Have a few minutes to spare? Go to "Google," type in the phrase "highly educated voters," hit "Search News." Go ahead. We'll wait . . . OK, what do you get? All sorts of stories about Obama voters, and how he attracts the "highly educated." You will get the same from the pundits on network and cable news: lots of blather about how Obama appeals to "highly educated" Americans.
That, of course, is just more MSM "spin doctor" nonsense and we conservatives let them get away with it. We heard the same song when John "Xmas in Cambodia" Kerry ran for President, to wit, the "highly educated" went for Kerry the ignorant ones went for Bush. Every time you hear that phrase, "highly educated" substitute the phrase "attended a lame liberal college or university." That's what we are really talking about. Given the state of higher education in the world, including in our own beloved Republic, spending four years in a typical "liberal arts" institution generally qualifies you for . . . uh . . . well, not much, except, of course, to boast that you are "highly educated." And that just don't mean a whole hill of beans today. Let me explain.
A few years ago, more than I care to mention, I headed a large office at the State Department. I got tasked with hiring a couple of Presidential Management Interns (PMIs). These PMIs come from the elite of the elite student body at the elite of the elite universities. They get hired on a temporary basis and then, usually, get offered prestigious jobs in the government. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that whatever else I did, I had to hire women. So I began to pore over the resumes. My heart sank. I felt inadequate and so, so inferior to these kids. Their resumes, impeccably printed and organized, using dozens of words ending in "-ization," and listing prowess with a dazzling array of complex software programs, described accomplishments beyond my wildest dreams -- especially for when I was the applicants' age!
I thought I should resign and give up my job to one of the "brilliant" child wonders. Ah, naive me. I obviously had spent too much time overseas. I saw resumes as truthful documents actually written by the applicants, applicants, in this case, full of accomplishments and possessed of massive brains throbbing with energy and ideas. As I, however, kept reading, even slow-witted me began to notice oddities. They all began to look the same: the font, the format, the wording, the list of classes and even -- horrors! -- the "accomplishments." I noted this in passing to a cynical old friend (now, alas, departed) who worked in "human resources" (what a great phrase that). He laughed, "You dope! They get classes on how to write resumes! They have professors and computer programs that put these things together for them." (Remember, folks, computers were new things back then.) He said, "Just randomly pick a couple of women students, they're all the same, hire'em, and move on."
I could not do that. I stole a friend's idea and devised "The World War II Test." I invited the applicants for interviews. These PMI wannabes came off as slick and somewhat rude. I noted something among my subjects, a sense of entitlement, they all, to varying degrees, emitted a message along the lines of "Why are you bothering me with this silly interview? I am obviously brilliant. I have a degree from Columbia. I am not going to spend my whole life as you have in this stupid bureaucracy. I just need this to add to my resume. I am in a hurry." I hit them with the test, which consisted of about dozen questions about WWII and its aftermath. I recall a few,
Can you tell me how US troops got into Europe in the first place? When was WWII? (I would accept a variety of answers as long as the applicant could defend the dates as the true start and end of WWII.) What nations comprised the principal Allied and Axis powers? Who was Neville Chamberlain? What he did he do at Munich and with whom? Who was Mussolini? What did he do to Ethiopia? Who was Stalin? Who was Hirohito? What was D-Day? What President ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs and why? Can you name a result of the Conference at Yalta? What was the Berlin Airlift?
Of the 14 or 15 applicants I interviewed, only one got them all right -- the only male in the crowd, by the way. None, zero, zip of the rest got even ONE right. Not a single one. A very irritated applicant asked me, "Do we really need to know this old stuff?" I noted that we worked with NATO and Europe, hence, it was important to know the background that led to the creation of NATO and the then just-concluded Cold War. She stared at me and said, "What does World War II have to do with NATO, the Cold War and Europe?" I promptly offered the job to the male -- oh, the cries from "Human Resources" -- who turned it down for a more lucrative one in the private sector. In the best Foreign Service tradition, I stalled hiring anybody else, let my two-year assignment run out, and left my poor successor to get stuck with one of the clueless ones.
Back to our story. I wonder how many of the "highly educated voters" could pass that WWII test? Or the Vietnam War Test? Or the Cold War test? Or know much about American history? Or understand the economy? And worst of all, the odds are they can't fire a gun, either.
Moral of the story: do not accept the mantra that Obama voters are "highly educated." They just went to "institutions of higher learning," you know, like the one where the Weatherman terrorist, Bill Ayers, teaches.
77 comments:
Both Dr. Sanity and Wretchard (Belmont Club) touched on this "highly educated" recently, albeit from different angles than yours.
It is a codename to be used amongst a 'selective few'. To make them feel superior, to justify their 'unrecognized potentials' (ie, their real life unsuccessfulness), so they can continue to thumb their noses at us the un-enlightened ones.
/BTW, I probably can answer 85% of your WWII questionare on top of my head. But I think these young applicants assumed a great appearance and charming personality were all it need for the State Dept.
I've quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2008/05/re-about-those-highly-educated-voters.html
Diplomad - ah if only I had not spent 12 years on active duty, several nights a week and every other weekend to go from GED to a MS Degree I might be more than an IMS:) - jumper
God i love this blog - you guys really need to post more if you can. :)
You cite ONE anecdote from your personal experience and have the gall to act as if this incident proves the low value of higher education. Give me a break.
Mr or Ms. Anonymous (2) -- you missed the point. We were arguing that the phrase "highly educated voter" means nothing except "attended university." That tells you nothing about intelligence, experience, or even -- sadly -- knowledge. That was the point of the story of the PMI interviews.
Diplomad
I think you miss the point of what highly educated means these days. The prevailing ethos is that in this age of Google the command of facts is less important than the mastery of skills. Liberal arts schools tend to emphasize 'higher order' skills such as research, non-quantitative analysis and writing.
Thus the fact that I happen to know that Truman dropped the bomb is less interesting than the perspectives that informed that decision, the way that decision has been revisted and revaluated again and again in over the years with varying interpretations across the world, how those interpreations have driven perceptions of America, and how those perceptions have both aided and hindered America in achieving its foreign policy goals, e.g., how it affects the debate over basing and training troops in Okinawa and how that affects our war fighting readiness and capacity to project power in Asia and how it affects Chinese calculations of our willingness to defend Taiwan.
Now you can argue that without a baseline of knowledge it's impossible to function effectively and apply those higher order skills and I won't disagree, but I think your WWII filter was fairly arbitrary and driven in large part by your anger at feeling "inadequate" and "inferior to these kids." In any case it was hardly a test of intelligence or experience and only a very casual superficial test of knowledge. (Though it is shameful that the overwhelming majority knew none of the answers)
A more fair and meaningful test would have been to tell them in the weeks prior to the interview to come prepared to discuss one of your test question topics and present evidence on how its consequences continued to reverberate today.
While I won't deny that many of the educationally privileged sport obnoxious senses of entitlement, I don't think correcting them was part of your mission responsibilties. In fact, one could argue that you were derelict in allowing your personal feelings to come before hiring someone who could have made a limited but positive contribution to our nation as a PMI. In my experience, one of the key skills a manager must cultivate is the ability to hire quality employees and get the most from them. That also means being secure enough in the value of your skills/judgement/experience to not only hire someone who is 'smarter' than you, but be prepared to learn from them as well.
On a more personal note, although I attended an elite liberal arts college and am about to embark on a career of drilling holes in people's heads, I can both fire and field strip a variety of guns. In November I'll be writing in Ron Paul; because restoring the Constitution is more important than winning any single election.
And of course4 Obama himself is "so highly educated" that he thinks there are 57 states in the union.
Astonishing.
I have worked with some PMIs and you hit the nail on the head. From your description, they could have been those you tried to reject.
So, HR told you to hire women only, eh? Big surprise.
Anyone who hasn't read it should read "The Best and the Brightest" by David Halberstam. Those about whom he wrote were some of the most "highly educated" in the land. One wonders what would have been the result of their meddling in foreign affairs if they had not been so "highly educated."
Give me the horse sense any day of someone who came up the hard way, paid some dues, heard a few shots fired in anger, has seen the inside of a state university classroom, and has some empathy for others over the polished "entitlees" that want their State Department ticket punched asap.
Keep up the good work, Diplomad. Keep the banner of common sense flying over the Building.
Is it funny that an amateur historian like myself can answer all of the questions you raised (based on my own studies apart from what I learned in public school) or is that more of a tragedy???
Actually, we win the high school to 4 year graduates.
The Dems win the post-graduate and the less than high school voters.
Tragedy. This is material I could have rattled off in high school.
Which merely proves that so-called "elite" schools are marketing snobbery, not education. If you want a REAL education, try an engineering school.
I must disagree with 'Live free' and his assertion that Diplomad misses "the point of what higher education means these days." If only these poor applicants had been given a week to write a slick, polished report on a narrow topic, he says, they would have done just fine. Diplomad, he says, was just acting out of his own insecurities.
Live Free has himself missed the point in a most extraordinary way. If these students are all competent to, in essence, generate slick resumes based on little of substance, what makes anyone think that they won't do the same thing to generate the output that "looks good" on the limited topic they are given ahead of time?
More importantly, if you are looking for someone to place in a position of responsibility, by what measure is it a good idea to hire the person who knows nothing but who can go look up someone else's work and copy it? This isn't judgement nor is it a display of competence.
Furthermore, we're not talking obscure stuff here. We're talking about the very foundations of our modern foreign policy - squarely in the area of expertise expected of these kids. And it isn't that they missed some details, they were wholly ignorant of the topic at hand.
Great story Diplomad!
Troops: I suppose you mean how did they LITERALLY get into Europe. Some parachuted in, the rest came in boats and had to storm the beaches and climb the cliffs under withering machine-gun fire.
WWII was in the mid to late 40s. I can't give exact dates, I'm afraid.
The Axis were Italy, Japan and Germany. The Allies were the USA, Britain, Russia and I suppose France (but they didn't do much)
Neville Chamberlain was the prime minister before Churchill who played the capitulation game with Hitler "all in the name of peace."
Munich? See above, and with Hitler
Mussolini was the dictator of Italy
He conquered Ethiopia
Stalin was the dictator of Russia (I suppose they used a prettier term for it)
Hirohito was the emperor of Japan (What, no questions about Yamamoto? :( )
D-Day was the invasion of Europe across the english channel, where they hit the beaches of Normandy
Truman ordered the dropping of the bombs. Japan refused to surrender (unconditionally) and we were forced to arrange a huge invasion force to end the war, with casualties on both sides expected to be shockingly high. Truman figured that by suggesting we could simply obliterate city after city, he would force the Japanese to give an unconditional surrender, and while the bomb would kill many, many thousands, it wouldn't kill as many as a full invasion. We dropped the second to show that this wasn't a "one-off" thing, and to convince them we could just keep going (even though we only had two. The third, the demon core, was never used)
A result of Yalta? Not too sure, but I would expect the UN came out of it, especially the members of the Security Council. Oh, and who got to occupy what in Europe and Germany, which set the tone for the Cold War.
Berlin was in the middle of Russian controlled Germany, but the west had control of Western Berlin. After some people started escaping over the wall, eastern Germany decided to try to starve Western Berlin into submission, so the west flew supplies in until the East gave up.
There, how was that? And I have a single year of education at a community college. It's not where you learn, but what you learn.
8 years ago I was a PMI trying to impress some snooty bureaucrat so I could get a start on paying off my grad school loans. I got a very un-sexy job at a very un-sexy department. My boss didn't particularly like me but he was desperate for a body.
I quickly lost my own sense of entitlement, which I seemed to have picked up in grad school (I was a older, returning student). I was actually a very good bureaucrat or as a friend says "You get the Policy Joke."
I've been sent to numerous PMF (changed the name since 'intern' is out now) meat markets to make a first cut for my bosses and the candidates do have many of those traits. My test is spreadsheets - really complex ones with lots of numbers and small print. This is just to scare them away. I want the desperate not the entitled.
Oh and no Peace Corps veterans. Don't like them. Nope not at all.
I've also progressed from a GED to an MS. I always tell people that the degree means only two things about a person; they have money, adn they are persistent enough to complete the process. Anyone who has taken even one college class knows who was just riding and who was really getting educated.
However, I think there is another angle to the "highly educated voter" line. There are certainly undereducated voters and voters who wish they understood candidates and politics better. To present this line to them is to possibly convince them to trust and join in with those who "should" know best. Just a thought.
Jim
Live Free, I don't think his test was bogus at all for the job in question.
Yes, analysis and writing skills are essential, but so is the cultivation of a factual and coherent understanding of the world. What I see in academia is a focus on competing narratives without a larger sense that a unified Truth exists that can be reached, however asymptotically.
Data precedes theory. You can't evaluate claims about political perspectives unless you know what events and philosophies shaped them. If you don't know what prompted the building of a system to keep "the Americans in, the Soviets out, and the Germans down", you aren't competent to mess with it. A homeowner who can't answer "what's this joist really for?" shouldn't cut it down.
You go the interview with the facts you have, not the facts you would like to have; real life doesn't give you a week's notice to bone up on something.
I am reminded of a couple of remarks, William F. Buckley's that he'd rather be governed by the first five hundred names in the Boston phone book than by the entire facultyof Harvard, and Orwell's observation that some things are so stupid only intellectuals can believe them.
And live free..., assuredly knowing aboutthe various perspectives and interpretations is important, but you can't understand them without actually knowing that Truman was the one who ordered the bomb dropped. We don't learn "language." We learn English, Spanish, or whatever.
It's more important than ever to be "highly educated." You met people who were not, and yet were allowed to represent themselves as being so. That's different.
Well, to be fair to these people, they were educated. They just didn't learn what old-timers like me learned. What did they learn? First, they learned every sin committed by America, which means that if they know anything about WWII, it would be how we treated Japanese-Americans and that we dropped a couple atom bombs on Japan. Second, they've learned women's history and no doubt some non-Western history as well. If the tables had been turned, they would regard you as the ignorant one.
That said, there are some obvious problems in their education. One of these is what you touched on: their abysmal ignorance of traditional history. A second is their ignorance of the sins of the left during the twentieth century. A third is that they probably got some fake history along the way (such as learning that Socrates was black or that only the West has ever engaged in imperialism).
JFP
To whomever commented to say: "I think your WWII filter was fairly arbitrary and driven in large part by your anger at feeling "inadequate" and "inferior to these kids."
I think you're forgetting that this interview was for a post in the US State Department. How can you say that requiring a working knowledge of the most important geopolitical event in the 20th century is "arbitrary"?
- Furytrader
Not all PMIs are that way--I was one and could have answered all of your questions (although I didn't interview for any slots since I took up a PhD program).
But since we are talking about State Department hiring practices, let me just say this--I tried, three times, to be an FSO. Made it to the oral interview every time. And in that interview I was not allowed to discuss any of my extensive overseas time, any of my published research into international economics and trade, any of my published research into international security. No, any of my real accomplishments would have been unfair to "under-represented" groups.
State has a hell of a lot more problems than its PMI selection issues.
I don't know about a shot (shots) fired in anger; I think having seen a bar fight might be as good a qualification for the job.
Very interesting to see the sense of entitlement among the replies. Maybe it is an age difference.
Note that the 9:53 PM poster spent five paragraphs explaining to the author why it was unfair for him to expect a basic understanding of recent, germane world history from university graduates, and one paragraph announcing that he was going to vote for Ron Paul.
Anybody else surprised?
For the purposes of Diplomad's post, highly educated = the new class = nomenklatura = bien pensant cadre = tranzi-progressive apparatchik
Shawn, it's a good thing you learned this on your own. (In my opinion.) Self-reliance is the key to success and happiness in anything, including knowledge and education.
"Live Free or Die Trying," that's a wonderful idea to give people advance notice of what the test is going to be and what your preferred answers are, because that does coincide with their previous educational training and is exactly how the real world works. There's no need to know anything, ever. Just form an opinion and assume you'll have enough advance notice to work up some talking points. And if it doesn't work that way, it's because the system is biased! It's not fair! In my experience at work (not the State Department or with "highly educated" people - just the real world), people with an overwhelming sense of entitlement, inability to behave civilly, and limited knowledge don't have make "a limited but positive contribution." They just suck and make work more difficult and unpleasant for everyone else. In the State Department, where someone could unintentionally allow those people around grown-ups doing real work, that kind of person can screw up things that affect lives.
But, hey, they took a class that helped them make a cookie-cutter resume! Hooray!
"...the command of facts is less important than the mastery of skills."
In theory, perhaps, but if you don't know some basic facts, you won't be able to detect BS when the odor passes under your nose.
First time it's a tragedy, the second, a farce.
Your WWII test does not seem to be a very good one. It seems pretty arbitrary. I could probably only get a D or so on the test, and I was trained as an engineer (Mechanical with almost enough credits for a EE degree as well). Having said that, as an engineer we pretty much referred to other undergrad degrees as the "Do you want fries with that" type of degrees. We didn't even have a lot of respect for the civil engineering department. So while I disagree with your example I generally tend to agree with your overall point (at least as far as undergrad degrees are concerned).
Of course, don't forget that many "highly educated" people also lack any understanding of the scientific and technological underpinnings of our society. Few things are more chilling than talking to someone with a degree from an Ivy league university and realizing they don't understand basic scientific method or even statistics.
Given the role that scientific, quasi-scientific and pseudo-scientific studies play in the modern decision making process, ignorance of how these studies are conducted or how how accurate they are is a serious intellectual short coming.
I don't argue with the premise that elite liberal arts educations don't necessarily indicate knowledge, but I do think that this is a probably a bit exaggerated.
The worst issue from the standpoint of the DoS is when the shiny elites take "international relations" curriculum instead of history. That way they get fancy IR diplomas from the Georgetown SFS and know almost nothing. Sort of like the bright ultralibertarian above who plans to write in Ron Paul.
Before we write off all the college-educated voters to Obama let's look at some actual data. 2004 election exit poll data shows the following point spread breakdown (+ in Bush's favor, - in Kerry's favor): among high school dropouts: -1; High school degree only: +5, some college: +8; college graduate: +6; Post-graduate degree: -11. So basically Kerry got the not-smart and the too-smart vote. (I am allowed to denigrate the later category since I am a possessor of multiple post-grad degrees).
I suspect that Obama is in much the same position now. At my university where I teach, he is very popular among the academic set but maybe not quite as enthusiastically supported among the students.
Do Diplomad's questions to the candidate interns represent a superficial and unfair test as described by Live Free or Die? Well LFD is right that colleges try to emphasize these "higher order" skills nowadays. And, correctly, LFD concedes that baseline information may be relevant in being able to use those skills properly.
Here is my experience. I teach Biology. We strive towards teaching students how to ask the right questions and how to analyze data. But there is a HUGE bank of knowledge we expect students to know. Without it our students would never advance beyond the simplest analysis. Likewise I just can't understand how my colleagues in the humanities and social sciences teach their courses without any expectation of prerequisite knowledge.
Suppose a graduate student wants to do research in my lab (I work on chemical sensing in lobsters). I would expect that student to know what a neuron is, how it generates signals, a basic understanding of how olfaction works, and the general taxonomy of lobsters. If the student was clueless (and I wouldn't give her a chance to prepare), I would question the usefulness of a future collaboration.
Anonymous is a perfect example of the problem. not only does s/he display a profound lack of reading comprehension skills, s/he seems to typify the problem not clearly stated by 'live free or die trying' in that 'mastery of skills' is pretty pointless in absence of a mastery of the facts.
Sure, give a college grad a week to flange up a paper on a known topic and they'll use their 'mastery of skills' to go all google on it. Big deal. If the facts aren't at ones command (at least the basic ones), then that 'mastery of skills' is going to be turning the crank on the crap handle. (For anecdotal evidence, anon 2, see any college campus or the blatherings from the nutroots.)
Finally, 'highly educated' also means "possessing a teaching degree or graduate degree in education" than which there are few things more indicative of a paucity of both facts *and* a 'mastery of [any real-world useful] skills'.
My definition of Obama's voter demographic is: the racially prideful [nttawwt], the easily led [young], and the easily duped ['highly educated'].
To be fair, I think women's interest in history and wars is dramatically less than men's.
I dated two very intelligent "science nerds" in college, and remember being stunned when one of them confused WWI with the Civil War. The other one (now my wife of 20 years) can now answer basic questions on WWII, but mainly because she homeschools our kids and has had to learn it to teach it.
I consider it on the same lines as my wife being complete uninterested in whether her car has a 2.5L or 4.0L engine - like cars, war history is simply of zero interest to many (most?) women.
Anonymous (2) does more than miss your point; he/she also manages to undercut Live Free or Die Trying's as well. Logical analysis is a necessary foundation for “higher-order skills”, but the inability to grasp a distinction between One example doesn't prove the claim of low value and One counterexample falsifies the claim of high value indicates that A(2) is building on sand here. Almost certainly “highly educated” him/herself.
live free or die trying,
Thus the fact that I happen to know that Truman dropped the bomb is less interesting than the perspectives that informed that decision,...
How can you understand the perspectives that informed the decision if you don't know what the final decision was, who made it and when they made it?
Raw facts are not the only thing a person must know to make good decisions but they are an absolutely critical foundation. Without that foundation, none of the rest of your reasoning is valid.
I think you've been indoctrinated to think that applying ideological templates to historical events equates to understanding them.
You don't even need to be an amateur historian to know this stuff, just tune into The History Channel for like 8 hours!!!
Seriously, I'm amazed these little darlings are able to breathe without mechanical assistance.
ps: glad to see you're back Diplomad..
Naw, sorry there, brain doctor, but you're far too understanding.
They can't answer questions on WWII? On WWII? That's just dumb.
I went to an elite college, although not one of the "most elite." At 21 I could have answered his questions and analyzed the situation off the top of my head -- and field strip a variety of weapons -- and I'm a woman.
Nope, the elites jsut aren't that elite.
This example of "the highly educated" just goes to show why so many people in this country think we're going down the wrong track. These future leaders have no concept of the past, what has been tried and failed, and believe if only given the chance they can fix the socialist dream and finally make it work. "We the People" need to take back our government. Something like "1099 for All" would make them be responsible with the money the redistribute.
www.SenatorMark4.org
Live Free or Die Trying said...
I think you miss the point of what highly educated means these days. The prevailing ethos is that in this age of Google the command of facts is less important than the mastery of skills. Liberal arts schools tend to emphasize 'higher order' skills such as research, non-quantitative analysis and writing.
Nice try, no cookie. Google doesn't do you any good when you don't know enough to know who is full of it, and who isn't. Google doesn't do you any good when you're having a conversation with someone, and don't want to sound like a complete idiot.
Oh, and I love the term "non-quantitative analysis". Would that translate to "making up crap"? Or is it just "BSing"?
Sorry, but anyone who can't, off the top of their head, answer at least half these questions is entirely ignorant of WWII. And therefore not qualified for a job involving NATO.
I might take issue with Live Free. While his point regarding who as opposed to why and the possible and future ramifications of the atomic bomb has a certain logic he is missing the forest because of all the trees. Education means far more than the ability to engage in mental masterbation. The end result is more than just the ability to think in a rational fashion but a limited mastery of a body of knowledge. The young lady who peevishly inquired why WW2 has anything to do with Nato is a perfect example of not possessing a sufficient body of knowledge, frankly to graduate from high school in my opinion.
This leads to an observation of mine we suffer from the paradox of raising the bar but lowering the standards. A college diploma is required now for a position that a generation prior any reasonably bright high school graduate hired off the street could do better.
While I laud Living Free for his ability to field strip various firearms and symphathize with his support of Ron Paul the crippling effects of an overly liberal education are clearly there to see.
I thought that this quiz and the study that went with it was very informative about the state of knowledge of the highly educated.
http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx
"Liberal arts schools tend to emphasize 'higher order' skills such as research, non-quantitative analysis and writing." Live Free or Die Trying: 9:53PM
Personally, my impression of Liberal Arts schools is just the opposite. I've had a really good time baiting people who are unable to think beyond the current "narrative" on virtually any subject that involves the natural sciences. Seems that a liberal arts education spends a great deal of time learning to regurgitate Chaucer and no time learning Newton much less Boole, Pascal, Ohm or Ampere.
I've had a really good time over the years baiting some blovating know-it-alls yakking on and on about subjects where they end up proving little to no expertise. AGW and energy issues come immediately to mind.
It's truly a shame that the true schools that emphasize 'higher order' skills such as research and analysis are graduating fewer & fewer students every year. Yes, I'm talking about Engineering schools. Many Ivy League schools don't even offer engineering.
You want to learn to think? Become an Engineer. To bad we're losing this skill set in favor of blovating liberal arts majors who lack any appearance of a clue.
Republicans earn higher incomes than Democrats. In fact, Democrats can only get a majority among those who earn less than $30K a year. So much for Democrats being 'highly educated'. Quite the opposite, actually.
I got my (science) PhD in California in the early 1990s and am now on corporate relocation here. Because of our company's line of work I have a lot of contact with academia. What you are writing sounds extremely familiar to me.
Note that about 75% of my (Belgian) 12th grade high school class would have been able to answer all your questions correctly. (This was just a state-subsidized Catholic school, no fancy prep school --- there aren't any in Belgium. It's gone downhill there too --- for similar reasons --- but not as badly.)
James Taranto wrote in the WSJ about an expensive college degree often being just a stand-in for an IQ test which companies aren't allowed to administer because it supposedly discriminates against certain minority groups. As college admissions factor in reverse discrimination, excuse me, "affirmative action", this leaves companies off the hook for lawsuits. So you need a liberal arts degree (where people increasingly "learn" pretty much nothing other than ideological propaganda) from some selective school to get the job you want, then pay off $200K in student loans.
Meanwhile science and engineering graduate schools have to fill up with foreigners because American college kids find it much easier on one's spare time to spend 4 years parroting a professor's literary or political dogma than to actually use their brains. ("Like, what, spend a lot of money AND having to work hard?")
I don't know from PMIs - my job at State doesn't bring me into contact with them. As for voters - I agree that "highly educated" can be a code word for "liberal." Anyone who's read blogs for a while has probably witnessed the liberal commenter writing about how highly educated, intelligent, creative, and gifted with advanced critical thinking skills he is. Humility is not a trait of highly educated liberals.
Can you tell me how US troops got into Europe in the first place?
A: uh ... boat?
"So much for Democrats being 'highly educated'. Quite the opposite, actually."
Ah, but they think they are because they 'care' more.
In some respect LFOD's comments are valid, 'skills' of data acquisition, analysis and interpretation are more valuable than rote learning of dates. But as has been pointed out elsewhere in these comments - going to a job interview with a European/Nato focus without researching the background is dumb. The fact is the guy who got them all right probably did research before going in based on his (correct) assumptions about what his potential employers would expect him to know. The fact that no one else did makes them idiots, irrespective of their IQ, degree or other qualifications and points solidly to arrogance and a sense of entitlement. I wouldn't expect someone coming for a job interview with me to pass the WWII test, but they damn well better know something about my company and my industry.
JN
kurmudge:
I have a niece studying 'international relations' at an elite east coast re-education camp. She's being marinaded in various fraudulent history narratives, bogus 'conflict resolution theories' and other world-as-we-wish-it-to-be nonsense.
Unfortunately, her classmates confuse reflex pacifism, moral vanity, metrosexuality and citizen-of-the-world-equivalence with sophistication. Little understanding that these luxuries exist only if the societies in which they flourish are vigorously defended. Or the world's predators agree to play along, which is quite unlikely.
Such a defense is unnecessary, you see, because there are no predators. It's all just so much intellectualized cowardice packaged as enlightened accommodation.
Also unfortunate: You can bet our antagonists, now and in the future, aren't buying into such foolishness.
"Data precedes theory. You can't evaluate claims about political perspectives unless you know what events and philosophies shaped them."
I teach community college history, and you indeed can tell immediately who possesses the sense of entitlement, and who is there to learn.
Currently, we put a super-heavy emphasis on critical thinking, for two reasons:
1. High schools have largely been forced to "teach to the test," thus conditioning students to finding value in mastering the recall of narrow prepared material (as noted in comments), rather than having any comprehension of process or ability to make use of data for one's own purposes.
2. Technology is changing so rapidly that narrow job training is simply less valuable than it used to be.. the careers are changing, and fast.
However, the pre-requisite about that is, ALWAYS, the data. Does one know what one is talking about, or not. I am not qualified to hold out opinions on orbital mechanics. Students w/o the bare facts are not qualified to judge the Franco-German EU position vis-a-vis earlier arrangements/war, or even later political realignments.
In response to Vadept (and off the top of my head):
Troops: I suppose you mean how did they LITERALLY get into Europe. Some parachuted in, the rest came in boats...
They first came into Europe through Sicily in 1943 - the year before the D-Day invasion in France.
WWII was in the mid to late 40s. I can't give exact dates, I'm afraid.
WWII started in the late 1930s and was over by the mid 1940s. (1945 to be exact. The starting date is open to interpretation depending on how you count China.)
[Mussonlini] conquered Ethiopia
Or Abyssinia, as it was also commonly known at the time.
A result of Yalta? Not too sure, but I would expect the UN came out of it, especially the members of the Security Council. Oh, and who got to occupy what in Europe and Germany, which set the tone for the Cold War.
I think you're right on the second point and not on the first.
Berlin was in the middle of Russian controlled Germany, but the west had control of Western Berlin. After some people started escaping over the wall, eastern Germany decided to try to starve Western Berlin into submission, so the west flew supplies in until the East gave up.
There was no Wall during the Berlin Crisis, which occurred in 1948. The wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from crossing into West Berlin in great numbers. The Berlin Crisis of 1948 was, as you said, an attempt by the Soviet Union to starve the West out of West Berlin. The Berlin Airlift prevented that.
There, how was that? And I have a single year of education at a community college. It's not where you learn, but what you learn.
Pretty good, with a few glaring inaccuracies. I left out all the ones I believe you got completely right. I learned most of what I know not from school but from reading Winston Churchill's multi-volume history of World War II. At least that was the base, which I've added onto over the years with the History Channel, various websites, etc.
In response to Vadept (and off the top of my head):
Troops: I suppose you mean how did they LITERALLY get into Europe. Some parachuted in, the rest came in boats...
They first came into Europe through Sicily in 1943 - the year before the D-Day invasion in France.
WWII was in the mid to late 40s. I can't give exact dates, I'm afraid.
WWII started in the late 1930s and was over by the mid 1940s. (1945 to be exact. The starting date is open to interpretation depending on how you count China.)
[Mussonlini] conquered Ethiopia
Or Abyssinia, as it was also commonly known at the time.
A result of Yalta? Not too sure, but I would expect the UN came out of it, especially the members of the Security Council. Oh, and who got to occupy what in Europe and Germany, which set the tone for the Cold War.
I think you're right on the second point and not on the first.
Berlin was in the middle of Russian controlled Germany, but the west had control of Western Berlin. After some people started escaping over the wall, eastern Germany decided to try to starve Western Berlin into submission, so the west flew supplies in until the East gave up.
There was no Wall during the Berlin Crisis, which occurred in 1948. The wall was built in 1961 to prevent East Germans from crossing into West Berlin in great numbers. The Berlin Crisis of 1948 was, as you said, an attempt by the Soviet Union to starve the West out of West Berlin. The Berlin Airlift prevented that.
There, how was that? And I have a single year of education at a community college. It's not where you learn, but what you learn.
Pretty good, with a few glaring inaccuracies. I left out all the ones I believe you got completely right. I learned most of what I know not from school but from reading Winston Churchill's multi-volume history of World War II. At least that was the base, which I've added onto over the years with the History Channel, various websites, etc.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions. In a rational world everyone is not entitled to their own "facts". My sister and I are both highly educated with graduate degrees. She was a teacher; I was a lawyer. We frequently disagree on political matters.
As Obama might say, I find it "unacceptable" if someone can not take a political pronouncement (whatever the latest San Francisco liberal party line might be) and restate it and defend it in their own words.
A firm grounding in the facts of American history over say the last 160 years ---starting with the Missouri Compromise, the Lincoln Douglas debates, the Civil War etc. at least gives one the intellectual tools to detect political BS when one smells it.
And yet most of our "highly educated people" believe, or at least act and argue as if they believed, that history started on the day they were born.
That makes them simply useful idiots for those who would bamboozle them with rhetorical or PC flourishes.
One comment about the Democrats' winning a majority of those with Master's degrees. A lot of Master's degrees are in Education, which is where a lot of those Democrat voters are coming. The intellectual value of a Master's degree in Education, many of which do not require a thesis, is minimal.
What do you expect. Kids are taught "Gripe-history" as Victor Hanson would describe it in school these days. They don't know basic dates or names. They are taught that Hiroshima was bad, but not why or how it occurred or what were the alternatives. They learn more about the lives of people such as Harriet Tubman than than a Ulysses S Grant.
To my fellow engineers who didn't get high marks in the reading comprehension section:
This was for a job in the STATE DEPARTMENT at the end of the cold war. Knowing the background of the area forms the basis of the (then) current cultural prejudices of several locations - it's rather germane to the situation.
If it was for a job at NASA dealing with airplanes, questions might be more like: Who first flew faster than the speed of sound? When and where? What does Mach One mean? How is it calculated? What is gamma in that equation? What plane did Yeager fly? What was the X-1 shaped like? Why was it shaped that way? What was discovered about control surfaces when flying faster than Mach 1? Name some design factors that must be considered if a plane will be flying above Mach 1...
Would the EEs in the crowd think that Faraday was important? Coders think you should know what big and little endian is? Mechs think that you should kinda know something about Cauchy? I know one guy who claimed to ask doctoral canidates what the variables in E=mc^2, d=FL/EA, and Q=mc(delta)T actually were and often got incorrect answers. In one of my high school classes, a teacher actually wrote E= on the board and asked,"What comes next?" Almost everyone said (as one) "M, C, squared." Then pointing to E=mc^2, the teacher asked, "What does this mean?" Everyone started out with "Energy equals..."; half got through "mass times"; the volume was rather low for "the speed of light, squared." The point of was nicely made.
-=Nony
I amused myself by answering your questions to myself at some length and congratulating myself that you would have been very gratified by my extensive knowledge. Thanks!
Although I have a liberal arts degree myself, I'm also kind of a history nut (more Civil War than WWII, but I know the salient facts of US History including WWII of course). The point is, all history is intertwined and you can't really be a buff about one period without learning stuff about the rest.
It always seemed odd to me that some people don't have more curiosity about history. Its fascinating to me, and I've always voraciously read history books. The more you read, the more you want to know about what came before.
The relevance of WWII to NATO? Hell, ancient Greek history is relevant to NATO. Every war since prehistory led to NATO. Any history concerning Europe led to everything that's happening in the world today, in fact. The multiculturalists hate this fact of course, but most of "history" is the history of Europe, I've found, at least until the American era.
Yeah, its depressing that there is so little interest in history for the majority of Americans. It makes them more susceptible to propaganda masquerading for history like the new Che movie or Oliver Stone's drivel.
If only people were as obsessive about real history as they seem to be over conspiracy history like Truthers or the Kennedy assassination nutball theories.
Looking at the exit polls of the last election (according to CNN exit polls). 55% of voters with "post-graduate study" voted for Kerry while only 44% voted for Bush. That is the "highly educated" majority that votes Dem.
However, it ends there. Of all people who received a Bachelor's degree (w/o post-grad) only 46% voted Kerry while 52% voted Bush. So more college grads actually went Republican. Even for people with "some college" Bush got the majority with 54% compared to 46% for Kerry, and High school graduates split 52% Bush and 47% Kerry. Democrats took people with no High school education and those with post-graduate work, yet use that to claim rights to the majority of the "highly educated"
Also if you look at the income distribution. It's pretty telling at how successful people split. Kerry took all of the ranges of incomes from $50k under. Bush took each range above $50k.
link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
I just thought that was pretty interesting. I enjoy using "facts" to refute these claims Democrats try to use to make themselves feel superior.
I agree with some of your analysis and also find it shocking that these PMI candidates can't answer basic questions about WWII. Yes, I believe higher education puts more emphasis on skills than the underlying facts, but I don't think there should be an argument between skills vs. information. You have to have both in order to have knowledge. You can have all the facts in the world, but if you don't know what to do with them, they aren't of much help to you. And as many have pointed out, skills without facts is pretty much a farce.
However, I find the remarks about women a bit trying. Do I think HR should demand you hire a woman? Absolutely not. I think you should hire the person who is qualified for the job, and it seemed that you did. But you also had a limited pool of women that you interviewed.
One anonymous commenter said that most women don't have an interest in history, which is adverse to my experience. I don't know what was the deal with the PMI pool, but I most certainly am interested in history. Next to Arabic it is my favorite subject. My AP European History class is actually the most useful class I've ever taken; it opened my eyes to so much of what's behind the way Western civilization thinks, and why things are the way they are. I've found many people who don't know a lick about history. Several men I've come in contract with think that the Magna Carta is just a video game. And my best friend (a woman), thought that Hitler was a communist and Mussolini was a famous Italian painter. I nearly died when she told me that.
I've found a lack of basic knowledge of history rather pervasive around all sexes recently, and I live on a college campus. It seems to me that being highly educated to these people is memorizing a few facts for a test, and then promptly forgetting them afterwards, especially if they get to go to a frat party and drink it all off on the weekend.
Most people don't go to college to be come "highly educated," at least in my experience in being at college. They come here for four years in order to walk away with a diploma. To them it's like picking up a work permit.
This is a great piece. I am a high school graduate, 1976, and found myself answering your interview questions in my head as I read along. Just a public school kid who liked to read from an early age.
I can't imagine Americans NOT knowing the answers cold.
And, I can't imagine what our country will look like when The Clueless Generation is running things. God help us.
Mr/Ms Anonymous' post at 2:45 claimed you draw a broad conclusion from a single anecdote. Aside from the fact that what you said aligns with I have also observed about supposedly "educated" young people, it seems you had a good sample population if 15 PMI candidates all failed miserably at your test, and all demonstrated the same level of arrogance.
I'm with crescendo here. The story illustrates the sense of entitlement well, but the fact that the only candidate who knew the answers happened to be male doesn't really tell us anything about the study of history and the sexes. The attempt to throw in this aside like it means something is certainly exasperating.
It's just the pool you were dealing with. I was also a PMI finalist, and if you had been interviewing me, I would have been able to answer your questions, in spite of being female. Of course, I also have a Ph.D. in history, but I am not unique.
"Thus the fact that I happen to know that Truman dropped the bomb is less interesting than the perspectives that informed that decision"
And how would they have any idea about the perspectives if they don't even know the players?
I on the other hand. No degree but I read a book about Truman's decision to use the bomb at the library. re: Me... Not highly educated... and the only answer on his quiz I didn’t know off the top my head was the WWII start and end dates (I’m bad with dates; I’m more interested in the big picture and perspectives...).
You're such a chauvinist. Don't you realize that girls aren't interested in "icky" stuff like war, bombs, historical dates, and politics?
I'm one of those highly educated people. (Might be applying for one of those types of jobs soon, too...)
But I was a history nut when I was growing up -- those are easy questions. (Except for that "When was the Second World War?" one. I'd have started hemming and hawing over whether 1931 or 1937 or 1939 counted as the right start date...)
Oh, also: am thrilled to see that the Diplomad is back. I thought you'd hung up the spurs back in 2005.
What do you have against UIC? What do you even know about it for that matter besides the fact that Bill Ayres is a professor there? Bill Ayres does NOT represent those of us who graduated from that "institution of higher learning" as you so condescendingly refer to it. You would be surprised to learn how many of us are more aligned with those "bitter" people who cling to their guns and religion.
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?!"
But seriously, asserting it's all about "'higher order' skills such as research, non-quantitative analysis and writing" boils down to holding the fashionable political worldview. One cannot be utterly ignorant about the facts upon which opinons are based and be truly intelligent.
For "highly educated", substitute "highly indoctrinated." Spending four years at a leftist University makes a person more likely to vote for the most liberal candidate.
Have a few minutes to spare? Go to "Google," type in the phrase "highly educated voters," hit "Search News." Go ahead.
I did. What bothered me is that Google did not acknowledge Memorial Day. During Earth Day and Halloween their logo appeared in an altered holiday form but not during Memorial Day.
History - simple, basic stuff, I admit - is part of what Marines must learn in boot camp.
It’s interesting that an 18-year old brand-new Marine knows more WW II than a brainy Ivy League grad.
You are absolutely right, and not many seem to care. I really wish I had been a little bettered disciplined and not bothered with any advanced degrees. I see all my "peers", and their fancy degrees from fancy universities, and I get real disheartened. I mean, these are the people that will be running our nation, and they haven't a clue about what it is they do. I really do wish that more value was placed on knowledge, knowledge of the practical, over "experience." I'm really sure that these children gained so much when they studied abroad in Madrid, Rome, Paris, and Berlin. These kids do have a sense of entitlement because of their degrees, they've been taught to have that attitude, it's called confidence by their professors.
The fact that these 'applicants' couldn't answer basic history questions, about relatively recent history, is beyond disturbing. I remember being told that I couldn't apply for the PMI, or PMF as it is now called, because I didn't have the "life experience" that would distinguish me from other applicants. I guess having a 3.9 gpa, being president of the Student Organization, while working 40 hours a week to pay for tuition, wasn't enough. Yet, I have met many of the recent PMF and am not impressed by a vast majority of them - in a sense I am glad that I don't have to work with them.
Any way, thank you for the post.
“more than a few years ago”
How many years would be important information to know.
Did your applicants attend Columbia before the Advanced Placement exams became an expected preparation for attending competitive schools? Much of your depressing situation should have been corrected by this growth of these high school programs.
I am surprised that any graduate student of Columbia; accepted into a political science, history or diplomatic studies departments; would NOT have taken either an AP US History and AP European History course during their high school preparation. Students applying for competitive colleges are expected to have taken AP course work as a matter of preparing a strong application. Anyone taking and passing these AP exams knows that the exam designers REQUIRE a detailed, FACTUAL understanding of history, as well as, the analytical and composition skills.
Unless, of course, your applicants did NOT major in a related field; but jumped over from the English Department (I’ve seen this happen) which would explain the problem. English majors are notorious for their abysmal knowledge of history. Another field with a similar, horrible reputation: Women’s Studies; a disastrous waste of funding.
Nonetheless, (LIVEFREE) a student’s ability to provide such basic knowledge about the major players of the WWII era would NOT be considered optional by any reputable history or political science department in the nation. The only other explanation that occurs is that an institution has deliberately removed that coursework from their requirements. It would be hard to believe, but nothing shocks me anymore. One state bureaucrat attempted to remove the topic of “European constitutional philosophers” from the curricula of teaching high school World History. (Say goodbye to Voltaire).
There is a huge difference in high school history instruction between the AP and advanced and regular coursework. Outside of AP required history content, the other classes are notorious for poor instruction of the subject matter on your test. Yet, to repeat my question; how would students accepted at Columbia been able to skip the AP classes?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- changing topics
Are men more attracted to studying history than women?
It depends on whether you are speaking of the general student body and what historical topic is being highlighted. Women historians are very visible, but as a general rule, men are attracted to studying military history than women.
Twenty years ago there was a shift in greater numbers of women undergraduates and graduates, entering the field of history. Unfortunately, many history departments (especially Columbia) have been hopelessly degraded by the popularity of “deconstructionalism” and other agenda-driven approaches to research. So, a place to start-- is to ask the question: What do people consider as “history”.
I would be regarded as a “suit” or a traditionalist by young Turks in the field. In contrast, I don’t view what they produce as history; but rather, forcing someone’s previous research through an artificially-devised sieve, to produce publications that don’t qualify as original research. Buried in the middle of most such convoluted writing is the hidden pill of propaganda; designed to train the mind to automatically categorize all events into a certain formula. That process is destroying historical objectivity.
Ragnell
JR Ewing said:
I just thought that was pretty interesting. I enjoy using "facts" to refute these claims Democrats try to use to make themselves feel superior.
link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states
I take it; correct me if I am wrong, that you use Wikipedia as a trusted source of facts. On St George’s day, Apr 23, an English friend of mine looked up St George on Wikipedia. In the list of countries of which he is patron saint was Scotland, as a Scot I was less than impressed. The moral is always use multiple sources and question the information you take in.
On the WW2 test, can’t agree more that a grounding in the facts surrounding this conflict for anyone working in the State dept is a must not just then but still today. Why? Because the attitudes and perceptions in Europe and to a greater or lesser extent throughout the world are still shaped by this conflict both the underlying reasons for it and the consequences of it.
On the whole Ivy League thing you will be unsurprised to hear that in the UK we have similar issues with those who were educated in Oxbridge and other old established universities and those who went to more modern establishments (those founded after 1700). Personally I have never seen the need nor the importance to liberally sprinkle Latin phases through a document as any measure of intellectual rigger and after two years of boredom in High school I dropped it for more science subjects and history (needless to say I am an Engineer).
The question I have is why do we get hung up on the level of education a person has and where it was attained? Is this an absolute gauge of their intelligence? Can you assume that a person that has no formalized education is unintelligent? I would submit that this is arrogance of the most extreme and dangerous kind. Having spent a number of months in Afghanistan last year I met many people who had no formal education what so ever. They were not unintelligent people. Here is the thing that grates many of the “intelligent” p