From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 2

In their 1985 book, Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools, Peter W. Cookson Jr. and Cardine Hodges Persell wrote the following about the U.S. power elite's private school and elite prep school educational system:

“…On the East Coast, knowledge about boarding schools is largely confined to the upper class, the upper-middle class, and a small proportion of the middle class…As schools that train the children of such illustrious American families as the Rockefellers, Kennedys and Vanderbilts, prep schools have gained the reputation of being educational country clubs where children of wealthy families are sent to get socially polished and prepared for admission to acceptable colleges…

“[John F.] Kennedy’s call for `prep power’ was not altogether original…President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Dean Acheson were both Grotonians…Adlai Stevenson was a Choate man and Kennedy, of course, became president in 1960…

“…George Bush [I] is a Phillips Andover alumnus and…James Baker III is a Hill School graduate…

“The difference between a public school and an elite private school is, in one sense, the difference between a factory and a club. Public schools are evaluated on how good a product they turn out…

“…To be accepted into a private school is to be accepted into a social club…Because the most exclusive boarding schools have traditionally educated many upper-class children and a large number of children from high status families, they have become what we call `status seminaries’…”