On my child's education

This text was written in 2013

My experience with private schools begun with reevaluation of my own education. Being a product of “the best in the world educational system” I nevertheless found in myself some vague dissatisfaction. Instead of what I deemed to be the education, I had a broad range of very specific semi-developed skills and patches of information all loosely (or lousy?) coupled together. A spectacular achievement after some sixteen years of the educational process. So when it came to my child's turn an audit of the whole idea was needed. For the audit to be successful there should be some yardstick to measure things with. Obviously education has some purposes. What are they and how well are they achieved – that were my checking points. Initially I thought that education should provide a person with

1. Skills for earn a living (professional skills)
2. Skills for living in society (from how to hold a spoon to how to hold a blow)
3. A set of facts about the world, the more the better (kinda “cultural” skills or erudition)

The one annoying fact was that neither of this three had anything to do with any school or university whatsoever. All my professional skills (I mean those which really put the bread on the table) I developed after the school & university or outside of them. All social skills were the product of my family or my extracurricular activities – to say it in human terms, of the usual mundane normal life itself. All general facts about the world were the result of a wide reading scope, which amount to the family background and the flow of the usual life once again. There was (and is) nothing at all that would need a special educational facility to get the education of this kind. When I was in need of some special training I always got it through private lessons. Including my English which I never studied anywhere outside a private school.

The second still more annoying fact was that the time I spent in the public school was not only useless, it was rather unpleasant too. If not say harmful, when it comes to “formation of personality”. You can easily find gigabytes of descriptions of how public schools suck, there is no need to add another one. I just want to remark that, by my opinion, all the problems have a single cause – the absence of a feedback in the system of public education as its main and irrevocable feature. 

On some level the education is an process of exchange. The teacher provides the student with knowledge and skills , the student provides teacher with the means for living. This interdependence is the feedback. But in the public education system it does not exist. Teachers do not receive their fees from students (or students' parents), they get it from some state's department. Now this “teacher-bureaucrat” connection is the real feedback link in the public system. As a result, the teacher doesn't teach. He provides “the compliance of the educational process with regulatory legislation.” His real “client” is a bureaucrat. The consequences are innumerable and all bad. 

This input data given I just could not find what my child should spend eleven years on. So I looked toward private schools. To my dismay I very soon discovered several big problems:

1. They are very expensive. To the point that one of the parents will be oblige to work full time only to cover tuition fees.
2. They most often are just the same public schools a bit enhanced. Because to be legal and stay in business they must comply with the very same regulatory legislation. This adds to the cost too.
3. They are insecure the way all private enterprises are insecure in Russia: at any moment an inspector may appear and put the school to torch for the violation of the fire safety legislation, for example.

To pay the reality its due, I should say that several very good schools, private and public, do exist. But all private ones were too far away from our place and/or expensive. All public ones were middle- and high schools, we needed a primary one. An interesting fact about good public schools is that they are all the result of an historical accident. During the Yeltsin era a piece of rather freedom-minded legislation allowed some good and charismatic teachers to get headmaster positions in several schools. They have entrenched there ever since and hold the fort. But alas they are under the constant pressure, and who knows for how long they will stand.

The vista seemed to be rather dull. And here came the aforementioned Yeltsin era educational law. There is an option in it named “homeschooling”. By some miracle it survived the last revision (2012) (NB: the text is written in 2013). This option allows to educate children outside of any system either public or private. Or rather outside public but inside a fine-tuned private one. The term “homeschooling” is a bit misleading since nobody binds me or my children exclusively to the home. Actually, it would be impossible for me to do everything at home because I miss some skills crucial for education of a first-grader (as calligraphy) and must earn at least some money. A compromise solution was elaborated. My child is registered as a home-schooler, but visits a so-called “parent club” which practically is a private school in disguise. There children get their training in basic math, English, writing and reading and practice their “social skills”, whatever the latter means. Since the school does not exists as a school, the whole juggernaut of state's regulations goes by the board. If some astray inspector wanders in, he sees only the landlord the club rent the place from. The classes are small, the stuff is absolutely free in their ways and means. Outside the school we arranged additional classes we think useful such as advanced English, programming for beginners, sport and so on. Sure it all take a lot of patience and time but here we come to the core of the whole question.

Education is not about lessons and classes and things (Wanna cry btw? Google “UNESCO approved education goals”, you'll cry as I did). Education is about to accrue and develop the ability of bringing the state of your mind in accordance with the state of the reality. Any future sophistication be it professional, cultural, academic, social, creative or whatever can be successfully elaborated only on this base, not vice versa. And NOBODY teaches this, unless we are so lucky as to stumble upon a great teacher. The only option is to walk this road step by step WITH the child to the extent of his and my abilities or possibilities.