[extropy-chat] Schools, was speaking of electoral college

[Keith Henson]

At 04:49 AM 11/7/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>On 11/6/06, Al Brooks <<mailto:kerry_prez at yahoo.com>kerry_prez at yahoo.com> 
>wrote:
>>You're old enough to remember the '80s, right? Things have changed little 
>>since then.
>
>Oh but some of us remember the '70's and even the '60s and we are longing 
>to bring back those days -- when people truely cared and positioned 
>themselves as such.

I can one-up you a bit.  I was born in 1942.  So some of my memories go 
back to the late and even the mid 40s.

Informed by my interest in EP, I am not so sure that "people truely cared 
and positioned themselves as such" more in the past than they do today.  In 
some cases (such as the FBI) the myth and the reality as we now know it 
were miles apart.

Times certainly have changed since the late 40s in a number of ways, 
particularly with schools.  (My experience with public school spanned from 
fall of 1948 to spring of 1960.)  Because my Dad was in the military I was 
in 8 schools during this time.

48  1st  Barnet, Arlington VA.
49  2nd
50  3rd  Stonewall Jackson Arlington VA.
51  4th  Texas near Lubbock and Washington Heights in Japan
52  5th  Washington Heights
53  6th  Sagama Hara Japan
54  7th  Wakefield Jr/Sr High School Arlington, Virginia
55  8th
56  9th
57  10th  Tombstone AZ
58  11th  Prescott AZ
59  12th

School teacher was one of the few occupations smart women could go into in 
those days and the children benefited from it.

The quality of the schools varied considerable.  The worst was Tombstone 
where one morning the FBI took our chemistry teacher away.  5th was the 
most fun because the class had a set of encyclopedias and the teacher let 
me sit quitely in the back are read them.  9th I read an organic chemistry 
textbook I still have.  11th grade English for some (probably random) 
reason was packed with the smartest kids in the school.  Fascinating 
discussions.

My oldest kids started school in the mid 70s, my youngest graduated from 
Palo Alto High School in 2000.

I could write more or possibly get the kids to write about their 
experiences if there is interest.

Keith Henson

PS.  I went through about a dozen high school libraries in the San Jose 
area around 1995 looking at the books of my childhood (Heinlein, Clarke, 
Asimov and others) to see if the failure of those books to be read after 
some point in the early 70s was widespread, similar to what I had  noticed 
in my daughter's middle school.  It was.  I have no theory as to why.