Private school is a strange and esoteric world. Bizarre traditions abound. The terminology for the breakdown of grade levels is nonsensical (Intermediate School? Huh?) and diversity is virtually nonexistent. The football team probably blows, but the squash team is guaranteed to be nationally ranked. Swathing your entire torso in plaid is status quo. And the annual cost of buying into this madness generally exceeds the retail value of a fully loaded Ford Focus requiring some level of derangement on the part of parents, if you ask me.
I attended the same K-12 school for 13 years. I've effectively had the same group of friends since I was five. No one hooks up anymore because doing so would be tantamount to incest.
But I'm also one of those rare (and potentially loathed) few who had a phenomenal high school experience. I like to think that most people in my class did. Because my school like many of its small private counterparts worked hard to establish a sense of community from the outset and to create an atmosphere where doing well was a baseline expectation. It sounds a little kumbaya on paper, but I'd nonetheless argue that these are the kinds of things that give you a leg up on college at least initially.
(Not to imply that I set the world on fire with my freshman Fall GPA. But that is neither here nor there.)
Sure, we did a lot of weird shit. May Day one of those "bizarre traditions" alluded to above involved fourth through sixth graders participating in springtime rituals from the Middle Ages (including singing a song in Middle English, a song which I still remember and could probably perform for you right now if you were willing to pay me a small fee). If you were lucky enough to be in Mr. Parry's fifth grade class (as I was, back in 1999 huge win), you'd get the considerable honor of dancing around the Maypole, inevitably incurring jealous stares from members of the other three fifth grade classes (who'd all be stuck performing lame-by-comparison dances that usually also involved ribbons, large sticks or complex crossed-arm formations. It's fine.)
There's also the not-so-weird shit the more tangible scholastic features that make parents willing to forego the Ford Foci in favor of getting their children in the door. There are the oft-touted small classes, the high level of academic rigor and the commitment to creating well-rounded and motivated students. Is this a generic list of pros that could just as easily apply to a small New England liberal arts college? Yes. Is it nonetheless true? Definitively so. And while I certainly found plenty to stress about and bitch about in the moment, there was also always the greater understanding that everyone was slogging through it together.
I think that this feeling of "togetherness" is what distinguishes private schools not the resources, or the facilities, or even the squash players. The 75 members of my graduating class were all bonded from the very beginning by our school's unique traditions, by our genuine desire to succeed, and by the fact that we were all more or less nice to each other throughout the entire experience (largely thanks to an atmosphere that actively cultivated such behavior).
So forget the haters. Let's hear it for plaid.
