[Cadre-politics] predestination

[Dan MacNeil]

Bob Lechner quotes somebody else from ACM SIG list thread:
> * Let's face it, the people that succeed probably came INTO college with
> a lot of the basic personality and intellectual skills needed to be 
> successful.  College is probably more about discovering, enhancing, and 
> focusing  those skills and about taking on new knowledge and skills
> for some area of  endeavor.  Much of the learning during college about 
> such things probably  takes place outside the classroom rather than in 
> organized academic activities.

In my darker momments Sometimes I fear this is true. I find myself 
resisting the notion that a person is born with or without the 
personalty traits they need to do good work. --For example an internal 
locus of control.

This issue has come up on the CSL board list, --the thought that we should 
do less working with the people who come to us and more seeking out good 
people.

In my lighter moments I read Gatto and think of my own internal locus of 
control:

John Taylor Gatto writes:
 	> The shocking possibility that dumb people dont
 	> exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the
 	> millions of careers devoted to tending them will
 	> seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central
 	> proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies
 	> official schooling first had to be dreamed of;
 	> it isnt real.

 	more: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm