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Here's what the article said: A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great power

by dkarl 16y ago

Here's what the article said: A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral. Since when does thought equal equivocation? Thoughtless action is irresponsible no matter what motivates it. The author also faulted a student who signed up to kill for the government without wondering whether there was anything worth killing for. The only thing I disagree with in the article is the one-sided concentration on the students who are just eager to do what they're told. What about the ones who are more thoughtful? Who are they, where do they come from, and why are they different from their Ritalin-addled robot achiever peers?

jerf 16y ago
The problem is anyone actually considering whether they should do what they are told has probably at some point wondered whether they should be good students, and at the Rhodes Scholar level of competition it doesn't take very many semesters of not-straight-As to not be in the running anymore. Selecting for straight-As and the ideal academic is, to be fair, selecting for exactly the kind of person the author decries. I'm not saying no straight-A student is a thinker, just that at some point a thinker has probably found some reason to end up not getting straight-As for a semester. Maybe not even a good reason. Just a reason.
- hugh3 16y ago
  To get a Rhodes scholarship, you don't just have to do well academically, you also need to be an enthusiastic sportsman and participate in a bunch of extracurricular activities -- i.e. be an obsessive CV-builder. And indeed, since the actual cash value of a Rhodes scholarship isn't all that large, the main reason to want one is to get another shiny achievement for your already-extensive CV to impress even more people. The kind of students who are competitive for Rhodes scholarships are thus exactly the sort of students who do things in order to build up their CVs rather than because they are particularly passionate about them. A Rhodes scholarship selection committee member complaining that kids nowadays are thoughtless hardworking achievement drones is like a football coach complaining that students nowadays spend too much time in the gym. It may or may not be true in general, but it's obviously true of the subset you're interacting with.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    It's also a reinforcing spiral. Getting into a Model UN conference at high school, improves your chances of joining the state debate team, which improves your chances of getting into an honours society, which improves your chances of going to that Future Leaders seminar, which ... I called it "The CV circuit". The only way to win was to get onto it first. I think Americans have worked this out more completely than we have (in New York they send toddlers to prep school to get them into the best kindergartens).
KC8ZKF 16y ago
She offers no evidence that the student hasn't thought long and hard about nuclear weapons. I wonder if she reached that conclusion because he disagrees with her. As if saying "If he supports Global Zero then he couldn't have considered these things."
- hugh3 16y ago
  I assume this is based on a real student whom she interviewed, and that he was unable to satisfactorily justify his belief system when challenged on it. This kind of thing doesn't surprise me -- the students with the most strongly held political opinions are often those who have thought about the issues the least.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    That's because when we talk about "strongly held beliefs" we're talking about an emotional and not rational attachment to the idea. Emotionally-held ideas are not examined as they are tied up in self-image.
- dkarl 16y ago
  She isn't trying to make a case against those specific students. They might not even exist exactly as she described them. She merely used three examples to illustrate her argument, and she included one vaguely "conservative" example (the student willing to kill for the government) to balance two "liberal" examples. That's pretty good for a former Republican officeholder writing in the Washington Post. There is only the faintest whiff of partisanship here; don't let it distract you from her argument.
- defen 16y ago
  > "If he supports Global Zero then he couldn't have considered these things." Millions of pounds of Soviet armor rolling across the Eurasian steppe and into Germany.

by dkarl 16y ago

jerf 16y ago

The problem is anyone actually considering whether they should do what they are told has probably at some point wondered whether they should be good students, and at the Rhodes Scholar level of competition it doesn't take very many semesters of not-straight-As to not be in the running anymore. Selecting for straight-As and the ideal academic is, to be fair, selecting for exactly the kind of person the author decries. I'm not saying no straight-A student is a thinker, just that at some point a thinker has probably found some reason to end up not getting straight-As for a semester. Maybe not even a good reason. Just a reason.

hugh3 16y ago
To get a Rhodes scholarship, you don't just have to do well academically, you also need to be an enthusiastic sportsman and participate in a bunch of extracurricular activities -- i.e. be an obsessive CV-builder. And indeed, since the actual cash value of a Rhodes scholarship isn't all that large, the main reason to want one is to get another shiny achievement for your already-extensive CV to impress even more people. The kind of students who are competitive for Rhodes scholarships are thus exactly the sort of students who do things in order to build up their CVs rather than because they are particularly passionate about them. A Rhodes scholarship selection committee member complaining that kids nowadays are thoughtless hardworking achievement drones is like a football coach complaining that students nowadays spend too much time in the gym. It may or may not be true in general, but it's obviously true of the subset you're interacting with.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  It's also a reinforcing spiral. Getting into a Model UN conference at high school, improves your chances of joining the state debate team, which improves your chances of getting into an honours society, which improves your chances of going to that Future Leaders seminar, which ... I called it "The CV circuit". The only way to win was to get onto it first. I think Americans have worked this out more completely than we have (in New York they send toddlers to prep school to get them into the best kindergartens).

KC8ZKF 16y ago

She offers no evidence that the student hasn't thought long and hard about nuclear weapons. I wonder if she reached that conclusion because he disagrees with her. As if saying "If he supports Global Zero then he couldn't have considered these things."

hugh3 16y ago
I assume this is based on a real student whom she interviewed, and that he was unable to satisfactorily justify his belief system when challenged on it. This kind of thing doesn't surprise me -- the students with the most strongly held political opinions are often those who have thought about the issues the least.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  That's because when we talk about "strongly held beliefs" we're talking about an emotional and not rational attachment to the idea. Emotionally-held ideas are not examined as they are tied up in self-image.
dkarl 16y ago
She isn't trying to make a case against those specific students. They might not even exist exactly as she described them. She merely used three examples to illustrate her argument, and she included one vaguely "conservative" example (the student willing to kill for the government) to balance two "liberal" examples. That's pretty good for a former Republican officeholder writing in the Washington Post. There is only the faintest whiff of partisanship here; don't let it distract you from her argument.
defen 16y ago
> "If he supports Global Zero then he couldn't have considered these things." Millions of pounds of Soviet armor rolling across the Eurasian steppe and into Germany.