精英意识比精英更重要

T.J. Shi

前些日子美国《新共和》杂志发表了《不要送您的孩子去长春藤》的文章，引起了巨大反思。在高等教育大众化的今天，的确出现了这样或那样的问题，如质量，经费，就业，贫困资助，大学评价等问题。以“钱学森之问”为顶点，各个大学都先后出现了所谓的xx学院，xx实验班，xx学堂，政府更是采取“珠峰计划”，“2011计划”等，殊不知 这其实是精英教育再次回到人们视野而已。

钱学森之问——“为什么我们的学校总是培养不出杰出人才”，其实其之前还有个对比，那就是“这么多年培养的学生，还没有哪一个的学术成就，能够跟民国时期培养的大师相比。”钱老自己就是精英，更是受民国时期的精英教育出来的，他不可能不明白这个道理。在高等教育大众化后，一些媒体冠以高等教育扩招导致教学质量严重下滑，钱学森之问其实就是在问大众教育与精英教育的关系问题。以前所谓的精英教育是指只有少数人可以接受高等教育，特别强调受教育者的超出常人的 智力和基础；而大众化的教育，学生的个性被抹杀，成为教育统一化的 产品。

看了新共和的文章，可以看出作者反击的是菁英学府正在放大美国社会的财富不均等，扼杀社会流动性，维持部分人的特权，并创造了一个脱离社会的特权阶级。其中的观点恐怕只有特权阶级才能体会到，普通人应追求的应该是社会相对公平公正。

在我看来，精英意识比精英更重要。暑假了，希望即将进入大学殿堂的弟弟妹妹，能有所体会。即使不懂，那并不要紧，最重要的是要慢慢懂。我摘录了其中的一些段落，分享给大家。

Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League

William Deresiewicz

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere

When I speak of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them—the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants and test-prep courses; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brand-name graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the B.A.; and the parents and communities, largely upper-middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.

"Return on investment": that’s the phrase you often hear today when people talk about college. What no one seems to ask is what the “return” is supposed to be. Is it just about earning more money? Is the only purpose of an education to enable you to get a job? What, in short, is college for?

The first thing that college is for is to teach you to think. That doesn’t simply mean developing the mental skills particular to individual disciplines. College is an opportunity to stand outside the world for a few years, between the orthodoxy of your family and the exigencies of career, and contemplate things from a distance.

Learning how to think is only the beginning, though. There’s something in particular you need to think about: building a self. The notion may sound strange. “We’ve taught them,” David Foster Wallace once said, “that a self is something you just have.” But it is only through the act of establishing communication between the mind and the heart, the mind and experience, that you become an individual, a unique being—a soul. The job of college is to assist you to begin to do that. Books, ideas, works of art and thought, the pressure of the minds around you that are looking for their own answers in their own ways.

College is not the only chance to learn to think, but it is the best. One thing is certain: If you haven’t started by the time you finish your B.A., there’s little likelihood you’ll do it later. That is why an undergraduate experience devoted exclusively to career preparation is four years largely wasted.

Elite schools like to boast that they teach their students how to think, but all they mean is that they train them in the analytic and rhetorical skills that are necessary for success in business and the professions. Everything is technocratic—the development of expertise—and everything is ultimately justified in technocratic terms.

This system is exacerbating inequality, retarding social mobility, perpetuating privilege, and creating an elite that is isolated from the society that it’s supposed to lead.

Everybody gets an equal chance to go as far as their hard work and talent will take them—you know, the American dream. Everyone who wants it gets to have the kind of mind-expanding, soul-enriching experience that a liberal arts education provides.

最后附上一个反击的文章，Send Your Kid to the Ivy League

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118848/new-republics-ivy-league-takedown-destructive-high-schoolers