Read a good book yesterday and wanted to pass it along.
Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite by William Deresiewicz
A former Yale professor, Bill Deresiewicz presents a look at how the top Ivy League colleges in America are producing students who go out into society without being able to conceive a critical thought. He also discusses how the current admissions process to top colleges has and is continuing to form a wide gulf between the haves and have-nots, how the enabling of parents is stunting their children's independence, and how this broken system is perpetuating a segregated class system within America.
It was a hard read for me as Dr. Deresiewicz criticizes the rise of specialization of professions, and the decrease in focus on the humanities within the current college model. I'm a specialized professor teaching in a professional degree program. It was hard to hear, but I think he has a good point. I teach students everyday that, I swear, don't have an original thought in their head.
With Common Core and the emphasis on STEAM, classrooms are moving more towards creativity and divergent thinking. I'm a curriculum coach so I'm seeing this K-12. Divergent thinking and problem-solving are components to training students to use their minds. I'm imagining this is threatening to many groups.
I don't think it's just Ivy League schools or even just colleges.
That is a book that I would love to read. Thank you for the up.
But with out even have read it yet, I can Attest to the premise.
When I was young, and mind you this was during the Carter administration, where higher learning was something that he really fought for, was fortunate to have been administered into a " Modern educational school", for lack of better words.
We were, rather than memorizing names and dates, were shown how to use and apply critical thinking.
For example, we would discuss a topic, and then sent out on our own to research our findings, and write a paper on what we had learned. and even then we would still discuss what we had learned, and came to a consensus.
Unfortunately, that ended in my Tenth grade. Going back to a public school for the two remaining years was much akin to torture.
I am simply dumbfounded on why that system never advanced farther than that.
But I have to say that the "critical thinking" aspect has never left me. I still apply it to just about every thing I do.
Such a tool is paramount to any other system I've ever seen.
Monty Python portrayed the british version of them very well.
Sounds mighty interesting, however I think that I need to read all the other 150 000 books that I already have at home, on my bookshelves, under the bed, in piles on the floor, in boxes in the garage, but if I ever finish them, I shall get to that one too.
My brother went to an Ivy league school, Dartmouth, for one year, then dropped out because it was too expensive, which was back in the 70s. Can only imagine what it costs now. He took away from it a very disillusioned view of how the offspring of the elite think and act as well as the lesson that for most of those members of elite families the main benefit of an Ivy league education as well as the top priority among their kind is the making of connections with others of their kind with which to get jobs in govt. or the private sector. It's just an expensive 4 year boarding school to party and network in.
@linxminx Thank you. My brother and I unfortunately grew up in a small town in Iowa, but he's a pretty sharp guy, even if we don't get along. He eventually went to Syracuse U. for a masters in English Fiction writing and got to know the writer Jay Mc Innerney, who wrote Bright Lights, Big City, among other novels and short stories, then got a law degree from Columbia, another Ivy League school where he got to know Caroline Kennedy, among some other members of the elite families of America. He ended up as a fed magistrate in Puerto Rico and I have no doubt some of his Columbia connections led to that job.
As far as critical thinking, my brother already had those skills before he got to Dartmouth, but, at least back then, they did teach critical thinking there in most classes. He also had original thoughts, but he would probably agree that many of his classmates did not. They were trust fund babies for the most part and would do just fine in life without having any original thoughts because their families could provide them with unlimited extra chances if they failed at anything.
Well things may have moved on a little, in my day in the UK, (long time ago) if you had an original thought, the teachers would slap you.
They never liked it when a student raised a question for which they the teachers did not have an answer and would quickly gloss over it.
Sounds like a book I need to add to my library. Thank you for posting.