Anonymous wrote:My children are adults and teens. We live in a wealthy neighborhood with a mix of private and public school families. From my experience, the character is the same. Some private school kids have more polished manners at an earlier age, taught to them explicitly at their school... but manners have nothing to do with character.

Specifically for middle school shenanigans, I would say it can be challenging at any school, and it depends on the group that you end up in.

But I really need to insist here that CHARACTER is not equal to MANNERS.

Not all privates teach or enforce manners. Looking back I went to one Christian private that was super strict about manners but attended another, much more well-regarded private, where manners were not emphasized and had a lot of incredibly rich kids with poor manners and absent parents.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say private school kids generally are nicer because:

1. There is an admissions filter for incoming students that rejects extremely bad behavior,
2. Their parents can devote significant resources to their children's educations, and
3. Social skills can be placed on the back burner when parents struggle to meet basic needs like food, shelter, and adequate childcare.

Every group has hierarchies and subgroups... Of course bullying can be ruthless in any group...

But in general, it's easier to be a decent human being when the most violent kids can't sit next to you in class, your family is investing money into your upbringing, and you're not hungry all the time.

You're not understanding OP's question. She said there are a bunch of bad behaved kids at her DD's public. So, she is considering going private to get away from that kind of behavior. But with private, she is worried that the kids will exhibit a DIFFERENT kind of behavior INSTEAD: meanness and entitlement. In other words, she is assuming better classroom behavior at the private, but she wants to know if her concerns about meaness are valid. Will she just trade one for the other? Obviously we can't answer that because it depends on the two schools she is comparing. So, ridiculous thread.

Thank you for understanding my dilemma. In public, it seems relatively easy to just avoid the poorly behaved kids. Current friend groups is great. I’m afraid my super sweet girl will learn or be the target of mean girl behavior.

I think that it is entirely possible you'll see meanness and entitlement at a private. I taught in public and private and experience the same kind of really aggressive and physical behaviors in both. The only difference is that in private, kids like that are removed after a few months or a year. In public, you are stuck with them forever. But, the amount of entitlement in some kids is just astounding.

I had the opposite experience. Private will not remove mean, aggressive kids if they are the kids of donors. And if it’s a small private, you may have zero way to separate this kid from the ones s/he is bullying. In a public with 4 classes of each grade, you can avoid and ask for separation from the bully especially if there is a documented case of aggression.

Schools will be a mixed bag of behaviors, grades will be a mixed bag of behaviors, even individual students will be a mixed bag of behaviors (nice to some kids well being mean to others).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say private school kids generally are nicer because:

1. There is an admissions filter for incoming students that rejects extremely bad behavior,
2. Their parents can devote significant resources to their children's educations, and
3. Social skills can be placed on the back burner when parents struggle to meet basic needs like food, shelter, and adequate childcare.

Every group has hierarchies and subgroups... Of course bullying can be ruthless in any group...

But in general, it's easier to be a decent human being when the most violent kids can't sit next to you in class, your family is investing money into your upbringing, and you're not hungry all the time.

You're not understanding OP's question. She said there are a bunch of bad behaved kids at her DD's public. So, she is considering going private to get away from that kind of behavior. But with private, she is worried that the kids will exhibit a DIFFERENT kind of behavior INSTEAD: meanness and entitlement. In other words, she is assuming better classroom behavior at the private, but she wants to know if her concerns about meaness are valid. Will she just trade one for the other? Obviously we can't answer that because it depends on the two schools she is comparing. So, ridiculous thread.

Thank you for understanding my dilemma. In public, it seems relatively easy to just avoid the poorly behaved kids. Current friend groups is great. I’m afraid my super sweet girl will learn or be the target of mean girl behavior.

I think that it is entirely possible you'll see meanness and entitlement at a private. I taught in public and private and experience the same kind of really aggressive and physical behaviors in both. The only difference is that in private, kids like that are removed after a few months or a year. In public, you are stuck with them forever. But, the amount of entitlement in some kids is just astounding.

Both nice kids and mean kids will exist at any school, public or private, of reasonable size.

My children are adults and teens. We live in a wealthy neighborhood with a mix of private and public school families. From my experience, the character is the same. Some private school kids have more polished manners at an earlier age, taught to them explicitly at their school... but manners have nothing to do with character.

Specifically for middle school shenanigans, I would say it can be challenging at any school, and it depends on the group that you end up in.

But I really need to insist here that CHARACTER is not equal to MANNERS.

Anonymous wrote:A little different…in private you can get absolutely entitled and demanding students and parents. In public you can have feral children whose parents are checked-out.

Of course, if you’re in an UMC area, on a whole both will have mostly nice kids. If you’re in a wealthy area all bets are off.

This is a good point. If you are in a super-wealthy area all bets are off. I went to a school that had multiple kids who were involved in the Varsity Blues scandal and a bunch of kids who were unspeakably rich with absent parents (sometimes parents were in another country). You don't want that extreme.

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Anonymous wrote:This is definitely not something that can be generalized that way. Every school, indeed every grade within a school, can be different.

This.

This. My kid went to one of small privates in DC known for "being nice." There was a ton of bullying and other behavior issues. His public has stricter expectations of the kids and as a selective school, and if things happen the school is on it immediately. Not the leniency that seemed to exist in the private.

Small privates can be nightmarish for bullying because the administration doesn't want to upset parents (especially ones who are donors) and the school is also usually small enough you can't even separate a bully from the kid being bullied (like you would be able to do at a larger school)...sometimes they have to be together from K-12, and the bully's behavior just gets worse and worse each year.

Anonymous wrote:Same

This. But they’re definitely easier to keep in line with 18 kids and 2 teachers, than 30 kids and 1 teacher.

I think every school is different and you can’t generalize one way or the other. For example, people at a low key private school can be a lot nicer than a public school in a competitive area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say private school kids generally are nicer because:

1. There is an admissions filter for incoming students that rejects extremely bad behavior,
2. Their parents can devote significant resources to their children's educations, and
3. Social skills can be placed on the back burner when parents struggle to meet basic needs like food, shelter, and adequate childcare.

Every group has hierarchies and subgroups... Of course bullying can be ruthless in any group...

But in general, it's easier to be a decent human being when the most violent kids can't sit next to you in class, your family is investing money into your upbringing, and you're not hungry all the time.

You're not understanding OP's question. She said there are a bunch of bad behaved kids at her DD's public. So, she is considering going private to get away from that kind of behavior. But with private, she is worried that the kids will exhibit a DIFFERENT kind of behavior INSTEAD: meanness and entitlement. In other words, she is assuming better classroom behavior at the private, but she wants to know if her concerns about meaness are valid. Will she just trade one for the other? Obviously we can't answer that because it depends on the two schools she is comparing. So, ridiculous thread.

Thank you for understanding my dilemma. In public, it seems relatively easy to just avoid the poorly behaved kids. Current friend groups is great. I’m afraid my super sweet girl will learn or be the target of mean girl behavior.

OP- unfortunately there is no way to predict or avoid it. Things can be fine and dandy for a while and can flip on a dime…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would say private school kids generally are nicer because:

1. There is an admissions filter for incoming students that rejects extremely bad behavior,
2. Their parents can devote significant resources to their children's educations, and
3. Social skills can be placed on the back burner when parents struggle to meet basic needs like food, shelter, and adequate childcare.

Every group has hierarchies and subgroups... Of course bullying can be ruthless in any group...

But in general, it's easier to be a decent human being when the most violent kids can't sit next to you in class, your family is investing money into your upbringing, and you're not hungry all the time.

You're not understanding OP's question. She said there are a bunch of bad behaved kids at her DD's public. So, she is considering going private to get away from that kind of behavior. But with private, she is worried that the kids will exhibit a DIFFERENT kind of behavior INSTEAD: meanness and entitlement. In other words, she is assuming better classroom behavior at the private, but she wants to know if her concerns about meaness are valid. Will she just trade one for the other? Obviously we can't answer that because it depends on the two schools she is comparing. So, ridiculous thread.

Thank you for understanding my dilemma. In public, it seems relatively easy to just avoid the poorly behaved kids. Current friend groups is great. I’m afraid my super sweet girl will learn or be the target of mean girl behavior.

Anonymous wrote:I’m not talking academics, just character and good kids. My DD is in public now. There are so many poorly behaved children. I don’t know if they are bad or just don’t listen. My daughter is a great kid. I’m afraid that she will become entitled and learn mean girl behavior in private.

It really is the luck of the draw and the mix of the individual personalities in the class. My kids were two years apart. The older one was ina class that was terrible and mean and bullying all the time - both the boys and the girls. Too many kids wanting to be top dog or chum up to the top dog. It didn’t matter how they mixed the kids in the three classrooms as they moved up. Two years later, same school, same teachers, same administration - about 25% the same parents, it was a totally different class. They were nice and inclusive and helpful. As my eldest class made its way through ES, no one wanted to teach them and the aides specifically asked not to be with them. It was the total opposite of our younger child’s class, everyone loved teaching them and wanted to loop up. The difference seemed to be in the natural leaders of each group and how their personalities balanced the group or created strife within the group.

You never really know what the mix will be until they show up.

Isn’t that just going to depend on the kids? It’s random.

A little different…in private you can get absolutely entitled and demanding students and parents. In public you can have feral children whose parents are checked-out.

Of course, if you’re in an UMC area, on a whole both will have mostly nice kids. If you’re in a wealthy area all bets are off.