From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: Re: Spheres and Calculus [Re: Cyber (was Introduction was Eh?)]
Organization: Data I/O Corporation
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 17:23:35 GMT

In article <Bzqwvt.C29@chinet.chi.il.us> pat@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Louis Sugent) writes:
>
>Now that you bring up the subject of
>'tracking' (more or less), I recall suffering some degree of culture
>shock at taking classes with 'the rest of the students'.  In particular,
>I was shocked at how much lower the level of instruction was (especially
>considering my assessment of the 'advanced' courses).  Of course,
>this comparison probably isn't quite fair since these were courses that
>every student had to pass to graduate and were probably 'fixed' so that
>even the 'lowest' student could pass them.    Then again, maybe that
>is part of my point.

Liralen nods.

>  "While there was probably more 'diversity in learning abilities' in my high
>school than yours (with your school's 'lows' likely being higher than my
>school's 'lows'), I was curious if you experienced anything
>similar.  Of course, I welcome comments from others as well. :-)

She grins.  "Well, my second high school also had a lot of people bussed in
from the SE side of San Diego because the racial mix was probably 90% white
and the last 10% were Asian.  The bussing brought in blacks and chicanos
from the poor side of town; and, without the infrasturcture of the same
kind of elementary and intermediate schools, they made the diversity pretty
wide.  Plus, some of the kids of the 'rich folk' *didn't* want to acchieve
anything, so many of them were regular track because they wanted to be."

"La Jolla High had Economics (which was the budgetting thing that you
mentioned above) and U.S. Government, too; and it was predominently 'the
rest of the students'.  I do think there was *some* culture shock at the
beginning, but I seem to have adapted pretty fast.  Part of it was because
I'd just changed schools, so I wasn't accepted with open arms by the kids
that had done the local 'fast track' because they didn't know me the way
they knew each other.  The bussed kids, though, were already 'outcast' so
it was easy for me to make friends with them.  The classes were *so*
slow that I even remember some classes when all we did was 'sit and be
quiet' so I'd finish all my homework in my other classes *in* that class
and have the afternoon free.  

"I have a feeling that the teacher of the U.S. Government class wasn't
particularly interested in teaching anything.  The one thing I noticed
about the 'track' teachers is that they usually delighted in how quickly
their students could learn and loved to push their capabilities.  In 'the
rest of the school' classes, they didn't have that kind of joy.  And I
think I acclimized pretty quickly.  After one U.S. Government class I
even drove home one guy who had drunk half a bottle of tequila for lunch.
He was sick out the window of my VW Beetle while we were on the freeway.

"I actually made a lot of friends in those regular track classes.  I
learned, pretty quick, that lots of the folks who were 'stuck' in them
weren't stupid, they simply either hadn't had the background to support
anything more advanced or they simply didn't excel in the things that
schools graded on.  So I had fun wandering the SE side of San Diego with a
bunch of guys that were *all* about twice as big as me, all of which knew
far more about cities and the lessons Jilara listed than I did.  They
taught me a lot about pain, prejudice, poverty, friendship, and courage 
along with some martial arts, gaming, and the rules of survival.

"But, to get back to your original point," Liralen grins. "Yeah.  Those
classes were pretty awful, geared to the lowest common demoninator and
dragging the best in the class back simply so that the worst could keep up."

-- 
Phyllis Rostykus    | "... and how you feel can make it real  | - _US_
aka Liralen Li      | Real as anything you've seen            |   Peter
li@Data-IO.com      | Get a life with this dreamer's dream."  |   Gabriel
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