Reply to How are the 6th grade enrichment classes for cohort kids who were not accepted to magnet programs?

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Reply to "How are the 6th grade enrichment classes for cohort kids who were not accepted to magnet programs?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm just going to comment on the earlier comment of "due to my low SES, I am not as confident that my kids can be as successful in career/life, because I recognize how much more other parent peers are able to give them to start their careers."  It drives me nuts when I see people posting that they don't expect much from low SES kids because they are making that an excuse for low performance and lack of ambition.  If the kid is smart and works hard, they can do just fine, despite a low SES.

My parents were poor, even though they both worked 6 days a week.  We lived in an apartment with 1 bathroom for 4 people, but were in a good school district.  I was on free lunch at school as a kid.  I never get the outside tutoring, private lessons, or other paid enrichment that my peers had.  It was a strain to pay for field trips and the $75 for a graphing calculator for math class in the mid 90s was a huge cost for us.  There were way fewer programs to help poor families pay for school costs and colleges didn't waive tuition for low income families back then.  I was even docked points for every paper I turned in for my history class in 9th grade because the teacher wanted everything to be turned in on the new fancy inkjets, which were not available at school where I did my work using the library's dot matrix printer.  (Yes, that was allowed back then, or at least I didn't know enough to know that I could complain and my parents were equally clueless.)  I did not go to a magnet school, as they were new to Baltimore County when I was a freshman and there was no public transportation to get me there, and my parents couldn't drive me across town because they both had to work.  I won't even get into the social issues of being poor in a rich town.

I worked my butt off, was a National Merit Finalist, took every AP I could (including those not associated with classes), joined lots of school clubs.  I was accepted to several top colleges and was also offered a full scholarship to several MD state schools.  I went to MIT, then went to law school, and am now a lawyer making more than my electrical engineer husband (who came from an upper middle class family with a stay-at-home mom and who also went to MIT).  [/quote]

I think PP was explaining that they want their child to do as you did, and that they put an extra focus on high academic achievement because for a low SES kid that is the best path to the scholarships and education that will give them the choices in life that are more readily available to a high SES kid.[/quote]

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