Then again, maybe the kids who go to schools like this run in these circles their whole lives, and that is the real world to them.
One might well regard this as just another cloistering, and also pernicious.
I can report that they can remain cloistered at least until receiving a BA.
Holy crap. At my (public) high school we had to use an indoor olympic size pool, our football field was shared with a university, and we only had four tennis courts. Kids these days, eh ogged?
You'd think that tuition comes with a guarantee that no Iranian horndogs will show up for watersports with the kids, but I guess standards have all gone to hell these days.
a true 50 meter pool? Christ. There wasn't one of those in the entire country I grew up in.
Watersports with the kids is a cherished tradition from the English boarding-school culture, and there's no reason its New World equivalent should mess with what works.
What depresses me: demographics says thirty years from now half those kids are arguing that they are self-made successes, and that the bright kids in the ghetto schools just need to work harder.
Kids these days, eh ogged?
Exactly; even for someone who went to a school that's considered snooty and overprivileged, this place was off the charts.
Then again, maybe the kids who go to schools like this run in these circles their whole lives, and that is the real world to them.
This is the United States, terrorist. We make sure that our kids grow up to be even richer than their parents. Our kids' kids will ride ponies fashioned from platinum to schools with two Olympic-sized pools. That's the fucking American dream; now suck it.
Cala 8:
So true. "Born on third base and think they hit a triple."
Ogged,
Then again, maybe the kids who go to schools like this run in these circles their whole lives, and that is the real world to them.
You have no idea.
Cala, have I ever shared my delightful stories of teaching affirmative action literature at Tony Slac?
It's not the watersports Labs is concerned about, Fatman, it's the Iranian peddler thereof. These kids need to learn to provide for themselves; once they've lost the bloom of adolescence, ogged correspondingly lose interest. You know the saying—piss on a boy, arouse him for a day; teach two boys to piss on eacher other, arouse them both for a lifetime.
Holy shit, is that an extensive campus.
a true 50 meter pool? Christ. There wasn't one of those in the entire country I grew up in.
Gonerill grew up in the antebellum US.
I know at least two people who went to ridiculously over-the-top New England prep schools and turned out just fine, but both were -- or at least considered themselves -- outsiders. I also know people who have gone to schools like this who are really nice and all, but pretty thoroughly unaware of how privileged their lives have been.
Shouldn't this post have the same title as the one immediately below it?
Father Flippanter went to a very fancy New England prep school, back when they were probably even more slavishly attentive to the spirit of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and hated it so much he cannot laugh about it even now. It's one of the few subjects that make him as grim as the Bush Administration.
Although those schools only have six and eight tennis courts, respectively, so maybe that's the difference.
Those links both go to the same place, Sifu.
17: still more evidence for Sifu as member of wealthy New England society elite.
I know at least two people who went to ridiculously over-the-top New England prep schools and turned out just fine
I imagine this depends hugely on the parents and their attitude about privilege -- unless you have Robin Williams for your English teacher, in which case you'll be a generous and free spirit for your entire life.
Funnily enough, my school didn't have any tennis courts.
22: sure, pick on me. What about that scion of prep school elite Flippanter?
21: oh well. If you've seen one New England prep school from space, you've seen them all from space.
I should also mention, PGD, that I'm either a fat, swearing, heavily accented Boston sports fan or a prim, aristocratic New England blueblood. You can't have both.
This is the United States, terrorist. We make sure that our kids grow up to be even richer than their parents
I went to a seminar on generational differences the other day where we learned that of the Boomers, the Gen Xers and the Millennials, the Gen Xers are the only generation that doesn't feel confident that they will be better off than their parents were. Also, Boomers apparently like Millennials better.
hated it so much he cannot laugh about it even now
Wow.
St. Grottingbury*: We'll ruin you for life.
* Goddamnit, can't recall or Google up the accepted made up name.
Our kids' kids will ride ponies
My kids' kids' ponies will ride ponies.
You can't have both.
Barack Obama, the effete, non-bowling 'hood organizer says different.
23: Or you'll shoot yourself and grow up to be Hugh Laurie's sidekick.
i wonder the satellite images are what, real-time?
i looked up my place and there are people walking, i wonder whether they walk right now
it's like a perfect tool for online stalking if real time
maybe i'll ask someone to go outside and wave me
I'm either a fat, swearing, heavily accented Boston sports fan or a prim, aristocratic New England blueblood. You can't have both.
Boston Brahmins have heavy accents, they just don't have heavy working-class accents, and I'm sure they cuss when appropriate.
As for being fat, well, hello, plutocrats are always fat.
Also, Boomers apparently like Millennials better.
If they really loved us, they would make Generation Awesome catch on instead of that damn Millenials tag.
The upper-class New England accent ("the Plimpton") is pretty close to completely gone by this point. I don't think anybody born later than about 1925 grew up talking that way.
At my particular expensive & exclusive boarding school, they would have us wake up at 5:30 in the morning to feed the horses and shovel out the stalls. I carried 2x4s up hillsides to shore up trails, spent weeks in the Sierras & laid concrete with my bare hands.
There were the usual accouterments of privilege, of course. And it was the farthest thing from real life, but I like to think it made us a little more centered than Nearby Seaside Private School With Surfing Team.
Boston Brahmins have heavy accents, they just don't have heavy working-class accents, and I'm sure they cuss when appropriate.
As for being fat, well, hello, plutocrats are always fat.
Yeah, the Monopoly guy is all the evidence you need. Oh, also Charles Emerson Beefo Meaty Fish Jetpack Winchester.
As for being fat, well, hello, plutocrats are always fat.
html hates my fat plutocrat accentless guts.
In any case, Ben is little-bitchily ignoring my actual point, which is that the boorish, Irish sports fan and the stiff, croquet-enthusiast WASP are two archetypes with very little in common besides location and alcoholism.
My mental image of Sifu is identical to the image accompanying the "M" entry of Gorey's The Fatal Lozenge ("The MAGNATE waits upon the pavement / For his enormous limousine, / And ponders further child-enslavement / And other projects still more mean.").
I can't believe that I laughed at the put-down in 40. yet I did. I must go atone.
All the Right People is a fascinating collection of photographs of, and interviews with, bluebloods. (The Amazon page doesn't have much info, but there are a couple of photos and commentary by the photographer, Barbara Norfleet, at the bottom of this page.) Tweety probably knows some of the subjects.
39: What, no golf course? Yes, very salt-of-the-earth.
Sifu wears a tearaway tuxedo at all times. When a championship series is at hand, he pulls at the satin-covered seams and whips the formalwear off to reveal a Celtics jersey thrown over a white Patriots tshirt. Doffing his tophat reveals a backward Red Sox cap. An attendant then steps forward with his plastic cup of Bud Light, collects the shed layers, and presents Sifu with his primo tickets.
Voila, the breathtaking nightly transformation of the pupal Brahmin to a fully matured Masshole.
School here. The wooded area to the right with the lake is a man-made marsh created a couple of hundred years ago for the iron foundry where they made these for use in blowing the crap out of ships in Napoleonic times.
If they really loved us, they would make Generation Awesome catch on
Precisely what the speaker said you kids-these-days think of your entitled little selves....
I didn't go to a private school, but we did have a decent football field.
And only five tennis courts, bitches! Who's down with the gente!?
(the baseball diamonds in the lower-left aren't actually ours, they belong to the Christian school that shared our block.)
Precisely what the speaker said you kids-these-days think of your entitled little selves....
Oh you know you love us.
Here's mine. Note the absence of an Olympic-size pool and the presence of 70s-era modular plastic construction. Although, if you click on the marker labeled "C" then you'll get some genuine Irish culture from a recent school play.
Yeah, well how many of your high schools had a highway rest-stop adjacent?
re: 54
Nope, just the 200 year old iron foundry, and some slag heap type things where they periodically found large quantities of asbestos.
where they periodically found large quantities of asbestos
Which was then mixed in to the school lunches as it was cheaper than cornstarch and widely believed to be more nutritious.
48, 53: Yeah, but you guys really do have nice football pitches. Well-maintained, properly verdant... I'm jealous.
I just don't know how someone could go through high school with any fewer than 10 tennis courts. The football field is looking a little embarrassingly ratty these days, though.
Nope, just the 200 year old iron foundry, and some slag heap type things where they periodically found large quantities of asbestos.
Eh: Itinerant hobos vs. slag heaps. Toss up.
I know a dude who went to the school Ogged swam at, and he's a great guy, completely unassuming. Same with dozens of other day students at similarly fancy schools.
I know maybe a dozen boarding school grads. Probably ten had (at least in college) serious drug/alcohol issues. My lesson: there's something especially nasty about sending your kids off to live with a bunch of other privileged kids. If you keep them at home, at least you can remind them every night or two that they're lucky as hell to be where they are.
To complete the loop from my #60: I think a good hunk of the drug/alcohol issues from boarding school kids were emotional issues specific to them -- correlation with boarding, or causation? I don't know.
Another big driver in that is that it seems like one of the main things you learn at boarding schools is how to get ahold of and take drugs, and drink yourself silly.
52: Nah, my generation is too bitter to know love. But at least I can take comfort that my HS had twice as many tennis courts as your HS...
Hey, high school conversations were what originally sucked me in to unfogged.
Here's my gritty prep school (no tennis, not much grass on the football field):
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=19+eye+st.+nw,+washington,+dc&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=47.617464,76.992187&ie=UTF8&ll=38.901491,-77.010534&spn=0.002876,0.004699&t=h&z=18
Di and PoMo seem to have gone to the same high school. Is that IMSA?
The (free, state-sponsored) boarding school I briefly attended before being expelled for misbehavior. No pool or riding facilities, but we did have a scanning electron microscope and a Buchla 400.
Di, the only concept of "love" Generaton Awesome can experience for other people (as opposed to machines) is "sexual love". Surely your generation isn't too bitter for _that_.
46: Nope, but golf carts for the gourmet kitchen & sports injuries.
61: Not at all in my particular cloistered bastion, but all the anecdotal data from elsewhere suggests that 70% of the kids get pretty fucked up out at boarding school, yeah, usually because cocaine gets used as a performance enhancer & kids are fighting tooth and nail for class rank.
I went to a rather posh private high school, the sort that the hippies who grew up and found themselves wealthy sent their children to, and we didn't have tennis courts, swimming pools, or fields. The absence of that swag, however, does not mean that I understood how privileged I was. It wasn't until my college year abroad that I began to socialise with working-class people; I simply hadn't met non-college-educated people until then.
I recently learned that I know a Trevian.
25: Don't look at me: I went to a lousy public high school in White Flight City!
64: Indeed, those 7 X-shaped buildings around the center and right were the dorms where they kept us.
Here's mine. 7 tennis courts, but no pool. I'm pretty sure my husband's far fancier private school had no tennis courts or fields---a function of being in NYC & having 1/6 as many students per class.
28: I'm not exaggerating for comic effect. He can laugh about all sorts of unhappy things now, from my grandparents communicating for years solely by means of typed notes left on the kitchen table to the Christmas when one sibling got 2x the number of presents received by the others combined, but any reference to his prep school shuts him down.
Yes, that is what I meant, ogged.
None of you went to rich PUBLIC high schools?
That you lacked a retractable domed football field makes me sneer.
Only 7 tennis courts though (4 baseball diamonds!)
None of you went to rich PUBLIC high schools?
That's what New Trier is. Here.
Mine. No tennis courts, no swimming pool. The student body ranged from dirt-poor farm kids to the kids of millionaire families who lived on Lake Champlain.
On the lower right you can make out a cemetery bordered by a row of maples. During track practice in early spring, we used to duck up there and drink from the sap buckets.
the hippies who grew up and found themselves wealthy
Doesn't this usually happen in the other order: found themselves wealthy and grew up to be hippies?
None of you went to rich PUBLIC high schools?
Both Apo and I did. Public schools with entrance exams, but still, (more or less) free to anyone who got in.
Tennis courts? Pools? I think I managed to get to college before even finding out that high schools EVER had that kind of thing. You're all the scions of privilege.
my school, across the street from a skeevy strip mall.
64: Doh! No, it appears that Di just can't link... My HS was way better than PoMo's!
I wanted to feel special, but obviously, that's wrong.
No entrance exams at mine, but the teachers were good enough that everyone got carried way, way up.
I want to know when a retractable domed field stopped being excessive for a public high school. There was little public outrage when it went up.
There was little public outrage when it went up.
From your link: "The dome is paid for completely by rental fees and does not require any tax dollars for its operation."
82: Holy crap, that school building looks HUGE! And only a few miles south of the gigantor Stevenson High, too. What school is that and how many students did you guys have?
I went to a public school which was probably rich.
Well-maintained, properly verdant... I'm jealous.
Entirely due to the fact that we both come from countries with massive rainfall. Verdant is the default.
school which was
I recognize this as bait, young Ben, and might even take it, were I not off to swim.
No entrance exams at mine
Mine was an 11th-12th grade program that took kids from all over North Carolina. The entrance exam was the SAT, which you took as a sophomore. I never took it again because I totally spaced on the day I had registered to take it my senior year, and ended up just submitting those scores when I applied to college.
Doesn't this usually happen in the other order: found themselves wealthy and grew up to be hippies?
I doubt it. At least, that doesn't mesh with vast majority of `hippies' I've met. Could just be selection bias.
I went to a famous and posh New England boarding school, and my wife went to a different one. Happy to field any and all questions about the fucked-uppidness!
Basically, it was simultaneously confidence building and confidence destroying. It was depressing at the time and since to be told how awesome you and your peers were and how likely you were to rule the world and what an incredible weight of privilege you had, when obviously you yourself were just a screwed up little teenager and were likely to do less well than your parents. And I have!
But it also made college much easier and created a lasting sheen of confidence (which I hope isn't just assholishness) that's proven useful in later life. Whether this was a good use of my folk's money, who's to say.
76: S/hakers H/eight High School, class of '87. No retracting football stadium when I was there. Now? Maybe.
87: What struck me with your link was how much greener the pitch looked than the rest of the surrounding fields.
90: Yeah, IMSA used the SATs as well. Handy stuff, even if it embarrassed some kids who needed to take it 2-3 times as a junior/senior to get better scores than they did as an applying freshman.
65: Boy, with that short porch in RF, I would imagine they really recruited lefties.
re: 94
Those aren't really good pieces of land [the surrounding land]. Partly overgrown landfill and slag heaps from the iron works, and partly swamp with dried out reed beds. Although the photo looks like it's mid-summer so the pitch was probably watered so would be a bit greener anyway.
I went to a rich public high school, it's fair to say.
I recognize this as bait, young Ben, and might even take it, were I not off to swim.
Because there's something wrong with the phrase "school which was"? Because if it had been, it would still be?
85: Around 2500 students now, HS from which Sen. Clinton graduated...
jeebus, some of you lot went to nice schools. The one I sort-of went to had a nice machine shop.
You all are so weird.
I went to a totally normal, suburban American HS*. I mean, richer than inner city, but that's about it. Typing classes and auto shop and "co-op" for seniors that let kids get an early start in such rewarding fields such as grocery stocking.
Also, only 4 classrooms had windows, but that's just fucked-up 70s architecture.
* That other building to the east is the middle school. And I'm pretty sure the nicer-looking ballfield is new.l
Another big driver in that is that it seems like one of the main things you learn at boarding schools is how to get ahold of and take drugs, and drink yourself silly.
"That's why they're considered "college prep" schools.
You all are so weird.
Surely you'd realized that before today.
Surely you'd realized that before today.
But I thought it was along a different axis.
102 is funny.
It was depressing at the time and since to be told how awesome you and your peers were and how likely you were to rule the world and what an incredible weight of privilege you had, when obviously you yourself were just a screwed up little teenager and were likely to do less well than your parents. And I have!
You see, this is exactly how prep schools give kids a head start in life. I had to wait until I college to have this experience.
My high school. Four tennis courts, no pool (we shared one with a school across town). But it's very green!
I attended the kind of schools that conservatives are thinking of when they say things like, "It might have lacked for certain luxuries, but the students respected the teachers and there was discipline in the classrooms."
The school buildings in the schools I attended were over 50 years old at the time. All of them have since been condemned and razed. One of my classrooms was in a basement next to an open coal furnace, its sulphuric fumes filling the room and turning the crayon-drawings on the wall yellowish brown. Another classroom was in a trailer (as in a mobile home).
All the facilities were constructed when coal heat was cheap and electric lighting was expensive (and air conditioning non-existent), so they were built with huge expanses of ancient glass windows to allow in the light. Post-energy crisis, we shivered through the winter and suffered through the hotter months as the sun poured through the unshaded windows.
The ancient plumbing made the bathrooms putrid. The elementary school boys room had a homemade urinal made of a bisected galvanized tank that we called "the trough". In junior high, the newest part of the school was the athletic dressing room, so everyone went out of their way to use the facilities there.
To anyone who says "we've tried throwing money at the schools, and it hasn't done a damn thing," I say "Try throwing some more. Like, lots more. Then let's talk."
until I college to have this experience.
And as you can see, I still haven't mastered the English language.
Geez, I went to a prep school, but it didn't even have a track. Check out the football field. Where are the stands? Correct, it is that metal rectangle to the bottom right.
My dad attended a one-room school. He used to walk two miles, each way, in moccasins. And since the two hours of sunlight each day came around noon, he' be inside for them. His teachers were drunks and imbeciles, but if you disrespected them, your parents would find out and tan your hide.
When I was younger and we went through small towns on family vacations and I would muse about what it would be like to grow up there, my dad would get uncharacteristically reflective and reply "lots of boredom and aimlessly stupid bad news, no, don't romanticise it."
JM, it's more amusing to think that it was you who went to the one-room school up in the Yukon, being tracked by bears and wolves coming and going.
"we've tried throwing money at the schools, and it hasn't done a damn thing,"
It is, of course, self-evident that money alonewon't fix the more stubborn structural problems of our educational system (or anything else, for that matter). You know what else has been proven time and again not to work, though? Not throwing money at them.
The elementary school boys room had a homemade urinal made of a bisected galvanized tank that we called "the trough"
Hey, trough urinals have an august history. Fenway had 'em up until like a decade ago.
Mine was an 11th-12th grade program that took kids from all over North Carolina.
Hey, I know a couple of people who went there! (It must be the same place, how many could there be?)
Mine had and has a range from upper middle down to lower middle, although it was pretty toney for a public high school in that city. I was isolated and a misfit there, and probably would have been anywhere. The teaching wasn't outstanding and only occasionally good; I was bored all the time. Not an exciting place to spend the late sixties.
Mine served students separated by up to ~40 miles. Poor bastards in Wolf Creek had a miserable bus ride.
Po-Mo,
If they really loved us, they would make Generation Awesome catch on instead of that damn Millenials tag.
Sorry darling, but we never get to declare our own nicknames. I never liked "Baby boomer."
You are still my favorite though. Now here's a cookie and go play with your friends.
Another classroom was in a trailer (as in a mobile home).
This is pretty common even at richer schools because there's so much overcrowding.
To anyone who says "we've tried throwing money at the schools, and it hasn't done a damn thing," . . .
I say "well duh!" I tried throwing money at my school once and the friggin' principal nicked me for pitching pennies!
Which reminds me, does anyone pitch pennies (or quarters or whatever) anymore?
105: You see, this is exactly how prep schools give kids a head start in life. I had to wait until I college to have this experience.
Yep. The result is, in some of us, a sort of schizophrenia about whether we're properly to be ruling the world, and a sneering disdain for the very suggestion. But we've talked about that sort of thing before here -- ttaM, I think, also described himself as one of these in-betweeners, or cross-overs (I've forgotten the term we were using for working class people who wind up highly educated, and ultimately deeply ambivalent over both identities).
As an Exeter grad and someone who did consider going to Menlo at the tender age of 14, I have to say, Exeter churns out far more well rounded kids than your average provincial public high school. We went to class with kids of every ilk and background, all of whom were competing with their brains, not their money (which didn't matter for shit at a boarding school, since we couldn't have cars, we all wore basically the same clothes, couldn't have furniture or special things for our rooms.) It was at Exeter I learned to think critically-and the responsibility I had to the world. More than you can say about the average all white or all black or all mexican or all anything local high school
J.
As an Exeter grad and someone who did consider going to Menlo at the tender age of 14, I have to say, Exeter churns out far more well rounded kids than your average provincial public high school. We went to class with kids of every ilk and background, all of whom were competing with their brains, not their money (which didn't matter for shit at a boarding school, since we couldn't have cars, we all wore basically the same clothes, couldn't have furniture or special things for our rooms.) It was at Exeter I learned to think critically-and the responsibility I had to the world. More than you can say about the average all white or all black or all mexican or all anything local high school
J.
As an Exeter grad and someone who did consider going to Menlo at the tender age of 14, I have to say, Exeter churns out far more well rounded kids than your average provincial public high school. We went to class with kids of every ilk and background, all of whom were competing with their brains, not their money (which didn't matter for shit at a boarding school, since we couldn't have cars, we all wore basically the same clothes, couldn't have furniture or special things for our rooms.) It was at Exeter I learned to think critically-and the responsibility I had to the world. More than you can say about the average all white or all black or all mexican or all anything local high school
J.
This is pretty common even at richer schools because there's so much overcrowding.
That's because the Millenials outnumber the Boomers. And who'd going to get stuck taking care of their aging Boomer parents while simultaneously putting their Millenial offspring through college? Yeah, that's right, Gen X. And what are the odds that anyone will even appreciated it? Hmpf.
117: It's not even just `overcrowding' anymore. I was talking to someone who builds elementary schools in suburbs, and he was saying they typically intentionally underbuild now with portables/trailers to take up the slack, because the schools always get built as an area fills out. This involves a population bubble of school age kids, so typically 10 years in the school has a smaller population....
Of course it didn't help me learn not to overpost...slinking away...
Exeter grads, however, tend to repeat themselves.
When the terribel day comes, I definitely plan not to appreciate Gen X. The motherfuckers.
My supposedly good public high school in a rich county of Northern VA was stupid and soul-crushing. It would have been a lot worse if I hadn't had a Unitarian youth group to validate that I wasn't insane or alone in the world. (Okay, I'm exaggerating how bad it was, but it sucked.)
I had a handful of good teachers and was and am committed to public schools, but once I got to 0berlin and learned about some of the groovy (as opposed to status-conscious) private schools in the area and I was incredibly jealous. Interesting electives! Critical thinking! No football or prostelytizing Christian youth groups!
described himself as one of these in-betweeners, or cross-overs
Yeah, we've a few here. Apparently handily outnumbered if this thread is anything to go on.
106 - KR:
Years ago I did part of my bleeding heart thing by going with a group into the elementary schools to teach them about inappropriate touch. (Yes, I know, the jokes really do write themselves.)
Doing that over the course of a year I saw probably dozens of the Elementary schools in our area.
A couple of those school sound like your school building and when the School Board tried to raise money to fix them up or build a new school there were some skinflints claiming the buildings were "fine" and there were still plenty of places to "cut back."
I wanted to take every single person who said that and bring them to the school to see for themselves because they were spouting BS and nothing else.
The place was a dump and so overcrowded some classes were held in a hallway and it had leaky ceilings and it smelled.
120 through 122 are cracking me up.
Sir Kraab, As far as I can see stupid and soul crushing is the default state for high schools. It takes serious, backbreaking effort for one not to be.
Yeah my high school was pretty much stupid and soul-crushing, highly regarded public school committed to diversity, academic excellence and blah blah blah though it was.
On the other hand, it served as the backdrop for a certain oscar-winning actress's execrable first star turn, so.
"Little boy, in six to eight years inappropriate touch will be the very focus of your existence. But not yet, we hope."
"The Joy of Inappropriate Touch".
128:
No football or prostelytizing Christian youth groups!
Hey. HEY. C'mon man, no digging on football, OK? If you meant soccer well then go right ahead.
135:
John,
I'll lob them in over the plate, you knock them out of the park.
Deal?
I didn't even own a rich private high school.
Did the talk about inappropriate touching involve the song whose chorus goes like this: "My body's/ Nobody's/ Body but mine!/ You have/ Your own body;/ Let me have mine!"?
Interesting electives!
Ooh, we did have those. Mind-body research! Semiotics! Architectural drafting!
I knew a bunch of people who went to this prep school, which was in theory groovy and alternative but was in practice warehousing for the fucked-up pot-smoking children of rich suburbanites. I kind of wanted to go there when my friends were there, but in the end I'm glad I didn't.
I should also mention, PGD, that I'm either a fat, swearing, heavily accented Boston sports fan or a prim, aristocratic New England blueblood. You can't have both.
You could be every noxious New England stereotype rolled up into big, horrifying ball.
Another classroom was in a trailer (as in a mobile home)
This is beginning to sound like the Four Yorkshiremen sketch. Mine wasn't as bad as KR's, but we also had "the temps," so-called temporary classrooms that had been in use for about 15 years by the time I got there. They were in a double-wide attached to the main structure, and they were bone-crunching cold in the winter, but we figured out that you could get a little more heat by packing snow around the thermostats.
132: I know you're right, especially for all of us smart, sophisticated iconoclasts who bravely challenge the prevailing hegemony and suffer as no one has before or after.
I suppose we all imagine we're James Dean, one of the Breakfast Club, or Enid from Ghost World, depending on generation.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
120 sounds a bit like a brochure. 121 and 122 increase this effect.
145: yes.
141: with an amazing girlfriend; where's the justice?
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
Me me me!
Actually, my high school is looking pretty nice these days. That plaza-like area just north of the track was a crappy building when I was there; a year or two after I left someone torched it and they had to tear it down. The whole northeast corner looks completely different now - there was a hideous cafeteria building over there when I was a student and it was closed down for earthquake-related reconstruction. There was also parking along that northeast side which now seems to have been moved to the tennis courts, which probably aren't used much for tennis anymore. And the track was a not entirely even asphalt surface when I was there. Street view reveals a high school I can't even recognize.
committed to diversity
Ha! Never was such a phrase uttered in my hallowed halls.
no digging on football, OK?
You can have your little football games as long as the rest of us aren't required to attend pep rallies.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
Mine was, in fact, the ordinary public high school in my zip code. Lots of non-special kids.
every noxious New England stereotype
What about the flinty Yankee who is taciturn to the point of disability?
144: Nah, I was just a self-centered brat bored enough to drop out.
But seriously, I think the role HS is currently asked to play is almost impossible, and by default they lack both the resources and mandate to do something better. So they suck by default.
Another classroom was in a trailer (as in a mobile home)
Mobile HOME? Luxury! Our classrooms were in cars with the windshields broken out.
Lake Wobegon HS was unstimulating but unproblematic. By now it's actually quite good. There was some problem with bullying back in the day, but I don't think that it was tolerated the way you hear about today in some schools. I know of several kids from dirt-poor families who came out of the school with a pretty good education and did well in life.
You could be every noxious New England stereotype rolled up into big, horrifying ball.
Beefo Meaty, taciturn dairy farmer.
Beefo Meaty, back-to-the-land organic gardener hippie type originally from New York City.
Beefo Meaty, guy in rocking chair on porch who feeds you laconic one-liners when all you want is goddamn directions.
Oh, and Frontline did a documentary on race relations at my high school.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
Yes, although we were encouraged to regard it as "The School That Leads."
just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
Yup, me too.
Beefo Meaty, braying mainstream comic.
Beefo Meaty, revolutionary war hero.
Beefo Meaty, subaru-driving lesbian mother.
145 see 101.
But we appear to be the minority.
I feel so oppressed.
I would note that people whose "just for whoever happened to live in that zip code" school was nonetheless impressive were most likely housed in that district for the express purpose of attending said school.
Suburban RE agents are completely obsessed with school rankings and the like.
153: Yeah, but you're Canadian. Doesn't count.
The normal public high school in my zip code was pretty good. Unfortunately, my address was zoned so that we were supposed to go to the public high school ten miles away, a not-so-good school with razor-wire fences and regular gang shootings. No way to transfer to the school we could walk to, not without filing a sham address or something.
120-22 --
Oh boy do I ever disagree with the sentiment that elite boarding schools are a good move and create well rounded people as a general proposition, although obviously I can't speak to what worked for you.
During one period Wobegon inappropriate touching training was one-on-one in the principal's office with the door closed. IYKWIM. We couldn't afford fancy-pants consultants like Tripp who had really mastered inappropriate touch.
I would note that people whose "just for whoever happened to live in that zip code" school was nonetheless impressive were most likely housed in that district for the express purpose of attending said school.
Got me there. Housed on the distant edge of that district, which was the only remotely affordable part, in point of fact.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town?
All but the one semester I was at smart kid school, yes.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
yes
153: Yeah, but you're Canadian. Doesn't count.
Biscuit too!?
Verily, They walk among us.
Whatever that Berkeley elementary school is that is completely made of temporary buildings is still grotting along strong.
||
I always knew I liked John Cusack.
|>
I would note that people whose "just for whoever happened to live in that zip code" school was nonetheless impressive were most likely housed in that district for the express purpose of attending said school.
Indeed. We moved to that zip code when my eldest sibling entered HS.
166: Me too. We moved out of a zip code near Jackmormon's to change school districts (also probably to avoid cost of private schools too, and to get closer to my parents' workplaces). I went to private schools k-5th grade, public thereafter.
162: It's been shown by science that Canadians can count up to four.
NCP, I just met your new baby. Looks like part of you fell off and starting sprouting. You sure L is the mom?
I think the story is that the original group of buildings in my posh private high school were temporary buildings that were later made a little more stable and permanent.
Beefo Meaty, stiff-necked Protestant minister.
Beefo Meaty, smiling church lady and baker of pies.
Beefo Meaty, proprietor of a bar decorated in a style so self-consciously Irish it would embarrass Yeats.
Beefo Meaty, mob-connected local politician.
Beefo Meaty, massively over-budget highway project.
Beefo Meaty, teenaged witch.
Beefo Meaty, murderous Irish gangster from Southie
Beefo Meaty, smug and dickish Harvard Law student
Beefo Meaty, Brookline liberal and card-carrying member of the ACLU
Beefo Meaty, obnoxious Masshole in baseball cap.
120-122: My father's reaction to his experience, and my reaction to the Exeter and Andover tools I met in college, suggest that most prep schools would be much improved by two scoops of plastic explosive, but I'll take your word for it.
180 was me.
Note how many obnoxious New England stereotypes there are! Nobody's been pwned yet! This tells you something.
176: Yeah, well, we're hoping Lil Baby NCP will grow out of it soon.
I would note that people whose "just for whoever happened to live in that zip code" school was nonetheless impressive were most likely housed in that district for the express purpose of attending said school.
I don't know if we did or not. Nothing was said about it, and we looked at houses in other parts of town every so often. We stayed in the same school district while my sister and I were in HS, moving three times, but may have been there in the first place more or less fortuitously.
Just because:
It was at Exeter I learned to think critically-and the responsibility I had to the world. More than you can say about the average all white or all black or all mexican or all anything local high school
card-carrying member of the ACLU
That's obnoxious?
More than you can say about the average all white or all black or all mexican or all anything local high school
Who here went to an ALL AMERICAN high school? USA!
We stayed in the same school district while my sister and I were in HS, moving three times
Worst. Witness Protection Program. Ever.
181: See Lindsay Anderson's if.....
Beefo Meaty, pink-shirted Berkshire antiques dealer.
Beefo Meaty, bed-and-breakfast owner.
Beefo Meaty, tax-and-spend liberal.
Beefo Meaty, still aggrieved by the Quabbin flooding, damn it!
Beefo Meaty, massively over-budget highway project.
Yay.
I'm thrilled to observe that none of the obnoxious New England stereotypes thus far mentioned describes me. Woo-hoo!
And didn't anyone just go to the only public high school in their town? What's this zip codes business?
186: well, to somebody .
178-179 werethe best.
Another classroom was in a trailer (as in a mobile home)
The middle school I attended used those. I remember that a kid put his foot through the floor during English class once. (That year was awful. I had transferred from a large central school with every desirable program and facility to a school that was, literally, a dump. I hated every moment of it. Now I realize that I probably expressed my child-like disapproval much too freely.)
Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids
Mine was excedingly non-special ed.
And didn't anyone just go to the only public high school in their town?
Well, the only one that wasn't a vocational school, yes.
That's obnoxious?
Well, if you're always flashing the card like you're the one who's securing everyone else's civil liberties.
"Oh no, go ahead and tell us what you really think about Bush. It's OK - *card-flash* - I'm a member of the ACLU."
Beefo Meaty, salty-tongued lobsterman.
Beefo Meaty, Subaru-driving married lesbian mother.
Beefo Meaty, collapsed granite mountain face.
the only public high school in their town
My town not only had multiple high schools, it had two entirely separate school systems.
One of the New England stereotypes in fact describes me fairly exactly. Betcha can't guess which!
Beefo Meaty, writer of lyrical odes to the Red Sox
Beefo Meaty, man-hating lesbian from Northampton
Beefo Meaty, drunk BU student in Kenmore Square
And didn't anyone just go to the only public high school in their town? What's this zip codes business?
I think Cala was just covering people who were in towns with multiple HSes, and could have been bused to the schmancy one across town.
I will admit that we really, really don't want Iris to go to the HS in our Zip - it's pretty impressively shitty, even by Scary Urban School District Standards. But I suspect something will have changed when it becomes a live issue in 10 years.
Beefo Meaty, author of Blueberries for Sal, The Education of Henry Adams and The House of Seven Gables.
Beefo Meaty, one-legged, obsessed, bitter Nantucket whaler captain.
Beefo Meaty, merchant prince of the nineteenth-century firearms industry.
Beefo Meaty, cheesemaker.
145: yep. I think if it as pretty Average Public School, but it was probably only average for a NYC suburb. The town is unusually diverse for Long Island, but still has high median income, lots of AP classes, etc.
it had two entirely separate school systems.
I had no idea apo grew up before Brown vs. Board of Ed..
192 before I saw 190.
So does parsimon run a B&B, or still upset about Squabbin?
Beefo Meaty, noted abolitionist.
Beefo Meaty, crappy 70s arena rock band.
Beefo Meaty, minor Kennedy.
Beefo Meaty, in the hands of an angry God.
Beefo Meaty, selective liberal arts college.
Beefo Meaty, fall foliage.
I will admit that we really, really don't want Iris to go to the HS in our Zip - it's pretty impressively shitty, even by Scary Urban School District Standards.
Since I'm from Pgh, now I'm wondering which school this is.
Beefo Meaty, misanthropic scion of pencil-making magnates.
Beefo Meaty, slave martyr of the Revolution.
Beefo Meaty, hometown catcher made good.
207: More on-target than you might think, JRoth. The city school system was 95% black and the lowest performing in the state. The county system (which included select within-city-limits neighborhoods) was 70% white and pretty decent. They have since been merged into a single school system.
This has been some interesting clicking. Here's mine. The cluster in the upper right was my (all male) school. My senior year it merged with the all female school in the lower right, and a few years ago they built the enormous buildings in the middle.
One of the New England stereotypes in fact describes me fairly exactly. Betcha can't guess which!
208: If you count old books as a subcategory of antiques, all that's left is confirmation that she wears a pink shirt. Which somehow I find improbable.
My senior year it merged with the all female school in the lower right, and a few years ago they built the enormous buildings in the middle.
So schools ... can breed?
Oh, and sorry about the non-parallel structure in 208. I couldn't fix it in a timely fashion.
211: Here.
213: Woof. I was decently well-served by the Miami school system, which was (I think) County-wide. I think they bused within regions, so that everyone who would end up at PSHS would go through a series of schools that were, themselves, integrated by busing one way or the other, but were always nearby-ish. So there was geographic continuity, but not de facto segregation from housing patterns.
216 is somehow the funniest of them all.
211: I am going to guess either Westingbody or Peahouse. (I think Schenley closes this year.)
re: 119
Yeah, working class family [although we were a household with lots of books] and a working class area. As you say, it's a strange position to be in. You don't really feel entirely in either 'camp'.
Scotland doesn't have grammar schools, or magnet schools or anything like that. It's a fully comprehensive system. So the intake for the school basically comprised all the kids who lived within the catchment area. As a result my high-school had a fairly mixed intake, with both very poor kids from very rough backgrounds, lots of solidly working class kids and quite a few middle-class kids from comfortably off families. So I wouldn't describe it as a bad school, it was fairly balanced and the teaching was pretty decent, I think.
My school. Suburban, Catholic, went there largely because of family tradition and my parents' belief in the importance of there being a religious component to one's education. (They were probably weren't expecting that my HS religion classes would spend more time on meditation, "practice marriages" with egg babies, and discussions of the morality of capital punishment than on genuine theological education.) Zero tennis courts.
It was a good enough school, with some genuinely good faculty and some who clearly were teaching for lack of anything better to do, but it definitely had a higher opinion of its own quality than it should have had, as I found out when I went to college and met people from truly top notch high schools.
There is a Facebook group called "I went to a real public school, bitch!" that was formed in reaction to the original "I went to a public school, bitch!" group. I like this.schools.
Beefo Meaty, hanged for inappropriate touching of an underage sheep.
Beefo Meaty, aggrieved white Southie resident turned to violence against the coloreds
Beefo Meaty, absent-minded, pipe-smoking, bearded professor wearing a courduroy jacket with leather patches on the sleeves
Beefo Meaty, sun-dappled yachtsman
Beefo Meaty, talented only child of a widowed mother who takes a wartime commission in the army and requests combat deployment out of a sense of duty.
My high school. There was only one drive-by shooting in school hours during my four years there.
Yeah, yesterday was the last day ever for Schenley - (many of the) poor bastards are being sent to Reizenestein, which was a shitty enough MS. There's talk that it might benefit from now being surrounded by tony development, but I don't buy it.
Beefo Meaty, talented only child of a widowed mother who takes a wartime commission in the army and requests combat deployment out of a sense of duty.
Beefo Meaty, made famous by Bernard Williams.
I went to Reizenstein, and actually, for me it was GREAT, despite its relative poverty and occasional knife fight. Everyone I know is really sad about Schenley.
Ordinary rather decrepit public high school in a one high school suburb. No tennis courts, no pool, and in 1980 no air conditioning. also no student parking available or needed, but lots of bike racks. No electric typewriters in typing class, archaic even back then, and no electric guitars in music class.
only one drive-by shooting in school hours during my four years there
We had a grisly on-campus shooting my senior year.
for me it was GREAT, despite its relative poverty and occasional knife fight
That, of course, was about twenty years ago.
217: If you count old books as a subcategory of antiques, all that's left is confirmation that she wears a pink shirt. Which somehow I find improbable.
You bet it's improbable. Honestly, the whole run of stereotypes is making me increasingly homesick, but 190 made me gulp. The Berkshires are so lovely; running a B&B is a fool's game, but romantic as hell; some areas of New England are just sort of slowed down and smiley. There's a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in Great Barrington (or Stockbridge, I forget), and the husband of the proprietor plays in a funk band; there's a microbrewery at the base of some foothills, and some extensive botanical gardens with outdoor sculptures .... Sigh.
232: we didn't have student parking either. The concept has always struck me as odd.
My school, the public school for my hometown. The greenhouse on the southeast side of the parking lot -- there are school buses next to it now -- was built just a year or two after I graduated, I think.
At the moment, the satellite imagine of my hometown is much lighter east of the school than west. I've almost never used the Google maps satellite thing; does anyone know why that is? Maybe it's a composite of pictures taken on different days or something? Interesting.
Got me there. ... the only remotely affordable part, in point of fact.
Yeah, that was me, too. One of the only rental apartments in the district. Since converted to condos, of course.
215:
That was lobster pot
So awesome.
I have a nostalgic craving for a basket of fried clams and a lobster roll, but I live in a foreign land.
At the moment, the satellite imagine of my hometown is much lighter east of the school than west.
I assume that's where Whitey lives.
238: I remember that some of my classmates thought I lived "in the projects"; no way, man, I lived next to the projects!
239: dammit! Now I do, too, but that delicacy is easily within my grasp, yet totally bad for me.
Actually I'm not quite sure where to get fried clams within walking distance. I betcha I'm going to have a lobster roll later, though.
Beefo Meaty, uncomfortably hostile to fluoridation.
Beefo Meaty, failing to assimilate the mid-century Puerto Rican influx for six decades and counting.
Beefo Meaty, arguing that downtown Amherst has plenty of parking, damn it.
My HS. At least one of those fields has got to be new, though really, it's not as if I spent any time out there. I nearly didn't graduate for want of PE credits.
245: hah, I regularly failed gym because I would never bring shorts to change into; I only graduated by faking an independent study course in Ultimate Frisbee.
According to wikipedia, Dita von Teese went to my high school.
240: In Vermont? There and everywhere else.
246: a murderous dickish Irish Harvard Law gangster from South Brookline in an ACLU baseball cap?
239: I have a nostalgic craving for a basket of fried clams and a lobster roll
Ah -- Jesus, I'd forgotten you're a transplant over there. I wondered why you knew about the Old Man in the Mountain -- the collapsed granite mountain face. (Wondered whether this had somehow made national news, to my astonishment.)
In Vermont?
I think you may have the wrong link in 237, then.
Beefo Meaty, savage Nor'easter
Beefo Meaty, rocky coast
Beefo Meaty, early primary that saves Hillary Clinton's candidacy.
I would note that people whose "just for whoever happened to live in that zip code" school was nonetheless impressive were most likely housed in that district for the express purpose of attending said school.
I had a comment that I meant to post but apparently didn't that said that. I was just curious to what extent the extent having the hometown high school be your high school was a common experience. Not making any kind of holier-than-thou kind of claim.
My parents moved out of the slightly tonier district next door into the district where I attended high school, because that's where my dad grew up, but the school was still excellent. The district has also become a lot wealthier in just the past ten years. We'd usually send one kid per year to the Ivy or equivalent when I was there; it's now closer to ten or twenty.
251: it did make national news, actually.
Ben's high school had a lot of parking.
A good chunk of famous people went to my high school -- I even knew one of them (he went to my elementary school, too) -- but if I said who then it'd be too darn obvious what school it was.
251: It had, actually, but I drove by there the summer after it happened and saw firsthand. Silly to be sad over geological processes, but it was a bit of a sad sight. Not so sad as the proposals to rebuild it, though.
2 of my grad school classmates went to Ben's HS.
...and the guy who has the desk next to me, now that I think of it.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
I did, but it was generally a pretty rich zip code, so.
I wondered why you knew about the Old Man in the Mountain -- the collapsed granite mountain face. (Wondered whether this had somehow made national news, to my astonishment.)
It made national news when it collapsed something like one year after it was featured on the state quarter. It will live forever in our coin purses.
258: We New Englanders do not quibble over our prepositions, Flip.
The cluster in the upper right was my (all male) school. My senior year it merged with the all female school in the lower right, and a few years ago they built the enormous buildings in the middle.
Wow - the story of the American Nuclear Family(TM) told with buildings. Impressive.
Didn't somebody here go to Lick-Wilmerding? (I don't really care, but who can resist the opportunity to mention Lick-Wilmerding?)
265: We do if we also belong to the Hashashin!
245: say, Ben, what liquid is in the bright green lake by your high school? It doesn't appear to be water.
Went to the middle school that was the district rival of my father's middle school. The basketball uniforms had not changed in all those years. Oh, the tragic riding-up.
269: That's what happens when runoff pools are built four feet deep and hold as much algae as water. They're brilliant arguments for why asphalt sprawl should be discouraged at every juncture.
269: Brawndo, the Thirst Mutilator.
The guy who was president of my senior class is now a U.S. Senator. Not that surprising as his dad was a U.S. Senator too.
274: Now I'm just picturing James Carville managing Chelsea Clinton's campaign for the school presidency. Nice.
259. If we don't rebuild it, the geologists win.
I was waiting for them to recall the quarter.
275: He was definitely a natural politician, but he ran an entirely positive (and issue-free) campaign.
I always knew I liked John Cusack.
Don't tell the trevian.
I suppose we all imagine we're James Dean, one of the Breakfast Club, or Enid from Ghost World, depending on generation.
Not to get all Four Yorkshiremen on you again, but I viewed The Breakfast Club with longing and envy. What a great school! What cool, good-looking people! I didn't identify with the alienation-from-parents theme or the school-is-pointlessly-authoritarian themes *at all*. The only HS movie that I ever found familiar was All the Right Moves.
267: A couple of my friends went there. I guess it worked out well for them and they definitely wanted to go there and enjoyed it, but it always seemed odd to me since my family moved to get into the school district they were getting out of. They also has some long transbay commute.
Have the stereotypes from The Breakfast Club expired in modern-day high schools? I wonder if they're all referencing The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants now.
283: There are still some boys at the more upper-crust public high schools.
But yes, the stereotypes aren't so much there anymore. Drug use being somehow associated with being an outcast, for example.
Or Emilio Estevez being associated with coolness.
A new sterotype might be the strident Christian type.
A new sterotype might be the strident Christian type.
It ain't new down here.
A new sterotype might be the strident Christian type.
e.g., Saved!
Ben's high school had a lot of parking.
More now than when I went there.
The 'corn as adjunct' line made me grin.
My high school, completely non-magnet, the one I lived near, etc. When I went there it had a single tennis court that had been allowed to become overgrown and fallen into disrepair such that it looked like something from an episode of Scooby Doo; it was paved over to make a parking lot. Now they've gone all fancy and built six of them. As an aside, my elementary school was my parents' and grandparents' high school.
I don't think anyone would move where I'm from to get into a better school. Not that it never happens, I'm sure people do it in the bigger cities, but where I'm from the schools are quite widely spread, with fairly big catchment areas, and there isn't one that stands out as really any better than the others. They all have mixed middle-class and working-class/under-class intakes.
There's a very highly rated and quite well known private fee-paying school about 20 miles away [in a quite mind-bogglingly beautiful location] and one girl I knew got a scholarship to go there, but that was freakishly odd. I don't think most people even contemplated anything other than the local school.
Wait, `The Breakfast Club' wasn't supposed to be about a fancy public school? Looked pretty upscale, I thought.
I'm hurt. Not a single shout out. Really people.
One of the strident Christian HS types in Wobegon is just lovely, half Chinese and half Norwegian. I've run into her a few times and she's cheerful and pleasant. Alas, they aren't all raving fanatics.
Yeah, but you're Canadian. Doesn't count.
Yeah, Canada doesn't count, IDP, because its system is so different. You might say it tends toward the egalitarian middle, or you might say it tends toward a uniform mediocrity.
I went to the local RC school, which was dumpy and underfunded. We had silverfish in the chapel.
What kind of bug did the Protestant schools have? Is this one of those symbolism things?
The Protestants don 't have transsubstantiation, so they were just fish.
so they were just fish
I was raised Bassptist.
294: It's New Trier. Filmed at New Trier West (now the middle school, I think), but regular New Trier did have a pre-schoolday detention known as "breakfast club" when CA was there (early 80s).
Filmed at New Trier West
Was it? That doesn't sound right to me, although we did have "breakfast club."
302: Well, that's what my Trevian (boy would they denounce and reject that adjective) friends say -- they're 6 or 7 years older than you, I guess? NTW sat empty for several years apparently, and that is why it was used. But it could be bullshit.
Aha -- so it is bullshit! All the folks I know who graduated from there in 84, 85 believe it to be the case, however.
Yeah, that's not surprising, given the title and Trevians' sense of themselves as at the center of the universe.
We had silverfish in the chapel.
Did they multiply? Along with the loaves?
We had silverfish in the chapel.
Did they multiply?
Nah, they just climbed up onto the backs of cars and adhered.
Did the silverfish multiply? They can barely count, much less do arithmetic.
Just because the people in the movie were awful doesn't mean that it was about New Trier.
a pre-schoolday detention
This would have been horrific at my high school, where the regular school day started at 7:20.
Did anyone else here just go to the public high school that was in their town? Non-magnet, non-for-special-kids, just for whoever happened to live in that zip code?
I did too. Middling school in a middling town--not great, not horrible, not interesting. But I send my kid to a pretty damn idyllic private school. It's almost certainly not as hoity-toity as the one Ogged swam at, nor is it expensive, but it's very nice indeed (it's the one Barry O attended). Kids there, and their parents, are pretty much like every other large group of people I've ever encountered: there are neat ones, shitty ones, and blah ones, in more or less the same proportions as anywhere else. And my kid is quite a bit less bored than I was in school, which is the main reason I send him there.
"...nor is it as expensive..."
You're sending your kid to a madrassah?
Did they multiply?
It was miraculous how they multiplied. And quite disgusting, really.
The priests would say mass every morning, but we only had to attend on certain days of obligation (for certain saints and etc: and they totally played favourites with the saints...), or on days when they wanted to assemble us all together to exhort us to sell more lottery tickets to raise money for the school (and there were cash prizes for those who sold the most tickets, of course). However, if you didn't attend mass, you had to sit quietly in your classroom and pretend to do homework, so lots of students attended mass quite regularly. The school principal, a priest at the time and now a monsignor, was my dad's second cousin once removed, and also his fourth cousin.
Damn you, Cala, must you own every thread? 313 wins, of course.
I went to a hippie madrassah school in Canberra. I think here is where it was, but it closed (I heard) when the principal retired and his payout consumed the entire operating budget.
By god that area is looking terrible, what with the drought and all.
My cohort grew up to be sarcastic and under-achieving, just as we were supposed to.
Here is my "most suburban school in a medium-sized city school district". Looks pretty stark compared to some of the real suburban mega-schools here (and the 2nd building was the junior high). We thought it pretty swank at the time, a few excellent teachers, but a lot with nothing going for them but the seniority to get the "plum" assignment in the district where they could get on with their dotage unperturbed by tiresome activities like "teaching". (I semi-realized this at the time, true understanding came when I got to college.)
My high school was admission by test, but we were broke. Not only did we not have tennis courts, a football field, or a pool, our gym was so small that the basketball court wasn't regulation.
My high school was the same street corner as Snoop. I got on F in his Common Sense 101 class, though.
Oh, man. Southern Oregon was, and maybe is, unreformedly sexist. The "city" school had two gyms, the smaller, crappier, of which was, I'm pretty sure, formally named the "Girls' Gym." Come to think of it, the same was true of the county school I went to.
At the county school, there was ~3' of room around the court. Fun for spectating: you could totally grope anyone restarting play with a pass.
313: Nice. But no--the elementary school chaplain is a relentlessly upbeat woman who's about as theologically rigorous as Barney the dinosaur. Actually, about that intellectually rigorous, too.
my school was pretty swanky when you get down to it, though there isn't room for some of the things ogged talks about in the post. we share facilities with the neighboring boy's school. the national cathedral is really amazing and has hundreds of fun places to explore, hide, etc. crypts in the sub-basement! we had the keys to the place for quite a while until a friend got caught puking drunk in one of the choir stalls by the rent-a-cop and they changed all the locks. dumbass.
despite the fact that I hated my school with the heat of a thousand O-class stars I would probably send my kids there if we moved back to dc. I got a great education and I probably would have been miserable anywhere.
Despite the fact that I hated my school with the heat of a thousand O-class stars I would probably send my kids there if we moved back to DC.
Reproduction. Compulsion to repeat. Becoming the oppressor. Eternal Return. Great cycle of Being. The wheel of karma.
Etc.
But no--the elementary school chaplain is a relentlessly upbeat woman who's about as theologically rigorous as Barney the dinosaur.
I smell Unitarianism.
>despite the fact that I hated my school with the heat of a thousand O-class stars I would probably send my kids there if we moved back to dc. I got a great education and I probably would have been miserable anywhere.
I went there as well, and hated it at least as much. I don't have kids, but if I did and lived in DC, I'd probably send them to Sidwell instead.
yes, people did seem to like sidwell a lot more.