Reply to Kids in high achieving schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s not the school that does this. It’s wealthy snowplow parents who obsess on elite colleges. [/quote]

I think it's both, though I think the problem with the school is usually not the educators there, but the peers. It's bad to snowplow for your kid and obsess over their grades and scores and college prospects. But even if you aren't like that, if you send your kid to school with a lot of kids who have parents like that, it will rub off on them. They will absorb that anxiety.

Schools like TJ and other "pressure cookers" create this ambient anxiety about success and prestige, and you can't escape it.

The vast majority of kids, even high achieving kids, would be better off in more diverse school environments where there is room not only of rate hyper-ambitious Ivy-bound straight-A student, but a variety of other kids at different levels of ability and ambition, with different interests and strengths.

It is deeply unhealthy to be self-selected into a group where everyone wants the same few, scarce rewards. It will drive you crazy. And these are children, so it's even worse.[/quote]

The high achieving kids at those diverse schools want the same scarce rewards. At least the Langley kids have full pay parents; try being a high achiever at a middle class school knowing that you and your friends are all competing for the same limited seats at your state flagship. [/quote]

You get that the kids don't actually get to decide if their parents are full pay or not, right? A kid with full pay parents is always going to have more options than one without, and a high achiever without wealthy parents will always have to compete against other similarly-situationed kids for limited resources. It doesn't matter where they go to school, that's just life.

The high achieving kids at the more diverse schools might develop some perspective that helps them to see that not getting into a top college is not the end of the world, and they also might develop some resilience from being in a place that doesn't solely cater to their needs, but seeks to educated a much broader population with a greater variety of needs.

But yeah, having rich parents is an advantage. News at 11.[/quote]

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