From G. William Domhoff's `Who Rules America?'--Part 1

In his classic book of U.S. power structure research, Who Rules America?, G.William Domhoff wrote the following in reference to the political role that the U.S. private school system plays in U.S. society:

"Underlying the American upper class are a set of social institutions which are its backbone,--private schools, elite univesities...The private school is an excellent starting point, for its rise to importance was coincident with the late-ninetenth-century development of the national upper class. Baltzell emphasizes that at that time the proper school replaced the family as the chief socializing agent of the upper class: `The New England boarding school and the fashionable Eastern university became upper-class surrogate families on almost a national scale'. Educating the big-city rich from all over the country is only one of the functions of the private schools. They serve several other purposes as well. First, they are a proving ground where new-rich-old-rich antagonisms are smoothed over and the children of the new rich are gracefully assimilated. Then too, they are the main avenue by which upper-class children from smaller towns become acquainted with their counterparts from all over the country. Perhaps equally important is the fact that the schools assimilate...members of other classes, for such assimilation is important to social stability. Sweenzy calls the private schools `recruiters for the ruling class, sucking upwards...elements of the lower classes and performing the double function of infusing new brains into the ruling class and weakening the political leadership of the working class.' Indeed, many private schools employ persons to search out...members of the lower classes..."