Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life Audiobook

Quotes

• An urgent summons to a long-overdue debate over what universities do and how they do it.

  — Booklist Starred Review

• “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, New York Times bestselling author of The Future of Freedom

• “Deresiewicz’s controversial full agenda indeed means an end to rule by meritocracy and a beginning of fairness for the working class. An urgent summons to a long-overdue debate over what universities do and how they do it.”

  — Booklist (starred review)

• “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

• “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

• “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