Re: Public Schools

[The Deviant <deviant@pooh-corner.com>]

On Fri, 27 Sep 1996, snow wrote:

> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 20:09:36 -0500 (CDT)
> From: snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>
> To: jbugden@smtplink.alis.ca
> Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
> Subject: Re: Public Schools
> 
> James said:
> > ronsimpson@unidial.com wrote:
> > >I hate to burst any bubbles but, the school with the highest number
> > > of National Merit Finalists and highest number of 1600 SATs is a=20
> > > Public High School (Jefferson High in Fairfax, VA)
> > The same is true for Montreal (Royal Vale) using the equivalent scoring methods.
> > But there are public schools at both extremes of the curve.
> > While it is true that Private Schools would not survive due to market forces if
> > they did consistently poorly, it is also true that they filter their incoming
> > student body in a manner that Public Schools can not.
> > If you want to refuse those who are too stupid or anti-social from Public
> > Schools in order to improve the social or intellectual climate, you better have
> > a solution for the resulting cast-offs.
>  
>      There is a solution. Trade Schools, and Parental Envolvement. It could 
> very well be (and if I had the money I'd make the bet) that _many_ of the 
> "troubled" youth of today are simply undisiplined. (Fortunately, most of 
> them couldn't afford to bet against their parents in an AP world). It would
> also seem to follow that if parents were spending their own money (or 
> perceived it as their own money) that they would take a greater interest in
> their childrens education.
>    
>       For those that are truly not scholastically oreinted, there would be
> trade schools. I would also bet that you could teach a child everything they
> need to learn (other than a trade) to cope in this world in about 4 years. 
> 

But now we must make a disinction... I'm LD in writing, but can read very
well (when I was in 6th grade I could read like a 10th grader), and do
very well in Math and Computer classes (and non-biological/anatomical
sciences).  So should I be in trade school, because I plan on being a
computer programmer, or go to college?  Sure, I don't do well in language
and (depending on the class) some history classes, which, IMHO, are
weighted more heavily than they should be in both public _and_ private
schools (and yes, I've been to both), but I don't think that should mean I
can't go to college...

Anyway, my point is that there is, at times, a very fine line...

 --Deviant
When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.