Princeton answers to Jian Li claims

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 12:54pm

Good job, cptn. When the board is at its collective best, I agree with you. At our worst? Well, we are still better than most places IRL.

Ikki · December 6, 2006, 12:55pm

first of all, opposing the war on iraq does not make you a liberal, in case that’s unclear.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I detect definite anti-idealism on this board, where idealism is loosely defined as strict conformity of general world view with personal actions.

Liberalism goes hand in hand with upwards social mobility and acceptance of different cultures and ideas. I assume that most people on this board would give lip service to this, but here a few examples of inconsistencies:

<ul>
<li> posts telling recent immigrants how to get into HYP, i.e. how to be more “American.” Yeah, you can defend this by saying that the posters are just trying to help out, but if you don’t see how these comments are utterly offensive and ignorant, then i can’t help you. </li>
<li> posts claiming that legacy dynasties out to be perpetuated. </li>
<li> posts defending the continuance of athletic recruitment: how many inner-city kids or recent immigrants have chances to play football or waterpolo? This is so balantly tailored to the upper class, but any comments suggesting that they ought to be abolished is met with denial and ad hominem attacks. </li>
</ul>

I’m sure you will all be happy to hear that I will no longer post or read this board, god forbid anyone else comes along to offend your bourgeoise sensibilites.

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 12:57pm

Don’t let the door hit you in the butt. :)

Alumother · December 6, 2006, 1:00pm

Oh gosh Ikki. In my recent post telling recent immigrants how to get into HYP I was just telling the truth as I see it. Not saying that this is good. Not saying HYP is the be all and end all. Not standing up waving a dang flag about god it’s great to be an American. Voting Democractic all my life BTW and coming from a family that has been robustly charitable. Just pointing out a pattern. If people can’t analyze the patterns of the world as they see them and then offer up a perspective, then what? Then what is discourse for after all?

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 1:07pm

Alu, I’ll answer for Ikki since you just missed him. Discourse is not to gain or foster knowledge. It is to pontificate grandly on things we know little about. The broader the brush the better. Too many individual thoughts kill the big picture. It is where emotion is the ultimate trump card. Play it often. It works best without scrutiny , only volume. And if challenged, play the victim.

Alu,
I liked your thread BTW. Knew you were gonna get splattered :eek: but I liked the effort and knew the intent. You are finestkind.

Drosselmeier · December 6, 2006, 1:13pm

My gripe with this ikki kid has little to do with his opinions. There are plenty of people here who completely reject my views and whose views I reject, and yet who I respect and whose views I read with great interest. None of these people have come here spewing all sorts of pedantic nonsense while proclaiming an entire category of students outright “dumb”, this, merely on the basis of his youthful experiences in the world. Once a guy comes out slinging mess like that, he loses me outright. And I don’t have any recruited athletes in school either. So this is not a personal matter. It is a very rudimentary issue of civility and of decorum amidst discussion and debate. Kids ought to learn this long before entering a place like Yale. But if they haven’t, then they should certainly learn it at Yale. If they go through Yale and still don’t learn it, then it seems obvious to me we talking about a rather hopeless case, and I, for one, won’t waste time on it.

Drosselmeier · December 6, 2006, 1:15pm

Yeah Alu. I give your thread the lip of approval too. Good stuff, and we could all learn from it.

JHS · December 6, 2006, 1:16pm

Ikki:

I think over time you’ll notice that parents in general are less idealistic by your definition than children. There’s nothing like changing a diaper while getting your face peed on, or trying to guide an adolescent, to loosen up the old conformity of general world view to personal action. And if that doesn’t do it, just living for a while will.

But on issues like AA, my experience is that the kids in this forum are much more adamant based on their personal interests than the parents are (because their personal interests are much more immediate).

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 1:17pm

Waste time on who? ;)

Drosselmeier · December 6, 2006, 1:25pm

I haven’t the foggiest idea. Hmmm. Oh well…

How 'bout them Bears?

Alumother · December 6, 2006, 1:25pm

Cur, D, thanks guys. I kinda figured about the splattering too, but that’s OK if the point is valuable anywhere. And I’m not really a selfless person prone to doing random acts of kindness or anything, but occasionally some things are worth a little knuckle-baring, right?

Frankly sometimes I feel that cc has done me its greatest service in helping me to learn to brave controversy in a way I have actually avoided most of my life. Speaking of which, for those who frequent the Cafe, I don’t suppose driver is reincarnated anywhere:)? He he, as my D and I say in our IMs…

Yes. How about dem Bears.

cptofthehouse · December 6, 2006, 1:38pm

Boy, since Ikky, couldn’t take the heat on the Parents Forum, I’d hate to see what would have happened in that Cafe. I just tip toe in there on threads like “what kind of Christmas gifts have you bought”. Haven’t dared venture in the hard core stuff.

Drosselmeier · December 6, 2006, 1:39pm

LOL. I nearly missed this. So true. We all probably have stuff running around our heads that makes oh so much sense — as long as it stays in our heads. But the minute we face the real world with it, all that stuff just goes poof.

xiggi · December 6, 2006, 1:46pm

Whenever lengthy debates about AA, and especially about Asian discrimination, roll though CC, I take a minute to read one essay written by a famous legacy applicant at Harvard:

I had lived in Beijing for a year and a half at the age of four, and had attended Chinese nursery school. I had also grown up speaking Mandarin at home. However, I was not at all prepared for what met me the year we spent in Beijing when my father headed an international program for a small group of American students.

At the time, though I spoke Mandarin without a foreign accent, my vocabulary did not extend far beyond a grade-school level, and I was next to illiterate. Well aware of that, my parents, fond followers of the “sink or swim” theory, dropped me off at the local Chinese school the first day of classes and promptly disappeared.

In thinking back, I can honestly say that during the first few months I was completely in the dark both socially and academically. There were so many intricacies of the classroom that no one had prepared me for. I was shocked by the power that the Chinese teacher held over the students: the volume with which she scolded them even after they had been reduced to muted sobbing and her unceasing rhetoric about their duties to the ancestral land. I was shocked at the same time, however, by her extreme involvement in and dedication to the lives of the students. The relationships shared among the students were foreign to me as well: I had to get used to girls holding hands with girls and boys likewise with boys. Arguments were settled in the open, often with loud screaming and eventually crying. Nothing was suppressed.

I made all sorts of blunders, such as wearing my hair down, crossing my legs when speaking to the principal, or forgetting to stand when answering a question in class. Actually, the students greeted everything I did with laughter, giggling, and stolen glances in my direction. It took me so long to understand and accept the nature of that laughter. Gym class (or rather, military marching drills class) provided me with the ultimate chance to be a blundering fool. Though the students assured me that the teacher was speaking Mandarin, I could hear only a garbled shout of “Fragrance,” followed by some vowelless consonants, while the others somehow heard “Face right and march.” Of course, my being run into was not beneficial to the appearance of the drill. My favorite class, calligraphy, was taught once a week by an ancient man who spoke with an accent more foreign to me than that of the gym teacher. The students were astounded one afternoon at my callous behavior in response to his complimenting of my characters (Guo Lei poked me in the back with her pencil): they did not realize that I had no idea what the dear man was saying. We had math and language class each at least two times a day. In math not only could I not read the problems or understand the spoken terms, my math ability was so far behind that of the Chinese that I did not even know how to begin the problems which they practiced by the tens in one-minute speed drills. I was not used to being the dunce, and many tears were privately shed in our bathroom after school those first few months.

Of course, some of my classmates shed tears publicly. I remember the first time the teacher caught a student cheating on an exam. The student was screamed at until he was reduced to tears, whereupon he proceeded to tattle on numerous other kids. The teacher was pleased and complimented the boy for fulfilling his duty of tattling “for the betterment of those students.” I was dumbfounded. Immediately, students began to stand, confess, and tell on others. A few tried to deny it, but they all knew that it was much easier to follow the “confess and tattle” routine. Within 15 minutes, nearly the entire class was standing before the teacher in tears.

I do not know how I came not only to function in, but to enjoy going to that classroom and spending time with the other kids, so much so that I did not want to return to American school. I guess it started with the teacher assigning me during the first months to blindly copy hundreds, thousands of characters to train my hand. Also, every night my mother translated my math problems to me and helped me to reach their level of math. Gradually, I began to fit in. I learned, after the second class, to put everything away and perform facial massage exercises when the theme of Love Story was blasted over the loudspeaker. I began to keep a weekly journal like the other kids, and to do the same homework they did. I learned to laugh with them at the funny occurrences in class, whether or not they involved me. In particular I remember a day in Communist Virtue class, when the teacher read the class their duties to their nation: “We must be loyal to our nation and try to associate as little as possible with foreigners. Of course, we must be gracious and polite, helping them when necessary, but beyond that, we ought to distance ourselves from them and help our own fellow comrades and” There was an embarrassed silence before she lowered her book below her eyes to hurriedly state before continuing, “Of course, we know that our classmate Pu Lan is exempt from this…” Several students turned their heads toward me and grinned. (My brother, in a similar class, had been asked to pass out little booklets entitled American Imperialism in China, although his teacher never mentioned them again.) I recognized from my own experience and from those of other foreigners that the propaganda and rhetoric of a government cannot be assumed to represent the common people.

By the middle of the second semester, I was completely integrated into the class. The length of the school day and the incredible work load became completely normal. I got As on the math tests, and wrote long essays with the others. I memorized the texts at the same rate and recited them in the same unnatural, passionate voice. The tone of my essays even matched that of the other students: a molded tone of awe at the beauty and bounty of China (and, of course, its Communist virtue). I had made numerous friends, three in particular who came to our dorm every day before our lunch break was over to talk and play card games. I participated in all of the class activities. I even understood the gym teacher. I had become as much at home as I had been in America. It hurt to leave.

Though we left China several years ago, my China experiences have never left me. Back in an American school again, I had to adjust to a “foreign” culture. Again, I had to deal with my reactions toward the mentalities and behavior of the students around me. Again, I was often shocked and frustrated. But I am glad I have two cultures. 

Jennifer Pusey

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 1:46pm

cptn, we don’t mention the name of the under-place. We just call it “The Place From Which No One Returns” or “The Place From Which No Light Can Escape”. I would get thee to a salt shaker and yon rabbit’s foot.

Northstarmom · December 6, 2006, 1:46pm

“Note the box in the article that show legacies have a 40% acceptence rate at Harvard - that seems like more to me than simply Harvard alums having smart kids.”

From my perspective – an alum who inteviews for Harvard, I do believe that alums have smart kids AND alums are smart enough to steer kids elsewhere who wouldn’t make the cut at Harvard. Both of my sons are spectacularly high scoring URMs with excellent ECs, but mediocre grades. Neither applied to Harvard becasue I knew darned well that they wouldn’t get in.

The legacies whom I’ve seen get in in my area were clearly qualified, and were the equivalent or better than the nonlegacies who got in. I’ve also seen legacies – including URMs – rejected who were far better than most Harvard applicants. This includes at least one URM legacy who had excellent grades, scores within H’s range, 2 excellent ECs, and has a mom who has been a very active alum. That student was rejected at Harvard, accepted to another top 10 university.

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 2:04pm

Of course, I’m talking about the free-for-all College Confidential Cafe not our Parents au lait equivalent. ;)

cptofthehouse · December 6, 2006, 2:05pm

Xiggi, I too, spent a year at a foreign school. Gained fluency, learned a lot. Did well in the end, but, I think in part, it was because I was cut slack as a foreigner, something we don’t do as much of when it comes to grades in highschool here, especially in the college prep classes, which I was taking in my experience. My brother says they give foreign West Pointers big breaks when they go to school here as exchange students after a couple of them were beheaded upon return to their country, for disgracing their people with poor grades. But here, international students get pretty much what they earn, I noticed, when I had an exchange student for a year.

My son’s best friend is Korean. Lives with his aunt here so he can attend school here. He told us why they made this decision. In his village (no Americans, way off the beaten track–son went home with him last year), the way it work is a “best boy” is picked for the class. He is in charge of the class and is also the “whipping boy”. Literally beaten for the transgressions of all in the class. If anything goes wrong, the teacher does not have to seek who is to blame, the best boy gets it. And you can guess who got the honors in this case. 
This young man came here 6 years ago without speaking much English, never mind the writing skills. He is at the very top of the class now and a leader in every way at the school.

curmudgeon · December 6, 2006, 2:08pm

Now that’s a tough curve.;)

That had to be in the really fine print. :eek:

xiggi · December 6, 2006, 2:37pm

Cptofthehouse, I like to read the essay as a small reference to the vastly different approaches to education among nations, not to mention tha vastly different expectations.

As far as adapting to different systems, I don’t think there is much doubt about the adaptation to the American education being far easier than the opposite. And for what it is worth, I also believe that the ingrained pursuit of excellence at all costs and sacrifices is at the core of the success of many first generation immigrants, especially when entering a system that is not built on similar patterns of highly individual academic competition.

Princeton answers to Jian Li claims

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