Public schools vs. Private schools (poll)

[psikeyhackr]

Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer

- Develop a strong work ethic

What does a work ethic matter in a world of robots where the economists haven't even discussed planned obsolescence for the last 50 years?

Do schools brainwash kids to think in terms of obsolete ideas?

psik

[west seattle gal]

Originally Posted by Hamish Forbes

Based on my own experience of having gone to both kinds of schools as a kid, I would answer this question with a resounding "yes." Exposing your kids to the lower 20% of the population could be useful, I suppose, but mainly for kids who aspire to grow up to be psychiatric social workers, police officers, or prison guards. My own take-away from my experience in the "diverse" school was affirmation of the age-old maxim "poor people have poor ways." Yes, of course there are individual exceptions . . .

Sad commentary. I disagree completely, and its actually this expressed attitude to which I would not want to expose my kids.

[Hamish Forbes]

Originally Posted by west seattle gal

Sad commentary. I disagree completely, and its actually this expressed attitude to which I would not want to expose my kids.

Please keep in mind that something is not sad simply because it differs from your liberal view. At least I have personal experience in both environments, which is probably more than any number of people posting here can say. Also keep in mind that you are going to encounter people with my attitude in your search for diversity in the public schools -- that's what diversity brings -- and that your kids will, in fact, be so exposed. If you don't want this to happen, then send your kids to a private school that screens out people like me. Conversely, in my opinion, other people are free to send their kids to private schools that screen out people like you.

[lkb0714]

Originally Posted by west seattle gal

Depends on the actual schools, not just private vs public as broad categories. In my area, kids would probably have the advantage if they went to the 25-40K per year private schools, but a well-funded public school offers much better math/science and other advanced coursework than several of the lower cost Catholic schools. As for values, is an elite population really preferable to a mixed income, diverse public school?

Yes, totally depends on the area.

I went to both. A prep school in the NE and a public school in Monmouth Co NJ. They were very different in terms of atmosphere, expectations and population. The were though both primarily upper middle class SES. The level of rigor were not particularly different when you compared similar populations. Meaning the academic type kids at both got similar educations. The only place I saw a difference was with the less academically, and more athletically inclined kids. At StJs, even the "jocks" were expected to work, sometimes harder than others, to keep their grades up. They would work late at night, or even on weekends, where that just was not the case at Squan.

As for population, rich kids, no matter the setting are up to just as much "bad behavior" as any other kids. There will always be a subset of any population that does drugs, gets arrested, and so on. With the rich kids, the frequently have more money with which to do drugs and much better lawyers to get them out of trouble. At the prep school, those kids tended to come and go quickly, because they were doing the prep school shuffle from one new school to the next every time they got in trouble. So it seemed like there were less trouble makers, only because there were few repeat offenders. At a public school, you get the same kids getting in trouble over and over.

So I agree, compare apples to apples. If you want to compare public to private, compare lower SES public schools to the lower SES privates (usually catholic schools). Compare the public elites to the prep schools. At the high end, there is not that much of a difference.