college is nextDunno.
From what I’ve read about public schools in NYC lately the kiddos might BE better off if they skipped school every day.
Do they need to take and pass any exams?
(sigh) You just can’t stay ahead of this stuff. Punish success. Reward the unproductive and the deviant. Do this for five decades and wonder how your civilization will develop.
I could’ve sworn I read something like this in the Babylon Bee a while back.
You could be a pretty good psychic by making predictions based on BB articles.
how about greta thunburg- can she gradiate?
In new york city I once passed a class (not an entire school year, just one class) that I never attended save for the first few weeks.
LONG STORY here:
About 1983 I once cut class in high school and still got rewarded with a passing grade. Every school semester we were required to choose 2 “electives”. Electives are classes in subjects other then the 3 r’s. Such as foreign language, computer programming, film criticism, musical instrument lessons, drawing, architecture, etc, etc.
One year one of the electives I chose was photography. I always loved the art of photography. And I thought that the school would supply us with all the necessary equipment. But on the first day of this class, we were instructed to buy our own single lens reflex (SLR) cameras (single lens reflex means when you look through the viewfinder, with the help of a couple of tiny mirrors inside, you are also looking through the lens), film, and photography paper (to print your pictures on). The only thing the school supplied was a darkroom, darkroom equipment, and film developing chemicals.
Being dirt poor (we were on welfare), my family couldnt afford a single lens reflex camera. We couldn’t even afford photography paper, never mind a camera. The cheapest SLR cameras went for over 200 bucks (this is in 1983).
My grandfather was about to get remarried and I was invited over to his fiancees apartment for a spaghetti dinner. There, they handed me one of those annual photography magazines filled with all the latest SLR camera models that were coming out and told me to pick a camera and they would buy it for me. I flipped through it, and found one that would fit my needs for class just perfectly. It also happened to be the cheapest one listed in the magazine at just over 200 bucks. I pointed to it and asked them to get me that one. But they said for me to not be so fast to choose a camera. Take the magazine home and be sure to take my time in choosing the camera I want. I did just that and I still decided on the camera I picked the first time. I didnt need all the extra bells and whistles that came with the other more expensive cameras. But that was the last I ever heard of them buying me a camera. I’m assuming they were too wrapped up in getting married that they just forgot about getting me a camera.
One week, the photography teacher told us that he was going to take us to the nearby college campus where we are to take pictures with our camera on the following monday. I told my my mother and she came home on friday night and presented me with a camera. It wasnt a single lens reflex camera. It was one of those cheap 15 dollar (14.99 to be exact according to the price sticker on the package) plastic jobs that you buy off the rack at a local drug store, supermarket, or something.
At first I thought it was the greatest little camera ever. I put the batteries in, loaded it with film, read the instruction booklet over and over again. All weekend long I touched the camera, I felt its weight in my hands. For the first and only time in my life I just COULDNT wait for school to start on monday so that I could use my camera. At long last I was going to have a hobby that I was truly going to enjoy. Imagine getting school credit for something I really liked and wanted to do on top of that. Street photography in particular was my favorite type of photography and I envisioned myself doing that as a hobby and profession.
Monday finally rolled around. The teacher as promised took us to the college campus. Just as we were standing outside the front gates, my fellow students started pulling out their spanking brand new cameras. All of them were expensive single lens reflex 300-800 dollar jobs. Some of them surrounded the teacher, asking him, “how do you load this? how do you load this?”. Their cameras were so new, they never even took the time long enough over the weekend to at least learn how to load the film in them.
At that very moment my once brand new camera that I was so happy to have over the weekend, turned into a piece of junk in my eyes at that very instant. Now I was ashamed of having such a camera. It was clear I had the junkiest, cheapest camera out of everyone in the class. I didnt even bother to take it out of my bookbag in front of everybody because I didnt want anybody to see it. The teacher then let us loose on the campus, but I went and found a remote, deserted corner of the campus so that no one would see the cheap type of camera I had. Looking around to make sure nobody saw me, I took my camera out and halfheartedly took a few pics, then stuffed the camera back into my bookbag. Met with my teacher and classmates at the entrance of the campus and we went back to our school.
I didnt get my photos developed in the school darkroom. Instead, I took them to the local supermarket to have them developed (couldnt afford to buy photography paper anyways, nor did I want my classmates to see my photographs which I knew was going to come out terrible). They were crappy pics you would expect from a crappy camera. Because it was a double lens reflex camera (viewfinder alongside the lens instead of through the lens), my photos were off center, out of focus, over lit or under lit, etc. Just way too many problems. Some of the others with their expensive single lens reflex cameras, had their photographs developed in the school darkroom, came out with some pretty impressive photos.
That week, the teacher gave us another photo assignment. He would assign us certain neighborhoods in manhattan to go to take pictures in. Greenwich village, wall street, etc. He assigned me the name of a neighborhood in manhattan I never heard of, much less knew how to get to. So I asked him if I could go to Times Square instead. I knew where that was. He agreed. But I really had NO intention of letting anybody, total strangers at that, see me walking around Times Square, taking pics with that cheap camera of mine. I was now just too ashamed of it.
I never went to Times Square. And I never returned to that photography class either. I chose to cut that class from then on. At the end of the year they gave us our final grades for our classes. Much to my shock and surprise, in spite of never showing up (with the exception of those first few weeks) for photography class, I received a passing grade of 65 for that course. I think, my best educated guess is that the teacher completely understood why I cut his class and giving me a passing grade anyways was a nice, compassionate act towards an economically poor student who couldnt afford the proper camera and camera equipment for it.
Consider this: those moron slackers may want to go to college for the parties. And this: that the college has to admit them. And this: that if the Dems manage to pass student debt amnesty, we'll be paying for it.
And yet, New York is one of the most difficult, nearly impossible, states to homeschool in.
Ridiculous regulations; teaching parents must provide a list of curriculum & lesson plans (including all books and materials to be used) in advance, they have to provide quarterly attendance/hours, children are not allowed to participate in sports or clubs in the public schools, can only use the school library & other resources if allowed by the superintendent (even though you still are paying school taxes), children must take standardized tests (some may require a certain% passing grade) and/or be evaluated by an accredited teacher, on and on. The idea of “unschooling” (which worked perfectly for my kids in the later grades) and Montessori type teaching (proven to work, esp. for younger children) is impossible under these conditions.
It’s not banned because students who miss ore than X% of class time (I don’t know the exact number) are not supposed to pass the class, and therefore shouldn’t accumulate a credit needed for graduation.
But these things all snowball as teachers are pushed into passing students so that schools can meet targets for achievement, even if nothing is being achieved.
college is nextDoes this mean that NYC is giving a complete green light to homeschoolers?