What Elite Toddler Schools Teach Us About Who We Are

I 'm reading a very disturbing, excellently written article in The Atlantic  - and had to pause to write to you. The article is about the author's attempt to get his son into private school at age two in New York City. Gone are the days when a Beat Generation girl could get "homeschooled" by local storekeepers--but then again I made that up, so there's a good chance those days never existed.

The article's author is George Packer, who writes about the alarming trend among the elite in cities like New York (though no other city is likely to be as rabid) to get their toddlers into schools that will propel them into the upper strata of society, like in a Thackeray novel. I've known for many years we were back in that world, though Americans don't like to admit it.

"When parents on the fortunate ledge of this chasm gaze down, vertigo stuns them. Far below they see a dim world of processed food, obesity, divorce, addiction, online-educations scams, stagnant wages, outsourcing, rising morbidity rates--and they pledge to do whatever they an to keep their children from falling," Packer writes. "They'll stay married cook organic family meals, read aloud at bedtime every night, take out a crushing mortgage on a house in a highly rated school district, pay for music teachers and test prep tutors, and donate repeatedly to over-endowed alumni funds. The battle to get their children a place near the front of the line begins before coneption and continues well into their kids' adult lives.

"At the root of all this is inequality--and inequality produces a host of morbid symptoms, including a frantic scramble for status among members of a professional class whose most prized acquisition is not a Mercedes plug-in hybrid SUV or a family safari to Maasai Mara but an acceptance letter from a university with a top-10 U. S. News & World Report ranking." 

Hello, Felicity (Huffman) and Lori (Loughlin). Hello private preschools and elementary schools that charge $25,000 to $50,000 a year.

Eventually, Packer and his wife send their children to public school (bringing its own set of problems, which you can find in the article). But his point that inequality is at the heart of what's going on is what brought me to write about this today.

My family was never in a category to even think about paying for private school, but I do remember bringing my son to a testing session for a "gifted and talented" public school. He had no prep for the test and didn't get in, and I didn't bother to look at whatever his scores were.

I'm grateful our Midwestern school system gave my son a good education, and being around musically-inclined parents gave him a love of the art. That and his talent brought him to a small Wisconsin college with an excellent music program that was perfect for him. I'm grateful for that too, and for the scholarships the school gave him. 

I can't help but contrast this experience to what Packer is describing. What is the toll this is taking on kids, the pressure they must feel to become not just successful, but incredibly successful?

Packer tells a story of parents sleeping OUTSIDE a school on a February evening to make sure they are first in line for a nursery school (called Huggs) that is part of the gateway to other private schools.

Reading this, I think of the title of one of my favorite horror movies, Get Out. I'm not sure where you are with all this, but if you can pick up this month's Atlantic I hope you read the article. It definitely made me think about how kids are caught between two extremes in what's unfortunately become a pathological culture war.

I hope one day (soon) we can do better. By our kids and ourselves. I really do.



Sandringham photo:  Karen Roe