Is it
an evil thing to use your elite education to get a consulting job at McKinsey instead of attempting to save souls with Teach For America? I think there is something to the idea that the elite in America have
more civic responsibility than everyone else, but that hardly means everyone needs to abandon worldly ambition and live only in the service of the poor. If it weren't for the 20 percent of Harvard grads working 70 hours a week at McKinsey, there would be no TFA for the rest of their classmates. The connection here is quite concrete--McKinsey has actually donated money and consultants to TFA to keep it afloat in the '90s. And more broadly, where does Howard Gardner think all the money for all these do-goody non-profits is coming from if not Wall Street firms? Much of the new social entrepreneurship is closely and consciously linked to corporations, in terms of funding, but also
in its outlook and emphasis on data and results. Has it occurred to anyone that making money might actually make it easier for some people to make the world a better place, either by giving them the time to volunteer or the money to donate to keep Harvard's professional world-savers in Birkenstocks for the year?
And what, ultimately, is the end goal of all this teaching for America and anti-poverty initiating if not to help put the underprivileged into the position where they can obtain precisely the high-paying job and comfortable life that Harvard apparently wants its graduates to hold in contempt? And what ever happened to the claim of elite schools that their student bodies come from "diverse backgrounds." If that's really true, then presumably some of those from the less well-endowed backgrounds have some loan debt they have to pay off before they go "make the world a better place"?
And really:
“It’s like applying to college all over again,” he added. “ ‘I applied to 8 to 10 Ivy League colleges, and I got in here. I applied to these 40 companies, and I got into these ones.’ It’s exactly the thing that appeals to the Harvard competitive spirit.”
As if TFA is any different.
10 comments:
Your blog might very well be the next thing noted on "Stuff White People Like."
# 146 Budding Intellectuals Commenting on Infighting amongst Established Academics and Intellectuals.
More seriously though, I think there is a legitimate question raised in asking what the real value added is by going to the public sector route for elite graduates (TFA potentially aside). Even the very best social service programs have a day-to-day operational structure that can be, and more often that not is, efficiently managed by many a graduate from less vaunted schools. I don’t think is really makes sense to place the talent of a Harvard UG into a paper shuffling fest for two years at a wack, even if it is to review worthwhile grant requests for charitable organizations.
In contrast, while the Wall Street nexus should not be held in as high of a regard as it is at the post-BA level (given it requires no skills in particular), it nevertheless embodies a critical thinking intensive culture which only a small fraction of college graduates can begin to handle (the organizational / work ethos demands aside).
I agree with HUM III. Entry level civil service jobs do not require huge amounts of intellectual horsepower.
I argued recently that returns to intelligence diminish after about 1,100 on the SATs for most jobs. Wall Street and Management Consulting are not most jobs, and therefore place a higher premium on raw intelligence.
That said, being what is fashionably called a social entrepreneur, ie somebody that creates an NGO, does require intellectual horsepower if it is to be successful. However, I would argue that all of the people that you hear about raising tens of thousands of dollars for their feed children in Africa NGO that they started out of their Ivy League dorm room got those initial tens of thousands of dollars from their wealthy parents and parents' friends. Furthermore, I would bet that most people who have really wealthy parents willing to fund an NGO will work at the NGO and not on Wall Street. So, they're a moot point. Otherwise, to get seed money for an NGO, most kids will need to be Wall St whores for a few years to get the money.
All told, I think the idea of pushing elite graduates into public service ain't the right thing to do.
Sounds like P.J. O'Rourke's graduation advice
(http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-orourke4-2008may04,0,3597821,full.story):
2. Don't be an idealist!
Don't chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you'll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That's $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You'll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?
Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, "I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can't eat. I can't sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I'm a better person. And because I'm the better person, I have the right to boss you around."
Get a pair of bolt cutters and liberate that tree.
Who does more for the redwoods and society anyway -- the guy chained to a tree or the guy who founds the "Green Travel Redwood Tree-Hug Tour Company" and makes a million by turning redwoods into a tourist destination, a valuable resource that people will pay just to go look at?
So make your contribution by getting rich. Don't be an idealist.
Also, I expect you to soon have commentary on this:
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html
As with the question of how smart you need to be to teach, here too, I am happy to let people choose their own careers. If a third of elite graduates want to do TFA or the Peace Corps or climb trees in the Amazon, fine. (I don't think many such graduates go into entry level civil service, but those that do feel probably enough uppity entitlement after their elite educations to quit if they find it boring.) I don't think that Harvard should nurture the belief that public service is airy or stupid, because first of all, it's not, and second, starting an organization like TFA is no walk in the park. But even TFA doesn't underrate the importance of Wall Street in its success, and neither should Harvard. That's all. Well, that, and you don't have to make charity your career to do public service.
Cheryl: I started reading that this morning, but it was just so boring. Does it get better?
I don't always agree with you, but on this point, you are on target. I had no such lofty, altruistic intentions when I chose education, nor do I feel guilty about the fact that I am now paid handsomely to do what I enjoy. I admire Gardner's work on multiple intelligences, but he is being a bit sanctimonious in this regard.
Sorry, but Gardner's multiple intelligences thing is ridiculous pseudo-science. The theory has no empirical support at all. Gardner just woke up one day and said, "What a crying shame it is that some people are smarter than others. I know, let's redefine intelligence in a completely meaningless way so everyone can be smart. This guy is good at sports so he's got bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. This woman's good at music so she'll have musical intelligence. This other person is really good with people so we'll call it interpersonal intelligence. This person's really bad with people, so he'll have intrapersonal intelligence." In 1999, he said, "Oops. I left out the people who are good with plants and animals. They shall have naturalistic intelligence."
If Dr. Gardner merely abandoned the idea that intelligence is the sole indicator of a person's worth, he could still cling to his egalitarianism without doing such violence to science and common sense. On the other hand, I realize that Dr. Gardner may very well have meant his theory as a framework for educators and for that it might work just fine, but the perfectly good word "talent" exists for that purpose.
Andrew, I will leave it to your obviously superior grasp of science to determine the empirical value of MI theory or lack thereof. What I can tell you from experience (and from actually having read Gardner's work, wink, wink) is that, as your closing sentence grudgingly acknowledges, MI theory does provide a "framework for educators."
At the very least, it sensitizes teachers to kids' different learning styles and induces them to eschew a "one size fits all" approach to their delivery of material.
Furthermore, your contributions to this blog suggest that you possess the very "intelligences" that tend to make one disdainful of such theories because they are the very "talents" for which the predominately didactic secondary and tertiary education systems in the U.S. are tailored.
I agree with both of you. Now, take the bickering outside, please.
For what it's worth, mgsc, I do apologize for my earlier vehemence. I only object to Dr. Gardner's theory in the way it has been used by the public with the unfortunate label of "multiple intelligences." If his sole purpose was to improve pedagogical practice, I withdraw my objections to anything except the nomenclature.
Also, for what it's worth, my argument is in fact an anti-intellectual elitism argument (most attempts to redefine intelligence are unnecessary if we only did away with the silly belief that intellect is a moral quality and those who possess more of it are better people than those who have less). Also, I nearly flunked out of secondary school.
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