Hi ndbnddnyen
Readers! This letter is a gauntlet thrown down by the student body president in Chappaqua, N.Y., a suburb so lovely it’s where the Clintons moved after the White House. (And apparently they have loved it!) I wish the letter had a few more details and of course, I do not know the administration’s side. But it sounds like the local high school, Greeley, is beset  by the same fears gripping so many schools these days: The fears of litigation, political incorrectness, possible student injury and just a fear of doing anything, when doing nothing is so much safer. The (much longer) letter appeared in NewCastleNow.org.- L.Â
OPEN LETTER TO THE GREELEY ADMINISTRATION: WHO TOOK MY GREELEY?
March 15, 2013
by Tim Bloom
I was very disappointed to hear yesterday that the Greeley Games event* that I proposed is not going to happen. Quite frankly, I’m not at all surprised, as this seems to be par for the course these days. It has gotten to the point where every single member of the Student Council is disappointed with the way the administration is trying to dismantle the very things that had made Greeley great for so long.
It’s really sad to see… A group was [even] told they can’t sell hot chocolate in the morning for charity because it’s “too dangerous.â€
…I don’t feel as if I’m doing even half the job I ran for as President and the reason for that is the administration. … For example, how do we know that the event I proposed would have an attendance problem if it’s never happened before? …
This school has gone from a place of which I was proud to be President to a place that I can’t wait to leave. If it is your long-term plan to oversee a community of grade-obsessed, one-dimensional, disinterested students then continue to do what you are doing. If you want a vibrant, engaged community of students who participate in their education more fully, then you need to reexamine how you interact with us. Less police state and PC paranoia and more positivity would help. Just today, I heard of two new issues that are all of a sudden problems in the eyes of the administration. I’ve been told that the beloved Greeley a capella groups have to meet with you because the fact that they rehearse off-campus is a problem. Why? Why do they have to change how they operate if they are successful as they are now? Isn’t this discouraging the independence that you encourage us to develop throughout high school? And now you want to change the traditional trip to Jones Beach for seniors? You have already dismantled quite a few senior traditions. Can you leave just one alone?
…To summarize, we’ve all had enough of the arbitrary decisions. The Theatre Company just put on a play about sex (and a very good one might I add) without being questioned, and yet a song for the a capella concert was questioned because it included the word “bullet†and referenced guns. Can you explain that inconsistency? I can’t.
I wish you an uneventful rest of the school year.
Sincerely,
Tim Bloom
Student Council President 2012-2013
* The event was a field day/color war event for the whole school, to replace Seminar Day. It was going to be a surprise and hopefully bring the school together—but administrators took two weeks of considering it, just to say no.
Lenore Here: The comments on the site are pretty fascinating. I’m hoping the administration will write its own letter and make it public. Â – L.Â
Horace Greeley H.S.
The more schools treat students like incompetent idiots, the more they will act way. It’s a shame the admins can’t see that they are creating the very thing they claim to wish to counter.
This reminds me of a saying I think of often: “We are not raising kids, we are raising adults”. High school is supposed to be preparing teens to leave the nest.
Many of the high school seniors are already 18, and legal adults. They can vote, join the military, get married, sign a legal contract.
But they can’t sell hot chocolate, practice singing off campus, or use the word “bullet” in a song, according to the school administration. They can’t make plans for a trip that they are old enough to take WITHOUT school approval.
Someone needs to remind the administration, we are raising ADULTS, let’s treat them as such.
I can’t help but wonder what sort of punishment the school administration is currently planning, because one of their “children” choose to exercise his freedom of speech. Since freedom of speech is only a discussion in civics class.
In 1966 I finished High School. Things were different back then. I live in PA and we took our guns to school and left them in our cars during hunting season. Our teachers cared more about teaching us to go out into the world than teaching us their personal agenda.
The kids need to remember this. Some of them are voting age now and others will be soon. The school President should run for school board. Voting for those office’s are poorly attended so a dedicated group should have some progress. Even if they don’t win they will shake up the current members.
What an incredibly intelligent response.
I agree with Kimberly. I’m floored at the stupidity of the school administration, but I’m also very proud of this young man for writing such an intelligent, articulate, and reasoned letter to address the problem of the administration not giving the student government any room to govern. He obviously cares very much about his school, which is admirable, and should be encouraged.
I too was involved in student government in both high school and university, and when I was in high school, we had some problems with overzealous administration, but it was almost always worked out through reasonable compromises. For example, when the principal objected to pajama day for fear that some of the girls might wear “skank-jamas” (our vernacular, not hers), we were still allowed to have it, with the stipulation that all pajamas must comply with the dress code (shoulders, midriffs, thighs, and underwear covered, and no obscene slogans). When the fall United Way week had to be cancelled because the teachers were on strike from doing extra-curricular activities, the strike only lasted a few weeks, and United Way week ended up being combined with the winter Spirit Week the following semester. When we got two new vice-principals who were brought in to “crack down on discipline problems” (who comprised only a minority of the student body), and they cancelled the teachers’ assembly one year (we had a ritual of the teachers doing a variety show for the students on the last day of classes before Christmas break), they replaced that event with the principal kissing a pig……and then promptly reinstated the teachers’ assembly the following year, by popular demand. I guess what I’m trying to say is, even when things were “strict,” we still had our school dances, concerts, game days, dress-up events, Spirit Week, and everything that made high school fun, and I’m glad we did, because that’s what made me look forward to going to school. I was fortunate enough to have found my niche in music, but some students really didn’t like school, and the special events were, for them, a welcome break from the monotony. Oh, and in case anyone’s wondering, I didn’t go to high school in the Dark Ages of air raid drills and mimeograph machines either–my last year of high school was in 2002-2013, ten years ago.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Tim Bloom is alone in his frustrations. When I went back to my old high school just before Christmas, with an old friend of mine, to visit the graduation mural we’d painted, we learned that the school’s Christmas concert, and pretty much every fun event, had been cancelled, due to a province-wide strike on extra-curricular activities. According to the newspapers, this strike is still going on, but they’re “beginning negotiations.” That’s great, but it’s March, and school ends in June. That’s not enough time for a full season of any sport, for the music and drama departments to put together any kind of performance for the spring semester, or for the student government to do much of anything. I know that the school board has to plan long-range, but for the students, that’s not good enough, because for them, their school years are a moment in time–each student is only going to get one chance at grade nine, grade ten, etc., and those are such formative years, that if you strip school of all but the bare bones of academics, those students aren’t going to learn life skills, like making friends, or working as a team, or planning an event from start to finish, or even just learning that everyone has their strengths, and even if they aren’t in the classroom (or, in a certain subject area), that doesn’t mean that they’re stupid. Also, even those who are focused on grades, for the purposes of getting into a good university, well, most universities don’t just look at grades–they want students who participate in extra-curricular activities too. I know this first-hand, because that’s how I got accepted into Bishop’s University, which, coincidentally, also has a vibrant student community, and I had a wonderful time there. If my high school experience had been similar to Mr. Booth’s, I might not have had enough extra-curricular involvement to get into university, or I might have just “checked out” mentally and emotionally, and showed up for class, and maybe gotten decent grades, but I would have done so feeling like I was passively having my education forced upon me, rather than taking an active role in it.
Also, another thing–did it not occur to the administration at Horace Greeley High that they’ll be metriculating students who are right on the cusp of voting age? If those students had such a negative experience of democracy in high school, they’ll probably be less likely to vote as adults. After all, the “government” they chose at school was ineffectual, they’ll grow up believing that their votes, and their opinions, wont make a difference in the real world.
My sixteen year old was reading this over my shoulder, and assumed that hot chocolate was dangerous because the kids would hurl it at each other. Should I be worried about his school experience? 🙂
When I explained that, no, the issue was probably with the making of the hot chocolate, he was rather stunned, as I’m sure most teenagers would be. After all, he can drive a car and own/use a gun, and yet some twit deems making hot chocolate an unsafe practice?
@Hineata–Good point. Also, I have to wonder, if Horace Greeley High School considers making hot chocolate to be “dangerous,” do they still allow students to boil water for lab experiments during science classes?
I love the closing of that letter.
I would guess that the “danger” of hot chocolate is kids bumping into each other in crowded halls and spilling it and not in the making of it. Still a completely idiotic fear. I guarantee that this will occur but it is not like the hot chocolate should be that hot. In reality, my guess is that “too dangerous” is code for too messy.
Who is naive enough to think schools are run for the benefit of students?
@Nick–It’s funny that you should say that, because when I was in high school, and my first round of university, I did feel that the schools cared about the students. Since my high school valued and encouraged extra-curricular involvement, and honestly gave students a say in things whenever possible, and Bishop’s was (and is) very much a “teaching university” with a similar attitude towards extra-curricular activities, I never felt like Tim Bloom did. I mean, things weren’t perfect, but like I said, the problems that we had were almost always talked and sorted out, so that everyone would get *some* of what they wanted. I mean, obviously, the administration still ran the high school with regards to academic matters, and if someone did something they weren’t supposed to, they’d be referred to a teacher or V.P. for discipline, depending on the offense (since this was just a regular public school, and not Sudbury Valley School), but when it came to things that were “just for fun,” the students were in the driver’s seat, with staff advisors either in the room (at student council), or nearby (for band exec), to steer our ideas toward something that’d be safe and feasible. As for university, I did student government there too, for my first two years, but it was a lot slower and more bureaucratic, so I didn’t continue beyond second year, but I’m glad I had the experience of doing student government when I was in high school, and I’m glad that I did it when I did, instead of now. Tim Bloom’s letter has really shown me how much things have changed in so little time.
P.S., I have a distinct memory of being on student council in grade eleven or twelve, and it was during Spirit Week, and we were making hot chocolate for the students as a treat, to pass around to the different homerooms in the morning. The only problem was, that week happened to be my week to be on “the morning show” (what we called the morning announcements), and so, I had to figure out how to get the announcements read, and the hot chocolate made, at the same time. I ended up putting the kettle (actually a gigantic coffee urn) on, then reading the announcements, then making the first batch of hot chocolate when I was done. No adult told me to do it this way; I figured it out myself. Anyway, this is just one example of a real-life opportunity to learn problem-solving, that students at Greeley High are being denied.
Wait, we shouldn’t use the word “bullet”? So what new term do they propose for PowerPoint or Word instead of “bullet points”?
Of course the sad thing is the kind of Political Correctness mentality of forcing one to adopt concepts.
You can be a good liberal and still object to this Stalinization of thought.
@ Cyn:
“Wait, we shouldn’t use the word “bulletâ€? So what new term do they propose for PowerPoint or Word instead of “bullet pointsâ€?”
Dots.
A dot is a round smooth non-violent simple syllable, with no scary sharp edges known to cause injury to delicate politically-correct (non)sensibilities!
😛
For me, it is mostly letter from some strange very different world.
Our high school was way more academically oriented. We had no school organized food sales and if you did sport or music or charity, you did it with out of school organization. In fact, extracurricular activities was almost never in-school. School was there for physics, history, geography, languages and so on.
Keeping things separated has some benefits I guess. It is more simple and complicated negotiations over place to practice or other silly stuff are not necessary. School rules only some part of your life, not most of it.
Btw, I forgot to ask. What is seminar day and why should the decision whether to replace it by color war be done faster then in 14 days and be yes?
I tried to Google it, but did not had much luck.
@Michelada–Are you sure? “Dots” are also a type of candy, and don’t forget about “Dippin’ Dots” ice cream–we can’t have any mention of sugary junk food while we’re in the midst of an obesity crisis!!!
@Andy–I think schools that run extra-curricular activities, do it becaue they want the students to relate well to one another, and function as a community. I mean, even with no extra-curricular involvement, most kids are in school for 30 hours + each week–six hours or so each day, for five days per week, with the same peers, day in, and day out, with very little say in who they choose to associate with–for example, Jimmy HAS to share a math class with Billy the Bully, Ditzy Dana, and Malodorous Malcolm whether he likes it or not. So, extra-curriculars give the students a chance to be with other, like-minded peers. If Jimmy is really into, say, theatre, then he still has to suffer through math, but at least he has drama club at the end of the day to look forward to, and since he’s going to be in high school for four years, that can significantly increase his morale.
Another thing with extra-curricular activities is, some of the offered activities are really just extensions of the curriculum. For example, sports teams play the same sports that are offered in the physical education classes, and when I was in high school, I was never into sports, but I was into music, and we often played band repertoire in class. So, taking band as an extra-curricular gave me the chance to “customize” my education somewhat, by voluntarily signing up for more than the required amount of music. This taught me (although I already knew) that music isn’t just something you do in school, it’s something you can do for fun too, or to share with others–through band, I went on concert tours of Italy and New Orleans, played at a few different charity events and parades (on a float, NOT marching) in the community, and also at game days and assemblies at school. That’s another thing; when you have the band playing at sports games, and the theatre kids doing plays about hot-button issues like, say, homophobia (I actually wrote and co-directed such a play), then you teach kids that these activities don’t exist in isolation, and each person has something they can contribute to the school community. That’s something you don’t get outside of school in, say, Little League, or a youth orchestra or theatre group. Besides, those activities outside of school can be difficult to find, difficult to afford, and they usually take place at a location away from the school, and not always accessible by public transit, so parents have to drive their kids, which isn’t always feasible. So, students might not be able to participate in these activities, if they can’t do them in school.
Also, student government, by its very nature, cannot take place outside of school, so even if it’s possible for Jimmy to join a theatre group/orchestra/choir/sports team/charity fundraising group outside of school, but he won’t learn to be a leader in his school community, if no such opportunity exists. As for student government making “silly” decisions about things like school dance themes, or whether to have a talent show or a student-teacher hockey game (or both) during Spirit Week, those decisions may seem silly, but making them collaboratively gives students a sense of autonomy (if their opinions are actually respected), and in the long run, these things create the most positive, lasting memories of high school. If you asked me, say, the formula for the length of a line, which I think I learned in grade ten or eleven math, I wouldn’t know, and I’d have to Google it, but if you asked me what song I danced to with the student council in the school lip-synch competition in grade eleven, then I’d remember that day with fondness. For the record, it was “Rock Lobster,” and we weren’t even close to good, but we had a blast, and the rest of the school found it entertaining too.
@Emily It was not meant as a rant against extra curricular activities, really. I did them and almost everybody I knew in school has been engaged in some. Just that they have not been organized by school and there was kids from other schools as well.
The “what is seminal day” question was meant in all seriousness.
The whole system was entirely different I guess. There was no “school community” as you describe and you probably spend much less time in school. There was mini community around classes – group of around 30 kids that have all the math, history and so on together. That mini community was whatever emerged out of those 30 kids, some did after school stuff together others not.
If I compare it to what you wrote, you still had drama or music club to look for if you hated all the school stuff. Although most people did not hated all school – that was very rare. They might hated particular teacher or topic. Our system had what Americans call tracking and I doubt that you would pass entrance test into our school if you would hate whole school.
From your example, you would still play in a band and charity actions and so on, just that you would not sign in school but elsewhere.
We had no game days, no assemblies at school and no theaters about hot button issues in school, so that would be impossible for you. As I told, entirely different word :).
This is just a technical note, but those out of school activities have not been hard to find, expensive or hard to get to. I think it was market thing, schools do not organize those things, kids want to engage in them, so a lot of organizations emerge and they want to be located where the public transport goes. If you open music club somewhere where it is impossible to go by public transport, you will not find enough kids able to get there. Other music clubs will beat you :).
I would seen then ability to do sport not offered by school as an advantage.
There was some poor attempt at something like student government, but it was only a game for those that wanted to study political science or something similar later on. I do not even know what they did. How many kids participated in those in your school?
We had no “spirit week” for them to organize decorations. When we had issue with something (I recall some negotiation over lunch room organization), we went directly to teachers. We did not needed to go through students council.
As I told, I think that the whole system must have been very very different. The school did not cared about leadership or sense of autonomy or anything besides academics and no one expected it to.
Actually, I still see work, hobbies and private life as separated areas of life and prefer to wok in places that allow me to see them separate. I would not like to work in one of those companies that want you merge work with non-work life, my hobbies are mine :). It is kinda similar, but I never related those things.
But, it ended soon after the lunch, so you was free a lot of hours per day. There was homework to do of course.
You can calculate the length of the line using Pythagorean theorem. It is just an application of that theorem, memorizing special formula is a bad idea: sqrt((x1-x2)^2, (y1-y2)^2) I used to like math and this one is easy, but would have no chance if you would ask something out of history of art :).
@Andy – were you schooled in China or South East Asia? Being very nosy, it’s just that your schooling sounds very much like his, and you write like he does too 🙂
His exposure to the ‘arts’ consisted of memorising 5000-odd characters in primary school – he was lucky enough to go to a Chinese one – and learning the long line of the Emperors, who all sound fascinating…
Sounds like somebody has had enough. I hope he can encourage students to dissent.
@hineata Czech republic actually. Some properties are similar, but Asian systems tend to require much more drill (and time) from students.
Even at hardests schools, if you have been smart, you could still slack through what you did not liked and still have pretty decent grades. No such possibility in Japan I heard :).
I know nothing about China system.
History, geography and any other humanities were mostly memorizing, but math, physics and similar calculation based topics have been very good – based mainly on problem solving.
That explains why almost all Americans can write very good essays and we can not. Our students would not be able to save their own lifes if it would depend on three coherent paragraphs. Really, what you guys call bad essay would still pass as very good one around here. (Yes this was a rant.)
@Andy–I didn’t “hate all the school stuff,” by any means, I really just didn’t like math (or gym either, but that was only mandatory in grade nine). In any case, I Googled the formula for the length of a line after I replied to you the first time.
Also, when you said that your school had “little mini communities of students who shared classes,” well, that’s kind of my point–at my high school, I had friends of all ages and grade levels, and a lot of them, I wouldn’t see in classes during the day, but I’d see them after school at band, student council, play rehearsal, and so forth. Because of this, the school wasn’t divided into cohorts of “the grade nines,” and “the grade tens,” and so on, but it was, as I said, a community, at least for those who chose to engage in it. People could still participate in activities outside of school (I swam and volunteered at the YMCA for some time, and later, took private clarinet lessons in preparation for university), but there no dearth of activities at school, for anyone who wanted to join.
As for student council, it was just one tool for helping students’ voices be heard. I know that, for a lot of students, it was easier to approach a student council representative about something, than it was to talk to a teacher or principal about it, because that representative might be right there with you in, say, English class. Also, people were more honest with us than they were with adults, because they were more comfortable talking to their peers. I don’t know that our system was better, but it seemed like a pretty good system at the time–I liked going to school, and I got the feeling that school liked having me there. Since high school is such a formative time in a young person’s life (whether they’re there for six hours a day for four years, or only three hours), I think that’s important.
Anyway, I went through the school system in Canada, so YMMV–I hated elementary school, liked high school, and loved university.
@Emily As I told, weird strange system from entirely different world :).
In our system, you had strong (often lifelong friendship strong) ties to kids in class, weak to other kids in school and strong to kids in whatever activity you are engaged in afternoon.
Another difference is, that I know nobody who would like to go through other students. I would trust adults and kids equally e.g., based on my personal experience with them. The age was less important for us, our school had very good relationships between students and teachers. (Not “we are friends good”, but “we trust and respect each other” good. Plus it might have been different other schools.)
Each class had assigned one special teacher that would sort of belong to that class. You usually knew him well, much better then some future political scientist in students council:). He usually stayed the same whole high school.
I liked going to school too, but both elementary and high school. I liked high school a bit more then elementary, it was way more interesting and challenging.
I do not really think that these differences are too important by the way, it is just interesting to read about them.
Come to think about it, both systems probably work ok, but should not be combined. The combination of tracking and in-school extra curricular activities would mean that I would spend all time in school with people who passed the same selection process and would never had a chance to met those from trade schools or even other schools. That level of segregation would be unhealthy I think.
Our hobbies or religions might been different and some might been more artistic then others, but all kids in school shared a lot: we all went to college, none of us had problems with learning (entrance test), most of us have been geeks in something and so on. Real world is way more diverse then that.
>>Each class had assigned one special teacher that would sort of belong to that class. You usually knew him well, much better then some future political scientist in students council:). He usually stayed the same whole high school.<<
@Andy–That sounds great, except for the rare occasion when a certain teacher is a bad fit for a certain student. In that case, that student would be stuck with that teacher for four straight years, if it wasn't possible to move–for example, if all the classes were full, or Mr. Smith's track was the only one that could take advanced French or whatever. When I was in high school, in a lot of cases, if you had a teacher you didn't like, and switching wasn't an option, then you'd put up with him or her for 75 minutes a day for a semester, and be done with it.
As for only associating with students who share your interests, under the North American system of having extra-curriculars that took place through the school, well, yes, that was theoretically possible, and it happened with some kids, but I (and a lot of people) had multiple interests. I was in band, band executive, student council, morning show, newspaper for a few years, peer assisting later on, and I wrote and co-directed a play, and also designed a mural for my graduating class, that I painted with some friends of mine. A lot of people would be in student council AND a sport or two, or band AND theatre, or some combination thereof, so they'd have friends from all over. As for the people who just focused on one key activity, and their friends from there, well, that was their choice. Also, by the time I got to grade twelve or OAC (Ontario Academic Credit, which was a university prep year that used to be called "grade thirteen"), not all the people who I'd started grade nine with, were still around. So, a lot of the older students just banded together, and found each other, and if anyone transferred to our school that year, we'd include them too. So, again, that was our choice–we weren't thrown in with a random group of people and expected to become "lifelong friends," we chose our own friends instead. While it's important to be able to get along with most anyone, I think it's also important to know what kind of people you want to seek out as friends, because that's an important part of knowing yourself.
@Emily Well, yes, if you have big problem with one teacher, then your only chance is to complain / swap class or school. I think that if it is really that bad, then there is some failure on the side of teacher.
Here on high school level, one block of teaching takes 45 minutes. Math was every day, Czech language everyday, the rest 2-3 times per week. So, on the good side, you are stuck only for 90 minutes a week.
Teachers during the year do not change, next years teacher may or may not be the same.
Btw, you are not expected to become a friend, you are only expected not to be complete jerk towards classmates. Nobody cares if you are friends or not, that is as long as you do not disturb others with loud conflicts. That friendship is what often naturally happen when you spend a lot of time together.
I did not mean uniformity in hobbies and interests. I meant more uniformity in life priorities. Everyone in our school planned to go to college and everyone was among good students. Literately no one placed priority on say sport or music over school. They might have been willing to sacrifice some grades for that hobby, but not too much.
You would not get into that school otherwise or you would risk the school to ask you to transfer into “better suited one”. Our sport club had kids that took sport as much higher priority – they usually went to easy trade schools so they have time for sport.
I do not think that you would be able to get into our school if you had learning disability. Not unless it would be very very mild. Also, those who chosen trades have been different from us in a hard to describe way.
As far as learning goes, this is good thing. Making fun of good students and geeks on high school level is something I knew only from American movies. It also allows much bigger expectations from teachers in term of both amount of content and speed. Almost all students had good attitude towards learning. That was definitely not the case at elementary.
From what I compared, what passed as difficult test on trade school would be considered as very simple one in our. We would probably not study for it at all, required content was so small. I did not even needed pen and paper to do math exercises my friend from trade school struggled with.
Which is the difference I meant.
I was lonely in elementary school and could not relate to other kids much. Most of those kids went to trades or other schools later on, so I fitted into high school immediately and well. Also, having low social skills and quirks have been much smaller problem.
I do not know how much all that geeks are bullied or sit alone in lunch room you see so often in movies are real and how much of it is huge exaggeration and non sense. We had no unofficial popularity contests, football players were not above geeks in any way and cheerleading would be just another hobby only your friends really care about. The whole popular-unpopular student scale is foreign for me.
Programming, board games or dungeon and dragons playing among math school students have been common in math schools and no reason for ridicule on our.
Btw, I would really like to know whether that image I made from movies is absolutely out of reality or not.
@Andy–As for your comment on putting music, sports, etc., before getting into university, I went to university FOR music, so my experience was a bit different. Also, nobody made fun of anyone for being smart and getting good grades in high school–people certainly did in elementary school, but in high school (and even more so in university), being smart was “cool.”
Boy, things were different when I was in high school. Instead of being punished for singing a song with “bullet” in it, we actually had a school sponsored rifle club. And there was never a single injury or threat in my entire time there.
That was in Colorado in the 80’s.