The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School

by Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández

Overview

For two years, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández shared the life of what he calls the "Weston School," an elite New England boarding school. Vividly describing the pastoral landscape and graceful buildings, the rich variety of classes and activities, and the official and unofficial rules that define the school, The Best of the Best reveals a small world of deeply ambitious, intensely pressured students. For Gaztambide-Fernández, Weston is daunting yet strikingly bucolic, inspiring but frustratingly incurious, and sometimes - especially for young women - a gilded cage for a gilded age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674053878
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/30/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	531 KB

About the Author

Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández is Assistant Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS Introduction 1 Totally Elite 2 Getting In 3 Being Smart, Working Hard 4 Reserved Seating 5 Bonding Rituals 6 Unequal Distinctions 7 Envisioning an Elite Future Appendix: Researching Identification at an Elite Boarding School Notes Acknowledgments Index

Editorial Reviews

In a book that's both generous and skeptical, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández penetrates the inner world of a top prep school, and shows how the students first construct, and then rationalize, their elite identities. Filled with irony and insight, The Best of the Best reveals both the opportunities and the casualties of privilege.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot