High School

[kdh]

My family have been thinking about Adele's high school choice, and I just realized I'd love to know what you guys think based on your own decisions with your kids.

From infant play-group drop-in to 8th grade Adele's been in a Waldorf school. Play-based, outdoors a lot, learning through direct experience, thoughtful use of screen time, age appropriate learning (reading wasn't taught until 2nd grade), close families (a Hillary "village"). It's been awesome for all of us, but she's ready for something else.

All choices are good, mostly due to their being well funded. I'll call them public, exclusive private, and progressive (private) education. All within 5 miles. Public is 200 kids per graduating class, private and progressive are about 100.

Private: this is one of the less ridiculous schools in this category in our area, but it's exclusive (33% acceptance rate), so everyone wants it for that reason. Human nature. Maybe especially around here, but everyone wants their kid to go to Harvard, like they start worrying about this with them in the womb. So parents look at matriculation and count ivy league acceptances. Schools have responded by accepting like colleges, mostly smart kids who excel at a sport. Thing is, frankly, it's who you know, not what you know, often.

Public: More kids, teachers who are trained in "education" rather than what they're teaching. As much competition for who makes the sports teams and clubs as the exclusive school.

Progressive: Spend a lot of time saying what they're not. Not Republicans, not competitive, which is complete bullshit. The teachers freak me out, I worry about the sex going on there.

All of them suck I see having written this. Thoughts?

[kimbottles]

She might get a more diverse view of the world in public school. Just a thought.

[Panope]

If one is happy with the way one's self turned out, might as well do the same as your parents did with you.

Steve

[BeauV]

I wanted my two to go to public schools, for both the reasons Kim and Steve say. But, my x-wife (a private school->Stanford type) wanted private.

Our two were different, home schooled aboard SAGA through the middle of middle school. We tried a private girls school in Palo Alto for the oldest and it didn't work at all. She hated the cliquish stuff. She and our youngest then went to a private good-but-not-great school that was of the "who you know" category you referred to. That worked for the oldest, but the younger one informed us it wasn't hard enough. He got moved to a tough private academic place for high school and has done extremely well.

I suppose the conclusion I'd come to from our experience is that we kept talking to the kids and listening to what they did and didn't like about their schools, we moved them if we thought things could be better someplace else. Most of the input on wanting to move came from them, but only existed because then knew we'd listen to them and act on it. The results were great. The oldest went to Stanford (Biology), McKinsey, then Harvard B-school. The younger went to Yale (Math then Econ), Marines, and is now going to to Princeton's Woodrow Wilson school after he gets done sailing Uncle's Cal-40 around Central America. I have nothing to complain about.

Keith you seem eminently rational and obviously adore your kid. Having her feel loved, cared for, and supported is a great start. Hopefully, she'll be so successful she'll drop out of Harvard like Zuckerberg and Gates and make a few billion to give away to charity!

[JoeP]

I went to a Jesuit college prep high school which was great for me. The classes were demanding and the teachers were not just there for a paycheck. My son and daughter went to public high school (their choice) and did well there but they said some of the teachers seemed to be just going through the motions.

[kdh]

Great thoughts.

Perversely, in my town the public schools are less diverse than the private, as the town has no diversity. For the private schools diversity is part of their ranking so they have diversity departments and endowments to support the economically unfortunate while drawing students from the various cultures and skin colors around greater Boston.

I did fine, but I've tended to get in places through back doors and have been strategic with my career path and earning money, which was given a lot of importance by my parents. I went to a not-exclusive private college, Boston University, for one year. It was ok. The remaining eight years of college were at UMass Amherst which is a great school in a great college town. I went to public high school with probably 25% recent immigrants with great teachers of the AP classes and a great music program.

Beau, you're comforting in that I hadn't really contemplated much the idea that if things aren't working we just switch. There are no bad options here, but I'm sure you guys appreciate the concern we have for our kids' happiness.

[Tucky]

I second the "don't be afraid to switch" advice, from personal experience. I left prep school for public in 11th grade and never regretted it, also never regretted making the switch myself over parental objections, as they were clueless as to who I was:-). My daughter should have switched schools in high school but we and her couldn't figure out a good alternative to the private school she had always attended. My grandsons are at Maine Coast Waldorf School, which does have a tiny high school ( and working on a new building). Maybe you should move to Maine?

[kdh]

Tucky, I have a good buddy who lives off the Harraseeket and we've often fantasized about moving to that area.

Adele treasures and will always treasure her Waldorf experience but she's ready for something more mainstream, whatever that means. What's hardest to accept for her is that in high school she can't do anything she wants in sports regardless of her ability. The best kid on her Waldorf soccer team will likely get cut from her town high school team. Girls soccer has gotten insanely competitive. To not get cut and compete in anything it has to be done basically year round to the exclusion of everything else other than academics.

This is the land of the overachiever.

[BeauV]

Keith, the athletics stuff is a big deal, sadly now it's as big a PIA for girls as it always has been for boys. One nice thing about University High School, where the Marine went, is that while being academically VERY demanding it also had a few sports that it really focused on. EG: No football team, no tennis team, etc.... The boys did one or two of Lacrosse, Basketball or Cross Country. "Dad, they have a sport that lets you run around and hit guys with a stick!" Was my son's joyful exclamation when he was introduced to Lacrosse! His Mom was appalled (I thought it was hysterical) but for a kid who had ZERO ball skills as a side effect of growing up on a boat, this was a god-send.

Also, I wouldn't down play the skills you learned at a mixed up public school about getting in the back door. I did something similar. I had the interesting experience of attending a middling state college with 23,000 fellow kids. (It now has almost 40,000 students.) What this sized institution requires is that the kids get used to the idea that NO ONE CARES ABOUT THEM. Yes, I'm sure a number of freshmen get lost, never graduate, never do well, etc.... But for many of us the most valuable thing the school taught us was how to deal with a large faceless uncaring organization. This was to stand me in good stead the rest of my life. Like the old Wall St. saying: "Want a friend, get a dog." My college experience was a series of moves to figure out how to get an education despite no-one giving a shit if I was there or not.

There's lots of talk about a well rounded education, but most folks leave out all the ugly bits when they describe it. The stuff like learning to deal with bullies, learning to deal with unwanted approaches by teachers/professors, learning to deal with cheaters, learning to manage life yourself vs being "helped", etc.... I have to say this laundry list of the ugly bits was massively more valuable than learning Kant's philosophy, calculus, or FORTRAN programming.

[Orestes Munn]

I went to a small, progressive private elementary school and was supposed to go from there to the fancy day school where my mother went. As it happened, my school pushed another kid and my mother declined to pull strings, so I went to Stuyvesant, one of the NYC “special” public high schools and supposedly one of the best public high schools in the country. Going to public school was good: it was free, it was broadening, it was a few blocks from home, and there were some phenomenally bright kids there. However, the education was low quality in most areas and they ran it like a prison. My brothers and my daughter, who went to private schools, got a much better education in almost all respects, except exposure to diverse kids. My wife, who went to high school in a rural district outside of Buffalo, NY and was the brightest kid they’d seen in years, feels she was barely prepared for college.

The greatest generic weakness of ”good” public schools today is that they do not teach writing. They can’t, because the classes are too big. My daughter had to bash out a paper every two weeks in her advanced English class, and they came back with real criticism. That helped her go to college and beyond ready to produce a workmanlike product on short notice. Try a paper every two weeks in a class of 30 kids. I have to edit the living shit out of everything my people produce, because they can’t write a paragraph that conveys a technical or scientific idea effectively and painlessly to another intelligent human being. Seems to me someone else should have taught them that.

My cousins went to CSW. Seemed like a good place.

[kdh]

OM, you've got the progressive school right. Adele said "seems too much like Waldorf," probably because the people at the open house seemed different stripes and there was the "we're different" vibe from the faculty and administration. For Ann and me students' referring to teachers using their first names was weird, but that's just our New England sensibilities.

With writing Adele's been criticized for being terse, not flowery. She reads a lot, knows how to communicate. Terse rules the day in my book. No one reads what other people write these days.

[Orestes Munn]

OM, you've got the progressive school right. Adele said "seems too much like Waldorf," probably because the people at the open house seemed different stripes and there was the "we're different" vibe from the faculty and administration. For Ann and me students' referring to teachers using their first names was weird, but that's just our New England sensibilities.

With writing Adele's been criticized for being terse, not flowery. She reads a lot, knows how to communicate. Terse rules the day in my book. No one reads what other people write these days.

Yeah, that place is sort of hippie-dippy, but that’s what we were all supposed to want back then. My daughter’s school was a lot more traditional, but some of the teachers did go by first names.

Natural writers teach themselves by reading and assimilating, but they still need to be hammered. I didn’t really learn to write (if I ever did) until I had gone over about seven manuscripts in humiliating detail with a professional scientific editor. She was a big fan of terseness too. You and many here obviously learned to write very well, somewhere along the line.

My other private school experience comes through my wife, who holds the upper school psychology contract at a world famous Quaker school in DC where the higher achieving children of the elite of elites tend to go. It’s a fantastic school with amazing resources and a wonderful faculty, but operates at an academic pressure approaching that in the Marianas Trench. She could have gotten our daughter in, but we didn’t have the heart and I can’t see how it would have altered her trajectory.

[Tim Ford]

Both of ours went to a K-12 progressive but highly competittive and academically rigorous private school.

Was it good for them? Yeah, I guess. Was it better than going to a decent public school? I have no idea.

Maybe.

All I know is at parent's night, I was deeply envious of some of the course offerings and on more than one occasion teared up at how incredibly brilliant the instructors and curricula were. Not sure you'd find that everywhere.

Do a parent visit at each school and ask a lot of questions.

One thing about their school, in particular, it teaches kids to be skeptical, at least in the upper school...not sure you'd find that in a lot of places and not even sure if you'd want it. But both kids have a bullshit meter that is sensitive down to parts per trillion. Not sure what kind of life that leads to, though.

It's bit of a crap shot, if you ask me. Kids choosing the wrong peer group at any school, public or private, is going to a huge, uncontrollable factor!

[Olaf Hart]

Peer group is important, if she is in with a good group of friends I would also look at where they are going .

[kimbottles]

OM, you've got the progressive school right. Adele said "seems too much like Waldorf," probably because the people at the open house seemed different stripes and there was the "we're different" vibe from the faculty and administration. For Ann and me students' referring to teachers using their first names was weird, but that's just our New England sensibilities.

With writing Adele's been criticized for being terse, not flowery. She reads a lot, knows how to communicate. Terse rules the day in my book. No one reads what other people write these days.

Well, not so, I have been reading all of your posts Keith.......

[kdh]

I'm always struck by how influential one or two teachers can be. It was true for me.

Adele has some great friends most of whom are going to the public school in another town. They'll always be great friends but she welcomes broadening her world at this point.

I have great confidence she'll be a happy, productive human. At this age the challenge for us seems to be to butt into her life as little as possible and let her be who she is. Not easy. We parents are so protective.

[Orestes Munn]

Peer group risk does vary from school to school and you have some control.

While we are not big on religion, we consciously chose a Quaker education for our daughter because we did not want her growing up in the consciously "values-free" environment of a public school or the money-worshiping, socially competitive, atmosphere of some of the local independents. While there were cliques and some mildly mean girls for a while, the place was very decent and nurturing. Many of the social and other problems were addressed by the students themselves in weekly meetings for worship and the school's ethical and humanistic values were applied in everyday educational and administrative life. As anyone who's been to a Friends meeting knows, it's about silence, speaking from the heart, and listening deeply. Kids can do that in a real community. The school also demanded that parents be involved. This tended to weed out the kind of grossly materialistic or otherwise antisocial families one can encounter in wealthy suburbs and other places. It wasn't perfect, but it certainly helped shaped daughter into a morally driven, confident, woman.

[TheOffice]

We lived in the best school district in one of the best counties in Maryland. There was no class diversity.

My older daughter was sent to an all girls private school for middle school because she needed get the attention and be pushed to achieve. Middle school a/k/a teenage wasteland would have been a disaster for her otherwise. We sent her to the public high school where she did well enough to get into and through WashU. The younger one was self-motivated and wnet public all the way through, and graduated from Columbia. You know your daughter. What was right for one was not right for the other.

[Tim Ford]

What was right for one was not right for the other.

Truer words never spoken! Well, hardly ever.

At least both of ours root for the Ravens and loathe the Patriots...one of the few things upon which they agree!

[kdh]

Tom Brady. Best quarterback, worst tux of all time.

Gisele's niece is in a Waldorf school so her kids almost ended up in ours. No such luck.

You have to admit the Super Bowl comeback was amazing.

[Tim Ford]

Peer group risk does vary from school to school and you have some control.

In my experience, much less than you'd think.

We were lucky, both our kids preferred nerds to hard-partying jocks and fashionistas. Not so lucky were some friends whose kid went to same school, died of an O.D. a few years after graduation (wealthy, influential family not withstanding).

Unless you are with your kids, in school, and afterward well into the evening, you're really at the mercy of whatever values and intelligence you've already tried to instill over the past 14 years. Hopefully you've done an adequate job, but there are some kids who are going to reject it for whatever reason. Throw in a tendency toward addictive behavior and easy access to abusable substances, then things get rough.

[Tim Ford]

Tom Brady. Best quarterback, worst tux of all time.

Gisele's niece is in a Waldorf school so her kids almost ended up in ours. No such luck.

You have to admit the Super Bowl comeback last year was amazing.

HAH! Nicely played, Keith.

Hey, I didn't say they weren't great and Brady is probably among the top three who have ever tossed a football. But that doesn't mean we have to like him

At least they aren't the Steelers....

[Charlie]

Tom Brady. Best quarterback, worst tux of all time.

Gisele's niece is in a Waldorf school so her kids almost ended up in ours. No such luck.

You have to admit the Super Bowl comeback was amazing.

The irony is that, in that household, Tom is the second most famous, second best looking, and second wealthiest person.

[Tim Ford]

so unfair!

[Tucky]

So which one do you want your daughter to grow up to be like?

Is that now the question we've come to:-)