Education meme
Feb. 16th, 2026 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnEducational meme from thistleingrey (also seen at a couple of other places under lock). I've answered for both my sister and myself (generally similar answers, sometimes not), as well as for my kids. (Will eventually lock.)
- Adults responsible for your care actively helped facilitate your early learning. (Reading at bedtime, playing educational games, going to child-friendly museums...)
Yes... though my mom likes to boast about doing things that meant less long-term parent work. So: teaching us how to read early meant mom didn't have to read at bedtime. Obtained a computer before most families had them so that we could play educational games on the computer so parents did not have to. We did occasionally go to the closest science-related museum, two hours away, which I remember with great fondness on the rare occasions that it happened. Pretty rare, but, I mean. It was two hours away!
(My kids: yes. I really enjoyed this part of parenting, well, the reading and the games, not so much the museums. I still read to A. when I think I can get away with it, which is only when he's ill enough to stay home from school.)
- You had a library card.
Yes. Buying books, on the other hand, was something that involved much negotiation (except for the library book sale where books were 25 cents! Then, I only got scolded about how much room we didn't have for the big pile of books, which... okay... as an adult with a finite-sized house I do have more sympathy for), but we went to the library every weekend and spent hours there while our dad pored over newspapers.
(My kids: yes, but because the trips were based on their wants rather than our wants, the visits were much shorter and are now not every week. We buy a lot more books than my family did, though.)
- Adults in your life involved you in tasks that involved mathematic skills.
Yes. My sister and I were expected to be able to do things like figure out how much an item was when on a certain percentage sale, and if we couldn't do the calculation faster than mom (who was very fast and is probably still faster than I am), much mockery ensued.
(My kids: Sure. From a pretty early age the kids were expected to be able to double recipes, etc. And I have mentioned before that we expected A. to know how to compute sales tax a couple of years ago, and when he couldn't, that was a red flag about his education. Without mockery, or at least I hope they perceive it that way!)
- If you started falling behind in school, you received help from a private tutor.
We weren't behind in school, but yes, for values of "falling behind" that meant "not up to what my parents thought we were capable of" and values of "private tutor" that were "our parents and/or sibling." fortunately for me this didn't really happen to me, except that one year when my mom decided she should teach me algebra at home, which was sufficiently painful that it was with great relief for all involved that it turned out that the next year there was a different math solution that involved my going to the high school and eventually skipping a grade. My dad and I ended up doing more tutoring of my sister.
I do wonder whether my sense of "there's got to be a better way than the way mom is doing it" is part of what made me interested in pedagogy -- strictly at an amateur level, I've never taught for real, but I tutored my sister a lot (mostly in math and science, but she and I both remember how I had her write essays so that she would not have the experience I did of totally failing an essay the first time she had a teacher who expected a thesis statement, and my parents would not have been able to help her with that), and I thought about it at least enough that I have done some tutoring/math-extracurricular-running and thought about it a reasonable amount with my own kids.
Oh, no, wait: my sister had a math tutor at one point (I'd left home by then, there was more money around than when we were small, and I think my parents got tired of fighting with her) and also my mom hired my French teacher to basically teach me third-year French the year my high school schedule was totally borked and I wasn't able to take French (I took Spanish instead, from a rather terrible teacher who taught me nothing), which was really nice of my mom, who did not think much of French and to this day, if you ask her, will mourn that I didn't take more Spanish. Maybe she realized I wouldn't pursue Spanish further and thought I might fall behind without that year of French? Honestly, from my point of view it was mostly because I absolutely adored my French teacher and learning French, and was super unhappy not taking French from her. Which probably is even more privileged than if I'd got the tutor because I was falling behind. (The end of that story was that I went to another school the next year and retook third-year French from a teacher who was not as good as my old French teacher but miles better than my Spanish teacher, and that was it for my high school French career. I still remember my first two years of French from my great teacher, and not too much of third-year French, although I assume third year solidified those first two years.)
(My kids: yes, for values of "private tutor" that mean "their parents" and values of "falling behind" that sometimes actually mean falling behind and sometimes mean "I am working on this high-level contest math problem and I am totally stuck and am really upset about it." E is now well beyond the problems I am capable of doing (and she is currently working on getting her geometry up to par, which was never something I was great at anyway), but D likes doing contest math for fun and although he can't always solve the problems either, they talk about it.)
- You went to a well-funded school.
Yes. Even more than that, the last two years of high school I went to the state magnet school, which was amazing and awesome, and very much of who I am both educationally and overall I owe to that school. My first high school was fine. Most of my teachers were good, with a few excellent teachers and a couple of terrible ones, but it was much more limited both in classes and in peers than my second high school, at which also most of the teachers were good, in addition to which I had a couple of absolutely world-class teachers and one terrible one who in retrospect was probably quite ill at the time. (Also, it appears world history wasn't required at my first high school in tenth grade, which seems to have been a my-district thing and not a my-state thing? But meant I never took world history in high school.)
(My kids: yes. E's high school is much better than my first high school, but not nearly as great as the school I went to the last two years of high school. The kids' elementary/middle school has... some... problems, as I've documented here, but obviously has a lot of good things about it too.)
- You typically attended school adequately clothed and fed.
Yes.
(My kids: yes, although E always wears a T-shirt and boys' gym shorts, so idk what the people around her think. Fortunately it seems like her era is much more laissez-faire about what everyone wears.)
- Adults responsible for your care were able to help you make decisions when it came time to pursue higher education.
Yes. If anything we got too much help with the decision part. My sister told me that she was at an event with my mom this week and mom was telling one of the other people there about how sister got into one college (my alma mater, preferred by our mom) and went to another one instead (equally as "good" plus a far better fit for her) and "it was so awful."
(My kids: presumably yes, I guess we'll find out)
- If you were disabled and/or neurodivergent, you were classified by your school and received support through the education system.
HAHAHAHAHA have I mentioned this would have been the 80's and 90's we are talking about here. We did not have these things.
(My kids: yes; we went private to get that support.)
- You generally felt physically and emotionally safe at school.
Sure, except middle school, because it was middle school. I did feel physically safe in middle school.
(My kids: yes. E. even felt emotionally safe -- to the extent that her hyperactive system would let her feel safe in general -- during middle school, which I feel makes up for a lot of the academic deficiencies of her middle school. A has not yet been through middle school, so we'll see if his school remains the kind of place it was for E., or remains at all.)
- You were in relatively good physical and mental health.
I think I was? idk, though -- at some point after college I had this conversation with my sister where my sister mentioned how in college she sometimes thought about how everything would be easier if she were dead, and I was like, "okay but everyone feels like that in adolescence, right?" and she was like, "...actually not?" which was news to me. In retrospect my sister in particular was holding together the mental health (particularly as regards stress) with duct tape, but we didn't really understand that at the time.
(My kids: one kid, definitely yes. Other kid: I mean... relative to what it was a few years ago, it's looking pretty good?)
- For the most part, you were able to study and complete assignments without any struggle.
Yes.
(My kids: one kid, yes. Other kid: depends WILDLY on subject. Some subjects, yes for sure; some subjects, HECK NO)
- Test-taking came easily to you.
Yes. I like to say I'm awesome at multiple-choice tests but hmm, turns out this is a skill that doesn't have a whole lot of use in the real world. My sister did fine at tests but it didn't come as easily to her.
(My kids: yes. A. is on a team for the local math competition this year; I usually run practices, but I'm not this year because of some scheduling logistics (I probably will do it again next year) and AwesomeTeacher is doing it instead. One part of this competition is multiple choice, and apparently A. has been teaching the rest of his team multiple-choice hacks, which I think is hilarious. I tried to teach all the kids these hacks last year during practice, actually, but apparently none of them were paying attention except A. E. is stellar at test-taking, except that she used to have a lot of trouble making even educated guesses (now she can).)
- You seldom faced difficulty understanding assignments.
Yes.
(My kids: one kid, yes. Other kid: no for a while, depending on the subject; now yes)
- You read at grade level or above.
Yes.
(My kids: one kid: yes. Other kid: mm, depends. Mostly yes, but some reading skills lag grade level.)
- Your mathematics skills were at grade level or above.
Yes.
(My kids: yes.)
- Adults responsible for your care supported your academic journey for the better and for the worse.
I mean, for the vast majority of it, yes for me. It's one of the things I think is best about my parents, and in particular my mom, who was something of a champion for us in many ways. In college there were a few issues where I would not exactly have called it supportive, like the Sophomore Thanksgiving Admission That Pre-Med Is Not Something I Can Do and the Are You Really Taking Two Semesters of Music Theory Fight, but I felt they were relatively small in the general scheme of things. (And I guess I was in the end allowed to "win" both fights, in the sense that I did not stay pre-med and I did take the second semester of music theory.)
I thought my sister might have a different or at least differently-nuanced answer (and I felt I couldn't answer for her, which I could do for most of these questions), so I asked her, and she said, "Yeah. I have always said that the parents' goal was for us to get a good education no matter the cost and... they accomplished that." Which, yeah.
(My kids: well, I like to think so? But I cannot discount that we happen to have the great good luck to have kids whose desires for their own academic journey align pretty well with what we think would be a good academic journey. If that alignment was significantly less, then I like to think we would still be supportive, but who knows?)
If I were making this questionnaire, I'd add a couple more statements:
hamsterwoman added this one, which I think is quite important:
the family/cultural attitude towards education – and also the attitude of the peers.
My parents' attitude towards education is in the question immediately above. My attitude towards my kids' education is somewhat more relaxed, as I've seen the damage that can be done with an "at all costs" attitude and also quite frankly I am not as intense as my mom -- but I do feel pretty strongly that learning things is fun, that kids ought to grow up in an atmosphere that is conducive to the principle that learning things is fun, and that they ought to be encouraged to learn as much as they can to the extent that it's not stressful. (I also had the experience that most of what I learned before college is stuck firmly in my head, and most of what I learned in college is much more fluid, so I also just think that before college is a great time to learn facts in general.)
At my elementary school and first high school, I had peers who cared about doing well at school but not peers who cared about learning things. At summer camp and at my second high school, I found those peers, which was really great. My kids grew up with at least some peers who liked learning things, although E didn't really appreciate it until she went to math camp and spent all summer every day with these kinds of kids, at which point I was like, but hey, a few of these kids exist in our town too!
E is now firmly embedded in a circle of high school peers who care about academic accomplishment and learning things. (And they're all super nice kids!) Mostly this is very good. It's so fun that she's been informing me of things like, "I'm going to physics club" (which she had no plans to do before realizing that some of her peers were doing that) and "I'm going to take AP World History," although I think sometimes it may be a bit much, like when she decrees she has to take alllll the APs because her friend is doing so (she has one friend who is clearly Gunning For Elite Colleges and is Doing All the Right Things and is accomplished in every direction possible).
(See also the next question I made up, which overlaps a lot.)
Intellectual activities outside of school and family were available and facilitiated.
My kids did and still do attend a math circle, which I think probably saved E. in her earlier years when she didn't have any other real outlet for her math ability, and later when she went to high school she was in high school with several of the kids she'd been in math circle with for years -- whom she hadn't made friends with in math circle because she didn't have the right social tools at the time, but once she was in high school she did become friends with them, and I think having known them from math circle helped for that (she seems to be less good friends with the kids she didn't already know from math circle).
I didn't have anything like that, although my parents did facilitate music lessons at great cost in time and money for them, which filled a lot of the same purposes in a way (the local-ish friends I actually had until I went to second high school were through music and not really school, though I didn't see them very often).
Both E and I were able to attend "nerd camp" in some of our middle school and high school summers, which was and is an extraordinary privilege (in my case, at least one of them was free due to it being sponsored by the state), and in both cases this probably changed our life more than any other activity outside of school, because we got to be around people who were more like us. I think it was perhaps a little less completely life-changing for my sister and I think also for A. (who has actual local friends, which E. didn't at his age), but we'll see about that.
Working above grade level was encouraged when possible and the resources were available to do this.
I've kind of answered this in the previous questions. Yes, although with my parents possibly not with the "when possible" modifier. (This did not affect me; it affected my sister.) My kids have had a lot more resources in that way available to them, which has been great.
General endnote
It's interesting how many of the differing answers to these questions I felt were due to genetics rather than environment (given that my experiences were with reasonably educationally supportive environments, which I know is itself a privileged assumption).
One of the reasons I felt I had to add the extra questions is that I think our family (including both my family of origin and my kids) has had so much educational privilege that it's hard to see how much from the questions as written. From those questions it sounds like one of my kids has less educational privilege than I did, even though I perceive kiddo as having generally more.
I would also note, as I think is pretty clear from many of these entries, that I think educational privilege and educational support are very distinct from what I'll call, for lack of a better term, emotional privilege and emotional support. I like to think that my kids have significantly more of the latter than my sister and I did (except for the genetic component, where the mean value of my kids' emotional regulation is pretty much on par, but the variance is high).
thistleingrey (also seen at a couple of other places under lock). I've answered for both my sister and myself (generally similar answers, sometimes not), as well as for my kids. (Will eventually lock.)- Adults responsible for your care actively helped facilitate your early learning. (Reading at bedtime, playing educational games, going to child-friendly museums...)
Yes... though my mom likes to boast about doing things that meant less long-term parent work. So: teaching us how to read early meant mom didn't have to read at bedtime. Obtained a computer before most families had them so that we could play educational games on the computer so parents did not have to. We did occasionally go to the closest science-related museum, two hours away, which I remember with great fondness on the rare occasions that it happened. Pretty rare, but, I mean. It was two hours away!
(My kids: yes. I really enjoyed this part of parenting, well, the reading and the games, not so much the museums. I still read to A. when I think I can get away with it, which is only when he's ill enough to stay home from school.)
- You had a library card.
Yes. Buying books, on the other hand, was something that involved much negotiation (except for the library book sale where books were 25 cents! Then, I only got scolded about how much room we didn't have for the big pile of books, which... okay... as an adult with a finite-sized house I do have more sympathy for), but we went to the library every weekend and spent hours there while our dad pored over newspapers.
(My kids: yes, but because the trips were based on their wants rather than our wants, the visits were much shorter and are now not every week. We buy a lot more books than my family did, though.)
- Adults in your life involved you in tasks that involved mathematic skills.
Yes. My sister and I were expected to be able to do things like figure out how much an item was when on a certain percentage sale, and if we couldn't do the calculation faster than mom (who was very fast and is probably still faster than I am), much mockery ensued.
(My kids: Sure. From a pretty early age the kids were expected to be able to double recipes, etc. And I have mentioned before that we expected A. to know how to compute sales tax a couple of years ago, and when he couldn't, that was a red flag about his education. Without mockery, or at least I hope they perceive it that way!)
- If you started falling behind in school, you received help from a private tutor.
We weren't behind in school, but yes, for values of "falling behind" that meant "not up to what my parents thought we were capable of" and values of "private tutor" that were "our parents and/or sibling." fortunately for me this didn't really happen to me, except that one year when my mom decided she should teach me algebra at home, which was sufficiently painful that it was with great relief for all involved that it turned out that the next year there was a different math solution that involved my going to the high school and eventually skipping a grade. My dad and I ended up doing more tutoring of my sister.
I do wonder whether my sense of "there's got to be a better way than the way mom is doing it" is part of what made me interested in pedagogy -- strictly at an amateur level, I've never taught for real, but I tutored my sister a lot (mostly in math and science, but she and I both remember how I had her write essays so that she would not have the experience I did of totally failing an essay the first time she had a teacher who expected a thesis statement, and my parents would not have been able to help her with that), and I thought about it at least enough that I have done some tutoring/math-extracurricular-running and thought about it a reasonable amount with my own kids.
Oh, no, wait: my sister had a math tutor at one point (I'd left home by then, there was more money around than when we were small, and I think my parents got tired of fighting with her) and also my mom hired my French teacher to basically teach me third-year French the year my high school schedule was totally borked and I wasn't able to take French (I took Spanish instead, from a rather terrible teacher who taught me nothing), which was really nice of my mom, who did not think much of French and to this day, if you ask her, will mourn that I didn't take more Spanish. Maybe she realized I wouldn't pursue Spanish further and thought I might fall behind without that year of French? Honestly, from my point of view it was mostly because I absolutely adored my French teacher and learning French, and was super unhappy not taking French from her. Which probably is even more privileged than if I'd got the tutor because I was falling behind. (The end of that story was that I went to another school the next year and retook third-year French from a teacher who was not as good as my old French teacher but miles better than my Spanish teacher, and that was it for my high school French career. I still remember my first two years of French from my great teacher, and not too much of third-year French, although I assume third year solidified those first two years.)
(My kids: yes, for values of "private tutor" that mean "their parents" and values of "falling behind" that sometimes actually mean falling behind and sometimes mean "I am working on this high-level contest math problem and I am totally stuck and am really upset about it." E is now well beyond the problems I am capable of doing (and she is currently working on getting her geometry up to par, which was never something I was great at anyway), but D likes doing contest math for fun and although he can't always solve the problems either, they talk about it.)
- You went to a well-funded school.
Yes. Even more than that, the last two years of high school I went to the state magnet school, which was amazing and awesome, and very much of who I am both educationally and overall I owe to that school. My first high school was fine. Most of my teachers were good, with a few excellent teachers and a couple of terrible ones, but it was much more limited both in classes and in peers than my second high school, at which also most of the teachers were good, in addition to which I had a couple of absolutely world-class teachers and one terrible one who in retrospect was probably quite ill at the time. (Also, it appears world history wasn't required at my first high school in tenth grade, which seems to have been a my-district thing and not a my-state thing? But meant I never took world history in high school.)
(My kids: yes. E's high school is much better than my first high school, but not nearly as great as the school I went to the last two years of high school. The kids' elementary/middle school has... some... problems, as I've documented here, but obviously has a lot of good things about it too.)
- You typically attended school adequately clothed and fed.
Yes.
(My kids: yes, although E always wears a T-shirt and boys' gym shorts, so idk what the people around her think. Fortunately it seems like her era is much more laissez-faire about what everyone wears.)
- Adults responsible for your care were able to help you make decisions when it came time to pursue higher education.
Yes. If anything we got too much help with the decision part. My sister told me that she was at an event with my mom this week and mom was telling one of the other people there about how sister got into one college (my alma mater, preferred by our mom) and went to another one instead (equally as "good" plus a far better fit for her) and "it was so awful."
(My kids: presumably yes, I guess we'll find out)
- If you were disabled and/or neurodivergent, you were classified by your school and received support through the education system.
HAHAHAHAHA have I mentioned this would have been the 80's and 90's we are talking about here. We did not have these things.
(My kids: yes; we went private to get that support.)
- You generally felt physically and emotionally safe at school.
Sure, except middle school, because it was middle school. I did feel physically safe in middle school.
(My kids: yes. E. even felt emotionally safe -- to the extent that her hyperactive system would let her feel safe in general -- during middle school, which I feel makes up for a lot of the academic deficiencies of her middle school. A has not yet been through middle school, so we'll see if his school remains the kind of place it was for E., or remains at all.)
- You were in relatively good physical and mental health.
I think I was? idk, though -- at some point after college I had this conversation with my sister where my sister mentioned how in college she sometimes thought about how everything would be easier if she were dead, and I was like, "okay but everyone feels like that in adolescence, right?" and she was like, "...actually not?" which was news to me. In retrospect my sister in particular was holding together the mental health (particularly as regards stress) with duct tape, but we didn't really understand that at the time.
(My kids: one kid, definitely yes. Other kid: I mean... relative to what it was a few years ago, it's looking pretty good?)
- For the most part, you were able to study and complete assignments without any struggle.
Yes.
(My kids: one kid, yes. Other kid: depends WILDLY on subject. Some subjects, yes for sure; some subjects, HECK NO)
- Test-taking came easily to you.
Yes. I like to say I'm awesome at multiple-choice tests but hmm, turns out this is a skill that doesn't have a whole lot of use in the real world. My sister did fine at tests but it didn't come as easily to her.
(My kids: yes. A. is on a team for the local math competition this year; I usually run practices, but I'm not this year because of some scheduling logistics (I probably will do it again next year) and AwesomeTeacher is doing it instead. One part of this competition is multiple choice, and apparently A. has been teaching the rest of his team multiple-choice hacks, which I think is hilarious. I tried to teach all the kids these hacks last year during practice, actually, but apparently none of them were paying attention except A. E. is stellar at test-taking, except that she used to have a lot of trouble making even educated guesses (now she can).)
- You seldom faced difficulty understanding assignments.
Yes.
(My kids: one kid, yes. Other kid: no for a while, depending on the subject; now yes)
- You read at grade level or above.
Yes.
(My kids: one kid: yes. Other kid: mm, depends. Mostly yes, but some reading skills lag grade level.)
- Your mathematics skills were at grade level or above.
Yes.
(My kids: yes.)
- Adults responsible for your care supported your academic journey for the better and for the worse.
I mean, for the vast majority of it, yes for me. It's one of the things I think is best about my parents, and in particular my mom, who was something of a champion for us in many ways. In college there were a few issues where I would not exactly have called it supportive, like the Sophomore Thanksgiving Admission That Pre-Med Is Not Something I Can Do and the Are You Really Taking Two Semesters of Music Theory Fight, but I felt they were relatively small in the general scheme of things. (And I guess I was in the end allowed to "win" both fights, in the sense that I did not stay pre-med and I did take the second semester of music theory.)
I thought my sister might have a different or at least differently-nuanced answer (and I felt I couldn't answer for her, which I could do for most of these questions), so I asked her, and she said, "Yeah. I have always said that the parents' goal was for us to get a good education no matter the cost and... they accomplished that." Which, yeah.
(My kids: well, I like to think so? But I cannot discount that we happen to have the great good luck to have kids whose desires for their own academic journey align pretty well with what we think would be a good academic journey. If that alignment was significantly less, then I like to think we would still be supportive, but who knows?)
If I were making this questionnaire, I'd add a couple more statements:
hamsterwoman added this one, which I think is quite important:the family/cultural attitude towards education – and also the attitude of the peers.
My parents' attitude towards education is in the question immediately above. My attitude towards my kids' education is somewhat more relaxed, as I've seen the damage that can be done with an "at all costs" attitude and also quite frankly I am not as intense as my mom -- but I do feel pretty strongly that learning things is fun, that kids ought to grow up in an atmosphere that is conducive to the principle that learning things is fun, and that they ought to be encouraged to learn as much as they can to the extent that it's not stressful. (I also had the experience that most of what I learned before college is stuck firmly in my head, and most of what I learned in college is much more fluid, so I also just think that before college is a great time to learn facts in general.)
At my elementary school and first high school, I had peers who cared about doing well at school but not peers who cared about learning things. At summer camp and at my second high school, I found those peers, which was really great. My kids grew up with at least some peers who liked learning things, although E didn't really appreciate it until she went to math camp and spent all summer every day with these kinds of kids, at which point I was like, but hey, a few of these kids exist in our town too!
E is now firmly embedded in a circle of high school peers who care about academic accomplishment and learning things. (And they're all super nice kids!) Mostly this is very good. It's so fun that she's been informing me of things like, "I'm going to physics club" (which she had no plans to do before realizing that some of her peers were doing that) and "I'm going to take AP World History," although I think sometimes it may be a bit much, like when she decrees she has to take alllll the APs because her friend is doing so (she has one friend who is clearly Gunning For Elite Colleges and is Doing All the Right Things and is accomplished in every direction possible).
(See also the next question I made up, which overlaps a lot.)
Intellectual activities outside of school and family were available and facilitiated.
My kids did and still do attend a math circle, which I think probably saved E. in her earlier years when she didn't have any other real outlet for her math ability, and later when she went to high school she was in high school with several of the kids she'd been in math circle with for years -- whom she hadn't made friends with in math circle because she didn't have the right social tools at the time, but once she was in high school she did become friends with them, and I think having known them from math circle helped for that (she seems to be less good friends with the kids she didn't already know from math circle).
I didn't have anything like that, although my parents did facilitate music lessons at great cost in time and money for them, which filled a lot of the same purposes in a way (the local-ish friends I actually had until I went to second high school were through music and not really school, though I didn't see them very often).
Both E and I were able to attend "nerd camp" in some of our middle school and high school summers, which was and is an extraordinary privilege (in my case, at least one of them was free due to it being sponsored by the state), and in both cases this probably changed our life more than any other activity outside of school, because we got to be around people who were more like us. I think it was perhaps a little less completely life-changing for my sister and I think also for A. (who has actual local friends, which E. didn't at his age), but we'll see about that.
Working above grade level was encouraged when possible and the resources were available to do this.
I've kind of answered this in the previous questions. Yes, although with my parents possibly not with the "when possible" modifier. (This did not affect me; it affected my sister.) My kids have had a lot more resources in that way available to them, which has been great.
General endnote
It's interesting how many of the differing answers to these questions I felt were due to genetics rather than environment (given that my experiences were with reasonably educationally supportive environments, which I know is itself a privileged assumption).
One of the reasons I felt I had to add the extra questions is that I think our family (including both my family of origin and my kids) has had so much educational privilege that it's hard to see how much from the questions as written. From those questions it sounds like one of my kids has less educational privilege than I did, even though I perceive kiddo as having generally more.
I would also note, as I think is pretty clear from many of these entries, that I think educational privilege and educational support are very distinct from what I'll call, for lack of a better term, emotional privilege and emotional support. I like to think that my kids have significantly more of the latter than my sister and I did (except for the genetic component, where the mean value of my kids' emotional regulation is pretty much on par, but the variance is high).
no subject
Date: 2026-02-17 12:19 am (UTC)Math circles sound awesome. I did a quick online search to confirm that the main "math circle" offerings in my city are either intended for homeschoolers as part of that very cool homeschooling thing that meets in an arboretum, or way out in the suburbs, but it's good to know of as a thing that exists.
I think educational privilege and educational support are very distinct from what I'll call, for lack of a better term, emotional privilege and emotional support
This feels very true in my family and very key, in the sense that I really think the lack of emotional privilege and emotional support has held us back significantly and damaged relationships within the family too.
It is definitely interesting to see friends post this meme and see the fairly unusual set of things we have in common among those of us who are still on Dreamwidth and driven to complete this survey as a meme.
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Date: 2026-02-17 04:25 am (UTC)Math circles are awesome! I'm sorry that there's not one near enough to you, though it sounds like school probably fills a lot of those needs for your kids (which it didn't for E. for various reasons, though it does for A.)
Yeah, there's a reason why I resonate with some of your family posts :)
I do think that it's a certain kind of person who stays on a text-heavy site like this at all and also wants to fill out a meme about education and educational privilege :)
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Date: 2026-02-17 02:46 pm (UTC)This was really interesting to read!
Yes... though my mom likes to boast about doing things that meant less long-term parent work.
Why does this not surprise me? :P
I would also note, as I think is pretty clear from many of these entries, that I think educational privilege and educational support are very distinct from what I'll call, for lack of a better term, emotional privilege and emotional support.
Uh, yeeeep. I got more emotional privilege/support, you got more educational.
As for my experiences, I think you know the answer to most of these for me, but if you're curious about any of them, let me know!
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Date: 2026-02-18 12:31 am (UTC)Yeah, about the reading thing in particular, my sister and I were like, "...this is not exactly the flex you think it is..."
I think I do know the answer to most of these for you! :)
I'm looking forward to your AtG potential!patricide post! I am veeeeeery slowly reading Renault (which I am absolutely loving) so I haven't yet gotten to what she thinks about that.
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Date: 2026-02-18 04:40 am (UTC)learning things is fun, that kids ought to grow up in an atmosphere that is conducive to the principle that learning things is fun, and that they ought to be encouraged to learn as much as they can to the extent that it's not stressful.
Strongly agree! This pretty well encapsulates the ideal I’m aiming for as a parent (don’t know how well I’m succeeding).
It's interesting how many of the differing answers to these questions I felt were due to genetics rather than environment
I’m noticing this as a pattern too–not that I have a lot of data points, but there seem to be many cases where things were very different for one sibling vs another, and that’s definitely true for my brother vs me. I really need to fill out this meme for myself!
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Date: 2026-02-18 05:13 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's hard to know how well we're succeeding, isn't it! Right now I'm having a lot (A LOT) of struggles with the kids' screen time -- like, part of the issue is that some of it is learning or learning-adjacent (A. and I have been watching these history YouTube videos his friend showed him, and I'm learning a lot too, lol, and I know both of them do some of their socialization via computer), but it seems really easy for them to just slide into spending hours online and not having anything to show for it afterwards. E. complains that she's tired and doesn't really want to do anything, but at least she could read books if she gets bored with doing math...
I'd be so interested to read your take on the meme!
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Date: 2026-02-20 01:51 am (UTC)Heh.
I didn't get into buying books in mine, but one of the 'culture shock' parts of immigration was, books are so expensive in the US! (relative to other things) So I basically never bought books in the US, except the cheapie Scholastic Book Fair ones or secondhand, and kind of had to unlearn that as an adult. (But when I went to England for the first time after emigrating, and found that the classics were really cheap there, I ended up having to buy another piece of luggage to bring all my new books home XD)
And I have mentioned before that we expected A. to know how to compute sales tax a couple of years ago, and when he couldn't, that was a red flag about his education.
Oh! That makes me realize that we actually did used to do a math-based daily activity with the kids -- calculating a restaurant tip (before they just started printing the suggested ones on the receipt). I knew there had to be something.
I still remember my first two years of French from my great teacher, and not too much of third-year French, although I assume third year solidified those first two years.)
Foreign language learning is such a tricky thing! I had an AMAZING Italian teacher in high school, whom I took all 4 years and was reasonably fluent in Italian by the end -- did very well on a National Exam in a higher category than I really belonged in, even wrote a poem in Italian at one point -- and wanted to continue the language at uni, where I promptly realized that the conversational classes were taught by TA's who happened to be native speakers but not interested in being language teachers, and lost interest. My brother took Italian at the same school, but the amazing teacher had retired, so he didn't learn nearly as much, but still had a nice experience and got to do an exchange program with Italy. O also took Italian, 25 years after me, and learned basically nothing. They made pizza at one point, and narrated it in Italian; I think that was the apotheosis of his language learning. (L took French, and did manage to learn enough that at least she understands it markedly better than me, and can say some things, despite having had two differently bad teachers...)
the last two years of high school I went to the state magnet school, which was amazing and awesome, and very much of who I am both educationally and overall I owe to that school.
That sounds wonderful! (and very much how I feel about my high school, as you've probably surmised :)
If anything we got too much help with the decision part. My sister told me that she was at an event with my mom this week
Haha, oh no XD
E. even felt emotionally safe -- to the extent that her hyperactive system would let her feel safe in general -- during middle school, which I feel makes up for a lot of the academic deficiencies of her middle school.
I would agree with that prioritization! Also, I'm not convinced that anyone learns anything in middle school...
I like to say I'm awesome at multiple-choice tests but hmm, turns out this is a skill that doesn't have a whole lot of use in the real world.
Heh, I had the same unfortunate discovery. I mean, I'm pretty good at lots of other things, too. But I'm AWESOME at multiple choice tests, and test in general :P
In college there were a few issues where I would not exactly have called it supportive, like the Sophomore Thanksgiving Admission That Pre-Med Is Not Something I Can Do and the Are You Really Taking Two Semesters of Music Theory Fight,
Ouch. I was very, very careful to stay out of what classes L and O were taking, except that I was trying to push them to take classes more broadly, what with college being the last time you're likely to have the opportunity to just learn new stuff not for any reason (and we were covering all their fees, so it's not like they would be "wasting money" on it). Neither kid was going for it. L chose to graduate a quarter early (and still stayed at uni, doing work in her lab), O went part-time one quarter, because they'd finished taking the required classes and didn't want to take just something fun. (L did complete an English Lit minor, so she did have some breadth at least.)
This still makes me sad, but I suspect this might be the result of Covid affecting both of their schooling (it hit during L's freshman year of uni and O's junior year in high school). I was talking to coworkers with kids the same age, and they were reporting similar things -- this cohort just sort of had the joy of broad learning at a high level sucked out of them by remote school and all the Covid uncertainty...
My attitude towards my kids' education is somewhat more relaxed, as I've seen the damage that can be done with an "at all costs" attitude
Nod.
I really like your distinction about learning vs "doing well at school", and while I find both important, I do think the former is a lot more important. Both kids did very well in school, and I think they're decent at the love of learning thing, but B and I were a bit dismayed that neither seemed to have the drive to go off and learn things on their own the way he and I both did as children. I think it's probably that they have more fun things available to them in the form of YouTube and video games and whatnot, and they are both also more social than B and I, so were prioritizing spending time with people rather than thinking about things on their own as well...
Intellectual activities outside of school and family were available and facilitiated.
That's a great addition!
I can't remember for myself -- mostly I think outside activities were focused on music and sports-type things (both very unsuccessfully), rather than academics. With the rodents, we tried to get them hooked up with various things, another language, science camp, etc., but they were fairly uninterested (and I had hated being forced into extracurriculars against my will, and so felt very strongly that I would not force them). Except L did take to the zoo, and spent pretty much her entire 12 years of schooling advancing from day camper to volunteer.
Working above grade level was encouraged when possible and the resources were available to do this.
That another really good one! Yes at the family level, and I've just written a long comment elsewhere describing the process at the school district level... :P
I think educational privilege and educational support are very distinct from what I'll call, for lack of a better term, emotional privilege and emotional support.
Nod, that is another crucial distinction.
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Date: 2026-02-21 12:43 am (UTC)and wanted to continue the language at uni, where I promptly realized that the conversational classes were taught by TA's who happened to be native speakers but not interested in being language teachers, and lost interest.
Oh, heh, I took two semesters of Italian from the local city college here because I wanted to learn it partially because of Dante and partially because of opera, and yeah, the teachers were native speakers who were just not great at being language teachers (though I don't know that they weren't interested, just that they didn't really know how to approach it). So I don't remember very much at all. Fortunately for opera you don't really need to know that much, as long as you know key words like "love" and "king" and "vengeance" :P
E.'s Spanish teacher last year was terrible (and is no longer at the school, although according to school gossip this has less to do with his teaching than with his inability to deal with student conflict) but the one this year seems committed to having them actually learn things (she actually had an oral/conversational exam this week! very exciting! I don't think they did a single one last year), which I'm hopeful about! But they also got rid of the honors classes (re your point about the "Harrison Bergeron" approach to equity in the other thread -- though it hasn't quite got as bad here as it is there), so the classes also go like molasses. My estimate is that in her first-year Spanish class they covered about half of what I covered in my first-year honors French class.
Also, I'm not convinced that anyone learns anything in middle school...
Well, I suppose that's true, but I think she could have had a little more practice writing. I feel like she got thrown into high school with really subpar writing skills, including no idea how to style prose. Now, I think most bright kids pick that up automagically by reading a lot of books so it is less of a thing that needs to be explicitly taught in middle school (that was certainly my method for learning, and A. seems to be following that path), but even though she read a lot at that age it didn't seem to translate into actually being able to write herself.
except that I was trying to push them to take classes more broadly, what with college being the last time you're likely to have the opportunity to just learn new stuff not for any reason
Ooh, yeah, we are pushing this same idea with E, although with the added wrinkle in her case that she actually has no idea what she wants to major in and/or do with her life besides something that uses math, so she really should take a wide variety of classes, at least technical classes, so she can figure that out. Now... even if she does that, I also think she will take the absolute minimum of pure humanities classes possible :P I super wish I had taken more humanities classes in college, but I was also into humanities much more than she is.
but B and I were a bit dismayed that neither seemed to have the drive to go off and learn things on their own the way he and I both did as children.
*nods* A. does that a bit -- some of his Youtube time is spent watching educational videos, and both kids love reading recreational math books -- but they really do have a lot more distractions available. E. is prepping for math competitions, but she's said lately that it's a little less fun than it used to be (which I totally understand!) And she doesn't really seem to have a drive to learn other things on her own, either.
Except L did take to the zoo, and spent pretty much her entire 12 years of schooling advancing from day camper to volunteer.
Aw that's really cool! A's good friend really loves zoo camp and may be that sort. He got A. to go to zoo camp with him one year but A. did not take to it at all :P
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Date: 2026-02-22 06:48 pm (UTC)Oh that's funny, because I think one of the main reasons that I still haven't read Dante is that, in high school, I had enough hubris to think that I would be able to read him in Italian at some point, but then my Italian steadily decayed and I never got around to reading him in English, either. Hopefully I will at some point still.
As for opera, I did actually have enough Italian to understand some by the time our Italian teacher took the class to see La Boheme... but that just meant that I could tell that the people were singing inane stuff like "I can't find my keys!" and I don't think that contributed to my experience of it as Art XD
she actually had an oral/conversational exam this week! very exciting! I don't think they did a single one last year)
That is encouraging! I can't remember if L ever got those, I think maybe? O I'm pretty sure never did.
Italian was always small at my school, so the first two years the classes were just regular classes, because there wasn't enough for a split-off Honors class, but a classmate later pointed out to me that Signora N was absolutely teaching a core group at an Honors level within the larger class. And by the time we got to third or fourth year Italian, when it was just that core group left, the class got designated Italian Honors, which I found out when I saw it reflected like that on my report card, lol.
I feel like she got thrown into high school with really subpar writing skills, including no idea how to style prose.
This was true in L's case, too. (It was definitely true in mine, but I'd spent the preceding several years doing ESL stuff, so that's totally understandable. I think it was also true of my brother, though.) She did get lucky with her freshman English teacher at Lowell, who actually formally taught them how to write an introduction, a thesis statement, etc. But when I was talking to him about how great I thought it was that he was teaching them that, he said it wasn't part of any curriculum for 9th grade, he was just doing it because he thought it was important. Kind of how L's World History teacher taught them geography that wasn't on the curriculum either (like one of my World History teachers had done).
O, weirdly, seemed to have a natural grasp of logically laying out his writing -- as long as he wasn't having to talk about himself :P
A's good friend really loves zoo camp and may be that sort. He got A. to go to zoo camp with him one year but A. did not take to it at all :P
Aww! :) O did also follow L into the zoo camp/zoo volunteering path (although his volunteer thing was as a junior TA sort of role, not animal/conservation education outreach like L's), but I think kind of on autopilot -- he was definitely less excited about going to the zoo as a visitor, and mostly seemed to view it as a chance to spend time with friends whom he also lured over to doing it with him. Which was better than nothing, certainly, but he probably could've been doing it in any other setting.
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Date: 2026-02-24 05:41 pm (UTC)That is encouraging! I can't remember if L ever got those, I think maybe? O I'm pretty sure never did.
I know we had parts where we had to listen and write things down, but possibly not where we had to speak. But my second-year French teacher conducted almost the entire class in French, so we definitely got a lot of speaking/listening practice.
who actually formally taught them how to write an introduction, a thesis statement, etc.
E's 9th grade teacher did that too! But I think it is on the curriculum at this point.
I get the sense that talking about himself in writing is much easier for A. than for E., for whom it is really pulling teeth. She had to do this some for summer program applications last year, and we had this rewarding but also frustrating interaction going where she'd have to answer some question like "what do you like about math?" and she'd be like, "idk, it's fun?! I have nothing else to say!" and then several days later she'd be telling me about a problem she was working on and that she thought it was interesting because of X, and I'd be like, "uh, THIS needs to go in your essay!" "Really?" "YES."