

Our Superficial Scholars - kijinbear
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104554.html

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adrianparsons
The article rings true to me. In college I met a lot of eager kids who worked
hard and were good at... being students. They executed assignments diligently
and knew how to get straight A's.

However, many of these kids lacked basic critical thinking skills. They didn't
read the news or have much of an idea of what was happening in the world
around them. They largely did what they were told and didn't have the guts to
question professors.

I'll share an anecdote:

At the very first meeting of a statistics course, we were informed that our
assigned professor was sick and a new professor would have to fill in. A kid
sitting next to me said, "I already looked him up - he gives 60% A's. The last
guy gave 65% A's." I asked the kid if the new professor was a good instructor.
He gave me a dumbfounded look and repeated, "He gives 60% A's."

------
zachallaun
I believe a different question should be asked.

Instead of: "Do universities fail to educate students on the underlying
importance of the problems they are training to solve?"

We should question: "Is our system of education more than just a game?"

My thesis is basically thus: While the issue presented in the article reflects
accurately on many students, the root is not grounded in university education,
but in our system of education as a whole.

HNer adrianparsons notes (1) that many of his former classmates were excellent
at being students, but their interest was not in their learning, but rather in
passing the classes. Where, then, did this way of thinking originate? Not in
universities, as the author suggests, but much earlier. Students are trained
from a young age to participate in the game that is schooling; you are foisted
into generic classes and made to take surface-level standardized tests
(measuring nothing but the rote memorization seemly criticized by the author).
Very rarely are you taught by a Professor in elementary, middle, or high
school. Rather, "education professionals" prepare you for what is to come
later. Just as often as not these teachers are uninterested in your learning
(2), simply seeking a paycheck. Both teacher and pupil are playing the same
game, one in which neither benefits from going above and beyond. Is it any
small wonder that students enter college as excellent students, but poor
learned citizens?

The article is far too narrow; The problem, much more broad. It's not the
universities failing students, but the institutions that placed them there.
We're not going to college intellectually and socially curious, only to have
that squashed out of us; We're going to college expecting more of the same.

(1) <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2133712>

(2) This is not to say that great primary education teachers do not exist. I
was lucky to have been influenced by a number of excellent teachers at a young
age, though in hindsight I find that they were far and few between.

*Disclaimer: I am a first-year student at American University, and clearly hold a grudge to a system that, I believe, has wasted so much of my time.

------
niels_olson
When I was on staff at the US Naval academy, I had the interesting experience
of interacting with the bottom 2% and top 2%. There's a line in the US Code
that says we have to identify midshipmen who lack the aptitude for
commissioned service. Like porn, it's hard to define, but you know it when you
see it.

So the job also was in charge of identifying the best of the best and we had
all sorts of metrics to assess the whole spectrum of midshipmen.

Anyway, so I got to work with a lot of the Rhodes, Fitzgerald, etc scholars.
And I was doing my med school pre-reqs, so I sat next to several of them in
class. During the summers they'd intern for me. I've had a bizare number of
academic elite as my direct reports. Then, in med school, I interviewed
applicants who had made it to the interview process, who are from the same end
of the gene pool.

Before all of this exposure, interviewing the best of the best, I had been a
division officer on a Navy frigate, and then an air craft carrier. Those jobs
had some real leadership responsibility. Literally, "go this way, not that
way", "do this, not that", "Yes, I said don't shoot" leadership. So, that
added a different flavor to the experience of interviewing these kids.
Frankly, my reaction was about like the author's: dismay. Despair. Disbelief.

Conversely, I knew a few of the Rhodes kids when I was a midshipman too. We
weren't surprised when they got the nod.

Now, what I was surprised about was how they got the applications. At least at
Canoe U. They'd set up a booth. In the Poli Sci hall. Which was further from
the dorm than all the science and engineering halls. Basically, if you weren't
a Poli Sci major (and there were plenty), some one had to, still has to,
advise you to stop by.

I thought that was an interesting twist in the dynamic.

------
kenjackson
I think what the author is looking for and what most top tier students are
shooting for are two different things. She's looking for someone who is good
at, what my uncle called, dinner conversation. Any dinner topic my uncle could
talk for hours on. He had a reasonably well thought out position on anything
one was likely to ask at the dinner table.

But most people who excel in college are exceling at going deep on something.
Being the world's foremost expert at something. Dinner conversation ability is
probably largely unrelated to this. In fact it might be inversely related as I
could imagine that many who want to go deep, view the dinner conversation as
pointless -- people's minds are made up before they come to the dinner table,
and don't change.

If they're really looking for people who can answer those questions, don't
look for traditional scholars, look at debaters.

~~~
ajays
"But most people who excel in college are exceling at going deep on something.
"

I disagree. Undergraduate education is not about becoming the "world's expert
at something". That's for grad school and a doctorate. Undergraduate education
should be well-rounded with a broad exposure to many different areas. Then, if
the student chooses s/he can specialize and become the "world's expert" at
something they came across as an undergrad.

~~~
kenjackson
For most undergrads, you're right (and note, I'm not saying that this is how
undergrad should or shouldn't be). But the ones that are typically celebrated
are those that are doing graduate/professor level research (or public service)
as undergrads, and exceling. It's the Barton Reids and Wendy Kopps of the
world. Those are the people that college professors heap praise on and
recommend for prestigious fellowships.

Someone who is all-around good, but doesn't go deep, is likely to go
unrecognized at the Rhodes-level. You must excel at something for your
department or professor to take notice.

There's an old saying about Harvard... Harvard doesn't want well-rounded
students. It wants a well-rounded student body. That is it doesn't want a
bunch of good students. It wants the best math student, the best physics
student, the best chess player, the best violinist, the programming prodigy,
etc...

My point is that we've created a system where this is the metric. And when
this is, you can't be surprised that when you try to take the cream of the
crop, using this metric you may not get the results you expect.

Like I said, if she picked members of the top debate teams I think she'd be
very _impressed_ that they have answers for all those questions.

------
hugh3
Oddly enough I've always thought that one of the big problems with the US
university system is that it's _too_ broad.

When I went to university in Australia I studied four subjects in my first
year (Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Computer Science), two subjects (Physics and
Chemistry) in my second year, two subjects in my third year, and only physics
in my fourth year. On the other hand, I get the impression that the average
American university student wastes at least a third of his time doing random-
ass subjects with no real relevance to his major, right?

In my opinion, "broad education" is what you should be getting in high school.

~~~
stevenbedrick
I disagree. My undergraduate degree was in biology, but I earned it from a
liberal arts college. What did that mean? It meant that I took an awful lot of
biology classes, but I was also forced[1] to take a lot of classes outside of
the science building. The college's degree requirements specified that you had
to take a certain number of credits from such-and-such department, a certain
number from so-and-so, and so on, no matter what your major happened to be. As
a science major, it was sometimes very challenging to fit all the requirements
in, but I'm really glad I did. Having a broad base of knowledge outside one's
speciality is extremely liberating personally, and it can be professionally
empowering, as well.

It's easy, as a scientist, to lose perspective about what we do- both in terms
of "why are we doing this at all" to "why do we do this in this specific way."
A good liberal arts education helps you a) recognize situations in which those
sorts of questions are relevant, and b) can help you develop a useful set
intellectual tools for answering those questions. Also, a lot of the biology I
learned is already obsolete, ten years later; while learning it was certainly
worthwhile, it is of relatively little practical value to me today (and not
just because I didn't end up going into biology).

Also, having to take some humanities classes helped me become a better writer,
and also helped me learn how to effectively discuss my work and why it is
important. Those have proved to be _extremely_ useful skills in life, both in
academia as well as in the "real world".

Now, I would also argue that, had I been a humanities major of some sort,
taking some hard-core science classes would have been quite beneficial- it
would have taught me about a different way to engage with and think about
reality, which can only be beneficial to one's ability to think about
literature, or music, or whatever.

Oh, BTW- in addition to biology classes, I took a fair number of CS classes
(almost enough for a minor), and I feel like my programming abilities over the
years have definitely benefited from a liberal arts background. Furthermore,
when I was doing hiring at my pre-grad-school job, I found that the best
candidates weren't necessarily the ones with impeccable CS credentials. Often,
the ones that worked out best in the end were often the ones that had broader
academic horizons. They tended to have an easier time dealing with ambiguous
situations and instructions, and were better able to "dive in" and "JFDI" when
confronted with new and unfamiliar codebases, technologies, or projects.
That's not to say that CS classes weren't important, or anything like that-
just that there's a synergistic effect between good CS and the humanities.

[1]: "Forced" isn't quite the right word, here, since getting a broad
education was the whole reason I chose a liberal arts school. "Required,"
maybe?

~~~
hugh3
I dunno. Personally I found that I could never enjoy things like literature
and history until they _stopped_ being educational requirements.

------
SirFaux
If you want to see more students who are broadly informed, create an
incentive. Don't expect people to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a
broad university education that will land them a mediocre, 9-to-5 $10 an hour
job.

------
jacques_chester
My experience of seeing people selected for the Rhodes scholarship in
Australia was that there were two major criteria for selection:

1\. You attend Sydney University.

2\. You live in a residential college at Sydney University.

Folks outside those circles found it much harder to be selected. To be sure,
those who were selected were exceptional scholars, sportspersons and active in
University life. But such exceptional people exist all over Australia, not
just in one subset of one prestigious, well-connected university.

~~~
bane
There is, perhaps, a larger question...There appears to be a large mismatch
between public perception of the weight of certain academic badges, and the
actual substance of the badge.

In your example, the Rhodes selection committee selects only people from a
particular elite slice of Australian society, yet it may have nothing at all
to do with their actual intellectual qualifications, "such exceptional people
exist all over Australia".

Yet the public perception is that a Rhodes scholar is somebody who is not only
extremely bright, but the top of the tippy top of bright people. They are the
medium from which light itself emanates.

You can find this kind of mismatch elsewhere when it comes to similar
comparisons of actual intelligence, vs. perceived intelligence a particular
badge bestows on a person. "I graduated from Harvard" "I went to Oxford", "The
best school is Seoul University" etc. Appears to have only slightly more
substance to a person's intelligence and worth than the brand of socks they
are wearing. Yet the public will grant significant weight to these things.

Articles like this work to slowly peck away at this often faulty public
perception. It's not that Rhodes Scholars, or graduates of top schools aren't
smart -- just that similarly smart people exist elsewhere. It's only a matter
of time before "Rhodes Scholar" means only slightly more than "Dean's List" in
terms of perception.

I'm afraid more and more that badges that _should_ signify significant
intellectual achievement are becoming more and more worthless. In order to
improve the value of these badges, it behooves the selection committees to
cast a wider net and find people from many other places who fit their
requirements...doing the hard word of actually finding people than the lazy
work of fishing in only well known ponds.

~~~
jacques_chester
Here's where I contradict myself.

Rhodes Scholarships are valuable because they are very rare. According to
Wikipedia, the USA got 32 places in 2006, Australia got 9.

But given that in a given year, tens of thousands of Australian students could
apply in the first instance (having good scores, plays a sport, involved in
some other activity). At a statistical level, the distinction between the top
100, the top 50, and the top 10, is going to be nigh on invisible.

So in a sense it is just as reasonable to select students from the University
of Sydney (prestigious) as from the University of Western Sydney (considered
to be a dump).

It's just that Sydney University happens to be wired into the Sydney
establishment, especially through its residential colleges. And the Sydney
establishment is the dominant fraction of the Australian establishment. And
the Australian establishment provides the selection committee for the Rhodes
scholarships.

Being at Sydney means that you have an opportunity to meet some of the
selectors, and to get to know them, in advance. That's more or less how our
Rhodes Scholar opposition leader, Tony Abbott, got a leg up.

~~~
hugh3
_So in a sense it is just as reasonable to select students from the University
of Sydney (prestigious) as from the University of Western Sydney (considered
to be a dump)._

But there's also self-selection factors.

1\. The best students are far more likely to go to Sydney than UWS, because as
you mentioned, UWS is a bit of a dump. Of course in fairness UNSW is pretty
good, but...

2\. The sort of people who are interested in Rhodes Scholarships are exactly
the sort of people who are likely to choose Sydney over UNSW. Why? Because
Rhodes Scholars are the sort of people who think Oxford is the awesomest place
on Earth, and Sydney is basically Oxford Lite.

(Declaration of bias: I went to Sydney.)

~~~
jacques_chester
Sure, you might select Sydney over UWS. But students from other Group of 8
universities are pretty bright self-selectors too. Where are the equal number
of Rhodes scholars from the Universities of Queensland, Melbourne, Western
Australia, New South Wales and Adelaide, the ANU, and Monash?

(I went to Sydney too, for 2 years, before depression wrecked my life. Spent 1
year at St Andrews college.)

~~~
hugh3
Melbourne I'd expect, the others not so much due to the self-selection factors
I mentioned ("If you like Oxford's original 11th century gothic architecture
you'll love our 19th century copies of Oxford's 11th century gothic
architecture!). If there's significantly more from Sydney than Melbourne then,
yes, I'd say something is screwy.

~~~
jacques_chester
I got curious and decided to test my assertion.

Taking this list as an input:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Australian_Rhodes_scho...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Australian_Rhodes_scholars)

70 entries in total. I excluded 4 entries where the original university is
unknown, and 3 where the person did not attend university in Australia,
leaving a sample of 63 scholars.

Of the remainders:

Sydney: 13

Melbourne: 17

Adelaide: 15

Queensland: 5

UWA: 8

Tasmania: 5

While this is not a representative sample (it depends on Wikipedian
"notability"), it may suggest that I am full of shite.

~~~
hugh3
Well congrats, it takes a special kind of effort to go to that much trouble to
disprove yourself.

I'm interested in the complete lack of UNSW and Monash. I think it supports my
idea that if you're the kind of person who really wants a Rhodes Scholarship
so you can go to Oxford then you're the kind of person who'll choose the ivy-
covered alternative over the just-as-good 20th century one.

~~~
jacques_chester
Well it's more embarrassing when someone does it to you. And I have a suitably
fragile and inflated ego, which is why I picked Sydney out of the offers I
received way back in the day.

------
chancho
Hmm, that's kind of strange. There's so many important socio-political
dilemmas for young people to grapple with these days, why would the author
fault them for not being ambivalent toward nukes and armed conflict? Shouldn't
young people be forgiven for holding the unequivocal yet naive belief that we
shouldn't kill each other, or even threaten to? I mean, if they're
equivocating on nukes when they're a fresh-faced 22, what will they be
equivocating on when they're a grizzled 55 and at the reins of some real
power?

 _get's to bottom of article, reads that author represented NM in the
house...back up to the byline..._

Fucking Heather Wilson. Should have known...

~~~
dkarl
Here's what the article said: _A student who started a chapter of Global Zero
at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great
powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or
less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral._

Since when does thought equal equivocation? Thoughtless action is
irresponsible no matter what motivates it. The author also faulted a student
who signed up to kill for the government without wondering whether there was
anything worth killing for.

The only thing I disagree with in the article is the one-sided concentration
on the students who are just eager to do what they're told. What about the
ones who are more thoughtful? Who are they, where do they come from, and why
are they different from their Ritalin-addled robot achiever peers?

~~~
KC8ZKF
She offers no evidence that the student hasn't thought long and hard about
nuclear weapons. I wonder if she reached that conclusion because he disagrees
with her. As if saying "If he supports Global Zero then he couldn't have
considered these things."

~~~
hugh3
I assume this is based on a real student whom she interviewed, and that he was
unable to satisfactorily justify his belief system when challenged on it.

This kind of thing doesn't surprise me -- the students with the most strongly
held political opinions are often those who have thought about the issues the
least.

~~~
jacques_chester
That's because when we talk about "strongly held beliefs" we're talking about
an _emotional_ and not _rational_ attachment to the idea. Emotionally-held
ideas are not examined as they are tied up in self-image.

