This is a newsletter bonus question. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
We live in a city with a lot of wealth disparity. The reality is that most public schools here are seen as “bad,” with a few schools that are seen as outliers (these all have mostly families from wealthier areas). My husband and I both in well-paid industries, and we own our home, but our school district is one of the districts that has a majority of kids from poorer backgrounds. We knew this when we bought the house, but we really loved our house and neighborhood, and at the time we didn’t have kids. Once we did, we decided then that we’d default to sending our kids to the local public school anyway. This turned out to be the right decision.
We have two kids now, in 1st and 3rd grade, and they both go to the neighborhood public school. It’s one of the worst-rated schools in our city, but we now understand those ratings to be basically meaningless. We love our school! The principal, the teachers, the other kids, and the families make it such a special place. My kids are both having a really great experience, and I’m very happy there. And yet: Our friends all think we are crazy. We have two other families we get together with pretty regularly. One moved out of our neighborhood when their first kid got to kindergarten so they could be in a “better” district. (They plan to move to another city for middle school.) The other family stayed in our neighborhood, but opted to send their daughter to private school. Both families are constantly bashing the school system in our city, and it’s getting kind of old, actually! They keep saying thinks like, “OK maybe the elementary school is good enough, but you’ll definitely have to move for middle school.” We’re not planning on it! I think they’re being racist and classist. But I don’t have a good retort to them. Calling your friends racist and classist is not a good way to keep friends. How should I respond when they disparage our school?
—Public School Parent
Dear Public School Parent,
I tend to agree with you that being anti-public school is inherently racist and classist. But I also agree that telling your friends that to their face won’t accomplish anything positive. Your goal is to get your friends to stop talking shit about your kids’ school, and I think the simplest way to do that is to just …. tell them that. The next time they bring it up, interrupt! Say, “Actually, I need you guys to stop with your critique of the public school system. We’re happy with our kids’ school, and it feels bad when you criticize it.” If they want more of a conversation, have more of a conversation! But my guess is getting called out even the tiniest bit will have them shut their traps.
Your friends, whether they know it or not, keep bringing up schools because they’re trying to make themselves feel better about the decisions they’ve made for their own kids. Any questions they may have about their own school choice evaporates when they remind themselves how “bad” the alternative is. As always, we all are trying to make the best decisions we have with the information we have available. I don’t agree with where your friends ended up, and it sounds like you don’t either, but we’re not raising their kids. Your raising yours. And they sound great. I’m glad you like their school.
—Logan
Classic Prudie
My idiot husband had an affair, and I feel like I’m going crazy with his and other people’s reactions to how he’s decided to move on. He cheated on me with “Elise,” eventually getting her pregnant—all of which he successfully hid from me until Elise slapped him with a lawsuit for money covering pregnancy costs.