. . . I could take 5 years of Spanish or French, but if I wanted auto shop, I had to go across the town to the other high school . . .
How do you manage 5 years of one language in what's normally a 4-year program?
When I was in high school (1970s in Chicago) they required things like 4 years of English but only 3 years of a "math/science" combination. Reading Shakespeare and the books the teachers - mostly female - enjoyed reading when
they were young was acutely painful. And it didn't help when my freshman English teacher told us her name and said ". . . ah teaches English and ah's a gunna learn all'a youse ta read and write bettah dis yearh . . . " Turned out she was hired because the Board decided they didn't have enough minority teachers, so they lowered the standards for minority teachers.
My freshman class was 630, we graduated 470 four years later.
