From amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu Thu Feb 1 09:13:05 2001 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW00.12) with ESMTP id JAA56274 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 09:13:04 -0800 Received: from tantalos.perseus.tufts.edu (IDENT:root@tantalos.perseus.tufts.edu [130.64.2.169]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id JAA08686 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 09:13:04 -0800 Received: from perseus.tufts.edu (IDENT:amahoney@pegasus.perseus.tufts.edu [130.64.2.187]) by tantalos.perseus.tufts.edu (8.9.3/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA28304 for ; Thu, 1 Feb 2001 12:13:03 -0500 Sender: amahoney@perseus.tufts.edu Message-ID: <3A799916.67A3E6A5@perseus.tufts.edu> Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 12:12:54 -0500 From: Anne Mahoney X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14-5.0 i686) X-Accept-Language: en, fr, de MIME-Version: 1.0 To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Longinus O'er a Bottle References: <200102011347.IAA26286@ccat.sas.upenn.edu> <3A79730E.81721550@perseus.tufts.edu> <3A799428.35D7C0FF@umail.umd.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Elizabeth Vandiver wrote: > > Somewhat TAN, but-- > > Anne Mahoney wrote: > > > > > In other words, once upon a time it was possible to go through quite > > ordinary public schools and learn languages, literature, history, music, > > science, and mathematics. > > Golly. Not in the public schools I attended at about the same > time!!! (I too was around for "New Math," taught by teachers who > were utterly bewildered by it, and it was a terrible > experience.) NO foreign languages were offered before 8th > grade, and I was told that I absolutely could not take more than > two in my high-school career; taking three languages was out of > the question (I wanted to add French to my Latin and Spanish). > We also had NO music instruction whatsoever beyond a "music > teacher" coming into the class once a week to lead a sing-along > of tunes we already knew, NO history classes before 9th grade, > etc. All of these things had a great deal to do with my decision > to bail out of High School after 10th grade. Such was the state > of public schools in Florida, in a university town at that; > Anne, what thrice-blessed state did you grow up in? Massachusetts. I attended schools in a couple of different Boston suburbs. I finished high school in New York City -- we moved when I was 16 -- where the school I attended was notably inferior to the one I'd come from, but I did have friends even there who took multiple languages. (Two for sure, quite possibly three) I recognize that much depends on the individual teacher, principal, school board, and budget. The school in NYC was worse than the one in MA probably because it didn't have as much money to spend on things like fancy science labs or music rooms. As a result, though I took two science courses as a senior, only one had a lab component. They also hadn't instituted a full program of AP tests yet, but encouraged people to prepare on their own and take them at neighboring schools. Much also depends on the students themselves, and on their parents. I would have learned languages in any setting, I expect, while Jim O'Donnell says he managed to avoid Spanish even in spite of a requirement. New Math comes very easily when your father is a mathematician and you were brought up on sets, combinatorics, and logic. Taking extra science courses is a given when your mother was a research chemist (until she got married -- life was very different for the Class of '53!). --Anne Mahoney .