We left off our subject of Academia, starting in East New York, with my having completed Mrs Lindner's AR-6 class in PS 108 and heading off to Junior High. As with my admission to the AR program for AR-4-5-6, I had no input into being admitted to the SP program, 7 SP & 9 SP. I just felt the world worked in mysterious ways. The two programs as I look at them from now are different. The Advanced Reading program was pure enrichment, as explained. The SP program did not stand for "Special". It actually stood for Special Progress. Its purpose was to "skip" 8th grade without actually skipping it. In all subjects, the 7 SP class (starting in fall 1951, age 12) covered the 7th grade curriculum, plus the first half of the 8th grade curriculum. The next year, 9 SP (1952, age 13) we completed 8th grade, then did the entire 9th grade curriculum. That was the Special Progress involved, without missing any subject matter.
As you've noticed, the grass-roots East New York Project has been very helpful in my research, and I was very pleased to find several items of information for contributor Donald Hulslander, to wit:

This of course makes total sense now, but I never realized what was happening then. I know that every once in a while, special tests would be given in class. That's how state education authorities always monitor class and school progress. But we were never given any results, and quickly forgot about them. Now I see that at least some of these special tests led me into the ARs and SPs. Hulslander said he did as I did, go from AR-4-5-6 in PS 108 to 7SP & 9SP in Junior High School 171. He seems to have started in AR-4 in 108 in 1953 at age 8, making him five years younger than me.
For re-orientation, let me reprint the ENY neighborhood map (Map by Zietz). At this stage, everything took place in the Cypress Hills neighborhood of ENY north of Atlantic Avenue (click), where the two unnamed streets are first Fulton Street, with the el, then Jamaica Avenue, along Highland Park. But again, we'll mostly rely on the below ENY street map.

https://prattcenter.net/uploads/0720/1595700004650430/derived/4965378f442248da8fe3bfdc81cf0c2e/CHLDC_BOA_Step2_strategic_sites.jpg

Click on the top. This time we'll take note of three streets between Fulton and Jamaica. First again is unnamed Arlington Avenue, and along its north side are PS 108, the Arlington Library west of that, and the place we moved to west of that. Then comes unnamed Ridgewood Avenue, then comes Etna Street. Follow Ridgewood east to the block between Lincoln and Nichols, south side. We are now at PS 171, Abraham Lincoln Junior High School for grades 7-(8)-9 (now Abraham Lincoln Middle School for grades 6-7-8). Call me oblivious, but at the time, it never struck me that the side street and the official school name were both Lincoln, since we always called it 171.

https://dev.virtualearth.net/REST/v1/Imagery/Map/Road/40.6863189291,-73.8709055978/15?mapSize=300,230&key=Akes6TWH32vyV6Idpcq5b4ZKJuQsTv3Fdn87h8QznMiJwuTV-dQFXtOGYlyLn261

This "school map" shows more detail. Find 171 here (the green square), and its proximity to the Queens border. Also note the Jamaica el train, with its two notorious curves between the stations at Crescent Street and Cypress Hills (not named) on Jamaica Avenue at the cemetery entrance.
I two choices to travel to 171. One was that I could walk a block north to Jamaica Avenue and take a city bus, which I did this less often. Those with yellow school bus experience will find this odd, but I never rode a yellow school bus growing up.
We did have a student pass, good for travel on city buses or the subways system, including els. My vague recollection, probably mistaken, was that the pass was free to students, but Hulslander, writing for the ENY Project, says that, "in the 50's the NYC Transit Authority sold a monthly ticket [= student pass?] for $1.00. The normal fare was either 12 or 15 cents."

http://subway.umka.org/stations/new-york/cypress-hills.gif

My other choice is the one I preferred. It might sound odd to some, but I usually went to junior high school by elevated train. I could walk a block south to Fulton Street at Van Siclen Avenue and take the BMT Jamaica Line el there (in brown--see map) for just four stops, stopping at Cleveland Street, Norwood Avenue, Crescent Street, and Cypress Hills (I also could get off the bus at the Cypress Hills station). The dot-and-dash line showing the border shows how squeezed in this entire area is below the borough border to the north and east.
This was my stop at Van Siclen Avenue (Photo by TLK in 3). We are standing on Van Siclen looking north under the station of the same name above Fulton Street. Arlington Avenue would be one block in the distance. The station has a central platform (Photo by Adam Moss). The other end of my ride was at the Cypress Hills station (click left for sign), which has two side platforms (Photo by DanTD). We see a J train arriving.
The Jamaica Line is the longest elevated line in the system. It runs from the Williamsburg Bridge along Brooklyn's Broadway, then via Broadway Junction into ENY, then on to Jamaica in Queens. It also includes the oldest existing elevated structure in the system, the original 1885 line to Gates Avenue, then extended gradually that year to Alabama Avenue, then to "my" Van Siclen Avenue. In 1893, a further extension opened from Van Siclen east to the Cypress Hills station—my school route exactly!
I now find it odd that, while the route I traveled ran roughly the length of the Cypress Hills neighborhood of East New York, the station actually named Cypress Hills was at the very end of the line!
The Cypress Hills station was a terminal when it opened in 1893, apparently since it was the last stop in the City of Brooklyn at the time (pre-1898). It remains to this day the easternmost station in Brooklyn on this line, since the next stop, 75th Street–Eldert(s) Lane, lies mostly in Queens.
But look at the Jamaica Line map again, so we can talk about something that I always wondered about at the time. Find again between Crescent Street and Cypress Hills the two sharp curves making a starkly visible S curve that are not as obvious on this map as they are in reality. This map of the Cypress Hills sub-neighborhood shows the double curve more clearly.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/05/realestate/05liv-map/05liv-map-popup.jpg

It also shows two other things. Happily, it shows the Arlington Library. It also shows more of the Cypress Hills cemetery on Jamaica Avenue, running across the glacial ridge to the Glendale neighborhood in Queens (more to follow). But we have another map that shows the issue perfectly.

https://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/crescentstcurves-2048x1005.jpg

These are the two notorious sharp curves (dark brown) on the Jamaica Line, forming an S curve. Trains must navigate these at less than 15 mph (24 km/h) so that a train must take more time to transverse this section than other sections of the line. The one at Crescent Street is the sharper of the two and makes a nearly 90° angle as the line turns left from Fulton Street to Crescent Street. The ENY Project helps us with this first notorious curve.

http://www.tapeshare.com/Zone4/FulCres.jpeg

http://www.tapeshare.com/Zone4/FultonCrescent1946c.jpg

Both links show the curve at Fulton & Crescent. The first looks west down Fulton, and the second looks north on Crescent. The first post card shows a very common local error, calling the el an "elevator", as in a building, rather than an el[evated train]. The line runs for three blocks, then rather than stopping at Jamaica Avenue, it makes a right turn onto it, the second, slightly less sharp half of the S curve. The first turn, from Fulton onto Crescent, ranks as the second sharpest curve in the entire NYC subway, second only to the former City Hall station on the Lexington Avenue Line.
Despite what this map shows in light brown, there are no current plans to alter the S curve. Historical proposals have not been implemented due to local opposition and the high cost of such projects. The S curve remains a significant bottleneck on the Jamaica Line.

EXPLANATIONS Reviewing this past history has been very cathartic. In addition to what I remember, some memories have had to be adjusted based on the paper trail in the files in my upstairs closet. But most exciting is now learning totally new things all these decades after, that I never knew at the time. Nobody did. Why was the neighborhood called Cypress Hills? Why did the very last el stop have that name when the train had been running thru the eponymous neighborhood already? Why were those crazy curves built into the el?

I was vaguely aware that there was a Cypress Hills Cemetery nearby, but perhaps assumed it was named after the neighborhood. That's not unreasonable. Present online research shows that Cypress Hills Cemetery is a non-sectarian/non-denominational cemetery corporation organized in Brooklyn and Queens, the first of its type in the city. It retains its two primary entrances to the south at Jamaica Avenue (Cypress Hills, Brooklyn) and to the north at Cooper Avenue (Glendale, Queens). It was opened for burials in 1851 and was designed in the rural cemetery style popular at the time. While most burials had previously taken place in or near religious establishments, growing public health concern about burial as a source of disease led to the creation of large rural cemeteries such as this. Notable burials here include Jackie Robinson, Mae West, and oddly, the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. A portion of the northwest area of the cemetery was designated as the Cypress Hills National Cemetery in 1862 as a military burial ground for soldiers of the American Civil War.
However, the Brooklyn Public Library states that it's not certain if the neighborhood takes its name from the cemetery or vice versa. Possibly both were named from the trees that grew in the local hills formed by the glacial ridge.
The next point is how did visitors get there? Well, it seems that in the late 19C rail was so common that it reached everywhere. This is especially true on the outskirts, where they might be a park, cemetery, or even an amusement park, and either a streetcar line or subway might have reached out to it to bring dwellers of the central city to it.

https://maps-nyc.com/img/0/mta-subway-map.jpg

To illustrate, let's look at the current map of NYC subways (keep this for later). To the south is Coney Island with numerous subway lines still reaching it to this day. But originally they were all rail lines, built across open countryside to reach the resort and its beaches. They all arrive in Coney Island as els. One more example is the north Bronx, also with els. Note how the #6 line was built to Pelham Bay Park and the #1 to Van Cortlandt Park. Even more to the point, note the Woodlawn Station on the #4 line, built right up to Woodlawn Cemetery.
Finally let's look east. When what is now the Jamaica Line was being built beyond Broadway Junction, the decision was obviously made not to continue up Jamaica Avenue, but up Fulton Street. We have to assume that was because Fulton street was a major business corridor with a greater population of potential riders, while Jamaica Avenue was all parkland on one side. They got as far as the Crescent Street station in 1893. Oops! To serve Cypress Hills Cemetery it was a three-block walk north along Crescent Street, which leads right up to the cemetery entrance on Jamaica Avenue, and which until 1887 was known as Cypress Avenue.
Up to 1918, the Jamaica Line was known as the Cypress Hills Line, since that was its destination. But there were two reasons why the S curve was built. One was to build the Cypress Hills station right at the cemetery. But why not have the station at the north end of Crescent Street? Why bother with building the second curve? That's because the new station, while being the last el stop in Brooklyn, was to nevertheless have trains go beyond! On May 30, 1903, a connection between the el and trolley tracks was completed at the Cypress Hills terminal. Known as the Cypress Hills Incline, it allowed el trains to descend to street level at Jamaica Avenue and continue as a street run (!!) to 168th Street in Jamaica on existing at-grade streetcar lines, the third rail being replaced by overhead catenary lines. It apparently was spectacularly unsuccessful, because just seven months later, on December 30, this service was discontinued due to the traffic congestion it caused in Jamaica--apparently the street run of the trains overwhelmed Jamaica Avenue. So instead, the el was extended. The first extension opened in 1917, adding the station at 75th Street-Eldert(s) Lane. Then, the line was further extended east, opening the 168th Street station at the far end in 1918.

https://images.cf.nycsubway.org/images/maps/bmt_1946.jpg

This illustration shows the extension beyond Cypress Hills and Eldert(s) Lane (click). Take particular note how it served LIRR's Jamaica Station at Sutphin Boulevard, then stopped at 160th, then finally 168th. We have to use this 1946 map of BMT lines, including the Jamaica Line, since the route today only exists as you see it to 121st Street, the rest having being torn down, with the route being relocated underground, one block south and closer to the LIRR tracks. Confirm this on the subway map from above (more later).

Now let's move back to my junior high school in Cypress Hills, using the above "school map" with 171 in the green square. In retrospect, tho we were only two blocks from the Queens border at Eldert(s) Lane, it never occurred to me to walk over to see it. Still, most people in the area had it in their mind that the "world ended there"—no more Brooklyn!

Another fact dawns on me that I never thought of before. NYC's five boroughs, contiguous with five counties, have only one land border of consequence, the one between Brooklyn and Queens, plus a tiny minor one.

So it's really only one major land border between NYC boroughs, Brooklyn/Queens.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/99/90/4199906c556251c28d605c26562a8667.png

However, the land section is not as long as it looks. In the northwest, Newtown Creek separates the boroughs, with the land border actually starting at about Grand Avenue (misnamed Grand Street here). And the southeast border ends before Spring Creek in Spring Creek Park, between ENY and Howard Beach in Queens. Check out the Spring Creek sub-neighborhood again on our ENY neighborhood map (Map by Zietz), where the border is clearer. I never realized before that the part of ENY way south of me was at one end of the land border.
So the border twisting around ENY at the Highland Park glacial ridge is at the top of what keeps ENY in Brooklyn. And where it turns south is Eldert(s) Lane.
The ENY Project tells me that the street is named after Johannes Eldert, who owned the farmland that bordered the road. It has a long borderline history. It was once named Enfield Street, short for End Field, since it was the end of the fields for New Lots. Eldert(s) Lane is unique in that the west side of the street is in Brooklyn while the east side is in Queens. On our "school map" note how the Brooklyn side has named streets while the Queens side streets are numbered. And the house numbers follow this. On the west side of the street, the numbers are simple: 94, 96, 98, but on the east side, these addresses face 88-01, 88-03, 88-05, all based on the side street of 88th Avenue, following the unique Queens numbering system.
The name has evolved from Eldert's Lane with, then without, the apostrophe, to the current Eldert Lane, which gives rise to the discrepancy between the MTA naming of the el station and the street name below (Photo by Tdorante10). On our street map, at the bottom it says Eldert Lane. So does Google Maps.

TWO STUDENTS Before we discuss the junior high, I want to mention two students I knew there as casual friends. The whole SP class kept together quite well, but I mention these two because one had a tie to the past, and the other a tie to the future.
I remember MT as a poet. He had been in Mrs Lindner's class the previous year, and I also knew him for the two condensed years of junior high. While most people, when idle with a sheet of paper, might doodle drawings, MT would write rhyming couplets! And to their credit, Mrs Lindner, his junior high English teachers, or both, nurtured his skill. When we had to do composition writing, MT was allowed to do his essay in poetic form. It's a fun memory.
We all knew SD in junior high, and, while we were never more than casual friends, I also knew him afterward at Brooklyn Tech, plus traveling together afterward (more later). But you get to know "stuff" about people, like if they have a famous relative, for instance. The class knew that SD and his parents went to Europe for the duration of every summer. It was just a fact that everyone learned in casual conversation—SD never boasted about it. However, he did drop the fact that he was born in Tangier, which we all thought was an exotic fun fact. Since we were all the same age within months, while I was being born on Eastern Parkway, SD was being born in North Africa! Years later, when Beverly and I were sailing home from our sabbatical in Europe on that freighter, it stopped shortly in Tangier, and of my thought was, of course, I know someone who was born here.
How naïve we all were! It was years later, after I saw the film Casablanca on TV, that it struck me: there were so much more drama to the story of SD and his parents! The film shows people, Jews and non-Jews, fleeing the Nazis in Europe and stopping in North Africa en route, in Casablanca, Morocco, at the fictional Rick's Café Américain, then hoping to cross to the US. It was after seeing this film that I had the epiphany of what happened to Mr/Mrs D, who were Jewish. They had fled Europe, and worse, Mrs D was pregnant as they did so. When they stopped in Morocco, it was in Tangier (sometimes called Tangiers) where SD was born. I always wished I'd pumped SD for more of the story, to say nothing about asking his parents, once I'd met them. But that dark history remained undiscussed. Since when SD and I traveled, we made a stop in Vienna to meet some of SD's aunts and cousins, there's a possibility that that's where the D family came from, but that's a guess. (I've been to Spain's Canary Islands—see map. Aside from quickly stopping in Tangier, I've also visited Spain's enclave of Ceuta. But I never made it to Casablanca in between.)

PS 171    It's finally time to get down to academics. In junior high we had the usual courses, English, Social Studies, Math, Science, and more. But I want to point out several things that stand out in my memory.
(1) We'll start with music, but first I need an aside for a language matter I left out earlier.

The next music news was the light classical pieces in the AR classes in 108. But now on to the music in the junior high SP classes. The report cards say that we had "Music" both years, and I remember this music appreciation as our sing-along class. I don't think it could have met daily, maybe three times a week, but I'm not sure.
The teacher regularly gave out mimeographed lyrics that we were to glue into our notebooks. She sat at an upright piano in front of the room and we sang along. It was more than just folk music. I'm sure we must have done some folk songs like Clementine, Comin' Round the Mountain, Yellow Rose of Texas, and the like, but I think I can explain now that we were learning what is now known as the Great American Songbook, the standards of the early 20C. I can remember specifically only the following two, about which I've now learned more.
CIRIBIRIBIN (say chi.ri.bi.ri.BIN) is a Piedmontese ballad composed by Alberto Pestalozza in 1898, which quickly became popular. Four decades later it enjoyed renewed popularity with swing and jazz bands. The song was a favorite of Harry James, who chose it as his theme song when he formed his band in 1939 and wrote English lyrics for it. Frank Sinatra worked with James's band for a while. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded the song in late 1939 and it reached the number 13 spot in the charts in 1940. The distinguishing feature of the song is repeated use of the five-note title phrase, for which I can only find the possible explanation. It's a dialect Piedmontese word naming a certain bird, and at the turn of the 20C, it was also used to refer to pretty teenage girls. See if you recognize Ciribiribin (1:13). The verse starts at 0:34.
ALOHA 'OE is a Hawaiian folk song written c1878 by Queen Liliʻuokalani, who was then Princess of the Hawaiian Kingdom. We sang it in its English translation "Farewell to Thee". It's her most famous song and is a common cultural symbol for Hawaii. The story of the origin of the song has several variations. They all have in common that the song was inspired by a notable farewell embrace given to a member of the party during a horseback trip taken by Princess Liliʻuokalani in 1877 or 1878.
I do not speak Hawaiian, but know quite a bit about the language. 2008/22 is devoted to it in its entirety—take a look if you're curious. The language has only 13 sounds, and there are exactly 13 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet with a one-to-one relationship with the sounds. One of the consonants is the glottal stop, called the 'okina, written as an apostrophe—it's NOT punctuation. The alphabet is recited in the order: A, E, I, O, U, H, K, L, M, N, P, W, 'okina. The 'okina appears in the proper spelling of Hawai'i. Thus the word 'oe has three sounds to match the three letters. Again, check that posting if you're as intrigued as I am.
This is a Ukulele Play-Along in Hawaiian (4:01), with some English included, of Aloha 'Oe.
(2) Another class that has stayed with me over the years is typing, listed on my report card as "typewriting" for 9 SP in 1952 when I'd just turned 13. In retrospect, I must have liked the class so much because it was using language. Thinking ahead, it would have been a precursor to my enjoying print shop so much in high school.
We sat in a room filled with desks and a gazillion manual typewriters, perhaps like this Woodstock typewriter from the 1940s (Photo by Cbaile19). I'd had a (manual) typewriter since we'd lived on Jerome Street, a used one my father had gotten me, and it sat on my dresser. Now I'd be able to use it properly.
It required a heavier touch than what we're used to today, but that was no problem. The lever for the return carriage move up to the next line as you manually moved the carriage back. The non-alphabetic layout of the keyboard, still used today on computers, had originally been determined to minimize jamming of keys as they flew up to the platen, as seen here:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x_GgHaFi4IQ/VUFP0De2tgI/AAAAAAAAK6c/1Au1VZMnqnE/s1600/typebarjam.png

We learned right away that it was all about the eight fingers resting on the "home keys". The left hand controlled the ASDF keys, and the right hand the JKL; keys. The right thumb controlled the space bar, and the left thumb did nothing. Over time, exercises got you typing to rows above, below, and around the home keys. A warning bell rang when you were close to the end of a line. Lower case l (L) doubled for the number 1. Capital O doubled for zero. For an exclamation point, you hit the apostrophe ('), then backspaced and hit the period (.), yielding a primitive (!).

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1600/0*KfeJAlfCncc29L8w

This illustration on a more modern keyboard illustrates the basics. It shows an electric typewriter keyboard, obvious because of the "Return" key, which automatically moved the platen to the next line. Beverly and I later bought an IBM Selectric electric typewriter (Photo by steve lodefink) such as this. Note the Return key on the right, as well as, on the top row, the genuine (1), (0), and (!). The Selectric also used the "golf ball" typing head (Photo by Scs) instead of the "basket" of individual type bars that swung up to strike the ribbon and paper. It "magically" rotated and tilted to the correct letter position before striking the ribbon and paper, and could be interchanged for writing in different fonts. We also bought one in Cyrillic.
Later, for about five seconds, stand-alone word processors appeared on the market, but were quick replaced by the word-processing capability of computers. At this point, the "Return" key was renamed "Enter". I suspect people today used to using computers don't realize how simple it is to change to italic or boldface, or different fonts or colors of text.
Back to typing class. I was transfixed with the ability to write this way. I remember how, at the time, I would walk down the street with my arms at my sides but "air typing" signs I saw with my fingers. What was even easier was typing fingers against the thumbs. I sometimes even do it today, but very rarely.
I know that many people taught themselves to type by the "hunt and peck" method. It's much slower, but does work. However, I'm absolutely appalled when I see people today typing with two thumbs on a tiny smartphone keyboard. Enough said. (3) As for English class, I want to comment on learning the parts of speech. Or actually, not learning them well. I don't know which grade or English teacher in junior high it was, but she made it clear that grammar was not a part of her subject that she enjoyed. She did not teach it in increments. One day she pointed out we were going to spend several days covering a topic we'd never had. I still chuckle at how she started, saying we'll "get rid" of one category quickly and easily, so she taught us that interjections were words like Oh, Ouch, Whoa, Oops, Wow. She actually started out with the garbage words in the language.
She followed up boringly, methodically, by definition. You know what I mean. Noun: person, place, thing. Verb: action, state of being. Blah, blah, blah. When she was done, I understood the basics by definition, but I had no feel for the fundamentals, even a noun as opposed to a verb. All that came later with studying other languages.
When I once spoke with a friend online about a grammar situation, he told me that before he could comment, he had to diagram the sentence. I respect that, and it works, tho diagramming was nothing I ever was taught. As I look it up know, it's apparently called the Reed-Kellogg system, invented in 1877. Sentence diagrams look like this (Diagrams by Tjo3ya). As you see on the left, noun subjects, verbs, and noun objects are on the main line, with all modifiers (adjectives, verbs, determiners) attached below. The right-hand sentence is a little more complex, since it includes a prepositional phrase used adverbially. If this system works well for you, then use it.
However, there have been linguistic developments, notably by linguist Noam Chomsky. I will admit, I never went to the source, but I learned about it in grad school in Middlebury in the late 1970s. And, as is occasionally my experience, I learned it IN German and about German, but of course, it applies to all languages. It's part of generative linguistics, which describes a language in terms of a set of logical formulas (as I call them), set up so as to be capable of generating the infinite number of possible sentences that that language is capable of. It's much easier than it sounds.
This system is not diagrammed horizontally, but vertically, like an ancestor tree, with great-grandpa at the top, expanding to all the many great-grandkids at the bottom. In other words, an upside-down "tree", in this case called a syntax tree. Herr Professor Hartweg just delved into it for a bit in that class, and he said we were going to Bäumchen malen (draw little trees). It's a really easy concept.
Everything starts with S at the top representing the Sentence we want to form. V is verb, N is noun, VP is Verb Phrase, NP is Noun Phrase; D[et] is a Determiner, such as "my, the, every".
Look at this example of a possible tree that could result in manifesting the sentence shown at the bottom (Tree by Tamur/Stannered).
It also works for German: Johann schlug den Ball. It could also generate: Music pleases the soul. Soccer is a sport. Luis toca el piano. Make up another sentence this tree could generate. Maybe even try altering the formula for one of a gazillion variations.
Adding A[dj] and Adv to our arsenal, a formula could then generate this fun bit of nonsense if desired, since the system generates just structure (=grammar), exclusive of meaning—that's covered by the study of semantics (Tree by [Automated conversion] at the English-Language Wikipedia).
But let's simplify this. (Copy the following on paper vertically if it's easier to picture.) The easiest structure I can think of has (1) S on top generating (2) V on the second line, and that's it. It could then manifest actual language on a third line merely expressing "Eat!". This indicates the primacy of verbs over nouns in a sentence. All you need for a minimal sentence is a verb.
Almost as simple is: S yields V plus N, manifesting as "Enjoy life." This illustrates direct objects rising into importance before subjects.
Or we can toss in determiners. (1) S could yield (2) VP which then yields (3) V plus NP, with the latter yielding (4) D plus N. The manifest line could be "Eat your vegetables". "Check my homework", Cherchez la femme, and untold more being generated by this pattern.
But let's add a subject now. S yields NP (for the subject) plus VP and the rest of the last example. This could manifest as "Her son eats his vegetables".
As I was taught, it never became clear that adjectives and adverbs are almost the same, both being modifiers, except that the former modifies a noun and the latter a verb. Let's try to generate one last one including that fact. Alter the last example to show that NP could possibly yield D plus Adj plus N, and that VP could yield V plus NP plus Adv. Now the manifest line could appear as "Her angry son eats his vegetables slowly."
Any formula you set up in a generative grammar can yield sentences like a Xerox machine shooting out sheets of paper, except that the tree can shoot out a different sentence each time--and even change languages. (If you did manage to follow along in this last discussion, welcome to modern linguistics!)

(4) We now come to language study, but with trepidation, since it's not good news. As a matter of fact, it's the low point of my junior high studies. Within the SP curriculum we were to study a language. Donald Hulslander, writing for the East New York Project, says that two classes were formed in 171, one learning Latin and one Spanish. I know and knew nothing about that. Without being asked, our group was plopped into a Latin class, like it or not, and that was it. Not only didn't we have a choice, I didn't even know Spanish was taught in that building. If given a choice, I might have chosen Spanish, but I was very naïve at the time. I later developed an opinion about modern versus dead languages. From my phraseology, you might figure out what my opinion was, tho it's been tempered since. More later.
The opening day of Latin class in 7 SP is one I'll never forget, as it was the worst opening day for a class I ever experienced. We settled in, as the teacher sat at her desk to start. That alone was body language that I now recognize as trouble. Teachers should always be active and move around when teaching. I would always move around the room as I spoke, and sit on empty student desks up front. But as she sat, she clasped her hands as she spoke to the class. More body language! Only because of later experience, I am now able to quote verbatim what she said to her class of bright students that first day:

The whole room sat muted and stunned, thinking: What's a case? What are all those long, complex words? Why is one of them only sometimes connected? And who on earth can repeat all that just hearing it just once? And what good does repeating it do anyway?
There were and are no good answers to those questions. I don't recall her segue into what followed—perhaps a textbook--but her method was not to include actual language the first day. Instead, she just wanted to get started with learning about Latin. It's like being handed a Rubik's Cube, then told we're not going to play with it, but we'll learn how it works mechanically. Then things went downhill from there.
Over time, she was also very defensive about Latin. Whenever she had read an article or heard a broadcast praising Latin, she told the class about it. But at least for me, her defensiveness backfired. All she was doing was pointing out that many people felt studying Latin was a waste of time (not me, exactly—more to come), which made the class wonder—WAS it a waste?
In later years I've spoken with people who studied Latin in school and enjoyed doing so. I respect that. I also heard all the arguments about how Latin "helps" you with English. But so do modern languages. And why should you study a dead language to improve your English? Shouldn't English classes be enriched to improve vocabulary and grammar skills?
I've found it very hard arguing with Latinists on this subject. It's even worse than arguing if paper towels or toilet paper should peel off the roll down the front or back (the front, of course!). But I want to state my feelings about modern and classical languages.
MODERN: Studying a language should be open to everyone and at any age. I do mean a modern language, which is something that actually exists, where you might come across speakers in the street or on TV, can go to a restaurant serving the corresponding cuisine, might meet exchange students, or even might visit the country. Kids have been taught language in elementary school. I was not, tho I do remember learning Frère Jacques at a very young age.
CLASSIC: These can be invaluable. Just like we enjoy learning about historical events, we can enjoy learning about historical language, and in this website we have mentioned derivations from Old English, Old French, Old Norse, and, yes, Latin and ancient Greek. But it goes older than that. Linguists have put together a theoretical language that probably did exist in some form, Proto-Indo-European (PIE). Descending from PIE are theoretical Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic, and many others. It's great fun finding derivations coming down the pike from the oldest times, and one of my favorite postings is 2016/15 "Boards & Ships". Do a Ctrl-F there for "Boards" and the third click will get you to the explanation how two theoretical words developed in PIE, moving to Proto-Germanic, and each one came down to Modern English (also Modern German) as "board", one as a noun for a piece of wood and one as a verb meaning to enter, as boarding a ship.
However this historic aspect of happily digging up dead languages is best suited for more mature students, in college if not later.
I have to say that, when I see a list of languages being taught that includes Latin (or ancient Greek), I regularly get the feeling that I espy a goat among the flock of sheep. Sure, they're all animals, but one is clearly out of place.
Nevertheless, in that junior high Latin class, I do remember learning the word silva for "forest", and the teacher pointing out that derived from it is the esoteric English word "sylvan" as in "a sylvan glade". I do find that interesting, and do see how that can beef up one's English vocabulary. But neither do I recall ever using that word, or even coming across it in a text. Might it just as well have been presented as vocabulary in an English class? But things do tie together, as when years later, I learned the Spanish word for "jungle" as selva.
So etymology is great, but not limited to what Latinists espouse. One more thing I've been told by a friend—Latin made him understand grammatical subjects from direct objects. Sure, but let's look into that. I'll use the word nauta"sailor", which we learned right at the beginning—not because of any interest in the sea, but because of grammar. The word ends in –A and is therefore of the first declension, which is where we started our grammar. I have to laugh at the thought of such reasoning.
I have my "dog" test to illustrate subjects and objects. English relies solely on word order, as does French.
English: "The sailor sees the dog. / The dog sees the sailor." Only word order indicates who's doing the seeing and who's being seen.
French: Le marin voit le chien. Le chien voit le marin.
Latin: Nauta canem videt. Canis nautam videt. It gets very interesting when we note that Latin uses markers to indicate what's what. Here, the marker is –M to indicate the direct object—what's being seen.
I remember this argument being made as to the magnificence of Latin: if you want to emphasize the object and bring it up front, the –M marker continues to show it's the direct object. Canem nauta videt. This is the same as the first sentence, but what's being seen is put up front for emphasis, still marked with –M. The only way English can do this is to recast the sentence: "It's the dog the sailor sees (not the cat)."
If this in the past helped people to learn grammar, I'm glad of it. But there are modern languages that use markers as well, and show the very same thing.
German: Der Matrose sieht den Hund. Der Hund sieht den Matrosen. Here we see an –N marker—in three places!
Russian: Моряк видит собаку. Собака видит моряка. (Moryak vidit sobaku. Sobaka vidit moryaka.) You can see that a feminine noun takes –U (sobaka becomes sobaku) as a direct object marker and a masculine noun takes –A (moryak becomes moryaka).

Back to Latin class. I remember suffering, not understanding what was going on—and when you start falling behind, disaster is ahead. I have a very clear memory of coming to school on the Jamaica Avenue bus one morning, furiously studying for a test: hic, haec, hoc / huius, huius, huius . . .. The whole set is here:

https://grammars.alpheios.net/allen-greenough/files/pronouns/hic_haec_hoc_2.jpg

I was only vaguely aware of the three genders and five cases, with little understanding of this array of boxes. I'm not sure I even knew that these bazillion different forms all meant "this".
My reviewing Academia like this is cathartic and helpful. One memory I had was that after a time, I asked to drop the class, making it the only class I ever dropped from 1st grade to doctoral studies. But reviewing those old report cards proved my faulty memory. Dropping never happened. I suffered thru Latin in 7 SP and did manage to barely pass the course, right on the border. I then also continued Latin in 9 SP and failed miserably, in every marking period. So instead the memory should have been that it was the only course I ever failed from 1st grade to doctoral studies. And it was a language class at that! I was convinced I had absolutely no language ability and should never think of language as a possible career.
Well, that's not how things went, but we'll get to that. Once I had a firm foundation in modern languages, on occasion I've reviewed this and that about Latin, and so Latin and I are no longer enemies. (I still think it should never be offered too early, before one has studied a modern language.) It's still not one of "my" languages, but I can deal with it when appropriate. I think Latin and I are even better than just frenemies. I have two examples of that.
When I wanted to formulate a phrase to indicate the joy of a traveler actually being at a well-known location, I turned to Latin and established the phrase HIC LOCUS EST / This is the place. And there is stark irony in that it includes the word "hic", which is the word I struggled with so much on the bus that time.
In our discussion of Academia, we will later on discuss the fabulous Academic Anthem written entirely in Latin, Gaudeamus igitur. It's a wonderful unifying piece for everyone interested in Academia, and I'm going to carefully pick apart the two best, and most popular verses, bit by bit. I want everyone interested in Academia to know just what the Anthem means, and why it means it. And yes, it IS in Latin.

Planning for High School    I've made clear that I was passively guided into both the AR and SP classes by outside forces, but when it came to deciding on high school, we were all made active participants. It was presumed by all that those of us in SP would apply to the three academically challenging Specialized Schools NYC had established (there are more now), and most if not all of us went to the special after-school special study groups in our junior high to prepare for the special entrance exams. I don't remember the content of those exams, but they did cover knowledge of English and math. I only remember a couple of the brain-teaser math problems we were given to practice with in those after-school sessions. One involved trains and the other bathtubs. I'll paraphrase them here.
Trains: If a train leaves A for B going at such-and-such a speed, and another leaves B for A at another speed, and A and B are so-and-so miles apart, when and at what point would the two trains meet?
Bathtubs: If water pours into a tub at the rate of so many gallons per minute, but water drains out of the tub at another rate, after so many minutes, how much water would be in the tub?

LOCAL HIGH SCHOOLS I'm going to make a statement that I find hard to believe myself, but, with all this applying to distant specialized schools, at the time, I had no idea whatsoever what my local high school might be—and still don't. At this extended time, I can only speculate, since I know of two that existed at the time.
Look back at our street map, and find Pennsylvania Avenue again. Just south of Blake Avenue was Thomas Jefferson HS, where my cousin Annie attended—she was a decade older than me and became a lab technician. Famous alumni of Jeff were Danny Kaye, Steve Lawrence, Jimmy Smits, Shelley Winters.
The other candidate, Franklin K Lane HS, surprises me as to its proximity, for which I'll repeat this Cypress Hills map:

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/05/realestate/05liv-map/05liv-map-popup.jpg

I knew it was close, but not THIS close. Look at the park area north of Eldert(s) Lane and you'll see a white square. This was the Lane campus! Right in the corner of ENY and Cypress Hills! The school's property actually spans the Brooklyn-Queens border! My mother went to Lane. Among its notable alumni are Anne Jackson and Sam Levinson.
But with the decline of ENY, both schools suffered, and were eventually closed down. Today Lane is the campus site for six different smaller high schools, and Jeff today encompasses four smaller high schools.

SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOLS At the time, the three specialized high schools that required entrance exams to attend, each in a different borough, were the Bronx HS of Science, Stuyvesant HS in Manhattan, & Brooklyn Technical HS. Those of us in Junior High 171 in the far northeastern corner of Brooklyn at the Cypress Hills stop for the most part discounted Bronx Sci as being much too far away, especially since it was in the far northern reaches of the Bronx. On our subway map, go to the north Bronx and, on the 4 train in green, find the Bedford Park Boulevard stop. Bronx Sci is a 7-10 minute walk west. (I once visited here when I was teaching.) But this would have been a long three-borough trek from ENY. I now calculate, from the Cypress Hills station, riding the brown to the green line in Manhattan would take over an hour and a quarter one-way. And in addition to a demanding curriculum, one had to have by definition a strong interest in science, so I doubt if many of our group considered Bronx Sci.

So I took the (then separate) exams for Stuy and for Tech. So did SD. This is how we got there from 171 on two different test days, test-takers being excused from regular classes.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57154d604d088e8318875db8/1461931640169-VFYOEGUP48PA70V8WKJ2/image-asset.jpeg

Stuyvesant in those years was in the Gramercy neighborhood (above), on 15th Street, west of 1st Avenue. On the subway map, follow the brown line to Broadway Junction, thence to the gray line to the first stop in Manhattan at 1st Avenue & 14th Street, a miniscule walk to Stuy. It's two boroughs away from Cypress Hills, and takes just over a half-hour. The only time I visited the school was to take the test. I find it SO ironic that, in 1992, Stuy moved to Battery Park City.

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/28/14/fd/2814fd16c03076ca5367df3cc73ea4df.jpg

As it's at the northernmost end of North End Avenue (click on map), I live at the southernmost end of South End Avenue in The Regatta, I now pass Stuy regularly when I take the bus or the Downtown Shuttle.
I'll detail my actual commute from home to Brooklyn Tech later. For now, to take the test, check out the route from Cypress Hills on the brown line to Broadway Junction, then via the blue line to Lafayette Avenue. This connection would take just under a half-hour, and stays entirely in Brooklyn. Also, just take a look at this map of Brooklyn neighborhoods:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bc/b1/f4/bcb1f47dda0195187517a5cf230a9bb5.jpg

Picture going elevated thru Cypress Hills above Jamaica Avenue, then in the subway under Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant to Fort Greene, just before downtown Brooklyn. (Hold on to this map.)
While we're waiting for the test results to come in, let me update all this info. There is now a total of nine NYC specialized high schools for highly academically inclined students. All nine require a separate admissions process, and eight of them now have a single uniform entrance exam, the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT, covering language and math ability. In addition to the original three, there are now also these five more: Staten Island Technical HS; Queens HS for the Sciences at York College, in downtown Jamaica; (these two offered geographic balance—each borough now had at least one specialized school); HS of American Studies at Lehman College, steps away from Bronx Sci; HS for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College in Hamilton Heights, West Harlem; Brooklyn Latin School in Williamsburg, northern Brooklyn.
Of these, testing centers remain at the three original schools, plus Staten Island Tech. In addition, five other regular high schools are testing centers.
Those are eight, but there is a ninth. And because it's unique, it doesn't require the SHSAT for admission. For highly artistically inclined students there is the (unified) LaGuardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Arts, known by the first and last words as LaGuardia Arts. Here, admission is by audition or submission of portfolio.
The unwieldy long name of LaGuardia Arts is because it's the result of the merger of two heritage schools, the HS of Music & Art and the School of Performing Arts. While they started merging on paper in 1961, they didn't finally merge into one building until 1984. The building is adjacent to Lincoln Center, and the name honors Mayor LaGuardia.

https://www.planetware.com/i/map/US/lincoln-center-for-the-performing-arts-map.jpg

LaGuardia Arts is on Amsterdam Avenue between 65th & 66th Streets, west side (see above map). It faces the block where the private Juilliard School of Music is (#1 on the map) and both are adjacent to Lincoln Center, so there's an incredible amount of student performer talent there, to say nothing of Lincoln Center itself.
There are numerous notable alumni of the school (LaG) plus its legacy schools (PA, MA), so below are a very few selected notable names, mostly actors unless noted (the legacy schools have a much longer history, hence more names). Since most of these names are celebrities, they stand out, even beyond famous alumni of the other specialized schools:
LaG: Timothée Chalamet, Adrien Brody
PA: Liza Minnelli, Eartha Kitt, Suzanne Pleshette, Dom DeLuise, Robert De Niro (attended), Al Pacino (attended), Violinist Pinchas Zuckerman, Dancer Edward Villella, Designer Isaac Mizrahi
MA: Hal Linden, Diahann Carroll, Tony Roberts, Billy Dee Williams, Shari Lewis, Composer Cy Coleman

We've all taken tests, even very important ones, so we can imagine what the SHSAT (or my earlier Tech and Stuy tests) are like. But the thought of a 14-year-old to go to an audition overwhelms me. I think of Billy Elliot in the film (or the musical), going to an audition at the Royal Ballet School and auditioning, which included an interview with a (scary) panel of educators (this video runs 1:46). For this reason, I went right to the source. Friend Simi Horwitz is a freelance journalist, specializing in the arts, and she went to PA. I asked her about auditioning, and this is her (mildly edited) response:

Simi seemed to survive the audition well. You'll recall Lillian Hellman's "Foxes"-- Tallulah Bankhead famously played Regina on Broadway, as did Bette Davis in the film adaption. The role of the daughter must have been a meaty one. I very well remember Joyce Grenfell from her hilarious role in the film comedy "The Belles of Saint Trinian's", but was unaware of her other work. I can imagine how funny those nursery school monologs might have been.
At the time, the HS of Performing Arts was on 46th Street between 6th & 7th, right in the heart of Times Square. Trace Simi's short commute to school on the red line from 96th to 50th Street. The irony is that she still lives near the 96th Street subway station, so when she travels to see a Broadway show, she actually retraces her six-stop high school commute! And the #1 train actually runs underneath Broadway!
On the other hand, non-New Yorkers should note what it's like for a teenager to go to high school by subway, but then to be confronted with more complex subway connections to visit a friend. You can trace the red line to the purple line way out to the wilds of Flushing.
I checked, and when The Little Foxes opened on Broadway in 1939, it was at the National (now Nederlander) Theatre on 41st Street, steps west of 7th (and Broadway). That means that Simi auditioned playing Alexandra on 46th, and the original had taken place on 41st, five blocks south on 7th Avenue.
Back to Tech and Stuy. Doing this review, I continue to pile up things I find hard to believe, like not knowing at the time what my local school would have been. First, let me give the results. I was accepted at both Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant. So was SD. But here are two things I now find it hard to believe. I do not know how I found out. I doubt it was via a letter home. Most likely the two acceptances went to my junior high guidance counselor who would have then informed me, but I do not remember.
The second is this. You always hear of someone being accepted at some prestigious college, or private school, getting very excited and celebrating. I recall none of that happening. It seemed I just accepted it as inevitable, like getting into AR or SP classes, even tho in this case I was active, having taken tests. And being accepted at TWO prestigious schools. I cannot fathom my lack of excitement at the time, but that's the way it was.
Was I expecting to be accepted at two schools? I don't know. Maybe I was hoping for only one acceptance, making the decision easy. Did commuting distance enter into the decision? Maybe, because I always picture Stuy being further away from ENY, the apparently it wasn't. But it was in another borough, and Tech was not. Both are superior, challenging schools. But Stuy was neutral as to careers, while Tech trained engineers. Did I want to be an engineer? I liked language, but the Latin fiasco told me I had no talent there.
It's possible that the thought of some career, such as in engineering, brought me to Tech. But there was another factor. I was about to commute by el and subway to a school at some distance, where I would know absolutely no one. Maybe some companionship might help.

I should point out that Tech is a very large school, with 6,000 students (as we sang in the school song). I now learn that Stuy and Bronx Sci each have half that. That would also imply that Tech has a little more room to fit in a few more highly qualified applicants out of the about 30,000 students who take the SHSAT.
I have some modern stats. Today, about 2.8% to 3.0% of the students who take the SHSAT and are eligible for Stuyvesant are accepted, which comes to about 800-850 students.
Today, about 4.5% to 5% of SHSAT takers are accepted by Tech, with around 1,450 to 1,600 students.
But I was curious about older stats, and now find that in the 1950s, the three specialized high schools had typical acceptance rates of about 10-15%, so this would have been my cohort.
But I had to reject one acceptance! That became Stuyvesant. In retrospect, it's hard to picture that I rejected one of the most prestigious schools in the US. But of course, that fact has to be balanced at what I got: Brooklyn Tech.

JUNIOR HIGH vs MIDDLE SCHOOL Before we go more deeply into high school, it's necessary to explain other changes in education during the 20C. I remember hearing about my parents' generation, where those that didn't go to high school were said to have only had an "8th-grade education". It seems that the original sequencing was two-fold. Elementary School went from grades 1 to 8, and then High School went from 9 to 12, very likely patterned after the four-year college system. High schools even used the same collegiate terminology, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, to describe the four levels.
In the early 20C, it was apparently decided that a three-fold system would be better, and the junior high school was born. I just learned that the first school in the US built specifically as a junior high school (as opposed to converting) was Indianola Junior High School in Columbus, Ohio, which opened in 1909, and spread. Two grades were taken from below, and one from above, so that the new system went Elementary School 1-6, Jr Hi 7-8-9, HS 10-11-12, leaving the HS, oddly, with no real "freshman year".
But by mid-century, fault was found with that plan, and another three-fold system developed, whereby Elementary Schools went from 1-5, the new Middle Schools covered 6-7-8, and HSs went back to their original 9-10-11-12. I have now learned that my old schools have changed to this pattern. PS 108 now ends in grade 5. Jr Hi 171 is now Middle School 171 with grades 6-7-8. The shift from junior high to middle school in the US gained momentum in the 1960s and 1970s, with the concept gaining wider acceptance by the 2000s. The world has changed.

In my case, having gone to a junior high shouldn't have been any problem. But I went to Tech, and so it was. Tech had a very thoro and complete four-year curriculum, which worked fine for students coming in from the 8th grade, either from an elementary school or from or any nascent middle-school. But anyone who had had 9th grade in a junior high—even in an enriched SP program—wouldn't have begun to cover the technical coursework required in Tech's 9th grade.
The conundrum of getting my group educated in what we'd missed was solved in two ways, more easily solved by the fact that all courses were one semester long, with class changes in January. Thus Tech's four years were eight semesters. Theoretically, we 9th graders had six semesters (three years) ahead of us. But instead we were scheduled for seven semesters (3 ½ years), setting us back a half-year. I do not know if there would have been any situation like this if I'd chosen Stuy, but frankly, I don't care. Tech was too much fun.
But there was so much we needed to catch up with, that for that first semester, we had an extended day as the second way to catch up. The eight-period school day ran roughly from 9-3 (late bell 8:50; dismissal 3:02) but our hardy little group had a special 9th & 10th period add-on for that semester running first from 3:05 to 3:50, then to 4:35 so we could catch up. It made for a very long and busy day.
I started at Tech in September 1953, where three years were stretched to 3.5 years, ending in January 1957. I can say that I never had a feeling of being a Freshman—or even Senior, since those terms cover the academic year and not the calendar year we were doing, interrupted by summer vacation. As alumni, we are grouped together with the more regular June class, all of which is now known as the Class of 1957. Graduating in January meant that we entered college a well on this off-schedule, so after four years at Queens College, I again graduated in January, of 1961, again never feeling of being of any class year, such as a Freshman. Thus the junior high system, clashing with Tech's many requirements, now explains why I had a half-year free in early 1961 before graduate school. This is when I clerked on Wall Street.

OLD VIEWPOINTS Along with the 65th (!!!) reunion of our Class of 1957 in 2022, Brooklyn Tech celebrated its centennial, 1922-2022. This means that, while the school has completed ten decades, when we attended, it was merely in its third decade. Looking back now, it's easy to see that, what we all considered perfectly normal and de rigueur at the time, seems so, so out-of-date.
We'll start with the sexism of the period. In no way is sexism gone, but the blatant ways it existed at the time seem incomprehensible. Those were the years when boys were guided into shop classes because "shop is for boys" and girls to home ec classes because "home ec is for girls." This implied girls had no need to hammer a nail and boys had no need to break open an egg. Thus, while Stuy and Bronx Sci and other high schools were co-ed, Tech at the time was for boys only, because "engineering is for boys". It was the only academic period from 1st grade to graduate school when I was in an all-male environment. 13 years after I graduated in 1957, Tech finally went co-ed in 1970, with nine women joining the class of 1974. Today, 43% of the students are female, and 57% male. At reunion assemblies, classes are seated in order, so the first three rows or so in the auditorium are all male, and only after that come co-ed classes with female faces.

But that was far from the only antiquated thought remaining from Tech's founding. Since four-year high schools were modeled after four-year colleges, there was apparently the notion of some equivalency. Why shouldn't high school be sufficient for most people—particularly middle class--to become educated? Most of the courses of study were set up to train engineers without going to college, and I know of a couple of guys that were swooped up by the phone company or electric company right after graduation from high school. The College Prep course I took—my salvation, as it turns out--was an afterthought to the original planning, apparently indicating a gradual change in thinking. Thus my current review of the Tech handbook from that upstairs closet sees a listing a number of engineering colleges that could be of interest to ALL students at Tech. Among them was, for those who wanted to study in college near their high school, Pratt Institute, a 20-minute walk east of Tech right down DeKalb Avenue.

1950s COURSES As I review the handbook, I find there were in the 1950s eight specific courses of study. At the time, they were not called majors, tho that's exactly what they were: Aeronautical; Architecture & Building Construction; Chemical; Electrical; Industrial Design; Mechanical; Structural (Civil Engineering). The Building Construction guys actually built a small house in an oversized room—and is the only one that still does!
I didn't know what profession I wanted to enter into. It was certainly not language based on my junior high experience, and the eight offered were, as major engineering fields, all far too specific for me. That's why I refer to the ninth, the (Technical) College Prep(aratory) course as my salvation. College Prep was just as challenging as the other eight, but it was far less specific, with full academic courses and just a peppering of engineering-related courses.
I just found this quote in the handbook: All courses . . . offer excellent preparation for engineering colleges . . . which do not require preparation in languages. However, [College Prep], which includes language study, qualifies its graduates to prepare for engineering or any other career at the greatest number of universities and colleges. I never fully realized until now that no language study at all was available within the eight other courses, nor that that would affect college entrance. And only now do I see the words—boldface mine—that actually stated in so many words, that I on graduation essentially would be prepared to "put engineering aside" and become a language major in college.
So language study was limited to the College Prep guys. But there were more restrictions, typical of period thinking: French and German are the only languages taught because they are the most valuable for engineering. Maybe they were and maybe they weren't, but that was the closed-mind thinking of the day. (NB: Today Tech teaches German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Chinese.)
One last thing: It was made perfectly clear that "French & German" meant "Scientific French & Scientific German". It was a very logical and interesting bias and turned out to be another part of "my salvation", since, while learning German, we happily plunged into readings in German science(more later) and were not encumbered with literary studies as later beset me.

COLLEGE PREP The handbook requirements for the College Prep major are below. I'm sure that course requirements, especially four-year ones, had to be rearranged for those of us squeezed into the 3 ½ year program, with perhaps a year of English and Math being credited to junior high study, I'm not sure.
4 years each: English, Math, Shop, Technical Drawing, Health Ed
3 years: Language—German or French (2 years was also possible)
2 years: Hygiene
1 year each: World History, American History, Physics, Chemistry, Industrial Processes, Civics, Freehand Drawing, Music
½ year: Economics

It will surprise no one that German was my favorite class. It will surprise every one that my second favorite was my beloved Print Shop, formally "Printing Technology". I will comment separately on both of these gems in the next posting.
Following those two gems, I loved Math and Physics. Math included Plane & Solid Geometry, Trigonometry, Advanced Algebra, and I took Calculus in college. (I'm afraid that Chemistry, tho I was successful there, never lit my fire.)
Of course I liked English, World History, and American History—I now write a lot about all of these.
But I really want to say a bit more about some above classes that constituted the "peppering" of engineering-type studies in what was otherwise a general, tho challenging, group of courses. Most of them were really fun.
Once I graduated, I didn't follow Tech news until I started going to homecomings and reunions just before the 50th reunion of the Class of 1957 in 2007. I went to several homecomings, including tours of the school, but notable were our 60th in 2017 and 65th in 2022. I strongly recall something that happened at the class dinner for the 60th. It was suggested at the restaurant that alums stand and say what course they studied at Tech and what field they then entered into. A number did, and it was all engineering, including teaching it. Then a guy stood up and said his experience was different. He was now a dentist, and went into dentistry in college after Tech. I then took that as my cue, since it was rare within the group to leave engineering, and I rose to talk about moving into language study. But it was so revealing to me how the dentist and I stood out from the group. And I now realize how the College Prep course was so generally academic and non-committal to any engineering major.
At the homecomings and reunions we could see that just about everything listed below was gone, physically torn out of the building! All the shops have been converted to classrooms or to other uses. Most memorable of a new use is the robotics lab, where I saw a student-built mini robot toss a ball into a ground-level hoop. Marvelous, but SO different from what we had experienced. Back to the '50s.
One year (two semesters) of INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES was required of everyone in the building, not just College Prep guys. It was all textbooks in a classroom, tho, and was really quite informative. I can remember that to make steel, you have to remove carbon from iron and add other alloying elements. The older Bessemer converter was then replaced by open-hearth furnaces. Galena is the principal ore of lead. Railroad ties and other woods are soaked in creosote to reduce rotting in the ground. What does all this have to do with direct objects in German? Nothing whatsoever, but it's still fun to know. Anyway, since the course was universally called "IP", you can imagine what fun teenage boys had saying that. Gone.
Four full years was required for TECHNICAL DRAWING, which was actually DRAFTING. If I recall correctly, those 9th & 10th period classes our group that first semester were largely filled with this, since no one from junior high came with these skills. All in all, this was fun to learn—its roots go back to ancient civilizations—the ancient Egyptians around 3000 BCE used detailed plans on papyrus and stone to build the pyramids.
Our work space looked like this (Photo by Michael Holley). That's a drafting board with a t-square that moved up and down one side to help making horizontal lines. Drafting paper was taped to the board with masking tape. The plastic triangle would run along the t-square to make vertical lines, and in this case, also 45° angular lines. We actually had two triangles the above "45", actually a 45°-45°-90° triangle, as well as a 30°-60°-90° one as shown here (Illustration by Dnu72). The picture also shows a straight ruler, calibrated to scale. Actually, we had a triangular Architect's Scale or Engineering Scale. Its three edges allowed six different scales to be shown. I suppose I liked it because it was so mathematically precise, much more fun than freehand drawing.
We had to purchase our own two triangles and architect's scale, so I still have them today. When we were building our house in Purchase NY, on a table I would set up a makeshift drawing board and t-square, then use the triangles and Architect's Scale to help in planning what we wanted to do. Obviously, Beverly had never had such training, and she took to it enthusiastically. She not only would work with me on house plans, she also used the drafting tools to help plan furniture selection in various rooms. It reminds me of Emily Warren Roebling learning from her husband.
But all this is gone. Drafting today at Tech is done by CAD (Computer-Aided Design). This is a draftsman somewhere in 1992 using CAD. Don't ask me to explain it.
The four years of shop courses covered so much. It started with WOOD SHOP, officially "Patternmaking", making small forms and doing wood lathe work, but also making a table lamp that I brought home.
I enjoyed SHEET METAL SHOP, which involved folding sheet metal. Look at it this way. Makers of origami have to fold paper to get the designs they want. But how do you fold sheet metal? In a bulky machine called a press brake(Modified Schematic by Wizard 191). The sheet metal ("workpiece") is in yellow, and the punch is lowered to bend it to the form of the die. This can be done repeatedly, as shown in this animation. This very short video shows a press brake making a series of folds—pause it at end to inspect the resulting shape. Once again, I made a lamp to take home, this time of folded sheet metal. But the shops are gone.
Believe it or not, back in the day, Tech had a FOUNDRY that took up half of the 7th floor where we learned SAND CASTING. Blissfully, I actually found a picture of boys in the Tech foundry back in the day:

https://surveybths.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Pic-3.jpeg

It had a double-height ceiling and a sand floor. It wasn't beach sand, but "green sand" a special easy-compacting molding sand to make castings. We wore aprons. You see above a guy shoveling some sand to make the lower half of a mold. He's about to use the round sieve that every work station had to sift the sand going into the mold to avoid impurities. A small wooden form ("pattern", hence "pattern shop") would be inserted to be copied in metal, then the top section of the mold was prepared. Behind him and facing him (click) are two other guys preparing top-and-bottom molds.
This is a very good animation video (1:21) that shows the process. Just keep in mind, we didn't do fancy multi-part castings, we just had little odd-shaped blocks of wood as our patterns.

https://plymouthfoundry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Green-Sand-Casting-1024x683.jpg

This picture of molten metal being poured into a sand casting is NOT from the Brooklyn Tech foundry—it's generic and just illustrative. But it certainly was a fun change of pace to go from, say, Math to Foundry to English!

https://surveybths.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Pic-5-900x675.png

To "go Latin" for a moment: Sic transit gloria mundi. By the late 1980s, the foundry class was discontinued. The foundry space is now primarily used for storage, tho there are plans to repurpose it. It's described as a large, untouched, and somewhat abandoned space. For alumni of that era, the foundry evokes strong memories of offbeat experiences, such as pouring molten metal.
There are a number of ways to cast art objects as well, and among them is sand casting. I have more of a feeling for these art works having "worked" in a foundry.
I enjoyed MACHINE SHOP, but not as much as other shops. There were numerous lathes, and we would turn metal objects. I still have in my tool box the nail set I made (Photo by Za). You hammer one end and the other pushes headless nails deeper into wood to hide them.
The set-up of the room was impressive. I now know the system we used was called "belt and lineshaft". Power came via shafts and wheels up on the high ceiling, and a fat belt came down to each lathe.

https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.1ba3158076e534219aa87eedea170a69?rik=duV8FX0eNM3WIQ&riu=http%3a%2f%2fimages.fineartamerica.com%2fimages-medium-large-5%2fold-school-machine-shop-paul-freidlund.jpg&ehk=82dY0L5g7CMmmTrhCGMiDVJcCLvCZ05dN%2bYn5IgJ6kE%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0

You started or adjusted your machine by moving the belt between an idler pulley doing nothing and different size drive pulleys for different speeds. Those red poles hanging down from the ceiling were part of doing the shifting. To me, this has always been how machine shops were. However, I was startled to see the above picture online referred to as an "old school" machine shop. I haven't followed the progress made in the field, but I suppose now it's all done by electric motors. But look how spectacular and "mechanical" the belt and lineshaft system was. Note in particular the pulleys at 1:14 and the actual lathe at 1:27. I'm surprised they point all this out as being "so 19C". But I suppose it is.
This is now all gone at Tech, as with the other shops. But there's a bit of nostalgia. When touring the school, you come across a large room with desks below, maybe CAD machines for drawing. But up on the high ceiling, the wheels and lineshafts of the old machine shop remain to this day. I wonder what today's kids think of the "ceiling decoration".

We're not done yet. In the next posting, we'll revel in the Print Shop and see how it goes back to Gutenberg, if not to Ancient Rome. And we'll get into German as well.