Richter, Please Fasten Your Seatbelt and Observe the No-Smoking Signs.

[Suu]

If the school in your neighborhood is shit and people get stabbed on the playground, do you send your kid there anyway or do you transfer out? Because, if you send your kid there, they get more funding and it might help improve conditions for all the other kids... besides, if your kid is doing OK academically it will bring up the school's scores, and then they'll get even more funding.

You should do the right thing for the hive, even at the expense of your child.

You aren't serious right?

No, she's ripping on my counterpoint.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If the school in your neighborhood is shit and people get stabbed on the playground, do you send your kid there anyway or do you transfer out? Because, if you send your kid there, they get more funding and it might help improve conditions for all the other kids... besides, if your kid is doing OK academically it will bring up the school's scores, and then they'll get even more funding.

You should do the right thing for the hive, even at the expense of your child.

I went to an urban high school. There were stabbings, rapes, etc. I did FINE. I also had the benefit of art and music education, which high schools are losing left and right because of that lack of funding, because of those parents that are putting their children in private institutions and the schools can't afford it anymore. But you're mixing apples and oranges here, you're talking about pulling your child out of public school because she's smart, not transferring her from a different school because it's dangerous.

If I have children, they're going all the way through public high school, I won't bother with the hometeaching bullshit and I sure as hell won't put them in a private school where teachers don't need to be certified. As much as anyone now in our age bracket (late 20s/early 30s) hated high school or at least claim to have hated it, there's a lot of social development that happens there that a student doesn't find in college. What did I do in college? I sat in my room and studied, sure I had the flexibility to do what I wanted, but I was also old enough to vote and drive a car. There are reasons why we have age limits on things and schooling is one of them. I want my kids to see fights, I want my kids to go to prom, I want them to take sex ed and see pregnant students and deal with the same stresses that we all did. I don't want to shelter them or coddle them. The high school experience is more important IMO to the development teens and a necessary evil before attending college, no matter how smart they are.

I know a girl that quit high school when she was 16 to go to URI, she is a totally annoying pedantic little bitch who still thrives on high school-like drama and acts no different than she did when she was 16 because she never actually had the rest of her high school career to mature and grow with her peers. We don't need more people like that. We need mature adults who experienced what they needed to in order to develop into who they are today.

I know you're kids are smart Nigel, and of course it would be only natural for you to want what's best for them, that's not selfish at all, but at the same time, what will happen to the relationships your child has with their friends in school before they transfer to college? Will her friends shun them because she's smarter or will she blow them off because she thinks she's better? Will you allow her to date a guy in her college class that could have 5 or more years on her? That 16 year old I mentioned? Her first college boyfriend was 32. THIRTY TWO AND SHE WAS 16! She became defiant to her parents because she was in college, and wanted to do what she felt she was old enough to do...How would you feel about that?

High school sucks, but kids need it to grow.

I think that SOME kids need high school to grow. I didn't. My kids may or may not, and it has less to do with them being smart and more to do with every kid being different. As a parent, I am going to tailor my children's educational experience as much as I can to optimize it for each child.

As for funding, like I said, the money I pay into the public school system via taxes doesn't get pulled out of the pool when my kid stops attending school. It's not harming the public school system if my kid graduates early; I'd like to see anyone try to present a compelling argument that it does. For every anecdotal failure like your friend, I can present an anecdotal success, like MY friend who is one of the most well-adjusted people I know. Or anecdotal public-school failures, like my first boyfriend who was stabbed to death trying to stop a fight on the playground.

But, that's pretty pointless, really.

There is no one-size-fits-all magical educational Right Answer for kids. What might be best for one of my kids may not be right for another of my kids. It's up to me to show them as many options as I can, and help guide them through them, and I'm going to do that job to the best of my abilities.

[Juana]

I'm gonna homeschool.

I totally agree.  Ive got a pretty good idea how well public schooling works, and I think I (and maybe tutors here and there) can do better.  Not only can I do better than most algebra teachers (partly due to their split attention), but homeschooling would be a good way to bond with my kid (in theory; no existing contingencies exist).

I don't know how well I'd be able to teach upper level math, but I can do reading and writing skills like nobody's business.

When your kid gets to that point, send him to community college.

*IF* your state allows for that. Mine doesn't. You have to 18 or have graduated to go.

WTF?

I've never heard of something that stupid. I know that in Oregon, Washington and California, you can take college courses and simultaneously earn college and high school credits. It's common for AP and homeschooled kids.

Dual enrollment is allowed, in either CC or a four-year university. But dropping out of regular high school to attend a community college is not. Here in California, anyway.

And you're probably right on the community funding being the reason it's not done.

NOT true for CA.  CC's will take you, GED or not.  ETA: but you may be right about the 18 years old thing, I haven't checked.  I just know you don't HAVE to be 18 nor do you need a GED, as for the either/or, not sure.

I go to a community college and I'm pretty sure that isn't just our policy, nor do I think it's changed since I started here. If you're 18, you can go whether or not you were a high school drop out. If you're under 18, you either have to have graduated high school or be dual enrolled to come here.

[Nast]

Personal testimony tiem:

I'm glad I got my GED and high tailed it to community college. It saved me a lot of wasted time.

Yes, I do feel like I've missed some experiences unique to the high school environment. Yes, I do miss my friends. But I can't say that I've somehow been emotionally or developmentally stunted by it.
As a young adult, my goal is to become a functioning, autonomous, happy human being. I view going to CC as a shortcut on that path, and like all shortcuts, you do miss some scenic sights along the way. But I weighed it out, and can say that it's for me at least it's worth it.

But I'm not exactly the standard of normalcy, so I'm not sure how much that applies to other kids.

[Requia ☣]

I'm gonna homeschool.

I totally agree.  Ive got a pretty good idea how well public schooling works, and I think I (and maybe tutors here and there) can do better.  Not only can I do better than most algebra teachers (partly due to their split attention), but homeschooling would be a good way to bond with my kid (in theory; no existing contingencies exist).

I don't know how well I'd be able to teach upper level math, but I can do reading and writing skills like nobody's business.

Find another parent who can do the math but not the R&W?  I don't (thankfully) have a kid to home school but if I did I'd have pretty much the opposite problem of you.

[JackALope2323]

My 2 cents.

As it is, I'm still in my state public education system. Only three months left in it, thank Eris.

Recently, we were informed that the budget for our school district for the next school year included cuts to some things. This included:

- Sports. All sports. There will be NO more sports in our school district.

- Arts. All arts. There will be NO more arts in our school district.

- P.E. and Music in Elementary Schools.

- The IB program. This one is what really pissed me off. Even if I'm not into any arts or sports besides theater, I can understand how important they are to people. But I have been in the IB program for all four of my high school years. As much as any IB student will complain about how mind-numbing and spirit crushing the IB program is, if you genuinely ask their opinion, they will all tell you that the IB program is, perhaps, the MOST important thing in their high school life, more than any sport, more than any art, more than any friend, more than any lover. And they're cutting it. Just straight out. They had already cut the GATE program, and now they're cutting the IB program.

Now, I understand we're having a global financial crisis. California has been hit worse than most of the U.S. I understand that, too. I also understand that, because of this, the school district isn't getting as much money as it used to. And I understand the school district can't magically make more money appear, except with taxes, which I wholly oppose anyways. So I understand some cuts have to be made.

Now, here's the part I DON'T understand. Why are we cutting sports, art, P.E., Music, and IB while the school district is building a new district office which costs TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN?!

The total cost of all sports is approximately $750,000 a year. Art, probably $200,000. P.E. and music, maybe $350,000. And I'm just pulling everything besides sports out of my ass.

And IB? IB costs $15,000 a year. Let me repeat that figure for you, for emphasis. $15,000.

The district office costs $25 million dollars to build. It is estimated that it will cost $500,000 a year to maintain. (Okay, the latter figure I pulled out of my ass, too. The former one, I didn't though.)

I went to the old district office, just to see it. Yeah, it's kind of old and ratty. I can understand that a new district office would be nice. I know I wouldn't want to necessarily work in the old one.

But then I remembered the High Schools in our district. They are literally falling apart. 1/10th of our lights simply don't work. The ceilings have stains in them. I could ramble for hours on it, but I'm not going to.

The High Schools are, simply, in worse condition than the old district office. Now, I might be able to understand those who organize our school district need a decent place to work in. However, I don't understand why they need a TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLAR office to work in, with a coffee bar in the lunch room, thousand dollar plus furniture, etc. etc.

One of my teachers, who's experienced more in his life than most ten people have experienced, commented on the situation. "In this school district, education is not about the students. It never has been. Education has been and almost certainly always will be about bureaucracy and appealing to the corrupt officials in City Hall."

So, I decided to go to school board meeting where they would discuss the cuts to the programs. I submitted my "Request To Speak" form before Six P.M., which is supposed to guarantee me three minutes to speak at during the school board meeting. About a hundred other people also submitted Request To Speak forms, which is about ten times more than usual. Now, I had been stressing about this all day long. I wrote a speech, memorized it, actually BOUGHT nice dress clothes JUST for the meeting.

School board meeting starts up. The head of the school board realizes that, if we gave all hundred or so three minutes to speak, we'd never get anywhere. So he suggested that each group of people, such as the sports, the art, the IB, etc., each have a caucus, and elect one or two or three people to speak on behalf of all of them. Those who wished to speak generally would be allowed their individual voices to be heard. I was, as it is, a general speaker. IB was my heart and soul, yes, but I wanted to speak out against ALL of the cuts, and that was my intent.

So, they start up with the individual speakers while the groups are caucusing. I'm nervous, sweating bullets each time they call out a name, hoping and fearing at the same time that it'll be me. I noticed that most of the people going up didn't say too many really... Enticing things. It was all very neutrally said, very wishy-washy. I also noticed that a lot of the people who went up, the school board recognized, and was friendly with. I didn't think about any of this until the head of the school board said "Okay... And that's all the general speakers, let's move onto the caucus'."

Wait a minute. I hadn't been called up. What the fuck?

I got out of there before I felt the need to tackle a school board member.

There was the bullshit of everything, laid out right before me. I always knew politics was a corrupt, dirty business. You could be a sewage worker and be covered in less filth than a politician. But to have corruption to such an extent in a god damned fucking local SCHOOL BOARD?!

That was the night I lost all faith in our political system. I went there to try to make a difference, but they never even let me try.

For a while, I was incensed. I had recently watched Fight Club, and was considering a radical, violent approach, like blowing up their fancy district office they were building, or something like that. Eventually I calmed down and got out of that state of mind (Thank God), but I was still pretty pissed at our entire political system, and society in general for sitting there and taking it.

And then, a couple of weeks later, I finally got around to actually reading the Principia Discordia. I had heard about it in the past, yes, but I never really tried READING it.

And the rest is history. Now I'm where I am right now. Maybe the politicians won't let me speak out at meetings. But by God, let's see if they can keep me from PosterGASMing all over this city.

[/rant]

[Requia ☣]

Stickergasm time.

Print some stickers that say 'program cuts 1 million*'
'new office for the people who made the cuts, 25 million'

*Get real numbers if you can.

Also include the names of the school board members.  Put them *everywhere*.

[Nast]

So they finally did away with the GATE and IB programs?

Cripes, it feels like I've been gone from high school an eternity, what with hearing all about teachers being fired, courses cut, funding denied. I knew that a lot was in shambles from personal experiences (My second year of GATE was a joke), but it seems this year a lot has finally gone down the toilet.

[Requia ☣]

They cut all that in 2004 in my district, year after I left (technically it was still available every other year, but that made meeting the prereqs for the classes impossible for most students).

I'm shocked to hear how cheap the IB program is though.  If the advanced stuff is so incredibly dirt cheap in comparison to other programs why does it seem that its always the first to get cut?

[Doktor Howl]

Now, here's the part I DON'T understand. Why are we cutting sports, art, P.E., Music, and IB while the school district is building a new district office which costs TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN?!

Sports, art, PE, music, and IB don't reward political contributors.

Fat contracts to build offices do.

Thus endeth the lesson.

[Jenne]

We're being told by our district that the rent they pay on two buildings is what causes them to want to buy another site.  I call bullshit, but that's just what it is.

[Suu]

Cutting IB is retarded. I got into IB, but I didn't want to go to the school that had it, so I ended up just doing the honors/AP track, which still shaved a semester off of my college career. It wasn't a full year, but still...

IB is just the program for Nigel's kids, IMO. Again, I'm not telling her how to parent, it's just my side of the argument and my perspective because in the end it is really her choice. IB is what the kids who can't afford to hop out of high school early and go to college need. Same thing with AP, we need to keep programs like that so that the kids can remain driven and ready to go to college.

Art and music...Christ, don't get me started on that. I remember Herbert telling me that he didn't have art in high school after he saw my high school portfolio. I was flabbergasted.  I remember when I was in elementary school, one song that we sang in the school concert was something like "Don't Take My Music From Me". This is something we, as a nation, have been fighting for over 20 years now and it's not getting any better. It was required for me in both middle school and high school to take fine art credits. And I went to FLORIDA schools. Blargh.

Providence public schools are horrendous. I went to a pretty urban school in St. Petersburg where all sorts of bad shit went down, but they really just don't give a fuck up here. Everything up here is controlled by the towns though, not the counties, so it all comes down to how much money the town or city wants to give to their school system, and since the state is so corrupt, politicians would rather pocket the money than do anything like restructure the school systems, oh, but they'll bitch about us out-of-state folks from down yonder with a much inferior education, lemme tell you.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

I am unable to comment because every time I try I start foaming at the mouth and fall on the floor.

Suffice it to say public education in this country is terrible.  I hate hate hate public schooling.

[Doktor Howl]

I am unable to comment because every time I try I start foaming at the mouth and fall on the floor.

Suffice it to say public education in this country is terrible.  I hate hate hate public schooling.

I love the concept of public schooling.  What I hate, is politicians that underfund it and then claim that it never worked, and the hordes of dittoheads that go along with it.  The ultimate goal, of course, is the creation - or rather the formalization - of a permanent educated aristocratic class, and an uneducated peonry. 

[Suu]

We're protected only by the United Nations in that aspect. There is no US Constitutional right to an education. But there should be.