orichalcum

First, and unrelatedly, wow is it snowing here, in that wet snow kinda way. Apparently, this storm will hit the NE tomorrow, so be warned; tomorrow will be very icky for many of you. Apparently, it might snow during the Quest game; I'm sure that will be fun.

What I'm actually writing about is some mixed feelings I've been having after reading a couple of NYTimes articles about various of the different small, charter-type public schools that have sprung up in NYC in the past few years under the Bloomberg administration. These high schools are often focused on one particular area and serve as magnets for students particularly interested in that subject, as well as students who wind up there randomly due to the lottery.

So, I have no particular problem with the "math and science" schools, or even the "law and justice" schools. But a Food and Finance High School where nearly all the classes are centered around culinary and restaurant management skills? A Sports Professions High School? The High School for Hospitality Management? A Fashion Industries High School? These seem awfully, well, vocational to me. And maybe I'm wrong, and there are lots of 14-year-olds who know that they want to be a chef or a fashion designer or a baseball manager when they grow up. But...I feel like the point of high school is to give everyone the same general foundation, so that, when they're adults and actually have slightly more of a clue, they can pursue a wide variety of career paths. Theoretically, everyone has several years of math and world and U.S history and English and biology and chemistry and so forth.

I worry that by sending some students to the "Math and Science" high school and others to the Sports Professions High School, we are creating even more of a default class system in the public schools than tracking by academic achievement did. Will elite liberal arts colleges treat students from the High School for Hospitality Management in the same way as students from the High School for Law, Advocacy, and Community Justice?

This isn't an area where I have a strong opinion, and so I'm curious to hear from others, particularly people who either did go to magnet schools or who knew very early what career they wanted to pursue. (To be fair, I wanted to be an archaeologist since I was 9, and have only deviated a few degrees from that in the subsequent decades.)

Mac has just discovered that if you take a seltzer bottle by one end and shake it, all sorts of fun things happen.

Also, he has learned how to crawl with alternating legs, which has doubled his movement rate, somewhat terrifyingly.

And finally, just as Eowyn was getting calmer about letting him pet her without running away, and had taken to affectionately intercepting his grabby hand and licking it and then grooming his hair, Mac discovered her tail. And discovered that he could grab onto her tail with both hands and pull really hard.

Now we have Baby-Dog Circle Chases.

Right now, I'm watching a fascinating exercise in problem-solving. Mac has gotten the selter bottle edged underneath the bouncer. He knows it's there, and is trying to figure out how to get it out. He tried pounding on the top of the bouncer, reaching arms in from both sides, and periodically he puts his head down on the floor to check that it's still there.