<p>I ran across this article in Phi Beta Kappa's magazine the other day and it struct me as being a very thought-provoking critique of the field/game/industry so many of us are involved in. In short, the author is a former professor at Yale and a creature of the Ivy League, but he argues that an "elite" education, in our current system, creates its own set of disadvantages and can even be considered dehumanizing.</p>
<p>It's not the disadvantages of an elite education, but the people who are in these so called "elite educations". No offense to this chump, but he just doesn't know how to carry out small talk. From reading that article, he sounds like an ugly nerd who can only talk about intellectual subjects, which connects to the people who attend these elite educations. Again, no offense to people who go to elite foundations, it's just a generalization.
And of course the fact that he acts like he's better than the plumber just makes it even scarier. I can tell you right now, he's not.</p>
<p>There have been threads about this, and most of them involved slamming the author as an exception. However, I thing that there are nuggets of truth in the attitudes he claims that the students at these schools have, and how they are being groomed.</p>
<p>Much of it is at least partially true with regards to my high school, which is definitely a prep school. I don't see why some of the elite institutions would be vastly different (although I have only visited a few of them).</p>
<p>There are people who lead a really cloistered existence at such schools. I went to schools of the type he's discussing, but had grown up in a mostly blue collar neighborhood. I had summer jobs in factories when I was in college; my practice the first dozen years after law school led me to represent people from many walks of life. I was moonlighting as a musician in those days, and played with some very intelligent people who had day jobs in the building trades. </p>
<p>Sure, it's possible to become cloistered at those schools. It's also easy to avoid it, for those who are so inclined.</p>