Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Neighboring Saratoga plans to offer historic look at 1968

By John Pancharian

With attendance expected to rise for the foreseeable future at Los Gatos High School, curriculum planners will be hunting for new classes to offer the ever-growing student body. One place they may want to look is Saratoga High. Though it may disturb some members of the community that 1968 is now considered history, SHS plans to offer a new course in which students can study the "historical events and people which led the movements for change across the globe in 1968." Principal Kevin Skelly presented the proposal to the joint high school district board of trustees at a March 3 meeting.

"It's going to be fun," says social studies teacher Mike Davey, who will instruct the class if enrollment is sufficient to offer it. Modeled after an upper-division university seminar, the course will allow students to pursue individualized reading and present the material to the rest of the class, as well as tackle group reading assignments. Davey also plans to involve the students in mock trials and debates in which they must attack or defend various historical figures and their actions at the time. These trials will go far beyond "should he have inhaled," though. Davey will cover topics such as the British decolonialization of Nigeria, which left hundreds of disparate ethnic groups suddenly with no controlling authority and arbitrary boundaries between them.

Jimmy, Jerry, Janet and "mary jane" will occupy a section on '60s music and culture, but the main thrust of the class "will start with the student rebellion in the United States and then move out globally," Davey said. "I want to explore the idea that the conformity of the '50s led to the explosion of the '60s."

What was Davey doing in 1968? "Being born," he says--which may come as a relief to board members who expressed the concern that teachers who lived through 1968 once already might not want to go back and teach a class on it.

In other items:

* Board members decided unanimously to send condolences to the family of Sean Lisher, a Los Gatos High School student who died Feb. 28 in an auto accident. Lisher was a sometimes troubled student who had begun to turn his life around and was doing well at LGHS at the time of his death. The accident was "alcohol related," though Lisher was not the driver.

* Superintendent Cindy Ranii returned from a trip to Sacramento with news of items under debate for the June California ballot. State lawmakers are preparing Proposition 223, which would mandate school administration costs be limited to 5 percent of a district's total budget. Currently local districts spend from 7.9 percent to 11.2 percent of their budgets on administration costs, with the high school district occupying the lowest spot.

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