Saved by Juan Orbea
The Organization Kid
The system manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.
William Deresiewicz • Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
sari added
Now consider our current situation. Despite all the language professing otherwise, in general the education system of the United States is based entirely on genetic determinism. A child is born assumed to have innate traits, including, for example, a preference as to what they want to be when they grow up (somehow just waiting fully-formed inside o... See more
Erik Hoel • Why We Stopped Making Einsteins
The American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - William Deresiewicz
William Deresiewicztheamericanscholar.org
sari and added
Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what their professors teach is
... See moreChris Hedges • Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
We’re doing it for someone else—an audience: our teachers and our parents, and their substitutes in adult life. Make us proud. You have to shine. We’ve given you so much. What matters is the performance, not any inner sense of satisfaction. Authority figures are benign, wanting what is good for us and speaking on behalf of our long-term interests.
... See moreAlain de Botton • A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life
kev and added
Most people, at least among the college-educated set, seemed to have rebel attitudes and social-climbing attitudes all scrambled together. Defying expectations and maybe logic, people seemed to have combined the countercultural sixties and the achieving eighties into one social ethos.