Ensworth Recruiting

[Redtwin]

I would still have to argue that with the "majority" of students, your education is what you make of it. As a parent, I believe that High School is about a lot more than just education and is truly about your overall development; educational, social, athletics, life. I'm not sure that the really small private schools prepare a child for life.

 

I agree whole-heartedly that intelligent kids, or athletic kids, or kids who are willing to work hard can be successful regardless of the school that they attend, but I also believe that in many cases, private schools offer the best opportunities to prepare children to be successful in life. For example, the valdedictorian from Vanderbilt's law school last year graduated from MBA in 2001. The valedictorian from Vanderbilt's business school last year graduated from USN in 2001. My college roommate, who graduated from BA in 2001, is at Harvard Business School. The class president from my class at MBA, a former Morehead scholar at UNC, is pursuing a JD/MBA at Stanford. I'm sure that there are plenty of publicly educated kids with similar accomplishments, but I believe you'll find a disproportionate number of them coming from small private schools. Just my opinion though.

[Indian]

I agree whole-heartedly that intelligent kids, or athletic kids, or kids who are willing to work hard can be successful regardless of the school that they attend, but I also believe that in many cases, private schools offer the best opportunities to prepare children to be successful in life. For example, the valdedictorian from Vanderbilt's law school last year graduated from MBA in 2001. The valedictorian from Vanderbilt's business school last year graduated from USN in 2001. My college roommate, who graduated from BA in 2001, is at Harvard Business School. The class president from my class at MBA, a former Morehead scholar at UNC, is pursuing a JD/MBA at Stanford. I'm sure that there are plenty of publicly educated kids with similar accomplishments, but I believe you'll find a disproportionate number of them coming from small private schools. Just my opinion though.

 

 

Here's the question, though, is their success more due to their prep school background or more due their own intelligence, work ethic and parent support? Sure all are major factors but nobody can convince me such students couldn't have succeeded at that level out of public schools too.

[cbg]

Here's the question, though, is their success more due to their prep school background or more due their own intelligence, work ethic and parent support? Sure all are major factors but nobody can convince me such students couldn't have succeeded at that level out of public schools too.

IMO, their success is due to several factors and those same students "could have" succeeded if they had attended any public school in the USA. The major difference is that when these same kids were still in middle school you had people single them out and start to tell them & their parents what they would need to do to attend Stanford, Vanderbilt, Harvard, etc... The educational environment that these kids grew up in was structured for them to be ultra successful in their academic studies. The academic expectations at the more elite prep schols are very high and competition breeds success. When all of your friends are working to get into the best schools possible then most kids just fall in line and try to become successful in the classroom like their classmates. Everyone knows that all of the kids from MBA, BA, MUS, Baylor, GPS, etc... do not attend one of the Ivy League institutions but a higher percentage from those schools attend the top academic institutions than those from public schools.

 

What I would like to see is what the top academic students at the rual public schools would be able to accomplish if they could attend one of the elite prep boarding schools. The only problem is that most don't have a clue about those types of schools or that they could receive financial aid to offset what their family could not afford to pay. IMO, after some social & academic shock they would adjust and do very well.

Edited October 12, 2010 by cbg

[Kevin38]

Here's the question, though, is their success more due to their prep school background or more due their own intelligence, work ethic and parent support? Sure all are major factors but nobody can convince me such students couldn't have succeeded at that level out of public schools too.

 

I personally give the credit to the student. To me school is more about social developement and IMO students get a more "realistic" social education in a public school b/c those are the higher % of people in the real world. I am not knocking private schools, but my kids will always attend public schools, they will succeed b/c of their hard work, not what school I enroll them in.....

[rollredroll]

Ironically, for all of the talk of private schools raiding the areas out of the country club zip codes to fill the athletic teams and student bodies, one would think that a private school would be a decent representation of the “real worldâ€, what with the melting pot of students roaming the halls. And yet, to think social education occurs only in school settings is somewhat short-sighted.

 

I’ve read rationale like this for years, and while I don’t necessarily have a problem with it (nor fault anyone’s reasoning), it seems a little melodramatic. How does one define a “real worldâ€? Is it a race distinction? Is it a socio-economic distinction? Take the three largest cities (MSAs in particular) in this state, and you see rather different worlds, even though they are all so-called “big citiesâ€. And while those differences aren’t necessarily numerous, there are distinctions. Go further and compare any of those cities to the outlying, rural communities, and you see even more distinctions between the various worlds, and in some cases on a different level of criteria.

 

The point being, “real world†is not singularly defined, and really is defined by an individual and the place and people surrounded by that individual. If you grow up in the most remote of rural counties in Tennessee, odds are you are going to return to that county and live your adult years (this is not a stereotype; I’d venture to say there is data out there that widely supports it). That person is likely not even going to even have a private school option. On the other hand – and not for the better or worse – the kid that grows up in a white collar family in Nashville and wants to work on Wall Street some day may find a private school environment more fitting of his/her perception of a real world. The comparison is a little tricky here, as there are plenty (a majority) of public school kids who work on Wall Street – partly a byproduct of better public educational systems in the Northeast – but the point remains the same. People gravitate towards what’s natural, what’s comfortable, what’s available.

 

My father grew up dirt poor in Roane County and forged his adult years in Nashville. He raised his only son in Nashville (but yet hardly much richer). If his “real world†experience in Harriman prepared him better for a life in Nashville than my upbringing would for a life in Harriman, I’d love to hear opinions as to why. Harriman sure as heck ain’t Nashville, I can tell you that (and vice versa).

 

On another ironic level, I’ll mention another aspect of the “real worldâ€; of course, with the understanding there is not one, true real world. The real world consists of all types – rich and poor, city and country, etc. – competing for jobs and the amenities of a community. Rich and poor alike share the same roads, utilize the same utilities. And yet, for all of the beliefs that the public school system is a microcosm of the “real worldâ€, many of the people with such beliefs espouse an athletic system in this state that represents just the opposite of the widely accepted definition of the “real worldâ€.

[owlbooster]

I personally give the credit to the student. To me school is more about social developement and IMO students get a more "realistic" social education in a public school b/c those are the higher % of people in the real world. I am not knocking private schools, but my kids will always attend public schools, they will succeed b/c of their hard work, not what school I enroll them in.....

The credit always goes to the student. I had a friend and neighbor who transferred back to the local public high school after the 9th grade and he ended up at Harvard on a full scholarship. It is the students that make the school not the school that makes the students. As somebody who has attended both public and private schools, I think your "social education" reasoning is overvalued. Wherever they attend school, students tend to divide off into social groups or "cliques" based on common backgrounds, interests and pursuits. Private school students are not likely to end up in "blue collar" jobs, so I limit the value of their rubbing elbows all day with future mechanics and laborers. The same set of learned social skills that work with one group - courtesy, cooperation, consideration - will work as well with another. The big advantage to private schooling as I experienced it was the lack of disruption or distraction (no girls at my school) in the learning process. Discipline was strict, order was maintained always. And since everybody was prepping for college, there was virtually no peer pressure to "dumb yourself down" in order to be "cool" or "accepted."

[big red big blue]

boy did you nail it RRR...

 

How you an individual chooses to interact with "the real world" or, I guess you would call it, "groups of people different from you" is going to have nothing to do with high school and everything to do with what you want to do in life when you actually have choices to make. Plenty of people--private school types, and public school types of all varieties--choose never to leave the cocoon, whether that cocoon is the small rural town, the inner city, or the country club white-bread world. Nothing wrong with that-- I doubt any of these people are less happy or less productive members of society because of that choice, but their lives are less rich for it, whether they know it or not. It's all about what you choose to expose yourself to, and how much you care to learn about and respect the people who are different from you. I'd say the parental influence here is no less meaningful here than it is in the case of academic work. Does it matter if you are surrounded by diversity if your parents aren't encouraging you to take advantage of it?

 

When I look back at my time at MBA, I'm not sure what it all meant in this department. Many of the people who were the most "different" from me and whom I could have benefited the most from spending time with, were, on paper, just like me (same economic background, same ethnicity). Some of the people I played sports with were completely different from me on paper, but the same in reality. Sports are really valuable in that way, but I'm not sure they are a real cure-all. Same with my time in the military...a complete melting pot culturally, but yet otherwise farily homogenous (attitudes, politics, interests, etc.).