Well, having gone to Harvard, I can testify that my experience was that there were screwed up people who went to public and private high schools. I never noticed any real correlation. You're certainly right that people who ONLY attended private schools often didn't have the greatest idea of how to relate to dumb, poor or just plain regular people. I guess I feel like my 5 years in public elementary, middle and high schools gave me more than enough of that, though I don't regret the experience. After dealing with so overwhelmingly many idiots for so long though, private high school was a breath of fresh air. I was actually fairly popular and well liked, and that wasn't 100% at odds with being bright, intellectually curious or ambitious.
Basically, I don't want my own children to spend their childhood in a school where being smart is a social disability in itself (I'm not talking about socially dysfunctional geeks here, I'm not one of those). Nor do I think they should have to hear the ridicule I received from my guidance counselor in ninth grade when I told him I wanted to go to MIT - he said nobody had ever gotten into MIT from our school, I should just set my sights a bit lower. Obviously he was dead wrong.
On the flip side, perhaps the reason I turned out relatively functional and normal is because I had a much broader set of experiences than most by the time I got to college. It's tough - on the one hand, you want to protect your kids from some of the miseries that were inflicted on you as a child, on the other hand you can't protect them too much or they turn into lazy, slothful spoiled brats. Hopefully when I become a parent I'll walk this balance carefully and make the right decisions.
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Basically, I don't want my own children to spend their childhood in a school where being smart is a social disability in itself (I'm not talking about socially dysfunctional geeks here, I'm not one of those). Nor do I think they should have to hear the ridicule I received from my guidance counselor in ninth grade when I told him I wanted to go to MIT - he said nobody had ever gotten into MIT from our school, I should just set my sights a bit lower. Obviously he was dead wrong.
On the flip side, perhaps the reason I turned out relatively functional and normal is because I had a much broader set of experiences than most by the time I got to college. It's tough - on the one hand, you want to protect your kids from some of the miseries that were inflicted on you as a child, on the other hand you can't protect them too much or they turn into lazy, slothful spoiled brats. Hopefully when I become a parent I'll walk this balance carefully and make the right decisions.