Play-to.

I've seen a great performance of West Side Story tonight.
Very professional, great acting, superb music, sophisticated stagecraft.

Yet somehow, it made me sad.
It was done by students of Pace Academy, an elite school in Atlanta.

Frankly, this production was larger than almost all commercial plays I've seen.
It was certainly much larger than what me and my friends have done last year - larger funding, larger crew. And more effort put into it.
This makes me rather bitter; I know I've done a lot for my - our - play. But whatever I could've done, it'd never match Pace's West Side Story.
This brings up the question of opportunities and successes and how they affect people, particularly students.

This is not completely unrelated: I've always believed that students should not be able to afford expensive boost. See, rich kids can buy stuff that doesn't give them hangover - therefore, they are not taught a necessary lesson and are more at risk of getting into a problem.
One way or another, this can be applied to a huge number of things. Being told ever since middle school that you're "the future", "the chosen" or simply "the best" is very nice and comfortable. But what elite schools fail to teach you is that you cannot always succeed. And there goes my insignificant yet for me important flaw of tonight's show: when it ends, all the actors get a clap. But what about the band? Nothing! The band stays out of sight. I think it's because the band was actually hired (and paid).
Doesn't this sound like artificially made success, rather than pure talent? No one would let elite kids fail at something. Grade inflation is a thing - whereas average grade in average school is C, on elite schools it's B.
But back to the play: the fact that disturbed me tonight is that even though I can see plenty of flaws in elite schooling, it obviously works. I wish it didn't, because it often creates individuals detached from reality - not actually prepared for a real life like they should be - some of them expect that they will change their surroundings, rather than that the surroundings will change them.
But somehow, they actually DO change their surroundings, for better and worse. In the long run it's usually better for them and worse for others, but that's the way the world, or at least parts of it, work (funny; settlers moved to America because they wanted, among other things, social mobility - the opportunity to change their social status. And now there's less social mobility in US than in many other developed countries.)
I always valued the trial and error method more than simply being told what is right. But the problem is; aren't errors too much of a waste of effort?

I certainly hope I will never have to believe that textbook knowledge is superior to experience.