Elite colleges nurture cutthroat, selfish behavior and a sense of entitlement

Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior and We Are All Paying the Price

The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where misguided students are encouraged to become worse.

5.23.09 / Peter Schmidt / Alternet

Like many of us, the nation’s elite colleges and universities have taken a financial beating over the past year.

Among them, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford all watched their endowments shrink by about 20 percent as a result of investment losses.

Despite all their brainpower, such institutions appear to have failed to learn what every simple farmer knows: you reap what you sow. Elite colleges and professional schools bear a share of the blame for the economic crisis that now plagues them, because it is they who educated and bestowed academic credentials upon many of those who got us into this mess.

It should come as no surprise to them that many on Wall Street and in Washington have proven ethically bankrupt and without regard for people of lesser means, because their admissions policies have done much to ensure such a result.

In determining which applicants they will admit and put on the fast track, most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior. The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where bad people are encouraged to become worse.

Consider, for starters, how most such institutions rely on standardized admissions tests such as the SAT, even though they know perfectly well that the nation’s massive test-preparation industry has severely compromised the reliability of such instruments, turning them into tools for measuring, as much as anything, wealth and willingness to seek unfair advantage.

Test-preparation programs make people better test-takers not better prospective students. They raise scores mainly by teaching various test-taking tricks, such as how to quickly spot the “sucker” answers to a multiple-choice question to improve the odds of guessing correctly. Yet many are effective enough to offer those families that can afford their fees — typically, $500 to $1,000 — a chance to buy their children enough extra points to transform many from also-rans into shoo-ins.

In turning a blind eye to the widespread tainting of admissions test scores, higher-education institutions argue that they lack better mechanisms for efficiently judging applicants from high schools of sharply varying quality. But many education researchers disagree and say some alternatives to such tests, such as admissions systems that give substantial weight to class rank or samples of each applicant’s work, are more reliable predictors of applicants’ academic performance.

Moreover, selective colleges have ulterior motives for relying on standardized admissions tests that have nothing to do with academic considerations and everything to do with their bottom lines. The more high-scoring students they admit, the higher their “selectivity” ratings in the college-ranking guides that help determine how many applicants knock on their doors each year.

And not only is sifting through applications based on test scores a lot cheaper than hiring enough people to consider each candidate carefully, but relying on such scores helps skew the process in favor of wealthier applicants, who will not need financial assistance and are likely to donate generously down the road.

If young people find that artificially inflating their test scores isn’t enough to get them into a choice college, they always have the option of having someone bribe their way in with a big donation.

Selective colleges are so happy to have their palms greased in such a manner that some make little effort to hide how much they lower the bar for applicants connected to generous alumni and other contributors. To improve their odds of having favors done for them by people in positions of power, many selective higher-education institutions also admit mediocre applicants at the request of state and federal officials.

They let their professors and administrators in on the game by lowering the bar for the children of employees, as a job perk. Despite all of their talk about operating athletics programs to promote sportsmanship, they assure recruited athletes the playing field will be tilted in their favor in the competition for freshman-class seats.

Through such admissions policies, colleges end up giving the nation’s high school students crash courses in cynicism. They teach young people that money talks, fairness is for losers, who you know matters more than what you know, and some people are simply entitled to what others may never attain, no matter how hard they work.

Considering how much selective colleges and universities favor applicants who take such lessons to heart, should it surprise anyone that about half of all graduate- and professional-school students admit on surveys to having recently cheated?

Awakened, or still grazing in the pasture?

Thinking Long Thoughts: Crucial to Finding Our Answers

4.5.09 / Bronte Baxter / Splinter In The Mind

Have you ever wondered why some people are brilliant, capable of making new connections in thought that are regarded as genius by others? And why most people are followers, in awe of brilliance, but not original thinkers themselves? Is it really that some are gifted with that much extra intelligence, or is it a difference in the way we use our intelligence?

Creative thinkers, leaders in the realm of ideas, are those who know how to think long thoughts, to sustain a mental question long enough to reach the end of the answer. Few people do this. We’ve been trained since birth to accept what others tell us as reality without looking deeper. Children are rewarded for getting “the right answers” on test rather than for growing original answers or questioning the pat answers they’ve been given. Curious kids are told “curiosity killed the cat” or “you ask too many questions.”

The system is set up to discourage long thoughts because people who think are a danger to the system. Thinking deeply enough allows you to connect isolated pieces of information, revealing the system’s real mechanics and ultimately its agenda. If enough sheep on the farm start thinking about their situation, noticing the pens that confine them, wondering why their wool regularly vanishes and what happens to their friends who disappear, that’s a danger to the sheep farm operation. Humans getting too smart is a danger to the New World Order.

We say “people are waking up.” They are, and it’s good to see the numbers who are not accepting the long-standing answers anymore. But what disturbs me is that so many simply replace one imposed thought system with another, rather than becoming truly independent thinkers.

I’m noticing this in the Truth Movement, the continuous parroting back of what David Icke says, what Alex Jones says, what Zeitgeist Addendum says, what various leaders in the Truth Movement think. Icke and Jones are independent thinkers, but what about the rest of us? Isn’t simply repeating such people’s brilliant insights almost as dangerous to truth as parroting back the system’s propaganda?

Let me explain why I ask that. Conspiracy researchers have their fingers much closer to the pulse of what’s really happening than the mainstream news (which is dedicated to promoting human dependence and illusion). But Icke, Jones and other outspoken lovers of freedom have not figured everything out nor do they claim they have. Their understandings are works in progress.

To swallow whole everything you read in a David Icke book without examining the research yourself is to be a follower, and being followers got the human race into its current fix. When we act like sheep, we tend to get herded into a pen.

To accept as final truth everything David or Alex says, or that anyone else says, is to limit the mind’s ability to grow beyond a certain point. It limits the ability of the human race to grow in knowledge, because how will human knowledge evolve, if the humans themselves refuse to evolve it?

Worse, making someone “knowledge king” in our minds takes away our power and bestows it on another individual. That power can then be misused by the leader for his own self-aggrandizement, or manipulated by others who find a way to influence the leader and through him all the people that he leads.

It is hard for many people to resist the temptation of power, but we offer that temptation to people we put on pedestals. That they typically grow arrogant and messianic is our fault as much as their own. Better to listen to brilliant people, with their fresh perceptions and insights, and let their ideas inspire and stimulate our own original thought. Then we contribute to the growth of knowledge and human freedom, along with the person who inspired us. If we simply swallow whole everything the person we admire thinks, we’re nothing more than a groupie, comfortably finding personal identity in another individual rather than doing the work of becoming ourselves.

I never understood before I started this blog how much even aware people tend to follow the leader. I see it in the people who write in for advice, setting me up as an authority on life when I am just a person who insists on asking questions and thinking long and hard until I get to my answers. I see it in the fawning emails some people write, and in the hateful emails they typically write later. Such readers diminish themselves, believing because I have original ideas I must be superior to them. They then try to correct the mistake by heaping on me personal abuse to right the balance. It’s like school children – worshipping people they place on pedestals one moment, then drawing mustaches and horns on their heads the next.

Where I see group-think most is in the emails that go on  and on expounding Eastern philosophy, attempting to correct my misguided opinions. These people don’t see that they’re regurgitating the easy, familiar explanations and excuses they’ve been taught. They refuse to look deeper, into the holes in the excuses and the gaps between the explanations.

When we give up one belief system to adopt another, it makes us feel free. We’re tempted to regard ourselves as enlightened. In fact, we’ve jumped from one pen into a slightly larger one. We think we’re out in the open range because we refuse to look at the edges, those disturbing still-existing fences, the boundaries of the thought system. We may frolic happily for a while, feeling superior to the sheep who haven’t leaped the wall we did,  growing irate at anyone’s suggestion that the space we cavort in may not be real freedom.

I haven’t been writing much lately because I’m going through an inward period, deeply thinking through many things. This isn’t an answer time for me, an expounding time. It’s a contemplative time, looking at the holes, the gaps, the still-remaining questions. Insights are coming in bits – small puzzle pieces. I write when I have something to say, and I won’t say until I understand. Long thought can’t be hurried.

Anyone can teach themselves to think profoundly, to discover new and deeper connections. You simply have to ask “why” and “how” and “what evidence supports this.” You have to refuse to accept other people’s viewpoints as fact, even the unique and brilliant ones, even your own unique and brilliant ones. You must look at the uncomfortable places where your beliefs are in self-contradiction, or where they don’t fully explain your experience. These chaotic spots are not something to shy away from, but keys to deeper answers. They are disguised doors that, when engaged, lead outside the holodeck.

Thinking takes time. We have to make space for it. We need quiet time to think long thoughts, to get to the bottom of things. It’s not accident that our lives are so busy and loud that most of us have no time for quiet thinking. That keeps the humans sheep, oblivious of our pens, following the dictates of our masters.

I’m reading a stimulating book right now that I don’t like at all, a book a reader suggested to me. I recommend it. It’s called, “Making a Soul,” by John G. Bennet, a disciple of Gurdjief’s. I don’t like the book because I don’t like Bennet’s conclusions, but I cherish the experience of reading it because it challenges me.

The author has seen through parts of the illusion. He thinks deep thoughts and posits profound questions. His conclusions get waylaid because of some of the assumptions he still makes, but how refreshing it is to read something filled with original, provocative ideas rather than rehashings of the dogmas we’re accustomed to.

I get some of my best insights from reading new things I don’t like and listening to original opinions that disturb me. The uncomfortable clash between another person’s insights and my current opinions always forces me to delve deeper in my own pursuit of truth.

Bronte Baxter

© Bronte Baxter 2009

The Devolution of the American Math Curriculum

This was posted on Henry Makow’s site as a comment. It expresses so well how and why American educational system just sucks.

<<<< Fifty Years of Math 1957 – 2009

Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58.  The counter girl took my $ 2 and I was digging for my change  when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She  stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking  at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and
tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the  transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because of the evolution in teaching math since
the 1950s:

1. Teaching Math In 1950s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of
production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit ?

2. Teaching Math In 1960s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of
production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1970s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of
production is $80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math In 1980s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of
production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment:
Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 1990s

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish
and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of
animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this
so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this
way of making a living? Topic for class participation after
answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel
as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong
answers, and if you feel like crying, it’s ok. )

6. Teaching Math In 2009

Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo
de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?

And that’s just the math.

Forget the rest.