What is illiterate, wears Elmo undies and costs nearly as much to send to pre-school for a year as it would a 19-year-old valedictorian with a penchant for quantum physics to an Ivy League university? That would be my three-in-September-year old.
Let's just look at the facts (if not the math, which has never been my strength -- read it people: B.A. in Spanish).
Princeton, Yale, Stanford: $35,000-$38,000 annual tuition
The University of Oregon: $7,500 annual tuition
Jersey City Montessori Toddler program: $18,800 base annual tuition
Extended day (7:30am-6pm): add $4,200
Application fee: $75
Non-refundable tuition deposit: $1,500
Materials fee: $300
Insurance fee: 1.76% of base tuition (in our case, $3,300)
One-time, new-family fee: $1,000
Grand total: $29,175.
Here I would like to add that according to Montessori, the optimum number of kids per class is 36.
Check my math, please. Because no matter how I add that up, I can't figure out how it costs as much to send my 3-year-old boy (who gets excited by the color blue, and finding and eating yesterday's Cheerio under the couch) to school for one year as it cost me to get an undergraduate degree.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of hand-holding and nose-wiping at college. I read a great Time Magazine article about "helicopter parents," the ones who hover over their pre-adult children -- even sleeping on dorm-room floors! -- instead of kicking them out of a still-rolling car near the admissions building. But still!
There's so much that bothers me about paying $30,000 per year for Montessori. Not least of which is that my mom owned and operated Montessori schools for years in the '70s and '80s and never saw this kind of money. NEVER.
What I've not mentioned yet is the school above has something like 45 days of vacation, so working parents have to find a nanny or camp to cover those days. I'm going to attempt more math. The going rate for a nanny is $15/hr, assuming an 8-hour day, times 45 days: $5,400. On top of $29K plus.
In other words, were I willing to work purely to put the kid in school, I'd have to earn something like $50,000 just to break even. That's not one dollar of take-home salary. Not one pair on new shoes for mama. Now, I may be some country hick from Podunk, Oregon, but where's the logic in that? Why would I kill myself at a job I probably wouldn't like to come home with nothing at the end of the day -- other than my beautiful child being raised by someone else?
Surely you noticed you have to pay your own kid's insurance costs (wha?), but did you notice the $300 in materials, ie. Crayons, construction paper, and Elmer's glue?
What in the name of tarnation does $23,000 in tuition cover if not a little glitter? I ask you.
Einstein went to Princeton, but did he go to Montessori? I doubt it. However, maybe I don't have to be concerned about selling my organs to put Cam in school as it appears he was channeling genius from a few weeks old:
Then again, Cam may go a different route all together:
