Mark Hickey wrote:
bbaka wrote:


Mark,
Teaching and medical may be the most well paying jobs in the future,
that much I do have to admit. Another upside is that it is much more
pleasant to be educating 'interested' kids, so I don't know how high
school will be. When I was a freshman in Illinois I attended Arlington
Heights high, which was somewhat of a snob school for the well off. It
had 3 levels of each class, standard, remedial, and advanced, and I made
it to advanced in all classes because I was interested in learning. I
also had many female study partners (one perk) and much more civilized
classmates than the standard classes. The remedials got all the punks
and the actual slow kids.


I too am a product of the Illinois school system, from a rural area in
southern Illinois (about 50 miles east of St. Louis). Back then
(ending in the late 60's / early 70's) the schools in my area were
rated very high on the national scale, though I'm sure we weren't
positively awash in money to make it so. It all came down to teachers
who were interested in teaching, and (for the most part) kids who were
interested in learning. I finished out HS in that system, but did
find most of the college-level stuff laughably easy when I went
elsewhere (schools in KY, FL and AZ). I feel very lucky to have grown
up there (and also, to have moved away). ;-)

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $695 ti frame

Mark,
There is nothing for me to disagree with there, not even the moving away
part. I moved back in 1993 and had a good job in Mundelein, lived in
Lindenhurst near the Wisconsin border, and had a high rent house with a
lake as the border of my back yard. After work I would take my boat out
for some power rowing or go for a bike ride up into Wisconsin. That part
was OK, but my daughter was in High school at the time and the system
had gone down the tubes. I went to see some of the houses I had grown up
in and came back totally, 100% bummed. All of the corn fields I used to
play in were paved over with housing, even as far out as McHenry, where
I had my now infamous tricycle adventures. My old house was still there
but the entire neighborhood was neglected, while across the creek that
was the back yard property line, it was solid houses, even condos. That
used to be my favorite cornfield for playing hide and seek. Down in Park
Ridge it had become a huge traffic jam and my favorite climbing tree had
been cut down, probably so some kid couldn't fall and hurt himself. The
grand slam of that day was Paul Harvey mentioning that Chicago had
become sooo crowded and that, by the way, in the last 10 years the
Hispanic population had Quintupled. Welfare!

That night there was no riding, no rowing, but a lot of beer. Yet people
here wonder where I get my attitude from.

I wonder, huh.
Have good day.
Bill Baka