Reply to GDS vs. Maret - cultural and curricular differences?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Re GDS history

With a couple notable exceptions, the teachers aren't great and the curriculum isn't well-conceived.  In theory, I agree with you that the 9th grade approach sounds promising.  In practice, it hasn't worked well.  Part of the problem is that an ambitious approach like that requires teachers with a kind of training/background few HS teachers (few profs, for that matter) actually have.  Another part of the problem is that history gets treated less as a rigorous scholarly discipline than as a place to locate various advocacy projects.  To be clear, I'm NOT saying I reject the school's politics/values.  What I'm saying is that advocacy is more effective if you actually learn how/make the effort to analyze and understand issues in greater depth than GDS requires in its history classes.  [/quote]

Our student's experience has been so different as to make me question whether we are discussing the same high school.  But I respect that different people have different opinions.  The 9th grade history course in Communities and Change really exposed my student to studies they would otherwise not have explored on their own.  It was briefly frustrating as they immediately wanted to study more traditional history courses, but as detailed again below, you get to those courses in due time.  The first year process is engaged in by every student, it is a shared curriculum that pushes you to think, learn, and explore history outside what your natural affinities and conceptions on the subject.  Upon reflection, our student does not regret anything about their studies at GDS, as the school has so many traditional and specialized offerings in the other grades.  The history teachers they have been taught by have been uniformly strong, and some of their very favorites at the school.  [/quote]

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