School Choice and Cultural Values

What I Learned the Hard Way

What defines a good education? In one culture, it’s about structure, rigor, and academic achievement. In another, it’s about freedom, self-discovery, and individuality. This personal reflection reveals how one school decision exposed the deep, unspoken divide between Eastern and Western values.

By Kate Xie | Published on: March 10, 2025

The Decision

Cedric had chosen a Montessori school nearby without hesitation because he had gone there as a child. The headmaster was even his old teacher.

On our way to register Lena, I glanced at the modest brick school building, then at Cedric.

“Do you think this is a good school?” I asked.

“Of course!” he said, his voice full of confidence. “I graduated from here, didn’t I? And we’re already lucky the headmaster accepted us. Usually, you have to register a kid when they’re still a baby.”

I nodded, taking his word for it. I didn’t know anything about the Dutch school system back then. I trusted his judgment.

Two Worlds, Two Visions of Education

But years later, I realized—this was a terrible mistake.

Like so many things in our relationship, we had assumed we were looking at the same problem through the same lens. That our priorities aligned. That we agreed on what mattered in a child’s education.

We couldn’t have been more wrong.

For Cedric, education was about individualism, freedom, and autonomy—a space where children could explore and develop at their own pace.

For me, it was about academic excellence, factual knowledge, structure, and discipline—a system designed to push children toward the highest possible achievement.

Had I known...

Had I known then what I know now…

Had I known that Montessori education would dismantle the concept of authority, placing the teacher on the same level as the student…
Had I known that there would be no structured problem-solving demonstrations, no emphasis on memorization or factual learning…
Had I known that this particular Montessori school performed poorly on final standard tests, and that most of the parents were blue-collar immigrants with limited education…

I would have never agreed.

But I didn’t know. No one explained this to me. To Cedric, a school close to home was good enough.

The Cultural Divide in Parenting

He didn’t understand that, in an Asian household, choosing a school was a life-altering decision—as serious as choosing the family a child marries into.

It was not about convenience. It was about pooling every possible resource to secure the best future for the child.

I had walked into this decision blind, assuming that what was obvious to me was also obvious to him. But in this country, the metrics were different. The stakes were lower.

And by the time I realized it, the choice had already shaped the course of our future.

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