When I was living/working in Asia in the late 90's my wife and I decided to buy a house for our eventual return to the US. To give us the maximum flexibility we decided to buy in suburban Boston. Fast forward to 2003 and the process of planning our new lives back home. Since diversity is important to us we gathered the statistics of non-white students in the town where the house we bought was located. Less than 2% - hmmm, not very good.
Were we really going to take our kids from a kindergarten with more than 12 countries represented to a 98% caucasian school system? It seemed like a big step backward. Time to re-evaluate!
Since quality of schools and diversity were co-number 1 factors we realized that our proximity to the urban center of Boston was more of an anchor than a boon. We looked further afield and were pleased to find that we could get everything we wanted in a college town of only 10,000 residents.
On my daughter's first day of 1st grade at the Bernice Ray School I realized that she was one of 5 Asian (or part Asian) kids in a class of 19 kids! I remember feeling "Wow, did we ever find a loophole in the system!" Consequently we have never regretted selling the house we bought and never lived in.
Dartmouth College and Hanover specifically has given us ethnic diversity, best-in-class school facilities and staff as well as culture and healthcare that exceeded our expectations. What we didn't realize we were getting was an incredible sense of community and a much more tolerable pace of life than we ever could have achieved in the city of the burbs.
Comments(0)