So you thought Britain had class and American gave you equality? To this I reply: Ha, ha, ha!
According to an article in today’s New York Times which looks at recent census data, a strong majority of affluent Americans in all major cities send their kids to private schools, many riding in chauffeur-driven limousines, where they are completely isolated from the scions of less fortunate compatriots. In other words: They grow up in a world of their own like so many Little Lord Fauntleroys.
The numbers speak for themselves. 72 percent of New York households with a total income of more than $200,000 send their kids to private schools.
Interestingly, the same article states that foreign-born parents, both wealthy immigrants and those living temporarily in New York, generally tend to enroll their children in public schools. New York has about 15,000 households with an annual income of more than $150,000 in which both parents were born abroad. 61 percent send their kids to public schools – double the rate of American-born parents. Foreign-born New Yorkers are apparently swayed by the greater ethnic and economic diversity of the public schools, the article maintains. In an interview, Lyn Bollen, a Brit from working-class Birmingham, is quoted as as saying: “When they go to public school, they’re in a whole new world, a world of different people and different values, which is what the world is like.”
