
The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/opinion/16davis.html?ref=homepage&src=me&pagewanted=all
======
JanezStupar
This kind of attitude of company towards employees is seldom seen nowadays,
yes I'm sure that it was seldom or even unique in those days. But one would
expect that this kind of behavior would be more common nowadays.

It's one of those intangible things that "feel" right but are hard to prove
(especially on quarterly basis).

I firmly believe that just as great generals, great businessmen also need to
be people with broad interests.

A (great) leader needs to be firstly a philosopher, scholar, businessman,
humanist,... and lastly a great warrior - I believe it was somewhere along
these lines the way Sun Tzu described qualities of a great general.

~~~
jbooth
Bell shut the program down.

An institution only needs a handful of actual leaders. But it needs thousands
of middle managers. This program undermines that goal, so they shut it down.

/me gets depressed and goes off to read Brave New World again.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Police departments tend to disqualify people who are too smart.

------
jakarta
Here is an article from 1955 that details more about what they read:

<http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,861231,00.html>

------
daniel-cussen
"We need fewer drifting straws on the stream of American business, and more
discontented thinkers who listen thoughtfully to both sides of our national
debates."

Both sides? How narrow-minded.

