Education and Class-ism
I don't know which is more disheartening: the fact that the author thought this article was necessary, the fact that he just now figured this out, or the fact that he still comes across as pompous (one of the good things about going to a 'mediocre school' "is that it teaches you to relate to stupid people"). I often felt like people at our beloved alma matter acted like they were above "working class" people, and I'm positive that some of Jennie's colleagues at Rutgers thought they were better than people with less scholarly education. One of things I'm most grateful for in my life is that I'm equally at ease among blue collar, white collar, no collar people, etc... (I'm not so at ease among billionaires, but I don't run into them that often). I count that as some of the best education I ever received.
Labels: 1 fish, 2 fish, blue collar, blue fish, class issues, red fish, white collar
5 Comments:
The article is fairly predictable, and I get the sense that he's just waiting for us 'regular people' to slap him on the back and welcome him into the fold (another act of people pleasing, perhaps?). St. John's, if anything, teaches humility in this sense: the tutors do not drag their degrees behind them into the classroom, expecting our deference. Everyone is 'Mr.' or 'Ms.', and you have to do a little digging to find out where any of the tutors received their degrees. If they can sit and participate with us in discussion, who are from every background under the sun, then as students we can also engage people of different backgrounds in a conversation of equals. Peter Kreeft, I believe, has described the modern academy as 'elite when it comes to people, and egalitarian about ideas.' The true liberal arts education, in contrast, is 'egalitarian when it comes to people, and elitist when it comes to ideas.' St. John's seems to be in the latter tradition - anyone can come to the table (if they've read the book), but everyone's ideas have to be measured first by what the text actually says, and, secondly, by reason itself.
Actually, I think the author is wrong. An elite education does not "make you incapable of talking to people who aren't like you." That's an excuse for laziness, nothing else. Or maybe for a lack of social skills. It has nothing to do with attending an elite school.
Two things are at play here under the surface (or not so much under the surface).
The first is the idea that reason makes truth accessible to all, and the academy is about truth, thus elitism should be a bad word for honest academics because elitism allegedly implies that some people are excluded from knowing truth. That is false. The academy is not about truth as much as about creating people highly trained in a field of their choosing. That is by its nature elitist. If you immerse yourself in legal jargon all day or do nothing except think about vectors or if you can think about all the world only in psychoanalyst terms, of course you need to check yourself when you talk with people who don't. Of course you have to remind yourself that your mode of thinking is only one of many possible ways. That may be hard sometimes, but it's certainly possible. And it has nothing to do with class. I'm pretty sure a biochemical engineer from Yale and a cultural critic from Berkeley have the same problem when they meet at cocktail parties.
The second false assumption is that all good schools provide a set of knowledge and the rest is up to you. Really good schools provide that, but they also provide a network that advances its alumni. Most Yale MBAs don't go there because they can't understand business unless they do. They go there to meet people who know people -- business is predicated on connections. So is politics. So is, by the way, academics. We may not like the system, but saying, "Oh how unfair! People help their buds before they help others! How elitist!" isn't going to change it... nor is there some guarantee written in the skies somewhere that it should be fair.
And by the by, that plumber is an elitist, too. Ask him sometime how he feels about Mexicans who didn't have his training and will do the same work for half the price.
Now now, most states require a license to be a plumber or electrician and that takes the same amount of training no matter where you're from. I think perhaps you were thinking of day laborers.
Otherwise, those are all good points. I tend to think you're upbringing more than you college education tends to "make you incapable of talking to people who aren't like you." Of course, if you come from a rich family and you were raised to think you're better than others, there is also probably a higher chance that you'll end up at one of the "elite universities". So I guess it's kind of like the chicken and the egg.
“The academy is not about truth as much as about creating people highly trained in a field of their choosing.” That seems to be true about the contemporary academy; but it has not always been true, nor should it necessarily be in the future. Harvard’s crest proclaims Veritas as its founding and sustaining principle, not Utilitas. Yale’s adds intellectual light (dare we say Reason?) to the mix: “Lux et Veritas.” One might object that this is lip-service to something that has never existed – non-utilitarian interest in truth. Even if this is true, at the very least the academy recognizes its mission. Whether it succeeds or fails, it is still measured by those words.
One question we could ask about whether the elite academy should stay the way it is, is: ‘what kind of society will we have when all of our leaders are educated in such a way that they no longer know how to ask the big questions?’
The biochemical engineer and cultural critic, when meeting at a cocktail party, might compare notes about summer homes in the Hamptons and Napa Valley, respectively, or play ‘do you know so-and-so?’ They both inhabit a world of priveledge, no matter what their specialty. That’s what binds them together.
Agreement here about contacts as being a primary reason for attending an elite school. Even if Yalies no longer know how to recognize the Good or the True, they at least know a Yalie when they see them.
By the way, Steven, who are the ‘no collar people’? Nudists, perhaps?
I supposed unemployed nudists could be considered no collar. I was referring to the service industries, or jobs that aren't easily define-able as on collar or the other. I also just found out that if you work on environmental issues you're considered green collar.
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