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Posted by: rs on 3/23/1998@21:16hrs:
In Reply to: Re: The Petrides School posted by: Old Timer on 3/23/1998@15:51hrs:
Yeah, betta' watch out what ya say about us public school grads. We didn't go to school just to eat lunch.
BTW, I worked with a couple of Petrideses at Midland Beach, in '61 (that's 1961), Mike and his brother Gus. Gotta be the same; how many Petrideses could there be.
When I came to California, I wanted my kids to go to public school, as opposed to private and parochial. Two went to good public elementary schools and one, once we got him started in a pre-school, where they taught him to read and write before first grade, we could never make the switch back to public school as he was ahead of his class by a year or more. One boy went to an excellent public high school and the other two to an excellent parochial school. My bias in favor of public schools (because that's where I went and learned to get along with everybody who'd say hello back), got outvoted. Kids have benefited greatly from the parochial high school. The first boy graduated Cal (Berkeley) with an M.E. (mechanical engineering) and wants to build robots; actually is working in that field; I say get a maid. Cal is one of the great public schools in Western Civ. The other two are hoping they'll get in there.
But yeah, public school bureaucracies are amazingly self-perpetuating; puts the Byzantine Empire to shame. The kids are at the wrong end of the food chain, or money pipeline. The educational bureaucrats are right there at the fount. Doing something about this is one of the world's most challenging political problems. The Bored of Ed has outlasted the Soviet Union. That must mean something. -r