Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 Apollo 11/21/85; site apollo.uucp
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!wanginst!apollo!nazgul
From: nazgul@apollo.uucp (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Universities, and high school education
Message-ID: <2c7e211f.7005@apollo.uucp>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 14:50:03 EST
Article-I.D.: apollo.2c7e211f.7005
Posted: Fri Mar 14 14:50:03 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Mar-86 22:08:40 EST
References: <162@pyuxc.UUCP> <588@hoptoad.uucp> <1119@burl.UUCP> <14792@onfcanim.UUCP>
Reply-To: nazgul@apollo.UUCP (Kee Hinckley)
Organization: Apollo Computer Inc., Chelmsford MA
Lines: 83
Summary: 

In article <14792@onfcanim.UUCP> dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes:
> This is a followup to two articles.  In one, Laura Creighton (hi Laura!) says:
Ditto.

> So, if I ever have children, and if they are "bright", how do I prevent the
> same thing from happening to them?  Send them to a private school, assuming
> that it can be afforded?  What happens to bright kids who don't have
> at-least-middle-class parents, so private schools are an impossibility?
> 

That is a good question.  I had the interesting experience of going to both
a private high-school and a public high-school.  Our town was in the process
of building its high-school, but in the meantime they funded you to go to
another school, most kids went to a nearby private dump (it was one those
schools that takes all the kids who flunked out of other high schools) or
to the high school of the next town over.  I flew the coop and went to
a private boarding school (Phillips Exeter) for a year.  Then the town finished 
the high school, stopped providing tuition, and back I went to public school.
Some thoughts on (good) private schools vs. public.

    o   The education is REAL good vs. mediocre to bad.
    o   The pressure is VERY high vs none.
    o   There isn't any hazing or other public school crap.
    o   There isn't as much of a drugs/alcohol problem (or at least there wasn't
        then).

For example:    

    I took a year of Spanish at PEA, and then took two more years
    at the public school (Maranacook Community High School).  At
    the end of the three years I knew less Spanish than at the
    end of the first year.

    I missed a day at PEA due to sickness and spent two weeks catching up.
    My senior year at Maranacook (which was also my junior year, since I
    ended up skipping a grade) I was taking 7 courses and debate and was
    bored.

Personally I don't think I'd send my kids (as yet non-existant) off to a 
private school.  I might consider it if they went as day students (although 
then the kid misses a lot of the social life).  I work very well under
pressure, my grades were better at Exeter than at Maranacook, but I went
in there a rather laid-back rural bookworm (the admissions officer said I
was the only student he had ever interviewed who didn't seem to care whether
or not he got in).  If I'd stayed on for four years I would have come out a 
classic go-for-success preppy, something I shudder to consider.

So what are the options?  Well, you could teach them at home.  There are
a few places that will sell you all the course work to do that (my father
skipped a grade that way when he was sick for a year).  But then again 
you run into the problem of missing the socialization.  There are alot
of bad things about school (so speaks someone who got a lot of teasing
with regards to his name) but I wouldn't want to bring up a child who
had no opportunity to deal with people his/her own age.  Another option
are the more local alternative schools, where the parent has some say
in what goes on, and then there are the good public schools.  Maranacook
actually wasn't that bad, it certainly had good intentions, but the
realities of teaching in rural Maine bogged it down.  On the other hand
I went to Marks Meadows in Amherst for a semester in sixth grade and they 
had an excellent program, self-paced with pre-tests and post-tests for
each subject (if you passed the pre-test you didn't have to do any of
the work for the chapter, if you didn't pass the pre-test you only had
to work on those parts of the chapter that you had done poorly), but with a 
lot of pressure to move along given by the teachers.  But that succeeded 
because the student-teacher ratio was something like 4 to 1 (it was the 
school for all the education majors to work in) and the quality of the 
students was generally good (children of grad students and professors).  
As soon as the kids left that into high-school though, you were back to 
good old standard educational methods.

Hmmm.  This has gotten a bit too long.  See ya.

                            The Witch-King of Angmar
--

                         ...decvax!wanginst!apollo!nazgul

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

                    A Space Child's Mother Goose