A long but important essay, that explains much about the mess we’re in, when one considers that these people are running the country, and our lives, particularly the one currently in the White House. For what it’s worth, I’ve never had a problem talking to either plumbers or auto mechanics. Perhaps because I’ve spent a good part of my life doing both.
21 thoughts on “The Disadvantages Of An Elite Education”
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Doing plumbers and auto mechanics?
I’ve had the opportunity to work with mechanics, carpenters, PE’s, veterinarians, and any number of PhDs. For lack of a better term, I’m well read enough to be social chameleon. I do not feel uncomfortable because of MY not having met their educational level, so I easily fit in.
Cold, hard experience has shown me that I know much and have done much that many of those educated do not know and have not done.
Way back when I was in the poultry bid’ness, I routinely gave presentations to the upper echelon of the major poultry companies, Tyson, Perdue, Holly Farms, etc. On more than one occasion after giving my talk to the senior folks, one of them has introduced me to their next level of management as Dr der Schtumpy, thinking that I was a vet too.
I corrected that, without telling them just how little formal education I have. Part of being educated, IMHO, should be not hurting peoples feelings or making them look foolish, just because you can.
I am in most ways very happy that I am self taught, with a Masters Degree in Street Smarts, and advanced courses in engines, carpentry, and a dozen other areas of expertise, as opposed to being like the writer.
If he’s typical, he spent a small fortune on an education that left him unprepared to fix his own plumbing.
I’m glad he sees that there is a problem with his thinking. With the exception of my poultry business experiences and a few others, most of the ‘educated’ people I dealt with acted as if I WAS beneath them.
I still get that sometimes, even after I’ve fixed their computer, car, or even plumbing. The other thing I’m glad for is that when I NEED someone’s help, I don’t then take the time to think of myself as better than them because they dug a ditch or fixed my septic tank.
Thank God I never read enough to become THAT educated.
My father was extremely intelligent, and in fact got his degree at Georgetown (I have it in its old frame — it’s all in Latin), but he had friends from all levels of society and in fact preferred to hang out with what are usually called blue-collar workers, even though he was a teacher. But back then (60s – 70s) everyone was like that. Even the hippies and radicals actually interacted with “the working class” instead of just talking about them in the abstract while huddling inside their academic bell jars. The idea that “smart” people should only associate with people just like them was anathema to Americans right up into the Eighties. Then something changed, I’m not sure what.
Reading the first paragraph of the article, the idea that someone with a university education wouldn’t know how to talk to a plumber about anything would have struck my father as bizarre.
One of the rebellious media pundits, I think Bernard Goldberg in “Bias”, mentioned something similar about media elites, that they’ve never actually had any poor friends or knew people who lived in a trailer. Thus they don’t have any first-hand familiarity with blue-collar conservatives, so they come up with bizarre theories about what such people think. Their lack of understanding shows through whenever they opine about Joe Sixpack, along with their bizarre gut feeling that the average Republicans is an ultra-rich criminal banker who controls the world but mysteriously chooses to live in a trailer park polishing guns in between hunting expeditions for Bigfoot in the neighborhood swamp.
GT,
the other thing that rankles me is the concept that ‘lesser’ peoples NEED these pointy headed boobs to ‘save’ them. Save them from WHAT?
Keeping their cars running, homes built and maintained, food grown, keeping their beloved college campuses RUNNING?
In my experience it’s only the third rank that is so snooty, although my experience is confined to scientists. I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few first rank scientists, and they are uniformly humble, eager to learn from anyone and everyone, and would never dream of putting someone down for their paper credentials. Really, it’s almost a diagnostic of outstandingness: if you need to put someone else down, you’re not in the first rank.
I dunno. I suppose it’s an okay essay as far as it goes. Sentences such as
“If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education, George W. Bush represents another. It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale.”
give one pause. The self-indulgent, lying, profiteering hypocrite Gore is a characteristic product of an elite education!?! (There is nothing “analytic” about Gore’s, er, “intelligence.”) The talentless mediocrity (and that’s about the kindest thing I can say of him) of Kerry is a characteristic product of an elite education. Which “another” does Bush represent, then? And slam on Obama isn’t near hard enough.
The word “elite” must mean something other than I think it does, either that or the “education” part of “elite education” doesn’t remain after graduation.
“Elite” in this context means “connected.” Basically it’s the same old structure of the Soviet Communist Party, transplanted to the American academic institution. If you can get “in,” become an apparatchik, you’re SFL. No wonder we don’t hear much about the late USSR — it still exists, only it’s called the Ivy League.
Andrea,
can I have this made into an embroidered sampler?
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“Basically it’s the same old structure of the Soviet Communist Party, transplanted to the American academic institution.”
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For years, I had been thinking of the educated crowd in terms of “Animal Farm”. They just think of themselves as being MORE equal. But you’ve hit it much more squarely on the head than did my analogy.
I guess I just had PIGS in mind, and how PIG headed some of the elites can be.
Carl Said:
I’ve been lucky enough to meet a few first rank scientists, and they are uniformly humble, eager to learn from anyone and everyone, and would never dream of putting someone down for their paper credentials.
Bingo exactly correct.
“can I have this made into an embroidered sampler?”
Heh, you go right ahead. Really, it just occurred to me. (I try to spend as little time as possible thinking of these people.) But suddenly I flashed on all those scenes in those old (like from the 60s-80s) movies where there would be some scene with a Soviet bigwig in his nice apartment with the antique furniture and crystal and silver-plated samovar. Some old spy film, possibly with Michael Caine as a world-weary British spy? Or else I’m thinking of that movie about the ballet dancer played by Mikhail Baryshnikov who defected but ends up in the USSR again after a plane crash and since he’s such a prize the Russkis try to bribe him to stay by giving him a fancy apartment and so on.
Man, now I’m getting nostalgic.
An elite education not only ushers you into the upper classes; it trains you for the life you will lead once you get there. I didn’t understand this until I began comparing my experience, and even more, my students’ experience, with the experience of a friend of mine who went to Cleveland State. There are due dates and attendance requirements at places like Yale, but no one takes them very seriously. Extensions are available for the asking; threats to deduct credit for missed classes are rarely, if ever, carried out. In other words, students at places like Yale get an endless string of second chances. Not so at places like Cleveland State.
Well, all I can offer is anecdotes from two universities that are exactly opposite to that. My own alma mater is considered by many to be “elite”, perhaps even the most elite university in the world. I don’t recall getting a lot of slack. And I have never worked as hard in my life as I did my first year of PhD school.
On the other hand, I taught for a number of years at a small Catholic university that was mainly known for its engineering and business programs, but had pretensions of becoming a liberal arts school. And I had to make a severe adjustment to the classroom norms at small universities. I thought I was being a nice guy by letting them turn in assignments late for only 10% off per day late — many of my professors when I was a student had a zero-tolerance policy for late work. But I quickly found out this “tough standard” earned me poor student reviews because the norm was to treat due dates as suggestions. And student reviews are everything! You see, small universities, especially small private universities, are scrounging for students all the time — times are tough in hte higher education bubble. Spoiling them rotten is one tactic for retention. The idea of challenging students or making them live up to some standard is horribly old-fashioned, Cleveland State not withstanding. I can only hope that I was able to impart enough to my students to make their education worthwhile, even if my hands were tied in meting out discipline.
Large elite universities don’t have to stoop that low because the education they offer is actually valuable — well, at least in the sciences and engineering….
It might be easier for if William Deresiewicz’s education were in a field that was about something in the real world, instead of about each other’s opinions about the real world.
I strongly suspect that plumbers need analytic intelligence a lot more than they need “social intelligence and emotional intelligence and creative ability”. This rhetoric might even be a way for humanists to try to prove that they’re better than the experts in real-world subjects while simultaneously looking humble.
I suspect that the phenomena the writer discusses are more a product of the dreaded “liberal arts” education than a technical education (science, engineering) or maybe even a business education. It reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House, particularly Wolfe’s description of how an entire generation of architects tried to design “machines for living” for the benefit of the benighted working class, only to discover that said benighted working class wanted to live in houses with two-car garages and basketball hoops outside and tacky lawn decorations and knick-knacks on the mantle and luxurious master bathrooms and…you get the idea.
But I agree with Carl; I’ve met a few world-class minds with the paper credentials to match, and one of the things that struck me about them is their acknowledgement of how much they DIDN’T know, and how that factors into how they work.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Ooh, Number 12 on my list!
Andrea,
I looked at the entry on your list regarding the Heinlein quote. IMHO, your criticism is irrelevant to the quote. I don’t care for large portions of Heinlein’s oeuvre post-The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but the aforementioned quote (from “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long” section of the generally-really-bad Time Enough for Love) is as good a summary of Heinlein’s philosophy as he ever wrote. And I, for one, find much to admire in Heinlein’s philosophy and fiction.
Well, your criticism is irrelevant to my list. My point is that the quote, its merits aside, has been used so often that it’s become a cliché. Also, how many of you guys can do all that stuff? Or want to? (Admit it: none of you if you aren’t already obstetricians have any desire to know how to deliver a baby.) Really, I don’t think that not knowing how to do ten thousand different types of things makes you an “insect.”
Anyway, how is what I said irrelevant? I’ve read lots of Heinlein, and he seemed to think that the ability to have sex with any type of person or persons regardless of age, sex, or relationship, without any hangups* whatsoever, was a very important skill, certainly worthy of being added to his comprehensive list. I’m just helping.
Brings to mind Mike Rowe’s recent Senate testimony on the need for more Skilled Labor:
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/dirtyjobs/mike-rowe-senate-testimony.html
I can do 16 of the 21 for sure and one (design a building) if it’s small. I don’t know how to butcher a hog, although I do OK with the Thanksgiving turkey, and I seriously doubt I could plan a successful invasion, given how the family never gets on the road when I think it will. The other two require acid tests I’m not enthused about undertaking.
Admit it: none of you if you aren’t already obstetricians have any desire to know how to deliver a baby
Well I don’t know about that. I’ve come within five minutes of having to do so. Fortunately I knew the rudiments, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing it done once or twice beforehand, just in case.