2012 Spring, New England, USA

[chin]

One of the many stops on the road. This little white house looks nice and warm in the snowy winter.

[chin]

In between school visits, we went to see an Armor museum, and the Old Sturbridge Village. I may later post some pictures of these places.

[kai]

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Excellent report for the trip.  These are very good high schools, much better than ours in 80's.  Is your daughter going to study in science/art?  What model is your small camera?  Nice camera!
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[chin]

Kai,

In the US system, the student does not need to declare art or science major. The kid would just pick classes that he/she likes, and attend the class. Some classes may have pre-requisites, e.g. Calculus classes may require pre-calculus or algebra.

The camera used was Panasonnic LX5.

[hughchan]

The pictures from school visits are all posted. I will later post other pictures from this trip.

While I was traveling Massachusetts, Connecticut & New York in those few days, one of the local news was this public school was in such bad shape that the authority was planning to shut down one of the main buildings, and the parents were very concerned, etc... On the local TV, I can see that the public school building was really lack of maintenance, the toilets was not clean and need fixing, etc... In the news, that school building was to be shutdown for now, until they have the fund to repair and revert back to certain safety standard.

Yet there we were, visiting private schools that takes millions to build and maintain. Not only the buildings are safe and nice, the amenities like sport facilities rival those at many smaller universities, and small classes where one teacher take care of only a dozen or less students. For me coming from Hong Kong, the most impressive was that the teachers are career teachers who stays in one place and teach for many years, instead of school hopping looking for "better career" like many now teaching in international schools in Asia.

The increasing wealth gap is now a hot topic in the US as well as in HK. In our visit we just have another first hand experience of this wealth gap between well funded private schools vs poorly funded public schools featured in the local news. I am just glad that my kids do not have to go to the poorly funded public schools, that we have choices.

The public educational system in the US is getting worse in light of sluggish economy.  Private school is definitely the way to go.  These schools reminded me of the "Dead Poet Society" movie. What's the approximate percentage of international students? or Asians?

[chin]

The public educational system in the US is getting worse in light of sluggish economy.  Private school is definitely the way to go.  These schools reminded me of the "Dead Poet Society" movie. What's the approximate percentage of international students? or Asians?

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From memory, 20-35% international students. Of the international student population, increasingly more and more from the mainland, could be as much as 1/3 of the international students, or up to 10% of total school student population.

Some times it's hard for the school to count who is from where. Many businessmen or government officers sent their family to the US, so many of these kids resides in the US as legal resident. So are they American or Chinese?
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[rene]

I remember during the days when I was at Cushing, boys can only visit the girls dorm once a quarter and it was a big deal.  They can now visit twice a week.  Wonder if I can call that an improvement.  :-)

Chin, next time when you visit, please take some pictures of the sporting complex especially the ice hockey rink.