The miseducation of American elites

The professors at my "southern ivy league" university told us point blank that our educational experience was just as good as Harvard/Yale/Princeton and not to let those people look down on us. But "those people" did look down their noses, when we went to internships on capital hill or other places of influence alongside them. Lends to the scrappy, can-do attitude of the university, I think.

Funny, he didn't mention affirmative action admittees along with athletes and legacies...

He did. They were the children of black and Latino business leaders.

I knew I should have gone Penn or MIT.

Oh, puh-leeze. In other words, elite schools are doing exactly what they're designed to do--create elites who, naturally, think they are better than other people. Cuz that's what elites do, folks. Gosh, what a horrid surprise. And this professor has worked there all his life . . . and only now, now when he's retired and it's too late to do anything about it, has he noticed this is happening, just in time to write an article about it!! You have to admire his stunningly delayed perspicacity. Strangely, if conservatives were still in control of the academies, I would guess that they'd be doing exactly the same thing. I mean, Yale NEVER gave off the faintest whiff of elitism back in the good old days when they kept all the Jews and women and dark-skinned people and other riffraff out . . . oh, wait . . . . My sarcasm cup runneth over.

Also, anyone who says he can't talk to the plumber, and is distraught over this, is engaging in a very weird form of whining and self-pity. I talk to plumbers all the time. In fact, I have trouble getting them to stop talking to me so they can do some plumbing. I suspect this guy may have had trouble talking to people before his expensive college education ruined his life.

I'm with Sigaliris. I don't think it's the Ivy League's fault that the professor didn't have the common sense to talk to the plumber in the Red Sox hat about...the Red Sox. If he doesn't have the social graces to chat about the weather or potholes or sports, or to make basic chitchat along the lines of how long have you been doing this, are you originally from the area, how's the family, etc., his problems go beyond his diploma. Also in agreement with the comment above, I would guess that the Ivy League is much more egaltarian than it was in, say, 1960. Perhaps that's my perspective. Because of where I live, most of the Ivy Leaguers I know were excellent students at midwestern public high schools, students whose parents wouldn't necessarily have had the pedigree to get in against the Dubyas of the world.

My undergrad degree is from a Big Ten school--certainly beneath the Ivies, but that doesn't stop us from looking down our noses at state schools whose names begin with directions. There's snobbishness and elitism everywhere, not just at the very top. Do you think an LSU frat boy, say a multigeneration legacy who grew up in one of NO's old money neighborhoods and went to a ritzy private high school before following dad's and grandpa's steps in the Greek system, has any more exposure to plumbers than a Yalie?

I also didn't think all that much of the Kerry/Gore mention. GWB is an Ivy Leaguer with more of an aristocratic background than either of those guys. Bush is just better at connecting with people, as have been other Ivy aristocrats like FDR, JFK, and RFK. Both Kerry and Gore are skilled politicians whose skills didn't necessarily translate to modern presidential politics, but they were good enough at connecting to voters to get elected many times by "ordinary" people.

Rod, as for your friends' experience at Brown, that comports with the stereotype I have of Brown, as distinct from how I think of Harvard or Princeton.

Having gone to Columbia for undergrad, I can fully relate to this article. Attending an Ivy can definitely make you elitist. I see it with many of the classmates I've kept in touch with in the years since graduating. They travel in rarified circles and like it that way. They think they're smarter and better than other people. Twenty years after graduating, they still put a lot of stock in "where'd you go to school?" My best friend from college, who is now a tenured history professor, just admitted to me over dinner about a month ago "I know I'm a snob, I can't help it."

My brother went to Harvard and became an ever bigger snob than was his already natural tendency. I love him dearly, but that is the truth. And my sister used to tell people "I go to school in New Haven" instead of just saying that she went to Yale. That always seemed very self-conscious to me, even as a kid. Now her husband, who went to Amherst, is insisting that both their sons (who are still in elementary school) go to Harvard. Or so he declared at Thanksgiving two years ago. I feel for those kids, what pressure.

I come from a family of Ivy Leaguers: besides my siblings, my Dad went to Dartmouth in the 50s, my great-uncle went to Columbia in the 20s, an earlier relative on my mom's side was the first black to attend Dartmouth in the late 1800's. And I can honestly say a lot of it is hype. Smart people can be found at lots of schools. And the Ivy League in general is so PC and quasi-lefty/fascist these days that I wouldn't encourage my son to attend unless it was something he really wanted to do.

Myself I dropped out of that status-oriented, Manhattan-centric, workaholic lifestyle many years ago.

Rod,

I did my undergrad at LSU and am finishing up my MA at the University of Notre Dame. When I was studying English at LSU, I had to work my behind off to get just a B+ from my English professors -- some of them thought themselves to be Robert Penn Warren and Walker Percy and would except nothing finer. When I arrived at Notre Dame I remember thinking, "I'm going to have to work hard if I want to maintain good grades here." Turns out, I found my graduate work at ND more interesting but easier. Maybe they have better professors or maybe not. It very much was this attitude of "You're here and there isn't much you can do -- afar from killing another student -- that will get you kicked out of the university or cause you to fail."

In other words, I pride my LSU education far over my Notre Dame graduate degree. I actually had to earn first.

I read John Gatto's _Underground History of American Education_ a few years ago. An extension of these ideas. Great book. I got it at a homeschooling conference book table.

He was NYC's teacher of the year a few times, then got fired.

Woo hoo--shout out to Juiana for mentioning "Underground History of American Education." That is a mind-blowing book that everybody would be better off for reading. It makes you look at the world differently.

Sigaliris,

What you're missing is that the very essence of the elitism that the elite schools produce is the pretense that one is not oneself a part of the elite of iniquitous fat cats who rule the world, or at least the sense that while one is entitled to all of the rights of being elite, one bears none of the responsibilities and none of the blame -- elitism with a wholly clear conscience, in other words. Graduates of elite schools enjoy a grossly disproportionate share of the fruits of the new globalized laissez-faire economy. But what they learn in college is that they ought to feel themselves oppressed by their working-class peers in Pennsylvania who "cling" to Jesus and pickup trucks instead of Obama and hybrid cars. Obama's own facility for playing at radicalism with William Ayers and playing at black nationalism with Jeremiah Wright, while also "pivoting" toward corporate and professional interests when it suits him to is just the sort of thing that an elite education of this sort will teach you to do -- thus Obama's messianic status with folks who attitudes were formed by the socialization they received at those schools. It is entirely in keeping with their world-view that their messianic saviour would be a really "smart" and "au courant" fellow just like them. I know whereof I speak because I teach at an institution not unlike the ones the article describes.

Interesting you mention Brown, Rod.

Of all the elite universities I can think of, Brown strikes me as the biggest joke. Tough to gain admittance, but once you do, it's a great credential for life. No need to bother studying much of anything substantive there, much less learning to write well or think.

From Randy Newman's "Rednecks":

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And colleges men from LSU
Went in dumb. Come out dumb too...

I think "elite" is a way more useless, overused word than, for example, "vibrant."

As people have said, there are snobs and socially inept people everywhere, not just in the Ivies. I know a quite a few Ive Leaguers, and they're not as a group any more snobby or out of touch than my fellow UW graduates.

Toad,

There is something called *irony.* It's very much present in this and in most of the lyrics to Randy Newman's songs. Newman spent part of his childhood in New Orleans. He premiered the *Good Old Boys* album in a concert with the Atlanta Symphony. And he has said again (and again) (and again) that "Rednecks" is more of a satire on Northern liberal condescension and hypocrisy toward the Southern working-class as it is a satire on the Southern working-class itself. Remember the part about "keeping the [n-words] down" in cities all over the North? If not, you should go back and listen again and also read what Newman has to say about the song in every interview that he has ever given in which he has been asked. The lines you quote are the Southern character singing the song *imitating* and *poking fun* what Northerners say about Southerners every day -- *not* imitating or poking fun at Southerners themselves, or at least doing so only in a secondary and affectionate way. The fact that you misunderstand the song as badly as you seem to do only means that you are probably one of those who most needs to hear what the song has to say.

Makes sense to me, oshkosh. Organized religions are lead by elites. Can't have the rank and file speaking directly to God, now can we?

:-(

I think these generalizations don't hold across an entire university. From what I've heard about Harvard, for example, the undergraduate education has declined. But for graduate degrees in something difficult and challenging (like the sciences), you really get an absolutely top notch education.

FBC, point taken. My unhappy emoticon was not enough to be clear: there was never a doubt in my mind that Christians (and other belief systems) have a personal relationship with God. I was referring to the many doctrinal and dogmatic tensions in many (most, I would opine) sects. The hierarch is the final word on the Word, as it were. Any "peon" daring to contradict him (rarely, her) is disrespecting the elite.

As evidence, I submit the "not a true Christian" arguments.

Here's a few observations:

First, I'd agree with those who have stated earlier that this professor's inability to have a simple conversation with his plumber probably is the result of his own personality issues, not some larger issue related to his level of education. Heck, the last time my plumber came by my house, he looked like the plumber described in the piece (minus the Sox hat - this is Texas after all), and he and I had a pretty good conversation relating to techniques and tools for shaving one's head (we both sport the skinhead look). The fact that I got my bachelor's degree from Rice and my law degree from Harvard didn't make it any more difficult for me to chat amiably with the guy. On a related note, his comments about how he was trained to not want to speak with people who didn't go to elite schools sounds like him acting out on his own insecurities and need to think of himself as some sort of a higher-level intellectual, not something that was expected of him because of this education. From what I've seen, the few elite-school people that I've met who exhibit that sort of attitude are the social misfits that are ostracized by their more socially capable (and in the long run, more successful) schoolmates, so I wouldn't read too much into that, either.

He does make some good points regarding how education at elite schools causes changes in one's expectations and in some ways can limit one's opportunities, unless one is very independent and a confident nonconformist. Going to an elite school can make some otherwise pleasant job opportunities seem inappropriate or an admission of failure, when they are not. I remember one guy in law school lamenting that now that he went to Harvard, he couldn't take a fun job at some coffeehouse or bookstore anymore because people would talk badly about him. But that may have just been some twentysomething angst.

Also, he is correct that one can find a certain arrogance and an attitude that the rules that other people need to follow don't apply to you among elite school students. However, a lot of that is just the dumb confidence of youth, and most people have that beaten out of them pretty quickly once they get out in the working world. Anyone who thinks they will close a deal or win a case just because they went to a better school than the guy on the other side of the table will usually find themselves missing their trousers at the end of the day. The one place where that sort of "where did you go to school" sort of elitism seems to be prevalent is in academia, and it may well be that because this professor has lived his whole life in the elite school bubble, from school to work to social life, he is assuming that is how everyone else who comes from that background has a similar experience and worldview. That really isn't the case outside that world, and probably is the case within that world except to the extent one's personality is geared towards that sort of attitude (see my first paragraph on that point).

One little detail got my attention. He talks about the hardships of his friend from Cleveland State (hey, wait, I thought he was trained not to talk to such people, much less befriend them). Given that we have recently mourned the loss of a bona fide member of the American media elite who was a Cleveland State grad - the late Mr. Tim Russert - I thought that little choice of detail seemed ironic, given the timing of the piece.

What is excellence?
Elite colleges deserve accolades if they evince it, right?
So how come Business Week awards Penn's Wharton School its top place for Undergrad school for business studies? This school and its associated not-for profit enterprises (including a vast healthcare provider network) is the largest employer in Philadelphia - if Wharton's teaching is so "excellent" how come no one locally has applied it with success? The city has shrunk to half the population of its 2 million plus manufacturing heyday, and correspondingly half the housing stock is severely neglected (the large urbane mansions of the elites the most blighted) many handsomely erected schools and churches stand empty, vacant commercial premises left to the elements, overgrown with weeds and strewn trash.

At tuition five-fold the fees charged at state schools ($35,000 vs $7,000) why does Penn enjoy tax-free status? The "education" component perhaps deserves some consideration but the time spent networking on the social climbers ladder (the reason parents are so eager to pay such astronomical sums)?
Pulleeze!
I don't think so!