Dear Friends and Family,
P goes to private school so we pay tuition. If P went to public school, it'd be free since it's public school and public schools are free.
This post isn't about P's school in particular but more about schools in general both public and private. The curriculum may be different, the teacher-student ratios may be different, but overall, I think schools are schools and home is home unless you home school, but that's not within scope of this post.
I think it comes down to two things. The first is comparative advantage. We should each focus on what we do better than the other. After all, it's not practical for me to try to teach P hip hop. She takes a class for hip hop. Her hip hop teacher knows hip hop, I do not. Therefore, by definition, he's got the comparative advantage. Therefore, lessons make sense. Another example would be swimming. I know how to swim. I think I could teach P how to swim. But, P takes swim classes because her teacher has the advantage of being trained in teaching swimming. He gets more done in 30 minutes with P than I would in 30 minutes with P. With me?
The second is goal alignment. In a perfect roles the goals of the schools and the goals of the parents would be perfectly aligned, but in reality they are not. Ultimately, parents are selfish. They want to optimize around their kid. Schools optimize for the group. They can't optimize for the individual participant. Going back to swimming, P needs to practice her breaststroke kick and her butterfly kick. I would love it if her teacher spent all of his time on just that. But, he doesn't because other students need to practice other things to. So, she spends part of her 30 minutes on freestyle and on backstroke and on other parts of learning to swim. This is where family swim comes in. While we are not better than her teachers in teaching swimming, P does benefit from family swim because she can spend an hour doing just her kicks which would not be possible in a group setting. Our goal is to make P a better swimmer so we optimize our time outside of classes on what P needs. Still with me?
Okay. Then, back to school and parents.
Let's start with an obvious place where schools have an inherent comparative advantage - the number of kids interacting with each other. Every day when P goes to school she is placed in an environment with other kids. I don't think that's shocking. It's more kids from a wider background for a longer period of time than I would ever be able to manufacture in our home. School's got me beat so let's take advantage of the comparative advantage.
At school P will meet kids she wouldn't meet at home. There are some kids we see regularly because P's friends with them and we're friends with the parents. There are some kids we never see outside of school. I think that's realistic. You don't go through life only interacting with close friends. So one potential role of school is it can expose P to lots of people and teach her that she's got to learn to function within a group of people where not everyone is a close friend, some people are friends, some people are acquaintances, some people are just people you have to be with even if you don't like them. You have to find a way to make it work out because life is like that. In this role, I think the schools goals and ours are aligned. Perfect.
At school P is with her teachers. Mr. mouse and I are not there. There are more children in the room than adults. That means, compared to home, you're resource constrained which doesn't sound like a comparative advantage at all. Except it is, if you're trying to teach your child independence. At home, P knows there are two adults and one child. As long as she's patient, we can get to anything that she needs help with. In a way, this limits her independence. At school, P knows there are three adults and twenty children. Realistically, the teachers can't step in on every situation. There's not enough hours in the day. So, children have to learn some level of independence. The teachers are there as an escalation point, but they begin trying to figure it out on their own. They begin trying to resolve conflict on their own. The begin trying to negotiate solutions on their own. So another potential role of school is it can teach P to independently resolve conflict. In this role, I think the schools goals and ours are aligned. Excellent.
At school, conflicts will come up. It hasn't yet. But, I'd be an idiot if I didn't think it wouldn't at some point. P's not going to go through 12-18 more years of school without encountering some conflict somewhere. I think that's the point where things begin to get more complicated. The right answer may not be obvious or may not even exist. Opinion comes into play and it's not clear either party has a comparative advantage. And, goals, well, there's bound to be misalignment of goals. If it's between P and the school, we will want what's best for P and the school will want what's best for school. If it's between P and another student, we will want what's best for P, the other parents will want what's best for their child, and the school will want what's best for the group which may not be either what's best for P or what's best for the other child. I think in those situations, we need to advocate for P, but the school needs to advocate for the school, and well, I'm assuming the other parents will advocate for their child.
I'm not sure what happens in those situations. I guess in those situations the school will do what's best for the school and we will need to decide if that's something we can live with or if we can't live with it what our next best option is because our role as parents will be to optimize for P.
I'm not sure this was helpful to anyone, but it was helpful to me. Happy Thursday!
Cheers!
mouse
P goes to private school so we pay tuition. If P went to public school, it'd be free since it's public school and public schools are free.
This post isn't about P's school in particular but more about schools in general both public and private. The curriculum may be different, the teacher-student ratios may be different, but overall, I think schools are schools and home is home unless you home school, but that's not within scope of this post.
I think it comes down to two things. The first is comparative advantage. We should each focus on what we do better than the other. After all, it's not practical for me to try to teach P hip hop. She takes a class for hip hop. Her hip hop teacher knows hip hop, I do not. Therefore, by definition, he's got the comparative advantage. Therefore, lessons make sense. Another example would be swimming. I know how to swim. I think I could teach P how to swim. But, P takes swim classes because her teacher has the advantage of being trained in teaching swimming. He gets more done in 30 minutes with P than I would in 30 minutes with P. With me?
The second is goal alignment. In a perfect roles the goals of the schools and the goals of the parents would be perfectly aligned, but in reality they are not. Ultimately, parents are selfish. They want to optimize around their kid. Schools optimize for the group. They can't optimize for the individual participant. Going back to swimming, P needs to practice her breaststroke kick and her butterfly kick. I would love it if her teacher spent all of his time on just that. But, he doesn't because other students need to practice other things to. So, she spends part of her 30 minutes on freestyle and on backstroke and on other parts of learning to swim. This is where family swim comes in. While we are not better than her teachers in teaching swimming, P does benefit from family swim because she can spend an hour doing just her kicks which would not be possible in a group setting. Our goal is to make P a better swimmer so we optimize our time outside of classes on what P needs. Still with me?
Okay. Then, back to school and parents.
Let's start with an obvious place where schools have an inherent comparative advantage - the number of kids interacting with each other. Every day when P goes to school she is placed in an environment with other kids. I don't think that's shocking. It's more kids from a wider background for a longer period of time than I would ever be able to manufacture in our home. School's got me beat so let's take advantage of the comparative advantage.
At school P will meet kids she wouldn't meet at home. There are some kids we see regularly because P's friends with them and we're friends with the parents. There are some kids we never see outside of school. I think that's realistic. You don't go through life only interacting with close friends. So one potential role of school is it can expose P to lots of people and teach her that she's got to learn to function within a group of people where not everyone is a close friend, some people are friends, some people are acquaintances, some people are just people you have to be with even if you don't like them. You have to find a way to make it work out because life is like that. In this role, I think the schools goals and ours are aligned. Perfect.
At school P is with her teachers. Mr. mouse and I are not there. There are more children in the room than adults. That means, compared to home, you're resource constrained which doesn't sound like a comparative advantage at all. Except it is, if you're trying to teach your child independence. At home, P knows there are two adults and one child. As long as she's patient, we can get to anything that she needs help with. In a way, this limits her independence. At school, P knows there are three adults and twenty children. Realistically, the teachers can't step in on every situation. There's not enough hours in the day. So, children have to learn some level of independence. The teachers are there as an escalation point, but they begin trying to figure it out on their own. They begin trying to resolve conflict on their own. The begin trying to negotiate solutions on their own. So another potential role of school is it can teach P to independently resolve conflict. In this role, I think the schools goals and ours are aligned. Excellent.
At school, conflicts will come up. It hasn't yet. But, I'd be an idiot if I didn't think it wouldn't at some point. P's not going to go through 12-18 more years of school without encountering some conflict somewhere. I think that's the point where things begin to get more complicated. The right answer may not be obvious or may not even exist. Opinion comes into play and it's not clear either party has a comparative advantage. And, goals, well, there's bound to be misalignment of goals. If it's between P and the school, we will want what's best for P and the school will want what's best for school. If it's between P and another student, we will want what's best for P, the other parents will want what's best for their child, and the school will want what's best for the group which may not be either what's best for P or what's best for the other child. I think in those situations, we need to advocate for P, but the school needs to advocate for the school, and well, I'm assuming the other parents will advocate for their child.
I'm not sure what happens in those situations. I guess in those situations the school will do what's best for the school and we will need to decide if that's something we can live with or if we can't live with it what our next best option is because our role as parents will be to optimize for P.
I'm not sure this was helpful to anyone, but it was helpful to me. Happy Thursday!
Cheers!
mouse
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