On sex and elitism in the Ivy League
The High School argument. Over the years here, there's been too many of these dustups to even begin to count. You know what I'm talking about: Public schools have bad teachers, Private schools are elitist, Prep schools are SUPER-elitist, and on and on and PUMP MY GAS on and onnnn... It's garbage, all of it.What were we talking about? Oh yes -- the eternal, exhausting Public versus Private debate. Well, we'd say that each side's talking points have been the same since time immerorial -- but turns out that's not the case.In December 1957, Ivy Magazine ran point-counterpoint articles in favor of and against public schools -- specifically, about how well prep-school and public school graduates fit in at Ivy League colleges. Interestingly, differently, both sides centered their cases around sex. As in, "how much" and "what kind" the opposing side is having. It gets vicious."Almost all the public high school graduates have had the benefit of adolescent contact with the opposite sex," wrote Bryce E. Nelson in "Toddlers in Tweed," the pro-public school piece. "[The public school graduate's] classmate has had a far different adolescence."
While the high school boy was exploring his social environment and advancing into emotional maturity, the "preppie" was either sitting around his monastic room bragging about his sexual proficiency to his friends or dissipating his frustrations on the athletic field. The effect of being without women during these crucial years results, for most, in a very important personality trait: a compulsive obsessional need to prove virility."..."Because he has not yet attained mental puberty, the prep school graduate is not ready to make full use of the four years he spends in college. The unresolved conflicts of his adolescence must be acted out during college.... Often [the prep school graduate] is so debilitated by the neurotic conflicts produced in his prep school past that he cannot achieve his desire to lead a creative, meaningful life."..."No one would deny that the average prep school better educates a student than the average public school, but there are more important things than early education. The prep school graduate is ahead educationally only until college."
Mike Thomas, who wrote the anti-public school piece "The Suede Shoe Set," countered:
"Most high school graduates regard the sexual lives of their private school associates with considerable scorn. To them, the graduate of Exeter, of Kent, or of Lawrenceville is woefully unprepared to lead a "mature sex life." So far as I can glean the meaning of this peculiar phrase from the conversation of the high school graduate and from current fiction, a "mature sex life" consists of sleeping with everybody in sight, up to and including one's nearest relations."..."The student from St. Paul's or Andover or Groton has been educated in a particular fashion. As well as receiving a corpus of education which may enable to serve himself well in his scholarship, he is trained in certain attitudes which are fundamental to the stream of Ivy League tradition. In some ways he is undoubtedly disenchanted. He is inclined to be irritated by loudness. His tastes are more subtle; his manners studied. And if his sexual achievement falls sometimes short of the remarkable index of success enumerated by the high school boy, he is no less sensitive to it, and no less earnest in his pursuit of it.Set against him, the high school graduate is likely to seem a creature of incomparable blandness and vulgarity. His taste is likely to be plebeian, and his activities appear to be perennially accompanied by a grating aura of bombastic blatancy. His clothes betray his outlook.... They bespeak the complete lack of breeding, genetic or acquired, which marks his approach to things. This is understandable, for he comes from a world of TV dinners and TV sex."
