Adam Goodman | Repackaging intellectual gifts

It might sound elitist, but us Penn students will inevitably rule the world one day and it's up to our administrators and faculty to make sure we're well-prepared to meet that responsibility.

That's essentially what Charles Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argued in the Wall Street Journal last January.

Murray contends that the people in the top 10 percent of the IQ distribution (IQs of 120 and above) - a group Murray labels the "intellectually gifted" - have a "huge influence on whether our economy is vital or stagnant, our culture healthy or sick, our institutions secure or endangered."

The intellectually gifted are the people who make our laws, run our Fortune 500 companies and work in our laboratories. They are our doctors, engineers, CEOs, journalists, legislators, scientists and academics: the movers and shakers of our society.

In other words, they're us . but it's not all good news.

Murray claims that there's a serious problem with how America is educating its intellectually gifted.

Professional training is great, writes Murray, but we're failing to train the future leaders of America to be responsible citizens, to view the problems of the country and the world through a prism beyond their own self-interest. To paraphrase a role model of mine, with great power comes great responsibility for the leaders and future leaders of this country and, according to Murray, it's not being met.

He argues that to rectify this problem the intellectually gifted, starting at an early age, need to receive a special kind of education grounded in the classics, ethics and history. The curriculum would be designed to instill wisdom and humility in its students - to demonstrate to them both the possibilities of their talents and, conversely, the limits of their abilities.

Murray focuses on elementary and secondary schooling, but the point is well taken at the collegiate level as well.

One of the first things I learned about Penn was how much it values "practicality." We don't bother with naive idealism and romantic notions of saving the world; we're pragmatists, problem-solvers, realists. Our brochures scream it and our schools preach it. Hell, one such pre-professional school is almost exclusively devoted to teaching its students how best to earn money.

Of course, there is plenty of value and merit to the emphasis on practicality, but with students leaving Penn without a formal education in social responsibility, there's a definite cost as well.

From academically based community service seminars to Wharton's Social Impact Management Initiative, Penn does an excellent job of offering students opportunities to cut their chops as citizens. But perhaps simply offering the opportunities isn't enough. If you buy Murray's argument, maybe these need to become requirements. Here are a few options:

1. Create an across-the-board ethics requirement.

I know, the last thing we need is another requirement. But a well-taught, intensive ethics course which teaches students what it really means to be "good" would prepare Penn students to be the kind of leaders Murray envisions. Such a requirement would be infinitely more useful and relevant to a Wharton student than Criminology or Sociology 137.

2. Make a global experience mandatory.

A controversial option, no doubt, but forcing students to confront the realization that there is a world beyond the East Coast could have a tremendously positive impact.

You can read as many books as you want, but little compares to the skills and tools acquired from the experience of living in a foreign country. Yale instituted such a requirement for their MBA candidates last December that has been met with rave reviews.

3. Establish a community service requirement.

My high school had a community-service requirement that had the express goal of helping its students get into college. I dreaded it and mocked its misguided purposes and ulterior motives.

But when it finally came time for me, an upper-middle-class kid sheltered in San Diegan suburbia his entire life, to work in a food bank, deliver meals to AIDS patients and rebuild houses savaged by California wildfires, I began to realize that not everyone was as lucky.

A community-service requirement at Penn could be fulfilled through an academically based community service seminar or volunteering in a program such as West Philly Tutoring Project.

These are just rough ideas. They may be good ones, or there may be better ones. The point is that Murray's right. We're smart, we will be wealthy and we will be influential. Penn, along with the rest of the higher education community, needs to put its money where its mouth is and do a better job of preparing its students to be responsible, aware, civic-minded citizens.

It's not elitist; it's just practical.

Adam Goodman is a College sophomore from La Jolla, Calif. His e-mail address is goodman@dailypennsylvanian.com. A Damn Good Man appears on Wednesdays.

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