Ms. Nugent said the Harvard College Debating Union didn’t respond to parts of that argument…
— The Wall Street Journal
A month ago, the illustrious Harvard debate team had their backsides handed to them by a small group of New York prisoners. Whilst credit should be given to the hard work of the men from Eastern New York Correctional Facility, especially as they seek to turn their lives around, the outcome demonstrates the serious intellectual shortcomings being bred by Ivy League and other prestigious American universities.
The best part, aside from the fact the Harvard team had won a national title only a little while before, was that the prisoners had to argue for a grossly non-SJW position: denying undocumented children right of enrolment in American schools.
2015 has not been a great year for the reputations of Ivy League schools. The protracted debacle at Columbia University, where inveterate attention seeker Emma Sulkowicz was allowed to perpetually stalk and harass her innocent ex-boyfriend, demonstrates how the rule of law has now suffered its tenth death on elite American campuses.
Recently, my colleague Matt Forney covered the prima donna egos of Yale students after husband-and-wife academics decided not to lay down draconian and politically correct orders about how students could dress for Halloween.
It may be hard to directly trace what went so hideously wrong for the Harvard team but it is undeniable that the perilously pro-SJW atmosphere in Cambridge, Massachusetts has dumbed down its students. Socially and professionally, a Harvard degree still means a lot. But is it equipping its students for life in the real world?
A case in point: Harvard and Yale alumni may be grossly overrepresented in fields such as politics and wishy-washy academia, but they are less likely to lead Fortune 500 companies, where actual results, not rhetoric, matter much more.
Part of a much wider trend
Sadly, the Oberlin professor Michael Raney was one of only a few academics willing to openly defy the princess mentality of SJW students after the Ferguson grand jury decision.
Columbia Law School postponed exams last year after the Ferguson grand jury decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson (but strangely declined to offer any mass commemoration for an actual tragedy, like nearly three dozen elite American soldiers dying in an Afghan War helicopter crash in 2011). Harvard and Georgetown law students rushed to join the fray for special consideration, too. In response, a Fox News column astutely highlighted that:
This won’t prepare them for tough judges, unscrupulous clients or merciless partners at the law firms they hope to work for.
And to think that this network is widely derided by liberals as supporting anything but common sense!
Going back to the prisoners and Harvard students’ debate, the biggest problem the young undergraduates faced was that they didn’t even address much of what the felons put forward in argument. Across the Atlantic, this was the same dilemma that the Bristol University Feminist Society’s Francesca Collins found herself in during a very recent campus interview.
In trying to defend the drive to exclude Milo Yiannopoulous from campus entirely, she could not explain why Milo was in any sense a threat to the safety of students. Defeated and in total shock, she promptly hung up on her interviewer.
SJW presuppositions, drilled into undergraduates in many countries over at least several years, are elevated to a realm of incontestability, in the same vein as the law of gravity. Whether “I believe women” in the context of unverified sexual assault allegations or the automatic presumption that any police shooting is either a racist lynching by bullet or police brutality, indoctrinated students are taught that they do not need to prove something that cannot be refuted. It just is.
It will only get worse
Ivy League SJWs getting their asses handed to them, however justified, is rare in modern society. From the media to politicians, the system is designed to protect them and marginalize positions that contradict them.
Look around you and there are plenty of examples of Ivy League SJWs or their ideological allies getting away with pure nonsense. Tragically, both of the leading candidates for the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are unleashing the blatantly false gender pay gap scam. Sanders may not be an Ivy Leaguer but his rhetoric is identical to the Yale-educated Hillary Clinton.
The new generation is worse still. Harvard Law School students this year slammed their own professors, many of them fundamentally liberal themselves, for arguing that sexual assault policies should have some semblance of due process found in the court system. These are the misguided or plain fascistic “leading” lawyers of the future.
Hope exists, though. The debate against the New York prison team highlights the massive limitations of the SJW narrative. When required to construct actual arguments in a setting they do not control, students educated in the most politically correct environments tend to crumble.
And long may this crumbling continue.
Read More: Harvard University Jumps The Shark
Reminds me of the conduct of CNBC hosting the GOP debate. Even the left was heavily critical of the lack of professionalism by the moderators, who spent the whole debate trying to bash the candidates. The more conservative the candidate, the more ‘gotcha’ questions they were asked.
It’s not just academia, its the media (please withhold all comments about the Jews & media control).
Why?
“the outcome demonstrates the serious intellectual shortcomings being bred by Ivy League and other prestigious American universities.”
Laughs. This was a feel good underdog story trumped up by the media. The fact that you think a single subjective debate competition would be a serious intellectual shortcoming of the Ivy League is foolish. If I had a gun to my head and 24 hours to find ten geniuses to disarm a nuclear bomb, I’d go straight to Harvard and MIT.
“but they are less likely to lead Fortune 500 companies, where actual results, not rhetoric, matter much more.”
Clawing your way up an F500 is underachieving for an Ivy-caliber student. Big corporate is for the middle class and state educated average guy to trade hours for a modest paycheck. Ivy Leaguers are the next inventors, Nobel Prize winners, high financiers, prestigious attorneys.
College looks like it’s getting worse for men, and the Ivies are definitely a liberal echo-chamber, but continually bashing it is poor masculine advice. If you are an 18 year old male with an acceptance letter to Harvard or Stanford, ditch the SJW fear, pack your bags, and fucking go.
My kids will be homeschooled. Including on the college level.
Didn’t realize homeschooling on the college level was a possibility… are you referring to online college courses or something else?
I’m referring to how the world actually works, that is, red-pilling. I have learned more in the past four years reading on the internet than I ever did in school.
I was going to say…
I generally disagree with homeschooling, especially far into adolescence
Well, I don’t see the point of “college-level” red-pill education. If raised properly, your kids will already have a pretty good grasp on the realities of life and politics. Whatever works for you and your kids. I plan on homeschooling my kids as well so no judgment here.
For what reason(s)?
Why? The male brain is not fully formed until the late 20s, why wouldn’t you agree?
They are highly circumstantial, but for a reasonably well-spoken and socialized child, schooling is a life-long positive experience that forms friendships, romances, teammates.
I say the reasons are circumstantial because the experience of formal schooling is far different for an overweight or socially maladjusted person than the prom king. Home-schooling is a good option if the traditional school setting is a complete nightmare for your children due to bullies, a learning disability, fear of safety, etc.
Plenty of kids meet their lifelong friends in class, first girlfriends in middle school or high school, play for a real sports team that represented a school and community, took part in an activity which meant a lot to them. Would you really be comfortable depriving your children of that experience? It should be a crime if your kid is athletic or good looking, they would rule the school.
I get it, people think that the education system produces a bunch of loony leftists, but allowing this untested theory to dramatically alter a successful child’s life is bonkers. Your kids are eventually going to have to go out into this crazy world and deal with feminists and leftists, especially if they go the corporate route. I detest institutionalized leftism, but I will not run in fear.
I’ve heard the socializing aspect brought up many times and my kids will have plenty of opportunities to socialize between church events, martial art classes, and field trips. All weekly occurrences. Plus there are homeschool groups where to kids meet up to work on their studies and socialize. It isn’t what most people think of as a kid all by themselves, cut off to the rest of the world.
I knew two girls (no relation) that were both schooled at home by born again Christians. They were both socially retarded, could barely write, and were sluts. Both were hot as fuck though, both good lays. Just my personal experience.
The biggest negative to homeschooling to me is the socialization. All the homeschooled kids I knew were weirdos. But back then, the only ones doing it were fundamentalist religious people. Today I think more people are doing it for pure educational reasons, and there are better support networks that allow fellow homeschool kids to interact with each other. Still, there is something to be said for being exposed to a wide swath of people, like we experience in the real world.. the bully, the nerd, the slut, the various racial groups. Homeschooling doesn’t provide that.
I am well aware that parents have ambitious intentions to socialize their home-schooled children with activities, but it isn’t the same as going to school.
I’m not saying that I respect the particular brand of education that schools are entertaining, but I respect public schools as a pillar of the community and a staple of a healthy childhood.
“The biggest negative to homeschooling to me is the socialization.”
I used to believe that until I actually met some. Plus that has been debunked by multiple sources and seems to be perpetuated by those affiliated with public schools.
You hear a lot of times people comparing things to “the schoolyard bully”. I still remember this fat kid in 7th grade who pushed me and others around in gym class, and can relate. I think if you don’t experience that it hurts your ability to understand a fairly large aspect of the world.
Curious, how did you meet them?
To each their own. I understand the necessity of public schools, but I also don’t hold them in high regard.
Schoolyard bully wouldn’t stop a parent sending his kids to school, it’s the lack of quality education and even negative socliacization (homo sex is normal) your kids might get. Not to mention the kid getting molested by the staff.
Shit, schoolyard bullies were cake. Fighting the neighborhood bullies (always older and bigger) is going to give you that cherished “socialization” you think the kid will miss on the playground.
If you didn’t mention that they were homeschooled, I would say that you just mentioned 2 girls coming out of the public school system.
He crawled through the window. 🙂
I’ve never understood how people romanticize their days in school. Wasn’t 90% of the time watching the clock and waiting for class to be over in 7 hour shifts 5 days a week plus homework?
But schools keep young people sheltered from the real world of adults to be “socialized” by other kids instead.
Depends.
If you want to ruin your kids childhood send him to a same-sex catholic high school or a hippie Montessori type with 4 people in each grade. That’s not a high school experience.
Some schools have much different dynamics with the classroom setting, the socialization, level of strictness.
I’ve known people who went to public school who were socially retarded. I’ve also known home school kids who were socially skilled just fine.
What I don’t get is the endorsement of the public school system, at this website of all places. They don’t educate kinds they just indoctrinate them with leftist bullshit.
How are you going to educate your kid for an engineering or medical career, with YouTube tutorials?
I went to uni for Computer Science and I can say that there are YT videos better than 95% of the material you get from classes and taught in 10% of the time.
Both from different jobs in my younger years.
hahahaha truth
As Unabashed put it, I could have very well been describing publicly schooled girls. Again, this is just my observation from only 2 people.
so basically you plan to socially and academically cripple your children while hiding them from the realities of the world and then call it red pill? Will this education happen in a bomb shelter filled with cans of food?
That’s one option. No specific plans yet, just setting the course for now.
People have also had false rape accusations thrown at them by going to school and in my experience the teachers just keep getting worse. Last time I took a math class we just had to input the question in a computer, hit enter and write down the answer. And german classes in this country is full on feminist indoctrination.
I’d say they are for parking your kids so you have time to work. I plan on not working for others for the rest of my life, so there will be plenty of time if things pan out.
If they want it enough to pay their own way, that’s on them and godspeed. Anything doable outside the public system will be done there. What matters most is that they live in a way that works for them. Look up The Element on amazon, or watch the guys vid on youtube.
I agree with your overall point, but it’s not an “untested theory” that the educational system produces looney leftists. The proof is all around us, on a daily basis.
I wasn’t home-schooled. I went to a same-sex Catholic high school, and I highly doubt that I was being taught by leftists.
Homeschooling your kids just because of the fear of runaway leftism is insane. Might as well turn the TV, computer, and cell phone off, and limit social interations besides church groups and Young Republicans.
There’s also a difference between a Democrat teacher who enjoys the benefits of the public sector union and a full-blow crazy.
I don’t know how old you are, but I’m 50 and when I went to school I wasn’t taught by leftists but it’s different now. Even Catholic schools aren’t immune – recently in the news we learned that a Catholic elementary school boy was suspended and a mark placed in his permanent record for simulating shooting a bow and arrow at a playmate during recess.
And as far as college goes, not sure how you can’t deny it’s overrun with leftists and has been for years. Recent news events make this clear. If you deny *that* then you have some blind spot or bias you’re not disclosing and will have lost all credibility in this debate.
Mid twenties.
I went to a secular college with a sizable Jewish population, pretty liberal school. I didn’t get into politics with the profs, but I’m sure they were very liberal.
If my professors were Marx and Alinsky, I’d still go in a second. I met my best friends, fucked hot girls, made business connections, and even had a few good professors, one of them probably a liberal.
The thought of missing out on the best experiences of my life in late HS/early college because of a fear of leftism makes my head spin.
Bullshit. The majority of Ivy Leaguers have the conditions for success secured before they step foot on campus – and the campus is little more than a networking opportunity for the children of the connected and wealthy. Or, perhaps you believe that all four of Al Gore’s kids were among the fraction of the fraction of a percent of the academically elite of each of their respective high school classes (both nationally and among foreign educated applicants).
Come on. What do you mean by “conditions for success?” Is that a code word for “privilege?”
Legacy admits are a small part of the Ivy League talent pool, and favors are definitely made in the admissions and donation office, but you are off your rocker if you think the average Ivy-League student is anything but a brilliant and ambitious striver that has knocked it out of the park for the first quarter of life. Your average rich kid can’t just get into Harvard by dropping a few names or a six figure donation. I did well academically, and attended a top high school with honors, but I wasn’t even close to Ivy level.
No, not a purely racial privilege as you may have implied, but rather that many or most students have actual privilege. Ever been to those $40K-$50K per year elite college preparatory schools in New England and the Northeast? Each is the “pipeline to X” (where X is a certain Ivy League University? That’s privilege. Your high school counselor being an alumnus or alumnae and classmates with an admissions officer is privilege. Coming from a family that can swing hundreds of thousands of dollars at Lawrenceville or St. Paul’s is the essence of privilege.
I’m not saying that the incoming classes are not full of bright, accomplished students with demonstrated achievements, but it’s silly to pretend that these schools are committed to meritocracy.
Yes, the prep schools are definitely feeders to Ivies, but that’s because they are the best high-schools in the country with top notch academic talent.
High school counselor recommendation? For an IVY??? You need way more than a friendship with an alumnus to bust your way in. Plenty of middle class kids and even working class get in on merit alone. Almost every middle class high school sends at least one kid to an Ivy League.
I actually didn’t imply a racial privilege, but now that we are on the subject, racial privilege in liberal college-land is being black. You can significantly underperform the competition and still be admitted.
I consider anyone who has the innate academic ability to succeed at Harvard or Yale “privileged.”
The prep schools are “the best high schools in the country” because they send their graduates to the Ivy League. It’s a circular argument.
It’s not a one-off “recommendation,” it’s the incestuous relationship between the Prep Schools and the admissions departments – they’re often friends and alumni who socialize on the regular.
“Ivy Leaguers have the conditions for success secured before they step foot on campus – and the campus is little more than a networking opportunity for the children of the connected and wealthy.”
I have heard that from to many corners to dismiss that as untrue.
Also per chane knew an older gent who went to Harvard Law with some of the Kennedy kids. Said they were all as dumb as a box of rocks, but you can be sure they graduated.
Ted Kennedy was caught cheating – which, in those days was a death sentence at Harvard. He graduated nonetheless.
I have to agree with your last Paragraph, I drive by William’s College every once in awhile and while it may not be an Ivy League it is Definitely an Ultra Prestigious School, only problem is that there are women everywhere,…Not that an Abundance of Pussy is the issue, Rather that there is a Drastic imbalance between the Male/Female Demographic of Attendees to the College, it may be a rough estimate but from observing the demographic from driving by, or walking near the campus, consistently I see at least 75-85% of the attendees being female, and I have to wonder if women are just more Brilliant then Men these days and William’s is accepting more Female applicants’ because of this, or if it’s because William’s is following the Empowered woman Narrative and is trying to set the example in the Liberal world of having the most Diverse demographic for attendees, If it’s the Latter example I think it really questions the merit and esteem associated with the Reputation of Ultra prestigious schools, and whether schools are choosing students based on academic achievement or based on Diversity Quotas.
Harvard now produces people like this –
http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/23/harvard-writer-free-speech-threatens-liberalism-and-must-be-destroyed/
Not to defend the kid but he is just that, a kid. A jackass, but a kid.
Also, he is a graduate of U. Michigan nor Harvard.
Columbia Law postponing the finals was totally horseshit. However, I will say, that there is a problem with the Harvard Debate team losing and it is more political than intellectual.
Talking about the inmate win would be like talking about when the special Olympics athletes score on NBA players. Lebron isn’t taking corky to the hole. It is good natured charity. You let the retards win.
There is literally zero chance that in a proper debate on anything other than anal rape the inmates stand a chance….and if those Harvard kids went to prep school run by certain religious organizations there in Boston then even the anal rape debate might go all crimson.
Unlike the retards in the special Olympics who, by virtue of being retarded, ought to get the win and, in general, a steady stream of undeserved high fives for life as compensation for the whole being fucking retarded thing…these inmates were born healthy. Granted they were born poor and in bad situations, bad neighborhoods and with violent surroundings. But fuck that, so was I.
There is a difference between handing the big forehead retard a win for charity, giving him a high five and something shiny and being a decent guy and finding Jamal the drug dealer and letting him have a big pink titty high five courtesy of an ivy league debate team.
Those kids are not stupid. They are very bright, they are talented and they have very good futures ahead of them. The fact that they throw a bone to inmates seems to them like doing a good deed, but in reality it is just fostering this idea that being incarcerated means you are a victim and deserve to be helped rather than a criminal who deserves to be punished.
Bullshit. There is no way that they would allow a bunch of felons to out-debate them. The damage to their egos would be too great, and far too many people would refuse to believe that they allowed the prisoners to win. Especially when it comes to an issue that SJW’s actually care about, like illegal immigration.
No, those Harvard faggots straight up lost. To say otherwise is a violation of Occam’s Razor.
I believe you to be wrong. But, no big.
Given the amount of comments you’ve made on this thread, you obviously have a personal investment in prestigious schools. To that I say: too bad so sad. Those kids lost, and saying “Well, I disagree” doesn’t do jack shit.
And Occam’s Razor is not connected with science, but with any argument in general, and that’s why you couldn’t rebut the substance of my argument. And don’t bother saying, “There was nothing of substance”, because there was, and you just can’t think of a rebuttal because there isn’t one.
Occam’s idea was good if you want to believe in a magic god or Dumbledore or something. It was made more sophisticated by later thinkers who all realized that other points could be made relevant to a single point so that the larger matrix decided whether a point was relevant or not.
My personal investment is there but doesn’t go any further than being annoyed by people who couldn’t get into these schools wagging their fingers and saying they are bad. It’s moronic. And what we need less of in this world is moron majority ideas covering being butthurt with saying that something better than them is actually worse than them.
I loath self hating white people, feminist men and people who point at the ivys and talk about how they are filled with morons. They are all the same.
You still haven’t rebutted my main argument: that the Harvard kids’ egos are too great, and that no one would believe them if they said they had lost on purpose. Furthermore, the debate topic was one that SJW’s really care about, so they had an incentive to try their best.
And Occam’s Razor applies to any problem put forth, no matter the academic arena. That’s a fact. All the written diarrhea you just put up there^ won’t change that.
Now quit acting like a sophist. No one’s impressed, try-hard faggot.
the idea that the Harvard kids egos would have led them to go full tilt boogie at a couple of inmates is incorrect. The same way I don’t think Lebron plays his hardest when the cancer kids come in with the make a wish people….and Lebron has a pretty big ego.
Now, if you had said that their ego is so big and they are so delusional that they thought that putting this dog and pony show on was some how good and valuable and important and that the people that are at that school making them believe that are doing it for standard SJW reasons and should be put out to pasture I would agree with out 100%.
I understand that you probably heard about Occam’s razor on some movie or the big bang theory or something (probably where you heard sophist as well) but you absolute impossible stubbornness to even consider the possibility that a great number of people at Harvard and other Ivy League universities are intelligent and work hard to be where they are and will carry that hard working value into the future is just insane. It is the kind of immediate negative reaction you get from people who want to put their viewpoints, self preserving insecure beliefs or politics so high up on a pedestal that they can never be reflected on, much less criticized.
That’s ok. It doesn’t bother me your opinion. If you want to be like the fat kid who thinks all the football players are total jerks then go ahead.
“the idea that the Harvard kids egos would have led them to go full tilt boogie at a couple of inmates is incorrect.”
You can’t possibly know that, so saying it’s ‘incorrect’ is laughable.
“The same way I don’t think Lebron plays his hardest when the cancer kids come in with the make a wish people….and Lebron has a pretty big ego.”
Stupid analogy, since the Harvard kid can’t be sure of the prisoners’ debate skills the way that LeBron can be sure a kid’s basketball skills.
“but you absolute impossible stubbornness to even consider the possibility that a great number of people at Harvard and other Ivy League universities are intelligent and work hard to be where they are and will carry that hard working value into the future is just insane.”
Never said anything like that, dipshit. Nice straw man.
And I notice you didn’t respond to my third point: that the issue being debated is one that SJW’s care deeply about, and therefore these kids had an incentive to do their best. That’s telling.
I read about Occam’s Razor the same way you did: through education. And it applies to any problem. If I’m wrong, and it only applies to theories regarding God and the origin of life and the universe, then prove it. *Rubs my hands together* I’m looking forward to this!
“If you want to be like the fat kid who thinks all the football players are total jerks then go ahead.”
LOL total projection. Whatever resentments you have, that sucks for you.
you’re ability to read is, at the very least, up there with your ability to think critically. Your yawnable attempt at intelligence here is annoying because if you would stop and activate some grey matter instead of a pile of reaction formation you might be an interesting human being. BTW the analogy is perfectly apt.
Sorry I didn’t get to pointing out you are ignorant on every single sentence of your post. I am bored with you now.
^Not a single rebuttal and not a single proof that I misunderstood Occam’s Razor.
All you just did was say, “Well, you’re stupid, so take that, poohead!”
And therefore you have lost this exchange. Enjoy knowing that.
I am not about to teach you what Occam’s razor is.
While incomplete, I am sure you learned plenty from the big bang theory or something.
You can take the win. Just like the inmates. Doesn’t matter to me and if it makes you feel good who am I to dispute.
Meanwhile, if you didn’t think of this in terms of winning and losing you might have learned something. But that’s ok…learning is for those stupid ivy league kids right?
I already know what OR is. If anybody needs an education, it’s you, bud.
The rest of what you wrote is just snark and condescension. But that’s ok.
oh and by the way, Occam’s Razor isn’t like gravity. It is violated in reality constantly. The most simple solution is almost never correct except for in hindsight once the problem has been solved and people look back and say, that was simple.
Occam based this idea on God magicing everything into existence, not on the science that the actual world is based on and he never intended it to be used psychologically.
Are we to believe Harvard also “threw the debate” in the national championship here? (They did not make it to the championship round, but I’m assuming they had a team entered.
So, according to ‘Occam’s Razor’, I win by default in a debate if I say nothing at all…. because I made the fewest assumptions? Just curious.
Do you have a link to the actual debates?
actually was looking for one, but work just came up. I would be interested to read it.
You have things backwards. Grown men who do nothing but think and read all day in prison are more prepared for a debate. Grown men who impose their frames onto others for years in a violent environment are at an advantage over some 19 year olds who don’t yet have fully developed brains and never dealt with any discomfort in their lives.
So…we should put all college students in prison since it’s obviously better for their development?
Not serious, just being a little silly.
Actually not a Bad Idea, not all but some, seeing as some will get into politics that eventually ruin the country.
Going all Minority Report, eh?
Haha, though one may not need psychic abilities to see how the liberal Narrative will wreak havoc in the future on impressionable college age Minds.
In some ways you are correct, I can’t deny. However, debate is a sport. It is a nerd sport, but a sport nonetheless. As a sport there are rules by which one may be given points. What you are saying is tantamount to thinking that black people can play basketball but I am sure any white NBA player could score effortlessly on, say, Colin Powell.
The politics here seems to me that a bunch of bright but intolerably smug kids throw a win to some homies from prison and then feel really good about themselves for being just awesome.
They May be Smart, but throwing a Bone to the Inmates for the Feellzzz Good show’s how stupid they are, this kind of Mentality I have a Special Name for, “Intelligent Idiot”, It’s Like what’s going on in Europe and Germany Right now, know doubt the Leaders of those countries probably have all the right credentials and all the stuff that looks good on Paper, but when it comes down to it, they are letting their country get invaded and all the awards and degree’s professing their achievements and outstanding Brilliance Means Nothing, “Intelligent Idiot”, It’s Like Bill Gates throwing millions upon millions of dollars at Africa thinking it will solve Africa’s problems even though Leviticus 26 says no nation will improve unless it Reveres the word of God, but hey throwing around millions to an effort that won’t resolve , Feellllzzzz Good, “Intelligent Idiot”, it’s like the Minds who are responsible for letting the Free world Collapse, they all probably had the highest Merits, but their leadership skills prove otherwise, Intelligent Idiot, and I think it goes without saying that anyone who get’s behind the SJW/ Feminist movement, whether it’s a Brilliant Actor, or Genius Politician, or Profound thinking Public figure, is clearly an Intelligent Idiot. So I think that even though these college kids got accepted to ultra Prestige universities the fact that they allow themselves to be so easily ensnared and unable to see they are being manipulated to dance to a certain Narrative, says to me they are Intelligent Idiots.
Here, my friend, we agree 100%
So you’re saying the Harvard debate team isn’t lacking in ability, just intellectually dishonest? That isn’t better.
No, I am saying they are young idealists being lead by the nose to believe that they are helping inmates by letting them win rather than being shining examples of what hard work will actually achieve.
Any evidence at all to support that Harvard threw a debate, or is this just wild speculation?
Though I haven’t seen the Debate (can’t find it anywhere) I can See your point, especially since it would follow the Narrative of Empowering and Giving Medals to everyone for Participation just for showing up, but of course taking it to the Next level and giving the Trophy to the underdog just because he’s the underdog, and if that’s the case it’s a really scary reality especially when those students may be our leaders some day and the Feelzz Good dictates policy instead of Reason. Though not seeing the Debate it’s hard to know If the inmates Crushed Harvard or if Harvard Fumbled on purpose.
I will admit it is my speculation. I haven’t even bothered googling it.
I think you have where my thoughts are tending exactly. If you look at my original post I started by saying not that the Harvard kids were better than inmates but that the problem of their loss in a symptom of a much bigger problem than Ivy League standards….that problem being precisely what you describe here.
so instead of you just admitting that the Harvard team can be beaten by a bunch of very intelligent prisoners, you come up with a narrative that makes your ego feel better. They didnt lose, they must have just let the other team win. They cant lose becuz we all know that white Ivy Kids cant be less smart than black prisoners. You are pathetic man.
“Did you just say what I was trying to say only smarter!”
I don’t watch a whole lot of TV but I love me some Boondocks. It’s rare to see something so un-PC on TV. I guess it’s cool since it was created by a black guy.
Like South Park?
Don’t watch a whole lot of South Park. Nothing really against it, just haven’t really gotten into it. Seen a few episodes that I enjoyed (like the WoW one).
Only ever heard about. I think I need to spend less time at the gym and more time watching TV like everybody else… 😛
Ditto…I WAS going to go to MA class again tonight but now I think I need to binge watch South Park, or Modern Family or something.
SP is one of the only (2-3 shows) I watch. I don’t own a tv, but it’s worthwhile. It used to be available on their website for free, but they sold out to hulu so there are all sorts of rules on place when and how you can watch now.
This season seems completely dedicated to attacking political correctness, and it’s great so far.
What season is the latest one?
Looks like 19? Damn, I feel old!
http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes
I love that one.
Blizzard Game Designer: “Sir, whoever this player is, he’s been playing all day, every day, since the release of the game. This person has absolutely no life.”
Blizz Exec: “How do you kill that which has no life?”
“can she run really fast in high heels” still makes me laugh
I’ll admit, when I first saw the Boondocks, I was shocked this made it on TV…I was like “Oh shit…Adult Swim is gonna get sued so hard!”
Every now and again one comes along. Drawn Together was a short lived though brilliantly not pc show.
The reality is that most of these ivy league graduates are out of touch with reality since they have been sheltered by their rich parents their entire lives and have been insulated from the real world.
These oligarchs and plutocrats are the very reason why society and the economy is collapsing. No longer does the hard working man from the poor background count for anything. The real innovators and creators who come out from nowwhere- this no longer exists.
Everything these days is about connections, alumni, nepotism etc.
The IVY bashing is really strong here.
Yes, many, if not most, IVY students are rich and sheltered. However, not all of them. The fact is that while there is a lot of vocal liberal politics at IVY schools, it is not a homogenous group. The students there are, at least the vast majority of them, the highest achievers from secondary school. They scored very highly on tests showing their ability to work hard at that. They also were highly recommended by their teachers and school administrators showing they were sociable. Further, since it is so competitive, IVY freshman were almost always on at least one athletic team, part of a school theater, worked on the newspaper, involved themselves in charities outside of school, were civically responsible and showed a huge amount of willingness to put their personal lives and desires aside (say good by to pussy and HALO if you want to be at freshman orientation at Princeton) for the sake of academic as well as social responsibilities.
It is easy to hate on them the same way it is easy to talk about how some movie star or billionaire or politician is an asshole or whatever. The truth is that these are kids between 18-21 who have excelled with flying colors at everything that has come their way and have gone out of their way to find other challenges and have excelled at those too.
Every college is filled with a large group of morons who swing far left and make the news doing dumb ass shit that sets the world deeper into the swamp, but I wouldn’t be so fast to make such a sweeping condemnation of IVY kids. I honestly thing the hatred of ivy kids is basic jealousy in its most primal form.
Finally, I would have you remember that the removal of oligarchs and plutocrats is the reason we have feminism. There would be no SJW’s with Peter the Great in charge…..at least none with heads.
The kids may well be charming enough but the institutions have been wholly corrupted. A good proportion of each incoming class is devoted to legacies, some other great proportion to the scions of the wealthy and connected, and yet another great proportion to meeting “diversity” goals. Little room is left for the plucky achiever from a Western Pennsylvania steel town. The pretense that these are meritocracies rather than country clubs with classrooms has long since been debunked.
As George Carlin perfectly put it: “Its a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
While legacies will always make up a portion of an ivy class (and diversity which is fucking absurd I grant you) the education that is available to someone at an ivy school is just plain excellent. Of course, if you don’t have parents who steer you in the right direction you will wind up taking 86 credits of underwater basket weaving and women’s studies, but it is not necessary. You can make you entire way through a 4 year AB degree and never run into the lunatic fringe if you intentionally avoid it.
Plucky achievers can make it to an ivy if they set on that trail early and fight really hard and sacrifice everything for it.
I think that the real myth is that the ivy league schools are country clubs and not true palaces of higher learning which have been invaded by a small an vocal minority of young brats with a sense of entitlement. This view point is helped by the fact that the Emma Sulkowicz’s of the world have no shame and are media whores while the majority of the students at a very good university are simply doing all they can to maintain a very high level of academics along with extra circular activates.
It is so easy to point at the ivy’s and call them country clubs, but in my experience it is much more often the case that state schools and secondary private schools are really just places to go have a party whereas the Ivy’s and other top notch universities (U. Chicago, MIT, Johns Hopkins) are where the future leaders are well educated.
I went to a British equivalent of these schools. Nothing but hard work and grind there.
just because you don’t get to go to the party doesn’t mean it wasn’t great. You can sit and sulk and say “it probably sucked anyway” as much as you want, but it was still a real awesome place.
I could not give a fuck about the “big club” other than to point out that they have essentially destroyed the West. And don’t fucking deny it.
This is true, and it translates throughout life. I had to work my ass off to maintain a part athletic and part academic scholarship to a great school. I knew where the rich kids hung out. The kids that drove porche’s and laughed in their classes, but after freshman year they weren’t in my class and I wasn’t invited to their parties.
I still work that way. It is how I was taught. And many, if not most of the people I went to school with are the same way. Even some of the jackass lefty idealists (when they were 19) have grown up and think back on that time as just terrific even if they now acknowledge that their beliefs were immature and daft.
I am not saying that only Ivy or only top notch university students are smart, but to downgrade the entire ivy league and call them all entitled idiots is just moronic.
Amongst the shit that needs to change in the US, and there is a mountain of it, is the rampant anti intellectualism.
I do deny it. Some people in the club have. As have some people out of the club. I think you just like pointing at a group that you don’t know, understand, interact with or could aspire to and say “they are just jerk faces wahhhhh”
I’ve met many people from the elitist club, who all went the top schools in the UK such as LSE and Oxford. I understand exactly how they think and interact.
Its ironic how these so called “champs” in our society are really not that smart when you get to know them.
The anti-intellectualism you’re observing is driven by a perception by the general public that universities are no longer the respected home of ideas. That the modern university resembles something more akin to a seminary, than a place of classical education. There is a lot of truth in that supposition. I speak here chiefly of the humanities programs. STEM by its nature, save for the climate change hysteria, seems largely exempt from this corruption.
The lens through which the humanities subjects are approached, appear to the outsider, to be less inquisitive and more doctrinal than they used to be. There appears to be the accepted conventional view (truth) on the one hand, and everything else (irrationality) on the other.
Given that environment, it’s hard to garner the respect of the average person for the genuine capacity and hard work, which most attendees of elite institutions otherwise display.
It also doesn’t help that the average attendee of these institutions openly holds the values and beliefs of the common man in utter contempt.
Walter Russell Mead wrote a great article on meritocracy a few years ago in The American Interest. I highly recommend it.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/07/01/is-meritocracy-a-sham/
“[T]here are a couple of problems with meritocracy in practice. The first is, evidently, that it doesn’t always work as advertised. The “best and the brightest” organized the financial market reforms of the Clinton years that led to the Bush bubbles and the Obama doldrums, and neither the wars in Vietnam by the Kennedy era Great Meritocrats nor the Bush and Obama era wars were triumphs of social engineering.
The second problem is that in the end, meritocracy doesn’t promote democracy. The meritocrats may have won their positions through an open competition and their kids (with some advantages to be sure) are still going to have to struggle to make it into top colleges and so on, but once they win — they’re an elite. And their perceptions about how hard they competed and how fair the competition was makes them more smug and more entitled than the old elites ever were.The new elites don’t feel guilty about their power; they didn’t inherit it. They earned it. They are smarter than everybody else and they deserve to rule — and in their own minds at least, they also deserve the perks that power brings. Money, fame, access: bring it on.Wealth and entitlement corrupts the meritocratic elite. Members of this elite can no longer see society easily from the perspective of ordinary people and so their decisions increasingly reflect their own interests rather than those of the people they are supposed to represent. They lose the ability and perhaps also the will to be impartial arbiters between the masses and power; they identify with power and start to use their own influence to tilt the system farther and farther away from the populists and toward the old power centers.”
There is a reason why the ivy bashing is strong.
The idea that everyone who goes to ivy league schools based on meritocracy is not necessarily true. A large percentage of these students who go, get to go based on wealth and power.
I know plenty of students who went to Oxford and Cambridge, based on their wealth and family backgrounds, not because of their so called grades. I guarantee you, if I were to give every ivy league student a real aptitude/IQ test provided by Mensa, then you will find a large percentage of these students are not the genious that they proclaim to be.
Was George Bush a genius, because he went to both Harvard and Yale? I doubt it. I don’t even believe David Cameron or the other Etonians in the UK are intellectually smart. They all come from royal family bloodlines and WASP networks.
The ivy leagues deserve to be looked down with anger, because it is the ivy league grads who have been running the West for a very long time, and look at how much death and destruction they have caused.
Ivy schools grads do not equal success in my eyes as they need to rely on their school name, family connections to get a job or somewhere in life, rather than using any real genuine skill or standing on their own.
I can tell you that a) Cameron is smart and b) you do not come out of Public School in Britain and graduate from Oxford if you are stupid.
I don’t agree with Cameron on many things but trust me, he is no fool.
As for Public Schoolboys, I work with a lot of them. They are some clever boys. If I had the money, I would send my kids to Eton et al as well. Best start in British life bar none.
Really? Do you personally know David Cameron? Did you study with him? Do you know anything about his family background? No you don’t.
People get into private schools based not necessarily on academic merit, but based on wealth and power. Don’t fool yourself if you still believe these schools take people in, simply on merit. I knew a lot of kids who went to some of the top private schools and they were not the sharpest tools in the box. They simply had connections.
Its not what you know, but who you know.
I would want my kids to innovate and build a name for themselves rather than follow the whole private school, ivy league mantra bullshit that is rife in our society.
No, but I know people who do. Irrelevant. Yes I do.
Private schools are different to Public Schools and State Schools in the UK. It is merely your opinion that those kids were a)not smart and b) had connections get them in. You do not know this for a fact.
I am a pretty good judge of intellect having gone to one of these schools you denigrate. I also know far more people who have gone to these schools based on my occupation and my academic background than you. I also know exactly what it takes to get in there. You may want to reflect on that.
Frankly my friend you are fantasizing.
Why put so much emphasis on MENSA. People who bash the ivy schools sound like the 16 year old kid in English class who is really going to show his teacher what’s what. It is immature, ignorant and comes from a place of jealousy.
I have rarely met an Ivy student who didn’t excel in every possible way. I will grant you that loads of money, influence or a combination of the two do buy in a small percentage of the school and of those kids some of them are dumb as bricks. It is kind of like when you meet someone who has been allowed to go to Notre Dame based on the fact that they can play basketball. You know they are there and you know you are a lot smarter then them, but them being there is what allows the school to keep the heat on. It is a small percentage, they run in different clicks and more likely than not you will never meet one.
Looking down on Ivy schools is foolish. There are loads of people at them to look down on for sure — for a variety of reasons. But just being some dumb back water hick who doesn’t like the smart kids? That doesn’t jive. Neither does jealousy when it is turned into policy.
David Cameron is not intelligent as you presume him to be. He needed to rely on his family Etonian connections to get his foot in the door. That does not reflect strong intellect, but rather a weak reflection on his part. As I have said, if I were to give that man and the rest of his ilk a proper IQ test, there is a high chance he would not make it in the high bracket.
People like David Cameron have never had to sit an online aptitude test, assessment centres, deal with face to face interview panels etc. The truth is, he wouldn’t be able to hack it. Everytime I see him on those Sunday poltical shows and getting grilled by the interviewer, he comes up with the weakest responses. Not exactly what you would see in a “smart” man.
He is not smart as you presume him to be. Just another useless politician. The whole private schooling system is just a product of the upper elite and their reindeer games. And no, it is not my opinion, but actual verified statements from my old friends who went to the top private schools in the South East of England, that they had family connections, which triumphed over meritocracy.
Based on your posts, it is you who is frankly, delusional.
I’ve rarely met girls from the rich high school who didn’t look hot, or go on to good schools. Money takes you places. Any visit to the ghetto will prove this. I’m sure there are some smart kids in the ghetto but they will never accomplish what most rich kids will.
But I will chime in and say the quality is not here at the ivys. Sure, if you want to work in one of the power broker industries where it’s all about connections and politics, by all means, go. But I know a couple of Harvard grads, they are all very well informed of current events, have a good vocabulary, and can rattle off some things at a dinner party, but one is living at home in his parents basement, and the other is socially awkward and obsessed with veganism and has some mental health problems. Then there are the crazies like Jerome Corsi on the right and Larry Lessig on the Left (posted a video with him here). It seems that whenever there is a nut from an elite background, he typically went to Harvard.
If Ivy League schools are supposed to train our next generation of Kings and leaders, to preserve and protect the values and ideals that we cherish, then I say they have been a total failure. Of course, everything is not black and white. I’m currently taking a free philosophy course on ITunesU from one of their instructors and it’s good.
The reason why I put emphasis on MENSA, is because it is the real way to determine one’s actual intelligence quotient. In otherwords, it would show who is genuinely smart and who is not. I guarantee you, most people but especially these ivy league grads, would shit themselves and refuse to take the test as it would show their true intelligence. It is not ignorance or jealousy, but rather the truth and this shows what insecure fucks these ivy grads truly are if they refuse to take these tests.
Spare me the excels and extra curricular activities. At the end of the day people get into these schools not based on academic merit, but connections. A lot of the comments here verify this, but more importantly, even some of the people I personally know, have verified this.
Ivy league grads are not the smartest people around. Thats why they rely on their school names, family connections, alumni, etc to get a job. Heck you should see some of the dumbasses that work as consultants at some of the top multinationals. Complete airheads who got their positions because of the school name. And I have met many of them.
You are both wrong about MENSA and wrong about how people get into ivy league schools. You don’t understand something and therefore don’t like it.
You are right that all ivy kids aren’t the smartest people around. Some are and some aren’t. Some are just family connection folk who will never fail. Again, it isn’t nearly as many as you think.
You are ignorant about a topic and are lashing out against something with no knowledge and just your feels. You would make a great feminist.
How am I wrong about MENSA? How am I wrong about the admissions standards of ivy league schools? The truth is you cannot handle it. You are afraid to concede to the fact that your ass is owned in this article, not just by me, but the rest of the commenters here who have pretty much verified what I have been saying this whole time.
So you can go ahead and live in your delusional blue pill fantasy world. It is you who is truly ignorant and rather, stubborn to admit that ivy league grads aren’t exactly the most sharpest people around.
I am at an age where all high school girls are cute. Whole forbidden fruit thing ya know.
The problem I have is the equating of the some to the all. Everything you say is 100% true about a section of the ivy folk. It is annoying. It stinks. But whatever, life isn’t fair. To paint the entire ivy league of universities out to be the small minority of old money influence brokers is no different than saying anyone who went to Notre Dame got there on a basketball scholarship. It’s patently absurd.
Many people at these schools (and even some of the really wealthy ones) work their asses off.
Of course many of the nutbag elites went to Harvard. Entitled, wealthy people tend to breed nutbag elites. They are there. They hang out together. They drive a porche and tell you about skiing in Vale. But the labs and libraries are filled with some of the best students in the world as well. You are, like I said, absolutely correct but you are painting with a very big brush what really requires a fine tip.
And I will agree that while the overall output of Harvard may have declined and the curriculum may be corrupted with political correctness and SJWs, that some incredibly bright people are there. Indeed, perhaps many of our best and brightest are attending there, and will learn something of value, and will go on to do great things.
But universities are institutions, and they must paint with large brushes. Institutions must deal with large issues. Hospitals must look at how many patients they are curing, and how many are dying, not the fact that they just performed the most amazing Siamese twin operation ever, or that someone just developed a new way to give Bruce Jenner a better vagina.
Likewise universities must be creating a more just, informed, thoughtful populace, and should be training leaders for the next generation. If, in this, they are failing, which this debate, along with many other factors, seems to indicate, then it matters not if the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (neither of whom graduated college FYI) is currently there. The institution is failing, and the criticism is valid and deserved.
You are way off about the admission standards.
Take a look at average gpa, class rank, and objective SAT scores.
Only the best of the best. Even their athletes were smart in high school.
No disagreement at all and there is a lot of problems in these institutions which ought to be addressed and fixed (and probably won’t be). My original point was just that the Harvard debate team is made up of excellent debaters with stupid ideas and let the inmates have a win because they think that that is good for them.
My point simply evolved to the fact that the general “ivy league is bad” attitude is ignorant and based in jealousy and that the ivy league has a great number of incredibly smart, hard working, diligent young men.
Funny you should mention Gates, possibly in an attempt to discredit college. He went to Harvard, perfect SAT scores, building software at 12. Meets the cofounder to his company at Harvard. Same story with Zuckerberg, Spiegel from Snapchat at Stanford.
I really hate when people point to these pillars of success and say “Look! He didn’t graduate college and he’s successful!” Being a genius programmer and dropping out of the best college in the country to take a career risk is not similar in any way shape or form to your average college dropout.
Explain to me how George Bush got in to Harvard and Yale? I seriously doubt that bumbling idiot got there through meritocracy.
Or explain how some of the airhead consultants I personally know who went to Oxford and Cambridge, managed to land some of the highest paying jobs in London?
You are wrong about mensa being the be all and end of of genius. It is simply a club with an admission fee where there is a minimum score on an IQ test. I am sure many members are smart and many are just good test takers.
You are absolutely wrong about admissions standards of ivy league schools. They are so intensely competitive for the 95% of the students that aren’t just legacy kids.
I mean this truly…it is wear, cowardly, ignorant and shameful that people like you don’t look at these places and aspire to them. It is the same logic that poofs up feminism and is, along with feminism, one of the reasons this country is in the shitter.
What I take away from stories like that is going to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, etc. is a great place to meet other smart people that you can go on to do great things with. I don’t think the actual professors taught Zuckerberg anything that helped him develop Facebook, same with Gates, who as you point out had already learned coding years before college, and probably was a better coder than anyone on faculty there.
So basically, the biggest advantage of an Ivy League is your first year living in the dorms.
His father was literally the future president of the United States, I believe a senator at the time. That level of influence is much, much more than your average business owner’s son.
I went to college with a ton of the super rich (Top 40 school, so pretty smart themselves) and none of them got into Harvard. One of my good friends is a wealthy legacy to a number of Ivies, average intelligence and he couldn’t even get into my school.
Absolutely. It is more about making connections than learning once you are in, but you have to be damn smart to get in.
Mensa is one the official and oldest IQ regulatory bodies in the world. It is recognised for giving accurate and official results in regards to one’s IQ. As I have mentioned, it would debunk the whole notion of the smartest people in the world going to ivy league schools.
Yes, some of the smartest go to ivy league schools,. But the reality is a large number of them are not the smartest. You are living in denial if you cannot see the legacy connections between the schools and the kind of people who go there. All of the politicians children, industrialists children, even the frickin central bankers kids, all went to those schools. The whole legacy concept throws meritocracy out the window and proves what a load of horseshit these ivy league schools really are.
Why would I aspire to go to the ivy league? I would rather aspire to be someone like Richard Branson or Alan Sugar- guys who didn’t go to some ivy league school but built multinational empires and enterprises that created millions of jobs for people like you ivy league grads, something which the vast majority of ivy league kids would not be able to do.
Exactly. George Bush relied on his father’s legacy to get him to those schools, rather than his own academic merit.
The people I know who went to the top schools…you would laugh if you had a conversation with those guys.
IQ is self is a touch bullshitty and mensa is just a club.
As for aspiring to become someone Like Branson or Sugar, yes, those are admirable role models.
Your views on the ivy league, however, are based in ignorance and prejudice. It is no different than when poor black kids sit around talking about rich doctors and calling them lucky…some are…some just worked their asses off.
Just getting accepted to an ivy takes far more work than the vast majority of Americans will ever put into anything their entire lives. By the time they are 18, most students of the prestigious universities have already outshone the vast population of people.
“By the time they are 18, most students of the prestigious universities have already outshone the vast population of people.”
But they still got owned by a bunch of convicts. These Harvard students look like they could use some time in the can too.
Yeah, according to you IQ is bullshit. Which would also reinforce my belief that you and the rest of the “geniuses” at your ivy league schools, would be afraid to take one as it would certainly throw a large percentage of you people under the bus.
My views on ivy leagues are based on seeing the realities of these schools and the actual history of the kind of people who are admitted into them.
This will be my last response. I’ll give you the last word.
All the best.
can’t restart. there is a whole discussion out there.
ok. you win.
See, if Harvard students could let inmates from a prison beat them in a debate and if the NBA can let retards score on them, I suppose I can do my part too.
You have a misconception here, an outdated one. Maybe 50 years ago Anglo-Saxons networked their kids into the Ivy league and had the wealth to pay for it. Now Whites constitute 20% of Harvard. Jews who are only 3% of the population are 25% of the Harvard student body. That’s the priviliged and racially connected tribe at Harvard today.
I preferred the Ivies when they were entirely the province of the elite. At least then, the smart kids were more evenly spread around the country, where others benefited from their presence. What’s more, a kid who attends an elite institution as a legacy, at a certain level knows that he owes his status and opportunities to his birth, rather than to his own efforts or intelligence. In a meritocracy, the elite all think that they’ve earned their positions of power, and are less likely to feel indebted to anyone else for it.
The Ivies stopped being WASP enclaves in the 1950s.
Just a few things here:
Gates, according to wiki, didnt really take college seriously judging from his life before entry and testimonies during his stay. I think its was really a good way to meet people like him at best and i assume him dropping out lends to that if there was no contract making everything produced in a school lab the property of the school at that time.
Mark Z just had a great product which went viral, accidentally or not, which did what some other similar services at that time did, but on a smaller scale (and had less corny people imho). He basically markets a fad and sells information in exchange for his services and he basically worked with 4 others to make a great product while in school and marketed to other schools. I dont think the school really did anything to bolster his product other than being the place that housed them.
Snapchat? Its a product that was there before and willl get replaced by the next fad related product. There are many people who have great products who come from different backgrounds, but these guys do what most programmers do: make something and save code in our code repositories until someone can make money off of it wether its us or the next person.
If anything i believe the example provided works against itself unless we are discussing the marketing teams if they werent already predisposed to being giants in their field before college.
Good points. Your comment really accentuates my previous points on the meritocracy of Ivy League schools. You WILL meet a plethora of brilliant folk, most of your classmates in business and law will make 7 figures, some will make 10.
Microsoft doesn’t happen without Gates meeting his co-founder Steve Ballmer at Harvard. Same with Zuckerberg meeting Saverin who funded Facebook with hundreds of thousands of dollars that he made himself.
I don’t think the actual classwork influenced these guys, but they were brilliant, thats why they were in the Ivy League, and they met each other basically at a gathering for future world-changers.
There’s a certain irony in you saying “…Cameron… never had to… deal with face to face interview panels…” and on Sunday he is getting “grilled by the interviewer”.
This guy deals with a grilling every week on PM Question Time. And he has been dealing with grilling probably for decades. Remember that he is a politician and essentially that means taking positions that you are not comfortable with because of various “pressures”. It is standard fare for politicians to give “weak answers” for this reason and because they cannot adequately prepare for every possible question. Not only that, its much easier to come up with skeptical questions than create a viable policy. And easy for you to be an armchair PM.
You need to back up what you are saying. How do you know “he needed connections” to get his foot in the door? (Not the same as actually getting in). Online aptitude tests? Eh?
You still don’t understand the difference between Private school and Public school do you? Who verified your friends’ statements? You?
You don’t know how intelligent I presume Cameron to be. Who said he had strong intellect? I just said he was smart. And I’m sorry you don’t get to be PM by being stupid. There are aspects to that job that you do not see on Sunday mornings.
Do you understand what context I am talking about, when I discuss people like David Cameron not having to deal with face to face interviews? Read the post again.
Do you know how PM Questions work? The Prime Minister receives all the questions in advance and has a team of people who devise all the answers to his questions. That goes to show you he is not skilled as he makes himself look like in PM Question Time.
In regards to his connections, it is well documented on the internet. You want to delve further into this, then I suggest you do a google search yourself.
Again, I do know the difference between the schooling systems and, what would you know about my friends?
PMs and other political leaders are not necessarily always smart or intellegent.
I know he gets the questions in advance. I have supplied questions for this purpose before. You have a problem with him taking time with his team to organise his answers?! Baffling.
I’m not interested in doing your research for you. Obviously he is “connected” but this has no bearing on his intelligence.
I don’t know anything about your friends, that’s why I asked you. Are you sure your State School education adequately prepared you for life?
Your last point is not being debated. We are talking about whether people who go to privately funded schools are idiots or not. And specifically Cameron. Like I said, I don’t necessarily agree with him but he is no dummy.
While it is true that someone like Zuckerberg probably wasn’t thinking about Heisnberg’s uncertainty principle, Kant’s categorical imperative or Adam Smith, Galileo, Plato, Sir Edmund Hilary, History of the Peloponnesian war, how to speak French or German or play the flute or row a canoe or anything like this while he was doing the thing that made him wildly successful the truth is that knowing this stuff, being taught it in a way that it becomes part of you and learning how to work and compete while learning it adds more to a person than you can possibly quantify.
I am a huge believer in a broad, liberal arts education.
Zuckerberg dropped out of school his sophomore year so I doubt he was even exposed to any of that stuff. Besides, I’m not impressed with Zuckerberg or his spam company anyway.
Zuckerberg was the wrong person to make the example with…but I still believe the general point as, I am guessing you do.
I am not sure how much genius versus luck versus timing versus fucking up backwards went into facebook. Don’t really know the story. But as Douglas Adams says, flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing…so who knows.
I can agree with you on the point of these schools being useful as an expensive meetup.com, but i don’t doubt they could have done so without college. We really don’t know the details behind steve ballmer and bill’s plan to work together or even if there were more people met on the outside that weren’t mentioned in order to, in some way or another, attempt to validate these institutions.
Personally i would say i’d knock these places (11% knock 89% don’t care)and not out of hate or envy, but because of the fact that the name is getting people into places as opposed to the actual education though i can’t add hard work in there because its something we can’t judge from out positions.
The rest is marketing; that’s why some ingenious stuff doesn’t make it through the cracks.
Wait, your saying IQ tests are actually reliable tests for intelligence? HAHAHAHAHHA
Wait stop… OMG, MENSA? A real test for intelligence? NO… just NO!
“The truth is that these are kids between 18-21 who have excelled with
flying colors at everything that has come their way and have gone out of
their way to find other challenges and have excelled at those too.”
Ah, but what exactly are those challenges? What exactly does a school student excel at in order to be accepted to colleges which depend principally on academic merit?
Academic success at high school? Absent problem-solving skills in Math, this amounts to success at regurgitation of facts. Original ideas are meant to be generated at university level, not school.
Social success at high school? By definition that means you got a large number of people to like you. To do that, you must be a social chameleon, able to blend into any environment while disguising your true voice, or you were adept at finding the correct group to associate with. This is probably an excellent skill for becoming a politician, but I’d hardly call politics a terribly worthy subject.
Recommendation from teachers or school administrators? Basically the same as social success at school, with the variation that you had an instinctive grasp of Cialdini’s persuasion principles — skills that anyone can learn and often do with time — and were most likely a brown nose who knew how to keep his face in front of adults.
Problem solving, original ideas, innovation, preternatural wisdom, maturity, principles, integrity? Those range from the “not so much” to “impossible to develop or predict at high school level” when it comes to picking kids for university.
Again, the Fortune 500 CEO list is telling: when someone is needed who is results-oriented rather than process-oriented, the Ivy League loses out big time. Paradoxically, by its focus on supposedly well-rounded students as opposed to result-orientation and problemsolving skills, the Ivy League is the advanced school for people who want to climb up the system as it stands and work the system to its advantage — not focus relentlessly on results.
lolknee is pissed… He went to a fancy school, wasted a ton of money on prestige and all he got was a lousy job.
The CEO list is deceptive. You are looking at the top fraction of corporate employees. It would make more sense to compare Ivy League grads as a category vs non-Ivy League grads and see who performs better on a non-arbitrary set of criteria?
I see your point in a lot of places MA and agree with you. But you have to compare apples to apples here.
Two students, one gets into an ivy and another doesn’t. Examine why. With similar issues at hand one has excelled. One has be able to put their personal desires aside to strive for a greater goal. On top of which, because of competition, one will be able to, most likely, play at least one instrument, play at least one sport well, debate, play chess and have read a great deal of literature as well as be adept with math far beyond his classmates. He will also have shown himself to be active in his community, have written articles for the school newspaper, have kept himself out of trouble, etc. etc.
Yes, they haven’t been given real world tests yet. However, the tests they have been given they have aced.
Graft said it below about the F500 CEO list. This is a bad barometer of certain things. I have no doubt that all 500 of those CEOs have serious and aggressive alpha traits not found in many (though in some) of the Ivy students. But, how well do they do research? How well do they work on a team? How well do they understand the world in a wider frame than the particular aspect of their job. This isn’t to put them down. They are amazing specimens of people, but the skill set does not necessarily require intelligence.
3 of 500 of the F500 CEO’s are from Ivy’s. I don’t know the exact percentage of college students to go to an ivy league school but I can absolutely assure you it is less than 1% of all students.
Look at Fulbright statistics however? Or Rhodes Scholarships. My point was that the Harvard kids threw this debate for political reasons….big high five to the special Olympics team…not that they are better.
If I want someone to cleave a path for me from the streets to a penthouse apartment taking no hostages and making hard decisions I will find a F500 CEO. If I want to win a collegiate debate I will talk to an ivy debate team. Different skills are needed to make the world go ’round and the ivy boys bring something special to the table that is different form others.
What bothers me is the outright ivy bashing. People have been hostile towards intelligence for a long time and it is an ignorant and dangerous thing for a society.
True, many Ivy Leaguers are starting their own companies using their connections. They don’t have the patience to work 20 years for a Fortune 500 company to get a snowball’s chance in hell at becoming CEO.
A lot of misleading info about Ivy League schools and college in general. Someone who gets a 2300 on the SATs and a 4.2 in subjects like advanced calc and physics are not merely “regurgitating facts”
Teacher recos-not great in ivy. Go for a politician or charity director after volunteering.
Social success is not really counted unless they are student body president.
The F500 list is telling because as I mentioned earlier, corporate work is underachievement for an Ivy grad that tends to go into more “elite” fields.
Yup. Entrepreneurship, MD, corporate law, consulting, high finance. They get on the track to making real money right away-not 200k after 20 years of slaving for F500 with student debt from a part-time MBA.
As you can probably tell, I wish I had gone to one of the top Ivies (Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Columbia)
I got a recommendation from the principal after getting suspended for two weeks for socially engineering my way into the school computer system. Also used to write TI basic programs to take my math tests for me. Good times man, good times.
actually I went to a fancy school, didn’t pay a dime an now have an enviable job as well as a well rounded education that serves me every day in one way or another.
I am a bit pissed though. The rampant anti-intellectualism in the united states is, along with feminism and lefty economics, going to cause the downfall of the western world. Guessing that isn’t an issue for you.
Nailed it.
I always thought how hilarious female priorities are. If they really valued achievement and success in their youth, the top ten colleges for hot women would be all the groupies showing at Harvard or Princeton parties instead of ASU or Towson.
I think I’m coming from a different angle here (European, not American), but-
If you compare US standard tests (SATs from what I recall they call them) with European ones (In Sweden, Germany, or hey hey, Russia), their threshold is much lower. For example, the math questions asked in a test that ascertains a student’s readiness for college in the United States is 9th grade level in Germany or Romania. 7th grade level in Russia. The same is valid for biology, history and geography.
Eastern European students are not allowed to use scientific calculators for any type of exam, and they learn how to use one in their sophomore year at the Uni, if they’re studying polytechnic or architecture. Banking, finance and economics students have no idea what that is. American students basically live on sci calculators since high school.
Ivy League language students have the same levels with 8th graders studying French or German in Eastern Europe. Romanian highschool and gymnasium curricula include two obligatory foreign languages- it’s mostly English coupled with either Spanish, French, German etc.
Highschool-level athletic and ‘social’ inclinations (playing baseball and being in the school theater) prove absolutely nothing about a student’s real cognitive and social skills. Nobody can be good at everything, and having played Little Bo Beep in the 12th grade production or the tuba in the highschool band has nothing to do with how well a young graduate will perform at his job.
Most of these extra curricular activities don’t mean anything but the certificate they are printed on, and they are encouraged over generations as, unbeknownst to anyone who lives outside the US, Americans still think they matter for something.
It is logical that a ‘top student’ from a private school in the US will excel at a standardized test and ‘pass with flying colors’ like you put it, as opposed to a student who comes from the public school system, for example. Or someone who simply didn’t study enough. The test is overall standardized for everyone willing to take it.
In Europe, each single faculty (not University) has its own admission exam, with its own questions, methodology and assessment process.
I have studied in three different EU countries, and I have met a lot of students and professors from different systems, different approaches, different backgrounds.
I can assure you that the American students were the rudest and loudest (civil responsibility flew off the window), the least informed on general knowledge and world affairs, and they all seemed to have the same vocabulary that consisted of about 25 words.
Had no intellectual hobbies as well- Facebook, ‘hanging out’ at the mall with their friends and Harry Potter. European students usually read (non-fiction), watch documentaries, play chess, play a musical instrument and read the newspaper every morning.
I speak only of European students because that’s what I know- I’m not mentioning Asian students (mostly Chinese, Korean and Japanese).
There are even videos on YouTube of Korean gymnasium students resolving US standardized math tests in 10 minutes and laughing about it. You can go see for yourself.
Now, that doesn’t mean that Ivy League students are idiots while the European ones have three brains and six hands.
But their ‘excellence’ pales in comparison with international standards, as it is strictly confined within the borders of the US.
You are dead on correct here. I did my graduate work at the graduate faculty of a school based on European education model and did 2 years abroad, one just after college and one in graduate school (first in Paris and the second in Berlin).
Every single thing you say here is correct. The European model is vastly superior when it comes to educating the young and I would go as far as to say that most Gymnasium graduates in Berlin that I met were more articular (not only in their own language but usually in 2 others) than many if not most of the graduates from some of our top Universities over here.
The American secondary education is a joke and American’s simply do not read on the whole.
I will say that the American education system, while horrible beaten by European system for raising well rounded and intelligent citizens does do an excellent job creating career specialists (Knee Surgeon, Divorce attorney) and then preparing them for a mind numbing life where they rate their success in ways that would mortify their European and Asian counterparts.
This is not without some benefits as the educated American workforce is sought after all around the world (especially doctors and lawyers), but nevertheless, your point is taken and is correct.
Like I mentioned in another comment, painting with a broad brush is rough. MIT is turning out world class engineers who take a back seat, on the whole, to no other country…but the US is not all MIT.
The excellence at schools like Harvard is, you correctly point out, only comparable to other schools in the united states and not even in the same league as, say, the Sorbonne in Paris. There simply isn’t a comparison when it comes to producing intelligent, well read, thoughtful citizens.
The problem, essentially, is that the US turned education into a business. There are a billion little schools here who will accept anyone because their parents think success equates to having a degree as if having a degree from some one school is exactly the same as from another.
ALso, the loans to go to these schools are a sure thing. This ensures an uneducated public which is at least a quarter million in debt before they are 25 competing with a million other uneducated people with a ton of debt and all of them are expecting to be treated like royalty because they have a degree. Compared to this, Harvard is turning out very smart and capable kids.
The people who get into these schools, like Princeton or Yale, have been given a series of hurtles to jump and have jumped them all very well. Yes, the hurtles in many ways were much shorter than their European counterparts, but they jumped the ones they were given.
I don’t even know how to agree with you enough that the outside of school activities of American students are preposterous and not only do not add to a more full worldview but actively destroy what small light is there in the first place.
I wish I would have gone through the gymnasium system. Then again, we also need people who didn’t…and this is another thing that the US bumbled on. By making the mark of success “having a degree” and making it so that everyone could get one we have basically taken the value of a Bachelors Degree and wiped our asses with it.
The problem, and what my point was aimed at, is that many people here look at the Ivy schools with disdain because of their history of nepotism…which does exist just not as much as people think…thinking that everyone there is a lazy, rich and self-entitled dimwit who is going to get through life because of his name and bank account. It simply isn’t true. Most of the kids in Ivy schools have been put through the ringer to get there. That ringer may not have been as intellectually challenging as any of the European schools, but it has been incredibly stressful and time consuming.
A highschool kid with hopes of going to an ivy will first be getting perfect grades. Will have some amount of another language (which is the US is like walking on the moon). They will be active in their neighborhood, be on an athletic team, have a dozen other activities they are participating in. When they leave school they very well may not know a stitch of Dostoyevsky or Game Theory, but when they get to work they will be able to work in a totally stressful environment with 100 things to do for 17 hours a day and do so with aplomb…and that, at least, is something that very few of their European counterparts can boast.
I don’t want to say one is better than the other. They are different and they are both necessary to make the world go ’round.
Thank you for your insightful post.
I think that the comparison between the US labor market environment and the European is a bit ……not necessarily unfair, but slightly…unwarranted, basically. This is partly, if not largely, due to the cushy European social system, with its huge benefits, maternity leaves, medical and dental, as well as a larger number of free days per annum compared with the US one.
An European engineer, on average (whether Finnish, Romanian or Slovak), or a doctor, a lawyer or a professor will work just as hard as an US one, will have the same hurdles and difficulties, as well as the same type of success so to speak, minus the higher salary (doctors for example make much less in the UK than in the US), due to the tax system.
If an European professional gets fired- no biggie. Severance package regulated by the government, automatic health insurance again, from the government, unemployment benefits, again- gov here.
Of course that the UK, a rich EU country, will be wealthier and thus more generous towards its citizens than a poorer country such as Romania, or Bulgaria. Nevertheless, these people who worked and studied hard know that nothing remotely similar to what’s happening in the US (foreclosure, unpaid medical bills etc) will ever happen to them.
The grueling work hours, the responsibility and the pressure for results is identical.
The nepotism thing in the Ivy League debate I believe stems from the social inequality in the US, and the differences in the admission systems. There’s a lot of nepotism here in Europe as well, particularly in Eastern Europe where I come from (Corruption Kingdom), nevertheless in the US the divide between the haves and the have nots is sharper due to the public v . private school system.
Someone who doesn’t come from the one percenters, whose parents or relatives never went to an Ivy League school, who has good test scores but went to public school, basically has absolutely no chance in getting admitted, as opposed to kids who come from wealth and pedigree.
In Europe, despite nepotism flourishing in academia as well as everywhere else, if you’re good enough you don’t get left behind. If you pass the admission exam of each faculty, if you have good grades and impress the board at the interview…welcome aboard. The system also absorbs those who can, but don’t have, because the fees are not that exorbitant.
Here’s the business-like approach that you mentioned, and I believe that’s why people think about nepotism, wealth and family connections. Ivy League is 100% about the money (beyond the required good grades), so if someone who genuinely IS good cannot pay the fee an cannot quality for financial aid…bye bye Harvard or Columbia.
Mixed bag here and again, I tend to agree with most of what you have to say. You are absolutely correct about the social inequality leading to the finger pointing. However, as someone who grew up in relative poverty, who had a stay at home mom and auto mechanic father, who had no connections and certainly wasn’t a child of privilege I was able to gain access so I can tell you that the idea that it is impossible to get on board without having the in is simply incorrect. Furthermore, I wasn’t an aberration. There were plenty of kids from low income and middle class working families there in the same boat. Yeah the rich kids shit on us, but no more, I would imagine, than French aristocrats shit on French farmers. I was very good academically and athletically and from a very young age knew one thing…I wanted to be away from where I was. I was on several athletic teams in highschool, in the school band, theater, wrote for the school newspaper, worked a job, volunteered at an old age home AND at the Met Museum while getting pretty much perfect grades (not necessarily because I was smart but because I worked hard and studied like a lunatic). Like I mentioned in another post, I wasn’t alone. There were plenty of people like me. I knew where “the other” kids were. They didn’t want anything to do with me and I didn’t want anything to do with them. I was working full time while going to school and also a member of several clubs. Ivy kids aren’t, definitionally, smarter than other kids which is how some people feel they act…but they have made sacrifices and worked harder than a lot of other people. It is funny: so many people hate the ivy kids because they simply assume that the ivy kids feel superior to them when, in many cases, that simply isn’t the truth.
Is Ivy league 100% about the money? No more than every other school in this country…with regard to something yes and other things no. I had very smart professors who gave me a lot of personal attention. If I got a wild hair and wanted to know more about Kant or George Washington or the History of Chess or whatever I could find a professor who would dedicate time to me, suggest reading, discuss things with like an adult. I had one professor I remember fondly who met with me every week in his office just to talk. He gave me a big list of books I had never heard of coming from a shit hole area and poor family and I would read them and then talk to him about them. It was terrific.
The university system in America is Flawed but at many schools you will find what you put in…to a degree…at the ivy joints I found that, with almost no end, as much as I wanted and as much time as I could spend I would find people to guide me. If you have no intellectual curiosity, if you are super wealthy and apathetic, if you are lunatic fringe political then that is what you will get out of it but there were plenty of students who worked hard and really enjoyed and benefited from the experience.
Agree again. I just wanted to point out that while in many ways inferior there are some lessons that are learned here in the US which are a byproduct, intentional or not, of what is in many ways an inferior educational system.
The difference is cultural. Americans are pragmatists. Education is viewed as a utility that gains them access to the labour market. Europeans have a more well rounded understanding of its social role, but not all EU countries are equal in terms of the quality of education provided.
Absolutely. America is still the country of all possibilities….for the rich. A college degree means much, much more in the United States as only a fringe of the population ever gets one, in comparison with the majority in Europe. Then there’s the consumer-oriented lifestyle and ‘affording’ everything you want as well as the bank pays for it up to a point…personally, I could never see myself living in the US. Just visit a couple of places ^.^
I am happy that the whole thing worked out for you in spite of your background. I come from Eastern Europe and grew up in the aftermath of the fall of Communism- you cannot imagine the poverty and misery that we had for many, many years.
You put in the hard work but you also had the genuine interest. Had you been European, you wouldn’t have had to make so much effort (clubs and volunteer work simply don’t matter here) as the top schools would’ve simply picked you up immediately.
Correct. I like the European system better. However, being involved with those clubs and services did have some value.
I won’t claim to have any idea what post communism eastern Europe looked like in terms of poverty, but where I was from was a little on the poor rough side.
For instance, the police simply didn’t come there so the gangs ruled everything. It was relatively safe because everyone knew you didn’t have anything to steal.
I am not saying it is easy, but for someone who is determined, the possibility exists.
The PISA results would back up your observations, but I must digress that a diverse nation of +300 million in a Republic such as the US– the end results are not going to tell you much. (*Note: What is the biggest factor taken into consideration when married couples with kids decide to buy a home? The school district is resides in.) Regarding mono-ethnic nations — China (not big with human rights) with +1 billion citizens is the largest and tops the charts. Finland does great on PISA, but is is country of 5 million white Lutherans who speak a unique language. Not disparging those countries, but it is a valid observation.
The US public school curriculum, has been watered down to moron levels and should be disbanded at this point. Most US universities are nothing more than credential factories who love the government grant money, but that educational bubble will bust some day. However the US does produce great local talent and as we spend more in R&D than any other country it will also draw foreign. Money gives you advantages over education. I have met plenty of better educated Russian citizens than me, but that education does not help you much when you are standing in line for food.
“..nevertheless in the US the divide between the haves and the have nots is sharper due to the public v . private school system.”
School vouchers. Big push give them to poor parents so that they may use them to get into the private schools has been going on for 30 years. The democrat party and the NEA (biggest labor union in the US) blocks that every time.
There are a billion factors to take into consideration when discussing academic results or systems. Chinese students for example, and Asian students generally, while great with analytical skills in mathematics and physics, have severe difficulties in learning foreign languages. Same goes for their ‘style’- they never do anything more than what is required of them, have no creativity and are molded by a system that values 100% response to authority.
I was ‘generalizing’ a bit, nevertheless overall, top US graduates of Ivy League universities are definitely less prepared in their respective object than European students. The fact that they get better jobs in US versus what kind of jobs Russian engineers get in Russia- that’s a whole different thing.
‘No longer does the hard working man from the poor background count for anything.’
When did the hard working poor man count for anything? By my count, through most of history, he was always the least appreciated and most shitted upon.
What they are discovering is the inadequacy of focusing almost exclusively on discourse, on changing and managing representations of reality, rather than focusing on the reality itself, the bind for them being the impossibility of making any distinction between the two since for most progressives discourse is supposed to be constitutive of reality. For progressives all there is is a competition between competing ideologies with the implication that the best way to win the argument is to short loudest and most frequently until your ideology becomes hegemonic and unchallengable. The only problem though with this plan for building a new world order based on controlling reality through the control of discourse is that, ultimately, as Captain Blackadder would say, it’s bollocks. You have to be able to argue your case to win a real debate and to do that you have to return to demonstrable facts and figures, that is the reality beyond endless repetition of the same thing in the hope that that thing comes to be accepted as unchallengibly true
Good for these men, and when I say men I mean then in the absolutist sense. The sense of disgust I have for these coddled soft privileged kids who remain children most of their lives is not disgust from a sense of envy but from a sense of recognising weakness. A nation’s upper class and their values is a barometre on the nation’s general health of their body politic, and the reason why monarchy and landed aristocracy is looking more and more better everyday as opposed to the values of internationalism and soft cosmopolitanism. Yes luxury was reveled and position was determined by order of birth but if war ever broke out the aristocracy, the best of the nation were the officers at military academy, the generals, the first to lead their countrymen and share a common sacrifice, these were men.
Today what have are boys who enter into institutions whose founding values have long been eroded and graduate these places remaining boys and soft at heart, soft in body and weak in mind. You can hear it in their voices, see it in their eyes, see it in their physical form. The inculcation they receive from four years of cohabited with girls on campus and being shoveled false theories contributes to this, but also disgusting is their parents and the cycle they create. Their children are too good to be in the military, for military academy, to share in the nation’s toil, these are internationalists, even if not Jewish, they share in a Jewish internationalism of disinterest in their nation’s health. Look at West Point today, full of women, and kids from lower backgrounds and model minorities such as Asians and good for them but the fact that this does not signal a crisis in how weak men are here should tell you how weak American men are. For this reason when the backlash comes, this will be an upperclass almost worthy than any other of their decapitation from the body politic, if it comes at all.
When I studied a broad 10 years ago in Barcelona I met a lot of students from across the country. Some of the dumbest I met were students from Harvard and Brown. Talking to them it became obvious that being admitted to those schools was primarily based on where they grew up and what comfortable upper class schools they were able to attend. I met a blonde bimbo who was admitted to Harvard because her parents knew someone on the admissions board. That’s not to say there isn’t a sprinkling of a few geniuses there.
I tried to study a broad once but she slapped me. Couldn’t finish my study.
Damn you beat me to the joke!
You beat me to say “you beat me!”
Did it hurt ?
No, but thank you for your concern.
Not after I was up in Dat!
Ya, I was going to say that I’ve studied a number of broads.
I had a professor from Harvard at my school. Smart guy but he could ask the stupidest questions. Outside of his area of expertise he was pretty dumb.
So many of the dumbest “elites” come from Harvard. From both political persuasions. There is a Harvard professor running for president in 2016, and he’s a complete idiot. He even says in his own words that he is stupid when asked about the main issue in his platform. See for yourself:
Thomas Sowell (who is basically the leading conservative academic in the western world) said, or referred to a conversation where someone else said, something like “Have you ever noticed that with every crisis, there is a Harvard man at the centre of it?” The implication was that that it is the Harvard elites and their hair-brained schemes that create problems rather than solving them.
quite often the case
One of my former professors in Sweden used to tell us this funny anecdote- he had been invited for a one-semester fellowship at Harvard in 2006 from what I recall, and went in to his first lecture with palms literally sweating and knees trembling, thinking that he wasn’t prepared enough for those world-renowned kids, he wasn’t going to perform well, his arguments were going to be attacked with questions from the famous world-ranking Ivy League students….and left the class with a major disappointment, thinking how extraordinarily average those humongous tuition-paying students were.
From what I understood about the US academic system (friends who studied in US at IL universities), the discrepancy between reality and expectation lies on the less-than-average performance of US students, who mostly come from public schools.
The public school system in the US is more than tragic, therefore the private sector is given this ‘top of the top’ veneer by both Americans as well as those overseas, who have no idea what’s happening in reality and are influenced by the media and the Hollywood-like perception of the US by the non-American.
Most IL students come from wealthy families who can afford the tuition fees, and have been prepared by the private school system, as opposed to those from public schools. Nevertheless, on average, a Harvard or Princeton student will be identically educated and equipped for a professional career like an European student educated in Germany, the Uk or France.
These Harvard (even MIT) educated geniuses wouldn’t stand a prayer in front of some peasant educated in the old communist bloc, if we’re talking STEM fields at least… Everything back then was done pen and paper. That’s it. That’s why you see all russians/eastern europeans oldies developing and running the most complex military and civilian systems.
PS: The beating we were getting from the teachers in grade school when we were slacking.. LOL.
Absolutely true. Take any top MIT engineering graduate- graduate, not freshman- and have him take the admission tests in mathematics and physics for the Lomonosov in Moscow. Or pass a semesters’ exams, it just isn’t going to happen.
Yes, the MIT engineer will get a fantastic job in his home country and make much more than what a Russian engineer will make in Russia. Cause that’s how life is.
But the development of brain farms such as the MIT was only possible with Russian-inspired mathematics curricula, researchers and professors. Not American ones.
I can attest to Russian science and engineering education. I’ve worked with their postdocs and they put the West to shame. Hands down.
I spent a decade – with half of it during the Cold War – prepared to defend Canada against the Commies, but you really have to hand it to the Soviets for giving a challenge to the USA on what amounts to a shoestring budget. Do you think a bunch of MIT grads could develop a Mig? an Akula? or motherfucking Sputnik given the economic constraints?
For STEM, I think you are absolutely wrong. STEM recruiting is not done based on idealogy, but on results, even at schools like this. That said, a brilliant conservative scientist would be best served to hide his conservative values at one of these places. The fact remains that these institutions still have professional prestige and they still attract geniuses from the STEM fields. I guarantee you these Harvard debaters were not STEM kids. They are being groomed for a life in academics or politics. And no, the average peasant from any country is not going to out-think the brightest from the US. Even at Harvard. This is of course opinion as there is no test for either of us to prove this. It seems a ridiculous concept though.
I’m willing to entertain this idea if you have proof.
You can see for yourself, by checking the respective tests I am mentioning. The point of view I previously expressed actually belongs to one of my sister’s former professors at the polytechnic university, not to me.
According to Plato, Socrates was considered the wisest of the Greeks at his time. According to Socrates, the only reason he was wise was that he understood the exceeding large limitations he has as only human. Socrates went to talk with the men of Athens whom were supposed to be the wisest. Politicians, generals, the wealthy. He said the more each individual thought they new, the more he could see they new nothing of real value. My dad used to sum this up all the time when I was a child. He said the dumbest people always think they are the smartest people and the smartest people usually realize there is so much they don’t know. As far as I know my pops never read Plato and came to this decision on his own. The same goes for most of the government and academic elites.
In all seriousness, my understanding is that you get into Harvard by having sky-high marks or as part of the “legacy”. I think the kids of alumni and major donors get preferential treatment but my impression is that having a someone on the admissions board trying to put the fix in would not fly.
.
The average SAT scores for Ivy League schools is significantly higher than other schools, and the SAT is heavily g-loaded, which means that it is a good proxy for an IQ test. However, what I have said elsewhere is that 1) raw intelligence is no particular indication of common sense or wisdom and 2) beyond an IQ of about 140, it just doesn’t matter in the real world (ie. outside of academia or the laboratory). The greatest military, business and political leaders all cluster in the 130s.
Under a “study abroad” advertisement on a local billboard, there were subscription forms for Playboy magazine, showing a few front covers of past issues. I thought it was brilliant placement.
Tired of liberal faggots being exactly that. They have no ground to stand on, they just own the shouting game. You say something I dont like, you lose your job…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjpC_DGNpEY
Clearly having women on Harvard’s team versus the all-male inmates was a major contributing factor to their loss. This should have been mentioned in the article. Also, I’m betting the inmates had very strong vocal delivery versus the vocal fry weaklings on Harvard’s side.
I love the worried expression on that girl’s face as she looks at the rest of her team. “You mean we actually have to prove our point?”
“But I thought having a Pussy was all the Point I needed in a debate?”
The pussy-pass doesn’t work with felons.
What are these FACTS they keep using against us??
facts is just “Cats F” all jumbled up and baby these cats F
“Would I be a total slut if I went and sat on their lap?”
Guys! Our white privilege isn’t working!!!
One of my favorite scenes in any movie is at the beginning of ghostbusters when Pete and Ray get fired from Columbia University. While drinking from a pint of scotch Pete says “don’t worry, it won’t be so bad” and Ray replies “not so bad? Peter, you’ve been in academia all your life. you don’t know what it’s like in the real world.” Then he, almost incredulously, says “they expect RESULTS!”
I doubt we’ll have that amount of honesty and insight in the all new improved female ghostbusters.
A very poignant quote. Especially in the 80s with the rise of the yuppies and demise of the unions
If only all feminist social scientists would do it
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/women_and_minorities_in_science.htm
The problem, in my opinion, begins in K-12 education. There the SJW narratives are contained in the textbooks. Also, public schools have diminished student accountability. As an example, the process of failing a student requires the teacher to provide paperwork as a justification. We need to provide copies of “remediation forms” that were given to both the student and parent as well as a signature sheet that contains verification of the receipt of the remediation form. Additionally, we must also provide proof of parental notification. Never mind the fact that student grades are posted online and all parents have access to their child’s grades. This bureaucracy creates a disincentive to fail students and to offer “make-up” work and “extra-credit” to avoid paperwork on top of regular teaching duties.
But let’s get back to curriculum, more specifically the myth of “critical thinking”. Critical thinking is nothing but a heavily edited version of logic. And when “critical thinking” is taught, it’s “taught” as part of a subject area but that’s deceptive. If you can remember your school textbooks, each chapter had a section review which are questions on the content. Each section review contains roughly 6 questions and only one is a “critical thinking” question. By they way, did you notice how I’ve not mentioned anything about a class dedicated to instruction in “critical thinking”? That’s because there is none but how would you dedicate coursework to something that is nothing but a heavily edited version of a superior original? Besides, the school teachers are not trained in “critical thinking” or logic so how would they know how to grade answers from a question designed to improve “critical thinking” skills? Now add to this, the fact that schools are measured largely on their ability to instill the memorization of facts in order to have students do well on a standardized test? I am a social studies teacher and this is par for the course for all the subjects except for economics (and even that is poisoned with bullshit like “income inequality”). When you evaluate a school based on its ability to instill rote facts then teaching “critical thinking” is further marginalized.
This is what is happening in American education. What we are seeing in the colleges is merely a manifestation of the failure of American education which begins in elementary school. One of the main reasons why the SJWs argue dishonestly and fail to stay on topic is the failure of education to develop the mind. Additionally the kids are coddled and given second, third, and fourth chances. All this is done at the behest of the parents. These children then grow up to be journalists, college professors, senators and congressmen, and lawyers. If there is any good news in any of this then it is the fact that our opposition is ignorant and cannot think rationally. This is an opportunity for those who actually know how to think and, sadly, know how to read text beyond the 7th grade level.
I’ll never forget a debate I was having with Chauncey de Vega, a writer who has had an article appear in Salon. There were serious issues in his responses that were identical to those we see with the SJWs. In a retort, I mentioned that he should read a textbook on formal logic as a means of tightening his arguements. I recommended one by Scott Sullivan, “Introduction to Traditional Logic”. I cannot remember the exact nature of his response but it was along the lines of “I don’t need your damned book on logic.”
Is there any video of the debate itself? All the youtube videos just have stills and quotes.
Because after this, any affirmative action debate team needs to provide hi rez proof.
If anyone has a link, please post. I want to see it myself.
It’s like they’re Rapping.
Hand in face in utter disgust at the human race. All I could make out of this “debate” was whiteness and culture with a lot of heavy “ah’s” that sounded like a convulsion. Was anything of substance actually discussed or was this just two groups of black people complaining about white people…or was that, in fact, the actually subject of the debate, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Today’s topic will be complaining about white people.
The content doesnt matter, its just like “political” hip hop, raise your fist in the air and throw in some noam chomsky and malcolm x quotes and you’re good to go.
This was painful to listen to…if they truly are champions, I have lost respect for debate teams nationwide.
The news clip said they were champions but i doubt it was on a national level, it must have been some kind of subdivision.
A subdivision of a subdivision
Apparantly its somehow altruistic to lower the standard alot for one of the greatest nations on earth, and if you disagree then shame on you.
Wouldn’t say altruism so much as a disservice being done to these kids. They’re going to go out into the real world thinking this “nigger AH shit and stuff AH the white man AH” is going to get them anywhere. They’re in for a rude awakening.
Subdivision? More like a project!
I’m not debate expert but a few things:
1) Why in the hell is she talking so fast? This is a DEBATE, not a race to see how many words you can spit out per minute.
2) I thought the point of debate teams were two-fold; to learn to approach topics critically and to learn how to speak well. What’s with all the “ah’s” and “uh’s”?
Is she having a seizure?
Celebrating black pathology 365/24/7. You can have civilization or you can have the presence of the negro, you can’t have both.
You think all blacks act like that?
If the behavior of 95% of their elected representatives after the George Zimmerman Affair is any indication, yes.
Then you’re wrong, I live in the inner city btw
So gerrymandered welfare subsidized inner city slums is how you define all blacks?
(Not to mention how shitty Career politician are?)
The 86% who disapproved plus the 9% undecided of the George Zimmerman verdict is how I judge blacks.
Not the media who spinned the entire story, I BELIEVED the official story at one point of time
After Officer Wilson, the “evil media” argument doesn’t hold water anymore. Blacks will always put their own ahead instead of doing the right thing.
It had nothing to do with politicization? Seriously you’re trying hard to ignore media here
WTF ! I understand most of spoken English, I do admit to have some difficulty with the Scottish accent, but so do lots of people even Scots… But definitively I don’t understand American ghetto language…
i see dont get what this was about
ROK is stupid for publishing this article. I have a very good feeling the “debate” resembled the debate you shared here.
I feel like I am at the dmv watching this
Fortunately, a little thing called the Internet exists. And yet, I’m assuming the prisoners didn’t have access to it, yet they still kicked ass.
And speaking of ass kickers, Happy Veterans Day!
I love that professor’s email response. Very succinct
It’s a soft generation. When reality hits these Ivy League students it’s gonna feel like kissing a moving freight train. I’ll happily wager that those prisoners will be better prepared for life and success when they are released than the students. At a certain point in life just being smart, talented or having an Ivy League education isn’t enough. You have to have heart and have to have a man’s will to put in the work mastering your craft. School of hard knocks > Ivy League coddling party all day long.
“I’ll happily wager that those prisoners will be better prepared for life and success when they are released than the students”
I’ll happily wager against you. Harvard diploma=automatic cushy job and access to the worlds best connections in addition to a genius level IQ.
The school of hard knocks is vastly overrated. Donald Trump didn’t have any hard knocks. Money, power, connections will get you way further than life experience ever will.
Maybe for Trump’s generation, but every advantage my twenty something classmates had, money for college from parents, going to a better school, connection in business and politics, only landed them whining about how unemployed they are. I went to the city college and had to work nights full time to pay for it. I’m a success now and they can’t rub two nickels together without mom and dad’s help. The cushy job you’re talking about isn’t available anymore. The market reality has changed.
You are school of hard knocks, but no money or connections. If you are ever fortunate enough to experience those advantages, you will realize it’s a much better road to the top.
School of hard knocks is beneficial, but I would much rather be a rich kid with a 150 IQ and two software patents alongside my Ivy-League diploma and high-powered rolodex than sweat it like you did.
I can relate to that, but I think I would be a much more shitty person if I went that route. I remember being on the cusp of going to a top tier business school, visiting my uncle in NYC who was working 90 hours a week at one of the big investment banks, never home to visit with me or his wife, never able to enjoy the great things the city offered, just working like a slave, and sure, being very well paid but losing some of his humanity. Eh, I do just fine now and live a low stress life. Have time for hobbies and goofing off and volunteering and messing around on ROK. You can’t buy that no matter how rich you are!
The true privileged in this country don’t need to slave for dollars.
I tend to agree with you because that is the reality. Some people are more equal than others like Animal Farm.
But if you strip away all the connections and advantages and start each group on equal footing, then these felons would do better in life.
“But if you strip away all the connections and advantages and start each group on equal footing, then these felons would do better in life”
Depends on if you strip genius level IQ from them. That can take you real far in life.
I have an inherent issue with IQ tests being considered equivalent to intelligence… but thats just me. 🙂
“I’ll happily wager that those prisoners will be better prepared for life and succes…”
Ah, no. Considering the recidivism rates of black felons, they will most likely be back in prison. They will return to their neighborhoods, meet up with the same old crowd and act on the same impulses.
Yeah, not even close.
Blue collar hourly job is best case scenario for prison boys.
Ivy Leaguers can skate through your average six-figure STEM job on intelligence alone.
If this topic were WOMEN, I’d agree more with Bushido.
Intelligence? From those that I met, it was more about connections. I have always been parital to the guys at MIT– smart blokes.
Connections are a factor, especially if you have a 2200 SAT instead of a 2400, but you still have to be damn smart to even break the 25th percentile of Harvard students (about 2120 SAT)
If they would actually use objective standards for ALL students, I would agree with you.
Of course they have to do more than beat Ivy League squirts to win back redemption from society, but I must say, these guys are off to a good start. Godspeed.
It’s affirmative action bingo.
When kids spend their lives in institutions where social signaling over “compassion” is prized above anything else, they’re naturally going to lack critical thinking and rationalism
This is why academia needs to be purged of equalists before society can improve
Academia is too far gone to be purged of anything. It’s a nursery of all sorts of degeneracy. The rot runs so deep, it would useless to try to excise the bad elements.
Eliminate tenure and utilize a merit based system.
Funny how these people fold when they have to argue facts and can’t threaten to get you fired from your job
A true story of a Harvard law grad:
This was very entertaining. Love it.
I had a professor once that seemed to go out of his way to offend his students. Learned more from him than the rest of my university education.
That’s basically what the inmates did here. Allow me to make an assumption about them that they would prefer education be offered universally and at no charge to the public. They were forced to argue the opposing side, and challenged their minds to develop the best arguments against something which they (may have) strongly opposed personally. They used logic and reason, attempting to understand the opposing side, analyzing their arguments and determining counter-arguments.
Plus, Harvard had chicks on the team.
Of course, inmates are more in touch with everyday life. Plus they’re in a masculine environment, so in a way it shouldn’t be surprising.
Tell me about it. Growing up in a third world country does make you aware of how things really work.
Struggles and challenges build character.
I knew students and even professors in college who never considered some people can’t afford to shop at high-priced locally-owned yuppie stores.
Then again, at this college professors get away with daily $300 lunches for “business purposes” and 3-week trips for 2 day conferences.
The fact is that the Ivy’s have always been clubs for the elite, used to filter out those who are part of the club in job positions at elite companies and insistutions. My cousin went to Darthmouth and he and his fellow alums got access to better jobs and higher paying salaries right out of college. In fact one of his friends turned down an $75,000 entry level job at PricewaterhouseCoopers because his bleeding liberal heart wanted to do something special with his life; help needy children in the projects. BTW this job offer was in 2006 before 2008 bitch slaped most of us milenials.
Regarless of his mistakes, he was gainfully employed during the recession because of those college connections.
While reading the article I literally laughed out loud when I read this little gem… “Kenner said the Bard prison initiative, which has expanded since 2001 to six New York correctional facilities, aims to provide inmates with a liberal arts education so that when the students leave prison they are able to find meaningful work. ” It sounds like these inmates are pretty intelligent since they just schooled a bunch of Harvard kids. Why not utilize their intelligence and actually expand their education in something truly useful such as a STEM program? At least since they’re in NY when they are released with prison with their shiny new liberal arts degrees they can get a job in fast food making $15 an hour.
Just more evidence of the systemic sickness that has infected “higher” education. And, by the way, its also evidence of the huge scam that education is. harvard is NOT cheap, for that matter neither is yale. The dynamic that I see, plain as day, is the government via loans, basically, engenders infinite demand for a college or university “education”, with supply of schools more or less fixed i.e. supply and even adjusting for existing schools increasing head count/expansion et al, nonetheless demand up significantly while supply is either stagnant or unable to keep up equals the massive hikes in tuition that we’ve seen. This in turn creates more incentive for the government to fund students education all the more ergo creating a nasty self powering cycle. And the relationship between government and education is insidious, since, its governments interest to continue to grow and, certainly not contract, the loans act as a way to beholden the students who go onto institutions that only act to reaffirm the need for large intrusive government via indoctrination. Hence obedient little democrats/progressives are born. The ideology of choice is socialism/communism or progressivism, and the irony is that whereas redistribution of assets is praised and wealth, capitalism and greed is admonished, the later, is in fact, precisely what these “noble” institutions are focused on. Who’s getting rich? I’ll tell you who – tenured college professors, school administers and other ancillary service providers such as text book publisher (single not plural). Want to know why were having to deal with all this bullshit from feminism or homosexualism? Answer: that high tuition that the government pays for partially via our taxes and then slowly repaid by their indentured servants (students) goes on to pay professor blane flower-boy and professor miss fat ass pant-suit to sit around and make shit up about how society is terrible and what to do to change it! Meanwhile the students get a lousy education and a ticket to bartista at starbucks.
Well I’m not really surprised at this outcome since Ivy League schools have been sitting in the Ivory Tower for a long time. People like to defend the Ivy League schools since many of the students are overachievers, but there’s nothing praiseworthy about overachieving in an educational system designed to pop out drones. Standardized tests and public schooling are largely designed to brainwash students into accepting certain educational narratives. That’s why there is such a lack of real critical thinking among the so-called intellectual class and why most of them end up making a negative contribution to society. You can brag about high test scores and GPAs all you want, but it’s what you do in the real world that matters. That’s why the average blue-collar worker is superior to the average Ivy League intellectual who worships words, numbers and abstractions.
Always remember that a person’s money, influence and shallow achievements don’t say anything about whether that person actually does good things. If that were the case, then Hillary Clinton would be close to a saint.
Watch out! lolknee is getting really butthurt about this criticism of prestigious schools. He might have something to say about this!
I think some alternative thinkers defend the Ivy League with such zeal because they think it represents the “good old days.” This has never been the case. The Ivy League has always largely been a debauched party for pseudo-intellectuals and hedonistic oligarchs. The fact the a few geniuses managed to come out of the system unscathed does not change what it is.
lolknee doesnt believe that blacks are as intelligent as whites so he has to spin this loss. His views on blacks are well stated in the Christopher Columbus day article comment section. He believes the Harvard team lost on purpose to be politically correct LMAO. Racism is so dumb that the people who believe it have to twist reality to fit their worldview. Many black prisoners are highly intelligent. Smart people can be found everywhere.
yes exactly. Could not have said it better myself.
This pro-sex feminist went to Harvard and she got 15 mins of fame for writing a sex blog:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Chen
I went to high school with her and know for a fact she was an airhead (which is not “bad”). Got high enough grades, SAT scores, debate team, wrote for the school paper. Being Asian from a single parent family definitely gave her a huge boost. She has the intelligence level for UCLA at best. I’m not “sour” that she went to a better school but am bugged by the fact that the whole system cheapens everything whilst requiring us to “work hard”. It’s all a charade that deems constant mockery.
Most Ivy League schools follow the diversity regime pretty strictly as well. I know a girl who got into an Ivy League school because of her ethnicity.
Getting into a prestigious college in America is not necessarily how smart you are, it’s how much money you have.
Don’t forget your victim status helps for scholarships.
Harvard is a joke. The grade inflation is horrendous. They admit to the median grade being an A-, and the most common grade given is an A.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/04/harvard-colleges-median-grade-is-an-a-dean-admits/
Gents, things will average out. You see, sheltered children are easy to destroy. That’s the way of nature. Imagine, please, a sheltered infant being mugged…..now as funny as that may be, chances are it won’t survive the encounter. The mugger will kill it out of disgust, not to mention self respect.
The way of humanity is extremely violent. Hot house flowers don’t do well.
May be those Ivy school students didn’t get a chance to attend high cost prep schooling for debates. Most of the IVY leagues start preparing for college since pre- school.
Love this. I visited my cousin in prison once after not seeing him since I was 5. I said maybe 3 words that time. All I did was listen.
To date I can still say he taught me more about life than I can ever learn on my own.
As a college student and vet , I see now a degree is overrated most times. There are a few good ones, but only some.
I applaud these guys. Just having a degree doesn’t mean anything. And many Harvard teachers got their degrees elsewhere anyway. Let that sink in.
While in law school I was on the executive of the debating society. Debating teaches you confidence in front of an audience and how to think on your feet. It also teaches you how to organize your thoughts quickly, which carries over into blasting off correspondence in a hurry. If you are a nerdy frosh with no approach, I highly recommend it (debating and joining the military completely changed my life as a teenager).
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It can help you as a barrister but frankly, in the real world, it is useless because people – especially women – do not respond to logic and well constructed arguments or reasons as to why they should agree with you. Even in law you can read judicial decisions where it is obvious that the robed wizard already had their mind made up, constructed reasons to support the outcome, and then wrote everything in reverse to give the impression that they actually looked at the evidence and worked their way through it and applied the law to give the result.
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As a side note, perhaps my natural skepticism was the key factor in being virtually unbeatable in opposition. In Canadian-style debating the LO or “leader of the opposition” gets a full 10 minutes to tell everyone why you suck. The PM or “prime minister” was only allowed a 3 minute rebuttal and over the course of three years I could count on one hand the number that came back from that onslaught for the win.
Debating society? We called that “Trial Advocacy” class.
It was a “society” at UBC but a “club” at Ryerson. Trial Advocacy was an actual credit course in law school.
undocumented children – you really mean to say “the children of illegal aliens”, right? Stop using the language of the left.
Ivy League institutions are not like they used to be. Filled with autistic immigrant children and chosenites. Quality has suffered appreciably in the past forty years.
The Atlantic published a manifesto against all of this “coddling” on campuses, and then just doubled down with a wonderful attack on those idiots at Yale. New York Magazine, which once put Mattress Girl on the cover in a heroic pose, just published an article asking “Can We Take (The real dangers) of Political Correctness Seriously now?” The parenthetical insert is mine, but a pendulum might be swinging, even in the mainstream.
The reason why you let blacks win debates is the same reason you let kids win at board games.