Who Rules St. Paul's School?--Part 2

As the 2004 book by Michael Kranish, Brian Mooney and Nina Easton, “John F. Kerry”, observed about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (who has recently been acting more like a “U.S. Secretary of War” in 2013):

“To his critics, Kerry is an aloof politicians who lacks a core…As a boy, he was shipped off for a 7-year odyssey at boarding schools in Switzerland and New England…The boy who was educated at patrician prep schools…married wealthy wives whose net worth dwarfed his own…Kerry…went to St. Paul’s…on the generosity of his great-aunt Clara Winthrop…She owned an estate in Manchester-by-the-Sea…Winthrop offered to pay for much of John’s prep school education… Kerry began at St. Paul’s in the eighth grade and stayed for a total of 5 years, through graduation…”

Coincidentally, John “Skull and Bones” Kerry’s step-son, Christopher Heinz, has also been a member of the St. Paul’s prep school’s board of trustees and co-chair of the St. Paul School's Investment Committee in recent years. St. Paul’s Trustee Heinz is described in the following way on the Heinz-Kerry dynasty’s Heinz Endowments website:

“Christopher Heinz is a founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a New York-based, private-equity investment company. Prior to Rosemont, Mr. Heinz worked as a senior advisor for the John Kerry for President 2004 campaign. Before joining the campaign, Mr. Heinz worked as an associate and principal at Jacobson Partners in New York City. The private-equity group focuses on small to medium-sized companies that have enterprise values between $20 million and $150 million, and are in turnaround or restructuring situations.

“From 1996 to 1999, Mr. Heinz was employed by Cambridge Associates, a Boston-based investment advisor for investors classified as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. During his tenure at Cambridge, Mr. Heinz focused on private-equity and venture-capital partnership evaluation and portfolio construction. Mr. Heinz currently serves on the board of St. Paul's School and on the Board of Visitors of the Carnegie Mellon School of Public Policy…”

Coincidentally, according to the St. Paul’s School’s Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning July 1, 2011 and ending June 30, 2012,  the Cambridge Associates LLC investment advisor that employed St. Paul’s School Trustee Heinz between 1996 to 1999 was paid $261,317 by the tax-exempt St. Paul’s prep school between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012 for “investment consulting.”

The "New York Times" (2/11/07) also reported in 2007 that St. Paul’s Trustee Heinz also married the daughter of “the chairman of Devon Value Advisers, a financial consulting and investment banking firm in New York” in 2007. And as the Muckety blog noted in a May 24, 2011 post:

“Two easily recognized names head Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm founded in June 2009, with offices in New York and Washington.

“The company is co-chaired by R. Hunter Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden; and Christopher Heinz, son of the late Sen. H. John Heinz III and stepson of Sen. John Kerry.

"The Heinz-Biden alliance opens doors across the political spectrum. While John Kerry and Joe Biden are Democrats, John Heinz was a Republican….Heinz is founding partner of another investment firm, Rosemont Solebury Capital Management."

“As the great-great-grandson of the founder of H.J. Heinz Co., he would have had access to wealth even without the political connections of his father and stepfather…”

And, coincidentally, both the St. Paul's prep school and the Kerry-Biden administration in Washington, D.C. seem more interested in training young people to serve the special corporate interests of Wall Street investors and "the 1 %" (whose foreign investments overseas the U.S. war machine is being used to protect) than in educating young people to create an egalitarian, democratic society in the United States that serves the class interests of U.S. public school graduates and "the 99 %."

Who Rules St. Paul's School?--Part 1

One of the most exclusive prep schools in the militaristic U.S. power elite's private school system is located in Concord, New Hampshire and operates under the name of "St. Paul's School." As St. Paul's School prep school graduate and Columbia University Professor of Sociology Shamus Rahman Khan observed in his 2011 book "Privilege: The Making of An Adolescent Elite At St. Paul's School::"

"...St. Paul's...had long been home to the social elite of the nation. Here were members of a national upper class...Children with multiple homes who chartered planes for weekend international trips, came from family dynasties, and inherited unimaginable advantages met me on the school's brick paths...

"...A cursory look at St. Paul's leaves no doubt that the school is a place where already privileged youth spend their adolescent years; two-thirds come from families who can afford over $40,000 per year for high schools. The colleges that students from St. Paul's are most likely to attend is Harvard followed by Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Yale, Cornell, Princeton and Stanford. The acceptance rates to these institutions are well above three times the national average. In recent years, 30 percent of graduating classes attended an Ivy League institution and around 80 percent attended one of the top 30 colleges and universities in the nation. The school's annual per-pupil expenditure of over $80,000 for each student is approximately 20 times what most high schools spend. St. Paul's also has one of the largest endowments of any educational institution in the country (nearly $1 million per pupil)...

"...If St. Paul's was a meritocratic place--if you got there because of your hard work and your own personal excellence--then why was the school made up of mostly very wealthy students?...Why were many students the children of parents who went to boarding school, particularly St. Paul's?...The school is not, in reality, a meritocracy...If you believe that the children of alumni should not have a far better chance of attending the school than childrn who are not `legacies,' then the school is not a meritocracy...

"...Just like at other elite schools, at St. Paul's receiving an A is closer to average performance than it is exceptional work...Today as in the past, elite colleges still listen to elite high schools...It is not just the quality of the students that gets them into college, but the quality of the relationship between elite high schools and colleges...St. Paul's refuses to rank its students...It is only a slight overstatement to say that I rarely saw a student reading...at St. Paul's...If we think back to the history of how elite colleges accept high school students, we can recall how they deemphasized academic excellence in favor of other factors (`character') so as to advantage students from already established backgrounds...

"...There are more rich kids at top schools than there were 25 years ago and fewer poor ones...Rich people have more money than poor peoople. And they use that money to buy advantages for themselves and their children. One of the places they do so is St. Paul's School..."

Coincidentally, the former preppie 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate and current preppie U.S. Secretary of State who's been pushing for the U.S. war machine to be used in 2013 for a cruise missile attack on people in Syria recently--John "Skull and Bones" Kerry--is a graduate of St. Paul's School. And apparently the stepson of U.S. Secretary of State Kerry, Christopher Heinz, has also, coincidentally, been sitting on the St. Paul's School board of trustees in recent years.

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 9

The 1999 book by Harlow Unger, "How To Pick A Perfect Private School" indicated how the elite private prep schools of the U.S. power elite's private prep school system contradict democratic and egalitarian values and provide their mainly wealthy students with a different educational experience than what most U.S. public schools provide most students who graduate from U.S. public schools:

"If your child is accepted by, and enrolls in, private school, both your child and you...will enter a new educational and social world unknown to (indeed unimagined by) the vast majority of Americans whose children routinely attend public schools. Most have never seen or even heard of America's most prestigious private schools. Most respond with blank stares at the mention of such names as Exeter, Hotchkiss or even Collegiate...Attending private school...is a privilege...

"...Enrollment in a private school will mean your child will join a private club. Some of these `clubs' can often ease entry into the most selective colleges and universities and into the halls of power and leadership in business, industry, government and the profession. Membership in such clubs often lasts a lifetime, and can produce...associations that last equally long.

"Flagrant violation of private-school rules, however, can mean swift expulsion from that club...Many private schools...are the way they are because those who own them...want their schools to be that way...Again, they are private! So if you disagree witih the way a school is run, don't enroll your child!"

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 8

The admissions offices of most U.S. elite universities, in an undemocratic way, generally grant preferential treatment to student applicants who have graduated from one of the U.S. power elite's private prep schools--and not from a U.S. public high school. As Harlow Unger's 1999 book "How To Pick A Perfect Private School" observed:

""...About a dozen of the most selective boarding schools of the Northeast, which...limit admissions.., send a disproportionately high number of their students to the most selective colleges and universities...Phillips Academy...has a physical plant that is larger and more extensive than many colleges...More than one-fourth of the typical graduating class goes to Ivy League colleges...Andover [Phillips Academy] and Exeter [Phillips Exeter Academy] along with...boarding schools as Groton, Hotchkiss, St. Paul's and Deerfield and...New York City day schools as Collegiate, Dalton and Horace Mann, place disproportionately large numbers of their graduating seniors in the most selective colleges and universities..."

From Harlow Unger's `How To Pick A Perfect Private School'--Part 7

In his 1998 book, "How To Pick A Perfect Private School," Harlow Unger indicated how Catholic parochial/private schools differ from U.S. public school system schools and the elite prep schools of the U.S. power elite's private school system by writing the following:

"...Catholic schools, like most private schools, refuse to admit...disruptive children...Children who don't obey the rules are expelled. Public schools must by law deal with all children, and, therefore, incur far higher costs handling disruptive, emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped or learning-disabled children...

"...The academic quality of most Catholic schools--especially parochial schools--is far below that of most selective independent schools...Only 44 percent of 8th-grade students in Catholic schools achive the highest level of reading proficiency..."