Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage

The gaze of educational researchers has traditionally been turned "down" toward the experiences of communities deemed at-risk, presumably with the purpose of improving their plight. Indeed, theorizing about the relationship between education, culture, and society has typically emerged from the study of poor and marginalized groups in public schools. Seldom have educational researchers considered class privilege and educational advantage in their attempts at understanding inequality and fomenting social justice. This collection of groundbreaking studies breaks with this tradition by shifting the gaze of inquiry "up," toward the experiences of privilege in educational environments characterized by wealth and the abundance of material resources. This edited volume brings together established and emerging scholars in education and the social sciences working critically to interrogate a diversity of educational environments serving the interests of influential groups both within and beyond schools. The authors investigate the power relations that underlie various contexts of class privilege. They shed light into the ways in which the success of a few relates to the failure of many.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Introduction: Why Study Up? Chapter 3 Preparing for Power: Twenty-Five Years Later Chapter 4 Educating for Hegemony, Researching for Change: Collaborating with Teachers and Students to Examine Bullying at an Elite Private School Chapter 5 A Part and Apart: Students of Color Negotiating Boundaries at an Elite Boarding School Chapter 6 Stepping Outside Class: Affluent Students Resisting Privilege Chapter 7 Getting In: How Elite Schools Play the College Game Chapter 8 The Effects of Parents' College Tier on Offspring's Educational Attainments Chapter 9 Class Dismissed?: The Social Class Worldviews of Privileged College Students Chapter 10 Pageantry, Pedagogy, and Pandorea: Literacies of the Southern Belle Chapter 11 On Not Seeming Like You Want Anything: Privileged Girls' Dilemmas of Ambition and Selflessness Chapter 12 Outlining a Research Agenda on Elite Education

About the Author :
Adam Howard is an associate professor of education at Colby College. He is author of Learning Privilege: Lessons of Power and Identity in Affluent Schooling. Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. He is author of The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School.

Review :
A great collection. Elite schooling is important not only because it defines the ladders others must climb to move up in the world, but also because it represents powerful families' best guess about the future their children will inherit. Educating Elites quickly will become required reading for any serious student of inequality in America. A fresh and interesting collection that contains a number of pieces by talented young scholars....highly recommended. Class counts, and it counts in crucial ways in education. Adam Howard and Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández have provided us with a set of important and nuanced analyses of how elite class institutions and understandings work in a system that is riven with class relations. This is a significant book for anyone who cares about elitism in education in this society.