Talk-Polywell.org

You really don't want a world run by A students from the ivy covered snob factories

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... 9-students

The problem with A students is that they spend so much gaming the system that they forget the real work that needs to be done.

Amusing; O'Rourke is usually pretty funny. However, there are different types of A students;

"insecure, overbearing, full of himself and contempt for his students"

This describes a lot of grad students and professors. I get the impression from some of my colleagues that they simply look for things to nitpick in students' work.

However, I would take exception to such statements as:

"It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq war, and to hell with what happened to the Iraqi Class of ’03 after they’d graduated from Shock and Awe."

I think the generals, half of whom have Masters' or Phd degrees these days, knew what they needed. For instance, Shinseki said 500,000 boots on the ground would be needed. It was Rumsfeld and company who came up with their shock and awe plan based on their own interpretation of RMA/Transformation.

Now, their RMA/Transformation interpretation was a way to "game the system" of reality... ironically a Republican politician (Rummy) was being the ivy covered snob there.

The U.S. generals, with their own grad degrees, were also A students, but ones who were more grounded in reality.

The problem society has is in sorting out the good A students from the bad ones. This is probably because most university courses are taught by bad A students.

CaptainBeowulf wrote:This is probably because most university courses are taught by bad A students.

Another case of those who can't, teach?

It's a pretty poor case of reporting. As said above, it makes no mention of the true A students - those students that didn't goose step into the starchy cookie cutter academic machinery. Proper way to do that article would have been to search deeper into the psych. causes for these fake "A" graduates.

The "from the ivy covered snob factories" specifier points in the right direction. Without it, the assertion is too much of an overgeneralization. The crux of the matter - what exactly causes these students to go bad, and the implications - is not reported.

I was a B student. That didn't stop me from going to grad school, where I have that same contempt for my students. Let's be very clear: they deserve it. Moreover, I remember being a B student. It wasn't anything to be proud of; it simply meant I wasn't as responsible and didn't try as hard. I don't understand this bitterness.

I think the generals, half of whom have Masters' or Phd degrees these days, knew what they needed. For instance, Shinseki said 500,000 boots on the ground would be needed. It was Rumsfeld and company who came up with their shock and awe plan based on their own interpretation of RMA/Transformation.

Now, their RMA/Transformation interpretation was a way to "game the system" of reality... ironically a Republican politician (Rummy) was being the ivy covered snob there.

Very well and good. I don't disagree.

But there were not 500,000 troops available. There were 150,000 (200,000 at the peak I think).

And the plan developed - raise an Iraqi Army untainted (for the most part) by Baathism worked. It took 5 or 6 years. Not bad. And the majority of American troops will be out of Iraq before they are out of Europe.

A really good military can take the resources in hand and perform the desired task. America has a really good military. One sign of that was that they prevailed by 2009 when a lot of people in 2007 gave that eventuality really long odds.

MirariNefas wrote:I was a B student. That didn't stop me from going to grad school, where I have that same contempt for my students. Let's be very clear: they deserve it. Moreover, I remember being a B student. It wasn't anything to be proud of; it simply meant I wasn't as responsible and didn't try as hard. I don't understand this bitterness.

I couldn't stand all that crap so I skipped it. I always preferred technical problems to people problems.

Probably a smart move.