MHS senior defends quality of education for Fayette students

MHS senior defends

quality of education for Fayette students

Four. Over 1100. The University

of Notre Dame. Emory University. Yale. Mr. Carl A. Thompson may not be

able to identify these figures, but most students at McIntosh High School

are familiar with them.

Four MHS students were among

the 16,000 high school seniors nationwide to be named National Merit Semifinalists

last month.

McIntosh's average SAT score

is over 1100, which is a great accomplishment on national, not just statewide,

standards.

Recent graduates of McIntosh

High School now attend such prestigious institutions as the University

of Notre Dame, Emory University, and Yale University, and the high percentage

of graduates who enroll in Georgia's public universities is nothing to

laugh about, either.

Education has not "gone

amiss here in Fayette" as Thompson claims in his Oct. 4 letter. As

a senior at McIntosh High School and student of the Fayette County public

school system since the first grade, I can give myriad firsthand accounts

of what makes MHS an exceptional learning environment. I cannot speak

for the other high schools in the county, but I am confident that they

are not very far behind.

I was recently fortunate enough

to be chosen as the student on the editing committee for MHS's request

to become a Georgia School of Excellence. As I reviewed the twenty-some

page manuscript, I realized just how deserving my school is of this prestigious

accolade.

MHS caters to the needs of

its students as they prepare for life outside of high school, which is

college for the majority of us. I am confident that I will be fully prepared

when I am graduated and leave for whichever of the seven schools to which

I am applying that I ultimately choose to attend.

As for Thompson's questions,

I clearly recall Dec. 7, 1941, Iwo Jima, Benedict Arnold, and "Give

me liberty or give me death" from one of my favorite and most educational

classes in high school, AP United States History. "Et tu, Brute?"

is embedded in my mind, thanks to tenth grade gifted English.

Speaking of AP classes, I earned

fives on both AP tests I took last spring, and I am taking three more

this spring. AP exams are graded on a national standard, and McIntosh

students maintain over 90 percent pass rates on many of them.

I'm not aware of the actual

monetary figures concerning the money the school system puts into sports,

but I am sure that enough money goes into academic endeavors as well.

MHS may not have an all-star football team, but it does have some great

student athletes.

I don't participate in any

school sports myself, but most of my friends and acquaintances manage

to balance sports with their high academic standards. Sports, extracurricular

activities and employment teach us to budget our time wisely as we will

have to do forevermore. Many kids do play recreational or club sports

to augment their school activities, but these teams cannot replace high

school teams.

Athletics give our schools

a sense of spirit and unity and are an American institution. What would

high school be without the homecoming football game?

I am inclined to believe that

my peers and I are more knowledgeable than many adults of such trivia

as Thompson mentions, but is it this type of menial knowledge that counts?

I don't know that MHS has influenced

my "safe lifestyle," but developing critical thinking skills

and learning to defend my arguments logically as I have in high school

will prove invaluable to me in whatever career I chose. Every English

class I have taken in high school has featured frequent roundtable discussions

that have gotten fiercer as we have gotten older and more confident in

our arguments.

I have a great relationship

with my government teacher this semester we like to provoke political

arguments with one another that force me to stay on top of the issues.

I have been a staff writer,

copy editor and am now co-editor-in-chief of the McIntosh newspaper The

Trail, so I have learned to compose a sound editorial argument, to deal

politely and patiently with other people, and, most obnoxiously, to edit

newspaper articles and research papers well enough to earn a reputation

for it.

Though I am tempted, I will

not point out every flagrant grammatical slip that Thompson made in his

disparaging rant on Fayette County's public education. Thompson should

not complain so much about his wasted tax dollars; he should instead be

thankful to live in an area such as Fayette County.

Atlanta city schools put more

money into each student's education than Fayette County does only to see

significantly weaker performance. It is ultimately the student who determines

whether or not he will excel, and Fayette County is home to many motivated

students with bright futures ahead of them.

Perhaps what Thompson needs

is to have a child in Fayette County schools. I know that my parents are

satisfied with the education I am getting at MHS and that there is no

other school, private, public, or parochial, to which they would rather

send me.

If Fayette County Schools can

produce straight-A National Merit Semifinalists with an SAT score in the

1400s, they must be doing something right.

Lindsay O'Connor

Senior at MHS

Peachtree City