I attended the Park School in Brooklandville, MD (a suburb of Baltimore). This was your typical high school... if your typical high school had the cool hangout being the library. The librarian- who used to be the head of the Maryland ACLU- would join in the freeranging political conversations for a while before finally kicking us out. The campus had some woods where we could go to escape during "Free periods." (Park wouldn't do anything as repressive as having study halls :) ) Variants of Pooh Sticks and sneaking off to smoke were popular options there.

This was the best schooling experience I could have ever hoped for. Conversations were challenging both inside and outside the classrooms. The school assumed that we were adults; rules were always given a reason for and there were no real disciplinary options, short of suspension. To encourage our creativity, all seniors are given a page in the yearbook. Mine was kind of bland, but the existence of amazing documents such as Chris Schulte's senior page actually led Park to make rules governing them for classes after ours.

If I were to ever have kids, I would be highly tempted to move back to Baltimore so I could send them there. Any school with a headmaster who had a copy of The Preppie Handbook (Park was listed under Bohemian Prep Schools) between analyses of James Joyce, is a place that needs to be supported :)