[lbo-talk] For intellectuals

[ravi]

At around 20/1/07 2:16 pm, joanna wrote:
> Charles Brown wrote:
> 
>> ARTICLES   
>> Wall Street Journal <http://www.wsj.com>       
>>     
>> If "intellectually gifted" is defined to mean people who can become
>> theoretical physicists, then we're talking about no more than a few
>> people
>> per thousand and perhaps many fewer.
>
> Wrong. Take for example that guy who taught calculus to a class of
> ghetto kids in an L.A. barrio and got most of them to pass the AP
> Calculus test with flying colors.

Not to forget the guy in a remote village in India who is getting 80% of
his students (children of farmers with little prior education) into the
Indian Institute of Technology (perhaps the most difficult undergraduate
program to gain entrance to, in the world).


> Becoming a theoretical physicist is
> not about brainpower but about having the burning desire and interest in
> thinking about certain things. The only reason he uses "theoretical
> physics" is because it sounds grand and impossibly abstract.

Theoretical physics? That's for the guys who aren't smart enough to do
real mathematics, isn't it? ;-)

	--ravi