SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
In a recent study, we investigated how many of the wealthiest and most influential people graduated college. We studied 11,745 U.S. leaders, including CEOs, federal judges, politicians, multi-millionaires and billionaires, business leaders and the most globally powerful men and women.
We found about 94 percent of these U.S. leaders attended college, and about 50 percent attended an elite school. Though almost everyone went to college, elite school attendance varied widely. For instance, only 20.6 percent of House members and 33.8 percent of 30-millionaires attended an elite school, but over 80 percent of Forbes' most powerful people did. For whatever reason, about twice as many senators – 41 percent – as House members went to elite schools.
For comparison, based on census and college data, we estimate that only about 2 to 5 percent of all U.S. undergraduates went to one of the elite schools in our study. The people from our study attended elite schools at rates well above typical expectations.
Why waste $150,000 on an education you could get for $1.50 in late fees at the public library?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday April 21 2017, @11:18PM
Precisely.
The school environment is radically different. Though in the background the drive for results is that, it's not the focus. The focus is on getting the kids to the point where they know that themselves, and drive that themselves, and have enough interest, support and enjoyment to make themselves do what's needed.
I spent years in school feeling "held back" by my peers, my teachers, even the senior teachers and "best friend" teachers. They could not deviate, or take time to do things. I was a pest because I finished my work and wanted to move on and couldn't because it wasn't on their plan and they had to get all the others even STARTED on their task. Because I was "obviously" going to do okay, I was sidelined. There was little point wasting time on me when they could get a borderline kid into something that showed up on the results tables, or their appraisal. It wasn't just a handful of poor or distracted or overworked teachers, they had no drive for their subject because it had been sucked out of them by administration. I'm not bitter, I did better than virtually everyone else there, and I came out with the greatest gift of all - realising that's not how it should work and learning was a thing you needed to be able to do for your whole life. The frustration actually instilled it in me to do it myself, after a while. And the teachers who tried will always be the "best" teachers I will remember long after they're dead.
As an adult, I worked for state schools for about 10 years. The same was true on the backend as an adult as I saw first-hand as a child. Kids were side-lined because they over-achieved, while those who played up got all the time and attention. I started to take activities and extracurricular classes, as a way to give what I had to those kids who could benefit from it. It worked, I was proud, I made differences. I literally had people CRYING in my office because they lost pages from their lesson plan, I had teachers REFUSE to let me backup their data because it contained a lesson plan (like it was some kind of top-secret document) and they didn't want me to see it in case I gave it to another teacher. It was literally that bad (and pointless, I'd like to point out, because the lesson plans were not even that good and often cribbed from Internet sources and even paid books full of nothing but lesson plans).
But then an opportunity came up at a private school. I'll be honest, it was luck. I responded to a forum post for a job, at exactly the time I was hating the school I was at, when all the staff were changing for pen-pushing morons who couldn't speak to adults, let alone children. Instantly a reply come back that I'd be perfect and would I like an interview. The next day I sat an interview with a private school. Within a few weeks I was working there.
It totally changed my opinion. I stood at the backs of classes while I did my work (IT), or watched the lessons from afar. I got kids who were interested BROUGHT TO ME (the IT guy) because staff recognised an interest within the child and thought they could benefit by speaking to me and helping me out. It was literally a place to walk in, help people learn and then go home. Little else was involved, and everyone had a focus. Sure, there are endless meetings about all kinds of things for the teaching staff, of course, but that's more to do with legislation, professional development, and even just working out what to do and how to apply things. The teachers work just as hard but there's a purpose rather than a checklist.
And if a child deviates in the middle of the lesson, people know their subjects and jump off to deal with the deviation, provide the knowledge and then steer it back to the topic. It's all there, in their heads, not on paper in a lesson plan. I'm sure they have things written down. I'm sure they have to cover topics fully. I'm sure they have checkboxes to tick. But that's NOT the lesson. I've never seen anyone care about lesson plans in private school, in fact they tend to throw them all on Google Docs or a shared drive for everyone else to be able to see "best practice".
And the kids thrive. They make friends with the caretaker not because he's a nice old man, but because he shares their love of plants, or playing guitar, or even mathematics. The parents know the staff, the staff know the kids. The kids come to ask questions. They'll come out of hours, to anyone who can answer, and they'll listen and learn and come back and show you what they've learned.
Until you work there, you can't quite understand it. You can stop a random, say, 7-year-old in a Prep school. You can have a conversation with them just like an adult. They'll talk to you about all kinds of things. They won't clam up, or not want to be seen talking to you, or be embarrassed. Then they'll come and find you later in the year just to show you something they think you might be interested in because of that conversation, even if they aren't into it. They'll find their friend that plays guitar (or whatever) and bring them to you because they thought that the two of you might be able to talk and learn from each other.
It's an entirely different kind of atmosphere.
And I cannot see a single reason that all that wouldn't translate positively to adulthood, further education, the rest of their lives, career and experiences.
My school has things like "breakfast with the headmaster", kids look forward to it because they like talking to him and being invited to do so, and it makes them feel like any other adult to be allowed to do so and have the same expectations of them as any member of staff doing the same.
It's not because "breakfast with the headmaster" would turn any school into a fabulous wonderful place. It's because it's just a natural consequence of the kind of atmosphere, people and pupils that are already in place.
And, to be honest, I meet an awful lot of parents, and an awful lot of alumni (even the ones in their 80's still come back every year to talk to the teachers and look around the school again). They're just pleasant, educated, intellectual people. They'll talk to the caretaker in the same friendly joking way as they talk, swearing away, and they'll talk to the headmaster or the governors laughing politely in an official meeting. They get on with people at all levels, because they understand all levels, because people are all people, all different to them, and they know how to talk to the them. They're not upper-class twits or better-than-thou's.
They've been taught to be well-rounded individuals who just want to learn about others, and learn from them, and teach them things. And that's because that's what private schools have always taught them.
And, yes. Some of them are politicians. Most of them are successful. And one of them came back to work as a caretaker at the same school he was a pupil at 50 years earlier. The caretaker who has better elocution and knowledge of some subjects than the people now teaching it. He just slots back into the atmosphere because after having his life, he decided it was the best place to start his slide into retirement.
If I could afford it, I'd put my kid through that system immediately.