What Former Students Hate Most About Private School: Practical Tips For Parents Today
The paper coffee cup was still warm in my hand last week at our neighborhood parent coffee, when another mom leaned in, lowered her voice, and asked, “You went to private K-12, right? We’re touring elementary schools right now. What’s the one thing you actually hated about it?”
I froze for a second. Most of the time, when people ask about private school, they want to know about class sizes or college acceptances or how to get in. No one asks about the bad parts that stick with you 15 years after graduation. I thought for a minute, then said the thing I never used to say out loud: It wasn’t the homework, or the cliques, or the expensive uniforms. It was that every single thing I did had to count for something. There was no room for stuff that was just for fun.
I was that kid who drew comics in the back of every class. My sketchbook was full of silly strips about the lunch ladies, the weird smell in the gym locker room, my math teacher’s obsession with corduroy blazers. I started printing small zines and selling them at a local monthly market when I was 16. The problem was, that market was on the same day as our school’s mandatory junior SAT workshop. All juniors had to attend, no exceptions. I went anyway. I got caught when the dean saw a photo of my table on a local community blog.
My parents had to come in for a meeting. I still remember the dean leaning across his desk, saying, “This is the kind of unstrategic choice that will keep you from getting into a good school. What do you think colleges are going to think when they see you skipped a prep workshop to sell cartoon books?” My parents, who were stretching their budget to pay tuition, agreed. They made me give up my zine table, and I hid my sketchbook under my mattress for the rest of high school.
A few years ago, at my 10-year reunion, I brought this up over lukewarm catered buffalo wings, and half the table nodded along. One guy, who now works as a mechanical engineer, said he hid his model train hobby all four years because everyone would’ve called it childish, and it wouldn’t have looked good on college apps. A friend who’s now a nurse said she quit her after-school recreational bowling league because her college counselor told her it didn’t “demonstrate leadership” the way volunteering at the hospital would. No one ever talked about it when we were there, but almost all of us were cutting out the parts of ourselves that didn’t fit the package the school wanted to send to admissions offices.
That’s the thing no one tells you when you’re comparing private vs public school as a parent. The small class sizes and dedicated teachers are great, but the entire system is built around turning out top college acceptances to keep its own reputation up. Every activity, every grade, every after-school hour gets sorted into “adds to your profile” or “waste of time.” And that’s what sticks with most of us, long after we graduate: the loss of all that unproductive, just-for-us time that helps kids figure out who they actually are.
I’m not here to tell you not to send your kid to private school. For my own son, it’s been a good fit so far—he has extra support for his dyslexia that we couldn’t get at our zoned public school, and that’s worth every penny. But I’ve learned over the last few years that my job as a parent is to be the buffer between the school’s pressure to perform and my kid’s need to just be a kid. There are small, concrete things any parent can do, even if their kid is in private school, to hold space for the unimpressive stuff that matters.
First, we have a monthly “no-resume dinner” at our house. The rule is simple: no one can talk about anything that would go on a college application, a resume, or a report card. We can only talk about stuff that’s just for fun. Last month, we spent the whole hour talking about how our old beagle learned to open the snack cabinet and steal granola bars. The month before that, it was all about the different colors of dandelions my son found on the playground. It’s a small thing, but it reminds all of us that not everything has to have a payoff.
Second, I protect one afternoon a week that’s completely off the school’s radar. If the school adds a mandatory prep session or a “college readiness workshop” that falls on that afternoon, I just send a note saying my kid has a doctor’s appointment. That afternoon is for whatever he wants that week—last week it was digging for worms in the backyard, the week before that it was rewatching all the old Lego Star Wars shorts on YouTube. It doesn’t count for anything, and that’s the point.
Third, I catch myself before I turn every interest into a future career. If my kid says he likes sorting his rock collection, I don’t say “that’s cool, you could be a geologist!” I say “can you show me the sparkly one you found last week?” That’s all he needs.
Last month, my son came home from school with a “My Future Goals” worksheet all the kindergarteners had to fill out. All the other kids wrote things like “firefighter” “scientist” “teacher.” My son wrote “I want to collect all 15 types of acorns that grow in our state.” I didn’t tell him to change it to something more impressive. I taped it to the fridge. This weekend, we’re skipping the private school parent group’s “introduction to coding for little kids” playdate to go hiking in the state park and look for acorns. It won’t help him get into an Ivy League in 13 years. It won’t look good on any application. But it’s his. And that’s enough, for me, anyway.
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