From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 17

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 their specially privileged student body:

“Preppies are a perfect market for drug dealers because they have the money and the need. The generous allowances many boarding school students receive make it relatively easy for them to buy drugs. If they do not have money, others often share their drugs…Alcoholism is also prevalent at boarding schools….In effect, prep school students come to believe that they are entitled to privilege because they are true aristocrats…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 16

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 why the U.S. power elite continues to maintain an exclusive, undemocratic, separate, private educational system in the United States:

“…As our data [from the early 1980s] show, boarding schools are stil a man’s world [in the 1980s]. In the Porter Sargent sample of 289 schools, 92 percent of the heads are male; even at girls schools, 64 percent of the heads are male [in the early 1980s]…None of the select 16 schools has a woman head [in the 1980s]…

“Male authority is a deeply entrenched tradition of prep school life…In the prep school world, strong women usually find their mobility blocked. Leadership positions within the elite schools are something like a men’s club, where women are not made to feel particularly comfortable nor considered truly acceptable for membership…

“…Preps are taught to camouflage their interests in the rhetoric of morality and community service…There are no…protected enclaves at boarding schools, no unions, and in most cases no tenures. In some schools, there isn’t even a written contract. Teachers are simply invited back or not invited back…

“…Most heads come from middle-class or upper-middle class backgrounds in which a guiding principle is to enhance one’s status, not change the rules of the game…

“…Giving information to the administration that is detrimental to one’s peers is considered a form of treason by nearly all prep school students…

“…While the style of the schools has changed, their missions have not. If they abandon their goal of socializing students for power their very purpose is open to question…Leadership training is as much a part of the prep school mission today as when Endicott Peabody founded Groton to train leaders in 1884…”

From Cookson & Persell's `Preparing For Power: America's Elite Boarding Schools'--Part 15

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 what kind of folks control most elite prep schools:

“…Prep school educators often depict themselves as mentors to the next generation of the power elite…Like other power structures, the prep power structure is hierarchical…

“At the top of the prep school power hierarchy is the board of trustees…These trustees are not elected…Instead, trustees select their own members…Most board members are successful in some area of the business world…The real power of most boards is exercised by an executive committee, which includes the president, the most influential board member…

“…An analysis of available data [from the 1980s] on 538 trustees from 22 schools indicated that 41 percent of the trustees of these schools are listed in either the Social Register, Who’s Who, or both…At a socially elite school like St. Paul’s in New Hampshire, 63 percent of the trustees are listed in the Social Register…

“…Trustees cannot be controlled by the faculty, and quite often they will take the opportunity…to root out difficult cliques or individuals. Part of looking to the future is knowing when to clean house…Much of the power of the trustees is difficult to detect within the school community because they tend to keep low profiles…The unobtrusiveness of most boards is an example of how power can be exercised without publicity; they are indeed the power behind the throne, and many students may only be dimly aware of the board’s importance or even presence…”

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…”