I thought I'd start a new topic on this one so as not to muddy up the previous topic.

Yes, you got me on my "there's nothing wrong with public schools" statement. Obviously that's not true. There are a lot of things that are wrong with public schools. I can attest to this most fervently, as I spent three months as a student teacher in one.

You've got all kinds of problems in public schools. Some of them stem from the fact that public schools, by definition, have to take ALL the students that are of school-going age. They don't get to decide which students they like and which they don't. They get the kids with learning disorders, the kids with behavioral problems, the kids who would rather be vandalizing a wall than learning, the kids who simply couldn't give a rat's ass about being in school. It's a problem. You have to integrate all those kids together into one classroom.

There's a whole separate set of problems that stems from the lack of the government to provide adequate funding, and the tendency of the government to try to micro-manage in totally ineffectual ways (the 9th grade proficiency tests in the state of Ohio, or the "Constitution test" in the state of Illinois -- I could go on at length about either of those).

However, I think that public schools have some definite advantages, as well. They tend (I said TEND) to be more diverse, especially in urban areas. I don't just mean racially, I mean economically. In public schools, you're going to have mega-rich kids sitting in desks next to poverty-level kids. When I student-taught, I taught kids whose parents were Northwestern professors and kids who were living in the projects. I strongly believe that coming into contact with such a wide diversity of other students is a GREAT learning experience for kids. You learn to tolerate other people and their opinions, and you don't learn it from your teachers, you learn it from the social microcosm that is a high school. And yeah, some people are never going to learn it, but they certainly aren't if they never have to encounter the problem in the first place.

Also, the quality of some (I said SOME) public schools can be really outstanding. Sadly enough, this often has to do with the wealth of the district -- the richer the parents, the more funding the school has. Nonetheless, there are some really fine public schools out there (I say, humbly, that I believe my student-teaching school was one of them).

I really do believe that public schools have the vast advantage over private schools on the diversity issue, though. If you go to an all-Catholic school, you're going to associate with people who are all Catholic. If the school is expensive, you're going to associate with mostly rich kids. The same is true of most (I said MOST) private schools. There's just not the diversity that there is in the public schools.

That having been said, when I have kids, I will do my damnedest to find them the highest-quality public school that I can. When Keith and I buy a house, one of the things we're going to be looking at is the quality of the school district. If we can't find a public school in Seattle that's up to our standards, we'll start investigating private schools. But that is my second choice. I'm not ruling it out, but in my mind it is definitely a less-desirable option.

Phew, was that long enough? And once again, please refrain from flames in this topic (I know I didn't have to remind you of that, really I didn't).

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2000

Answers

Well said.

I have had kids in public, private and home- school envioronments, and as with any institution, there are good AND bad points in all. My set of experiences has led me to conclude that you have to try and get the best that you believe for you & your child out of whatever situation you are in. Sadly, a lot of individuals do not realize they have a choice in the matter.

okay, even some who seem like they have no choice (due to poverty, location etc..) still have a choice to do the best possible with what they have.

As for diveristy, there are exceptions there too of course (she said from a majorly Irish/English community)... ;-)

Jan, i just have to applaud you in even thinking about your children's education befroe you even have them. It seems that in North America there are far too many people (parents in particular) who expect the school system to do their job for them. (Disclaimer: i certainly don't mean anyone on this board. ;-) )

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2000

Well, maybe my viewpoint is biased because I studied to be a teacher and did student teaching, but personally I feel that education should be the country's number one priority. It makes me angry to hear about school districts in which the school admin tried to pass a funding levy, and the voters of the district turned it down, just because they don't have any kids that are school-aged.

Then those same people bitch and complain about how youth today are out of control and poorly educated. Uh-huh.

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2000

The lack of funding is also a big problem here in Canada. We're supposed to be the #1 country to live in according to the UN or whoever, but there is lots of room for improvement in the education fields. The big thing now seems to be to close down the little schools so they can bus kids for and hour into the big already-crowded ones. i don't know where that logic came from.

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2000

I hate the idea of my kids NOT being at public school. I had the misfortune of my parent's bright idea of sending me to a private religious school.. and it made me worse. I learned how to manipulate situations and theology to suit my needs, I learned a disregard for authority, and I learned that sending your kids to a religious school does not guarantee a better learning environment. My advice, as parent and previous student, is to go public, but stay involved, and LISTEN TO YOUR KIDS. God I hate private schools.

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2000

Ok, I know the experiences I'm going to mention aren't necessarily indicative of the state of education in the US. Public and private schools are terrible and excellent and everything in between. But I think these images are interesting just to exemplify vastly different things are being taught in America at the end of the millennium. I was lucky enough to go to a public school that was wonderful and had advantages and opportunity and actually gave you individual attention. We had a chapter of the Massachusetts Alliance Against Racism and Violence, I took cool classes like Latin and Anthropology. We even had batting cages downstairs that the Red Sox players who lived in the area used to practice in. Diverse. Privileged. Go us.

Ok, then there's my boyfriend, who went to a private yeshiva in Brooklyn. His school had no extracurricular activities, no sports teams. He was taught that gentiles were evil. The rabbis openly made fun of black people. When a fight broke out between two male students and one kicked the other in the balls, a rabbi broke up the fight and screamed, "I will not have faggots in this school!"

Miraculously, my boyfriend turned out normal and open and great. But can you even believe that around the world, people who believe disgusting crap like that are allowed to have their own schools and poison young people's minds?!? It just makes me sick.

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2000

See, that's my other problem with private schools, which is that many of them are pushing some kind of agenda. Maybe they're affiliated with a particular religion, or they're for people of a particular ethnic background, or they're for gifted children only. I just have a major problem with that.

First of all, I think that the separation of church and state is GREAT. This is not to say that I'm anti-religion. I'm pro-religion. I believe in God. I have no problem with people teaching their children about God. However, the founding fathers of this nation believed, I think rightly so, that allowing the schools to teach about a particular religion as being the correct and proper one leads to a mindset in which all OTHER religions are somehow incorrect and improper. When the state supports a particular religion, the other religions get the short end of the shaft. And I realize that private schools are not affiliated with the state, and that's why they're permitted to have religious affiliations, but I still feel that it's the wrong way to educate children. If you want them to get a religious education, teach them yourself and send them to Sunday School. Besides, as I said in a previous post, if you send your child to school with only other Catholics, or other Jews, or whatever, they're not going to get very much perspective on what it's like to be a member of a different religion. They're not going to learn to tolerate members of other religions and respect their views as valid, in any kind of practical way.

I think that's true of the private schools that are only for gifted children, too. At first I thought that sounded like a pretty good idea: being surrounded completely by other kids who have the same mental abilities as you means that nobody has to slow down for the stupider kids in the class, right?

Except, first of all, even if my child is mentally gifted, I don't want her thinking that that somehow makes her better or more worthwhile than the other kids, and I have a feeling there's a LOT of that sentiment among the kids in all-gifted schools. It's prevalent among gifted kids anyway; put them all together in one school and see what happens. Also, I'm a strong believer in preparing your children to experience the real world, and a private school in which all the kids are incredibly smart doesn't teach ANYONE how to deal with real-world problems. It teaches you to look down on the rest of the world as somehow inferior, and I think that's wrong.

I guess it all comes down to my original point, which is that I prefer public schools because in private schools, you're just not going to get the diversity of students, and I think that experiencing that diversity is invaluable for ANY child -- the benefits of that experience outweigh any of the benefits of attending a private school.

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2000