The idea is that no money transaction happens amongst the New England elite
unless the parties know & trust each other, and that only happens when the families have summer camped and prepped schooled and gone to Harvard together for generations. Knowing classics is a big part of it, or used to be. It's a code that marks you as part of the well-educated. The schools themselves have banded to maintain an ideal traditional high standards. Sadly, from the point of view of those of us that had the idea of teaching classics for the sheer love of the classics, most of what goes on there nowadays seems to have more to do with social connections, status, who's cute/cool, drugs, and money, money, money. The money thing doesn't have the decency to underlie any more.

http://www.tenschools.org/home/

For more info, see The Preppy Handbook, which is all the deeper my knowledge of these matters goes.

---Didaskalos