{"id":337,"date":"2014-09-22T14:38:48","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T14:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/?p=337"},"modified":"2014-09-22T20:31:26","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T20:31:26","slug":"excellent-sheep-better-shepherds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/2014\/09\/22\/excellent-sheep-better-shepherds\/","title":{"rendered":"Excellent Sheep? Better Shepherds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"World<\/a>Much has been said and written\u00a0about William Deresiewicz’s recent book Excellent Sheep<\/em><\/a> and the accompanying articles\u00a0that variously lambaste or defend the Ivy League\u2014which, of course, includes only EIGHT colleges.\u00a0 But having just completed our first two weeks of the school year at Williston, it’s hard for me not to weigh in.<\/p>\n

The point of Mr. Deresiewicz’s attack seems to be the lock-step fashion in which ambitious teenagers march in pursuit of Ivy Gold. Clearly, such generalizations, even when applied to the\u00a0often highly focused students found on the campuses of New England boarding schools, do a real disservice to our educational missions.<\/p>\n

Williston students are well known to be authentic\u00a0individuals, eschewing cookie-cutter molds and easy categories.\u00a0\u00a0They take seriously their teachers focus on\u00a0critical reasoning\u00a0skills\u00a0 and independent thinking. \u00a0 When they graduate, Williston students spread far and wide geographically, and from all I can see, they retain these values and\u00a0mindsets\u00a0throughout their college careers.<\/p>\n

The phrase “excellent sheep” connotes\u00a0 an attitude or mindset. There’s nothing at all sheep-like about a Williston student, not now, and certainly not in the past (if the alumni stories which I hear\u00a0 from across the generations are any indication). If anything, Williston students are more like shepherds, a simile that, for me, denotes leadership, reflection, resilience, and a healthy pursuit of clearly defined goals.<\/p>\n

Individuality, in fact, \u00a0is one of Williston’s core values, and\u00a0our graduates who attend the colleges that Mr. Deresiewicz spotlights will surely never be lost in the flock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much has been said and written\u00a0about William Deresiewicz’s recent book Excellent Sheep and the accompanying articles\u00a0that variously lambaste or defend the Ivy League\u2014which, of course, includes only EIGHT colleges.\u00a0 But having just completed our first two weeks of the school year at Williston, it’s hard for me not to weigh in. The point of Mr. … Continue reading Excellent Sheep? Better Shepherds<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willistonblogs.com\/headofschool\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}