On Mon, 2008-06-30 at 09:53 +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > This sparked a train of thought in me. I belong (inter alia) to the > TamBram elite. I strongly suspect that the kind of high cost you're > talking about might be absent, at least in the more traditional > societies, because of the utter focus on academic performance and > 'centum' in the society at larger, which translates into a different > set of high costs for the students [1].
danese's high costs are far from absent in traditional societies. indeed, they are so much higher as to become invisible. the cited article was amusing, but in an omphaloskeptic [1] way - a bit like frasier's club in someone else's post where the super-elite try to figure out who's platinum and who's gold. none of the people in the club relate - on remotely equal terms - with 90% of indians, who are generally assumed to be unequal in social, cultural or intellectual abilities. india wastes a lot of brains thanks to its "traditional" elitism. india's education system, where the poor subsidise the upper middle class (someone else can dig up the subsidy-per-student costs for IITs this time) lets the "elite" get a total free ride and flee the country afterwards (smarter countries like brazil or singapore beneficiaries of subsidised education to pay the state back in cash or in kind through socially useful employment). it irritates me to hear IITians claim they're giving back by investing in india now. this is like someone who skips town after taking a loan coming back to invest in his now rapidly growing lender who's forgotten about the original loan. i like talking to taxi drivers in europe. especially northern europe. the peculiar form of elitism here pretends to be egalitarian - you can't look down on someone because he's a taxi driver, and shouldn't have a problem going on holiday to the same place, which you may well end up doing if you live in holland, or going to the same bar. however, if he arrived in europe as a refugee you _can_ make him drive a taxi instead of teaching physics or conducting eye operations. you're not intimidated by his phd from iran, no way! he can drive a taxi like the rest of them! is it elitist to respect a quadrilingual iranian physics professor driving a taxi more than a white belgian taxi driver whose reading doesn't extend beyond the football news? -rishab 1. the economist style guide [2] says one should not (be elitist and) use complex words in foreign languages when simpler, clearer expressions would do, such as "navel-gazing". 2. I Confess, my frequent citations of the economist are elitist! 3. footnotes are elitist! and i'll make a special footnote for the first person to spot badly hidden reference in the previous footnote.
