still weighing . . .

The kindergarten debate rages on in our household.  Well, that's the overstatement of the year, frankly, because we both have too much on our plates to obsess.  (Over that, at any rate.)  But we haven't decided yet, and the decision point is starting to loom.

Hence, bloggery.

I'll say up front (as I've said before) that I don't really think that we can lose.  That makes the choice that much more difficult, and it also makes intensely small things seem global in importance.  I also don't want to discount what Geeky Mom calls the "'put your own oxygen mask on first' philosophy of parenting," but I'm also aware that the difference in convenience is pretty minimal.

We're swimming against the current of faculty at my college, most of whom seem to send their kids to Hippie School.  While some of this has to do with proximity, and some of it has to do with the intrinsic qualities of the school itself, the logic by which fac brats are sent to Hippie School starts to disappear, and it starts to look like the obvious and automatic move.

And I'm aware that having a whole bunch of educators as the parents of Squiss's school friends might be simultaneously great and not so great.

(The daycare where Tricksy now goes, and which Squiss went to the year she was two, also had tons of faculty kids and I have to say that I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the results.  We moved Squiss to her current Montessori -- and will move Tricksy once she turns two -- because we weren't satisfied with certain aspects of the school.)

My biggest misgiving about Hippie School is its very strong reputation for not teaching math (and science*) well.  I'm not down with that.  One friend thinks that the school is working on it, but I've heard it from parents whose kids went through the school years ago, and so I'm worried that it's pretty entrenched.  Squiss currently loves numbers and math, and while she doesn't play with those quite as much as she does with words, I'd hate to see her in an environment that wouldn't foster that love.  I'd hate even more if she got to junior high and, faced with kids from other elementary schools that ARE better at math, decided that she "wasn't good at math" and stopped paying attention.  Another smart girl, sidelined.

Princess Towhead's parents are agonizing over the decision at least as much as G and I are, so we're probably going to band together to think it through.  Sidecar and Gemstone will both go to Hippie School, it seems.  If Princess T goes to Hippie School, that's it for us: we're not separating Squiss from three of her four best friends (Haggis lives in another town), particularly when they'll all be at the same place.  And while the thought that she might not go to school with Sidecar and Gemstone saddens me, we're close enough friends with the girls' parents that I don't worry too much about maintaining contact.

Both kindergartens assign homework, which irritates me to no end.

* A geologist friend swore he'd never, ever send his children to Hippie School after a visit to a class to show the kids some cool rocks and fossils.  The teacher not only misinformed the kids but then put him in the position of either ratifying the misinformation or telling her in front of her class that she was wrong.

Comments

[DR]

My sense of Neighborhood School was very much what you describe at Hippie School, Oona: the space was similarly *happy* and creative. (Unlike, from what I hear, both of the High Test Score Schools in the northern part of town, where the kindergarten kids' drawings displayed on the wall all look identical.) And the kindergarten teachers both talked about working with kids at widely differing stages -- there's at least one girl in kindergarten now who's reading at a second grade level.

We haven't really considered leaving Squiss at Montessori for a number of reasons. One is that we *have* to stop paying for full-time care soon: we need to start saving more aggressively for college and retirement, and there's no real way to do both while spending $1500 a month on the girls' schools. I'm also not fully convinced that the Montessori elementary is up to the pre-school standard, yet. It's too new.

The second reason is that neither G nor I can quite stomach the thought of not supporting our public schools when we live in a town with good ones. Paying for private school here sticks in my craw, given that I don't think that I'm sacrificing my daughter's future by doing so....

[Grace]

I second the recommendation to leave her in Montessori school as long as possible. You can learn from my mistakes.

[Oonae]

Hippie School is my first choice for Sidecar, as you say. I'll admit, though, that I'm a wee bit worried about the math. I don't know if I ever mentioned that a Hippie School mom told me, years ago: "the middle schools say the [Hippie School] kids are not as well prepared academically, but are *much* kinder than other children." She said it with pride! Man, I'm all about the kindness, but I don't want to make this sacrifice.

My own allegiance to Hippie School comes from walking through the classrooms: bright, colourful, covered with drawings and projects, filled with plants and animals, messy, alive -- as well as with dealing with some of the kids, who seemed to be, yes, very kind, but also forthright and independent. What I want is a school where Sidecar can go at her own pace, where she won't be taken along too fast when she doesn't get it, and won't be held back when she got it a long time ago. The school she's in now (in Canada) holds her back: I can feel it when I go in there.

I'm not too worried by the geologist's experience. It could have happened anywhere. One of the things kids have to learn is that their teachers are sometimes feeding them erroneous information. I've been through this disillusionment with both my step-kids.

One question: Have you considered leaving Squiss in Montessori?