Feb 27 2009
Schooling our kids, pt 3: Public or Private
How do you define success in education?
The way I see it, if you leave out of a classroom (or wherever the learning is taking place) wanting to know more about what you have learned, if you desire to continue that learning throughout your lifetime, if you, in essence, become more curious about a study or area of study as a result of schooling, then your education was a success.
Just a short story, shared from the perspective of one of my best friends. (I’ll try to do her justice, although the words are from memory, so there’s a lot of meshing around in my head.)
I hated history; didn’t understand it. Never really knew much about history until recently. I went to Catholic school growing up - at first. And whenever time came for us to study history, they would have us reading outloud from the textbook. Each student would sit there, terrified and waiting for their turn. And then we would read our little passage, and then the next person would read. That was our education. He would give us a short quiz at the end of the class to make sure we were listening, and then that’s it. So I hated school and really hated history.
I wanted to get out and go to a public school. My parents were raised up having to go to public school and they wanted the best for us, so they tried really hard and sacrificed to get us into the private school, but it wasn’t working for me. I begged and begged and begged my parents to take me out, but they were sure it was good for me. Then I just started dropping grades; I guess I was so frustrated that my grades suffered dramatically. So then they pulled me out.
Even after she went off to public schools and university, she was so tainted by her experience in history that she never really studied it. It is only now that she is showing a general (albeit deep and wide) respect and admiration for the study.
Now, I understand that there are many success stories in the realm of private education, but I drag out this story to illustrate my point, I utterly believe that we should continue to look for the best options for our children (and for the larger world in which they inhabit) and I think that to assume that one way is naturally better than another is toxic.
What are your thoughts, impressions? And further, how would you define a successful education?
I think that all schools, public and private, used that form or method of learning in the past. The bottom line is that our educational system is severely lacking. Public schools do not have the money to support arts and music and many are cutting out recess and PE. The sad thing is, though, is that there is much research out there that supports the importance of movement in education and learning. Coordinated movements enhance brain activity and assists in “waking up” the body in order to get ready to learn, but this is one of the first areas cut due to a lack of funding.
A successful education needs to incorporate all aspects of learning. It needs to support creative learning (the arts) just as much as grammar and history. I also went to private school, and upon entering a public high school, I was shocked at the elementary level of spelling and sentence structure which I found in the public school kids. It was obvious that my private education gave me more in that area of learning, I guess the public schools had to make more cuts back then, too, and they decided to cut out simple English lessons.
The public schools today are so concentrated on science and math, because those are the biggie areas on the standardized tests. The students have to perform so well on these tests in order to meet federal criteria under No Child Left Behind. A lot of other learning and teaching is being forgotten because of the standards and criteria of NCLB. Schools do not want to be punished because their students do not perform at federal expectations, so they only concentrate on the areas and items found on standardized tests. Since when bubble marked tests became a valid form of performance, I’m not sure, but again, just another sign of how our educational system is getting a big thumbs-down from me. Oh, and by the way, I am a former public school teacher, so I have seen first hand and have heard administrators say pretty much the exact thing which I stated above about concentrating on certain areas just to meet federal expectations.
ckcramer,
we are on the same wavelength, i believe.
one thing that i’ve noticed is that due to this mark-up of standardized tests (as you’ve noted, a dangerous and fairly silly way of measuring achievement), kids who have already started out behind (those who did not go to pre-K, who do not have a solid educational background at home, who do not speak english as a first language at home, etc) fall into deeper and deeper recessions.
when i (as a public high school teacher) had grad classes with grade school teachers, i was a bit shocked at all the time that was being consumed by getting these students ready for the fourteen or so tests they had to take that year. and as for the ‘benchmark’ years, (is it 3rd and 6th grade?) those would be largely missed years. so the poor/marginalized would miss out on that much more education…
I know that the 3rd grade year is spent mostly on preparing for standardized tests. The 3rd grade curriculum has pretty much vanished and been replaced with nothing but preparation. And we wonder why the rate of referrals to special education goes up so much in the 3rd and 4th grades. It’s because all of those kids that need other modes of learning are lost by sit down lecturing and bubble dot filling.
right. and that’s something that my wife and i have talked about: the possibility of taking our daughter out of school during those years. that is, assuming that this fiasco continues to happen. and i hope not. i’m a bit frustrated that the nation as a whole seems to be more in favor of blaming teachers and poor black families [not to mention ‘illegals’] than it is questioning the veracity of our measurements and ‘corrections’ to those measurements.
Every school is different. When we had our oldest in kindergarten in a small school in Oklahoma, it was excellent, but when we moved back to Texas, we were sorely disappointed. Now we are homeschooling and loving it.
Laurel said:
Every school is different.
yes! absolutely.
and i think also that every child has a different set of needs and learns differently, so i think it’s unnecessary and quite painful to say that one type of schooling works best every time. i also like the idea of homeschooling, but that may not be our way (although, as i hinted above, we may just run that route for short periods of time).