From “Why Christians Should Be Leftists” by Phil Christman
Here, to continue with my example, is an ideology that I confront every day. I think the reality is that my university, wonderful as it is, either creates or further cements false distinctions in raw ability that serve the interests of the class system. But that’s not the story my university tells about itself. My university instead, in its official slogan, proclaims University of Michigan students “the Leaders and the Best.” They just are these things – after all, they have the burnished resumes and good manners to prove it.
Now, again, my students are wonderful. But if I really started to believe that they were inherently “the leaders and the best,” it would have a pretty ugly influence on my behavior toward people who aren’t them, and it would even, probably, in the end, reduce my usefulness to them as well. How could I avoid being a little condescending when I meet someone who is attending the local community college, or no college at all, or (worst of all) Ohio State? How would I react to proposals that the university relax some of its admission standards so as to educate more of the children of the poor – that inadequate riffraff? How would I treat students who are dealing with mental-health emergencies and need a little deadline lenience? The Leaders and the Best never need lenience.
And on the other side, wouldn’t I ultimately get a little staid and boring in my teaching? I shouldn’t need to work that hard to educate people who belong to a natural aristocracy of sheer talent. It’s not my responsibility to make the material as gripping as possible and my expectations as clear as water; it’s on them to be attentive to whatever maundering-on I happen to feel like doing today, and to read my mind regarding my expectations. Any pedagogical choice I make is already justified by the fact that I have managed to snag a job at this prestigious and munificent place. No group of people is more complacent, in my experience, than those who think they have earned their top spot in a meritocracy, and have nothing else to prove.