I sucked at school. Never focused on it. I assuage myself by reminding myself that Einstein sucked in school, too. (The truth is that I regret not even trying to do well.)
Posted on 09/19/2011 9:08:10 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Maureen Dowd, channelling a new liberal narrative, argues that at least Romney is not an anti-intellectual dunce like Rick Perry, and to prove her point, she returns to Perry’s college transcripts. To the coastal elite, college grades are always proof of intelligence and legitimacy:
“Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.
“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”
He even got a C in gym.
Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”
It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale. Even Newt Gingrich’s pseudo-intellectualism is a relief at this point.”
When Dowd trashes Perry and Bush (why not quote the hardly impressive Kerry record?), she is arguing that long ago college records and scores are a good barometer of presidential success (that is dubious if one were to compare a Lincoln or Truman to Wilson or Carter), and, by inference, that the current president is also apparent proof. But does she have inside information about the Obama undergraduate record at Occidental and Columbia? If not, why not, given the supposed importance of undergraduate grades to liberal observers? I suppose we are to conclude that supposedly poor students like a Perry or Bush released their grades or had them leaked, but brilliant undergraduates earning top slots at Harvard Law have no need to release obviously straight-A transcripts and no worry that anyone would care?
Dowd then warns, ”Our education system is going to hell. Average SAT scores are falling, and America is slipping down the list of nations for college completion. And Rick Perry stands up with a smirk to talk to students about how you can get C’s, D’s and F’s and still run for president.” One need not approve of Perry’s C grade populism to wonder whether the problem is not a C student Perry as presidential candidate, but a current president that for some reason does not want to remind us that he was, of course, the sort of straight-A student that op-ed writers pine for.
Finally, some of Perry’s education reforms would probably do more to raise SAT scores and improve undergraduate education than the current race/class/gender industry that has turned a once classical curriculum into therapeutics, and tried to apply an illiberal equality of result standard of college performance rather than the old ideal of an equality of opportunity. In regard to Dowd’s sneer quote of ”What appears to be a course called ‘Meats’,” it might, in fact, offer more real knowledge (about animal science, nutrition, and physiology) than, say, any of hundreds of classes in our universities like ”Queer Mobilities” at Yale or “Desire and Repression: Economic Anthropology and American Pop Culture” at Princeton or “Of Mean Streets and Jungle Fevers: Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee” at Harvard?
“There’s a saying among lawyers that the A students stay in the law school and teach; forget what the B students do, and the C students are the ones who flourish and make money in the actual practicing law. One lawyer I know brags about finishing dead last in his class at UVA law school, and makes $ hand over fist.”
I practiced for 25 years. Never heard that saying. By and large, it is not true, except maybe for the personal injury bar. Almost everyone at the top of my class went into private practice and made a lot of money. I can think of two exceptions—and they both had bad problems with alcohol.
She probably does. But she'll never admit it or put it in print.
Zee gut fraulein has been given her marching orders.
No need! Just start an Email campaign asserting that Perry's grades are better by far than Obozo's. Throw that out into the blogosphere. Here's my start:
Perry's release of records proves that he has better grades than Obama.
No need! Just start an Email campaign asserting that Perry's grades are better by far than Obozo's. Throw that out into the blogosphere. Here's my start:
Perry's release of records proves that he has better grades than Obama.
No need! Just start an Email campaign asserting that Perry's grades are better by far than Obozo's. Throw that out into the blogosphere. Here's my start:
Perry's release of records proves that he has better grades than Obama.
The way I see it,it’s one thing to memorize stuff and quite another thing to apply your knowledge. Also, life in general can be quite a teacher if you can somehow manage to grasp its lessons.
I sucked at school. Never focused on it. I assuage myself by reminding myself that Einstein sucked in school, too. (The truth is that I regret not even trying to do well.)
Albert Einstein for instance.
. . . which raises the question as to whether Obama used a teleprompter when he took his exams in college . . .
FROM GOOGLE ANSWERS
Ms Totenberg does not have any degrees and did not attend law school.
sources:
“Totenberg, 47, who joined NPR in 1975, after serving as Washington
correspondent for New Times magazine, is widely viewed as the nation’s
premier law reporter, ...Not bad for someone who dropped out of Boston
University (to work for a newspaper) and never went to either
journalism or law school.”
JUST SAYIN’
Grades mean you paid your money, they have nothing to do with how well you did, Some schools don’t even have grades, they have pass/fail system.
I have some of those grades, for which I did absolutely nothing except pay for the class. Well, that and being subjected to many hours of homosexual indoctrination.
U C Riverside.
Obama never was a straight A student. He is an affirmative action president.
I’m in the same boat. Ive done pretty well for myself but I’ll always wonder what would have been if I’d gone to college. Most of the time I can hold my own on a variety of subjects with college grads so I’m not sure if it would have helped. But who knows??
“. . . which raises the question as to whether Obama used a teleprompter when he took his exams in college . . .”
He used the Affirmative Action Grade Redistribution program.
This is where our education system began to fail our children:
From Wiki:
The United States Department of Education, also referred to as ED or the ED for (the) Education Department, is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. Created by the Department of Education Organization Act (Public Law 96-88) and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 17, 1979, it began operating on May 16, 1980.
_____________________________________________________
Schools have been teaching kids a load of rubbish ever since!!!
Beyond one’s first post-college job or grad school admission application, do grades EVER come up in one’s life again, absent a run for elective office ??
Employers/customers/voters only care that you can get done the job you’re applying/running for, and how you’ve performed in similar jobs beforehand, nothing else. Oh, except the Maureen Dowds* of this world, in which case your grades are important only if you’re a conservative or Republican.
*ironically, my freshman year roommate was named Maureen Dowd. Hardly the same person, tho that MoDo was an honors student. Quite unlike yours truly ;)
The saying could be a) regional or b) generational. The lawyers I know who’ve said it are all late 60s thru early 80s and practiced/are practicing in NYC or DC. I called one, and he said the B grade part of the quote is judges, i.e., B students make good judges.
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