During yesterday's Twitter rage-a-thon against Indian immigrants, Vivek Ramaswamy—the son of ultra-high achieving Indian immigrants—decided to hold forth on the problems of American culture:
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
....This can be our Sputnik moment...but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
The laughable implication here is that America in, say, the '50s was some kind of nerd utopia where valedictorians were the cool kids and jocks were looked down on. It wasn't. But I suppose it's understandable that Vivek thinks this. Check out his family:
Vivek’s father, V G Ramaswamy, did his schooling in Vadakkencherry. He went on to complete his pre-degree from Government Victoria College, Palakkad and graduated from REC Calicut — with first rank — before proceeding to the US, where he secured his MS and doctoral degrees. Ramaswamy also holds a degree in patent law and his wife Geetha is a [geriatric] psychiatrist.
This is about like an American kid whose parents are a Yale PhD and a Harvard Medical School grad. That family also cares more about their kids being valedictorians than captains of the basketball team.
This is top 1% culture, and it isn't very different in India vs. America. Mass culture isn't all that different either:
India is not some kind of genius monolith with a universal culture of noses in books. Ordinary kids there pay more attention to Bollywood and cricket than they do to quadratic equations. It only looks different if you compare their top 1% to our entire country.
In the 1950's I was the school nerd and football hero as well as valedictorian.
The 1950's were the good old days for me. Those were the days when I got many hands up the ladder and not the kick down. They were also when I met my late wife. Good Old Days!!!
Ohhh, you're one of "those" people, you know, astronauts.
Nerdiness has actually been in the ascendancy in recent years. Nerds were not school or campus heroes or featured in TV shows in the 50's.
What has also gained is the ideas of how large the rewards should be for success in business or on the corporate ladder. It seems that the salary and benefits that executives require in order to work hard, or at all, have increased greatly. It looks like these are increasingly the good days for those at the top of the ladder.
The problem is certainly not that there are insufficient rewards for success in business or finance.
There is a sort of Nerd Chic vibe in pop culture, but I'm not convinced that reflects an actual respect for intellectual achievement. Certainly in our right-of-center political culture there is a pathological disdain for expertise and a palpable hostility to practitioners of science and math (you know, the "elites"). Witness the American reaction to medical expertise during and since the pandemic. Observe the calls for prosecuting Dr. Tony Fauci, one of the greatest nerd heroes of the 20th century.
It looks like Ramaswamy is vying for the Hillary Clinton Prize for Likeability.
As a scientist nerd, I can assure you that it is not nerds climbing the corporate ladder. The few former nerds that do only do so by ceasing to nerd, and switching to greasy pole climbing.
America is also getting the best-educated Indians to move here, which works out for us, but isn't representative in the least.
The good old days when the Ivy collleges were football powers? The good old days when my minister grandfather, a Union Theological graduate, could telegraph on the occasion of his first male grandchild__"make a football player of him"? The good old days when the pre sident of the United States hd to intervene moderate the excesses of football play? https://www.history.com/news/how-teddy-roosevelt-saved-football
Your claim about India is incorrect.
India has an exam culture similar to China. There is a huge fuss about exams to get into IIT universities and things of movies about kids trying to get into them or attending them.
The US of the 1950s still idolized engineers, professors, etc. The science fiction of the time was as much about the science as the aliens, unlike the relationship and sociology heavy and scientifically absurd stories of today. We had movies like Flubber and Bedtime for Bonzo. On today's movies the scientists are incompetent or villains - see Terminator and Aliens.
...You say that but their scores are lower. Are you saying they're dumber?
Dude, the point is the exam culture is really only a few families (compared to the total population) and it doesn't result in better students.
India has huge numbers of desperately poor people, many of whose children cannot go to school because they must work.
That brings down scores but does not change the fact that Indians idolized engineers, teachers, etc.
Please provide your evidence that exam culture does not produce better students. As far as I can see, it produces incredible numbers of good students.
Actually, the 50s were far from US education's halcyon days. That was brought home by Sputnik, which triggered a wholesale revision of primary and secondary curricula in US public schools. I know this because I was *in* school in the '60s. If the US of the 1950s was the golden years of STEM education, why did it need to change with the news of Soviet space achievements?
Oh, wait, I see. You think that entertainment with vaguely scientific themes is what made American STEM education great in the 1950s.
Smarter trolls, please.
US has never been perfect but it is undeniable that attitudes about scientists and engineers back then were far more positive and idolizing than today. That was Ramaswamy's point and he is correct.
Well, I suppose one piece of evidence that eduation and intelligence is less valued now than in some golden era of the past is that we just elected an ignorant intolerant know nothing as President. But seriously, your view of the 50's sounds suspiciously like Bill James's comment about most baeball fans conviction that the golden era of baseball was when they were 12. Did you turn 12 in 1950 ? Hard to take seriously anyone who cites Flubber as evidence.
I want born until the late 1960s.
Why aren't Flubber and similar movies good evidence for cultural attitudes toward scientists?
"attitudes about scientists and engineers back then were far more positive and idolizing than today."
Attitudes towards Roman Catholic clergy were far more positive and idolizing than today, as well. Nothing to admire there. Competency and literacy, not culture and belief, are the real measures of American investment in technological progress, which was Ramaswamy's actual point.
Smarter trolls, please.
I'm not sure what Roman Catholic clergy have to do with this discussion.
Ramaswamy's point was about social status of scientists and valedictorians vs football jocks. Read what he wrote.
I read what he wrote. He's wrong and so are you.
I was born in the '50s, Ramaswamy wasn't. You weren't.
As for the obvious point about Catholic clergy, I'll type slowly this time so maybe you'll understand. You posted: "attitudes about scientists and engineers back then were far more positive and idolizing than today." My point is that positive and idolizing attitudes don't say anything about societal reverence for science and engineers, since clergy--who promote superstition--were also revered.
Smarter trolls, please!
You rightwing idiots are the reason smart people in STEM careers are demonized by a lot of people in the US. You've spent decades claiming people like us in those fields are elitists who don't really know anything, and that the gut feelings of anyone are just as good to solve problem no matter how complex. Just look at your current lord and savior dumbass J Chump, who has forever appointed people not based on their qualifications or expertise in a particular field, but by how good they are at licking his ass, and defending him publicly.
"On today's movies the scientists are incompetent or villains - see Terminator and Aliens"
Hey numnuts, I know that basic facts give you allergy, but Terminator and Aliens came out in the 80s, only an idiot would call them "today's movies".
Terminator was made 40 years ago.
Alien? 45 years ago.
As for Flubber, what about The Nutty Professor?
Recent popular movies:
Apollo 13
The Martian
Interstellar
The Imitation Game
A Beautiful Mind
Arrival
Hidden Figures
The Theory of Everything
Temple Grandin
Tesla
And of course, Oppenheimer
Plus: The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon?
Vivek's an elitist in the worst kind of way, talking down to people. He's being dismissive of the role of every human, regardless of their status and education. It wouldn't be surprising if his family were at the top part of the Caste, don't you think?
But the intellectually lazy part of his screed, criticizing American culture, directly contradicts the nativist MAGA that demands immigrants reject their own cultures and integrate into American culture. (And I can't help but think that he's now put himself, and all people with south Asian heritage, into the crosshairs of the nativist MAGA.)
After all, the irony of such a policy (of a culture change) is that highly-educated people like Vivek (or specifically his parents) would then not be needed according to his own terms of the policy he's pushing. He and his family would have never been allowed in.
Vivek's a fool.
If he wasn't foolish, would he be a Republican?
I was having a similar thought: if he's so passionate about the value of math, science, and engineering, why is he tying himself to the most ignorant, insecure, faux-macho, anti-science president we've ever had the misfortune to endure.
"the most ignorant, insecure, faux-macho, anti-science president"
Wha . . . ? Haven't you heard our Once And Future President wax gloriously about how he had an uncle who something something MIT, and thus (possibly by the powers to lateral Lamarkianism) Trump also has a big, goodly brain?
If Donald Jay wasn't so hepped up on STEM, it would have been impossible for him to recommend courses of study to the team of folks working on covid, like when he made the utterly science-based leap from how bleach and UV light kills microorganisms to how maybe bleach and/or high-powered lamps could be used in the lungs?
The "value of math, science, and engineering" is so much lower than the value of paying lower taxes and corruptly winning government contracts.
This. Republicans in general and Donald Trump/FOX News in particular have done more to devalue the role of science in our society than any prom queens ever could.
Climate change is a hoax. Vaccines cause autism. Evolution never happened. The list could go on.
Cognitive dissonance: The same party believes on the one hand, "science is bad, don't trust experts” (and they follow through on that by undermining public education, attacking universities, and will soon try to kill off our jewels of federal laboratories in multiple fields), and on the other "Americans are dumb, we need to import more smart people."
The conservative ideal has always been the melting pot.
The melting pot produces an alloy that takes the best of all. I very much hope that Chinese and Indian attitudes about education and hard work influence the entire US population as they integrate into our society.
LOL! The conservative ideal in America has always been White supremacy and xenophobia. Conservatives opposed Reconstruction and supported the KKK. Conservatives attacked Chinese, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants. Conservatives want to spend billions of American taxpayer money on a useless wall on the Mexican border. You obviously know *nothing* about American history and politics.
Smarter trolls, please!
What does Kevin have against quadratic equations?
(Asking for a friend who happens to be of Indian origin, from an upper middle class highly educated family).
Does that friend happen to be a swami, perchance?
Coincidentally, yes.
All the cool kids know how to solve quartics.
The coolest kids square circles, trisect angles, and solve quintics.
“This can be our Sputnik moment...but only if our culture fully wakes up.”
We need to be more fully woke .
You heard it from Vivek himself. /s
LOL
further: what a stupidly out of touch metaphor (which he is also using incorrectly). "Sputnik moment," indeed! Nothing highlights the dangers of prom queens and football stars like the terrifying menace of satelite from nearly 70 years ago (launched by a country that ceased to exist over 30 years ago).
"Careful! If we don't punch down on the poors, we might fall behind the non-existent country that we never actually fell behind last century!"
Actually on STEM we have fallen behind China. Right now we are coasting on momentum but China has a greater share of most of the technologies of the future than we do.
Try to find US manufacturing capacity that compares to China for wind turbines, grid scale batteries, solar panels, large cargo vessels, milled or cast steel, etc.
US no longer even has the engineers with the skill to set up an iPhone manufacturing process.
wind turbines, grid scale batteries, solar panels?
That’s Marxist crap. In Trumplandia, we drill, baby, drill! We build walls and burn oily rocks. If 14th Century technology isn’t good enough for you, then go ahead and move to Chiner.
the obvious question is then, why did he support the jock over the valedictorian in the last election. trump famously doesn't read and campaigns on AI generated images of him being manly and strong. If we're in the real life version of the movie back to the future, we're in the Biff timeline, when the jocks rule the world. in no small part due to Vivek
↑↑↑+1↑↑↑
Because he is an opportunist?
two things i'd never call trump. one is jock.
Agreed. Trump wishes he was a jock, and, because he is a delusional moron, probably thinks that he is some sort of glorious athlete, rather than the bald fatass in orange clownpaint he actually is.
Don't forget, India is 3x larger than the US (roughly).
"The Good Old Days" also required the destruction of any competing industrial power via a world war and a top US income tax rate of 98%.
Agree with the sentiment, but let’s keep our facts straight. Excluding the single wartime year 1944, the top marginal rate was 91%, during the 1950s. (https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-income-tax-rates)
So Kevin, regarding your earlier “send more!” on visas as they represent the top 0.1%, presumably that is how we got Vivek Ramaswamy, albeit transitively. Are you certain the socio-political leanings of the top 0.1% of the country which has Modi at the helm match what you want more of?
Kevin's not wrong, but he's missing the point that matters. He's also dragged almost every comment down to Ramaswamy's seemingly apolitical framing of the issue with him.
It's not that America is especially down on the intellect and education. It's the Republican party (him included) that runs against science, especially medical science, and sees academia as an oppressive ruler, not a marginally influential, poorly paid sector. Oh, and poorly funded, along with every level of education.
The thing is, none of that matters. Nerd, prom queen, outcast, jock...
What matters is ambition. Sure, being born into a economically stable family helps, but it doesn't make up for ambition. Ambition is the drive to obtain more and push yourself to be better. A prom queen with no ambition is just tomorrow's housewife. An outcast with ambition is tomorrow's start-up founder.
America is the best place in the world for people with ambition, it's all there for the taking if are motivated enough to figure out how to get it.
I think the people who pine for the good old days are wishing they lived in a different society than this one, one where mediocrity is rewarded with a house in the burbs and new car every 5 years. We don't live in that country any more and we can't go back.
The amount of lazy arguments here is astounding. But considering that all this started with a Wewake screed, one who is totally committed to making facts and logic fit the conclusion he wants to reach, this is not surprising. end rant.
But, monolithic as India isn’t, the ones that come over here, while certainly self selected to outperform not just the average, tend to be quite self satisfied about their own exceptionalism and therefore (as Rick Jones points out above) not a healthy set of people to aspire for (what, exactly?). Again, I am falling into the lazy argument trap I mentioned above. So I’ll stop.
—s
Does Vivek Ramaswamy ever wonder what nerds think of him? Or jocks and prom queens?
I suspect that he thinks about it a lot, actually. Seems like the sort of thing that gnaws at him, and leads to him complaining that "culture" celebrates jocks and prom queens (when it should be celebrating him instead).
I suppose that this is the mentality one has to have to become a billionaire, but it really does seem like a for a lot of the hyperrich, it's not enough to be free from all material cares and wants, and to enjoy a lifetime of freedom to do whatever they want--they demand praise and adulation, too.
Nicely put.
But I wonder if continual kowtowing from their employees and “friends” has given them a sense of entitlement for adulation, or if part of the ambition to become a billionaire in the first place is to get that adulation.
Because you don’t need a billion to “be free from material cares and wants”. A few tens of millions will do that, even adjusted for inflation. That suggests that anything beyond that is just keeping score with the other billionaires, and getting adulation must be part of that.
I wonder if Ramaswamy and RFK Jr ever discuss science?
Ramaswamy, like his mentor Musk, seems to be under the impression Americans like to be lectured about their imperfections by disgustingly rich foreigners. And yes I know Ramaswamy's a US citizen, but he's obviously speaking on this occasion as the proud inheritor of a foreign culture.
I'm not sure Americans will appreciate their well-intentioned advice.
I personaly agree that we shouldn't celebrate prom royals/footballers etc. I'd go further, though, and say that we also shouldn't celebrate billionaires, or pay particular attention to whatever idiot thing they have to say.
Elon(gated) Musk(rat) and Ramaswamay appear to be pretty good at attracting and investing money in whatever it is that they did to become billionaires. Good on 'em, I guess. But that has fuckall to do with whether or not they have anything intelligent to say about, say, government efficiency, or about US culture more broadly.
In fact, they are probably less likely that any other rando to have something intelligent or meaningful to say about those topics, since the hyperspecialization they focused on to become billionaires means that they are accordingly less informed and less aware of issues relating to efficiency/culture than they would be if they were more generalized mid-tier businesscritters (or wonks who specialized in studying same), in which case we never would have heard of the bastards, and, blissfully, would never have to hear from them at all.
Sadly, though, we live in this universe, where Ramaswamay can yell "I'm rich, so listen to my pet theories/grievances!" and everybody complies.