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Download e-book for iPad: The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding by Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández

By Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández

ISBN-10: 0674035682

ISBN-13: 9780674035683

For 2 years, Rub?n Gaztambide-Fern?ndez shared the lifetime of what he calls the “Weston School,” an elite New England boarding university. He sat in on sessions, ate food within the eating halls, cheered at exercises, frolicked in dorms whereas scholars baked cookies or celebrated birthdays. and during all of it, watching the stories of a various staff of scholars, undertaking interviews and concentration teams, he built a nuanced portrait of ways those scholars make experience in their outstanding luck in attending the varsity. Vividly describing the pastoral panorama and sleek constructions, the wealthy number of sessions and actions, and the authentic and unofficial principles that outline the varsity, the easiest of the simplest unearths a small international of deeply formidable, intensely harassed scholars. a few are on scholarship, others have by no means met a public institution pupil, yet all consider they've got earned their position as a “Westonian” by way of being clever and dealing not easy. Weston is a kin, they claim, with a distinct segment for everybody, however the hierarchy of coolness—the approach within which classification, race, sexism, and attractiveness can ensure one’s place—is renowned. For Gaztambide-Fern?ndez, Weston is daunting but strikingly bucolic, inspiring yet frustratingly incurious, and sometimes—especially for younger women—a gilded cage for a gilded age. “Would you ship your daughter here?” one lady asks him, and seeing his hesitation asks, “Because you like her?”

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Although they were ambivalent about the classic curriculum that was the model of early academies, the colonists also acknowledged the symbolic power of such skills and retained the belief that these were important for distinguishing a learned class. Still, they wanted the early academies to do more than just teach the classics. Academies were expected to teach an overwhelming number of courses in a wide range of subjects and specialties, from Latin and religion to surveying and penmanship. 56 The combination of limited fi�nan�cial resources and the demand for a€ comprehensive curriculum eventually undermined the viability of in� depen�dent academies.

This is part€of the promise that Weston and its peer schools make to their students, and what attracts many of those students (and their parents) to the school in the first place. ” “Â�Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself,” she invites students, “and especially to develop new skills and areas of knowledge. €. €. €. €. ” Most elite boarding schools have very similar mission statements. “Dare to be True” is the motto of another school, which claims to “cultivate in its students a passion for learning and a respect of others.

The old marble walls seem to spark more curiosity and inspire more comfort than the gray cement of the newer part of the library. We ascend the wraparound marble stairs, and I notice that the lacing on one of the girl’s knee-Â�high black boots has come GETTING IN undone. ” The mother leans down and ties the teenager’s boots. 2 Every arrival at Weston is the result of a unique and often conÂ� voluted path, and evÂ�ery student has a different story to tell. For some, Weston is part of a particular family experience with elite boarding schools, via parents, grandparents, or siblings, a place where they are expected or at least encouraged to arrive via a road already traveled.

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The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School by Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández


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