I definitely didn’t grow up in a bubble–far from it–but I’m a little worried my kids are seeing only a small fraction of the society, where everyone they know is well off and rarely faces financial compromises. Both attend a kindergarten whose tuition is higher than that of most public universities in the US, and as a result, all of their little friends talk about their exotic vacations, summer houses, parents’ cars, and other expensive toys. At such an early age their friends are not even bragging about it; they honestly talk about it because is what they’ve seen and ignore other realities. Such a narrow view is not formative, in my opinion.
A friend of mine in a similar situation took her daughter, 6, to the slums of their city to see poverty for the first time when she told him that they were poor because they didn’t have a house as big as that of one of her friends. My friend’s house must be in the $700K-$900K range. He was predictably upset when he heard that, so told her: “now you’ll see what poverty is.” His daughter’s face was in utter disbelief when she saw the projects/trailer camps and the people who lived there.
Not surprising, I grew up in a farming/oilpatch town to evangelical parents. I’m one of the few to get out of that town. (but as a Canadian it’s hard to say how accurate that was - a lot of those restaurant chains we don’t even have here)
My parents put my sisters in expensive prep school for rich kids, while I went to public school. This was in the developing world, so median income for people at my school was probably like $10k. Interesting to see what my parents’ priorities were…
Anyway, main difference, in my opinion, is that the schools with rich kids teach you that the world will always take care of you; you can focus on becoming your own unique snowflake. When you go to a school with non-rich kids, you realize that most people need to shape their own future. And I think this rubbed off a bit - among my siblings, I am the most practical and make the most money, but I am also the most selfish when it comes to social issues.
Yeah, around me it’s pretty much either pay tons of property taxes in the 'burbs and send your kid to a great public school or live in the city and send your kid to private school. There are one or two decent public ones in the city. Glad I don’t have to make that decision yet.
^ Where I live, there are good a handful of good public schools in the city but to get districted to them you’ll have to buy a comparitively expensive house and pay high prop taxes or live in a slummy apt. Not far from my house, there are awful run down apartments that their greatest selling point is “mapped to X High School.” I think they’ll be torn down in the next few years since that’s the trend around here. Or you can live in the suburbs and deal with not great but not awful schools and cheaper property.
I dislike that schools are funded mainly through property taxes. About half of my property tax goes to the local ISD and community college. I really wish that public schools were funded more from a state level, or in an ideal world, place some like of user fee on public schools to pay a portion of the costs. If you can’t afford to put them in school, don’t have kids! Unfortunately I’m realistic enough to know that would never work… Around here, I would say a disproportionate number of kids in the public system are coming from the people who live in apts and don’t contribute anywhere near their cost to the system. One morning, I was driving through an area that reminds me of a little Mexico and the street looked like a effing school bus parking lot. Little kids everywhere and all streaming out of apartment buildings.
I grew up in a town and school not unlike Hickory High in the movie Hoosiers. Around those parts, the only people who went to private schools were religious wackos. Not talking about good, Christian folk, mind you. I’m talking about nutjobs. It was only after I got older that I began to understand that some people went to private schools for academic reasons.
That’s another thing I like about where I live now. The public schools are pretty good, and you don’t have to go broke trying to pay for a private education.
(I feel a “Harvard or Hacksaw” argument coming on. CvM–what’s the high school equivalent of “Harvard or Hacksaw”?)
On the other hand, these are sort of the kinds of kids you want in those schools. By living in a small apartment in a decent school area, their parents have sacrificed life quality to give the best opportunities to the kids. These are the kids that become driven and productive.
I was in TX when the UT system adopted the top 10% rule and there was a pretty significant flight of 11% - 20% students from elite school districts to crappier districts where they would land in the top 10% without even trying.
Around me it’s pay tons of property taxes in the ‘burbs AND send your kid to a private school because Mexicans will fudge (*) their addresses to send their kids to great public schools which are now getting overwhelmed. I admire their ambition and drive or whatever but unfortunately all the sacrifice is coming from folks like me, not them.
BTW we do have charter schools (free public schools run like private schools, and high quality) but the admission depends on a lottery.
(*) e.g. fake address on a fake driver’s licence, or list a relative who lives in an apartment in the district.
I take it that you oppose a “path towards enrollment” for children who have already attended those schools for some time using an “undocumented” address?
This quiz sucks monkey balls. Glanced over the questions, none of them inquired about fecking while not wearing a condom. So skipped the crap. The author is probably some 70-year old PBS middle office manager, waiting on his retirement.
