The New York Times magazine profiled the Avenues school in New York City. Avenues is a private school that was recently opened by the media and education entrepreneur H. Christopher Whittle; Alan Greenberg, a former publisher of Esquire magazine; and the former Yale president Benno C. Schmidt Jr. (and current chair of the Board of Trustees of CUNY colleges).
Working with $85 million in start up money and annual tuition payments of $43,000 per child, they are tapping the great minds to build the most perfect school ever. Sound good, doesn't it? Imagine having a blank check to create the perfect school. Imagine building your own team of fresh, energetic teachers and consultants from scratch. Sound good, right?
The problem with building a school that needs rich parents and their tuition payments is that you have to deal with the parents. You'll have to sell your program to them. Any education program would have to sound fun and new. So, you couldn't sell an old school program that had the kids read the classics and write, re-write, and re-write essays.
The school also has to deal with parental anxieties. There are meetings, after meetings.
And then there was the food committee. After the PowerPoint presentation concluded in the black-box theater, the questions started flying: Why so much bread? What was the policy on genetically modified organisms? Why no sushi? Nancy Schulman, the head of Avenues’ Early Learning Center, who was sitting among the parents that night, has a theory about the wealthy parents of young children. Privileged parents want to control everything in their kids’ lives. When the kids go to school, the parents can’t control what happens for eight long hours; hence, food. She dutifully worked with parents to implement many of their ideas, including more education about nutrition, and more snack time.
The article mocks the mission of the school, which seeks to provide the kids with humility. They want to promote humility, because elite colleges and businesses say that super rich kids coming out of New York City are too arrogant. Elite colleges are sick of them, and companies end up firing them. The idea of an exclusive, expensive, elite school creating committees trying to figure out how to make rich kids less arrogant is a little wonderful.
I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in a wealthy town. The professors lived on the same blocks with the cops. The lawyers, doctors, CEOs, and the occasional musician lived on the other side of town. So, I thought I knew rich people, until I moved to Manhattan and took my first job as an editorial assistant at major book publisher. While I entirely supported myself on my $15,500 salary (rent, food, entertainment, clothes), some of the other assistants were society page types whose daddies paid the rent on their midtown apartments. Their salary was pocket change that contributed towards their entertainment funds. One fellow assistant told me that she had never ridden on a subway before.
How do you teach rich kids humility?
Apt. 11d 
As Laura sort of suggests, traditional upper class education was actually pretty good at teaching rich kids humility, by sending them (at least the boys) to the wilds of New England to live in Spartan surroundings under strict discipline and rigorous grading.
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Laura said:
“Sound good, right?”
No, sounds terrible. See, for example Bill Gates’ School of the future and Disney’s model school in Celebration. They were, at least initially, awful places to send your kids.
y81:
“As Laura sort of suggests, traditional upper class education was actually pretty good at teaching rich kids humility, by sending them (at least the boys) to the wilds of New England to live in Spartan surroundings under strict discipline and rigorous grading.”
There are some amazing memoirs of English boarding school life–awful food, cold, beatings, terrible pedagogy, awful bullying, and sexual exploitation of younger boys by older boys (there are some very vivid chapters in C.S. Lewis’s memoir Surprised by Joy). As Orwell said, the British middle class treats its kids worse than it treats the working class.
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New England boarding schools still exist. I don’t know if they teach humility, so much as kick out those who are too arrogant to learn. Which is in the schools’ best interest, as who wants to be known as Paris Hilton’s alma mater? The leading schools can select the students they want, so the truly arrogant jerk won’t get in.
Are “not for self alone” or “to serve is to reign” humble slogans? I don’t think so. Is noblesse oblige humble?
I looked at Avenues’ website when it was first announced. At that time, the curriculum was really fill-in-the-blank on the website, apart from assurances that it would be international/world class/innovative/sure-to-impress-admissions-officers. Fascinating they’ve reoriented themselves to humility, if only of a world class/innovative/sure-to-impress-admissions-officers sort.
At present, this is a K-9 school, correct? And upper class parents are very controlling through middle school. After that, my impression is many transition to ignoring their students, except for demanding good grades. (It could be different at day schools.) The age of the student body makes a huge difference. High school students will riot if they’re not allowed to leave campus briefly to buy fast food.
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“How do you teach rich kids humility? ”
It’s really really hard. Even when one sets up artificial environments in which they have to fend for themselves, they still have the backstop of wealth. I have a couple of books on teaching about money to privileged kids (“silver spoon kids” and the like). It’s not easy to give kids everything they might want or need (including the love that means that you aren’t going to let anything really bad happen to them) and still teach them that they are not the center of the universe and still have responsibilities to each other and the world.
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bj said:
“I have a couple of books on teaching about money to privileged kids (“silver spoon kids” and the like). It’s not easy to give kids everything they might want or need (including the love that means that you aren’t going to let anything really bad happen to them) and still teach them that they are not the center of the universe and still have responsibilities to each other and the world.”
I remember reading somewhere in a book by Judith Martin that traditionally, wealthy families often kept their kids on a very short financial leash.
I think our kids have everything they need, but (perhaps because of my own WASP upbringing) I can’t even imagine wanting to give them everything they want. Maybe if we were richer it would be more of an issue–if I got everything my little heart desired, I might feel guiltier about saying no to the kids. As it is, I don’t get everything I want, the kids are able to earn money, and if they want something that I think is frivolous (but not harmful), they can buy it themselves. We’ve been doing this for years and now that our big kids are 10 and 8, their acquisitive passions have cooled quite a bit. If you ask the 8-year-old what he wants to do with birthday checks from grandparents, he’s very likely to say that he wants to have it deposited in his money market account.
I’m not totally sure on how I’m doing on teaching them “that they are not the center of the universe and still have responsibilities to each other and the world,” but having a new baby and having them pick up the slack at home probably helps to some degree. If we were rich enough to have full-time help, it would definitely be trickier.
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The problem is often thought to stem from parents who give their children lots of things, but little attention. (and I’m not counting worrying about lunchroom carbohydrates as attention.)
I recommend _Family Matters_, by Robert Evans, on this issue.
It is idiotic to give a teenager a large allowance. If the basics are covered, clothing, food, shelter, what might a teen spend the money on? A dangerous dilemma for a child.
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Regarding New England boarding schools:
1. Nothing I have ever read has suggested that they had the levels of homosexual activity that English schools had in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
2. I dont’ know if they do the same job of instilling humility that they used to. My perception is that they have grown less Spartan. They have certainly become less isolated. In fairness, they are still academically rigorous.
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I believe that some people give their teenagers independent access to relatively large pots of money, with the explicit understanding that some clothing and food *aren’t* covered. Here’s your “allowance” for the semester; use it to buy your school clothes and whenever you want to go out to lunch/buy lunch at school. (And buy birthday/holiday presents for family and friends, and go out to movies, and go ice skating, etc.) The parents still stock the house with food–if the kid runs out of money early on, he or she will just have to make his/her own lunch and brown bag it.
I don’t have a teenager yet, but I’m already trying to figure out how much money (and freedom to screw up with it) to trust my kindergartner with. Enough to buy lunch once per week at school, and let him choose which day? (or if he saves it, he can use it for something else?) I can imagine that leading to slow-but-steady development of financial sense. It won’t teach investing, but it introduces the rudiments of budgeting.
I worry about teenagers heading off to college, making crazy decisions about how to spend their stipends or their student loans. Maybe that ski trip is WORTH two weeks of ramen for lunch and dinner, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be *surprised* when you run out of grocery money. And I really hate it when a student comes to my office at the end of term and explains he has a 0% homework grade because he never bought the textbook.
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In high school, our daughter had separate allowances (clothing, walking around, buying Christmas presents, etc.), but now that she is in college, we give her a single integrated allowance. If she chooses to buy clothing and eat noodles, it’s up to her. However, there are a few things paid directly rather than out of her allowance: tuition (obviously), textbooks, travel at the beginning and end of term and school vacations, medical, maybe something else I’m not remembering.
I can’t we did a great job teaching her humility, but she does seem fairly competent (for a 19-year-old) at managing money.
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That’s a great deal more structure than I had. I was given a lump sum to get me through college and into life. It was a generous amount of money, but it was just one shot.
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Knowing that I needed to buy a computer kept me drinking Old Milwaukee to save money.
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You don’t. I don’t believe that is the true mandate of the school any more than Google is not evil in its own way. I think Fitzgerald said it best:
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.
I went to a school that was merit-based but drew from a crowd that included some real elite kids, and personally I think the best way to teach a small amount of humility — or rather, a work ethic, which is different — is grade hard, and make sure you have enough scholarships that the rich kids are up against really smart not-rich kids.
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“make sure you have enough scholarships that the rich kids are up against really smart not-rich kids.”
yeah, the competition has to be real. But then, those really smart non-rich kid are being used for their utilitarian value, aren’t they? I think rich schools spend quite a bit of time looking for those kids, who are going to give a well-rounded experience to the rich kids.
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I agree bj, although I think like most things it is probably mixed motivation – not just because some people will want to truly help smart kids but because I think any good school will invest in its students. But I think when it comes to setting up particular academic environments they are a commodity.
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What bj and JennG say is true, but let us note that the administrators of the typical school, who are not themselves rich (Whittle being an anomaly in this regard), are not interested in the rich kids for their own sake either, but only for their parents’ money. All the children are commodities.
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It’s really really hard. Even when one sets up artificial environments in which they have to fend for themselves, they still have the backstop of wealth. I have a couple of books on teaching about money to privileged kids (“silver spoon kids” and the like). It’s not easy to give kids everything they might want or need (including the love that means that you aren’t going to let anything really bad happen to them) and still teach them that they are not the center of the universe and still have responsibilities to each other and the world.
My ex husband was from a wealthy family who gave him everything he asked for but not any sort of accessible money. Their method seemed to be: coddle the children at home, and cut them completely loose when they move out. He also was from a Commonwealth country and attended an elite religiously affiliated all-boys boarding school, where AFAICT he and his friends partied all the time in their various summer homes and smoked a lot of pot and maybe did some coke. But anyways, I found that his upbringing produced a personality that was the worst of all worlds. He had very expensive tastes, almost no work ethic to speak of, and absolutely no ability to “eat bitterness” as the Chinese would say, but his much more straightened circumstances living with me just made him petulant and resentful rather than motivating him to work hard and earn lots of money himself. He was mostly un- and underemployed because he turned up his nose at most entry level work, arguing it was terrible and the pay was a pittance compared to what he was used to, except he didn’t have his own trust fund or an allowance to live off of.
The biggest problem with my ex, I think, was he had never had to work for anything, ever, so when the time came to work, he was completely unprepared. I think this is the biggest handicap rich parents can give their children, especially if the wealth is such that a lazy and entitled kid could blow through it in one generation. As much as I dislike Donald Trump, it’s clear his children know how to work. This is also why I can’t really hate Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian, because however superficial or flawed, they both also work hard for their money. (I know Paris is a trust fund baby, but apparently she earned all or most of the money she spent, and didn’t live off her trust fund.)
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I can’t summon up too much sympathy for rich kids. Their entitlement and arrogance is their Achilles heel that equalizes the difference between the rich and the middle class once they hit the job world.
But that aside, I think all kids can learn the lessons of hard work and humility. I see too many middle class kids and even working class kids struggling in that area. We’re all trying to emulate the rich families, so we give our kids too much. Second mortgages on the house to pay for elite schools, fancy computer and gaming systems, expensive sports camps.
This summer, Jonah isn’t going to the fancy day camp that he’s attended for the past seven summers. This year, he is working for free at the local Y as a counselor-in-training. He’ll be helping out with the little kids all day throughout July. He understands that this experience will help him get a paying job the following summer. He’s actually really into it. We’re not pushing it very hard. I helped him fill out the application, but he’s handling the rest of the paperwork on his own.
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“This year, he is working for free at the local Y as a counselor-in-training.”
Awww.
(I think the colleges will like that, by the way.)
I’m pretty solidly against giving junior high or high school kids cash for lunches, as it will not necessarily be spent on what grownups would deem lunch. I’ve told the story before, but when I was in high school, there was a long stretch where I was turning my lunch money into cherry LifeSavers and a grape juice box instead of actual lunch. I talked to my sister recently, and she did something similar with her field trip money–instead of purchasing a sandwich, she’d buy a big bag of cookies or half a dozen Rice Krispie treats.
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The Millionaire Next Door talks about the phenomenon of moving to the better neighborhood (usually for the schools) and all of a sudden finding that there’s all this pressure to live the same lifestyle as one’s neighbors. At my kid’s public school, there is a trip to Europe every year for the band and orchestra and French club and German club, etc. and there are kids who go EVERY YEAR. I still can’t figure out how they’re funding that and college, particularly when they have multiple kids.
Our middle child is fifteen and she just got a summer job as a lifeguard. We send our younger two to private school for a variety of reasons and all of their friends from the private school have year round and summer jobs, while the kids from the public school mostly don’t. Still haven’t figured that one out either.
I agree about preparing kids to handle the adversity that will come eventually — a period of unemployment, having to lie frugally for a couple of months til the job or fellowship kicks in, taking a job that’s beneath you and doesn’t pay well. I’m not sure how Mr. or Miss “I took a trip to Europe every single year I was in high school” would do in that situation. We won’t be finding out — because we’ve learned how to say no. A lot.
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I have a (will be 14)-year-old this summer, and I don’t know what to do with her. It’s time for her to start thinking about summer job-type things, but she is so resistant because of all the stupid teen reasons, which all revolve around OMG, I don’t know what to do I’ll look stupid I hate people. Or is that just my own daughter? My own fault for marrying a misanthropist. She doesn’t ask for a lot money-wise and seems willing to do without, so there’s no financial incentive. I suppose I could stop buying her basic clothing and food, but that seems somewhat abusive.
However, she does read a lot. The other night she read Candide, just so if her teacher asked in class if anyone had ever read it, she could raise her hand and say she did. Now she’s reading Eleanor and Park, which I’ve already read and loved (if Gone Girl makes you feel dirty, E&P makes you feel clean and glowing and 16 and in love for the first time again. Great book).
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I also think it’s adorable that Jonah will be a CIT. My daughter will be ta’ing a clamp of 1-2nd graders at her school for a week this summer. It is my idea of hell, but she wanted to do it.
I think part of the issue is that not every child is suitable for the kinds of jobs that appear for these young kids. CIT is great (kind of like Amy’s kids, naturally, coping with having family responsibilities for an infant), meaningful contributions. But, if a kid isn’t suited to being a caretaker (CIT, babysitting, . . .)? where can they make a meaningful contribution, in the kinds of work available to young children? They have to be more entrepreneurial and figure things out.
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Another kid I know took on a dog walking business for the summer (last summer).
(and, a camp, not a clamp, though it might be a crazy camp)
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“…but she is so resistant because of all the stupid teen reasons, which all revolve around OMG, I don’t know what to do I’ll look stupid I hate people.”
I hear Slushy Dawg is hiring. The uniform is cute!
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It’s possible that kids turn up their noses at low-end jobs because they see their *parents* turn up their noses first. I really worry about this when it comes to our cleaning service – when I try to clean the house without help, it ends with me screaming at everyone, tears, and a huge fight with my husband. And so I hire a service. And so I have children who literally don’t know how to mop the floor. (“Mom! I’m in the corner and the whole floor around me is wet! What do I do?”)
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“Mom! I’m in the corner and the whole floor around me is wet! What do I do?”
“Be glad it’s not paint!”
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On the topic of overindulged children, I recommend _Too Much of a Good Thing_, by Dan Kindlon. Released in 2003, now available for 0.01 + shipping on Amazon. He is also one of the authors of _Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys_.
Some other good books in that vein are Wendy Mogel’s books, _The Blessing of a Skinned Knee_, and _The Blessing of a B-_.
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