Why would any parent pay big bucks to send a child NY’s Dalton School?
Read the description at Legal Insurrection of what’s happening these days at NYC’s Dalton School. It’s worth taking a look at the entire article, the gist of which is that it appears this exclusive private school is in the process of being utterly revamped in complete devotion to an “anti-racist” model. Whether or not Dalton adopts the entire set of demands (or “thought-starters”), it’s clear that the mindset of a huge number of faculty and staff there is dedicated to indoctrinating students in the most extreme version of the poisonous – and poisonously racist – pedagogy known officially as “anti-racism.”
Just to take one example of these policies that might be adopted there, we have: “Elimination of AP courses if black students don’t score as high as white.” That’s the drift of the last decade or so of education, in a nutshell.
Some parents are already pulling their kids out of Dalton. My question is: why would anyone stay and pay for the privilege of having their kids being excoriated and humiliated for their race (if white), or coddled and humiliated for their race (if black) by the implicit assumption that black children of today (even those of the rich) are incapable of doing well and the educational world must be organized to accommodate that supposed fact? It’s a pernicious educational philosophy for children of all races.
My guess is that some parents want to make their children into sacrificial lambs for wokeness in order to showcase their own virtue. But hopefully, not that many.
My wife is an elementary school teacher and this is beginning to pop up in public schools as well as part of the ‘social contract’ (their verbiage, not hers). Non-caucasian students’ parents are actually excusing their children’s poor performance with their heritage. It isn’t widespread yet at this point, but it is happening. I honestly don’t know where kids will be able to expect to be educated in this country in ten year’s time.
Well, at least the kids don’t have to take compulsory puberty blockers until they choose their identity and pronouns.
At least not yet.
https://nationalfile.com/trans-activist-says-children-need-mandatory-hormone-blockers-kids-cant-consent-to-puberty/
If, as the “woke” educators assume, black kids are incapable of doing well, then the obvious response is to reduce effort and funding on a fruitless attempt to push them above their capabilities, and to utilize the savings, in funding and effort, to enable the other kids to advance even further.
In the 5 years before I retired, the college went through a revamping of the GE program. This usually happens about every decade with small changes. Not this time. The progs/SJWs pushed through a complete 4 year GE that was loaded with indoctrination along the usual lines. Us older faculty argued that such a program would be the death knell for the college in terms of applicants. Boy, were we wrong! Applications went up with parents saying they wanted a college that was “woke” and not stuck in the racist past. I was shocked until I remember that these parents were the first set of students who came to college as postmodernism/social justice was really establishing itself.
Gotta hand to Bill Ayers…he has done more to undermine the United Sates by targeting education than anything the old Soviet spies could have done. And, I don’t see any way to undo it.
physicsguy: GE program? General Education? Something else?
Check out the book “Higher Education” by Jerry Pournelle.
Scott Johnston, author of the wonderfully amusing novel Campusland (on the topic of academic insanity) has been covering this on his blog at The Naked Dollar. The madness engulfing Dalton is no different from what is happening in the public schools in San Diego and Seattle; thanks to the excellent reporting of Chris Rufo (City Journal), this metastasizing of the cancer of “wokeness” through K-12 can no longer be ignored.
I’ve read that as many as 10% of students are now in some form of home-schooling, and many more are going to private schools — but not this kind.
Not one of these “woke” teachers would ever be caught dead in a overwhelmingly Black or Puerto Rican neighborhood such as Jamaica, Queens or East Flatbush, Brooklyn (the neighborhood I grew up in).
“Mandatory diversity plot lines in school plays”?
My guess is that most of the 100 faculty that signed this thing realized how completely idiotic these demands are. They signed it anyway because they were too cowardly to refuse for fear of being denounced as “racist”. The same thing has been going on in the universities for a long time and has spread to corporate America and the media, and is starting to take hold in society in general. Unless people start having the courage to stand up and say “enough” we are doomed.
“My guess is that some parents want to make their children into sacrificial lambs for wokeness in order to showcase their own virtue.”
Neo- I believe that is exactly what is going on with the current fad of giving young children puberty blockers. Any parent that would do that to their kid belongs in prison.
Well, let’s see.
The Dalton School is on the upper east side of Manhattan and its students are the kids of the uber rich, leftist, neo-communists.
Looks to me like the parents are all for having their kids indoctrinated in a hate-America first , neo-Marxist ideology.
Why would they? It’s not only virtue signaling, many mostly liberal whites are in total agreement with the woke insanity. As John McWhorter says, it’s akin to a religion – and we all know how difficult it is to step away from a growing circle dance.
Huxley…. yes Gen Ed; was the usual area requirements of a math, a science, a history, etc. Now a 4-year program with a student designed theme, that of course now must meet SJ requirements. In the meantime, to mesh with the new system, each department must have courses at all 4 levels that also satisfy SJ criteria. That’s how they wormed their way into making sure the math and sciences fell in line.
I suspect that the parents who keep their kids in such nonsense possess sufficient resources that they foresee their kids not needing a productive job. Or getting along quite, quite well in a non-productive occupation.
Why Dalton? Helps the chances of Junior getting admitted to an Ivy League school.
The Dalton School, New York, NY_Percentage admitted to Ivy League ~ 31%
That is an alumni list heavy on celebrity but not so heavy on brainpower- though celebrities may be what they were looking for in the construction of such a list. The Wiki alumni list was also heavy on celebrities, not on scientists.
“Why would anyone send their kids to Dalton School?”
“Why would anyone watch CNN?”
“Why would anyone read the NYT?”
“Why would anyone vote Dem?”
As the contradictions heighten and as the cognitive dissonance goes off the rails, sanity will resume.
However, as the saying goes “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and similarly the culture can remain toxic for much longer than one would think ….
Something about fools and money comes to mind. But I’m not of the elite.
I’d be interested in hearing more on how “social contract” is defined in their use.
Of course we are all familiar with the old terms, “social contract” and “social compact” and, the curious manner in which some, say the Canadians, have deployed the terminology in recent years.
Originally, it meant merely that I, or you, tacitly entered into an associative relationship, or not, freely and on the basis of a calculation of self interested benefit; and thus implicitly (as proper institutions were established) promised not to level violence against one another as long as an impartial rule of law prevailed.
Latterly, it seems to have morphed into some kind of social solidarity notion, as might be expected under the influence of feminism, socialism, and wokeness.
Zaphod’s link to the boyish pseudo-philosopher’s simpering celebration of supposedly multiplied weaknesses realized within so-called “communities of vulnerability” rather than traditional “communities of strength” (or competency) is one recent formulation.
Yeah that will work for sure. Pack a football stadium with retards [deliberately provocative usage] and you will have the power of Einstein at your disposal.
Of course, all this illustrates that the basic assumptions of progressives concerning what humans are, their nature, destiny and fulfillment, differ radically from those of traditionalists embracing classically liberal notions of moral autonomy, individual responsibility and freedom of association.
The disputes between modern liberals/progressives on the one hand, and traditionalists and libertarians on the other then, go right down to the anthropological level; as we first learned in high school and college, but sometimes subsequently forget.
As the natty [his photo is a braying scream] leftist “adjunct professor” approvingly puts it on his “L.A. Progressive Blog”, (conveniently there the moment I typed in “social contract and violence” in Duckduck) :
Yeah, like the song goes Bruce, everybody, needs somebody, sometime.
But not everyone, needs everyone else every-time … or indeed, at all.
I worked for the Dalton School and I can easily answer the question from knowledge which others here just dont have….
It’s because of HOW they teach vs what they teach… they teach people to be the leaders of tomorrow in behavior and how they unstructured the persons mentality when compared to “regular” education. The students that go there will be the ones who control the students that go to common school. One teaches how to follow orders, follow a schedule (as the two books that would have helped make this kind of thing clear went recommended and unread!!!!!! despite being free downloads.. John Taylor Gatto and Iserbyte who was in Ronald Reagans administration)
Dumbing Us Down – The Hidden Curriculum Of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto…
no one asked… dumbing us down for whom… well for the kind of kids that graduate the Dalton School!!!!!!!!
the kids at dalton learn in a more realistic way how to solve problems, get people organized to work together under their supervision… in a regular school, the kids have to memorize things about archeology, and what workers did and what was found… in the Dalton school, software i wrote for them created an artificial realm where they had to organize a archeological dig, set the area, grid the thing, hire the people, put them in position, find things, catalogue them, etc… they were to lead the confused.. They are taught how to make sense of the world and get things done, the others are confused and have a warped view and so have to be told how to do a small part of it… The why and how you do things a certain way not another way… classes are not structured like factory workers of the soviet style schools created by Dewey…
make them perform the same, so they are interchangable, so that you do not have to weigh talents and abilities and skills and aptitudes… a gear is a gear and a cog is a cog… and for the leaders of Dalton, this is easier as these cogs are trained to sit in place, do what they are told, etc..
not at Dalton…
take a look at this page at the work i helped develop..
https://www.dalton.org/dalton-news?pk=651337
The 3rd grade archaeological study is a centerpiece of the Dalton First Program, activity-based pedagogy. The students take on the role of archeaologists (diggers, excavators, recorders, screeners, mapper/loggers and washers) to dig into the simulated box of strati, with plate and trowel, to unearth New York’s historical treasures.
This activity is a prime example of Dalton’s philosophy, which puts students at the center of their learning. It emphasizes a real world, activity-based approach; they encounter real problems with real answers. Students experience a comprehensive archaeological dig, which is designed to provide the complete conceptual framework for observing aspects of the city’s history and for understanding New York City culture and history in greater depth. Rather than simply studying information about the history of NYC, it gives all 3rd graders a chance to do the real work of archaeologists. When they dig in to the second stratus, they will find actual artifacts from New Amsterdam. Native American Indian Studies and the Age of Exploration are investigated, in conjunction with an Archaeology unit developed by Neil Goldberg, Dalton’s Archaeologist-in-Residenc
What does a third grader do in a regular school?
Re., the latter 3: It’s how they establish their place and earn their pay in Neo’s famous circle dance.
Re., the first: Pagan parents of old sacrificed their children up on the altar of Moloch hoping to get a return. Why would modern members of that breed be any different?
Well, Art; you have illustrated why a Dalton parent might have wanted to send a child there in the past.
Whether making them the subjects of a social justice regime of abuse will contribute to their personal empowerment and social dominance in the future, seems to be the question at hand.
Artfldgr:
That’s extremely interesting information.
I’m not familiar with the previous Dalton school curriculum, but I’m highly familiar with that of three other private schools that have a remarkable way of teaching that’s very different from what children receive in the public schools.
However, after what I’ve read about the things that are now being contemplated as changes in Dalton’s curriculum as well as the school’s planned shift in entire focus, the question I’m asking is why someone would want to send a child there after those changes have been made.
About 90 teachers and 30 other employees signed this worthless mess. I’m guessing from it’s enrollment that the school employs about 130 teachers. The headmaster received it four months ago. What it indicates is that (1) over 60% of their faculty haven’t a clue as to why an ordinary person would send their child to school or just what liberal education actually is and (2) a similar proportion of these high-priced teachers know nothing of social relations in this country. By some accounts, starting salaries at the Dalton School for their faculty are around $100,000 a year, and they hire people addled by social fantasies. The headmaster is putting out statements that read like they were drafted by a crisis communications consultant and the board is (as it always is at these ruined schools) completely AWOL.
Who would subject their children to this? God only knows. One thing I’ve discovered in the last five years is that no normal human being seems to have any insight into the mentality of the corporate elite anymore.
It’s because of HOW they teach vs what they teach… they teach people to be the leaders of tomorrow in behavior and how they unstructured the persons mentality when compared to “regular” education.
Oh, shut up.
Our friends at Wiki provide a list of dozens of current public figures who attended the Dalton School. Not one of them is a notable in business, the professions, or the military. One is a prominent academician. One is a federal judge because, well, she knew Kirsten Gillibrand.
You want a private school, move across the river and enroll your kid here:
https://www.hobokencatholic.org/admissions/tuition-and-fees
A three bedroom apartment in Hoboken will set you back about $2,000 a month.
Art+Deco
Our friends at Wiki provide a list of dozens of current public figures who attended the Dalton School.
Mattress Girl of Columbia fame is one of the Dalton alumni so listed. ‘Mattress Girl’ Emma Sulkowicz Walked Into a Libertarian Happy Hour. No, This Is Not a Joke. Time flies. She’s now 28.
Mattress Girl of Columbia fame is one of the Dalton alumni so listed. ‘Mattress Girl’ Emma Sulkowicz Walked Into a Libertarian Happy Hour. No, This Is Not a Joke. Time flies. She’s now 28.
Her father is a prominent clinical psychologist in Manhattan. Another cobbler’s kid running around without any shoes.
The Woke Madness is endemic:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/11/28/delingpole-eton-sacks-teacher-who-dared-question-toxic-masculinity/
The Oligarchs and uppermost levels of their Managerialist Servant Class will move entirely to private tutoring. They already have nannies, governesses, etc. No big deal at all for them.
Can’t be sustainable in the longer run if the next rung down the Managerialist Ladder goes completely insane — cf. Dalton, Eton, and myriad others who are less newsworthy. When you get middle and upper-middle managerialists gone woke-mad who are feeding garbage information upwards (let’s ignore their kicking downwards here) this cannot help even the most cynical oligarchical Dr Evil to make rational decisions about how to maximise extraction of value from us Ant People.
I like the Dodger’s data point about how things were at the Dalton School back when. We (even those of us who did very well in public schools) tend not to realise what an attenuated abortion of an ‘education’ we received. One can compensate to a degree by becoming an autodidact, but the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, not in parents’ basement playing computer games. Certain things can only be instilled n the young and in groups and in carefully curated environments.
For those asking why the elites would be willing for their children to be exposed to such nonsense in the current year, it’s simple: They Can Afford to Go Mad. It’s just a fashion statement for them. We cannot afford to go mad, nor can we afford their ostentatious madness.
NYC’s Dalton School is simply the tip of the left’s pedagogical ‘spear’.
“I honestly don’t know where kids will be able to expect to be educated in this country in ten year’s time.” James
Absent Trump declaring Martial Law or America erupting into another Civil War, in ten years time, kids will not be able to find a refuge from pervasive leftist indoctrination. Even today an actual education is no longer the norm.
Cap’t Rusty,
Black kid’s low scores are not an indication of an inability to do well but rather ‘proof’ of systemic racism. Asian kid’s scores are simply an inconvenient truth, one that’s best ignored.
Facts that invalidate a narrative are evidence that it’s not about leveling the field of opportunity but rather using false accusations as leverage to gain more cultural and political power.
physicsguy,
“Gotta hand to Bill Ayers…he has done more to undermine the United Sates by targeting education than anything the old Soviet spies could have done. And, I don’t see any way to undo it.”
Yes, Bill Ayers is arguably the most successful traitor in the history of the United States. Though he got the idea from Lenin; “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Who may have got the idea from Lincoln;”The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
However, by now you must see the singular thing that can be done about it. It’s just that it’s unthinkable. Though seeing it as unthinkable is entirely understandable. Namely, the prospect of an even more horrible Cival War. Tragically, the alternative is acceptance of 1984. Personally, I give us a 1 in 3 chance of avoiding another Civil War. As 1984 is going to be an unbearable burden upon formerly free men’s souls.
As to the why, Gringo nailed it above:
_________________________________________________
Why Dalton? Helps the chances of Junior getting admitted to an Ivy League school.
The Dalton School, New York, NY_Percentage admitted to Ivy League ~ 31%
_________________________________________________
Parents with money and status are crazy desperate to get their kids into Ivies. I’ve seen it. The Ivies have gone crazy for Crit theory and it seeps down.
Getting your ticket punched by an Ivy is a big deal and will continue to be so. There’s no mystery here.
Eventually this may change, but I’m not waiting up nights.
Well to be an optimist, the noncontact schooling (home schooling) brought about by COVID19 may break the teacher’s unions indoctrination and woke poisoning of some young minds.
The educrats and teachers are still trying to extend their domination when they snoop into the actual home environments of their “students” and find objectionable “problematic” artifacts in the background.
Almost as bad as wearing the wrong hats or clothing into the holy realm of the “public schools.” Children after all are the property of the state. ;(
Z Man makes the point that what we’re seeing is the result of Managerialists having become class aware.
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=22253
Worth reading even if you have antibodies to his side of the fence; there are things to be learned there. The world is a very messy complicated place. There is more on the reactionary right than blaming everything on the you-know-whooos. Smarter people than Zaphod the Midwit are trying from a bunch of angles to figure out how we got here and how to avoid it happening again. The consensus seems to be that human nature is a tinderbox of bastardry and classical western liberalism is an accelerant and no kind of firewall.
That doesn’t mean we have to live without liberty. But it means that our recipes for doing so are seriously messed up and need looking at.
Kate,
“I’ve read that as many as 10% of students are now in some form of home-schooling, and many more are going to private schools…”
I’d bet my last dollar that on the left, the call to outlaw home-schooling and private schools is a not uncommon one.
Chris B,
I suspect that all the ‘teachers’ and administrators at the Dalton School are true believers. I imagine they’re carefully scrutinized before being hired and then watch each other for any back sliding.
JohnTyler, M Williams, Richard Aubrey and Gringo have the right of it.
JimNorCal,
People who have embraced an ideology that demands disconnection from reality rarely return to sanity. And most of the ones that do, do so far too late.
DNW,
“all this illustrates that the basic assumptions of progressives concerning what humans are, their nature, destiny and fulfillment, differ radically from those of traditionalists embracing classically liberal notions of moral autonomy, individual responsibility and freedom of association.
The disputes between modern liberals/progressives on the one hand, and traditionalists and libertarians on the other then, go right down to the anthropological level;”
I mostly agree. The ideological dispute between Marxist progressives and constitutional conservatives and libertarians is basically antithetical. The latter can live with powerless Marxist progressives. But when the former are in power, they cannot abide constitutional conservatives and libertarians. The Marxist progressives are motivated by an ideological imperative to rid the world of any contrary ideology. Which is why it will come down to a contest of arms.
Wherein we disagree is in lumping together liberals and “progressives”. Liberals are willfully blind to the fact that they’re enabling the fashioning of the chains of their future oppression. They’ve been force fed leftist indoctrination by their parents and ‘educators’ for so long that they are literally unable to see where the path they are enabling leads. That indoctrination inculcated acceptance of “white guilt”, which is the emotional premise that creates their willful blindness.
Art,
Re: “the kids at dalton learn in a more realistic way how to solve problems, get people organized to work together under their supervision… They are taught how to make sense of the world and get things done”
When did your involement with the Dalton school occur? Because there is no way that what they’re being taught >now will enable those students to “solve problems” or “make sense of the world and get things done”…
Confirmation of that assertion is obtained by simply looking at the people Obama surrounded himself with and who now are reportedly joining the Biden team… those people’s ideological kin are the ones currently teaching Dalton school students ‘how’ to ” solve problems” and “make sense of the world and get things done”…
Re: Managerial class…
Zaphod: You might want to backtrack to Herman Kahn, the “Thinking About the Unthinkable” guy.
In the seventies Kahn was on to something he called the New Class, which is your managerial class. He once did an evening seminar with Gov. Jerry Brown’s staff and a few countercultural luminaries like Stewart Brand of “Whole Earth Catalog” fame. Brand published it in his magazine, “CoEvolution Quarterly.” It’s one of the most prescient articles I’ve read, sadly not available today.
The first pull quote:
_______________________________________________________
A war of the New Class against the middle class — when you look at American politics that way, everything falls into place.
_______________________________________________________
Kahn specifies the New Class:
_______________________________________________________
Think of a group of people who come from upper middle class backgrounds, from families who are largely education-oriented, so they see that the children go to the good schools and who, after they get out of the schools, earn their living by the use of academic skills, language skills, esthetic skills, analytical skills. They don’t earn their living by being entrepreneurs, businessmen, engineers, laborers, clerical workers.
_______________________________________________________
Kahn forecasts exactly the conflict we see today between the Washington insiders and the Tea Party/Trump supporters. For example:
_______________________________________________________
The New Class has an agenda. What is their agenda? Number one is risk aversion. In the New Class theology the only real value is human life. You’re never entitled to risk human life. It gets to be kind of manic. The risk aversion is pushed to the point where you’re running bigger risks.
_______________________________________________________
Covid, anyone? Anyway, I could go on.
The sixties had plenty of big-think gurus bloviating about the future. Kahn IMO is one of the few who has stood the test of time.
FWIW, that was the Spring, 1977 issue of “CoEvolution Quarterly.”
Once upon a time the CQ archive was available digitized, though not OCR’ed, online, but the archive has vanished. A shame.
@Huxley: Thanks for that!
Art+Deco,
“over 60% of their faculty haven’t a clue as to why an ordinary person would send their child to school”
‘Ordinary people’ don’t send their children to “pricey and exclusive” schools.
Nor are high-priced teachers interested in how social relations in this country actually work. They’re interested in indoctrinating their students in how to participate in “The Great Reset”.
Zaphod,
Since when are Oligarchs and the uppermost levels of their Managerialist Servant Class interested in how to maximise extraction of value from us ant people?
We need simply look at how South America’s oligarch class has treated it’s peon class to see how much they value maximum extraction of value from the ant people. The elites are quite happy with a world of the ‘educated’ rich, their managerial class and the ignorant poor. It has always been so. In the modern world, we must add a technological class which serves the managerial class.
The basic division in humanity remains between those who need to control others and those who have no such wish.
What do you think the utter destruction of America’s middle class and small businesses is about if not that? Sheer coincidence? I think not. Not when all the data and science contradicts their assertions. While they personnally ignore their own dictats. A recent study of contract tracing of Covid transmission rates in NYC revealed that less than 2% was traced to restaurant dining or patronizing a bar. While just under 75% was contracted in homes. Yet they’re telling us to shelter in our homes? What an excellent way to ensure the virus continues to spread, while simultaneously killing off small business in America and Western Civilization.
huxley,
I’m not sure that I buy into the notion that Kahn’s New Class explains it all. It may have value as part of the puzzle pieces. But if Kahn’s right that their big agenda is risk aversion… then its a suicidal agenda, as they have competition. Neither the ChiComs nor Islam value life and they’re fanatics, which means they won’t give up on their imperative to rule over all.
Geoffrey Britain:
The Kahn talk was long and covered much ground. I was trying to fit the context and a few quotes into a screenful. I think you’d agree with much that Kahn said. It holds up quite well for a piece over forty years old. Here’s another excerpt:
___________________________________
Brown: …in our society certain people have a higher potentiality for being in the bottom 20%, so people feel that that systematic process should be altered.
Kahn: Not everybody feels that way. This is a New Class idea. It’s a question of guilt. You remember those New Class religions I mentioned earlier?
They have one common characteristic. They rely heavily on guilt to keep people in order. I have a friend of mine, a Polish banker. He went to see LeRoi Jones’ play which gave a very graphic picture of the suffering of the Blacks. At the end of the play, my friend went up to LeRoi and said, “What can we do to atone?” I said, “Sit down, you weren’t here, you were in Poland.” He couldn’t understand it. He felt personally guilty.
Now, I’ll argue that one of the sickest characteristics of our society is the
inability of the New Class elite to control their feelings of guilt.
–Herman Kahn
If you read the curricula of equally elite prep schools you will find that most of them are invested in “anti-racism.” It’s not surprising that Dalton went a little bananas; as pointed out above, it is not a “traditional” school to begin with.
huxley – very interesting information about Kahn.
Artfldgr – you always come up with salient insider info!
Among the suggested authors, Glenn Reynolds has been describing the rot in schools for years, and what to do about it.
Looks like Covid shut-downs accomplish some of what he proposed.
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_School.html?id=q9rYAgAAQBAJ
I suspect he mentions home-schooling somewhere in there also.
If you read the curricula of equally elite prep schools you will find that most of them are invested in “anti-racism.” It’s not surprising that Dalton went a little bananas; as pointed out above, it is not a “traditional” school to begin with.
You fancy that makes it better?
And ‘a little bananas’ is an anodyne way of describing the mentality of the faculty and administration there. What they’re advocating is complete subordination of the residue of liberal education to a rancid and invalid social ideology and institutionalized harassment of students and employees alike.
Getting your ticket punched by an Ivy is a big deal and will continue to be so. There’s no mystery here.
No, they sell you the idea that it is. Have a gander at the capsule biographies of important CEOs. The Ivies are there. However, you also see other private research universities, selective private colleges, and state schools. And for every Ivy graduate with a handsome career, you’ll find several others with careers open to anyone who came out of a land-grant school. See Thos. Sowell on the value-added of an elite education. It’s vastly over-sold.
Huxley,
A good catch and contribution. I don’t think I have seen the set of referenced persons and their attributes, psychological and otherwise, described as a social class or so effectively defined before. At least to my present memory.
Clerisy, intelligentsia, bureaucratic class, social engineering class, and so forth don’t quite cover the range of people described quite so effectively: either referring too narrowly to an intellectual avant garde, or to tax consuming functionaries; while ignoring the class consciousness and assortative selection aspects, as well as the psychological traits, of Kahn’s ” New Class”. Especially the nagging guilt of the clever shirker and not quite deserving opportunist who has made his aim a dwelling place in the safe, insulated, center of the herd.
If “New Class” were a striking, catchy moniker equal to the insight it encapsulates, we would all be using that term regularly: instead of using segment descriptors, circumlocutions, or figurative terms like “schoolmarms”
Your quote:
I think that the clear implication intended by the use of the word “class”, is that that they are, as such, self-consciously, intentionally and egoistically: their being aware members of a self-recognizing subsociety of persons pursuing a particular life strategy of avoidance and domination … or at least extraction. Farming the farmers, and all that.
Not much identification with their ‘fellows” there …
A fair enough point, I suppose. But if an Ivy degree offers both social status, and a kind of base line assurance ( all other things being equal) or failure floor for one of their credentialed mediocrities, then I am sure many parents would be desperate to have it for one of their own sons or daughters no brighter than a Kennedy.
Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas coined the term “the new class” in his 1957 book of the same name. Pretty much describes what we are calling the “managerial class” in this country. Or what used to be called the “nomenklatura” in communist countries.
Whatever you call it, we’ve got a potentially fatal case of it. And its related symptoms: system-wide corruption, dynastic nepotism, and stagnation (Russian: zastoi).
But if an Ivy degree offers both social status, and a kind of base line assurance ( all other things being equal) or failure floor for one of their credentialed mediocrities, then I am sure many parents would be desperate to have it for one of their own sons or daughters no brighter than a Kennedy.
There is no such thing as a failure floor. And if you’re carrying around an Ivy League degree and you’re teaching middle school, you don’t have social status. You look like an oddball or a tool if you’re male; if you’re female, it depends on your husband’s line of work.
What is the purpose of an education and where you get educated? Cut to the chase.
What is the purpose of an education and where you get educated? Cut to the chase.
The purpose of the mechanical arts is to learn a competence. The purpose of the liberal arts is to learn things you can savor in your off hours, to learn things you might deploy as a civic participant, and to exercise that mind muscle (which includes among other things developing your own filing system and developing a means to put ideas into words with clarity and economy). The purpose of basic education is to learn to read, write, and sum and to get some sense of the history of the world around you. Schools with a foundational architectonic mission seek a superordinate goal for learning. To be properly observant and instructed Catholics, for example.
Where does “Science” fit in the mechanical arts vs the liberal arts? The old argument “Is engineering a science?” Thread hijacking not intended, let’s argue politics or religion! 🙂
Hubert: Yes, Kahn gave credit:
______________________________________________
Let me define the New Class for you. The term was coined by Milovan Djilas to mean the upper levels of Yugoslav intelligentsia, who he felt were ripping off the country. We’re not using it that way, but it’s close. In our sense, the term is used by Bazelon, by Podhoretz, by Kristol, a few others. It was also noticed by Marxists and you’ll find lots of references during the last hundred years to this concept.
–Herman Kahn
Art Deco; om, et al.:
Allan Bloom on the purpose of American education.
Where does “Science” fit in the mechanical arts vs the liberal arts? The old argument “Is engineering a science?” Thread hijacking not intended, let’s argue politics or religion!
Engineering is engineering. It’s one of the mechanical arts. At the same time, engineering faculties have an authentic research programme.
The natural sciences are part of a liberal education. It’s just that an acquaintanceship with them renders you more interesting to employers than do an acquaintanceship with other academic subjects.
NB, artists create, scientists discover. Both creation and discovery are part of liberal education.
Thank you for that interesting information.
Engineers don’t “discover?” Some engineers would not agree I’m sure, or what is that research program for? Something about methods of inquiry and how questions are asked and answered may apply.
No, they sell you the {Ivy League] idea that it is. … for every Ivy graduate with a handsome career, you’ll find several others with careers open to anyone who came out of a land-grant school.
Art+Deco: I would suggest, sir, you consider that perceived value is still value to the parents (as well as status bragging rights) and that the real value is still considerable.
An Ivy League degree doesn’t guarantee one a future so bright that one must wear shades, as the 80s song went, but it is a considerable leg up in many, if not the most circumstances.
At one hi-tech company where I worked, a friend had done senior-level work for years, but he was never going to be promoted to senior software engineer because his degree was from Chico State, not Stanford or Berkeley (not an Ivy, but similar currency in the tech world) etc.
My friend found a happy ending, though. He quit, returned to Apple, where he had worked before, got his senior title, and received stock options just before the iPhone boom.
Art Deco….”The purpose of the mechanical arts is to learn a competence. The purpose of the liberal arts is to learn things you can savor in your off hours, to learn things you might deploy as a civic participant, and to exercise that mind muscle (which includes among other things developing your own filing system and developing a means to put ideas into words with clarity and economy).”
I’d note that seriously-useful participation as a civic participant requires some understanding of technologies that would be classifiable under the ‘mechanical arts.’ Specifically: I observe that most politicians and journalists have so little understanding of energy technologies…especially of electrical technologies…as to make their opinions and judgments meaningless.
I’d note that seriously-useful participation as a civic participant requires some understanding of technologies that would be classifiable under the ‘mechanical arts.’
It better not, because 99% of us will be ignorant of any trade but the one we’re in.
At one hi-tech company where I worked, a friend had done senior-level work for years, but he was never going to be promoted to senior software engineer because his degree was from Chico State, not Stanford or Berkeley (not an Ivy, but similar currency in the tech world) etc.
(1) It seems really peculiar that in a working environment where your skill set is known, people are looking at the school you attended 20 years earlier when considering who gets the promotion
(2) Stanford is a fancy private research university that has for 40 years been commonly rated as a peer to the Ivy and then some. Berkeley is commonly lumped with the ‘Public Ivies”. Interesting place to work if they fancy they can afford to exclude from consideration anyone who did not attend a top school.
(3) Chico’s a common-and-garden state college, albeit with an enrollment well in excess of that you’d ordinarily see in a public teaching institution. There are several strata separating Chico from top schools – state flagships, ordinary public and private research institutions, swank private colleges, &c.
the question I’m asking is why someone would want to send a child there after those changes have been made.
because thats what a leader will have to follow in the future!
or do you think that this stuff will go away like bell bottom pants?
Heather Mac Donald has defined the “core mission” of American universities as “joyfully passing on the precious inheritance of Western civilization, which happens to have been disproportionately shaped by white males.” Very much a minority view these days.
Huxley:
Thanks for the excerpt from Kahn. Djilas was a big deal in the 1960s and 1970s.
Heather Mac Donald has defined the “core mission” of American universities as “joyfully passing on the precious inheritance of Western civilization, which happens to have been disproportionately shaped by white males.” Very much a minority view these days.
As it should be.
There was a critique of higher education a generation ago offered by people within the circle of Wm. Bennett. The problem with the critique is that it was a critique of Harvard. The problems it emphasized were minor problems most places.
I respect Mac Donald, but in that remark, she’s fixated on the arts-and-sciences faculty. About 35% of those earning degrees follow an academic course of study. Most study in vocational programs. The arts-and-sciences faculty is a big bloody problem, but it’s not the only problem.
35% Arts and Sciences
65% Vocational programs – such as? Business? Nursing? Pre-Med (Not Biology or Physiology or some other science)? Engineering (a “mechanical art”)? Education? Theology?
You might want to specify what is a “vocational program” for those not tethered to the academy, the State U systems, or the Ivy Halls. Not my circus nor my monkeys. It’s been almost 40 years since I was in that setting.
Art+Deco: “It better not, because 99% of us will be ignorant of any trade but the one we’re in.”
Anyone who has taken a high school physics course should be able to understand the difference between Power and Energy, and why it matters when talking about energy storage.
Almost all articles I’ve seen about energy storage are confused about some basics. It is meaningless to evaluate a large-scale battery system (for example) by quoting Megawatts or Gigawatts…you also have to talk about *how long* you can store that amount of energy for. Specifying battery capacity in Megawatts is like trying to state the capacity of your car’s gas thank in Horsepower.
Writers in the business press and the so-called ‘tech’ media are almost as clueless about this point as the general media. Much over fallacious thinking about how wonderful it would be to phase out fossil fuels is due to this lack of comprehension about the realities of energy storage.
David Foster
Much over fallacious thinking about how wonderful it would be to phase out fossil fuels is due to this lack of comprehension about the realities of energy storage.
Probably the most efficient means of energy storage would be to pump water uphill and then have it go through a turbine on its way back downhill. Unfortunately, the areas that have the most potential for wind energy tend to be flat, dry areas such as the Great Plains- lacking the water and the altitude change for pumping water uphill.Oh well.
Anyone who has taken a high school physics course should be able to understand the difference between Power and Energy, and why it matters when talking about energy storage.
You’re riding a personal hobby horse. I took two years of high school physics, and that’s two years more than most people get. I’ve never found it helpful reading a newspaper article about a policy question.
How a person uses the education he has received is a personal choice.
A college friend’s father, when hiring for his law firm, specifically chose graduates of good state colleges, and refused to even consider the Ivies (after some experience).
Because, so I understand, the former did just as good or better at the bread-and-butter legal work without the pretentions of the latter.
AesopFan: A lawyer friend got a job at big LA firm after he graduated. Once while in the restroom he overhead two of the partners discussing how the new hires from Ivy schools weren’t working out.
The Ivy hires weren’t dumb, but they had spent so much time learning Legal Critical Studies, they didn’t know meat and potatoes law and required an extra year getting up to speed to do real work.
The partners resolved to hire fewer Ivy grads.