思考与写作theamericanscholar.org
精英教育的弊端（2008）
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
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导读
本文是William Deresiewicz发表于2008年的文章，反思精英教育（如常春藤盟校）的隐性代价：学生被训练得擅长追求成功，却可能丧失独立思考、与不同阶层沟通的能力，以及选择非主流人生道路的勇气。文章指出精英教育虽带来机会，却可能缩小生活选择，让人难以摆脱社会期望。
为什么经久不衰：因为它触及教育本质与阶层流动的永恒矛盾，在名校崇拜和“内卷”时代更显尖锐，持续引发对成功定义与人生选择的反思。
HN 评论精选
个人经历支持文章：精英教育可能缩小人生选择，摆脱社会期望需要长期自觉努力。
我读这篇文章时很疲惫，没读完。但我是高中毕业班前三名，拒绝了国家优秀奖学金去了州内最好的两所大学之一。我认为我做了正确选择，也理解作者写作动机。简言之，如果教育赋权，但追求教育反而缩小生活选择，那可能有缺陷。常春藤学生大多只想象疯狂追求职业阶梯的下一级，代价巨大。我快50岁才真正理解母亲价值观多么上层阶级。我花了多年有意远离根深蒂固的期望，才真正为自己 reclaim 生活，得到我想要的，而不是成为社会期望我成为的人。所以虽然大多数人理解不了有真正代价，会嘲笑任何缺点，但作为一个重新找回自己的人……
Mz查看英文原文
The remarks here on HN dissing this article piqued my curiosity, so I began to read the article. It's been a long ..year...and I am super tired, so I am not going to manage to actually read the whole thing. But, I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class and I turned down a National Merit Scholarship to one of the top two universities of my home state. I think I made the right call and I think I understand the impetus behind the writing of this article. In a nutshell, if education is empowering, but pursuing that education actually narrows your life choices, then perhaps there is some flaw somewhere. For people who go to Ivy League schools, most of them can only imagine rabidly pursuing the next rung on the career ladder and this may come at great personal cost. I was in my late 40s before I really understood how incredibly upper class my mother's values are. We didn't have much money when I was a kid -- or so I thought, though it turns out that is not as accurate as I believed at the time -- and I never thought of myself as upper class. It took me a lot of years of intentionally walking away from this deeply rooted expectation in order to really reclaim my life for myself in a way that allows me to get what I want, not for me to become what society expects me to be. So while I get that most people are not going to understand that there is a genuine cost involved and will simply sneer at the idea that there is any down side, as someone who recognized that downside at a young age and walked away, I will say that the ability "to not be rich" is, in fact, a choice not psychologically available to many upper class people and it does harm them and it does definitely harm their ability to be good leaders for the common man.
教育质量差异不大，但精英大学带来社会资本和机会优势，精英圈子围绕资本而非知识。
我毕业于国内顶尖大学（世界前50），学的和MIT差不多。我认为任何领域第一和第一百大学教育质量没显著差异。但MIT和其他好大学机会差异巨大。投资者或雇主听到MIT、哈佛、斯坦福或耶鲁就觉得你聪明得多。部分因为精英心态。精英认为精英大学的人聪明很多倍，但真正区别是社会连通性。精英机构的人更接近资本，更有影响力，更可能成为投资者和雇主。他们的精英世界观（基于错误认知）使他们更可能雇用或资助同样上精英大学的人。精英认为同类因知识聚集，实际他们聚集在伪装成知识的金融资本周围。
jondubois查看英文原文
I graduated from one of the top universities in my country (top 50 in the world) and we learned pretty much exactly the same material as they did at MIT. In reality I don't think there is any significant difference in terms of education quality between the top #1 university and #100 for any given field. But the difference in terms of opportunities after finishing MIT vs finishing some other good university is massive. It seems that if an investor or prospective employer hears the word 'MIT', 'Harvard', 'Stanford' or 'Yale' when you make a pitch, somehow you're considered to be much smarter than the rest. I think it's partially due to this elitist mindset. 'Elites' seem to think that people who went to an elite college are many times smarter than everyone else - But the real difference is actually social connectivity. People who went to an elite institution are closer to capital - This gives them more influence. They are more likely to become investors and employers themselves. Their elitist world view (rooted in the false perception that they make up an intellectually distinct group) means that they are more likely to hire/fund people who also studied at elite universities. Elites think that people like them congregate around knowledge, but in reality, they congregate around financial capital disguised as knowledge.
精英教育可能不扎实，名校课程不等于真正理解，促使自我教育。
常春藤教育最大教训是它不充分甚至不必要（对我目标）。如果想进精英华尔街或咨询，需要它。一旦进入几乎不会被踢出。完成、面试、你就上路了。但我一直怀疑我实际教育状况。尽管上很多工程课，我不能立刻心算i^i。想象有人问2^512大概多少？你应该立刻说出巨大正数，可能比宇宙原子多。现在问i^i呢？正？负？实？虚？接近1？极小？即使一分钟算出，延迟是否说明你理解指数或虚数？这是中学运算和高中参数。我被卡住，似乎没人认为这值得理解。这让我走上自我教育之旅，但我需要亲眼看到即使在……
kalid查看英文原文
Much of this resonated with me. One of the biggest lessons of my Ivy-league education was, paradoxically, that it wasn't sufficient (or even necessary). At least not for the goals I wanted. If you want access to the elite Wall St. or consulting jobs, then yes, you need it. Once you're in, it's almost impossible to be kicked out. Finish, interview, and you're on the path. But I had longstanding doubts about the state of my actual education. Despite numerous engineering classes, I couldn't, for example, work out i^i in my head instantly. Imagine someone asked you "Roughly, what do you think 2^512 to be?" "I don't know exactly, but it's an enormous positive number, probably more than the atoms in the universe." Ok. You should spit that out instantly. Now imagine someone asks "Roughly, what do you think i^i is?" Is it positive? Negative? Real? Imaginary? Close to 1.0? Microscopic? Even if you eventually work it out after a minute, does your long delay mean you understood exponents or imaginary numbers? Is this something that should be solidified before, say, studying the Fourier Transform? Despite scoring well in classes taught by famous professors, I couldn't answer such basic questions. This was literally middle school operations (exponents) used with high-school parameters (imaginary numbers). I was stuck -- and it didn't seem like anyone thought this a reasonable thing to understand. It led me on a journey of self-education, but I needed to see firsthand that even in an Ivy-league environment, the basics could still be missed. It ended the fantasy that things were transformatively different in some other place -- it was up to me to fill the gaps. ps. If you want to work out i^i in your head: https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding-of-eulers-formula/
问题不在精英教育本身，而在社交圈层单一，应增加跨阶层接触。
这些不是精英教育的劣势，而是缺乏与足够多不同社会经济背景的人充分接触的劣势。让你的孩子参加能遇到低收入家庭孩子的课外活动，这会让他们能更好地理解和相处。
dibstern查看英文原文
These aren't the disadvantages of an elite education, it's the disadvantages of not having sufficient breadth of experiences with people from a sufficient breadth of social-economic backgrounds. Get your kids to do extracurriculars where they'll meet kids from lower-income households. It'll make them able to relate to them and understand them better.
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