Elite Education and the Private School: Excellence and Arrogance at Phillips Exeter Academy

Considers many components of current crises and dilemmas in education through an analysis of one of the most celebrated secondary schools in the nation, Phillips Exeter Academy. Illustrates how styles and techniques at Exeter have grown to eclipse educational content, a stasis resulting from an "education school" mentality among the teaching establishment that adversely affects American instruction. Levy examines the "corporate culture" of Exeter and the way in which a surreal relationship of genuine and illegitimate standards stymies intellectual development among faculty, and hence, among students. Also deals with the way students' problems with drugs, depression, sexuality, and suicide are either mishandled or ignored