Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

We’re doing it for someone else—an audience: our teachers and our parents, and their substitutes in adult life. Make us proud. You have to shine. We’ve given you so much. What matters is the performance, not any inner sense of satisfaction. Authority figures are benign, wanting what is good for us and speaking on behalf of our long-term interests.

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Obama is a product of this elitist system. So are his degree-laden cabinet members. They come out of Harvard, Yale, Wellesley, and Princeton. Their friends and classmates made huge fortunes on Wall Street and in powerful law firms. They go to the same class reunions. They belong to the same clubs. They speak the same easy language of privilege, com

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Ultimately, the true measure of any educational experience lies in how it empowers individuals to think critically, pursue meaningful goals, and contribute to society in ways that resonate with their authentic aspirations, conventional or otherwise, while maintaining reasonable levels of personal well-being.

Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what their professors teach is

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