Education

I was asked a while ago what I thought about education. Which is better, public or private?

Private schools are very expensive; well outside the budget of most families. On the plus side, they usually have a student/teacher ratio that is more favourable to actual learning. A minus, for me, is that most of them teach religion. And, in some cases, snobbery. However, my biggest objection is the cost.

Home schooling is out of the question. Kids need to be with other kids, away from their parents. It's part of the learning process. Not to mention that many of the parents who choose that route are not particularly qualified to teach. Some are. Some kids thrive in a home-school environment. But they still have to pass the SATs.

Public school education is abysmal. Yes, I say that; I, whose husband is a teacher. Our President's "No Child Left Behind" initiative translates into "No Child Gets Ahead" in practice. Our teachers are underpaid and have too many students per class. The administration, whose function should be to facilitate education, is totally immersed in a game of CYA for when the system fails. And it is failing. When theater teachers of 6th through 8th grades are coerced into teaching math that is required for 9th and 10th grades, but was taught in elementary grades when I went to school, you know it's failing.

So here's my solution. Send your kids to the public school, but be prepared to spend a lot of time augmenting and supplementing that "education" on your own. The days of schlepping your children off to school and expecting to get them back 12 years later, ready to take on the world are long gone. You need to be proactive. Discuss with your child what he is learning in school, and expand on it. We have this wonderful teaching tool, called the internet, at our fingertips. Even if you live in an isolated and culturally deprived area, you can still find a huge amount of information online. I am lucky to live near Austin, with its cultural diversity, myriad theaters and music, museums and art galleries, but every community has something.

Just remember that the function of the public school is to teach basic skills, not to provide a full education.