21 March 2001
On Paglia, Brooks, and Duff
As is my habit, I checked out the Atlantic Online Monday for new stuff, and found an article ("The Organization Kid") by David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise. It is the most profound and troubling article I have read in a while. If you haven't yet, go read it, because I don't want to bias your reading. And then go read Michael's reaction to it, because I had almost exactly the same reaction, and there is no use repeating exactly what he has written so eloquently.
First off, I have to say that the phenomenon of the Super-Students is not confined to Princeton or other Ivies, although that is where Brooks found it. I found the same thing at every level of my post-baccalaureate education: the honors college as an undergrad, the missile-counters in the masters program, the number-crunchers in the Ph.D program, all driven not to sleep until they had mastered whatever minutiae was required of them so long as critical thinking was not involved (for then they became lost). The example I recall with the most amusement is the young lady in my Honors College Macroeconomics class who jotted down every word uttered by Joe Bell (the professor), and maintained a perfect 100% average, but to this day, I am convinced, could not say anything useful about economics. Joe Bell is one of the most engaging professors I've ever had, and after I was done taking classes from him, I spent many fridays knocking down beers with him and picking his brain. He was as much comedian as economist, which made him that much more compelling. He was also "biased" in that he critiqued the standard Keynesian nonsense presented by most textbooks, and fairly presented such "radical" economic theories as supply-side economics and liquidity preference. I learned how to THINK about economics from Joe, although I was satisfied enough with my A not to spend precious time mastering the minutiae required for that 100% average. One of the most amusing moments in class came when he rambled on about how FDR's policies actually prolonged the Great Depression, and then said something hilarious like, "Of course, FDR was a Communist, so what do you expect?" At least I found it hilarious. 100% girl, and some of the other super-student Honors College kiddos, were too busy jotting down "FDR was a Communist" in their notes to laugh. No joke! It might be on the test, after all, and PROFESSOR Joe Bell (who rides a BMW motorcycle and once dressed all in black because he "likes to dress appropriately on test days) had uttered it, so it must go in the NOTES! I told him about this once over beers, and he didn't believe me. Maybe I should email him the Brooks article. Because 100% Girl DOES exist -- and it's far more prevalent than I thought.
But, as Michael notes, 100% Girl is a child in an adult's body now. She can tell me the formula of the Keynesian model to this day, I'll bet, and that FDR was a Communist (ha!), but she has nothing useful to say otherwise. The scary thing is, these super-student children are now coming of age. The cubicle-generation is beginning to enter the real world. What will happen when they are faced with their first real crisis beyond "what academic group looks better on my resume?" What happens to the rest of us? Brooks and Duff have made me wonder about this. So has Camille Paglia.
In a wide-ranging article, Paglia wrote the following related paragraph:
You say the young are far too immature to survive at 14? Well, that's proof positive that they've been infantilized by their parents in this unctuously caretaking yet flagrantly permissive culture that denies middle-class students adulthood until they are in their 20s and later -- long after their bodies are ready to mate and reproduce. The Western career system is institutionalized neurosis, elevating professional training over spiritual development and forcing the young to put emotional and physical satisfaction on painful hold.
That paragraph is sandwiched between Paglia's argument that schools ought not to force everyone into a pre-professional track, that perhaps more freedom to pursue the trades would be beneficial. I think in the rush to crank out an article by deadline, Paglia missed the greater significance of what she wrote about: that our educational system is simply producing robots, regurgitators of vast quantities of information who have no clue how analyze, evaluate, critique, or integrate any of it. Michael snapped to that implication of Brooks' piece immediately, and my own revulsion matches his. My guess is that much of the Club 23 crowd reacted the same way. I would hope so, anyway. I'm not sure of it.My friend Kellas suggested to me during a recent trip that he thought I would make a fine lawyer. I disagreed with him, but I don't think I explained myself very well. While he was right to note that I am happiest when dabbling in the interaction of law and philosophy, that is NOT what lawyers do. Lawyers work long hours arguing over evidence, or procedure, or minutiae, for the most part. That interests me not in the least -- that's what the super-students have been groomed to do. They are perfect for it! What I long to do -- what I do here and among friends -- is to read, to analyze, to think. To ask why, as Michael puts it. About everything. A word that isn't even in the super-students' vocabulary.
Have you asked yourself "why" today? I highly recommend it!
[Posted @ 06:35 PM CST]
