Are Independent Schools for Black Children

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't need a study or report to tell me what I have seen with my own eyes. Enjoy your ignorant bliss.

Enjoy the landscape of your (closed) mind's eye.

[Anonymous]

Every year at application time people raise the issue of AA boys at Sidwell. I do wonder sometimes if people do this to scare away competition. If you are concerned, ask around and talk to current black families at the school you are interested in.

I agree with this. There are many AA boys at Sidwell. If you are concerned about whether Sidwell will be a positive environment for your AA son, ask the school to put you in touch with some of their parents. I know some AA parents at Sidwell, and they're not shy. I suspect they would be happy to talk to interested parents and would give you direct answers to your questions.

FWIW, I'd recommend waiting until you are admitted though. The odds of admission are daunting, so a discussion now might be premature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Every year at application time people raise the issue of AA boys at Sidwell. I do wonder sometimes if people do this to scare away competition. If you are concerned, ask around and talk to current black families at the school you are interested in.

I agree with this. There are many AA boys at Sidwell. If you are concerned about whether Sidwell will be a positive environment for your AA son, ask the school to put you in touch with some of their parents. I know some AA parents at Sidwell, and they're not shy. I suspect they would be happy to talk to interested parents and would give you direct answers to your questions.

FWIW, I'd recommend waiting until you are admitted though. The odds of admission are daunting, so a discussion now might be premature.

Get over yourselves one or maybe two posters in this entire thread mentioned a school by name. To scare away competition, WTF?

[Anonymous]

Only Sidwell was mentioned. Again, tell me if this is the only school that has this problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Every year at application time people raise the issue of AA boys at Sidwell. I do wonder sometimes if people do this to scare away competition. If you are concerned, ask around and talk to current black families at the school you are interested in.

I agree with this. There are many AA boys at Sidwell. If you are concerned about whether Sidwell will be a positive environment for your AA son, ask the school to put you in touch with some of their parents. I know some AA parents at Sidwell, and they're not shy. I suspect they would be happy to talk to interested parents and would give you direct answers to your questions.

FWIW, I'd recommend waiting until you are admitted though. The odds of admission are daunting, so a discussion now might be premature.

Get over yourselves one or maybe two posters in this entire thread mentioned a school by name. To scare away competition, WTF?

15:16 again. To be perfectly clear, the part I was agreeing with was the sentence about talking to current AA families. I've certainly seen threads around admission season for the past few years where someone will ask questions about AA boys at Sidwell, and I think I even recognize some of the posters from this thread as participants in those earlier threads. But I don't know the motivation people have in posting those threads.

Re: "Get over yourself..." I don't think your tone helps this discussion. If you'd like to trade insults and snide comments, I can do that too. But I don't think it will help other people trying to navigate school options.

FWIW, although we're talking about AAs and Sidwell here, the same advice applies to any school and any topic. I know I had questions particular to my own family's personal situation that I raised with the schools we applied to before we enrolled. Almost all of them put me in touch with families who were dealing with similar situations. Those conversations really helped us make the right schooling decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only Sidwell was mentioned. Again, tell me if this is the only school that has this problem.

No it's not the only school.

[Anonymous]

Just happened on this post as a AA parent who has just gone through the 2012/2013 admissions process...

Just looking at gender alone, I think that it has been well documented that boys are developmentally behind girls between 8-12 years old. There is an excellent book - 'Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys' that details the developmental and emotional differences that can impact a boy's experience in school. The book gives good evidence that these differences put some boys at a disadvantage in school and asserts that most educators don't truly understand the differences between the genders.

Now add race into the equation and you get 'some' of the issues that AA parents have detailed so eloquently in this thread.

[Anonymous]

I agree with this. There are many white boys at Sidwell. If you are concerned about whether Sidwell will be a positive environment for your white son, ask the school to put you in touch with some of their parents. I know some white parents at Sidwell, and they're not shy. I suspect they would be happy to talk to interested parents and would give you direct answers to your questions.

FWIW, I'd recommend waiting until you are admitted though. The odds of admission are daunting, so a discussion now might be premature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm white. I once went to a social event where there were about 3,000 people there, and I was the only non-black person.

I felt like everyone was looking at me. They weren't.

In fact, no one noticed me at all.

It was all in my head. I think a lot of the posters here should reflect on that.

Really, PP? What if you had to exist like this each day and didn't have the option of returning to your world.

Must be a real cakewalk for a child to attend a school each day where he's pushing down his feelings of being the other and who realizes he's only "seen" when he's suspected of doing something wrong. Most boys want to fit into their environment, not pretend that they're invisible.

I'm sure you claim that you are colorblind too.

+1000!!

That whoosh sound, its the point going over your head.

[Anonymous]

Independent schools are for children, period.

[Anonymous]

There was an AA boy at well known DC private who did some reprehensible things while he was a student. Full pay parents (doctor, lawyer) who basically overcompensated for lack of "face"-time. The school was afraid to get rid of him because the parents used words like "witch-hunt" and "discrimination" in a letter to the Administration. Scared the bejeebas out of the school so they let him stay until the parents decided to take him out. I would say this kid was treated just like all of the other spoiled rich non-AA kids who get in trouble.

[Anonymous]

Where do u put a bright African American child-other than GDS??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was an AA boy at well known DC private who did some reprehensible things while he was a student. Full pay parents (doctor, lawyer) who basically overcompensated for lack of "face"-time. The school was afraid to get rid of him because the parents used words like "witch-hunt" and "discrimination" in a letter to the Administration. Scared the bejeebas out of the school so they let him stay until the parents decided to take him out. I would say this kid was treated just like all of the other spoiled rich non-AA kids who get in trouble.

How do you know the details of this letter? The letter wasn't shared with the entire school community.

[Anonymous]

Would the poster who keeps inserting different races into other posts please stop doing this. It does nothing to move the conversation forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where do u put a bright African American child-other than GDS??

If a boy, St. Albans.