In the Basement of the Ivory Tower

Excellent submission. That was an extremely well-written and particularly trenchant piece of writing.<p>It is interesting to compare the experiences of Ms. L to various people in their 40s returning to school when I was in undergrad. They too had difficulty with very basic (to us youngsters, anyway) methods of computer use. Many viewed computers with either outright terror or blatant suspicion.<p>I have often thought of volunteering my time to a college or tech school locally to teach computer-illiterate people the basics of computer use. It would be such a simple thing for me and judging by Ms. L's plight, it could make all the difference in the world to some people.

The most helpful grade I ever received on an essay was an 'F'.<p>It was in my first year of university. I knew the course and knew the material but couldn't have been arsed to put together a paper which adequately addressed the subject.<p>The comments the professor wrote were scathing and it was a wonderful full slap on the face that I'd better get my act together and actually deliver what was expected of me if I ever wanted to accomplish something of value.<p>I did. Thanks for that 'F'.

This is a very interesting story. What I'm left with is the question of 'who are these people, really'? Is there really a considerable portion of American (or we could say Western) society that is practically illiterate? This seems counter-intuitive to me, I thought it was hardly possible to function at all without a basic understanding of the written word. If these people are out there, I have certainly never had any deep face-to-face conversation with them.<p>Or put in other words; I didn't think there were enough jobs available that didn't require a minimum of college-level skills. A checkout clerk could obviously make do, but I'd expect even a car mechanic to have enough brains to grasp some abstract literary concepts.<p>And other questions arise: Isn't academic aptitude strongly correlated with ability to succeed in the world at large after all? You'd have a hard time convincing me that most people who can't comment intelligently on 'The Wizard of Oz' are fit do be much more than corporate monkeys. At one level or the other, there is a major problem here - either the educational system is a massive failure, or the rest of us are stupid to assume that everybody has to be particularly intelligent.

Thoreau said, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root."<p>Here is my attempt.<p>Shortly after we're born, we begin to perceive a certain amount of value in everything we encounter. We assign value to food, attention, comfort, safety, pleasure, affection, entertainment, possessions, virtue, appearance, and a million other things. We assign value to a thousand instances of a hundred types of those things - particular tv shows, certain cars, particular kinds of attention, certain types of pleasure, even one virtue over another. Automatically, they line up along a spectrum of desire and the sorting continues each moment till we die.<p>Some people value books more than people. Books have never hit them. Some people value an infomercial on tv more than any book imaginable. They still remember all those years ago how the class laughed when they had to read aloud. They don't feel stupid watching tv. They don't feel poor, inferior, or much of anything while it's on. A superficial man can see a woman and in a tenth of a second assign a value to her. We call him superficial in hopes that he will start valuing her other qualities more. A child of six in a bad neighborhood somewhere has never seen any of their friends or family open a book for fun. With perfect logic the child's mind takes note of what seems valued and what does not, by people like him. A very reasonable, and very wrong valuing ensues.<p>And there is something out there that each person on this website ought to value but doesn't for the very same reasons: We haven't yet encountered it, or we didn't understand it when we did, or the people around us didn't seem to value it, etc. High school art class comes to mind.<p>You are on this website right now because at this very moment you value it more than everything else that can at this moment be had. Not because of your DNA or inherent intellect, but because at some point you began to value time on this website, and before that websites in general, and before that time on computers, and before that a million other things that compose rungs on a ladder to somewhere.<p>And by my simply saying that, many of you will suddenly call into question the value of being on this site right now. That questioning is the combination of your own ability to reason, imagine, and introspect as well as your environment of which my words are now a part. And those four ingredients more than anything else are what have formed your beliefs, including your beliefs about what is to be valued.<p>Scholastically, life works out better for people who value books more than television. And better still for people who value knowledge more than almost everything else.<p>Things work out better when we value things of value.

<i>Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X?</i><p>The author seems to think one aspect of education is to propagandize a certain political view, and that the success of the same would validate forcing education on people. If it makes him feel better, then...yes, of course reading such things will have an effect. Where did <i>you</i> get your ideas from? Obviously, a brain not so capable of absorbing information tends to stick to its instincts. That's why not every human quality is curable.<p>I do wonder if the author realizes that many police officers come from a poor background, probably much unlike his own. Maybe they don't need Steinbeck to learn about the subject.

Thanks crocus for posting this.<p>When I made the parent submission to HN ~2hr ago which contained this article, I was going to post to the original source shortly but good to see you do it. That is what it is all about, helping each other :)<p>(I deleted the submission as it linked to this article in reference rather than the original, and did not follow the “Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter” in <a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>)<p>Anyway, if you find the article interesting you may enjoy some of the other ones I was reading at the time (also with good links) that were useful...<p>Which Universities Have No Chance at Entrepreneurship?: <a href="http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/which-universities-have-no-chance-at-entrepreneurship/" rel="nofollow">http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/which...</a><p>As Textbooks Go 'Custom,' Students Pay: <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121565135185141235.html?mod=2_1567_leftbox" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB121565135185141235.ht...</a><p>The latest National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship newsletter shares a great new paper by Block and Keller called “Where do Innovations Come from?: <a href="http://www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde/news/2008/enews-08-07-14.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.publicforuminstitute.org/nde/news/2008/enews-08-0...</a>

Very insightful view into the mind of an essay marker. I've always loathed the subjectiveness of English courses, that's why I took computer science :)<p>I agree with the author, not everyone is cut out for English classes, but I think an alternative to these "trying help you an write essay" classes should be some kind of "just read a book and enjoy it" class. It would be a start anyway. In school, any hope of loving English literature is usually destroyed by some kind of forced book dissection or compare and contrast garbage.

"America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns."<p>We tend to never look at the underbelly of academia, particularly those who are well served post-college in a world of newly minted bonus checks and corporate perks. Discussion exists as to where the process went wrong, a process that favors the inevitable elite and rich, but I have yet to see one solid and compelling reason why education (on average) fails compared to our European counterparts.<p>Excellent article.

Perspicacious and lyrical. Nicely done.<p>Having said that, I found the author a bit whiny.<p>I can almost hear his supervisor at his "night job"<p>"Old Professor X seems like a nice enough sort," they'd say, whispering among themselves, "but he'll never be ready for a job a at a major university. Sure -- he might get published in some rag like The Atlantic, but serious work? Not likely. He's just not cut out for it."<p>It's all in your perspective. You could take a guy with the same students and the same success ratio and he could write a story about how rewarding it was to help people at night school!<p>I think that's why I liked it so much: it was so artfully done that I couldn't help but think that the same experiences could be written to drive home a completely opposite conclusion.

This really was a great submission. I also am an adjunct instructor (albeit at a 4-year university), and I can attest to this guy's experiences.<p>The line that really lit me up was this:<p><pre><code> Our dialogue had turned oblique, as though we now inhabited a Pinter play. </code></pre> This is golden. If anyone here has ever seen a Pinter play acted out, you know exactly what this means, and it is totally spot on. It's when you totally have begun to talk beyond each other, each sentence containing only enough of the subject continuum to keep you in the conversation, but apart enough to make it clear that nothing is being exchanged at all.

It is interesting how the author is so cautious about saying "College is not for everyone". Maybe we hear "It should be hard to get a college education - especially if you are poor". I'm a big believer in getting all the education you can. That is not the same thing as believing you should get as many college degrees as possible. There comes a point when it is time to get out and do something with your life. For some people that means a PhD. For others a B.S. For some an apprenticeship with a skilled craftsman. Don't confuse a degree with an education.

I taught basic computer classes (Microsoft Office) and the lower level computer science courses as a similar institution.<p>This article is so spot on, it's a little eerie. Do all adjuncts feel the same way?

I can bet that woman must be good at something she has never been tested on and probably does not know about. Maybe if we start from the premise that most individuals have something they are really good at, we might be able to move beyond the educational system of As and Fs and take advantage of people's abilities to the fullest.

At my old school they tested incoming freshmen and sent many of them to a pass / fail English 050 class. It seems odd that most schools don't have such programs.

Interesting. Entering college as a computer agnostic and hs dropout in the late 80's I was dismayed by my curriculum and it's focus on word processing, dos, floppy disks, etc.. It seemed that the computer medium was dross and doldrum.<p>Previously, in HS, I was terribly bored with most subject matter presentation and irritated by authority in general.<p>I had been an avid reader since 5 or 6 and had read science fiction/fantasy and classic literature during these formative years. I did not do well in the college environment. I dropped all my classes.<p>Years later, I returned to college: emphasis had once again turned to the printed word, symbolism, and other recognizable concepts rather than any ability to use a computer. 4.0 average for two semesters was the result.<p>At the third semester I found myself in honors courses which irritated me with opinions I was too immature to discard gracefully and once again dropped out.<p>Provided as counterpoint to this article.

The author repeats themselves:<p>Page 2 top:<p>"I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper."<p>Page 2 middle:<p>"I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper."

It is utterly interesting how many people do not even bother nor desire to simply think for thoughts sake. I am starting to wonder whether people who value knowledge for its own sake is a counter evolution to the majority. A bit like right-handed people with left-handed people. The left-handed people are a minority hence have some advantages when say playing sports as most people are used to playing against other right handed people.<p>Maybe same can be said for those people who value knowledge for its own sake as most people (the majority) do not, hence the minority who does has an inherent maybe gentical advantage.