@panpacific There is also no point in justifying the idea of a boarding school to someone who doesn’t view it as “radical” and who may well be very much “inside” that world but simply make another choice for their kid.
I would guess that most people who are on the attack or even question your decision about boarding school in a judgmental way are doing so because they feel that your decision to send your child to a BS is in some way passing judgement on their own decision to not. They may feel that you are essentially saying “that educational situation is not good enough for my child”…that and of course jealousy.
The times when a green-eyed monster peeks over my shoulder, hopefully I flick him off and move on with my own life but sometimes he is a tough little bugger and I struggle to get him under control.
@labegg Your husbamd’s story sounds very much like mine. The difference is that I don’t feel that I had had the best opportunities and I wanted something better (on my mind) for my kids. And, in case you are not aware, in certain cases, middle class (and “semi upper middle” class) families can get significant finding from some BS, which would be much more unlikely in private colleges including the most generous ones. So finances could work out sometimes.
I would’ve been happy to keep my kids in our public school and wouldn’t lose sleep for the fear of them having a doomed future, had the prep school route not worked out for them. The majority of kids go to public schools and then go on to do great things in life. I get that.
@TheStig2 I think it can be a double-edged sword. In my case, if my private day school isn’t superior and it’s just a better fit for my child, then I’m an idiot for “wasting” my money. If I give an example of why my son’s school is better for him, I’m an elitist. I’m guessing if my son goes to boarding school, I’ll get more of the same. I’m just going to say as little as possible to someone who I sense is looking for a fight. I’ve considered deflecting with humor too. “We sent him away because we couldn’t afford our grocery bill.”
In a previous post from a few years back on this thread, the response of “We miss him terribly, but he is missing nothing” was mentioned. I have used this a few times with both benign and malicious lines of questioning/reactions. It has worked beautifully (–thank you to whomever originally crafted this simple and assertive response!)
Now that our younger DD has applied for the 2016 admissions round and to my DS’ same school, people around here are finally getting the idea that NO, he is not in a military reform school. The light is slowly coming on for some in that they are realizing that we are simply looking for the best education for our bright children.
I have to say that it has been fun to see the reactions of moms who ask me where she is applying for school next year. In addition to the magnet, private day, and parochial high school that she applied to, my favorite line is telling them that she is also applying to all the “Famous schools”, too 
This whole experience has made me learn how to 1) Keep my mouth shut with the ignorami (ha ha, can that be pluralized?) and 2) Talk to the entirely uniformed-rather -buy -a -Mercedes -SUV -or -HELOC-Kitchen-while-sending-their-kids-to-45-in-a-class-public-school set. You have to know your audience.
@PossiblePrepMom – you are not an elitist if you give an example of why something is better for your son. That said just like @TheStig2 pointed out – if you say " it really is about the opportunities they provide, that no good day school can replicate." – that superiority complex/false narrative doesn’t go over well and will probably result in the negative response that a lot of BS parents complain about.
I think a lot of BS parents do not realize some of their invalidity statements that they make that creates the response. If BS parents stated that they chose BS because it was the environment that was best for their child to flourish without getting into specifics, I don’t think you would get a negative backlash. If you say you are choosing it for the superior educational opportunities, I know I personally would challenge it because it is just not true.
We don’t get a “control” kid to send to one school while we send our own kid to another school and compare. So we don’t really know exactly what benefits that might accrue from our choices. Comparing the various educational opportunities is subjective. I also think though that markets are pretty efficient, and the fact that for every person spending $50,000 to send their kids to a top boarding school there’s four more people that wish they’d have that choice, tells me that a lot of people believe that it’s absolutely worth the time, trouble and resources. Can it be “proven”… I don’t think so.
We haven’t really come across any negativity as I’ve said. And that’s partly because bs is not uncommon in our area. But we did see it even in choosing day school for elementary and middle school. Our local public school is quite highly regarded. People do take offense when you leave the public schools In which their children remain. It is after all a rejection of the school. There’s no honest way around that. Unless asked, I don’t offer up our decision-making process. If people do ask I tell them what I think the pluses and minuses are.
PS Laenen, whether or not BS offer superior educational opportunities depends upon where the student lives.
Bottom line is people are easily offended nowadays and even when you share personal experiences, they are picked apart. This is not a debate team rehearsal. If you feel your child can have the same experience/academics in day schools, why are you considering boarding school? I personally gave up justifying my parenting decisions decades ago, was just trying to offer examples of what top boarding schools offer outside of academics.
“We sent him away because we couldn’t afford our grocery bill.”
I laughed at this. Our electric bill has went down significantly since the boy is at school! It was up in December when he was home, and I imagine it will be up again in March. :))
Seems to me if you approach non-boarding school friends with attitudes reflected in these statements, I wouldn’t be surprised if you get negative reactions. And if you are not getting them in your presence, I suspect they are expressed after you leave.
I’m not saying that parents who sincerely ask about your choice should be scoffed at for being unfamiliar with BS.
I am saying that the ones who cast aspersions … And again, this has never happened to us, but several people here have related it …are just plain backward.
Edited for typo
@laenen, I’m curious – why is your child applying to private day schools instead of attending a public high school? My apologies if you already expressed this at some other point in the postings, I’ve kind of lost track at this point. And I’m not trying to stir the pot here, I’m genuinely curious given your defense of public schools.
I will just mention this because it doesn’t seem to have been addressed. I talked to someone who strongly believes that it is immoral to send your kids to a boarding school thereby contributing to the culture of elitism, whether with your own money or with financial aid.
We make multiple different decisions every day in how we earn our money, spend our money and spend our time. And everyone makes their own (and thus by definition, different) decisions. Multiple people in our lives no doubt disagree, view negatively, cast aspersions, etc. on any number of our own decisions. But in my experience, if they do not involve our kids or how we are raising them, we are much more likely to shrug our shoulders and move on. Make it about our kids or how we are raising them and its much less likely to be so easily ignored. And I think the reason we are less likely to ignore it is the same reason he negative reaction/aspersions were cast in the first place.
The word “immoral” gets tossed around too often. But ultimately, I think the statement in this situation is a result of the same defense mechanism I am referencing.
Way back in 2012, I pondered the sanity and morality of this elitist investment, and I’m not sure that even now I’ve come to terms with this decision:
It’s interesting to me to go back to those words in light of where our son has ended up. He has made a choice to use his talents for the greater good, but he is rooming with a cadet who attended the school I used to drive by every day. They both ended up in the same place. Is the other cadet as prepared as our son? No. He had adjustment issues and our son has been tutoring him since the academic year started, but they will both graduate as Army officers. I guess I use this cadet as my “control” kid to see, perhaps, where BS made a difference. There is/was a huge difference in our son’s academic preparation as well as the ease with which he’s adjusted to the rigor and routine of academy life but, by the time graduation rolls around, I believe his roommate and all the other cadets will have caught up. So, what will be left? Connections? Fond memories? I guess I’ll just have to ask him four years from now.
In the meantime, I know we’ve met our goal of ensuring he is well educated which was all that ever mattered to us. But the question of the cost of that education in light of the world’s bigger issues continues to pick at me.
When asked “why are you sending your kid to BS”, what’s the best answer to not offend the questioner or solicit negative comments? Some suggested not to say anything that implies “superiority” but rather mention “BS is a better fit for your child”. Then the next line of questioning would naturally be “what is the special needs of your child’s that could only be met by living away from home”. It’d be putting you right back in that defensive position. You know what I do? I play dumb. I say “oh he didn’t like his school (I thought it’s great but he didn’t like it) and wanted a change, so we let him. We took him to different types of schools and he happened to like this BS best. We let him apply not sure at all he’d get in anyway, but he did. What could we do? He’s stubborn and we are weak parents. LOL” Over the years, I probably “told the truth” to only a few people who seemed to be genuinely open to the idea and want to explore different options.
Coming from my background, I absolutely understand all the “negativity” surrounding prep schools. I used to think they are for rich spoiled kids and kids who are too weak to survive the “real world” of a big public school. Not until after I talked to many private school parents raving about their schools and their kids’ experience (Thank god, I didn’t throw in negative comments to shut them up) did I have a better understanding of that unfamiliar world. Obviously, if I didn’t think it was “superior” relative to other options available to us, I wouldn’t take all the trouble and sometimes the pain to go through the BS route. But I learned way way back to choose audience. It served me well.
When asked “why are you sending your kid to BS”, what’s the best answer to not offend the questioner or solicit negative comments?
Here is what we say, which has the added advantage of being the truth. “DC is a very dedicated student, and this is what his school recommends for DC (a private DS that ends in middle school) and what DC wants to do, and we support DC in that because we believe DC has earned our support”.
This is just one person’s anecdotal evidence, but my own experience has certainly colored my view of this issue. I attended a large public high school – commonly regarded as the #1 public school in the state where I grew up – for 9th and 10th grade. I then attended BS for 11th and 12th grade. In my own case, I can say with some certainty that I wouldn’t have gotten into the college I did had I not gone to BS, but these days that’s not the differentiator. While the main reason I attended BS was my parents’ perception that it would help me get into an Ivy League school, what I got out of it was so much more than that.
There were 2000 kids in my LPS, which I think is a pretty common size for a very well regarded public high school. We had reasonable class sizes, plenty of AP offerings, a separate honors tracking program, ample arts and sports programs, and lots of extracurricular clubs. I was in honors classes, so for the most part, I was in a pool of maybe 40 or so kids who tended to have most of their classes together. The notion, of course, was that if you were in the honors classes, then you were with like-minded peers, getting an education that challenged you appropriately. And to some extent that really was true, except… (1) it’s not very intellectually stimulating after awhile to have almost all your classes with some combination of the 40 kids, especially once you figure out who your friends are and aren’t; (2) that doesn’t mean that you’re entirely insulated from the “riff-raff” (as my mother viewed them), and so you still had other classes or activities with kids who weren’t interested in school, didn’t plan to go to a 4 year college, came to classes stoned, etc., (3) the teachers taught a large number of kids in total, and didn’t for the most part have the time or interest to really get to know each kid in their classes individually, much less provide any additional feedback or help, (4) most classes were taught to a fairly rigid curriculum, set by the school board, so that multiple sections of the same class would be consistent and cover the same material (back then, it wasn’t so much a question of teaching to standardized tests as it is today, but it was similar in that the public school curriculum was pretty set in stone by people other than your teacher).
Then I went to boarding school, and I discovered that there were schools where pretty much every kid there really wanted to learn and be challenged. And even though my BS was 1/4 the size of my LPS, my peer and friend group was at least 4 times bigger than it had been at home. And pretty much every teacher there really wanted to engage on a personal basis with their students, and found intellectual stimulation themselves from the interaction with their students, instead of it being a one way street.
I do not by any means intend to disparage public school teachers. I know there are many wonderful public school teachers, and indeed some of the teachers I had in my public high school were undoubtedly perfectly good teachers. But I find it telling that 30-odd years later, I cannot tell you the name of a single teacher that I had in my public high school (and indeed, I can only even picture one of them), but I can still tell you the name of each and every teacher I had at BS. And for many of those teachers, I could tell you a specific thing that they taught me, or challenged me to do better, or something I loved about their class, or even something I didn’t love about their class but ultimately came to see made me a better student or person.
Many years later, I asked several of my BS classmates what they thought of their educational experience at our school. Every single one of these people had gone on to a very well-respected college, and then had either a JD or MBA from top schools. Every single one of them replied with some version of the following: “of all the schools I’ve ever gone to, I would say I learned the most at [BS].”
Was it worth the money my parents spent on BS? It certainly was for me. Can I prove it? No, but I assure you, it’s true.
There are good public school teachers and bad public school teachers. Both are overworked and underfunded. Each teacher’s personal ability has its limit.
I actually have no (big) issues with kids going to boarding school…my only issue is that i don’t understand how parents can let them go at 12 or 13 or 14…my kid was 18 when she left and I would have been heartbroken to have lost those amazing years before college.
(and this is not to put down all of the good reasons folks have on this thread for their kids being at BS…i’m just looking at it from the tender-hearted mom view