American culture is almost entirely based on English not European culture. England historically was highly class based, heirarchical and had no revolution to upset the system. You might just as well attack Oxbridge. The Ivies are modern day route to preferment in presteige industries like big law and finance. Industries in which (for better or worse) US and UK firms are globally dominant. So it was less about education and more about training a ruling class.
Europe's far from one single entity in education systems, and social system that's part of.
In France, for example, you're far more likely to get into a top university if you have a parent that's a teacher. I postulate here: the interdisciplinary learning system, vs. the Anglo subject focused system, that looks good on paper works out quite hard to find success in without knowing success in navigating it and putting the pieces together.
In Germany, good luck becomming the CEO of a large company without the right breeding. It happens, but not a lot. There's turtles all the way down, from managing relationships with other stakeholders (i.e., knowing who runs them) to bank funding (funding from stock is less prevalent than Anglo, it's mainly debt funding, importance of Landesbanks). Screw the well qualified engineers, middle management will squash them sucking up the class divide at the top.
Sweden, prized for community. "So fucking claustrophobic I had to leave", "curtains twitch, everyone watches each other", "if you don't conform to the system, you need to be strong" "a nice place to retire, possibly" not only one Swede has said to me on their experiences on getting out [emigrating], interestingly all from smaller southern towns. [Interestingly, 'Collectivism' being the flip-side of 'Individualism' can mean those on the 'outside' of the collective have a much harder time than when there's no, or a weak, collective. See [1] Geert-Hofstede 'Model of national culture'].
Europe's very class based, it's less transparent, more insidious.
The influence consisted of money, arms, and troops, for the most part. They learned some rhetoric from the French, but I don't think that the cultural influence was at all deep.
Comments
American culture is almost entirely based on English not European culture. England historically was highly class based, heirarchical and had no revolution to upset the system. You might just as well attack Oxbridge. The Ivies are modern day route to preferment in presteige industries like big law and finance. Industries in which (for better or worse) US and UK firms are globally dominant. So it was less about education and more about training a ruling class.
Europe's far from one single entity in education systems, and social system that's part of.
In France, for example, you're far more likely to get into a top university if you have a parent that's a teacher. I postulate here: the interdisciplinary learning system, vs. the Anglo subject focused system, that looks good on paper works out quite hard to find success in without knowing success in navigating it and putting the pieces together.
In Germany, good luck becomming the CEO of a large company without the right breeding. It happens, but not a lot. There's turtles all the way down, from managing relationships with other stakeholders (i.e., knowing who runs them) to bank funding (funding from stock is less prevalent than Anglo, it's mainly debt funding, importance of Landesbanks). Screw the well qualified engineers, middle management will squash them sucking up the class divide at the top.
Sweden, prized for community. "So fucking claustrophobic I had to leave", "curtains twitch, everyone watches each other", "if you don't conform to the system, you need to be strong" "a nice place to retire, possibly" not only one Swede has said to me on their experiences on getting out [emigrating], interestingly all from smaller southern towns. [Interestingly, 'Collectivism' being the flip-side of 'Individualism' can mean those on the 'outside' of the collective have a much harder time than when there's no, or a weak, collective. See [1] Geert-Hofstede 'Model of national culture'].
Europe's very class based, it's less transparent, more insidious.
[1] https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-ho...
France also had a pretty strong influence on the founding fathers apparently. From what I've heard English are much nicer than we are
The influence consisted of money, arms, and troops, for the most part. They learned some rhetoric from the French, but I don't think that the cultural influence was at all deep.