The Truth Hurts

When my husband accepted a job earlier this year that required us to pack up our 16-month-old daughter and relocate from New York City to Boston, I was surprised by my reaction. In public, I was a puddle of self-pity and despair, dreading the impending hassle of shuffling to a new state with a not-yet-two-year-old in tow and bereft over having to leave my network of friends and professional contacts, not to mention my dream apartment a few blocks from both Central Park and Lincoln Center. (True, I hadn’t seen a performance at the latter since my daughter was born, but one never knows when the urge to catch a matinee of Das Rheingold will strike.) Privately, however, I was relieved: The move meant my family would escape New York’s nursery school admissions melee, a competition so notoriously fierce, it makes dog fighting seem dignified.

While unquestionably fueled by status anxiety, the gladiatorial combat that parents are willing to engage in to get their child into a private preschool in Manhattan stems from a real problem: There are more children on the island than there are school slots. (The public schools are largely irrelevant because a) they don’t guarantee every child a spot, and b) they’re terrible.) And so, some of the most highly developed competitive skills in the nation are put to use in a battle that has as its prize the right to spend tens of thousands of dollars to send kids to school for three hours a day.

Differences in schools’ curricula and educational philosophies are beside the point—most parents are so relieved to get their toddler enrolled anywhere, they don’t care if the kid is learning witchcraft. I certainly fell into that category, having more or less convinced myself that as long as the teachers were sober and the cleaning products safely stowed, it didn’t matter where kids went; besides, the only “learning” taking place, I imagined, was figuring out how to make refrigerator-worthy art from construction paper, dry macaroni, and a glue stick. Our plan was apply to a range of places, then cross our fingers that we wouldn’t end up having to home-school.

In Boston, I reasoned, I could do it the old-fashioned way: Find a preschool close to our home, and leave it at that. When I arrived here, though, it became clear that my daughter’s preschool experience was not something I could pass off so blithely. I realized I was now in a position to choose a school, rather than have one choose me—which meant I’d have to engage in a little homework. As I researched the various educational philosophies and spoke to experts, I gained a fresh appreciation for the critical importance of the preschool years.