Anyone go to private school?

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I personally prefer public school even though public school does suck sometimes. The private schools that I used to go were small and two of them were religious. The religious schools are well known on trying to push their agendas on students, and the one I went to was no exeption. Public school maybe large, and dirty but it does give you space in which you can basically act as you want to, whereas in private school you are stuck around the same people all the time.

I went to a charter school. I liked it. It was small, so I could be around the same people every day, and none of them were too bad. I've been really lucky; people generally feel sh***y if they're mean to me, so people are hardly ever mean to me. Also, the teachers were intelligent and mostly approachable. (I have a feeling several of them were secretly Aspies as well, come to think of it..)

I went to a public middle school, and it wasn't too bad. I didn't talk to people very much; because of the smaller setting in the charter school, I got to be almost outgoing sometimes. But I think it really depends on the school, and the people at the school.

I went to a religous high school and the teachers were quite helpful and the students at least tolerated me, many are still friends.

School just plain sucks for aspies.

90% of the time the teachers don't understand aspergers and as such, don't know how to treat us and when we fail, blame us for not paying attention and what-not.

I'll tell you, if I could have done dissection in biology instead of just watching the white-board, I would have learned a lot more.

In Math's, I used geometer's sketchpad to draw massively intricate shapes. I actually made a 2d image of thousands of line look fully 3d with the impression being you thought the centre was rising up to meet you.

That's what I did in my math classes.

Regards
GM

I went to a public primary school but left after two years because it was boring - not enough hard work. I went to a private primary school and learnt GCSE maths before I turned 10 and did computer programming in BASIC at age 10 - much more interesting than reading Spot the Dog when I could read Dickens. Went to a private secondary school and it was great. Public school did nothing for me.

I was in private schools all my life, because help for autistic ppl when I was young was not readily available and the thought was that with the class sizes being only about 12 ppl that they would be able to help and integrate me at the same time. I didn't really think it was all that bad, I think if I had been in a bigger setting I probably never would have communicated with anyone (I had alot of sensory issues), the teachers there treated me decently, perhaps it was because they were aware of my condition.

an addendum to my previous post, the curriculum was challenging and varied, we had 5 languages offered to us, several different english classes and variations of the science classes, much like steelmaiden I probably would have gotten bored if the curriculum wasn't as diversified

overall i found neither to be much pleasant. i would have rather been homeschooled.

define better.

I went to a private school, but I am most likely a foreign. In this country the level in the private school is absurdly higher, there's also the bonus that public school teacher strikes don't affect you, kids in public schools here would have no classes like 15% of the official year for this.

It was full of people from a higher economic level than me, I actually owe a lot to a scholarship I got when I was just a kid. When I stop to think about it, I don't think this really was a problem in my case, if anything the class differences didn't affect me much worse than the social anxiety, there were also a group of guys with approximately the same social level. Well, I don't know.

I've never been to a public school, so I have no idea which one is 'better' in a non-academical sense. I do go to a public college as of now and the isolation from peers is worse than in school, I think however this is because it was easier to deal with people you've known since they were kids.

I went to a public primary school and then to a private high school (it starts in grade 5 here in Germany). I think that a private school is MUCH better, because (or if, I don't really know what it's like in America) there are fewer pupils, in my case, when I started in grade 5, there were only 8 because I was in the first year, the school was founded then, so there were and are no older pupils which was quite a relief, and now we're 15 students, in my English course I am th e ONLY student- so 5 lessons per week just for me. Of course there is a higher proportion of idiotic students with rich parents, but there are also more reasonable ones who are quite nice and alright to talk to. There is a higher level of acceptance for "different" students, though they think you're weird of course, but they don't bully anyone, only a few comments now and then.
The teachers know your name and can concentrate better on you and the others because there're fewer studenst.
Therefore I think, for me at least, it's much better here.

I went to a private school from 6th grade on and I would have to say that private schools are generally better when academics are concerned but can lag behind public schools in other areas. For instance, my private school did not offer any "Tech" classes like automotive repair. Most private shools are probably more concerned about college preperation than teaching a trade. With that said, if you plan on continuing your education past high school then a private school can help make the academic transition easier.

Private schools will generally have a better teacher to student ratio but with this No Child Left Behind crap, public schools can sometimes have several teachers in a classroom at once if there are students that require one on one attention. Unfortunately, most of these teachers do not have the appropriate education from an accredited school in the first place!

There are many good public schools out there but it really depends on where you live.

I'm long out of school, thank goodness, but I did attend both public and private schools and here is my take.

Grade 1 - Went to a Montessori school. I had 2 great part time teachers(one morning, one afternoon) and I did really well. There was one kid I had problems with, but once the teacher found out, she was able to put a stop to it, but then that kid moved out of town anyway, so I did fine.

Grade 2 - Spent the first part of the year at the Montessori School but with a new teacher who didn't treat me well at all. I needed extra help in some areas(like writing) and my previous teachers helped me, but this one wouldn't, plus she tried to isolate me from the other kids. I at one point didn't want to go to school. My parents complained and were promised it would get better and it did, but that didn't last long. They complained again and in the mean time, had me tested for another school, and let them know if it didn't change, I'd leave. The principal sided with the teacher against me, so my parents moved me to a new school.

The new school was an all boys academy, a very disciplined enviornment. Because of the problems at my previous school, I was behind academically, but my teacher gave me extra help so I could catch up, and I ended up an honor roll student near the top of the class. As for social problems, there were very few, some kids liked me, some didn't, but very little bullying. For the most part, I was left alone.

Grade 3 - Stayed at same school, did well.

Grade 4 - Started at same school, did well academically and didn't have too many social problems. For some reason during the year, my parents decided they didn't want me there anymore and transferred me out. They transferred me to the school my sister was in, and it wasn't good for me. This school emphasized sports over everything else and since I was never good at sports, I was pretty much an outcast amongst the students and even the teachers. We also didn't have recess in the middle of the day like in the previous schools, which I didn't understand. In addition, my sister often got her friends to pick on me as well, but our parents wouldn't do anything about it. My parents insisted it was a better school, but I couldn't figure out why. I complained, but they didn't listen, mainly because my sister's experiences there weren't the same as mine, so they thought I was not teling the truth or just having trouble adjusting.

Grade 5 - Same school, only I also had a teacher who was enjoyed belittling students, kicking them out into the hall if they got an answer wrong or didn't know it, etc. My parents complained and of course, nothing was done. In addition, every day at P.E., they'd take the athletes to practice and put the rest of us to work cleaning up the campus and we were forbiddent to return to class until all the trash was picked up, even if we had to miss an entire afternoon of classes to do so. My parents complained and were promised the trash duty would stop, but it didn't. My parents never believed my complaints until they talked to other parents who had boys in the school who had similar stories. They took us out at the end of the school year and next year, we were in different schools.

Grade 6- Catholic school. I had a hard time there as well, since it was the first time I ever changed classes and had a hard time keeping organized. It was also hard for me because I was having trouble coping with the fact my parents had begun cramming swimming down my throat the summer before by denying me everything I liked to do for swimming when my sister commanded it. The school was also very biased towards certain kids because of who their families were. At the end of the school year, my mother asked me if I wanted to have a swimming party for my class and I said no but my mother organized one anyway!

Grade 7 - Went to a private school that took anyone who paid and was in a class full of students most of whom had been kicked out of other schools. As a result, I was picked on, my class was badly treated my school personnel, and my sister, who had transferred there after a semester in a Catholic school, also got other kids to pick on me. Of course, my parents didn't believe me, they had taken on this new idea that boys are bad and girls are good, so girls never do anything wrong and should never be punished. In addition, I had coped with another summer of forced swimming, which I found very hard to deal with, since my sister used to brag about how she owned me every summer thanks to swimming.

Grade 8 - Public School hell. I went to public school and there was a kid who started picking on my because I had a deep voice and others joined in and it mushroomed to the point of alot of kids picking on me. They also called my house several times a day as well. I did fight back once, but my parents threatened to send me somewhere worse if I ever fought again. The bullying was reported and didn't stop, and my grades suffered as well. My parents punished me for the whole summer with no TV, radio, music, reading(except for swimming books of course), or anything but sitting around waiting to be told by my sister it was time to go swimming. They thought denial of everything and only allowing swimming in my life would "build me up into a human being again" as my father put it. Of course, I was miserable.

Grades 9-12 - Private school again. My parents promised me nobody would hold the fact I was new to the school against me because everyone in my class will be new to the school. Most of the kids came from the small group of elementary schools, went to the same churches, etc., so they all knew each other so again, I was an outsider. The school also allowed hazing of freshman students, which included seniors forcing freshmen to wear outlandish costumes, perform degrading, humiliating acts, like pushing coins on the floor with your nose, peforming humliating acts on a stage in front of the school so they could all laugh at us, and so on. I refused to be a part of it, so I was picked on by my classmates and other students in the school, again made an outcast. My parents made me stay there in spite of the lousy academics and poor treatment I got there. They told me the school was going to be strict and wouldn't put up the foolishness I'd dealth with public school, but it wasn't. The only good thing that happened was during the summers, my parents quit forcing swimming, which was nice. I hated that school and even though they considered taking me out a couple of times, they didn't. After I got turned down for the National Honor Society and was basically not allowed to participate in academic games as they were by invitation only to one small group of students the school was biased towards(who got picked for National Honor Society over me), my parents let up on me about my school problems and complained over the principal's head. Senior year got better because they brought in a get tough principal who didn't allow the kind of foolishness that had been going on there the last few years, plus he kicked out the troublemakers. Even though it got better, it had a long way to go, and I was still glad to get out.

My conclusion is there are good and bad public and private schools, so they have to be judged case by case, not categorically.

Does being homeschooled count?

I went to a private boarding school (Worcester Academy) and feel I got a much better education than I would have in public school. There was no music education program though, and I missed that.