What kind of schooling do you chose for your children and why?

 My children will go to public school.  We live in a good school district where I feel that they will get a proper education. I also want them to be exposed to a variety of people and activities.  I want them to have the social aspects of school. 

I'm leaning toward secular private, though it is really hard trying to find private schools that are not affiliated with religion. Being a military family (and having been in DoD schools and public schools myself) I know that moving around a lot you don't really get a chance to scope out schools or even get much of a choice of what the public (or DoD) schools are like. At least with private schools they have smaller class sizes which mean better student to teacher ratio, and  (in my assumption anyway) you know that the school should be a good one, just on the fact that the students have to pay to go there. Obviously if the school were a crappy school parents would pull their kids and the school would lose funding and ratings (kwim?).

 Just my thoughts on it. I know it's not an absolute that private schools will always be the better choice, but for me -given the choice of  a public school that I know nothing about, and a private school I know nothing about I'd choose private.

 I personally don't think being shuffled around in a classroom with like-age and socio-economic status children for 7 hours a day, 12 years is exposure to "variety."

In an average school year my children are spending far more time interacting with people of different status, AGES and social conditions during school hours than any public-schooled child.  If diversity is the goal, public school is not the answer. 

Last I checked schools priority is not diversity, but academics. As long as they are being taught the academics I couldn't care less if every kid in the class had the same birthday. 

I totally agree with you (for once).

Academics is yet another reason why I choose home school over public.

I think that makes twice, actually.

psmileyf:

 

What kind of schooling do you chose for your children and why?

 My children will go to public school.  We live in a good school district where I feel that they will get a proper education. I also want them to be exposed to a variety of people and activities.  I want them to have the social aspects of school. 

ITA  We live in a pretty good school district also

We live in the best district in the region.  We did our homework before we moved here and picked our house based on that.

Public school and homeschool are like comparing apples to oranges.  They're both fruit, sometimes they're rotten and sometimes they're good, but they're both different.

Homeschool is more like an apprenticeship program with academics thrown in, while public (and most private) school is like going to the library (with a little apprenticeship thrown in).

My daughter does a full academic load of 6 classes.  Math, reading, history, science, music, and Bible.  It takes maybe 3 hours a day, 4 days a week (we're going to do reading 5 days a week now though) to finish all the books in a year.  I NEVER finished a textbook in public school, BTW.  I wondered why the time difference until I realized how differently a public school teacher has to teach.  I can sit with her and listen to her personally read all the words in her text, giving her immediate feedback when she gets a word wrong.  The same goes for math problems, or history discussion questions, or science questions.  Since I'm her teacher, I know exactly what subjects that we have covered, so if the topic comes up later on, I can bring it up again.  At dinner today, we were able to talk about the Mideast Peace talks and how it relates to Abraham and the Bible, because I knew that it was a subject that we had already gone over in school.

But since school only takes up part of the day, we spend the rest of the day doing "real world" things.  Running errands.  Going to the doctor's office.  Cooking dinner together.  Then of course she has her own things that she likes to do.

When someone graduates from a typical high school, they go off into what is called the "real world".  Or college, which still is a lot more real world than high school, because you do almost everything for yourself at that point.  When a homeschooler graduates from high school, what changes?  They're already in the real world.  Life continues more or less like it did before, except you might drop the academics if you're not going to college.

Perhaps they move away from home, but a lot of recent graduates don't immediately move out, whether they went to public, private, or homeschool.  They might already have a job... in the case of a homeschooler, their working hours might not even change, since working hours are not limited to after 3 PM... you work the academics around life, not life around the academics.

Don't get me wrong, I think that academics are very important.  The standards that I set for my daughter are at least as high as any public school.  She has been exposed to Spanish, Italian, and American Sign Language already, and she's only 5 years old (we learn ASL to try to communicate with our baby).  This January everyone in our family is going to start learning Arabic.  Today she was reading words like inch, crack, and branch.  She's learned how to add +0, +1, +2, and doubles facts, and -1, -0, and subtraction facts like 5-5.  We've talked about the Mayflower, Squanto, the colonies, gravity, magnetism, solids liquids and gases, etc.  However, academics can be learned flexibly, while sometimes real world appointments have to be made at certain times because there are only certain times when other people are available.

It isn't for everybody because not everybody is inclined to want to teach their kids.  Not everybody is organized enough in this area.  Not everybody wants to be with their kids all day.  But I really like it.  My kids like it.  Sometimes dd complains about having to turn off Super Why in order to sit down and learn about math, but she'd complain about having to turn off Super Why in order to get ready to go to school too.  It works for us, so that's what we're doing.  If it ever doesn't work, we'll look into different homeschooling approaches, community colleges, and/or our local Christian school.
 

Though my child will attend public school, that is not to say that I won't play a part in teaching him too.  I personally do not beleive that all teaching can be left to a school.  I don't think homework is something my child will sit down and do and hand in the next day.  I think homework is a time for me to work with him and explain what he doesn't understand.  I know some parents leave all teaching up to a school, but I wasn't raised that way, nor will I raise my kids like that. 

I also want to teach my kids a lot that they just don't teach in schools...like balancing a check book, budgeting money, etc.  I'll probably have to spend a lot of time with him on fractions, decimals, and making change from a dollar, b/c schools obviously don't teach that well (as evident on many trips to local stores, lol.)

I don't expect my kids to learn to cook in school, because all  I learned was to make bagel pizza in home ec classes.  So, we'll practice cooking, measuring ingredients, and all the math skills that go along with that too.

I guess I am just trying to say that just cause a kid goes to public schools doesn't meant that a parent is off the hook of teaching their kids too.  A school shouldn't be the only place your child learns. 

 And as for the cariety of people I was referring to, I meant not just people that I would necessarily like.  He's going to have teachers that teach in different ways and he is going to have to learn to adjust.  He is going to have friends that maybe I would not have chosen for him.  He is going to meet people who have everything that they want and other people who struggle.  He will get to chose, with in reason, who he wants to be friends with, not just the people I want him to be friends with.  He is going to meet someone who doesn't like him and I am not going to be there to remove him from the situation, he is going to have to learn to deal with it.   I realize that most of the kids will be just like us demographic wise, since we all live in the same neighborhood.  You do learn to be social in school.  Not everyone in school is exactly alike, they all bring something a lil different personality wise to the table. 

I grew up with the same kids in church since we were little...  the kids who were homeschooled were always a little "off " if that makes sense.  I can see why a parent would take comfort in the fact that their children are protected from the outside world, but I believe they are being socially crippled.  And that is not an opinion...that is a fact, based on the kids I grew up with.  A couple of them really went nuts when we got into the later high school years too.  

So, if a parent homeschools, then they had better get their kids involved in other activities that involve other children, and not just be all wrapped up in the family. 

I have seen homeschooled kids who are not socially awkward.  We had a lot of friends in NJ whose kid were homeschooled. Now there are so many networks of parents and kids who get together for academic or social pursuits.   So it CAN be done.

It just seems that the majority of parents who homeschool are either really conservative religiously (and therefore people I wouldn't want to hang out with anyway) or socially awkward themselves.

It's just something I would never do.  I can afford to live in a good district and my husband and I are educated and confident enough in what we teach our children at home.