Education Archives - Christmas in Lapland

Big Schools Big Programs Ratio

Comparing the good things that can be offered between school programs can get difficult. Picking a school for your kids isn’t as cut and dried as it was when we were young. Only a few decades ago, the public school system was the only alternative to get an education for children and since having our kids in school is mandated by law, that was that.

But in the last decade or so, many legal alternatives to public school have become available to parents including private schools and homeschooling options. It seems each year the diversity of programs that you can take advantage of to get a good education for your children or teenagers grows. So you have to have some priorities to compare schools by so you know what the best option for your child and for your family is.

Private Versus Public Schools

Private schools are an entirely different world from public school, and that is the idea. Because the school is a for-profit institution run outside of the oversight of government, as long as they meet the educational requirements to be considered a valid school, private schools can operate with much more liberty to have a religious, political or cultural focus that is specific to a particular niche in society.

One of the great things the private school movement has made available to parents are schools that can focus with greater effectiveness on a particular learning disability or on an area of excellence of a specific group of students. So you can have a private school devoted to the performing arts on one side of town, another dedicated to helping learning disabled kids on the other and another school focused on religious education for Jewish kids, and all of them are strong private schools who are legal and legitimate schools in the eyes of the state.

Also because private schools are funded by parents, if their base of financial security is active, the teacher’s salaries can be higher as can the quality of programs and equipment is often much higher than their counterparts in public school. Many times private schools have highly desirable campuses with beautiful classrooms, cafeterias, libraries, and gyms because of the support of the parents and alumni of the school.

Now to balance our comparison, public schools do have some real strengths as well. Because many public schools, particularly those in large communities, educate thousands of students literally, the funding from the state for educational resources is large to meet the need. So because these schools must “think big” to provide programs for such a diverse population, the number, and complexity of programs is also very often large and well developed.

Large public schools have both the blessing and the curse of big populations so they can boast the “big schools, big programs” benefit. Very often sports programs in large public schools are second to none and if your child is looking to excel at sports, perhaps even seek a career in sports, coming up through large public school sports programs is a feeder system to the collegiate levels and then on to the professional ranks where big success can be had.

The same can be said of other professional areas of development including theater, band and academic competitive clubs. Because of big schools complete inter-scholastically on an enormous scale, they can afford the most excellent coaches and facilities, and they are underwritten by the state because the success of these schools brings growth and financial benefits to the area. This is an area of strength big public schools can boast that very few private schools can match.

To complete your analysis of what kind of educational setting is right for your family, you may want to also review homeschool options as that movement is developing rapidly and fitting the needs of many families as well. How you finally make your choice will depend to a considerable extent on your financial resources and the needs of your family and your children.

Many children do very well in the small intimate cultures that private schools can provide while others require the great settings of public schools to find programs that fit their needs. But by doing your homework to determine exactly what is best for your educational situation, you can make the right choice to give your child the finest these school systems have to offer to fit your son or daughters educational requirements.

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A Place for Your Gifted Child

When you recognize that your child is gifted in some particular area of talent or intellect, getting the school system to realize that unique ability can be a challenge. For the most part, public schools are designed to accommodate the “normal” range of children. Because it’ a legal requirement not only that you send your child to school but that the state provides public schools to meet that need, most of the children in public school are neither gifted nor special needs.

Generally

As such the majority of the resources and the skills of the teachers are built around the need to teach large classes of average students. There is nothing wrong with this approach as our society depends on a good education for everybody. But what this does mean is that public schools directly are not oriented toward providing specialized classes for gifted students.

Accelerated

Now there are gifted programs in most schools which offer classes that are “accelerated.” This means the curriculum is more challenging and complicated, so the student conquers a harder workload than other kids in their grade level. But if you look at this approach closely, this is not really a program for gifted children. These are classes for highly intelligent students or kids who are exceptionally good at learning so they will be the ones to earn scholarships to college.

But very often truly gifted students do very poorly in these kinds of classes. That is because usually when a child has a particular area of excellence, that does not mean the child is gifted in all areas of academics. So your child might be a brilliant musician, mathematician, chess player or dancer but in every other way average in his or her ability to handle the routine workload of school.

Intelligent Design

The outcome of putting such students into gifted programs is (a) they don’t get specialized training in their particular gifts and (b) they do poorly in accelerated programs which results in poor self-esteem and lousy report cards which disguise the pure genius of this child. These problems with how public schools handle gifted kids point to the need for you to look into finding private instruction that can design a program to take your child to the next level in his or her area of specialization while teaching the other academic subjects in ways that the child can excel in every endeavor at school.

Private schools can provide the focus on your child’s particular area of excellence simply because they are private and they don’t have the burden of providing education for everybody. Specialized training needs the services of dedicated teachers who themselves are outstanding in that field of study or in your child’s gifted area. So if your son or daughter is a phenomenal talent in playing the violin, you need violin teachers who can bring that talent along and knows how to take that talent to the next level and the next and the next.

Private schools can afford to keep such gifted teachers on staff. They can also afford to have any specialized tools or equipment that are needed to help your child develop his or her gift. Further, the field of excellence your child will develop has a path to success that is unlike the paths most kids take to state college and beyond. Your child may need to seek specialized education beyond high school that takes recommendations and a resume that a private school can help your youngster develop.

Tailor-made Curriculum

The private school setting can tailor your child’s curriculum so all of the routine academics can be taken care of but there is plenty of time for your boy or girl to focus on their gift under the tender loving care of a skilled professional. These gifted teachers can become mentors to your child to show him or her the path toward success and greatness in the particular area of genius where your child is gifted.

These are compelling reasons to find the perfect setting that will polish and bring out the talent or gift in your gifted child. It might be more expensive but if investing in top-notch education for your youngster means that he or she genuinely realizes that tremendous potential, its worth whatever it takes to make that happen.

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