There is More Than One Path to Brilliance

Whoa! Wait until you see what Eduwonkette has to say about elite colleges and what happens to kids on the high end of the scale with "No Child Left Befind". She references Yale English Professor, William Deresiewicz and his essay in The American Scholar It makes sense in light of the current administration. And for everyone who is wondering if the Gifted Class is the right class. Put this NY Magazine article into the mix "How Not to Talk to Your Kids".

From Eduwonkette:
Elite Colleges, "1) Teach students to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class."

"2) Inculcate a false sense of self-worth ('Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value.')"

"3) Initiate the winners into a club that's almost impossible to get booted out of once you're in ('Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend.')."

"But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework."