the disadvantages of an elite education

article:
The disadvantages of an elite education
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds,not careers.
It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35 .I’d just bought a house,the pipes needed fixing,and the plumber was standing in my kitchen.There he was,a short guy with a goatee and a thick Boston accent,and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him.So alien was his experience to me,so unguessable his values,so mysterious his very language,that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work.with fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees,I could carry on conversations with people from other countries,in other languages,but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation ,because the last thing an lite education will teach you is its own inadequacy.As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me,elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there,and for what being there can do for them.The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable.You learn to think,at least in certain ways,and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards.To consider that while some opportunities are being created,others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed ,others are being crippled is,within this context,not only outrageous but inconceivable.
The first disadvantage of an elite education ,as I learned in my kitchen that day,is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you.Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity,but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race.with respect to class ,these schools are largely homogeneous .visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white business people and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black,Asian ,and Latino business people and professionals.At the same time,because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes,they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees,Al Gore and John Kerry:one each from Harvard and Yale,both earnest decent,intelligent men,both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.
But it isn’t just a matter of class.My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to,regardless of their class.I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me.We were the best and brightest,as these places love to say,and everyone else was,well,something else:less good,less bright.I learned to give that little nod of understanding,that slightly sympathetic “oh”,when people told me they went to a less prestigious college .I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite school ,often precisely for reasons for class.I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.
The second disadvantage ,implicit in what I’ve been saying ,is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.Getting to an elite college,being at an elite college,and going on from an elite college-all involve numerical rankings:SAT,GPA,GRE.You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers.They come to signify not only your fate,but your identity;not only you identity,but your value.It’s been said what those tests really measures is your ability to take tests,but even if they measure something real,it is only a small slice of the real.The problem begins when students are encouraged to forger this truth,when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense.
There is nothing wrong with taking priding in one’s intellect or knowledge.There is something wrong with the smugness and self-congratulation that elite schools connive at from the moment the fat envelops come in the email.From orientation to graduation,the message is implicit in every tone of voice and tilt of the head,every old-school tradition,every article in the student paper,every speech from the dean.The message is :You have arrived.Welcome to the club.And the corollary is equally clear:You deserve everything your presence here is going to enable you to get.When people say that students at elite schools have a strong sense of entitlement,they mean that those students think they deserve more than other people because their SAT score are higher.One of the great errors of elite education,then,is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense.But they’re not.Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable that stupid people,or talentless people,or even lazy people.
The third disadvantage is that when elite universities boast that they teach their student how to think,they mean that they teach them the analytic and rhetorical skills necessary for success in law or medicine or science or business.But a humanistic education is supposed to mean something more than that,as universities still dimly feel.So when students get to college,they hear a couple of speeches telling then to ask the big question,and when they graduate,they hear a couple more speeches telling them to ask the big questions.And in between,they spend four years taking courses that train them to ask the little questions-specialized courses,taught by specialized professors,aimed at specialized students.Although the notion of breadth is implicit in the every idea of a liberal arts education,the admission process increasingly selects for kids who have already begun to think of themselves in specialized terms-the junior journalist,the budding astronomer,the language prodigy.We are slouching,even at elite schools,toward a glorified form of vocational training
Indeed,that seems to be exactly what those schools want.There is a reason elite schools speak of training leaders,not thinkers-holders of power,not its critics.And independent mind is independent of all allegiances,and elite schools,which get a large percentage of their budget from alumni giving,are strongly invested in fostering institutional loyalty.As another friend,a third-generation Yalie,says the purpose of Yale college is to manufacture Yale alumni.Of course,for the system to work,those alumni.Of course,for the system to work,whose alumni need money.At Yale,the long-term drift of students away from majors in the humanities and basic sciences toward more practical ones like computer science and economics has been abetted by administrative indifference.The college career office have little to say to students not interested in law,medicine,or business,and elite universities are not going to do anything to discourage the large percentage of their graduates who take their degrees to Wall Street.In fact,they’re showing them the way.The liberal arts university is becoming the corporate university ,its center of gravity shifting to technical fields where scholarly expertise can be parlayed into lucrative business opportunities.
The world that produced Al Gore and John Kerry is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders.The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring ,the kid whom everyone wants at their college but no one wants in their classroom,the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe,let alone think ,will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government.He/she will have many achievement but little experience,great success but no vision.The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have,and the elite we are going to have.

translation:
Elite education
我们最好的大学忘记了他们存在的原因是为了创造思想，而不是为了职业。
直到35岁的时候，我才意识到我的教育可能会有一些漏洞。我刚买了一所房子，水管需要修理，水管工就站在我的厨房里。他是个矮小的家伙，长着山羊胡和浓重的波士顿口音，我突然意识到我一点儿也不知道该对他这样的人说些什么。对我来说，外星人是他的经历，他的价值观是如此难以理解，他的语言是如此神秘，以至于在他开始工作之前，我无法让他进行几分钟的闲聊。有了14年的高等教育和少数常春藤盟校学位，我可以用其他语言与其他国家的人进行交谈，但我不能和站在我家里的那个人说话。
我花了这么长时间才发现自己受教育的程度，这并不奇怪，因为一个简单的教育所能教给你的最后一件事就是它自身的不足。正如耶鲁和哥伦比亚大学的二十年告诉我的，精英大学无情地鼓励他们的学生在那里自夸，精英教育的好处确实是不可否认的。你学会思考，至少在某些方面是这样的，你建立了必要的联系，使自己的生活充满了社会最宝贵的回报。要考虑到，当一些机会被创造出来的时候，其他的机会却被取消了在这种情况下，虽然一些能力正在发展，但另一些能力却在削弱，这不仅是不可容忍的，而且是不可思议的。
正如我那天在厨房里学到的，精英教育的第一个缺点是，它使你无法与与你不同的人交谈。精英学校为自己的多样性感到自豪，但这种多样性几乎完全是种族和种族的问题，这些学校基本上是同质的。参观我们伟大国家的任何精英校园，你都可以看到白人商业人士和专业人士的孩子们与黑人、亚洲人和拉丁美洲商业人士和专业人士的孩子们一起学习和玩耍的温馨景象。同时，因为这些学校倾向于培养自由主义的态度，他们让学生处于一种自相矛盾的地位，想代表工人阶级提倡，而不能与任何人进行简单的对话。最后两位民主党总统候选人阿尔·戈尔和John Kerry，分别来自哈佛和耶鲁，两个都是认真、正派、聪明的人，都完全无法与更大的选民沟通。
但这不仅仅是一个班级的问题。我的教育让我相信，不去常春藤联盟或同等学校的人不值得和他们交谈，不管他们的班级如何。我得到了一个明确的信息，那就是这些人比我低。我们是最优秀和最聪明的，正如这些地方爱说的，其他人都是，另一件事：不那么好，不那么聪明。当人们告诉我他们上的是一所名气不高的大学时，我学会了点头表示理解，略带同情的“哦”。我从来没有意识到有聪明的人不上精英学校，经常是因为上课的原因。我从来没有意识到有聪明人根本不上大学。
第二个缺点，就我所说的来说，是精英教育灌输了一种错误的自我价值感。进入精英大学，进入精英大学，从精英大学毕业，都涉及到数字排名：SAT，GPA，GRE。你学会用这些数字来思考自己。它们不仅象征着你的命运，也象征着你的身份；不仅象征着你的身份，还象征着你的价值。据说那些测试真正衡量的是你的考试能力，但即使它们衡量的是真实的东西，也只是真实的一小部分。问题始于学生当学术上的卓越在某种绝对意义上成为卓越时，被鼓励去伪造这个事实。
自夸自己的才智和知识是没有错的，自夸和自夸是有问题的，精英学校从邮件中的脂肪包裹一出现就纵容这种自夸和自夸，从入学到毕业，每一个语调和头的倾斜都隐含着这种信息，每一个古老的学校传统，学生报上的每一篇文章，院长的每一次演讲。传达的信息是：你已经到了。欢迎来到俱乐部。其推论同样清晰：你应该得到你在这里能得到的一切。当人们说精英学校的学生有强烈的权利感时，他们的意思是，那些学生认为他们应该比其他人得到更多，因为他们的SAT分数更高。那么，精英教育的一个重大错误是，它教你认为智力和学术成就的测量在某种道德或形而上学的意义上是价值的测量。但他们不是。精英学校的毕业生不比那些愚蠢的人，或是没有才智的人，甚至是懒惰的人更有价值。
第三个缺点是，当精英大学吹嘘他们教他们的学生如何思考时，他们的意思是教他们在法律、医学、科学或商业上取得成功所必需的分析和修辞技能。但是人文教育应该不仅仅意味着这些，正如大学仍然隐约感觉到的那样。所以当学生们上大学时，他们听到一些演讲告诉他们要问大问题，当他们毕业时，他们听到更多的演讲告诉他们要问大问题。在这期间，他们花了四年的时间学习课程，训练他们问小问题，专业课程，教授由专门的教授，针对专门的学生。虽然广度的概念隐含在每一个文科教育的概念中，但招生过程中越来越多地选择那些已经开始用专业术语思考自己的孩子，初级记者，初出茅庐的天文学家，语言天才。我们是懒散的，即使是在精英学校，也要追求一种光荣的职业培训形式
事实上，这似乎正是这些学校想要的。精英学校谈论培养领导者，而不是思想家掌权者，而不是批评者是有原因的。独立的思想独立于所有的忠诚，而精英学校的预算很大一部分来自校友捐赠，在培养机构忠诚度方面投入了大量资金。正如另一位朋友，第三代Yalie所说，耶鲁大学的宗旨是培养耶鲁校友。当然，为了系统的运转，那些校友。当然，为了系统的运转，他们的校友需要钱。在耶鲁，长期以来，学生们从人文和基础科学专业转向计算机科学和经济学等更实用的专业，这是受到了行政上的漠不关心的怂恿。学院职业办公室对那些对法律、医学或商业不感兴趣的学生几乎没有什么可说的，而精英大学也不会做任何事情为了阻止大部分毕业生去华尔街攻读学位。事实上，他们给他们指明了方向。文科大学正在成为企业大学，它的重心转移到技术领域，在那里，学术专长可以被利用成为有利可图的商业机会。
创造了戈尔和克里的世界确实给了我们下一代的领导者。在双主修的时候，正在上大学三年级的AP课程或编辑三本校园刊物的孩子，每个人都想上大学但没有人想上他们的教室的孩子，没有一分钟呼吸的孩子，更不用说了想一想，很快就会成为一个公司、一个机构、一个政府的管理者。他/她会有很多成就，但经验很少，成功却没有远见。精英教育的缺点是，它给了我们现有的精英，也给了我们将要拥有的精英。