Few things are as critical to your child’s
future as a good education. As a parent, you naturally want your child to have
every possible opportunity to live a happy and productive life. And the time to
start building toward that goal is right now, even if your child is not yet old
enough to enter the educational system.
Contrary to what adults might think, childhood
and adolescence are inherently stressful times for a child, testing his or her
rapidly expanding awareness of the larger world. The child naturally wants
little more than to have fun, make friends, and to fit it. But between peer pressure, the media’s
frequent distortion of reality, and underdeveloped faculties of logical
discernment, today's children face greater obstacles than ever before. Your job
as a parent is to help your child steer through those obstacles in a manner
that causes him or her the least amount of difficulty, while at the same time
building a strong moral and intellectual foundation. The choices you face might
appear daunting, but by using available resources and your own good common
sense, you should be able to face the task without too much difficulty... at
least no more than standard difficulties inherent to parenthood.
Choosing a school
Pre-school
- Even if your child is still a toddler, and a couple of years must pass before
his or her formal education begins, you will need to begin to formulate a plan
for his or her school experience. If both parents work, you might need to look
into pre-schools. No longer merely formalized baby sitters, pre-schools offer
your child a head start on the education process, by providing early
instruction in basic comprehension, socialization, and reading & math
skills. Beyond these functional skills, pre-schools also serve to help your
child develop a social and moral compass. As such, you need to determine
whether the approach taken by the pre-school is consistent with your own
parenting objectives and guidelines. If the parents hold to a secular
world-view, for example, enrolling a child in a strict, faith-based pre-school
can cause significant conflict for the child, not to mention being the source
of tension with the rest of the family. By the same token, if the child lives
in a home where faith plays an important role, it only makes sense to enrol the
child in a pre-school where practices and instruction closely resonate with the
family’s beliefs.
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| School Boy Studying: Stockvault |
Public, private, or home school?
While the majority of children attend public
schools, more and more parents are choosing alternative education formats for
their children. Private schools typically have higher teacher to student
ratios, and can therefore offer more individualized instruction than can a
public system with larger class sizes. They also offer the ability to somewhat
limit the range of personalities with whom the child routinely associates,
particularly in more exclusive or faith-based private schools. Home-schooling,
of course, offers significantly more control over the child’s level of
socialization, but this is actually a two-edged sword. While you will be able
to insulate your child from many of the problems that plague public schools,
you will also be severely restricting the opportunities the child has to
develop a broader range of relationships and engage with people who come from
different backgrounds. Whether the trade-off is worth it is a decision that
requires significant thought on your part.
In addition, you have to honestly consider
whether you are best qualified – in both your own education and temperament –
to educate your child. Furthermore, there are significant logistical
considerations to be weighed before undertaking the task of home schooling.
When both parents work, even if the parent who will be providing the home schooling
works from the home, it might be difficult to devote the time and energy
necessary to properly educate the child. These are all considerations that must
be addressed honestly if your child is to be afforded the education that he or
she will need to thrive as an adult.
Finally, you should consider whether your
educational choice will best prepare the child for his or her subsequent
ventures. Does the public, private, or home schooling program increase your
child’s qualifications for admission to the college that he or she might
ultimately wish to attend, or prepare the child for whatever alternative career
choices he or she might make, such as technical school, the military, or
apprenticeship in a trade.
For additional information on choosing a school,
the Department of Education website offers a free, downloadable booklet,
available at http://www2.ed.gov/parents/schools/find/choose/choosing.pdf
.
These are weighty choices, and certainly not to
be taken lightly. In addition to today's concerns, you need to start preparing
to pay for your child’s college education, but that is a topic worthy of its
own article.
Author Bio:
This is a guest post by Sarah Brooks
from Freepeoplesearch.org. She is a Houston based
freelance writer and blogger. Questions and comments can be sent to
brooks.sarah23 @ gmail.com.
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