A couple of us were having a rather interesting discussion on education last night. I'm not sure how it came up exactly... but it boils down to this: "If you had your whole education to do over again and money and acceptance weren't issues, where would you go to school (starting at kindergarten through present?)"
Personally, I know where I would start and that's walking away from public schools. Not that I didn't learn a good bit in public school and I did have a couple of spectacular teachers... but the fact of the matter is that easily 8-10 years of my primary and secondary schooling were wasted in classes where the teacher either couldn't teach or was simply teaching to the bottom of the class. Especially for those of you who did at least some of the public school thing, just stop and think about it: how much of your time in school were you bored because your teachers either were re-hashing stuff that had been gone over 3 times before or were teaching down to the point that you could have sworn there were retarded monkeys in the class with you? Is it like this in private schools as well?
My current theory is that I know I would have opted for a very rigorous private school at least through 8th grade. After all, as much as I would have liked home-schooling, the social development is a must and is quite frequently one of the most neglected things in home-schooled students that I have met. Beyond that I'm torn between more private schooling and boarding school. After all, as much as the former helps, the latter adds the maturity that being responsible for yourself away from parental guidance brings, the social development of living around your peers all of the time, and the academic rigor of living at school. There is of course the painful separation from family and the lack of relationship with one's parents this brings... but boarding school needn't be so far from home to prevent monthly visits and the months of holidays, of course. Having it to do over again, I would probably go boarding school. Of course, there is the whole matter of college left to discussion, but we'll tackle that some other time. For now, just roll that over and respond.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot:
Disturbed Link of the Day: Making Your Job More Bearable
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at November 10, 2003 03:56 AM