Which of the top privates has the nicest kids in lower school?
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pbraverman
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Regarding normal hurt feelings, not horrific bullying: All schools have some random meanness. It's part of growing up, and while it's unfortunate, it helps kids to build resilience and skills to resolve conflict. As I once said to a parent, "They don't do it because they are terrible kids, or because their parents are awful, or because the teachers don't care. They do it because they're 11." (The parent replied, "But Jenny is 12." I realized I had not made the point I intended to make. LOL.) If kindness is very high on your list of values, I'd suggest looking at schools where kindness is reinforced on a daily basis as a part of the curriculum, in every class, beginning at the earliest grades. The schools that sponsor Kindness Day or Be Nice to Everybody Week are, in my experience, not as likely to be focused on it, and kids understand innately that such an approach is a bandage on a problem rather than an actual commitment to a particular value. If the seventh grade math teacher glosses over a cry of "That's so gay!" because he has a lot of material to cover, that would be a red flag to me. Peter _____________________ Disclaimer: The anonymity here makes me uncomfortable; it's easy to be uninformed, personal, or simply mean-spirited if people don't identify themselves. For that reason, I have an account so you know whose words you're reading. I have more than 20 years' experience as a teacher and administrator in independent schools, and I have counseled hundreds of students in finding their next schools. I hope I can be helpful to some folks. If you don't like something I've said, you're in good company — there's a long line of past students and parents ahead of you.  If you want to chat further, please feel free to contact me offline: peter <at> arcpd <dot> com
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Anonymous
OP here - sorry if this question hit a nerve with you. I can tell you that I went to a top private in DC and the kids who were "mean" (name calling, exclusionary etc) in first and second grade were honestly still the mean kids in 10th and 11th grade. I can think of maybe one exception, so I am definitely taking the student populations into account while we look at schools. I think schools can do a lot to teach kindness and niceness, but I honestly think that a lot of it comes from the home, so if the parents are clueless and/or not willing to address it - it can really fester. So, yes, I do think 4-10 year olds can be mean and cruel. Social climbing may have been the wrong term, but it certainly turns into that by 5th/6th grade. And, yes, there are always going to be mean kids - always always, but if I could find a school that perhaps had kids that were majority kind, I'd put it on my radar screen. |
Anonymous
I never said it was a straight-forward proxy. You are adding to my statement. I am merely saying that in the time / location where I grew up, the nerds were on the fringes and knew it. They were not the ones who devised means of humiliating other children in front of the entire class or engineering their exclusion. We knew better than to invite that kind of attention, not necessarily because we were inherently super-kind, but because it made no strategic sense to play a game you will not win. Also, being separate from the "cool" crowd leaves room for appreciating a certain amount of quirkiness in other people. And since the nerds of my generation often got bullied a little bit, we usually had some sympathy for underdogs. |
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Anonymous
OP, you're sounding less nice by the minute. |
Anonymous
OP here - appreciate this perspective. I'm sure I sound like I'm trying to shelter my child from reality, but I've heard one or two horror stories of kid meanness and a school not doing anything that itgot me thinking. Appreciate the perspective about the ones who are pushing it daily - tolerance, inclusion, and valuing quirkiness or differences are big on my list |
Anonymous
My experience as a nerd in the 1980s was somewhat different. Even within the group of nerds at my school, there were those most vulnerable who got targeted for bullying by the meaner nerds who had been bullied themselves by the "cool" kids. See Violence, Cycle of. |
Anonymous
Yeah, what I am seeing from this thread is why administrators privately complain that parents are unwilling to see that their children engage in unkind behavior at times. The idea that nerdy children aren't or can't be mean is just plain willful blindness. |
Anonymous
| Where are the examples of schools? |
Anonymous
Really? How so? |
Anonymous
| I'm sorry to say kindness and entitlement rarely go together. In my experience children at one school mentioned so far here tend to be so wealthy that their parents appear never to have said no to any request. This does not work well with classmates. |
Anonymous
| I teach at a private school. Each graduating class has its own character. Most kids are nice. Some years have more than their share of entitled kids. And, yes, you can sometimes see them coming years in advance. Lower school teachers will tell us when a class is full of challenging kids. |
Anonymous
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I'd look for schools that are diverse, selective, and co-ed for the ones with the nicest kids. These are all generalizations but this whole topic is a semi-subjective, semi-vague topic.
Diverse schools are more likely to encourage inclusiveness and to take a strong stand against excluding or discriminatory behavior. Selective schools are more likely to weed out at least some kids who, in lower school admissions play dates or interviews, don't display "nice" behavior. Co-ed schools -- at least in lower school, girls are nicer and less competitive than boys. Not sure about this one but it makes sense to me. And finally, niceness begets niceness. Good manners lead to others having good/better manners. "Warmth" begets warmth. Starts at the top, with the head of school and the school's mission/values statement(s). I'm a believer in the need for kids to be exposed to both good and bad, mean kids and nice kids, as part of growing up. But some schools seem less likely to have bad kid daily distractions than others and those are the ones I'd be looking to for my lower schoolers. |
Anonymous
Computers turned out to be important. |
Anonymous
| I agree with the "look for a selective school." Our school should have been more picky about the students they accepted! |
Anonymous
| It will be the school with the nicest parents. |