My sons' math education in public school better than mine in private school

by Frances Griffin
(San Franciso CA USA)

Although homework in elementary school. When I looked at the practice questions for my sons' SAT I was overwhelmed. I had no idea how to do many of the problems. My sons got a much better education in public school than I got in private school. There were social advantages to private school, but not academic ones.

Comparisons to schools of years gone by can be very deceptive. Neither of my parents finished high school despite living in San Francisco. This was common at the time, so materials, such as they were, could be aimed at elite students. (I also remember that in the 50's we got our immunization shots at school.)

In the 60's public schools in my area had a whole array of support services for the classroom that have now been stripped away and those tasks added to the teachers list of duties. Schools had more counselors per student, an audio-visual support staff, an adult who did all the copying of materials, a full time school nurse and adults who took care of attendance records, while students who misbehaved could be assigned to a study hall, supervised by a qualified adult. All these supports are gone,and these plus more extremely detailed record keeping tasks have been added to the teachers' load.