42 pages • 1 hour read
William DeresiewiczExcellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Schools”
Part 3, Chapter 8 Summary: “Great Books”
This third part of the book focuses on how colleges are supposed to provide students with the kind of education Deresiewicz has been talking about. In short, he touts the importance of, “…deploying that most powerful of instructional technologies: a liberal arts education, centered on the humanities, conducted in small classrooms by dedicated teachers” (149). In these three chapters, he explains what that means.
First, Deresiewicz defines liberal arts as those subjects studied for their own value, not to a practical application. These include not only the humanities, but the hard sciences and social sciences as well. Employers value graduates who major in liberal arts because they want employees who can see things from different perspectives, make connections between disparate ideas and concepts, and have strong communication skills. The author calls these “soft skills” and argues these are more important than ever in today’s globalized world relying so much on innovation. However, the main purpose of liberal arts goes far beyond just a career.
In short, the humanities help people see the world as it really is, divorced from personal perspective filtering reality. Deresiewicz is not suggesting that everyone major in a discipline of the humanities, but that everyone be exposed to them. A true liberal arts education is broad, such that it can be applied to more specialized areas as one progresses through a career. Having only a deep and narrow focus in one field is like working with blinders on, and more people today are realizing the benefits that the humanities have for work in very different areas.
Part 3, Chapter 9 Summary: “Spirit Guides”
Chapter 9 examines the topic of teachers—the guides in the process of education. Deresiewicz argues that teaching and learning is not merely about transferring information. A proficient teacher is needed to shepherd students through the process of thinking—asking questions and making sense of material—and the best format for this is the seminar. Thinking is a set of skills requiring feedback over time to hone.
Good teachers act as mentors, and this requires a relationship with their students. A seminar setting allows teachers to get to know each student and their individual learning development. Deresiewicz writes:
Learning is an emotional experience, and mentorship is rooted in the intimacy of intellectual exchange. Something important passes between you, something almost sacred. Socrates remarks that the bond between a teacher and a student lasts a lifetime, even once the two have parted company (178).
This mentoring involves more than just discussing classroom material because a good teacher serves as a model for how to apply information in real life. Students often say their favorite teachers taught about everything by making connections to life experience and changed their lives.
However, Deresiewicz adds a cautionary note that finding skilled teachers is no mean feat. The research aspect of professors’ jobs has become so dominant at universities that anyone winning awards for their teaching become suspect. The adage “publish or perish” involves research, which is far more important in gaining tenure than most tasks involving teaching (181). What’s more, in 2011, full-time tenure-track professors accounted for less than a quarter of all faculty at US institutions, while adjunct or contingent faculty, graduate assistants, and post-docs make up the rest. While they may be qualified, several factors inhibit this latter group’s ability to create the deep relationships necessary for becoming successful mentors.
Finally, Deresiewicz addresses MOOCs (massive open online courses), a recent phenomenon made possible by the internet. He compares them to textbooks, writing that self-directed learners who have already learned to think may find them useful merely for information transfer (185). As real education, however, they fall far short of the mark: Their real purpose is to generate profits for elite schools sharing their courses on their platforms.
Part 3, Chapter 10 Summary: “Your Guide to the Rankings”
Chapter 10 presents Deresiewicz’s advice for where students should search for the college that is right for them. He argues against Ivy League schools for various reasons, including the lack of diversity (economic even more than ethnic) among the students. Instead, he recommends small liberal arts colleges, writing “if there is anywhere that teaching and the humanities are still accorded pride of place—anywhere that college is still college—it is there” (194).
They have seminar-style classes, fewer adjuncts, more emphasis on teaching, and greater student input. Often, they also have freshman seminars intended to examine the purpose of college, which helps students sort out the meaning of a good life and introduces them to interdisciplinary thinking. Service learning can also be effective in allowing students to put ideas into practice by making connections between studies and the real world.
Deresiewicz does not advise skipping college, which has become trendy since dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went on to establish successful companies. He says these folks are extreme examples of exceptions rather than the rule. College still pays off and is necessary for intellectual growth. He encourages prospective students to think about what they want from college and to sit in on classes when visiting campus. Focus on what the students and professors are like rather than any amenities or facilities. Then, once in college, students need to be proactive and seek out what they want. Deresiewicz states, “[b]y far the most important factor, when you go to college, isn’t the college. It’s you” (201).
Part 3, Chapters 8-10 Analysis
After focusing on what students should get from education in the previous section, the three chapters in Part 3 examine the role of universities in helping them obtain it. The first discusses which disciplines to study—those that will help a student learn to critically think and form an independent self. A liberal arts education does this, Deresiewicz argues, in the process of creating strong citizens essential for an effective democracy. Studying the humanities is the best way to accomplish this because it allows students to encounter the past, offers a wide range of ways to be in the world, and provides a kind of mirror that reflects people’s own selves—all of which help determine meaning in life. Deresiewicz writes, “We ask of a scientific proposition, ‘Is it true?’, but of a proposition in the humanities we ask, ‘Is it true for me?’” (160).
Secondly, universities provide experienced professors to help students in ways that go far beyond simply learning the curricular material, which they can obtain from textbooks or MOOCs. Significantly, the chapter about professors is entitled “Spirit Guides”; the best ones don’t teach so much as guide students through the material. Teaching involves merely imparting information while guiding involves incremental back-and-forth progress supplied by a professor’s astute feedback—leading students in the process of developing a unique, independent self.
The third chapter in this section concerns what students should look for in a university in order to get the kind of education Deresiewicz promotes. Based on what he wrote in the previous two chapters, it’s not surprising that he recommends small liberal arts colleges. The difference for him—and why he recommends them over Ivy League schools—is in the teaching. One can focus on the liberal arts at Ivies, but they won’t get the same individual attention from professors. This harkens back to something mentioned in Chapter 9: American universities come from either the tradition of teaching or of research. Today, the latter has the upper hand at large universities, where being a bad teacher can be detrimental, but so can being a great one. As one professor put it, the “sweet spot…is to be unremarkable” (183). No such limitations apply at liberal arts colleges, where the focus is still on teaching—and that is better for students.
