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 :)