Here are, links to, two articles by William Deresiewicz that highlight the feudal academic system. Published in: The American Scholar ;)
William Deresiewicz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
William_Deresiewicz
Read them both – It is sheer brilliance. The importance is that the upper most elite has the same problems with the stupid servants of the feudal system such as the politicians, the academics, and the journalist just as the ordinary citizen have.
About “The American Scholar”
The American Scholar - Speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Harvard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The_American_Scholar
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ralph_Waldo_Emerson
Phi Beta Kappa Society (Publishes The American Scholar)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Phi_Beta_Kappa_Society
The American Scholar (magazine)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
The_American_Scholar_(magazine)
Solitude and Leadership
If you want others to follow learn to be alone with your thoughts. By William Deresiewicz, Spring 2010
Also delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009.
The United States Military
Academy at West Point
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
United_States_Military_Academy
”Why is it so often that the best people are stuck in the middle and the people who are running things - the leaders - are the mediocrities? Because excellence isn’t usually what gets you up the greasy pole. What gets you up is a talent for maneuvering. Kissing up to the people above you, kicking down to the people below you. Pleasing your teachers, pleasing your superiors, picking a powerful mentor and riding his coattails until it’s time to stab him in the back. Jumping through hoops. Getting along by going along. Being whatever other people want you to be, so that it finally comes to seem that, like the manager of the Central Station, you have nothing inside you at all. Not taking stupid risks like trying to change how things are done or question why they’re done. Just keeping the routine going. … What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the Army - a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People, in other words, with vision.”
Read the whole article
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/
solitude-and-leadership/
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers. By William Deresiewicz, Summer 2008
“In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity - lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. ... Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.”
Read the whole article
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/
the-disadvantages-of-an-elite-education/
Read Also
"We're training students to be obedient, and to try to read our minds, rather than being a catalyst for learning" Professor makes his mark, but it costs him his job (theglobeandmail.com / Canada), February 6, 2009
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/article970280.ece
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