Saturday, November 29, 2008

Harvard University

Veritas, by the way, means 'Truth'.

Because in the oligarchical State they [the drones] are disqualified and driven from office, and therefore they cannot train or gather strength; whereas in a democracy they are almost the entire ruling power, and while the keener sort speak and act, the rest keep buzzing about the bema and do not suffer a word to be said on the other side; hence in democracies almost everything is managed by the drones.
-Plato, the Republic

I’ve been reading Plato’s The Republic, and it is very good. Book 8 is tracking very well with America-2008. While I went to a prole school on a military scholarship, my brother went to a fancy school, and was given a book to read before showing up to the classroom. He was directed to read the Iliad. I was curious about what Harvard is telling it’s incoming minds to read these days.

I believe that the Ivy League schools spend a good deal of their time suppressing truth, especially the subject of human bio-diversity. It seems like their attempts to suppress truth have been meeting with resistance, as their incoming reading list sounds downright defensive. Here are excerpts from Harvard’s reading list , as compiled by faculty and staff:

American Demographics
The Anatomy of Racial Inequality
Anna Karenina (Trotsky-feminism)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (seconded by Al Qaeda even!)
The Black-White Test Score Gap
The Case for Affirmative Action
Choosing Students; Higher Education Admissions Tools
The Chosen: The History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
College Admissions and the Public Interest
Crafting a Class; College Admissions and Financial Aid
Difficult Conversations; How to Discuss What Matters Most
The End of Equality
The Gatekeepers; Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College
Higher Education and the Color Line; College Access, Racial Equity, and Social Change
A Hope in the Unseen; An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
Projections of High School Graduates by State and Race
Understanding Globalization
How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work
Questions and Admissions
Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel about the American Obsession
Race Matters
Race Sensitive Admissions
The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions
The State of College of College Admission
Why a Diverse Student Body is So Important
Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth


In case you were wondering, Plato is not on the list.

The above recommendations make up 37% of Harvard’s reading list. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just admit that intelligence is inherited, and that Ashkenazi Jews and Orientals are the smartest people*, followed by Whites, followed by Hispanics, followed by Blacks.

The two richest guys I know did not go to college, they started out as cops. My theory is that being a cop forces you to understand people, while colleges expend resources trying to get their students to not understand people. Truth is the foundation of any private-sector business.

Our Country would be stronger if we had our students studying things like math, science, and engineering instead of this crap.

* Correction: Statement intended on a strict average basis for the demographic group. Individuals are highly variable.

2 comments:

Dave said...

A real reading list is over at St. Johns College in Annapolis. http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/academic/ANreadlist.shtml

It's a $38k/year education you could get almost for free if you can live without the classroom time.

Granted, the end of the Senior year reading list trails off with the likes of Marx and Hegel, hopefully not with a sympathetic tone.

Bill said...

Thanks for the list Dave; what can you do. I’m really enjoying reading Plato’s words, and tying them to the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and American Institutions. The emphasis that Plato places on the power of truth, and the concept of human and divine laws, is comforting.

At the risk of taking advantage of someone else’s financial problems, these $3.99/lb lobsters are pretty good.