Students' Best Efforts Should Be Encouraged, Not Called 'Stupid'

To the editors:

Alejandro Jenkins has missed the point. In bashing the American education system (Column, Dec. 1) he forgets the point of the American dream.

I attended both high school and university in the United States and abroad. I can attest to the grade inflation here; the exact same A- paper at Harvard received a 69 percent at a university overseas. I worked extremely hard on the paper, which is why I was rewarded with an A-. The professor at the institution abroad told me my paper was unoriginal and boring.

In other words, he gave me Jenkins' "you-are-stupid." My professor, like Jenkins, missed the point--that the paper represented my best effort.

If I had continued to put that much effort into subsequent papers, I would have eventually reached his lofty ideal (one would hope). But because of my grade, I withdrew from his class. Yes, he de-motivated me, and I succumbed to my grade-inflicted stupidity. You see, intelligence is really a relative, intangible phenomenon.

Intelligence emerges through opportunity, and one cannot be deemed intelligent until one has the opportunity to demonstrate it. Jenkins writes "there is really no way to keep bad students from doing badly without lowering the standards and keeping the good students from developing their full potential."

This sounds very similiar to the South African government's justification for keeping black students out of white apartheid institutions. Bill Gates was a bad student--he never even finished school. In fact even Einstein, one of the smartest men, was a bad student at one time during his life. But does this make them stupid ?

Thank God the American dream protects us from the status of incompetency before we have had the opportunity to be adequately evaluated (take note, professor who gave me that 69 percent). Labelling someone as fundamentally unfit suggests an inherent flaw--a permanent and incorrectable state rather than a temporary condition.

Few normal humans, if any, are in fact fundamentally unfit. Rather, most of us saunter between states of competency and the incorrect degree of qualification. But most importantly, we are all qualified to some degree (even if it be the bare minimum) and have the ability and potential to further that qualification.

Jenkins, there will always be people far smarter and more productive, but not necessarily more deserving than you. While this does make you less qualified, it does not necessarily render you stupid nor your efforts completely futile.

Dominique Kalil '00

Dec. 3, 1999

Ducey Wrong to Cast Burnout as a Failure to Cope

To the editors:

In "Fighting the Burnout Blues" (Feature, Dec. 3), Dr. Charles Ducey of the Bureau of Study Counsel contends that "burnout...means surrendering in the face of defeat." Moreover, it is apparently reflective of a "long-term inability to adapt to rising challenges."

I would like to point out that Harvard, of all places, is not attended by people who give up when faced with a challenge--nor does the end of the semester strike me as a period when challenges significantly grow in amount and magnitude.

Although I applaud Dr. Ducey's and the Bureau's care for our mental health, they should not be too quick to jump at the psychological cause of students' decreased motivation and ignore the physical underpinnings of our functioning.

For one thing, we only have one body with which to work. This body has been subjected to systematic sleep deprivation, high levels of stress and, in the latest weeks, dramatic fluctuations in temperature and pressure. The increased desire for sleep may be reflective of nothing more than normal exhaustion.

Harvard always has--and always will--attract, as well as select, overachievers and people who push themselves very--certainly too--hard.

This will be the case as long as we live in a society that places hard work among its highest values. Many students spend more than 20 hours each week on part-time jobs and extracurricular activities before sitting down to do their homework.

Everyone who took Science B-29, "Human Behavioral Biology" knows that our hunter-gathering ancestors, to whose environment we are adapted, work three to four hours per day on average, while relaxing and playing for the rest of the time.

So please, do not tell me that my exhaustion these days is reflective of my insufficient psychological coping mechanisms.

Andrea F. Volfova '00

Dec. 3, 1999