PRIVATE PUBLIC SCHOOL IN THE UNITED STATES

Today I want to talk about American private elementary school. Why did we choose a private school over a public one? We live in a big city. In public school (Public School) the child is determined by the place of residence. Accordingly, the child will get to a good or bad school, depends on how prestigious area/city you live in. The advantage of living in the city is that to get to work takes about an hour, or even less. The disadvantage is that the state provides subsidized housing to unemployed and poor families in large cities.

The amount of the benefit paid by the state to these families depends in part on the number of children – the more children in the family, the higher the benefit is paid. Here there are whole generations of families who have never worked a day in his life (this explains why in the American movies show a lot of single mothers, and why are rappers singing about “baby-momma”).

Accordingly, such parents do not fundamentally the quality of education received by children. For anybody not a secret (Yes will not call me racist) that basically it is African Americans. You can also guess that they attend public schools, with police and metal detectors at the entrance (famous YouTube videos about fights in schools from such places).

The middle class is trying to settle in the so-called suburbs. One of the disadvantages of this accommodation is the time it takes to get to work (often about two hours). However, the level of public schools will be much higher than in the cities. The higher the average earnings of residents in a particular village, the higher the cost of housing, the level of taxes on which local schools are maintained, and accordingly the higher the quality of public schools. The number of poorly educated / poor in such public schools is minimized, because subsidized housing is not built in such places.

Given the above, we chose a private school. I wanted the children in the class to be mostly from the families of educated parents, where at least one of the parents goes to work, and parents do not care what kind of education their children receive. The need to pay tuition to a private school produces this filtering to some extent. Tuition is $8000 per year per child. For a private school is, in principle, not expensive, as in the US there are schools, the cost of study in which there is $60,000 per year, which is comparable to the price of College.

The city we live in has the following demographics: 32% white, 25% black, 20% Asian, 23% Latino. In our school, for a class of 15-17 people have 2 baby blacks, 5 Asians (Indians, Filipinos), 2 Latino, 8 white. There are no representatives of families living on state benefits in our school.

Now a little about the school and the curriculum

Classes start at 8: 30 am, but you can take the child to 7 am, and in this case it will be looked after before the start of classes. At this time, the child can finish lessons, eat Breakfast (which should be Packed with a child) or watch TV. “Morning service” is actively used by families in which parents work. This service costs an additional $ 20 per week.

Classes end at 3 PM. From three to six there is a homework club. Detention costs an additional $ 175 per month. Cram school, the children will do homework in nice weather will lead to walk to the school yard. A variety of mugs are also available at an additional cost. The average price of a mug is $ 60 per month.

Here is a list of clubs: football, chess, drawing, LEGO, tennis, music (guitar and piano), orchestra, choir, programming, dancing, skateboard, foreign languages (Spanish, Chinese), jewelry.

No additional” official ” levies, except for the above, the school is not done. The child is given all the way up to notebooks. Donations to the school seem to be voluntary. Theoretically, if you don’t sacrifice, no one will throw stones. In reality, you are forced to make these donations in every way.

For example, children should go to school in uniform, and this form is strictly regulated by the school (on the shirt should be the coat of arms of the school, pants of a certain shade, socks and shoes – only dark colors). On certain days, the school arranged a “day without uniform”, but to be able to put the child in a t-shirt and jeans of his choice, on this day it is necessary to pay the school $ 2. Of course, no one wants a child on this day the only one in the class, like pariah, came in shape, and all give their children two dollars.

Parents ‘ meeting is held once a year, in early September. The teacher tells the parents about the plans for the year, about how the school day will be held, and about his General requirements. During the year, the teacher holds meetings with parents individually, every three months. The meeting should be recorded on the Internet, and each parent is given exactly 15 minutes. During the meeting on the teacher’s Desk is an alarm clock. As soon as the time is up-you need to leave the office.

School Lunches are paid. The cost of lunch is $5. Not all dishes offered to choose from, can be called in our opinion a healthy diet, given that we are mainly grown on soups, cutlets and compotes. The menu is given for a month, and parents can order a school lunch for their chosen days.

Here is a sample list of dishes to choose from: Croutons with cheese and pasta salad, Fried chicken with string beans and carrots, Mexican tacos with beef, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese, Cheese sticks, pizza with cheese (it’s just pizza with tomato sauce and a lot of cheese), Ravioli with cheese, Pasta with chicken, Pancakes, hot dog, chicken Sandwich, Spaghetti with meatballs.

If on any day the child does not buy a school lunch (for example, my children do not eat cheese sticks), then on this day the child should be given lunch with him. In the morning I pack the child a hot lunch in a thermos, as the school does not have microwaves and the ability to heat the food is not available. In addition to lunch, you need to give your child something for a light snack (fruit, cookies…)

Marks on a one hundred point system. 90-100% is A, 80-90% is B, 70-80% is C, and everything below is F (that is, in our opinion, two). Despite the advertised American justice, the teacher’s bias against the student is still possible. For example, a child was downgraded for a wrong shade of green when he was painting a model of the earth.

In the third grade, the main subjects are reading, English, Spanish, drawing, singing, music, physical education, natural Sciences, mathematics and social studies. For the first seven subjects I had no questions. I would also like to highlight the quality of music teaching, as the child was taught to play the pipe, and he already has a basic idea of how to play the notes.

Natural science seemed to us relatively adequate. During the year, children go through various topics, such as the properties of matter, the water cycle in nature, the basic concepts of the planets, the rotation of the earth around the sun, food chains, etc. Here is an example of questions from the test:

Garvey crushes a piece of ice on the clay, trying to model a glacier. Which of the following shows how ice differs from clay? Options answers (the right answer-Clay softly):

– Clay softer

The clay harder.

– Clay is coarser

– Clay is smoother

Here’s another example of the issue:

Sand was one of the materials used by Rodrigo to model the glacier. What happened to the sand when Rodrigo ran a piece of ice over the clay and sand? (correct answer-Sand scratched clay)

– Sand turned to crumbs .

Sand’s gone.

– Sand scratched the ice

– Sand scratched the clay

Mathematics, of course, leaves much to be desired

Tasks on sharpness (from a series about tails and hooves) are not present as those in General. There is also no system of education, which in our understanding means teaching concepts from easy to complex.

There is a jump from one topic to another, not related to the previous one. For example, with the topic of adding a column, on which the teacher spent only one week, switched to the topic of studying fractions. Fractions is dedicated to also a week. On fractions the test is written, and next week already study system of measurements (kilograms, liters, degrees Celsius, kilometers). And then for some reason go to the study of geometric shapes. For some reason, it is taught how to determine the sum of the first two digits of the folded numbers, and this is after the children have learned to add a column.

Now I’ll tell you about the subject that caused my husband and I brain explosion. There will be a lot of text. Subject called social Studies (Social Studies), but the tutorial is called Weekly Lessons on Democracy. Below is a photo of this masterpiece.
Topics go by week

Immediately I note that any system on which these topics were selected, no. The feeling that the author of the program their children never had, and he/she/they are clearly something of a smoke and selected topics according to the principle of random drawing of cards. So, the theme is laid out exactly in the order that they appear in the textbook.

The study of each topic takes a week

Keep in mind that eight-year-olds are encouraged to study these topics.

Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece (why this theme here at all?)

The Independence Of America

New nation

Slavery in America

Freedom in America

Women’s right

Geography of America (Yes, we jumped from women’s rights to geography. By this point in the mind of a child is a complete madhouse)

World geography

Pioneers

Education for all (about the pioneers, we probably have already forgotten by this point)

The character of the American

Government

A new era for America

Eleanor Roosevelt.

Justice and tolerance (Yes! Here about what we need to accept others for who they are)

Resources

We depend on each other

How Much Is It?

Money! Money Is Everywhere!

Money in your pocket

American legal system

Becoming a wonderful society

Law and order

American labor

Diversity and culture

Young democracy in Mali (why Mali?)

Democracy around the world

Materials on democratic weeks are presented in the form of newspaper articles. Their content is a separate topic. We were very much interested in whether the compiler took into account the fact that the target audience was eight – year-old children.

Here’s a picture of the week on ” Money in your pocket.” Children are taught what the interest rate is and that they are well placed to invest in the securities market at the age of eight.

Here is a picture from the theme “money, Money Everywhere!”The child is offered to study how the dollar appeared, what forms of money are, that the dollar was provided with gold, who and how prints money. How useful is this information for a child aged 8?

And here is how the theme of the Second World war is revealed. Did you know, for example, that Roosevelt defeated everyone with the help of Stalin and Churchill? And that he founded the UN?

Note also that the topic of the Second World war in parallel tells about the origin of Teddy Bear. Why not? And just in case the paragraph about the need to respect themselves and others. Who would know how these concepts are related to each other.

How do we fill the gaps in education? The child attends additional classes at the Russian Sunday school, where he goes to mathematics, chess and Russian lessons. Chess was originally recorded for the development of logical thinking, and the lessons of additional mathematics, if possible, fill in the blanks of the American program.

As for democratic weeks, we, firstly, notice that half of this nonsense in the child’s head does not even remain (as in other things and in ours, although her husband still complains that he remembered for a lifetime that the largest cargo plane in the US is CJ130 Hercules). When women’s rights jump to geography, and then with the pioneers of education for all, in my head such a mess that specific knowledge the child does not receive and simply does not remember what was taught last week. Secondly, taking advantage of the fact that the child is free to read in Russian, in accordance with his age, we offer him books on the Russian program. The older he is, the more detailed and detailed we will cover the topic of the Second World war for him.

As for the issues of minority rights, tolerance, race and everything else, we ask him the relevant questions, which we do not answer directly. For example, we say that mom and dad both work. Is it right that we pay 30% of taxes on every dollar that we earn, and the government partially transfers this money in the form of benefits to those who prefer not to work for years (such people he sees every day on the street, and Yes, they are not white). As for freedom, in a previous article I wrote that a child spends his summer in Russia with his grandparents, where he freely walks, rides a Bicycle, can even go to the store. Conclusions about where he feels freer and more confident, he will do for himself.