>There's actually quite an extensive literature
>on the horrors of elite schooling. Consider
>the unintended revelations of Tom Brown's
>School Days. Trollope was miserable at bishop-
>breeding Winchester. As was Maugham at
>King's.
Got anything closer to our own time?
>These are not benign institutions. Though the grounds
>are often very nice.
You keep saying that like it's a small thing. The difference between playgrounds is a good indicator of the gap. There's a very big difference between asphalt and grass when you're jumping up and down and running around on it.
>And the elite schools are just as crazed about standardized testing
>as the publics are. Have been for years.
That's not the case at the school the prez's kids attend:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/dc-schools/the-irony-of-obamas-sidwell-re.html
[...]
At Sidwell, a Quaker school, teachers don't spend days drilling kids to pass standardized tests, and they aren't evaluated by student test scores. Sidwell has small classes, a wide range of curricular and extracurricular options, tremendous facilities on two big campuses, etc. etc.
The irony is that Obama's own education policies give standardized testing a central place in public education, though he chose a school for his children that wouldn't see that as a sound way to run an academic program.
[...]