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Tim Burke has some comments (on a New York Times article I have avoided reading) about the way liberal-arts schools sell choice which seem remarkably aware of the ways in which the liberal arts are genuinely elite.
My roommate for a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates several years ago was Hoa. At some point not very far into our acquaintance, she asked me, "There aren't very many Asian kids at your school, are there?" at which point I said, "Huh?" and she explained, "You seem to have trouble understanding my accent."
My small-elite-liberal-arts-college was full of Asian-American students; but it didn't have many students like Hoa, who had been in the U.S. all of two years, and had switched her major from teaching (in Vietnam) to mathematics (at a large East Coast state university). Hoa seemed to conclude that my school was horribly expensive; but of course it was too well-endowed to ask anything at all from someone like Hoa. The issue was more that nobody like her would have considered attending an institution focussed on writing and reading and being a better person. She was going to college-- and participating in a competitive math REU-- so she could get a good job when she was done.
That was the true luxury of Swarthmore: the luxury of getting an education, rather than a career. It was a class distinction, but not the distinction of pricetag; and I think that elitism was invisible to most of us.
My roommate for a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates several years ago was Hoa. At some point not very far into our acquaintance, she asked me, "There aren't very many Asian kids at your school, are there?" at which point I said, "Huh?" and she explained, "You seem to have trouble understanding my accent."
My small-elite-liberal-arts-college was full of Asian-American students; but it didn't have many students like Hoa, who had been in the U.S. all of two years, and had switched her major from teaching (in Vietnam) to mathematics (at a large East Coast state university). Hoa seemed to conclude that my school was horribly expensive; but of course it was too well-endowed to ask anything at all from someone like Hoa. The issue was more that nobody like her would have considered attending an institution focussed on writing and reading and being a better person. She was going to college-- and participating in a competitive math REU-- so she could get a good job when she was done.
That was the true luxury of Swarthmore: the luxury of getting an education, rather than a career. It was a class distinction, but not the distinction of pricetag; and I think that elitism was invisible to most of us.
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i remember, during graduation rehearsal at Swarthmore, i was seated behind a couple of people who were discussing, with what appeared to be real concern, the possibility that the school might not be a revolutionary institution. i didn't laugh, or cry, or otherwise give them a piece of my mind, but there was something very striking in the fact that they'd seriously entertained such illusions up to that point.
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but you're right, it *is* about choice and about the leisure to learn non-useful things. then again, i always feel that it's even larger than that...when you're fighting for survival and shelter you don't write much poetry...we as a society want to afford it (or no literature would ever be taught!)
finally, i wanted to share an embarrassing anecdore that i remembered when someone in some thread commented on why these women got advanced degrees and whwther that was the new upper midde class elite status symbol: one of my friends was talking about her sister whose new nanny was working toward her Ph.D.; wherupon my husband felt the need to share that he indeed had a finished Ph.D. taking cre of his children and cleaning the house.
amusing if it weren't so bitterly true!!!
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in fact, i'd argue with all of the people barely getting by on my flist, very few of them are actual working class...students, mothers, non-profit jobs...we *choose* our lack of income (well, the mother issue is more complicated, but there still are various choices involved...for example, i could get a tenure track job across the country and have a long distance marriage..but i wouldn't want that for my kids, so: choice! otoh, i don't think of parenthood as a luxury that i choose to spend my time/money on...if for no other reason than that i'm rearing the tax payers of the future!!!)
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the things that gets me is the way this system uses concepts like "love" to justify not paying someone for the same job that gets paid (and benefits!) if someone else does it. Even if we step away from motherhood, takin care of sick relatives, dying parents,...same thing!
The entire system relies on volunteer labor that doesn't get rewarded (not even in health insurance nd social security years!!!)...and yes, while every individual woman chooses to do that, as a class, we are "stuck" with it, aren't we???
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Oh, I don't know why I'm going on like this in your comments. Something resonates with me, I guess. Don't mind me. I just haven't gotten some of this stuff out yet, anywhere else.
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(And of course, like everyone else, I post to get comments; don't apologize.)
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Jessica Todd Harper, naive WASPy Bryn Mawr rich girl at thirty, once told our photography class that the purpose of our education was to make our minds interesting places to spend the rest of our lives. I like this explanation.
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We have a lot of debates on the reasons for higher education because of this...
All Swats are class-enemies of the proletariat. You will be reeducated at the one-walled classroom.
the luxury of getting an education, rather than a career
(1. Getting a career is also something of a luxury.)
2. While I agree with the banal point that it is much easier to disdain money when you have it, the disdain seems to me well-placed. Tim Burke puts it well, "the general critique we should have here is not the critique of choice and privilege, but the critique of the idolatry of productivity in white-collar careers." That said, this idol is more in need of smashing than critiqueing at this point. Who's got a hammer? This [entire discussion] looks for the life of me like an impotent spasm of bourgeois guilt and pity. I wonder what content would be left in the discussion after replacing loaded words like "privilege", "elite", "class", "luxury", etc. by the injustices they apparently connote, as Tim Burke tried half-heartedly to do and ended up with "critique" (the diminuitive of refutation and actual reversal).
I find it extremely hard to believe that the privilege you flatter with the term elitism has ever been invisible to anyone. More likely, and rightly so, it was felt to be a practical fact, without imperative power. What changed?
If you were really in the in-group, you would know it was Swattie
Re: If you were really in the in-group, you would know it was Swattie
Re: If you were really in the in-group, you would know it was Swattie
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::waves hand:: Er, classicist here? Once you've had the first 100 people ask you, 'so...what are you going to do with that?', you sort of get the idea you're getting an *education*, not a *job*.
I know it's quite early days yet, but I've been enjoying the working world more than I thought I would (or perhaps just the absence of homework), so I'm beginning to be curious about how I will use that education -- as you say, an education like Swarthmore's doesn't necessarily mean you'll go into that field and make lots of money. That's one of the things I like about alumni -- they do such cool things which may or may NOT be related to what they studied at Swat.