Talk:Westlake High School (Austin, Texas)
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[edit] Notable Alumni
All of them are athletes? Come on, surely Westlake has produced some other notables. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.110.217.66 (talk) 02:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Possible Copyvio?
This text sure does sound like it's pulled off some brochure. If this is the case, it needs addressing. If it's not the case, the article still reads like an ad. -Seidenstud 23:57, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
If you didnt go to school there you have no idea.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.167.235.141 (talk • contribs)
I Must Say that this depiction is 100 percent accurate. And, while it may read like an advertisement it shouldn't because having gone to Westlake myself I can testify that it forces you to live in an utopian world where its often difficult to imagine a world in which every ones dad is a doctor and everyones house is at least worth 1,000,000+. The Association of Prepatories once argued that Westlake "out prepped the prep schools". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.25.156.81 (talk • contribs)
[edit] Inaccurate Advertising
This Wikipedia article is a mockery--a self serving advertisement for a school that is riddled with controversy. As an AUSTIN Independent School District former student, I can attest to Westlakes historic white upper middle class exclusiveness. While urban schools just a few miles up MoPac and accross Hwy 183 have leaky cielings, inadequate textbooks, and record crime rates, Westlake builds multi-million dollar football jumbotrons and "freshman centers." By remaining a few yards outside of Austin's jurisdiction, Westlake has successfully preserved segregation along race and class lines. Its perfect hallways and college-sized football arena do make it a utopia, but a false one built on the suffering of innercity students because of the greediness of upper middle class white suburbanites unwilling to share tax dollars with (gasp!) poor minorities. This article was clearly written not by an unbiased observer, but by a proponent of Westlake and all of the social inequalities it could not exist without. Clearly I am not an unbiased observer either, but this article must note some of the bad alongside the good. Maybe they should start by incorporating Westlake's drug problems or the highly controversial and incredibly brutal and unsupervised underground wrestling matches. Westlake kids have a reputation around Austin as pampered and overprivileged, with too much time and money on their hands, blind to the struggles of the real world. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.32.24 (talk • contribs)
Criticism will need some sources cited. I do not have the time to fully research this school (that I had never heard of until seeing this article), but I will, for now, go through and remove some of the violations of WP:NPOV and WP:V. These violations include content such as "proud tradition of excellence" -Seidenstud 04:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Response to Other Comment
And in response to the "if you didn't go there you have no idea comment," I posit instead that "if you did go there you have no idea." Meaning, of course, that Westlake students are sheltered from the real world and are brought up in a homogenous culture that does not reflect the true struggles, or honest triumphs, of the real world. I know many very nice Westlake former students, but it has been my experience that they truly are not taught through Westlake's curriculum nor its student composition "how the other half lives," to quote Riis. It is also important to note Westlake's academic "success" in comparison to Austin's schools, particularly the magnets. While Westlake may have ranked 72nd at some point, LBJ High School, NOT an affluent white haven, ranked 17th best high school in the nation in the same ranking system. Also, LBJ has outperformed Westlake in National Merit Scholar numbers for years. So even with all of its utopic perks, Westlake cannot ascribe such unbridled academic success to itself when, just a few miles down the road, with no money and rampant crime, LBJ's students still outperform Westlake's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.32.24 (talk • contribs)
Responding to the above comments: Westlake's academic prowess is not based solely on financial endowment. Westlake and Eanes has a culture that values education. Eanes schools are a selling point for parents moving to central Texas. They are willing to be taxed at the highest legal rate to support good schools, even when more than half of all tax revenue is distributed to poorer districts. Fully 60% of Eanes revenue is taken by the state, a percentage that increases each year. Yet Westlake continues to be one the best schools in the nation.
You want to talk about LBJ? Don't make me laugh. That is the most internally segregated school in Travis County, where all the magnet students occupy AP classes and students that go there as a result of geography do not. The only interactions are in the hallways. Moreover, you are comparing a magnet school for a district with many times more students to draw from, with a school that is the district's only high school. Provide the source saying LBJ is the 17th best school in that nation. I can point to Newsweek's 2006 list showing Westlake as the 71st best, with LBJ coming in a paltry 166th. Austin High comes in at 447.
The argument about a sheltered high school is weak. People in any environment can choose to insulate themselves from the world, or seek it out and learn. Athletics, forensics, UIL, Model UN, band, and orchestra are activities widely participated in at Westlake that bring students into interactions with others. Citing your own anecdotal evidence just exposes how little you actually know, thus falling back on stereotypes.
[edit] Response to Westlake Rebuttal
Suffice it to say that this discussion has grown outside of simply Westlake vs. AISD. Please go to college and take a sociology class that involves reading books like Ain't No Making It, Random Family, Jocks and Burnouts, American Apartheid, and Streetwise. Why do you think Eanes families value education? Do you think others don't value education? Could it be not that Westlake parents have an inherent superior moral character, but instead that working class families do not have the time for parents to read to their children before bed, coddle them in their elementary school projects, and must instead work long hours? The children of working class families do not posess the same cultural capital that the children of upper middle class families do. Of course all families value education--it's a core characteristic of the mythic American Dream and the appearance of an American meritocracy. But not all families can enable their children to succeed, as Westlake parents can, despite how much they desire solid education and school success.
What I'm saying is that despite the individual experiences of Westlake students, the success they enjoy is predicated on segregation and classism. Why is Westlake almost all white? Because the neighborhood is all white. Why is the neighborhood white? Because of white flight from urban areas and the federal policy of guaranteeing loans only for whites after WWII, thereby excluding minorities and the underclass from the pampered, suburban American dreamland. Why can't these innercity students all just do well in life and buy into areas like Westlake? Because the innercity schools don't have the funding to make up for the lack of cultural capital passed on from parents to children. Why don't they have this funding? Because all the big property tax dollars go into segregated bedroom communities who have created their own municipalities in order to hoard tax dollars. Why doesn't the state reapportion this money? Because when it tries to do so, all the wealthy people, who have the power in society, cry about it. But what about Robinhood legislation, doesn't that take money from Eanes and give it to AISD? It used to, until people cried about it. But wait, doesn't Eanes still give away a ton of money to the state? Yes, all districts do so that the state can waste it on beaurocracy and adinistration costs and pork barrel jobs that keep the friends of those in power wealthy.
It's not just Westlake, and it's not anecdotal evidence; it's the greater structure of inequality in our society. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.68.122.186 (talk) 22:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC).
Responding to this comment: Your line of argumentation has taken you away from attacking Westlake's academic status, which I show as excellent, into excuses for why it is excellent. No where do you defend your original assertions that some AISD schools are better than Westlake. Do you believe all families value education equally? Because if you do, you have already contradicted yourself by saying LBJ students "without the utopian perks of Westlake" outperform Westlakers, implying that they are somehow harder working or value education more? (On that note, the fact that you describe LBJ as a "few miles down the road" when they are on opposite sides of the city makes one wonder whether you have actually been to Austin.) One can throw around platitudes and say "Americans value education, hard work, discipline, honesty, integrity, etc.", compare with another nation who says their citizens value the same things, and come to the conclusion that there are no cultural differences. National groups break into a million different sub-groups, near the bottom of which is the family unit. Some families value other things besides education, even in Westlake. Things like family, money, athletic achievement, duty to country, and religion. Do you really believe that all families value education the most, even when in conflict with these other values?
I have seen evidence that Robinhood is ineffective, but not because money is wasted on a huge bureacracy that gives pork barrel jobs to the rich. The rich and powerful are not working as civil servants. Civil servants in Texas are relatively poor. The reasons I have seen that Robinhood is not working is 1) there is not enough money being spent overall on education in Texas, 2) the money is mismanaged by local districts, and 3) money can only go so far to raise education performance.
Finally, you said in your first post that Westlake is a horrible environment, as "Westlake students are sheltered from the real world and are brought up in a homogenous culture that does not reflect the true struggles, or honest triumphs, of the real world...it has been my experience that they truly are not taught through Westlake's curriculum nor its student composition "how the other half lives." Given such an environment that supposedly handicaps Westlakers' success in the real world, perhaps this amplifies their very real sucesses? On the other hand, your last post mentions the "suburban dreamland"
[edit] Merger with Eanes Independent School District
This seems like a reasonable thing to do, as just about half of the text of Eanes Independent School District is about Westlake, and it is more or less overlapping content. Having the two articles just leads to inconsistencies, etc. Anyone have an opinion about this?
-Seidenstud 21:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
If this is to happen, then ALL schools within ALL ISD's should also be merged into one page. I believe this is going to lead to some very large pages. Eanes is a 'known name', but Westlake has its own reputation - for better or worse, as some have mentioned. I would rather see the information grow around both Eanes ISD and Westlake HS and have these pages linked, rather than made the same. It will also slow the confusion down when someone searches on 'Westlake' and sees the article 'Eanes ISD'. There will be more searching on Westlake HS if the popularity of Friday Night Lights rises, as the Westlake team is the model for the 'Westerby Chaps' in the series.
My $0.05 on the subject. :-) -- From an Eanes ISD/Westlake resident
[edit] Merger with Eanes Independent School District
Most other highschools have wikipedia pages. For example, Austin High and Bowie do. But there's also too much information on the Westlake page to merge it with another page covering other schools as well.
As far as Westlake's reputation of being rich and preppy, we ARE rich and preppy. I happen to attend Westlake and, from what I can see, we are some of the whitest richest streetsmart-less people in existance. I've seen people take out a wad of 50 dollar bills and lay them out on a counter of a crappy resturant in downtown San Antonio, which strikes me as just a bit stupid. People here call themselves "ghetto" because they live in a .5 million dollar house...but it's on Cuernavaca. A few weeks ago we had "country club day" as a theme for one of our pep rallies. Honest to God, I couldn't tell half the people were dressing up. We are pathetic. I've seen students AND PARENTS wave credit cards and cash at other teams during a football game. We think we're better than everyone else and that simply isn't true. No Wikipedia article, whether it exists or not, can change that. This article does not mean anything. Nobody judges a school by its Wikipedia article. I promise. We've already been judged and stereotyped.
--Whs09 13:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
- While I am aware that many other highschools do have articles, it seems that this is its own case. Most other high schools are not in such a notable district, that arguably merits its own article, yet whose article consists of a sub-article on the highschool in question and little more than a list of the other schools in the district. Perhaps merging the District article into this one would make more sense, but either way, I'm pretty sure a merge is appropriate. -Seidenstud 16:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Friday Night Lights
I have removed the unsourced line about Westlake being the "model" for the TV show. According to the Austin Chron, http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A232233, it is some other school, although reading many ghits seems to show that while Westlake has been used for a variety of reasons in the show's production, the show is mainly based on the experience of Central Texas football powerhouse schools, in general. -Seidenstud 05:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
- That link is in reference to the movie, the TV show uses Pflugerville High School as the model, a suburb of Austin. The show is shot at the schools football stadium, the uniforms in the show are identical to the teams. --Holderca1 19:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Extracurricular activities
I am Westlake '00 and I don't remember "money laundering" as one of the extracurricular activities. Kids these days!
