Okay, so my 7th-grade-and-up school was very politically liberal and very wealthy; I can't speak to other environments. The basic expectation of the students -- I don't recall the teachers' attitudes, though they were making less than public school teachers in general -- was that everybody could afford lots of clothes, vacations, dinners out, etc. I absorbed that attitude; though my group didn't put much emphasis on clothing, I spent a huge amount of my parents' money on travel for the debate team and other debate-related expenses. And the thing was, I didn't notice it. It really was like air. One of my middle-school friends occasionally couldn't afford things, and I was clueless about why (and really I only remember it in retrospect; I either ignored it or decided to ignore it as embarrassing at the time, and can't remember which). Another had to leave when her father stopped paying child support, and she was just gone, out of my life.
It's perfectly possible our kids are going to end up at this school, which provides a fabulous education. But if so it will be an effort to help them be mindful that they're getting a very different experience than most kids, and not because they're so awesome.
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Date: 2007-09-06 12:10 am (UTC)It's perfectly possible our kids are going to end up at this school, which provides a fabulous education. But if so it will be an effort to help them be mindful that they're getting a very different experience than most kids, and not because they're so awesome.