My youngest son, Edward, the one I took up to New York to the Metropolitan Opera to see and hear Carmen, is 18 and a senior in high school. He is applying for colleges and at the top of his list of desiderata is that it be a big school in an urban setting. He has had enough of small-town life. It was for this reason that his mum and he went to the Northwest coast over Thanksgiving, checking out the University of Washington in the States (in Seattle) and the University of British Columbia in Canada (in Vancouver). The fact that UBC has a nude beach all around its perimeter (I am not kidding) seems not to have been the attraction that it would have been for me, and naturally, given that the fees are about five times south of the border than they are north (because he has Canadian as well as U.S. citizenship and so can pay in-country fees), he is favoring the U. of W.
When they returned, one remark that went by without notice was that there seemed to be an awful lot of Asian students on both campuses. So, big deal. However, this is something which has rather blown up in Canada just recently. An article in the weekly magazine Maclean’s—the closest equivalent to Time magazine in that country—with the apparently provocative title that I used above, “Too Asian?” (Now changed on the Net to “The Enrollment Controversy”), has got a number of people very upset indeed, and questions have been asked in the nation’s parliament.
The article points out that some universities in Canada have a justified reputation for being heavy on Asian students—UBC, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo (in Southern Ontario and with a very well-deserved reputation in mathematics especially, as well as engineering). That this is out of whack with the general makeup of the population. UBC has over 40 percent Asian undergrads compared to a general ratio in Vancouver of just over 20 percent. The article also pointed out that white students, especially those from more privileged backgrounds, now tend to opt straight off for the older, more toney institutions, like Queen’s University in Kingston (Ontario) and McGill University in Montreal. (Like other Canadian classy universities such as Dalhousie in Halifax, Nova Scotia, these still bear major vestiges of their Scottish origins. Even to this day, in English-speaking Canada, the Scots have a disproportionate influence on higher education akin to the Irish in the police and fire forces in Boston and New York City. And, let me say, a very good thing too.)
The article points out also what is certainly true, that this is not a uniquely Canadian phenomenon but also one that occurs big time in the States. But, cut to the analysis. A number of questions arise. Should the article even have been written and published? A lot of people seem to think not. Such a piece can only be racist in intent and exacerbating a problem, which may or may not have existed but certainly does now. I disagree, partly on First Amendment grounds. (Canada is not as keen on the philosophy of the First Amendment. You cannot get up and slag off Jews in downtown Toronto as you can in downtown Tallahassee.) But mainly because I think these are facts we should know. People often ask me about Tallahassee, and I tell them that we are nearly 40 percent African-American. At once you know that we are a town of the South rather than a place like Miami which is so Latin American. We are more South Georgia than North Florida and it counts with respect to issues like schools.
Should we worry about the facts? That I am not so sure about, but I am not convinced that the answer must at once be “no.” Take what seems to me to be a good analogy, the sex ratios in higher education. When I went to university, there were two-thirds young men to one-third young women. As we know, the figures have swung very much the other way, with most colleges (including F.S.U.) reporting about 60 percent female undergraduates. I do worry about all of those missing men. Are we facing a future of female teachers married to male laborers? Or more likely, married to guys without regular jobs?
When the imbalance was the other way, we used to be told that there are no innate differences between males and females. It was all a matter of prejudice. Is this still true or are females innately brighter than males? If it is prejudice where is it and should and how should we do something about it? I suspect that it is in major function the way that kids are treated at schools, but what to do? It is often pointed out how boys lack male role models in primary schools where almost all the teachers are female. But would you want to be a male teacher in primary school in today’s atmosphere of fear about sexual predators?
Go back to the Asia question. We know the proximate cause of so many Asians at places like U.B.C. They work a lot harder than white kids, before they get to college and when they are there. So again, big deal. That’s what is going on and who is to complain? If white kids want to take things easy in high school and want to party and booze at university—in Canada entirely legally given the lower drinking age—that is their choice. Don’t complain when the Asians get the good jobs.
Or is there a valid counterargument? From Plato on, educators having been pushing the need to be well rounded—mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body). Is too much swotting bad for you—and bad for society generally? Take medicine. When it comes to brain surgery I want the biggest nerd available. But for my G.P. I want someone with people skills who is going to listen to me and not just regard me as a sack of circulating chemicals. Is there therefore a genuine case for saying that universities fail both individuals and society if they focus simply on ability to pass tests in academic subjects—especially academic subjects like mathematics?
To be honest, I don’t really know the answers to these questions. But both with respect to sex and to race I think we ought to be addressing them. We are terrified to do so—I really thought about whether to write this post at all—because of the terrible history of the 20th century. Not just Hitler but all of those distinguished white professors at Harvard who made very sure that the place was not overrun by the children of immigrants living in the Lower East Side of N.Y.C. Apart from anything else, are white parents like me and my wife Lizzie doing our kids an injustice by encouraging them to do soccer and rowing and swimming rather than staying in and doing homework? Are we doing this, not because it is better for them but because we are lazy and sports are easier than academics? Would they be better off if they stayed in and worked? I am not sure of the answer but I am sure that we should be thinking about the possible answer and not flubbing the issue because it is easier to do what we now do or because we are too scared even to open the discussion.
(Full disclosure: I personally hated sports and was a swot. In the homoerotically charged atmosphere of a 50s, English, Christian, boarding school, the kids who were good at games were adored by students and teachers alike. I thought then and I think now that group spirit is much overrated and long suspected that sports did not [in a Lamarckian fashion] bring on group spirit but (in a Darwinian fashion) selected out those boys who already were into that sort of guff. My kids to the contrary love sports and are good at them. My middle son Oliver happily wasted his time at high school—he got in a lot of tennis—and had then to go to community college and do remedial reading and writing. He started to work hard—perhaps that tendency is innate and he got the needed genes from his dad—and transferred to U.B.C. after two years. He is about to graduate with marks that although not outstanding are pretty good. Apropos comments made above, the only course he failed was a math course, taught by a foreign graduate student, whose lack of communication skills in English was matched only by the lack of monitoring he got from the faculty.)