When I was in high school, I attended the local public school that was a few blocks away from my house. I got myself into the gifted program on day 1 and quickly established myself as an academic all-star so I was segregated into the most difficult courses with some of the best teachers. Except for gym class, homeroom and electives, my interaction with mainstream kids was limited. That was good for me.
Still, high school was mostly a waste of time. I would have learned 10x as much attending cyber school, home schooling myself or taking early college courses had those been options back then. They weren’t.
I had friends whose parents would not send them to the public high school because it had a bad reputation. We had kids from all over the area. It was roughly 50/50 white and black kids. There was a history of racial strife. The number of college graduates coming from the school was pathetically low. There were fights, robberies, and piss-poor teaching.
These friends went to Catholic grade school and then onto North Catholic High School, an all white, private high school. Most of my friends went on to graduate from college – even the ones who were dumb. All of them were involved in sports and extracurricular activities. The school offered tutoring, mentoring, clubs, field trips, college prep and activities unheard of in public school.
I never wanted to go to Catholic School after my two awful years in 3rd and 4th grade but I envied my friends’ high school experiences. They never worried about getting jumped in the bathroom, having their lockers broken into or finding a way to cut gym to avoid the some violent lunatic mainstream kids.
I pass a private high school everyday on my way to the pool. It has a huge soccer field with bleachers, a PA booth, lights and billboards. The grounds are massive – taking up several square miles of city property. It looks like a college campus. I know the name from seeing it on bumper stickers all over the city.
For some reason, today I wondered how much it cost to go there.
$30,000. Per student. Per year.
Then I looked up North Catholic, which is still operating in Pittsburgh.
$18,000. Per student. Per year.
I cannot imagine what it would be like to have parents who could afford that and would choose to spend that much money. $72K-$120K for high school!
You could launch a business with that money.
You could pay for 4 years of college.
Then again, I suspect that many of these students who attend private school aren’t worried about paying for college or for getting seed money to launch a business.
I don’t have any conclusion or point to make here. Seeing the lines of cars pulling into the high school every morning just had me noodling on it.
Perhaps I’ll think of more to say later. Or I might just delete this post.