Posted on 02/03/2010 3:34:22 AM PST by Scanian
"One man's meat is another man's poison," as the saying goes. Let me explain a most striking case in point. Last year at about this time, David Brooks of the New York Times anticipated an enormous intellectual dividend for our country. After cataloguing the Obama administration's numerous Ivy League J.D.s and Ph.D.s, and with no mention of their real-world experience, he went on to write:
"Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists."
While Mr. Brooks was pleased to finally see intellectual meat on the Washington bone, many others were dismayed to see this Ivory Tower culture reaching critical mass in our government. Brooks's comment was an instance of arrogance acknowledging itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Probably so. And they are half as smart as the average Republican voter.
So is Brooks.
I don't know how to break this to you, but that's not meat; it's blubber.
I have a daughter who is a senior in high school. She's her class valedictorian and has the highest GPA in her school's history. Lest you think she's a nerd, she's also captain of her school's cheerleading team and is president of several school groups -- one of which she founded. She has represented her school in a beauty pageant. Fortunately, due to my influence, she's very conservative.
She has the potential to be accepted to the best universities in America. In fact,she's already been accepted by Georgetown's School of Foreign Service for 2010/2011. She wants to be an international law attorney, go into politics and eventually be POTUS (I kid you not).
She has applied to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth and Duke. There's a very good chance that she'll be accepted by most, if not all, of the schools to which she has applied.
Now, I know that the Ivy's are bastions of liberalism. But they are also potential tickets to the inner circle.
So, assuming my daughter is accepted by all the schools to which she has applied, where do you think she should go to maximize her chance for a career in politics. She really likes Georgetown, but the fact that it's not an Ivy seems to bother her.
I would be very interested in hearing from Freepers who have actual direct experience with Georgetown, Duke or the Ivys.
Did he just call the Obambi brain trust meat heads or bone heads?
First, the Ivy admission committees are so concerned with ‘diversity’ and ‘unique’ candidates that they admit a significant number of people each year who don't have exemplary academic credentials. It's most definitely not the strict GPA/SAT criterion that one might expect.
Second, many of the brightest and most creative students are late bloomers, for a variety of reasons. These students are generally not a significant component of the Ivy student body. Instead, the Ivy universities tend to recruit from very predictable backgrounds (e.g. recruiting from expensive prep schools) that ensure homogeneity of thought and literally ensure less creativity than a student body chosen with more enlightened criteria.
Third, there are few surer ways to diminish quality than to become ‘self convinced’. The Ivy universities generally pay faculty more poorly than other universities, counting on the ‘stature’ component as sufficient compensation. So, the entire system is set up to be self-congratulatory, and the buy-in to the ‘we're special’ delusion runs deep at the Ivy universities.
Objectivity is crucial in all of this, which is why I would strongly advocate ranking colleges and universities on the basis of standardized testing given to each graduating class. How many people would be willing to pay for an Ivy education if they saw on paper that their state university turned out students who fared better on these tests?
Clearly there are very bright people at Ivy schools, in the faculty and student body, but the same is true of other schools as well. To automatically label someone as ‘superior’ because they attended an Ivy is just ridiculous, and should never be a criterion for choosing who to vote for.
Given the mess that these Ivy League clowns have made an Ivy League education should be an immediate disqualification for holding public office from now on.....
I couldn’t agree more and I graduated from one of them. I hate the Ivy League with a passion. Every single stinkin’ institution.
The first and most comprehensive portion of the test should be a US History vs. the history of the rest of the world in a comparison/contrast essay. No multiple guess questions allowed. Any essay less than 25,000 words or any essay that portrays Marxist ideology as superior to Freedom and Liberty should be immediately excluded. Furthermore, any graduate that tries to opine on the virtues of Marxest ideology over Freedom and Liberty should be stripped of their degree and sent back to an inner city elementary school in Detroit to clean toilets with a toothbrush for a period of not less than four years......
There is a very informative college guide put out by the conservative group ISI. Check out:
http://www.collegeguide.org/
Check out Georgetown’s review in ISI’s book.The review will mention the best conservative classes to take at Georgetown University. I’ve read sections of the book at Border’s. It is a unique college guide and even has a chapter on making the most of core curriculum electives.
I’d take one Sarah Palin from the University of Idaho over any dozen over-educated Ivy League idiots any day of the week...
“where do you think she should go to maximize her chance for a career in politics. She really likes Georgetown, but the fact that it’s not an Ivy seems to bother her.”
If she really wants to go into international law, she should be thinking about places like Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy or Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. But that’s for graduate work and the reality is that any of the schools on your list would give her high odds of being accepted at such institutions.
Given her interests, she should seriously consider majoring in public policy, where she’ll get some basics in analytical tools routinely used in making policy decisions (e.g., basic microeconomics, decision theory, basic statistics) as well as courses that educate her on the politics of the policy process, leadership, ethics & public policy etc. Public policy is the second largest major at Duke in part because of its rigor but also because it is the only major with an internship requirement: the Sanford School of Public Policy has an excellent track record in placing interns in DC or wherever else in the country students might wish to go. Regardless of where she goes, she should consider trying to be an intern at American Enterprise Institute sometime during her undergraduate years or even post-graduation.
On a related point, DukeEngage provides every undergraduate the opportunity to do service learning literally anywhere in the world—a unique opportunity to channel her youthful energy into something she’s passionate about. Duke also has a new Global Health Institute that may be relevant to her international interests etc. While it may not be an Ivy, it’s a top-10 school whose basketball team most assuredly is better than any she’ll see in the Ivys... If she’s even considering Georgetown, then I think Duke merits a very serious look as well.
My opinion, you should spend some time thinking about getting her out of the USA for a little while in order to have a better perspective. May come in quite handy.
I’ll nominate you for University President. Actually, the fact that there is such ‘group think’ coming out of universities is evidence in itself that the goal of ‘learning to think objectively for oneself’ is not being met.
Instead of paying to sustain the Old Progressives Clubs (i.e., Ivy League) and becoming a widget in some NGO? Or a FedGov Employee?
You realize, of course, that PhD's are fighting to get GS-9 slots in the fedgov, don't you? They have nice pads (not iPads - ha!) in DC because daddy helps foot the bill, otherwise they'd live in some dorm-like highrise 2.5 hours away from the epitcenter of federal employment, DC.
Make sure you read Joh Taylor Gatto's "Weapons of Mass Instruction," before your write the check. Don't let a promising person like your daughter run the risk of getting brainwashed, losing her creativity and leadership skills (and who knows what else) in the intellectual cesspools fronting as colleges these days. Evaluate whether a degree is critical (some professions require credentials, for example, you don't want an engineer "guessing" that a building will stay standing), but a ton of folks are just paying for an expensive party experience. Carefully evaluate the risk that your daughter will become another drone with a ton of educational debt - an indentured servant to the gov't (through student loans, which didn't Obambi take those over, too?).
O.k., I'll stop. I'm very opinionated. All the best to you!
One man’s cheese is another man’s spoiled milk...
Not even close by my experience. Our gubmint skool system has decided it is better to dumb down the curriculum to make it easier for the low achievers, rather than trying to raise the low achievers to the level of brighter students. Stupid people, after all, are easier to control. This is a two edged sword because when the skools don't challenge the brighter students they become bored and the end result is mediocrity for all. Colleges and Universities, by and large, seem to have gone so PC that a good portion of the student's time is wasted studying things like "cultural diversity" that won't help them one bit in the real world.
Ivy League colleges really for the most intelligent and gifted. BS. I have had to sit in front of the same Ivy League educated professors in college and in seminary. let me tell you an Ivy League educated professor whether in college or seminary is an an arrognant pompous without any understanding of history (ahistorical) buffon. they are so anal retentive, linear thinking individual. History must be understood in this manner and this manner only, their understanding of history as taught at harvard, Princeton and MIT. progressivism was dealt a blow in WWI the war to end all wars, and WWII did not help the views of progressivism. Progressive political thought has an idealistic idea that the world would be better if everyone was the same, same clothes, hair style, car housing and so forth - social engineering. seminary professors were just as arrognant. interpret scripture through the lens of german intellectual thought Heilgeschicte, The Old testament Pentateuch was written by different authors, not Moses. The seminary professor was admanant that scripture was not breathed by God, but just written as stories. Oddly enough the students works would contribute to his latest scholarly treatise. myself i wrote something totally opposed to what he was teaching, and was pulled into the dean of students office because it was viewed as a stating the denominational teaching was deemed a heretical view (Nestorius). Lest just say I was going elsewhee for theological training and I defended my understanding that the professor was teaching an age old heresy that was debunked back in 500 AD.
“they are also potential tickets to the inner circle”
Inner circle of what? Does your daughter want to be part of the inner circle these schools lead to?
The question to be answered is which college best provides the tools and environment that will enable your daughter to achieve her goals. That school could be Harvard. It could be Duke. It could be Michigan or Florida.
Keep in mind what the Ivy League really is- a football conference. That’s right. Sports writers in the 1930s began referring to anywhere from 8 to 10 northeastern colleges that were historically good at football as the “Ivy League” (the 9th and 10th schools were West Point and Annapolis).
There is no lack of conservatives at any elite college. There are probably more thoughtful conservatives at Harvard than there are at Boston College. Some campus conservatives spend their time jousting at windmills of the liberal establishment, but most focus on learning, friendships, and career advancement, and in the meantime develop a healthy disregard for mainstream opinion and received wisdom.
Acquiring the habit of thinking for yourself, having the courage of your convictions, and making your way through higher-ups who disagree with you, is a BONUS that a conservative gets out of going to a mostly-liberal college, not a penalty.
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