So there’s this top-notch rated private school in our town for grades 6-12, and  BB, who’s now a  fourth grader has decided it’s his ambition to go. The testing process begins in January of the 5th grade and applicants are notified in May whether or not they get in. I feel so conflicted about this. Like horribly, terribly, keeping me awake at night, conflicted.

My issues are:

Financial- Tuition is $19,335 PER YEAR. They offer financial aid, but no scholarships, and my family is in that crappy lower middle class tier that makes too much to qualify for any type of assistance (from medical breaks to cheaper spaying/neutering for pets), so he would need financial aid to pretty much cover the whole tuition if he got in. But even if he were able to get his tuition fully taken care of, books and supplies run between $250-$500 per year. That’s not a huge deal breaker, but it’s a lot to pay out all at once. Plus, I’m not convinced that *any* private, non collegiate school is worth nearly 20 grand…even if he got full financial aid. It feels wrong to me to participate in that kind of price-gouging system. One could argue that this particular school has a proven track record of churning out students who go on to ivy-league schools, but, in all honesty, I don’t care if Ethan goes to college. It’s not my dream for him to spend 8-12 years getting a PhD. If that’s his dream, then that’s fabulous and I’ll support it, but it’s just not important to me and my husband that he go to a university.

Emotional- Both his and my emotions. BB’s a great, smart, wonderful, empathetic, emotionally intelligent kid. A huge reason we homeschool is that I want my son’s personality to be his, not some mash-up of what is expected by friends and teachers. He’s sensitive and is likely to cry if he sees someone hurt. He wants to help kids who fall down, when he’s experienced mild forms of bullying, he wants to engage the kid in conversation or walk away. I don’t want any of those things to be buried by peer and social pressures. And he’s innocent. At 9 1/2, he’s still just a little kid. He isn’t into games that blow people up, he’s not into girls or baggy pants or acting cool. He’s not embarrassed to hug me in front of his friends and he’s not embarrassed or ashamed by us. I want him to hold on to that as long as he possibly can.

Educational- I have no doubts that he can do the work he needs in order to pass the test and get in. But I do doubt that he will thrive in a school environment. He seems to be a right-brained learner and he folds under the pressure of worksheets, busy work, and “showing the work”. When he does math, he can often do it in his head, but he’s very convoluted in the way he arrives at the correct answer. For example, if he has to subtract 17 from 22, he’ll turn the 17 to 20 and the 22 to 25, subtract those and then arrive at 5. If I ask him to show his work he gets caught up in the minutia  of writing and forgets how to work the problem he just correctly solved in his  head. It’s not a huge deal to me if he can show his work, as long as he has a system to correctly solve problems. But schools don’t work that way. He has to get used to showing his work, whether he wants to or not, and I’m not convinced that that’s a good thing. Or that it’s any better than how I’m letting him find his own method now. As it is, I know that he has a solid foundation in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He understands the functions behind the problems, so I don’t see the point of making him do it the “correct” way. He also crumbles under time restraints. His brain just freezes when he has a time limit and things I know he knows can’t be retrieved. I’m afraid that a high pressure school environment will make him a nervous wreck. This school is supposed to be more progressive, especially in 6 and 7th grades, but that pressure is still there and he’s sensitive to pressure.

Philosophical- We are homeschoolers for a wide variety of reasons. I was a former Montessori teacher, my husband was a Junior High teacher, yet our son has never gone to school. Not even preschool. I have seen the underside of private school education. I know how burnt out the teachers are, how exhausted the kids can be, and how everything is so damned political. I also can’t stand the idea of my free-spirited little boy being forced to conform to a set of social mores that are put in place for no reason other than to keep the kids orderly and under control. I am not at all convinced that 8 hours of school plus 2-3 hours of homework will create better educated, more well rounded adult than what we’re currently doing. I see great benefit to allowing him to read what he wants for as long as he wants. I see great benefit to skipping a day just to hang out and build dams and rivers out of mud in the backyard. I think it’s far more well rounded of him to not see adults as authority figures. Right now, he can talk to complete strangers without fear, but if he goes to school he’ll quickly learn the pecking order and he’ll discover that adults are harsh and mete out punishments if they are crossed. I don’t want that for his life.

However, he really, really, really wants this and I  feel that it’s my job to help him attain his dreams, even if they aren’t mine. So I’m conflicted. We’ve talked about what he needs to work on in order to pass the test, he knows what he needs to practice and do, but I don’t know how much to push it. I remind him that he has to do his math (or whatever), and he grumbles. So I remind him that at The Academy, he doesn’t have a choice. He doesn’t get to decide to just do it later or do double tomorrow. If he’s going to do this, he has a lot of work ahead of him and I want him to tackle it a day at a time instead of cramming before the test. But there’s that nagging little piece of me that feels like I should just put my foot down and say “Son, I love you and I want you to be happy. I want you to have  your dreams come true and I want you to follow your heart, but this isn’t your decision. As your mom, it’s my job to make sure you have the best possible education you can get, and I think you’ll get a better education as a homeschooler. Sorry, but you’re not going.” But somehow that doesn’t feel like the right thing to do either.

I also know that a year and a half is a long time. He could change his mind and decide not to test in, he could make major leaps in his ability to show his work, or I may decide it really is the best thing for  him (I don’t think so, but it’s not totally outside the realm of  possibility).

I don’t expect anything from anyone who has read this. I just needed to put my thoughts out there in a quasi-organized fashion.