DADWAGON

A new study from the Fordham Institute catalogs a school type I hadn’t heard about before: the Private Public School. These are basically public schools that service almost no poor students, and apparently 1.7 million U.S. students attend one of them.

This includes a relatively high percentage of kids in the states around New York City: Connecticut is the highest with 18 percent of public school students going to these poverty-free idylls, while New Jersey has 17 percent. You can even search for the individual schools in question in this (.pdf) report.

New York City, despite its filthy reams of richness, has none of these Private Public Schools (the titans and barons and moguls keep their kids in private schools or in the suburbs, or, ideally, in both).

I wonder how many students around the country attend schools with virtually no rich students? I’d bet a much higher percentage, and I bet they’re also concentrated in places where the Private Public school phenomenon is strongest.

But here’s the thing: no doubt the thinkers behind the study wanted to draw attention to educational inequality and a lack of socioeconomic diversity in our schools. What they’ve actually created? A handy roadmap for White Flight. If you find yourself in uncomfortably close quarters with food-stampers, just find a school on this list and move nearby. After all, it’s good to be a rich student in 2010. Don’t get caught learning with the Lazzaroni.

Yes—and, of course, no.

I’ll start with no. In school, I was, in all honesty, not really a geek. I was president of the school my senior year, captain of the soccer team, lead in the play, and while I wasn’t necessarily a sex-god, I did have a date to the prom, she was gorgeous, and I felt confident enough to take her in a taxi (shockingly, I didn’t get laid).

The problem with all of this didn’t really come until I went to college. I attended a tiny Manhattan prep school, filled with non-threatening kids who I’d been in classes with since junior high. That soccer team? We played in a 90 percent nebbish Jewish league. The wrestling team, which I was also on, competed against the School for the Blind — and I lost.

My college, however, was in the PAC-10, and my adjustment from big shot to schmuck wasn’t easy. I recovered, eventually, but I think my life in college would have been more fun if I didn’t assume that the cool kids would always come to, and include, me.

In that light, encouraging a little geekery in JP is probably a good thing. Let him play Dungeons and Dragons. Motivate him with electronics and pocket protectors. Model U.N. anyone?

On the yes side of the ledger is this: it’s wrong to try to exert too much agency over who the child is going to be. JP is going to be JP, hopefully, regardless of the various ways he gets fucked up his parents, teachers, and all the other role models (television) that he encounters. Having a plan in mind is unhealthy, and even smacks a bit of hubris. What if he isn’t a good geek, after all?

Clearly, DadWagon’s influence is being felt far beyond our humble little corner of the Internet, for Details magazine has taken on a topic clearly derived from this week’s geek-rearing Tantrum: “Are You Raising a Douchebag?” The piece includes warning signs such as Junior remarking “that his friend Jake’s eighth-birthday party was ‘unbelievably lame’ or that ‘it’s weird that Brandon’s family flies first-class and we don’t,’ or maybe it’s simply that ‘these taquitos taste like turd.’

It’s then that you must reckon with the real possibility that your drive to make little Johnny better, smarter, and hipper has merely turned him into a douchebag. Put it this way: If it’s your child, not you, who gets to choose your weekend brunch spot, or if he’s the one asking how the branzino is prepared, it’s probably time to take a hard look at your own behavior.

Nathan, I think you—more than the rest of us—might want to look seriously at this article, at least before Nico starts complaining that Serafina’s a shithole and Barney Greengrass smells like old people. Cuz by then, it’ll be too late.