Globally Elite

Athletics for All!

May 10, 2023

While reading through the interview transcripts of students at Everdeen, one particular theme stood out to me as emerging within many contexts. That theme was sports. One specific interviewee seemed to be able to incorporate his participation in athletics and sports while at Everdeen into his responses to almost every question asked of him. At Everdeen, “everybody has to do sport training in school” (Jake Anderson). This idea of each student being required to partake in some type of athletic activity or sport at school is certainly an interesting one. It is not necessarily uncommon for schools, especially elite ones, to require students to participate in athletics in some capacity. This requirement can’t be considered solely positive or negative for the student’s educational experience, given that there are both pros and cons to it.

Those in leadership roles at Everdeen “claim sports provide a unifying experience for students” (Howard, 2020, p. 9). In claiming this, they are not necessarily wrong. As student Jake Anderson describes, “kids go and play sport with each other… we all mingle with each other.” The very prominent aspect of sports and athletics in life at Everdeen is a great way for the students to broaden their social circles and get to know students who they would not typically interact with a little bit better. The students are given a space to collaborate and work together on a team in a different atmosphere, and through doing this they are gaining very crucial communication and cooperation skills. Those at Everdeen “believe that involvement in sports provides a much more important instructional setting for teaching these lessons” (Howard, 2020, p. 9) as opposed to other methods that could be used. This aspect of socialization through the various sports teams and athletic events is certainly a pro of the requirement.

The student whose interview transcripts I read, Jake Anderson, also consistently mentions that sports are “like a way to [get] out of studies, get your mind off things, but have fun with your friends at the same time and just have the best time that you can.” He responded with this after being asked what role sports play in his life. It is clear that he, as well as many other students at Everdeen, truly enjoys participating in his respective sports and athletics. Students feel as though it is a great way to clear their minds of any school-related issues, as well as anything else that might be impacting them. This helps keep the student’s mental health in a good space, by assuring that they are not constantly surrounded by the stressors of school and life and that they have a space to decompress. These are all certainly positive things that come out of the school’s athletic requirement, and they are not to be discounted when considering the negative aspects as well.

Also at Everdeen, however, the student’s participation in sports seems like it almost overshadows their participation in other extracurricular activities, as well as their academics. As displayed by the tendency of this student to center his answers about his experience at Everdeen, a place of education, around his experience playing sports and participating in athletics, he clearly thinks of it as a very prominent aspect of his life. He rarely describes his actual classroom experiences at Everdeen, which could be a sign of them being on the back burner in his mind. He is evidently very focused on his involvement in sports, almost so much that it overtakes everything else. He also states, “I don’t really do anything else,” when being asked what he does outside of school besides sports. In this, it is clear that the athletic involvement is overshadowing any other extracurricular activities that students may want to partake in, such as music or art. Students seem to become so enthralled in athletics that they forget to leave room for other activities that could be beneficial to them as well.

This pattern of placing athletics over academics and other activities is not specific to Everdeen and can be seen at many elite educational institutions. For example, many student-athletes at Colby have developed a reputation of caring more about their sport than they do about their academics. This is again, not necessarily a bad thing, it is just something to keep in mind since one of the main purposes of pursuing higher education is to learn. Clearly, elite educational institutions, like Everdeen and Colby, need to be careful how they promote athletic involvement to students. These places need to emphasize that it is definitely important for socialization, mental health, and overall experience. In doing this, they also need to be careful about pushing student involvement too much, because it can easily lead to over-prioritization and hyper-focusing on the wrong things while at school.

Citation:

Adam Howard (2020): Globally elite: four domains of becoming globally oriented within elite schools, Educational Review, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2020.1805412

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Envisioning Greatness through Landscape

dbgree24 / Globally Elite /

May 10, 2023

In the middle of the 1700s, private English estates with vast landscapes and curated gardens became a symbol of the elite (Angod & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2019). A private estate in rural lands where its residents may walk for miles to sit and write poetry, paint, or frankly do whatever they desire while protected from the commoners was a symbol of privilege, power, and colonization. If you have ever seen Downton Abbey or Pride and Prejudice, you know exactly what I am talking about. However, it is crucial to understand that this landscape of historic buildings with surrounding plains still symbolizes eliteness for schools today. Many historic campuses have the same characteristics when looking at elite schools worldwide. Although the multiple campuses of Everdeen are not precisely within remote areas, the athletic fields spread out across campus create the visual of plains leading into tree lands. Additionally, a wall separates the students from the city streets on the other side of the campus. Besides having a wealthy English aesthetic, this pastoral landscape is critical in producing young elites (Angod & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2019).

With this aesthetic, Angod and Gaztambide-Fernández (2019) argue that as the students look onto this land with an infinite gaze, they can look through the lens of a colonizer in which they are entitled to endless opportunities. This expansive campus makes students feel like they belong everywhere, creating confidence and entitlement. Moreover, Everdeen not only has multiple campuses across Australia, but they also have campuses abroad. This factor adds to the students’ infinite gaze, allowing them to envision themselves conquering whatever they most desire through manifest destiny. While the class diversity at Everdeen is low, and students often travel with their families during holidays, this landscape further reinforces the notion that for the students, the world is their oyster.

ksmith23 / Globally Elite /

May 9, 2023

Sebastián Madrid: Popping a Bubble

Throughout this research process of the Croft school, it had not posed any major challenges until the task of finding outside sources to support our findings was presented to us. Being responsible for writing the literature review, I had to find some extra sources on top of what my peers already found, and it proved to be quite challenging. My group’s main focal point of our research is to talk about the bubbles that exist within Croft, but also about Croft being a larger bubble of their own. This was a similar theme when trying to find outside sources to help strengthen our findings. Looking for information about elite schools in Chile seemed to be nonexistent, as if no one had popped the bubble of researching Chilean elite schools.

When trying to find outside sources, I first wanted to look for articles that spoke specifically about elite schools in Chile. This seemed to be wishful thinking, as no useful resources surfaced through these searches. I tried several other times, adding and removing key words like “private” and “South America” to see if I could have any resources turned up about elite schools in other South American countries. This still resulted in results that did not fulfill what I was looking for. During class I remember hearing that Sebastián Madrid would be a potential strong researcher to look at. Upon looking up Madrid, there were several different articles that Madrid had written that showed up, with only one of them being applicable to researching elites in Chile.

The first piece of work by Madrid that I found to be very useful was, The formation of ruling class men: Private schooling, class and gender relations in contemporary Chile. Published in 2013 as the thesis submitted for his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. While a lengthy paper, this work provided a strong foundation of how private schooling in Chile puts men in positions of power and how gender relations have seen a shift since neo-liberalism took over.

After interviewing students who have gone through elite private schooling in Chile, Madrid studies the ruling class and how it produces hegemonic masculinity within society. This is important work, especially in how this work directly relates to Chileans educated in elite spaces now holding powerful positions in their home country. Results from this study show that there exists ruling hegemony in Chilean society and it is produced and emphasized through elite private schools (Madrid, 2013). There is an important distinction within this work that is laid out where men who come from an elite private schooling are above men who do not have this background, regardless of the work they are doing following their education. Lastly, Madrid talks about women in these elite school settings, who still struggle with issues of discrimination due to cultural ideals that have existed for generations, where “the mother is the mother” (Madrid, 2013, p. 262), telling us that women still struggle to find themselves in positions of power, though these opportunities have grown, following their elite private schooling in comparison to their male counterparts.

This work by Madrid offers another insight into how elite schools help to put their students in positions of power following the completion of their education. Madrid’s work has helped to strengthen my group’s findings about the Croft school, but his work also contributes to a very small world of literature about elite private schooling in Chile.

Elite Schooling as the Global Dominant

Madison Brown / Globally Elite /

May 8, 2023

This research process has shaped the way I view elite schooling not only in the United States, but as a global force. Our research findings have guided my understanding of elite schools as a global phenomenon, via the use of their social groups, expectations, and curriculum. As I have analyzed these findings through interviews and theoretical work by Bourdieu, it has become transparent that elite schools aid in the reproduction of elites and provide a platform for elite students to flourish in a globally unequal educational system.

Social bubbles are a dominant theme in our research findings. The Croft school creates social bubbles by keeping the elites and the working-class separate through closing off admissions to the school by not offering financial aid, resulting in only admitting kids who live in wealthy neighborhoods, coming from wealthy families. Through this practice, it creates a social divide within the education system in Chile and more broadly, within the community by limiting interaction between elite students and non-elite students who might attend publicly-funded schools. In addition to the Croft school, we have been exposed to numerous elite schools who have similar elite networks of students like the Croft, for example at Colby. Bourdieu discusses this phenomenon through his explanation of elite networks and the field of the game. What he argues is that elite networks play in the field of the game by controlling the rules, creating a landscape that allows them to win. Within this field, social networks play a large role in connecting elites together to remain in positions of power extending globally. To be a member of the elite ‘in-group’, Bourdieu explains how an individual must possess the social and cultural capital as well as economic capital to remain a member of the elite circle. This concept undermines the social bubble at the Croft as well as the social bubble globally for all elite schools whose criteria is strictly based on forms of social, cultural, and economic capitals.

Secondly, we discovered social and academic expectations as a main theme for students at the Croft, which seems to be consistent with elites across the world. There is an expectation that as an elite student, one must follow a certain path and follow in the steps of their parents to remain in the elite income brackets. At the Croft specifically, the students express a level of academic expectations in what they study and how high their grades are to be socially approved by their families and peers. Similarly, elite schools across the world set the same expectations for their students. For example, if you go to an elite American Prep school, the expectation is that you will land admission at an Ivy League school or another highly-selective college. And if you attend an elite college, you will likely land in a high-paying prestigious entry level career. Bourdieu touches on this with his idea of elite schools as ‘training grounds for executives’ (Bourdieu, 2010) and how elite students are curated to be in positions of power and serve the greater good for the public. His idea supports these prestigious positions that elites are expected to enter, who control and also ‘serve’ the public due to their elite credentials and power. In addition, his concept of cultural capital explains how elites expect a certain level of performance and if one does not meet the standards, they “fail”. Not only does this encourage students to take a specific success path but it also legitimizes the widely known placed expectations and reproduction of elites, regardless of the country.

Lastly, and maybe the most obvious is that Croft is a British school located in Chile. They also express their efforts to provide a cosmopolitan education, meaning they are encouraging students to become familiar with cultures and education centered around global topics. By increasing the students’ exposure to a globalized curriculum, the school is positioned to appear that they are inclusive and helping students prepare to participate as well-educated citizens. Since this is a British run school, this means that the Croft is incorporating exposure to the British curriculum and the English language in Chile while also preparing students in other ‘elite ways’ that students might not experience if they were not in this elite institution. A cosmopolitan curriculum is very prevalent in elite schools including various diversity and language requirements to balance a well-rounded education, which is meant to create a globalized experience for students, preparing them to participate in ‘elite’ circles across the globe.

By using Bourdieu as a framework to analyze elite schools and by reflecting on our findings, it helps contextualize how similar elite schools are whether they are in the United States, Chile, or China. These discoveries ground how and why elites are successful in the education system and in society. More generally, outside sources have framed my thinking of elite schooling as a global force by gaining exposure to schools in Japan, China, Sweden, etc. that each experience various forms of elite systemic practices and ultimately embody the work of Bourdieu, the Croft school, and elite schools in the States. Elite education exists worldwide and will continue to dominate our societies from the Global North to the Global South.

Sources:

Bourdieu, Pierre, et al. The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Stanford University Press, 2010.

Hard Work or Hardly Working for Global Experiences at Elite Schools?

Jake MacDonald / Globally Elite /

May 7, 2023

It wouldn’t be elite school research if the idea of being a global citizen wasn’t brought up. The idea of being global leaders is a very common theme among elite schools. But what does it really mean to be a “global leader/citizen”? Being a global leader/citizen is being able to apply the skills that have been taught at school to the global market. For the students at Olive Grove, global citizenship was said to be, as student Fatima puts it, “about…keeping the humanity” and “acknowledg[ing]…biases [we] have against each other.”.

The ways that elite schools promote this idea is through community service. In our research one student claimed that almost everyone does community service during their time at Olive Grove Academy. Tariq states, “It’s not like required, required, no. But they encourage you a lot,” showing that these schools make sure to push their students towards community engagement. Many elite schools do this so their students get hands-on work with current issues of the country (Koh & Kenway, 2012). One of the major community service opportunities that was offered at Olive Grove is Roundsquare. This is where students have the opportunity to travel to a different country and experience what life is like in that country. One alum of Olive Grove said it allowed him to become a better global citizen because it exposed him to a different culture and community than what he grew up in.

I am not trying to argue that doing community service is a bad thing but more of the motives behind it at elite schools. This can be related back to the college admissions process and how colleges value certain student experiences. These elite schools know that and that’s why they put emphasis on community service. These ideologies are reflected in Olive Grove’s purpose of being not only a Jordanian school, but a “school of the world.”

Now to dig deeper into the title of my blog post this week. As we have discussed in class many of these students have grown up in elite families their whole lives. With this comes some very special privileges. When attending these elite schools many of them offer amazing opportunities to get involved with a certain community or country. With these opportunities gifted to these students, how hard are they really working to expand their global mind? How well does it actually prepare students for future success in the western world by participating in community service? Finding the proper balance between having a quality community service commitment and how prepared it gets the students is massive. That way the students are still working hard during their time doing community service.

When you add the factors of the elite schools and the opportunities that they offer to their students it makes the college admissions process easier for their students. It makes it very hard to compete with these students because of the opportunities that they have that not many people have. That’s where the “Hardly Working” aspect of the title comes into play. Many of these students are given admission to some very elite colleges because of the prior opportunities that were handed to them.

Hard working or hardly working is a question that will always remain unanswered because we will never be able to get the feel story of the private ways of the elites.

Work Cited

Koh, A., & Kenway, J. (2012). Cultivating national leaders in an elite school: Deploying the transnational in the national interest. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 22(4), 333–351. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2012.745342