Reply to Any Parents Privately Disappointed with College Placement?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids are too young to know what kind of students they will be in high school.  However, I do know that what I want for their pre-college education is lots of experiences in a variety of subjects (including art, music, etc.), the development of good work/study habits, and a love of learning.  They are at a rigorous academic school right now, and one thing for which we will watch is whether their schools become too much of a pressure cooker at some point.  If it does, we will make a change.  Based on where things stand currently, it likely would not be a public school, but who knows where school budgets and classes in things like the arts will be at that point?

When it comes to college placement, I want them to go to the colleges that best suit them depending on their interests at that time.  I don't care if it is a top 25 school - and I went to one.[/quote]

You could do public and spend the money on extra-curriculars.  If you want your kid to be any good at music, theater or the like you will do extra-curriculars anyway.  My kids' private did recorder lessons and cute musicals, but there really are limits to that.

Work and study habits come from you.  [b]It's a lot of hooey that public school kids have bad study habits.[/b]

Love of learning may be a case for private - some publics do drill and kill.   Some have great teachers, though.

I guess what I'm saying is, there is a casefor private, and  especially for certain kids.  But some of you are painting a cozy picture of privates being a refuge from the generally barbaric publics with their dumb, low-achieving, generally déclassé public kids, and this is just hooey.  [/quote]

To 14:39 - I am the poster you quoted, and I disagree with you.  I had terrible work and study habits before college.  I went to a highly regarded public school in another state and was in the gifted program/all AP classes/etc.  I live in DC, which doesn't even have a gifted program.  I am not painting some cozy picture of private school.  I also do not think all public school kids are dumb.  I was a public school kid myself, as was my (also gifted track in yet another state) DH.  You seem determined to take the view that those who choose private are doing it as some sort of class war.  In our case, we are not.  Finding the line for our children between challenging and interesting enough and a pressure cooker will not be easy.  It's a challenge I devote my time and energy (and financial resources) to because I was absolutely miserable and bored in high school.  Life began at college for me.  I hated school before then.  It was nice to be in a place where they expected you to do good work and take the subject seriously.  My public school, despite how I was tracked, was never able to make me feel like I had to think about anything - it was all too easy and boring.  College also made clear that a focus on academics to the exclusion of everything else (including art, music and sports) was a crappy way to live my life.  "Drill and kill," as you put it, is not something I want my kids to experience when they could be experiencing a more well-rounded and interdisciplinary approach to learning.[/quote]

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