Breaking The Code To The Catcher In The Rye discussion
Breaking the Code to the Catcher in the Rye: Pencey Prep -This Side of Paradise
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Cosmic wrote:" When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education," began Amory slowly, "that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, a conservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. Interesting how perspectives on higher education have changed. These days one thinks of the Academic Centers as promoting liberal rather than conservative ideals, with the exception perhaps of those getting a degree in business, and I believe there was no such degree back in the old days.
Traditionally the so-called gentleman's education included the Classics, and it frequently involved learning Latin and/or Greek rather than reading translations of the original works. I've only met one person who went to an Ivy League School to study Classics, and her inclination was very liberal, not conservative as one would traditionally expect.
Edward wrote: "I think the old days to which you refer were gone before anyone alive today was born. A shame in a way, but a reflection of times when most college attendees are not members of the privileged class..."I've actually met many Ivy Leaguers, but only one who went there specifically to study Classics (Ancient Greek and Roman Literature).
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I also knew kids and adults that had Ivy League education's. One went to school with Ted Turner. He told me that his class voted Ted Turner to be most likely to fail. I see him as a Holden character.
I don't know anyone that studied Greek in high school besides me. My father majored in math and had a minor in Greek. This is where I got my education from.
Personally I think school wasted my time.
Cosmic wrote: "...I also knew kids and adults that had Ivy League education's. One went to school with Ted Turner. He told me that his class voted Ted Turner to be most likely to fail. I see him as a Holden character..."Ted Turner is an iconoclast. He defied convention and came up with some novel ideas that led to his success. I've heard him speak at a fundraiser, and he is very entertaining, although quite the misanthrope.
However, not all rebels will have his level of success, some end up as pariahs.
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I had a friend that taught at a preparatory school for girls. She would have girls come up to her and tell her to give her a passing grade or they would see to it she was fired because their father was so and so.
Those high schools are not as much about an education, although they are that too, but they are about forming relationships that will become connections in adulthood.
Cosmic wrote: "...Those high schools are not as much about an education, although they are that too, but they are about forming relationships that will become connections in adulthood..."
So much for Monti's level playing field.
I've heard a lot of people say that. The value of those relationships are of course dependent on your career choices. Certainly if you're going into business or politics, those connections are very helpful in order to get on the right track. All the business schooling in the world isn't going to guarantee success in business. If you're going into a more technical career like engineering, the nuts and bolts of your learning are more important than the social connections.
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..."
My son was not a good candidate for becoming a librarian. He didn't read until he was 14. It didn't hurt him at all A's he was doing college level electronic in first and second grade. He taught himself how to program computers by looking at other people's code and writing his own. His code was much more compact and my husband was very impressed. He did that before he could read. He learned to build computers when he was ten. He was writing web pages when he was 18.
Treating children linearly is not the way children learn. It holds them back.
My son went on to get his Technical, General and Extra ham licenses. He built a tv studo when he was 19. He of course was unschooled. He is still in the industry. He fixes people's computers. He enjoys learning. He is not reliant on a teacher to teach him, unless he asks the questions.
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Monti and I have met in the Most Overrated group. He has helped me polish my writing and appreciate the writing practice. I don't know why he needs to defame me. Who cares where I went to school? I am 50 years old.
I have never met anyone that had a Harvard Education or Yale. But I have heard a couple on TV. They just sounded like parrots that were repeating what they were told.
I do have a funny story to tell. One place that we lived we were friends with the business owner's son. He was wild and a huge alcoholic. We weren't like best friends but he respected my husband. One day he came in and showed him a ring that he inherited. No one in the family wanted the ring. The ring was a skull and bones ring.
Now before he had gotten this ring he had tried to get a loan from a bank. I wouldn't loan him to much money myself, and neither would the bank. But after getting the ring he tried again. This time they were falling all over themselves to give him some money.
This family made money making tents for WW2. They sold the business two weeks before the end of the war.
These are the kind of connections that you get.
But I also have a video to share with you.
Cosmic wrote: "...They just sounded like parrots that were repeating what they were told..."You can find people like that everywhere. There are those who can only follow strict protocols and are unable to improvise and apply common sense to real world situations.
Having said that there can also be a lot learned form an institution that teaches (or preaches) a strict dogma. It's probably not a good idea to confront the professors of these institution while under their mentorship, since that may not respond favorably to criticism, but after playing the game and thoroughly learning their dogma (even if you don't agree with it) and get your advanced degree then you can refute them and give them a well-deserved bashing.
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Albert Einstein didn't let it interfere with his either.
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I can see that too. It was suppose to be in Pennsylvania.
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"The choice of the authorities fell upon Matvy Ilyitch Kolyazin, the son of the Kolyazin, under whose protection the brothers Kirsanov had once found themselves. He, too, was a 'young man'; that is to say, he had not long passed forty, but he was already on the high road to becoming a statesman, and wore a star on each side of his breast—one, to be sure, a foreign star, not of the first magnitude. Like the governor, whom he had come down to pass judgment upon, he was reckoned a progressive; and though he was already a bigwig, he was not like the majority of bigwigs. He had the highest opinion of himself; his vanity knew no bounds, but he behaved simply, looked affable, listened condescendingly, and laughed so good-naturedly, that on a first acquaintance he might even be taken for 'a jolly good fellow.'* On important occasions, however, he knew, as the saying is, how to make his authority felt. 'Energy is essential,' he used to say then, 'l'énergie est la première qualité d'un homme d'état;' and for all that, he was usually taken in, and any moderately experienced official could turn him round his finger. Matvy Ilyitch
*this is also translated "splendid fellow" in the audio version of the book.
Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says: "Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." Strictly for the birds. They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Pencey that way
Pencey Prep just makes me think of a juvenile name for Princeton University. Another thing that makes me think this is a reference to Princeton is that how it relates to the debut novel
"Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature. The novel explores the theme of love warped by greed and status-seeking."
In this quote from This Side of Paradise I think that we can see some of the intertextuality that Holden uses to describe Pencey Prep.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/805/80...
" Do you remember that....you brought Burne Holiday from Princeton to see me? What a magnificent boy he is! It gave me a frightful shock afterward when you wrote that he thought me splendid; how could he be so deceived? Splendid is the one thing that neither you nor I are. We are many other things—we're extraordinary, we're clever, we could be said, I suppose, to be brilliant. We can attract people, we can make atmosphere, we can almost lose our Celtic souls in Celtic subtleties, we can almost always have our own way; but splendid—rather not!"
Right before this paragraph is this :
" You went to war as a gentleman should, just as you went to school and college, because it was the thing to do. It's better to leave the blustering and tremulo-heroism to the middle classes; they do it so much better."
(Why do middle class do it so much better? Read to the end of this discussion and I think that Fitzgerald will explain..)
I think that Salinger is saying that school is a path that orchestrate where they are going to be in the world. It sets them up. I used to live in a town where there were several boarding schools that advertised in the back of National Geographics. I knew a couple of teachers that taught there. We talked about the parents that sent their children to these universities and why. One of the things that surprised me, maybe because I was very young, was that one of the main reasons for sending your children to these schools was for the connections that your children would make that would become life time connections. These parents were not just educating their children they were providing them with clout, connections.
John Taylor Gatto talks about the advantages of aa Prep school education in this video series:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=11g9Tnmv...
" When life gets hold of a brainy man of fair education," began Amory slowly, "that is, when he marries he becomes, nine times out of ten, a conservative as far as existing social conditions are concerned. He may be unselfish, kind-hearted, even just in his own way, but his first job is to provide and to hold fast. His wife shoos him on, from ten thousand a year to twenty thousand a year, on and on, in an enclosed treadmill that hasn't any windows. He's done! Life's got him! He's no help! He's a spiritually married man."
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Every child," said Amory, "should have an equal start. If his father can endow him with a good physique and his mother with some common sense in his early education, that should be his heritage. If the father can't give him a good physique, if the mother has spent in chasing men the years in which she should have been preparing herself to educate her children, so much the worse for the child. He shouldn't be artificially bolstered up with money, sent to these horrible tutoring schools, dragged through college... Every boy ought to have an equal start."
No," said Amory, shaking his head. "Money isn't the only stimulus that brings out the best that's in a man, even in America."
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"....Did you ever see a grown man when he's trying for a secret society—or a rising family whose name is up at some club? They'll jump when they hear the sound of the word. The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way. We've made a world where that's necessary. Let me tell you"—Amory became emphatic—"if there were ten men insured against either wealth or starvation, and offered a green ribbon for five hours' work a day and a blue ribbon for ten hours' work a day, nine out of ten of them would be trying for the blue ribbon. That competitive instinct only wants a badge. If the size of their house is the badge they'll sweat their heads off for that. If it's only a blue ribbon, I damn near believe they'll work just as hard. They have in other ages."
Perhaps you knew him. His name was Jesse Ferrenby. He was killed last year in France."
"I knew him very well. In fact, he was one of my particular friends."
"He was—a—quite a fine boy. We were very close."
Amory began to perceive a resemblance between the father and the dead son and he told himself that there had been all along a sense of familiarity. Jesse Ferrenby, the man who in college had borne off the crown that he had aspired to. It was all so far away. What little boys they had been, working for blue ribbons—
There were only about five or six other kids on the ride, and the song the carrousel was playing was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It was playing it very jazzy and funny. All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them.