House of Eratosthenes

The president went to Harvard, and barely defeated a primary opponent who went to Yale. His predecessor went to Yale and Harvard, and defeated opponents who went to Yale and Harvard, and Harvard, respectively. The previous two presidents also went to Yale, with Bush I defeating another Harvard grad for the presidency. And once Elena Kagan gets confirmed, every Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools.

I know that Harvard and Yale attract a disproportionate percentage of America’s talented youth, but still, isn’t this a bit much? Are there no similarly talented individuals who attended other Ivy League schools, other private universities or (gasp!) even state law schools?

This is an abdication, not a usurpation. You can’t just say “I went to a wonderful school,” walk up to some seat of power and sit on it. You need the consent of those who would not be sitting on that seat, with your sweet ass cheeks filling it up. You need the consent of the governed. And so the blame goes to the rest of us who did not go to Yale/Harvard; we’re looking for supermen to make all the tough decisions for us.

Thing I Know #263. The one thing that’s wrong with higher education that nobody ever seems to want to discuss, is that it is valued through something called “prestige.” Get this prestigious diploma. Get that prestigious degree. Attend a prestigious university. My alma mater is more prestigious than yours. Trouble is that genuine learning has very, very little to do with prestige. It is, arguably, the exact opposite.

A commencement ceremony is not what learning looks like. Mike Rowe, covered head to toe in some kind of animal shit, is a far superior portrayal of real learning. I’m not saying you have to be humiliated in order to learn, my point is that when it’s just a lot of theory with a bunch of must-ought-shoulds holding it together, there’s no validation; and without validation there is no evidence of any fastening to reality. Just the professor’s say-so and that’s it.

So the professor says this guy did well enough; the guy who hires and promotes the guy, believes what the professor says about him, although those two will never meet each other and neither one knows who the other one is. So nothing is proven by anybody to anybody else about the competence of anyone. It’s just a bunch of things written on paper by complete strangers. The system still works to some extent as long as there is universal recognition of what makes a student’s learning ability adequate, superior and excellent; and, there is some. But all the values are not universally shared, so the competence only translates into upward-mobility where there happens to be some overlap. Where there is no overlap, the upward-mobility is only enjoyed by those who show competence in good old-fashioned ass-kissing. The results is a government of ass-kissers, of people whose grasp of disparate hard subjects may or may not be firm, but who show a competitive advantage at things like Motivating Large Numbers of People to Do Things Without Anyone Associating the Dumb Things With Their Names Later On. And throwing out buzz words & catch phrases like “make no mistake” and “let me be clear.”

But for all of the leaders to come from the same two schools? That’s arguably worse, that deteriorates the situation further. The answer to Volokh’s question is an emphatic yes…IMO. But I don’t get to decide this, it’s really up to the rest of the country to figure out if we’ve allowed these floorboards to rot enough.

Pedigree can become a substitute for scrutiny, that is for sure. I’d say it is reason to perk your interest, but the diligent scrutiny should still be done.

Funny how the “oh, he graduated from Harvard” meme didn’t work for the libs with Bush. Conservatives didn’t care that he’d gone to Harvard. Libs are all like, “Harvard. What more do you need to hear?” when it’s their candidate.
- philmon | 05/12/2010 @ 07:48
[…] linked a few days or weeks ago to Volokh who was bitching that everyone making any decisions right now graduated either from Harvard or Yale. It isn’t a picture of America, and it’s a problem. When these people bitch about […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/29/2010 @ 06:53

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

“Isn’t This a Bit Much?”Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

“Isn’t This a Bit Much?”
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010