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

[Anonymous]

OP - You might want to distinguish between schools (or classes) that are socioeconomically homogeneous, culturally homogenous, and academically homogeneous. There are arguments pro and con for each of these measures. As others have pointed out, private schools can have mostly affluent students with a wide range of ability levels. Conversely, some public school magnets have much more cultural and socioeconomic diversity. An Asian immigrant family that earns $75,000/year and a White family that earns over half a million/year aren't identical in my book, even if neither family's children qualify for free lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Problem with cities like NY and Washington is that a lot of us "professionals" really are the former equivalent of working class. It just happens that the working class in this city works in the factory called government or non profit or education ect. So we want to think of ourselves as middle class because that means we are at least doing as well as our parents when the reality is that we are at best treading water. All I know is that my parents had way better options for housing, education both k-12 and college than I do or will likely have even with a master's degree.

argh! you depressed me.

but thank you for the reality check.

Right. Our parents had on the average much much better options. Not.

Do you really envy them their wonderful, unsafe, lead-spewing breakdown prone cars? Or their wonderful old small screen TVs, with so many entertainment options? Or access to those wonderful dental and medical technologies on the 70ies and 80ies. And the great way they communicated with folks across the world using their magic rotary land line telephones? And not having to bother to plan holidays because air travel was so expensive. And not to mention higher pollution levels. And the opportunity to live in houses that were, on the average, about 30% smaller than they are now. I could go on ....

I think you miss the point. Upward mobility was more available 20-30 years ago. My grandparents were penniless farmers in the 1930's and yet able to move up to good professional jobs. They did not worry about the quality of their neighborhood or of its schools or even god forbid have to face any number of lotteries that might determine their kids chances at opportunity. They were average and yet they could make it. I have a master's degree, I have a good professional job, I cannot afford to move to an area that has schools where even 60% of the kids can read or write on grade level, no other fancy request here like extra language otherwise. I am one of many, many in this boat in this area. Plasma, tv, the internet or leaded gas aside this country does not provide options for upward mobility in the way it used to and that upward mobility starts with the crappy state of at least half our schools.

Where do you live and where have you considered moving? You may not have the house you want or the commute you want, you may not live in DC, Arlington or Bethesda, you may have to rent and not own, but are you stating there is nowhere in the DC metro area that you can afford to live that has acceptable schools? Close in is very, very expensive and you get a lot less for your money. There are, however, other options that many people do not want to consider.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want to clarify something: 900k is upper middle class??? If so, what is considered middle class in the dc metro area?

That's what I was wondering. ... But it seems pretty clear that an income of $300K, or a house of $1M in a good school district, is upper class, not upper middle.

This can be (and has been) debated for dozens of pages without reaching any real answer. ...

Translation: I want to make a self-serving assumption that my $300K income is middle class, and nobody can stop me.

No, you're wrong. My point was that there's lots of debate about which income level fits in which class. Maybe the answer is that posters should not use any particular class designation as shorthand, since it leads to pointless debates. So with that in mind, please allow me to revise my comment from 4/22@12:45, which seems to have started this exchange:

In my experience, in every family I know earning above $200,000 (up to at least $900k HHI range), the parents both work extremely hard. Yes, they often have nice things (eg, nice house, nice car, private school) because one or both parents work at high-paying jobs. But those high-paying jobs usually require lots of education (and hard work to get that education) plus lots of hard work at the jobs themselves. If the kids mimic the parents, they certainly won't lack in developing a work ethic. So I think it's wrong to suggest that families at those income levels lack a work ethic.

[Anonymous]

Answer: In the early formative educational years choosing a private school with exclusively upper middle class kids would deprive my children of the true competitive landscape (academic and intellectual, creative, social and athletic) found in bigger and more diverse ponds.

I prefer early vaccination (exposure and immunization) for my children with this broad experience for life's long haul rather than raising them in a bubble environment. This approach, as in my upbringing, will make my children my resilient for life's unexpected turns and curve balls in the long run.

This is the approach I prefer to adopt rather than throwing them into the unrealistic coccoon of an elite private school from Pre-K through middle school.

After early immunization I believe many kids are well prepared (intellectually, socially, emotional and physically) to re-enter some of these elite establishments in high school and/or college to witness and gain exposure to how some of their "entitled" and non-immunized brethen think, behave and act -- also a very useful experience for life's long haul.

[Anonymous]

You'd be surprise to know how many 'upper middle class' families are under water because they outfit their kids with ipad and other frivolous things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Answer: In the early formative educational years choosing a private school with exclusively upper middle class kids would deprive my children of the true competitive landscape (academic and intellectual, creative, social and athletic) found in bigger and more diverse ponds.

I prefer early vaccination (exposure and immunization) for my children with this broad experience for life's long haul rather than raising them in a bubble environment. This approach, as in my upbringing, will make my children my resilient for life's unexpected turns and curve balls in the long run.

This is the approach I prefer to adopt rather than throwing them into the unrealistic coccoon of an elite private school from Pre-K through middle school.

After early immunization I believe many kids are well prepared (intellectually, socially, emotional and physically) to re-enter some of these elite establishments in high school and/or college to witness and gain exposure to how some of their "entitled" and non-immunized brethen think, behave and act -- also a very useful experience for life's long haul.

On the other hand, since our area tends to have a disproportionate number of black and hispanic poor children compared to the world I believe that view is also less broad and a little slanted. My kids have a very multicultural group of friend but don't see any coorelation to wealth. To them all kids are pretty much the same and ethnic background does not come into play.

Also, I am not sure what more your kids are learning because they are still in a coccoon just a different one. What specific experience are they getting that other kids don't get?

I am also a little confused about the lack of exposure to people outside of school. How about family, church, community centers, sports and neighborhood?

[Anonymous]

Some of the most racist people I've met come from disadvantaged backgrounds. I don't think that simply placing children in a diverse environment ensures against racist/classist attitudes. Rather, you want your children to be engaged in conversations with parents, teachers, and others who hold moral authority to discuss racism directly.

Just because you send your kid to a diverse school doesn't mean that your kid is going to be at a social advantage later in life. I would make sure that you, as a parent, discuss race (and class) and that the school you choose makes a concerted effort to educate the community (students, teachers, staff, faculty, and parents) about racism and classism. If you go to a school where parents aren't concerned about these issues, then you are not really helping your children thrive in an integrated environment.

FWIW, I send my children to GDS, and I think that the school does a remarkable job of discussing racial, cultural, and religious diversity and integrating it into the curriculum. The entire community--including the parents--are educated about these issues through formal and informal means sponsored by the school. I do think that GDS could do a better job w/re to economic diversity (right now, most of the "economically disadvantaged" children are probably children of the teachers), but in terms of racial, cultural, and religious diversity, it does an excellent job.

[Anonymous]

I have nothing against private schools or GDS. I prefer to send my children to public school at the outset. And for the reasons I have already elaborated (childhood vaccination). It seems to be working for my children. They are not afraid of the big pond. I do not wish to send them to GDS for early education. I may consider elite private education much later. By then, they should have high titers and protective immunity to the rampant "entitlement" mentality I witnessed growing up and later when I have toured these schools. Of course, our preference.

[Anonymous]

If a child can't hack it in public school there are many area private schools or "small pond" options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If a child can't hack it in public school there are many area private schools or "small pond" options.

Why are you and PP trying to pick a fight? I'm not seeing anyone from private schools taking unsolicited potshots at public schools, so why are you trying to start something? You're making us public school families look like jerks. Please stop.

[Anonymous]

I agree that for some college/grad school is their first time interacting with people from varied racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. I am Black, from an impoverished background, am the first to go past high school in my family and graduated from a top 20 law school. I experienced so many of those kids from 'the bubbles' in law school. Where do you summer? It took me a while to figure this out...uh everyone does not "summer"...I work during summers to pay for my education. Financial aid office like what is that, my parents always write a check. My dad golfs with the partner at the firm so I don't even have to interview. Questions like do you and your brother have the same father. Seriously. Basically early on the upper class identified each other based on the boarding school and private school connections they had and stuck together. We just really had nothing in common. This also applied to my fellow black students also that were mainly from well to do families and schools. The uber wealthy black students separated themselves also. And that is not to say that all were like this. I made some really great friends in law school that were from uber wealthy families and for some reason they knew how to relate to people from all backgrounds, did not constantly refer to lifestyle topics related to their wealth, you would have no idea they were wealthy by material things and were really down to earth. I do not know what was different about their upbringing but they were just amazing human beings who seemed to be aware of the gifts they had been given and seemed grateful but not caught up in it. They were genuinely interested in getting to know who I was and what my experience was yet I was not their first black experience. These were rare people to find amongst this group but they did exist. The funny thing is most of the uber wealthy folks I was friends with did not even go on to be lawyers, they followed a passion of theirs in the arts or non-profit world...law school was just something to please the parents.
As I am now a parent who can afford to send my children to most private schools, I am struggling with the decision of where to send them to school and this topic is one of the reasons. Do I move from my lower middle class neighborhood (still in my first home) now that I can afford a neighborhood with much better public schools? Do I stay where I am and send them to private and save on the higher housing cost yet retain the socioeconomic and cultural diversity within our current neighborhood though that may be lacking in the private school?
Not sure what I will decide just yet, however what I do know is that I do not want to raise a child that was raised in a bubble like many that I ran into in the college/law school years.

Anonymous wrote: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:Responding to 11:39, I know that my kids end up hanging for the most part with kids that are just like us. But the schools benefit from having those well-educated and possibly wealthy families in the mix, whether the social dynamic encourages interaction or not. And even though the kids typically self-segregate on a social level, they do interact in the classrooms, at recess, etc. And the parents, teachers and administrators have to deal with the whole spectrum of needs, desires, demands. It's a puzzle, I admit, but at a minimum I know that I cannot simply ignore the reality of families who are different from us, which would be possible or even likely in other nabes.

I agree. It's not a perfect system by any means but it's better for my kid than not going to school with working class kids at all.

[Anonymous]

If a child can't hack it in public school there are many area private schools or "small pond" options.

Why are you and PP trying to pick a fight? I'm not seeing anyone from private schools taking unsolicited potshots at public schools, so why are you trying to start something? You're making us public school families look like jerks. Please stop.

What does this statement mean? It takes at least 2 to fight. Are you looking for a fight? I'm not. The points from the posters you are referring stand tall.

[Anonymous]

16:53 I think you pinpoint one of the more important issues about some well off kids. They just can't imagine a world of not just privilege but extreme privilege. I am white but went to inner-city schools and paid my own way through undergraduate at a state school and have enormous debts from graduate school at American. I found my years at American to be a bit of nightmare because so many kids just had no concept of what it was like not to have the latest, mommy and daddy paying rent in a nice building and not working. I ultimately did not pursue the work I wanted to do because I what I found when I got my degree was that there so many of these kids who could afford to not work for decent wages in the non-profit world that I could not survive. It may have also been an indication that I did not have a strong enough desire to be poor any more...

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't say it's awful. But it can lead to a cluelessness about people who don't have as many advantages. I grew up in an educated but solidly middle-class family. I went to school with mostly people like myself - mostly white, mostly middle-class 2-parent christian families. But there were enough kids at my high school that I did have friends with less money, or a single parent, or of a different race or religion. I feel like I'm more cognizant of the range of people out there than some of my friends who went to lily-white upper-class schools. I do realize how lucky I am relative to most people, rather than feeling "poor" because I "only" make $90K in an area where that is the low-end of normal.

we're moving soon and will probably be priced out of the "best" school in the district, but I'm cool with that because it's a very homogenous school and I figure more diversity is probably better for my daughter anyway.