<p>RE Wellesley societies: actually, no one lives in the club houses; they are sites for meetings, parties and lectures, and they are rented out for events. Only three of the societies have houses. There are 5 societies now at Wellesley, and they are all very different. Shakespeare (focus obvious) and Agora, the newest one (politics) don’t have “rich girl” reputations. TZE is reputed to be the most economically and socially exclusive. In total, probably fewer than 200 students out of 2400 are members of societies at Wellesley, so they don’t have much impact on overall campus culture. Many students would find being in a society faintly ridiculous, a 50s throwback. Most just don’t pay any attention to them except maybe to attend parties they host.</p>
<p>The TZE house looks lovely from the pictures, and it looks as though they have nice, genteel events. Not to everyone’s taste, but neither are beer-soaked bashes, so to each her own. It may have been different in momzie’s day, but it seems pretty clear today that their presence isn’t really important to anyone but themselves and they don’t set a “tone” for anyone but themselves.</p>
<p>The “gentleman’s C” probably went away as it became less socially acceptable to slide through life on inherited social status without at least a token showing of your own individual merit.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s why no one has heard of Paris Hilton and the Kardashians, LOL. But you make a fair point – they don’t need to pretend to go to Yale!</p>
<p>Re: devaluing academic achievement. In fairness, what you WILL see on this website, including from me (with no apologies), is a lot of criticism of artificial academic achievement, and the suggestion that kids obsessed with it do more to get a life. High standardized test scores are not academic achievement. Getting a 3.95 unweighted GPA vs. 3.90 is not academic achievement. Racking up double-digit AP tests – OK, it’s a kind of academic achievement, but not a very valuable kind. I also believe that academic achievement is not entirely captured by appropriately-weighted GPA and standardized test scores.</p>
<p>Furthermore, I think academic achievement is not the only sort of valuable achievement people can have, and to which colleges may pay attention. I grew up in a WASPy, prep-school culture in which merely being an egghead was not particularly valued. I got lots of strokes for my intelligence, writing, and test-taking abilities, but in order to win respect I had to spend time on the athletic field getting my butt kicked by kids with much lower GPAs than I had. That – and socializing together outside of school – was part of an ecology of mutual respect, and top students who ignored it were regarded much less highly than those who participated in it.</p>
<p>I am also living testimony to the fact that other things besides academic achievement can be important: I have all the academic achievement in the world (including the GPA and test scores), but considerably less actual life achievement. (Not bad, mind you, but hardly on a par with my academic achievement.) That gets reflected in my advice or commentary sometimes.</p>
<p>My impression of Momzie’s post is that it’s more the social exclusionary aspects on the basis of SES status of that club which was the issue…not the nice, genteel events.</p>
<p>The WASP prep-school culture is an upper/upper-middle class one with attitudes similarly held by old-guard British Aristocracy who made no bones about being anti-intellectual in their attitudes. This could be seen in how Queen Victoria’s consort Prince Albert…who was university educated was socially disdained by other British aristocrats…his intellectualism and university education were factors. </p>
<p>I don’t know about you…but I don’t see much to recommend from such hidebound cultural attitudes…especially considering they penalize those who aren’t athletically inclined/interested or those who aren’t extroverts*. </p>
<p>This is also derived from the fact some WASPs have married into my family and how that branch of the family exhibit the very same attitudes which are at great odds with other branches of my family. Each time there’s an argument/conflict over such topics at extended family gatherings/occasions, it’s a cue for me and other like-minded cousins to grab a large tub of popcorn, sit back, and watch the amusing spectacle. </p>
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<li>Ironically, I speak as someone who happens to be an extrovert…but who feels a “live and let live” attitude and understanding/acceptance of those who aren’t inclined as such should be the rule of the day.</li>
</ul>
<p>Well, I didn’t know Prince Albert, and my school (and others like it) was not in the least anti-intellectual. The ideal was really the Renaissance Man. (It was all boys until my senior year, and feminism was just coming into existence, so our ideals were definitely male gendered.) The guy my friends and I all worshiped when we were in First Form and he in Sixth Form was someone who was near the top of his class, started at wide receiver on the football team, played lead guitar in the school’s best rock band, and went to Harvard. I had five teachers with PhDs in high school (not common at all back then). High school friends have wound up as professors at Stanford, MIT, Brown, and NYU.</p>
<p>And believe me, I was NOT “athletically inclined/interested,” nor was I extroverted. Left to my own devices, I would have burrowed someplace private and read books, and I did plenty of that. But I was educated to believe that participating in sports, etc., was part of the deal, and as I grew I developed an understanding of why it was part of the deal and how well that worked. </p>
<p>And it wasn’t hidebound at all. It was open to me – no one would mistake me for a WASP – and to a great number of economically disadvantaged (and decidedly non-WASPy) kids from our city. My 7th grade English teacher had me reading Eldridge Cleaver, George Jackson, and Malcolm X in 1968.</p>
<p>I went to a pretty-good-but-not-great high school in a fairly small town in the South. My experience is that other kids respected those who were “brains,” but they didn’t really envy you, exactly. I wouldn’t call it anti-intellectualism, because there wasn’t really an “ism” there. Being the smart kid didn’t get you picked on, but it didn’t get you dates, either.</p>
<p>As for anti-intellectualism on CC, I will simply note that the politics forum has been closed.</p>
<p>Emphasis on, “merely being.” No one disrespects an academically accomplished person who does something with his accumulated knowledge. Its the people who are selfish about spending all that time doing well in school, and care only about racking up the academic accolades to benefit themselves. What good is being brilliant if you don’t do anything productive with it? (or at least contribute a few points to your team, as well)</p>
<p>How is it selfish to invest in your own education while a high school student, even to the exclusion of other things? Presumably, this will help you to contribute more later once you have a career. </p>
<p>James Watson once remarked that he felt that community service was important, but it was something to do later in life, not in college or before. The only real thing of importance during the high school and college years is to educate yourself so you can make more meaningful contributions later. </p>
<p>I suppose if you are learning organizational skills by doing some type of community service or activity, then that may be helpful, but this benefit is distinct from the immediate benefit bestowed on the community. Doing sports and other things may be <em>personally</em> meaningful toward you, but it is not “selfish” to not do them if you don’t care to.</p>
<p>I’ve been in plenty of elite places, and I’ve seen people so spread out that they don’t really make any intellectual growth. How many people actually do the assigned reading at the ivy leagues, instead of just reading what they need to in order to write their papers? It’s not that their lazy or that they wouldn’t enjoy it, but there is such a pull toward being “active” that many people do not really attain any intellectual growth from their classes. There is simply not much time left for their classes.</p>
<p>I had a similar experience in public school that the smart people were not exactly envied, but weren’t picked on for it either. Ironically, I’ve seen more anti-intellectualism from people who went to elite schools, including my own (MIT.)</p>
<p>What if someone cannot exhibit it in the school environment because he/she needs to hold an afterschool job to help the family pay bills? </p>
<p>What if the social environment of the high school concerned is so toxic for those who are “brains” that forcing them to socialize with most classmates would be detrimental to their mental and sometimes even their physical health*?</p>
<p>What if the given student isn’t athletically inclined or has a heath issue/disability which prevents him/her from participating in athletics?</p>
<p>How does one know the academic high achiever is “being selfish”? More importantly, what gives other parents/school admins the damned right to make such determinations considering they may not know what said kid does off-campus…whether it’s an afterschool job or some activity they may not deem “worthy enough”?</p>
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<li>I.e. What happened to several older neighbors and what would have happened to me if I ended up going to my old neighborhood’s crime-ridden zoned HS with a graduation rate of around 34% a couple of years before it was permanently closed by the DOE.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>I was educated to believe that sports is one of many nice hobbies/pastimes to participate in. However, it wasn’t to be elevated above other mere hobbies such as music, tinkering with mechanical devices/technology, reading, etc. It certainly wasn’t to be considered equal to or worse…greater than academics/academic achievements.</p>
<p>This is a definite cultural difference…but within most branches of my extended family…especially the academic/intellectual side and many parents of HS classmates…the general consensus is that US high school/pop culture…including the NE prep school culture is far too “sports-crazy” in their words. </p>
<p>Granted, I also don’t agree with the extremes my public magnet campus culture took towards denigrating athletes to the point several older alums stated "We made fun of our athletes* in ways similar to how most American high schools made fun of their “Nerds**”.</p>
<ul>
<li>I had a few friends on my HS’s football team. Most had no issues because they also were academically accomplished/competent. However, the emphasis was on their academic accomplishments while sports/athletics were regarded by most HS classmates no differently from other club activities/hobbies. The only exception is that “cool kid activities” such as math team, Westinghouse, and debate were considered co-curricular and thus, elevated above other club activities/hobbies.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Using the working definition of a highly academically engaged and accomplished student/person.</p>
<p>Yes, my kids went to a public academic magnet that essentially had a one-factor prestige system, GPA. (Well, science competition results could enter into it, too.) Athletes weren’t made fun of, exactly, but they weren’t heroes, either, while the high-performing kids were rock stars. One of my kids had a close friend who was in and out of our house, often daily, for all four years of high school, and when their yearbook came out I learned that she was all-city in a sport I hadn’t even known she played. (She was also ranked #2 in her class, was a fine musician and actor, and won a number of public speaking prizes. That stuff I knew about.)</p>
<p>In my world, there were really three roles that sports played. One was exercise – mens sana in corpore sano was a strong ideal, as others have pointed out. This is hardly unique to Anglo-American prep culture, either. India has yoga, dance, and wrestling; East Asia a plethora of mind/body martial arts. Another involved learning valuable life skills: teamwork, leadership, discipline. </p>
<p>And finally, for the “brains”, there was the salutary experience of trying your hardest and not being the best, or even necessarily the good. My experience on the playing field was not unlike some of my classmates’ experience in the classroom. They could do their best, and still wind up near the bottom . . . but all the time they were still learning, and still getting better. I could do everything asked of me and more in sports, and still be one of the slowest, clumsiest people on the field, and yet still be making progress. It made me a little less likely to lord it over people whose grades were never going to be as good as mine no matter how much work they put in. And I got a chance to give THEM props for what they could do that I couldn’t. That made for a much stronger community, where mutual respect was always there.</p>
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. While I don’t think there is any particular magic to sports, or community service, or a job, or involvement in arts or other ECs, a person who only does academic work to the exclusion of all else is less likely (in my opinion) to understand how to be a good citizen who works well with others. Perhaps “selfish” isn’t quite the right term, but perhaps excessively self-directed.</p>
<p>Speaking as someone raised in a Chinese-American family and a longtime student of Chinese history, much of the martial arts tended to be considered a “lower-class/low-brow” activity by many elite/upper-middle class families up to the early decades of the 20th century. </p>
<p>On both sides of my extended family, many who were from the same social milieu in China and from my grandparents’/great grandparents’ generations would have felt anyone who wanted to pursue martial arts was aspiring to “low-brow culture” similar to how many upper/upper-middle class White/Asian-American families I knew regarded their childrens’/grandchildrens’ desire to pursue careers as rock(especially punk rock) or more recently, hip-hop/Rap/R & B musicians. Heck, I know some older generation Americans(Born in 1920s and before) who hate Jazz because they felt it was “too low brow/pop”. </p>
<p>As for other exercises, many were also regarded skeptically because they were associated with the more edgy sects of various religious groups. </p>
<p>It’s somewhat similar to how many anti-hippie/anti-countercultural folks disdained vegeterianism/veganism or Apple computers back in the 1980’s and early '90s because of their prejudices against hippies/counterculture.</p>
<p>cobrat, that may be true about China, although I am fairly certain that by the 1920s and 1930s (which were way before my time in high school) elite education had a physical component that was regarded as necessary for complete personhood. And I know that was true in Japan, starting at least in the Meiji era, if not before. (Korea, I have little idea about.)</p>
<p>The 1980s and early 90s were NOT before my time; I was around and pretty active then. I don’t know that anyone had heard of veganism then – I think I first noticed the term “vegan” sometime in the mid-late 90s – but there was a vegetarian tradition that went back way before hippies and the counterculture. It was maybe seen as cranky and health-nutty, and there was clearly some overlap with hippies, but I don’t think anyone equated vegetarianism with being a hippie or being anti-American, at least not where I was. I interviewed for a job over two days at the University of Michigan in 1983 and got taken out for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant; my wife worked at a vegetarian restaurant all through college in the 1970s (and it’s still there today, three times as large).</p>
<p>And no one, but no one, associated Apple Computers with hippies. Marketing myth. Apples were the not-for-work computers, except in academia, because essentially Apple didn’t market to large employers and didn’t support the products in the way large employers were used to IBM doing. I think it took Apple a long time to get networking well. Apple STILL doesn’t market to businesses much.</p>
<p>Well, in the case of our current issues, obesity seems to be the biggie, these days. Downgrading physical activity isn’t going to add to anybody’s longevity around here, including anybody’s kids.</p>
<p>And, just like a kid who doesn’t learn to study in Jr. High isn’t going to “get” it later on without remediation and a tutor to show him/her the study ropes. A kid who doesn’t participate in sports, be it Intramural or Varsity, isn’t going to become active as an adult, without huge remediation.</p>
<p>Are we sure we don’t want to invest in a physical as well as intellectual education?</p>
<p>bclinbtonk-
Interesting geneology, but one slight correction. Martha Parke Ford (who attended Vassar) actually married into the Ford family (an interesting merger of the car and tire families): </p>