A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation's top schools should
be--but aren't--providing: "The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers
elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those 'sheep'),
pushy parents, and admissions mayhem" (People).
As a professor at Yale, William 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. Now he argues that elite
colleges are turning out conformists without a compass.
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, students are losing
the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz,
that college be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish
their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own
paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has
corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is
broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it.
"Excellent Sheep is likely to make...a lasting mark....He takes aim at
just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America....Mr.
Deresiewicz's book is packed full of what he wants more of in American
life: passionate weirdness" (The New York Times).
