Education without education

Teachers are trapped in the system, as well, as one of them told me. A veteran of many years, she has watched her institution [an elite high school] evolve in the direction of a customer-service mentality: give the parents what they want, no matter what's good for the kids. Don't challenge them intellectually, don't encourage them to engage the material, don't even try to insist on academic rigor.

That may be the most damning thing about these schools, so full of smart teachers teaching the smart children of smart parents: that they finally don't care about learning at all. . . . Everybody wants their child to get an education, but nobody wants them to get an education education.

William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (New York: Free Press, 2014), p. 49