Description
Chronicles a long, strange trip through America's ivy-covered temples of higher learning where standardized tests, class rankings and gamesmanship stand in the way of true intellectual fulfillment, and reveals the psychic costs of our advance-or-else educational system.
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A New York Times Notable Book A Daily Beast Best Book of the YearA Huffington Post Best Book of the Year From elementary school on, Walter Kirn knew how to stay at the top of his class: He clapped erasers, memorized answer keys, and parroted his teachers’ pet theories. But when he launched himself eastward to an Ivy League university, Kirn discovered that the temple of higher learning he had expected was instead just another arena for more gamesmanship, snobbery, and social climbing. In this whip-smart memoir of kissing-up, cramming, and competition, Lost in the Meritocracy reckons the costs of an educational system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within.
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