Ms. Siew, I’m really sorry that Matt posted this. You are our FUSD student rep and probably would have preferred an exchange of ideas and a useful debate, not insults followed by some pretty condescending explanations of why you’re wrong.

Too bad, as a middle school debate club teacher, I love it when students take a risk and say what they think. And, I HATE it when people don’t treat them politely and respectfully.

I’m done reading this blog.

I teach 12th grade AP English and college prep senior English at Washington. There are always a handful of CP English students who dropped out of the honors track, even though they’re plenty smart, because they don’t want to do the work required to succeed at the honors/AP level. They want the “easy A” in English so they can concentrate on physics or calculus.

And while it’s not a reason I personally subscribe to, I can respect their choices. I dropped out of the honors math and science track in high school (yes, in Fremont, too) while remaining in the high English track because I loved it. I wanted to focus my energy on the subject I loved, that’s all. It turned out well for me, no regrets.

Contrary to the previous commenters, I don’t think Ms. Siew’s inability to understand the problem is that she’s young or naive…that’s a condescending and unhelpful accusation. I suspect it’s because Ms. Siew has diverse interests so she can’t understand why someone else may not want to take a slew of honors classes in every subject. She may not understand that most people have to prioritize and make choices about where to focus their energy.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, knowing what you love and want to spend your life doing while in high school can be very liberating.

I appreciate Jennifer’s sentiments, but quite frankly, she’s just very naive.

I am a product of FUSD and was in honors classes all through high school.

And you know what? 15 years later, most of the college prep kids are doing just as well as most of the honors kids.

Unfortunately, out there in the cold cruel world, no one cares if you feel bad or excluded or left out. You either hack it or you don’t.

Student writers are sometimes so annoying. They just dont get it. Life is not fair. Things are not equal. Honor students are honor students because they scored higher grades in class. They deserve it period. If there was no distinction / appreciation / incentive for hard work, then people will just stop working hard. Justifying bad scores with a social connection is fine as long it is limited to remedying the problem, as opposed to grouping all students as equally good.