Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Parenting: advice & issues

EXCELLENT SHEEP

William Deresiewicz

The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee.

As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.

A groundbreaking manifesto for people searching for the kind of insight on leading, thinking, and living that elite schools should be—but aren’t—providing.

As a professor at Yale, Bill Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.

Available products
Book Published 2014-08-01 by Free Press
Book Published 2014-08-01 by Free Press

Comments

At the core of Deresiewicz’s essay is the ongoing question of whether elite universities are havens of meritocracy that educate the mind and promote the best and the brightest or just prestige cartels that entrench pre-existing networks in our corrupt, unequal, rent-seeking society. Read more...

The New Republic, cover-story excerpt, July 21, 2014. Read more...

William Deresiewicz’s book is in and of itself a higher education, and to read it is to learn what a college is for. The author is an inspired teacher, and his lesson is of a truth sorely needing to be told.

Korea: Darum Taiwan: Sun Color

An unquestionably provacative book that hopefully leads to productive debate.

n Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz sets out to unnerve the current and future college students of America (and their parents). He succeeds brilliantly, with an indictment of elite education that should launch a thousand conversations. Read this book to remember what learning should be, and then pass it along to the next sheep who should leave the flock behind.

This is a book of great importance to our society. It deserves to transform our understanding of integrity and achievement and success. William Deresiewicz is a genuine humanist with a profound faith in the promise of democracy, and he has an uncommon gift for wisdom without platitudes. Excellent Sheep is a withering analysis of the transactional spirit that rules American education and American life, and an inspiring example of a better ideal. A true teacher speaks here. He has my admiration and my gratitude

Lucid, sharp-edged, and searching.

William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep is a searing and important critique of our morally bankrupt educational system. He argues, correctly, that colleges and universities, awash in corporate money and intend on churning out corporate managers and conformists rather than scholars, have betrayed not only their mission, but the students they purport to teach and by extension the wider society. Independent thought is subversive, uncomfortable and lonely. It requires us, as Deresiewicz points out, to challenge and question reigning assumptions rather than kneel before them. Deresiewicz’s book is not so much a call for reform as for revolt.