Does anyone here have kids in school and if so how did you go about picking their school? Where is the best place to get a scientifically based ‘rational’ education.
I’m in Houston and the public schools are a non-starter. We could move to a better area with better schools but my mortgage would increase 4x. Instead we send our kids to private school and most in the area are Christian schools. In a recent visit with my schools principal we were told in glowing terms about how all their activities this year would be tied back to Egypt and the stories of Egypt in the old testament. I thought to my self that I didn’t even think that Moses was a real person so this is going to get very interesting.
I wish they’d spend half as much time on studying science and psychological concepts that they do studying the bible...but what are you going to do?
Any ideas?
I should add that I did graduate from this same school although I did not go through grades 1-9 there...only high school, and that education was really top notch...but still an hour a day of bible class.
My approach was very simple: find the best public school system in my area and move there. “Best” is defined mostly by IQ of high-school seniors proxied by SAT scores. What colleges the school graduates go to mattered as well, but it is highly correlated with the SAT scores.
What I find important is not the school curriculum which will suck regardless. The crucial thing, IMHO, is the attitude of the students. In the school that my kids went to, the attitude was that being stupid was very uncool. Getting good grades was regarded as entirely normal and necessary for high social status (not counting the separate clusters of athletes and kids with very rich parents). The basic idea was “What, are you that dumb you can’t even get an A in physics??” and not having a few AP classes was a noticeable negative. This all is still speaking about social prestige among the students and has nothing to do with teachers or parents.
I think that this attitude of “it’s uncool to be stupid” is a very very important part of what makes good schools good.
Does anyone here have kids in school and if so how did you go about picking their school? Where is the best place to get a scientifically based ‘rational’ education.
I’m in Houston and the public schools are a non-starter. We could move to a better area with better schools but my mortgage would increase 4x. Instead we send our kids to private school and most in the area are Christian schools. In a recent visit with my schools principal we were told in glowing terms about how all their activities this year would be tied back to Egypt and the stories of Egypt in the old testament. I thought to my self that I didn’t even think that Moses was a real person so this is going to get very interesting.
I wish they’d spend half as much time on studying science and psychological concepts that they do studying the bible...but what are you going to do?
Any ideas?
I should add that I did graduate from this same school although I did not go through grades 1-9 there...only high school, and that education was really top notch...but still an hour a day of bible class.
My approach was very simple: find the best public school system in my area and move there. “Best” is defined mostly by IQ of high-school seniors proxied by SAT scores. What colleges the school graduates go to mattered as well, but it is highly correlated with the SAT scores.
What I find important is not the school curriculum which will suck regardless. The crucial thing, IMHO, is the attitude of the students. In the school that my kids went to, the attitude was that being stupid was very uncool. Getting good grades was regarded as entirely normal and necessary for high social status (not counting the separate clusters of athletes and kids with very rich parents). The basic idea was “What, are you that dumb you can’t even get an A in physics??” and not having a few AP classes was a noticeable negative. This all is still speaking about social prestige among the students and has nothing to do with teachers or parents.
I think that this attitude of “it’s uncool to be stupid” is a very very important part of what makes good schools good.