Douthat’s Tribalism
I don’t usually read Douthat’s column. But today’s headline caught my eye. I figured from the title that he was going to blame liberals for racial hostility on the Right. That’s not quite what he did. Nevertheless, I found his column to be perverse, but in a slightly different way than I had expected. His discussion relies heavily on a study of admissions at elite colleges and universities, which found that poor whites are less likely to be admitted to these institutions than comparably qualified whites with higher incomes:
while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”
This provides statistical confirmation for what alumni of highly selective universities already know. 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.
Where to start. First, let me say straight out that, as a resident of a rural area, I agree that there’s a real problem with how this country addresses (or, more accurately, neglects) problems of rural poverty. And I agree that that neglect includes elite educational institutions, though I doubt my employer has that problem to the same degree as Douthat’s alma mater. Of course, the problem goes well beyond college admissions. But, like David Brooks, Douthat is expert at taking social science and twisting it to suit his preconceived partisan agenda. So he chooses to focus on those godless liberals running America’s top universities.
We then arrive at his strange parenthetical about elite schools discriminating not only against the urban poor but against “white Christians in particular.” What’s his evidence that white Christians are uniquely disfavored by elite colleges? None that he points to in the piece, unless we are to take his claim about what the “alumni of highly selective universities (i.e., Douthat himself) already know” as an authoritative source. Why does Douthat think that poor, rural white Christians are particularly disfavored, as opposed to rural, white working class people in general? Which non-Christian white, rural working class people are being welcomed by admissions officers? While most of the disfavored group (the white, rural poor) are in fact Christian, what’s the evidence that their religion is motivating their exclusion in any way? Are wealthy Christians suffering the same fate? It’s interesting that, of his examples of the activities colleges disfavor (4-H, FFA, and ROTC), none of them are, in fact, religious.
Douthat’s lack of evidence that the white Christian poor are uniquely disenfranchised raises the crucial question: why stretch to Christianize this point? Why not simply let the data speak for itself and talk about the struggles of the rural poor in America? Because that would ruin Douthat’s partisan objectives. If the struggles of the rural poor are a problem of poverty and the shortcomings of our meritocracy in dealing with issues of poverty, particular rural poverty, then the solution is plainly redistributive. Or, put another way, if the problems of the rural poor are framed in economic terms, rather than religious/cultural ones, then Douthat’s column — and the data it highlights — would raise the question of what either party has been doing for the rural poor. This would be a particularly interesting question to address in light of recent stories about rural counties tearing up paved roads because they can’t afford to maintain them at precisely the moment the Senate GOP is filibustering federal aid to state and local governments.
But that conversation would be far too messy for Douthat, so, despite the pesky lack of evidence, he has to turn the story from one of class bias into one of religious bias in order to fit it within the tidy red-state, blue-state framework. Add the label “Christian” to the group being excluded, and, voila! class struggle becomes culture war. The enemy is not the elite, which resides in both parties (though we could have a nice discussion about which party’s policies better serve the rural poor). The enemy is the liberal, urban, secular elite out to keep you from finding Jesus (as a Republican congressional candidate from Missouri put it the other day). Pay no attention to the GOP agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, which will do nothing for the rural poor, white or black or brown. This is just pure hackery. I should have stuck to my normal policy of ignoring Douthat’s columns.
What’s his evidence that white Christians are uniquely disfavored by elite colleges? None that he points to in the piece, unless we are to take his claim about what the “alumni of highly selective universities (i.e., Douthat himself) already know” as an authoritative source.
Douthat cites a 500+ page book. Have you read the book and confirmed that it has no evidence of Douthat’s claim? If not, then — ironically — you have no evidence that Douthat lacks evidence.
Why not simply let the data speak for itself and talk about the struggles of the rural poor in America?
Translation: Why is Douthat allowed to write a column about something he and many other people find interesting (how elite colleges define diversity) when I wish he had written about something else that I find more interesting (how the rural poor are doing generally)?
The last line is a picture-perfect example of epistemic closure.
Douthat is echoing a bogus conspiracy theory put forth by a conservative blogger, which twists the results of the study to fit the preconceived Palinesque narrative of how elites are biased against hearland Americans and their so-called red state values.
Here’s what the study has to say about 4-H and ROTC.
From PP 126:
Excelling in career-oriented activities is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission. These activities include ROTC and co-op work programs. They might also encompass 4-H clubs, Future Farmers of America and other activities that suggest students are somewhat undecided about their academic futures.
Douthat’s claim of bias in elite universitie’s admissions is nothing more than self-serving invention.
If anything, the study’s focus on dry statistics, to the exclusion of case studies, dehumanizes the problems and obstacles faced by disadvantaged students trying to break into elite universities.
You can find the text of the study at http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=47rORpFmuBwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR17&dq=+Espenshade+and+Radford&ots=1T9O8sfO_N&sig=MlIgWRSArSwStwA7HfRerBLd0lk#v=onepage&q&f=false
Agree, Antonio Manetti. I was just looking at the 4-H passage in the book, too. It doesn’t seem to support Douthat’s interpretation.
http://www.amazon.com/Longer-Separate-Not-Yet-Equal/dp/0691141606/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279557391&sr=1-1#_
Another problem, as I see it, is: “The book’s analysis is based on data provided by the National Survey of College Experience, collected from more than nine thousand students who applied to one of ten selective colleges between the early 1980s and late 1990s.”
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9072.html
As those of us know whose children applied to (and were accepted by) those schools in that period, it’s harder now. Ten years is a long time. For one thing, Harvard doesn’t have early admissions anymore.
Douthat cites a 500+ page book. Have you read the book and confirmed that it has no evidence of Douthat’s claim? If not, then — ironically — you have no evidence that Douthat lacks evidence.
Read the column again. Nowhere does Douthat claim to have read the book. Rather, he draws on the opinions of a conservative blogger to support his views.
Well, it seems pretty obvious that in a short newspaper column with very limited space, no one who quotes a book is going to waste the words to say, “which I have personally read, by the way.”
I always read Douthat. Although a conservative, his views on particular issues are not always predicable. He seems to me to be more open to fair consideration of his opponents views than other columnists. Maybe it’s his age. Given the profound problems the under-40′s face, they need to be more open-minded to find and invent solutions..
I think there is another alternative to the redistribution of income that you suggest above. Why not practice affirmative action based on class or socioeconomic status rather than on race? Why should an upper middle class minority kid get a step up when a poor but equally qualified white kid does not?Elite (and not so elite) universities should be looking for class diversity, not racial diversity. Upper middle class folks of whatever race can pretty much look after themselves these days.
I agree with the thrust of your comment Karl, and I would consider class based affirmative action to be a form of redistribution (of opportunity, rather than income). The irony is that the book Douthat cites suggests that that is just what universities are doing with minority students — that the poorer minority students get the biggest admissions advantage. This rebuts a common conservative talking point about affirmative action in admissions.
As a sometime writer of columns, I think Douthaut faced a space problem. “White Christians” came from his opening quote of Patrick Buchanan, an address that Douthaut may have heard when an “elite” undergrad.
He segues into the study of admissions and elite university and is stuck with the “white Christian” quote. You’re right that the study is about class (though since none of us has read the book, religion may enter in), but aren’t you trying to kill a misquoto with a sledge hammer.
More to the point, I think:the readers of the NYT op-ed page really don’t get the Pat Buchanan “resenment” trop, or the tea party trope. I took this to be an edifying observation for liberals (I include myself) who pay too little attention to the problem.
I “like” Douthaut in the sense that he approaches questions from interesting perspectives. But I find his columns to be permeated by a whiny subtext, something more or less along the lines of, “See, liberals? See? You guys are also hypocrites, but no one ever believes us.”
I think the interesting question is what counts as “merit.” Can one say that one “deserves” a place at an elite school based on test scores and grades?
In any case, there is a study somewhere about what mediocre achievements high school valedictorians went on to have–it was sobering information about the relative importance of test scores.
“I think the interesting question is what counts as “merit.” Can one say that one “deserves” a place at an elite school based on test scores and grades? ”
Hmm. I would have to say that gifted students really do “deserve” programs that will develop their considerable human potential, for the good of the student and for the good of the society that hopes to reap the benefits of their gifts, and that there should be a sector of the education system that serves this mission.
I guess what I’ve described is as meritocracy. As a practical matter, is there a better way than test scores and grades to identify those with such gifts? Presumably the Ivies get many more applicants who have top grades and highest-level test scores than there are seats available. So then, how do they narrow it down to the lucky 7% who are accepted? Lottery?
BTW, I suppose admitting members of historically disadvantaged groups (like inner-city African Americans) whose grades and test scores alone wouldn’t qualify them for admission is a divergence from the meritocracy, and on the whole, I’m okay with that.
What I do wonder about, with regard to the Ivies, is how many GW Bush’s are admitted – i.e. legacy students with unimpressive academic achievements but the right sort of family. A variation on that theme that my wife observed in her University of Chicago days is the foreign-born silver-spoon student, e.g. the children of Middle East petroleum-state royalty. Those are all seats that could go to bright and hardworking children from rural Midwest counties.
Same thing with athletes–or professors’ kids and legacies!
Those of us who want to preserve the past will find it reassuring to find that traditional (even pre-Vatican II) concepts such as class struggle are defended in this post. Thanks to our tenured radicals at elite institutions we are reminded that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and that anyone who distracts from the economic issues of oppressed proletarians and serfs is nothing but a perverse hack with a preconceived partisan agenda.
“Workers of the world, unite” will always be a cherished sentiment, if only on selected campuses with advanced notions of diversity.
From my own experience with my children and their admission to elite colleges, I have this to offer: These colleges were looking for a diverse body of students. Mine qualified because we lived in a tiny town of 4 thousand in a rural area. We were not poor, i.e., we could pay our bills, albeit barely, and yes we were white, but also Catholic. What we found is that the schools looked for the student who took the most demanding courses their school offered and demonstrated a work ethic in regard to scholarly, extracurricular and community opportunities. In our town, these offerings were quite modest and ordinary. Our kids had no overarching enriching experiences unless you count ballet lessons and working at Burger King. I worked in a college for a time and the Admissions folks would worry about the dwindling population of eighteen year olds so they had to broaden their outreach efforts. These elite colleges also offered generous financial aid packages, which is why my kids were able to attend. Yes, when they got there, they discovered that though they may have been the brightest kids in their class, others from exclusive private schools and upscale school districts were much more prepared than they. As an aside, our next door neighbor, extremely conservative Baptists, did not want their very bright and serious son to even apply to these schools, because they were “too liberal.” He went to pharmacy school instead and I heard that he did well there. My point: He could have gone to one of the so-called elite schools. I serioiusly doubt that Admissions would have been put off by his Baptist beliefs.
About the Ivies. It is my understanding that their big=name faculty usually don’t teach undergrads unless they want to. Junior faculty, who may or may not themselves be on their way to being outstanding scholars or whatever handle most of those classes.
So what’s the difference between such an education and one at a lower-rung school with excellent teachers? One former Yale faculty member told me that it was the brain-power of the students themselves that set the standards. They were all brilliant and set each other thinking. So I think it is probably quite feasible to have many excellent colleges for the super-smart, with faculty who are not necessarily Einsteins themselves.
It used to be said sometimes that American graduate schools were our great schools, not their colleges. This, it was said, was because the truly great faculty members taught undergrads only if they wanted to. And, it was often said that those great faculty members (scholars, scientists, original thinkers) were not necessarily even adequate undergraduate teachers, so it was just as well they stuck to grad students. I wonder if that was and still is true. If Ivy undergrads don’t really get a super-undergraduate educaiton, it would seem that an Ivy isn’t worth what you pay for it — or maybe the contacts made there cause the difference in future performance. Hmm.
Complexity, complexity.
{Douthat] segues into the study of admissions and elite university and is stuck with the “white Christian” quote.
Why does Douthat deserve sympathy? He went out of his way to embellish the point that elite schools are dismissive of white, Christian, heartland values.
Pardon the rather lengthy quote:
[C]ultural biases seem to be at work….one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”
In Douthat’s world the ‘gatekeepers’ just can’t win.
Douthat has a post in the Times in answer to issues raised in his article. It’s about “The Trouble with Meritocracy”. It raises a fundamenal issue: would it be good for all our leaders to get the same education? Wouldn’t the values of diverse outlooks be lost?
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-trouble-with-meritocracy/
” —trying to kill a misquoto with a sledge hammer. ” Or an ant with a nuke, fer crying out loud!
” Can one say that one “deserves” a place at an elite school based on test scores and grades?”
Can one say that one “deserves” a place at an elite school based on one’s parental financial success, legacy status and family connections?
If you agree with that, is it also then truth for those “elite schools” who retain at least a semblance of Catholic identity?
Jimmy Mac, I agree–and I think it’s telling that people like Douthat go after minority admits–but not legacies, athletic admits, or professor kid admits.
The premise of Douthat’s piece is that someone has a “right” to a spot in a class. But there is no such right. And admissions directors are shaping classes, creating communities–looking for a range of talents and life experiences.
That said, I think if I really wanted to get my kid nto an Ivy League school I’d move to a scarcely populated state and make sure they did really well in the best public school there.
Let’s see, Douthat’s response opens with the following salvo:
For anyone with an appropriate skepticism toward meritocracy and its works, there’s an obvious critique of my suggestion, in today’s column, that America might be better off if our top-flight colleges welcomed more students from demographics — the white working class, rural America, evangelical Christians, etc. — that are currently viewed with suspicion and hostility by the highly-educated elite.
He starts out asserting ‘suspicion and hostllity’ on the part of the ‘highly-educated elite’ towards the hoi-polloi and we’re to take his views seriously. The Republicans get a lot of mileage out of that trope until they get their hands on the levers of power — especially in the tea bagger era. I’ll say this much, Douthat knows what buttons to push to evoke the White Liberal guilt response.
Douthat might deserve credit for exposing the issue of the red states being under represented. Especially if they desire admission. But he seems really shaky in drawing his conclusions. Nevertheless, the issue does need more attention. Holloway above, gives us different information which indicates more study is necessary. We might start on something a few here might know about, Notre Dame. It seems to be generally believed that Notre Dame caters mainly to the upper middle class. How does this issue relate to Notre Dame? And Edward might be naive to include that Cornell does not exclude the Red states and Farmers, etc.
I’ve been conscious of this issue since the 1980s, and it’s nice to see that it is finallly getting some play. A few clarifications–I agree that the key adjective here isn’t ‘Christian’, but white working class. Also, it’s not abour rural vs urban. There are plenty of urban and suburban/small town members of the white working class who feel aggrieved at the lack of places they hold at America’s elite universities. (A few years ago while in DC the student newspaper at Georgetown ran an in-depth article making the same point–that the only white students at Georgetown were well-off, and that only minorities got the slots for the less-advantaged. This article, by the way, was not written by aggrieved conservatives but rather sociologically minded students, as far as I could tell). There are other dimensions to this issue too extensive to delve into here. Just one example–there’s a perception among the white working class that racial integration (or what they call ‘housing projects’) was forced upon their neighborhoods by rich white liberals who live in “lily-white gated communities” or “ritzy suburbs,” and that this helped destroy the monetary value of white working class homes, often the only assets they had. This is an exaggeration, but there seems to be enough disquieting truth there. I grew up in a working class town and in a white working class family, and I watched many/most of the people I know drift from the Democratic to the Republican party over the past 3 decades precisely for these reasons. Yet the media said very little about this development, and many white liberals seemed/seem clueless about it.
Liberals: Guilty and Clueless? Can you be both at the same time? Let’s ask Wittgenstein.
My infrequent visits to elite Catholic universities suggest to me that White Christians have little to be aggrieved about in those precincts. Whether those are 4H whites is another question.
i knew plenty of white conservative christians at the ivy league university i attended. Douthat is disingenuous to stte that this is about christians and conservatives (i did a google books search on christian in the study Douthat mentions and got no hits). I think the author of this piece got it right–the issue is class/income, NOT Christianity or Conservativism.
“…though we could have a nice discussion about which party’s policies better serve the rural poor…Pay no attention to the GOP agenda of tax cuts and deregulation, which will do nothing for the rural poor, white or black or brown. This is just pure hackery.”
Perhaps it is “nice discussion[s]” such as the above which may perhaps lead to adverse selection among the applicants Mr. Douthat concerns his essay with and therefore depresses the acceptance rates of that applicant pool?
I’d also go back to the premise of Douthat’s column — is admission to Harvard really the driving issue of resentment for working class white Christian conservatives? I tend to doubt it. I my experience, the general response is along the lines of we don’t need no stinkin’ Ivies.
In any case, holding this issue out as the rationale for white resentment, as if it were a justification, is a real stretch. How much of this is a self-fulfilling result? Conservatives spend decades harping on the hatred these Ivy elites have for Red State Americans and surprise, Red State Americans resent said disdain. Right. Working class folks of all folks have lots of other reasons to be angry, and mainly at their Red State Republican pols, IMHO.
The best bit of course, is that Douthat himself is a perfect example of the down sides of the kind of affirmative action he criticizes, no? Given an NYT op-ed column because of his identification as a Catholic conservative, and not for any evident ability.
“The best bit of course, is that Douthat himself is a perfect example of the down sides of the kind of affirmative action he criticizes, no? ”
I do not believe so. I believe what Mr. Douthat criticizes is affirmative action based solely on “skin color”, such as when he says “there’s more to diversity than skin color”. And does he not encourage exactly that type of affirmative action when he says: “Inevitably, the same underrepresentation [of white Christians] persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.”?
As someone who thinks there is actually a lot wrong with elite universities in various ways, I still found this column to be superficial and wrongheaded.
First, Douthat apparently accepts as a premise that success in his social landscape virtually requires education at an elite university. So point one: how has it devolved that the cluster of preferences and characteristics that send students to other universities (e.g., land grant universities) has become so devalued? What would change this (if we agree that it seems kind of crazy to think that only those people who go to one of 8 or even 20 schools should have such an advantage in life)? Closely related, is Harvard even producing the kind of product (in the form of graduates) that makes the country a better place? A 25% rate of acceptance of jobs in the financial sector does not produce enthusiastically positive feelings in this regard.
Second, Douthat seems blissfully unaware that while future farmers of America may not be enrolling in Harvard and Yale etc., the children of rural doctors and lawyers do, in much greater numbers. Of course, they are able to avoid mediocre rural schools through various means (private, mostly). Point Two: Douthat doesn’t even begin to consider that members of FFA and 4-H are, like their counterparts in many urban and suburban locales, grappling with and trying to survive public schools starved for money while their better financed and better connected peers have bought their way out. It can be done, as Holloway says. I, for one, did it.
Third, Douthat seems not to have noticed that not everyone wants to go to these schools and that more than a few people actively do not, and that, disproportionately, these people are white Christian, conservative Americans. My daughter’s good friend, an extremely successful student considered only two schools, both extremely conservative if not fundamentalist Christian colleges. Point Three: Preference matters and going back to point one, we really need to challenge this emerging consensus that all is lost if you don’t join the elites early enough in the game. Someone who really values a different kind of experience should not be so disadvantaged.
So instead of looking at diversity WITHIN these few elite institutions, how about trying to spur diversity in a way that diminishes the institutional biases that gives these particular institutions such embedded advantages to begin with?
“especially in the tea bagger era”
I object to the use of this term.
Methinks some dotcommonwealers dot protest too much.
Irrepsective of how he may err on details or certain categorizations, the broader point about class and who is represented at universities that generally produce the leaders of the US which is a global influence is an important dialogue to have. And he is the only one who seems to have advanced it (or at least the only one on the NY Times and elite papers).
It really has to do with representative democracy and the manner in which cross sections of the population are adequately represented and able to participate in making decisions about the direction of the country.
I heard Joe Biden once say that he would prefer to see a dog catcher on the Supreme Court than someone with ivy league academia. What he meant by that was that real world experience is important in making decisions considering interpretation of the consitution (arguable I know but this was his point and I tend to agree). However, this seems like a very romantic idea because in the real world in recent decades we have not seen that at all in the USA.
The US does a good job of discussing race openly (even if more heat than light is shed on it) but it is less candid about class. There is still a mythology around anybody growing up to be president, Lincoln born in a log cabin, etc., ect. This mythology is very important but it may not actually be true upon closer examination.
George D, but Ross Douthat doesn’t get to class in a direct way. Instead, he incorporates categories like “rural” and “farmer” as if they were stand ins for class, when they often are not. Just an anecdotal case in point: my husband grew up in a very rural community and attended elite schools (his father was a professional), as did many of his friends, including some who were part of a very wealthy farming family. There tends to be a fairly low concentration of people like this in rural communities, hence, the underrepresentation of rural people in Ivy league circles. Ross Douthat doesn’t seem to understand the class distinctions that exist even within rural communities and thus both overstates and understates the relevance of the various categories on things like attendance at Harvard.
But my main point is as follows: it wouldn’t and shouldn’t matter to us how diverse Harvard (or Yale or Princeton) is if our society didn’t seem to be ossifying into one that unduly rewards inclusion in the club that is Harvard or Yale. If that ossification were not taking place, and Harvard and Yale bypass the truly meritocratic innovators who end up at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin, then Harvard and Yale should eventually atrophy in influence.
In other words, ensuring that our oligarchy is “diverse” and “meritocratic” hardly addresses the overall harm that comes with being a society that functions as or like an oligarchy, that rewards people even though they don’t particularly deserve to be rewarded. And Ross Douthat, a card carrying member of the “club” doesn’t go near that point. He’s happy to be part of the ruling class so long as the class has a few more members like himself. And that attitude can be true for any of us, regardless of our political orientation.
Barbara:
Yes.that is a very good point. And I do think that issue could and should be reframed in the manner that you suggest.
But first we have to arrive at a consensus that political society functions as an oligarchy. I doubt that we are there yet.
Tha arguement has, of course, been advanced although it has not permetated the public domain and is certainly no reflected in the political landscape.
Heck even the current leader of the oppostion party in Canada, Michael Ignatieff, is a Harvard grad and boasted about it in his Liberal leadership bid.
But we would not be even having this conversation had Douthat not wrote the column, and it was reprinted here. So however clumsily he is going about it – at least it is a start.
Some of my English friends have more than once chided Americans for failing to admit that we are royalists at heart. We go ga-ga over certain political, social and university graduate clans and hang on their every word, news event and general attention-getting activities. (No, I don’t mean the Lady Ga-Gas and Lindsay Lohans of this country, either!)
Given the choice of voting for one of them versus someone of equal or better qualification but not from said inner circles, we tend to vote for the former.
My friends are right, you know.
“But my main point is as follows: it wouldn’t and shouldn’t matter to us how diverse Harvard (or Yale or Princeton) is if our society didn’t seem to be ossifying into one that unduly rewards inclusion in the club that is Harvard or Yale. If that ossification were not taking place, and Harvard and Yale bypass the truly meritocratic innovators who end up at, let’s say, the University of Wisconsin, then Harvard and Yale should eventually atrophy in influence”
Barbara – well said! (In fact, I agreed with everything you wrote).
The amounts of money made by Ivy League grads on Wall Street are, by my reckoning, the most damning evidence of this ossification.
“I think there is another alternative to the redistribution of income that you suggest above. Why not practice affirmative action based on class or socioeconomic status rather than on race?”
Actually, this is happening, as Holloway notes. We live in a village of 1,400. Our kid got a scholarship to music camp in Michigan a) because he’s a pretty good musician (he passed an audition and rec’d rec from his music teacher) and b) because rural kids are underrepresented at the camp.
What surprised, even shocked, me was the fact that I know of three other kids who received similar scholarships, but whose parents refused to let them go, didn’t want them mixing in the the “big city” kids.
Sad. The students were extremely well supervised, made lots of friends, and his music improved by big strides in two weeks of intensive instruction.
Jimmy, how dare you lump Lindsay Lohan and my Lady Gaga together! For shame!
Ross Douthat doesn’t get to class in a direct way. Instead, he incorporates categories like “rural” and “farmer” as if they were stand ins for class, when they often are not.
I think it’s being generous to assume that Douthat’s arguments are meant as anything other than an attempt to fuel feelings of grievance among his constituency . It’s always good tactics to portray your side, no matter how powerful it is, as if it were beleaguered and threatened.
With regard to oligarchy, it would be interesting to know of any powerful country not dominated by an oligarchic elite. In any event, it seems like this issue only comes up when the power of groups long accustomed to getting their way is threatened. If or when the status quo ante is restored, this issue will vanish like the morning dew.
Antonio, I think it’s within the natural order for those who have to try to preserve their advantage and where this becomes the predominant method by which resources are allocated, it leads to what I would call oligarchy. The extent to which this phenomenon is tempered and resisted (never to be eliminated) is what distinguishes social organizations, and usually, their ability to maintain vitality over the course of generations.
Jean, many people at the NYT who commented made exactly the point you did (and I did more indirectly). Self-selection eliminates choice every bit as much as overt non-acceptance by third parties.
“What surprised, even shocked, me was the fact that I know of three other kids who received similar scholarships, but whose parents refused to let them go, didn’t want them mixing in the the “big city” kids….Sad.”
Why is that sad? The parents are motivated by love to act in the best interests of their minor children I presume. Or are you saying it was punitive? If the former, it is not an uncommon sentiment. Personally, for example, there are a host of universities I would not permit a minor child of mine to attend.
I think there is another alternative to the redistribution of income that you suggest above. Why not practice affirmative action based on class or socioeconomic status rather than on race?
The only difference is that, in spite of racism past and present — which is often but not always manifested economically –the use of socioeconomic status as a preferential basis is deemed to be legitimate, whereas race is not.
Jean: mea maxima culpa. Gaga me.
John V. Fleming, a distinguished scholar of medieval (including Franciscan) literature and a proud 4-H Club graduate, reflects upon the extraordinary feats required of those seeking admission to an elite freshman class Below is an interesting excerpt from his 2007 Princeton commencement speech.
“My career at Princeton was not paralyzed by self-doubt..But to one height I knew I could never ascend. I could never, ever have gained admission to the freshman class — yours, or any other Princeton class. I simply don’t have what it takes. I had never done any of those things that you wrote about in the autobiographical statement of your admissions packet. I never backpacked through the Carpathians. I never made a papier-mâché model of the New York subway system. Not even with an unrusted nail did I perform an emergency tracheotomy on an asthmatic camel in the Gobi desert, thus saving myself and my companions from certain death. I did not in fact ghostwrite the enabling legislation for the most sweeping program of environmental remediation ever undertaken by the Ohio State legislature. My big “extracurricular” was the 4-H Club.”
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S18/09/02O65/index.xml?section=newsreleases
Evangelicals may have to learn to focus their Christian activities on the more exotic adventures favored by contemporary gate-keepers. That will happen before admissions officers learn how to discriminate among members of this missing constituency.
“They might also encompass 4-H clubs, Future Farmers of America and other activities that suggest students are somewhat undecided about their academic futures.”
———–
Very shaky: “might”, “suggest”, “somewhat”? Three qualifiers in one sentence? Lame.
Four good (imho) letters to the editor about Douthat’s column in the NYT this morning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/opinion/l21douthat.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Jean said: What surprised, even shocked, me was the fact that I know of three other kids who received similar scholarships, but whose parents refused to let them go, didn’t want them mixing in the the “big city” kids….Sad.
MAT said: Why is that sad? The parents are motivated by love to act in the best interests of their minor children I presume. Or are you saying it was punitive? If the former, it is not an uncommon sentiment. Personally, for example, there are a host of universities I would not permit a minor child of mine to attend.
Jean said: Yes, MAT, but that’s probably b/c you have first bothered to check out the school’s faculty, find out how dorm personnel are vetted, visited and inspected the facilities, talked with other parents whose kids have gone there, eaten the cafeteria food, and inspected the infirmary. In other words, you’re making a decision for your kid based on information, not knee-jerk fear of people who live outside the boundaries of your own tribe. That’s not love, that’s xenophobia.
Going to camps and summer schools like that, especially on scholarships, looks good on applications. There could be jealousy involved. The parents were unable to get good educations, so they’re not interested in seeing their children outstrip them.
Patrick, yes it’s true that the affluent try to engineer all manner of advantages for their children, but it’s also true that admissions officers are fairly attuned to this fact. Honestly, when I did a survey of some people in my office, it seemed like nearly all of their high school kids had done one of these “charity in a box” schemes, that is, pre-packaged “doing good” tours in a poor country, that they then expected to write about as part of their college essays. How many essays of this type do you think the Harvard Admissions Committee has to read before it realizes that much of this experience is inauthentic, not all that impressive, and easily bought? Which is why it really IS possible to get into these institutions from a “nothing” background — not by showing up with good grades and high SAT scores, which everyone else has too, but showing that you were active and involved in a sustained way in something of true personal interest, like 4-H. But you can’t “game” that in the six months before you submit your applications.
“Douthat has a post in the Times in answer to issues raised in his article. It’s about “The Trouble with Meritocracy”. It raises a fundamenal issue: would it be good for all our leaders to get the same education? Wouldn’t the values of diverse outlooks be lost?
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/the-trouble-with-meritocracy/”
Interesting. Douthat’s thesis in the blog post seems to be that elite education mills spit out a sort of vanilla conformity. I guess my thought is the inverse: that differences of class, and perhaps to a lesser extent region, are persistent and stubborn, and that beneath the Ivy veneer is who the person really *is*.
The implication of that is this: again using GW Bush as an example of anti-meritocracy: suppose that the US culture really isn’t primarily a meritocracy – suppose that class and cronyism are more important (but not always decisive: an able outsider like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama can find entree to the elite caste).
If that supposition is right, then GW Bush would have become governor and president whether he went to an Ivy or Texas – that he is son of GHW Bush and grandson of Prescott Bush is the primary determinant of his ascendancy. And if GW Bush is the rule rather than the exception, then – an argument can be made that the Ivies are doing the country a service by exposing the young adults who will be rulers no matter what to a top-flight education and social exposure.
Barbara,
I don’t have much faith in the good faith of our elites or their gatekeepers to seek out genuine diversity for their institutions. And I think culturally sophisticated students and their parents are more adept at gaming the system than officials are at detecting genuine potential. Maybe this is at the root of conservative/liberal differences – conservatives recognize the ingenuity (and often superiority) of local, decentralized knowledge versus the view from a hierarchy I also wonder how many practicing evangelicals are present on prestigious faculties or on their admissions committees. I have no doubt that there are many who are vigorously hostile to the evangelical outlook and wouldn’t have the slightest ability to evaluate the potential of evangelical students.
Likewise with the prestigious press. I’m always brought up short at their provincialism. One example I think about is the single evangelical journalist that I know of at the NYT, McCandlish Phillips. He left many years ago. There must be some among their present-day 1,000 professionals but I would be shocked if there were more than five. Perhaps when they had typesetters there was a higher representation. But even now I believe that if they tried they could exceed a goal of one percent.
I don’t advocate any sort of hard affirmative action for evangelicals but I don’t see much evidence that institutional leaders are much bothered about their highly selective diversity goals. And I confess that at times I’m tempted by Daniel Boorstin’s satirical essay in his book Sociology of the Absurd — establish for everyone at birth an E. Q. or ethnic quotient. This might be combined with their I.Q. to establish what he called an Omnium Quotient. The latter could also include victim status. Scores would be subject to periodic reweighting so as to reflect accurately the status of newly discovered qroups. Transparency for all! And since it would be done scientifically no one would be able to claim unjust discrimination.
I guess we have Notre Dame, Wheaton College and Brigham Young in part because of the selectivity of Ivy admissions departments.
I don’t think Notre Dame or BYU are second choice for those not admitted to Ivy League schools. I think those schools are first choice for those who apply there.
Many (most?) applicants to Ivy League colleges apply to several and for their fall-back positions have scholarship offers from state and other universities who reach out to top students.
As to Christians? I just asked a Harvard graduate if he knew any born-again Christians when he was in college. Sure. Several, including a lab partner who was in Under Construction, a Christian a cappella group.
http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/groups/index.php?category=music
“I don’t think Notre Dame or BYU are second choice for those not admitted to Ivy League schools. ”
I was thinking more historically than today.
Hi, Jim!
I doubt that Fr. Sorin had even heard of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., when he founded Notre Dame in the early 1840s.
(I have the 1842-1844 “Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Harvard University.” A 48-page booklet. There were 11 men on the college faculty, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and 247 students. In the Divinity School, faculty of 3, and 26 students; Law School, faculty of 3, and 120 students; Medical Lectures, faculty of 7, and 116 students. Tuition, books, and room and board in the college came to $194 per year.)
The founders of BYU surely had heard of the eastern colleges, but they were more concerned about local rivals.
“In addition to the academic poverty, Maeser found that he had to compete with a large number of denominational schools throughout the territory of Utah founded by the Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists. The competition was keen because these sects had raised millions of dollars in a campaign throughout the United States for these schools to convert the benighted Mormons to Christianity. As a matter of fact, by 1888 there were eighteen academies plus seventy-two elementary schools founded by these denominations in Utah, as compared to only ten academies maintained by the Church, of which BYA was the main one. The leaders of these Protestant schools, however, soon came to realize that Mormon students came to their schools, enjoyed all their educational facilities, and then went back to their ward as leaders in the Mutual Improvement Association and other auxiliary organizations of the Church, so most of these competing schools were gradually discontinued. Mormon students accepted the educational training of the other denominations but rejected their brand of Christianity.”
–Ernest L. Wilkinson, president of Brigham Young University from 1951 to 1971
http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=6112
But you can’t “game” [activities reflecting true personal interest] in the six months before you submit your applications.
In Japan, the culling process begins in kindergarten. I suspect as more folks catch on to the rules of the game, something similar will happen here (if it isn’t happening now). In our culture of complaint, there will always be those who think the deck is stacked against them.
It’s been happening here for a long time. Scaling the Ivy Wall, published in 1975, was one of several books advising students and their parents on how to get in.
One bit of advice from that: get a “career”. Something outside of school. E.g., acting in plays, commercials, etc. Singing in choirs at local cathedrals. Stuff they get paid to do.
The books offered other advice: in school, go for state, regional, and national competitions, in math, languages, robots, etc. Go to gifted and talented summer school, TIP, CYU, etc. Take the hardest classes, including as many AP courses as possible. Take several SAT 2s. Etc.
(I don’t think it’s fair to call it “gaming the system”. Parents who pay for sports training, lessons, etc., to help their kids get athletic scholarships are not accused of “gaming the system”.)
The newest thing is the International Baccalaureate. Article somewhere recently about it, NYT? All below is from Wiki:
————
Howard Gardner, a professor of educational psychology at Harvard University, said that the IBDP curriculum is “less parochial than most American efforts” and helps students “think critically, synthesize knowledge, reflect on their own thought processes and get their feet wet in interdisciplinary thinking.”[32]
In the United Kingdom, the IB Diploma is “regarded as more academically challenging and broader than three or four A-levels.” In 2006, government ministers provided funding so that “every local authority in England could have at least one centre offering sixth-formers the chance to do the IB.”[19] In 2008, due to the devaluing of the A-Levels and an increase in the number of students taking the IB exams, Children’s Secretary Ed Balls abandoned a “flagship Tony Blair pledge to allow children in all areas to study IB.” Fears of a “two-tier” education system further dividing education between the rich and the poor emerged as the growth in IB is driven by private schools and sixth-form colleges.[33]
Political objections to the IBDP in the United States have resulted in an attempt to eliminate it from a public school.[34][35] Some schools in the United States have eliminated the IBDP due to budgetary reasons and low student participation.[36][37] In Utah, funding for the IBDP was reduced from $300,000 to $100,000 after Senator Margaret Dayton objected to the program, stating, “I don’t want to create ‘world citizens’ nearly as much as I want to help cultivate American citizens who function well in the world.”[38][39]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Baccalaureate
In secular colleges and these days in some religious colleges professors think it is their duty to teach kids to think critically, while fundamentalist parents, whose ultimate evidence is Scripture regardless of what scientific evidence indicates, don’t want their kids being influenced by such teachers. These are two sets of facts, not prejudices.
So are secular schools best for such kids? I’d say for most of them, no, but for some of them, yes. But I’m sure many fundamentalist parents would disagree.
Part of the problem. I think. is that many people, including many, though not all, fundamentalists, think that a college education is mainly for job training or a means of becoming “successful”. But in a pluralistic society we have many meanings of “success”. And the question becomes: can many sorts of people be taught successfully in one classroom when their goals are fundamentally different?
Btw – off topic but this kind of thing bugs me – could someone please write out Douthat’s name phonetically, so I know how to pronounce it?
I pronounce it (mostly in my head): Do hah t; but I just heard someone say Do Thaht
http://www.slate.com/id/2213548
You can listen to him pronounce his own name.
The yearning for the definitive!
I heard Due Thut when I listened to him.
But he written version on the site says…
“DOW-thut”
Any phonetians care to comment?
Hi, Margaret!
I’m not a phonetian. (Not sure what that is. Maybe we don’t have them out here west of the Hudson.)
He says DOW-thut, quite clearly. Twice.
(Try turning up your volume.)
I didn’t realize Douthat had written a book about bad old Harvard.
http://www.amazon.com/Privilege-Harvard-Education-Ruling-Class/dp/1401307558/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279823674&sr=1-1
Strange column, yes. Harvard isn’t even on the radar of conservative Christians in Arizona, where I was surprised to discover one day didn’t include Catholics for some. If there’s any group that’s been excluded from elite schools its the East Coast Catholic immigrant community. It’s a bunch of malarcky to say this was all about “self selection.” The Ivy League got more open after World War II, but Catholics are still under-represented there, and the new gospel of diversity probably won’t change that much, because Sonia Sotomayor notwithstanding Hispanics are the latest Catholic immigrant group under-served by our elite colleges. Of course Douthat isn’t sensitive to this, his roots and sensitivities lie somewhere else, speaking of tribalism.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/liberal-elites-and-conservative-illusions/
Douthat’s blog today is on “Liberal Elites and Conservative Illusions”. He repeats his mantra that the conservatives are falling short in offering positive policy changes, and he defends the liberals as smart, though not wise.