Class and College: Is College Anything More than Class?

50 years ago, in college, I stumbled across  a bar graph, doing some reading for a sociology course which struck me as outrageous, unbelievable and heretical: What it did was to plot IQ scores across the US population in 1955 and it showed that the highest numbers of people with very high IQ scores lived in the middle class, among factory workers on assembly lines, people who owned Mom and Pop stores, mailmen, people who, for the most part, had only high school educations. 

I wrote my father--this was an era before cell phones and long distance phone calls were reserved for emergencies; so I wrote him a letter--saying this struck me as preposterous and I could not believe this trash had made it into one of the most widely read textbooks of its time.

My father, whose career in the Labor Department and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, brought him into constant contact with numbers like these wrote back, amused. Of course most of the high IQ scores were distributed across the middle classes in higher absolute numbers: It was obvious this should be true, because there were so many more people in the middle class. 

He went on to tweak me with another question:  The real question is, how many people among the upper classes, what percentage of the upper classes, have high IQ's?  Or, asked another way, are the rich, on average, more intelligent than the poor or the middle class? 

I, of course, assumed the answer is yes, the rich are smarter; that's why they are rich.
Although I was attending college at one of the "second tier" colleges, not Harvard, Yale or Princeton, I had absorbed the idea throughout my three years at a highly competitive high school that "the cream rises to the top," and those top tier colleges are filled with only the very best and brightest minds and those people would go on to populate the ruling class, as it should be in a meritocracy like the United States.

The Harvard of the Proletariat 

My father laughed at all that. He had gone to CCNY, "The Harvard of the Proletariat," they called it.  Students at CCNY worked two jobs and went to class (when they could) at that city run college in Hamilton Heights, hard by Harlem and they did not believe for a moment that kids at Harvard, Yale or Princeton were any smarter than they were.  
They all knew that exchange between Hemingway and Fitzgerald:
Fitzgerald:  "You know, Ernie, the rich are different."
Hemingway: "Yes, they have more money."

Even today, I cannot shake my long ago acquired prejudices and snobbery about colleges.  I hear people who attended Northern Essex Community College, or Phoenix on line college or Chico Community College say they are college graduates and I smirk inwardly, much as I try not to. That's not real college I think. 

But then I ask: What is college, really?

David Leonhardt writing in the NYT "The Assault on Colleges--and the American Dream" shows a graph which shows spending by states on state colleges is way down--the only two states  have cut spending its university system more than New Hampshire (52% since 2008). 

But then I think about what that experience of college really means. Is it transformative intellectually, personally? Does it shape character?

I think of my wife's brother, a very bright guy, likely one of those high IQ guys I had written my father about, who dropped out of New Mexico State and became a welder at a GE plant making airplane engines. Now welding at that level, air planes, is not your old fashion soldering thing, or even Rosie the Riveter. It's more like high tech physics. After 15 years on the line, he had moved up steadily and people would bring their questions to him and management called him in and told him they wanted to move him up into management, to run an big division, but he had never graduated college and GE could not put a man into management if he did not have a college degree.
"Well, what do you want me to get a degree in?"
"Anything, really.  Literature, basket weaving, just get a degree."
"I think I'll stay where I am," he told them.
So they appointed some guy who had spent four years drinking beer on the fraternity porch at Chico State, who, predictably, proved to be a disaster and ultimately they made the exception for my brother-in-law and he retired 15 years later, at age 55 with a good pension. His siblings, all of whom graduated from college were still working into their 60's, unable to retire, financially.

It should be noted that when it comes to social cache, Oxford and Cambridge universities in England carry at least as much as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but the English colleges are only 3 years. 
In England, college is not considered important for medical training and their doctors go from high school to medical school. 

So what really happens to a person who goes to college? 
I suspect something quite different can happen to the person who goes to a residential college, away from home, away from parents, at age 17 or 18 than what happens to someone who commutes from his parents' home.

Graduate of Wharton, Ivy League

But, in either case, beyond the inevitable maturation of the brain, and neuronal connections, does the college experience make any difference to the competence of the person most concerned?

Well, if that person has taken a course in engineering, very likely. 
On the other hand, if he has studied almost anything else, biology, math,  economics this may allow him to apply to the next level of training, but likely those courses did not really "prepare" him for the next sequence of learning.
And for those who studied English literature, sociology, Greek, Latin, history, political science, philosophy, anthropology, if they are lucky, their minds have been opened, but  they are no better bets to be good staffers on Capitol Hill or advertising firm employees, or administrators than people who never went to college.

When I see a college degree on an application now, I think, well, this person is more likely to be able to show up for work on time and to complete a task assigned on deadline than the person who never went to college, but I'm often disappointed there.
Most often, the difference I see between college grads and people who have not done college is the way they fill out written forms: The college grads fill in the answers to the questions completely, thoughtfully, often interact with the written page in thorough and creative ways. The people who have not gone to college skip questions, barely answer the questions they do focus on. Looking at those pages, you might think they are barely literate. 

Never went to college; Hoped others could have what he did not

The first allocation of government dollars for state schools was made by the United States Congress in the midst of the Civil War, around 1862, when money was set aside for land grant colleges, among them Cornell and Berkeley. In the 19th century, when access to information was highly limited, that became an engine for an education that made a real difference in what people knew, in their value as employees and their fund of knowledge. Lincoln said he hoped more people would have that experience he lacked, going to college. In Lincoln's day you did not need to go to college to go to law school and in fact you did not need to go to law school to pass the Bar. In fact, I'm not sure those requirements for college and law school today have played any useful societal role other than to separate the professional class from those who could not afford the time or money to enter it through the gauntlet of schools

I'm not sure, in the 21st century, college can play that same role, and if that is true, I'm not sure we should make college a requirement as we have in the past, and I'm not sure we should attribute the same value to that credential.

Thinks college is important

A friend married a Japanese man and lives in Tokyo. Her children's Japanese grandparents are very concerned these two girls get the highest level of education in Japan, where the scholastic hierarchy is very clear among the universities. There are only two American colleges these Japanese grandparents would consider adequate. Not Harvard. Not Yale. Not Princeton. These schools are considered insufficiently rigorous. Too touchy feely. Not tough enough.
The one school which carries heft in Japan is MIT, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That school they respect.
The other is Wellesley College.
Go figure.

The Clever Enemy

Stonewall Jackson would have appreciated today's Islamic terrorists. The Confederate general believed emphatically that war was most effectively prosecuted by deception and subterfuge. He was often fighting an asymmetrical war, where the federal forces outnumbered him, but he struck in unexpected ways and prevailed most often, by deception.

Today's terrorists use surprise as their most consistent tactic.

When the 19 terrorists of 9/11 launched their attack, the reason they were able to overwhelm what must have been at least 600 people on those flights was none of the American passengers was prepared:  19 people took 600 by surprise. Even so, once the passengers on board the third plane got word about the other two attacks and the element of surprise was lost, the unarmed passengers were able to fight the terrorists to a defeat, and bring down their airplane in that field in Pennsylvania, albeit at the cost of all lives on board.

As the NY Times editorial staff points out today, the goal of these terrorists, such as anyone can divine a coherent goal among lunatics, is to unhinge Western democracies, to force democracies to gravitate toward authoritarian modes of governing. The radical Islamist are all about authority and the imposition of authoritarian control. If they had their way, there would be no music and no women leading independent lives, and men would control the lives of females from cradle to grave.

The appeal of this sort of anarchy to adolescent males mystifies most commentators but I can recall vividly my own day dreams of disruption, even violent disruption, to my high school classesand I imagine, had I not had a family managing my psyche in constructive ways, had I had to deal with loathing of my contemporaries,  mixed with rejection from attractive young blond women who might prefer attractive young blond men, I suppose I could have been pushed over the edge.

There is a startling scene in an Italian movie, "Bread and Chocolate" made in 1974 which was amazingly prophetic and insightful.  A guest worker from Southern Italy, working in Switzerland quickly perceives how the blond, Nordic looking Swiss see him as a subhuman. At one point, he is living in a chicken coop with some very short fellow Sicilians, and they spy a group of Swiss teenagers, who have come to bathe in a mountain stream and waterfall behind the coop.
They watch the teenagers undress, and they are star struck, as if looking at these lithe young gods and goddesses, in their naked splendor, their white skin, blue eyes and you can see the self loathing which wells up among the short, dark, impoverished Southern Italians, trapped in their chicken coop.
This goes all the way back to Wagner and the Ring of the Nibelung and Alberich the dwarf, who lusts after the Rhine maidens, who spurn the short, dark, ugly dwarf and inspire a rage the teen aged Muslim boy can recognize.
Anyone who has watched this scene will readily apprehend the forces which might drive, down the road,  a teenage son of a Lybian, living in Manchester, England to strap on a body bomb.

The Joy of Human Contact

My brother is a radiologist. He spends his days sitting in front of images of CT scans or chest X rays, searching for tumors and pathology and dictating his findings into a machine. 

When I asked him how he could enjoy that, the absence of patient contact, not talking to a real patient all day, he said, "That's the best part."
Of course, patients can be demanding, entitled, infuriating, frustrating, but they are also the source of the real juice of daily medical practice.
Yesterday, an eighty-eight year old woman was brought to my office by her two sixty something daughters. She had diabetes. Or maybe some thyroid problem. I can hardly recall her prosaic disease. What I remember was the food fight I started when I asked her about her personal history.
She has eight kids. But she didn't start having kids right out of high school, as I had expected. Oh, no, she went to New York City and got a job dancing.

"Dancing! " one daughter gasped. "What kind of dancing?"
"Oh, burlesque," the mother replied with a faint smile, eyelids half closed, remembering.
"Burlesque?" the other daughter said. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you know, those were different days. I kept my clothes on. Well, mostly."
"What?"  both daughters exclaimed.
They clearly did not know this part of their mother.
"Was this Broadway?" I asked.
"Oh, not hardly. You know the sort of place, where the piano's hot and the gin is cold," she looked me up and down, "Well, maybe you don't. Did you ever get out of the library?"
"Mother!!!"

Looking at her, at her high cheekbones and her blue eyes, I tried to imagine her 65 years ago, and I could imagine she was quite a looker. Even now, she was pretty.
"Is that how you met your husband?" I asked.
"No," one daughter answered primly, "Mother met my father at work, in Manhattan."
"That's right," said the mother. "At my work. He used to come by after he got off work at the subway and watch all the shows and then take me out, around 2 AM. He said he liked the way I danced. He was just trying to get into my pants."
"MoTHER!" the daughters, scandalized, shouted in unison.
"Well, that's the truth," the mother said.
By this time I thought I might have to resuscitate both daughters, so I tried to steer the conversation back to more medical things.
As she left the exam room, I made sure to push the daughters out ahead of me, so I could have a word with Mother.
"I think you have shocked your daughters," I said. "They didn't seem to know about your career."
"They never asked," the mother said with a mix of indignation and amusement. "To this day they think of me as a baby factory and a sort of house slave. Never asked me about any of that part of my life."
"Do you have any photos of you, as a dancer?"
"Oh, I've got a nice one," she said.
"I'd like to see it sometime."
"I'll bring it next visit," she said. "Of course, we'll have to keep it between us. I don't think my daughters could take it. They are just such prudes."

Now, I ask you. Did you have more fun than that at work today?

Intelligent Life Discovered in Texas! Austin

You've got to pay attention to any town whose motto is "Keep Austin Weird."

You see it on coffee mugs, T shirts, hats, even socks.
Of course, anywhere else in that state you might think "Keep Texas Weird" might apply.

Austin is an island of blue in a sea of Red.

Texas is not just Red, it's holy roller insane. 

Lubbock, Texas is where that sixteen  year old girl was nearly run out of town for advocating for sexual education in the schools.
Texas is where conspiracy theory erupts in spontaneous generation from radio stations which carry Alex Jones, who knows the moon landing was a government fake, that the  Sandy Hook shootings were staged and fake news, that President Obama is a space alien sent to destroy the United States, that Robert E. Lee is alive and being held captive by ISIS and Lee Harvey Oswald was a Democratic operative sent to kill Kennedy to provoke a Civil War. (Other than that, Mr. Jones is just a regular guy.)

Austin has the Congress Street Bridge, which spans the Colorado river--yes that Colorado River--which is very placid by the time it reaches Austin, and the bridge just happens to have an under surface with concrete recesses which proved irresistible to a species of bat which likes to hang upside down underneath until dusk, when the bats all swarm out to go hunting for insects.
This attracts a huge crowd of human beings every night--tourists and townspeople--who simply love looking at swarms of bats. They line the bridge surface; they bob around in the river below the bridge in kayaks and they sprawl over the grassy knoll--Texas is big on grassy knolls--across from the bridge on the far shore.

After they watch the bats lift off, the crowds walk back to the many live music places which line Sixth Street, where there is live music and ample opportunity to drink alcohol and talk about bats.
Along the streets, you are accosted by 20 to 30 year old men, vagrants, who  sprawl out on the sidewalks calling out, "Got a dollar?" These panhandler Western versions of Bowery bums are not interested in spare change. They quite specifically want a dollar. There are a lot of homeless, street grimy young men in Austin.

The best thing about Austin, from the Phantom's point of view, is the grackle bird. It looks something like a crow but it is much louder--the name is of obscure origin, but might have something to do with the word "cackle" because the bird is very noisy and might just be laughing.

Don't mess with grackle

It has found its niche among outdoor cafes, which are everywhere in Austin, and it will swoop down the instant patrons have vacated a table and the grackle goes to work on whatever French Fries, tortillas, bread, salad has been left behind on the table tops and they stand their ground, confronting any waiter or busboy who tries to clear the table.

They are said to have a special taste for mussels in green sauce, but that was from a waiter who expressed special antipathy for the birds and it's not clear how reliable he was.

Why the birds wait until the diners are finished their meal is anybody's guess, but they certainly are not afraid of people. It's almost as if the birds have decided this is a question of fair play: You get to eat your meal--you paid for it, after all--but I get to finish up whatever you do not eat. That is the grackle's share.

The Phantom is now the proud owner of a T shirt that shows a grackle and says, "Grackle got no boss," which, apparently, is an Austin expression meaning,  the Phantom supposes, grackles ain't got no boss.

House Repubicans Repeal Obamacare for the 165th Time and Flee the Scene

Well, they did it again: House Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare, again.
Again.

Why is this time different from all the other times?
Because now Republicans control the Senate and the House and the White House.
So maybe they really can vote through a bill which will withdraw care from those undeserving masses and wealthy tax paying job creators can get some much deserved tax relief and there will be a great die off in the middle of the country, from Kentucky through Ohio up to Wisconsin.
Separate legislation is already in place to cover the coal miners and Paul Ryan promises another bill to cover dental costs for all those Kentucky folks in the hollers who never had care before Obamacare and are only half way through their dental extractions: It is the American Extraction and Freedom Act of 2017.  Another bill, The American Heroes Eternal Care Act is set for a vote, to cover costs of burial and/or cremation for all those who lose their health care and coverage for pre existing conditions. 
This particular bill, just passed hasn't been assessed for cost, or how many people will lose health insurance. It just is.
Phantom was unable to reach a single Republican Congressman for comment because a charter flight to Paris left Reagan National Airport with all 218 Republicans who voted for the bill on board, except for Louie Gohmert, but we long ago gave up trying to make any sense of anything Congressman Gohmert had to say.
Apparently, the Republican caucus is on their way to vote for Marine Le Pen in this weekend's French election. When asked how Americans qualified to vote in the French election, Sean Spicer said, "Democrats cast fraudulent votes all the time: Ask them."

Finally,the Republicans have shown they can govern.
And what a fine job they are doing.

The Pathos of the White Male Usetowaser

"The greatest Hell is remembering happier times"
--Mephistopheles, Dr. Faustus 

One of the most memorable scenes of any movie was from "Do The Right Thing" by Spike Lee, in which two old Black men sit on a street corner, looking across the street at the Korean owner of a market/ bodega.  One says to the other, "Look at that guy. Been here in this country, maybe 10 years, max. And look at him. Owns that store. Doing fine."
"And look at us," says the other.
"Yes, look at us. Been here our whole lives and what we got? Nothing."
"So," says his friend, without rancor, in genuine perplexity, "What's wrong with us?"

Today, I'm looking around a convention of doctors. I've spent the morning talking to young doctors, just finishing their training, as they stand in front of posters describing a patient or a research project which was deemed worthy of presentation at the convention's meeting.  Eighty, maybe ninety percent are foreign born or first generation, from South Asia, East Asia, some from Europe and most will shortly be going out into the country to join practices where they will frequently be treating white males in red counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump country. More than half are women.

They will be driving to work in their BMW's and living in large homes, because they have significant earning power, practicing in a specialty, endocrinology, which includes diabetes and thyroid disease. There is a terrific market for them.

Well, they will be taking those positions if Mr. Trump does not deport them. But assuming they are allowed to stay, they will be the doctors for his most ardent supporters.

And these white males--why are they not the doctors of tomorrow?  They are not doctors because they come from families who do not produce college graduates, much less doctors.  Like their parents and uncles and cousins, their lives consisted of going to high school, and if they were lucky their lives peaked right there. They were football stars or basketball heroes and then they graduated and went to work at the factory. But now the factories are closed. 

They live within 10 miles where they grew up because they cannot sell their skills, such as they have skills anywhere farther away. So they depend on work their families or friends can provide, but they cannot compete in the wider world, much less in the global economy.

As J.D. Vance demonstrates in Hillbilly Elegy, these people are ignorant and their ignorance makes them afraid and when you are afraid, you cannot learn.  Anxiety blocks learning. 

But the thirty somethings who surround me today do not fit that profile. They are educated, confident, optimistic and smiling. They tried hard and worked harder than their peers from grade school on and now they are poised to enter the world. And the white males looking at them are not asking the questions posed by Spike Lee's characters.  They are looking for answers and the answers provided.Mr. Trump and his friends are: You were cheated. That's why you are losers. 

It's not your fault. 
For Mr. Trump rumor is fact; opinion is evidence and truth is what you can get away with.
For the men who are receiving this message the truth is opaque to them. They never knew a family with a tiger Mom who insisted they do their homework, study hard, show up on time at school and not miss class. They simply don't know what hit them.
So they are open to suggestion.

Climate Change, Science and Belief and Bret Stephens

Bret Stephens is a journalist I've not previously heard of, but his two columns in the Op Ed of the New York Times deserve attention and more than Ross Douthat, he may be a conservative voice worth listening to.

Bret Stephens

His original Op Ed simply warned against being too sure of what science tells us, because, as we have all learned in the pursuit of science, the closer you get to being 100% sure you know the truth, the more likely you are to be wrong.
Science is not just a work in progress; it's one long argument.

I have often remarked, to the irritation of my children and my colleagues I learned only two things in medical school which I still believe today: The heart pumps blood to the brain; the thyroid is controlled by the pituitary.  A bit of hyperbole on my part, you understand; take that more seriously than literally.  But you get the point. Our understanding of how things work, of "truth" in science changes as we learn more.


So it has been with climate science. I do not know enough about geology or climate science to know with any real certainty that our climate is actually changing. I do understand we are talking geologic time, which is measured in 10's of thousands of years. So how do we know about what temperatures were like 20,000 years ago?  I have read about core samples of Artic ice in which carbon dioxide has been measured, but I'm not really sure what that means.

With the rest of my fellow citizens, I am inclined to think if the vast majority of climate scientists believe the planet is warming, is headed toward trouble, they may be correct. But they may not be. The chance they may be correct is enough for me to agree we ought to hedge our bets and to push for more solar power, wind power, maybe electric cars.  What do we have to lose? If we're wrong, well we still have new sources of energy.

This bear believes in global warming

But we risk doing stupid things when we marry science to politics, and Stephens provides the perfect example talking about the decision to grow corn to add corn alcohol to gas tanks, which turned out to cost more oil growing the corn and to add more CO2 to the atmosphere than the gas without alcohol did. But once the farmers got that new source of income, that was a policy from which there was no turning back, engraved in stone.

Oh, the Holocaust is a hoax.

The best part of Stephens' article was the reply column he wrote in response to comments from readers. At every medical conference, the best part of any presentation is the question and answer period and the same is true for the Op Ed and Q and A which followed.

Bumper stick from Mr. Trump's limousine

For one thing, it made Stephens crystalize his reservations about Mr. Trump and I have rarely seen a more succinct summary:

There’s no need to convince me on your first two points. Our 45th president is a man who seems to regard rumor as fact, opinion as evidence, wishes as truth — and truth as whatever he can get away with. Hence the conspiracy theories about his predecessor’s birthplace, the lies about the size of his Inauguration Day crowds, and so on. As for your reference to some evangelical voters, it’s astonishing that so many in this country seem not to have gotten past the Scopes trial.    

And, lest there be any remaining doubts: I subscribe to the theory of evolution, I vaccinate my kids, I don’t smoke because it causes cancer, the earth is not flat, and the world is warming.

So now we have a new voice and one whose thoughts we should listen to and digest.
Another gold star for the New York Times. The editors have finally figured out how important the interactive nature of news and opinion can be.