<p>Interesting article:</p>
<p>The</a> American Scholar - The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - By William Deresiewicz</p>
<p>I always felt my sons benefited by having friends in different economic classes. One night at the mansion and the next weekend with a friend in the double wide. </p>
<p>A thought provoking article.</p>
<p>It seems more that this guy isn't quite complaining about the disadvantages of an elite education so much as a pampered lifestyle.</p>
<p>I'm sure if he had held a retail job as a teenager or maybe even been to a less-than-perfect private school, they wouldn't have felt this sort of bubble.</p>
<p>A passage from the article:</p>
<p>
[quote]
But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so its almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that its even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting As in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of 17 year old CC regulars and their parents who have their hands clasped over their ears and are repeating "la-la-la-la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you-la-la-la-la-la-la-la."</p>
<p>"Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers"</p>
<p>Only somebody who had the luxury of an elite upbringing would make that statement. Middle and lower class kids know that the purpose of an education is that they can have a better life than their parents, so they don't have to have the same struggles their parents did.</p>
<p>Now, I'll read the rest of the article.</p>
<p>I don't get the point of the not knowing how to talk to his plumber part. It's not like his plumber knew how to talk to him any better. People who have elite educations don't understand the life of the "non-elite"...but it's also the case vice versa. It'd be a little overwhelming to understand everything about the world.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If that's the case, it's a recent trend, because my experience at a top 20 school twenty years ago was most assuredly NOT designed to teach us how much other people were beneath us. </p>
<p>Indeed, I would submit it's his own upbringing and failure of his parents if he can't engage in small talk with his plumber, or anyone else at any educational level or socioeconomic class.</p>
<p>BTW, last year I made small talk with an electrician at my house and found that his father was an extraordinarily accomplished and famous scientist.</p>
<p>"he first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it. Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate."</p>
<p>And Bush was educated at Yale and Harvard, as was his father and grandfather before him and he was one of the most adept communicators with the working class we've seen in a while (i.e. the guy 'you'd like to have a beer with.') 'Bubba' Clinton, despite his solidly working class upbringing, went to Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale. Yeah, obviously, products of an elite education will have some degree of trouble communicating with the lower classes, but the effects of this can certainly be overcome. </p>
<p>"I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all."</p>
<p>He shouldn't fault the educational system or a subset of it for his own ignorance. Plenty of individuals I know from the elite environment he describes realize what he does not.</p>
<p>"I also never learned that there are smart people who aren’t “smart.” The existence of multiple forms of intelligence has become a commonplace, but however much elite universities like to sprinkle their incoming classes with a few actors or violinists, they select for and develop one form of intelligence: the analytic. While this is broadly true of all universities, elite schools, precisely because their students (and faculty, and administrators) possess this one form of intelligence to such a high degree, are more apt to ignore the value of others. One naturally prizes what one most possesses and what most makes for one’s advantages. But social intelligence and emotional intelligence and creative ability, to name just three other forms, are not distributed preferentially among the educational elite. The “best” are the brightest only in one narrow sense. One needs to wander away from the educational elite to begin to discover this."</p>
<p>A fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the academy - to understand the order of the universe and how to harness that order for the betterment of mankind. So, indeed, it stands to reason that analytic intelligence is favored. Sure, social competency (I refuse to call it intelligence) can become useful in many endeavors, such as business. Indeed, social competency or athleticism/'bodily-kinesthetic intelligence' can lead to greater material wealth as well as greater happiness. But that is unrelated to the fundamental purpose of the educational institution.</p>
<p>"What about people who aren’t bright in any sense? I have a friend who went to an Ivy League college after graduating from a typically mediocre public high school. One of the values of going to such a school, she once said, is that it teaches you to relate to stupid people. Some people are smart in the elite-college way, some are smart in other ways, and some aren’t smart at all. It should be embarrassing not to know how to talk to any of them, if only because talking to people is the only real way of knowing them. Elite institutions are supposed to provide a humanistic education, but the first principle of humanism is Terence’s: “nothing human is alien to me.” The first disadvantage of an elite education is how very much of the human it alienates you from."</p>
<p>I'll take the advantages of a fine education over the ability to talk to dumb people. Thanks for the offer, though.</p>
<p>"One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. "</p>
<p>This idiot should stop conflating value with moral worth. Without a doubt, on average, graduates of elite schools have more value to society than stupid/talentless/lazy people. Who finds the cures for the diseases stupid people get by eating too much Mickey D's? The Ivy Leaguers. And no, the stupid person can be a much kinder person than the Ivy Leaguer (or even outright more moral person than the ambulance chasing HLS grad), but he's creating a strawman - nobody said that Ivy Leaguers are inherently morally superior to regular people. </p>
<p>"The average gpa at public universities is now about 3.0, a B; at private universities it’s about 3.3, just short of a B+. And at most Ivy League schools, it’s closer to 3.4. But there are always students who don’t do the work, or who are taking a class far outside their field (for fun or to fulfill a requirement), or who aren’t up to standard to begin with (athletes, legacies). At a school like Yale, students who come to class and work hard expect nothing less than an A-. And most of the time, they get it. "</p>
<p>Maybe that's because the ridiculously rigorous admissions process at Yale means that people are so good and well-rounded that it makes sense they'll get better grades than Cleveland State students. If you think about it, the difference between the average Yalie and CSU student is a bit bigger than (0.4/4.0.) </p>
<p>"It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale."</p>
<p>And now's the time for the insult to our President. Can't write a paper without a dig at the guy with the 35% approval rating anymore these days, can you?</p>
<p>"Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? "</p>
<p>No, plenty of people choose to teach or lawyer on behalf of illegal immigrants after paying phat scrills for their education. I wouldn't do that, but I don't judge. Either way, they exist. </p>
<p>"Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed...This is not to say that students from elite colleges never pursue a riskier or less lucrative course after graduation, but even when they do, they tend to give up more quickly than others."</p>
<p>People make that choice for themselves. That's what is also beautiful about America - freedom. Maybe that Beemer and the Barbados vacation is really more fulfilling than teaching Shakespeare to a bunch of morons who got high on the haze during lunch.</p>
<p>"Although the notion of breadth is implicit in the very idea of a liberal arts education, the admissions process increasingly selects for kids who have already begun to think of themselves in specialized terms—the junior journalist, the budding astronomer, the language prodigy. We are slouching, even at elite schools, toward a glorified form of vocational training. "</p>
<p>Eh, cry me a river. That's what I want. I want cancer to be cured more than I want some 35 year old grad student asking what the meaning of life is. If I had it my way, we'd go the British route where undergraduate education is professionally oriented.</p>
<p>"and at a college that was known in the ’80s as the Gay Ivy, [you see] no gender queers."</p>
<p>The horror...the horror!</p>
<p>The author appears to be elite, whining bonehead.</p>
<p>Deresiewicz's lamentation is just a facade for an opportunity to expound upon how "deep" he is.</p>
<p>I did think it was unfortunate that the author had the inability to see behind the limits of his own blinders. A lot of generalization seemingly based on the concept, "this is what I see, therefore it must be true." The clueless who assumes that all who are similarly situated must be equally clueless.</p>
<p>Quote:
[quote]
But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That is a huge bunch of baloney.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? "
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Does the author remember that Teach for America was launched by a Princeton grad and KIPP by a Harvard grad? My Ss have had student teachers from Princeton, Georgetown, Tufts and Harvard.</p>
<p>To me, this is a classic example of a "straw man" article. I went to Yale. I have no problem talking to plumbers. Or the guy who parks my car. Or the guy sitting next to me at Yankee Stadium. Or anybody else. There's always something to talk about, yes? I'm not nearly as good at talking to people as my mother, for whom the fact that she was a graduate of Columbia Law School didn't stop her from striking up conversations with everyone she met. But, still. I don't see any of this as a major issue. Not for me, not for most other well-educated people I know. I've always known that there are lots of smart people who don't go to college, and the converse. After all, my parents were the first people in their respective families ever to go to college. But it didn't mean they were smarter than, or more valuable than, their own parents!</p>
<p>I also think he's way too hard on "kids today." Not all kids who go to Yale and other "elite" schools (either now, or 30 years ago) are snobs or think they're "better" than people who don't. (I've been back to Yale for panel discussions several times in the last five years, and the kids I met seemed pretty unassuming, well-centered, and altruistic to me.) And most, I believe, fully understand that a certain amount of luck is necessarily involved in getting into places that have < 10% acceptance rates; it isn't "all" about merit.</p>
<p>Plus, a lot of the so-called "jumping through hoops" is actually genuine academic curiosity, from what I've seen.</p>
<p>So I think a lot of this is B.S. An example of a teacher who wasn't happy someplace, trashing the students there as soon as he leaves. Bah!</p>
<p>Donna</p>
<p>PS: Yale is still known as the "gay Ivy." Maybe the writer just doesn't know where to look for the "out" lesbians. And I happen to know of at least two "genderqueer" students who were there when this guy was teaching, one of whom was quite prominent on campus! (From what I've read and been told, that term, in the college context, often simply refers to young women born female, who present, and/or refer to themselves, in a gender-ambiguous way -- sometimes in the course of exploring their own gender identity issues, sometimes for political reasons, sometimes for fun.)</p>
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<blockquote> <p>People who have elite educations don't understand the life of the "non-elite".<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Rubbish! A number of those with elite educations came from humble or middle class circumstances or are one generation from humble. The old days when the elite institutions were filled with elite boarding school graduates are gone.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"I also never learned that there are smart people who aren’t “smart.”
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This guy must be indeed book-smart and common-sense dumb if he never realized this, or thought that it was the role of his college to teach him this.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers
[/quote]
This reminds me of a clip from The Aviator when Howard Hughes visited Katherine Hepburn in Connecticut. At the lunch table, her family members made some comments about socialism and he said something about only those with elite upbringing can entertain these thoughts. Who is this idiot?</p>
<p>From Google:<br>
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1998
M.S., School of Journalism, Columbia University, 1987
B.A., Columbia University, 1985</p>
<p>Ding Ding Ding, we have an elitist in disguise.</p>
<p>
[quote]
From Google:
Ph.D., Columbia University, 1998
M.S., School of Journalism, Columbia University, 1987
B.A., Columbia University, 1985</p>
<p>Ding Ding Ding, we have an elitist in disguise.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why didn't anyone show him how to use a subway? Or eat one. It's not that hard to learn either system.</p>
<p>I regret to say that this thread's general level of discourse so far, which amounts for the most part to mockery and personal insults, has done little to discredit the claims made in the article.</p>
<p>Adad:</p>
<p>Re: the passage you quoted and which I deemed to be a bunch of baloney: </p>
<ol>
<li>It's a huge generalization supported by no evidence whatsoever.</li>
<li> If the author, in his ten years of teaching at yale, has not found one student who defies his description of teacher-pleaser, system-gaming students, then he should address his complaints to the admissions office. But I feel sorry for him and don't believe his claim for one minute. If he thinks that Yale should equip its students to talk to plumbers, then he could lace his discussions of Jane Austen with discussions of plumbing. In fact, 18th century plumbing could make for a fascinating topic for a lecture. </li>
</ol>
<p>A liberal arts education, at whatever tier of colleges, is not intended to provide one with the means of talking to plumbers or car mechanics. My S's roommate is the son of a car mechanic, URM, from a different part of the country. As far as I know, they do not talk cars (neither can have a car on campus) or car repair.</p>