{"id":819,"date":"2016-09-27T21:16:48","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T01:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=819"},"modified":"2016-12-08T18:23:25","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T23:23:25","slug":"oh-captain-my-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2016\/09\/27\/oh-captain-my-captain\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Captain, my captain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dead Poets Society has been one of my favorite movies since it was introduced to me sophomore year of high school by my english teacher after we read The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>. At the time, I simply appreciated Robin William’s brilliant portrayal of Mr. Keating, the pleasing aesthetics of poetry, and the mid twentieth-century, but didn’t think much beyond the sentiments of carpe diem and the power of words (not to mention the iconic “oh captain, my captain”\u00a0finale).<\/p>\n

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Sophomore year of college, Mark Tappan showed my class scenes from the film in Teaching for Social Justice, with a more critical lens focusing on\u00a0Mr. Keating’s teaching style (if you were wondering, it is progressive). While this second time viewing Dead Poets Society in an educational setting made me think about the film in an educational context, it wasn’t until last week that I\u00a0began to think about it in terms of elite schooling. As I was browsing the websites of elite private schools, many images reminded me of scenes from Dead Poets Society, with young boys in uniforms and beautiful campuses with fallen leaves scattering the unnaturally green grass.\u00a0Welton Academy, the elite boys prep school in Dead Poets Society, boats\u00a0four pillars: “tradition, honor, discipline, and excellency.” I could see traces of these four stereotypical “pillars” through different schools’ mission statements, information, and pictures.<\/p>\n

Looking back, I think elite schools have always\u00a0interested me (re: Dead Poets Society and my fondness\u00a0with Zoey 101, Gilmore Girls, and\u00a0John Greene’s Looking for Alaska<\/em>). However, for some reason, I previously assumed that educational studies in college would focus on\u00a0schools in poverty. The subject of studying elite schooling was something I had never considered before taking Adam’s course, Schools and Society; when we began to study Colby and how privilege plays into schooling, I was intrigued.<\/p>\n

I think this stems from my own educational experiences. While I did not go to a private school, home is a wealthy Maine town whose school system is consistently\u00a0named one of the top five\u00a0in the state. My high school is only 15 years old and sits on a beautiful campus. Academically, to 73% of students take AP courses, and my graduating year, to be in the top 10% of the class, you needed to achieve a GPA of at least 98.2%.\u00a0(Over 93% of students are white and fewer than 5% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, but that could be a whole other discussion.)\u00a0We also\u00a0boast many state championships in sports, arts, and academics, which has made our school’s nickname “Titletown.” Additionally,\u00a0our mascot is Yachtie the Yachtsman. Yes, a yachtsman, the embodiment of a person who owns a type of boat that is synonymous with wealth and the upper class.<\/p>\n

\"(Yachtie<\/a>
Yachtie the Yachtsman, for reference.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m not trying to boast about my high school with these qualifications, but portray\u00a0its status as an elite school (despite not being a private school).\u00a0Sometimes I’m almost ashamed of coming from such a privileged place because of my town’s reputation, both in neighboring communities and even to some extent at Colby, as\u00a0being full of spoiled rich kids; I feel this shame because\u00a0I don’t identify as fitting this\u00a0stereotype. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely thankful for the amazing education I received there, but especially since coming to Colby I am much more aware of the role privilege has played in my life.\u00a0This school system led me to Colby and made my transition here that much easier, as socioeconomically and academically, Colby wasn’t that<\/em> different from home.<\/p>\n

While my transition was relatively easy, it must have been even smoother for students coming from private schools, whose culture and climate are even closer to Colby’s than my public high school’s. Living in a dorm and having this much independence was new to me, but many of my peers who attended\u00a0private schools spent their high school years in a dorm; their elite private institutions have prepared them to jump right into college without having the shock of a completely new living and social situation, and they are thus better prepared than many public school students to focus on academics and social life right away.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Students at Croft School\u00a0graduate and enter some of the top universities in the world, and are thus very well prepared for college. In beginning my research on Croft School, the Headmaster’s message contained the following elite “buzzwords”:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • tradition<\/li>\n
  • discipline<\/li>\n
  • commitment<\/li>\n
  • all-rounder (mental, physical, social, moral growth)<\/li>\n
  • excellence<\/li>\n
  • quality<\/li>\n
  • future leaders<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Like Welton Academy in Dead Poets Society, Croft’s core values surround the advancement of their students in all areas while keeping a focus on the tradition of the institution that separates it from other schools (often, its very eliteness and the emphasis on quality and excellence).<\/p>\n

    As the research process continues, it will be interesting to see how eliteness manifests in the Croft School, especially in terms of socioeconomic background, as this is the topic my group is exploring. I also am curious to see how my views and understandings about elite schools in relation to public schools, whether privileged or not, change over the course of the semester. Although I may not have had an “oh captain, my captain” moment in high school,\u00a0I was still a yachtsman- about as close to a private school as a public school can get.<\/p>\n\n

    \n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Dead Poets Society has been one of my favorite movies since it was introduced to me sophomore year of high school by my english teacher after we read The Catcher in the Rye. At the time, I simply appreciated Robin William’s brilliant portrayal of Mr. Keating, the pleasing aesthetics of poetry, and the mid twentieth-century, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1531,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/1531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}