Yeah, extracurriculars do count toward college here, and sometimes there's pressure on teachers to oversee clubs. Maybe teachers are less overworked in the UK...
Schools are smaller, there's not the critical mass for a lot of these things.
Afterschool programs in the Boston area are city- but not school-specific, even when there are multiple programs. Similarly, the schools don't have individual instrument teachers, but there are teachers who go around from school to school during the week.
Looking back at my childhood, I didn't have a lot of unstructured time, unless you count the weeks in between summer camp sessions when I would wander the halls of my mother's workplace. I remember one year when my summer job expired a week and a half before school started, and to fill the time I ended up watching roughly 5 movies a day (no, really) from the library. Then after I dropped out of college, I marathoned TV series every day until I found a job. I guess I never learned how to sanely structure my free time. ;P
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Date: 2009-10-21 10:32 pm (UTC)Schools are smaller, there's not the critical mass for a lot of these things.
Afterschool programs in the Boston area are city- but not school-specific, even when there are multiple programs. Similarly, the schools don't have individual instrument teachers, but there are teachers who go around from school to school during the week.
Looking back at my childhood, I didn't have a lot of unstructured time, unless you count the weeks in between summer camp sessions when I would wander the halls of my mother's workplace. I remember one year when my summer job expired a week and a half before school started, and to fill the time I ended up watching roughly 5 movies a day (no, really) from the library. Then after I dropped out of college, I marathoned TV series every day until I found a job. I guess I never learned how to sanely structure my free time. ;P