/lit/ - Literature

Wanted to have a redux of this thread since the last one was trolled to death by larpers and political baiters. I'll start with some recommendations from the last thread and then post some info from the book in pic related. I'm still looking for a contemporary book in the same vein - specifically a sociological analysis of boarding schools in 2020 (or close to it).

>Boarding school students, we began to see, are taught that they should be moral and treat life as an exciting challenge, but what they often learn is that life is hard, and that winning is essential for survival. The "muscular Christianity" that so well describes the essence of prep pride is exactly right: speak like a man or woman of God, but act like a man or woman who knows the score and can settle a score without flinching.

>Part of the preparation for power is learning to live in a world of seeming contradictions. By learning to reconcile the difference between what the schools teach and what is learned, students discover that power and pain are inseparable and that to a large degree the price of privilege is the loss of autonomy and individuality.

>The exclusive prep school played an important role in the formation and maintenance of an American upper class because the schools enrolled both Eastern patricians and parvenus. By putting a Boston patrician under the same roof with a New York parvenu, the schools ensured that blood and money would recognize their class interests were the same and that they should act in concert. The shared ordeal of the prep rite of passage would create bonds of loyalty that differences in background could not unravel. The collective identity forged in prep schools would become the basis of upper-class solidarity and consciousness.

>To justify inequality requires the powerful to acquire a style of behavior that legitimates unequal relationships. The “habit of command,” which Randall Collins has called the essence of upper-class style, is a learned behavior. In Great Britain, public school graduates often became literal soldiers for their class, either by serving in the officer corps of the British army or by becoming civilian administrators somewhere in the British empire. Being able to command respect could mean the difference between life and death to public school boys in “Her Majesty’s service.” The aristocratic and military traditions of the British upper class, however, are quite different from those of the American upper class. The American upper class is primarily a business elite, and in the economic marketplace inherited titles and battle flags count for little. The founders of American boarding schools imitated the British in many ways, but stopped short of trying to create a military and administrative elite, even though many of the schools’ founders dreamed of an American empire to rival the British.

Similar titles:
Ross Douthat: Privilege
Christopher Lasch: The Revolt of the Elites

I'll post some insightful quotes from this book below. It was fascinating, but from the 1980s. I want to know what's been going on since then!

>Boarding school students, we began to see, are taught that they should be moral and treat life as an exciting challenge, but what they often learn is that life is hard, and that winning is essential for survival. The "muscular Christianity" that so well describes the essence of prep pride is exactly right: speak like a man or woman of God, but act like a man or woman who knows the score and can settle a score without flinching.

>Part of the preparation for power is learning to live in a world of seeming contradictions. By learning to reconcile the difference between what the schools teach and what is learned, students discover that power and pain are inseparable and that to a large degree the price of privilege is the loss of autonomy and individuality.

>The exclusive prep school played an important role in the formation and maintenance of an American upper class because the schools enrolled both Eastern patricians and parvenus. By putting a Boston patrician under the same roof with a New York parvenu, the schools ensured that blood and money would recognize their class interests were the same and that they should act in concert. The shared ordeal of the prep rite of passage would create bonds of loyalty that differences in background could not unravel. The collective identity forged in prep schools would become the basis of upper-class solidarity and consciousness.

>To justify inequality requires the powerful to acquire a style of behavior that legitimates unequal relationships. The “habit of command,” which Randall Collins has called the essence of upper-class style, is a learned behavior. In Great Britain, public school graduates often became literal soldiers for their class, either by serving in the officer corps of the British army or by becoming civilian administrators somewhere in the British empire. Being able to command respect could mean the difference between life and death to public school boys in “Her Majesty’s service.” The aristocratic and military traditions of the British upper class, however, are quite different from those of the American upper class. The American upper class is primarily a business elite, and in the economic marketplace inherited titles and battle flags count for little. The founders of American boarding schools imitated the British in many ways, but stopped short of trying to create a military and administrative elite, even though many of the schools’ founders dreamed of an American empire to rival the British.