Recently posted:
We’ve all seen many articles about the value of attending expensive
schools. This one also looks at whether it is the school that makes
the difference later in life or the student’s aptitude going in that
makes the difference.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19steinberg.html>
schools. This one also looks at whether it is the school that makes
the difference later in life or the student’s aptitude going in that
makes the difference.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/weekinreview/19steinberg.html>
The conclusions don’t surprise me. Who would have guessed that smart,
motivated, hard working students generally tend to do better, no
matter where they go? 😉
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As I’ve stated before, David Brooks says he talks to lots and lots of college groups and he finds no difference in the quality of the questions he gets between Ivy League and state schools. Who shows up to talk with David Brooks?
I went, by accident, to a high prestige high school. The result? I went to college outside of all expectation simply b/c so many of my friends were going. Then I went to what one friend calls a “third rate institution”, AzSU, getting both my degrees there. I became a counselor and psychotherapist rather well-known for my work, and then went into fl teaching and achieved respect for that work.
What would have been different had I not gone to a ritzy high school? Possibly a lot if I never attended college. What if I had gone to a highly rated college? Would what I did after be any better than what I’ve done? Who can tell? I really like what I’ve done.
My wife, OTOH, despite the ministrations of excellent teachers in her segregated school system, is still bitter about having only two choices: nurse or teacher. But she made the best of it and achieved high recognition. She went to ASU, one of few Blacks at that time attending college. She endured s***, despite what conservatives will tell you. Anyone who knows her knows she is an outstanding person. Now, how many of you consider yourselves outstanding people? Yet you got a college degree. How many of the wealthy who get to attend high prestige institutions come by their abilities the way my wife did, or, for that matter, I did?
Wealth and power confer advantages and as long as millions of American children are consigned to inferior educations which preclude the average among them from attending college, we need to focus on that rather than on how happy the well-off are, no matter what school they attended.