Edited 2 April 2008
My wife and I have been confronted with a choice — one that is available mostly to those in our privileged social condition, but a difficult one: where should we send our children to school?
Just a few years ago, we wouldn’t have had this difficulty. We’d have sent the kids to whatever the local school was. The alternative would have been (and still is) to homeschool them and cobble together an education by ourselves. This option has a lot going for it that I won’t get into here, and we used to feel sure that homeschooling would be the option for us.
But our older daughter, now approaching the age when children start kindergarten, is a tremendously social person. She loves to spend time with other kids, and I think she thrives more when she has frequent contact with lots of them. So we’re trying to find the right course to take for her: something that does not lock her into a world of standardized tests and a passive-learner mentality, yet does allow her regular social contact.
We see three options:
- Send her to Denali Elementary School, which is our local school, about ten minutes’ walk away.
- Send her to Barnette Magnet School, about fifteen minutes’ walk away, in the afternoon for elective, multi-age “exploration” classes in science, art, social studies, languages, mathematics, and technology. In the mornings and evenings, we would work on the core skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic — plus whatever else we felt like. Alternately, we could send her in the morning for the core subjects and have the afternoons free.
- Send her to Chinook Charter School, about five minutes’ drive away, where they run a Montessori-style program for K-8 kids.
Until recently, I felt sure we would never send our kids to Denali. It has to do with my distaste for compulsory schooling; Denali would undoubtedly be as bad as any other elementary school about squashing my children’s interest in learning. (I’m saying this not to invite debate over the merits of the school system, but to give you an idea why I am in a dilemma.)
My wife, our older daughter, and I went to tour Chinook in the past week. Classes were opened up for visiting families to see what kind of education went on: we could walk from room to room, watch the class activities, and look at the educational materials (books and “toys”). My complete appraisal isn’t germane here, but I’ll say: there were things I liked and things I disliked, though it’s hard to put my finger on anything bad.
With one exception: the location. Chinook Charter School is in the middle of nowhere — an industrial area of Fairbanks that not only is outside my neighborhood, but is outside any neighborhood. If you’d been given directions there and were walking, you’d turn around before you saw it, sure that only warehouses and prisons awaited you. The nearest bus line passes two-thirds of a mile to the northeast and would require the rider to walk across an expressway to get to school. There is nothing for any pedestrian out here; the school is an island in a sea of roads, cars, and heavy industry.
This bothers me for a few reasons. (They are intertwined, and others might parse them differently.) The first is that our daughters would be entirely dependent on us for their transportation to and from school, five days a week, nine months of the year. While the parent volunteer who showed us around said that some of the kids ride their bikes to school, I’m sure that they don’t do it year-round, not with our climate. Let my girls walk ten minutes to school at forty below? Sure. Let them bike over two miles on icy streets, with no bike trails, and crossing the Mitchell Expressway? Nuh-unh, no way.
Where could they go after school, other than where we took them? I remember biking to and from school in the fifth grade. Often I’d stop at a convenience store to buy Mad magazine or play video games, or I’d pop into the video store for a movie, or occasionally I’d see a friend whose house was on my way home. None of that could have happened if my parents had been driving me to and from school each day. Such a distant location stunts children’s independence.
The second reason is that it normalizes environmental ugliness. While the inside of the school is attractive (and eerily tidy), the property’s surroundings teach children that it is only the building in isolation that matters, while surroundings are just obstacles on the path — disregarded at best, resented at worst, but never experienced and enjoyed.
Third, it reinforces the lesson — already taught by our inadequate city planning — that it’s normal for the most worthwhile destinations to be far away from anything else. This discourages children from making do with neighborhood resources, or even possibly creating neighborhood resources. It normalizes distance and disconnection.
Fourth, it gives children the chance — the inevitability, actually — of making friends from all over the Borough, at the expense of time to make friends who live nearby. Of course, the more gregarious children may seek out nearby peers in their non-school hours. But, by and large, they won’t, not in the same number as if they had gone to their local school and rubbed elbows with their neighbors. This impoverishes their social lives, condemns their parents to a life of chauffeuring to events with friends, and hampers their social independence.
Last, the student population is selected by the difficulty of access: only those children can attend whose parents (1) can afford to buy and maintain a car, and (2) have the leisure to drive the little ones to and from school every day. The location selects against poor and working-class families with neither the money nor the free time to ferry their kids around, and for middle- and upper-class families. The result of this is a socio-economic heterogeneity homogeneity that delays children’s learning how to deal with — even be friends with — people different from themselves. It makes school not a social leveler, but a stratifier.
I have to grant that Barnette, while downtown, has some of these faults. A magnet school by definition attracts children from all over town — and the more time my daughters spend making friends with kids in Spinach Creek or Goldstream, the less time they’ll have to make friends with those only a few minutes’ walk from our house. And those kids will very likely be from privileged families with the money and free time to make schooling outside their neighborhood possible.
Yet I suspect that homeschooling, with some accommodation for my girls’ need for regular society, will offer them the best education. It’s even possible that the Montessori-style program offered at Chinook — which has a lot to recommend it — would be best. But if you believe in the importance of locality, of neighborhoods, of school as a social leveler, and of children’s independence, what can you do?
As someone, maybe a Russian, once said, “The choice is not between good and bad. The choice is between bad and worse.” Choosing a school for your two daughters will be difficult, but look at it this way: Fairbanks now offers you three distinct possibilities. A few years ago, there would have been none. Perhaps the only thing you and your wife can do is grit your teeth, make a choice, and work for a better educational future for the next generation. (Besides, this is only for elementary school. You and your wife will have a different set of possibilities — maybe better ones — after that, and by then your children can participate more actively in the decisions.)
Hi Fairbanks Pedestrian,
I really enjoyed your “school” post and just thought I’d leave a comment telling you so. My son is in third grade now, and I had (and have) all of that same inner dialogue while considering the education opportunites. It’s such an enormous decision, and I found no perfect solution. I homeschooled until this year, and he is in Weller. Only because I got divorced and have to work now. He enjoys it, but is fast becoming a “public school kid”. Not sure what all that entails, and too much to write to describe it. We were on the waiting list each year for Chinook, but always found disappointment as we were not lucky lottery winners. And I agree about the location!!!!!!!!!!! We actually tried Barnette for one month when it first switched to a magnet school. I pulled them out because I just saw it as a typical government school, and remember that yes there will be kids from all over, but the children who live in that district also go there, and there were some really rough kids. I don’t mean just physically rough, but rough around the edges in many senses. I guess my number one choice with the options we have is homeschooling, through a supported organization like IDEA or Raven.
side note…there is a community competition starting next month…”don’t be fuelish” and it’s to get people in town to bike, walk, bus, or carpool to work to reduce the use of fossil fuels. If you’d like to know more, send me an email at lori @northern.org
Thanks for the blog, it’s great.
Lori
In what way were these kids “rough around the edges”? I tend to believe that exposure to varied, “rough”, and sometimes discomforting people can be good for us, and that too much polishing just smooths out all our interesting corners and makes us the same shape and texture. But it sounds like these kids were “rough” in a way that was detrimental to your son. If so, how? What were they like?
Hello. I agree with your comment about exposure to “sometimes discomforting people”, and that was one of the reasons I thought a magnet school would be terrific. There was just too much agressive (I shy from saying violent as they were 1st graders) behavior and the teachers had too many kids to keep it in check. For example, a girl on top of another choking her (not play), smashing kids faces into the water fountain when they tried to get a drink (I saw this happen to my boy), just lots of pushing into the ground bullying, really suggestive come-ons to the girls (now, I’m not a prude and think our country is too repressed sexually anways, but these were little boys saying what they were going to do to little girls after they became their boyfriend.) I talked to the teacher about the situations as they occured, but poor thing couldn’t control that many (not too bad by school standards, maybe 23??? Can’t remember sorry). She was a seasoned teacher too.
Okay, one class gone bad? …no it was even worse in seventh grade upstairs…my daughter told of complete disrespect of the teacher, cussing, hearing threats of violence, though she never saw any. Major sexual pressures, though my daughter didn’t experience this.
Maybe, things would have mellowed out and settled in, but it was chaotic and I just wasn’t comfortable so we homeschooled because I had a situation where I coulc make that decision. Not everyone does, I know. All of this said, I do believe homeschool is the best education, so my decision might have been biased, but it was what it was.
Long story on how I got to your blog but I like your public writing.
Fortunately, Elizabeth (mostly) and I were able to home school our two sons, who are now very different and interesting if somewhat unsettled young men. Fortunately also, we had a group of like minded families with similar values allowing us to provide that social interaction of a fairly respectful sort, and to provide other learning activities. We also had our sons in Chinook for awhile, it was a great learning environment, although at the time Chinook was housed in the old elementary school on Fort Wainwright.
I think anytime there is an industrial application to achieve a goal , whether it is a school or a factory, you get a somewhat predictable if inferior product. The workmanship of the craftsperson (teacher) gets diluted. If you want a finely crafted education for your daughters, consider homeschooling; you are certainly qualified.
On the other hand, in the interest of building community, Denali school is your community school. The entire community would benefit by your direct involvement as a parent in the PTSA and as a classroom volunteer. I am sure that your love of knowledge, books, and literacy has the potential for sparking a similar love in kids that may not be exposed to literacy at home.
As far as rough edges, I think that it is good for kids to grow up with some social awareness and adversity. The cliche “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” does contain a nutmeg of truth. Our boys were exposed to a little adversity, and they survived. However, the stories that Lori told are of an environment that is completely out of control and is beyond the kind of adversity that makes a person stronger. I do believe that respect and personal responsibility has broken down in our society over the last 40 years, and public schools have become a scarier place
I think that the key to learning is acquiring the ability and aptitude to read; I don’t think that skill and interest in reading can be taught on a classroom schedule in a classroom of 20-30 kids. A possible compromise would be homeshool for K and 1st until your daughters are solid, engaged readers, and then Denali after that.
Good luck on your choices!
[...] readers may remember my concern, about a year ago, over another charter school, Chinook: that the location was ugly and distant, and that (in part because of the distance) the [...]
I naively thought that public schools were okay – having myself gone through public schools and having a good experience there. So I sent my child to Denali, as it is close by.
Kindergarten was excellent and First Grade started wonderfully. But when a six week substitute (who later was the head of the Fairbanks Education Association!) finished that first grade year for the teacher, who had a baby, we were thrown into great turmoil. This teacher had no skills at teaching, and her method of controlling the class was to yell – all day long.
My child, who cried when Kindergarten ended and couldn’t wait for First Grade, was no longer intersted in school at all and never wanted to go back! Unable to afford a Private Christian School I opted to Homeschool. It was the best option for my child, and also some of her classmates whose parents ALSO pulled their kids out of public school!
After 11 years of homeschooling and graduating through the I.D.E.A. program, my child attended the University of Alaska and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. My child did great there, and was complemented by professors on her language and grammer skills, something our homeschool curriculum was very intense in.
My child NEVER suffered from lack of social interaction. There were neighborhood friends and also church and business friends to interact with. Schooling should have nothing to do with socialization. Schooling is about education.
In my opinion, any parent who truly cares and is concerned about their child’s education will choose to homeschool. After all, who knows your child better than you do? No one does.