Excellence: We used to celebrate it!

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I was just reading that Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, was explaining to a reporter what Quantum Computing was.

Do any of us remember a time just 10 years ago?  Forget about the Fifties; we're talking just a few years ago.  People were interested in all sorts of things: cold fusion, quantum computing, wormholes in space!  At least, my friends were.

But now it appears that while the sector of the population in which I lay celebrated this excellence, while this sector was searching on YouTube for interesting, intriguing, unusual things, another sizeable minority was fuming in resentment against those who knew and understood and appreciated novel and interesting things.  And some switch has been thrown somewhere, and the throwbacks have begun to assert themselves.

An author called Charles Murray (who might be familiar to others, but about whom I only heard a couple of days ago) says that increasingly we're getting to the point where nobody listens to anyone who disagrees with them: we're beginning to seek ideological bubbles in which to live, insulated from the opinions of those whose values are different.  So while I and most of my friends---even those who are political conservatives---celebrate those who have exceptional talents, who are interested in unusual things, who are creative, who like intellectual challenges, there are those out there who simply hate intellectualism, who would mug Justin Trudeau if they caught him alone at night in a parking lot.

This is not news to me; there have always been people like this.  I find them among my students.

Teaching mathematics brings you into contact with all sorts of strange animals.  There are those who had been fairly good at math in high school, but who need to get through a remedial course.  Some jump into it, and do as well as they can.  Some are bored with it, and struggle to pay attention.  Some resent it utterly, and feel that having to learn math in college is an imposition, and an abridgement of their freedoms.

There is an interesting person called Vi Hart, a musician by training, whose avocation is creating videos on mathematical subjects.  She has numerous interesting videos on YouTube, all made by simply recording her doodlings on video with a fixed camera, while she babbles on about what she's doing.  She's the type of person who could be interested in Quantum Computing.  So I occasionally play a video by Vi Hart to my classes.  Some of the kids just love it.  Some are annoyed by her, because Vi Hart can occasionally sound a little patronizing.  Some just cover their heads and hate it with a passion!

So, apparently while---at least a few years ago---some kids were involved in gymnastics and swimming and tennis and ballet and Odyssey of the Mind, and MathCounts, and Spelling Bee, there were others who resented these kids with a passion.  The slimy underbelly of America has been exposed; the worm has turned, the rats have their backs against the wall, and are asserting themselves.  They're striking a blow for mediocrity.

This is not as simple as it appears.

Too long we have pushed toward a society where everyone goes to college.  This means that the minority that never has this privilege becomes a resentful underclass.  It does not help that all you really need to go to college is money.  Not intellectual ability, not hard work.  Just money.  It is inevitable that if a sufficiently large number of mediocre students flood the campuses, colleges must respond with dumbing-down.  I have a colleague who specializes in dumbing down.  He does not see it as specializing in dumbing-down; he sees it as teaching his kids what they should have learned in Fifth Grade, but teaching it really, really well.  I'm not sure he's succeeding.

There is only one tiny little bit of hope, and that is that the other people have not disappeared; they've just gone into hiding, they're staying under the radar, they're playing it cool.

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