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Excellent Sheep
- The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's Summary
As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation's brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively, and how to find a sense of purpose.
Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale's admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to "practical" subjects like economics and computer science, students are losing the ability to think in innovative ways. Deresiewicz explains how college should be a time for self-discovery, when students can establish their own values and measures of success, so they can forge their own path. He addresses parents, students, educators, and anyone who's interested in the direction of American society, featuring quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and clearly presenting solutions.
Critic Reviews
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What listeners say about Excellent Sheep
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-07-15
skip the book read the essay
What would have made Excellent Sheep better?
brevity
What could William Deresiewicz have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
avoid speculation on the decline of western civilization
How could the performance have been better?
Narrator sounded like a whiny 50's radio announcer. Detracted greatly from the experience. It's likely the author would have done a better job, otherwise, should have hired Malcom Gladwell
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Excellent Sheep?
everything but the material directly relating to the current college admissions process and state of students.
Any additional comments?
not sure which is more absurd, the concept that the ivy league admissions process is leading to the decline of western civilization, or that a decent liberal arts education will prevent it.
10 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 06-22-15
Important, but oh so boring.
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
I tried to read it, then to force myself to listen to it while driving.
It was excruciating. Silence reigned.
What does Mel Foster bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Mel was fine.
Was Excellent Sheep worth the listening time?
Sadly, I couldn't do it. The information is important but the material is so dry.
5 people found this helpful
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- kvrtis
- 10-17-16
read before saving for kids college education
if I told you a book was going to save you $10,000 would you read it? how about $40,000?
2 people found this helpful
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- Raleigh
- 09-20-15
smart only counts for so much
? as a youth, did you live a strict prep school, ivy league life
? did you spend your childhood somewhere between boston and DC
? as an adult, do you now see that focused and driven lifestyle as overrated
william deresiewicz's book means to expose the inner workings of that life
as a new jersey, orthodox jew and yale ivy leaguer he knows it all too well
his relentless manifesto has an " the emperor has no clothes " quality to it
the limitations and omissions of the ivy league are neatly categorized
he even provides a recipe, by which the universities can recover their greatness
as you'd expect, it starts with finding faculty and students more like mr. deresiewicz
eastern prep schools and ivy league universities look their best from a distance
america is rotating away from its' former boston to washington, d.c. axis
each year, the traditional towers of academic privilege become a bit less relevant
? at the end of the day, who really values and esteems ivy league credentials
basically it's other ivy leaguers; they're all caught in an expensive feedback loop
once life provides distance or perspective, you see it all for what it really is
as mark twain and garrison keillor have said "...smart only counts for so much..."
2 people found this helpful
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- Frank
- 06-29-15
Perpetual Privilege
The book is thought provoking relative to the perpetuation of privilege among those in the correct class. The conclusions however left me uninspired. It is too simple to say we have enough money to fix this problem. Our choices not only require choosing correctly where to spend but undoing the growing bubble of public workers' pension entitlements. Silence concerning this trap created by our governing elite is suspiciously absent.
Overall I liked it because it made me think.
2 people found this helpful
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- Albert Witts
- 03-09-15
Very interesting
Thought-provoking text that calls out the many failures of our educational system. Deresiewicz also offers solutions in addition to just pointing out the problems. Very interesting.
2 people found this helpful
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- L. Smith
- 05-10-18
Important book occasionally becomes a screed.
This is a very important book. It is hard to finish because it seems repetitious, but the data provided is needed to reach the authors conclusions.
1 person found this helpful
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- SeattleMom
- 02-15-23
Excellent
Fantastic reminders of how we can support our kids in the challenging system/ world we live in. Ideas challenged and myths debunked about higher education. It reassured me that there is not one right answer for anyone, and what an education really means.
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- dvan
- 01-21-23
Thought provoking book on huge education
I enjoyed the book, but found it to be long on prose and slow to develop. It was kind of a slow read.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 11-29-22
COLLEGE OR NOT
William Deresiewicz offers a view of life and education in “Excellent Sheep”. The author begins by arguing students of the Ivy League are disadvantaged in their acceptance by the best universities in the world. One thinks about eight of the nine Supreme Court Justices being graduates of Harvard. It is difficult to feel sorry for an American who has guaranteed life employment in one of the most prestigious jobs in the world.
When listening to any audiobook, one thinks of titles of a review for what one hears. In the first few chapters of “Excellent Sheep”, Deresiewicz’s book might be titled “Mostly Baloney”. However, “Mostly Baloney” is disrespectful, and somewhat unfair, as becomes clear in later chapters.
What Deresiewicz fails to appreciate is basic liberal arts and sciences for adolescents (before college) are exposure that may or may not become passions for the geniuses of life. Parents should encourage, if not push, their children to get good grades in school. That is where passion is born.
Most who listen to the author’s book cannot feel sorry for Ivy League students that are fearful of what life has in store for them. Every student transitioning to adulthood has that fear. Teaching liberal arts is not going to change that fearfulness. Of course, that is not Deresiewicz’s point, but America’s attention needs to be focused on improving liberal arts and science education for all, not just Ivy League students.
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Story
What is the Internet doing to us? What is college for? What are the myths and metaphors we live by? What is the purpose of art, and what can we learn from the past? The End of Solitude brings together more than forty essays from such publications as Harper's and the Atlantic and introduces four that are published here for the first time. Drawing on the past, they ask how we got where we are. Scrutinizing the present, they seek to understand how we can live more mindfully, more meaningfully, more freely.
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The Death of the Artist
- How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkin
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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William Deresiewicz, a leading critic of the arts and of contemporary culture, set out to answer those questions. Based on interviews with artists of all kinds, The Death of the Artist argues that we are in the midst of an epochal transformation. If artists were artisans in the Renaissance, bohemians in the 19th century, and professionals in the 20th, a new paradigm is emerging in the digital age, one that is changing our fundamental ideas about the nature of art and the role of the artist in society.
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Golden
- By Ivana A. on 10-17-20
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A Jane Austen Education
- How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter
- By: William Deresiewicz
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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An eloquent memoir of a young man's life transformed by literature. In A Jane Austen Education, Austen scholar William Deresiewicz turns to the author's novels to reveal the remarkable life lessons hidden within. With humor and candor, Deresiewicz employs his own experiences to demonstrate the enduring power of Austen's teachings. Progressing from his days as an immature student to a happily married man, Deresiewicz's A Jane Austen Education is the story of one man's discovery of the world outside himself.
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one of the best books I've heard recently
- By D. Littman on 06-14-12
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Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be
- An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania
- By: Frank Bruni
- Narrated by: Frank Bruni
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the last few decades, Americans have turned college admissions into a terrifying and occasionally devastating process, preceded by test prep, tutors, all sorts of stratagems, all kinds of rankings, and a conviction among too many young people that their futures will be determined and their worth established by which schools say yes and which say no.
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A relatable and relevant book for our time
- By M_BTV on 05-18-15
By: Frank Bruni
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Rescuing Socrates
- How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation
- By: Roosevelt Montás
- Narrated by: Roosevelt Montás
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities.
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Excellent defense of a crucial part of education
- By Nom de Guerre on 01-24-22
By: Roosevelt Montás
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The Closing of the American Mind
- By: Allan Bloom
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In one of the most important books of our time, Allan Bloom, a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago and a noted translator of Plato and Rousseau, argues that the social and political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis.
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VERY IMPORTANT WORK!
- By Douglas on 06-29-10
By: Allan Bloom
Related to this topic
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Skip College
- Launch Your Career Without Debt, Distractions, or a Degree
- By: Connor Boyack, John Taylor Gatto, Brittany Hunter, and others
- Narrated by: Tiana Hanson
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Tens of millions of Americans owe a combined $1.5 trillion in debt for student loans. Much of this staggering expense has been unnecessary. Attending college is more of a tradition - a cultural rite of passage - than a necessary step toward a successful career, thus not justifying its steep cost. As countless entrepreneurs and creative hustlers have shown, there is a path to success outside of the institutions of so-called higher learning.
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Interesting perspective, wrong narrator
- By Bree Baretta on 12-13-21
By: Connor Boyack, and others
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In Defense of a Liberal Education
- By: Fareed Zakaria
- Narrated by: Fareed Zakaria
- Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The liberal arts educational system is under attack. Governors in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina have announced that they will not spend taxpayer money subsidizing the liberal arts. Majors like English and history - which were once very popular and highly respected - are in steep decline, and President Obama has recently advised students to keep in mind that technical training could be more valuable than a degree in art history when deciding on an educational path.
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Almost
- By H. Hackney on 04-09-15
By: Fareed Zakaria
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Weapons of Mass Instruction
- A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
- By: John Taylor Gatto
- Narrated by: Michael Puttonen
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.
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I will never see school the same
- By Nicole on 05-21-15
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Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?
- The Case for Helping Them Leave, Chart Their Own Paths, and Prepare for Adulthood at Their Own Pace
- By: Blake Boles
- Narrated by: Blake Boles
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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For some kids, school offers a positive and engaging experience. For others, it's a boring, stressful, and frustrating waste of time. If your child is in the second category, why keep tormenting them? Instead, why not help them find an educational environment where they feel genuinely motivated, excited, and empowered? In this eye-opening book, Blake Boles makes the case for leaving conventional school and taking one of the many alternative paths through K-12 that exist today.
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eye opening/ must read for every parent
- By Angelika on 07-01-20
By: Blake Boles
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Dark Horse
- Achieving Success Through the Pursuit of Fulfillment
- By: Todd Rose, Ogi Ogas
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In Dark Horse, Rose and Ogas show how the four elements of the dark horse mind-set empower you to consistently make the right choices that fit your unique interests, abilities, and circumstances and will guide you to a life of passion, purpose, and achievement.
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If you're anything like me, you have to read this
- By JerayNotDre on 11-08-19
By: Todd Rose, and others
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The Vanishing American Adult
- Our Coming-of-Age Crisis - and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance
- By: Ben Sasse
- Narrated by: Ben Sasse
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Vanishing American Adult, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue - hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body - and explains how parents can encourage them.
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A truly non-partisan essay on being an American
- By Anne on 07-06-17
By: Ben Sasse
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Skip College
- Launch Your Career Without Debt, Distractions, or a Degree
- By: Connor Boyack, John Taylor Gatto, Brittany Hunter, and others
- Narrated by: Tiana Hanson
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Tens of millions of Americans owe a combined $1.5 trillion in debt for student loans. Much of this staggering expense has been unnecessary. Attending college is more of a tradition - a cultural rite of passage - than a necessary step toward a successful career, thus not justifying its steep cost. As countless entrepreneurs and creative hustlers have shown, there is a path to success outside of the institutions of so-called higher learning.
-
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Interesting perspective, wrong narrator
- By Bree Baretta on 12-13-21
By: Connor Boyack, and others