gat

ight summer resorts. 6) Attendance at the right churches. 7) Passage through the right private
schools. 8) An invitation to the right hereditary association. 9) Involvement in the right charities.
10) Trusteeships, boards, advisory councils. 11) The right marriages, alliances, a social register
listing. 12) Money, manners, style, physical beauty, health, conversation.
I’ve made no attempt to enter subtleties of gradation, only to indicate how the ephors behind
public schooling and virtually all significant decision-making in modern American society created,
quite self-consciously, a well-regulated world within a world for themselves. Provision was made
to allow some movement up from other classes. Clubs, for instance, were also agencies for
assimilating men of talent and their families into an upper-class way of life and social organization.
If we are unwilling to face how very far-reaching the effects of this American establishment are to
schoolchildren, there is just no good way to think about school reform. 5 Darwin’s evolutionary
racism, Galton’s mathematical racism, Maine’s anthropological racism, Anglican theological
racism/classism, all are deeply embedded in the structure of mass schooling and the economy it
serves. They cannot be extirpated by rational discussion; these viruses are carried by institutional
structures not amenable to social discussion.
5 Nelson W. Aldrich, grandson of Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island, who was one of the principal architectsof the
Federal Reserve system, put it this way in his book Old Money: "Membership in this patriciate brought with it much
besides wealth, of course: complete domination of all educational and cultural institutions, ownership and control of
the news media [and a variety of other assets]." Direct and indirect domination of the forced schooling mechanism
by the patriciate has never been adequately explored, perhaps owing to its ownership of both the tools of research
(in the colleges) and the tools of dissemination (in the media).
Fountains Of Business Wealth
The new American establishment of the twentieth century was organized around the fountains of
wealth international corporate business provides. By 1900 huge businesses had begun already to
dominate American schooling, and the metropolitan clubs where business was transacted lay at
the core of upper-class authority in every major city in the nation. The men’s club emerged as the
principal agency where business agreements were struck and, indirectly, where school policy was
forged.
In 1959, Fortune magazine shocked a portion of our still innocent nation by announcing where
national policy and important deals really were made in New York City. If the matter was
relatively minor, the venue would be the Metropolitan, the Union League, or the University; if it
were a middling matter it would be determined at the Knickerbocker or the Racquet; and if it
required the utmost attention of powerful men, Brook or Links. Nothing happened in boardrooms
or executive suites where it could be overheard by outlanders. Each city had this private ground
where aristocracy met quietly out of the reach of prying eyes or unwelcome attendants. In San
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