That Harvard and all the other Ivies have plenty of idiots in their student bodies. You don't have to be smart to get into any of them. The legacies are of course a huge source of the stupid in all of them, but the real stupid--that comes from the people who care more about getting a Yale degree for the sake of that degree, and not for the education offered at any of them--which is first rate, if if if if if if you are there to learn.
These right wing thugs aren't those people. A teacher here in the US actually told me that my son wasn't like the other kids in the gifted and talented program because he actually *was* gifted and talented; the rest of the kids were pleasers--the ones who did the busy work (90% of American schoolwork is idiotic busy work) at a competent level and sucked up to the teachers. Can you imagine a teacher admitting that's who got into the program--not the kids with actual potential or talent, but the most diligent of brown-nosers?
And that's not all they had in common. I saw firsthand who got in and why because I was there. They were overwhelmingly white--in a region where the majority was not. They were overwhelmingly middle-class, or higher, in a region where poverty was the norm. Single parents were rare--in a region where single parents were common. It didn't take the norm-conforming parents long to make those outside of those norms pariahs--because we were not "one of them." I was one of those pariahs. I was a working-class single parent, and that made me "beneath" them. And they let both my child and me know it, in oh-so-many ways.
So guess who gets into Harvard and Yale? Those very same kids with those very same parents. The parents have the connections and moolah to push for it. The kids manage to do the work at a consistent, competent level, they especially tick off the right "our kind" boxes, but they're not really smart. But the admissions system is built to accept exactly those kids. That's why the process is exactly the same for choosing who gets into a GT program as it is for who gets into an Ivy school.
The point is: being the "right kind" while being diligent is not the same thing as smart. Not understanding that difference is why the American education system cranks out so much stupid, despite having so much potential for better. The rewards aren't to the kids who have the real smarts--it's to who conforms, who does the busy work, and never forget the racism and classism built into the system in thousands of little ways that advantages mediocre white kids of means while squashing everyone else without mercy.
Until Americans face what the real problems are with their schools, don't be so surprised that so many prestigious educational institutes are full of low-IQ wankers like DeSantis, that nitwit who was press secretary for the Dotard, all of TFGs kids, that walking Ken doll husband of his incest chew toy, and all the others. And don't be surprised that many of them manage to eke out degrees from them, or even get into their graduate schools, either.
Because they don't have to learn anything while they're there--they only have to do enough work to get good enough grades to move onto the next part of their ambition-over-intellect plans. They don't have to know diddley squat to do that. Not if they're the "right kind."
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