The Elites

It has been a steady thesis here that the elites, old and new, failed and were seen to fail during the double aughts. It is one of the reasons, I suspect, that the Tea Partyers are so angry. But who are the elites?

There is a revealing article here from the Washington Post that may throw some light on the 'new' elite. Fortunately (from my pov) I don't fall into this category: didn't go to an elite university (though I went to an excellent one - Un of MN), live in a small town (really small), don't work for an elite school (ahem), didn't marry a fabulously elite and wealthy spouse (that's not a complaint!), and actually have a few good friends who are Evangelicals (despite being an Episcopalian from birth, once the sign of the 'inner' elite).

The major thing that worries me about the new elite is that their predominate ethic seems to revolve around careerism.

a type of family value btw

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Ah, youth

Now that I have reached a ripe old age, approximately a quarter of a century older than the average life span for most of human history, I find this video of one of our greatest living philosophers discussing youth oddly comforting. Or not. Depending on your point of view.

It is, however, absolutely true.

It also explains a lot about our culture in the 21rst century.

... but now I can ride the bus for half price.

this link came from andrewsullivan.com bte.
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Opus, Technology and the Generation Gap

Last might I went with Murty and Clovis to see "Cloverfield." Clovis is 19 and thought the movie was great - in fact, this was the second time he'd seen it. Murty and I thought it was ... "OK." But even before the movie started I had developed severe qualms about the younger generation from watching all the previews of coming attractions. All vapid, soulless looking fluff designed for and about a generation of 20 somethings raised on instant messaging and screaming laptops. A generation that has truly been 'wired' in the worst possible sense of the word, with cell phones grafted onto their ears.

My latest example of the haplessness of these folks when it comes to anything I can recognize as learning, a literate culture, and a connection with that great mass of humanity that is dead, is my current world civ class. They have 15 weeks to read three books, each selected for being short, and easy to read (I thought). And they complain because I expect too much from them, none of their other classes actually expect them to read, like, books. Maybe I'll just show them videos.

This morning, while basking in the schadenfreude of yesterday's primary in South Carolina, I was brought up short by this little episode of my favorite philosopher and commentator of 21st century society, Opus.

Makes me feel like a grumpy old penguin in need of a good hug.

The Virginia Tech Slaughter

There are times when it is a positive good not to have a television set and the last few days have been one of them. Just reading about what happened is bad enough. I don't have any useful observations about this horror, though it touched the Clemens family in more ways than one. It all comes down to theodicy, I suspect.

My older brother Jesse went to Virginia Tech, back before it was known as VT. The Corps of Cadets was still nearly the sum total of the student body. Like my brother, they all expected to go into the army as 2nd Lts, and most assumed they would serve in Vietnam. There were no more than a handful of female students. He is very upset about the whole thing over on our family blog. It is one of the few times I have seen him actually write down an opinion about anything!

When I was a grad student at Florida State, my friend Budweiser worked on a local political campaign with a very kind, decent woman who devoted countless volunteer hours to causes she thought important. Her husband was a professor at FSU who had a graduate student from Hong Kong. The student flunked his prelim exams for the doctorate three times and was booted from the program. This meant he would have to return to his family in Hong Kong as a disgraced failure.

Instead, he walked across the street to a gun shop and attempted to buy a gun. The shop owner thought the guy was acting so irrationally that he refused to sell him one. The student simply walked up the street to the next gun shop and bought one there. Then he went back to his professor's office, shot and killed him and then blew his own brains out. We didn't know quite what to make of it then, either.

Now I am a professor and occasionally have come into contact with students who have concerned me, and one who genuinely frightened me. There was, just as in this case, nothing that could really be done. I certainly cannot say what the administration at VT should have done, but I can say this, after several talks with my own university administration about disciplinary problems, and watching problems my colleagues have had: Administrators are absolutely gutless when it comes to drawing a line for student behaviour. It is axiomatic here that if you have a problem with a student, the administration will not back you up.

I have no reason to think that my university is unusual in this regard.

What were we thinking?

Remember the self esteem craze? That only telling a child positive praise would build up their self-esteem, which as we all knew, was the major predictor of success? Well, that was all wrong. It seems that kids are a whole lot smarter than the experts on kids, as any good teacher could tell you. The results:

According to Meyer’s findings, by the age of 12, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is not a sign you did well—it’s actually a sign you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. And teens, Meyer found, discounted praise to such an extent that they believed it’s a teacher’s criticism—not praise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a student’s aptitude.

I begin to question the self esteem craze myself when I read of a study that ranked high school kids for self esteem. Girls had lower self-esteem than boys, which supposedly showed that our schools were systematically failing girls and tilting the playing field against them. African American females had the lowest self-esteem of all, so they had a double tilt against them.

But African American boys had the highest self-esteem of all. By the logic of the study and its commentary they must have had the most advantaged education giving them the best shot at success.