How a small town High School in the early 60s did it.

[malthaussen]

12. I used to sign with my student number as a form of protest.

41414, remember it well. It's an easy number to remember!

I went to high school a decade later than you on the opposite coast. We had the same tracking system but our high school was 10-12th grades, and we had about 1200 kids in the school (of whom approximately two were black). Baby Boom city, most of our classes had 30+ students. The school had just "reformed" before I entered, removing the "honors" track for high-achieving students. Except they didn't really remove the track -- all the "smart" kids were in the same group -- they just stopped giving extra credit for the tougher courses. When I asked why they did that, the answer was something along the lines of not wanting to encourage the kids to feel "better" than their peers. I dunno, this may be a relict of the beginning of the downfall of education.

We did the standardized tests, too. I got into a big argument with my guidance counselor about doing the Minnesota Standard, and she totally lost her cool, screamed at me, and ripped up the test. Which was fine with me, I was refusing to take it to begin with. I was a bit of a pain in the ass...

Our principal gave a speech at the start of one year, saying that most of the "children" in school were fine, well-adjusted individuals, but there were "two percent" who were problems. We immediately formed a group called the Two Percent. Way before Occupy Wall Street. One of the bennies of being singled out as a disciplinary problem was that we got to beat classes every week to do a group thing with the school district psychologist. Field trips, movies, sensitivity training. Hey, anything to get out of class. Ironically, I was already getting plenty of sensitivity training as a volunteer D and A counsellor. We did the same stuff as "discipline problems" as we did to train for counselling. Ah, the 70's.

-- Mal