Summa Cum Laude

I was at a dinner the other evening. It wasn't for me but I was there. It was held to honor lots of people who had graduated in the top ten percentile in their college graduation classes. There was  - as expected - a cocktail hour before the dinner and, by chance, a man and his sister came to sit with us at our table. The man admitted he had graduated by the skin of his teeth but he was there as his sister's guest and because he had put a video presentation together for the college. I noted that there were very, very few luminaries among the top ten. They were all successful people but nothing extraordinary. The guy who got the biggest cheers was that man who had sat with us and who probably graduated in the bottom ten percent. It is well-known that many super-successful people are often not the ones who succeed in school. This was no exception. It's not the teachers who matter; it's the pupils. You could name ten or twenty extraordinary historical figures but you could never name who their teachers were. It matters, but not that much. As the 1800 tequila commercial says, "enough said." 

Teachers

Here we go again, blaming teachers for the poor performance of students. Education is not about teaching, it's about learning. The learning comes from the student, not the teacher. That's logical. If you fill a classroom with bad, lousy students, you will get bad results. It's like making a pizza with bad ingredients. It's that simple. Really. Does anyone know where bad students come from?

Value of pie

We all know money has value - you can buy stuff with it - necessities as well as luxuries. However, something much more valuable is time. If you don't have money and you want to acquire it, you will need time. Without time, one is truly dead. In fact, dead people are those who have run out of time. What would a dead person give in exchange for an extra five years or so??? Not so long ago, a young man died in a cave because he somehow got trapped in a very small space. The people trying to save him could not get him out in time, so he died. This topless woman has absolutely no clue what I'm talking about. In time, she will get it. If you allow a person enough time, they will eventually wise up, get educated, and learn to use time to their advantage. Perhaps not all, but most will. If I owe you two trillion dollars, I can pay you back provided you allow me enough time, no? When some scientist figures out how to slow the aging process, he will make a lot of people very rich. We hope we live long enough to see that happen.

Education is expensive

In California, some students are making a fuss because the cost of education just went up since the Golden State can no longer afford to subsidize college tuition as much as it used to. It is laughable because these students aren't smart enough to realize that education is now big business. Universities now keep the kids in school as long as they possibly can - like a doctor who keeps a patient coming back over and over again or who encourages a patient to have back surgery when all they really need is to relax a bit. My view is that a child should be done with school by age 18 - all of it - out of high school at 14 and out of college by 18. Out of graduate school by 20 - tops. Many years of productivity are wasted by keeping children in school forever. Who benefits? Certainly not the children since they know very little upon graduation anyway. That's why this topless woman is smirking.

Bad, bad teachers

Teachers and the education system are constantly being criticized for bad performance by students. New York spends the greatest amount of money (on a per-capita basis) on students and yet, they have the worst students in the country. The solution is simple. We all know that great athletes make great sports teams, great musicians make great bands, great citizens make great countries, and good soldiers make great armies. Education is more about learning than about teaching. Discipline is something a teacher should not even have to worry about. You want good schools? Fill them with good students. Even this topless woman knows that makes sense.

Music and Art

“Dave Brubeck, left, performs with Tony Bennett at George Wein's Carefusion Jazz Festival 55 in Newport, R.I. on Sunday, Aug. 9, 2009. Brubeck and Bennett performed 'That Old Black Magic,' a number they last did together for President Kennedy at the White House.” Brubeck is 88 and Tony Bennett is 83. I’ve never played with Brubeck but I have performed with Bennett. So, I ask myself, why should a life this good have to end? It does not seem fair, but you figure it out. I know nothing.

What Poverty???

From a New York Times article: “Poor people have I.Q.s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics. After all, a series of studies seemed to indicate that I.Q. is largely inherited. Identical twins raised apart, for example, have I.Q.s that are remarkably similar. They are even closer on average than those of fraternal twins who grow up together. If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which also offers terrific advice for addressing poverty and inequality in America.” How dumb can anybody get? I.Q. is only part of the poverty issue. There are lots and lots of poor people who are very intelligent. There are also lots and lots of rich people who are very dumb. A person can marry money and can also inherit money. They can also win the lottery. Poverty is concentrated among nations whose people are generally (1) inactive; (2) don’t have a cohesive society, (3) do not enjoy good health, and (4) unimaginative. (1) If you stay put all day (if you are inert) you will find that money will not fall down on you from the sky. (2) If you live in a society where people are adversaries and do not work as a family group, where there is no sense of community and belonging, then achievement and progress become almost impossible. (3) If you live in a society where people die young, you will find people struggling simply to stay alive and a life that could be productive for 70 years is simply productive for 30 or 40. (4) If people work hard and live long and work well together but have no imagination, they will also not prosper as much. Education is part of the solution but certainly not all of it. This article in the New York Times is just an effort to sell more books.

Language

There was some NPR show which reported that language had an impact on how a culture thinks and perceives things. They were comparing Spanish to German expressions. The focus of the report was on masculine versus feminine forms of nouns. It was discussed as though it were some major discovery. I could have told them that - in fact, I have. There is no way one can understand a culture well without speaking its language. That's not an NPR announcer on the left - that's my grandpa. He was a farmer - he understood animals. Animals don't speak. Animals don't even think.

Education

Education is much more about learning than about teaching. The responsibility for educating children and young adults has, for a long, long time been placed on the wrong shoulders. Good students - not good faculties - make for good schools. Look at how careful the top schools are about selecting their candidates for admission. If you don't believe that the student is the key, simply make a list of the most outstanding government leaders, scientists, artists, writers, business people, and clergy that you can think of. As an example, let's say Washington, Lincoln, Edison, Einstein, Bach, Beethoven, Van Gogh, Picasso, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Martin Luther, and the Dalai Lama. (Compile your own list and put a hundred names on it if you like.) Ok, now, list the names of their teachers next to them!!! It simply can't be done!!!! Teachers are not irrelevant, but learning really comes from the student - not the teacher. Nobody can spoon feed you your education.