montanadave
12-24-10, 08:12
I read the essay linked below after seeing it mentioned in David Brook's NYT column this AM. It is the text of a speech entitled "Solitude and Leadership" delivered by William Deresiewicz, formerly an associate professor of English at Yale, to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy in October of 2009.
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/
Mr. Deresiewicz wastes little time in pointing out the failure of our current educational system in nurturing the skills required of strong leaders and how this lack of leadership has proven catastrophic across the political, economic, and military spectrum. He also reflects upon the source of this failure.
"We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we don’t have are leaders."
The author also comments on the role of solitude and intimate friendship in developing the necessary traits of leadership and how our current culture of internet surfing, social-networking, multi-tasking, continual onslaught of media diversion is inimical to that goal.
And, being an English professor, Mr. Deresiewicz also draws upon some literary references from William Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or, for the movie buffs, Apocalypse Now) to illuminate several of his points.
All in all, I found the essay both well written, accurate, and thought provoking
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/
Mr. Deresiewicz wastes little time in pointing out the failure of our current educational system in nurturing the skills required of strong leaders and how this lack of leadership has proven catastrophic across the political, economic, and military spectrum. He also reflects upon the source of this failure.
"We have a crisis of leadership in America because our overwhelming power and wealth, earned under earlier generations of leaders, made us complacent, and for too long we have been training leaders who only know how to keep the routine going. Who can answer questions, but don’t know how to ask them. Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we don’t have are leaders."
The author also comments on the role of solitude and intimate friendship in developing the necessary traits of leadership and how our current culture of internet surfing, social-networking, multi-tasking, continual onslaught of media diversion is inimical to that goal.
And, being an English professor, Mr. Deresiewicz also draws upon some literary references from William Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or, for the movie buffs, Apocalypse Now) to illuminate several of his points.
All in all, I found the essay both well written, accurate, and thought provoking