In my first year as a teacher I worked in both selective and non-selective high schools. I loved working at one of Sydney’s most covetted selective schools but was only a part time casual so when the opportunity came to get a full time slot in a local high school for the rest of the year, I hesitantly accepted. The local high school had a rough reputation and most of the teachers endured their working day trying hard not to let the discipline issues get them down.
The thing about selective high schools is they tend to gut the schools around them of all the higher achieving children, leaving an imbalance in the remaining schools. Since parents are aware of this they see the selective high school as a kind of ‘holy grail’ as noted in a recent Sydney Morning Herald article ( Unnatural Selection, Good Weekend Magazine, January 24, 2015)
Selective high schols become the ‘cotton wool’ option to insulate children from the ‘rough-and-tumble’ of the local high school. For me teaching at the ‘Zoo School’, as I nicknamed it, was a real baptism of fire and I still cannot think of too many positive things that came out of my time there.
So, you’d think I’d be all for working your kid’s butt off to get that coveted slot in the selective right?
Bad teachers exist in all schools
Here’s the thing, bad teachers exist in all schools. Some teachers are cruising until they can retire; some have worked hard to get to that ‘cushy’ spot in the selective school. Some hate their jobs and just want out but have no other options; some are very poor communicators and probably should never have become school teachers. But you’ll find them in every school. Yep even in the fancy pants private ones.
Don’t get me wrong when I was in high school as a student, in general, I had good teachers at my selective high school. However, for the critical senior years 11 and 12, I had a couple of shockers. See you think you’ve got it made sending your kid to a selective school, but then it could all go south in those last 2 years based on the quality of the teachers your kid gets. I had one teacher who came to class thoroughly unprepared. I had another teacher who was incredibly intelligent but who could not communicate the subject matter at a level students could understand. Both were mandatory subjects. Both were supposed to ‘scale up’ (another mythical and thoroughly idiotic holy grail of the past, don’t get me started!). So don’t think that just because you crack a selective high school your kid is going to get a superior education to the one the up the road at the local. The teachers might actually be better at the local. The reputation might not be as good. But reputations can sometimes just be gossip that’s been perpetuated unchecked on a distant past bearing little resemblance to what is actually happening in the present.
Guess who is your kid’s best teacher?
You!
Parents are the best teachers
At the end of the day, your child’s development is going to largely depend on us parents, not the school. Any teacher will back this, because we see it all too often, namely, a child’s learning being heavily impaired or improved by their family life. Frustratingly, teachers are often expected to pick up and deal with a lot of baggage instead of get on with the job of teaching the curriculum.
The Bible firmly places the education and discipline of children in the hands of parents:
Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. ESV Proverbs 13:24
You can interpret the ‘rod’ how you like, but we often like to subcontract our parental responsibility out to others; but it’s our job to shape in them in things that are far more important than education, such as their spiritual upbringing, values, emotional well being and life skills. These things endure way beyond whatever that selective high will offer them. Education can enhance but nothing will surpass a person who has learnt to be genuinely other person centred.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. ESV Ephesians 6:4
Think of marketing, a key part of any business big or small these days. You know what the big brains of marketing are saying now? The best thing you can do is ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’! Wow! Genius! Jesus said that 2000 years ago. The entire Old Testament law is summed up largely under this command. (The other being to love God with all your heart and soul and mind). It’s not the selective high or posh privates or even local high schools that do that. It’s you and me:
I remember one student at the ‘Zoo School’ who was exceptionally good at technical drawing. I rarely give 10 out of 10. But on several occasions it was hard to justify not giving 100% for their work. Perfect white paper, crisp graphite lines, computer print quality, hand drawn, technical diagrams. Unbelievable. No matter what chaos was going around in the class, and there were some terribly behaved students, this student remained popular and kept high grades.
This shows that it is not so much the school but the student’s upbringing which determines their attitude and aptitude. A school might add a small percentage onto that, but there’s no replacement for all the enduring, life values and skills we parents bring in the preceding years.
