What are your standards for a high school education?
I haven't thought about this since I read the Delphi graduation requirements in the late 80's. A high school graduate should have enough information and ability to take care of himself or herself in life. Reading, writing, mathematics, history, and a number of other basics should be part of it. I'm not going to try to give a complete answer here. I think most any high school curriculum is about right, assuming the student gets the understanding and skills intended.
If you say the Oregon Delphi is not a bad school, what is it that you think it accomplishes?
I think it emphasizes getting abilities, rather than grades. The standards for passing, as I remember, were fairly strict. I did slip by on a few requirements, but it was damn few. Many students did not complete the program. The idea was that it's better to do half of it well, then to do all of it half-assed. Learn what you are learning well, then go to the next step. Learn what you are learning because you want to learn it, or don't learn it at all. These were the ideas instilled in me there. I think that's really correct and I haven't seen that in any other school, except for when it REALLY mattered to learn something right, such as skydiver training.
Were you as well prepared for college as your college peers seemed to be? Were you as well prepared as you could have been, or should have been?
Was I prepared for college? Yes and no. I went to college with the idea that I was going to gain abilities out of the classes I was doing. And that's what I did. If I had to spend more time studying something to get it, I did. And I got way behind in some classes. Partly this was from lack of discipline. At Delphi I had the support of a whole system of people to keep me on track. Towards the end of my time at Delphi, they tried to turn more and more over to me, as far as letting me sink or swim. But in reality, there was always a lot of group support. At college, I felt I was different and did not seek out the group support of the college and of my classmates. By the time I learned the benefit of studying in a group, it was too late, and I was flunking too many classes. As I got behind in some classes, I also got depressed and that led to getting further behind. And then in other classes I was doing very well. But I never bought into the idea that I should study to pass a test. This was damaging in the short term because I flunked out. But in the long run, I found myself years later in the workplace with people with advanced degrees, but they regretted their inability in basic subjects. They had studied for the test, and passed the test. But in application, they were not competent. So, what can I say? I didn't learn everything in the mountain of material I was drowning in at college, but I learned what I learned well.
Years later, when I went back to college, I took one course at a time, maybe two. This worked very well, and I never failed another course.
What there is to learn from higher education is itself one of the things you have to learn. If you don't know what you're missing, you could be missing a lot. And the people that talk down Delphi make it sound as though its graduates wouldn't know what they're missing. Could this be true, or is it not an issue?
I don't think it's an issue. Maybe it is for some. At Delphi, college was presented as a means to an end. If you didn't know what your end goal was, then what was the point of going to college? That was the idea. Now I see that going to college is not a bad way to discover what you want to do. But all throughout Delphi, we were being asked to figure out what we wanted to do, or rather to produce, and we were exposed to a variety of topics. So being at Delphi was similar to college in that way. Of course, colleges have a much wider variety of information.
Also, many times when I went back to Delphi for Alumni Weekend, I participated in Student/Alumni seminars in which we alumni talked about our post-Delphi experience, gave advice and answered questions. These were popular with the students. And at these seminars, many alumni did advise going to college.
There are some flaws in the Delphi system that I see now. They are trying to revolutionize education. And they have some innovative methods, to be sure. But, they would like to duplicate the school all over, and some things just don't translate down to the common public school. The cost, for one, which is driven up by the excellent teacher/student ratio. Delphi is well out of the reach of all but the most wealthy, or the most dedicated, in the case of Delphi staff themselves as parents. Another thing, pointed out to me by a public school teacher, is that a public school has to take ALL students. Unless a student is sent to juvenile hall, the public school system has to take him. Delphi has a very selective screening process. Problem students, drug-addicts, criminals, etc. are not allowed in. And students are kicked out of Delphi for such things as having sex and doing drugs. If I were running a private boarding school, I'd have do that, too. But my point is, that is a luxury that public schools don't have. And if you are promoting a solution to education, it has to work in the real environment, where students are poor, poorly fed, tired, and have many bad influences in the environment.
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