During the 20th century, the elite prep schools of the U.S. power elite--like Andover--apparently reflected the racial and religious sectarian prejudices of 20th-century U.S. society in general. As G. William Domhoff and Richard L. Zweigenhaft noted in their 1991 book Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America:
"Not surprisingly, there is considerable evidence that prep school administrators and students have demonstrated many of the same prejudices found in the larger society over the years. The experiences of Jews and blacks at Andover are instructive because that school has long prided itself on educating `youth from every quarter,' and it was one of the first boarding schools to accept black students. Frederick Allis's history of Andover, Youth from Every Quarter, is unlike any of the histories written about prep schools for it does not gloss over embarrassing or distasteful moments. Allis provides ample evidence that, for Jews and blacks at Andover, anti-Semitism and racism were likely to be part of their prep school experience. In the 1930s, when about 3 percent of the student body was Jewish, the headmaster wrote to a colleague: `We shall never have a larger percentage, and I am trying to reduce it just a little. On the other hand some of them make first class students and real leaders, although very few of them are permitted to hold important social positions.' Some Jewish students were given the `silent treatment' by the other students in their dormitory. And though Andover accepted black students relatively early, it did not accept very many, and they were not especially welcomed by the community. Prior to the 1950s, Allis writes, `the School had done little if anything for blacks.' For example, in 1944, in response to a request from an alumnus that Andover accept more black students, the headmaster responded that there were currently 2 black students at the school, and that accepting more might `cause trouble.'
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
Revisiting Lawrenceville School and Other Prep School Campuses and Endowments
In their 1991 book Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America, Richard Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff wrote the following in reference to the tax-exempt and "non-profit" Lawrenceville School prep school:
"...With the exception of the specific geographic location, the following description of the Lawrenceville School could apply to many American boarding schools: `The school is located on 330 magnificently landscaped acres of New Jersey countryside just five miles south of Princeton. Its physical plant--including a nine-hole golf course, mammoth field house and covered hockey rink, library of some 23,000 volumes, science building, arts center with 900-seat auditorium and professionally equipped stage--would be the envy of most colleges.'
"Most colleges would be pleased to have Lawrenceville's endowment as well. In 1983, Lawrenceville and the other 15 prep schools that make up Baltzell's select 16 had a combined endowment of $381 million, and their physical plants were valued at about the same amount...`In effect,' Cookson and Persell claim, `the combined real estate holdings of American boarding schools represent a "Prep National Park," a preserve free from state and local taxes...'
"...With the exception of the specific geographic location, the following description of the Lawrenceville School could apply to many American boarding schools: `The school is located on 330 magnificently landscaped acres of New Jersey countryside just five miles south of Princeton. Its physical plant--including a nine-hole golf course, mammoth field house and covered hockey rink, library of some 23,000 volumes, science building, arts center with 900-seat auditorium and professionally equipped stage--would be the envy of most colleges.'
"Most colleges would be pleased to have Lawrenceville's endowment as well. In 1983, Lawrenceville and the other 15 prep schools that make up Baltzell's select 16 had a combined endowment of $381 million, and their physical plants were valued at about the same amount...`In effect,' Cookson and Persell claim, `the combined real estate holdings of American boarding schools represent a "Prep National Park," a preserve free from state and local taxes...'
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Are U.S. Prep Schools Still Excluding Working-Class Black Students?
In the 1980s, the percentage of Black students attending the U.S. power elite's prep schools whose family background was low-income and working-class apparently decreased. As G. William Domhoff and Richard Zweigenhaft's noted in their 1991 book Blacks in the White Establishment: A Study of Race and Class in America:
"The ABC [`A Better Chance'] program was founded in 1963 by 16 independent secondary schools, with assistance from Dartmouth College, the Merrill Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation...The changing role of ABC, and the increasing entry of middle-class blacks into private schools are reflected in the one survey we know of that provides a comprehensive look at the racial composition of elite prep schools in the 1980s. It indicates that the number of black students has leveled off and that more of them are from the middle class. In their study of 2,475 freshmen and senior students at twenty prep schools, Peter Cookson and Caroline Persell found that 106 were black (4 percent). Notably, the fathers of 70 percent of their black sample were professionals: 17 percent were doctors, 14 percent were lawyers, 6 percent were bankers, 8 percent were college teachers, and 25 percent were secondary school teachers. One-third of the black respondents indicated that their families earned more than $75,000 per year [equal to over $153,000 in 2018]..."
"The ABC [`A Better Chance'] program was founded in 1963 by 16 independent secondary schools, with assistance from Dartmouth College, the Merrill Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation...The changing role of ABC, and the increasing entry of middle-class blacks into private schools are reflected in the one survey we know of that provides a comprehensive look at the racial composition of elite prep schools in the 1980s. It indicates that the number of black students has leveled off and that more of them are from the middle class. In their study of 2,475 freshmen and senior students at twenty prep schools, Peter Cookson and Caroline Persell found that 106 were black (4 percent). Notably, the fathers of 70 percent of their black sample were professionals: 17 percent were doctors, 14 percent were lawyers, 6 percent were bankers, 8 percent were college teachers, and 25 percent were secondary school teachers. One-third of the black respondents indicated that their families earned more than $75,000 per year [equal to over $153,000 in 2018]..."
Monday, October 13, 2014
St. George's School's Undemocratic Role In U.S. Society
In their 1991 book, Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America, G. William Domhoff and Richard L. Zweigenhaft indicated the undemocratic role in U.S. society that the St. George's School prep school has historically played, in the following reference:
"...St. George's School in Rhode Island, one of the most exclusive prep schools in America...St. George's, a scenic New England prep school that caters primarily to the children of the American upper class. Indeed, St. George's is singled out by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell as among the 16 most exclusive of the many boarding schools that `serve the sociological function of differentiating the upper classes from the rest of the population.'...
"Before World War II the graduates of the country's most prestigious prep schools had a virtual guarantee that the Ivy League college of their choice would accept them. Some prep schools were known to have special relationships with specific colleges. The six boarding schools many consider the most socially exclusive, often collectively referred to as `St. Grottlesex' (Groton, St. Mark's, St. Paul's, St. George's, Kent and Middlesex) served as strong `feeders' to Harvard...'
"...St. George's School in Rhode Island, one of the most exclusive prep schools in America...St. George's, a scenic New England prep school that caters primarily to the children of the American upper class. Indeed, St. George's is singled out by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell as among the 16 most exclusive of the many boarding schools that `serve the sociological function of differentiating the upper classes from the rest of the population.'...
"Before World War II the graduates of the country's most prestigious prep schools had a virtual guarantee that the Ivy League college of their choice would accept them. Some prep schools were known to have special relationships with specific colleges. The six boarding schools many consider the most socially exclusive, often collectively referred to as `St. Grottlesex' (Groton, St. Mark's, St. Paul's, St. George's, Kent and Middlesex) served as strong `feeders' to Harvard...'
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Prep School Racism and Sexism At St. Paul's School Historically
As late as the 1990s the prep school that the ultra-rich U.S. Secretary of State, John "Secretary of War" Kerry, attended--St. Paul's School--was apparently operating in an institutionally racist and institutionally sexist way. As Columbia University Professor of Sociology Shamus Rahman Khan--who was a student at St. Paul's School during the 1990s--recalled in his 2011 book Privilege: The Making of An Adolescent Elite At St. Paul's School:
"I am surrounded by black and Latino boys...It was September 1993...I quickly realized that St. Paul's was far from racially diverse. That sea of dark skin only existed because we all lived in the same place: the minority student dorm. There was one for girls and one for boys. The other 18 houses on campus were overwhelmingly filled with those whom you would expect to be at a school that educated families like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts...Why were there comparatively few Black or Latino students? Why did blacks and Latinos not do as well as the white and Asian students? Why, though girls consistently did better than the boys, was the student body still half boys and half girls? If you believe that boys should not win more academic awards than girls, even though girls outperform them, then the school is not a meritocracy...It was in the 1950s...that St. Paul's hired its first black teacher, John T. Walker..."
And, coincidentally, the St. Paul's School administration apparently also required its women students "to cover their shoulders, resulting in that was called the `no bare shoulders rule,' until this rule was "challenged" in recent years by the women students at St. Paul's School, according to the same book.
In her 1983 book The Good School, Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot also reported "that there were 45 black students at St. Paul's in 1969, but only 23 in 1980," according to Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff's 1991 book Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America.
"I am surrounded by black and Latino boys...It was September 1993...I quickly realized that St. Paul's was far from racially diverse. That sea of dark skin only existed because we all lived in the same place: the minority student dorm. There was one for girls and one for boys. The other 18 houses on campus were overwhelmingly filled with those whom you would expect to be at a school that educated families like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts...Why were there comparatively few Black or Latino students? Why did blacks and Latinos not do as well as the white and Asian students? Why, though girls consistently did better than the boys, was the student body still half boys and half girls? If you believe that boys should not win more academic awards than girls, even though girls outperform them, then the school is not a meritocracy...It was in the 1950s...that St. Paul's hired its first black teacher, John T. Walker..."
And, coincidentally, the St. Paul's School administration apparently also required its women students "to cover their shoulders, resulting in that was called the `no bare shoulders rule,' until this rule was "challenged" in recent years by the women students at St. Paul's School, according to the same book.
In her 1983 book The Good School, Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot also reported "that there were 45 black students at St. Paul's in 1969, but only 23 in 1980," according to Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff's 1991 book Blacks in the White Establishment?: A Study of Race and Class in America.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
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 atSt. Paul
Coincidentally, John “Skull and Bones” Kerry’s step-son, Christopher Heinz, has also been a member of theSt. Paul St. Paul
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 %."
“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
Coincidentally, John “Skull and Bones” Kerry’s step-son, Christopher Heinz, has also been a member of the
“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
“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 atCambridge St. Paul
“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
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
“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 %."
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
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.
"...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.
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