He also points out that the Spartans fought primarily against much weaker opponents, making their military prowess not so impressive. If I constantly pick fights against children, my win rate would be quite high as well.
Is this not just an argument over terminology? I think most people realize that grades are just an approximate measure of learning ability. I doubt many parents would prefer that their kid cheated on every test to get straight A's rather B's from honest studying. When most parents tell their kids to get good grades, they mean "study hard and show me you learned", not "go get good grades by any means necessary".
If there was a better measure of learning, executing, communicating, and leading than "grades" at the pre-collegiate level, then I'm sure we would've found it by now and used that instead. For me to be convinced that grades don't matter, I'd have to see proof that there is no correlation between successful people and good grades at a population scale.
Does anyone have a link to the actual details of the proposal? For a tech focused forum like HN, I would expect to see the actual technical detail rather than just political commentary.
> The Economist ... rarely editorialize their articles.
What? The Economist is almost entirely editorials. The only difference between it and other editorial-only publications like Foreign Affairs is that the authors' names are deliberately removed to give the paper a sense of speaking with "one collective voice". Every article subheading is an opinion, and ends with a paragraph firmly staking out a position. The writing may be eloquent, and the graphs pretty, but the result is a publication that heavily editorializes, while lacking any debate or diversity of thought.
One should be able to enjoy the works of another based on the work's own merits, separate from the creator's political or personal beliefs. I can enjoy H.P. Lovecraft's stories, despite the author being an abject racist; or like Ford cars, despite Henry Ford's antisemitism and admiration for Hitler. If we would shun all the works of another because we disagree on politics, the world would be a small and boring place indeed.