Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As diagnosis, this book is outstanding. Elite education for America’s elite has become a vast exercise in getting our high-achieving students all dressed up for the ball, and then never actually hiring a band for the event. Superbly equipped for just about anything, except knowledge of what an education is for, these incarnate high SAT scores on stilts wander aimlessly around the Ivy League campuses, not quite sure what they are there for. This book really is a stunning indictment of the status quo. At the same time, there is more to an education than getting to ask and discuss the big questions. If we are going to conceive of the liberal arts as a time for asking answerless questions, which is okay provided the non-answers are to the big questions, then bright sophomores are going to figure that out in ten minutes, and go to law school. If nobody knows what we are here for, including the English majors, then we might as well go to law school. We don’t know a lot, but it seems that life in a fog might be a little better if I had some money.
The early motto of Harvard was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church.”
The current motto of Harvard is Veritas, meaning “Truth.”
If the Eliot Spitzers and Johnathan Grubers Harvard cranks out now, are any indication,
Harvard should go back to their first motto!
Even if Eliot Spitzer did go to law school! ; – )
(“Elite”, my ram’s horns!)
“Harvard should go back to their first motto!”
Indeed.
Quid est veritas?
Pontias Pilate knew what the truth was, he just did not want to face it.
I think it was more that he didn’t care. He had other objectives more significant to himself than truth.
Something like that, no doubt.
Comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? But assuming he wasn’t a stupid man, then he could read the situation and know what the truth of the matter was; it wasn’t really unclear, even without the benefit of hindsight and revelation.