No one is making you send your kids to private schools. This seems like pages of absurdly obvious comments that gets extended by folks confirming the clear. Private schools are expensive and therefore exclusionary, but for financial aid. Hard stop. No one is under any kind of illusion that it's something different, it's that we are paying for a premium product because we think it's better and we can afford it. Nice restaurants don't offer financial aid and are filled with wealthy people. Is that equally problematic? I fly in business or first class...most don't. Is that an issue for you? Wealthy people, rightly or wrongly but definitionally, can afford to purchase things that less wealthy folks cannot. Is that breaking news is some way? |
| I guess one way to promote social justice and equity is to focus the financial aid on talented low income kids. I have seen religious schools doing that. Not so much in progressive schools. |
Yes, but airlines or nice restaurants don’t print in their tickets or menus the label of social justice, so they are not deceiving anyone. |
Exactly |
No idea why you think we care about social justice or socioeconomic equality. This is just a school for our kids. We don’t care about that stuff. Move on. |
But the schools you send your kids to pretend to. We prefer dealing with honest brokers. |
We? So if you are a disgruntled private school parent leave. And if you aren't a private school family who cares? Fix your own broken school. |
How do they pretend to care? By spending 5 minutes a year discussing it? You are so cute. We care enough to acknowledge it and move on. |
I’m not. I’m the rich poster who sent my kids to public. But I appreciate your honest feedback, because you and your attitude are exactly why I didn’t send my kids to private and it’s good to see my reasoning confirmed. But I guarantee you do not talk so bluntly when you’re not posting anonymously, hypocrite. |
That’s the other characteristic of private school parents. To pretend to be nice in person while at the same time being nasty in DCUM. |
+100 |
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People make all kinds of decisions that are not strictly in line with some of their values in order to have creature comforts in life or in pursuit of other values that in that particular decision cut against each other.
I may be against sweatshops and push for better safety and wage regulations for factories, that doesn’t mean I’m sewing my own clothes. It can be hypocritical, or it can be the sorts of compromises we all make every day living in this world. I will admit that when looking at private schools for my child, there was one school in which I felt the rhetoric was over the top and had me saying “if I/you believe all of that then we should be sticking with public school.” We did not apply to that school. But caring about the city you live in and are a part of, being open to learning about other people’s experiences, not being a jerk about the privileges and opportunities you have, and putting some real effort into having kids with a mix of different experiences is achievable for a private school. When I was looking at applying I knew I was doing a bougie thing and I had reasons I thought it might be worth it to me in that particular situation. I didn’t want to hear a school tell me it wasn’t actually a bougie decision, and I didn’t want them to tell me what they could offer that public school couldn’t. And my kid’s school is in some ways more diverse than our particular public school and in many ways less diverse. Life is full of trade-offs and no one lives strictly and fully in line with their values in every single decision. Most people’s commitment to equality has limits in that no one wants to be equal because everyone is equally miserable/oppressed/destitute. There are ways to care about equality and still send a kid to private school, and there are plenty of people who don’t care about it at all. |
| PP Edit - I did want them to tell me what they could offer that public school couldn’t |
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Can anyone please explain how to reconcile the attitude by private school parents ?
- I want a school just for white kids : Not good. - I want a school just for rich kids : good. In principle shouldn’t a school try to be inclusive and tolerant across several dimensions, not just race? |
Sure, but how will the school afford to operate? Staff must be paid, facilities need to be maintained etc. |