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"You can always tell a Harvard man," the saying goes--but is that true? Is the imprint of Harvard--or any Ivy League school, or Stanford, Duke, Notre Dame, Cal-Berkeley, or Reed--so indelible that its graduates are identifiable whenever they speak or write or problem-solve? Most Harvard grads are above normal in intelligence and many come from high-achieving families, but does a Harvard education in itself (the curriculum, the professors) provide them with knowledge and skills they would not be able to attain at, say, the University of Illinois or New Mexico State? In a "blind" testing could one tell by observing what he does and says over the course of a typical workday whether a particular teacher, doctor, lawyer, engineer, theologian, chief executive officer, or journalist was a Harvard grad or a University of Kansas grad? I doubt it. Is an Ivy League grad better at her job than a public school grad? I doubt it. If she is, it's only because she was smarter and more talented than the public school grad to begin with, not because she learned more in the Ivy League.
Ivy League schools and their students constitute an elite. The students are some combination of brilliant, wealthy, and well-connected. (The recent film The Social Network suggests that being well-connected and becoming even more well-connected is what the Harvard experience actually is all about.) To their credit, Ivy League schools try to achieve at least some diversity by recruiting racial minorities who may or may not be brilliant but are certainly not wealthy or well-connected. However, they are not nearly as diverse as they usually give themselves credit for being. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat points out in an article titled "The Roots of White Anxiety":
"The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren't racial minorities; they're working class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts."
Adds Douthat: "If such universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there's more to diversity than skin color--and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more ROTC cadets and a few more aspiring farmers."
I'm not convinced that the value of an education from an elite school is, in itself, greater than the value of an education from a non-elite school, although I concede that it has a symbolic cachet that may benefit its recipients. However, in the interest of fairness, those elite schools ought to broaden their definition of diversity to include working class white Christians. Most such students probably prefer to attend Mesa Community College or Arizona State or Bob Jones University, but they ought to be given more opportunities to go Ivy if they wish. Allegedly, both the elites and the non-elites have much to learn from each other. If diversity means a better experience for both classes of people (with the elite being somehow more aware and sophisticated and the non-elite being somehow more authentic and salt-of-the-earthy), then the elite schools should become as diverse as possible. Unfortunately, making them as diverse as possible would lead to an ironic outcome: the student bodies of elite schools would become much like the student bodies of state schools, and all of the students would begin to think, believe, and act like each other. Ultimately, diversity would result in homogenity, and we'd be right back where we started.
McDonalds is going upscale and taking its employees with it. Menus featuring smoothies, frappuccinos, and cappuccinos have led to increased sales and a need to hire more help, which is welcome news in these days of high unemployment rates. In Arizona, 15,000 people recently applied for about 1,000 part-time jobs paying $7.25 an hour with health insurance and other benefits for those working 20 or more hours per week. There are opportunities to advance to management as well, which seems only fitting since 25% of those applying for jobs have a college degree. Now if McDonalds would allow tip jars next to their cash registers, a liberal arts grad might be able to survive on his McDonalds income while writing that novel or symphony on the side.
Speaking of tips, I hate them. I think that prices for goods and services should be raised to the point that an employer can pay employees a decent wage without forcing patrons into guilt-tipping. That said, I have to admit that I'm a guilt-tipper. Here's how much I usually leave:
Waiter in a sit-down restaurant--20%
Pizza home-deliverer--20%
Hair cutter--$3
Hotel room maid--$5
Valet parker--$5 (but I usually park the car myself and walk)
Golf course attendant--$2
Barista, frozen-yogurt server, deli sandwich maker--spare change (and I always make sure they're looking before I toss it into the jar).
But what I'd really like to do is carry with me small pieces of paper on each of which I've written a sentence like "Keep your eye on the ball" or "Look both ways before crossing the street" or "Stay hydrated" and drop one into any jar with a sign on it begging for tips.
From Time magazine:
"Women's monthly periods can lead to moodiness, owing to fluctuations in estrogen, and now a rat study suggests that the hormone changes may leave the brain a bit fuzzier too. Rats with lower estrogen levels took longer to learn a new task than those with higher levels. Previous studies had found that ovulating women had trouble concentrating, but the animal work is the first to measure the hormone's effect on cognitive function."
I accept the theory of evolution, but after reading this news item, I am wondering why, since having trouble concentrating is obviously not conducive to survival, the hormone balance during women's menstrual cycles has not evolved. One would think that, over the millenia, a higher number of those who had slightly less trouble concentrating than others would be more likely to survive (would notice that lurking sabre-tooth tiger) as humankind moved from tree-dwellers to hunter-gatherers to farmers to manufacturers, and that eventually they would dominate the female population while the fuzzy-brained died out. On a sort of related note, I'm also wondering why some snakes are poisonous and others are not. The garter snake and the rattler both survive--but is one more effective at doing so than the other? At first blush it would seem that the poisonous snake would have a greater survival advantage than the non-poisonous one. Way back when, why and how did the rattler develop its poison-delivering mechanism? How has the garter snake survived without it?
The Seattle Mariners recently completed what is widely regarded as their worst season ever. They (under) achieved a record of 61-101, finishing dead last in the American League in wins, batting average, home runs, and runs scored. The General Manager, Jack Zduriencik, built the team around defense, which disappointed fans like me find offensive. Every team makes some bad trades, and every team lets certain players get away for financial reasons, but I can't resist looking at the 2010 batting statistics for ex-Mariners and shaking my head. Imagine a lineup that includes two current M's and eight former members of the Mariner organization:
Ichiro Suzuki, Mariners, .315 B.A., 6 homers
Franklin Guttierez, Mariners, .245 B.A., 12 homers
Raul Ibanez, Phillies, .276 B.A., 16 homers
Shin Shoo Choo, Indians, .300 B.A., 22 homers
Adam Jones, Orioles, .285 B.A., 19 homers
David Ortiz, Red Sox, .268 B.A., 32 homers
Andre Beltre, Red Sox, .321 B.A., 28 homers
Yorvit Torrealba, Padres, .271 B.A., 7 homers
Youniesky Betancourt, Royals, .259, 16 homers
Willie Bloomquist, Royals, .265 B.A., 3 homers
(Not to mention long-gone Alex Rodriguez, .270, 30 homers)
Put these guys together with Felix Hernandez and the other, run-of-the-mill Mariner rag arms and you probably have a winning team, maybe even a contender. Jack, what are your plans for next year? I fear our hopes are going to go up in Smoak.
In regard to one of my recent posts called "Red Ink," wherein I urged going beyond taxation and raising funds in more creative ways, Peabody Elementary School in Massachussets is now selling ads to be placed on permission slips, class calendars, and school notices sent home with students. Now that's what I'm talking about!
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