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school: heaven or hell?
 as several weeks of the new schoolyear have already flown by, it's time to gather here bits and pieces of what i've recently read from many of you about school. for starters, check out the barely-contained fury of Kevin's potent and well-written weblog -- "I despise academia..." -- about an issue that has concerned me, ever since I started working at ATDP: how gifted kids are typically given short-shrift in schools. kids like Kevin, kids like YOU, usually end up bored out your skulls in your schools, and it's mostly because of what Kevin characterizes in a damning fashion: the teaching to the lowest common denominator that one finds in a typical American public school.
 and is there something in the water at Piedmont High School? some excellent weblog writing has been coming from there lately... Kevin's schoolmate and AIC classmate Maciej, has another weblog update, regarding his amazing voyage from Warsaw, Poland to Philadelphia PA, to the SF Bay Area -- "Building on, and starting over..." i was the privileged listener of his story live and in person from Maciej and his mom one evening about a month ago, when they invited me over for dinner at their home in San Leandro. Maciej's weblog is still relevant to today's topic, as he did talk about how his schooling in Philadelphia was like. soon, perhaps he shall tell us how things turned out for him in his middle school in Piedmont and now at PHS.
for a middle school perspective, how about this slice-of-life image from Yong-eun? "They also won't listen to me..." although she seems to be real upset about a lot of things in her school, i suspect that she secretly enjoys it anyway, being one of the Big Kids now, in the eighth grade. freshmen, warn her of her impending doom in HS next year... j/k! ;-) (I did find the calendar on her weblog, btw, and it's buried one level down, in the Recent Discussion link. Y-E, there's an easy way of bringing the calendar up to the front. IM me next time you see me online.)
jumping up to the hallowed rank of high school seniors -- and btw, Tom Fletcher: STILL think you're too good for Harry Potter? ;-) -- here's Fed's weblog on: Olympic Swimming and Harry Potter. this being another elegantly written weblog by Signor Baradello. (check out the funny factoid he has at the end of his weblog!) Fed's such a cool writer, you all understand now why i banished him temporarily to the realm of silences, where currently only Aaron resides. i miss it when Fed doesn't write in his weblog for a while. speaking of exiles, kinda lonely down there, dude, isn't it... care to come back to the land of the living? ;-) you'd be welcomed warmly.
hey Evi, Giancarlo, Luis and any other Olympics watchers out there... for some of the best writing on the 2000 Olympics, look no farther than Salon.com's coverage. i like Gary Kamiya's essays in particular. his writing is sharp, vivid, evocative, and at times extremely funny. i've always enjoyed Kamiya's writings at Salon, and am glad he's still there. (he was part of the early group of writers at Salon.) naturally, he's a Berkeleyite. ;-)
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