From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 14

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 and indicated how prep school academic life differs from academic life in most U.S. public schools:

“…Children of wealthy or powerful families…may worry, `Did I get these grades because of my work or because of my parents?’…

“…On average, the class size in boarding school is 12 to 15 students, with some being as small as 4 or 5, compared to 32 students per class in New York City, for example…Most public high-school teachers have 5 classes each school day in which approximately 30 students are enrolled, a total of 150 students a day. Boarding school teachers usually have 4 classes of 15 or fewer students, totaling 60 students or less…There is no back row at prep school, as almost everyone sits around a table or in a circle…Students who need individual attention can find it at prep schools…Forty-eight percent of prep school students watch no television, and only 12 percent watch more than 2 hours per day during the school week…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 13

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, prep school teachers and working conditions for teachers at the U.S. power elite’s prep schools:

“…A high proportion of boarding school teachers are prep school graduates…Boarding school teachers have very little job security, certainly no union to represent them, and in almost all cases no tenure. At most schools their relationship with the head borders on the feudal, and they have little recourse if they fail to receive promotions or are dismissed, even without a stated cause…

“What prep school teachers like least about their job is paperwork, committee work, and busy work—including `administrivia’…Teacher evaluation was conducted by rumor, gossip, how much damage there was in the dormitories they supervised, and general impressions along the grapevine. Basically you either `fit in’ (a favorite administrative phrase) or you did not…

“…Since the 1960s, in particular, the profile of the boarding school teacher has changed considerably. Teacher prospects are more likely to be married, have children, have some public school background, and consider themselves professionals who expect some privacy and time for a personal life…Wealthy bachelors and spinsters are in short supply and the schools have had to adjust to the new boarding school teacher…

“Salaries are still low by public school standards…At many schools, the casual armchair evaluations so favored by generations of heads have been replaced by more systematic methods of evaluation…

“…Schools are particularly leery of college and university teachers when they try to `trickle down’ from higher to secondary education, feeling that the lonely, self-interested scholar usually lacks the flexibility required to cope with boarding school life or adolescent antics…In searching for teachers, heads will rely on informal networks as well as formal channels. Personal references and recommendations from other boarding school heads or teachers are taken seriously…Applicants…will have to meet and impress a small regiment, including in most cases the department head, dean of faculty, and the head…

“If the shape of boarding school faculties were drawn in terms of the age differences of the teachers, it would resemble an hour glass. At the bottom are the young `short-timers’ who come to work at the schools generally right out of college, spend a year or two, then move on to other occupations or go back to graduate school. Those that do remain join forces with the older faculty already in place, causing the upper bowl of the hour glass to swell out. The senior faculty are the role models…for the other teachers…

“Few schools have adequate pension funds…Some older faculty…have no marketable skills with which to start a new profession…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 12

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

“Not all students, of course, participate in school politics…The guerrilla leaders who emerge and flourish in the student underlife—or counter-culture—may have far greater real power than the `superschoolies” that tend to get elected to public office…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 11

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 and how the prep schools’ sports programs differ from the sports programs of most U.S. public school systems:

“Prep teams compete with college freshmen teams, other prep teams, and occasionally with public schools, although public school competitors are picked with care…Some schools, known as `jock’ schools, act essentially as farm teams for Ivy League colleges, consistently providing them with athletes who have been polished by the prep experience. Many prep schools take public high-school graduates for a post-graduate year, as a way of adding some size and weight to their football teams…Prep girls also love sports…

“…Few public schools can afford a hockey rink so prep schools can attract the best players without much competition. Some prep schools import a few Canadians each year to fill out the roster…

“The athletic facilities at prep schools are impressive, and at the larger schools, lavish. Acres and acres of playing fields, scores of tennis courts, one or more gyms, a hockey rink, a golf course, swimming pools, squash courts, workout rooms—all can be found on many prep school campuses…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 10

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 and its undemocratic admissions process:

“The exact percentage of whites in the questionnaire sample of 20 schools is 90.3, of blacks, 4.3, and of Asians, 5.3…Some boarding schools have as few as one percent black students and, on average, 4 percent of boarding-school students are black…29 percent of the black students in the sample had a relative who had attended boarding school…

“…Today [in 1985] one-quarter of all boarding-school students are now Catholic, close to the 27 percent of Catholic-Americans…Episcopal and progressive schools have the fewest Catholics…Today [in 1985] 11 percent of the students in our sample of 2,475 are Jewish, compared to less than 3 percent in the general population…In our sample there were no Jewish respondents at either the Episcopal schools or the Catholic schools. Jewish families have fewer legacies than any other group except blacks…65 percent of Jewish fathers own their own business, and 22 percent of Jewish mothers own their own business…

“In sum, boarding schools are overwhelmingly from high-income professional and managerial families…7 percent are non-citizen, 5 percent are Asian, and 4 percent are black. More than half (54 percent) of the students have one or more relatives who also attended boarding school…

“Boarding school students, by any reasonable standard, are elite…The select 16 boarding schools can be particularly selective in who they admit…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 9

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 and its undemocratic admissions process:

“Foreign students are as affluent as the Americans, as are the Asian-American students in our sample. Among black students, there are also affluent families, 15 percent come from $100,000 or more [in 1981] a year homes…A wealthy group of students come from Jewish homes, 41 percent having incomes of $100,000 a year or more [in 1981]…

“…50 percent of the fathers are professionals and 40 percent are managers. Specifically, 12 percent of our sample’s fathers are doctors, 10 percent are attorneys, and 9 percent are bankers…Slightly more than one-third of…mothers are professionals and 1 in 8 are managers or administrators…

“…On average, 7 percent of American boarding school students are non-citizens…Many of these students come from high-income families in the Middle East, South America and Asia…

“…`Legacy’ students create a critical mass at many boarding schools, especially at the Episcopal, girls and academy schools whose student bodies are between 55 and 75 percent legacy students…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 8

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 and its undemocratic admissions process:

“…Boarding schools must retain a firm grip on who they admit, because, if the `wrong’ students are admitted, then the historical mission of the schools to mold patrician and parvenu into an elite cadre will be jeopardized. The raw material must be suitable to the `treatment.’…

“46 percent of the boarding school families in our sample of 20 schools have annual incomes of more than $100,000 a year [in 1981]…By contrast, in 1981,…the median family income was slightly less than 24,000 a year [in 1981]. 41 percent of American families made less than $20,000 a year [in 1981]…

“…The families that send their daughters to girls schools are very well off indeed…58 percent have incomes in excess of $100,000 a year [in 1981]. Students al all-boys schools also come from affluent families; 53 percent have incomes in excess of $100,000 a year [in 1981]…”