patrick.net

The advantage of the "good" school district is it buys the peer group. For the extra money you spend to live there, you get a majority of families who value education, read to their children, and provide plenty of enrichment. Your kids are surrounded by others who know their parents will react immediately if they don't do their homework. College is assumed, and the goal is to qualify for a very selective one.

Consider the not-so-joking term "Asian fail": a B. And yes, most parents would prefer their kids be stressed about homework rather than getting jumped in the restroom.

"The best of Freakonomics work is questioning the status quo and letting data answer the question rather than conventional wisdom. Like women getting mammograms, for instance."

I found some data that might be classified under freakonomics.

Recently some government information came out that said that suv's were half as likely as sedans (passenger cars) to have an accident. But what the media did not report on this is according to NTSB the death rate is actually twice as high. So combining the two if suv's get into half as many accidents as passenger cars and the death rate is twice then actually accident per accident there are four times as many deaths. Interestingly enough vans have the best safety record but the media failed to report on that as well. But that also brings up is it the car or the driver being more at fault? SUV's are more likely to be used in commercial application while vans are more likely to be used as buses. So hauling stone for masonry job where time is money vs. kids to soccer practice will certainly have people drive safer.

Although schooling is a financial decision for a family, I think the most important consideration is whether the school reflects your family's values and ideas of education, at least as much as possible. This includes the students, teachers, school district, church, whatever. Kids spend a huge amount of time at school and are greatly influenced by their peers and teachers, and the general attitude of the school. If you are willing to get involved in improving a struggling school, it can be a great experience for parents and children. Most private schools do have some sort of financial aid programs and if that is a good fit, there are ways to make that work, even on a lower income. Charter schools come with their own sets of problems, but are a great fit for some families. Magnets and homeschooling are other options. It is about the priorities for the individual family, and for parents it is really important to feel that your kids are safe and in an environment that is conducive to learning and growing. Balancing all of these priorities including housing is the challenge of the modern family. It really needs to be about what is good for the family in a holistic sense, including financial considerations.

For the investor, established "good public schools" do mean a premium on housing in the district and probably will continue to do so.

moom says

The arguments about getting the money back from buying a house in an expensive school district vs. not getting it back when paying private school fees wouldn't work if people are economically rational. If they are rational then the extra price of housing in the good school districts should take that into account so that the net present value of the two paths is equal. Remember, that you pay a bunch of interest to buy that more expensive house that you don't get back. The total capital costs would add up to the costs of private school fees. Of course, the market might not be in this rational equilibrium, but the story is a bit more complicated than people are making out.

Interesting theory, but impractical. What should you assume for # of kids in a family? How do you adjust this for families with no kids. Also, neighborhoods with good schools often have other attractive features besides the school district. How do you adjust for that?

Another consideration is that you can drop out of the private school or apply for financial aid in the form or reduced tuition if things get tight. An expensive home in a good school district doesn't give you that option.

Another option which I've used is District of Choice. Some top rated districts give you a permanet spot and the sending district cannot contest it unless too many students have left.

And there's the old standby of using someone else's address to get into a better district. Just sayin'....

At least the Private Schools do provide actual dollar costs you can factor the premium you are paying and alternatives to buying into a high scored area. Good Luck

For us, the Harker experience was priceless... (No, I do not work there!)

The peer group was amazing. Highest AP scores in the State of California. Half the class every year is National Merit...

No tattoos, piercings, craziness, etc. If you want to be crazy and disruptive you are gone so fast from there. It is a serious learning environment.

Having said that, I think homeschool / plus co-op/ plus job could have been very rewarding for my kids.

Feel so fortunate they had an opportunity to attend Harker.

Maybe it's not for everyone for sure but it works for some quite well. Just grateful. :)

They DO have scholarships available. My kids attended on scholarship.

Toni Mascaro on the hatred of home schooling by the Swedish Govt:

http://lewrockwell.com/orig12/mascaro1.1.1.html

I live in a pretty ordinary house in Cupertino school district for the past 20 years and never did upgrade !

My kids went to the high API score public school in Cupertino till their high school. I found that my eldest child was getting lost in the huge classes in middle school and decided to send her to a private school in a smaller class setting. My son was good at academics and athletics and we decided to send him to Bellarmine as they have a very good sports program.

The experience for both my kids for private high schools was amazing. For most parts, the teachers were better than the public schools. Every school has their strong and weak departments and these schools are no exception. Every school/university, private or public have their drug issues. Some more so than others. However, the fact that there is little tolerance for these at private school helps. My son's freshman class was about 430 kids and the final graduating class was about 380. So about 50 kids left during the course of 4 years, for various reasons, including inability to handle the rigor as forced to leave on being disciplined by the school.

When we had gone to the Bellarmine presentation before making a school selection, If I remember right the presented said - "We cannot guarantee that we will send your kid to Harvard, but at the end of four years of high school, we want to see them turn out to be good human beings". I was a bit apprehensive about this, but I realize the value of this statement after my son is graduating.

Being a non-Christian, I was a bit worried about the compulsory religious subject that my son had to take, almost every semester. It turned out to be a non-issue. The school is very accepting and liberal. In the end, it turned out that my son has a very good understanding of all religions and he appreciates that.

My son loved the academic rigour and sports at Bellarmine. For him it was the best school I could send him to. He loved the school spirit and the enduring friendships that he has formed. One of his teachers was an amazing role model. It made my parenting a bit easier.

Both my kids are attending the IVY's and showing promise of doing very well at college.

I would say there is no right answer on private or public school choice. I had to spend a lot of money to get my kids through high school, since there turn out to expensive. Parental involvement is the most important, in both public and private schools. The private schools did a lot of heavy lifting for me so my involvement was lesser than had I sent them to a public school. It worked out well for us, but could as well work out well for others who are involved with their kids in a public school setting.

tatupu70 says

That criticism is much different than yours. That article seems to be saying that Levitt is giving economics a bad name because he doesn't study the "traditional" economic topics. Sumo Wrestling and Weakest Link are not worthy of study in the old guards' mind.

If you think it's a different criticism, you didn't read the whole article. Again, these things are not clever -- they're just identification.

For example:

But, at times, Levitt gave the impression he was more interested in clever techniques than answers to questions. In a 1997 paper, for example, Levitt argued that hiring more police decreases crime, a proposition for which there was surprisingly little evidence. (The fact that municipalities expand police departments when crime rates rise tends to muddle the picture.) To prove it, Levitt needed to simulate an experiment in which the size of a police force was randomly increased. His solution was to exploit the fact that mayors often hire more police officers in the run-up to an election. The only hitch, as a grad student later pointed out, was that mayors up for reelection don't actually hire many police officers, at least not enough to show that they lower crime.

In addition, the scientific method is most certainly not being used, because Levitt's conclusions are based on simply correlation without any way to prove causation. The opening argument is that abortions cut crime. This falls apart on examination:

http://www.isteve.com/abortion.htm

tatupu70 says

Now, you're right that the data is historical rather than newly collected. So they have to be careful in their analyses, but they usually are. Their statistical techniques are usually spot on.

Right, but it's an exercise in statistics then, not necessarily an exercise in scholarship or the scientific method.

tatupu70 says

The best of Freakonomics work is questioning the status quo and letting data answer the question rather than conventional wisdom. Like women getting mammograms, for instance.

A good criticism with respect to that point -- again, nothing wrong with questioning the status quo, but often Freakonomics doesn't stand up to peer review:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_07_11_05sm.html

Care to point me to the mammogram thing?

You also didn't quote my original statement which is completely consistent with this article:

Freakonomics is simply a backwards look at data and has more to do with chance and random discovery, than having good smarts and doing good thinking. I'd much rather have a clever thinker than someone who can pore through mounds of data just to find a random correlation.

I'm not the only one saying this:

http://www.noapparentmotive.org/papers/DiNardo_on_Freakonomics.pdf

leoj707 says

I actually find archival studies to be some of the more interesting ones. That is because they often are:

Sure, but that doesn't mean that they are good scholarship or that they help us answer important questions. It just means they are "interesting." Archival studies can legitimately be used for useful purposes, but that's not really what the Freakonomics-types studies do. They tend to make overbroad conclusions based on correlations.

corntrollio says

If you think it's a different criticism, you didn't read the whole article

Well, I disagree with that. I think the theme of the article was as I summed it. Even the paragraph you posted is talking about him being "clever". The whole article reeked of sour grapes to me.

corntrollio says

In addition, the scientific method is most certainly not being used, because Levitt's conclusions are based on simply correlation without any way to prove causation.

Yes, proving causation is a tricky endeavor. But that is the case no matter how you do an experiment. It doesn't matter if the data is historical or new--trying to control other variables is always difficult. That doesn't mean he's not using the scientific method, however. Just that he he was wrong about which variables to control.

corntrollio says

Right, but it's an exercise in statistics then, not necessarily an exercise in scholarship or the scientific method.

No--it's more than that. Coming up with the hypothesis, determining how to control all other factors, and analyzing the data is more than an exercise in statistics. The only difference I can see is that you are using old data rather than performing a new test. Is that why you think it's not following the scientific method? If so, why?

corntrollio says

You also didn't quote my original statement which is completely consistent with this article:
Freakonomics is simply a backwards look at data and has more to do with chance and random discovery, than having good smarts and doing good thinking. I'd much rather have a clever thinker than someone who can pore through mounds of data just to find a random correlation.

Sorry, I thought the other quotes framed my points better. I don't agree that chance or random discovery have any bearing on Freakonomics. Do you think Levitt was sitting around looking at Sumo Wresting data and found a random correlation? Of course not. He had an idea and then found data to test this hypothesis and analyzed said data. Sounds a lot like the scientific method to me.

corntrollio says

Sure, but that doesn't mean that they are good scholarship or that they help us answer important questions

You don't think understanding why crime rates decreased is an important question? Or whether mammograms actually decrease cancer? What is the cost? Those aren't important questions?

Finally, if your point is that Levitt didn't properly control for outside variables on some studies--that's a legitimate concern. But it means those particular studies are poor--just like papers are criticized in all sciences for similar flaws. You can't dismiss all his papers because of a mistake on one.

On mammograms:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1000727

tatupu70 says

The only difference I can see is that you are using old data rather than performing a new test. Is that why you think it's not following the scientific method? If so, why?

No, you can use the scientific method with old data -- the issue is that he's just finding random correlations on most of the questions that could be truly useful and not really finding things that are about causation.

tatupu70 says

I don't agree that chance or random discovery have any bearing on Freakonomics. Do you think Levitt was sitting around looking at Sumo Wresting data and found a random correlation? Of course not. He had an idea and then found data to test this hypothesis and analyzed said data. Sounds a lot like the scientific method to me.

So you're saying the Levitt was sitting around thinking about sumo wrestlers and then found data to prove it? That seems far more unlikely.

tatupu70 says

You don't think understanding why crime rates decreased is an important question? Or whether mammograms actually decrease cancer? What is the cost? Those aren't important questions?

Finally, if your point is that Levitt didn't properly control for outside variables on some studies--that's a legitimate concern. But it means those particular studies are poor--just like papers are criticized in all sciences for similar flaws. You can't dismiss all his papers because of a mistake on one.

On mammograms:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1000727

Is the mammogram study a freakonomics thing? Yes, that seems like valuable research.

So does crime research. But only if it's real research. A hand wavy argument that abortions lowered crime is not so useful, especially when it falls apart upon examination. That's true of most of his "studies" on important subjects like crime -- again, the police/election thing was complete BS -- the assumptions fell apart at first examination.

Again, some of his studies are *interesting* but most of them are not useful for anything and very few of them show clever thinking. They are certainly not as certain as he presents them to be either.

Many of the conclusions in the Freakonomics books that are presented as facts and conclusions are subject to heavy criticism by other scholars. Even the used house salesman example he has given has alternate explanations (I believe Arnold Kling, who I almost never agree with, had some.

controllio,

are you a parent?

what about you, thomaswong? A parent?

dunnross says

chip_designer says

Any public school in USA is still 100 times better than the public school system in 3rd world countries.

It depends on what you call a 3rd world country. I don't know much about African schools but, I can assure you that any public school in India, Russia or Argentina is 10 times better than any public school in the US. At least all these countries have a world map in their classrooms, unlike the US schools which only have a map of the state and teach students about local Indian tribes, before teaching them about WWII or the Persian Empire.

Huh?

It makes more sense that you start with local history before moving onto other forms. Every school I have seen in the USA has had maps.

I've met a fair amount from Russia and the objectives of learning actually make more sense here then in Russia.

It is pretty hard to establish a form of a international standard with education. We already have a hard time enough as it is with standardized tests. Malcom Gladwell wrote in one of his books (I don't like him but he made a point). That in examining lower test scores of a given subject in the USA vs countries in Europe he noticed something. The subjects weren't enough taught yet in the USA so naturally Europeans would score higher!

With reguards to Asia this gets interesting. China for example has crops that grow year round. Why does that matter? Because our school system here has a break in the summer that was created when we were a farming nation. Crops had to be rotated, planted, harvested..you don't see rotation in parts of Asia. In addition in Chinese the way numbers are said it uses less consonants. So it's not "THIR TEE THREE" it's three three. So the number process for thinking is faster because it does not require the same amount of processing. It would be like comparing two programs of the same application with one being programmed in assembly and one in visual basic.

I will say that this top is a good one. someone should submit it to a journal

Sybrib says

what about you, thomaswong? A parent?

nope, only conveying comments from life long residents who are parents.

Thomas,

I agree with much of what you write on this topic, but I am sorry that it does not carry so much credibility as if it came from a parent.

Sybrib says

but I am sorry that it does not carry so much credibility as if it came from a parent.

If anything, with the exact cost of private school known at least gives an average buyer an idea what premium they are paying for so called API schools in the Fortress. If they are paying well above the cost of private schools, they are being had big tim.

So why didnt many in prior decades pay for this premium ?
Answer .. there was none!

What matters is your kids' "scores", not the school's API's.

The API is a lazy-parents' index, for folks who don't have the bandwidth or interest to find out what is actually going on at the schools. Instead with a high API they know that their own kid is statistically more likely to have a high test score.

It is taking outsourcing from The Office into The Home.

We live in a very expensive housing market (overpriced shacks really) and have opted for another option: Renting near good public schools. Our nearby charter school is as good as a private school and (almost) free. I say almost because they do much fundraising because California has decided it doesn't care about its children. Still, we pay much less and get private school quality. This is the best of both worlds, right?

Also, in San Diego, it seems to make no sense at all to do the school district thing. You might have a great public or private for elementary, but then discover the middle stinks or the high school is bad. Then you truck your kid all over town (maybe in two directions if you have two kids) to a good school. Better to rent nearby I think.

According to patrick.net manifest, the price of the house can be compared to the same of the rental. Same to the price of a school. Making a rough computation:

- 1 children
- 10K to school one children
- rate 5% (30 year loan, long term interest on the bank)

Break even house overprice is 200K.

Sounds about right. Or am I wrong?
If you have 2 or more children, it seems worth it

ja-

You're forgetting to add in the increase in property tax to your public school "tuition."

For example:
$1.8M Palo Alto home yields approx. $18-20K/year prop tax
$800K Redwood City home yields appr. $8-10K/year prop tax

So not only are you paying a $1M premium for the PA schools, you also get to pay an extra $10K+/year in prop tax to live in the PA school district. So the premium actually turns into somewhere between $1-1.3M for a good public school education. That amount would far exceed private schooling, even for multiple children in our area if you chose to live in one of the nicer areas of Redwood City.

That's not even taking into consideration the "optional" (/required) donation per child required by most of the good school districts.

Seems like the best plan is to rent in a good school district and let someone else pay the property tax, or buy a lower priced condo in a good school district like Sharon Heights in Menlo Park with access to Las Lomitas School District.

Just because you don't physically write out the tax check does not mean you do not pay it.

HW-
Probably a portion, but definitely not all of it! At least not where I am with my rent!

Charter schools are not always what they are cracked up to be. In many areas, like NYC, the charter schools actually have LOWER test socres than the regular schools. Everyone tells me that charter schoosl are just a way to bust the teachers' union.

HousingWatcher says

Charter schools are not always what they are cracked up to be. In many areas, like NYC, the charter schools actually have LOWER test socres than the regular schools. Everyone tells me that charter schoosl are just a way to bust the teachers' union.

In Philadelphia, the privately run schools, that many free marketers touted, did worse than the public schools. There are studies on this:

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/04/09/study.privatized.philly.schools.did.not.keep.pace

Also the value for reselling your house will be high with good School.

Public school is not a bad idea if API over 900. Some private is about the same as public, why pay? With the extra money, I'll sent my kids to learn something new after school, or a family trip. Most important is family value, how you build it!

School is not the only decision point for choosing a neighborhood. You also plan to live there indefinitely. More expensive neighborhoods with better public schools have more of the neighborhood friends you want for you kids and yourself, as well as other conveniences and lifestyle preferences.

Are all your kids going to get into the same private school? Do you want to live in any of those neighborhoods? How are your kids going to get to school? Do you want to drive them (maybe 1 hr/day of your time, more if they're in different schools, or drive them to the train station (still takes your time and it takes them 1.5 hrs/day round-trip). They can walk to the neighborhood public school or it will only take a few minutes to drive them.

Sometimes the public schools are better than the private schools. I went to a private school in the Bay Area. It had at the time serious social problems. Many of us from the local very good school district wished our parents had let us go to the public school. I am sure we would have still gotten into the same colleges but had a much better social life, self esteem, and less psychological damage. On top of that, the 7 hrs of homework per day was a colossal waste of time. I would have learned and accomplished so much more with more free time.

And finally, the financials... Do you mean an extra 100k per year or for the whole house? If the latter, I'm not understanding your question. Bellarmine which is among the cheapest of private schools in the Bay Area costs 16k per year. If all your years of private school are even as low as 16k, K-12 is 13 years. 13 * 16k = 208k. You're way better off financially buying a 100k more expensive house even compared to sending just 1 kid to the cheapest private schools in the Bay Area. Most private schools I know of are over 30k and most people with kids have more than 1 kid. You're looking at more typically 2 kids * 35k tuition * 13 years = 910k. And that's at current tuition rates. Private grade school tuitions have been rising faster than college tuition.

bmwman91 says

Still, weighing a $600k San Jose (Cambrian/Robertsville) house versus a $1.1M Cupertino house surely leaves little room for argument. You could certainly send 3 kids to private K-12 that way.

Math: 3 kids * 13 years * 16k tuition = 624k

You're better off with the 1.1M Cupertino house, and that's if you're paying cash and never sell, not to mention many private schools have 30k+ tuition growing at 6%+/yr.

If you're paying 6% (5% mortgage + 1% property tax), your yearly payment is 36k for the 600k San Jose house and 66k for the 1.1M Cupertino house, which is a difference of 30k per year, less than 1 year tuition at many private schools. Figure in the tax deduction and whether you want to include payment toward principal, and the difference becomes more like 20k per year, less than 1 yr tuition at probably most private schools.

Then add in expected inflation on a highly leveraged house, let's say 3% inflation over 20 years. You might expect to sell the 600k San Jose house for 1.1M and the 1.1M Cupertino house for 2.0M, in other words a gain of 500k for the San Jose house and a gain of 900k for the Cupertino house, so you come out 400k ahead relatively with the Cupertino house after 20 years just on inflation.

Smurfette says

Private grade school tuitions have been rising faster than college tuition.

And there IMHO is the real laugh (on the public falling for it, and paying for it.) Where is your ROI?

commonsense says

Smurfette says

Private grade school tuitions have been rising faster than college tuition.

And there IMHO is the real laugh (on the public falling for it, and paying for it.) Where is your ROI?

Your ROI is the much lower chance of your children being assaulted by minorities, nor do you have to put up with the general 'dumbing down' of the classes for the blacks. Your children's social interaction will include less peers that are from broken homes. Blacks are statistically more criminal(both violent crimes and drug crimes) and that uncaring thug mentality gets instilled in many black children at a young age.

The only key factor in a 'good neighborhood': A low percentage of black people. If that percentage is low, all other factors that create a good place to live will fall into place. It has been proven many times in the past 60 years that a neighborhood/city will destroy itself if the percentage of blacks goes high enough.

These things may not be spoken about in more liberal households, but it is in their minds for sure.

Yes, but I speak there more of the liberalisation of so many so-called private schools that is based IMHO in money making. I'd rather opt for private tutoring/independent study as that is how I finished school. So a parent pays astronomical amounts to send a child to a private school that may well not be what a private school was 25 years ago. I have said before that in the best areas private schools are swiftly becoming what public school were 25 years ago. In the end you pay taxes and have to spend a million to educate a child? What about the mass cheap culture rap ghetto glorifying children of today most of whom cannot even speak properly out of a number of so-called better areas a result of this wave of private schooling? I don't see what it has resulted in because of the dumbing down of the public. I would NOT want to be dealing with children today in the USA no way no how.

Smurfette says

Math: 3 kids * 13 years * 16k tuition = 624k

or get the tubes tied after the 1 kid... its a heck of alot cheaper.

This is such an interesting topic. I actually posted a very similar one in city-data basically asking the question "parents obessions with "best" school districts.

In San Diego its simply ridiculous with the new wave of upper middles moving here from elsewhere. I understand not wanting to send a kid somewhere that they might be heavily infpouenced by the wrong crowd. But I am of the mind that so much of that foundation in decision making as a child grows up come from the home. School can be influential, but not long term....more "phase" than anything else.
Upper middle whites dont want their kids to be around "not them" basically. Passive agressive segregation is basically what it is. And yes it exists in 2011.

When API scores are calculated there isnt that much of a difference between asian, filipino and whites scoring high in ANY school. The negative numbers that push it down are the english language learners etc.

It really was eye opening to hear the spectrum of opinion. http://www.city-data.com/education/1329216-parents-obsession-best-school-district.html

I grew up in a poor family and went to a public school and did fine. Since I was a smart kid who studied hard, I was fortunately tracked early on to gifted and talented (GATE) courses similar to AP courses in junior high and high school with great teachers who had degrees from UC and Stanford. So the whole school thing to me is WAY overrated.

SJ, two coworkers in about the same pay grade who live in The Fortress had kids graduate HS the same year as my oldest, '09. Their kids went to Coveted "public" HS's with Coveted API scores, mine went to a public system that if they were not polite in front of me, they'd sneer at.

All three of these kids took a sh*tload of AP courses, etc.

Those other two kids had higher GPA's than mine, but then, they did not participate in sports. My kid was in three sports (a fall sport, a winter sport, and a spring sport) all four years.

All our kids got accepted to the same UC's, - (nobody made it into UCB but did all the other campuses).

Our family drove, and continues to drive, beater looking cars we keep well maintained. Fits right in with the neighborhood we live at. Fortress dweller coworkers show up to work in the cars you'd expect to see in The Fortress. And then, there's the once-every-other-year-or-so Very Expensive International Travel to "back home" which of course is Even More Expensive since peak holiday travel prices coincide with when K-12 is not in session.

Now the GrassHoppers are bellyaching about the cost of their kids' college expenses, (the similar expenses my kid is getting) because, well, working in a tech dept kinda makes you ineligible for financial aid. So far anyway, we Ants have been able to absort the cost from our paychecks, though it means setting aside less per paycheck than in years past. I listen empathetically.

I agree that K-12 is very important. Being outside of The Fortress, I had my nose to the ground at my kids' public K-12; was a fixture on the campuses (still doing it for the younger one), mainly so that I could continually assess the academic opportunities, peer groups of kids and families, and safety. If am not confident about the situation, we'd relocate our kid(s) in a heartbeat.

Outsourcing Basic Parenting to an API score can be a Very Expensive Proposition.

SJ,

It totally is overrated.

I have seen tons of parents at just about every socio-eonomic level that neglect their kids. While the chances of parents being brighter in high socioeconmic areas, it doesnt dictate how well they parent.
Because quite frankly when a kid comes into the mix, every parent is on the same page. Page 1. IMHO its how well a parent is able to work with what they have to provide a stable path for the kid. Just as all kids wont be pro athletes, all kids are not going to be academic whiz kids. Its about balance.

Its amazing how kids are kids, but adults at times will try to impose a framework of life that has no meaning to them. Its like hearing a kid say something "adult like" but they are like parrots. All they are doing is repeating what they hear but it has no depth or meaning.

Its a strip mall/cookie cutter mentality that I believe will always be there in society, but I am doubtful will yield the next great thinker or problem solver.

SDengineer says

Its a strip mall/cookie cutter mentality that I believe will always be there in society, but I am doubtful will yield the next great thinker or problem solver.

I thought my take on this was over but I had to comment here. You hit this directly on the head. It is a strip mall mentality, middle class bluecollar mentality of what upper class is supposed to be. The people worry so much about such things to such an extreme level are in my view social climbers. This is not as these climbers would like to believe about society because real high society doesn't think the way some people here are. This is about social climbing and nothing more.