A lot of us feel that we are in the Cold War Phase of America's Civil War II.
Which is why I don't get too excited about the really poor schools in the Blue cities and Blue States.
Amen!
If you want to learn about modern Czech fantasy novels, Harvard is an excellent place to be. The same goes if you want to study women writers from the Caribbean or elementary particle physics (where the particles, not the physics, are elementary). But where should you go if you want to become an educated person? What fun Socrates would have had at Harvard, the supposedly preeminent educational institution in the world.
In Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education, former dean of Harvard College Harry Lewis argues that Harvard — or its college at least — is aimless and adrift, with a scant idea of what to do with its undergraduates. Even if his critique has less irony and edge than one from Socrates would, it nevertheless serves as an informative condemnation of Harvard’s approach to education.
Harvard began as a school for Puritan settlers in the New World, meant to ensure that ministers were literate and somewhat learned; it has since grown into a world-renowned research university. Its professors are scholarly specialists whose interests have little to do with those of most students. Not that its undergraduates are particularly concerned about getting an education. Many treat college as one more rung on the ladder, and they inevitably have time-consuming extracurricular pursuits. Some indeed are academics in the making, yet, as can be seen from their professors, this has little to do with being well educated. So Harvard College ends up being little more than a collection of specialized, expert professors who lecture to, but otherwise try not to interfere with, their ambitious, talented students — a generalization, to be sure, to which there are numerous exceptions, but it is true enough.
It may be very ironical that the children of the elite limo driven liberals after graduating from Harvard and other left wing Ivy schools may have no knowledge/skill gains. That may put the future grads of Ivy League Schools in a lower rung of society.
Actually, I think that might have happened during the late 1960's up to the current time. If not for their grandparents trust funds, they and their left wing boomer parents might be living on the streets.