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In today's New York Times, David Brooks celebrates a magazine piece that appears to show that private college undergrads can't write coherent prose. But with journalism, as with students' essays, it's buyer beware. Read More
Harvard for Dummies
To buttress Brooks' argument, here's an out take from a Letter to the Editor that was recently posted in another journal:
Harvard for Dummies
As a Harvard Ph.D. and a current professor at a state university, I must say that my own experience is not in accord with Fred Reed’s account of the Harvard student body (April 7). Had I applied the same standards at Harvard that I apply at the University of Wisconsin, few of my students would have received a grade higher than C. When I worked as a teaching assistant at Harvard, I regularly encountered students whose native language was English but who could not form a coherent sentence. A colleague worked as a teaching assistant in a course on Alexander the Great in which not one student could find Greece on the map. When asked to describe the scene on a Greek vase, a native English speaker wrote, “he drew his sword weapon from his upholster while the other soldiers conjugated near the ledge.” Such howlers were not rare...
...The statistics cited by Reed, however, when weighed against my own experience, leave me convinced that IQ tests are simply another form of cultural dumbing down. IQ scores apparently lead us to infer that the average Harvard student is a genius, but everyone who has taught at Harvard knows that many of these geniuses often cannot form complete sentences, are ignorant of the most basic historical and geographic facts, and are graded more leniently than students at the average state school. The sciences may be, as Reed states, “the basis of America’s position in the world,” but what is the value of a scientist who cannot read a map?
Christopher Livanos
With investment banking obliterated, maybe plumbing (or the U.S. Senate) really is the way to go for some Ivy League types...
Welcome home
This piece made me sleepy,lots of smart talk. Welcome home and many thanks for the new wall hanging. Sincerely, David
Against Hamas
I would like to take time to thank my country for giving Israel precision bombing capabilities, helping them in their fight against psychotic depressives. Sincerely,David
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