RB did it again.
It is #3 in the state, & ranked #133 in the Country!
Way to go RB students and faculty!
Riverside Info » About Riverside
RB #3 in IL
(5 posts)-
Posted Monday May 19, 2008 19:54 #
-
Good for Jack Baldermann and his entire crew. I know how much effort and attention they put into making RB a school that everyone can be proud of. Go Bulldogs!
Posted Monday May 19, 2008 23:36 # -
Who are these people?
http://www.rblandmark.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=4522&TM=39891.12
When did public schools take a charter to "build character"? Is this a "faith"-based initiative? I'm not paying taxes to build anyone's character. I expect their parents and the church to do that.
Does the school presently lack "academic excellence"? Because I did think I was paying for that.
Posted Wednesday Jan 7, 2009 10:08 # -
After going through the public HS curriculum at RB with one of my children, I discovered that one of RB's missions IS to build character. Going in to RB, I had the loosely held belief that public school IS academics, and only academics, so when I saw that that RB had a strong expectation for service hours, I paused a bit, thinking that 'service' is not one of the three R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic.
However, at a gut level, I knew that this was a good thing for the students' development, and this expectation added to what they learned outside school.
Now, taking that RB child of mine further into the realms of the college search, guess what I discovered? Colleges actually look at the amount and kind service almost as much as the three Rs when evaluating the tons of applicants - and these are even the non religious colleges that I am speaking of. It seems to be the tie breaker, if you will, between kids who all do 'pretty well' academically. In short, college seems to care about the 'school of hard knocks', or moral experience, as much as the normal academics.
So it became clearer that one reason RB was having strong expectations for service hours was to better prepare the students for getting into the best college of their choice.
I am not familiar with that group of parents, but it looks like they are just trying to continue to improve RB, to keep the bar raised. It is axiomatic that nothing is perfect and therefore anything can be improved.
Posted Wednesday Jan 7, 2009 11:27 # -
Good colleges have always looked for service from their prospective students. It is up to their parents to teach that to them, in my opinion. I started doing volunteer work when I was 13. I learned that in church, not public school. Yes, colleges are also interested in hard knock stories, kids are well-advised to be artists and athletes as well as scholars, etc. I suppose there are parents who don't know this stuff.
I hope you are right about this group. Because if they are on that same witch-hunting mission of last year and win, I am going to vote down any further money for that school. Academic excellence is the primary function of a school, particularly a publicly funded one. 'Values' is often code for I am dumb and proud of it.
Posted Wednesday Jan 7, 2009 13:17 #
Reply
You must log in to post.