>Hey... What's wrong with public schools? The ones I've gone to
>aren't all that bad, and I'm starting at another one in less than a
>month.

In principle nothing. It's just that they often fail in their primary purpose: educating people. Instead you get "validation". It was particularly awful in my area because the public I went was the best in the county, had great teachers, and amazingly low standards. At the time I thought it was best school in existence. I was convinced I was a princess of the universe and one of the best educated kids out there.

Arrogant wasn't I?

It's only when I went to college that I realized how poorly prepared I was for the rigor and the standards. Of course, I went to university of chicago, so the effect was a little magnified opposed to say, university of illinois or kansas.

What happened is that the schools' teachers had created a curve to standardize teaching. This inverted bell gave the honors kids and the failing kids the most attention. The kids in the middle, you'd know, 80% of the population, recieved less funding and less attention. Worse, the English department had 1/3 the funding of math or science, or foriegn language. History had 1/8.

The latter didn't effect me because I love history and would have been intense about it no matter what. The former effected everyone equally - my friend, who was first in the class, was forced by her _grad_ school to take a writing course because of her egregious grammar. My younger sister (who went to two different high schools) is just as bad as I was. I've read her papers; they are masterpieces of incoherent thought and chock full of run-on sentences. We're all graduates of the public system honor's program. Imagine what happened to the average tracked kids...

I think if you can identify the deficits in the public school programs for you personally, and if you can receive extra tutoring on the side, you will be fine. Unfortunately, if your parents aren't educated (mine barely got out of high school and one is not a native english speaker) or if there isn't someone helping you identify the weaknesses in your education, you won't catch them until much later.

As I have no personal experience with private high schools, I'm not sure if this is a problem for them. Several friends and roomates attended private schoools and they indicated that a lot more personal attention was given to students. Several said that this let them improve in areas where they were typically weak. Personally, I think individualized attention versus the warehouse system we had at my school would make all the difference in the public school system.

That said, enjoy school this semester!

t.

Trigger Argee
trigger_argee@hotmail.com
Manon, Orado, etc.
Denton, never leave home without it.