Where should my little boy go to school?

By Jason Lim

This was the question that consumed us as we got ready to make the momentous decision: Which school should our little boy attend to start his official academic career? We didn’t want to feel guilty by sending our child somewhere where we weren’t confident he would receive the best opportunity to … what exactly?

Best opportunity to excel? But he will be a five-year old kindergartner. What kind of excelling can he possibly be expected to do? By this time, we already knew that he was no Mozart (Thank God), but in what subject matter could a kindergartner excel, except perhaps magically creating a mess out of a clean space or strategically leaving sharp LEGO pieces where your unsuspecting foot is bound to find them.

Best opportunity to be nurtured? But what does that really mean? We don’t want the kindergarten teachers to be substitute parents (although I’ve seen many of them end up being one due to circumstances) ― they are not there to clothe, feed, and bathroom-guide our children. After all, a kindergarten is the beginning of formal schooling. Nurturing seems to be something that happens at home by parents rather than at school by teachers. And believe me, as an only child, our son receives plenty of nurturing and being catered for.

Best opportunity to feel fulfilled? Not sure that a kindergartner would be searching for his or her life’s meaning to be fulfilled. At this stage in life, fulfilled might mean a pizza lunch (everyday, yeah!) or macaroni and cheese as a close second. Getting an “atta-boy” from his teacher would be as fulfilling as it might get. Oh wait, the “oohs and aahs” from his classmates on a Transformer toy that he brings in for a show and tell will definitely leave him feel fulfilled ― at least until he video chats with his cousin in Seoul, who just bought the next best thing.

Perhaps we were asking the wrong question. It wasn’t, “Where should my little boy go to school?” Maybe it should have been, “What kind of school is best for our child?” Hmm. That wasn’t quite right either. Rather, “What does school mean for our boy?” OK, let’s explore this a bit further. How about, “What type of a place do we want the school to be for our child?” Close, but we were still stuck.

Maybe it was the term “school” that was throwing us off. The term carried such ingrained biases and prejudices on what a school “ought” to be that we were trapped into a cognitive framework that was constrained by our own experiences. But our concept of “school” was defined by the time, space and cultural expectations that are no longer here. Realizing this, we hit upon, “What type of a physical, emotional, and intellectual experience do we want our child to have in a place where he has to spend eight hours a day for five days a week?” We knew that this was a better question because it was easier to formulate the answers.

We wanted our son to feel safe and secure within the physical space he was in. Then again, we didn’t want him to be in a prison-like fortress. It may be counterintuitive, but the safety and security would preferably come from the openness of the space, closeness to nature and welcoming warmth of a campus that seemed alert and jealously protective of its students.

We wanted our son to form positive, healthy emotional bonds with other kids, faculty and staff by feeling valued enough to be vulnerable. There’s plenty of time to learn to have your emotional guard up. Kindergarten should be a place where emotions are recognized, supported and shared, not attacked and protected. Also, you can’t learn how to have good relationships; you can only be shown. We wanted a place where good relationships based on respect, trust and warmth were modeled as a matter of fact.

Intellectual experience was the least of our worries. Every kid learns to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide in due time. Some do it a few months earlier than others. It doesn’t really matter in the larger scheme of things. But we did want a school that constantly experimented with its own curriculum and is always asking the difficult, probing questions about its own performance.

On second thought, I guess we are not talking about a school after all. At least not in the traditional sense. We were actually looking to find someone to have a relationship with our family. What we really wanted for our child is to meet a collective mentor that would lead, guide, share and grow as our son journeys through his maturity.

So, the question that we were really asking was, “Who can we best partner in order to provide our son with the tools to develop a positive relationship with the world that he will feel honored and privileged to actively participate in?”

Wow. We sure expect a lot from a school and our child. Maybe we should just settle for a straight A?

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006.