Benefits of Private School

 

One of the reasons parents send their children to private school is for the individual attention small class sizes afford. You want your child to interact with her teachers. You don't want her to end up hiding in the back of a large class room. She's in private school because she wants to learn. So do her classmates.

When you have 12-15 students in a class, you really can teach. Discussions, analysis and explanations are much easier to facilitate with a smaller group. Everybody's opinion matters. From the teacher's perspective it is much easier to assess progress when you are teaching a small group. You can make eye contact with everybody instantly and determine whether they've got it and you can move on or whether you need to go back and reteach.

Small classes play to the reality that everybody learns differently. Students receive information in different ways. They process it differently. The skilled teacher is always assessing where her students are vis-a-vis the material being covered.

The other factor which is so important for effective teaching is that the class is homogenous in the sense that the students want to learn, they are not embarrassed to excel and they are unafraid to ask questions.
 

 

You want the best possible education for your child. The local school district is reasonably good but is facing some drastic budget cuts next year and, as far as you can tell, probably for many years after that. You don't want to sacrifice your child's educational opportunities neither do you want to spend money needlessly on other options, such as private school or homeschooling.

 

Private school makes sense on so many levels because everything's there. The facilities, the staff, the activities, the academics - the lot. Homeschooling is certainly doable, but the onus is on you to track everything and make sure all the paperwork is completed and submitted and approved.

So, what about some of those rumors you have heard about private school? Well, those rumors are indeed true.

 

They are not just for rich kids any more. Decades ago you might have been able to make a case that some - but certainly not all - private schools were just for the children of privileged, wealthy families. Interestingly enough, most of the top American private schools started with very altruistic motives and aspirations. They were committed to creating a better society populated with skilled citizens who could think and reason.

 

In the 21st century the pendulum has swung back to those idealistic roots. There's hardly a private school out there which doesn't have diversity as one of its top priorities.

 

Private school academic courses cover a lot of ground. Guilty as charged. Of course, it's not quite that simple. But essentially private schools, because they have fewer students per class, can move through the academic material much more quickly than is possible when you have a class size of close to 30 children. Very little valuable teaching time is spent dealing with discipline or bureaucracy. Private school teachers get to teach. And the students they are teaching want to learn. As a result, you can cover a lot of academic ground under those circumstances.

 

Sports programs and extracurricular activities don't get cut. The problem with public school budgets is that the so-called extras or non-essential programs are the first to be deleted from the budget. Unfortunately sports and extracurricular activities fall into the broad category of non-essential programs.

Private schools meet or exceed state academic standards.  The curriculum which each private school uses is chosen by the school.

 

 

The other factor which stifles most attempts at cheating is the zero tolerance policy which your school will have in place. Cheating is, in many cases, grounds for expulsion depending on the severity of the offence. Children mimic the behavior of others, especially adults. If they see you cheating on your taxes, they will see nothing wrong with cheating on their math test. That's why private schools take great pains to teach and enforce ethical behavior.

 

There are rules to be followed in the school community just as there are laws which must be complied with in the community outside the school. Teaching a child to be responsible is not something which can be taught in one semester. You start at a very early age and gradually widen and expand the child's understanding of the concepts of right and wrong, good behavior and bad behavior, so that he is able to become a responsible member of society.

 

Private schools teach academics and parents expect great results in that area. But the overarching purpose and aim of most private schools is to shape the character of their students. Cheating is not tolerated. Accepting responsibility for one's actions is encouraged and expected.