Disclaimer: I'm not an education professional. I barely know enough to make a decision for my own kids.
Today, the family and I went to an open house for a private (non-parochial) school in Dayton, to see if our oldest son (Alex) would be comfortable attending kindergarten there. I had been pretty adamant in my assertion that public school was fine, and that I had gone to public school, so clearly there's nothing wrong with it.
My own parents sent me to public school; at least partially due to financial restrictions (my younger sister, on the other hand, went to private school). However, they were extremely interested in my academic performance and made every effort to be involved in everything I did. In typical Indian parent style, they constantly pushed me to do better. When I was discussing public vs. private schools with my wife, I always came back to the same central point: above a certain minimum threshold, the level of parental involvement is a better predictor of success than the school itself.
Clearly we were going to be involved parents, so why worry about sending him to a private school instead of a public school where he can be with the kids from the neighborhood?
Then I went to the school.
The open house started off with the headmaster saying some words, things about how they were committed to creating better "global citizens" and how they wanted to foster an attitude of "continual learning". He bought up some statistics about college acceptance rate and schools. Pretty standard stuff when talking to parents that obsess about their precious little snowflakes doing as well as they can.
Then, he invited some of the current students to speak. I guess they have "ambassadors"; and we heard from 2 seniors.
Many of my friends are outgoing people, and I may have some high standards for public speaking...but yeah. These kids were amazing. They were engaging, they were funny, they were articulate...more than what they said (all praising the school for their experiences there), the manner in which they spoke was incredible. They had confidence and poise, and it was obvious they were speaking from their personal experiences, not from material prepared by others. Granted, I'm sure the school picked its best seniors ,but still. I remember valedictory addresses from my school and (apologies to my former classmates) these blew them away.
When I spoke to the teachers, they all seemed to think that it was more important to promote an (for lack of a better term) organizational culture that rewarded learning. The social culture of the school itself meant that being smart didn't set you apart. I remember quite vividly the mental effort I had to put forth to fit in in elementary school, a non-trivial matter for a kid coming from a different country, with different color skin, who spoke English with a distinct, thick accent. It's hard enough to fit in without having to worry about seeming "too smart". I'm not certain, by the way, that my son IS smart. I think so, but I'm biased. I just don't want him to be socially outcast for it.
I didn't get a chance to talk to the other parents, but I'm guessing (hoping?) that they'll be as involved in their children's school lives as we plan to be in ours. It's always easier to be around people like yourselves, and I wasn't looking forward to PTA meetings at our local public school...but I think they might be enjoyable here.
Anyway, I think I just had my mind changed.
Great post Sandy! I'm, for the most part, of the same mind as you. With respect to parental involvement, I think any one of our group would agree that this is a far greater determinant of success than the specific school they are in. However, more recently my focus has been on the method keeping the creativity within my yet to be born children. I think it's relatively easy to groom a child to be successful in our current world. However, how do we teach the child to be both successful as well happy in their career (note, I did not use the word job)? How do you ensure your children find one what excites them and what they were meant to be? In the words of your previous post, how do we teach them to yearn for the vast sea (or whatever their "sea" is)? I know that's certainly a quest that I'm still finding myself on certain days.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have a pretty cool school up there for Alex. I look forward to hearing more about it (or other schools). Additionally, check out the following video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Related:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
I think you'll find it pretty interesting.
I remain unconvinced.
ReplyDeleteYour anecdote about the public speaking skills of two private school seniors is pure selection bias, but you know that, so there's little reason to belabor the point.
I wonder--did you know many private school kids when you were still in school? I knew a number of them, mostly from church. and they experienced the same struggles fitting in that you and I experienced as an intelligent youth. Kids are the same everywhere: their acceptance of their exceptionally intelligent peers does not depend on their affluence. The culture the teachers emphasize at a parental open house seems very unlikely to be the same attitude that students adopt in day-to-day life at the school. If Alex is as exceptionally intelligent as you are, I am sure he'll experience the same kind of difficulty you did, whether he attends public or private school. I think that difficulty will make him into a stronger, more independent adult, just like it did for you and me.
I'm not convinced that forestalling the struggles of the exceptionally intelligent is in a child's best interests. In the world outside of education (I would say "the real world" if it weren't so trite) the intelligent still experience those same struggles to fit in, and I think the experienced gained learning how to deal with those struggles while in school better prepare a youngster for life outside of school than avoiding those struggles until the student graduates. This is the same reason that I'll likely not install a porn-blocker on my computer, but instead have a transparent logging HTTP proxy. Both pornography and societal rejection of intelligent people exist outside of my home, and I would rather my children encounter them while still under my roof, where I can help them make good decisions, than when they've moved away and I cannot so easily offer them my support.
Good post Sandy. I agree with Jeremy and the pre-convinced Sandy. Sheltering a child is generally not a good idea. We know that. But with Jeremy's reassurance that private school still offers the same struggles, I guess it's an irrelevant topic. If private school would offer anything, it would be a heightened sense of rebellion against the structures that be. (Ex: Marilyn Manson ;) OR, on the flip side of that coin, Alex, in a private school, could be goaded into the perfect little follower.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe I'm reading in to this way too much, and private school ups your 'respectable' status as parents, as well as offers Alex a better chance to learn. Let's just hope that "No child Left Behind" doesn't hold him back, as it has so many.
Jeremy: It was more than just the two kids. The senior class is around 30 people; and there were about that many at the open house. If there were kids missing, it wasn't many. I spoke with several of them, and I'd like to think if they had been faking their enthusiasm, I would have been able to tell.
ReplyDeleteI knew a few private school kids from church as well, but they were (without exception) kids who went to a religious private school. This is not a religious private school, and partly because of that, the kids that go here are not ones that are forced by their parents. The kids I had talked to had almost all chosen to go there after shadowing a student (the others were enrolled at kindergarten). I think that makes a big difference.
So, I disagree with your last point. In the world since college, I've never felt like my intelligence has been *in the way* of me fitting in. Rather, my intelligence and hobbies are things I use to form a bond with the people I encounter in my life. I daresay that in your current work environment it's the same way.
It's school that's the aberration. Everywhere else, my intelligence and other skills are aids to my socialization, not barriers. We, as adults, select our social circles and (to a lesser extent) our careers to include mostly people that we share common interests with. There's very little forced socialization with people that that unpleasant... I certainly haven't encountered that "in the real world".
I don't deny that having to go through social turmoil wasn't valuable; but I question if the energy expended there couldn't have been put to better use?
I don't know, Jeremy. It really seemed as though the kids had a sense of camaraderie that wasn't feigned. In a small, tight-knit group of kids that value knowledge rather than some other random metric of popularity, I don't know how you and I would have turned out. To some extent we created that sort of environment with our friends; but I think we would have had an easier time if we were exceptionally gifted in, let's say, football and basketball instead of math and science.
Todd: One of my main problems with public schools is teaching to tests. Another problem I have is teacher tenure. This school has neither of those, so...
ReplyDeleteI don't think anything in the world could make Alex into a perfect little follower, and he's bound to rebel regardless of what we do. My hope is that this school will remove any external barriers he may have toward self-actualization, by allowing him to explore what his interests are without being forced to do stupid crap that he finds boring.
Sandy: In your disagreement with my last point, I contend that you're proving my last point. The reason you've not had trouble fitting in as an intelligent adult is precisely *because* you learned how to do so in school. Your ability to select your "social circles and...careers to include mostly people that we share common interests with" is not intrinsic, but one that you learned in the relatively risk-free context of middle school and high school. Many people who don't encounter that challenge in those early years have significantly more difficulty doing so in college and their early professional years, often engaging in destructive behavior while they learn. They go off to college with the expectation that everyone will like them, that everyone will be their friend, and they are sorely and rudely snapped back to reality.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds to me like these kids had exactly the sense of camaraderie that your friends had, except they are given it instead of having to work for it like you did. I absolutely agree that you would have had an easier time if you were gifted in football or basketball, or if you went to a small private school where everyone was like you. I think you also would have had an easier time if your parents had done all your homework for you while you had your toes licked by beautiful women, but I don't think that would have been beneficial for your development.
As young children, many kids expect that all other kids will like them and be their friends. In elementary, middle, and high school, kids learn not only that everyone isn't their friend, but that they don't really *want* to be friends with everyone. That ability to discern between people they want to be friends with and people they don't want to be friends with is an essential life skill, and putting your children in a school where they won't develop that skill is a mistake.
In fact, I would argue that it's missing the entire *point* of high school. Literally *everything* I learned in high school, I learned better in college. I learned physics in high school, but I learned more and better physics in college. I leaned chemistry in high school, but I learned more and better chemistry in college. I learned computer science in high school, but I learned more and better computer science in college. The point of high school is not to learn academic subjects, but to learn how to interact with people, to learn values and how to apply them in real world situations, and to learn the basics of life in society. Artificially limiting the kind and number of people your kids will interact with by putting them in a school with an order of magnitude fewer students than ours had, all of them focused on academic learning, is to miss the entire point of pre-college education.
Our job as parents is not to make our kids' lives easy, but to raise them to be adults fully equipped to take on the world. I don't care if Noah graduates high school knowing integration by parts or V = IR, but I do very much want him to graduate high school knowing the sort of people whose opinions matter to him and the sort whose opinions do not. I want him to know who he wants to be friends with and who he doesn't want to be friends with, and how to interact successfully with both groups of people. I think that exposure to the vertical slice of demographic that is public school will be far more effective for that learning than exposure to the horizontal slice of demographic that is private school.