Teaching under 'diversity'

Princeton University's admission office annually assembles an incoming class of astounding diversity, which confronts professors with the daunting challenge of finding the right intellectual pitch for their lectures.

To illustrate, according to the Dean of the College, the Class of 2011 has the following breakdown:

Geeks (11.2 percent),

Policy Wonks (14.8 percent),

Tigers (58.9 percent),

Party Animals (15.1 percent).

Each of these groups comes to class, if they do, for entirely different reasons.

Geeks eagerly seek knowledge for its own sake, whether or not it relates to the human condition. As early as 500 B.C., for example, a Greek geek named Pythagoras wondered whether numerical values of a, b and c could be found such that an = bn + cn holds for n other than 1. Would that question ever occur to non-geeks? As it happened, Pythagoras did get the equation to work for n = 2, a discovery he swiftly patented as the world-famous Pythagorean Theorem. A gazillion high school students around the world have been tortured with that theorem ever since, though few of them ever have occasion to use it outside the classroom. But never mind. For the next two and a half millennia, legions of geeks played around in vain with higher values of n, until a few years ago Professor Andrew Wiles proved n=2 is about it, whereupon the world's geeks finally could turn their collective attention to other burning questions, such as whether matter that you can't see, touch, smell or hear actually matters. You can usually recognize Geeks by their low biomass because, as Jonathan Swift explained in "Gulliver's Travels," they must be reminded with gentle taps on the mouth to eat, lest they starve to death while in deep thought. Geeks never wear lipstick and rarely ever shave. Like Steven Wright, they match socks not by color but by thickness, and they wear the same clothes year-round. Professors love geeks, because they are certified geeks themselves and secretly wish that all their students were geeks.

According to Wikipedia, Policy Wonks are "geeks who can get dates." Like geeks, they eat new knowledge for lunch, but only if it's "policy-relevant." They all share Presiden Bush's and Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) belief that the world is a mess and should be, like, totally rearranged. Wonks come in two main flavors: Liberals, who seek the Good Society by redistributing other people's incomes, and Conservatives, who seek the Good Society by cutting other peoples' government subsidies. Princeton Wonks are either Woody Woos or wish they were Woody Woos. When they date, as wonks sometimes do, they steal away late at night into one of those cozy Woodrow Wilson School seminar rooms, there to play with computer models that optimize Pigovian taxes on toxic waste. Policy wonks find that sensual.

Tigers come to Princeton, because, unlike Harvard or Yale, Princeton is known as the world's best farm school for Goldman Sachs, the Tigers' Shangri-La. There is intra-Tiger diversity, however, as some of them stray as far as Merrill Lynch or Citigroup. Tigers devote a measured amount of time to assigned readings and homework, not because it thrills them, but "because it has always been done at Princeton." Tigers all bicker Ivy and Cottage clubs. They tend to marry only one another, whereafter they amass fabulous wealth, suffering stress only during bonus season. Tigers all summer in the Hamptons, winter in Vail and, in between, give tons of money to Princeton, which is why they own the campus along with huge chunks of the rest of the world. President Tilghman loves Tigers.

Party Animals are known for their Sino-synchronous DNA. They are boisterously awake when the good folks in Beijing are awake and soundly asleep when the folks in Beijing are asleep. Anthropologists theorize that, transplanted to China, Princeton's party animals actually would function normally. Should party animals ever stray into a full Princeton lecture hall during daytime, they look like deer caught in the headlights, wondering how so many people can gather without having drinks in their hands and telling jokes. About a week before final exams, they tend to discover that the U-Store "is, like, totally out of textbooks." Party animals never worry about the future, on the faith that "Anyone can become president in America." Evidently so.

Picture now the poor professor who has to instruct this wondrously diverse collage of youngsters in the same course. Even after the professor's best effort, the Geeks will opine that the "course was insufficiently challenging, as it were." The Party Animals will lament: "The course, like, totally sucked!" even though they hardly ever attended a lecture or precept. The Policy Wonks will write off most of the course as impractical and irrelevant. Only the Tigers will graciously put up with it all "because, like, this is sooo Princeton!"

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Uwe E. Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and a professor in the Wilson School. He can be reached at reinhard@princeton.edu.