William Deresiewicz was a professor at Yale until 2008. He is the author of the landmark essays “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” and “Solitude and Leadership” and is a frequent speaker on campuses around the country. A contributing writer for The Nation and a contributing editor for The New Republic and The American Scholar, he is the author of A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter. Visit BillDeresiewicz.com.
“In Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz sets out to unnerve the
current and future college students of America (and their parents).
He succeeds brilliantly, with an indictment of elite education that
should launch a thousand conversations. Read this book to remember
what learning should be, and then pass it along to the next sheep
who should leave the flock behind.”
*Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture
of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and
Empathy*
“This is a book of great importance to our society. It deserves to
transform our understanding of integrity and achievement and
success. William Deresiewicz is a genuine humanist with a profound
faith in the promise of democracy, and he has an uncommon gift for
wisdom without platitudes. Excellent Sheep is a withering analysis
of the transactional spirit that rules American education and
American life, and an inspiring example of a better ideal. A true
teacher speaks here. He has my admiration and my gratitude.”
*Leon Wieseltier*
“William Deresiewicz’s book is in and of itself a higher education,
and to read it is to learn what’s a college for. The author is an
inspired teacher, and his lesson is of a truth sorely needing to be
told.”
*Lewis Lapham*
“William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep is a searing and important
critique of our morally bankrupt educational system. He argues,
correctly, that colleges and universities, awash in corporate money
and intend on churning out corporate managers and conformists
rather than scholars, have betrayed not only their mission, but the
students they purport to teach and by extension the wider society.
Independent thought is subversive, uncomfortable and lonely. It
requires us, as Deresiewicz points out, to challenge and question
reigning assumptions rather than kneel before them. Deresiewicz’s
book is not so much a call for reform as for revolt.”
*Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, with
Joe Sacco, of Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt*
"William Deresiewicz is one of America's best young public
intellectuals. He has written a passionate, deeply informed, and
searing critique of the way we are educating our young. Whether you
agree or disagree - and I found myself doing both - you must read
this book. It should spark a great debate on America's campuses and
beyond."
*Fareed Zakaria, author of The Post-American World*
“Excellent Sheep is likely to make…a lasting mark…for three
reasons. One, Mr. Deresiewicz spent 24 years in the Ivy League,
graduating from Columbia and teaching for a decade at Yale….He
brings the gory details. Two, the author is a striker, to put it in
soccer terms. He’s a vivid writer, a literary critic whose headers
tend to land in the back corner of the net. Three, his indictment
arrives on wheels: He takes aim at just about the entirety of
upper-middle-class life in America…. Mr. Deresiewicz’s book is
packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate
weirdness.”
*The New York Times*
"It might surprise the countless students competing for admission
to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford that they could be fighting for a
dubious prize. But in this probing indictment, a former Yale
professor accuses America’s top universities of turning young
people into tunnel-visioned careerists, adept at padding their
résumés and filling their bank accounts but unprepared to confront
life’s most important questions. . . . An urgent summons to a
long-overdue debate over what universities do and how they do
it."
*Booklist (starred review)*
“Welcome to what is sure to be the most polarizing education
and parenting book since Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger
Mom.”
*Town & Country*
“This refreshingly barbed indictment of America’s
prestige-education addiction reveals what college students are
really getting out of all that work, all that struggle, all that
stress – and all those tuition loans.”
*MORE Magazine*
"Excellent Sheep challenges parents to break from the herd
mentality, to question what we really want from our children, who
we really want them to be. The book filled me with both hope
that there could be a more authentic, creative way to raise a
new generation of thinkers--and with the courage to try to find
it."
*Peggy Orenstein, author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter*
“Deresiewicz’s critique of America’s most celebrated schools as
temples of mercenary mediocrity is lucid, sharp-edged, and
searching … he poses vital questions about what college teaches—and
why.”
*Publishers Weekly*
“An unquestionably provocative book that hopefully leads to
productive debate.”
*Kirkus*
"Not only does Deresiewicz speak with candor about the ins and outs
of the educational hierarchy from an insiders point of view, but he
prompts some serious questions about the potential for reform and
what we as parents can do to encourage our children from a young
age to change the way that they’re learning, and as a result, what
they take from the world in exchange. A much recommended read,
especially for those currently with or planning to have
children."
*High Voltage*
“[A] good case that these colleges are failing in their most
essential mission: to help kids "build a self."
*Mother Jones*
“Provocative.”
*The Daily Beast*
“Anyone who cares about American higher education should ponder
this book.”
*The New York Times Book Review*
"Exceptionally enlightening."
*Bowling Green Daily News*
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