John and Carol originally meet to discuss the difficulties Carol is having keeping up in John’s class, and with university life more generally. Over the course of their initial conversation in the first act, John and Carol both express the disillusionment they feel with the state of higher education in America. In the process, they become ciphers for Mamet’s argument that education has, in many ways, become an elaborate “hazing” ritual meant only to confer elite privileges on those willing to jump through a seemingly never-ending series of metaphorical hoops.
The fact that Oleanna—in many ways a bloodbath of power-grabs, conspiracies, and shocking acts of violence—is set in a university allows Mamet to explore the elitism, corruption, and moral bankruptcy that he feels lies at the heart of higher education in modern America. John, a professor, is on the verge of getting tenured at his university. Once the committee meets and confirms that John is qualified (which he already knows he is), he will have job security for life, and largely uncontested power at the university. Even though John wants tenure—and the financial security that comes with it, which will allow him to purchase a new home for his family and send his children to private school—he lambasts higher education openly in front of his frustrated, struggling student Carol. He says that he himself struggled as a student because tests, essays, and all the other benchmarks of success within education are designed “for idiots […] by idiots.” John insists that traditional education is flawed—he even goes so far as to imply that it is a failure entirely—and regards himself as a maverick who feels a “responsibility to the young.”
John’s comments are offensive to Carol—though she’s struggling to keep up in her classes and indeed has a hard time seeing the larger point of putting herself through such turmoil every day, she becomes upset when John admits that he feels education has become arbitrary and relatively pointless. Carol states that she—and many other students like her—have worked hard to gain admission to this university and others, fighting against social prejudices and economic disadvantages alike in hopes of bettering themselves and securing a good future. John’s assertion that education is pointless, Carol suggests, has the potential to create chaos and animosity rather than enlightenment—but John actually doubles down on his disdain for academic structures and policies.
When John offers Carol the chance to secure an A for the term—regardless of the bad grades she’s earned so far, at the halfway point of the semester—by attending weekly private tutorials with him in his office, he tells her that the two of them can break the rules with impunity and shirk the traditional structure of a university course. Carol is hesitant at first, and seems nearly scandalized by John’s flouting of protocol. When Carol asks John why he’d risk so much to help her, he insists it’s because he likes her and wants to help her—but Mamet seems to be suggesting that John’s desire to break the rules comes from his own need to prove to both himself and Carol that the university’s systems are outdated and irrelevant.
Even though John wants to portray himself as a contrarian who shirks the arbitrary rigors of university life, his excitement about his own candidacy for tenure—and the abject fear he feels when the security that tenure would provide is taken away after Carol accuses him of harassment—forces him to reexamine his own true beliefs. John has to admit that even though he looks down on and talks badly about the arbitrary nature of the university, he has participated in the institutional mechanisms that have afforded him power and support. He rails against the state of the university, but is completely at the mercy of the university’s maintenance of the status quo; if the institution crumbled or his tenure was revoked, he would be in trouble. When Carol’s accusations ultimately prevent John from securing tenure—and threaten to remove him from his position as a professor entirely—he realizes that even if the university is a glorified “hazing” ritual, he is dependent upon the continuation of such customs.
It’s worth noting that Mamet himself attended a progressive, nontraditional secondary school and matriculated to a low-residency college program before ultimately working as a professor at the college from which he graduated. John’s views on education are, perhaps, similar to Mamet’s—given his nontraditional background in education and his controversial politics, it’s fair to extrapolate from Oleanna’s overall contempt for higher education that Mamet, too, sees the institution of the American university as a failure. Ultimately, as John’s career is sacrificed to protocol and red tape, Mamet suggests that even if the university is a corrupt institution with no modern utility or relevance, it will continue on in its present form—for better or for worse.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Education and Elitism ThemeTracker
Education and Elitism Quotes in Oleanna
JOHN: What is a “term of art”? It seems to mean a term, which has come, through its use, to mean something more specific than the words would, to someone not acquainted with them … indicate. That, I believe, is what a “term of art,” would mean. (Pause)
CAROL: You don’t know what it means…?
JOHN: I’m not sure that I know what it means. It’s one of those things, perhaps you’ve had them, that, you look them up, or have someone explain them to you, and you say “aha,” and you immediately forget what…
CARO: You don’t do that.
CAROL: I did what you told me. I did, I did everything that, I read your book, you told me to buy your book and read it. Everything you say I … (She gestures to her notebook.) (The phone rings.) I do…. Ev…
JOHN:… look:
CAROL: …everything I’m told…
JOHN: Look. Look. I’m not your father. (Pause.)
CAROL: What?
JOHN: I’m.
CAROL: Did I say you were my father?
JOHN: I’ll tell you a story about myself. (Pause) Do you mind? (Pause) I was raised to think myself stupid. That’s what I want to tell you. (Pause.)
CAROL: What do you mean?
JOHN: Just what I said. I was brought up, and my earliest, and most persistent memories are of being told that I was stupid. “You have such intelligence. Why must you behave so stupidly?” Or, “Can’t you understand? Can’t you understand?” And I could not understand. I could not understand.
JOHN: If I fail all the time, it must be that I think of myself as a failure. If I do not want to think of myself as a failure, perhaps I should begin by succeeding now and again. Look. The tests you see, which you encounter, in school, in college, in life, were designed, in the most part, for idiots. By idiots. There is no need to fail at them. They are not a test of your worth. They are a test of your ability to retain and spout back misinformation. Of course you fail them. They’re nonsense.
CAROL: There are rules.
JOHN: Well. We’ll break them.
CAROL: How can we?
JOHN: We won’t tell anybody.
CAROL: Is that all right?
JOHN: I say that’s fine.
CAROL: Why would you do this for me?
JOHN: I like you.
CAROL: I was saying … I was saying … (She checks her notes.) How can you say in a class. Say in a college class, that college education is prejudice?
[…]
JOHN: … that’s my job, don’t you know.
CAROL: What is?
JOHN: To provoke you.
CAROL: But how do they feel? Being told they are wasting their time?
JOHN: I don’t think I’m telling them that.
CAROL: You said that education was “prolonged and systematic hazing.”
JOHN: Yes. It can be so.
CAROL: …if education is so bad, why do you do it?
JOHN: I do it because I love it.
JOHN: You see, (pause) I love to teach. And flatter myself I am skilled at it. And I love the, the aspect of performance. I think I must confess that. When I found I loved to teach I swore that I would not become that cold, rigid automaton of an instructor which I had encountered as a child. Now, I was not unconscious that it was given me to err upon the other side. And, so, I asked and ask myself if I engaged in heterodoxy, I will not say “gratuitously” for I do not care to posit orthodoxy as a given good—but, “to the detriment of, of my students.”
JOHN: Well, all right. (Pause) Let’s see. (He reads.) I find that I am sexist. That I am elitist. I’m not sure I know what that means, other than it’s a derogatory word, meaning “bad.” That I… That I insist on wasting time, in nonprescribed, in self-aggrandizing and theatrical diversions from the prescribed text … that these have taken both sexist and pornographic forms … here we find listed […] instances “…closeted with a student” … “Told a rambling, sexually explicit story […] moved to embrace said student and … all part of a pattern …”
CAROL: I don’t care what you feel. Do you see? DO YOU SEE? You can’t do that anymore. You. Do. Not. Have. The. Power. Did you misuse it? Someone did. Are you part of that group? Yes. Yes. You Are. You’ve done these things.
CAROL: How can you deny it. You did it to me. Here. You did… You confess. You love the Power. To deviate. To invent, to transgress […] whatever norms have been established for us. […] And you pick those things which you feel advance you: publication, tenure, and the steps to get them you call “harmless rituals.” And you perform those steps. Although you say it is hypocrisy. […] You call education “hazing,” and from your so-protected, so-elitist seat you hold our confusion as a joke, and our hopes and efforts with it. Then you sit there and say “what have I done?”
JOHN: They’re going to discharge me.
CAROL: As full well they should. You don’t understand? You’re angry? What has led you to this place? Not your sex. Not your race. Not your class. YOUR OWN ACTIONS. And you’re angry. You ask me here. What do you want? You want to “charm” me. You want to “convince” me. You want me to recant. I will not recant.
CAROL: Even if I were inclined, to what, forgive? Forget? What? Overlook your…
JOHN: …my behavior?
CAROL: …it would be wrong.
JOHN: Even if you were inclined to “forgive” me.
CAROL: It would be wrong.
JOHN: And what would transpire.
CAROL: Transpire?
JOHN: Yes.
CAROL: “Happen?”
JOHN: Yes.
CAROL: Then say it. For Christ’s sake. Who the hell do you think that you are? You want a post. You want unlimited power. To do and to say what you want. As it pleases you—Testing, Questioning, Flirting…
CAROL: Do you hate me now? (Pause)
JOHN: Yes.
CAROL: Why do you hate me? Because you think me wrong? No. Because I have, you think, power over you. Listen to me. Listen to me, Professor. (Pause) It is the power that you hate. So deeply that, that any atmosphere of free discussion is impossible. It’s not “unlikely.” It’s impossible. Isn’t it?
JOHN: Yes.
CAROL: Do you want our support? That is the only quest…
JOHN: …to ban my book…?
CAROL: …that is correct…
JOHN: …this…this is a university… we… […] No, no. It’s out of the question. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I want to tell you something I’m a teacher. […] It’s my name on the door, and I teach the class, and that’s what I do. I’ve got a book with my name on it. And my son will see that book someday. And I have a respon… No, I’m sorry I have a responsibility… to myself, to my son, to my profession…
