Review: Janice Aurini on The Making of an Adolescent Elite

Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege: The Making of Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, 248 pp. $US 29.95 hardcover (978-1-4008-3622-2)

Privilege takes us into the world of St. Paul’s, an exclusive boarding school, to examine the new American elite. In this well written ethnography, Khan returns to his alma mater as a teacher and researcher and discovers a transformed institution. Gone are the minority student dorms and (overt) expressions of old money and connections. In its place, the school prides itself on its racial diversity, the inclusion of women, and scholarships that allow superb disadvantaged students an education at St. Paul’s. Years after graduating, Khan finds himself in a school that eschews notions of “who you are” in favour of “what you’ve done.”  Read more