I have to beg to differ on the subject of Al Gore. If you've never
seen his talk on Global Warming I guess you might still consider him
a poor communicator...but it wasn't poor communication skills that
cost him that election (not to open a new can of worms).
On Jun 26, 2008, at 5:27 AM, Badri Natarajan wrote:
Al
Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest,
decent,
intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the
larger
electorate.
and another thing
If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have
learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school-the
Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.
I went to an elite private school from the age of 10 through
graduation at 16. It was elite in all senses of that word. The
student population was mostly wealthy and white. Around 1969 this
school had decided to aggressively "diversify" and so like Noah's Ark
we had 2 of each ethnic group imaginable scattered through the
school. Academically the standards had drifted a bit over the years,
but again in 1969 the school fathers (and mothers) had decided to
plump up the academic rating by artificially over-nurturing one class
(mine) so that we would excel and they could publish our results and
use them as a marketing tool. They basically pushed forward or held
back all the "rich but dumb" kids and then recruited a group of
"acceptable smart kids" (meaning we would fit in) to receive special
considerations on tuition. I was one of those kids. I say we were
over-nurtured because they also recruited special teachers for us.
For instance, I was taught high school physics by a man who had
worked with Oppenheimer on the Bomb and who held patents on the Sony
Trinitron system. He was only at the school in our physics year.
Meanwhile, my family actually lived in a small town called San Pedro,
which for 100 years had been a mostly immigrant-populated fishing
village in the larger Port of Los Angeles. It was definitely "across
the tracks" as we say in the US. Even to this day I often find
myself saying that I grew up in Palos Verdes (where the school was)
instead of San Pedro, and in a sense this is true as I was at school
from 6:30am to 7:00pm most days of the long school year...but it is a
choice I make to ward off the assumptions people would make about me
as well if I admitted that I was from San Pedro (so reverse nobless
oblige). BTW, I am also the first person in my extended family (on
both sides) to graduate from college. My father would have loved to
go, but there was a Depression and then a World War in the way...but
he was firmly blue-collar and worked with his hands to make our
living. My mother grew up on a farm in the back woods of Central
California without running water or electricity and was considered
well educated because she graduated from high school.
Anyway, my class of 29 students did extremely well by many measures.
Five got perfect overall test scores and another ten got perfect
scores on some aspect of the battery of tests we took (which back
then were SATs, Achievement Tests and Advanced Placement exams), and
about half finished as National Merit Scholarship finalists. Most of
us were accepted into Ivy League or Seven Sisters schools. I got
into Princeton, although I ended up at UCLA. At my 20th reunion more
than half of my class were lawyers and three were doctors...
But because of my family background, I always knew that "book
learning" was only one type of smart. My father was infinitely more
adept with his hands than any of the fathers of my fellow students.
That same physics teacher who was brought in for my class idly
remarked one afternoon that he was impressed at how proud my brother
and I were of our Dad, since most of the other kids thought of him as
"the help" because he'd happened to fix their fathers' cars. We were
floored to realize that anyone had any but the highest opinion of
Dad. That encounter created a chain reaction in me to rebel against
the elitism (and contributed to my decision to attend a public
university).
Meanwhile, an astounding percentage of the rich kids I grew up around
were and are massively unhappy. Several never made it to 25 due to
excesses that wealth affords (fast cars, too much alcohol or drugs).
Three committed suicide while still in college. Many have been
married several times. A couple had to take over their Dad's
businesses when said fathers killed themselves (we should look into
the rate of suicide in the "Academic Elite" some time).
Okay, enough about me. I typed all of this out because I think my
experience speaks directly to the original topic. I would not have
given up the chance to attend this school because the academic
education I received fed my little geekess soul...but also because I
got to see first hand the high cost of that elitism.
Danese
