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Oh high school
2003-11-07 - 10:57 a.m. I rode my bike to work all the way from home, which is, I think, 7 miles, and I am a hero. 7 miles up a big hill, too, I might add. It took me 50 minutes, which is actually not bad at all, considering it used to take me 55 minutes to go 5 miles when I first started. Yay me. (I am perfectly aware that many people go a lot faster and I don't want to hear about it. Thank you.) Went to look at public high school B last night. It's in El Cerrito, which people pronounce Elsrito. It doesn't look bad -- it looks pretty good, actually. It looks sort of like -- good education is possible in decrepit urban school. But the teachers do seem good. Inexplicably, there is no history freshman year, but on the positive side, there is math and science for all four years. Apparently, the school held out as long as it could, but the district forced it to drop freshman history. They do write papers. The English is execrable. I am not that old, and 25 years ago I had American Lit in which we read the Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Th Ambassadors, the Great Gatsby, and some Hemingway book. We read a lot. (Also, oddly, MacBeth.)Now, people may read the Great Gatsby, but that is certainly the oldest thing they read. It's a real shame. In twelfth grade we started with Beowulf. Then Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, The Wasteland, lots of John Donne -- It was great. I don't think anyone reads that stuff any more, but they should.. THe word on public school A (which is in Berkeley) is that it can be good, but it can be terrible. They offer Latin and lots of AP classes. They also have no history freshman year (instead they have "ethnic identities") but also, inexplicably, no science. Anyway -- I go to check that out in two weeks, but Nora will be in Yosemite. Nora liked school B. She said, and I think she's right, that there seem be good things about both schools, but that they're different. So -- there you are. A moment here for parental gloating -- I like my kids a lot. Naturally, they drive me nuts sometimes. But basically, they're pretty fun to spend time with, and they're actually pretty perceptive. I think I can actually trust Nora to make a reasonable decision herself about which high school to go to. She'll be able to decide where she'd feel more comfortable. It's good. Okay -- Parental gloating off. Now I have stuff to do -- Bye.
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