----- Original Message ----- From: "Dennis Claxton" <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>
>The elites send their kids to institutions
>which are just as totalizing and dehumanizing
>as the KIPP schools; but the grounds look
>nicer, and so do the teachers and the kids
>themselves.
Are you drunk or just being oh so provocative? ----------------------------------------------------------------
I can't guess precisely what Michael S. meant, but I have had family and friends attend or teach at elite schools, and I think I understand what he's getting at.
Of course, as I pointed out in my initial reply, elite schools have better teachers, more equipment, a greater variety of courses, and are able to teach more stuff because the general level of student literacy is higher. But, but, but....having said that, they are hardly what I would call a locus of enlightenment. The atmosphere is constrained, dour, anti-social, and somewhat asphyxiated. The drugs flow like water. The sense of entitlement is through the roof. The sense of isolation and the pressure to succeed is palpable. The kids cultivate a very professional and aloof attitude and are completely unnatural.
A mild anecdote: one of my daughter's dance friends who attends a suburban school came to hang out with my daughter and her urban-school friends and was amazed to discover "how genuinely nice" everybody was. I don't think this is because she was expecting to get mugged. I think there's just a lot of make nice in the upwardly mobile schools and very little real solidarity.
I write all this with my heart in a knot because I do realize everything that my daughter missed by not going to an elite school, and yet if she is to be an artist or teacher (her goals), I think her experience of Oakland Unified Public schools might be more valuable in the long run. She loves to read, she hangs out with the likes of me, and her education as a dancer was fantastic. She is graduating next week & headed for Santa Monica Jr. College.
Sigh,
Joanna