) for a mathematician.</p>
<p>Math is not a higher-order activity than philosophy, law, or politics–I never claimed that it was. The only comment that I made with regard to other areas of the curriculum was to say that I considered taking courses in the history of China, Japan, India, and West Africa to be more intellectual than participating in a choral ensemble. There are probably a few exceptions, where the choral ensembles dig into the history and music theory of the works that they are performing. Is that the general practice?</p>
<p>I understand and appreciate some of the arts better than others, but that’s likely to be true for anyone.</p>
<p>I am not saying that math is important because it excites me. In my opinion, it is important because of the things that it enables people to do. For example, if you look at the impact of Isaac Newton on the modern world, taking into account everything that is derived from his work, his impact is immense. We couldn’t even be posting these messages without a lot of people understanding electrodynamics, and Maxwell’s equations certainly could not have been written pre-Newton. I am not sure that you could say this of philosophers of the same era. What philosopher would you nominate?</p>
<p>I am also not saying that people should have no fun. For example, you mentioned a math student who might play in a jazz combo. “Indeed, it’s more likely (in my book) that the world will be an overall better place if he’s happier because he gets to play some jazz.” Is that not entertainment for him? It doesn’t seem like work to me.</p>
<p>Added: Just got to alh’s #372: Yes, I agree that music may be uplifting to many people, and thus have some analogies with a religious experience. I would not put attending a religious service in the category of “entertainment.” For those who find a spiritual dimension in music, I did not intend in any way to be dismissive of that possibility–just that I experience that very rarely, and almost never with symphonic music. The person playing in the jazz combo–is that a religious experience? Maybe it is? (Seriously.)</p>
<p>I am thinking of at least one friend for whom listening to jazz may be a spiritual experience and I’m going to try and figure out a way to ask that question.</p>
<p>I am worried about going off topic and shutting down the thread but still can’t manage to restrain myself. It seems to me an interesting question whether the ability to interact on these boards is necessarily a good thing. Sometimes maybe we’d be better off walking down the road to visit with our real life neighbors. One of my neighbors, who doesn’t own a computer, just left my house after a short visit. I had to tear myself away from this thread to concentrate on what she was telling me. If we don’t have real life neighbors, the board does serve a purpose. I am not sure which advances from Newton’s time are really all that beneficial to humankind as a whole. Medical? for sure. Weapons? not so much.</p>
<p>I am totally into knowledge for the sake of knowledge as a societal good.</p>
<p>Please just delete my posts if they are problematic. </p>
<p>PhD stands for doctor of Philosophy. I would be shocked if Newton thought he did not care for one of those because it says Philosophy. In his day he was a great philosopher.</p>
<p>"I am not saying that math is important because it excites me. In my opinion, it is important because of the things that it enables people to do. "</p>
<p>Art, music, architecture, theater don’t “enable people to do things” the way math does. But they enable people to feel. You as an INFP should appreciate this! They are life enriching and life enhancing. Why is that of lesser value? </p>
<p>Math (physics, engineering) enables you to build an art museum or symphony hall that won’t fall down and go boom. Why is building the building important, but not what’s inside it? </p>
<p>I think that art, music, architecture, and theater are extremely valuable to students when they approach them seriously. I think art, music, and theater are “entertainment” when they are not approached seriously. I am not sure exactly how architecture would count as “entertainment,” but I suppose there might be a way of not approaching it seriously.</p>
<p>I have a cousin who is a professional artist. I know how much intellectual content goes into his work–it is an enormous amount, truly. I also know how much technical knowledge goes into his work–also an enormous amount.</p>
<p>Sometimes I draw for my own amusement. That’s entertainment for me. It doesn’t mean that I can’t also take art seriously, when it is produced by serious artists.</p>
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