And So it Begins

March 21, 2011, By Craig J. Heimbuch 1 comment

It's just first grade, right? I mean, we're talking about a curriculum that involves structured play time and, I'm guessing here, at least a modicum of clay. So why is it keeping my wife and I up at night?

The question that has us vexed is where to send our son Jack to school next year. An advanced placement teacher from the public school has recommended we test him for gifted classes and the local Catholic school has already accepted him for next year. If he passes the advanced placement test, do we keep him in the public schools where they have programs to help develop young minds? Or do we send him, as we had always planned, to the Catholic school?

That's the decision, but really the issue is much larger. It's about the two of us, as parents, feeling academic pressure on behalf our little boy. I catch myself daydreaming some times. In one, he stays in public school as I did. He goes to public high school and ends up doing very well as one of 60,000 students at a public university. In another version, he goes to Catholic school. He attends on of our city's fine Catholic high schools and ends up at a Jesuit school like Xavier or Georgetown. There's nothing wrong, really, with either of these options. Except that in the first one he's lost among thousands of other kids and in the second my wife and I are still working at 85 trying to pay for the whole thing.

Then there's the notion of precedent. Jack has two younger siblings. It feels like the decision we make for him will inevitably be the same we make for his brother and sister. Extrapolate my anxiety related to making the right choice over three children and a couple of decades and you can see why I am losing sleep.

I don't remember it being this tough when I was a kid. I went to public school. I applied to six colleges and got into five of them. I picked the one I wanted to go to largely based on environment. Miami University, my alma mater, just felt more like what college should be than the other schools I considered. Red brick Georgian buildings, old growth trees, a small town in a pastoral part of the country. I had the grades and the test scores - neither of which I remember fretting too much about - and, most importantly, the support of my parents in selecting where I wanted to be. Thinking back, I don't remember my parents being too involved in my academic choices. Spanish or French? I took French because, well, because I wanted to. They didn't talk to me about how useful my language choice would be in the future. When I chose Miami, I think they were happy because I was staying in-state. But I don't remember them steering me to one school or another based upon graduation rate and alumni job placement programs. 

And yet, these are the things I worry about with Jack. We had a parent-teacher conference not long ago and I had to fight the urge to grill his teacher over her curriculum. Is it practical for them to be playing with blocks? Why can't they spend more time on the computer? I'd hate to think he'll miss out on future career opportunities because you spend too much time on the playground and not enough with calculus. The rest of the world has caught up, you know.

All this pressure, all my worrying are probably for nothing. My wife and I will make a decision and, in the end, it will be the right one. But the gravity of it all is almost too much to take right now. I feel like the choices I make will mean the difference between a child who becomes a brain surgeon and one that lives on my couch until he's 40 like one of the guys from "Step Brothers." But why? My parents stayed pretty hands-off and I turned out okay, didn't I?

Well, maybe that's the thing. Maybe the pressure I'm feeling about Jack's education is simply my own feeling of missed opportunity redirected toward him. Maybe I wish I had become a brain surgeon or a public policy lawyer or a Foley artist and I'm projecting my own disappointment or uneasiness on him. I'm not the kind of person who is comfortable. I'm always wanting to do more, to be more. Is it possible that, at six, I already want my son to be more than I am?

And, is that such a bad thing?

I'm not sure. Algebra to algebra, my son will get roughly the same exposure to information whichever way we choose. He'll take similar -if not the same - classes in either school districts. The public schools in our town are consistently ranked among the top in the state, so, really, I shouldn't be worried. And it's not really the money that has me concerned either. My wife and I have a way of always making sure things work out. We make ends meet regardless. It would be nice for him to have the small class sizes and student body of the Catholic school and we like the idea of his faith being intertwined with his education. But we'd also like him to have the opportunity to take advanced level classes and be around kids who aren't like him - as much as the suburbs can offer.

So, maybe what this is really about is consequence. Deciding where we send Jack to school next year is the first big decision we have to make as parents. It's the first we are consciously making that will impact his personal development. Parenting is rife with choice. But, until now, those choices have been easy, clear decisions between right and wrong. What makes this tougher is that it is, ultimately, a choice between right and right. It's all about context. But those subtleties don't make it any easier.

We've got a few weeks to make up our minds on this. And, like I said, I know the choice we end up making will be the right one. However, it will be made after several more sleepless nights and long, drawn-out talks. We'll take the time and sweat it out now, because, when it comes time for Jack to pick a college - he's on his own.

Apparently I'm not the only father struggling with a decision like this. Read Tom Matlack from the Good Men Project and his decision.