Review Of Cathy Davidson's Essay 'Classroom Makeover'

After describing universities like Duke, Stanford and other Ivie schools as elite private universities, Cathy Davidson in her essay “project Classroom Makeover” gives the implication that what is elite is what is considered excelling in surpassing the standards and having more power than others. This description, however, is only a snippet of how Davison views elite organizations and how those standards that qualify or nullify institutions are not as effective as they should be.
Defining elite will yield two different definitions depending on the person who is defining it. Organizations, people, and even countries can be categorized as elites however, themselves may categorize others higher up as elites. One of Davidson categorization of the

In her essay, Davidson mentions the story of her mother in law who was able to create a new way of learning for her students that was able to inspire kids to learn despite their circumstances. As Davidson mentions in her essay “Like the iPod experiment, what this classroom story shows is that kids want to learn and can propel themselves to all kinds of learning as long as there is a payoff, not in what is won or achieved in statistical terms, but what is won and achieved inside in the sense of self confidence and competence”(67). Mrs. Davidson was able to change and elevate the learning experience that her students get without being a part of what would be considered as an elite institution. Lacking wealth, reputation or prestige makes Mrs. Davidson’s classroom look like a normal classroom despite it being considered elite to Mrs. Davidson students. The standards of judging what is and is not considered elite lacks the ability to truly measure the learning experience that the students experience, As Davidson explains “Put those kids in a lecture hall, give them a standardized curriculum with standardized forms of measuring achievement and ability, and they learn a different lesson. They might well master what they are supposed to learn, but that’s not education”(68). The standardized system evaluates the students' performance does actually evaluate what the student was able to learn which makes it as whole just a test that one needs to