Perhaps at one time such blind acceptance of authority was considered noble. But this generation are not the kinds to simply accept that just because the school administration is a public institution, then they will always make the right decisions about how to educate our children. In fact, the very fact that public schools are government functions makes you suspicious that more likely than not they are making the wrong decisions and some amount of parental oversight is called for.

The problem comes with the amount of leverage that parents actually have over public schools. And that amount of leverage is somewhere very close to zero. School administrators have parents in a spot and they know it. The public school system is set up in such a way that other than for the purposes of public opinion, schools don’t have to answer to parents at all.

Now just think about what that means. You take your precious children every day and turn them over to other adults for six to eight hours of day during which those adults are given the job of putting knowledge in your child’s head. But there is no accountability for what they teach and if you determine that the school is abusing the privilege of caring for your child, except if it’s a criminal situation, you have no power to stop or change it.

There is no other situation in society quite like this one. And especially in this era of child abuse and our concern about the influence of others over our children, we continue to think nothing of the carte blanche power public schools have over the minds of our kids. So what can we do?

Well the ultimate vote is our presence in the system. We don’t have to submit to arrogance or tyranny if that is what we see happening in our public schools. The public schools are funded by the number of students in the school. So if you simply reduce that number by one or the number of children you have and take them to private school, not only do you capture a lot of control back, you send a clear message to public schools that they are not completely outside the parental control and judgment.

Now we can only vote one family at a time. But if your public school system is abusing their privileges and not regarding your desires as parents, public outcry can raise the alarm and send a message to other parents that maybe its time for a mass exodus to private school. The threat of this kind of parent revolt is exactly what public school administrators don’t want to see happen.

They would love it if we would all be good public school parents and just send cookies and never meddle in what they are doing with our children’s minds. But they are accountable to you and the leverage of your participation is powerful and will cause them to pay attention. It might take some media coverage, some citizens meetings in your living room and some organization but the system will respond if you care enough to make them listen. And even if they don’t private schools are paid to listen so that might be a perfectly acceptable alternative as well.

So, even though with the government is standing in the middle of the relationship, the schools fundamentally work for you. But somehow over time, things have gotten turned around and schools have taken it upon themselves to be the bosses and judges of society and even of the parents of the children who attend the schools.

It all starts with resentment. Schools very commonly not only develop a dislike for parents, they devise elaborate systems to keep things from you and to keep you out of the business of running the school. You know the feeling you get when you come to parent teacher conferences or, God forbid, you start poking your nose into what is going on at your child’s school. The message is delivered to you quite strongly to go away and leave the running of the school to the administrators and teachers and quit asking so many questions.

If this all doesn’t seem just a little insidious to you, it should. When you hear horror stories about bad people who seduce children or young people, one of the first lies they tell the children is that what is going on is “our little secret so don’t tell your parents.” Well, that is the same message your children are getting from the schools who take care of them and if you start poking your nose into what is happening at school, you are blocked from getting very far.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, public schools also take it upon themselves to pry into the private lives and the moral, ethical and religious values of your kids. Of the many reasons why the private school movement in this country has taken off so strongly, this is one of the biggest causes of people pulling kids out of public schools. Somehow, the public schools have started a practice of turning children against their parents and even using children to spy on the parents under the context of trying to flush out child abuse. They turn children into little reporters so if you discipline your child in any way, that can get back to the school who can find a way to call it child abuse and take over the situation.

The situation is nothing short of criminal. Part of the blame is a governmental system that is functioning outside of it’s authority attempting to control the lives and behavior of private citizens. And part of the blame is that dislike and disrespect schools have of parents. At some point along the way, the public schools decided, even if they never say so, that the kids belong to them and that parents are the enemy.

We have at our disposal ways to shut down government spying being done through the schools and through our own children. And that way is to take out kids out of public schools and put them in private schools who have respect for parents and live under parental authority, not the other way around. And if we will take advantage of this resource, public schools may get the message that they work for us and they better learn to live under that authority or they can be shut down too.

There have been plenty of movies that focus on gang life in high schools and the influence of adverse peer pressure that your child might undergo if exposed to negative elements at school. But oddly enough, the Hollywood representation of the influence of drugs and violence in public schools understates the case rather than overemphasizes it. To be blunt, the influence of drug cultures and of violent individuals can easily cause profound changes in your child and changes that are far from what you want for your offspring.

As parents, we want our children to mix with other kids with the same values and children who have ambition and good goals in life so the good teaching you have given to your kids in childhood can come to a good fruit in their teen years. Unfortunately, in many public schools, kids who are not there for education but have other agendas including illicit sex, drugs, criminal activity or violence are often seen as heroes and emulated by other kids. It is very easy for your child to fall in with the wrong kids in such a place and go down the wrong path before you have a chance to stop it.

The tragic stories of such things happening are far too common and they break the heart of any parent who wants only the best for his or her child. Some of the fault comes from the fact that the law requires that the state and city support public education for every child in the community. That naturally means that your child will be in classes with people who could have a negative influence on him or her. It is literally a place where you cannot protect your child and a place where even if your child has strong values and resists the influence of the drug culture and the temptations offered there, they still could become a victim of random violence that occurs frequently in such schools.

Despite the large public education budgets we read about in the papers, public schools are always chronically under funded. That means that classes are too large and teachers are often unable to control antisocial behavior in class. The worst outcome of such an explosive situation are violent outbursts where people get hurt or worse. At the very least this kind of setting makes a quality education virtually impossible and your child will come home traumatized and just glad to have survived the day rather than coming home happy and challenged academically.

In the last few years, large scale school shootings have made our concern for the safety of children at public school an even bigger concern. Yes, schools have responded with tighter security and more efforts to keep students intent on killing others from reaching your kids. But it is a public situation and the continued incidence of school shootings shows that even high security measures can only go so far.

These dangers make private school an attractive alternative. While even at the private school level, security is not guaranteed, the smaller community can do more to know the students well, counsel those who are troubled and build the kind of community that discourages the influence of drugs and violence. And that is the kind of educational setting we all want for our kids.

For a teacher, deciding whether to go the public or private school route can be a tough decision. While the environment of every school is different, the calling of each teacher might be somewhat different. For teachers with a specific focus such as in music or art, to teach in a private school devoted to that niche of education is ideal. But many teachers seek to educate young people in a general area of knowledge such as math or english feel called to teach but the subject matter isn’t as crucial. And for this type of teacher who thrives on larger classes and on taking disinterested students and transforming them into devout scholars, the public school setting is a good choice.

For parents evaluating schools, if you sit in on classes and are able to watch teachers work with their students, you can learn a lot just seeing that interaction and observing the body language of the teacher and how they present themselves to the class. Much of the confidence and sense of creative presentation that comes from the best teachers reflects the relationship between the school itself and the teacher.

Many times in a public school situation teachers can become so burdened with rules and stipulations that come down from the state and pertain to student behavior, safety guidelines and other non academic items that, while important, can dilute the pure relationship between teacher and subject and student.

So if you see a teacher who is having success establishing rapport with the students and engaging them with personality and humor in the subject at hand, you may be witnessing a public school administration that made it a point to make the purpose of each classroom to be about education and that is reflected in teacher attitudes as well. This is rare in the public school arena, but it happens.

This is not to say that every private school is staffed 100% with creative and inspiring teachers. So it’s a good idea to evaluate several teachers in any school because, as in any profession, there are good ones and bad ones. One question you can ask while observing any teacher in action might be, “Is this teacher teaching the subject or teaching students.” The difference is the attitude that teacher has toward students. Teachers who love their subject and are just looking for loyal students to absorb their wisdom do not interact with the young people as much.

But teachers who are true educators are fascinated with the learning process in students and love the interaction between student and teacher. You can tell if the instructor likes students and the affection is two ways by watching the body language of teacher and students. If there is a lot of eye contact, frequent smiling and laughter and there is a genuine joy in the room, that is a teacher who was put on this earth to be doing this one task. And that is the kind of teacher you want your child to learn from.

While you are more likely to encounter this kind of teacher in the private school setting, these are the real gems that make any school they work in great. But if you find one particular school where this is the kind of teacher you meet the most as you review classes, that reflects that in addition to teachers who are all about education and all about making great students, you have also found a school that from the administration on down is devoted to taking young people and making them wonderful scholars and lovers of knowledge. And when you find that school, make it your child’s home because that is the place to be.

When it comes to private school, there is another myth or misconception that we would do well with dumping. And that is the image of private school being only for the super rich and that they are full of snooty prep school girls and boys who are dropped off by chauffeurs and spend their summers in the south of France. This concept that to move your child to a private school somehow makes you a “snob” is worth discarding so that all of us can have options to consider rather than being trapped into the tyranny of enduring whatever the public school system tell us we must endure.

All you have to do to overcome this conception you might have that you have to be a snob to take advantage of private schools is take a day and visit a handful of schools in your area. You will find that the variety and diversity of schools is truly amazing. But more importantly, you will see that the kids in private schools are just like your kids, that the cars their moms and dads drive are the same kind you drive and that ordinary people just like you and I take advantage of the higher quality education and the better educational experience that is available for kids in private school.

Whether or not you keep your kids in public school or send them to private school should not be a matter of economic status or whether you fit in any particular social circle. While there are many good things about public school, the fact is that public school is not for every child and not a good fit to the educational goals of every family. And if you did take some time to visit several popular private schools in your area, you may find that there are kids of families you know using those facilities and kids who would provide a good peer group for your child if you did move her to a private facility for the next phase of her education.

We tend to view private schools as being the enemy of public school but that is also to some extent a myth. In a lot of way private schools are an excellent supplement to provide high quality educational options for certain niche students that the public schools cannot serve as well. Public school is, after all, an institution set up to serve the entire community of school age children. This is a big challenge so the school administration has to put the majority of their resources and energies into managing the education of for that large group of “average” students.

But many students benefit from the smaller environment and from specialized skills and focus areas that private schools can afford to take care of. This includes children with special needs such as educational or physical challenges. But it also includes children who are high achievers in certain areas such as the sciences, mathematics or the performing arts. Private schools can also provide an isolated environment for families who want an education built around faith based curriculum which is just not possible in a public school setting.

So there is no reason to shy away from considering private school along with all of your other educational options for your child. If you do consider private school and then decide to take advantage of the services they offer, you are joining thousands of other families who are benefiting from the diversity of educational options we have at our disposal today. And in doing so, you are in no way becoming a “snob”. You are just being a good parent by giving your child the best education possible. And nobody would fault you for that noble desire.

When we were growing up, just because a kid didn’t sit still in class, the teacher didn’t scream that the child had some disease and demand that he be drugged. But that is exactly what is happening to thousands of children in public schools all over this country. And at some point, it’s up to parents to stand up and say, “STOP. You are not going to keep pumping drugs into our kids just because you can’t control your classrooms.”

If you were to make that kind of statement to a school on behalf of your own child, you would face tremendous amount of pressure to have your child tested medically for one of these “behavioral diseases” so the medical community can cooperate with the schools and prescribe Ritalin, Concerta, Paxel or one of the other common behavior control drugs. Schools have a fair amount of leverage over us when it comes to forcing us to drug up our kids. Because these diagnoses are supposedly backed up by medical experts, the schools can maintain that you must comply and get your child on medication or be guilty of child neglect or abuse.

Because you are required by law to have your child in school, the school knows that the threat of holding a child back, expelling them or putting them in special needs classes each holds a terror that works very well at getting parents to play along with their plan. Now this is not to say that there are no children who are not good candidates for such medication. But the use of these drugs is be pushed for such a big percentage of children that its easy to see that what is going on here is nothing short of criminal.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that neither the schools nor the medical “experts” who peddle these drugs are being objective about what your child really needs. One big clue that your child is not a chronic problem is if he or she is perfectly happy and social at home and the problems only occur at the school. That tells you that the problem is with the school, not with your child.

We teach our kids to say no to drugs. So it’s about time we also taught our schools to say no to the idea of drugging up our kids just so they are more pliant in the classroom. The first thing to do is to take the teeth out of their threats to hold your child back or otherwise punish you or your child. And that can be done by researching your private school options.

It might sound harsh but unless your child’s pediatrician that you know and trust have independently diagnosed your child with one of these behavioral problems, the minute the school tries to put that label on your child, it might be time to go. The last thing you want is to give the public school the leverage to threaten you and try to get away with it.

And if they begin to loose students because of these threats, maybe they will get the message that parents don’t want their kids pumped full of drugs and that we want our children to learn with all of their mental and emotional faculties fully alive each and every day of their lives.

It really is amazing when you think about it because so many people with special situations have gone on to such genius and excellent. From Stevie Wonder to Steven Hawkings, the schools should buy a clue that a physical disability or learning disability problem does not mean that child cannot be an outstanding student and go great things in school and in life. But public schools traditionally do a terrible job accommodating kids with special needs and when your child has a learning disability, their record is even worse.

Perhaps we can see that public schools are really built to churn a massive amount of students in and out of the system every year. And because they do have to accept everybody, you can understand why it’s difficult to provide accommodations for physically challenged children or kids with learning disabilities.

For most parents seeking the best for their children, trying to get the accommodations made so your child can excel in public school is a study in frustration. Even if on paper the school acknowledges that each teacher will provide those accommodations, when the rubber hits the road, they don’t. Particularly when your child’s limitation is a learning disability, perhaps because the disability is not visible as is the case with a child in a wheelchair or who cannot see, the teacher commonly “forget” that your child needs accommodation and lumps them in with the rest of the class and then punishes them for having difficulty.

Not only is this situation a horror show for parents to get through, it erodes your child’s self esteem and ability to stay ambitious and positive about going to school to try to do his or her best. So while we all have the urge to try to make the larger system work for us, it is often the best course of action to seek out a private school that has the specialized training and equipment to accommodate your child and still provide him or her with an outstanding education from elementary school all the way through to college preparation in high school.

Any teacher who is going to work with children with disabilities or limitations has to undergo specialized training. Part of that training is to recognize the individual nature of your child’s situation and tailor the educational goals accordingly without “dumbing down” the curriculum. This is the value of moving to a private school setting to get your child away from the public school prejudice that sees all children with physical limitations or learning disabilities as “slow” or unable to learn. The truth that you know and your child knows is that your child may be of superior intellect and able to outperform other children with no such challenges if the disability is neutralized.

Private schools often foster the specialized training, the skills and the passion to teach physically challenged or learning disability children and seeing them reach the excellence they are capable of. And when the school knows that a disability is something that can be worked around and they see the true greatness in your child, then your child will begin to excel and that self esteem and excitement about learning will return. And won’t it be great when your child is eager to go to school each day rather than fearing it like a prison sentence. That alone makes going the private school route for your child a good option.

Traditionally we do look to the counselors and the leadership at the local public school to guide our educational decisions. But you might want to think twice about following the advice of people how are on the payroll of the government supported public school about whether you should pull your child out and enroll him or her in private school for the next semester. That is because these public school employees are far from objective and for the most part wish that private schools and home schooling would go away entirely.

The reasons for the dislike of private schools by the administration of public schools is pretty easy to understand. The state pays each public school $7500 for each student who completes a grade level at a public school. That means that every breathing human they can pack into their schools means more money for their budgets. The explosion of popularity in home schooling and private schools has hurt the attendance levels at public schools significantly. So they will do all they can to discourage your decision simply because you are taking money out of their budget if your child doesn’t warm a chair in their school.

But the animosity toward private schools goes even deeper than just numbers and money. The truth is that even the best of public schools do a pretty mediocre job of educating the students in their care. This is a typical situation when a public service is handled by a government agency that functions as though it was a monopoly. You get that feeling from public schools that they think they are the only option you have so you have to jump through their hoops because there are no other schools and the law stipulates you have your children in school.

But there are other options that public schools pretty much pretend are not there and those opinions are the dozens of quality private schools in your community. Almost without exception the quality of education that students get at private schools is noticeably higher than at public schools. Students do better, are happier and far more productive at private schools where the emphasis is on excellence and on the joy of learning as it should be.

This distinction is an embarrassment to the public school system. And the more people that know that public schools are so inferior to private schools, the faster the private school phenomenon will spread which will only continue to drive the public school system out of existence. Furthermore because parents of students who are exceptional either academically or in terms of special talents and gifts commonly take such students to private schools where those talents can be nurtured and developed. This takes the best and the brightest out of the public school system and leaves “the rest”.

By learning these facts from objective sources, you can make a wise decision about whether to put your child in private school. And the chances are if you do make that change, you will be happier with the results and your child’s years in the educational system will be so much better as well.

As such the majority of the resources and the skills of the teachers are built around the need to teach large classes of average students. There is nothing wrong with this approach as our society depends on good education for everybody. But what this does mean is that public schools simply are not oriented toward providing specialized classes for gifted students.

Now there are gifted programs in most schools which offer classes that are “accelerated”. This means the curriculum is more challenging and difficult so the student conquers a harder work load then other kids in their grade level. But if you look at this approach closely, this is not really a program for gifted children. These are classes for highly intelligent students or kids who are exceptionally good at learning so they will be the ones to earn scholarships to college.

But very often truly gifted students do very poorly in these kinds of classes. That is because often when a child has a particular area of excellence, that does not mean the child is gifted in all areas of academics. So your child might be a brilliant musician, mathematician, chess player or dancer but in every other way average in his or her ability to handle the routine workload of school.

The outcome of putting such students into gifted programs is (a) they don’t get specialized training in their particular gifts and (b) they do poorly in accelerated programs which results in poor self esteem and bad report cards which disguise the true genius of this child. These problems with how public schools handle gifted kids point to the need for you to look into finding private instruction that can design a program to take your child to the next level in his or her area of specialization while teaching the other academic subjects in ways that the child can excel in every endeavor at school.

Private schools can provide the focus on your child’s particular area of excellence simply because they are private and they don’t have the burden of providing education for everybody. Specialized training needs the services of specialized teachers who themselves are outstanding in that field of study or in your child’s gifted area. So if your son or daughter is a phenomenal talent in playing the violin, you need violin teachers who can bring that talent along and knows how to take that talent to the next level and the next and the next.

Private schools can afford to keep such gifted teachers on staff. They can also afford to have any specialized tools or equipment that are needed to help your child develop his or her gift. Further, the field of excellence your child will develop has a path to success that is unlike the paths most kids take to state college and beyond. Your child may need to seek specialized education beyond high school that takes recommendations and a resume that a private school can help your youngster develop.

The private school setting can tailor your child’s curriculum so all of the routine academics can be taken care of but there is plenty of time for your boy or girl to focus on their gift under the tender loving care of a skilled professional. These gifted teachers can become mentors to your child to show him or her the path toward success and greatness in the particular area of genius where your child is gifted.

These are compelling reasons to find the perfect setting that will polish and bring out the talent or gift in your gifted child. It might be more expensive but if investing in top notch education for your youngster means that he or she genuinely realizes that tremendous potential, its worth whatever it takes to make that happen.

But we, as parents, must remember that at no time does anyone have the ability to take away your right to know what is going on with your child and what he or she is being taught. You gave birth to those children and pour all of your love and caring into them so they will be able to reflect your values and grow into good, responsible people with the values of their parents.

Just because it’s time for the kids to go to public school, all of that caring and parenting you put in doesn’t go out the door. We do not live in a dictatorial state where we turn over our kids to the state to be raised to be good little soldiers and echo whatever state driven dogma they are being taught at school. And while this depiction of what goes on at school is a bit harsh and overly dramatic, you do have the right to question what is being taught at your children’s schools and object to any “indoctrination” that may be going on.

The first line of defense that you as a good parent may have equipped your child with is the right to question authority in a respectful way. Now some of what is being taught is cut and dried facts that there is no reason to question. We know algebra works, basic physics have been proven and history, for the most part, is history.

But there are other subjects that are more speculative. Much has been made in the last few years of subjects or approaches to subjects that have been promoted at public schools that amount to opinion or a political or religious orientation that is not the school’s right or responsibility to promote. So if you have taught your child they have the right to disagree with opinion or speculative teaching and they get in trouble for disagreeing with the school authorities, you are well within your rights to come to their defense.

Schools do attempt to keep parents out of the daily operation of the school simply because to have hundreds of parents getting involved in the classrooms would be chaos. And when we turn out kids over to the school to conduct classes, the implied contract is that we will give them the leverage to conduct those classes without us getting underfoot.

But that does not pass all of your rights as a parent to control both the environment of where your child will spend the day and the slant that the school may be putting on the teaching that is taking place. You have the right to be an active parent and look over the books and the syllabus of what your child is being taught. You have a right to know if what is being taught is grounded in fact or is theory and speculation so you can monitor if there is any “indoctrination”, however subtle, that is taking place.

The public schools will resist your efforts to stay informed and to exercise your right to know what is going on down there. They do that based on the faulty assumption that you have no alternatives. But you do have choices. You can always take your child out of public schools who are overstepping their rights and put them in private schools who will respect your wishes, your viewpoints and the rights of your children to a good education based on facts, not opinions and conjecture.

So let’s keep in mind that we do have resources to turn to if the school our children are in will not take parents rights into consideration. By using good old market pressure on the schools, we can keep them honest and doing a good job for our kids.