From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 3

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:

“According to Baltzell (1958) the exclusive prep school played an important role in the formation and maintenance of an American upper class…The collective identity forged in prep schools would become the basis of upper-class solidarity and consciousness…

“By camouflaging eliteness in the cloth of common dress, American prep school students generally deflect attention from their privilege. Privilege publicly worn is an affront to democracy, and the American elite discovered that inverse snobbery is more effective in masking social class difference…than flagrant snobbery and public displays of financial superiority. Thus, at the most socially elite schools the dress is often the most casual…”