March 29, 1999: My High School
 I attend Julia Reynolds Masterman High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'm writing this right now to let you all know that it's a shaft! I felt I had to write this so that prospective Masterman students would know what it's actually like.
For the most part I like Masterman. I've made many friends there, have some great teachers, do some neat things, all sorts of good stuff like that. As a social club it's pretty decent. As a school it's a failure. Unfriendly student atmosphere, uncaring administrators, lousy teachers, terrible classes, horrendous facilites, poor standards, antiquated courses, the list goes on forever. I think Masterman's biggest problem is that it looks damn good on paper. The administration can cite all sorts of SAT, AP, SAT 9, and other test results that show what a great job the school is doing. Therefore no one on the outside realizes and no one on the inside admits what a terrible school it is.
The reason the students do so well on these tests is because they're previously gifted. Masterman is a magnet school, meaning its students are mostly people who are already doing well on such tests. These tests also fail to reflect the real world and are essentially meaningless beyond praising the school and for college acceptance pruposes. Nowhere do they show the kind of person being crafted by the school or their capabilties with real projects in real world fields.
As I said before, there's an unfriendly student atmosphere that hangs over the school. Part of this can be attributed to the decline of community values in students nation-wide. More immediately, however, much of it can be linked to class rank. the endless quabbling and competition for a tenth of a point in order to beat one person or another's rank is tiresome and embittering. It contributes to the feeling at Masterman that you're always competing with the other students, trying to academically beat their brains out. This just helps break down class unity and kinship.
There's also the perception that the administration does not care about the students and their lives as long as everything looks good on paper. This can be seen in their day to day dealings with students, or the lack thereof. Nothing is done to address basic student issues such as having working bathrooms, enforcing lunch lines, simple things. It may sound silly, but if I have to spend 35 minutes in line to get my lunch because the NTAs are too lazy to stop people from cutting in line or purchasing orders for friends and the kitchen staff is inefficient then that's ridiculous. It becomes embittering and emphasizes the uncaring nature of the administration when you learn that they have been informed of these problems multiple times, always with a promise to do something but have never done anything. The administration simply does not care about a problem until it begins to affect how the student body looks on paper.
The school building itself is also inadequate. I love our building, and think it's architecturally great. However the administration has admitted far too many students into the school. We simply do not all fit in the building. There's so many in fact that I doubt its safe. If there were a real fire, I'm sure the halls would be too clogged to get everyone out. Having this many students also breaks school district rules. One district rule is that all students for any given lunch period must be able to fit into the lunchroom. The rule does not allow for absences or lunchroom activities for safety reasons. Masterman can not meet this rule. Any which way you split the lunches, you could not fit all students for that period into the lunchroom. This isn't even about how comfortable the students would be, it's about the Maximum Occupancy limit that the Fire Department set for the room. I find it curious that this sign has disapeared from the room. In many ways this is a funny situation because many teachers complain about allowing students to eat in the hallways, but the administration can do nothing because they know they can't press the issue and force students into the lunchroom. The building is simply too small. There aren't enough classes for all of these students. One of my classes is the auditorium at the same time as a music rehearsal. It's frustrating because you can not hear a single word said over the instruments. Is this fair that my education should be hindered by the school not having enough space? Of course not.
This point of there being too many students is key. Besides overcrowding the building, there are not enough teachers. Many of my friends wanted to take an AP Chemistry class this year. However there is only one chemistry teacher at Masterman and she did not have the time for an AP class. The reason? Two years ago the administration let in four advisories worth of freshman applicants whereas the usual is three. Chemistry is the Sophmore science class, so the extra class inherited what had been the AP Chemistry period, eliminating this educational oppurtunity for the current senior class. Completely unfair to these students, and another example of an uncaring administration. The reason there are too many students is because Masterman's standards have become lax. Far too many students are let in that do not meet the academic requirements the school supposedly demands. The reasons are many: athletic recruitment, integration, pure boneheadedness on the part of the administration, etc. This is true on both the high school and middle school levels. It leads to the degrading of Masterman's classes by way of watering down student capabiltiy. For each student accepted who doesn't meet the requirements, one student who more than meets the requirements is held back because the inclusion of the other student does not allow classes to progress as rapidly or cover material as deeply as they otherwise would.
Masterman also has an antiquated curriculum structure. The school does nothing to prepare students for our modern computerized world. In the high school there are only two computer classes offered. One is a basic programming course for tenth graders. The other is an AP Computer Science course offered for eleventh grade. I have no problems with the tenth grade class and think it's great. However, the AP course is not given a period in the day. Instead, students taking this class have to meet in the morning before school. This is unfair to prospective students of the class, epsecially those who simply can not make it to school that early for one reason or another. Overcrowding also ties into this class. The class is held in the high school computer lab, which simply makes sense. However, the computer lab is also the high school MG office and student hang out. While students simply hanging around can be forced to leave, it's harder to do for students having MG conferences in that room. The MG teachers have little regard for classes in general and this one in particular so they tend to be very loud, distracting, and disruptive of the AP class. So the tenth and eleventh graders get computer classtime. What about the freshmen and seniors? Other non-core curriculum classes are held through all grades, so why not computer classes? Why should music students have classes throughout their high school career while computer students get shafted? It makes no sense in this modern world of ours.
I'm too mad to write anymore. Perhaps I'll write more later and maybe get some other people to write about Masterman. In short, Masterman is a shaft. If you're interested in having a good basic education, adequate facilities, and modern classes, go to Central.
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