I am still in shock that this man was serious.

No doubt that high-risk students may need social support, and a teacher may be a collaborative force but their priority should be knowledge. My father-in-law, who is now retired, taught Humanities at the local university. People liked him, but the LOVED what he was teaching. My mother-in-law, a public middle school teacher also, dealt with the burn out especially for students with a high percentage with unstable high-risk factors in their home life. You give them all the pep-talk ‘you just got to believe in yourself’ inspiration mantra, but her obligation ultimately was getting these students the basic skills reading/math and appreciate the knowledge, and that is what she focused on.

My children go to Catholic, never really considered HS, expect actually in high school. I actually use to be against HS because I thought children should socialize with their own peers, but actually that’s the big problem. Children who are HS get more opportunity to be around adults in the adult world.

Think of one’s typical suburban high school campus, it looks like a prison! Teenagers never get to see adults doing adults things, 60 years ago high schools could be placed in the middle of town/city centers and young adults would look out the window and not see a subdivision or a highway, but rather city hall, businesses, and shops.

I idea of high school and living on college campus came around with the book from two years ago,

The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, By Dr. Robert Epstein

from the website.

““A revolutionary proposal for raising responsible and happy teenagers, this groundbreaking book argues that adolescence is an unnecessary period of life that we’re better off without. Epstein shows that teen turmoil is caused by outmoded systems put in place a century ago which destroyed the continuum between childhood and adulthood. Where this continuum still exists in other countries, there is no adolescence. Isolated from adults, American teens learn everything they know from their media-dominated peers—“the last people on earth they should be learning from,” says Epstein. He shows that our teens are highly capable—in some ways more capable than adults—and argues strongly against “infantilizing” young people. We must rediscover “the adult in every teen,” he says, by giving young people adult authority and responsibility as soon as they can demonstrate readiness. This landmark book will change our thinking about teens for decades to come.”

I guess my only gripe with HS is when I see then on the National Spelling Bee.

While my parents were upper middle class, part of the decision to pull me from public school was the fact that they could not afford the local private schools. In my experience, most rich people do the private school thing, and hsing is a much more middle class trend. I also had plenty of lower income friends, who had chosen a single income lifestyle over the extra income made possible by the public school.

Having lived in a very liberal area as a child, the hs community was far more diverse than the public environment. While the later was mostly WASP, where I was included people ranging from Wiccan “unschoolers” to couples wanting to provide their children a Christian upbringing and everything inbetween. They also included far more ethnic diversity than was actually representative of the population. As I’ve learned since through my husband’s work, districts seem more likely to think they can walk over minority parents than over WASP parents.

Finally, my parents took me out of ps because the lack of academic challenge had thrown me into a serious depression at the age of six. Show me a happy 6 year old who does not want to color and begs for beatings! I had actually been put in time out in school for knowing how to read and reading during “free” time. Since I was ahead of my peers, my mother suggested I be put in a gifted class. The teacher refused, even though I was reading in first grade at the sixth grade level, but put a boy in that class who was reading at the third grade level. She explained that boys need special encouragement that girls don’t. I was also frequently punished for complaining of bullying.

I’m not saying that all public schools are like this, but my husband works as a spec ed advocate (IEPs and such) and has yet to see a school that is significantly different. Maybe it’s just California.

Mr. Scaccia’s arguments are just further proof that too many teachers have no idea of what goes on under their own noses.