Hacker News Reader

Local public schools vary dramatically in quality. A perfectly rational parent could have grown up in a good public school and when looking at the school that is assigned to their children based on where they moved to decide that private school is right for their kids given the public option they're faced with.

View on HN

A valid point. But - at least a couple people I know are choosing not to send their kids to better public schools than they themselves attended.

Private school is about "who you grow up knowing" not merely a "better education".

> Private school is about "who you grow up knowing" not merely a "better education".

Maybe at the very elite end, but I don't think that applies generally. No one's going to Catholic School (IIRC, the biggest single type of private school in the US) because of "who you grow up knowing," for instance.

That's not a counter-argument. If your child spends his entire childhood primarily knowing folks that share your religious views, he's going to be better at honoring those views as an adult. Ergo, as a parent that knows that, religious school promises a curated "who your children know" even if that "who"'s attributes are "my kind of religious" rather than "my kind of wealth".

...

but at least in my local area those two things overlap nigh-identically.

Ahhhh see that makes more sense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com