{"id":58,"date":"2018-02-11T15:56:37","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T20:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/?p=58"},"modified":"2018-02-12T11:43:25","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T16:43:25","slug":"unsung-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/uncategorized\/unsung-heroes\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsung Heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Against Schools<\/em>, Gatto asserts that the United States public-school system has systematically, \u201cencouraged students not to think at all\u201d (Gatto, 37). As the product of twelve years of public schooling, I can partially attest to this. The meritocracy of public schools is structured such that the \u201csmart,\u201d \u201csuccessful,\u201d \u201cmost-likely-to-succeed\u201d students are the ones with the highest GPAs. Unfortunately for society, a high GPA is more a measure of conformity than intellect. Those individuals who strive for high GPAs often must take specific classes, learn material to prepare for test rather than to understand, and learn to memorize instead of thoughtfully analyze. It is no wonder that these \u201csuccessful&#8221; individuals lose the capacity to think for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are those individuals who preserve the, \u201ccuriosity, adventure, resilience, and capacity for surprising insights\u201d (Gatto, 34). They are the individuals who love learning for learning\u2019s sake, who explore what they love outside of the classroom, and who would <em>never <\/em>sacrifice their intellectual enrichment for the sake of a grade. So, while I agree with Gatto that our schools are not set up in a way to encourage students to think for themselves, such students do exist in the current system.<\/p>\n<p>Gatto also falters when discussing the complicity of our teachers in this meritocracy. Every school will have some teachers who have little interest in their subjects, but what Gatto fails to mention are those teachers \u2013 the heroes of our system \u2013 who possess a passion for both their subject and their students. Those teachers who inspire a love of learning and help them combat the classroom\u2019s endemic boredom are the reason that, despite some glaring flaws, I have great hope in our educational system\u2019s ability to produce the next generation of thoughtful, curious, and resilient leaders.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Against Schools, Gatto asserts that the United States public-school system has systematically, \u201cencouraged students not to think at all\u201d (Gatto, 37). As the product of twelve years of public schooling, I can partially attest to this. The meritocracy of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/uncategorized\/unsung-heroes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1902,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-first-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1902"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/59"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}