Yesterday at Seryozha's birthday party I got a phone call from Dr. L, who is the older kids' violin teacher. She is on the school board and wanted to tell me about this program at one of the area elementary schools. It's a pilot program that includes violin lessons in the curriculum, as well as free violin lessons after school for students. This is an amazing opportunity since Liza wants to go to Juilliard School; I can afford only to send them to a half hour lesson each a week.
We have always homeschooled. While I'm old enough that the black and white thinking of my mid twenties has passed, I'm still skeptical of public schools. I support them because I feel that society owes it to its children to provide a free education; I'm pretty socialist in a lot of my leanings, but I don't feel that the American model of education is terribly effective or even positive for most children.
However, I'm also not about to ignore something that could be a great opportunity simply because it's "school". That would be silly.
Dr. L feels that Liza and Alyosha are gifted musically and thinks that they would thrive in this program (she also thinks that they would make the program look good and, since the idea is to expand it throughout the state, this is important). She urged me to contact the principal and interview her, telling her that I was sent specifically by Dr. L.
So I don't know what to do. School has already started and the kids have never been in school. They have expressed interest since they are seeing the neighborhood kids going to school, although I figured that this would die down once we go the homeschool year underway and their days were busier. I guess that I'll just wait and see how the interview with the principal goes.
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