{"id":160,"date":"2017-09-17T21:14:31","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T01:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/?p=160"},"modified":"2017-09-17T21:14:31","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T01:14:31","slug":"for-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/first-blog\/for-school\/","title":{"rendered":"For School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A method of ranking and distinction is an essential piece of a meritocracy. In order for individuals to rise, to matriculate, to gain merit, there have to be people who don\u2019t. That sounds grim, but Gatto\u2019s essay is a bit idealized. He implies that if society rid mass schooling, and each child was homeschooled or self-educated (\u201cmanaged themselves\u201d), children would acquire leadership skills and critical insight\u2014but nay. I think kids, especially nowadays, would sit at home and watch TV all day, and <i>that<\/i> would truly be \u201cnot growing up.\u201d Ben Franklin, George Washington and crew\u2014they are convenient outliers to Gatto\u2019s argument: they are exceptional individuals who were (conveniently) not educated in a mass-schooling system. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"> This is not to say that the mass schooling system is messed up, because it sounds pretty messed up. There needs to be an emphasis on critical thinking in education\u2014students do need to learn how to manage themselves, to think for themselves and problem solve. I think Williams does this exceptionally well. Williams promotes creative problem solving and demotes mundane task-oriented work (I think). This problem is indeed easier to solve in a small liberal arts college\u2014a public school with 4,000 students is much different. It sounds like teaching methods need to change, but I don\u2019t think required education needs to cease. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A method of ranking and distinction is an essential piece of a meritocracy. In order for individuals to rise, to matriculate, to gain merit, there have to be people who don\u2019t. That sounds grim, but Gatto\u2019s essay is a bit &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/first-blog\/for-school\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1746,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1746"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18f-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}