All the schools

[missingkeys]

Say that you live in a city with five main schooling options. Homeschooling is illegal. Your options are something like

Comments

[breakableheart]

I'd probably go with the school that confers the most benefit to the child. Bilingual is a good thing to aim for, maybe that? I don't think I'd do an immersion school because while I think it's keen to teach core classes in another language, say Japanese, it seems like even the brightest kids would be suddenly set back in their ability to keep up and learn. Think of all the English Language Learners in schools in the US who are chronically behind their peers because they are struggling to learn language AND math, reading, etc.

No matter what schooling my kids end up in I would (and do) supplement that with additional instruction where I feel necessary. My poor kid, in school all day then homework afterward PLUS home reading PLUS doing extra math workbooks.

[anne_t_social]

You would be amazed at how quickly very young children pick up languages! When I went from a French primary school to an English secondary school, I found that I was ahead of the curve in most subjects. Total anecdata, I know :P

[breakableheart]

No I wouldn't be surprised. I'm aware children learn languages quickly. I also think immersion is not necessarily a good choice.

[anne_t_social]

Oh. All right then.

My experience with an immersion school was very positive, but I live in a bilingual country, so the benefits to speaking a second language (specifically French) are probably greater here. It is necessary to have decent French skills in order to get just about any government job.

[threekidsinky]

It totally depends on the schools and my own kids. We have a public school system with a bad reputation, so my plan was to send my kids to a private school. Started my youngest there and it was a terrible fit for him (he was later diagnosed with ADD-impulsivity), so we had little choice but to send him to our neighborhood public school. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the school is FABULOUS and perfect for him and my other two kiddos. Now, I've been in other schools in our system that I would move or homeschool before sending my kids there (mostly based on the attitudes, teaching styles and behaviors of the teachers), so I'm totally not fence-sitting by saying "it depends".

Based on the kids I have now and assuming the schools weren't cost prohibitive, I would probably choose the Montessori school for two of my kids and immersion school for my other one.

[mahsox_mahsox]

Depends on the kid. I'd send my eldest to an immersion school or a bilingual school no problems if it had good performance results in general. My youngest is on the spectrum and barely copes learning one language, my choice there would have to be whichever school I felt was best for her, and that would involve factors specifically related to how well they support kids like her, which varies wildly between individual schools and has to be investigated by asking parents of similar kids.

[journalismgirl]

What are my finances like, and what is the culture like at the private school? It's all well and good to want to send hypothetical offspring to private, but if I'm working multiple jobs and spending less time with the child to be able to afford it, and there's more stress at home, that's not good for anyone.

What are the available curricula like at the immersion and bilingual schools? What grades do they run, and what support is there for children once they age out and go to high school?

The public school where I live now is excellent. As much as I'd love the idea of private school, I'd also be very happy to send them to the single-language public school.

[anne_t_social]

Immersion school, which I'm guessing is a school where all classes besides English are taught in another language. I went to a school that was totally French - we didn't start having English classes until I was in grade 4, and even then it was only 1/2 hour a day. Even on the playground we had to speak French.

Being bilingual has definitely made finding work easier. Companies in Toronto are pretty hard up for French/English bilingual employees, so it really gives me an edge over my uni-lingual peers. We spoke mostly English at home and outside of school, and I never had any issues with my English spelling or grammar.

Plus I've read that being immersed in multiple languages at a young age makes it easier to pick up new languages later in life!

[firiels_cat]

I can see how this make sense based on where you live. My daughter is taking french as her foreign language, but I have no illusions that it will ever be practical for her because even if she were to visit Quebec, the spoken french is so different there. But I'm not going to force my kids to take Spanish and the schools don't offer Mandarin.

[firiels_cat]

We live in the US so the french taught in schools is Parisian French. Thus - not too useful in Canada. She would like to go to France someday, maybe she'll have that opportunity as an adult.