Asymmetrical Information

Check the page again ... I just added you.

Honest question about NYC street cred: If you're from (or went to school in) Riverdale, can you still say that you hail from the Boogie-Down? Or do you have to be closer to Jerome Ave. than West Chester to do that?

(My folks used to live off of Grand Concourse before I was born so I know I'm legit.)

Clarification about above post: I'm speaking technically. I know that bragging that you're from Riverdale will not make you appear tough in the eyes of anyone who's in the know.

For some strange reason, I figured you for the Bronx High School of Science.

(I went to Fordham Prep.)

A number of Riverdale residents never put "Bronx, NY" on their mail, just "Riverdale, NY." It gets delivered because of the ZIP code.

I don't think people in any other Bronx neighborhood, including City Island, do that.

However, it's done frequently in Queens: Flushing, NY; Maspeth, NY, etc.

Honest question about NYC school cred: You went to "one of the most expensive and competitive private schools in the United States," so why are you trying to talk about the failure of public schools from any personal perspective? Obviously anyone can comment on any subject, but your comments to the earlier post in which you invoke your experience living on the edge of a gentrification gave me the impression that you'd actually had a public school education that would make wherever you lived actually relevant.

I'm pretty sure Jane was claiming public school cred for grade school in a sketchy neighborhood, and then moved on to ritzy high school.

Beg pardon, but I was claiming the opposite of public school cred; I was pointing out that being "committed" to public school as long as the school near you happens to be good is not the same thing as a parent in a housing project who is committed to whatever crap is within commuting distance. My public school experience was certainly gritty, but it hardly qualifies me to discuss the problems of growing up in the inner city, which I manifestly didn't.

I went to PS 166 on the Upper West Side until 5th grade; after that (the school ended at 5th grade) my parents transferred me into private school for various reasons, most of them having to do with the fact that I hadn't learned much--and consequently struggled for several years in private school before I caught up. My school was very moderately dangerous, and certainly not challenging for a bright kid, but in no way qualified as an inner city public school; the kids in the inner city schools ended up illiterate, and more than occasionally, dead.

Isn't your definition of 'inner city school' begging the question? All the inner city schools are nightmarishly disfunctional, and the racially and economically integrated school you attended in what is literally an 'inner city' doesn't qualify as an 'inner city school' because it wasn't a nightmare.

Sure, if that's the definition of 'inner city school', there's nothing good about any of them.

Megan the elf from Rivendel...er Riverdale...

Jane, I love you, but if you're going to post a request for people to add you on to a Wikipedia page, why not just come right out and make the request directly?

Here in the UK we are pursuing 'school choice'.

The theory is parents will gravitate to the best schools for their kids, and all schools will be improved by the competition.

Let's be clear, this means schools (state schools, not public ie private schools) choose their kids, not parents choose the state school for their kids.

We have kids who cannot attend their local schools.

And the worse schools get worser, through the loss of involved parents, who fight and claw so their kids can get into better schools.

The addition of 'school choice' has created a sifting between winners and losers.

Vouchers are not an exactly similar system, but they might well have similar effects. If a voucher takes resources out of a state (public) school, and that resource goes to a private school, then the state school (which has significant fixed costs, eg unionised teachers) has to find cuts, somewhere.

One noticeable effect is the strengthening of religious schools, which by their nature are discriminatory: we have Jewish schools, moslem schools, Catholic schools, Anglican schools, evangelical schools. All are going to give preference to parents of their own religion.

In Britain, some religious schools don't want to teach the theory of evolution, or teach it as a 'theory' ranking alongside Intelligent Design. We have common final exams for all schools, whereas the US does not (as far as I know), so we can at least guarantee that all students are taught basic science (even if they are taught not to believe it), history, etc.

Be careful of vouchers-- you might get what you asked for. An America of worse public schools, denuded of resources, and of private religious education that encourages, for example, intolerance (anti gay), and separate social development (how many Jews at an evangelical school?).

I would add, that most people think vouchers encouraging religious private schools is an OK thing, or they don't really think about it.

When we get to the question of moslem schools, teaching that other religions are damned, and that men and women should be separate, and that gays are an offence in the sight of Allah, they are less sanguine.

So how do we regulate what a moslem school teaches its students (any more than what a Catholic or a Jewish school teaches its students)?

There are fewer moslems in America, it is less of a problem than here in Europe. But the question will come up, in Dearborn and New Jersey, perhaps, if nowhere else.

I don't know what the solution to the problem of bad inner city schools is, but I doubt it is about diverting tax dollars to private schools.

Bah! You got it easy.

I've got over 100 publications but I can't get a mention on my school's site. A couple of bastards with Nobel prizes, 4 pulitzer winners, one of the three stooges, Noam Chomsky and Douglas "Stupidest fucking man on the planet" Feith make it, but not me.

It was, by the way, an inner city public school in quite a nasty neighborhood.

How you could leave Norman Fell off that list you gave is beyond me.

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