Reply #8: MadFL, tell me more about the large high school thing..

[lostnfound]

I don't like large schools. To me they reek of prison atmosphere, constant ranking and depersonalization of students. Certainly that was the environment at my son's elementary, which is also huge. I attended a public school for only one year in my childhood (in Florida, by the way), and unfortunately it was academically a backwater compared to the Catholic school that I'd attended before and very inferior to the Catholic high school I went to thereafter. But do you defend large schools? I am completely against privatization (piratization!) of public schools, so I agree with you wholeheartedly there. But I wonder if you see a move toward smaller schools as an inherently bad thing. It's my understanding that the move toward very large high schools was decision directed not by parents or local communities, but by behind-the-scenes decision-makers in Washington for their own (probably corporate-driven) agenda.

Not only do large schools depersonalize students, but I suspect they also depersonalize teachers. Teachers ought to be in charge, not treated like serfs or pedagogues by tyrant-principals or by unaccountable bureaucracies.