Chat thread 95: old people can't hang anymore

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It's also possible that your local public school just sucks and you're fed up with their bullshit and you have $25,000 a year you don't mind spending to send your kid to the school of your choice.
 
DeacsATS said:
Just wanted to make the observation that there are a lot of non-diversity issues that make some urban schools really shitty.

I say this from experience, as we are one of those families that just made a move out of metro-Atlanta and a solid chunk of our decision had to do with improving schooling and having a better environment in which to raise our kids.

Some examples off the top of my head:
*Wealthier families taking their kids out of public schools and into private schools (which really took off around here when the pandemic started)
*Overcrowding
*Politics influencing every decision
*Huge gap in quality of physical facilities, even within a single district (though this admittedly could be due to diversity issues / politics)

My main point is that I don't think it is accurate to say that anyone who makes a move from an urban area to a more rural area is hindering their children's ability to cope with life.

And in our case, we definitely moved from a wealther area to a much less wealthy area.
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my point isn't that urban schools are better, they objectively are often not

but that there is more to education than schools and extracurriculars alone
 
This new translation of Oedipus I'm using has the line "I plowed in the same furrow where my father first planted me" and my class has spent the last 20 minutes laughing.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
my point isn't that urban schools are better, they objectively are often not

but that there is more to education than schools and extracurriculars alone
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and in my posts, I did suggest that parents would leave for "better schools" and never suggested they would do so because they feared or shirked diversity.

i also haven't had the opportunity to raise a child yet to the stage where i can assert any of my claims, only have the experience of myself and my own peers and the varying degrees of privilege we've all had.
 
townie what is your current thinking re: schools for your kid? are you planning on staying in your current house until he(? I think it's a boy?) is of school age?
 
My house cleaning lady kicks ass, and she has been doing a great job for the last three years and her kids and family are awesome.

But today she showed up in a Duke basketball shirt, and frankly I don't see how we move on from here. Tough break.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
my point isn't that urban schools are better, they objectively are often not

but that there is more to education than schools and extracurriculars alone
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Of course. I agree with that. I just got the sense that you were saying that for the sake of raising well-rounded and open-minded kids, living in an urban environment = good and more rural = bad. It's not that cut and dry to me.

For example, it has been a month since we moved and my kids (who were already active before we moved) are running around outside and playing with neighbors significantly more than they did at our last house. While we are farther away from the Zoo, Aquarium, and Botanical Gardens that we used to frequent often, the parks around here are phenomenal. The public pool is WAY better.

But yeah, it is less ethnically diverse here. We used to live in a neighborhood that was white, African-American, Asian, and Indian (mostly). The next street over was mostly Hispanic. Where we are now, it is mostly white and African-American. But I suspect the income dispersement is wider at our new school than it was at our old school. Of course a lot of that is due to the educational gerrymandering that was a big part of the more urban school district we used to be a part of. But that is a whole other issue.

There are puts and takes, and everyone's situation is different, but I think having parents that care and take an active role in raising their children is far more important than demographics (education, nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc).

And I don't think you are arguing otherwise... I was just "triggered" (not really) by a few posts that seemed to suggest that living in a big multi-cultural city is objectively better than not. I've lived a ton of places and my preference is not to be in a big city... Especially now that I'm at a point in my life where I don't have to anymore.
 
mako1331 said:
This new translation of Oedipus I'm using has the line "I plowed in the same furrow where my father first planted me" and my class has spent the last 20 minutes laughing.
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they're laughing because they know how many people have plowed the same furrow where your father planted you
 
TownieDeac said:
and in my posts, I did suggest that parents would leave for "better schools" and never suggested they would do so because they feared or shirked diversity.

i also haven't had the opportunity to raise a child yet to the stage where i can assert any of my claims, only have the experience of myself and my own peers and the varying degrees of privilege we've all had.
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Yeah, the allure of "better schools" for us was, as Biff more eloquently stated, all about getting away from the disfunction of the Dekalb County School System and not its student population. After listening to a number of school board meetings, it became obvious that it wasn't about the kids and it wasn't going to get any better. In fact, I'd argue that it is going to get a hell of a lot worse in the next 5-10 years... But that's a local issue and not necessarily a broader commentary on education.

And we also didn't move because of "better schools"... It was just a nice benefit of the change.
 
You can really tell the days I am less busy at work.

Disappear for weeks a time and then come back all concerned about the perception of the relative benefits of an urban vs. rural upbringing.

I have an annual physical this afternoon. New doctor. Hope he has smaller knuckles than the last guy.
 
DeacsATS said:
You can really tell the days I am less busy at work.

Disappear for weeks a time and then come back all concerned about the perception of the relative benefits of an urban vs. rural upbringing.

I have an annual physical this afternoon. New doctor. Hope he has smaller knuckles than the last guy.
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Damn how old do you have to be to start choosing doctors by hand size? Tell me like at least 45.
 
DeacsATS said:
Of course. I agree with that. I just got the sense that you were saying that for the sake of raising well-rounded and open-minded kids, living in an urban environment = good and more rural = bad. It's not that cut and dry to me.
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sorry if I misrepresented my opinion

my point was that when parents say the driving factor for leaving for suburbs is education and they go on to only discuss schools, I think that's a narrow-minded view of education

there are lots of reasons to move to the suburbs and schools are a huge factor, but I push back on the idea that "schools" and "education" are interchangeable here
 
ATS is now probably paying less in local property taxes (used to fund schools) and gets better schools in the trade.
 
WFcatamount22 said:
Damn how old do you have to be to start choosing doctors by hand size? Tell me like at least 45.
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I have both prostate and colon cancer in my family, so 40 was the big year.

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My wife and I have had these discussions. We picked our neighborhood in large part because of the school district.

My parents want us to move out where they are, which I would love but don’t want our kids growing up in a bubble with a bunch of entitled country club jerks.

At the same time (it’s not an issue for us but) we recognize the pandemic is going to create even larger disparities in education between those whose parents can hire tutors or send them to private school and those who can’t. But what are we supposed to do? Not do those things just because others can’t?
 
to townie's good point, the state has totally failed to prevent segregation along race and class lines and it puts parents (and everyone) in a losing situation

this is the result of letting the free market reign supreme when it comes to income and housing
 
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