Craig, you're missing the irony. Eli is describing Barton. Parents now say, "If only we could get Junior into Barton..." in the same tone of helpless yearning that others say, "If only we could afford to send Junior to Breck."
But I'm not really sure if you can compare SLC with open schools or evaluate open schools in general by looking at Barton. Some friends had their two kids at Barton through the late eighties and early nineties (both did extremely well in high school and college, by the way). I was their family's roommate for a while, and so was closer to the children's education than a friend of the family would normally be. My friends did a lot of volunteering at the school because they enjoyed the time they spent there. The kids generally looked forward to weekday mornings instead of dreading them. The teachers, from everything I heard, enjoyed their jobs. I wasn't sure if Barton's success was because of its open format or because it managed to keep each group of stakeholders happy. My impression was that the open school format contributed to stakeholder's happiness by providing more room for fun. Kids like fun quite a lot. Even notoriously grouchy subsets of humanity like parents and teachers can appreciate fun under the right circumstances. But it's certainly possible to imagine a school where everybody has fun but the kids didn't learn anything or an open school that is so badly run that parents, students, and teachers are all miserable. Rosalind Nelson Bancroft neighborhood Craig Miller wrote: > > Subject: [Mpls] Career Pathways for 8th Graders in MPS > > It is always interesting to see how parents perceive changes in the school > district regarding learning styles and quote the "SLC" curriculum. Do you > all know Barton School and its reputation today. Barton is classified as an > open school and a merger between Lake Harriet Open School (Fulton Open) and > Harrison Open. When Lake Harriet Open School first started, the turnover > was extremely high. > > (CM) > > Quit selling parents short. They looked they disliked and they moved on. > > Why, because the parents did not understand the concept > or have the patience to see what would happen to their child as the school > began to identify itself. It needed time to develop its own personality and > learn how to became the school it is. Just like a human who does not have > an indentifiable personality when born. Now look at Barton, one of the top > schools in the city. I believe that we have to give "SLC" a chance to > develop itself and see how the students achieve in later life. > > (CM) Is it just me just getting a headache reading this? TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
