The School Search

I cried when Kate was accepted at Friends and swore that I would never change her school until it was time to apply for College. So 'never' isn't always a good word to use since here we are looking casually, not frantically, but consistently at a range of high schools that Kate might go to instead of Friends. Right now we are looking at the top ranked public high schools and last night we went to an open house at Bronx High School of Science where one of the Museum's top scientists went. Of course I have to say that everybody said that you didn't have to be obsessed with science or math to have a happy time there. What to beleive and who to beleive. I grew up believing my government until they lied to me one too many times and so I think it was around the rheteric Viet Nam that I became concerned with lying. But certainly Weapons of Mass Destruction was a rallying call to people who beleive that their government has fudged the facts one too many times. And after so many events kept piling up, one after another, I became a big skeptic about institutional lying. You may think I've gone far afield of my topic but what I am saying is that it's hard to know who is lying and why. Because I now think that people/institutions/especially government lie all the time.

But the folks at Bronx Science seem to present the facts in a charming way and maybe they don't know that they are lying. We sat in on several clesses including a debate class, an after school legal class conducting an interview with Goldilocks and an English class where I saw a young woman who looked so familiar to me. I asked Kate who didn't recognize her until she identified herself as a graduate of the Salk Middle School in Gramercy Park and then I knew. Last year Kate and I took the bus with her and her twin sister down third Avenue. i think she recognized us too. and the winner was a robotics class -- also extra curricular too -- but they had won first prize for their found up creation of a robot that kicked soccer balls.

The only drawback with Bronx Science is not academic of course but is location, location, location. It is way the hell and gone in the Bronx. Not a bad subway trip but I am hoping we can find a school, suitable to all, in our own neighborhood. I realize that I am a Manhattan provincial but so be it. that's the truth

I'm not lying.