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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are headed to Sidwell, just be prepared for hearing about social justice issues,  over and over, all the time. It’s relentless. Everything has to have a message. [/quote]

This is true and to my DC, frankly, it's annoying. But take heart -- it's nowhere near as bad as it is at GDS.[/quote]

Serious question: We had good friends pull their kids out of GDS not b/c they have a social justice bent, but b/c on just about every social justice issue, they had a SPECIFIC bent. Instead of encouraging openness, it seemed to channel the students into one set of ways of talking about issues. I know Sidwell won’t have such a pronounced social justice bent as GDS, but whatever bent it has, is it specific? I’m actually quite supportive of being socially conscious and aware, and we are thinking of applying our DC to Sidwell next year. However, given that we were turned off by our friend’s experience at GDS w/r/t social justice thought-channeling, I thought I’d ask this about Sidwell. How much freedom is there to think about issues of social justice in a variety of (non-jerk) ways? And are students mostly happy, to take it back to OP, because they are given some freedom? Or is it not quite that way? [/quote]

I think it depends on your kid and how confident s/he is in his/ her thoughts and opinions, and how well they can be articulated.

We're a conservative family, both in a religious and political sense, and some of the things my DCs come home with from programs/ classroom conversations etc at SFS bring about, shall we say, interesting dinner conversation. But both of my kids insist that there are more conservative kids there than most people realize -- or at least, not as liberal as it may outwardly appear, and that the administration too often (in my opinion) promotes. The level of push-back varies, depending on the topic and the forum and situation - sometimes it's nothing more than eyerolling; sometimes my DCs really speak up. I have never heard that they were not fully respected for their opinions, as long as --again -- they can back them up with well-thought-out statements. That is one thing that I do appreciate about the school - being in the minority opinion forces them to really think about what they say and how they say it - and again, I've never heard about any repercussions.

Does that help?[/quote]

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