There were 225 guys in my high school class. I had black classmates, Hispanic classmates, and East Asian classmates. I had classmates who were from the richest families in St. Louis as well as classmates from working class families. Most of us were Catholics but not all—I had a few Jewish and Protestant classmates, too.
What we had in common was that before being admitted to the school we had taken the same examination at the same time and had scored from first to 225th on it and had managed to graduate.
On graduation day after the ceremony my high school advisor summoned my best high school buddy and me to his office. When we arrived he showed us the results of that entrance examination. I had the highest score. My buddy had the second highest score. He said, beaming, “You found each other”.
I hasten to mention that my performance in high school in no way measured up to that demonstrated potential. I was a lazy student, continually cracking wise. I did graduate with an A average in the top 10% of the class. I genuinely regret not having been a more industrious student.
Congratulations on that.
Public? Private? Or Parochial private?
It was a Jesuit school so although it was not an archdiocesan high school it was a Catholic high school.
My point in this post was not to toot my own horn but to point out that tough academic standards for admissions don’t make a school racist, classist, or anti-Semitic. My high school was the opposite if anything. IMO relaxing objective standards is in fact a racist practice.
Soft bigotry of low expectations. Or, as they couch it now, different expectations.
How many kids took prep courses for the test to get in? How did kids who lived far away get to school?
Steve
None. There were no such things in those days. Some kids came to school by public transit (including from in Illinois on the other side of the river). That included me. I lived about as far away as anybody–8 miles from school. Generally, I took public transit although I walked on a few occasions. Relatively few commuted long distances. In those days the St. Louis metropolitan area was pretty compact. Not like now.
Might have been before LBJ’s Great Society really kicked in.
It was before the Great Society programs existed.
Much different now. I think they have special prep courses for kids to get into the preferred (good) schools at almost every level. Kids often have pretty long rides (over an hour) to get to those special schools also.
Steve