<p>Okay - no need for college or professors.</p>
<p>What do you think about the idea “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it?”</p>
<p>Well, some guy at Stanford talked to the incoming students about the “wisdom” they possessed. Wasn’t it you who posted his remark, texaspg? The guy was just bloviating, and “wisdom” has no definition, or needs none?</p>
<p>In the New World Order based on the wisdom of 18-year-olds, I don’t need to check the name of the guy at Stanford, nor whether it was texaspg or someone else who posted it. Nor even whether the comment was made at Stanford. I am saving a lot of time already!</p>
<p>US or world history? US history is only 550 years old. </p>
<p>texaspg: Have you read or heard that saying before? Or something like it? I’m just trying to understand where you are coming from.</p>
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I care only because employers care. It is important to know the rules before playing the game.</p>
<p>These care about the alma mater:
<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/brown-and-cornell-are-second-tier/27565”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/brown-and-cornell-are-second-tier/27565</a></p>
<p>These care about smarts:
<a href=“http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi”>http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285160/how-elite-business-recruiting-really-works-jim-manzi</a></p>
<p>I strongly agree with Laszlo Bock on creativity and analytical training, and the importance of having a “balanced” education. Not so sure about his opinion on the woman who switched majors though.
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google-part-2.html?_r=0”>http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-to-get-a-job-at-google-part-2.html?_r=0</a></p>
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<p>I like the Times article. Hunt wrote yesterday (#412) about the need for scientists to have a broad education. Even those who don’t believe such an education provides a necessary moral and ethical framework should be able to appreciate the economic advantages in today’s marketplace. </p>
<p>I’d be embarrassed to be so provincial that I thought that “employers” consisted solely of the handful of companies where a small list of universities are carefully tiered. </p>
<p>Curiosity got the better of me. The quotation about the wisdom of incoming freshmen came from Harry J. Elam, Jr., Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford (aka “some guy”). It <em>was</em> quoted by texaspg in #350. I am reminded of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous Five Freedoms Speech (Jan. 6, 1941): freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom from defining words in your own posts.</p>
<p>“I don’t have a need to take everyone around me and rank or rate them on their socioeconomic background or their ability / smarts as I perceive them by their major or alma mater.
I care only because employers care. It is important to know the rules before playing the game”</p>
<p>The post that prompted this was your assertion that you “knew” the weakest students in your classes were the rich ones, because you magically knew their parents’ tax returns. Are you suggesting your future employers “required” that you rank your classmates’ smarts?</p>
<p>As for what employers know or don’t know, it seems as though you’re saying a quality education is only “worth it” if the college is well known. This is the same thinking demonstrated by the 18 yos on this site who won’t consider Swarthmore or Amherst because they aren’t as “well known” as Harvard. Unimpressive thinking. </p>
<p>Oh, PG, get with the program. Unimpressive thinking? Those 18 yos are wise–well, at least if they get into Stanford, they apparently have a lot of wisdom. :)</p>
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<p>All professors profess but they bloviate. Knowing when to shut up, I would like label that as wisdom. The kids already know when to shut up. Sometimes I wonder if professors have any of it.</p>
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<p>I doubt it. We didn’t overlap at all for HS and college. Moreover, judging by quotes someone else posted about his Oberlin experience, he really went a bit overboard with the artistic license bit. </p>
<p>I certainly know some very wise, non-college educated folks out in Faulkner-land (not Cather’s world but some similarities) And one is probably utterly brilliant. V. K. Ratliff is a very believable character to me. Ratliff, if I remember correctly, is kind of defined by his curiosity about all things and interest in the wider world. At one point, at least, he muses about the academic experiences of his lawyer buddy, Harvard and Heidleberg. I am pretty sure we are supposed to consider Ratliff the wiser character in the books. But he is never dismissive of those with book smarts. Maybe he’s amused. I’ll have to re-read. I think what makes him wise is how he uses the knowledge from his superior powers of observation and analysis.</p>
<p>adding: since I’m no kind of brilliant it is frequently necessary for me to analyze the world in terms of literary works or historical narratives, to attempt to make use the of the thoughts and ideas of those who are brilliant. If my only experience of the world was from my own personal observation and analysis, that would be a very limited experience indeed. It !limited enough as it is.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is saying that college profs aren’t smart or wise or that they possess less wisdom than their students. But even Pinker alludes to the fact that he doesn’t enrich his students souls ( proxy for wisdom?); he just tries to teach or impart knowledge. If the student listens closely and really takes the time to get to know Prof Pinker or Prof QuantMech I have no doubt they would get both knowledge and wisdom beyond their wildest dreams. However, at most colleges, students have way, way more interactions with each other than they do with the profs, and as alh noted her kids were smart ( and wise?) enough to ask her about her relationship experiences in life as her experiences were different than theirs. I would posit that all these schools that use holistic admissions recognize that students can and do learn a lot from each other so they try to create interesting classes filled with kids who have had a host of different experiences. And while the students are typically not as smart or as wise as their profs, they might be smart and wise enough to know that they can learn a thing or two from each other as many of them have vastly different experiences to share. Furthermore, I think these schools are wise enough to know that most kids aren’t going to like or want to get to know some of their profs and some of the time the profs have so much going on that they don’t have time for the kids who want it which both magnify the importance of learning from the other students. Ideal? Probably not. Realistic? Probably. Call it wisdom, call it knowledge, whatever. A lot of these schools want the kids to learn and grow in a lot of different ways. No one is really dissing the classroom or lab. It’s just not the only thing going on. </p>
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I strongly disagree with you, even though I am not a STEM major. Information that can not be quantified is just an opinion. We all know how much that is worth. </p>
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Since a disproportionate amount of elite grads ended up in these occupations, they must therefore be provincial? You are agreeing with Pinker then. Another illustration of “expert” prediction at work… Tetlock is correct. </p>
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I suggest you re-read what I wrote. Your linear thinking is interfering with your analysis. </p>
<p>The discussion of Pinker’s opinion piece seems to be channeling Deresiewicz, with all this talk of wisdom.</p>
<p>A recent article in the Harvard Crimson details how very similar the student bodies of Harvard and Yale are to each other: <a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/9/5/freshman-survey-part-v/[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/9/5/freshman-survey-part-v/</a>. The largest difference between the two may be the percentages of students who responded to the survey: 70% at Harvard, but only 46% at Yale. </p>
<p>“I’d be embarrassed to be so provincial that I thought that “employers” consisted solely of the handful of companies where a small list of universities are carefully tiered.
Since a disproportionate amount of elite grads ended up in these occupations, they must therefore be provincial?”</p>
<p>If they think that their jobs constitute the entirety of the business world, the only desirable jobs, or the most worthwhile jobs, of course they’re provincial. If they seriously don’t realize big money can be made anywhere and not just in NYC, of course they’re provincial. </p>
<p>“strongly disagree with you, even though I not a STEM major. Information that can not be quantified is just an opinion. We all know how much that is worth.”</p>
<p>So conceptual frameworks are over your head. Got it. </p>
<p>Knowing when to shut up, I would like label that as wisdom. :)</p>
<p>Freedom of speech is a cherished right:
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
George Orwell</p>