[First draft, needs some cleaning up, has too-flowery language, but
thought you might be interested]
I was reading Matthew Crawford's article in the New Atlantis, "Science
Education and Liberal Education" (Number 8, Spring 2005, pp. 49-60),
and came across this passage:
But science is hard. It is therefore inherently "elitist,"
merely in this obvious sense: as with skateboarding, some will
be demonstrably better at it than others. One can fall on
one's behind while skateboarding, and when it happens there is
no interpreting away the pavement. Similarly, in a physics
course there are answers in the back of the book, standing as
a silent rebuke to error and confusion. This sits ill with the
current educational imperative of self-esteem. It has been
clear for some time that the elephant of anti-elitism has run
amok in education; my purpose is to report what happens when
this elephant runs into the cold, hard surface of Newton's
laws. The material covered in a physics course can't be dumbed
down ad absurdum, as can that in a history or social studies
course. What is to be done, then, to make physics more
"inclusive"?
(http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/8/crawford.htm)
I think of myself as an anti-elitist, but people often accuse me of
elitism, and I think the cause is related to the above. But I do not
think I practice "elitism" as I understand the term.
"Elite" defined
---------------
An "elite" is a small group of people who are distinguished from the
majority in one of two ways: either they are better in some way, or
they have more power. These are distinct meanings, although
apologists for established orders like to conflate them, and sometimes
one leads to the other. Sometimes an elite is distinguished by the
mastery of a particular skill, such as skateboarding or mathematics,
and sometimes by past accomplishments; but the much more common sense
of the term today is to refer to a group of people who have power.
Sample uses:
"It must not be cool anymore to have access to this data," said
Rieger, who argued that Western societies are becoming
democratically legitimized police states ruled by an unaccountable
elite. (Ann Harrison in Wired, 2005)
A small but increasingly vocal group of Saudis takes a much more
liberal view of religion and state. This progressive elite is
poorly organised, as its trouncing in the election showed, and
Islamists, even modernist ones such as Mr Alim, say it is out of
touch with the pulse of Saudi society. (Economist, 2006 Jan. 5,
"Survey: Saudi Arabia")
At stake, say scholars who include some of the most elite
historians on India, may be a truthful picture of one of the
world's emerging powers - one arrived at by academic standards of
proof rather than assertions of national or religious pride.
(Scott Baldauf, ABC News, 2006, "India history spat hits US")
The work of localization started long before and now it has taken
the form of movement. Internet availability, lack of resources,
and illiteracy are some hindrances in the path of local language
computing. The major hurdle is the mentality of the English
speaking elite who sneer at the local language computing
efforts. The elite have not had any grass-root experience, but
they are still controlling the major positions within
administration and finance. (Rajesh Ranjan, Red Hat Magazine?,
"Localization as a movement in India", 2006 Jan. 15)
I know where that bias comes from - because I used to share it.
It is simply the college-educated elite's implicit, naive
assumption that, "I am personally representative of the population
as a whole, everybody is BASICALLY just like me, only the
particulars are a bit different." (Andrew Piskorski,
[EMAIL PROTECTED], posting "about clusters in high schools" on the
Beowulf mailing list, 2006-01-30)
Heck, now that I've joined the Crackberry elite, you can "talk" to
me everywhere. And Milwaukee, while not rural, is certainly
parochial enough... (Ken Meltsner, "FoRK is BaCK!", on the FoRK
mailing list, 2006-02-02)
For the most elite retail adventure, flag down an autorickshaw and
tell the driver, "Vithal Mallya Road." After buzzing noisily among
the other hornetlike black-and-yellow autorickshaws that swarm
Bangalore's streets, you'll be deposited along a pleasant
tree-lined strip of boutiques glowing with some of India's coolest
creations. (Seth Sherwood, "In India's Silicon Valley, Partying
Like It's 1999", 2006-02-26)
There's a new mobile-virtual network operator in town called Voce,
and it's among a growing number of companies offering branded cell
phones and services licensed from telecommunications
carriers. Most of these operators, also known as MVNOs, target a
specific demographic. Voce is going for the elite, billing its
services as upscale, with $1,500 sign-up fee and frequent handset
upgrades. (Elena Malykhina, "Willing To Pay $500 For 'Velvet
Glove' Monthly Cell Phone Service? Talk To Voce", InformationWeek,
2005-11-14)
For both the family and Los Angeles, the arc of power has unfolded
in a series of overlapping stages: an early epoch of boomers,
speculators and goatherds; a long run of clubby white capitalists,
who, one generation removed from their goats, liked to think of
themselves as "old money"; a latter-day installment of corporate
elites, whose moment was crowned with the 1984 Olympics they
sponsored; and, finally, a splintering off into many
pieces. (Peter H. King and Mark Arax, "A Dynasty, A City", Los
Angeles Times, 2006-03-26)
As demonstrated by the Saudi example, an "elite" in this sense may not
necessarily be the most powerful group, but merely a powerful group.
In two cases above, "elite" merely seems to mean "expensive".
"Elitism" is an ideology
------------------------
When I speak of "elitism", I refer to the ideology consisting of the
following tenets:
1. The powerful ("elite" in the sense illustrated by most of the above
quotations) and accomplished ("elite" in the other sense) earned
their power or achievements by virtue of some merit they possess;
2. Inversely, those who are not powerful or accomplished owe their
lack of power or accomplishments to their lack of merit;
3. This merit is intrinsic and unchangeable; it is not something the
powerful or accomplished have earned over time by their voluntary
choices, or something they can renounce, but an innate attribute
they possess and that others lack.
And, sometimes,
4. The accomplishments of a small elite (in the sense of achievement,
not of power) so far outweigh the accomplishments of the rest of
the population that, for practical purposes, only that elite
matters.
It seems that this is rarely what other people have in mind when they
use the word "elitist", so perhaps I should find another word.
Elitist Thinking by Example
---------------------------
You will sometimes hear elitists arguing, for example, that extending
higher education to a greater number of US citizens implies reducing
its quality; the unstated assumption seems to be that only the 25% or
so of the citizenry that currently attends a university has the innate
ability required for the intellectual achievements demanded by the
current university system.
Such elitism motivated the creation of the SAT, according to Malcolm
Gladwell's article on the subject. Racism is a species of elitism,
and racist educators saw that Jews were entering their schools in
increasing numbers because, working harder in high school, they got
better grades. So they set out to create a test to distinguish the
truly intelligent people (which they believed included no Jews) from
those who merely worked hard.
In the article of Matthew Crawford's that inspired this essay, near
the end, he criticizes what he calls the elitism of those
physics-textbook authors who fail to share their passion for physics
in their books:
Aren't there intelligent, curious people who are not
professional physicists, but who have the patience and desire
to learn? I believe it is this dichotomization of humanity
into two ideal types, professional scientists and ignorant
consumers, that is responsible for this book's cynicism. The
author doesn't seem to think his readers are really capable of
being educated. This is the worst sort of
elitism. Paradoxically, we have here the worst of both worlds:
an anti-elitist rhetoric that discredits the higher human
possibilities, the very possibilities by which the author
orients his own life as a scientist, together with a more
substantive elitism that views students from so far above that
it can't be bothered to cultivate in them those same human
possibilities.
On the other hand, believing that some works of art are greater than
others is not necessarily elitist; one can believe in great works of
art without being an elitist in three ways:
1. One can believe that their greatness is due to more than just the
merits of their creators; or
2. One can believe that other artists of similar merit never created
similarly great works; or
3. One can believe that artistic merit is not purely innate, but can
be developed to some extent by teaching, practice, or good fortune.
Additionally,
4. One can believe that life is brightened even by average-quality
works of art, and encourage people to create art for its own sake,
even if it will not be great art.
So one need not pretend that all works of art are equivalently good in
order to avoid elitism.
A very common form of elitism in the US is to discourage those who
learn something slowly from continuing to try it --- the underlying
thinking seems to be that if the learner had great talent in that
direction, it would have manifested early, and without great talent,
their achievements will never be great --- that they will never be
part of the elite. The fourth tenet of elitism enters here and
suggests that only the achievements of the elite really matter, and
everyone else is wasting their time.
Why I Do Not Subscribe To This Kind Of Elitism
----------------------------------------------
In my experience, #1 and #2 are often false, and the kinds of merit
allowed by #3 are, in my opinion, not nearly as important as the kind
of merit earned by voluntary choices and self-discipline; and #4 is
true only in a very few fields, not even (it seems to me) painting,
football, singing, or astronomy.
The primary effect of elitism is to justify oppression of one group by
another. If you believe #1, then you will believe that it is unjust
to reduce the power of the powerful; if you believe #2, you may even
believe that it is unjust to give power to the powerless; and if you
believe #3, then you will believe that there is no point in providing
opportunities to those currently outside the elite --- for example,
providing education to imprisoned criminals.
Racism and the divine right of kings are kinds of elitism, and the
smaller evils it perpetrates daily are beyond my ability to count.
