The Water Is Pat Conroy Analysis

A military child, Pat Conroy grew up to be a teach in Beaufort, South Carolina and an author in several other remote locations. He graduated from The Citadel, Military College of South Carolina. He has extreme determination the day he established his new position on the Daufuskie Island. He faces extreme challenges all while trying to teach at least an ounce of true knowledge to the fortuneless people on the Island. The Water is Wide is Pat Conroy’s memoir based on his bizarre experience teaching on Yamacraw Island, an island where the educational system is in absolute neglect. Mr. Conroy was as if a fresh breeze of air had blown by for these unintellectual students. It was disastrous when Mr. Conroy discovered the students could not read

Pat Conroy deiced to spend the rest of his third day just speaking to the children. He would tell them about himself, his family, his life. He provided them plenty of detail since they have no prior knowledge on any subject; therefore, everything Pat was discussing was being organized into units in their minds. He would make connections and assimilate new information to the insufficient knowledge they obtained creating an entire new schema theory for them. For instance, Pat Conroy asked the children “What is the longest striking river in the whole wild world?”. They all shouted The Nile then proceeded to ask continent is it on and their reply was Africa (p 58). This was huge progress in my opinion and it lead to his pep-really method of education. It begins with children merely learning about something through the conversations they were having with Mr. Conroy and it became a habit every morning to begin the day with chants after a basic question was asked by Mr. Conroy. Pep- rallies did not involve any textbooks, it was all done orally and every time something new was learned, it would be automatically transferred to their pep-rally chant. Pat used basic topics for example, plants, presidents and countries were used for the pep rally