Annabelle is ready for school.
If you are the parent of a genius or gifted child, like we all are, then I am sure you have worried about where your little superstar will go to school. Will public school be enough to keep him interested till college where his intelligence can truly be tested? Or is home school a better choice, where he can learn at his own pace, follow paths that interest him, and enter college earlier than his peers?
My Experience with Home School
These are questions that I have struggled with since I was in school. I spent my early years in public school where I collected some fond memories but not much knowledge. After that, my mom decided to homeschool me. It was great! I’d get up late, spend a few hours doing school work, then watch TV for the rest of the day. After two years, my mom decided that she couldn’t teach me Algebra and started looking for a private school.
We visited several private schools to see what they looked like, how many kids would be in my class, and just basically what I could expect if I went there. The whole thing was so weird. I was already an awkward teenager and being paraded through a school that I might not even attend was mortifying. The kids would look at me and I’d hear them whispering, sure it was about me.
My parents settled on a small Christian school in Derby, Kansas. Close enough to home that I could drive myself but far enough to give me some breathing room. After some time, I really grew to love the school. My classmates were great, the classes were challenging, and I felt comfortable there. I played on the girl’s basketball team and participated in many clubs.
My Experience with Public School
Aaron, my then on and off boyfriend, attended one of the best public high schools in Wichita. I definitely picked up on some animosity toward my little private school, but I think he was just jealous of the boys there. There were 3 in my class and I dated 2 of them!
Anyway, he always said that he had more opportunities at his school. We had the soul-winning club and he had debate. We had sign language class and he had French, oh la la! (That’s sarcasm.) Of course, he also had access to serious musical and drama programs, dozens of Advanced Placement courses, computer labs, science labs, an Honors program, and…well, you get the idea.
He liked to point those things out, too — not necessarily in a mean way, but he took it for granted that his educational opportunities were clearly superior to mine. I didn’t necessarily agree.
Until college, anyway. That’s when I began to understand what he’d been talking about all those years. I really didn’t know how to write a decent paper or even do research for one. I seriously disliked reading. (And let me tell you a secret: there is a ton of reading to do in college!) These are just some examples of things that could have been different if I had gone to his big fancy public school.
The Great Debate
These questions and more have troubled my brain and (because I’m a mommy now) my heart. So what do I do? Public school could have more learning opportunities and social opportunities…but at the same time, it could also offer more “social opportunities.” (That’s a nice way of saying drugs and sex.) Home school may let me tailor an education to my kids’ abilities and my family’s principles, but it could also offer fewer chances to socialize. It’s a never-ending circle of what-ifs.
I have asked two great parents for some insight to help me sift through all these concerns. They should be able to offer an interesting perspective, because both are the product of a strong education first at public school and then at private universities. They’re also siblings who have been debating for a long time, so it should be interesting.
- Heather is my sister-in-law, and she is currently home schooling her 3 kids.
- Aaron is my husband, and he’s still lecturing me about the value of public schooling and how to get the most out of it.
These two great thinkers will present their opinions and ideas to us over the next week. And I’d love to get your opinion, too. I’m sure we’ll have some great discussions about the merits and weaknesses of school systems.
Tags: home school, private, public
I am very interested to hear what Heather and Aaron have to say. I really liked learning more about your schooling history, too! And I do agree that Annabelle is a genius!
I have pretty much been in agreement with Aaron for most of my life, seeing as how I went to public school and enjoyed all the benefits of it and managed to stay away from too many damaging “social opportunities.”
However, since “No Child Left Behind” went into practice and I was able to witness the effects of it, I’m not so sure anymore. When I was working within the school system a few years ago, I found that it has become a lot harder for teacher to do their jobs. And the kids are the ones paying the price.
I think the question, “Public or Homeschool?” is a lot harder to answer these days.
Thanks for the comment Julie. I’m glad to see that this is an interesting topics for you.
“No Child Left Behind” isn’t doing many, if any, favors for our kids. Heather is going to address homeschool tomorrow. I hope we can get some good discussions from her article.
I am interested to hear what both of your “expert” witnesses have to offer. My little one is only 22 months old, but is starting to show some signs that she may be extremly intelligent!
She can read some words like zoo, stop and go. She knows all of the letters (uppercase) of the alphabet and at least one soud for each of them. She is quite imaginative. Of course what every other parent thinks of their genius child! But even before she was born, we had discussed that we would explore our options for schooling. What makes matters more challenging is the fact that her birthday falls right before the cutoff (literally a few days before school usually starts here in Kansas). I am a teacher in the public schools and find it ludicrous that children are expected to sit and have 90 min. “uninterupted” blocks of reading then turn right around and do the same for math on a DAILY basis! Talk about burnout! No wonder “no child left behind” although implemented with good intentions has not worked well to improve students’ perfomances! All this is to say, Stephen and I agree that we need to explore our options and don’t know exactly what they each mean for our “genius.” He would argue that the “social” part of it is not important (to which I would disagree). I will be checking back to see the arguments of both sides!!!
I am so glad that I’m not the only one out there struggling with these same issues. I knew that this would be a hot topic. Thanks for visiting Lacie.
I don’t think your private school experience and the educational aspects that seemed to be lacking can necessarily be applied to the whole private school arena. True, private schools avoid the state-mandated testing and so it is much harder to “standardize” the quality of education. But I think many private schools have an earlier and more thorough focus on critical thinking, reading, and writing, which can be very helpful in the college-and-beyond arena. Private schools can often require more education and experience from the teachers they hire. Private preschools often offer classes for younger ages than public school, and for more hours. Our son will start at a preschool Mother’s Day Out program in the fall (for kids 18 months and up). Their preschool program is for 3-year-olds and the pre-kindergarten program is for 4-year-olds and the class day is from 9am-3pm. Compare that with public preschool that is for 4- and 5-year-olds and runs for a few hours a day and you can see where there is a good opportunity for a headstart in education and social learning. It’s definitely not for everyone, though.
Kris and I attended a Department of Defense high school overseas, which mirrored a private school in many ways – small class size and higher-educated teachers with more experience. But we also had the benefits of multiple AP courses. And, since there wasn’t much else to do on base, there were multiple extra-curricular activites and all students were welcome.
Before Kris and I had a child, Kris was an advocate for public schooling and the social opportunities it offered. Now that we have our own little one, though, he’s more convinced of the merits of private schooling for the moral standards and more intensive educational experience. By the way, I find anyway willing to homeschool quite brave but I cannot see doing it myself.
The school I went to was very small and poorly funded. I think it was started by some parents who didn’t want to homeschool and didn’t like public school either.
I guess you could lump public and private school together against homeschool. I guess if you can afford a good private school, that may be the best option for your family.
I address that a little bit in my article, Nicki, but I don’t feel too bad preempting myself here because most of the debate focuses on home school vs. public school — not private schools.
The problem with just choosing “private schools” is that, like you said, they aren’t standard. That goes for public schools, too, but the variance runs a lot wider with private schools.
I think in most cases getting into a high-quality college-prep private school is the obvious best choice (in terms of education, anyway). It’s usually prohibitively expensive, though. Most “affordable” private schools just can’t compete with public schools on resources, though.
And if it comes down to choosing between the school with the better education and the school that better parrots my family values, I’d rather rely on our family to teach the family values. We sure can’t teach Trig.
That’s true, Aaron. If there were more kids at my school and tuition was more, we could have afforded such luxuries as a gym or science lab. But if the tuition was that high, then i wouldn’t have gone there.
This is a great discussion.
Questions? What do you do with public schools that teach contrary to your family values? What happens when your child becomes a teen and is trying to decide who to listen to and who they are by trying on different experiences? Sometimes those experiences have life long consequences.
Oops, sorry! Didn’t mean to team up on you.
You can see we’ve been discussing the topic, though.
I myself am a product of public schooling. I don’t regret any part of it. In life, people will face many challenging decisions, and the “social opportunities” referred to are going to be there in public school, but also in college and in life as an adult. By allowing the best possible educational experience as well as teaching your child responsible decision making and consequences, I believe public school is a great option. At least thats the chioce I have made for my son, who will be starting kindergarten in the fall. It’s a small school district, but with great teachers, small classes, and high test scores. There are many parents in the much larger school district 1/2 mile over who are trying to get their children in. I believe it is a parent’s job to teach responsible decision making to prepare a child to be an adult, not to shield them from the “real world.”
Thanks for coming, Christina.
I totally agree, it is every parents responsibility. That is why I’m taking this topic so seriously. I think it is my duty to teach my kids about the world before they hear it from someone else be it school, peers, or TV. But when I think they’re ready and when the world decides to they’re ready may different.
My daughters have gone to a local private school for most of their lives. I have one entering 6th grade next year, and another in 4th. We homeschooled one year, and LOVED it, though they did ultimately return to their school the next year. We tried public school for one month. During that month, I was told by their teachers that they would not learn spelling words- just “word-wall words” that they were expected to know (to quote the 3rd grade teacher, “who needs spelling? We live in a world with spell check on the computer!”… I kid you not). They would not learn cursive, since no one uses it anyway (nevermind that some people DO use it and they will need to be able to read it someday!). They were not going to memorize multiplication or addition or subtraction facts… period. Oh, and everything they WERE supposed to learn, they already knew from their previous schooling experiences. Needless to say, we put them back into their former private school by the end of that month.
As far as DCS was concerned, I don’t truly believe it is a good school to use as comparison. It was poorly run and pathetically underfunded. Some of the teachers were great (I never learned more from any teacher or preacher than I did during the years Mr. Cooper taught our Bible class) but other teachers simply weren’t fit to teach. My younger brother attended public high school; he just graduated this past year. He had the opportunity to take many classes that I would have LOVED to take when I was in school. Public does offer a good variety of educational, artistic, and sports-related classes that many private schools are not able to offer. The problem comes in when the classes are offered but between the teachers, other students, and class sizes, little is learned.
I think that if you have the ability to homeschool and you make the commitment to stick with it, it can be a fantastic learning experience. You do need to ensure that you counter the ever-present argument of homeschooled kids being “unsocialized” by having the child attend group activities with other children. We attended church, the YMCA, swimming lessons, homeschooling group activities, and they were on the gymnastics team; plus they often had children over to play and went to their homes in return.
If homeschooling is not the most appealing, for whatever reason, I would go with a private school for the first few years at least. By the time my daughter was finished with 1st grade, she knew most of the parts of speech and how they are used. She could go through a sentence and figure out which word was what part of speech. She knew some basic Spanish, computer skills, how to do a basic report (they had to do 4 presentations that year alone), and how to read fairly fluently. She was a little social butterfly, confident in her place in the world. She also learned what behavior was unacceptable when interacting with other children and adults – most of that was learned at home, but was reinforced very well at school.
Where will they attend high school? At this point, we don’t know. We pray God will give us the guidance we need when the time comes. Our girls are almost 10 and 11 years old – and we can say something that not enough parents can say with conviction anymore. Our children are still very innocent. The things they know about sex came from us, their parents, told to them in a loving way that was appropriate for their ages and maturity levels. Our daughters have standards – they know when someone is not wearing enough clothing lol… We just recently shopped for swimsuits and they flat out refused suits that they felt were wrong – and they were ticked that manufacturers make clothes too “grown up” for little girls! They are not overly sheltered, but rather kept innocent of things that they should be unaware of until they are of an age to better understand things. They know what homosexuality is, abortion (just the basic fact that it is choosing to end a pregnancy before the baby is born), and some basic facts about sex, along with other controversial topics. But, thankfully, they do not know information like what my cousin’s daughter came home with – details about such things as oral sex, anal sex, and rape… all from a little girl going into 3rd grade.
I know this is long – I talk just as much now as I did back in high school, Trish! The point I’m trying to make is that yes, public schools offer much in the way of learning opportunities… but some things you may not be ready for them to know just yet. Homeschooling is great for those who can, but it isn’t for every child (nor every parent for that matter). Private is a good option, provided it is a school that offers a rounded experience and teachers who are qualified. In the end, it’s up to you to decide what’s best for your family. You can always switch if you don’t find something that fits!
Ok, that was long. It’s been a long time since we’ve talked. I’ve seen you on Facebook but that doesn’t really count. Thanks for posting your opinion.
I agree, every family is different. I will continue to seek God’s guidance for my family just like you.
Please feel free to leave more comments on the two up coming articles.
Thanks for coming by.
As parent who attended both public and DoD schools (in Germany), and whose children attended public, private, and home-school, I think I have something to offer.
NONE, absolutely NONE, of my public school education was up to par. Every time I had to switch back to a DoD school with the smaller classes and more advanced teachers, I fell behind and my grades suffered until I was able to catch up, usually within one semester of very intense study. Then every time I had to move to a public school from a DoD, I would be several years ahead (somewhere between three and five years, depending on the subject) and would not be able to learn at my own pace and pursue the advanced classes that had been available in the DoD schools.
Then Jeff, my oldest, started in private school. He had learning disabilities and therefore had difficulties learning to read. The private school was not able to deal with his learning disabilities. We switched to public school where he could be in advanced math, but still be in a slower reading group. He was still unable to read or do phonics of any sort until the third grade–yes, they passed him even though he was unable to read. In the third grade, he had a very good teacher who recognized his learning disability and used a different method to teach him. And we had found a phonics program for the computer, and worked with him to deal with the phonics issues. Jeff’s reading issues continued for the next two years, depending mostly on the ability of his teachers to recognize that he was intelligent but learning disabled. In the fifth grade, when his teacher told me that she purposely put him in the back of the room and ignored him because he was so stupid that he’d be lucky to man a garbage truck, I sought learning disability testing on my own. In the meantime, I’d researched learning disabilities at the University of Kansas. They had a doctorate program at the local University hub, and the library to support it. It took me two years of study, but I narrowed down his learning disability. Without MY study, he’d probably be driving a garbage truck now, as his teachers had basically given up on him. From there I called the Mayo clinic Learning Disability Division, who referred me to Meninger’s in Topeka. The specialists at Meninger’s tested Jeff and referred to a learning disabilities specialist in the KC area, who worked with Jeff individually twice a week for several years to teach Jeff compensatory methods. Please note that Jeff had absolutely NO help from the public school during this time. We had to pay for this on our own. With a few bumps in the road after that, Jeff did fine in public school, although I still supplemented his education at home because I recognized the inadequacies of public school education.
Over the years, I kept trying to get my husband to allow me to home-school the children. He was very much against it until the public school got so bad that we just couldn’t take it anymore. By this time I’d researched homeschooling for years and was homeschooling the children over the summer. When the children were tested in the fall of the year at the public school (after I’d spent just three months working with them) they always tested out two to three years advanced over that they tested at in the following spring of the year. I’d teach for three months, and then the public school would get hold of them for nine months, and they would lose what they had learned. Then I would have to reteach and advance them again every summer!! RIDICULOUS!!!
When we started homeschooling, my husband was very concerned about the socialization aspects as well. We joined JCPE (Johnson County Parent Educators), and made use of their joint PE classes, their drama classes, their choir classes and their field trips. There were also home-school sports teams and science classes available. For AP classes, we signed the kids up at the Junior College through a special program available to high school (both in public and home-school) students. Socialization in home-school isn’t difficult at all. There are programs available nationwide, with just a little research on the parents’ part. Rather, the difficulty with home-school comes when both parents aren’t in agreement. You need the support of both parents working together for the benefit of the child. If either parent isn’t “sold” on the idea, you shouldn’t do it, as it involves significantly more effort to teach, keep the records required by the state, and keep yourself up on the legal aspects, since many states work to try to hinder home-schooling in any manner they can.
Hope this helps… Sorry for the length. Other people will certainly have their own experiences. In my experience, public school education did not serve the learning disabled or the gifted students well at all. I had both. We had a few gems for teachers, many mediocre teachers, and several horrible teachers. The learning disabilities specialist told us that it took a child up to several years to recover from a horrible teacher, and up to seven years to recover from two years of a horrible teacher. For Ron and I, that cost was just too dadgum high! Wishing you all well with your decisions. May God be with you.
One of the most important questions to be asked by any parent is, “What do you want to be the outcome of your child’s education?” If parents can answer that question it might help them greatly to decide where their children will learn. Every opportunity has it’s pros and cons. When I was a young mom I thought that the decision that I would make would be perfect for my child. What I found was that things change, situations were not what I thought they would or should be, some people didn’t have the same passion for my babies that I did. One of the most important things to know is that our society is so different than is was even five years ago. When I went to public school (forever ago) school was good, God had not yet been asked to leave. When my children went to school things were different. Many teachers were afraid of students and things were happening there that scared us for sure. Schools now are even more different. Parents, my best advice on making this decision is don’t base where your children go to school on what you experienced because you can be assured that what is expected of your child these days, will be vastly different.
Trish, I really just want to say that this was a smashing-good post. I have saved it as “new” in my google reader so that I would remember to come here and comment about how great it was…very interesting and personal, really showed your voice, and a killer topic.
Then I clicked through to your actual site and saw all the comments here…wow! This is an incredibly successful post. The comments are amazing, and the engagement of the readers. The follow up posts were excellent as well. Trish, you hit a homerun here. Way to go!
Thanks, Carlos. That means a lot to me.
I knew that this topic would interest lots of people. We had a great discussion from several different points of view. I hope we can keep up the momentum.