I did not move to Texas until high school; I’d grown up primarily in central Illinois before the move, attending a series of schools nestled into cornfields, where the largest graduation class had been somewhere around two hundred. Our school buildings were old but well-kept, and despite the drug problems (in middle school!) and varied socioeconomic backgrounds of the students, there was a certain respect that kids had for the school, the teachers, and their fellow students.
Now I attend a high school in Texas with over 3300 kids in three grades, crammed into a building’s been “under construction” for the last two years, with no end in sight. Over 80% of classes are held in temporary buildings set up where the sports fields used to be; there are four sets of bathrooms in my school, but it isn’t uncommon for the water to be out in one or two sets for weeks at a time. I couldn’t be more pleased to be graduating in the spring, if only to know the next school I attend will be mold-free and temperature-controlled (we hope).
And yet I wonder if I have any right to complain; academically, I’ve gotten a very, very good public school education—I’m in six honors/AP classes this year, and my test scores will get me in to most any school I can afford. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in a Gifted and Talented English program for four years that let me eschew AP timed writings and note packets in favor of poem dramatizations, film studies, and creative writing.
But I am one of thirty GT kids in my grade of 1000+, and one of the 250 or so that take AP classes—this is the difference between my public high school and a magnet or private school; certainly, large numbers of kids succeed here, but so many more go by the wayside.
In my fairly ritzy suburb we’ve got a community college that over 20% of my grade will attend. Those 200+ kids can be divided into two types: kids who are paying their way through school and can’t afford anywhere else, and, in far greater numbers, kids whose parents would be perfectly willing to pay but simply didn’t work hard enough in high school to go anywhere else. This troubles me to no end; by the time they reach eighteen it is already obvious that these kids will never make as much as their parents do.
The school district is planning on splitting our school into four smaller “learning communities” when/if the construction is finally completed—apparently this is the new trend in education, and though I’m all for making our schools as Hogwarts-like as possible, I am already certain this system will fail. It’s nice to think we can make our students feel like they know everyone in their school, and I imagine this system could work effectively in smaller high schools, or ones with more funding and a larger faculty, but the sheer class sizes (30-40 is typical and will remain such), completely disadvantageous layout of the campus, and a number of other factors will ensure that these “learning communities” fail.
What troubles me most of all is that walking to class every day is hardly any different than walking around in downtown New York—fighting my way through massive, noisy crowds, recognizing the tiniest percentage of the hundreds of faces passing by. It is a strange feeling, though after three years one to which I’ve become accustomed—but I’m ready to move on.
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