Nothing will tell you more about the past of IHS than the archives of The Tattler. Nestled into the back of E wing, in a small but mighty room, are filing cabinets containing bundles and bundles of past Tattler issues. As the Tattler Archivist and history enthusiast, it is my pleasure to bring a new life to the minds and ideas of our former students for you to enjoy!
June 2002
The Anglophile Exchange: 41 Combined Class students travel to County Durham, UK
By Adrienne Clermont
Last month’s trip to England was one of the most fascinating and fun experiences of my life. Fascinating because I got to learn about a different culture, try new things, and see firsthand the history that we’ve been studying all year. Fun because I got to meet and get to know a ton of really great people, see beautiful cities, castles, and cathedrals, and have a great time traveling with some of my best friends.
41 students from the Combined Class traveled to north-eastern England with Eileen Bach, the trip organizer and our English teacher, and other chaperones. The group I was in, made up of six of my friends, me, and our awesome chaperone Andrea Kiely, went to a tiny town called Ferryhill, about 20 minutes outside of Durham, the nearest large city. Other students were at the Roseberry School with Renee Newton, King James School with Moira Lang, both in other nearby towns, and in the Durham Johnston School with John Alvarez and Ms. Bach in the city of Durham.
Starting immediately after we were picked up from Darlington train station after 30 hours of travel from the US via London, we lived with host families in Ferryhill. Each family had a child the same age we are, whom we’d been talking to by email for months, and who will come to stay with our families in Ithaca next October.
My exchange partner was a 15-year-old girl named Louise. We already knew a little bit about each other from our email correspondence, and we’d received photos of each other through our schools, so I was able to pick Louise out from among her group of friends waiting expectantly on the train platform to meet “their Americans” for the first time.
Louise’s mother, Rita, drove us home, and I met the rest of my host family: Louise’s father, Sarkis, her older sister, Maria, and her younger sister, Tanya.
The Ozdemirs, my host family, immediately welcomed me into their family and did everything they could to make me comfortable in their home. Living with this family while in England provided me with a completely different view of the world. Besides the many cultural differences between the US and England, I realized that living with the Ozdemirs was a different lifestyle from what I was used to with my family back home.
Most of the host families we stayed with had to work quite a bit harder to get by than the comfortably middle-class, well-educated families we had left in Ithaca. Outside of Ferryhill was an industrial park, and at least one parent of everyone’s host family worked in one of the factories there. Louise’s father worked 12-hour shifts (night shift on weekends, day shift on weekdays) at a chemical plant in the industrial park. Her mother worked 12-hour shifts four days a week, answering the phone at a mobile service company.
Louise and her friends didn’t care as much about school, were assigned much less homework in their classes, and didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities. For my friends and me, who spend most of our time on school sports, clubs, and homework, this was very different. We were amazed to find out that they didn’t play any sports or instruments, or have many hobbies outside of school. When we talked about university, Louise said she wasn’t really interested in going, which was a surprise to me. The way most of my friends and I have been raised, we’ve never even considered the possibility of not working hard all through school and attending a good college. Living with a working class family was a new experience for many of the students on the Combined Class trip.
Despite the fact that we and the Brits speak the same language, we all had a fun time discovering the many differences that separate American and English culture. We learned British slang from kids our age, and had endless discussions about “chips” (French fries) and “crisps” (potato chips). We discovered British chocolate — almost everyone loaded up on Cadbury chocolate and “Aero” bars to bring home for themselves and their friends— and tried some not-so-delicious foods, like beef and onion flavored potato chips.
We also learned that “pants” means underwear and “trousers” are what we Americans call pants. One of my friends told me that she totally grossed out her English girl by telling her that she’d only brought three pairs of pants for the entire 10-day trip… until she finally explained that she meant jeans, not underwear!
We experienced real life in England living with our host families, but also got the best of both worlds by having the tourist experience as well. While our exchange partners attended school during the day, we Americans toured the area by train and bus. Our group of eight “Ferryhill girls,” with our unfailing and knowledge-filled chaperone-turned-tourguide Ms. Kiely, covered a huge amount of territory in less than a week and a half.
We spent the first and last day of our trip in London, seeing the British Museum and other highlights, as well as a hilarious play called “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged.” While staying in Ferryhill, we took day trips to York, home to a huge, beautiful Gothic cathedral called York Minster, into Durham city itself, to see Durham University, a medieval bishops’ palace, and a stunning Norman cathedral; Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, complete with kilt-wearing bagpipers; and Alnwick Castle and the Northumbrian seacoast.
Alnwick Castle was a favorite of many of our group members because it was recently the site where almost all of the exterior shots of Hogwarts School in the “Harry Potter” movie were filmed. (Durham County’s other claim to Hollywood fame is that it was the setting of the movie “Billy Elliot,” and the lead child actors were cast from the region.)
We also got to go to school for half a day with our exchange partners, and compare British public schools with those we know in America. I attended Louise’s chemistry, English, and food science classes.
There was never a boring moment on our whirlwind trip through England. We were traveling all day every day, and we often spent the evenings going out to dinner or doing other activities with our host families. I also had time to go to part of a local rugby match, see a really cool English soccer film called Bend It Like Beckham, and do plenty of shopping with my host family and Louise’s friends. All 41 Americans and their exchange partners got together on our last night in the Durham area for a “ceilidh” (pronounced “kay-lee”), a get-together with traditional English folk music and folk dancing. It was the first time all trip that the four school groups from Ithaca had gotten to see each other and share stories and experiences, and the first time we’d gotten to meet all the other British kids. We had a hilarious time trying to learn the English folk dances.
As I said goodbye to Louise and my host parents and sisters, we were amazed at how quickly the whole trip had gone by. I felt like, even in this short amount of time, I’d gotten to know Louise like a close friend. I felt like part of her family, and my host mother cried as she saw me off at the train station. The best part, though, is that Louise will be coming to Ithaca in October. She’s already excited to come to America for the first time, and I can’t wait for her to have as wonderful a time here as I did in England!
September 1996
Point/Counterpoint Why Parents Have a Right to Control You
By Rajni Raman
Parents and guardians influence a child’s life and development since his or her arrival into the world. They teach the child to talk, help him or her walk, and try to teach the child to interact and survive in society. This instinct is not only present in humans, but in many other animals as well. The role of parents is to teach the child to survive, based on their own experiences and what they have been taught. But humans differ in this process of nurturing a child because of their school system. When parents send their child to school, they suddenly lose control of what the child hears and learns. Parents should have the right to say what their child can and cannot learn, because ultimately, they are responsible for their child’s development.
Some may argue that limiting a child’s exposure to new ideas at school is a form of censorship that should not be enforced. If this were true, then ratings and age limits on movies (G, PG, R, etc.) would also be deemed foolish. Parents have the right to expose their child to whatever they feel is adequate for his or her development. If a family believes that certain material covered in a class is inappropriate or contradictory to the beliefs and values that they want their child to possess, then that child can be exempt from that certain class during that time.
When a parent wants to convince a teacher to add topics to material covered in a class, the topics should be considered carefully, since they could arouse protest among other parents. If they do, then the right to teach this topic should be reserved for the parents. After all, if a school took over the responsibility for teaching everything a child should learn, then parents would not be necessary. Parents are the ultimate teachers and guides to their children, the highest authority, and should have the right to draw the line when necessary.
Parental Oligarchy
By Kate Kaproth
To give parents control over what is taught in the classroom is like letting the blind lead the blind. We, the current students, would become stuck in a rut, only learning what our parents learned and being restricted as our parents were restricted.The 90’s may be one of the most liberal periods of time that the United States and the world have experienced. We have been taught racial equality, acceptance of those different from us, and we have been given the opportunity and knowledge to question ideas and acts that we feel are wrong.
The concept that Christopher Columbus did not discover America, that the Native Americans did, is one example of ideas that our parents might not want to believe and which some might not accept.
If our parents gain control of the curriculum, we may not have the opportunity to grow and learn to the fullest extent. Public school education is given to the community so that everyone has the chance to grow and learn. Students and teachers should not have to suffer parental censorship.
People who are too stubborn to accept an education which differs from the one they received, have many options they can exercise which do not include punishment for other students. Many people opt for homeschooling. This lets parents choose exactly what is taught to their children. At home, Christopher Columbus can still discover America and masturbation can be discreetly omitted from a health curriculum. Other people, who do not have time to teach their children at home, can take their children to private schools and boarding schools where parents have many options, including choosing the curriculum. Parents also have the chance to teach and explain ideas in the home.
So, to all parents who are trying to change our curriculum, quit trying to punish the student population with your quibbling. Students are smart enough to choose between what is right and what is wrong. And for all of you who have been stuck in the same rut as Andrew Jackson, believing the earth is not flat, but actually round, do not worry. We have something called gravity to hold us on.
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