William Deresiewicz-"Excellent Sheep"

Introduction to this book: "Excellent Sheep" refers to the students of Ivy League schools. Of course, their excellence is needless Doubtful, but at the same time they dare not go a step further and can only pursue first-class results in the traditional and inherent model. Like a sheep, it follows the leader obediently, so it is called an excellent sheep. This book tells us that Ivy League schools do not engage in quality education, and famous American professors do not teach students. There is no essential difference from Chinese schools. Real higher education should follow the example of public schools and small liberal arts colleges and follow the line of liberal arts education.

About the author: William Deresiewicz graduated from Columbia University. He has worked at an Ivy League school for 24 years and only served as an English professor at Yale University for 10 years. His article "The Disadvantages of Elite Education" has been viewed more than 1 million times on the Internet.

Reason for recommendation: If you are a parent of a child who will face the problem of going to college in the future, should you go to the United States to study? Should I get into an Ivy League school? How to get admitted to Ivy League schools? This book talks about how American universities really operate, and makes people think about what kind of education model is a good university education.

Content introduction: This book is divided into four parts: Part 1: Excellent Sheep, Part 2: Self, Part 3: What should we get in college, Part 4: Society . The following is shared from four aspects:

1. The Ivy League schools do not provide quality education

The Ivy League schools in the United States are recognized as good universities in the world, and many of the students they train have become celebrities. , it seems to be a particularly good quality education. This book believes that the education method in American universities is actually a disguised form of exam-oriented education.

The so-called Ivy League was originally a university sports league. But if you think that these universities originally organized sports events to promote sports among American youth, you are totally wrong. The essence of Ivy League is that it is a place where children of the upper class in the United States go to college. Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were not very big schools at first. They were just regional schools established by some local nobles and only recruited children of local nobles. However, after the popularity of railroads in the United States in the late 19th century, a rail network extending in all directions connected the country. The political and economic ties in various places are getting closer and closer, and it is necessary to make friends with nobles from other regions. How to make friends? To let their children go to the same school, the nobles arranged for elite universities such as Harvard and Yale to recruit students nationwide.

Of course, even if enrollment in these universities is expanded, they will still only cater to aristocratic families. The students they admitted were required to know Greek and Latin. The high schools attended by common people were all public schools and did not teach these contents at all, so common people were automatically excluded. In other words, the so-called elite universities were originally a thing played by the elite themselves. Losing their means of maintaining dominance, the nobles themselves spent money to sponsor prestigious schools, send their children to these universities, and then take over leadership positions in their own companies.

In this case, the outside world cannot actually blame them, because Harvard and Princeton are private schools to begin with, and they have no obligation to be fair to ordinary people. At that time, it was quite easy for students who were eligible to go to Harvard to go to Harvard, and admissions did not focus on academic performance at all. In fact, until 1950, Harvard had only 13 applicants for every 10 places available, while Yale's acceptance rate was as high as 46. It is completely incomparable to today's situation of one in a hundred or even one in a thousand. However, the aristocratic elites soon realized that this was not possible, because on the one hand, new social forces continued to emerge, and blindly excluding these people would be detrimental to the ruling class itself. On the other hand, the academic performance of these aristocratic children is indeed not good enough, and it brings disgrace to the university. So in 1910, some universities began to take the lead in canceling Greek and Latin exams to give opportunities to graduates of public high schools.

However, they soon discovered that the proportion of Jewish students increased rapidly, so they revised the admission standards.

If you want to go to school, it's not enough to just have good grades. You must also have a letter of recommendation from a teacher, pass an alumni interview, and preferably have a sports specialty. Children of alumni will also get extra points.

Later, the Ivy League was a sports competition league formed because the school valued sports. Reforms like this have gone back and forth, and the final compromise resulted in not only focusing on test scores, but also requiring so-called qualities such as sports expertise. But at this time, the essence of so-called quality education is no longer really to cultivate character, but to ensure the enrollment ratio of elite children. Not all qualities will help you get admitted to prestigious schools. What you need is aristocratic temperament, and it must be the quality of the traditional American elite. For example, playing the cello is obviously difficult for working-class children to do. If you are not an elite aristocrat, all these quality education requirements force you to pretend to be an aristocrat.

If you are in an ordinary family, you will already lose at the starting line without even comparing your qualities. But even so, some people are still dissatisfied and want to get into the Ivy League no matter how difficult it is. This book uses the real admission standards of Yale University as an example. If you have particularly outstanding achievements in a certain area, you will definitely be admitted. But it is not an ordinary award, it must be a national award like the Intel Science Award. If not then you have to be well rounded. You must take seven to eight elective courses and participate in nine to ten extracurricular activities. Even so, admission is not guaranteed and depends on letters of recommendation and family circumstances. As for the SAT test scores we talk about, they don’t mean much.

Although applying to college does make some middle- and upper-class students a little anxious, this lengthy process is "essentially just a formality." What really matters is not how you do it, but that you have been allowed to participate. The reason why Harvard also recruits a very small number of children from poor families and tells them that you cannot buy admission to Harvard with money is just a "propaganda machine" for class structure.

If a child wants to reach this standard, his high school career will basically have to be spent constantly participating in various extracurricular activities and elective courses. But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that he doesn't know why he lives like this. The value he has been instilled in him since childhood is that he cannot lose. They do this just because they are afraid of being surpassed by others. Their self-confidence is based on the evaluation of themselves by outsiders.

Everyone does not like exam-oriented education, because exam-oriented education makes children find ways to use a unified exam standard. This will cause children to lack a sense of independence. I know how to take the exam but not why. This situation actually exists among American middle school students. They know how to prepare to go to an Ivy League college, but they also don’t know what it means.

Once children actually go to college, their college life is exactly the same as in middle school. They still take various elective courses, participate in various extracurricular activities, get good scores, and improve their resumes. Sparkling. After graduation, find a decent job on Wall Street and move into the upper class.

Real quality education requires teaching students in accordance with their aptitude. Each student has different interests and specialties, and their development paths should also be different. The school’s mission is to encourage them to discover differences in themselves and help them create more possibilities. But the outstanding graduates from Harvard and Yale basically have the same face. Their resumes show that they are all top academics, with top-notch grades, and have served as student leaders of clubs. They are good at several sports or musical instruments, and they look particularly righteous. I have studied at charitable organizations such as the Gates Foundation, and helped children in poor areas of Africa. These qualities are called leadership. Famous schools hope to cultivate students with leadership skills, because these people have a much greater chance of entering the upper class, or to put it more extreme, entering the ruling class.

A Yale senior girl recalled: When others are busy selling their souls at a low price, it is difficult for me to be alone and hold on to my soul.

This book believes that the mission of colleges and universities is only to help students find a good job. There seems to be no essential difference between Ivy League schools and vocational training schools, and what’s even worse is that the so-called prestigious schools are still actively catering to this trend.

"U.S. News and World Report" has been ranking universities in the United States since 1983. The result of this ranking is that the schools with good rankings are crowded out, and the schools with poor rankings are ignored. Then it becomes more and more difficult to get into good schools, and the admission rate is getting lower and lower, and low admission rate is one of the indicators of high ranking. As of today, Harvard's acceptance rate is less than 10. Seeing the benefits of high rankings, universities have begun a fierce arms race, desperately trying to find ways to improve their rankings.

The most typical example is the University of Chicago. This school has a very rigorous academic style, and its ranking is around ten. But the school is too strict, not everyone likes it, even the smart kids don’t want to go. There are not that many people applying, and the admission rate is higher than many similar schools, with an admission rate of more than 20%. But the University of Chicago is not satisfied and wants to reduce its admission rate to the lowest level like Harvard and Yale. So the school advertises and publicizes everywhere to attract the attention of students and parents, and then adjusts its admission methods. Like other schools, students are allowed to be versatile. Soon the admission rate of the University of Chicago dropped to nearly 10, and the school's ranking rose to fifth or sixth. The price is a loss of what makes the University of Chicago unique. News organizations make rankings. Parents and students pay attention to the rankings and choose schools based on the rankings. The schools make adjustments based on the ranking indicators to cater to parents. As a result, the educational methods of various schools are becoming more and more similar, and the children they train are more and more like being carved from the same mold. The setting of this ranking indicator essentially takes Harvard, Yale, and Princeton as the standards.

But there are many types of schools in the United States. Pomona College is a liberal arts college, Wesleyan College is a women's college, Harvey Mudd College is a technical university, and West Point is a military academy. Students have different interests, and measuring them by the same standards is like comparing oranges to apples to see how much the orange resembles an apple. Under such circumstances, how do you expect colleges and universities to provide quality education to children?

2. American college teachers cannot teach students the ability to think independently

What should college teachers teach students? The author believes that the most important thing that universities teach students is not specific knowledge such as law and accounting. You can learn these by yourself without going to university. The most important thing that higher education brings to students is to help them establish self-awareness, and the core of self-awareness is the ability to think independently.

So what exactly is the ability to think independently? The author said that the most important thing is to learn to analyze other people's opinions and explain your own. For example, we are all required to write a paper when we go to college. Why do we have to write a paper? In fact, it is to practice thinking skills. The logic of the paper is very strict. You must write your own opinions clearly, and then the teacher will help you to correct logical ambiguities, structural errors, deficiencies in argumentation, and foresee possible objections point by point. Good thinking skills require you to practice class after class and paper after paper. Such training must require constant feedback from teachers to students. In other words, the frequency of communication between teachers and students must be high enough, so the author recommends that the class should be small and precise to facilitate everyone's discussion. Class time is not used to copy notes, but to be led by professors, through research and discussion, so that students can gradually become familiar with thinking skills. Class is not about instilling knowledge that students do not know. Instead, professors guide students in discussions around a certain topic. During this process, the professor will constantly ask new questions to force students to further explain their vague answers. He helps shy, humble students discover their inner confidence. He accepts and encourages students while guiding and challenging them. In other words, if you want to teach students the ability to think about problems, the role of the professor in the classroom cannot be to answer questions, but should be the questioner.

Even the professor himself does not know the answer to some questions, so he can leave them to the students to think about. The discussion in the seminar is an open collaboration, and unexpected surprises and new things can be gained during the exchange. This is the same thinking mode. But for the current teaching methods in colleges and universities, this approach is obviously too luxurious.

Many prestigious universities in the United States have launched online courses. Many people believe that large-scale open online courses are the savior of university teaching. It allows children as far away as Africa to appreciate the elegance of the world's top professors. However, the author of this book believes that online open courses have made it even worse for university classroom teaching, as professors are already not easily accessible. Online courses further isolate teachers and students, and are nothing more than an improved version of textbooks. It is tantamount to handing over a child whose parents have neglected him to an intelligent mechanical monkey. It cannot replace the one-on-one guidance of professors to students, and it runs counter to the teaching spirit of higher education. In fact, online courses are jointly launched by prestigious universities and third-party commercial organizations. Their target users are not poor students in Africa who cannot afford to attend prestigious universities in the United States. They actually want to recommend online courses from well-known universities to second- and third-tier universities. , to generate income.

3. Public universities and small liberal arts colleges can provide better education

When the author points out that the Ivy League universities have the above problems, does it mean that American universities are not worth attending? ? Of course not, the leading position of American education in the world is still certain. What the author really wants to express is that modern education has reached a time when it must be reformed. Only after reform can it better adapt to the requirements of education.

The author believes that public universities and small liberal arts colleges are currently the schools that are most in line with the educational spirit. The first thing I recommend is public universities in the United States, because public schools are truly diverse. The real diversity here is not the artificial diversity of elite private universities.

Although Ivy League universities do a good job in diversifying race, color, and gender, the most fundamental point is that they are not economically diverse, and most of the students are rich kids. Statistics show that more than half of Harvard University students come from the top five families in the United States. Stanford University is even more exaggerated. Nearly half of its students come from the top 1.5 families in the United States. Why are they all rich? The reason is that tuition fees at prestigious schools are extremely expensive, making it difficult for ordinary people to afford them. But how much money you spend to go to college is not actually the most important thing. How much you spend before going to college is really important. Some people have calculated that the most effective way to get into a prestigious school and gain aristocratic qualities is to spend huge sums of money to enter a top-ranked private high school. Among the students admitted to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, 22 are from 100 famous high schools in the United States. This is equivalent to 0.3 of the total number of high schools in the country. Among these 100 high schools, only six are not private. So although students from Ivy League schools seem to be culturally diverse. But on an economic level, attending a prestigious school is basically a game for the rich. The problem with rich people is that they have a single set of values. Everyone recognizes the value of money and believes that this is quality and a more successful manifestation. So everyone is chasing higher-paying careers. This is why most graduates from prestigious schools such as Harvard and Yale choose management and consulting industries. In contrast, public schools have far fewer financial restrictions and the composition of their students is more truly diverse.

In the process of education, people must try to get in touch with classmates from different walks of life. This is a necessary preparation to become a social person before entering the society, and it is more in line with the expectations of a mature modern person. The first priority of most teachers in Ivy League schools is scientific research and they are unwilling to spend time on teaching, and students try not to trouble them. If they miss the exam time, the teacher will reciprocate and give them another chance to pass. There is a tacit understanding between teachers and students that they will not offend each other. In this affirmation-based cultural atmosphere, student performance has increased year by year.

In the 1950s, the average GPA at public and private universities in the United States was 2.5 points. In 2007, the ranking of public universities was 3.01, while that of private universities rose to 3.30. In some top schools, the score has reached 3.43. Private universities are becoming more and more relaxed in grading students. In contrast, teachers in public schools are stricter. They are schools established by the government and do not rely on alumni donations, so they do not have to worry about offending future alumni or hurting students' fragile self-esteem. These schools do not value research as much as those research universities, but value teaching more.

Therefore, teachers will pay more personal attention to students. When students apply for graduate school or work in the future, students from public universities often have better letters of recommendation. Teachers at Ivy League schools may not even know who their students are. In 2014, Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, jokingly asked everyone to pray for Harvard because he greatly appreciated the teaching design of public universities after cooperating with public universities. He lamented Harvard’s teaching model, It may not be able to catch up with the needs of this Internet age.

In addition to the suggestion of going to a public school, another suggestion from the author is that if you must go to a private school, try to go to some small private liberal arts colleges. This is because the educational philosophy of these small liberal arts colleges can overcome the problems of elite schools. The educational philosophy of these liberal arts colleges is liberal arts education.

In the College of Arts and Sciences, classroom teaching is almost always conducted in the form of seminars, and the teachers are all full-time professors. Very few are part-time lecturers, and there is no phenomenon in large schools where professors with master's degrees or Ph.D.s take the place of professors to teach undergraduates. The entire teaching and learning environment is intimate, but also intense. The author believes that the best colleges and universities are second-tier liberal arts colleges, such as Reed, Kenyon, Wesleyan, Siobhan, and Mount Holyoke.

Liberal education is also called general education. Schools that teach according to this concept basically pay little attention to short-term goals such as rankings and vocational training, and do not regard themselves as vocational training places. Instead, we pay more attention to education itself, the training of thinking, and the cultivation of curiosity. During the four years here, you can temporarily escape reality, train your brain wholeheartedly, and cultivate your diverse values. Compared with research universities, teachers here are more willing to interact with students and spend time with students. This is completely opposite to our current educational values. Most people's view is that liberal arts education may not be able to solve practical problems. What you learn will not be majors such as law, finance, accounting, etc. that can directly help you find a job. Most of the time you may be working on something that seems a bit dangling. Such as literature, art, philosophy, etc. But liberal arts education is very broad. Everything that helps you think and helps you establish your thinking patterns and values ??may be involved. Liberal Arts Education believes that teaching students well is not about helping them find a good job or giving them an extremely narrow scientific research direction, but it is about helping them in their lives and helping them establish some values ??in life.

College belongs entirely to the students themselves. College represents an opportunity in life. Treat this opportunity well. Don’t rush to become the person you have planned in your heart, but become the person you have never met. People, meet your better self. The most important factor is not the university you attend, but you.

For teachers, if they want to guide students in all aspects such as their life values ??and ways of thinking, they must be knowledgeable and knowledgeable. Because these are too big of a problem. In order to teach students well, teachers even have to bring their own lives into the classroom. The educational philosophy of most universities is professional education, which divides knowledge into many different professional fields. With academic development, these fields must become more and more detailed. Each professor only studies a small area. If he wants to produce scientific research results, he must study a certain subdivided field more deeply than others. This requires him to focus most of his energy on this narrow field, and it is impossible to waste energy on making himself knowledgeable. This is completely opposite to the requirements of liberal arts education. This is the real reason why most universities attach great importance to scientific research, while humanities colleges that promote liberal arts education do not.

The author also mentioned that what is gratifying is that in recent years, many large public universities in the United States have begun to follow suit and establish similar humanities colleges. Many honors colleges are replicas of liberal arts colleges. This kind of replica was originally available in only four universities, but now it is available in dozens of schools across the United States. The author believes that public universities may have more advantages after setting up humanities colleges, because students here have the advantages of both public universities and humanities colleges.

Of course, many people may still worry about how these secluded disciplines will find employment in the future? This is a very real problem.

From a career perspective, many statistics show that children who study art, literature, and mathematics have no worse career outcomes than children who study engineering and business. Moreover, students who study literature and art perform better in jobs that require creative cooperation. better.

In fact, career is almost as long as life. If you choose a major that makes it easy to find a suitable job, it can only ensure that you take the first step faster. What happens in the future depends on what you have accumulated.

4. The self-salvation of elite education

When most of the leaders in American political and business circles come from the elite Ivy League, the result is that elitism begins to breed internally and continues to grow. These elites all come from distinguished backgrounds, but they always repeat the same mistakes again and again. The upshot is that America's entire national destiny can be traced back to grade school, or to the womb.

Elite governance is not only self-enclosed and self-reinforcing, it can also serve the public good for personal gain. Instead of serving the people, we are working against the public. Because elites are only loyal to their own ambitions and nothing else matters. As long as the elite continues to sacrifice the interests of others to gain advantages for their own children, these problems are unavoidable. This is actually a tragic redemption. You think you're screwing up other people's children, but in the end it's you who has to pay for it.

Merely changing the admissions process of elite schools is not enough. We need to create a fair environment. This is not to allow all children to attend Ivy League schools, but to allow those who do not attend Ivy League schools. Can enjoy first-class education.

Finally, the author points out that we have already tried aristocratic and elite governance, and it is time to try democratic governance.

Of course, we cannot deny the advanced nature of American university education just because of this book, let alone think that China’s university education is very good. We must understand the American university system and operating model from a new perspective, so that We have a new understanding and thinking about education. This is the meaning of this book.

To deepen the reading: To borrow from Wu Jun's "Road to University":

A good university should play four roles. First of all, it is a place to cultivate talents, and to train young people with potential and ambition into people who will contribute to future society. Second, it is a research center that leads the development of world science and technology and will have a positive impact on a country and a region. Third, it is the birthplace of new ideas and new culture, thereby promoting social progress. Fourth, it is the home of young people and the place where they spend the best years of their lives.

For individuals, a successful college experience should be like this: when a student graduates from a well-known university, he no longer needs to mention the name of his alma mater every day; After a student graduates from a second- or third-rate university, that school will be proud of having produced such a student.

For Chinese students under heavy pressure, embarking on the road to college has become an extension of their parents’ dreams. The moment many young people get their college admission notices, they think they have finally completed their parents’ dream. The mission given to them. With this idea in mind, their path to college has a very clear goal—to get a diploma. When they get their diploma, they will feel that their unwilling examination career has finally ended, and they will never want to study again for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, life is a marathon. Getting a gold-plated diploma from a prestigious university is just a good standing in the marathon. The journey from life to a real university has just begun. Anyone who has watched a marathon knows that the road is very crowded at the moment of starting, but after 1/4 of the race has passed, the distance between the runners has widened, and the little bit gained at the start is so advantageous. By this time it was long gone.

Many Chinese parents are saying that they cannot let their children lose at the starting line, and try every means to let their children grab a seat as much as possible at the starting line. But in fact, the road to success is not as crowded as imagined. On the marathon road of life, most people quit before halfway.

In the end, the few remaining people did not think there were too many competitors, but were worried about how to find a companion to run with them. Therefore, education is a lifelong matter, and the person who laughs last is the one who receives education throughout his life.