A venture into PhilosophyFollow

This is Sociology, not Philosophy

The public schools in my area are lacking. Then again you guys know this, you see my lack of grammer and such stuff. The classes in high school had 40+ people to one teacher. Half of those teachers were more concerened with making sure they were giving A's to our football players that couldnt add 2+2. My physics teacher? We learned to make bombs and lye soap. The final exam? One question and that was "Who is your favorite teacher". My speech class ran out of desks so we had people sitting on tables. My scince class? We had people sitting on the disection tables.

Where did our money go? I think it went to our football players judging from the fact they owned their own fleet of extravagantly nice charter type busses. They had their own physical therapists, doctors, spas, saunas and such stuff. We grow football players here, not scholars apparently.

I graduated on the Texas Scholars program which was the most advanced at the time. I remember going to talk to my councilor about college and if he could help me prepare my applications. He was busy helping a student with should he go to college or play professional football. The kid is playing for some NFL team now.

Edited, Mon Mar 6 10:52:04 2006 by Katie

Has anyone ever heard of the Duke TIP? Basically in seventh grade you take the SAT, full blown, with the High School kids. Most of the kids I did that with broke or even shattered the state average. Hell, I made a 950. I know people who I graduated with in college who didn't pull that off. It is pretty impressive to see some chick break a 1050 in the seventh grade.

I participated in a gifted program until high school (when it stops) but I didn't do as well in high school as my peers. I'm what you call "lazy". Teachers like to call that "not applying yourself" or whatnot.

From descriptions I have heard form others (parents, news, relatives, little brother, family, and friends) my high school was a pressure cooker of violence and crime. I must have missed all that. Sure, there were four thousand kids in a building built for less than half that. Sure, the teacher to student ratio was approaching forty to one. Yes I saw a lot of beat-downs go on, drugs in the bathrooms and the like. I guess I ignored it all as having no bearing on me. Teen pregnancy was on the rise and I guess I did see a general despondancy regarding all of the aspects of the educational process from both students and teachers. Very few teachers have the slightest care for the students. Each and every teacher said somthing along the lines of "You're professors in college won't care for you like we do, they won't give you a break." I found exactly the opposite to be true. Almost every professor I had was going the extra mile on a daily basis to connect with the students, and each of my professors was a PhD and not a TA or RA or anything less. From that experience I think thats what it takes, making that connection. I actually had to fight with one of my high school guidance counselors to be able to take AP Computer Science in my senior year. She thought I should take Spanish IV. Why, on God's green earth, would a future CompSci major want to do that. Furthermore, it was pretty much my perogative anyway. She was probably one of the worst guidance counselors ever... and also a contributing factor to me only being accepted at one school. (I applied to two.)

And to whoever was talking about letting students out early to go work... my HS had a program that let seniors out early, period. If the student didn't need all 4 classess a day to graduate, then they could take the last hour and a half off of the school day and leave. We were on the block system (which was really nice) of having 4 classes a day that changed each semester. Of course, if it hadn't been for classes that were completely optional then I could have graduated a year early, as long as I took the senior classes on Politics and Finance some time early as well.

We also had this rediculous South Carolina Scholars program where you got a fancy diploma for having like an extra comptuer class and an extra science. Quite possibly the most retarded thing ever since it was so easy to get.

That was a lot of ramble.