spin-off! What is so awful about attending school with exclusively upper middle class kids?

[Anonymous]

I've been giving this a lot of thought, lately. Full disclosure is that my child attends a private school in NW DC and there is just one child in his class whose parents seem to be members of the working class. Everyone else has parents who are professionals and most are highly paid ones at that, relative to the rest of the United States.

I'm OK with this, so long as everything else is in order. ie, the children are kind, hard working, not jerks to each other, thoughtful. Instead of daily lessons on how to select the very best Beluga caviar or Bordeaux, the kids learn math, science and also do community service. They have arguments and work it out, sometimes with the intervention of adults if needed, and the arguments are never about the relative merits of Ibiza vs. Capri in September.

What I'm saying is, my child's actual peer experience, with that economically heterogenous crowd, is no different that his after-school/weekend experience with a crowd that is wildly diverse, economically.

[Anonymous]

Ok, I'll bite - I think it's just developing a knowledge and empathy for how the other half lives - living in an uppermiddle class bubble MAY (and by no means am I saying it will) lead a child to believe that said child's socioeconomic status makes him "middle class" when in fact he's extremely fortunate and is in the top 1% for this country. It MAY lead to an attitude or belief that there isn't really any poverty in the United States - and if there is - it's in ghettos in urban areas he never would go to, so he doesn't have to worry about - instead of next door or in the next neighborhood over. it MAY lead to a feeling of entitlement - he SHOULD get this he should get that because he is part of the ELITE, not because he's worked hard to get it or what not. It MAY lead to a keeping up with the Jones' mentality - must have X, Y or Z (be it car, education, or vacation) instead of looking inside and figuring out what he really wants. Plus, those rich kids have access and the means to buy all the drugs. [Joke].

[Anonymous]

I grew up this way...private school with all upper middle -upper class people (not in this area.) I think the danger is thinking that everyone lives that way and living a very insulated life.

Thankfully, I was smart enough in high school to regularly volunteer at soup kitchens, Habitat for Humanity, etc and realized there is a big world out there not everyone looked like me, grew up like me, or had the privileges that I did. it really shaped the way I viewed myself, my school, my upbringing, and the world. Now I am a teacher in SE - a long way from that private school and I love it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been giving this a lot of thought, lately. Full disclosure is that my child attends a private school in NW DC and there is just one child in his class whose parents seem to be members of the working class. Everyone else has parents who are professionals and most are highly paid ones at that, relative to the rest of the United States.

I'm OK with this, so long as everything else is in order. ie, the children are kind, hard working, not jerks to each other, thoughtful. Instead of daily lessons on how to select the very best Beluga caviar or Bordeaux, the kids learn math, science and also do community service. They have arguments and work it out, sometimes with the intervention of adults if needed, and the arguments are never about the relative merits of Ibiza vs. Capri in September.

What I'm saying is, my child's actual peer experience, with that economically heterogenous crowd, is no different that his after-school/weekend experience with a crowd that is wildly diverse, economically.

I think you mean homogeneous?

[Anonymous]

How do we teach our children the value of money when every birthday party is bigger than the last, the lost and found looks like a North Face Jacket return warehouse, when they lose the $100 graphing calculator - we buy them a new one that day?

I live in upper NW and chose to send my children to a public charter school that is Tier 1 (has a certain % of children who are FARM). We have the financial means to afford many things, but want my childen to have an appreciation for all that they have. I did not think that this would occur at a school with exclusively upper middle class kids.

[Anonymous]

(OP), right thank you, I meant homogenous there.

I promise I am not a troll just trying to pull someone's chain. I really have been thinking about this a lot. I'm not sure what, if anything, there is to do about it on a micro-level.

I agree with the PPs about the greater risk of developing a let them eat cake attitude. No question there.

[Anonymous]

I live in upper NW and chose to send my children to a public charter school that is Tier 1 (has a certain % of children who are FARM). We have the financial means to afford many things, but want my childen to have an appreciation for all that they have. I did not think that this would occur at a school with exclusively upper middle class kids.

OP again. With all due respect, this is the type of comment I see over and over and over again on DCUM. Which is good, as far as it goes, but what I really want to talk about it is: why wouldn't your child (the royal "your", not you PP) appreciate what they have just because the other 20 kids in his class also have that? It's a different question, really.

Going further, if I decide to buy my son an iPad and a NorthFace jacket next year, but his friend Jimmy doesn't have these things because Jimmy's mom is poor, how is that better, exactly, than the situation where many children in the class have iPads? Why is iPad-less Jimmy inherently better?

This seems to be the line of reasoning underlying many comments like the one quoted, but I think it kind of falls apart upon examination.

[Anonymous]

I am one of the people who could afford private (albeit with some sacrifices) but will send my kid to public K come this fall - not even a great public K, just a "mediocre" one. I am truly worried about the focus on the materialistic aspects of life I have noticed in this area. In the name of full disclosure, I am was not born in the US and grew up in two very distinct and different societies, but always within very modest means. My husband is from the US but also had a very modest upbringing. We are successful but are living well within our means and by DC standars very modestly. We are also extremely grateful for what we have and find the focus on cars, electronics, luxury vacations, lavish birthday parties, brand-name anything overwhelming and unnecessary. We feel that our kids have a much better chance of living a life that is congruent with our values in a public school setting. Of course, if the school we chose proved to be a poor fit for our children we would reconsider, but for the time being we are more than willing to give our local public elementary a fair shot and see what happens. I think limiting kids' exposure to any one social group also limits their worldview, and that is something I would like to avoid, if possible.

[Anonymous]

Personal story: I went to (public) school in an affluent suburb--my high school was sort of like the Whitman/BCC of its area. Suffice it to say that the suburb was one where kids routinely received luxury cars for their 16th birthday (often the hand-me-downs from their parents). My parents both worked, and we were solidly middle class in the true sense of the word (i.e. family of four in a 1500-sq ft. house, vacation travel only by car to free national parks, had an afterschool job to pay for non-essentials, it was a big deal to receive a present like a bicycle, etc.). We lived in the "poor" section of my otherwise wealthy suburb.

In that day and age (I'm in my early 40s) my parents honestly didn't take me to volunteer at soup kitchens or the like--for one it wasn't that common in that day, but more importantly, they were always exhausted and busy because they were both working--and so, honestly, I grew up thinking we were much "poorer" than we actually were, because my frame of reference was my peers, and we had so much less than they did. It wasn't until I got to college (state school, didn't want to take out loans for private) and realized how fortunate my family was compared with so many. I know that sounds shocking that it wasn't until college, and maybe we were shallow , but you'd be surprised how important one's peer group is in terms of comparing lifestyles (there is research on this).

I wouldn't want my kids to have a similarly skewed sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I live in upper NW and chose to send my children to a public charter school that is Tier 1 (has a certain % of children who are FARM). We have the financial means to afford many things, but want my childen to have an appreciation for all that they have. I did not think that this would occur at a school with exclusively upper middle class kids.

OP again. With all due respect, this is the type of comment I see over and over and over again on DCUM. Which is good, as far as it goes, but what I really want to talk about it is: why wouldn't your child (the royal "your", not you PP) appreciate what they have just because the other 20 kids in his class also have that? It's a different question, really.

Going further, if I decide to buy my son an iPad and a NorthFace jacket next year, but his friend Jimmy doesn't have these things because Jimmy's mom is poor, how is that better, exactly, than the situation where many children in the class have iPads? Why is iPad-less Jimmy inherently better?

This seems to be the line of reasoning underlying many comments like the one quoted, but I think it kind of falls apart upon examination.

Not the PP you quoted, but IMO the difference isn't that iPadless Jimmy is better. He is not. But seeing and understanding that there are many iPadless (and jacketless, and lunchless) kids out there will help privileged kids understand that they are, in fact, privileged compared to 99% of the rest of the world. As opposed to being just one of the be-UGG-ed and NorthFaced Joneses. In the first case, a kid might think "Hey, I'm one of the few kids in my class who has this. My life is awesome. Maybe I can share it with my friend - too bad he doesn't have one". As opposed to the second case, where the kid might think "I wish my mom would have gotten me the iPad3. This one is so last season. My friend is lucky b/c their parents have a bigger house with a nicer pool. My life sucks."

Just hypothetically, of course.

[Anonymous]

I understand your question, OP, and I don't think you necessarily set yourself up to have awful, entitled kids if you surround them with upper middle class peers. Obviously, nice people can and often do go to very elite schools. BUT, in my own experience, I'm super thankful for my more diverse educational experience. I grew up upper middle class but went to public magnet and gifted schools (not in DC) in a place where almost every one of my neighborhood/friend peers went to private schools. In my case, the education was very good, and I don't think my parents would have sent me to those schools had it not been.

But I think I turned out to be an entirely different person bc of being friends with people from all walks of life. I think I was just inherently less elitist than my private school counterparts. I think I may have turned out to be a snob without the school that I went to. I didn't expect everyone to have fancy bags and shoes and cars and was kind of shocked when people had that stuff. I was open minded about other religions, races, and sexual orientations bc I was exposed to them regularly at my school (which would not have been the case at the private schools when I was growing up). When I got to my very expensive private college, I was kind of shocked at the level of consumption and privilege amongst my peers. I was also shocked at how many of them didn't really care about the education part of college or didn't seem to have any ambitions, they were just there because it was prestigious and expensive and allowed them to continue to surround themselves with upper middle class kids. I just think I had a very different perspective on life in general bc I didn't take it for granted that everyone was wealthy and would continue to be that way.

Anyway, that's obviously just my experience but I am eternally grateful for the fact that I went to public schools and was exposed to kids from different socio-economic backgrounds. I don't know if I articulated it well but I've thought about it a lot, so I hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

I think OP raises a really good question, and I'm interested in the responses as well.

[Anonymous]

Great question OP. As someone who came to the US as an adult, this desire to go out of one's way to surround one's kids with those who are less fortunate is the most puzzling thing about this board.

I want my kids to grow into high functioning empowered adults. The best way to attempt this is to surround them with smart, hardworking kids from well-functioning families and get them used to interacting and competing with them, both in academics and on the sports field. Sure, it will be important for them to learn that the world is full of all kinds of people, but that they will learn from travel and interacting with friends from different activities and camps. If I can give them successful role models, why should I go out of my way to show them "average." They can find that anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great question OP. As someone who came to the US as an adult, this desire to go out of one's way to surround one's kids with those who are less fortunate is the most puzzling thing about this board.

I want my kids to grow into high functioning empowered adults. The best way to attempt this is to surround them with smart, hardworking kids from well-functioning families and get them used to interacting and competing with them, both in academics and on the sports field. Sure, it will be important for them to learn that the world is full of all kinds of people, but that they will learn from travel and interacting with friends from different activities and camps. If I can give them successful role models, why should I go out of my way to show them "average." They can find that anywhere.

Upper middle class does not equal hard working. In fact, in many cases it's quite the opposite, especially if we are talking about the offspring of upper middle class parents. Those kids have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Why on earth would they work hard for anything? I am surrounded by countless examples of this every day. I DO want my kids to understand the value of hard work. That is why I am sending them to public schools. I say this as a person not born in this country, and raised in poverty.

Also, those "well-functioning" families that can afford a 30K plus private school tuition can very easily be a family with a high-powered career driven parent (or two) that rarely see their kids in an effort to provide said tuition money. I'm not saying that's not a valid choice, but it definitely depends on your definition of "well-functioning".

[Anonymous]

You will find that the high-performing kids (either in academics or athletics) in many private schools work quite hard.

But you are right about the definition of "well-functioning." I work hard in a competitive career and I love it. I want my kids to have the same opportunity (and, yes, they may choose a very different life style, and that would be OK too).