Somehow it seems that I have committed to staying in Boston for the cold miserable months of February through May 2006 to teach 6.171 (“Software Engineering for Internet Applications”). After reading this article on John F. Kerry’s grades at Yale, I’ve decided to give all of my students Ds. Apparently that is the path to leadership in America. The A-students end up going to graduate school and making $48,000/year as humanities professors (until they get denied tenure, at which time they take an entry-level job as a high school teacher, age 42).
10 thoughts on “Teaching 6.171 in the spring semester; all the students will get Ds”
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For the “path to leadership” route it helps to have wealthy, well-connected parents, attendance at a prestigious private boarding school, and membership is a selective secret society. The D is only a consequence of the above applied to attendance at a prestigious university. The anointed realize that only passing is require to assure their future position. I’m pretty sure very few of them are bothering to attend MIT. It is too much work.
But giving your students Ds to keep them from going to graduate school is a good plan. Maybe they’ll leave school and become entrepreneurs.
I recall reading that both Bush and Kerry have IQ’s in the 120s (no, I don’t have a reference). That’s smart by normal standards, but it’s not so smart that you could find yourself distracted by, like, thinking, and doing something stupid like going to grad school.
Both Bush and Kerry went to Grad School, “rps.” And Phil, how many Humanities people do you teach at MIT? I love how academic snobs like to pretend all smart people make no money…what about doctors and lawyers? white men basicaly need 4.0s to get into med school now.
eh, JD and MBA degrees are grad programs, but I wouldn’t really call them “grad school.” They have more in common with undergraduate degrees. There’s an easy test to tell if you’re a grad student: are you a customer of the university, or a poorly paid employee? If it’s the latter, you’re a grad student.
I participated in a discussion on the topic of Bush’s C average at Yale with some friends, at the time when that topic was prevalent in the media. One friend went to Yale at roughly the same time as Bush and Kerry. He pointed out that those were the days before the grade inflation trend hit Yale. Consequently, someone earning a C average should not be thought of as someone with low intelligence, but as someone in the middle of the bell curve; most students got C’s. So, you can either argue that our leaders should not be coming from the middle of the bell curve, or that coming from the middle of the pack–at Yale–is still not bad.
Perhaps these days we don’t have many true leaders but political players instead. For a true leader, intelligence is important, but for a player it almost works against you. I suppose for Bush and Kerry they did fine for the position as it is these days, it’s just that I wish that we had instead a different situation where intelligent, strong, well thought out leadership was more valued than spin, propaganda, and issue abuse.
Folks: Grad school is for losers with berets, cigarettes, and big ideas. PROFESSIONAL school is where George W. went for his PROFESSIONAL degree (MBA). The easy way to tell the diff between GRADUATE And PROFESSIONAL school is whether the student can say, upon entering, the date upon which he or she will graduate. If the answer is “exactly two years from now” or “exactly four years from now” it is PROFESSIONAL school (law, medicine, business). If the answer is “whenever my advisor(s) think that I am ready to enter the Academy” it is GRADUATE school.
So I guess you, Phil, were never a grad student? It’s hard to take seriously the notion that someone studying techical problems is really someone with “big ideas.” No offense, but be honest, a PhD in computer science is not the same as a far-reaching dissertation in the humanities. You’re more of a technician. And I don’t think your graduate studies have kept you worrying about tenure!
Michael: People who go to grad school have ideas that are too big for their abilities. That doesn’t mean that the ideas would be regarded as big by the average person or by a person with very strong abilities. And of course you’re right that my PhD in electrical engineering and computer science is pathetic by any standard. Certainly it is pathetic compared to a serious study of gendered embodiment in Gide’s texts, as you point out with your comparison to the humanities. As far as wages go the union plumber who is a student at my helicopter school earns more than the average PhD in EECS. Professional school is a better choice for almost anyone.
Reminds me of the scene from Good Will Hunting, when Will, the boy genius, is interviewing for an $80k job at the National security Agency:
“Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll give it a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. So I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never had a problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Send in the marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number was called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some guy from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes home to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile my buddy from Southie realizes the only reason he was over there was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the skirmish to scare up oil prices so they could turn a quick buck. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And naturally they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the job interviews, which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’ ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what do I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. Why not just shoot my buddy, take his job and give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.”