Obviously you are unaware of the sheer amount of actual work and awesome parenting required to make this happen.
And spare a thought for those high-achieving kids - so many of them might have flourished at an offbeat alternative college like Reed or Evergreen State or Hampshire (RIP), but they’ll never know, because it’s only the quirky “different drum” types who get funneled there.
Most people, by definition, are “average”.
Success is more a matter of just showing up and doing the work than being a “genius”. It is perhaps arbitrary and unfair because a lot of the lessons that children learn will be from their parents in the home. I think it also requires the child to find something he has a passion for that he is willing to pursue in spite of adversary or even his parent’s disapproval.
Our side was diagnoses at an early age with high-functioning autism. So we always have concerns about his ability to succeed. Fast forward to now, he’s in his second year at a highly respected private middle school. Now he had to go through the application and interview process and get accepted himself (which he did). But to get to this point required a lot of his parents working with him on his school work. We also push our kids into a lot of activities (some they like more than others) so they can get the experiences that will help them later in life.
This particular school has been a great fit for him. He’s made friends, which he hadn’t done in elementary school. He’s found various clubs and activities he enjoys. Sp it’s been worth the cost and efforts.
Parents who aren’t as involved as we are, he would probably find himself struggling and unhappy.
Absent a neurodevelopmental disorder or other issue that impedes academic progress, I think most excellent students rise to the top, even in bad circumstances. I was extremely self-motivated to get the best grades and my parents never had to hold my hand to get me to overachieve. I was lucky enough that my passion was academics. I did not have access to gifted programming. I compensated by going deeper on the projects I really cared about, essentially holding myself to a higher standard for many of my assignments.
But a lot of kids who aren’t particularly academically gifted get a poor education when they should have gotten a good one. It probably makes the biggest difference to those.
And God help any kid at an underfunded school who has autism or ADHD. We recently moved from what was considered a great school district to a city with an exceptional public school system, and the difference in the level of disability support they are giving my kid and their commitment to his education is astounding. That’s just the gap between good and outstanding. Imagine how much worse it is in poorly funded schools.
Incidentally, there was an article in the New York Times written by a long-time advocate against segregated schooling who placed her Black child in a struggling public school district on principle, even though she could afford to put her in a private school, and after years of struggle her kid is pissed because she has realized all the opportunities she didn’t have because of her mother’s crusade to change the system from within. I’m not sure what we’re meant to make of the article - I think the author was genuinely conflicted - but I found her choice unconscionable.
There’s really nothing like finally having your kid in the right place for their education. I am experiencing this now for our son who is working with a phenomenal IEP team to help teach him the foundational behavioral and social emotional skills he will need to succeed. I know so many parents whose neurodivergent kids are not receiving adequate support at school. So many. I want to tell them all to move here.
This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about, watching my kid and her peers as they’re getting ready for college applications.
My kid’s in a public high school. She has friends whose parents are doing the tiger-parent thing with their kids – the kids are clearly gunning for Ivys, they’re doing the nonprofits and the volunteer work and the leadership and the college dual-enrollment and all the APs and so on. She has other friends whose parents are clearly not: they’re not less bright than the previous set, but they’re mostly figuring things out on their own and maybe they end up in more advanced classes because they want to be, but if they decide they don’t, or are anxious about it (even if they have no reason to be), no one’s pushing them that way. Those kids will probably end up in some flavor of state school, and that’s OK – they’ll get a good education there as well.
We’re somewhere in the middle. The whole modern-Ivy-admissions track sounds awful to me unless you actually enjoy that kind of thing (I know there are kids who do, although I suspect it’s not all of them who are gunning for it). But I’ve definitely always known she was extremely good at math and have taken a fair amount of effort to put a lot math opportunities in her way to give her opportunities to enjoy herself as well as excel. (And other things. I also made her take music lessons, more because I think music is important than because I thought she was particularly good – now she’s given up music lessons, though she still plays in orchestra.)
I think if I hadn’t done those things, she might not have discovered her love for math, and her passion might be D&D instead (which she also loves). Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think overall she’s happier this way. Not least because it’s hard to find a good teen D&D group! but she has a good math group with friends, she’s having a lot of cool experiences. (And also plays in one D&D group.)
I’d love to discuss this article more, if you want to make a thread. I don’t have the ability to gift articles – I read it off a gift from someone else. I have mixed feelings about it.
Damn it, when I just look at a draft on my phone, it sometimes posts it before I’m ready.