Pre-School In New York

http://www.slate.com/id/2288402/Even before I moved to New York, I had heard about over the top the search for pre-school is in New York and the lengths that parents go to in order to ensure the future of their child's education, whether it's giving their 3-4 year olds IQ tests or just the number of applications one has to fill out and the inevitably of waiting lists. I admit, when I heard that mothers were putting their unborn children on their child's potential school's waiting list, I thought they were exaggerating.

It turns out they weren't exaggerating.

We moved into our house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn on the first of February. I immediately started researching pre-schools in our area, having heard that it was not something to wait until the last minute for. I quickly found - by the middle of February - I had missed all the deadlines for Fall 2011 pre-school classes for 3 year olds (or those almost 3). I protested at the school I had found I considered completely ideal, but the coordinator insisted that she had already made the roster for Fall. She left me standing and stammering in the hallway, "But this pre-school, not early admission for the Ivy League's."


I have since joked that I'm just going to enroll my child into Columbia University in Manhattan, that I think it would be easier. I have been told, that actually, it would be.

But the obstacles to my son's potential Fall pre-school education had me start thinking. I'm not one of those parents who has a house full of Leap Frog DVDs, so my infant could learn the alphabet and numbers (in English and French and Spanish).  We have loads of books and read to him a lot, but we don't push the alphabet or intend him to read by the time he's three. In general, I think there is something bizarre about Americans that push their kids to read by the time they're three, but don't toilet train them until four.

And my son - from interactions with us, other kids, and as we go around the city - picks this stuff up. He's learned letters and numbers from the subway trains. I started to realize that I shouldn't even worry about it. That honestly, he's learning things on his time line, and honestly, I want him to play and interact with kids. I started to realize that in his education in general, I want him to learn how to learn, what his interests are, what his process is, and that he can learn just as much from himself as the mentors he finds in life.

I started to relax about whether or not he'd be in Montessori, Waldorf, or the school down the street that's based on the philosophy of Gandhi. And I started to realize those schools aren't really for us anyway, that ideally, we wanted a school that was 3 hours a day. For us, five days a week, from 9 - 3 seems like too much school for our child and our family - and given we don't need the childcare, we were hoping to find a school that had hours closer to what we envisioned. Brooklyn Waldorf is the only one, and it looks fantastic, but it breaks down to $30 an hour for pre-school.

I'd rather save the money and just stick him in a play group.

And then this article from Slate. It sealed the deal. I no longer feel any pressure to engage in the bizarre conversation around pre-school in New York. I'm now busy - taking my kid to the park.