Mattingly at GetReligion is covering the elite/peasant divide with an emphasis on the consequences for journalism. Most of his commentary is fairly realistic. He says one thing that I’m not hearing from other commentators:
Christian churches and colleges are not doing a good job of preparing youngsters to ENTER the elite places.
I think he’s got it backwards. Preparing is irrelevant. The elites can always distinguish peasants from aristocrats, and the elites will NEVER admit a peasant to their circles. No amount of preparation can possibly jump the gap between non-parallel universes.
Phillips U in Enid was a good example. Phillips belonged to the Disciples of Christ, a somewhat richer splitoff from the Millerites. The poorer branch became Church of Christ, arguably the Merest of all the Mere Christians. No ceremony, no instruments, nothing that couldn’t be found and verified in the New Testament. CC churches were houses of God, not arrogant phallic cathedrals.
The Disciples longed to be Piskies, and their churches looked Pisky.
Here’s the seminary building on campus:
And here’s University Christian, one block from campus:
Phillips called itself the Harvard of the Plains. It wasn’t, of course, and it didn’t fool anyone. Toward the end, the trustees hired a Turnaround Man named Curll as president. Curll tried to Harvardize everything, raising admissions standards and bringing in Tenure and Peer Review. Phillips faculty had always specialized in good teaching and customer service. A student could get plenty of tutoring and advising because the teachers were NOT busy pumping out Least Publishable Units. The faculty quietly rebelled at Curll’s Harvardizing, and the university collapsed.
The faculty understood that Harvardized does not equal Harvard. They knew that their students would NOT jump from PU to Yale Law or MIT Engineering. Phillips students went into a variety of ordinary careers in Christian-type places, and their education prepared them well for such positions. In the realm of journalism, PU had a pretty good training program for broadcasters. Their graduates went to TV stations in Wichita and Tulsa, not to NYC or Hollywood.
When you’re a peasant, dressing up as a prince is wasted effort. You won’t fool the real princes. Booker T and Carver grasped this point, specifically in the area of education and preparation.
Polistra's Mill 