"This One Student"

A popular genre of academic story involves This One Student.  This One Student defied all expectations, succeeding when you never would have imagined it.  Therefore, we should assume that everyone can totally succeed at whatever they're currently trying and we shouldn't discourage them.

Well, no.  While I do grant that most people can, with sufficient time and effort, do most things to at least some level of competence, it does not follow that a person with precious little preparation can succeed in the class in which they are currently enrolled.  Maybe they need to go back and make up deficiencies before attempting this course of study.  It's insane to think that they should be able to remedy any and all gaps on the fly.  There's a reason why courses have prerequisites.

If a student is showing fundamental weaknesses in, say, algebra, they can still learn physics, but they should probably spend a substantial amount of time first remedying those gaps in algebra knowledge.  Yes, yes, they passed a math placement test that was approved by people who answer to officials who need a certain level of throughput.  Yes, they passed an introductory calculus class taught (and, more importantly, graded) by somebody who has no job security and answers to a system that wants to see students pass classes.  That does not mean that they actually know high school algebra, as is demonstrated to me on a daily basis.  Most of these students will flounder for years, fail and repeat classes, and eventually rack up enough partial credit to pass and graduate.

Nonetheless, from time to time we see This One Student who starts off doing terribly in algebra but goes on to do remarkably well.  That's wonderful when it happens, but it's rare.  It is inhumane to think that everyone should be encouraged to invest prime years of their lives and take on substantial loan debt in the hopes that they'll replicate This One Student's success story.

Moreover, it is often the case that This One Student has some unique advantage or compensating factor that we cannot easily replicate.  Sometimes it's a special personal factor that couldn't help them with algebra but could help them succeed in an internship that gave them the motivation to push ahead.  Sometimes it's an extraordinary personality characteristic or raw talent.

I was recently talking to somebody who started telling the story of This One Student, and it turned out that the student had served in an elite military unit.  (I rarely believe claims that somebody served in an elite military unit, but the fact that This One Student pulled off an extraordinary feat suggests a level of self-discipline and work ethic consistent with their claimed military background.)  Well, your average student does not have that kind of dedication.  In fact, even your average soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine does not have that level of mental tenacity.

They also told the story of This One Other Student who had the immigrant work ethic required to spend half the year working full time in shitty jobs, saving money for college, then attending college full time during the other half of the year.  Well, most students do not have that immigrant work ethic.  Nor do they have the humility and self-knowledge required to accept that they'd be better off EITHER working full-time OR going to school full-time, rather splitting their time and failing at both.   You could say that it's my job as an older, wiser mentor to help them see that, but I can't even get most students to follow instructions regarding algebraic steps, let alone major life decisions.

There are few tales more destructive than the tale of This One Student.  It gives us endless optimism, which is the bane of useful advice.

We are so screwed.

The author of this essay "The Promise of Intellectual Joy" was accused of "white supremacist rhetoric" and subsequently fired.  For an essay that cites Hofstadter extensively and proclaims that every child can and should feel the thrill of intellectual challenge.

We are so screwed.

Meritocracy and predictability

There is nothing more predictable than a critique of meritocracy, and this article in the Chronicle is no exception:  It contains 10 critiques of meritocracy, most of them utterly predictable. Anybody who doesn't know how to critique meritocracy in the expected ways does not merit a place in educational decision-making.  However, it does have a nice opinion piece by Thomas Chatterton Williams, who knows how to say more than just what we expect to hear.

*Wink* *Wink* *Nudge* *Nudge*

The Chronicle has an article on how "nudges" haven't lived up to their promise for fixing massive social problems.  Who knew that humans were complicated beings who couldn't simply be steered into doing hard but important things with a few well-timed text messages?

Essay up at Arc Digital

I sold an essay to Arc Digital on the subject of "Why This Physics Professor Reads Old Books."  It summarizes a lot of the preoccupations of this blog.

More on America's elites and The Restlessness

This article on political correctness and activism at Yale argues that the problem is not about speech, but about a loss of confidence by America's elites.  The writer (Natasha Dashan) starts by noting that the effectiveness of student protests were a symptom of loss of confidence:

But the appearance of bottom-up protest politics is always a bit of a false narrative.  It would be one thing if the students were polled and a majority said they wanted the name changed, or some other process was used. At least the university could say that it was making decisions based on some objective democratic process, and wasn’t just being pushed around. But this is not what happened. No polls were taken. There was no authoritative process. The school said no for a few months, then caved. If the school were actually confident in its position to resist, it could have easily pushed back on the protests.

I admit that on some level I don't understand why America's elites have lost confidence.  Yes, America has lots of problems, I disagree with its elites on lots of things, and I think they've made a lot of mistake.  But isn't that true of every era?  There's a whole lot that America does right, and a whole lot that it could still set right with sustained effort.  And plenty of other places and times have seen elites who did worse.

Maybe the problem is that America's elites know that they aren't really in charge.  I mean, yes, they control so many institutions, but they no longer control the government.  That may seem laughable on one level, with the Supreme Court being packed with Yale grads and plenty of Ivy Leaguers, rich people, etc. in Congress.  Not to mention the Ivy Leaguers packing the top of executive agencies and Congressional staff positions, i.e. the people who REALLY run the government and always have in every country ever.

On another level, consider the most intractable problem in American government:  The deficit.  You simply cannot have tax rates that are acceptable to Americans AND have the massive military that we have (and all the commitments that come with it) AND do something substantial about healthcare.  You can do any two of those, but not all three.  This isn't a matter of political ideology but rather arithmetic.  Nonetheless, it is impossible to raise taxes, impossible to cut the military, and impossible to do anything about healthcare that might threaten the bottom lines of entrenched interests.  There are too many different players with too much at stake.  And they can get the masses to vote with them.

OK, maybe all of those defense contractor executives and healthcare executives and upper-income taxpayers are elites, but (1) there are so many of them that the word "elite" gets stretched to something broader than "Top Ivy Grads", (2) they aren't the forward-thinking elites who know that some things can't go on forever (i.e. the sorts of people who are smart enough to rise to the top at Yale), and (3) these things wouldn't be politically impossible if the elites couldn't win elections while adhering to these stances, and lose elections by substantially straying from them. The people who benefit from these unsustainable contradictions have a critical mass of, well, the masses on their side. Something has slipped loose and is no longer under the control of smart old guys from New England.  It's not democracy, but it's also not an elite that's coherent enough to act together and accept short-term pain with the assurance that they know the other guys and can keep them from cheating.

Dashan seems to know this.  She says (emphasis added):

Western elites are not comfortable with their place in society and the responsibilities that come with it, and realize that there are deep structural problems with the old systems of coordination. But lacking the capacity for an orderly restructuring, or even a diagnosis of problems and needs, we dive deeper into a chaotic ideological mode of coordination that sweeps away the old structures. 

When you live with this mindset, what you end up with is not an establishment where a woke upper class rallies and advocates for the rights of minorities, the poor, and underprivileged groups. What you have is a blind and self-righteous upper class that becomes structurally unable to take coordinated responsibility. You get stuck in an ideological mode of coordination, where no one can speak the truth to correct collective mistakes and overreaches without losing position. 

This ideology is promulgated and advertised by universities, but it doesn’t start or stop at universities. All the fundraisers. All the corporate events. The Oscars. Let’s take down the Man. They say this in front of their PowerPoints. They clink champagne glasses. Let’s take down the Man! But there is no real spirit of revolution in these words. It is all in the language they understand—polite and clean, because it isn’t really real. It is a performative spectacle about their own morale and guilt.

I've written before about comfortable, well-dressed people sitting in conference rooms and nodding enthusiastically while people about them discuss TRANSFORMATION AND DISRUPTION!!!  It's not just about the federal budget.  In education the problem is the unsustainability of expanding access while preserving some modicum of excellence.  But denying access is simply not an option.  So everyone tries to look for too-good-to-be-true solutions, or at least tries to look like they're looking for them, so that they can look like they are the side of righteousness.  Because there's no politically feasible way to get off this train.  So they're all eating this shit up like it's pita chips and humus from Trader Joe's.

And then a reality TV star with a Twitter account and more loyalty to Moscow than Main Street wins the Presidency and half the country freaks out while the other half jumps on the bandwagon.  Because our elites don't know what to do.  Yeah, he's a rich guy (sort of) and a businessman, but just about all of the business elite would have preferred a more competent rich guy to sign their tax cuts and appoint people who will deregulate.  And the old-school elites, who could think long-term, would have preferred somebody with a bit more discipline.

The elites lack confidence because nobody is in charge, or at least nobody can coordinate the people who are collectively in charge.  God help us, we're sort of a democracy.

Admissions and Math: Yes, but...

The LA Times has an op-ed criticizing the CSU (California State University) system for instituting a requirement that all students who want admission take 4 years of high school math or other classes with heavy quantitative reasoning (e.g. physics, economics).  I actually agree with this part:

The proposal raises some big questions about what a college education ought to encompass in changing times. Are extra math classes in high school really necessary for all Cal State applicants — including those who want to major in, say, English literature, philosophy or theater?

Indeed. Andrew Hacker made much the same point in his book The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions.  However, we then come to this part:

It might make more sense, for example, for Cal State to require extra quantitative reasoning courses only of students who plan to major in STEM-related fields. They already are more likely to have taken a fourth-year math course before college. The university also should introduce any changes incrementally, checking to see whether the extra requirement makes enough of a difference to be worthwhile and considering other steps that might be at least as effective at raising graduation rates.

If we are going to admit people who are not ready to major in quantitative STEM fields then we should not be held accountable if they change their minds, decide to major in quantitative STEM fields, and then struggle to succeed.