Family
Are Private Schools Really A Solution?
Two articles recently caught my eye. The first was in The Boston Globe, describing the intense competition for a small number of openings in private school kindergartens. The story detailed the high level of parental anxiety as they watched their child go through an evaluation and then awaited the decision. The message was clear. If our child gets accepted, it significantly increases the likelihood that she will have a successful life.
The second article was in The Wall Street Journal and discussed the significant increase in private school enrollment in many suburban areas where public schools are thought to still provide a good education. Boston was one of those areas, with a recent annual increase of 6-8%. The article suggested it isn't just a concern about the possible decline in quality of public education but a deeper anxiety within today's parents about their own job security and about the increasing technological demands of the job market.
It seems like a simple concept. Provide your child with the strongest possible academic skills and she'll have "the good life." Only it's not that simple. Both articles focused on the sacrifices many of these families were making in order to pay for the private education of their children. The added stress and increased expectations generate potential risks for the parents and the children. Working extra hours, even extra jobs, to pay for the schooling means less time for parent-child and husband-wife relationships, factors which have been demonstrated to have a more significant influence on the positive outcomes in the lives of adults than where they went to school or what grades they achieved. It is painfully reminiscent of listening to the life stories of so many adults who grew up in the Fifties. "My father wasn't around much. He worked 6-7 days a week. I never really got to know him." Only now it's going to be not knowing either parent very well!
A factor often overlooked but which frequently shows up in my office is that when parents make such major sacrifices for their children, they expect a significant return on their investment. Yet many of the children, probably the majority, will still earn only ordinary grades and a significant number will do poorly due to a mixture of motivational, personality, and neurochemical factors. This often leads to parental resentment and pressure on the children to perform better. The result is frequently a worsening of parent-child relationships and less effort applied to schoolwork. Even if the parents are trying to be accepting of their child's performance (typically expressed as "We just want you to try your hardest. You don't have to get As.), the anxiety which shows while waiting for admissions is reflective of a continuing anxiety about whether their child will turn out "okay" and often is absorbed by the child in a variety of negative ways.
Another significant issue is social development. How important is it to allow your child to go to school with his neighborhood friends? Private school means much more work to bring elementary school children together because they live in diverse communities. For some children, this poses no problem. For others, it is not a good fit for their personality, something very difficult to guess at when your child is five.
I repeatedly tell parents that at least half of the CEOs of the top 500 corporations graduated from very ordinary colleges, that many of society's significant contributors graduated from very ordinary colleges, that many happy and successful people not only are public school graduates but were poor students. Many children have difficult lives for the first few decades and turn out to be wonderful adults. What is one of the most common statements made by all these successful people? They will point to the significant influence of positive family relationships and/or to a relationship somewhere along the way (a mentor-type experience) that opened up their eyes and motivated them to charge down a pathway to success.
For some children, the smaller, more structured, and, sometimes, more academically challenging experience of private school can play an important role in their development into successful adults. But, despite the increasingly technical nature of our work world, it is not a knowledge deficiency that undermines careers or lives. If motivated, adults in today's society, at any age, can fill in the missing skills. What is consistently more important is the combination of personal and relational factors: do you like yourself, do you have confidence in yourself, and are you able to build successful relationships with people (at home and at work)? You don't need to go to private school to develop these skills. Parents would be far better off applying their limited resources of time and money to family relationships and community involvement, including their neighborhood school.
Back to Family | Back to ParenTalk
Top | Home | My
Practice | Parenting & Marriage Advice | Resources
| Contact
