Member-only story
A School System that Worked — First Quarter/Nineteen Years pg54–55
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
Lafayette CA was a happy good place to live, and lasted right up until my father was transferred to Calgary, Alberta in January, 1970.
At that time Calgary had a sociologically interesting, practical and probably un-PC school system. Teenagers were tested and sorted into two groups coming out of middle school. My scores sent me to the matriculation high school for kids with the aptitude and ambition to continue on to college. The other was the trade high school with every facility to train for service vocations from beautician to auto mechanic.
My year at Woodman High School was a college level education — at a good college. None of the kids in any class were whining, “Why do we have to learn that? What do we need to know that for?” Those kids were all a mile away learning how to write invoices, solder pipes and carve meat. — From Chapter 2
Remembering Calgary in the frozen wasteland of Canada is nowhere near as painful as it was to be transferred there in 9th grade. From California. In January. But… I got the best year of academic education of my life in Calgary, and learned to ski in Banff.
