The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
Check out this website I found at theamericanscholar.org
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.
Interesting article. I may have well be on this track until we moved to Woodstock. That move exposed me 'regular' folks (even if they were all white), something that wouldn't have happened had I stayed at Decatur and ended up at one of the elite schools in Chicago. UIUC was also filled with 'regular' folk, at least outside the engineering circles (where I spent most of my time the first time around).
