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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The PP saying Park is too permissive, too liberal, too etc. posts very frequently. Frankly I find that person's posts to be very overgeneralized with no specifics about the school apart from that and the Jewish stereotype. Historically, Park was the "Jewish" schools because other elite private schools in Baltimore would not accept Jewish students due to anti-Semitism. I wouldn't exactly call it "#1 school for elite Jews" -- that doesn't really explain why Jewish people went there.[/quote]

You must be confusing me with someone else. I have only posted about Baltimore schools a handful of times as the topic doesn't come up very often and I don't recall talking about Park.

I think Park is a fabulous school. It's not for everyone or for every family. By Baltimore standards it's on the liberal side. The most common feedback I get from parents comparing Friends and Park is that while Friends is also liberal it is also a bit more structured and many families like that balance better for their kids. But every Friends family also thinks highly of Park too.

If I brought up the comment about Park's historic affiliation with the Baltimore Jewish community it was to highlight Park's reputation as a progressive and liberal private school, just as Baltimore's vibrant Jewish community has a history of progressive liberalism. Beyond that I'm sorry for mentioning it as it is probably not relevant at all, so you have my apologies. [/quote]

I’m really confused by this post. “Progressive” in Park’s sense means inheriting the educational philosophy of John Dewey et al. As far as I know, Baltimore’s Jewish community has nothing to do with Dewey.

Nor is the Jewish community particularly liberal in a political or social sense. Not that this maps onto political affiliation, but Baltimore has the largest growing Orthodox community outside of Israel and Brooklyn.

In any case, saying Park is the “Jewish” school as many old Baltimoreans is a totally ignorant way of describing the deep anti-semitism that is part of the history of all the other elite private schools. Park admitted Jews when other schools wouldn’t. I think calling it the Jewish school and suggesting that the manners of the kids are lax is a total mischaracterization of the school’s culture and philosophy. The only time I’ve seen kids lying on the floor there is when they were measuring velocity of vehicles they built in physics class. I would be fine with that as a parent. I visited many other “progressive” schools in Baltimore — Waldorf, Montessori, and Greenmount — and they were much more unstructured, if you like that. In contrast Park is much more conventional and incorporates a lot more teacher-led classroom learning. I was told it is one of the most rigorous from an academic point of view.[/quote]

You know what, give it a break won’t you? Park has historically carried a lot of cachet in Baltimore’s Jewish community. If you want to somehow turn this into an axe to grind it’s not going to make you good. You are coming across as judgmental and intolerant and unforgiving.

By the way, Friends was the other school that admitted Jews going back to the early 20th century. Jewish students have been attending Gilman since the 1950s.

[/quote]

Dp, but Park has definitely historically been the “Jewish” school, which has nothing to do with its educational philosophy and everything to do with Baltimore’s long history of racial and religious segregation.  The school is located adjacent to Pikesville, which is the heart of Jewish Baltimore.  [b]Currently, the school is about two-thirds Jewish, and they have been working on increasing diversity for the last decade.[/b]  Baltimore also had two Jewish religious schools located near Park, Beth Tfiloh, and Krieger Schechter.[/quote]

Where do you get this number? Literally every family I know at Park is not Jewish so I'm pretty sure that can't be true. One third Hopkins faculty, I could believe.

BT and KSDS are not really near Park. They are about as close as Boys Latin or St Paul's from Park.[/quote]

I know two people who were board members during the past 10  years.   They told me about the effort to diversify the student body., both are Jewish, for what it is worth.

Not sure what your issue is with Jewish people and why you find the need to argue about this.  There is a geographic part of Baltimore that is heavily Jewish because of redlining.  People have stayed in the area because it is where most of the big synagogues are located, and it is a great community.  This is the same part of Baltimore County where Park, Beth Tfiloh, and Krieger Schechter are located.

I’ll end this here because it is really not worth fighting over.

[/quote]

My guess is that the Park poster is not Jewish, but loves the school, so is miffed that people think of Park as Jewish instead of progressive, or academic or whatever other adjective they want to use.  This is the main problem with independents in Balto, the clichés and stereotypes never really die.  Even when a school HAS changed, there is always going to be a contingent that refuses to change the way that it's categorized in their mind.  You aren't going to change the way Baltimore thinks, just do the right thing for your kid and chose the school that is the best fit, ignore the stereotypes.  [/quote]

And the point was that this person is so strongly opposed to the fact that the school had a large majority of Jewish students that he/she appears anti-Semitic.

This poster also should be aware that Hopkins doctor and Jewish are not mutually exclusive categories.[/quote]

Honestly I have always heard about this Jewish majority, but of the 10-15 families I know who go to Park (random sample) not one is Jewish and not one lives in Pikesville. My Jewish friends who live in Pikesville send their kids to Beth Tfiloh and Krieger Schecter. I haven’t seen any numbers of actual students at the school so I’d love to see where you get this data.  [/quote]

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