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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3485 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 2024

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Can anyone here who had an overall happy experience during their primary and secondary schooling comment as to what your experience was like? What type of schools did you attend? How were your relationships with your teachers and peers? How involved were your parents in your schooling?

I attended public schools in wealthy districts, then a magnet school whose admissions policies are occasionally a matter of public controversy (yes, that one). My high school classmates were without a doubt the smartest people I've ever met, and I say this after having spent years around STEM graduates of elite universities. There was no shortage of advanced coursework to keep us nerds from getting bored, and we were given more freedom than we would have had at a typical school e.g. we could eat lunch anywhere, including off-campus, free periods were provided during the day for clubs and activities, and an independent research project was expected of all students. The teachers were generally competent and reasonable, and a decent fraction of them had PhD's in scientific disciplines.

When I was there the demographics were about 50/50 white/Jewish and south/east Asian, with every other group a rounding error. There was a clear divide between kids with tiger parents who had been pressured into attending and those like me who wanted to be there and whose parents were comparatively uninvolved, with the former having an overall negative experience and the latter loving it. I did not witness a single fight throughout my schooling, which I think would come as a shock to older generations or people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Some kids drank or did drugs (weed and LSD, mostly) but my friends and I were squares even by that school's standards, so I don't know the details. Everyone in my graduating class went to college, so even kids whose parents weren't able to help much with the application process obtained the requisite knowledge from their teachers or peers.

Are you saying it is typical in the US to restrict where students can eat lunch?

In the US public schools I attended, we were restricted to eating lunch in the cafeteria. We were only granted liberty to leave the campus for lunch during our senior year. In suburban/rural districts most students are bussed and walking home and back within a 45 minute period isn't practicable (and at many schools, walking isn't an option at all).

OK, at every school I attended in Canada, it would have been unusual for a student not to walk to school. There must be some students that live nearby and walk though. Are they forced to eat at school?

In my primary school a minority of students walked to school. None were permitted to leave school during the day and all ate in the cafeteria during lunch. In senior high it was a similar situation to primary and only 12th Graders were permitted to leave. At my middle school no one was permitted to walk as the school was only accessible via a road with heavy traffic traveling at 45mph+.

That's so strange. Why would they design it that way? Is the school not in a residential neighbourhood?

No, it is in the middle of what used to be a cow pasture (and was still surrounded by it when I went there). The school (built on a 60+ acre property in the '70s) is centralized to serve a group of exurban communities to ensure kids don't have a long commute time.

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