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Speaking of the British

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Re: Speaking of the British

#71

Post by flipbrad »

retree wrote: post #67
pg wrote: post #10

This phenomenon isn't limited to England. The one thing all Harvard undergrads learn (probably as much from one another as from the professors) is how to defend themselves in conversation. Some are smart, and some aren't, but by the time they graduate they all know how to sound smart.

I think the effect is more significant at Oxbridge though. At Oxbridge you have "supervisions" or "tutorials" as an undergrad. These consist of a 1-on-1 lesson with a fellow or grad student where you are questioned mercilessly on every section of your essay or problem set for an hour. They ask you about every single sentence or step in your solutions. You have to prepare carefully, and even then you have to learn to…

The author is right to skewer the particular targets of his essay in this way (the so-called Bullingdon set), but please don't take this as a skewer of the Oxbridge system itself, or you risk dramatically underestimating what it demands and delivers. I don't think that's what the author set out to do, and I think he perhaps does in fact colour the bullingdon set's experience of Oxford. I think he's particularly correct to attack how alien the British ruling elite is to scientific principles - uncertainty, testing, evidence, statistics, falsifiability. How fresh it would be to see politicians espouse such principles. This rejection is facilitated by their training in Classics, History or English Literature, and the ego boost one receives from Oxford when one is this particular type of person; typically, they'll be active in the Oxford Union, or be seen down at the Bridge club on a thursday night.

However, don't extrapolate this to a 'normal' undergrad's experience at Oxford.

I've never worked as hard in my life as for my MBiochem finals at Oxford - my law conversion is widely depicted as being intense, but didn't compare.

If the author of that article truly believes oxford tutorials are about defence, he's getting shortchanged, or he's looking to them for exactly the same thing our ruling elite gets from them; either way, he's shortchanging his readers in giving voice to such a view. The true aim of a tutorial is not to spend an hour defending what you wrote two nights ago, it's about letting that stuff fall into the backdrop to a cutting edge discussion with a leading (often foreign) academic; not just getting a better picture of what the cutting edge is, but where it's likely to develop to and what could be investigated over the next few years so we can get there. In UK undergraduate education, my understanding is that this focus on developing questions and probing soft spots in knowledge, rather than just assembling and defending answers, is pretty radical. And it certainly seems to run contrary to a fair amount of the article's claims.

Admittedly most of a tutorial's exchange of ideas flows to the student, but I rarely met a tutor who won't admit to having got something out of tutorials they have given, too.

Re: Speaking of the British

#72

Post by kikibobo69 »

ErrantX wrote: post #30

This is hilarious :) I honestly thought it was a joke... but now I am uncertain.. he seems to genuinely think that Britain is like this :S The best bit is the wonderful caricature of Oxbridge interviews, as if the modern world is left behind once you step foot in those hallowed halls :D One guy at our school that went to Oxford worked like absolute hell to get his grades, pass his entrance exam and pass the exhaustin…

I'm sure I will regret this, but:

One guy at our school that went to Oxford -> One guy at our school WHO went to Oxford

All of the friends I have that went -> All of the friends I have WHO went

Re: Speaking of the British

#73

Post by arethuza »

wyclif wrote: post #28
corin_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that if you put on an upper class accent (think Hugh Laurie) that would be enough to make the author of this article assume that you have the skill.

You mean RP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

RP is usually associated with the upper middle class, not the upper class:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_structure_of_the_United_...

Re: Speaking of the British

#74

Post by bane »

nradov wrote: post #56
bane wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A trait I've noticed when working with or arguing with the products of elite universities is the incessant ability to respond to most challenges in the form of a blank stare. Harvard grads in particular, but I've noticed it in some military officers as well. They won't get riled up, they won't back down, they won't...well...do anything in particular. While being incredibly infuriating, it also makes them nearly impos…

I have consistently found the dynamic, emotive people to be disastrous in crisis situations. They tend to act rashly without thinking through the consequences and often make things worse. When faced with a technical problem I prefer dispassionate experts who can apply a discipled, scientific approach and never get flustered.

I think I'm phrasing it wrong. I'm definitely not saying that people prone to histrionics are good performers, just people who show that they are concerned about the situation, have some leather in it, and want to fix it above all else seem to be the people that actually get it done the best.

A rational approach to actually solving the problem is definitely best, I agree.

A blank stare, followed by business as usual, is a non-starter in my opinion.

Re: Speaking of the British

#77

Post by petesmithy »

jdminhbg wrote: post #55
ErrantX wrote: post #30

This is hilarious :) I honestly thought it was a joke... but now I am uncertain.. he seems to genuinely think that Britain is like this :S The best bit is the wonderful caricature of Oxbridge interviews, as if the modern world is left behind once you step foot in those hallowed halls :D One guy at our school that went to Oxford worked like absolute hell to get his grades, pass his entrance exam and pass the exhaustin…

The author, Simon Kuper, is British and studied at Oxford ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kuper ), so while he may be wrong, it's not because he's unfamiliar with the country or the eduction system.

He has a British passport. He was born in Uganda of South African parents, spent his childhood in the Netherlands, "also lived in Stanford, California, Berlin and London", and studied at Oxford and Harvard. He currently lives in France. He should stay there :)

Re: Speaking of the British

#78

Post by tomelders »

MrScruff wrote: post #18
tomelders wrote: post #14

I'm british, but I have to say; this article is utter arse gravy of the highest order.

I'm also English. Calling something 'utter arse gravy of the highest order' isn't a particularly informative form of criticism.

I was hoping you would spot the irony.

Re: Speaking of the British

#79

Post by regomodo »

swombat wrote: post #52
regomodo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small case-study I know but I work with somebody who just came out of Cambridge and did a CS-like degree. He cannot program for shit and talks like he does but show him a bit of C(++), PHP, javascript (even bash or Python) and his eyes just glaze over. I was teamed with him but he was forever unable to get anything done. In the end I was left with it all and made much better progress and he was left to book to overhe…

That's not a case study, just an anecdote. In my experience, there were almost no people in Oxford that I wouldn't consider "very smart". Probably the only place in the world where that's been true. That said, I don't know how Cambridge's "CS-like" degree is/was, but Oxford's was very bad at actually teaching programming. Then again, are you really sure he went to Cambridge? Smart people have no problem with learning…

Yeah, anecdote is the correct term. He definitely went to Cambridge which is why we questioned his choice of employer (the hirers decision). It doesn't matter what language he's given a task in others are always curious as to why he's taking so long or when it's ever going to be done. It's not like he's making a cathedral of every task as ctrl+c & ctr+v are his key tools along with a good smattering of ugly hacks(i get the feeling he has no grasp of OOP or VCS).

He's comfortable in Access though.

Re: Speaking of the British

#80

Post by fanf2 »

raffaelc wrote: post #5
srgseg wrote: post #4

"Anyway, running a country on eloquence alone hasn’t worked out disastrously – or at least not yet" Good grades are certainly not enough, but they are almost always required. Oxbridge only invites the best students to interview, and even the top 5 most academically competitive schools in the UK struggle to send more than a third of their students to Oxford or Cambridge in a good year.

"Anyway, running a country on eloquence alone hasn’t worked out disastrously – or at least not yet" The largest empire the world has ever seen whittled down to its homeland, a naval base in the med, and some godforsaken islands in the south atlantic. I'd call that pretty disastrous. It'll only get worse. In an increasingly technical world, the brits have the wrong culture of Snow's two cutures running the show.

America deliberately bankrupted the UK after the second world war in order to ensure it had the balance of power in the west.
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