to ask how do private schools produce such "confident" kids / adults and how I can do it at home?

[dragontwo]

Ok, I have my reservations about private schools, but I recognise that often they produce kids / adults with high self confidence and self assurance.

I want to know how they do this, how they drill this confidence into them, and how I can replicate any beneficial aspects of this at home into my own kid (state schooled)?

What do they say / do / teach that encourages them to be so confident and expect success?

I know there are down sides to everything but I'm just thinking about good ideas I can help my kid. NB I'm no tiger mother and do my best to encourage my kid as it is already but just looking for ideas and general thoughts on how it's done!!

Just curious!

Resilience is a really sad concept.

Really? I think resilience is incredibly important.

Why?

Resilience is what's underneath when confidence fades.

Isn’t resilience the one thing we are meant to be installing in our kids to help them cope with the pressures of modern day life?

Children need to be taught to understand, first and foremost. Not to withstand

We need to bear in mind that IQs are plummeting. What does this really mean? That understanding is plummeting, and that is because others things that are less cognitively challenging are taking the place of analysis in our children’s lives.

Huh?

I meant to add that thats in a state special school. And please dont slate 2:2s as being below average. I got one!!

Sorry- too deep for me. And, I suspect, too inaccurate.

Try, Bertrand, try. It cannot harm you to exercise your neurones?

Both understanding and resilience are important!

Proper resilience can only be the outcome of deep understanding. We need to concentrate on the latter if we want our children to be resilient adults.

My kids get ‘stickability’ and perseverance drummed into them at their respective independent schools.
Also, i find they get listened to and encouraged to talk , which I don’t remember from my state school days.

A friend went to private boarding school. She says it was drummed into them daily that they were the cream and cream always rises to the top.

Class sizes of no more than 12 also help.

Likewise Eatalot. I didn't board, but that was very much the message. It was always just assumed we would all be a success, and could do, or have, anything we wanted.

@bertrandrussell But they are already in that social group. So they have been fitting in to it since birth..... no, you get children from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, I am as common as muck but spent 4 or so years in one, I wasn't the only commoner. You do have some funny ideas about private schools! I didn't go there to learn the social skills, obvs. I agree however that resilience is important (a later point you make...)

@user1499173618 I know, I agree, I drift to the utopian sometimes, but if we treated our teachers better and had slightly more joined up thinking in the education system in terms of funding and expectations it would be possible. Good gosh they freely spend 30m on some mad experimental open plan thing under bsf rather than spend 2m refurbishing the existing buildings, just as one example, think of the cash that could be available if it were used responsibly.

@user1499173618 i agree with your response about resilience too incidentally.

Some bizarre attitudes here. I must ask the dcs how often they've been beaten up at school...

I think that posters are linking academic success with private-school "polish". Of course if you go to an academic private/public school, and you yourself are clever, then success is all the more guaranteed. But just setting foot over the threshold of any old fee-paying school does not mean that your education is better than a state one just because it's paid for. In fact in smaller schools the classes may well be dominated by dunces.

The shiny sheen of confidence is another matter entirely, and in fact appears most liberally spread on those with the least academic ability.

Kids in private schools are also quick off the mark in getting work experience. This isn't all through family connections - one of my students got to meet a very famous scientist just by writing to him at his hospital and he invited her in.

This is an interesting point. At my workplace we always try to accommodate work experience requests but the fact is that the majority do tend to come from private school pupils.

I think it comes back to a lack of ambition and - at my state school nobody was encouraged to write proactively to people to find opportunities. You were just given a work experience placement from a list and if that was Woolworths, so be it. Also it wouldn't be seen as "cool" to meet a respected scientist, you'd probably keep it quiet to avoid being seen as a nerd!

The shiny sheen of confidence is another matter entirely, and in fact appears most liberally spread on those with the least academic ability

Yup you are right. There ARE some bizarre attitudes here

I don't think the shiny sheen appears most liberally spread on those with the least academic ability @gretol but I do think that appearing confident because of learned social skills is totally different from being confident, and having high self esteem. And totally unrelated to whether or not you will fulfill your potential. I also think that every child has immense potential.

”Also it wouldn't be seen as "cool" to meet a respected scientist, you'd probably keep it quiet to avoid being seen as a nerd!“

This is what DH experienced, from both school and home. He was ridiculed by his (working class, Liverpudlian, family) and told that “people like us, from around here, don’t go to university”.

He ignored them and made it on his own but he has a huuuuge chip on his shoulder about not being good enough. His parents are cut off now as he didn’t want our son to go through what he did.

Our son, private school since he was 3 and no contact from DH’s family, is the epitome of public school self assurance.

From my experience the difference between confidence levels could come from

1. They are treated as mini adults at school. Lessons tend to take the form of discussions/debates where everyone is encouraged to participate. So lively debate with no right or wrong answers and lots of putting together an argument and articulating it. This is normally the same at home
2. High expectations from parents and staff - lots of 'you can do it', 'what help do you need?'
3. No fear of failure. DDs school encourages competition in all areas and everyone gets used to failing. Sounds like it would knock confidence but it seems to improve confidence eg person A always wins at xxx but isn't too good at yyyy. If some one beats a personal best it's always cause for celebration regardless of whether they win or not. Someone decided to take part in an inter house swimming competition even though they weren't good at it (original selection was ill). The others had finished when the poor girl had 2 laps to go. So what did they do? Believe it or not,they did another 2 lengths with her to show solidarity whilst the rest of the school cheered her on. No ridicule because everyone was proud that she did it
4. House system- working as a team and recognising that everyone has strengths
5. Personal responsibility for own actions

....most of this can be boiled down into treating each other with respect (including opinions), don't be afraid to be different, working together (students,team events, parents, teachers), treating them like adults and providing all the support to let them achieve to the best of their abilities

It's OK to fail, but it's not OK to not try

So trying without fear of failure is perhaps what's being interpreted as confidence???

....and a lot of this can and does come from home life.

Met DH (public school) at uni. The course was a 50:50 mix of private school pupils and not.

A day after one of the freshers parties where a group, DH included, had made fools of themselves, another student was trying to embarrass them with the usual “OMG Do you remember what you did last night?!” line in a packed lecture theatre.

The state school freshers were embarrassed, the private school lot not a jot. DH looked up from his book, “What do you expect? We were drunk...”.

I remember thinking then that that was confidence!