[jacb]

This is really upsetting. I didn't go to TJHS, but the sense I got from the three people I know who did was that it had that critical mass of nerdy science-and-tech-obsessed teenagers.

At least in Canada, it's more common to have smaller programs operating within a larger high school - my program was 30 people, mostly humanities kids with maybe 8-10 STEM kids. There wasn't anything approaching that sort of critical mass. Plus, as a subset of a smaller school, you still had to play politics with everyone else. TJHS always sounded like one of the only places that, somehow, did have that critical mass and managed to maintain it for decades.

Maybe this sort of public school is just politically infeasible now - which is a pity, since locating and nurturing the talents of disadvantaged youth benefits all of us.

[wiredfool]

Critical mass would be one way to put it. There was also a willingness to let the kids do what they were interested in and provide support for it.

For example, in 10th grade, 4 of us got together and decided we wanted to make a new high temp superconductor. (87-88, around the time that the first LN2 one was out there). With the support of a couple of the labs, we researched it, ordered chemicals, made a pill press, mixed it, pressed it, baked it in a o2 rich environment, and then tested with ln2. I think at the time it was the first high school to make one.

None of that was something that was part of the classroom flow, it it was absolutely something that was supported.