High Schools Under Fire

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street for too many " Says he: There are things to be learned by those not quite good enough for Algebra 1 but who try and do their best." Civics Teacher Jerry Kotsovos, who is held in awe by students as Marshfield's most demanding teacher, feels that "students aren't being challenged enough. They complain that I make them work, I make them think. But they're glad afterward." He conducts his classes as vigorous discussion groups Margaret Burdg, who has the prim and proper air of an old-fashioned English teacher, team-teaches with History Teacher Connell an English-history course called American Culture. She says grade inflation has lowered a D from 68 to 60 and, in some classes, all the way to 50. Another teacher complains that there is great pressure to pass students "If my failure rate exceeds 12%, I'll be questioned," he says. "Someone would likely ask me if I weren't expecting too much. So the failure rate goes down, but the quality and quantity of work also go down Not surprisingly, SAT scores have fallen—57 points on verbal 64 in math, since 1962—approximating the national decline. More than half the present senior class were reading below grade level when tested in the ninth grade; Marshfield has since inaugurated a well-equipped "skills lab" with personal tutoring to help the slower readers.

Students tend to rate Marshfield an easy school. They teach you how to write in tenth grade, but then you don't get to exercise it enough," is an oft-heard lament; so is "They don t push you enough." Senior Brenda Steward is having no trouble fielding trigonometry, chemistry and British literature along with a 30-hour-a-week waitress job at a local restaurant called the Green Bandit. Says she: "Teachers don't assign homework; they don't believe in it." (The teachers' version, however, is that many students will not do homework when it is assigned.) Adds Senior Dennis Campbell: "It's so easy to get through here. I could make it by going to classes just twice a week."

Many students do not even bother with that. The dropout rate has fallen from 24% in 1966 to 13% last year, but a fourth of the students miss at least one period a day. Save for great enthusiasm about football games and other sports, students report, apathy plagues Marshfield. It is hard to get anyone to run for student office. Only 43 freshmen out of 400 voted last year for their class officers. On the other hand, violence is rare: surprisingly so, since a strict caste system separates the "jocks" (often children of the town's wealthier residents) and the "wall rats," so named because they once congregated along a wall behind the school to smoke before an inner courtyard was designated this year as a smoking area. Their fathers are apt to be mill hands or fishermen, and they tend to come from poor or broken homes.

Marijuana and beer are common. But Marshfield's students —mostly fresh-faced kids who favor down-filled jackets and track shoes—would rather go hiking than rehearse for the school play, just as they are often more interested in their jobs than in their schoolwork. Marshfield, concur most students, is an O.K. place. It just isn't very exciting—in class or out.

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