My friend and fellow journalist Kai Schenck of the eighth grade has offered to write me a story detailing his time in a particular public school and how it compares to his time at Friends’ Central.
This is Kai’s story:
I often hear people in the hallways complaining about various aspects of the school. Don’t be offended, teachers and staff. I’m sure you did the same thing when you were in school. I sometimes even join in on this practice, but what others don’t know is that this school provides a very different experience than others. Okay, so I went to this school called [NAME WITHHELD] Middle School for my sixth and seventh grade years. It was a rather rich and privileged public school. Being one of the best public schools in the Tampa Bay area, it was very crowded, with 850 kids in the school and about 280 kids per grade. I only knew about 200 of them by name, and I can look through the seventh grade yearbook and see kids in my grade who I’ve never met or even seen. That’s just one of the many differences between FCS and [NAME WITHHELD]. Because I like lists, I decided to do the top eight differences between FCS and [NAME WITHHELD], in no particular order. Why am telling you all this? Because I want to tell you guys how lucky you are for having all the great things I didn’t have at my old school.
- There is less of a sense of community at my old school: With so many kids in a school, it is hard to feel like a cohesive group. There were no community-boosting activities like Meeting for Worship, service, or weekly assemblies. We weren’t [NAME WITHHELD] Middle School; we were groups of people, scattered around, just trying to make it through the school day.
- We didn’t have such an odd schedule: At my school, we had one schedule that we went through everyday. Everyday we had the same class first, and the same class second, et cetera, et cetera, every day. This is one of the few things at public school that I enjoyed more, the fact that we didn’t have to check our schedules every day to see what class we had next. However, it seems here that we learn much more efficiently, considering classes here are forty minutes and classes there are an hour.
- The discipline system: This system was broken. Instead of simply getting warned before our behavior went too far, as is done here, once we talked in class, were late, or otherwise crossed the infraction line, we were slapped with a “conduct cut.” Here’s how it worked: if you had more than three conduct cuts in the combined total of all the conduct cuts in all seven of your classes, you got a B in “Conduct.” Of course, I’m a pretty well-behaved kid, so I didn’t get that many. But I had one this teacher, Ms. [NAME WITHHELD]. She was conduct-cut happy, and she gave us a conduct cut for nothing. Laughing, asking for a pencil, and saying ‘I don’t know’ where all “offenses” worthy of a conduct cut. I once had four conduct cuts combined one term, three were from her. So if you had one crazy teacher, you couldn’t get on the principal’s honor roll.
- No freedom: We had about 5 minutes to roam everyday, and even that was restricted to a courtyard. We were very strictly scheduled, and if you were one minute late you were slapped with a conduct cut. You had no time to yourself; our teachers walked us to lunch like little kids, and we weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom or get water during class unless there we were going to have an emergency. We didn’t even get to sit where we wanted during lunch; we had assigned tables. When I was at [NAME WITHHELD] Middle School, I just accepted all of this as the way it was, before I realized the freedom we are given here. It honestly seemed like they were trying to limit free thought as much as possible.
- How we were taught was completely uninteresting: Most of the time, teachers either gave us a textbook and told us to learn, or flicked through a ten-year-old PowerPoint and expected us to take notes. On the other end of the spectrum, there were teachers who wanted us to actually engage in learning, but were so strict that we felt scared to voice our opinions on any subject matter. And, in the middle, we had teachers who were interested in engaging us in the lesson, but had no idea how to keep us on task. Not all the teachers were like this, however. I had some good teachers, who were like basically like the teachers here. Firm but kind and fair, and interested in teaching us their subject. Those teachers were in a minority at [NAME WITHHELD] Middle School. Here, however, they are in a vast majority. I have not yet encountered a teacher who is apathetic or so strict that students are afraid to voice their opinions. And I’m not saying that because I think I’ll get in trouble–I genuinely believe it.
- The kids were less accepting: I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s being at a Quaker school their whole lives. Maybe it’s just the area. Maybe it’s something in the water. Whatever it is, I’ve noticed something. The kids are far nicer and more accepting of people here. At [NAME WITHHELD], I wasn’t bullied or anything (probably because of my size, as I was one of the tallest in the grade), but it took a lot longer for kids to even be friendly to me. Most of the guys became at least my acquaintances by the time I reached seventh grade, but the girls… One time I was standing in the lunch line and this girl who was behind me whose name I didn’t even know came up to me and said, “You’re so gross.” I didn’t think I was doing anything gross, but maybe I smelled bad? I wasn’t offended, just baffled. This is why I was so surprised when some girls here asked me to sit at their table. If I had tried to on the girl’s side of the table (because we had assigned tables, but not assigned seats, girls usually drifted to one side, and guys to the other) at [NAME WITHHELD], I probably would’ve been berated until I went away!
- The school didn’t care: It’s one thing if teachers don’t care. I mean, if I had to teach the same thing for ten years to us kids I probably wouldn’t care either. But I don’t think the school cared. Now I don’t mind that they didn’t do a bunch of really spectacular events, because public schools are funded by tax money and some can’t always afford extras. I’ll just illustrate with an example. Once, we had to get tickets to a trip to Washington DC that would be taken next year (paid for by the parents). The thing is, only sixty people could go. We all wondered how it would be picked until the teachers around the school collectively spoke the words, “First come, first serve.” One teacher would be at the other end of the hallway, handing out the permission slips, and we were supposed to quietly file in one at a time. It was practically Black Friday in there. Cutting was rampant; kids were injured. The teachers tried in vain to control the mob. It was one of the most gruesome displays of the dark side of human nature that I have ever seen. Want another example? One time, it stormed for three days, so we couldn’t go outside, and the gym was taken. So, we had to sit in the locker room during P.E. And watch a movie. They put on Epic, an already bad movie. But here’s the kicker: They restarted it every day from the beginning! By the third day, I actually wanted to watch past the first hour of Epic.
- The lunch line: I did the math. At my old school, we could only afford to serve one grade at a time at lunch. The grade had 280 kids, and it took twenty-five minutes to serve everyone. At this school, we have 180 kids (in the whole middle school) and I think the last kid is served ten minutes into lunch. You might think, that [NAME WITHHELD] Middle School has an excuse, considering they have way more kids to serve. But I calculated the efficiency of each school by dividing the number of kids by minutes taken to serve them all, and these are my findings: [NAME WITHHELD] serves about 11 kids per minute. Pretty good, pretty good. But this school serves 18 kids per minute! My last school did have great brownies, though…
Now you know how fortunate you all are to be in such a great school. While we may always complain about the stuff here, just remember this is where we have iPads, freedom, and good pizza on Wednesday.