Here's some food for thought. When I asked my friends what they thought stereotypes of private and public schools were, they answered as follows:Private schools: "exclusive, sheltered, academically superior, rich." "Snobby, overly cocky, pretentious." "Preppy, anal, good at blowing things out of proportion, arrogant." "Snooty, they think they're better than everyone."Public schools: "middle-class, underfunded, poor academic performance, overcrowded." "Stupid, poor." "Laid-back, heavily reliant on parents, somewhat immature socially and lacking in fashion sense."
Ouch.
We all know the stereotypes. We're all familiar with the image of the private school girl in a plaid skirt and polo spending Daddy's money (sup, Gossip Girl!), and there have been endless movies made about the social jungle that is supposedly high school who doesn't know the Plastics?
As familiar as we all are with these cliches, we also know that they're not true. It goes without saying that in any random sampling of public and private school kids you'll be able to find students who are gifted and mediocre, rich and poor, nice and mean.
If we're keeping it real, high school says so little about you and so much more about where you're from. In most places in the United States, high schools are zoned so unless you go to private school, where you live determines where you go to school. Some places have better school systems than others. Some towns only have one public high school and no private ones.
New York City, where I'm from, is an anomaly. With over 600 high schools, it must be one of the country's most extensive education systems. It's like a buffet of education you can go public, private, parochial, magnet or charter. But even in a city with so many options to choose from, public vs. private still means almost nothing. You can get an excellent education at no charge or a mediocre one for $30,000 a year.
Why does this even matter? At Dartmouth, there are kids from every walk of life our stats prove that. Maybe in high school people cared if you were a National Merit Scholar or got a 2400 on your SATs, but here it doesn't matter. We've jumped through all the hoops and passed all the tests that got us here. We had plenty of time to compete with each other in high school who was going to be student body president? Editor-in-Chief of the school paper? Prom queen?
Really?
Let's be real we're all in college now. Moreover, we're all in the same college now. Private school, public school the stereotypes surrounding each kind of institution are probably never going to change and maybe we shouldn't try to change them. We should just look just get to know each other for who we really are. Besides, wouldn't it be awkward to ask your new friends, "Public or private?" and back away slowly when you don't like the answer?
Take my freshman floor as an example. Within our relatively small group of 16, I count a tennis recruit, a soccer recruit, a figure skater, a hockey player, a rower, a volleyball player, two singers, two guitarists, a cross-country runner, a cook, a successful stock-market investor, a budding businesswoman and a debater. We've only had about a month to get to know each other and the talents keep emerging, but I'm never going to know who went to public or private school unless I ask.
What's going to be valuable 10 or 15 years down the line isn't what high school we went to. If that's all you plan to be talking about at your 10-year reunion seek counseling. Just kidding. But seriously, what we learn here is definitely going to serve us better in the real world than whatever we did in high school. Maybe my fellow New Yorker, Nas, said it best "Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined."
Who really cares about high school?
