When our oldest son was starting kindergarten, Paul and I fell victim to the private school rhetoric which would have you believe that sending your kid to a public school is tantamount to stringing him up in the town square to have rocks thrown at him on a daily basis. The scare tactics were not in short supply, and ultimately we "decided" that the only option was to send him to a specialized school geared specifically for his type of "gifts."
But then we moved...and I stopped working, and I was driving half way across town to get to this "special" school where not a single kid from our neighborhood went, and for the privilege of which we were paying thousands of dollars in tuition.
So, when our neighbor called us to let us know about the application deadline for the public school in our new area, with trepidation (and a strong sense of guilt), we reluctantly applied.
But then a wonderful thing happened - despite the large class size and low teacher to child ratio and the fact that the school is LITERALLY across the street from a crack house, our son continued to thrive. Contrary to all the studies to which those private school folks pay homage, our kids have actually learned to read and write and even do that goddamn lattice method of long multiplication in public school...
And they only get beat up, offered drugs or propositioned every once in while!
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