Yeah, I’ve certainly seen my share of parents like that too. We are a bit lucky in that our independent K-8, among the notable local options, isn’t necessarily the one parents like that would be most likely to pick. But that doesn’t mean it never happens.
And then our S24’s independent high school WAS one parents like that would pick. Fortunately they were still very outnumbered, but they definitely showed up in things like college counseling parent zooms and such.
To clarify something else, I also meant to be referring broadly about peers competing, to include cases where the peers are not at all cutthroat and are very supportive, and yet the kids still at least internally want to do well as compared to their peers, including not just peers in their school but in general. At a certain point labels aren’t so useful, each kid is subject to their own thinking about such things, but the point I was trying to make is I feel like kids are sometimes going to find ways to think like that regardless of the best efforts of their parents and institutions.
And I think that is OK, even if sometimes it can be a little hard to watch.