Reflections on so-called "elite education"

Deresiewicz, W. (2008). "The Disadvantage of an Elite Education". The American Scholar, Summer 2008, 77/3, pp. 20-31.
The author was English teacher at Yale (and thus may have some provocatively exaggerated points, but the core isn't that bad, I'd say:-)

"The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from" (i.e. you cannot relate to ordinary ppl anymore, the claim goes).

"The second disadvantage, implicit in what I've been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth ... all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE." (and, one ought to say, sometimes a false sense of self-esteem...).

on elite uni's and their exlcusivity-drive, reinforcing the self-perception of the "best and the brightest": " There's no point in excluding people unless they know that they've been excluded" (otherwise there is no "exclusive society:-)

"The elite like to think of themselvesas belonging to a meritocracy, but that's true only up to a point. Getting through the gate [of the school, i.e. getting admitted] is very difficult, but once you're in, there is almost nothing you can do to get kicked out" [yeah, maybe, but the fear persist...; on the other hand, there are parallels to management establishment where "eine Hand waescht die andere", i.e. mutual protection of who's "in the club".]

The perception of being 'entitled" to money, fame, power...

"... students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them. They've been driven their whole lives by a fear of failure ... "
[Good point, although the author is here much too narrow and simple-minded. I think the phenomenon goes much deeper...]

and what the guy thinks of the true nature and purpose of an (elite) school:
"their education as part of a larger intellectual journey, have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul ... feel like freaks ... searchers."
[a bit less metaphoric, please - ok, he is English teacher...-, but this is quite true, at least in my eyes. It's the perennial quest, the thirst to know and experience more...]

"Being an intellectual means thinking your way toward a vision of the good society and then trying to realize tht vision by speaking truth to power. It means going into spiritual exile...."
[ok, cool. Sadly, instead of pondering the financial meltdown and the political consequences, all we do is solving problem sets and embracing the Neyman-Pearson Theorem... (I just come from trying to read the stats book...)]

issue needs continuous treatment...

Financial Crisis and its ramifications...

In "Blue & Gray", the biweekly official Georgetown gazette for faculty and staff (there is btw also "the Hoya", published by the students), of Nov 17th, 2008, there was a brief article about Georgetown's endowment.
Apparently, the fund's volume dropped below 1bn $. It lost 9.5% of its value in Q3 2008 and overall 12.5% in 2008YTD.
Tough times ... however, the author of the article points out that Morgan Stanley's MSCI (global equity index) lost 26 (same time frame may mean 2008YTD, I guess). Anyhow, compared to Yale's or Harvard's endowment, Georgetown's is pretty small....

Another hot issue this week was (and still is) the possible 25bn $ loan for Detroit's Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler). However, it is highly unclear whether there will be money, how much, for which purposes and with which strings/conditions attached. There is no clarity whatsoever about the automakers' current financial health: will the go bankrupt withouth the federal money injection? If so, when (end of the year, in some months, never)?
Even if the money would help (how to spend it most efficiently, given the complexities and sizes of those firms?), is there enough oversight to avoid just preserving outdated plants/management styles/ill-fated worker benefit programs etc.?
It seems that noone wants a breakdown of the US auto industry, but can a gov't bailout help? on the other hand, if there is no help, what if all three go bust and some 4-5m jobs are lost in the aftermath?

We might assume that Congress, after playing hardball tactics to get more facts and clearer conditions on the package, finally grants money for the carmakers. Let's hope that it really helps to change the industry. The US auto industry urgently need a DRASTIC change (with or without public money), so let's just hope pouring money over it won't help them avoid changes and make them look forward (energy challenge, fuel efficiency, environmental standards, design revolution, sizes & tastes) and not backward (outrageous health care and pension packages).

Mitt Romney is apparently an outspoken critic (cf. "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt", NY Times, Wednesday, November 19, 2008, page A31): "with it [governmetn money], the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market share, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

On the other hand: how can you explain in simple terms why to bail out a financial system with 700bn, while being stingy about 25bn for cars and 4m jobs? Most people possibly don't easily understand stability and systemic issues and rather care more about their job. In any case, policymakers face a huge challenge to restore confidence: in the system, in the individual's power to keep on fighting for him/herself, in America, and, in politics.

Tue, November 4th, 2008: Being Election Officer

A student as election officer…
Tuesday 4.11.08: I went to bed at 3.30am (doing readings for courses and reading the guide for election officers). I got up at 4.10am, cooked eggs and ham to eat breakfast with bread and cooked spaghetti (to take with me as lunch). After taking a shower I walked two blocks to be on time at 5am at the Arlington Arts Center (my polling place). Overall, about 18 election officer were assigned to work in this precinct. At 5am, we built up the voting room, i.e. set up the desks, chairs, voting machines, leaflets, marked queuing lines on the floor etc. The actual voting room was approx. 5 x 10 meters in its size. When the first voter came in, he went to the desk for with the three poll books (3 electronic ones) to check-in as voter (i.e. the ID, name/address is checked and compared to the registration rolls on the poll books). If a voter was correctly registered, he got a yellow voter permit for the day to vote on all issues. Other colors restricted special voters to the federal elections or the presidential elections only.
Then a voter would proceed to the second desk was for deciding whether to vote by paper ballot or by machine. Each voter could opt for either one. If the choice was voting by machine, voters kept their yellow (or other colored ) permit and went on to stand in line for the machines (we had four, i.e. WINvote machines).
If opted for paper ballot, the two election officers at the desk took the yellow card and handed out the paper ballot (Arlington County ballot, contained: election of president/VP, one Senator, one House Rep (8th district), one member for the county board and two persons for the local school board as well as five ballot issues (four about whether to issue bonds for some purposes (for the metro, utilities, community infrastructure and public schools) and one about whether to activate a Redevelopment and Housing Authority in Arlington (was rejected clearly).
The voters then filled out the paper ballots at a desk (four seats only, with cardboard shields on the side, so no one could look on their ballots), and put it through the scanner, next to an election officer, called Accuvote which optically counted the vote.
The Winvote machines were touch screen-based systems (strangely, the Virginia state legislature apparently decided in 2007 against the purchase of more touch-screen or similar voting machines, so the electoral Board decided to opt for optical scanners (rental!!) in order to make sure to have enough capacity on election day).
Voting on the Winvote machines was straightforward: in order to re-activate (after a voter has posted his votes and finished the process), each time an election officer had to take the next person in line and put in his card to activate the system for the voter to start casting his votes (i.e. to prevent multiple/abusive use). Besides one brief incident (apparently related to power supply) the machines worked fine.

The precinct (Monroe, # 49) has about 1600 registered voters, of which about 900 or so voted. Both Winvote and Accuvote machines (overall five devices have been at our place) have an individual tally which we printed out three times after the closure of the polls at 7pm. Then the tallies have been checked, added together etc. If I recall correctly, Obama won by a sizeable margin (about 600 votes against McCain’s some 260).

From 6am onwards, I worked first at the Winvote, welcoming voters and advising them how to operate, and handed out stickers (“I voted in Arlington”) until about 10am, when the major wave of voters was over. Then I voted by myself on the Winvote and subsequently took a seat at the table with the paper ballots (worked (and more talked there between 10-1 and 5-6pm) and in between sitting around and waiting, eating, trying to learn (while falling asleep several times) Micro (last midterm was Micro, on Nov 7th). I had some good conversations with fellow election officers. One had Iranian roots and worked as a director in a law firm, another was originally from Dakota and worked for the FDIC. I could share some thoughts about the Swiss system (how they vote over there, the referenda of Nov 30 in Switzerland etc.) A Japanese-American woman invited me to a Japanese-US panel on education and IT later on. Particularly glad I was when one of my fellow roommates came at about 4pm to cast his vote and take this picture.

Stunning was that most of the voters came early in the morning, so that after 10am not many people came (between 1 and 4pm was almost nobody voting). The first people started to build a line in front of the polling place at 5.30am, so between 6 and 9am we all have been pretty busy and the place was crowded.

Freedom

The land of the free has elections next Tuesday. What about the state and quality of freedom in this country? Given its huge challenges and the many tasks that the next president face may make us think about how freedom will be affected. Some helpful inspiration:

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul." [Moshe Dayan]


"Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves." [Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888]

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." [Adlai Stevenson, speech, Detroit, 1952]

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." [Abraham Lincoln]

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" [Benjamin Franklin]

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." [Goethe]

"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." [Rosa Luxemburg]



http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_freedom.html

Indulgence....

Indulgence is when ...

... you can read again a newspaper after having had to deal only with econ/math/equations for weeks to study for midterm exams
... dedicate your time again to do some politics (e.g. vote early in the US for the presidential, House and Senate elections as well as some local elections and local ballot issues; e.g. Swiss politics, as Swiss voters face 5 federal referendum issues on Nov. 30th, as well as Cantonal government elections in Aargau)
... finding time to dive again into some political philosophy (and being reminded how sad it is that no party in the USA reflect this brand of thinking, i.e. cf. e.g.
F.A. von Hayek, "Why I am not a Conservative"
http://www.fahayek.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=53

and, of course: indulgence is when a friend spontaneously invites you to original Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup lunch at a Pho75 restaurant (cheap, simple, but great food) in Falls Church.
The beef briskets gets cooked in the hot soup (a bouillon) whith bean sprouts, rice noodles, Thai basil and some other herbs. Dunk the beef slices into the pepper/chilli sauce and enjoy!
Afterwards feel even more comfortable by sipping iced Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk .. hmmmm.

Sound bites and punch lines

Ceci n'est pas une gaffe...

If you watched this night's VP debate (ahem, was it really a debate?), you may understand what a gaffe may be. If it is successful, it may be called sound bite, particularly when A delivers it to score points relative to its counterpart B (which may then be called a 'punch'line:-).

Maybe also thoughtful, some funny comments, given by Thomas L. Friedman (NY Times, Wed, Oct 1, 2008, page A31) - hopefully, this is enough of citation), about what for possibly most seem more of a concern than talks on issues which are not really addressing the questions in so-debates.

"I've always believed that America's government was a unique political system - one designed by geniuses so that it could be run by idiots. I was wrong."

We have House members, many of them whom I suspect can't balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don't understand, swamped them with phone calls. I appreciate the popular anger against Wall Street, but you can't deal with this crisis this way. "
[the House rejected the bill on Monda, Sept 29, the Senate passed it on Wed, Oct 1]

"We're all connected. As others have pointed out, you can't save Main Street and punish Wall Street anymore than you can be in row boadt with someone you hate and think that the leak in the bottom of the boat at his end is not going to sink you, too. The world is really flat. We're all connected. 'Decoupling' is pure fantasy."
[didn't he write a book with the 'flat'-title...?:-)]

"I always said to myself: Our government is so broken that it can only work in response to a huge crisis. But now we've had a huge crisis, and the system still doesn't seem to work. Our leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have gotten so out of practice of working together that even in the face of this system-threatening meltdown they could not agree on a rescue package, as if they lived on Mars and were just visiting us for the week, with no stake in the outcome.
The story cannot end here. If it does, assume the fetal position."

How is America?

When you live for some period of time abroad, you wonder how to depict the more and less subtle differences. Sometimes you do not even recognize them, sometimes you do not know how to conceptualize them.
Here is one, I (still) cannot make sense of.

To my experience, it seems that stairs are usually a representative part of a building, and for this reason it may seem legitimized to put them on a crucial spot in the building.
Even more, security, safety and emergency concerns may impose additional restrictions on how to design a building and its stairs. no wonder, that soccer stadiums tend to have many many gates, in order to fill/empty the structure quickly (quess what would happen in panic, when you seem not to be able to move out quickly? Don't tread on me...). And so it comes that you see not only audience, but many gaps due to gates and stairways which cut across the rows of seats.

But let's look at a more common type of stairs, in buildings of every day use. We might expect huge stairs in huge buildings, for huge crowds and to make a huge impression on the visitor. this may be valid for Gaston/Healy Hall on the Georgetown Campus (likewise for European palaces, but similarly - scale adjusted - also for single households).
But - where are the stairs in the Walsh School Building? Where are the stairs in the ICC building or in the Lauinger library? They are not representative, not impressive, but closed up, away from the main hall/entrance room/atrium. As if the stairs are not a part of the building, but something to hide (and indeed, their walls are sometimes not even painted). And those stairs are small, maybe not even 1.5m (or 6 yards?) wide...
WHY????
Given that those few elevators are slow, old and small, they do not tend to provide enough capacity for the loads of students, faculty and others to get through the structure.
Is there any good reason for this? Cutting costs? Space constraints? Static challenges?? Or just different conceptions of how (thought of) modern buildings should look like?

If you have a powerful explanation, let me know.