Colleges and Elitism - NYTimes.com: "Our oldest and most prestigious colleges are losing touch with the spirit in which they were founded. To the stringent Protestants who founded Harvard, Yale and Princeton, the mark of salvation was not high self-esteem but humbling awareness of one’s lowliness in the eyes of God. With such awareness came the recognition that those whom God favors are granted grace not for any worthiness of their own, but by God’s unmerited mercy — as a gift to be converted into working and living on behalf of others. That lesson should always be part of the curriculum."
'via Blog this'
This entire piece is predicated on the false sense that the Ivy League was once steeped in Protestant rectitude. Whatever veneer the Protestant ethos had, it was easily trumped by the dominant commercial ethos and the drive toward social and cultural power, elements that are still ascendant today. Indeed the amazing grace to which the writer refers might be seen as a sort of universal American veneer which survives today regardless of whether one is in the Ivy League or not. Rectitude has only rarely trumped the forces of self-interest and national pride.
Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes
