My first secondary school had an excellent reputation and a wonderful headmaster. He retired during the summer before I started (unexpectedly, ill-health), and the other school in our area was oversubscribed and would not take any children from our village at all, so we were stuck with the new headmaster, who embodied all that was worst about 1980s progressive teaching... I was squashed at every available opportunity by teachers who said I didn't need to learn academic things but should learn to milk goats, paint murals, give up our French lessons to serve coffee to 'the community', watch TV and discuss it instead of reading books and writing essays... after a few years of that you lose any drive you might have had. If we hadn't moved house when I was 14 I really hate to think what would have happened. Luckily most of my brighter classmates went on to a decent sixth-form college (our school had no sixth-form) so I hope they all were hurriedly brought up to speed in the same way I was when I switched schools. Having 'push' is not much help if no one will help you use it in any academic way and your parents can't afford to move you/hire a tutor. I read voraciously and widely (but with no particular focus), and that's the main reason I think I survived that school.
I would hope that smallclanger would be ok in a state school, especially since both his parents could read before they were three. But I don't want to risk a similar terrible experience with school, nor do we want to be 'the pushy parents' that wind up putting the child off learning for ever more. They exist. They're scary.
Cambridge is unlikely to have dire schools. Oxford has really only one or two (but they are seriously dire) - unfortunately we're in the catchment area for one of them so if allocation works against us I'd give serious attention to private/home schooling.
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Date: 2004-01-23 04:58 am (UTC)I would hope that
Cambridge is unlikely to have dire schools. Oxford has really only one or two (but they are seriously dire) - unfortunately we're in the catchment area for one of them so if allocation works against us I'd give serious attention to private/home schooling.