<p>Something for all of us to remember:</p>
<p>Very interesting</p>
<p>A few threads on this topic
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/675962-disadvantages-elite-education-mod-needs-highlight.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/675962-disadvantages-elite-education-mod-needs-highlight.html</a></p>
<p>I totally agree with this article, and I hope that many people read it.</p>
<p>Wonderful article, thanks for posting.</p>
<p>Couple of thoughts:</p>
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<li><p>Schools have all but stopped teaching children to work with their hands as well as their brains. My father’s generation, people who came of age in the Depression and WWII, was full of middle class people who knew how to make stuff, and took pleasure in doing it. Dad attended a New England LAC, then (after military service) a famous Law School. However, it was not beneath him to build his own house and much of the furniture in it. He was very comfortable talking to people from all walks of life.</p></li>
<li><p>History and the other liberal arts increasingly have become technical arts. The past is studied with respect to how it informs the present, not for the sake of coming to terms with people who lived in very different times and places. Frequently it is studied through the lens of ethnicity, gender, or class. Or it is studied from the perspective of the latest critical theory, not to discuss, in a common jargon-free language, enduring questions about life.</p></li>
<li><p>Admissions committees seem to evaluate “extracurricular” interests with respect to how they add value to the bottom line, not so much with respect to what they say about individual character. Athletic skill is good if it is a recruited skill, but only a minor check-mark otherwise. So I’m hearing, anyway. The old school view was to value the scholar-athlete, not for the entertainment provided to others or for the money raised for the school, but because amateur athletics cultivated character traits such as courage and persistence in the face of failure.</p></li>
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<p>I didn’t get past the intro, I’ll admit. If that guy can’t talk to a plumber, it’s for far more reasons than his Ivy education. There are plumbers on my street; my kids had best friends whose parents were plumbers or who were going into plumbing (or pipefitting or lawncare or electrician work or policing, etc etc). They sat in HS next to other kids from those kinds of backgrounds. They have family members or close family friends who install bathrooms, who farm, who are banktellers, etc etc etc.</p>
<p>My S went to an Ivy, not for money, but for education (proof? he dropped out after seven semesters. sigh.) I’d like him to get the degree; he says “I have the education.”</p>
<p>He works now as a canvasser for environmental causes. He is more comfortable in middle class/blue collar neighborhoods than in high-end suburbs (though he does well in both–he can talk to, and charm money out of, anyone.)</p>
<p>So if this guy can’t talk to his plumber, he shouldn’t blame his college. He should examine his life.</p>
<p>This has been posted several times before.</p>
<p>I think it’s as foolish now as I did then. Just because the author doesn’t know how to interact with people who didn’t go to top schools, or <em>somehow</em> (seriously, how is this possible?) missed the fact that <em>some</em> intelligent people lack competence in other important areas, or in general has spent his life wallowing in an upper-class bubble, doesn’t mean that this is typical or universal or students at elite schools.</p>
<p>Edit: Cross-posted with garland. I agree with Garland’s points.</p>
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<p>I think the author believes that college is where you go to examine your life, and the experience should change you in important, positive ways. The fact that he may have started out as a snob when he arrived is beside the point. He left there the same way.</p>
<p>Was that the school’s fault? Maybe not. Who knows how many life lessons were there for him, but he just was not ready to learn them at that point in time. I think the best teachers do succeed in changing people, but they can’t always work miracles on an unprepared mind.</p>
<p>jessiehl, I agree that it is a silly article that I have seen before and I think that it is merely a backhanded puff piece. An elite education make you unable to talk to people unlike you? Come on! As if any conversation which does not require a citation from Keynesian economic theory or bon mot borrowed from Benchley or Parker is beyond reach? Please. And the claim that only an elite education enables you to think in “certain ways”. Gimme a break!</p>
<p>Its not the place where you were educated buddy, its the quality of your mind and life. We just finished building our retiremnent home and I had great conversations with our plumber, electricial, landscaper and superintendent.</p>
<p>The article says much more about the author’s limitations than it does about the limitations of a Yale education.</p>
<p>I think that successful people have a combination of smarts: emotional, street and intellectual. I believe that these “smarts” come from a combination of influences. One dimensional people tend not to be as successful in careers in my opinion. As a parent, the best thing we can do is to ensure that our kids are raised in a manner that they can nuture all these “smarts.” To over-emphasize one or to disallow the others to be fulfilled can cause our kids to be one dimensional. I also believe that a person who is one dimensional can be successful in life if they find a career where that single dimension trumps the others. e.g., the intellectural with lower street smarts and emotional smarts might be fine in academia. The emotional might do well in a career that involves selling or human resources or some aspects of the medical field. Street smarts are an asset in operations and sales. All of which has very little to do where one goes to college although I think it goes to the heart of what the elites are referring to regarding holistic admissions…not the pedigree but the balance of the person.</p>
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<p>These are great, down-to-earth comments.<br>
So maybe it is too much to expect that 4 years at Yale ought to change the quality of your mind and life?</p>
<p>“So maybe it is too much to expect that 4 years at Yale ought to change the quality of your mind and life?”</p>
<p>Yale won’t change the quality of a person’s mind and life…only the person can do that.</p>
<p>Plenty of people are changed by a so-called “elite” education, but if you don’t want to be, you won’t be. Education is a two-way street.</p>
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<p>True. This looks like blame-shifting. </p>
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<p>True many times over. </p>
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<p>I’m liking this article less and less the more times it gets submitted here. It immensely overgeneralizes from a few anecdotes–which is a sign of illogical thinking–and reaches a conclusion to my own experience (yep, my own anecdotes 
) with Ivy League colleges. As the younger people on this site say, epic fail.</p>
<p>You don’t need Yale to teach you how to talk to the plumber. </p>
<p>There is a rabbinical teaching from Ethics of our Fathers. </p>
<p>“Who is wise? One who learns from everyone.” - In Hebrew it rhymes, is much more compelling and easier to remember. </p>
<p>I learned this at a very young age and despite my elite education, I have no trouble talking to anyone with the respect a student should show his “teacher”.</p>
<p>Confucius had a saying, “Wherever three people are walking, there is my teacher among them.”</p>
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<p>Perhaps. Maybe you’ll find it worthy to note that I was keyed into this article by a good friend of mine and her father. She is a junior at Harvard. He, a professor at Princeton.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is worthless, as you say. But if it can help one more person be a little more modest and down-to-earth about that elite education they’re receiving, then it’s worth it. Especially in this CC world of HYP is GOD.</p>
<p>I also want to say that I didn’t post this only for the Ivy League schools, but for elite colleges–public and private–in general. As a student at one of those universities, I can confidently say that this is a good read for any college student at an elite university, anywhere.</p>
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<li><p>Perhaps it has been linked too many times, but this was the first time I saw it, so I, for one, thank the OP for providing this link. </p></li>
<li><p>The point about not being able to talk with a plumber is weak, but there are many other points that are interesting. So garland, if you didn’t get past the intro, I suggest you go back and scan the rest of the article to see if there is anything else in it that you like.</p></li>
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<p>Yes, and just because one of them is a pompous English professor it doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from him.</p>
<p>The article made some interesting observations and it made me think. I liked it.</p>
<p>I liked it too. But I also like the comments here.</p>
<p>Many Americans have an easy familiarity with all sorts of people. We hop off the plane in our shorts and sandals ready to rub elbows with the much more formal Saudis or the Japanese. We don’t understand all the fuss when Michelle Obama touches the Queen. So it strikes some of us as pretty bizarre for this professor to imagine he does not know how to talk to the plumber, then blame it on his schooling. </p>
<p>In some societies, it would be considered pretty weird that a Yale professor even wants to talk to the plumber. </p>
<p>This is a nice thing about Americans. We assume it is perfectly natural for people of all walks of life to be able to get along.</p>