All good reasons, and I understand. When I was an undergraduate my piano professor suggested that I get someone else to teach my daughters how to play. Why? Because, she said, you'll never get around to doing it yourself!! She was right, and that's probably why my 3 DD's play violin and cello, instead of piano!!
I believe that this site is valuable is so many ways, among them, to rethink how we we brought up to do things and to depend upon others to do for us, for compensation, of course. In
our small city the biggest school districts are just plain embarassing. Even in this terrible economic climate ALL of the private and parochial schools STILL have a waiting list of 5-7 years if you do not start your child there. Anybody that lives here and is sitting of the fence who would ask MHO about public vs private (in our town, mind you) would be told to cough up the money and go private,
if they could afford it. There are also many very fine small home schools that cost less. I know of one teacher who used to be a college professor and after moving here, she runs her own tiny home school. Here's some perspective:
One of the public school districts no longer teach the following:
1) English grammer
2) Calculation math--they now emphasize estimation (Bet your bank would like that!!)
3) American History, unless it's revisionist
They also teach communism as good, capitalism as bad.
AND, child disruptive behavior is the norm in BOTH of them. You send them out of the room, they send them back to you. (I KNOW this, because I worked for them for 2 years.) They SHOULD be making the child's behavior become the parent's problem, but they don't. I managed to get 2 of my daughters out of there by 2001, and when we moved in 2000, my third daughter started 8th grade in a rural district without dangerous students in the classroom with her. (She still, as a Senior at the University of Illinois, chuckles about the lack of discipline problems at her rural high school.)
We have heard from too many politicians over too many years that the schools need fixing, but it's the leadership and principles taught by the Universities that needs changing. Same youngest daughter made mincemeat out of one of her history teachers. It was his first year teaching, she was in his American History classroom--he was a history major--and she grew up in a family of Civil War Reenactors, rubbing shoulders with hobbiest who live, eat, breathe and sleep the American Civil War. (Also, her dad got his degree in History many years ago.) She countered every false statement he made with a counter-arguement and documentation to back it up. Of course, he was flustered, but he only regurgitated what
he was taught.
DH taught American History at a Community College for a decade, and he used a history text published in 1875 as reference for the first semester. We in CW refer to diaries, journals, letters, and you can even purchase a CD with ALL of the Union and Conferderate after-action reports--all of the sources that Ken Burns drew from in his fine documentary about the CW.
It just proves,
yet again, that we need to be vigilant about our government, and NOT blindly trust them to educate our children.
BTW, I wish you all well with your childrens' education, 'cause I'm finished with mine, now--all adults.
