Governor's School of North Carolina
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The Governor's School of North Carolina (GS, GSNC) is a publicly-funded six-week summer program for gifted high school students in the state of North Carolina.
Governor's School enrolls approximately 800 students each summer, half each in programs housed at Salem College in Winston-Salem (known as Governor's School West, or GSW) and at Meredith College in Raleigh (known as Governor's School East, or GSE); GSE was previously held on the campus of St. Andrews College in Laurinburg. Students at Governor's School choose their primary course of study from a broad range of academic and artistic areas, including mathematics, natural science, social science, English, French, Spanish, art, drama, and instrumental and choral music.
While enrolled in the Governor's School program, students participate in three areas of study, in addition to optional elective classes. The Area 1 program covers the students prime academic/artistic interest and is the class that students will spend the most time in. The Area 2 program covers primarily a variety of questions and ideas from the epistemological branch of philosophy. Area 3 is a kind of psychological venting booth for students. In Area 3 classes, students discuss moral and ideological issues and how they relate to both current events, as well as campus life.
The program began in 1963 as an education inititive promoted by Gov. Terry Sanford with the hopes of training North Carolina's top high school students to excel so the US could compete in the Cold War. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the curriculum of GSNC has become decidedly more liberal; students have adopted the slogan "Accept Nothing. Challenge Everything." This change has met with considerable opposition in North Carolina.