How kool is your skool?

This post is like a bad infection that I really need to just belch out so I can get on with my life. This is another topic that would take a dissertation to do justice to it (not to mention it presents the dual peril of bothering friends and making me look preachy), so I hesitated about even mentioning it. The demons won’t go away, however, so I lay myself down on the chopping block…

You see, I read this article the other day that everyone else on earth, apparently, read too. I was excited because it expressed some of the visceral thoughts I have about education in America. If you’ve read my last couple posts, you know this is an issue on my mind.

The ultimate message, and the conclusion I have reached over the last few years, is this: there are incredibly gifted kids that don’t end up as undergraduates at elite colleges. This isn’t (mostly) to detract from those elite schools, but more a statement about 1) how other schools are attracting phenomenal students because it’s getting crowded at the top, 2) an acknowledgement that some bright minds simply don’t blossom (academically) during the high school years, and 3) that some sharp and driven minds don't ever find their real outlet in school. Futhermore, although this guy doesn’t say if he agrees with me or not, in my opinion, far too much emphasis is placed on standardized test scores.

Actually I can’t relate to the students he discusses who are rejected from Harvard, but have unbelievably accomplished stats. What I relate to is the author’s experience and the attitude he has about his own kids. The former do research for NASA while in high school and travel in Europe with orchestras during the summers. He and I worked in pizza restaurants, shoveled gravel, or put in sprinkler systems. Like his kids, my friends and I learned life lessons during high school by skiing on the weekends instead of doing pre-calculus homework and reading history textbooks.

My problems rest much more in undergraduate education than with graduate education. I think graduate programs do a better job of sniffing out the best candidates based on a broader set of considerations. Also, if you’re getting an advanced degree from any school, you’re probably quite driven and likely have an active mind. Furthermore, what you become during your undergraduate years (and afterwards) has much more to do with who you are, while what you become during your high school years has more to do with what you were born into.

Elite undergraduate schools serve an important role. There needs to be a place where the truly brilliant and the truly driven (or some combination of both) can congregate and push the limits of human thinking. But let me say two things: while the wealthy in this country have such an enormous advantage in training their children for these overemphasized standardized tests, getting their children into elite summer training programs, privately influencing high-level people with control over admissions, and offering to forfeit the entire $50,000 for a year in school instead of asking for grants and loans, this is simply not a meritocracy and you cannot be assured that you are giving every bright student the right consideration. Again, this doesn’t apply to everyone from wealth, but we do have a problem here. Secondly, don’t think for a second that you have such a monopoly on the best minds. You will soon be paying more attention to schools that right now fall below your radar.

To answer upfront any speculation about bias, I’ll give the disclaimer that my SAT scores were better than average but certainly not adequate to compete for the top schools. The one quite competitive school I applied to (still, a notch below the best) didn’t particularly like me and slapped me back to their waiting list. These realities haunted me for years and when I awakened intellectually in college my victories were tempered by ruinous memories of underperformance and rejection at the age of 17. Seventeen years old. It took me many years to see beyond this.

When given the chance at another standardized test (GRE), I knew deep down that it would not serve as an adequate measure of my intelligence. However, I wanted to forever quell any lingering doubts about my capabilities on this front. It was personal. So I signed up for that test, got all pumped up, memorized some vocabulary, looked over a bit of high school math, went in there, freaked out, and froze up in the middle. The computer generated scores that said I was pretty mediocre. But this time, I wasn’t having any of it. Pissed off at the world, I marched back in there, showed that test who was boss and sat back for my scores. But when the computer spat out scores that supposedly told me I should apply to really competitive grad schools, I felt anesthetized. Was this really any moment of elation?

No. Not really.

“What an empty metric”, I thought to myself as I walked the DC streets back to work. I know so many sharp thinkers with truly novel ideas who wouldn’t score well on that test for one reason or another. Or what if like me, they had a bad experience the first time and never reconciled that with another test? So I thought back to high school and how before my our schoolwide SAT prep courses (sorry, mom!) my friends and I would take beer bongs, then show up and make people laugh instead of memorizing lists of vocabulary and reviewing how to deal with an arctangent. A couple months later, we came in one Saturday morning, were convinced that we weren’t that smart by a really long test, and called it good. Maybe one or two of my friends took it again. Most of us didn’t. We had other high school stuff to attend to, just like countless other high school kids across the country. I also think back to my college years when I encountered some bonafide brilliant people that forever changed my perspective about what intelligence is and how we measure it. For various reasons, these kids weren’t at Stanford.

What I’m trying to say here is that as someone who’s scored both underwhelmingly and quite well on standardized tests, I hope I have atleast a balanced opinion (although, yes, my argument that graduate schools are more balanced with their admissions would fit nicely into my scoring history…don’t worry, I see you). When you’re 25, you have likely developed the maturity and wisdom to know that standardized tests simply cannot encapsulate the breadth of an individual’s intellectual capabilities. But when you’re 17 years old, it’s different. This metric has been so overemphasized as to devastate swarms of great, young thinkers and instill a hideous arrogance in a few others.

Although I do think genetics contributes partially to an individual’s level of intelligence, research is amassing that suggests their experiences (nurture) are atleast, if not quite a bit more so, important in molding a 17 year old’s mind. So, please, let us all stop freaking out so much about who ends up in what undergraduate school and what a kid scores on a test at the age of 17.

So, I have a couple things to say to some people who aren’t reading this:

Elite colleges (and their students…a number of which are my friends): First of all, I’m sorry but you place too much emphasis on standardized test scores. But much more importantly, there’s something else. Most of you are filled with exceedingly bright, hardworking people. I commend that. Really, I do. You, however, need to keep in mind that there are other kids in schools you wouldn’t suspect with marvelously nimble minds who, for one reason or another, didn’t draw the attention of the big names when they were 17 years old. You might be surprised to find out how little separates you from a number of those kids. So quit namedropping and keep innovating!

High schools (including teachers and parents): for the love of god, stop placing so much emphasis on these standardized tests. Instead, try to instill a love of learning in the students and teach them why learning is important and enjoyable. I promise you this will pay off eventually. Are you looking for kids who get accepted into flashy schools or are you trying to produce people who will make a real difference in the world? (no, they are certainly not mutally exclusive, but you get the picture) In my opinion, the focus on test scores distorts young minds and will backfire in the end. Not to mention, if a kid falls in love with learning on his/her own terms, the right scores will follow. This may not happen at the age of 16 or 17 because there’s lots of distractions while high school kids grapple with the transition from adolescence to adulthood including a maelstrom of physical, emotional, and mental challenges. But it will happen and that success story will trace its roots back to the foundational education you offered. And my last point, we need more innovation and less rote learning. We need analysis, not automatons. Creativity should not be squashed, but encouraged. Please, please work on this.

My two buddies from high school English class are both at Harvard now. Another brilliant friend from high school was working on installing refrigeration systems, last I heard. A couple friends have PhD’s in physics from MIT and Stanford, a couple others are budding artists working lame day jobs to pay the bills. A few people are going to medical school, a couple are farming, and some are learning about raising families while trying to excel professionally, too. The thing is, I don’t care what you are, where you are, or what you’re trying to become so long as you’re working hard to get there, applying your mind, and have a reason for what you’re doing.

If you have the opportunity to study at the best institutions in the world, damn, take it! If I get that chance, I’ll do the same thing. But just as those cherished acceptance letters wouldn’t cement my contribution to humanity, neither would a degree from a state school mean my thinking couldn’t be the most innovative around.

So, yeah, shake what your mama gave you, because she’s not gonna shake it for you.