More movies like “Whiplash,” fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.”
Vivek Ramaswamy’s searing indictment of American cultural mediocrity made waves on the internet. It made waves at my family’s dinner table. It made waves at the gatherings of my mom and dad’s fellow Indian immigrant friends, the men and women I call “uncle” and “aunty.” It left a mark on me.
Ramaswamy’s tweet came across as remarkably genuine: the irrelevance of “geeks” on millennial teen television and the social dominance of “jocks” over valedictorians in high school clearly worry Ramaswamy. His concerns are valid: we need the geeks to save our country! American global leadership is now largely dependent on the development of leading artificial intelligence — hello, DeepSeek. That our leading competitor, China, has an educational culture centered around mastering the incredibly rigorous “gaokao” examination only heightens the weight of Ramaswamy’s argument. But it doesn’t make him completely right.
In his own words, Ramaswamy believes that a culture focused on math tutoring, weekend science competitions and everything but “chillin” is the solution to mediocrity. His words are familiar. I spent my childhood enrolled in every local supplemental math and science class offered. I attended two preschools simultaneously, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so I “wasn’t sitting around at home doing nothing.” I do not doubt that many would criticize my parents’ decisions as excessive. Regardless, my parents, Vivek and now I are all in agreement: this kind of hyper-focus on education, so typical in immigrant households, is a good thing and should be encouraged.
Like Screech in Vivek’s “Saved by the Bell” and like, I suspect, Ramaswamy himself, I was not exactly “cool” in my tweenage years. Ramaswamy says this was a great injustice, which must be fixed by reshaping the American culture into one that values academic knowledge above all else.
This is where I disagree. My Algebra 2 knowledge didn’t make me any more of a leader. Instead, teachers and students alike looked to the approachable, funny, and yes, athletic students as leaders. American culture values more than just academic knowledge! American culture motivated me to begin a new education, one which I’m not sure Vivek would approve of. I replaced an extra math class with travel basketball, where I learned how difficult earning a team’s trust could be. I went to prom at Central Massachusetts’ iconic Union Station and learned to appreciate the value of carefree youth. I spent an inordinate amount of time “chillin” in basements, learning to appreciate good humor. And yeah, I had a lot more friends as a result.
At Yale, where there are 99th percentile test takers at every turn, we would be hard-pressed to select our leaders strictly based on their academic knowledge. On the floor of the Political Union, we look for not just novel arguments but also the social awareness to have respect for our audiences. In a president, we search for both academic achievement and empathy. We do so not frivolously or out of a flawed culture. We do so because we know that knowledge alone does not guarantee honest leadership.
Ramaswamy is right in saying that our culture should assign significant importance to academics. But he wholly misses why interpersonal abilities are so valued in American culture. I couldn’t have made it to Yale without my parents’ dedication to educating me, but it’s my interpersonal education that shapes my Yale experience every single day. For that education, I have American culture to thank.
ROHIL MOHAN is a first year in Morse College studying Economics and Political Science. He can be reached at rohil.mohan@yale.edu.