Academic Elitism

Listening to Car Talk this morning I was once again reminded why I love the Click and Clack brothers, who are ending their 35 year reign as one of the most bracing radio shows which is social criticism masquerading as a car advice show. 


Ray is the younger, more focused, stolid of the brothers, but I love Tommy, the irascible, more free wheeling spirit, who tends to fly off into regions of truth and philosophy from the most tangential remarks from callers--everything from the pernicious development by which adults have usurped the sandlot from their children, who no longer go out to a ball field by themselves, without adult supervision, to his rant this morning provoked by a sweet caller, who, Tommy discovered taught math at a South Carolina college, and when he probed, it turned out one of the the courses she taught most often was calculus.  "And what can your students do with calculus?" Tommy pressed her. "Well, they can calculate the area under a curve and calculate the instant velocity of things, and the average velocity."


"And, how many times in their lives, after they finish your calculus course will they ever do this, will they ever need to do any of these things?" Tommy persisted.


"Well, I don't know."


"Oh, but I know," Tommy honed in. "Zero. Never. Zilch. You are teaching a totally worthless course, with no value other than intimidating students and making them think they are no good at math." And remember, Tommy graduated from MIT, and is presumably a good math student. So this is  not likely sour grapes, but simply a cry of outrage.


And, of course, he is not only correct, but he is more correct than he knows. Without a good grade in calculus you cannot hope to get into medical school in the United States. Harvard will not even consider your application if your physics course is not one which is calculus rich.


Every physician I have asked has said they never once used calculus, once they had taken their final exam in calculus in college. Calculus is about as important to learning medicine or surgery as Greek and Latin. 


Organic chemistry, a course I did quite well in myself, is similarly ridiculous. The sort of learning you do to learn organic chemistry resembles what you do in some medical school courses--there is a big volume of material which you have to organize to remember--so it's been thought to be sort of a predictor of how well you'll do in medical school. But if you want to predict which students will succeed in medical school, why not simply teach them physiology and anatomy and microbiology and genetics in college, the courses they will need to master in medical school?  You may ask what medical school would be for, if the students already had these courses in college, but the fact is, as anyone who has every tried to master them in the single year you get in medical school, these fields are so vast and complex, a second visit in medical school would be a welcome experience.


So, the selection process for medical schools, i.e. the schools granting MD degrees is very flawed, so irrational and obnoxious and ill conceived it can reliably tell you only one thing about the students you are selecting for the glittering prize of a medical school place: How much do they want it?  How hard are you willing to work? Are you willing to sit in a library and study while all your friends are out partying, having sex, having adventures, studying really cool stuff like philosophy, anthropology and literature?  


I once mentioned to my father, who had spent a career in what is now called Human Resources a study showing the SAT exam predicted only the first half of the first semester in college. And he responded, to my surprise, "Well, then it's a decent test. What you want to know is how is going to wash out that first year."  He laughed at the idea there could be any test which would predict who would do well throughout a four year college career, who would be Phi Beta Kappa or Summa Cum Laude.  


Elite schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton promulgate a very useful idea of ultra meritocracy--they say they can recognize the geniuses, and they can point to Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as proof of their discernment. 


But I wonder if they are the exceptions which prove the rule. In general, I wonder what exactly Harvard classes have harvested.  I wonder if they are very like what medical school classes look like--people who have demonstrated they are willing to work very hard, doing even worthless things, jumping meaningless hurdles to compete.


There is nothing wrong with people who are willing to work hard and repress their own gratification to gain a future goal. On the other hand, there is a worry for a nation which structures its reward system to put these worker ants in its most important institutions. 


I read those New York Times wedding advertisements--I know, they are "announcements," but what they really are is people bragging on themselves. These people have degree upon degree, from Harvard, Oxford and the London School of economics. These are people who pursue one academic merit badge after another, apparently because they can, and because they have nothing better to do in life, and nothing to contribute to the world beyond keeping Oxford dons in full employment.  


I say all this on the occasion of the graduation of a son from one of the most elite institutions, who has years of surgical training ahead of him, which will require persistence and which will require him to do many things he really does not want to do, to jump over hurdles. He has been carefully selected. 


But I think he was identified despite, not because of all those professors and deans who threw obstacles in his path.


I think we can do better for our nation, for the generations rising to meet the needs of the twenty-first century.