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Old October 27th 03, 02:59 AM
Banty
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Default Bright 2nd grader & school truancy / part-time home-school?

In article , Ericka Kammerer says...

Banty wrote:
[ socializing outside one's classroom]


Really??

I guess that doesn't jibe with my experience at all, either as a child or a
parent of a child. As a kid, we socialized in the neighborhood. We always
lived on base and there were tons of kids. A lot of the kids went to Catholic
schools, but after playing together all summer and evenings and weekends, it
wasn't a big deal. So moving with the same kids, going into neighborhoods with
the same kids (just different arrangements of houses) really put out in relief
that suddenly it was supposed to be bad to talk to most of my friends anymore.



I can certainly see how that would be so if the
prohibition on socializing extended beyond the school day.
My point was that I was just wondering outside of the
unusual situation you experienced, how would most of those
student know people outside their "circle" anyway, given
that school-based friendships would come almost entirely
from the classroom anyway. I guess I was assuming that
neighborhood friends and friends from other activities
would be unaffected by this odd school division, but
apparently it extended beyond school?


??

Perhaps you're thinking of a program where the kids are together in a class even
for lunch and PE and recess and everything else?

By junior high, those between-class periods and - especially - who sits with who
during lunch, and PE which mixes classes (at least did for the program I was
in), and in recess in earlier grades the kids see each other. And often
gravitate to their neighborhood friends. It doesn't have to extend beyond
school.


A generation later, my son has neighborhood friends - again lots of boys in our
neighborhood. And then cub scouts is a big base of friendship, for both parents
and children, and this included kids from different schools. In my son's
birthday parties I'd say the guests are 1) neighborhood 2) scouts 3) classroom.
And the bonds form most when they have two connections, like a friend of a
neighborhood friend who is also in a class with my son.



Right, same here. Well, different activities, but
same principle ;-) But when it comes to kids they have no
ties with other than school, my boys only have school
friends from their classrooms because they don't really
have a chance to mingle much with school kids who aren't
in their classes (past or present).


I agree that it's not a simple thing - bright nerdy kids like me definately get
harassed and I had my share of problems. In one sense it was wonderful to be
with other bright kids, but I *had* made connections outside that category over
the years, and that was pretty much a hard-won thing. That they were suddenly
so uncool was really a shock. I think it affected my outlook on how people
choose friends and about certain superficial aspects of socializing and
connections and even networking in adult life.



Absolutely. I wonder where that segregation came
from? I would expect some small degree of us-vs-them with
any segregated program, but it seems like it was really
excessive where you were.


I don't think it was excessive so much that the social expectations were much
apparent to those of us who came from unsegregated classes from another state
because it was so different where we came from.
Kids who had been in the NH system all along pretty much knew each other already
and not the other kids and it had developed over time. We were like a new tribe
coming in, and being told that certain members of our tribe were suddenly very
uncool. Our unique situation made the segregatation that much more starkly
clear. (Funny using this word 'segregation' concering this situation, although
it fits. In 1967, with a large group of kids suddenly coming in to a New
Hampshire school district from Texas, they assumed we'd be trying to maintain a
different kind of segregation! That was another piece of weirdness I can tell
you about another time.)

Banty