Thread: Hey, kid, it's performance that counts

Hey, kid, it's performance that counts

Last Updated: 4:53 AM, August 14, 2010

Posted: 12:23 AM, August 14, 2010
Comments: 4
| More Print [Follow Us on Twitter]
headshotThomas Sowell

A Graduating senior at Hunter Col lege HS gave a speech recently that brought a standing ovation from his teachers and got his picture in The New York Times. I hope it doesn't go to his head, because what he said was so illogical that it was an indictment of the mush that is being taught at even our elite educational institutions.

Young Justin Hudson, described as "black and Hispanic," opened by saying how much he appreciated reaching his graduation day at this very select public high school. Then he said, "I don't deserve any of this. And neither do you." The reason? He and his classmates were there because of "luck and circumstances."

Since Hunter selects its applicants from the whole city on the basis of their test scores, "luck" seems a strange way to characterize why some students are admitted and many others aren't. If you can't tell the difference between luck and performance, what has your education given you, except the rhetoric to conceal your confusion from others and perhaps from yourself?

Young Mr. Hudson's concern, apparently, is about the "demographics" of the school -- 41 percent white and 47 percent Asian, with blacks, Hispanics and others obviously far behind. "I refuse to accept" that "the distribution of intelligence in this city" varies by neighborhood, he said.

Native intelligence may not vary by neighborhood, but performance -- in schools, on the job or elsewhere -- involves far more than native intelligence.

The reason a surgeon can operate on your heart, while someone of equal intelligence who is not a surgeon can't, is because of what different people actually did with their intelligence. That has always varied, not only from individual to individual but from group to group -- in countries around the world and across history.

One big fallacy of our time is the notion that, if all groups aren't proportionally represented in institutions, professions or income levels, that shows that something is wrong with society. The possibility that people make choices and that those choices have consequences for themselves and for others is ignored.

If "luck" is involved, it is the luck to be born into families and communities whose values and choices turn out to be productive for themselves and for others who benefit from the skills they acquire.

Observers who blame tests or other criteria for the imbalances that are the rule -- not the exception -- around the world are blaming whatever conveys differences for creating those differences. They blame the messenger who brings bad news.

If prices are higher in high-crime neighborhoods, that is often blamed on those who charge those prices -- rather than on those who create the higher costs of higher rates of shoplifting, robbery, vandalism and riots, which are passed on to those who shop in those neighborhoods.

The prices convey a reality that the prices didn't create. If these prices represent simply "greed" for higher profits, then why do most profit-seeking businesses avoid high-crime neighborhoods like the plague?

It is painful that people with lower incomes often have to pay higher prices, even though most people aren't criminals, even in a high-crime neighborhood. But misconstruing the reasons is not going to help anybody, except race hustlers and politicians.

One of many disservices our schools and colleges do to young people is giving them the puffed-up notion that they're in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they've barely begun to experience. A standing ovation for childish remarks may produce "self-esteem" but promoting presumptuousness is unlikely to benefit either this student or society.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/op ... z0we4axO3Y

Test scores alone may not be the best way to determine admissions depending on what your overall admissions goals are. However, there is nothing lucky or undeserving about doing well on a test and being selected for admissions to a school based on that test result.

Besides, Elena Kagan, recent nominee to the US Supreme Court is a graduate of Hunter College High School. I wasn't impressed with her. She can't even cite the US Constitution as it was written, so if she's an example of the education delivered by this school, I'm not sure graduates of Hunter College High School are as lucky as they are puffed up about themselves which might be why others might not even apply to the school to begin with.