Former Yale professor goes in on the Ivy League

[kevm3]

Here's a little more from Bertrand Russell:

"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .” Bertrand Russell,1953

"Education in a scientific society may, I think, be best conceived after the analogy of the education provided by the Jesuits. The Jesuits provided one sort of education for the boys who were to become ordinary men of the world, and another for those who were to become members of the Society of Jesus. In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play." -----Read the book online here...[part 3, XIV, Education in a Scientific Society p.251]

"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen." -----Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others – Prussian University in Berlin, 1810

 

[Serious]

Im not even gonna @ the boy this is relevant to

U dont need a college degree to embark on intellectual discovery. IMO if you go to an Ivy League school and come out unemployable you wasted your time.

http://newsone.com/1186635/smart-black-girls-dumb-thugs-drugs-guns-and-murder/


@Emperor_ReinScarf

 

[BlackAchilles]

He also discusses the farce of "diversity" at many of these elite schools:

Let’s not kid ourselves: The college admissions game is not primarily about the lower and middle classes seeking to rise, or even about the upper-middle class attempting to maintain its position. It is about determining the exact hierarchy of status within the upper-middle class itself. In the affluent suburbs and well-heeled urban enclaves where this game is principally played, it is not about whether you go to an elite school. It’s about which one you go to. It is Penn versus Tufts, not Penn versus Penn State. It doesn’t matter that a bright young person can go to Ohio State, become a doctor, settle in Dayton, and make a very good living. Such an outcome is simply too horrible to contemplate.

This system is exacerbating inequality, retarding social mobility, perpetuating privilege, and creating an elite that is isolated from the society that it’s supposed to lead. The numbers are undeniable. In 1985, 46 percent of incoming freshmen at the 250 most selective colleges came from the top quarter of the income distribution. By 2000, it was 55 percent. As of 2006, only about 15 percent of students at the most competitive schools came from the bottom half. The more prestigious the school, the more unequal its student body is apt to be. And public institutions are not much better than private ones. As of 2004, 40 percent of first-year students at the most selective state campuses came from families with incomes of more than $100,000, up from 32 percent just five years earlier.

The major reason for the trend is clear. Not increasing tuition, though that is a factor, but the ever-growing cost of manufacturing children who are fit to compete in the college admissions game. The more hurdles there are, the more expensive it is to catapult your kid across them. Wealthy families start buying their children’s way into elite colleges almost from the moment they are born: music lessons, sports equipment, foreign travel (“enrichment” programs, to use the all-too-perfect term)—most important, of course, private-school tuition or the costs of living in a place with top-tier public schools. The SAT is supposed to measure aptitude, but what it actually measures is parental income, which it tracks quite closely. Today, fewer than half of high-scoring students from low-income families even enroll at four-year schools.

The problem isn’t that there aren’t more qualified lower-income kids from which to choose. Elite private colleges will never allow their students’ economic profile to mirror that of society as a whole. They can’t afford to—they need a critical mass of full payers and they need to tend to their donor base—and it’s not even clear that they’d want to.

And so it is hardly a coincidence that income inequality is higher than it has been since before the Great Depression, or that social mobility is lower in the United States than in almost every other developed country. Elite colleges are not just powerless to reverse the movement toward a more unequal society; their policies actively promote it.

 

[yoyoyo1]

yawn @ this stuff, what kind of person, even from a poor background, would want to enter life's VIP section an bring all the scrubs they grew up with into it with them. no one. too much work, too selfless

fukk diversity, diversity is what schools talk about when they have no other qualities

 

[wheywhey]

I sometimes think these articles are ways of lowering the desires of students who really want to go to these Ivy's and lower applicants

And in many fields, i'd take my chances with the Ivy.

That's the impression I got. The author received a bachelors, masters, and PhD from Columbia then taught for 10 years at Yale. How is he qualified to speak on the social/academic atmosphere of any college outside of the Ivy League?

The Ivys used to be reserved for men who knew that they would either enter the family business after graduation or live off of their trust funds, so of course they had time to "think".

There are fields like healthcare, teaching, and law enforcement where it does not matter where you attend school. However, if you want a chance at reasonable employment with a humanities degree or a school with generous financial aid, an Ivy League school should be among your choices.

 

[Poitier]

 

[Guess Who]

What does he expect? Universities are pretty much recruitment centers for employers. You don't go to college and come out with 100,000 dollars in debt just to satiate your 'intellectual curiosity'. You can do that with the internet, a kindle and some books. That's the big thing about school. You're not there to really learn. You're there to get the grade so it will look great for an employer. Where he talked about risk aversion, that's absolutely correct. Students aren't really learning as much as they are parroting the required information or fulfilling some task by their instructor. John Taylor Gatto has a great book about schooling and how modern schooling isn't created for the intellectually curious. It's there to create employees and people who know how to follow orders.

I figured this out when I was 15. Started playing the game ever since, making the system believe I was what they wanted me to be while I played my teachers and pulled the strings of the faculty to get the results I wanted/needed. The quicker one figures out that school is about brainwashing kids into believing in the rightness of the society they live in and how to fall in line with that society's ideologies unblinkingly is the sooner one gains true power over their destiny.