Ross Douthat has written an essay (hat tip to Sriram Naganathan, for the article) – The secrets of Princeton. This is a reaction to the essay that an ex-Princetonian Susan Patton wrote: Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had.
I would request all readers of this blog to read the above two articles – as they have a solid bearing and have valuable insights. Ross’ has more incite than insight, that is – but in the name of preservation of perverse diversity and promotion of Armed Chair Intellectualism, I would give Ross his due too, though I want him to get his just desserts.
My warped opinion follows: The articles are an interesting read. They confirm my suspicions. Susan Patton’s essay is cool, honest & genuine.
I believe in meritocracy, elitism and all those politically incorrect & inconvenient terminologies – and of course in the basic ideas of that dismal science – economics.
I don’t much care for equality of opportunity (it exists anyway) but I care for the creation of equality of status.
I also believe that each child / adult can be (and SHOULD be) elitist in more ways than one. It is important for self preservation, especially in these times of the meteoric rise of mediocrity and continual institutionalization of sheer lumpen stupidity.
MartinLK always comes in handy – as he says ““If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
It is a fantastic idea to be an elite sweeper, as our Bapuji (also) was.
But am digressing, as is my wont, and let me get back to the Susan Patton ammunition.
When I talk to my village girls (they are in their 9-12th grades) – this is what I tell them. You are bright, superior children. You are the elite! You should go out and construct your own splendid lives. It is possible. Don’t settle for anything less than an equal. Go out and meet with boys and girls from the rest of the multiple worlds that we inhabit, who are your intellectual equals And you make a choice. Don’t get hitched to a random useless drunken boor of a joker who has got nothing better than a perennial whine and thundering idiocy to boot.
In fact, we (wifey & I) are going to give the kind of advice that Susan would have given her daughter is she had one – to our daughter.
Thanks Susan, for your bold take on the subject.
namma shaale 
a handout for my lovely pupils… (and to myself!)
Generally, I deal with batches of adolescents from a few schools these days – as part of the game of a double edged sword called ‘education.’
The subjects that I pretend to teach range from history to sciences to choir music to computer programming. It has been fun.
Following is the sample text of a handout that I dish out to any given fresher to my sessions, for your edification.
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I believe…
… that you are a smart cookie.
For that matter, any and every individual is very smart, there is no exception whatsoever to this rule… of course, I am not being factitious here!
One may be bored or tired or lazy or whatever, but the fact is that every child / boy / girl is smart & super intelligent…
Why do I believe so? Why should we believe so??
Remember? In the first session we talked a little bit about the various parts of the brain, and the fact that all of have, more or less, the same amount of brain cells and that all of us at sometime or the other use 100% of our brain capacity (as opposed to the funny urban legends about most of us using only 5% of the brain) etc etc.
… but we focused on a part of our fore-brain called Cerebrum.
The most important aspect of this cerebrum is that it is the seat of:
So, it is the lack of the last two – the imagination and the will power – that largely makes us & molds us into mediocrity and poor performance – whereas all of us can be great models of excellence in our chosen fields…
In other words, there are no ‘born geniuses’ – the genius in us is always, without exception, brought out by the continuous application of our imagination and will power.
First things first…
There are some quotes in this section – for us to reflect on and internalize…
Ricki Riscorla (The principle of 7Ps)
“Proper prior planning & preparation prevents poor performance.”
[Ricki was a much decorated US marine and a great leader, doer & and a humanitarian – he believed in planning and training and leaving nothing to chance]
Richard Feynman (on knowing and problem solving)
“… you do not know anything until you have practiced.”
“… You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”
[Dick was one of the finest scientists that graced the earth – and an incredibly multifaceted one at that; besides being a Nobel laureate, he was a code decipherer, drummer, saxophonist, lock-picker, juggler and what not]
Yo-Yo Ma (on how to learn – coupez la difficulte en quatre)
“When the problem is complex, you become tense, but when it is broken down into basic components, you can approach each element without stress.”
“… then, when you put them all together, you do something that seems externally complex, but you don’t feel it that way… you know it from several different angles.”
[Yo-Yo is a great Brit cellist and a fantastic meta-learner]
Laura Ingalls Wilder (on perseverance and cheerfulness)
“Things that have to be done, must be done cheerfully.”
[Laura was a famous American author of ‘Pioneer’ books – especially the series called Little House on the Prairie’]
Ralph Waldo Emerson (on Self-reliance)
“If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards… it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. “
[Of course you may already know of him! He was an American author of many other facets]
Robert A Heinlein (on the capacity of the human potential)
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
[He was an American, popular science fiction author and a great engineer among many other things]
Perhaps you can use the Internet to research and know more about these folks and much else.
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The idea of this series of sessions (a few times a week) is to get an overall bearing on the basic building blocks of science & math in general – but with a particular reference to social sciences and the things around us.
The examples for the basic ideas / thoughts will mostly be from the sciences – but they are mappable to the rest of the knowledge realms.
Rules of the game:
The idea of giving you these quick ref notes is to give some pointers – you may have to take your own notes to help yourself; as you see, these ref notes are not even grammatically complete! 🙂
Now… on to the rest of the notes, and to life and learning, please!