For this is Hel's livejournal

In a clever attempt to distract myself from the calculus reviewing I should be doing right now, I have instead created a poll to help me decide what order I should do the rest of the reviewing I need to do before July 29th. So, weigh in!

Note, as the poll is unclear -- here 1 means "study this next," and 5 means "study this last."

( Mathy opinions! )

So I'm looking for some general information about high schools and tracking. If you didn't go to an American high school, you can still... actually, even better! The more kinds of schools I can learn about, the better. I'm supposed to debate tracking, and I'm really of two minds. As someone who left high school early, I remember GT classes being better than others (that is to say, slightly quicker), but I was still bored out of my skull. And I went to one high school which didn't have any such classes, but which drew its students from a highly-educated community AND drew only the fairly dedicated students. And on the other hand, there's this issue of the kids who aren't in GT classes at schools where they do exist -- does that send a message to them that they're dumb? Cause that would be bad. (Because honestly I think it has a lot to do with whether your brain happens to work in the way most high school classes are taught, which is less a matter of intelligence and more one of an array of equally valuable learning styles.) Is the good outweighed by the bad? Is there any good at all? And what about apparent racial disparities in enrollment? Is racism inherent in the system? Is classism? Could it be fixed? So I'm interested in gathering more information -- what were your experiences? Do you have an opinion? Anything I should have asked but didn't?

( Note: I apologize for the lack of 'ticky box' options in this poll. I am deeply ashamed. )