The Wrong Lesson

Apart from tolerance for antisemitism or woke culture gone amuck, the whole Penn/ Harvard/MIT fiasco raises another question worth considering: are we just doing education wrong?

Maybe instead of being the progenitors of a wrongheaded culture, the three university presidents are actually their ultimate products: incredibly academically intelligent and accomplished people who never learned basic common sense and basic communications skills. 

I remember from law school that my brilliant classmates were often stumped when an answer required street smarts or common sense rather than something from the text. The business school students I teach are very smart but aren’t being taught skills like how to sell that are ultimately the most valuable determinant of non-linear business success. We seem to be teaching the wrong things. 

As my kids go through life, the skills they really need to develop are not at all what they learn in school. They need compassion, empathy and judgment, not a trigger finger to call people racist at the drop of a hat. They need toughness and street smarts, not the ability to quote liberally from Macbeth. They need the ability to know right from wrong, to spot immediately when something just doesn’t make sense and the courage to just say so. They need to know how human emotions work, what ultimately produces happiness and how to prioritize that, how to take care of your mental health, what good relationships look like. 

That doesn’t mean academics aren’t valuable — there were times in school where I encountered an idea or a book that was truly wonderful and transformative. But the latter can’t come at the exception of the former, and our entire educational system seems designed to teach everything but the life skills needed to be healthy and happy. While I’d be thrilled to see all three university presidents shown the door, maybe more than being the symbol of cowardice or arrogance, they’re exhibit A of a system that fundamentally misses the point.