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Visit the schools and judge for yourself, keeping the realities of peer pressure in mind. If you see kids walking the halls in gang clothing and speaking in ebonics than its probably not the right place for your kids. If you see kids behaving how you want your own kid to behave than it is probably the right place for them. The location doesn't mean much compared to the other students. The students are who your kids are going to be learning from, possibly almost as much as from the teachers.
In my former 'burb (moved recently), I knew godless liberal tattooed coffee-drinking (no idea about pot-smoking) people of many different races and ethnicities! Those godless liberals and their ink come in all shapes and colors. And don't restrict themselves to city limits, for that matter.
My new home (in city limits but not downtown -- long story!) has plenty of godless coffee-swilling liberals, many of them tattooed, but it's admittedly not as diverse as our former suburb (although probably more liberal; could be a wash on the religious front, although our California suburban neighborhood had more religious diversity than my current city neighborhood). Both my current neighborhood and my former neighborhood have excellent public schools. It's been my experience that most of my godless liberal tattooed coffee-drinking friends and neighbors, whatever their race, tend to be highly educated themselves, and strongly value education. They are the kind of parents you'd like to have in your school community. Just as I also know tat-free conservative parents who likewise help make the schools a better place for all kids.
Last edited by uptown_urbanist; 11-13-2012 at 04:33 PM..
In my former 'burb (moved recently), I knew godless liberal tattooed coffee-drinking (no idea about pot-smoking) people of many different races and ethnicities! Those godless liberals and their ink come in all shapes and colors. And don't restrict themselves to city limits, for that matter.
My new home (in city limits but not downtown -- long story!) has plenty of godless coffee-swilling liberals, many of them tattooed, but it's admittedly not as diverse as our former suburb (although probably more liberal; could be a wash on the religious front, although our California suburban neighborhood had more religious diversity than my current city neighborhood). Both my current neighborhood and my former neighborhood have excellent public schools. It's been my experience that most of my godless liberal tattooed coffee-drinking friends and neighbors, whatever their race, tend to be highly educated themselves, and strongly value education. They are the kind of parents you'd like to have in your school community. Just as I also know tat-free conservative parents who likewise help make the schools a better place for all kids.
Yeah, but I don't see a problem shielding your kids at a young age. Putting them in christian schools that perform better than the public schools and are a lot safer with happier teachers which are treated better and not to mention, and by teaching her kids to think by Jesus and not have things like tattooed secular thinks contradict what she is teaching her kids. Honestly, you can teach your kids the way you, but REMEMBER it's not your place to judge or comment on how other people raise their kids.
Definitely make sure to keep the kids away from those horrible realities and experiences. Better to keep them shielded from that mess by keeping them more isolated from places and others that are different from them, in a big house with a tv in every room. Make sure to cram some ADHD pills down their throats and strict parental locking on every channel but PBS.
With this type of thinking, "good schools" can't teach them a damn thing, because they aren't going to see the real world until they're 18. I consider it "The Great Pretender".
Home schooling might be a good solution. Though I suspect ADHD is more common in public schools, and the (very small) sample of homeschooled kids I met seemed ok.
In my former 'burb (moved recently), I knew godless liberal tattooed coffee-drinking (no idea about pot-smoking) people of many different races and ethnicities! Those godless liberals and their ink come in all shapes and colors. And don't restrict themselves to city limits, for that matter.
My new home (in city limits but not downtown -- long story!) has plenty of godless coffee-swilling liberals, many of them tattooed, but it's admittedly not as diverse as our former suburb (although probably more liberal; could be a wash on the religious front, although our California suburban neighborhood had more religious diversity than my current city neighborhood). Both my current neighborhood and my former neighborhood have excellent public schools. It's been my experience that most of my godless liberal tattooed coffee-drinking friends and neighbors, whatever their race, tend to be highly educated themselves, and strongly value education. They are the kind of parents you'd like to have in your school community. Just as I also know tat-free conservative parents who likewise help make the schools a better place for all kids.
One thing conservatives and liberals seem able to work together on is the education of their kids (most of the time).
Home schooling might be a good solution. Though I suspect ADHD is more common in public schools, and the (very small) sample of homeschooled kids I met seemed ok.
I assume the homeschooling thing requires proactive diversity in terms of activities, exposure to others, etc. I knew a couple kids that were homeschooled while growing up, and one kid seemingly never left his house while the other had a parent who went great lengths to minimize some of the social gaps. Guess which one had an easier time adapting to public high school when the time came?
Yeah, but I don't see a problem shielding your kids at a young age. Putting them in christian schools that perform better than the public schools and are a lot safer with happier teachers which are treated better and not to mention, and by teaching her kids to think by Jesus and not have things like tattooed secular thinks contradict what she is teaching her kids. Honestly, you can teach your kids the way you, but REMEMBER it's not your place to judge or comment on how other people raise their kids.
Thank you.
Hey, I have no problem if you send your kids to a Christian school (although there is no guarantee that just because it's religious it's good, or better, than the local public school; maybe it is, maybe it isn't. And there's no guarantee that the teachers are happier!) Clearly if you are a parent who considers liberals or those who don't believe in religion or who have tattoos to be a danger to your child, you will want to keep them sheltered. But that's not an urban/suburban thing. Living in the suburbs does not equate to fitting into some sort of Christian conservative mold. As I mentioned, my former suburb had greater ethnic and religious diversity than does my current city neighborhood. I think it may have had greater political diversity, too, although it tilted liberal.
If you really want to shelter your kids that much, I don't know if it really matters where you live. Clearly choice of school matters, but if you're looking for that level of shelter from different views, you're also most likely going to have to go with private school or homeschooling, anyway (as you will, of course, if you want religion to be incorporated into the coursework and school activities). Because you'll find people of all religions (and without any religion), as well as liberals and social conservatives, in both urban and suburban settings. And in most cases, they get along just fine in the public school system. Now I can see how if you are very religious and need a particular church and want a large community that shares your specific faith, you may choose your location based on that -- but again, that's not a suburb versus city issue, or urban versus suburban school question, but rather a question of where are the specific locations that can support that lifestyle. It may well also be a school issue, but if you want religion to be integrated into the classroom, you're not going to (I hope) find that in a public school, regardless of where it is located. Public schools are, well, public, and are expected to remain neutral on religion. That also means that you won't have your atheist teacher (should there be one) trying to sway young Christian kids away from the beliefs of their family, if that's the fear.
Last edited by uptown_urbanist; 11-14-2012 at 09:24 AM..
No idea what thread to place this on, this seems the best of any. Here's a map of school ratings by greatschools.org. Greatschools.org may be imperfect but at least it's consistent:
Might want to uncheck private schools and perhaps charter ones depending on your interest. Now you can compare where city schools issues are most prevelant, and how big the city-suburb contrast actually is.
For NYC, the city schools were decent, even better than the national average as recently as the early 60s. That is for white students.
By the early 1960s, New York effectively had a dual public school system. In
its ‘‘white’’ system, presided over by a cohort of experienced teachers, students
read at or above the national average, and won a disproportionate number of National
Merit andWestinghouse Science scholarships. In the ‘‘black’’ system, pupils
in crowded classrooms, receiving instruction from teachers who were learning on
the job, read an average of two years behind the city’s white students, and dropped
out of school at a rate double that of the city as a whole.
It's all about socio-economic status of the STUDENT and not about the school. This is why greatschools rankings really just measure income and usually a lack of diversity more than anything else. If you look at test scores for the non-low income elementary school students in my urban neighborhood, they actually outperform the top suburbs in several grades. Now look at the school as a whole, including the low income half of the school, and it looks below average.
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