Reply to New York Top Schools - Top marks largely go to Asians. Bill de Blasio wants to change the exams

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think it's a mistake for these schools to take kids who need to spend all their time studying to get high enough scores on the test.  These schools should be filled with kids who can do well without spending all their out of school time studying, so they can be participating in and learning from non-academic activities such as arts, music, and sports. High school is a time to explore; kids are narrowing their opportunities if they only have time for schoolwork.
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I disagree.  Well-rounded individuals who get secondarily high academic scores deserve to go to college, but do not deserve to displace the highest achievers.  Those who have the drive and will to succeed at any cost, including spending all of their time studying are the types that make scientific breakthroughs, create inventions, and drive intellectual progress forward.  I work in a science and engineering based industry and it's the hard workers that are the most needed, not the bright kids who want to do a lot of everything, do everything well, but not truly excel at anything.  Great support staff, but not the true bright stars.  The best institutions need to have both the brightest and the hardest working.

It's this attitude that well-rounded individual should take the places of the truly academically gifted and diligent that has deteriorated the American dominance in science, engineering and technology.  Once we were the unchallenged leader in those areas and now we are just one of the top-10 nations in those areas.  We have diluted our intellectual dominance with jacks/jills-of-all-trades.
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Steve Jobs was extremely well rounded and extremely successful. He would never have thought of adding fonts to the Mac if it weren't for a calligraphy class that he took after dropping out of college. You are making a sweeping generalization, PP.

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/what-a-calligrapher-priest-taught-steve-jobs[/quote]

But it was the other Steve who really invented Apple computer. Steve Jobs is a visionary but scientist he is not. [/quote]

If it weren't for Jobs, Wozniak would've just been a computer club geek with some cool ideas. Jobs had the sense to partner up with Wozniak, who was a shy engineer content at staying at HP. Someone asked him if he could improve Atari's video game and he had the sense to recruit Wozniak.  Many visionaries partner up with technical people to make their ideas become a reality. Look at Alexander Graham Bell (another college dropout) and Thomas Watson, for example. I realize that Wozniak was more than a technician and was very much an inventor, but he didn't have the bold vision to do much with his ideas. He needed Jobs to draw it out of him.[/quote]

I am not going to argue that Steve Jobs was not needed. We need a lot more people like him as well. But he couldn't have done what he did without the likes of Wozniak. And the likes of Wozniak are in danger of being shut of from the gifted programming and elite schools. And this is in technology that has a natural market, presumably some nerds can find employment without elite higher education. Lots of basic science has no immediate market value, why can we save a few magnet programs and elite colleges for these brilliant yet not so well rounded individuals?

Thankfully there is always graduate school. I don't think extracurricular counts much there yet. 
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