Re:"10 Lessons of an MIT Education" by Gian-Carlo Rota
by mynameishere on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @02:02PM
(#53447)
What matters most is the ambiance in which the course is taught; a gifted student will thrive in the company of other gifted students.
This sentiment comes up time and time again. The first occurance of it being explicitly stated (to my knowledge) was Thoreau, who said that the advantage of Harvard was simply that: The association of the generation's best. But I believe he stated this in a chapter entitled "Economy", and it ended with, "...and the association of other students costs nothing." No one else points out that important point, and it amounts to this: Charging smart people just for gathering them together is a ripoff.
The same is true with housing. Hey, I'd love to buy one of those foreclosures in detroit for 8 thousand dollars, but the problem is, no other smart people are that smart [1], and so you have to live with crackheads.
[1] Unless they do later, and I become a successful land speculator. That's not the goal, however.
This sentiment comes up time and time again. The first occurance of it being explicitly stated (to my knowledge) was Thoreau, who said that the advantage of Harvard was simply that: The association of the generation's best. But I believe he stated this in a chapter entitled "Economy", and it ended with, "...and the association of other students costs nothing." No one else points out that important point, and it amounts to this: Charging smart people just for gathering them together is a ripoff.
The same is true with housing. Hey, I'd love to buy one of those foreclosures in detroit for 8 thousand dollars, but the problem is, no other smart people are that smart [1], and so you have to live with crackheads.
[1] Unless they do later, and I become a successful land speculator. That's not the goal, however.