When highly educated archaeologists dig up our Sunday-best-dressed corpses in some century yet to come, I wonder if we will be remembered as the culture who could argue over everything. Among our ruins of Movado watches, Ford Expeditions and Mini cell phones will they also discover our propensity for quarreling? Though we have covered the gambit of fighting with each other from politics to parking techniques to Harry Potter, our current “dispute de jour” is schooling. “Home schooling is best!, no public schooling is best!, no private schools are the only way to go!!”

You can hardly eat a block of Velveeta cheese in the grocery store checkout line anymore without someone bringing up the argument over which method of education is better for kids. It’s not that every facet of these diverse learning techniques doesn’t have their advantages, it’s just the fervor with which people will argue over them. I am hardly an expert concerning the process of intellectual development but I do think we obsess a little when it comes to our children’s brains. Our generation acts as if we are the first, in the history of time, that has really given the proper attention to the student mind. If that is true, then how did WE get so smart and reach this higher level of enlightenment?

I can totally understand the advent of the home schooling movement. It is a scary place out there sometimes, especially for kids. Too much of the time, home schooling is associated with religious fanaticism; like parents are at home teaching their kids how to handle snakes or over-apply blue eye liner, when in reality, home schooling is simply parents taking control of the education process. What? You mean there are people out there who don’t blindly and faithfully trust our government to know what is best for our children and to efficiently and effectively execute their red-taped agenda? Shocking.

When it comes to home schooling, I am just like most dullards worrying about the inane things, like how does one go to the prom? I mean, I have 4 siblings, so I guess I could have asked my sister to the prom, which wasn’t even that uncommon where I grew up in the country. But, if things followed my life pattern, she would have turned me down anyway.

Private schooling is obviously always a great choice for kids, if a family can invest the money in it. Besides, Britney Spears single-handedly brought back the schoolgirl uniform. Private schoolers always get associated with elitism and it is one of precepts of the Upper-Class Mantra: 1. Private Schools, 2. Hired Help (Nannys, housekeepers, chauffeurs, et. al.), 3. “Summering” in another location, and 4. Chemical dependency; though not necessarily in that order.

Thankfully, private schools are much more about education and preparation now than in the past. In the south anyway, most were started in the 1970’s in response to public school integration. One of the premiere private academies in the country, Woodward Academy in East Point, is a testament to what such a progressive school should aspire to be.

Public schooling, by default, is the step-child of the education process. We are handed this system with little control over what we can do with it. But, like most step-children we tend to overlook the good. At the local level, especially in Fayette County, there is allot of positive to realize. The system might be as perplexing as a overweight gymnast, but I know we have the greatest accumulation of teachers to be found in the world. And besides, who else can our kids turn to, to learn the skills they need... to one day become rich enough... to afford to hire a nanny, or go to a Major League Baseball game?

There are pros and cons to every form of schooling, so just quit arguing and teach your kids the best lesson they can get, nowhere else but from you; a little bit of humility.