Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School by Shamus Rahman Khan

Author:Shamus Rahman Khan [Khan, Shamus Rahman]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2011-01-04T08:00:00+00:00

Corporeal Misrecognition

I knew Mary reasonably well. She was the advisee of a friend and played in the club soccer league I had coached. One afternoon, between the end of classes and before sports began, I ran into her in the Schoolhouse. “Hi, Mr. Khan!” Mary greeted me. Though often frantic, Mary was almost always amiable. At this moment she seemed slightly more relaxed. In fact, she was practically strolling through the halls. “You look well, Mary,” I replied, “like you’ve had a good day.”

“It’s Friday!”

“You don’t have classes tomorrow?”4

“Just one!” Mary exclaimed with a smile and a clear sense of relief. “The others got canceled.”

“That’s nice. Looks like a weight has been lifted!”

“Oh! I still have so much to do this weekend,” she said, as a hint of worry returned to her face. “But tonight I think I’m going to watch a movie.”

“You should.” I tried to sound like a tender, compassionate advisor—a tone many of my colleagues had mastered after years of teaching. But it came out flat.

“I don’t know, I’ll pay for it later.”

“No one dies saying, ‘I wish I’d worked more!’”

Mary looked at me skeptically, noting that I was the last person left in the building on a Friday afternoon. “You’re one to talk! Plus, I mean, I bet a lot of people die wishing they’d had a better life. How else are you going to get one? We’ve gotta work for it.”

“That’s true. A movie isn’t going to kill you, though.”

Clearly sick of me, but still always polite, Mary headed to the door. “Yeah. Thanks, Mr. Khan!”

My praise of Mary was intentional. But it is also clear that I was unconsciously trying to inculcate some sort of ease within Mary, acknowledging any shred of the relaxation that seems to elude Mary so much of the time. When I attempt to undermine the importance of work—“No one dies saying, ‘I wish I’d worked more!’”—Mary scolds me for it, reminding me that I seem to be always in my office and that success in life is a product of hard work. This “work talk” was similar to countless other conversations I had with students, faculty, and staff at the school. Mary was not that different from other students, and she clearly was not unhappy at the school. And as David indicated, her fellow students seemed to like her. So perhaps I had misread Mary. Was I overemphasizing the importance of embodying ease?

Early one evening a few days later, I was sitting in the library reading. At certain times of the day the library is quiet. It sits right next to one of the lakes on campus, and as you look out many of the windows, it feels less like a building and more like a boat, floating atop the lake in the middle of the wilderness. Students began to pile into the library and I prepared to leave; soon it would be filled with activity and I wanted to relax. Yet one group set up quickly on the table next to me, preparing to dig into a science project.

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