Sandra Newman @sannewman
THE SEVEN SECRETS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE
- Private school
- Legacy lvy admission
- Nepotism hire
- Seed capital from family
- Club memberships
- Personal assistant, nanny, ghost writer answer
- Journalists who ask, “What’s your secret?” and uncritically publish the
Why don’t we send more people to private school then? Start with the easy one.
It’s not about the school itself, it’s about the elitism of the schools and the connections that the insular communities allow. It has little to do with the quality of the education, so sending everyone to private schools wouldn’t change much except as to create more religious indoctrination
Ok, but you’re saying one advantage elites have is they have access to this space that other people don’t have. If we just give more access to that space, we take away that advantage.
Credentialism is why. That is, the overinflation of the importance of credentials to keep belief in a meritocracy alive. A few years ago, when unemployment was higher, I learned that AmLaw 100 firms (i.e. the biggest U.S. law firms) were requiring applicants for runner positions to have a bachelor’s degree. A runner literally just schleps documents around between offices, a job that normally would be a good way to integrate people with intellectual deficits into society, but they required a bachelor’s as a useful screening tool for the hiring process.
If we send more people to schools to get the better credentials, it doesn’t create more room at the top of the social pyramid. It just makes the requirements for entry more exclusive. And that benefits the kids born wealthy, because they can afford to get that MD-PhD to get in the door.
Because it will stop being “private”, which in this case is a blanket term for elite schools. If everyone goes to elite schools, by definition it’s not elite anymore.
I went to a private elementary school. Not only did it not help me in the adult world, it didn’t even help me in middle school and high school other than put me in GT classes I shouldn’t have been put in, make me totally unprepared for class sizes (there were 11 kids in my sixth grade class), etc. Oh, and they had a no homework policy which meant I could never get used to doing homework and by high school just stopped doing it.
On top of all that, I had the same teacher for all six years who both mentally and, once, sexually abused me and encouraged other kids to bully me.
Not one of those things would have happened if I had just gone to a normal public school. Those, for all their faults, prepare kids to be adults.
But nepo babies never have to be adults.
So maybe we shouldn’t send more kids to private schools. We need adults.