Education & money
Caroline Hall was supposed to sign the contract a month ago guaranteeing a kindergarten spot for her son at an Upper East Side private school. He had already spent two happy years attending its early-childhood program.But Ms. Hall, a corporate counsel, began ducking the school’s calls. Where was her deposit toward the $22,000 tuition? The school had an eager waiting list.
Related, Privileged children excel, even at low-performing comprehensives:
Middle-class parents obsessed with getting their children into the best schools may be wasting their time and money, academics say today.They found that children from privileged backgrounds excelled when they were deliberately sent to inner-city comprehensives by parents opposed to private schooling.
Most of the children “performed brilliantly” at GCSE and A level and 15 per cent of those who went on to university took places at Oxford or Cambridge.
See The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. Also this Bryan Caplan post:
The bottom line for parents, as usual, is: Chill out. Your kid will probably do fine whatever you do. And even if he does badly, your parenting is unlikely to help.
Reminder: these are behavior genetic insights. Parents presumably have more information about their individual child; i.e, how susceptible your offspring might be to retarded peer pressure. I had many friends with whom I played b-ball as a teenager who would laugh at the fact that I read books for fun and talked shit about it, but that has pretty much zero impact on me. The esteem of my fellow man has always been rather low on the pecking order of my values (this somewhat autistic tendency explains my youthful flirtation is hardcore libertarianism).
Labels: Behavior Genetics
I must be the only person who actually believes this.
At first I though it was somewhat strange that you would link to Harris’s book. Considering that the thesis of the book is the importance of peer groups I would think this would be one of the few influencial things parents could do. It says in the article though, that they hanged out with the same people either way so maybe that was controlled for. In that case though I wonder if there would be a larger (a) effect for minorities who would have tendency to hang out with people in their own ethnicity. Are there any studies that look at this?
Of course I do find it amusing that people who proclaim an inteterest in child development don’t seem to know much on behaviorial genetics.
Harris’s negative case was strong but her positive case was weak.
this somewhat autistic tendency explains my youthful flirtation [with] hardcore libertarianism
Out of curiosity, what in particular are your disagreements with hardcore libertarianism? (I’m assuming that by “hardcore libertarianism” you mean “market anarchism”.)
Why do people live where these (in my mind) outrageous tuitions are the norm? My youngest daughter’s out of state tuition to William & Mary was less per year than some of these secondary private schools. (Thank whoever for scholarships and student loans!)
Honestly, I have to think it’s more a prestige thing than an education thing.
(This from a mother who worked as a janitor to pay tuition to a parochial school for several years.)
“They found that children from privileged backgrounds excelled when they were deliberately sent to inner-city comprehensives “
They did well on the tests, but I imagine that they got beat up by the minority children.
Donna B.
Why do people live where these (in my mind) outrageous tuitions are the norm?
New York City is an interesting place.
Honestly, I have to think it’s more a prestige thing than an education thing.
I think it’s more of a connections + nice environment for your child thing. Though prestige doesn’t hurt. Unless you’re a genius, and sometimes even if you are, I suspect connections matter more than anything else. That’s why I pay for private school for my daughter.
As long as we’re showing the dirt under our fingernails, I went to lousy public schools and a lousy state college that I paid for with grants, loans, and money from construction and flipping burgers. Unfortunately I forgot the “work hard in school/get good grades” part.
I must be the only person who actually believes this.
The protagonist of “About His Deposit” must believe it too. I have a pretty good idea what she makes; she could suck it up and pay her son’s tuition if she wanted.
Some of those elementary and pre-schools have lists of later-prominent attendees that would knock your socks off–going back 20, 40, 60 years and more.
OK, y’all are probably right about the connections thing. I worked hard so my children could get a good education because I wanted them to go to college.
They worked hard right along with me knowing if they were to go where they wanted to, they had to get scholarships, else it the local state university and live at home.
College and grad school were where they made their connections.
As for “later-prominent attendees” W&M had Thomas Jefferson and Jon Stewart.
“how susceptible your offspring might be to retarded peer pressure”
“They did well on the tests, but I imagine that they got beat up by the minority children.”
****************
That’s EXACTLY the reason for sending kids to expensive schools. This is no exaggeration, this is not just Milhouse on the Simpsons. Now, even if there is no actual violence at school, at the least there is the matter of becoming a social outcast.
The great advantage of sending bright children from literate homes into dud state schools is that it inoculates those children against belief in sentimental tripe about the plebs.
I have a friend who managed to get beaten up at Stuyvesant.
I sent my daughter to the local majority-minority high school. She did ok: they liked her and seem to have considered her some kind of demigod. I mean, not every kid gets knighted at an assembly while they play Carmina Burana.
The great advantage of sending bright children from literate homes into dud state schools is that it inoculates those children against belief in sentimental tripe about the plebs.
I’d like to see some data backing up that claim.
A woman has got to love data that suggest that picking a reasonably smart husband is more important to her kids’ futures than obsessing about the minutiae of their lives once they arrive.
It front-ends the hassle involved, you know?
Anyway, majority-minority schools aren’t always dreadful, even when they are.
As long as there is some place for high-achieving kids to hide in safety, (science lab, band hall, theater department, whatever) they can still be successful and happy in their own little niches.
The rest of the school will largely ignore their existence, but that’s not so bad, really; it’s good training for the Real World, in a way.
Just stay out of the cafeteria, OK?
This is also a reason not to get pissed-off at teacher unions. The schools are not that bad.
ias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/06/the_truth_ab out_urban_schools.php
Although, this seems to show that the washington dc schools, as opposed to new york and boston, actually are that bad when you break it down based on school lunch eligibility:
http://matthewygles