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Letter

The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.

The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.

Dear Editor: Lately there have been many of these Letters to the Editor about Creighton School and their high school from parents, concerned citizens, teachers, and administrators. After reading such accounts and the feasibility study, I have been prompted to write a letter of my own opinions on the matter. As many of us know it is financially possible, we have read Mr. Strailie's and Mr. Gerein's articles and have been fully informed, but I think a lot of people are forgetting one important thing Ð the students. What I am thinking about is how this school will affect the students' emotional and social well being. Think about it just for a moment and put yourself in the shoes of a 14 year-old who is not exactly the most popular kid at school. You are made fun of and school is a daily chore you are forced to attend, even with one or two good friends it is still a bit unbearable some days. Now think about this student and how going to a larger school would affect them. They would have the chance to meet more friends, more people with similar interests, they would no longer have to eat alone, or work alone, or be the kid that no one wants to partner up with. Now, if Creighton School gets their own high school, you are taking away that one chance that many students have been waiting for, for many years. You are forcing them to endure 12 long years of being the outcast. You are forcing them to stay and be ridiculed, and high school will be a time they long to forget for the rest of their lives. As one parent said, kids meet other friends at activities, be it soccer, hockey, Brownies, or curling, but there is a BIG difference between the kids you spend a total of four hours a week with and the kids you have to spend your whole day with every day for 12 years. See 'Fresh' P.# Con't from P.# Or think about the kid who has been labelled a bad kid by the teachers because in grade 7 he had a bad year and was a little more rebellious than the other kids. By going to another school this will give him a fresh start with a new school and new teachers, otherwise he will be stuck with that stigma for his whole school career. I am also thinking about making friends. If Creighton is switched to include a high school, the first and only time you will have serious interactions with new people, before university of whatever is next after high school, will be kindergarten. Now think about your friendship making skills in kindergarten, if someone shares with you, they are your friend, if you sit beside someone, they are your friend, if you are a girl, then all the other girls in your class are your friendsÉ I think you get the point. Now this strategy is not going to work so well at a university residence, by getting a high school in Creighton you are limiting the kids' development of people skills. Also, there is the issue that students will have to take distance education in high school in order to obtain more specialized courses. As a current student in the Campus Manitoba Program I can readily say that in high school I was not ready to do that. It takes a lot more self-motivation than a lot of high school students have. It has taken me the better part of three months to adjust to this new way of learning. Many high school students will then, most likely, not complete or even enter into a classroom situation that will be distance education because it is so different than learning directly from a teacher in the room with you. Another excellent point in Friday's paper was by a Creighton school parent who thought about how high school kids' activities will affect younger students. Kids are already starting to get involved with drugs or alcohol at a very young age, having the "cool" older kids talking about it in the hallway is only going to make it that much more appealing and easier to access. To think that the enthusiasm of the Middle Years students will rub off on the high school students is a bit naive, I think. See 'High' P.# Con't from P.# Also, the driving point was very good too. Now, even if it is a five minute walk to school from home the first day you get your license you are going to drive no matter what. It's a novelty, you drive everywhere your parents allow you to in that first month or so, before you realize how expensive gas is. Now where are you going to put these newly licensed drivers' vehicles? But to get back to my original point, I think that this is a bad idea because of how it will affect the students, it will make their high school experience much different and no amount of studies are going to tell you how smaller schools affect emotional well being. I think that people need to be less concerned about the money and think about how different your high school experience would have been in an atmosphere that small. Both school divisions need to wake up and start thinking about how this decision will affect the people they are there to help, the students. They are the ones who this decision will affect the most. Remember that you are preparing these students not only for university but for life. Sincerely, a former Creighton student and recent Hapnot high school graduate P.S. Ð To the Flin Flon School Division, don't you think that finally raising the issue of bringing a Creighton resident to the Flin Flon division is too little, too late? How long have Creighton and Denare Beach students been attending Hapnot? How long did you think it would take us to realize we had no say in our schooling?9/12/03

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