Summary Of Privilege By Shamus Khan

In his book, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School, Shamus Khan provides an ethnographic perspective to the world of elite boarding schools through his experience both as a student and as a full-time faculty member at St. Paul’s School. To preface the book, Khan reflects on his experience at St. Paul’s as a teenager– specifically the factors that led to his enrollment as well as his experience as a minority in the community. A product of two immigrant parents, one from South Asia and the other from Ireland, Khan was provided unique experiences amongst the traditionally WASP students matriculating at St. Paul’s. Because his parents had to perform a “cultural catch-up,” as well as being physically identifiable as non-white,
According to Khan, Abbott represents the class of individuals who take elite schooling for granted because it is a seen as a birthright and not as something that is earned through years of hard work. Khan notes that these one-on-one interactions were possible because the school specifically built time into the daily schedule for students to share meals with faculty, allowing personal relationships to develop. Students like Abbott, specifically those who can trace their affiliation to the elite institution they are a part of back several generations, were once the norm as Khan recalls. Now, traditionally elite families are essentially ostracized at St. Paul’s, as they are judged for not having “earned” their place. A new standard for eliteness permeates the St. Paul’s campus. Likened to Carnegie and Rockefeller during the Gilded Age, this new elite is also expected to be able to trace their affiliations to success, but not through family connections but rather through tangible hard
Khan points to this fundamentally exclusive nature with specific examples such as the armory on New York City’s Upper East Side– a clear indication of division of classes as the old elite tried to physically protect themselves against potential class warfare (27). One of the most obvious examples of the contemporary elite classes isolating themselves is the participation in the American boarding school. Following in the footsteps of prominent schools such as Phillips Andover and Exeter, St. Paul’s emerged in the latter half of the 19th century to provide isolation for the offspring of the elite, as well as a stepping stone for further successes in life.. Although St. Paul’s only offered three courses (Latin, Greek, and mathematics) as well as a deep commitment to religious studies in its earliest years, it rapidly became a well-renown institution that propelled teenagers into the Ivy League. Khan argues that the success of the American boarding school is rooted in the drive for the elite to “protect themselves through the removed location … [and] cultural institutions [such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art] to construct distinctions” (27). While this success thrived on aristocracy and meritocracy definitions of the elite alike, the experience for the students today is driven by the expectation to perform at their highest level. No