Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Differences between public and private schools

Bumper stickers.

In all seriousness, search online to find out when the PTA meetings are held at the school and crash a few before moving, just to observe. Corner a few parents and get them talking about their kids. A LOT of information can be gleaned in those situations.

I live in one of those aforementioned districts.
8 years into our educational journey, I have met exactly one hothousing family. However, nearly every parent I meet is pale with worry. All the time.

They are terrified that Johnny can't write essays well enough, can't rattle off his arithmetic fast enough, is struggling to keep up in school, isn't being challenged, or isn't being taught how to do the things he needs to learn - usually at the same time.

They are scared that really hard work won't get an A; they are scared that the assignments aren't hard enough to learn from. They are worried that time spent on homework is not compatible with time spent on practice or competitions leading to national ranking in chess/mathematics/gymnastics/insert sport here. They are worried about the high school all-nighters, the papers due at midnight, assignments due the next day that are only assigned by a post on the class website at 6 pm. They count the number of well-prepared kids that weren't able to attend a 4-year college last year because they got two B's their sophomore year, and they count the number of kids who don't survive long enough to find out.

My little pocket of the world is clearly crazy. Do others find that the primary vibe from the parents at their schools is fear?

Hothousing is very easy to spot. For a start, the amount of unscheduled time a child has. Then there's the second guessing the parents engage in. It's really very very obvious.

Is this the right place to put in a plea to stop using tiger mom/tiger cub as a small token to acknowledge how much harder it is for normal asian parents to be taken seriously/not judged? Non-asians, if you think we have it hard convincing schools that we're not hothousing, think how hard it is for asian parents!


Thanks for saying that so eloquently, Val.

Hawk, do you know people with kids in those school systems? Let's say Lexington, Newton and Belmont in particular. When they describe them, do you think "great!" or do you cringe inside. I ask because I'm figuring out what to think of your town.

Aquinas, that's a great idea!

I don't doubt it exists, especially when there are strong parental expectations. We have tried to emphasize to our kids that what matters is the effort, and we let the results take care of themselves. The kids themselves will be sad when they fail, and there is no need to make it worse.

It was pure dumb luck that our school system doesn't have class ranks or valedictorians, and if you asked me ahead of time I would have said this was a terrible idea. Now I think that this is a great approach for all competitive schools, as it fosters cooperation among the top students.

Even one suicide is too many. Obviously many other kids are suffering. Schools should do what they can to minimize the stress, but most of the responsibility belongs to the parents, first to minimize the pressure, and second to understand the child's personality, as some kids respond better to competition than others.

I am not saying this is easy, but some parents don't even bother to try.

I really don't see that. My daughter spends an average of 3-4 hours per day on homework and studying. Do you consider that a lot? Weekends are mostly free for activities. She has also pleasantly surprised us by being one of the top students in the class (it's even possible she is #1 but again our school doesn't rank students and kids don't discuss grades much). Her friends that are also among the top students spend about the same amount of time. They certainly have time to go out as a group at times, some of them date, and they all spend a lot of time on Facebook.

On this we agree.

I know families from various towns because my son is a competitive chess player. Many gifted kids try out chess. Some stick with it and others leave it. Many players come from the towns you mention.

By the way, hot-housing in school doesn't even remotely compare to hot-housing in sports or activities like chess. I will never forget the look of the father of the champion at a recent national tournament. He was unhappy that his son did not win all his games, but had a draw in the final game. His son was national champion and the first words out of his mouth after finding out the result was "You had a draw? Why?" My guess is that the father didn't think the son would perform well at the world tournament, which was coming up a month later.

Personally, I would consider that excessive if she's not reading beyond the curriculum out of interest, and unsustainable in university when her weekly readings will be in the hundreds of pages and she has multiple assignments and tests per week.

In my final year of the IB diploma, a day of 6 classes yielded about 2 hours of total work in addition to class. I finished most of my work, if not all, in class and my spare period. I finished whatever didn't get taken care of at school on Sunday evenings, and that gave me all weekday evenings and at least 3/4 of weekends free to socialize.

I specifically remember the only time I pulled a late night-- I was up until midnight writing the extended essay I had put off until the last minute in the final semester of grade 12.

The edge your daughter will have over someone like me is the discipline and habit of planning a work stream. That's something I never did until university and, even then, not as much as I ought to have done. In grad school, I was known to study for exams starting the morning the test. Old habits die hard.

Yeah, 3-4 hours a night is pretty awful. I won't be moving to your town, hawk.

LOL! She has all that now.

In all seriousness, none of our high school graduates find college to be difficult. It doesn't seem to matter if the child attends Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, etc. Everyone reports that our high school prepared them well.

I can just imagine everyone thinking "Yep, that's a hot-house!"

I would agree about 3-4 hours being excessive. Aquinas, your high school schedule sounds like mine.

I'm not sure because I haven't done a survey, but I suspect that an important difference between now and when I was in school is the absence of study hall. Pretty much every student in my school had a daily free period that was designated as time for homework/study. It was 50-odd minutes long, and gave us all a chance to get stuff done during the day. It started in junior high, when 8th period was always study hall, for every student. The study period varied in high school according to your schedule, but it was offered during every single class period. Around here at least, my kids have a class during every period. And let's face it -- the homework load was a lot lower back then (80s) than it is now.

I had time to be on 2-3 athletic teams per year (2.5 hrs/day of field hockey, skiing, or track), hang out with my friends, watch TV, and, starting when I was 15, I had a part-time job. This schedule was typical for the kids in my school. I still finished in the top 10 of my class of 300 or so. I can't see how a high school student today would manage half of what I was able to do without really breaking a sweat more than a couple times per year.

Val, good point about the disappearance of study hall. My high school experience is from last decade; I assume the practice has been retained at my old high school but don't know for a fact. Students need down time to think. I scheduled myself heavily in extra-curriculars because I loved them but relished weekends for the delicious option of doing nothing but relaxing.