This post by King reminded me of an article by Joseph Epstein in the December 8 issue of the weekly Standard. He refers to a David Brooks column in the New York Times that exults "the high quality of people President-elect Barack Obama was enlisting in his new cabinet, ." Why are these people so impressive? They all attended "superior" schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc. And, as referenced in King's article, a number of them teach in these institutions.

Some of us know these people: they work hard in high school, pile up activities, score high on SATs and get into one of the top 20 colleges. After arriving at an A school, they get more As and go on to the next level.

What is so bothersome about this? Academia is truly an isolated environment populated with far more believers in leftist causes than the population as a whole. Finding a conservative professor is difficult. Finding a professor who allows different points of view is even more rare.

Obama's A team learned early on to figure out what the teacher wanted: feminism, socialism, liberalism, anti-big business, etc. and gave it to them.

When did these students push themselves to examine another point of view?
When did they take a stand against a professor because they could prove the professor was wrong?
How many of them would have scored their perfect 800s on SAT tests before the grading scale got re-normed DOWN?

Can these people really think, make hard decisions or just accomodate what someone else wants?

As? Yes, for appeasement.

Labels: education, Obama