Wednesday, October 11, 2000

Four. Over 1100. The University of Notre Dame. Emory University. Yale. Mr. Carl A. Thompson may not be able to identify these figures, but most students at McIntosh High School are familiar with them.

Four MHS students were among the 16,000 high school seniors nationwide to be named National Merit Semifinalists last month.

McIntosh's average SAT score is over 1100, which is a great accomplishment on national, not just statewide, standards.

Recent graduates of McIntosh High School now attend such prestigious institutions as the University of Notre Dame, Emory University, and Yale University, and the high percentage of graduates who enroll in Georgia's public universities is nothing to laugh about, either.

Education has not "gone amiss here in Fayette" as Thompson claims in his Oct. 4 letter. As a senior at McIntosh High School and student of the Fayette County public school system since the first grade, I can give myriad firsthand accounts of what makes MHS an exceptional learning environment. I cannot speak for the other high schools in the county, but I am confident that they are not very far behind.

I was recently fortunate enough to be chosen as the student on the editing committee for MHS's request to become a Georgia School of Excellence. As I reviewed the twenty-some page manuscript, I realized just how deserving my school is of this prestigious accolade.

MHS caters to the needs of its students as they prepare for life outside of high school, which is college for the majority of us. I am confident that I will be fully prepared when I am graduated and leave for whichever of the seven schools to which I am applying that I ultimately choose to attend.

As for Thompson's questions, I clearly recall Dec. 7, 1941, Iwo Jima, Benedict Arnold, and "Give me liberty or give me death" from one of my favorite and most educational classes in high school, AP United States History. "Et tu, Brute?" is embedded in my mind, thanks to tenth grade gifted English.

Speaking of AP classes, I earned fives on both AP tests I took last spring, and I am taking three more this spring. AP exams are graded on a national standard, and McIntosh students maintain over 90 percent pass rates on many of them.

I'm not aware of the actual monetary figures concerning the money the school system puts into sports, but I am sure that enough money goes into academic endeavors as well. MHS may not have an all-star football team, but it does have some great student athletes.

I don't participate in any school sports myself, but most of my friends and acquaintances manage to balance sports with their high academic standards. Sports, extracurricular activities and employment teach us to budget our time wisely as we will have to do forevermore. Many kids do play recreational or club sports to augment their school activities, but these teams cannot replace high school teams.

Athletics give our schools a sense of spirit and unity and are an American institution. What would high school be without the homecoming football game?

I am inclined to believe that my peers and I are more knowledgeable than many adults of such trivia as Thompson mentions, but is it this type of menial knowledge that counts?

I don't know that MHS has influenced my "safe lifestyle," but developing critical thinking skills and learning to defend my arguments logically as I have in high school will prove invaluable to me in whatever career I chose. Every English class I have taken in high school has featured frequent roundtable discussions that have gotten fiercer as we have gotten older and more confident in our arguments.

I have a great relationship with my government teacher this semester we like to provoke political arguments with one another that force me to stay on top of the issues.

I have been a staff writer, copy editor and am now co-editor-in-chief of the McIntosh newspaper The Trail, so I have learned to compose a sound editorial argument, to deal politely and patiently with other people, and, most obnoxiously, to edit newspaper articles and research papers well enough to earn a reputation for it.

Though I am tempted, I will not point out every flagrant grammatical slip that Thompson made in his disparaging rant on Fayette County's public education. Thompson should not complain so much about his wasted tax dollars; he should instead be thankful to live in an area such as Fayette County.

Atlanta city schools put more money into each student's education than Fayette County does only to see significantly weaker performance. It is ultimately the student who determines whether or not he will excel, and Fayette County is home to many motivated students with bright futures ahead of them.

Perhaps what Thompson needs is to have a child in Fayette County schools. I know that my parents are satisfied with the education I am getting at MHS and that there is no other school, private, public, or parochial, to which they would rather send me.

If Fayette County Schools can produce straight-A National Merit Semifinalists with an SAT score in the 1400s, they must be doing something right.

Lindsay O'Connor

Senior at MHS

Peachtree City

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