From: Jasper
Date: 10/21/03
Time: 5:29:22 PM
Remote Name: 68.73.204.63
Charlie,
I HATED school. I hated kindergarten. I hated busywork. I hated “group” play because I thought the group games were ridicules. It made me feel put upon and ridiculous to have the play them and the idea of being forced to play a game I didn’t want to play made no sense to me. I didn’t like gym in elementary school unless we played dodgeball. I loved dodgeball.
I hated homework. It took too much time away from my comic books, my model building and the games I wanted to play with my friends. The only good thing about it was when we had to go to the library. I loved the library. Unlike Library class in school, we had a zillion books to choose from and we could pick the ones we wanted to read even if they weren’t the ones we were sent the library to read.
In high school, the only classes I liked were X-classes for kids like me who didn’t fit the normal student mold of highly structured learning. The regular classes were BORING! In the X-classes, students were encouraged to disagree with the teachers and the textbooks if we could defend our position and to explore our own areas of interests outside of school. I learned about things like logic, general semantics and cultural anthropology. In a composition class I got a chance to write without always shaving to follow the rules to get an A. My regular English teachers would have given Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence a D.
I loved the X-classes. I even enjoyed the homework.
Yes, Charlie, I know about square pegs in round holes. I was one of them. If I hadn’t had the X-classes, high school would have eaten me alive. Only my fear of my parents’ wrath and my fear of not being able to feed myself without a high school diploma would have kept me from dropping out.
And no, Charlie, I do not agree with you on school vouchers. I know all of the conservative arguments in favor of them but I think the liberals are right about what they would do to the public school system in the long run.. I know that there can be a place for “square pegs” in the public schools. I believe there should be. –Jasper