When I compare and contrast the two very different school districts I attended, the difference was not overtly political, but the character of the districts manifested in distinctly different qualities of education.

One of the districts was progressive, in the sense that they explored and implemented new techniques and theories in education, and seemed open to innovations like team teaching and individualized, programmed learning (I took a number of programmed courses from the Stanford Research Institute that used clever die cut booklets and inserts to simulate individualized and self testing and grading. (This was the early 60s.) They also allowed good students to take advanced classes and shave at their own pace, and emphasized flexibility in dealing with individual students.

The other district I attended was obsessed with sports and trophies, was fixated with making students conform (absurd dress code repressively enforced by (frequently, obviously alcoholic) tough guy coaches), a carefully ‘safe,’ fresh-idea-free curriculum, a long list of banned books by important 19th and 20th century authors… No Walt Whitman. No Mark Twain. Teacher turn over was high, except on the coaching staff. Academics took an absolute backseat to athletics. One of the two advanced math teachers was a multi-championship track coach. He could not teach the classes he was assigned, he could not do the work, he could not grade the work. But he was a heck of a coach. Only four people out of over 30 in the class were able to complete the curriculum, evenas far as he taught it. We didn’t finish the predetermined curriculum. The four got A’s, while everyone else got a D — which was then raised to a C by the school administration when parents of the theoretically college prep students complained en masse. Well I valued my A and did queue well in my college boards in math, i, personally, would have really liked to have had the trig that we never got to because when he wasn’t taking the algebra 2 class out to the track to set up hurdles, he was bogged down trying to teach the middle of algebra 2 — which he clearly was not capable of performing — to uncomprehending college bound Juniors and seniors. (Yes, you could not take Algebra 2 there until your junior year. Meanwhile, if I had stayed in my old school district, I would have been a year ahead.) But, hey, we sure had a lot of damn track trophies.

Oh, there’s a coda to the story: on my first day in the athletic obsessed conservative district, I was stuck in the 8th grade counselor’s office arguing to be allowed to finish Algebra in 8th grade, since I had been taking it already and had an A so far just shitty of mid-year. The counselor wouldn’t have it, of course, but made a big show of ‘consulting with the administration,’ leaving me in his office, which he used for his counseling as well as his school purchasing agent activities. He had left some paperwork for audiovisual gear lying in front of me. Being familiar with net and list prices for a lot of audio gear myself I found myself looking it over and quickly realized he was paying well over twice what he should have been paying as an institutional buyer. I went home that night and told my parents that I was pretty sure purchasing office at my school was corrupt. They were used to me, and they laughed it off. But flash forward about two decades, and six of the seven, mostly long serving school board members were arrested for various forms of corruption and malfeasance, including kickbacks. One of them was acquitted. And the rest served various sentences.