Brad <holden at salome.uchicago.edu> writes: > This is certainly true. But high school can really suck when a > certain group of people goes out of their way to torment and isolate > you, even if they never call you a name. I have dealt with some high > school students in a special program (not so much for gifted and > talented, but for people who want to learn, or at least have parents > who want them to learn and whose kids are willing to try). Every > student in the program played at least one sport, it was a > requirement. These kids were from an urban high school with a rather > different set of standards then, say, where I went. You did not get > good grades (if you did, you hid it well). You would not be called a > nerd, you would be physically attacked. I simply bring this up as an > extreme example of the diversity of school cultures in this country. I attended my 30th higshchool reunion last weekend, and it was very interesting in several ways. First of all, I should say that I didn't have the typical hellish highschool experience so common among fans. The school was very decent at the time, which helped some. This was in Northfield MN, and a lot of the town people were faculty or staff at Carleton or St. Olaf, both quite good liberal arts colleges in town. (My father, and Steven's father while we're at it, both taught at Carleton; I later attended Carleton). But I think the big thing was that I was almost new to the school (I'd lived there through all of grade school, but my family spent 1966-67 in Switzerland; so when we came back, I started in 8th grade, and only knew a small number of the other 8th graders since they combined 4 elementary schools into the one junior high), and that I started learning to program coputers and getting serious about photography all at the same time. That kept me busy for 4 years solid. But it was also a very reasonable school environment. Cheerleaders and football players were in my advanced math classes. Members of the "Hiliners" dance line (tended to perform at athletic events) also played in the school orchestra. Physical violence was almost unheard of, and when it did turn up it tended to be between kids in the "hood" social group, not between than and somebody from another group. There were cetainly "cliques", in the sense that people tended to hang around with who they tended to hang around with, but they weren't that hostile, and they didn't follow the obvious social / political lines. One of the things that was most interesting at the reunion was how nice it was to see even people I'd had hardly anything to do with back then. And that seemed to be a common experience this time. At the 20th, 10 years back, I was more seeing people I'd actively thought about and wanted to see again, not so surprising (except that some of them actually showed up). -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net / New TMDA anti-spam in test John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net Book log: http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/Ouroboros/booknotes/ New Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info