schooling and parental anxiety
Sep. 2nd, 2008 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleaAsk Moxie's talking about school today, and the comments are focusing on gifted and talented programs, which in some areas seem to mean "ways we can pull out the mostly white, upper-middle-class kids from the rest of the unwashed masses" and in some areas actually seem to mean gifted and talented kids. There is a G&T program in our city's schools; I don't know what it means here yet.
I posted some of my feelings about how Casper's school this year is going. I'm sort of half-hearted about it; I didn't have a strong positive at the start of the year, and now that we have 3.5 weeks under our belts I am still in the same place. It's the classic middle-class anxiety - I want her to be at school in a special place, one that will challenge and stimulate her, one where she comes home full of new ideas, one that recognizes her for herself and helps make an individualized path to learning. I just want that all in a public school that takes all comers, including the kids whose parents don't speak English, or are only semi-literate, who don't have books in the house, kids who don't get enough to eat at home, who are smacked around or neglected. I think, in theory, that it should be possible, with a low enough student-teacher ratio (in practice, budgets do not allow for this). I think we saw a better approximation of it at our public Montessori magnet last year than we are seeing in our current public school, unfortunately.
Also, no long term reader will be shocked to hear that I an deeply snobby, intellectually. I am tired of being smarter than the people who are teaching my kid (I do grant that they have more training in education than me, and that I would be a disaster as a home-schooler).
We don't have a lot of options for schooling, here. We've already looked at most of the ones that would be at all reasonable for our values and our budget. This seems like the best of the bunch. And it's not bad. But I'm sad that we can't send our kid to a public school that is exceptional, remarkable. I'm sad that EVERY kid can't go to such a school.
I posted some of my feelings about how Casper's school this year is going. I'm sort of half-hearted about it; I didn't have a strong positive at the start of the year, and now that we have 3.5 weeks under our belts I am still in the same place. It's the classic middle-class anxiety - I want her to be at school in a special place, one that will challenge and stimulate her, one where she comes home full of new ideas, one that recognizes her for herself and helps make an individualized path to learning. I just want that all in a public school that takes all comers, including the kids whose parents don't speak English, or are only semi-literate, who don't have books in the house, kids who don't get enough to eat at home, who are smacked around or neglected. I think, in theory, that it should be possible, with a low enough student-teacher ratio (in practice, budgets do not allow for this). I think we saw a better approximation of it at our public Montessori magnet last year than we are seeing in our current public school, unfortunately.
Also, no long term reader will be shocked to hear that I an deeply snobby, intellectually. I am tired of being smarter than the people who are teaching my kid (I do grant that they have more training in education than me, and that I would be a disaster as a home-schooler).
We don't have a lot of options for schooling, here. We've already looked at most of the ones that would be at all reasonable for our values and our budget. This seems like the best of the bunch. And it's not bad. But I'm sad that we can't send our kid to a public school that is exceptional, remarkable. I'm sad that EVERY kid can't go to such a school.
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Date: 2008-09-02 06:02 pm (UTC)Um, yeah. And the way the district staff have talked to us over the last few months...well, it's been like every negative conservative stereotype about "educrats." I find myself in a position which is completely contrary to to my own ideological leanings, and not liking it much.
Of course, at the moment our Innovative Homeschool Curriculum seems to involve Blondie the Bear and Mr. Zebra having a running party, which is apparently going to be followed by a bout of noodle-eating. Well. We'll get to something more substantive after lunch, I'm sure.