<p>Okay, VP, I’m trying, but again–if this is one’s world, then blame that world. Lots of kids go to “elite” schools who didn’t come from that world.</p>
<p>And again, that whole supposed message about the “lesser classes” not being worth talking to, well, S just didn’t get it. And if the author did, and internalized it, well, shame on him. Shouldn’t someone that smart be able to think just a wee bit independently?</p>
<p>I will agree with the part about the bad advising/no advising/stupid rules at most colleges. I work at one with some of those issues, so I know about that. I’ts not a knock on Yale and other places that they don’t put students through that kind of petty beauracracy, it’s regrettable that other schools do.</p>
<p>I do not know if you watched the episode in Wife Swap with the father who was so elitist because he attended the top schools and the swapped mom was from mid-America. The way he talked to her and about her is typical of how some people behave towards others wo did not attend college. The same attitude was also visible towards many in the Bush administration (this has nothing to do with his policies) when many commentators in the media snickered because he did not include many ivy league educated people but actively preferred people who attended state universities and other schools. It realy agrevates me that for many people just having an ivy league degree would immediately bow to you, even though one might not have the skills,experience, etc for a job.</p>
<p>I agree with the posters above who point out weaknesses of the article, beginning with the opening example of the author’s inability to communicate with (ie, listen to, and respond to) the plumber he’d called to help him with his house. </p>
<p>Apparently the author’s Ivy League education did not include his living in another country where he might go days and weeks at a time without speaking English. Or his parents never associated with anyone outside of his own social class. </p>
<p>I’d like to point to another problem with this article: the writer has a very sketchy idea of education at large state institutions (his example is "Cleveland State). He argues, for example, that there is significantly less grade inflation at "Cleveland State, for example. Not true. It depends on the classes, the department, the major. He argues that students at a large state institution don’t have the chance to meet foreign dignitaries, etc. Again, not true. Students who have the time and/or money or burning desire to go talks by visiting dignitaries can do so. There are no shortages of visitors coming through, all the time, at large state institutions. One thing that teachers in any kind of educational institution can do is to encourage students to do that visiting, etc. </p>
<p>Given that there is so much that is entertaining, and thoughtful in the article, which CC responders have picked up on, I do wish that the writer would visit a large state institution and even work at one, for awhile; I wonder what his analysis would be, of the big world that lies to the west of the Hudson.</p>
<p>I had not seen this article, and thank the OP for posting it. If nothing else, it requires the reader to truly stop and think about what they expect from their U of choice and why they choose it. </p>
<p>It also was abuntantly clear to me how the contributions of parental guidance and expectations, fundamental respect, life lessons from the whole of life (not just at university), personal integrity and simple values are diminished in importance by those who place eminent value on the degree. Academia is so insular, that I found the writer’s postulations very sad, but also possibly true for some students. Kind of ironic, I kept thinking of the word “shallow” defined as lacking depth of charcter or intellect.</p>
<p>Great article, although I honestly don’t know what to make of the author’s conjecture as to Ivy League schools. </p>
<p>I did, however, find it interesting that another article came to mind as I read Deresiewicz’s. The Christian Science Monitor had an editorial piece by a young woman who was attending law school at an Ivy League institution entitled “Ivy Leaguers are bright-but nice?” [Ivy</a> Leaguers are bright ? but nice? | csmonitor.com](<a href=“http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0505/p09s03-coop.html]Ivy”>Ivy Leaguers are bright – but nice? - CSMonitor.com). Which institution do you think she was attending? If you guess Yale, then you would be correct. </p>
<p>It makes me wonder if the culture of Yale attracts a certain type of individual or if the institution itself perpetuates a mentality of entitlement or … something else altogether. </p>
<p>Being a land-locked Midwesterner, I won’t even dare to speculate as I have no experience with the Ivy League. I just though the similarity in observations between the two authors was interesting.</p>
<p>In my experience, smartness and niceness are traits that are independently distributed in the general population.</p>
<p>I have lived on both coasts and in middle America, I have been at ivies and at second tier places, and in my experience there is no difference in the prevalence of “niceness” in any one region or one type of institution.</p>
<p>I thought it was a dumb article. At least I know plenty of Ivy League graduates who enjoy having conversations with the plumber, or the contractor, or the exterminator, or the garbage man (one of my favorite guys at the Y).</p>
<p>The problem with this article is elitism, not elite educations. If someone really buys the baloney that they are “the best and the brightest” they’re just silly. As so many have said the world is full of interesting people with things to teach us.</p>
<p>And the material read at elite institutions should and does teach this. </p>
<p>One can go into Yale a snob and come out a snob, but one can also come out a sympathetic person who understands how elistism, patriarchy, colonialism and class bias exploit others. </p>
<p>Since the writer no longer teaches at Yale, could he, gasp, have been let go? Are there sour grapes here? I wonder.</p>
<p>I have met some insufferably boors with Ivy educations, and I have met some plumbers who are princes.</p>
<p>My carpenter can recite the entire Prologue to Canterbury Tales in Chaucer’s English. </p>
<p>So, there are some carpenters, cleaning folk, gardeners, etc, who are fascinating, delightful and kind and their are some Ivy grads who are the same.</p>
<p>However, I will admit I don’t think I would have much success talking to the author of this article.</p>
<p>I have a child at a big name Ivy and I have some serious reservations about him being there (he’s in his sophomore year) but not for any of the reasons outlined in this dumb article. My uncle is a plumber, richer than all of us in the family, and is quite the rudest and most egotistical fellow you will meet in a long while. I think the article is just really low brow stereotyping.</p>
<p>My reservations about these schools have more to do with how they make it very hard to really return home and build your adult life, career and family where you started out. I think there is a very strong reverse snobbery once you join the tribe of the elite college alumnus. Doors shut and sometimes they are the doors that you most wanted to open and pass through. Hard to fathom all this at 17 or 18 when making the decision of where to go.</p>
<p>sewhappy, that’s a really interesting perspective, and one I hadn’t thought of (D is also at a big Ivy.) Around here it’s considered a big plus to have gone to such a school, but I can understand that wouldn’t be the case everywhere. Can you elaborate on this a bit?</p>
<p>I’m thinking the plumber probably didn’t know how to talk to the author or wouldn’t want to spend much time doing so. He (the plumber) may have been thinking–</p>
<p>How can I explain what needs to be done to fix this leak to this nerd who obviously has not ever fixed anything. Oh heck, I’m not even going to try. I’ll just charge him a lot and he’ll gratefully pay because he couldn’t fix it and wouldn’t want to dirty his hands.</p>
<p>Interesting article, though I disagree. His point was having a higher education makes it harder to talk to people not like you. Well, this is true. But not having a higher education - let alone from an elite school - also makes it harder to talk to people not like you. The plumber might feel awkward and out of place at a dinner party surrounded by Ivy grads, and feel his lack of higher education limited him. Meanwhile, this guy might feel awkward and out of place at a party surrounded by average joe’s and feel “limited”. </p>
<p>But I feel like the higher-education guy still has the advantage. This guy’s obviously socially awkward, but it’s not hard to make casual chit-chat, most people (including those at elite schools) wouldn’t have trouble. It’s easier to talk to an average Joe about average everyday things than to converse with a very educated ivy Ph.D about intellectual subjects…obviously since most of us are average joe’s or at least grew up surrounded by them. I don’t go to an elite school, but my friends who do don’t act any differently than I do…they just got higher SAT scores :)</p>
<p>Ok, I go to a pricy private college in NY, but I’ve been to poorer countries where I have family and I can talk to my cousins there just fine even though their education has been so different from mine, I could converse easily with the servants there who were treated very poorly and couldn’t read or write…so I don’t know, I feel like I can’t relate to this article much. thanks for posting it, pretty interesting.</p>
<p>Also, I agree with all of TK2176’s comments.</p>
<p>I’m with those who found the essay literally unreadable, though I tried. A load of cliches, for sure, but it was the tone that was most off-putting: “though I am part of the elite world, I am superior to it.”</p>
<p>The most down-to-earth person I know, a total Italian earth mother who’s always trying to force feed me pasta and go out to girls’ nights at the Elks Hall (which I happily do!), finally admitted to me after a year that she went to college up in Boston, which a year afterwards turned out to be Harvard!</p>
<p>Yep, you’re probably right. And what Professor Deresiewicz is saying is that many students at elite universities are being trained in exactly the same way of thinking. That’s what he means when he writes,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The result he observes is not only that the English professor can’t talk to the plumber; the linguist can’t even talk to the sociologist. Students are not being asked to discuss continually, in a common language, the big questions and how they’ve been addressed by the greatest minds. Those are the questions that matter to everyone, including the plumber and the sociologist too. A well educated person should be more able to talk to the plumber, not less able or equally able as before, after going through the experience of grappling with those life questions from diverse points of view in the books he reads and among the people who discuss them in school.</p>
<p>“Talk to the plumber” is a metaphor. He does not mean, literally, that he expects to have a nice little chat about the meaning of justice with Joe the Plumber before the guy fixes his pipes at 8 in the morning.</p>
<p>It seems to me that a lot of kids are just not maturing as quickly in terms of responsibility and self sufficiency. Maybe it is the way we raise them with the expectation of college ingrained so that the 4 years after high school is taken for granted. The thing is, most kids would not find much useful to do if they did not go to college. They might as well spend the next four years under the college umbrella and get “some learning”. </p>
<p>Going to college and dealing with real life situations are not mutually exclusive. There are kids at elite colleges who have had to talk to a plumber more than they ever wanted, if they are in student ghetto housing where the pipes had problems. (My son had a lot of plumbing problems in the old house he and friends rented). Also I know a number of plumbers with college degrees or at least several years of college. At my sons’ school, a family with top students owns a plumbing business. Don’t know if the plumber went to college, but his wife has a masters, works in education, and I certainly would not pick out the plumber as a sure non college person. Plumbers here also do very well financially.</p>
<p>Interesting commentary from all and some thought provoking points.</p>
<p>I, also, think this article is really about elitism. There are some for whom an Ivy education is a MUST. You are NO ONE if you aren’t going to an Ivy or similarly prestigious LAC. That kind of elitism and snobbery can be very limiting. Those who think the path to happiness leads straight through the Ivy League, Wall Street, the Hamptons and any other stereotypical priviledged path may never escape and will define themselves and others on that basis.</p>
<p>Of course you will see more of those kids at the Ivies because they HAVE to be there.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there are probably plenty of kids who are simply talented, hardworking, and perfectly able to work and interact with people of all walks to life no matter where they go to school.</p>
<p>Now that I think it over, my own child at an Ivy became far more modest once he started college. Through k-12 schooling, standing out and being the star came very easily. Finding yourself in a world of students just as talented and motivated (if not more so) than yourself puts things in perspective very quickly.</p>
<p>I think if he had gone to state U he would be much more arrogant right now.</p>