The following is not a paid advertisement. It is the truth. It is arguably plausible for me to state that I received the best secondary and higher education in the world.
I graduated from Phillips Academy (more commonly referred to as Andover now), the oldest boarding school in America founded in 1778, two years after our nation was founded. Andover and its sequel, Exeter, it seems, now take turns being voted the best high school in the United States.
Though I received an essentially unequalled secondary education at Andover, I paid an exorbitant social and emotional cost to receive it. The years I spent at Andover were the worst of my life.
I chose to matriculate to Columbia College, the tradional undergraduate liberal arts school of Columbia University, over Yale
for principally two main reasons: the Core Curriculum and New York City. More years at Yale would be like returning to Andover, anathema to me.
The Core Curriculum, now over 100 years old, is a rigorous, two-year course of studies that include philosophy, literature. art, music, language, frontiers of science, and writing. All College students, regardless of her or his majors, must take all the Core courses, which, in turn, make them learned for life. Columbia College is the only Ivy school to have anything like the Core. Living in and exploring New York City, the veritable capital of the world, for four years makes one a Citizen of the World for life, even if one decides to reside elsewhere after graduating, as I did. I now live in Boulder, CO. Columbia College's 2019 admit rate was 5.1%. Columbia College admitted a few over 2,000 applicants out of slightly over 42,000 applicants worldwide, making Columbia College the second most selective school in the Ivy League. 5.1 % admit rate: that's about 1 out of 20.
But even Columbia has its "bad apples:" Roy Cohn comes to mind readily. So does William Barr. But it also has Barach Obama. 84 students who studied or professors who taught there won the Nobel Prize.
So what to do with this piece CAN WE PROFIT OFF IT?
It sees to me that the maxim DO UNTO OTHERS...is rapidly being supplanted by CAN WE PROFIT OFF IT? Our political leaders, who have never been paragons of virtue, have for 3 1/2 years have become, in a word, corrupt. The Washington Post has authenticated more than 15,000 lies emanating from the Oval Office, not to mention the cheating, the racism, and the ******.
CAN WE PROFIT OFF IT? is the new adage these days.
I say "Make America A Democracy Again!" should be.
A graduate of Andover and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.
