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

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[quote=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.

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