The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We all want only the best for children. But sometimes we confuse our ambitions with what the child really needs.
“Which school will you go to?” – secularly asked me one of the mothers in the locker room of the kindergarten.
I hiccuped in surprise. At the time of this question, the son was barely five years old.
“I didn’t even think about it,” I admitted.
The interlocutor was surprised by my answer. And she enthusiastically began to list the options already selected. I listened with half an ear and nodded politely, not going to bother with anything like that for at least another year. But in vain.
Closely this issue had to be dealt with last autumn. To be honest, at first I didn’t bother at all. The system of “registering” addresses to certain schools – this was introduced in St. Petersburg several years ago – suited me absolutely. No night fires under the windows of schools, no many kilometers of queues and roll calls. They won’t leave without a place at the desk, and thank God. Fortunately, the entrance to the nearest temple of science is three steps from my front door. Ideally!
My steadfastness was shaken after I spoke with a neighbor. Her eldest son became the first grader of this particular school in September. And in two years, if they don’t move, she will have to give two more twin boys here.
“Already fourteen times in two months I went to the rono,” the mother of many children confessed to me. – Please transfer the child somewhere. They refuse, they say, there are no places. And I have never seen such lawlessness. Both theft and extortion. Knowledge is given by the weak. And the contingent is not the most pleasant – two ordinary first classes and two correctional ones for the mentally retarded. Of course, I am not against inclusion, but … “
At that moment I got nervous. I definitely do not need such happiness.
I decided to discuss the issue with friends whose children are our peers. And I realized that, firstly, I was hopelessly behind the situation. Secondly, mothers seem to be, advocating for a quality education, first of all satisfy their own ambitions. And, thirdly, no system can resist the parental pressure. Need a registration? So it will be!
“I chose a physics and mathematics school. The best in the area. The headmistress at the meeting immediately said that she would not be able to take everyone. Well, I had to buy registration and use the connections. “
This is my friend Katka. So far, her son Sasha does not have any obvious inclination to the exact sciences, and, in principle, to study. He would have to drive the ball and watch cartoons. But my mother had already decided everything for him. She left the question of whether he could handle complicated physics in high school unanswered.
“We go either to Spanish or to Italian. Without languages, nowhere. For the next year, they made a residence permit with friends in order to go to school, this is enough. We go there for preparatory courses. It is, of course, difficult to study there ”.
This is my other neighbor Julia. She sends her twins to first grade. True, she honestly admits, I’m not sure that the girls will pull the load. Moreover, there are a lot of people who want to get there and the classes are too large: 30-35 people. Yes, now this is possible, in 2016 the norm was excluded from SanPiN, according to which there should be no more than 25 students in a class.
“Well, a tutor, if anything, let’s take it,” Julia sighs.
Tutor, Karl! First graders who just need to master the school curriculum.
“We are sending the kid to the cadet class. Let him grow up as a man. ” This is Kirill’s dad. His son is a gentle dandelion boy, from whom his father decided to raise a real man. Unless, of course, his psyche is first broken. Mom grabs her head, but does not go against her husband’s word.
“And we go to a private school. Expensive, of course, 25 thousand a month. But there personality is at the forefront, not assessments. They are not even given them, they work according to the credit system. European education. And the classes are small. “
So I really wanted to go to this school myself. I began to ask the mother of our classmate for details. It turned out that “personality” is great, but they do not always have time to pass the obligatory program there. And education there is exclusively primary. And the classes are small – sometimes there are 10 people, and sometimes there are only 2. I imagined how this “personality” would come after such a careful attitude to the mass fifth grade of an ordinary school, and I felt sick. No thanks, that doesn’t suit us.
Maybe I don’t understand something? With this question I had to go to a kindergarten psychologist. Like, am I not a bad mother, if I do not strive right now to shove the child into a specialized school? Maybe you already need to go overboard to get into some humanitarian lyceum?
“It is almost impossible to try now to guess which sciences a student will gravitate toward,” the specialist reassured me. – In my practice, there are many examples when a beautifully drawing child in the seventh grade abandons painting and is fond of mathematics. Or, conversely, a sports fan suddenly starts writing good poetry and stories. It is pointless to talk about any kind of career guidance in primary school. “
It is enough if the chosen school is just good. And whether she has a profile or not, the first grader does not care. It is clear that parents choose lyceums and gymnasiums in the hope that there will be better conditions, but they do not take into account that modern children have so many additional loads that an enhanced program can simply harm them.
PS
Everything is logical. But I still don’t want to go to school at home. Even with all due respect to her teachers, she doesn’t want to be just good. The question was resolved quickly: we registered in my husband’s old apartment. The simple school itself is also attributed to it. But her parents speak very warmly of her, they say: they support the desire to study in their children. Here we submitted documents to it. Because, from my point of view, this is what is important at school. And the profile will follow.