Correspondence
Correspondence MAKING IT WITH BROOKS WHAT AN INTRIGUING PIECE by David Brooks ("Making It," Dec. 23). If what he writes is true, college hasn't changed since I went to Lake Forest College...
...But the most important thing I did in college was read—the books assigned to me and all the others...
...Trotsky's own works often reek with glib references to terror and its uses...
...All students are invited to discuss various notions of God and religion over beer, and it is typical for CUA students to come to these sessions to initiate friendly arguments with these men in black...
...I am more concerned with quality than quantity when it comes to "human capital," and though government might influence the quantity of children born, plans like Carlson's can only reduce their quality of life...
...The article is good because it is true...
...23) perpetuates the confusion between cloning and the destruction of human embryos for medical research purposes...
...It decides to make college education available to everyone who wants it: a noble and reasonable goal, with obvious benefits to society...
...When Brooks claims, "Most of all, I met students who had never really thought about how they wanted to spend their lives," this struck a deep chord with me...
...Any moral objections to the first must stand on a different footing than objections to the second...
...While I would agree that generalism is rewarded in college admissions, I have the pleasure of acquaintance with many intelligent current and former students who are bright enough to be successful in all subject areas, but who still managed, even in high school, to follow their interests devotedly...
...Just pop out a few kids and have them erased...
...ed.govlofficeslACIACSFAl emptypromises.pdf...
...governments and institutions provide student aid primarily to those who cannot afford to pay...
...I would simply point out that the image of Trotsky as portrayed in the film and some quarters of academe represents the almost complete internalization of the portrait of Trotsky as presented in Isaac Deutscher's three-volume biography, The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, and The Prophet Outcast...
...At Lake Forest, I was editor of the student paper, played varsity soccer, was on the executive committee of student government, and partied my brains out...
...KATHLEEN PREVOST Monroe, NC OUR BIGGEST FAN READING ALGIS VALIUNAS'S smarmy, ignorant, and self-righteous article on that incendiary piece of archetypal liberal tripe [Uncle Tom's Cabin] reminded me why I cancelled my subscription to your snotty Yankee journal ("The Great American Novel...
...WAYNE AUSTERMAN Converse, TX...
...Trotsky reaped what he sowed...
...This is bound to produce more college-educated, career-oriented parents that have no time for family life while they work to pay the taxes that provide free "loans" for future generations...
...If what he writes is true, college hasn't changed since I went to Lake Forest College (1975-1979...
...This question is especially pressing for America's low- and moderate-income families, because the financial responsibility for a son or daughter's college education lies with the family...
...But every Tuesday night, a group of priests gets together in our campus bar to engage in "Theology on Tap...
...The tape began well with old favorites like "Deep and Wide" and "Only a Boy Named David," but when I flipped it over, I found myself having to teach my two-year-old "Heaven's Hokey pokey" (You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around / Happy we're heaven bound...
...Someone (I nominate Brooks) needs to tell these kids that they'll never really catch up with what they miss out on reading in college...
...The government, because it is spending "other people's money," has no incentive to demand value commensurate with price, and the economic principle of "whatever the market will bear" is perverted to the point where the system perpetuates itself by continually expanding...
...Over half of the current student loan volume is non-need loans, suggesting that a large proportion of families who can afford to pay for their children's education are accessing student loans as a matter of convenience, rather than need...
...LINDA L. VAUGHN Gilbert, AZ TROTSKY IN HOLLYWOOD I enjoyed Stephen Schwartz's review of the movie Frida ("Trotsky Lives...
...At Kenyon, this was the main source of disaffection among the top students: By the time of graduation, seniors had spent far too much time feeding professors the opinions they wanted to hear...
...16) and bought a cassette tape entitled Bible Action Songs...
...The hazy nostalgia for the image of Trotsky overlooks what Trotsky was in real life: a dedicated professional revolutionary who was every bit as bloodthirsty as his contemporaries...
...Indeed, the problem is even more profound than Carlson suggests...
...That he died at the hands of Stalin's assassin (immortalized in another truly awful movie with Richard Burton as Trotsky) should not obscure Trotsky's own role in the creation of the totalitarian state that ultimately destroyed him...
...The government finds a problem that it wants to address...
...Brooks's report is rather reassuring, with one notable caveat...
...This paled in comparison with the penultimate song, "J-E-S-U-S," which begins: There is a name I love to hear / And Jesus is his name-o...
...16) accurately identifies an increasingly daunting challenge that faces the nation and individual families: how to ensure that young Americans can gain access to college education without assuming crushing student loan debt...
...Kids here are liberal about drinking and extremely liberal about what most adults would call casual sex...
...Many of these kids were deeply religious before they came to CUA, but their arrival, even at a place which should foster their Catholicism, prompted a radical, if not directly conscious, reconsideration of their basic value systems...
...More than true, it is precise...
...Stanford University's announcement that it will produce cloned human embryos for bio-medical research is morally objectionable because such embryos are not, in principle, distinguishable from any other human beings...
...Proposals like Carlson's for the student loan program are precisely why the "law of unintended consequences" is so evident in government attempts to improve people's lives...
...Inadequate student aid, as well as skyrocketing debt, will keep as many as 2 million college-qualified low- and moderate-income high school graduates out of college entirely in this decade (see "Empty promises," http://www...
...My daughter kept asking me what happened to Bingo...
...JANICE E. POUR New Haven, CT IF DAVID BROOKS WERE TO VISIT The Catholic University of America, the ostensibly conservative university where I am currently a senior, he would encounter attitudes about sex and relationships similar to those he describes at "elite schools...
...Since the article focuses on the broad impact of loan debt on the family, one could legitimately question the wisdom of a policy that rewards the children of relatively affluent families that have not made the effort required to pay for their children's education but, rather, as a matter of convenience, required their children to assume educational debt...
...Deutscher also wrote a semi-favorable biography of Stalin, and the greatest fault he saw in Stalin was his meanness toward Trotsky...
...In a very short time, it is impossible to go back...
...Nonetheless, I take mild exception to Brooks's statements on the "tyranny of the grade point average...
...Failing to insist on that differentiation sows confusion...
...MATHEW DUNN Washington, DC CLONING CONUNDRUM THE EDITORIAL by William Kristol and Eric Cohen "A Clone by any other Name" (Dec...
...I found it a sharp and accurate summary of many of my experiences on the receiving end of higher education...
...But when the government involves itself in the workings of a market, the prices go up, and generally quality goes down...
...BRIAN FITZGERALD Silver Spring, MD ALLAN CARLSON PRESENTS a reasoned and alarming argument against student loan programs in "The Anti-Dowry," but unfortunately applies his own special interest mindset to the solution...
...IRVING BERGER Tucson, AZ STUDENT LOAN TROUBLE ALLAN CARLSON ("The Anti-Dowry," Dec...
...I concede that this is a rare exception in the rules of the college-admissions race...
...student loans too much for you to repay...
...16) and his digression into Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism...
...If he ever produces the career magazine he describes in the article, I will subscribe...
...Carlson finds it so acceptable that his "solution" actually contains new methodology for defaulting...
...My liberal arts education has in no way prepared me for deciding on any kind of career or vocation...
...There is an enormous difference between reproductive cloning, which by definition involves an intention to treat the being created as a human being, and "therapeutic" cloning, which is a euphemism for creating an embryo for the purpose of destroying it in order to extract its stem cells...
...Brooks should, however, check out the little people—he might find not only validation, but an interesting change of pace from the elitism of those beautiful campuses of the rich...
...However, the editorial closes by approvingly quoting president Bush's reference to "human beings being created in test tubes...
...He says that at Yale (and lots of schools like it, I bet) the most important thing to so many kids is all the activities available to them...
...Is it really wise to use increasingly scarce government resources to reward these families when the needs of those who genuinely cannot afford to pay for their children's education are so great...
...Deutscher's Trotsky is portrayed as a sort of genteel alternative to Stalin...
...His opinions on the requirement for mindless deference to teachers, and even, I would argue, to professors, seem to me precisely on target...
...The species will perpetuate itself, with or without any government, because this is the most basic human drive...
...No other entity that lends money would continue to operate with a "stubbornly high" default rate of 11 to 12 percent, but the government, which has no profit motive and no serious concerns about its financial health being intrinsic to its survival, finds it perfectly acceptable...
...While I can certainly understand, and even applaud, society's compelling interest in families that already exist, Carlson loses me when he begins to include concepts like "human capital" in his analysis...
...JIM MCGRATH Albany, NY As a recent graduate of Kenyon College and a current graduate student at Yale, I very much enjoyed reading "Making It...
...Before blaming this unfortunate circumstance entirely on the federal government's student aid policies and calling for government intervention resulting from the government's "compelling interest in debt relief," one should examine the problem in a bit more depth...
...RICHARD DINARDO Stafford, VA AFTER-CHRISTMAS SALE WANTING MY KIDS TO LEARN the catchy Bible-based songs that I sang as a child, I recently shopped at Stephen Bates's "Jesus Market" (Dec...
...His description of how the kids regard lefty professors strikes me as particularly on the mark...
...The people come to expect their entitlements, and the entire market begins to function in the model that comes from the government's intrusion...
Vol. 8 • January 2003 • No. 17
