[speaker001:] the uh public school system system seems to be getting a lot of uh criticism lately I guess over the years it's always seemed worse uh to the parents that have kids in there than it was when they were there so uh I don't know how much of it is well a lot of it is deserved but then a lot of it's not I mean the the kids are coming out learning uh things a lot faster uh whether or not they actually have it learned that that that yet uh remains to be seen at least in our kids case it's they're still in it but uh I know they're learning things that uh
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] we never learned plus they have the burden of uh well this is the burden they have the task of learning computers uh even in uh kindergarten they had uh a requirements that they had to meet for learning the uh terms like keyboard and monitor and they wanted know what a computer was and what a disk was and
[speaker002:] oh really that's great
[speaker001:] you know all the uh yeah it is but it's interesting that that there's that much more knowledge to be learned at this at this uh age you know not just the colors and begin on the alphabet it's
[speaker002:] so much more complex yeah
[speaker001:] learn your colors learn your alphabet learn all your your little terms here and and learn how to uh begin learning some of the reading and by the second or third grade uh the little school system that we're in they have uh really a lot of computers uh it's a very wealthy district as as all that fighting's going on over who gets the money and the like but they have
[speaker002:] great yeah I've been hearing about that
[speaker001:] they have uh twenty seven computers for each of the little labs and each lab serves uh two grades so the first and second graders have their own batch of computers that they've cycled the kids through and
[speaker002:] goodness
[speaker001:] and so there's uh well I guess three or four different labs and they're all very nice uh computers all tied together on the LAN and one server that handles all the software so that the teachers don't have to go around to each machine and do their work they can control it from the machine the server it's it's a beautiful system but uh the only bad thing it seems to do is uh not the computer necessarily but the company the school system seems to put a little bit more pressure on the kids than uh than we had of course of course I guess with that learning comes that pressure
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] we also managed to land in a school that uh they decided to build one big rectangular building and then not have any walls for the classroom and so it gets a little noisy it's a little hard to keep the kids that quiet from one class to the next and they can't really
[speaker002:] oh
[speaker001:] be rowdy at any one given time so they they put them outside a lot they try you know to get a lot of good breaks here and there and but uh they just took bookcases and things to move around and sort of what you know sort of build a an idea of a wall and the kids seem to handle it okay but it's it's got some drawbacks to it and uh as if that wasn't bad enough they they also experimented with a particular size school most of the elementary schools were uh seven hundred uh kids in in it only goes from kindergarten up to fifth grade for our elementaries and our particular schools run uh thousand fifty right now
[speaker002:] oh goodness
[speaker001:] so they they put a few more warm bodies in there than the teachers really needed to have they still have a twenty three to twenty five or so to one teacher ratio but it's still
[speaker002:] that can be a disadvantage to the kids
[speaker001:] yeah still a lot of people and you just can't get them in and out of the school in a reasonable length of time you know traffic is a bit of a problem I mean of all the decisions they could have made on this particular school they uh they located it in a up against a creek and there's no street access to it except for one turn around driveway and that feeds onto a street that is right across the street from
[speaker002:] oh no
[speaker001:] another school and they all get out at the same time and it's just uh so we we spend a little time getting I get
[speaker002:] get it
[speaker001:] go over there to pick up uh my son about two thirty and he gets out at two forty five and that gives me a little bit of time to get parked and then I wait for between between kids rather than drive all the way home I wait a little while and and at two thirty I mean at three thirty my daughter gets out and we usually let them play if the weather's nice play outside until the traffic dies down and then we go home so I'm there from two thirty until four o'clock I'm just waiting for
[speaker002:] oh that's a good idea
[speaker001:] to pick up the kids that's how much of a chunk it takes out of the old day but uh it is better just to let them you know play outside than it is to fight the traffic so and there's it's real nice park lands on both sides of the school they have you know climbers and stuff like that but
[speaker002:] well great
[speaker001:] the the school system in and of itself as far as what they're teaching um they cannot keep up with the private as far as because of the ratio there's just no way plus the private tends to have
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] the more disciplined kids you know they're not dealing with the whole gamut of personalities here they're they're private schools do not put up with a child that is uh that much of a problem like most schools have to
[speaker002:] that's right
[speaker001:] so you have that kind of a situation but uh by the same token you have kids coming out of private schools that they've spent very much time with them not able to social cope socially with the other types of people in the world
[speaker002:] yeah um I remember I mean during my I went to a private school during the junior junior high years which was uh you know really during the development development time of my life and it was a small school we had like maybe twenty people in junior high I mean in my class like in seventh grade we had twenty in them and whenever we moved up to the eighth eighth grade we had like twenty or twenty five in the whole eighth grade and we had two different classes so the ratio was real good um as far as the we had real good teachers and I learned a lot I feel like that if I had of gone to a private school during junior high I probably wouldn't have developed such good study skills because um I thought the private school was difficult I mean it gave a lot of homework and everything and it really helped me develop my skills my uh my memorization I can memorize things real well now and things like that but and then whenever I got to high school it was kind of a disadvantage to me to to the fact that I was going from a class of twenty to a class of five hundred and uh and I do feel like that I was socially withdrawn to a certain extent because I didn't know anyone
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] and I was a freshman in high school you know and I was the peon but uh it probably took I don't know maybe the first semester to get to get to where I was really comfortable with school because um I hadn't been in the public school system for so long and it is just it's really different it uh the children there are a lot a lot wilder than what I was used to I was grew I grew up in a very protective home and then whenever I got to high school things were just so much different especially nowadays I mean even the high school that I went to just recently they put up these little metal detectors at each door when you walk in to make sure you don't have a gun and things like that and uh
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] I mean it's it's gotten worse I graduated about two years ago and even in the past two years it's gotten I mean it's just increased the the crime and the the drugs and the violence and everything have just crime increased enormously
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] so um
[speaker001:] well another thing that we've noticed that's uh changed over the years and uh we're not really sure exactly what we're going what we want to do with it publicly but uh the teachings uh the ideas that are taught uh don't always agree with what we would teach them either from a standpoint of morals or from a standpoint of how to handle a given situation
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and there seems to be a a large degree of violence not necessarily taught but but ingrained in a majority of the kids either from TV or from uh quite a few kids like in the second to third grade take uh karate lessons and take various uh self-defense things and it's it's it's given to them or it's proposed
[speaker002:] golly
[speaker001:] it seems to be socially acceptable as a self-esteem you know building building the person's confidence up and you have
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] uh third and fourth graders that are uh you know when they get into a fight they they tend to use some of the the maneuvers that they have and they feel a little more confident about their fighting ability they tend to get into a few more fights and several of them have ended with uh police calls and and having uh broken bones down at that level of
[speaker002:] oh goodness
[speaker001:] of kids I know more than one kid that has has got a uh record already just because of fighting of that that nature
[speaker002:] oh no
[speaker001:] and it's it's not something that necessarily happens at school but just in their their uh relationships as they after school times and the like
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and then you get into the whole area of of uh well what what I would deem the new age thinking where they have these little extra classes but they offer to come in about fifteen to twenty minutes early in the mornings and all the kids will sit around in a little circle and they're they're asked to empty their minds and to to think about uh they have a name of a particular dinosaur that they they're to uh think about that dinosaur and they're encouraged