
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower - crocus
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college
======
sspencer
Excellent submission. That was an extremely well-written and particularly
trenchant piece of writing.

It is interesting to compare the experiences of Ms. L to various people in
their 40s returning to school when I was in undergrad. They too had difficulty
with very basic (to us youngsters, anyway) methods of computer use. Many
viewed computers with either outright terror or blatant suspicion.

I have often thought of volunteering my time to a college or tech school
locally to teach computer-illiterate people the basics of computer use. It
would be such a simple thing for me and judging by Ms. L's plight, it could
make all the difference in the world to some people.

~~~
maximilian
_It would be such a simple thing for me and judging by Ms. L's plight, it
could make all the difference in the world to some people._

SIMPLE!!!??? You clearly didn't teach your parents to use computers. Teaching
people how to use computers is one of the more challenging and frustrating
things I have yet to do. Besides perhaps math, computers baffle more adults
than anything I can imagine. I used to have 2 hours phone calls with my mom
trying to "get her document back". She had just clicked another window and her
word doc was behind it. 2 hours later she accidently clicked the word doc
again and it came forward. Teaching the computer illiterate is a can of worms
I wouldn't open without some serious friends and some serious beer.

~~~
jbenz
My Mom always wants the screen to "return to the way it was".

Me: You mean the desktop?

Mom: I don't know. The way it was.

Me: Is it this? (shows her the desktop)

Mom: No. It was all black.

Me: You mean off? (shuts computer down)

Mom: Yes. Thank you.

My Mom's a preschool teacher, and I will rely heavily on her wisdom when I
have kids, seeing as I don't know jack about 3 year olds.

Me in 7 years: Mom, my kid won't eat his dinner. I think I got a broken one.

We all have our own useful areas of knowledge.

~~~
michaelneale
Having kids myself, yes I can relate to that.

I complain to my folks about what I see as major character problems in my
little one, only to have my parents smile knowingly (I think they think its
justice of some sort). The mention something about that being "familiar"
behavior they saw once upon a time ;)

------
tom_rath
The most helpful grade I ever received on an essay was an 'F'.

It was in my first year of university. I knew the course and knew the material
but couldn't have been arsed to put together a paper which adequately
addressed the subject.

The comments the professor wrote were scathing and it was a wonderful full
slap on the face that I'd better get my act together and actually deliver what
was expected of me if I ever wanted to accomplish something of value.

I did. Thanks for that 'F'.

~~~
josefresco
I never had a professor shoot down any paper I turned in no matter how half
assed it was. I guess I was that good ...

Now, it was the papers I _never turned in_ that hurt me the most :)

~~~
cdr
Hah. You must not have been _that_ good - the ones I never turned in didn't
really hurt me either.

------
marvin
This is a very interesting story. What I'm left with is the question of 'who
are these people, really'? Is there really a considerable portion of American
(or we could say Western) society that is practically illiterate? This seems
counter-intuitive to me, I thought it was hardly possible to function at all
without a basic understanding of the written word. If these people are out
there, I have certainly never had any deep face-to-face conversation with
them.

Or put in other words; I didn't think there were enough jobs available that
didn't require a minimum of college-level skills. A checkout clerk could
obviously make do, but I'd expect even a car mechanic to have enough brains to
grasp some abstract literary concepts.

And other questions arise: Isn't academic aptitude strongly correlated with
ability to succeed in the world at large after all? You'd have a hard time
convincing me that most people who can't comment intelligently on 'The Wizard
of Oz' are fit do be much more than corporate monkeys. At one level or the
other, there is a major problem here - either the educational system is a
massive failure, or the rest of us are stupid to assume that everybody has to
be particularly intelligent.

~~~
neilk
_Is there really a considerable portion of American (or we could say Western)
society that is practically illiterate?_

Yes. 21-23%. Or, higher, depending on how you count.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy>

 _I thought it was hardly possible to function at all without a basic
understanding of the written word._

Correct again. The wikipedia article notes the high correlation of illiteracy
to delinquency and crime.

However, a counterexample. One of my first programming jobs was to create a
data entry terminal in an industrial setting, replacing the giant paper sheets
they used to fill out. When it was ready I beta-tested it on selected people
from each shift. The interface was super simple, it just asked you a series of
questions and you typed in the numbers -- I figured the guys in the plant
would at least know how to deal with ATMs, so that was my metaphor. And it
worked well.

The best foreman in the plant brought a friend along -- I shrugged and let
them take the test together. He interacted with it in a really weird way and
required multiple repeats of the entire session before he understood it. I
only realized later that he was illiterate. And, let me just restate: best
foreman in the whole plant. He knew what numbers were, and he'd trained
himself to fill out the correct numbers in the correct spots on the paper
sheet.

So that's when I added big icons and pictures to each screen, diagramming what
bit of data we wanted at each stage.

~~~
listic
That's a striking case.

But about that 21-23% figure.. Here in wikipedia is a map that shows <5%
illiteracy in USA:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Literacy_rate_world.svg>

~~~
neilk
Rates differ according to definition. It's clear that YouTube commenters
aren't illiterate in the sense of total inability to read; they're typing,
after all.

'Functional illiteracy' encompasses people who can read and write, but not
with the fluency required to function in society, for instance, when
understanding and completing a job application.

Let's face it though; do you really think you live in a society where >95% of
the population can read and write fluently? Educated people tend to live in a
bit of a bubble, surrounded by others like them, but YouTube tells a different
story.

------
aspirant
Thoreau said, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one
striking at the root."

Here is my attempt.

Shortly after we're born, we begin to perceive a certain amount of value in
everything we encounter. We assign value to food, attention, comfort, safety,
pleasure, affection, entertainment, possessions, virtue, appearance, and a
million other things. We assign value to a thousand instances of a hundred
types of those things - particular tv shows, certain cars, particular kinds of
attention, certain types of pleasure, even one virtue over another.
Automatically, they line up along a spectrum of desire and the sorting
continues each moment till we die.

Some people value books more than people. Books have never hit them. Some
people value an infomercial on tv more than any book imaginable. They still
remember all those years ago how the class laughed when they had to read
aloud. They don't feel stupid watching tv. They don't feel poor, inferior, or
much of anything while it's on. A superficial man can see a woman and in a
tenth of a second assign a value to her. We call him superficial in hopes that
he will start valuing her other qualities more. A child of six in a bad
neighborhood somewhere has never seen any of their friends or family open a
book for fun. With perfect logic the child's mind takes note of what seems
valued and what does not, by people like him. A very reasonable, and very
wrong valuing ensues.

And there is something out there that each person on this website ought to
value but doesn't for the very same reasons: We haven't yet encountered it, or
we didn't understand it when we did, or the people around us didn't seem to
value it, etc. High school art class comes to mind.

You are on this website right now because at this very moment you value it
more than everything else that can at this moment be had. Not because of your
DNA or inherent intellect, but because at some point you began to value time
on this website, and before that websites in general, and before that time on
computers, and before that a million other things that compose rungs on a
ladder to somewhere.

And by my simply saying that, many of you will suddenly call into question the
value of being on this site right now. That questioning is the combination of
your own ability to reason, imagine, and introspect as well as your
environment of which my words are now a part. And those four ingredients more
than anything else are what have formed your beliefs, including your beliefs
about what is to be valued.

Scholastically, life works out better for people who value books more than
television. And better still for people who value knowledge more than almost
everything else.

Things work out better when we value things of value.

~~~
sophist
The classic nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate. The problem with
your argument is that it's simply not backed up by evidence. There are plenty
of cases of children who grow up in virtually identical environments, yet go
on to have widely varying interests. My brother and I grew up experiencing
basically all the same stimuli: same parents, same TV shows, same music, same
magazines, same everything. As adults we couldn't be more different.

There's more to this picture than just stimulus
response/valuation/categorization.

~~~
bluishgreen
Just wanted to point out. You and your brother cannot possibly have had the
same stimuli. You were his elder brother (say) and he was younger to you.
People sometimes resist each others ideas. My friend took to piano lessons
because his brother hated it. Sibling rivalry factors ever so little
especially at the early stages of growth, and it tips everything later on.

~~~
rkts
Technically true, but sophist's experience is consistent with scientific
findings. Sibling studies have repeatedly shown that genes do account for a
significant amount of variation in behavior. While environment plays a role as
well, the "blank slate" theory is flat wrong.

For an overview of the evidence, I recommend _The Blank Slate_ by Steven
Pinker.

~~~
aspirant
As far as I can tell, no one here has posited the blank slate theory.

My point was that the conclusions we come to about the world around us are the
largest factor in determining where we end up on the spectrum between mediocre
and extraordinary.

If we really thought DNA was more important than our beliefs, we would spend
less time trying to correct and inform each other on Hacker News and more time
getting our genes sequenced.

~~~
rkts
> the conclusions we come to about the world around us are the largest factor

Also known as "the blank slate theory." Or mostly-blank, if you want to be
pedantic.

------
mynameishere
_Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge
in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more
sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives
of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the
correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X?_

The author seems to think one aspect of education is to propagandize a certain
political view, and that the success of the same would validate forcing
education on people. If it makes him feel better, then...yes, of course
reading such things will have an effect. Where did _you_ get your ideas from?
Obviously, a brain not so capable of absorbing information tends to stick to
its instincts. That's why not every human quality is curable.

I do wonder if the author realizes that many police officers come from a poor
background, probably much unlike his own. Maybe they don't need Steinbeck to
learn about the subject.

------
babul
Thanks crocus for posting this.

When I made the parent submission to HN ~2hr ago which contained this article,
I was going to post to the original source shortly but good to see you do it.
That is what it is all about, helping each other :)

(I deleted the submission as it linked to this article in reference rather
than the original, and did not follow the “Please submit the original source.
If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the
latter” in <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>)

Anyway, if you find the article interesting you may enjoy some of the other
ones I was reading at the time (also with good links) that were useful...

Which Universities Have No Chance at Entrepreneurship?:
[http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/which...](http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/which-
universities-have-no-chance-at-entrepreneurship/)

As Textbooks Go 'Custom,' Students Pay:
[http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121565135185141235.ht...](http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121565135185141235.html?mod=2_1567_leftbox)

The latest National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship newsletter shares a great new
paper by Block and Keller called “Where do Innovations Come from?:
[http://www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde/news/2008/enews-08-0...](http://www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde/news/2008/enews-08-07-14.htm)

------
micah63
Very insightful view into the mind of an essay marker. I've always loathed the
subjectiveness of English courses, that's why I took computer science :)

I agree with the author, not everyone is cut out for English classes, but I
think an alternative to these "trying help you an write essay" classes should
be some kind of "just read a book and enjoy it" class. It would be a start
anyway. In school, any hope of loving English literature is usually destroyed
by some kind of forced book dissection or compare and contrast garbage.

~~~
orib
The problem with dissecting a book is that -- just like dissecting an animal
-- at the end of the exercise, the subject of the dissection is dead.

While mulling over a good book and discussing it can be enjoyable, the attempt
to squeeze deep meaning out of something that the author put in by chance
simply kills the joy of a good book.

Besides, I find that often the books that tend to be chosen for literature
classes (at least in high school) tend towards empty, meaningless "classics"
about empty, meaningless people. Reading this sort of book really ends up
sucking the joy out of an English class.

~~~
davidw
My favorite 'English' class in high school was a journalism class, which was
centered around learning to write well and communicate something effectively,
with none of the BS about "hidden symbolism".

I proudly got a D on an English paper once, when the topic was "how does the
symbolism help us understand what the author is telling us", where I answered
that it didn't help in the slightest, and that, truth be told, if the author
wanted to tell me something, he ought to have come out and said it directly
instead of beating around the bush with "symbolism" that to me was as clear as
mud, and that in the process he would have saved us all a great deal of time
because his message wasn't really all that difficult to summarize in a
paragraph or two.

~~~
derefr
Do you know how zen koans work? They help you understand yourself. They don't
do it by telling you about yourself, but rather by tricking your mind into
paying attention to nothing other than yourself, even though you might not
consciously want to.

In the same way, symbolism is intended to trick the mind into grasping a
concept it consciously has problems with understanding, or perhaps outright
disagrees with. It's like grinding a vitamin into dogfood--the dog won't
notice, but it's getting healthier. You might be an ardant anti-___ist and
never want to hear a single word on ____ism, but a carefully crafted allegory
about ____ism might have you more of a believer than you knew.

~~~
davidw
The thing is, I'm not a dog, but a person, and I am actually quite willing to
listen to people I disagree with as long as they are polite and reasonable.

~~~
stcredzero
There's listening, then there's listening. When someone is really learning,
you are dealing with the edges of their model of the world and their conscious
perception. When you are really teaching, you are playing in this dangerous
interstice. Sometimes, the best way of teaching people is tricking them.
Sometimes, if you just tell them, they'll just rationalize what you have to
tell them away.

This is more apt to apply to classes in history than to computers, however.
Even then, there are popular misconceptions to deal with.

~~~
anewaccountname
Sounds like jesus:

Mark 4:10 When he was alone, those around him and the Twelve asked him about
the parables.

Luke 8:10 He said, 'The secret of the kingdom of God is granted to you.'

Mark 4:11-12 'But to those on the outside, everything comes in parables so
that they may look and look but never perceive, listen and listen but never
understand.'

------
daveambrose
"America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We
are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is
not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing
him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to
the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that
ideal crashes and burns."

We tend to never look at the underbelly of academia, particularly those who
are well served post-college in a world of newly minted bonus checks and
corporate perks. Discussion exists as to where the process went wrong, a
process that favors the inevitable elite and rich, but I have yet to see one
solid and compelling reason why education (on average) fails compared to our
European counterparts.

Excellent article.

~~~
hugh
Interestingly, most coal miners make a whole lot more money than, say, an
adjunct lecturer in English. There's nothing wrong with being a coal miner.

Arts degrees are a luxury for children of rich families, not a good way to get
ahead in life.

~~~
scott_s
Coal miners make more than an adjunct English lecturer because there is
something "wrong" with being a coal miner: it's a dangerous and exhausting
job.

------
DanielBMarkham
Perspicacious and lyrical. Nicely done.

Having said that, I found the author a bit whiny.

I can almost hear his supervisor at his "night job"

"Old Professor X seems like a nice enough sort," they'd say, whispering among
themselves, "but he'll never be ready for a job a at a major university. Sure
-- he might get published in some rag like The Atlantic, but serious work? Not
likely. He's just not cut out for it."

It's all in your perspective. You could take a guy with the same students and
the same success ratio and he could write a story about how rewarding it was
to help people at night school!

I think that's why I liked it so much: it was so artfully done that I couldn't
help but think that the same experiences could be written to drive home a
completely opposite conclusion.

~~~
stcredzero
You are right, but then one would have to focus on your success stories, which
might just a few percent of the students.

By the time people are college aged, they are pretty set in their ways.
Educational miracles where whole classes are swept up into success generally
happen with younger students.

------
aggieben
This really was a great submission. I also am an adjunct instructor (albeit at
a 4-year university), and I can attest to this guy's experiences.

The line that really lit me up was this:

    
    
      Our dialogue had turned oblique, as though we now 
      inhabited a Pinter play. 
    

This is golden. If anyone here has ever seen a Pinter play acted out, you know
exactly what this means, and it is totally spot on. It's when you totally have
begun to talk beyond each other, each sentence containing only enough of the
subject continuum to keep you in the conversation, but apart enough to make it
clear that nothing is being exchanged at all.

------
te_platt
It is interesting how the author is so cautious about saying "College is not
for everyone". Maybe we hear "It should be hard to get a college education -
especially if you are poor". I'm a big believer in getting all the education
you can. That is not the same thing as believing you should get as many
college degrees as possible. There comes a point when it is time to get out
and do something with your life. For some people that means a PhD. For others
a B.S. For some an apprenticeship with a skilled craftsman. Don't confuse a
degree with an education.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
_I have never let my schooling interfere with my education._

\-- Mark Twain

------
pragmatic
I taught basic computer classes (Microsoft Office) and the lower level
computer science courses as a similar institution.

This article is so spot on, it's a little eerie. Do all adjuncts feel the same
way?

~~~
aggieben
Yup. I just had a class in which 15 of 18 I caught cheating, with 6 of those
committing blatant acts of plagiarism.

When you try to talk to those kids, it's totally like a Pinter play.

I also completely empathize with the high-lows he described. Teaching is a
high, especially if you allow yourself to be deluded into thinking your
students are interested and learning; that makes the lows of having your
delusions shattered at grading time that much lower.

------
weiser
I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on
and probably does not know about. Maybe if we start from the premise that most
individuals have something they are really good at, we might be able to move
beyond the educational system of As and Fs and take advantage of people's
abilities to the fullest.

~~~
pi3832
>I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on
and probably does not know about.

Hah. That women may very well be average at a lot of things, and bad at the
rest.

This idea that "everyone has a special gift!" is just pixie-dust dreaming.
Most people simply aren't special, in any sense of the word.

Fight Club: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd
all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're
slowly learning that fact."

The sooner people learn that, the sooner they can get on with their lives of
mediocrity.

~~~
oz
Amen. It smacks of the 'Oprah-watching, feel-good-book-reading, "let's hold
hands and sing kumbaya"' bullshit that pervades society.

The fact is that people have differing levels of ability. but with everybody
screaming for 'equality,' everyone has to have some 'special gift.' I'm not
saying that some lives are worth more than others (although there's an
interesting philosophical argument against this), but the idea that 'you can
do anything you set your mind to' is false.

~~~
turkishrevenge
I agree, but I don't think it's an issue of equality in the sense that we're
all given trophies and told we're all winners. I think it stems from the fact
that most people totally abhor the concept of being thought of as common. Not
everyone can be a leader--hell, if that were the case nothing would get done.
Really though, there is nothing wrong with being an ordinary working citizen.
If you have a hobby, pursue it in your free time. Conversely, if you like
watching TV and jerking off, by all means, indulge in it.

------
Retric
At my old school they tested incoming freshmen and sent many of them to a pass
/ fail English 050 class. It seems odd that most schools don't have such
programs.

~~~
tphyahoo
Agree.

I, too, taught "literature" to people that could barely read. It sucked.

If you can't read, you should learn the mechanics of how to read before
dealing with things like "foreshadowing" "theme" "denouement."

Just, basic stuff.Otherwise, it's just ridiculous.

That's what these colleges should be doing, if they're taking student's money.
Not raping them in their vulnerability, naivete, and ability to get a loan.

~~~
hugh
_Just, basic stuff.Otherwise, it's just ridiculous. That's what these colleges
should be doing, if they're taking student's money._

No, that's what high schools should be doing.

No wait, actually, that's what primary schools should be doing.

~~~
s3graham
Unfortunately, at least where I live, it is almost entirely not allowed to
fail students in primary or early high school. So, graduating effectively
means "I didn't die before age N". And of course, it's a downward spiral: if
you can't multiply and divide, you sure as hell can't factor an equation, and
you're definitely not going to get anywhere trying to understand the graph of
a parabola.

~~~
DougBTX
In my old school, if you fail a year (average below 60%) you repeat that year,
if you fail three times, you're kicked out.

------
hermaphrobyte
Interesting. Entering college as a computer agnostic and hs dropout in the
late 80's I was dismayed by my curriculum and it's focus on word processing,
dos, floppy disks, etc.. It seemed that the computer medium was dross and
doldrum.

Previously, in HS, I was terribly bored with most subject matter presentation
and irritated by authority in general.

I had been an avid reader since 5 or 6 and had read science fiction/fantasy
and classic literature during these formative years. I did not do well in the
college environment. I dropped all my classes.

Years later, I returned to college: emphasis had once again turned to the
printed word, symbolism, and other recognizable concepts rather than any
ability to use a computer. 4.0 average for two semesters was the result.

At the third semester I found myself in honors courses which irritated me with
opinions I was too immature to discard gracefully and once again dropped out.

Provided as counterpoint to this article.

------
adrianwaj
The author repeats themselves:

Page 2 top:

"I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of
myself for having written a college paper."

Page 2 middle:

"I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of
myself for having written a college paper."

~~~
neodude
Perhaps he repeated himself for effect? I certainly found the repetition
effective.

------
Ardit20
It is utterly interesting how many people do not even bother nor desire to
simply think for thoughts sake. I am starting to wonder whether people who
value knowledge for its own sake is a counter evolution to the majority. A bit
like right-handed people with left-handed people. The left-handed people are a
minority hence have some advantages when say playing sports as most people are
used to playing against other right handed people.

Maybe same can be said for those people who value knowledge for its own sake
as most people (the majority) do not, hence the minority who does has an
inherent maybe gentical advantage.

