Does the Sorting Hat really take your choice into consideration?
We didn’t have a sorting hat, but we have a trophy cup from which names were drawn for one of two teams for all students, staff and faculty. And also unlike Hogwarts, if you had a family member on a team, you were automatically on the same team - no families were going to be split up by as field hockey or basketball game.
Ice hockey was popular in NE public schools as well (I played in HS). Wrestling as well, but only in some schools. But I feel like LAX and rugby were pretty much prep school things. They had them at summer camp too (which was basically the same crowd).
“Did you ever see big afro-hair in school?”
My biology teacher had an afro but it wasn’t BIG. In my day, most of the girls with natural hair kept it in braids. A couple of the black girls permed their hair
Do you have experience now sending kids to “normal” schools?
What is it like to go to a school with things like PTA’s and bake sales?
I have no children, but many of my classmates do. Their kids go to a combination of public and private schools. Some of them are on PTA’s. Some of them will send their kids to boarding school, some of them won’t.
If I did have children, I wouldn’t want to be on the PTA, but would probably end up doing it anyway because I didn’t want to be on the HOA board, but ended up doing that anyway:smack:
Read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld to get a very accurate look at boarding school.
I went to a co-ed Quaker boarding school for high school. I also went to summer camp all summer starting at age 12 or so. It shocks people to learn that I never had my own room in a parent’s home after age 13.
To answer some questions above plus other random thoughts:
My school in those years cost in the $12 - $16K range and I was on a large scholarship. Today it costs more like $55k.
I know who my parents are, loved (and love) them and they loved (and love me). I never questioned whether they wanted me, then or now. We have deeply attached and communicative relationships, and always did. I just happened to not live with them. I am however very independent to this day, to a fault if you believe what some Exs have to say…
Going to college I was shocked at how dependent some of the kids seemed. I had to teach more than one fellow student how to run a coin-op laundry machine. And people had no clue how to keep their rooms clean. My god. On the other hand I still can’t cook worth a damn because for 8 years (HS + College where I lived in dorms the whole time) food magically appeared 3X a day, plus snacks.
My own kids went to your bog standard suburban grade school and are going to high school in the same district. I was president of the PTA for 2 years. It all seemed very normal, nothing surprising there. If I could afford to and the ex agreed I’d send them away to school in a heartbeat. The maturity and independence sets you up for a lifetime of success.
No one rich or famous in my school while I was there, but definitely a few diplomat kids or expat kids. Also kids who were given scholarships from the inner city like myself. And then just your regular rich kids, like no private jets but large houses, trips to Europe, great clothes type of thing.
As a result of going to boarding school and then a Seven Sisters for college I am entitled and I know it. I’m not great at being broke. Luckily I work my ass off to make enough money to keep myself in a way that feels comfortable, and have never expected anyone else to do that for me.
No uniforms but yes dress code that was mostly about not having rips or holes or being inappropriately skimpy or sports gear at dinner etc.
My school didn’t have prom or any truly formal dances. I’m sorry to have missed out on that rite of passage.
I played field hockey as my sport mostly. In those days my school didn’t offer girls soccer. Boys soccer was the coolest sport, and basketball. No football, no ice hockey.
Lots and lots and lots of what I think of as “hippie drugs”. Pot, acid, mushrooms and alcohol. No hard drugs like coke or MDMA etc. Lots of drugs. Lots. Smoking too.
I got an amazing, outstanding, robust education. We learned how to write an essay and interpret classic literature. No fucking around with puff journalism classes or something. You spent 4 years reading and then writing about what you read. I don’t remember a damn thing about math classes. Science lab had amazing facilities but the really cool thing is we had our own mummy. That was legendary.
Boarding was fun - you had roommates all 4 years and got so close to them and loved and hated them because roommates. The year I was a senior there was a huge scandal because 2 girlfriends - the first out teenagers I knew - were roommates and that was felt to be fundamentally unfair since a boyfriend/girlfriend pair couldn’t live together.
Wow some of this stuff I have not thought about in years. I would uncategorically say for good or for ill, that boarding school was the making of me.